Free Resurrection House by James Chambers Page B

head up and bit down with jagged, cockeyed teeth on Jennifer’s bottom lip. She pulled her down, close to her putrid face, and still Jennifer managed to voice the incantation. Pain lanced her mouth, and she gagged on the awful flavor of decay. Her stomach turned in a knot. She wanted to vomit, but she held back, until finally the jabbing bones forfeited their unbearable kiss. Marion Barnes’ head cracked against the floor and burst in a spray of blood and feathers.
    The silk noose jerked free.
    Jennifer sank several inches, landing on a bed of decimated seagulls slicked with putrescence.
    The other gulls descended into rampant chaos.
    All sense of a pattern to their flight dissipated as they turned wild, shocked by the confinement of the bedroom. They lashed out, and gradually managed to find their way to the windows and to the other rooms of the house. Soon they dispersed, leaving behind only a scattering of broken-winged gulls among the dead.
    Jennifer experienced a moment of overwhelming grief, and wondered if she had made the right decision. She rose and walked around the room, unplugging the electrical cords of the life support machines. The appearance of life in Mr. Barnes’ corpse had deceived Marion Barnes’ into lingering too long, while her husband’s soul fled to whatever awaited it. The mechanical sounds and beeps ended. Mr. Barnes’ chest fell one last time and never rose again.
    Jennifer put a hand on Chloe’s shoulder, helped her onto her feet, and led her outside to the backyard and fresh air. She peered through the trees and saw the parking lot was empty now; the only gulls in sight were far-off specks in the clear sky that might have been the last to flee the Barnes house. Chloe pressed her head against Jennifer’s shoulder and cried, and they stood there together like they had on an awful day a long time ago, and Jennifer thought to herself how the worst things that passed among people never really ended, but rolled on forever in ripples across time, eternally unanswered.

Refugees
    The odor of the bundle laid out across the backseat comes in waves that wrap me like the scent of guilt. Time draws me ever closer to the inevitable. Tear streaks dry on my misshapen face, forming a thin film over the painful contortions of my flesh. I sigh, step out of the car, and open the back door. Sand crunches beneath my feet. The slick, dark crests of the ocean roll and bend a short distance away. Remembrance ebbs back to me with the ripple-veiled clarity of languid surf; possibility gapes ahead of me like the far horizon of the sea on that dry, cloudless day that I first met Lynna Marish more than two decades ago.
    * * * * *
    A full-grown horseshoe crab lay wedged in a tiny gully among the rocks. It bobbed in the lapping water.
    I crept down the slick boulders, stretching across the last length of space to reach the crab, struggling to keep my feet dry. Today was the first day of school, and Mom would kill me if I came home for breakfast with my new shoes soaked. She hadn’t wanted me to go down to the beach, but I couldn’t resist on such a beautiful morning. I’d spent the whole summer combing the sand and rocks, tracing Bossoquogue Creek from its outlet by the bay into the woods, swimming and diving, catching frogs, fish, and crabs, while I explored the waters and wilderness around Knicksport. I wasn’t ready for it to end.
    School meant classes and being indoors, riding the bus, and facing the dumb meanness of people like Lester Smart, the track team star, and Julie Farrell, the class president, and all their hurtful imitators. It brought a close to days filled with seemingly endless hours of solitary wandering. It took me away from the water. The only good thing about high school that year was that our science course was biology, and we would get to dissect a starfish.
    Over the summer I’d made friends among the clammers and oystermen who kept their boats moored in the harbor, quiet men who knew the