Knock at the door

The door spoke to me before we even walked in, but the knock was making me think it was alive. I had to go inside, the folkish, Finnish painting of the man on the horse was speaking to me. The eye peering through the keyhole pierced me inside like soft jelly. It glowed like a devil.

“Don’t unlock that door, Indigo. The witch will get us. She can’t come in unless someone invites her,” I signed to her, and everyone gave me a look that made me feel disqualified to save anyone, much less, feel important enough to tell anyone what to do.

The room inside was little, untouched. Everything looked in its place. A pulpit, the big books placed in a pile, rows of seating. These sorts of things, I was taught to stay away from. This was…

“This is a church!” Stan signed suddenly.

The other Bloodletters hissed, growling at where I led them. Ax, the big zombie, seemed unfazed.

Emma, a human with black curls and brown skin, stuck close to India, a bloodletter with big, gold eyes.

“In this where we should stay for the night? That knocking got me spooked,” Emma declared.

India frowned, holding Emma’s hand as she signed to the group, “It’s probably safe. I doubt anyone will..”

An insistent knock made everyone jump a little. This wasn’t boding well. The night was already in full bloom with its relit hush of moon, stars and twilight.

“I’m not answering that… what the fuck is there?!” Emma whispered in a panicked way.

The door was thick and shut tightly once we all were inside. Now I think the door is breathing, bleeding. It’s red glow whispers to me: You aren’t who you think are you. I feel myself shudder. Indigo suddenly takes my arm. I don’t push her away. Is she seeing and hearing what I do?

You skinless goat. You parasite. I own you now…

The incessant, cruel whispers came punching through the door as I felt my head feel loose, ajar, frantic.

“Amory! What is in yer head, you mad yoke?!” Indigo signed to me, looking perplexed.

I remembered a long patch of brilliant jade green hills hit my subconscious, watching a human looking at me with this luscious, shining smile. The kind of smile that made me want to go off to war. To fight. To win. Was that…

Indigo was talking to me but I wasn’t paying attention. She hit me. I didn’t care. I was never human. I could not have been. I was always this sloth of a Bloodletter, damaged and stupid, like my handler Retha called me. The witch we killed…. No…

The one that died from her own poison. The concoction she made to sustain her.

You stupid halfwit! You couldn’t even get one thing right! You should rot away but it’s more entertaining to torture you slowly, Retha cackled inside of me. I felt her gathering up my insides like a violent tornado. She made me fall to the ground.

Everyone seemed spooked by the knocking as the night speared on. The lone eye kept taunting me through the key hole. Indigo was next to me.

Suddenly, everything got deathly silent. The door became wood again. Not glowing or red or bloody.

Everyone sat down. I think I heard prayer. I heard an angel singing:

Onpa tietty tietyssäni,

mesimarja mielessani.

Lempilintu litossani, soriainen suojassani.

This has to be my roots. The song was from my Finnish roots, my old memory. But how would…

Indigo… she’s signing it and humming it!

How did she know? She only spoke in Irish fragments. There was no way…

It was a poem from my childhood. Was I a child? No. No. I was only a monster.

Yet I remembered a woman with big hips and solid bust, her long arms holding me. Is that mother? The poem she spoke to me: Onpa tietty tietyssäni (I Am Thinking of a Particular One)….

The translation is sobering. I sign to everyone so they know what she sang.

His image is fastened in my mind

My sweet one in my memory,

My little bird flies along with me

My dear one under my ——

The last word is lost as the door is swung open. Something like a haunting laugh is sucked out of the room like an invisible vacuum. My insides recoil and twist. I feel paralyzed but my mind is swarming with images that I can’t quite place, like a mountain, a town, a village. A home. I must be imagining it. This church, looking like an old church out of my dead mind. The folk art on the door and walls that feel like home calls to me.

A human man and human woman are outside the night air. Who are they? What do they want? What am I? I can’t move as they come inside. Indigo is soothing me as we’re humming together. The dead witch inside me is finally quiet. But I know this won’t last. Something feels torn off my very soul, a rip that feels like the most important parts of something I need to remember is tucked away in a prison.

I look at the high moon, and the witch’s eye blink like a warning apparition in the night sky, tearing apart my last bit of sanity.

“I’m Cara and this is Ben. We need to rest. May we stay here?”