Eight glasses a day to keep the demons away ...

Part One: Mother

The family is gathered at the long table overlooking the lake at the back of my father's house—in reality, the lake is a pond, but my father demands grandeur from all his things. Now that he is gone, my mother has reluctantly claimed his seat at the helm. Like the pond, his seat at the table is grand. Like the table, it is made of Cypress—the eternal wood. It will never rot, nor any insect infect it. My father was so sure of it, he had the grand table and chairs set as close to pond's edge as possible. Taunting the dark water to a challenge.

My mother is telling the family a story. She is standing with her back to the pond. Her long hair matches its color. She is wearing a white cotton dress with my father's favorite leather belt tied almost twice around her small waist. The sun is setting. It casts my mother in a deserving light. Never being one to share the spotlight, my father kept my mother tucked in his shadow for most of their marriage.

Inexperienced in the light, my mother's story is going long. The night is hot and the bottles of cold Sancerre lining the center of the table are sweating. My cousin Rebecca has been staring at the Cajun potato salad in front of her for the last ten minutes, while the plump child on her lap cries for her breast. Uncle Pete is on his third rum and coke and has fallen asleep in his chair. I decide to help my mother bring the story to a close, but when I open my mouth to speak, her next words carry an inflection so familiar, it's almost like my father has come back from the grave to finish the story himself.

No one but me notices her voice deepen an octave. No one but me is bothered by the hard way she is delivering the crux of the soft story—a story cemented into tradition and the transcript of our family history. We've all heard it before—my sister, age 10, in a fight with a baby monkey at the Bronx Zoo.

I search the table for Sarah and find my sister seated next to grandma Wilson. Sarah's head is back and her arms are slack at her side. She is groaning up at the night sky. My sister is playing along as my mother reaches the climax.

"...and while my back was turned, Miss Zoologist over here," my mother says in my father's voice, "climbs over the guardrail and pushes her face against the monkey cage ..."

My mother abruptly stops. Hearing his voice too, she clamps her mouth shut. Her eyes go wide. She grips her stomach as if she's swallowed a fly. Everyone at the table begins to laugh without her ever reaching the punchline.

"The monkey had it coming!" Sarah shouts as she's always done. More laughter ensues and then the table rips into movement, like a hundred tentacles going for food and drink all at once.

From where I am sitting, I can see that my father's chair is covered in water. Bubbles of it are sliding over the oily Cypress wood. My mother settles back into the wet seat. Her hair is wet. Her mouth is wet. Her lips are blue. The wetness is rolling over her chin and down the slope of her neck.

After his death no one thought to move the table away from the edge. After his death no one thought about the things too close to the water that were not made of the eternal wood.

Part Two: The Young Priest

The young priest is in my kitchen—my father's kitchen—now mine. I wonder if he's ever been alone with a woman like me, or if I am the first of his damned creatures.

His eyes settle on a muddy water glass sitting on the counter top.

"Would you like some water," I ask.

His eyes fly up from the glass—blue eyes that could be pretty had they not been given the home of two sunken sockets pressed too close to a thin nose. With all his jet black hair and with eyes like that, he is right for a gypsy.

The young gypsy priest is nervous, obviously sent here to save me with no idea how to do it. A deep vertical line pulls between his brows.

"No, thank you," he says.

"Priest," I say. "What can I do for you?"

My voice is cold. My tone is hard.

"Call me Michael," he says.

I don't.

He nods and carries on.

"Your mother—" he begins.

"Is not here," I finish.

With panic on his face he asks, "And your father?"

"Dead," I confirm.

Red blotches form just above his collar. They spread up his throat. He glances at the ceiling above our heads then brings his eyes back to me.

"The police are asking to dredge the pond," he announces.

He waits for a reaction, but I know better. If the police want to mess with the pond that's their business.

"They won't come near the house of course," he adds. "I'll make sure of it."

The young gypsy priest licks his chapped lips. He interlocks his fingers and waits for me to thank him.

I don't.

We stand in silence. The wind picks up. The sound of outside trying to get inside, rattles the house. A branch smacks the window and the young gypsy priest nearly jumps out of his skin. I wonder who sent him here. I wonder what old man sent a child into the lair.

"You should go," I say.

I move forward, hoping this will push him toward the door. He takes a step back, but his eyes widen in childlike wonder.

"Look at you," he whispers.

He considers my wild hair. It's an unwashed rat's nest of curls. It's also graying although I've only just turned twenty. His eyes are next drawn to my nightdress. In the morning light, I am positive he can see right through the thinning cotton to my erect nipples beneath.

He swallows deeply and drops his eyes to my muddy feet. He focuses on them too long and misses my steps until I am nearly on top of him.

"You should go," I remind.

Part Three: Father

I go to the pond before sunrise. I kneel at the water's edge. My knees are bare. It's important to present skin-to-skin to the water. It's important that it knows who you are. The morning routine happens under the eye of the pond bullfrog—a yellowing thing that sits in judgement. He is unaffected as he watches. His head is resting on the ancient landing that Sarah and I used to jump off of as kids. I fight through the weeds and algae for the oily, black liquid. I fill the glass. The anaerobic bacteria, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide and ammonia gases combined, create a foul odor that sticks to my skin. My skin is always damp. I can't shake the wet. I can't wash it out. I can't dry it off.

Back at the house the young gypsy priest is gone but my father is there. I go upstairs. He is sprawled on my mother's bed, legs open, arms out. He is glaring at me with her eyes.

"Where's my water!" he barks. "I need eight glasses a day to keep the demons away!"

He takes a long breath in. There is a racket in his chest—a clamor of clanks, creeks, whistles and slams.

I hand him the glass. He shakely brings it to his lips—my mother's lips. He gulps down the water in three big swallows and slurps up a slimy brown weed like a slip of spaghetti.

"Sit down," he groans. "I wanna tell ya a story."

He waits. He breathes. Each breath sounds like the call of the bullfrog.

I do as I'm told.

I sit at the edge of the bed. The windows are open, but the room is stifling. The wind is blowing through the shedding maple tree right outside, and yet, in this room, there is no air. It is sealed by evil. Nothing can get in. Nothing.

My father brings my mother's legs together and sits up. Her head is uncooperative. Her head is the one part of her body he can't control. In life, he used to accuse her of having a wandering eye—a wandering head full of wandering thoughts. He tries to face me, but her head bounces around like it's being handled by a marionette string. Then my mother's head rolls too far to the left and hangs there over her shoulder refusing to straighten. I know it's a message for me. She's still in there.

My father snaps her fingers. "Listen up girl."

I listen up.

"When I was a boy your grandma Wilson used to parade me all over town delivering pies to the fine women of the church." He raises a finger at me. "Cept' they weren't no fine women at all. They was bitches and whores."

I fight to keep my face blank. Because of this he diverts from the story to get a rise.

"Whachu know about bitches and whores?" he asks.

"Nothing—"

"Ha!" he shouts.

He grabs at my mother's crotch. "Your mother knew a lot about whoring."

I think about killing him. Like so many times before. Except that, at the moment, that's exactly what he wants.

"Back to my story," he continues. "Your grandma Wilson had me out in the sun all day with no food and no proper shoes. I was tired and hungry, so when she was talking her woman talk, I ate one of the pies she had in her rolling suitcase." He licks his lips. "It was a peach pie!"

He tries to lift my mother's head. He wants to sit tall for this next part, but her head stays defiantly glued to her shoulder. The force of her fight swells tears in her eyes. Saliva pools in her mouth and sweat breaks across her brow.

"It was grandma Wilson's best pie," my father says. "Her most expensive pie! Reserved for the biggest whore of them all! The dang preacher's wife! And I ate it! I had sweet peach cobbler in my hair, up in my nostrils, even had some on my pecker!" He breaks off into a laughing fit. Orange bile slugs out the corner of my mother's mouth. He licks it back and swallows it down.

"Grandma Wilson was so mad she whip me right there in the street with her purse strap right in front of that whore preacher's wife."

He made a steeple out of my mother's beautiful fingers.

"That night I told daddy that mama had taken up with that same preacher. He whipped grandma Wilson with his leather belt harder than she whipped me ..."

He trails off, forgetting the point of his story.

"...well," he says, "I guess I never forgot it."

My eyes go immediately to his leather belt still wrapped around my mother's waist. It belonged to grandpa Wilson and was passed down to my father, which he used on my mother, Sarah and me. My mother took to wearing it when she was sure my father was dead.

Part Four: Daughter

I set my mind to setting fire to the pond. My idea is to dry it out—kill whatever is giving him life. If it died, then he'd go with it, and my mother would be my mother again. So, I fill four old barrels with gasoline and try to light them, but my hands are dripping wet. The barrels are soft. The gasoline diluted. I can't catch a flame. The matches in my hands are soaked. I go back to the house drenched in the rancid water even though I never touched it. Lately, I've been waking up wet. Even my belly is full. When I walk it sloshes inside me like a bathtub full of pond water.

I go up to check on my mother, hoping she's there and he's gone, but as soon as I enter the room, my father whistles through her teeth and laughs.

"You tryin' to burn us alive girl?" he asks.

"No," I say. "Just you."

"Wachu say!" he hollers.

He throws the blankets off the bed and slams a fist into my mother's bare thigh, shattering her femur. For a moment she is back. Her eyes brighten when she sees me.

"My baby," she says, reaching for me.

"Mama!" I shout, pouncing onto the bed and taking her hands in mine.

Her long lashes flutter. They are dotted with tears. Then her eyes fill with terror and her mouth opens. The inside is black. Her teeth are pond water green from the eight glasses of water I've feeding her everyday. She shrieks into the room as the pain in her leg reaches her soul.

"Help me!" she roars.

The voice is both hers and his. My father rips back in. Her hands are around my throat. But it's not my mother squeezing. I grip her hands, digging my nails into her skin, but he's too strong. The only choice I have is to ram my head into hers. I send her flying back from the strike. I fall onto my own back and gasp for air.

"That's right," he hisses. "That's a good girl," he says.

I scramble to my feet. There is blood everywhere. My mother's nose is broken. He thumps her chest with a fist.

"If you don't do it soon, I will!" he warns. "Now get my water!"

He wants me to kill him, killing her too. His final act.

This time I bring the pond water in a plastic cup, afraid he might shatter the glass and slit her throat. He drinks it down like a beer, sighs and rubs her stomach.

"That's good," he says.

When the cops come, I am sitting on the back steps of the house, shivering in my nightdress. None of them look at or talk to me. They go about the work of dredging the pond without so much as a nod of a greeting.

In the next moment, just when I'm thinking of him, the young gypsy priest comes out of the woods to the right of the pond. He glances over at the cops, but walks directly to me.

"I've been thinking about you," he says. "Hold this while I have a chat with the Sheriff." He leaves his bible at my feet. It is dry. I want to rub it all over my wet body.

I watch the young gypsy priest talk with Sheriff, a man I'd never seen before. He was not the same Sheriff Thatcher who once removed Sarah and me from the house years ago after one of my father's rampages.

The young gypsy priest nods at the Sheriff who is signaling to a group of three others struggling at the pond's edge. The young gypsy priest jogs back to me.

"Priest, what's happening?" I ask.

He takes a seat next to me on the steps.

"Please call me Michael," he says.

I don't.

"They've got something," he says.

He is looking at the work happening at pond. He closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them and turns to look at me. His eyes gleam. His lips tremble.

"Can I touch you?" he asks.

I decide he is pretty. I decide I was wrong before when I said he wasn't.

"I'm not sure," I say.

When he tries to touch me and I don't feel him, I think my eyes fill with tears.

A commotion erupts at the pond.

"Just keep looking at me," the young gypsy priest says.

His voice and eyes are familiar and kind. I want to cry and never stop.

"My father is upstairs," I say, even though I'm beginning to think it's not true.

A dazzling smile appears on his face.

"No," he says. "Your father is dead."

"And my mother?" I ask.

He lowers his eyes and frowns at the ground.

"She's dead too," he says.

"Sarah?" I ask.

He shakes his head.

"Your sister is alive and well, living far from here."

I try a smile but it's not a thing I can do.

"And me?" I ask. My voice shakes.

His eyes slowly come up to meet mine. He moves off the steps to kneel in front of me. Behind him I can see a body being pulled from the pond.

"Last week we said our goodbyes," he says. His voice is steady over the shouting behind him. Calls are being made into radios.

"Last week, I could touch you," he says. His palm hovers near my cheek, but I don't feel a thing.

"Last week, you told me where to find your father," he says.

His eyes go wide, his voice soft, like he's trying to explain something hard to a child.

"Last week you were alive at Kellington Hospital," he says. "Do you remember that? Your name is Grace Wilton."

"My mother!" I shout. I run up the stairs to her room.

The bed is empty. There is no bed. There are no walls. The house is rotted with age. The young gypsy priest is behind me.

"Who are they pulling from the pond?" I ask.

"You know who it is, Grace, because—"

"I killed him," I answer. "I finally killed him and put him there."

"Yes," he says. "And like I told you before you went, when he is found he will go where he belongs."

"With the demons?" I ask.

He nods.

"How did you know I was here?" I ask.

"I didn't," he replies. "But I'm glad I found you."

His blue eyes fill with water, but he himself is dry, and then, so am I.

"You can go now Grace, to where you belong," he says.