Chapter II.XI

Vitaly Ivolginsky

Always Visible (Another Prayer for the Dying Horror Genre)

Second Act — Uma Moldura Quebrada

Chapter II.XI

“I hope you don’t mind”, the prisoner took a break, “if from now on I return to a detailed description of the events that happened to me?

“Well, you go right ahead”, mister inspector Galbraith nodded understandingly.

The day after he and Delia returned from Japhet, Jo was awakened by a phone call. He, having forgotten about getting dressed and washed, walked up to the telephone as he was and put the receiver to his ear. It was his neighbour, missis Yonce herself. He, as if fighting with the feeling of dissatisfaction that overwhelmed her, notified mister Thurlow that while washing her daughter’s underwear, she noticed something strange and therefore in the afternoon she would take her daughter into town on business. Then she took a short pause, apparently waiting for Jo’s answer, but he could not find anything in response to these words. In a breaking voice, Ivette added that mister Thurlow was very lucky that her spouse and Delia’s father was at work at the center at that time. Jo’s internal organs appeared to be filled with liquid nitrogen. He felt that above him, like above Damocles – the favourite of the Syracusan tyrant – was hanging the sharpest sword of justice, which threatened to fall down and cut his unfortunate head into two halves…

He continued to hold the receiver to his ear, although only beeps could be heard from it. Finally, having mastered his numb limbs, he dropped it next to the telephone and, feeling the ground disappearing from under his feet, managed to grab the table top with his hands. In such a pose, vaguely similar to the figure of a son from a famous painting by Rembrandt, Jo spent, according to personal feelings, no less than two hours. Then he stood up and, feeling that he needed fresh air, almost ran out into the street. Thank God that not a single member of the Yonce family caught his eye…

Standing near his gate and turning his head from side to side, mister Thurlow was convinced that it was still possible to walk calmly on this earth. And he, still feeling the cold in his back, decided to walk to the store. No, not for the sake of shopping, but in order to, in an environment where there are a lot of people, try to get rid of the loneliness that tightens his soul. Trying not to break into a run, Jo directed his steps to where the entire population of the Parkrose Neighborhood was purchasing essential goods. Having reached the first tents under which fresh fruit was sold, he suddenly heard his name. It turns out that two old women, who at that time were taking red apples from the merchant, were engaged in a lively dialogue with each other. Mister Thurlow tried to stand behind the awning so that they could not see him and strained his ears.

“You know, Patricia, I have a suspicion that this scoundrel Jordan obviously did something to the pharmaceutist’s daughter”, the old woman with a white scarf on her head spoke, muttering her lips.

“What makes you think that, Elsebeth?”, her younger friend asked.

“Because I just met Ivette this morning”, exclaimed the interlocutor. “She was as pale as death!”

“Oh, the poor… They were connected with what?”

“Well, she said that she asked her daughter to put on new drawers and, while taking her old underwear to wash, she noticed that they were red with blood”.

“What, has the baby started her period? At eight years old?”

“Ivette couldn’t believe her eyes, and forgetting about the laundry, rushed at the girl with questions. And she told her that yesterday she visited certain ajussi Jo and ajussi Japh”.

“Two murderers… My God… They should sit together!”

“The pharmaceutist’s wife has the same opinion. I barely persuaded Ivette to go and get checked by a doctor before calling the police”.

“So what’s next?”

“She went home after that. Maybe she really did that, or maybe she couldn’t stand it and unleashed police bloodhounds on the bastards”.

“Dear God!”

Patricia – old lady who was younger – noticed hiding Jo and started screaming. He immediately rushed as fast as he could away from the shops, hearing the words “Ordinary, scabby, pitiful fiend!” flying after him. That’s it, he thought, goodbye freedom… And at the same time he asked himself the question of what was happening. He never committed any lewd acts with Delia, avoided kisses and did not even embrace her, and here on you… There is clearly something wrong here, he thought, being already halfway to the house. Meanwhile, clouds began to gather in the sky. Without slowing down, mister Thurlow glanced at the far ahead clearing full of tall grass. It was already the end of September, and now the previously green ocean of plants was coloured in shades of yellow and orange. Thick clouds that had already filled the sky with might and main created a very interesting conjunction.

And then Jo remembered what the landscape spread out before him looked like – the nature of his native village was almost completely a living embodiment of the cover of the very record that he gave to his young neighbour back in August… He remembered her story about how she gave the record to Jerry, and he supposedly responded to her gift with only “Thank you”, but deep down Jo felt that Delia, in telling him about this incident, was simply limiting herself to only the first half of what actually happened – at the same time, she didn’t lie, but she didn’t fully tell the truth either. Returning his thoughts to the present, he began to think that if he could trust the words of those two old gossips, then when interrogated by her mother, Delia also did not denigrate him and Japhet. All the same for her reverent parents – for the father in particular – one fact that their little daughter was in the company of two adult men in an unfamiliar apartment, was reason enough to hand Jo over to the court butchers, who will pass his mortal body through the knives of the bureaucratic meat grinder. Honestly, it would be better if they killed him right there on the spot than subjected him to such torture – death is clearly more desirable than such a life…

But even saying these words to himself, mister Thurlow was still afraid. He was afraid that Delia’s furious father would open his skull with his powerful hands, and the fact that under police escort he will be taken to dark and damp dungeons, where he will have to rot until the end of time. Is it really all because of certain gal, the daughter of a paltry medicine seller? Not that this solved anything in the real state of affairs, but Jo could not help but be offended by the fate that brought him, distant relative and descendant of one of the most influential figures of the former (and extremely short-lived) Saorstát Éireann, to the scaffold because of the daughter of some American. When Jo approached his house, the first drops of rain had already begun to fall on the street.

Rejoicing at how well he had timed his walk, mister Thurlow, without even bothering to check that he had closed the wicket properly, entered the house and followed to the kitchen. From the feeling of threat that still did not want to retreat, he did not feel like eating at all, but he tried to find a bottle with some kind of drink – he just wanted to drown out his fear with alcohol, even the most terrible one imaginable. Alas, there was not a drop of this substance at home, except for the flask, at the bottom of which there was just a little pure ninety percent alcohol – this amount barely fit on the teaspoon into which Jo shook out the contents of the flask. He put the teaspoon containing the contents into his mouth and exhaled. His throat felt a slight burning sensation, the disgusting bitter taste made him wrinkle his face, but he could not achieve the desired intoxication.

It’s a shame he didn’t buy a bottle of something strong when he went for a walk. In any case, he had to live in freedom, God willing, until tomorrow morning, for a premonition told him that this would not end the matter, and the return of mister Yonce will only worsen his already unenviable position. Jo did not know what to do with himself at this time. He couldn’t get even a little drunk, and he couldn’t try to do anything without this doping – the fear was eating him up from the inside. Therefore, mister Thurlow, standing a little near the window (behind which it was already raining), closed the curtains and went into the bedroom, where, without undressing, he immediately climbed under the blanket. He fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.

He had a dream that he, while still a very small boy, went hunting with his cousin into the forest. A piebald dog of some hunting breed was running behind them. The weather this morning was cloudy, but there was no rain yet, as well as the sun, which had not yet risen. He asked his cousin why they went so early. The grown man looked at the boy and replied something like “The ducks haven’t woken up yet, so it will be easier to shoot them”. Little Jo wanted to ask one more question, but then the piebald dog, bursting into barking, rushed forward into the impassable thicket. The expression of complacency immediately disappeared from his cousin’s face – it was replaced by the tense expression of a professional hunter who has already smelled the game and is trying not to scare it. The man rushed forward after his dog, holding his hunting rifle at the ready. The boy, who was openly pinched by the heavy boots, could not run after his adult companion in the same way, so little Jo, trying not to slip on the mud, trotted after his cousin. And then a shot rang out. A man was shooting somewhere in the thicket, his piebald dog was squealing wildly. The boy wanted to cover his ears, but his hands seemed to not obey him. And his cousin, to the accompaniment of an increasingly heart-rending dog, continued to send shots there, into the thorny branches of the thicket…

Jo shuddered and immediately raised his head from the pillows. The dog’s heart-rending screams continued to ring in his ears, but these were not echoes of the dream he had just seen – sounds came from the street. Mister Thurlow, covered in sweat, swung his feet off the bed and, pulling on his slippers, ran out into the yard. The rain, which began in the afternoon, had already turned into a real downpour by nightfall. But Jo, already standing on the porch, did not pay attention to the heavy streams of water that lashed him all over his body. All his attention was occupied by the wild picture that opened before his eyes – near the wicket, which was wide open, stood huge man with a bowler hat on his head. He had a pistol in his hands, which he pointed at poor Buffalo. When mister Thurlow went outside, the dog didn’t even whine anymore – an angry man shot him in the throat five times. And when he lifted his head from Buffalo to Jo, the owner of this yard, continuing to stand on the porch, let out a heart-rending scream. It was a cry in which fear, pain of loss and wild, all-consuming hatred for the one who was now standing at the wicket were mixed together…

What happened next, mister Thurlow practically couldn’t remember. Only fragments, as if in a delusional dream, remained in his memory moments how he then, already soaked through in the rain, rushed towards the killer with his bare fists, how the latter knocked Jo to the ground next to the dead dog with a strong blow to the chest and began to inflict powerful kicks on him with the fury of a wild animal. Then everything around sparkled with blue and red lights, he heard the howl of sirens. Mister Thurlow remembers how, covered in mud, he was grabbed by two men in uniform and thrown like a sack of flour into the back of a truck.

And then, no longer in the darkness and not in the dirt, but in a spacious courtroom, he stood and, with his head down, listened to the verdict, according to which he was destined to spend eighteen long years in a maximum security colony. With eyes that seemed to be covered with a veil, he looked around at the people gathered at that moment. Not finding among those gathered the one who started it all, his attention was distracted by the scream of his friend Japhet, who stood up and extended his hand forward – apparently pointing at one of the respected members of the trial – angrily recited “Some fiends eats other fiends! What a great thing to be doing when y’all don’t have a humaneness!”, after which he suddenly grabbed his heart with his other hand and silently fell to the floor, and then the guards grabbed him by the arms like a sack of potatoes and dragged him out of the courtroom…

“Anyway, that’s all, mister inspector”, exhaling, Jo completed his narration. “You are unlikely to be interested in how I began to do time in these stinking walls?”

“Well, well…”

The prisoner and the policeman sat silently opposite each other. Mister Thurlow, who wanted to stretch his legs after sitting for a long time, was about to get up, but then his interlocutor raised his hand.

“Wait, Jordan Thurlow, our meeting isn’t over yet”.

“What’s the matter, mister inspector?”

Jo asked him in the tone in which a little boy is trying to get an answer from his strict father about why he can’t go for a walk.

“You told me your half of the story, and I want to tell you mine”, mister Galbraith answered almost solemnly

“What, is it really possible that this family, through whose fault I am here rotting alive, still any incidents happening?”

“You get the point right, Jordan. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Sit down”.

And mister Thurlow sat down on a hard wooden chair. A spark of curiosity began to light up inside him. He suddenly became very interested in what this strong-willed man with a military bearing would tell him now. Who knows, what if… Jo tried to think about Delia as little as possible, but at that moment her small figure was resurrected before his mind’s eye. He, trying to cope with the excitement that was bursting through him, answered his interlocutor:

“I’m all ears, mister inspector…”