As I Lift Up My Hands 7/8

[keire_ke]

June 2008

For some time nothing changes, which Jacob finds unsettling. Things are wont to change, regardless of wishes and desires. There is an inevitability to change that needs to be taken into account when planning for the future. So yes, he is expecting a change. He is ready for it, in a way. He anticipates it, after a while with urgency. The anticipation grows every day when Deborah comes back home, kisses him and fixes dinner. He is ready for a change and doesn’t know how to handle the lack of one. When it finally comes, it leaves him with mixed feelings. On one hand, it is finally there, he can stop dreading and start accepting. On the other…

It starts innocently enough. Jacob walks into the bedroom after a shower, his hair sticking in every direction and still dripping. Deborah is in bed, lost in a book. Jacob drapes the wet towel over the backrest of a chair and starts hunting for his pyjamas. He finds them underneath the table, which proves to be a bit of a conundrum. How on earth did they get there? He pulls them on regardless and slithers under the covers.

Lying on his pillow he has a better vantage point for see what was it that Deborah finds so engrossing as to ignore him prancing naked about their bedroom. The hex bag William found in their old house is in her hand, kneaded thoughtfully by her hand as she traces the hand-written letters in the old volume.

“Can you not bring that to bed?” Jacob asks. He is tired and for once he would like a night without a mention of the supernatural business.

“Sorry,” Deborah says. She marks her place and sets the book aside, hex bag in tow. She turns to kiss him, her breath minty and fresh from the toothpaste, and they sleep. Jacob dreams of singing ghosts, which is not the mundane dream he would have preferred, but vastly superior to alternatives.

Two days later he returns home to find the living room curtains blocking all the sunlight from entering. Instead there is a white sheet on the coffee table and five white candles provide light. The flames flicker and the shadows on the wall twitch along with them, caught in a moment of endless dance. On the table there is a bowl of salt and another, filled with clear liquid, between the too, on the white linen, there are leaves and roots.

Deborah is kneeling in front of the table, facing the eastern window, and carefully spreads a square sheet of dark linen before the bowls. One by one she picks up the items, first the leaf, the root, a shard of wood, which she first held in the flame of the middle candle; onto them she pours the grainy salt, and thick oil from a small flask. A drop of water from the second bowl and she is folding the material around the mound in the middle, and ties it off with a leather strap. Throughout it all her mouth never stops moving, whispering words in a low but steady murmur that brings shivers to Jacob’s spine.

“Deb?” he says quietly, trying not to show how terrified he is. “What are you doing?”

Deborah ignores him, until she finishes by tying off the material into a bag shape. “Well, it got me thinking,” she says getting off her knees the hex bag in hand. “This hunting thing. “If those things do exist, it’s only sensible that we use some sort of protection.”

“We’re Catholic,” Jacob reminds her.

“It’s not contraceptive,” she says, a tiny hint of smirk on her mouth. “Relax. I picked the herbs in the park, and the salt is just salt. I doubt it’s strong enough to stop a really determined spirit from entering, but it might stop a random visit.”

“Leviticus had some strong things to say about this kind of things.”

“And see where it got them. Jacob, seriously. This is a bag with mint and salt and a cedar toothpick in it.”

Jacob resists telling her this qualifies as witchcraft and though he has no intention of heeding Leviticus on that point, he worries. Deborah sees his discomfort and comes closer to plant a soft kiss on his mouth. “Look, this is no bigger than lining the windows with salt,” she says. “I just put in the protective herbs, those that stop the supernatural things from entering. Nothing heavy, I promise.”

Jacob doesn’t believe her. He finds it absolutely terrifying, over the next few months, that coming home on work days and finding Deborah sitting cross-legged on the carpet surrounded with candles and assembling hex bags is such a usual occurrence. He made a point of putting more crucifixes around the house, because charms was one thing, but the latest spell includes bird bones, and he doesn’t really care that they come from chicken they have for dinner.

“You’re truly brilliant,” William says to Deborah when he drops in to visit a little while later. He is carrying a bottle of wine to celebrate. “That hex was absolutely spot on, thank you.”

“What hex?” Jacob asks.

“I was hunting his tenacious bugger who wouldn’t leave even after I torched his corpse. He had so many things he was invested in emotionally, I’d have to burn the town to the ground and still have plenty left to hunt down. Deborah found a spell that would summon and bind him to a specific object, one that could easily be destroyed.”

Jacob turns to look at Deborah and she at least looks ashamed. “Well, it was important,” she says. “The ghost was killing kids.”

“Is it gone?” Jacob asks, though inside he feels like screaming.

William nods and raises his glass. “To Deborah, the best witch of Pontiac, Illinois,” he intones. Jacob swallows the wine and it feels like ash pouring down his throat.

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only witch in Pontiac,” Deborah says, clinking her glass against his. “At least not enough of us to unionize.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” William says, grinning. “Witches are scary on principle, I wouldn’t want to go against a union.”

Jacob refuses to drink more. He sits on the couch watching and feeling the cold ripples of fear ruffle his skin and flow through to his heart. The casual indifference with which Deborah just referred to herself as a witch makes his breath catch. It is wrong on so many levels, and not just because the Bible says so. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her, not to them. When he went on the quest to find out about what happened, he didn’t mean to invite it in; he didn’t think he was opening the door wide and offering tea and cookies.

Though as things turned out, it was Deborah standing in the door offering tea and cookies.

“What is it that you do for money?” Deborah asks. “I’m sorry if that’s insensitive, but it seems like the question to ask. You hang around Pontiac so much, and I don’t think you have an actual job around here.”

“I bartend,” William says, helping himself a slice of angel cake. “At the Irish Pub downtown.”

“That’s an odd profession for a hunter.”

“Not really. People say all kinds of things when they are smashed and have far less reservation about telling them to complete strangers. Of course, the friendly Irish bar hand is hardly a stranger, eh?” he drawls, wrapping his tongue around the Rs and pursing his lips so that the Os come out whistling. Jacob, if he had the sense to be objective, would be forced to agree with his assessment. Back before he and Deborah were married it was the guy at the student union bar who’d known all about their relationship problems.

Deborah laughs and Jacob slides lower down the couch. “That must be useful.”

“You wouldn’t believe how useful it can be, when you investigate something long-term. It was a guy in the bar that pointed out the Frommiches’ luck to me in the first place.”

“Right. Tell me, William, you’re the kind of guy who appreciates honesty, right?”

“Depends. I can tell in this instance I’m going to regret it.”

“You have a vernacular that says quite distinctively ‘I’ve been schooled in literature and I have the diploma to prove it,’ so you can imagine my curiosity is piqued.”

“Bartenders do read,” William tells her, eyebrows raised. “We have to get through the mornings somehow.”

“And therapists are tenacious buggers,” Deborah counters.

“Fair to say. I do indeed have a degree and it is a degree in the literary arts. My thesis was on the representation of the supernatural in the works of Sophocles, ironically enough.”

“And yet here you are, in the outskirts of the civilized world, hunting things that go bump.”

“Life sends us in all kinds of directions, Deborah. Often unexpected. Though really, Pontiac isn’t that far off, as far as civilization is concerned. I’ve been in worse places.”

Deborah shakes her head. “What did you do before you became a hunter?” she asks.

“I was a history teacher, actually.”

Deborah’s eyes widen and Jacob knows his do too. “School teacher, seriously?”

“Would I lie to you?”

“So you taught kids. I wouldn’t have figured that.” Deborah looks at William, curiosity evident in her expression. “Schoolteachers I found to be mostly harmless, usually, and there you go, hunting, breaking into homes, threatening people.”

“Obviously you’ve never submitted homework late. We can be vicious.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Life, again. Sometimes things happen and there’s just nothing you can do about it.” William’s tone is wistful. Jacob can see the question forming on the tip of Deborah’s tongue, but she swallows it for the time being.

Later, when William leaves, he stays in his chair, watching the play of light on the ceiling. “You like this,” he says when Deborah settles herself on the couch with a cup of coffee.

“Like what?”

“Hunting,” Jacob says.

“I don’t know,” Deborah shrugs. “The opera ghost was nothing but amusing, but it had the potential to go south really fast, if it was either of us it wanted.”

“It nearly killed me,” Jacob admits.

“Ah, dramatize,” Deborah laughs. “We were there to stop it.”

“It was here,” Jacob says. His voice is so low it’s almost inaudible yet Deborah hears, as evidenced by the sudden silence.

“What?” she says, her eyes opened wide. “What do you mean here?”

“After I came back with Rachel,” Jacob says. “I went to bed and when I woke up the ghost was here.”

“You might have dreamt it,” Deborah says, though she doesn’t believe her own words. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Jacob stares at the wall, his fingers digging into the armrests. “It came here and it made me try and kill myself.” He almost feels guilty when Deborah’s face turns white. Almost. “He didn’t actually do anything, but it made so much sense then, that I didn’t deserve to be alive.”

“Jesus Christ,” Deborah whispers, still unable to move.

“You burned it just in time.”

“Jesus,” she repeats. “Holy mother of God. I didn’t know. I had no idea.”

“It’s okay,” Jacob says, now concerned. “I know. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Deborah presses her hand against her mouth and breathes. “I thought it was fun,” she says eventually and her voice is broken and small. “I thought it was just for fun. I didn’t realize- I didn’t know!”

Jacob blinks and just looks at her for a moment, because he is not sure how to react. He gets up and wraps his arms around Deborah’s shaking shoulders. “Hey,” he says into her ear. “It’s okay. Nothing happened. I didn’t even have time to get out of bed.”

“He could have killed you.”

“He didn’t. You saved my life,” Jacob says. Her arm is shaking under his palm and she clings to him, like the warmth of his body comforts her.

“I’m so sorry,” she says again.

“Nothing happened,” Jacob says again. “Nothing happened.”

Deborah stills underneath his hands and then sits up. “We stopped it,” she says, her eyes fastened to Jacob’s face. He nods, uncertain as to her state of mind. “We stopped the ghost. Which means the thing that killed Tim can also be killed, before it kills anyone else.”

“Yes,” Jacob replies, puzzled.

Deborah puts her feet on the floor and rests her elbows on her knees. “I can do this,” she says out of the blue.

“What?”

“The whole superhero by night thing. It’s not as hard as it looks.”

Jacob looks at her as though she’d lost her mind. “You want to become a hunter?”

“Someone has to do it, and it’s not like there’s a secret division of the government picking up the slack, right?”

“But why you?”

“I’m here and I know what I’m doing, William says that’s more than enough.”

“William says?” Jacob feels a stab of irrational anger. “So suddenly he is the prime authority on how to live your life?” Deborah, bless her, doesn’t register the anger, lost in her own thoughts.

“I looked through the news online, the other day,” she says her voice dreamy and faraway. “Do you have any idea how many people have died over the years?”

“A lot, or we’d be even more overcrowded.”

“I mean, I was reading those books and there are so many creatures that harm people. It didn’t even register before.”

“Okay, if you want to go into hunting, that’s fine,” Jacob says, thinking that no way he was okay with that and that it was anything but fine, but if Debbie really wanted to, he wasn’t going to stand in her way. “I’m just wondering, if it’s a latent let’s save people thing, or is it something… else.”

Deborah looks at him, uncomprehending. “Something else?”

“William,” Jacob blurts, knowing before his mouth closes he’s made a huge mistake.

Deborah stares at him for a few seconds, uncertain whether he is joking and Jacob can see she dearly hopes that is the case. “Are you insane?” Deborah asks finally, still staring him in the face. She is angry, and well. Jacob is familiar with the adage about Hell’s fury having nothing on scorned women, but Deborah is something special. No one in their right mind wants her angry, especially not Jacob.

“No. Deb, I’m sorry…”

“No, you’re not,” she hisses. “You’re not sorry.” Jacob tries to open his mouth and say something, but she is immediately there, slapping her palm over his mouth so hard it stings. “I have never looked at anyone else since we got together. Never, not once. I love you, even when you are being a fucking moron.” She steps away. “And you don’t trust me.”

“I trust you.”

“Like hell you do. You think I’m going to fuck the first guy that comes along, if I like him enough.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Not that? Then what is it! For God’s sake, Jacob. Men look at me. I’m attractive. Women look at you, and you don’t have a problem with that!”

“I didn’t mean it like this.”

“You did.” Deborah is quiet now and there is a world of hurt in her voice. “That’s exactly how you meant it. Someone looks at me, not even out of genuine interest, someone whose company I enjoy, and you flip out and now it’s supposed to be okay?”

“I know you don’t…”

“No,” Deborah says and raises her head, there is a twist to her mouth, one that’s as sad as it is cruel. “You don’t. But you think it. It’s in the back of your mind, isn’t it? Deborah and William, gallivanting off to God alone knows where. And who knows what they do, in between research.”

Jacob sits down on the couch, hiding his face in his hands. “Please,” he says weakly. “Stop.”

“You think I’m enjoying this? Knowing exactly how much you don’t trust me?”

“I do!”

“The hell you do! If you trusted me, you wouldn’t have thought I was screwing around behind your back!”

“Debbie,” he reaches out for her, but his hand falls short. Deborah is stepping back out of his range and his knees are shaking too bad to support him right now.

“I need to be alone,” she says and reaches for her coat.

“Don’t go,” he pleads, terrified. That is every fear he’s ever had, rolled up into one. Deborah is leaving and he cannot stop her.

“I will be back, idiot,” she says, rolling her eyes. “However stupid you get, I love you. I married you, if nothing else gets through your thick skull. I swore I would never abandon you. I just need to not look at you,” she says and it hurts more than anything Jacob could possibly imagine. “For an hour or two.”

The door slams and he digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. What has he done? “I am a moron,” he tells the ceiling. His chest is heavy and frankly he could weep, except he feels more like laughing hysterically. He’s made more sense in his life he knows. He hopes he has, because if that’s what he’s been like all this time, Deborah deserves a speedy elevation to sainthood for putting up with him.

Jacob gets off the couch and heads to the bathroom. He splashes cold water onto his face, trying to at least force his facial muscles into the usual look. William will know something is wrong the moment he looks at him, he has a knack for seeing his state of mind. He looks into the mirror and groans. And back to William it is. His life just couldn’t get any more frustrating at the moment. “Yes, it could,” he tells his reflection. And it is true. He is just having trouble with the how.

He feeds Rachel, grateful she’s outgrown the phase of spilling her food on anything in range. She looks at him through her pretty blue eyes and he wonders if she knows how much of a moron he’s just been. He hopes not. A few years from now she’s supposed to get to the worshipping the ground her father walks on stage, and it would be really bad if she were to miss out on the experience because she remembers what an idiot he can be. Jacob smiles to himself as he watches Rachel eat. It’s his duty as a parent to maintain the dad is awesome façade, until she is in her teens and he is an old man who doesn’t understand anything under the sun.

Deborah returns around eleven, smelling of cigarettes. She looks calmer now, as though the excursion helped her clear her head. She doesn’t send him to the couch straight away, which is a good start. She kisses Jacob goodnight and there is a hint of liquor on her lips. Her steps are steady though, which is a huge relief. She’s not drunk and she isn’t angry anymore. Jacob takes it as a sign of God looking out for his marital life.

“I’m really sorry,” he says turning towards her and they lie next to each other, unwilling to let God shoulder all the responsibility for fixing things.

“I know.” She looks at the ceiling. “Jacob, if I ever don’t love you anymore, if I ever think about cheating, if – and I mean it as in if there is the end of the world looming in the corner – you are no longer enough, I swear to God, you will be the first person I tell. Is that clear?”

“I know that,” he answers, though there is a stab of fear accompanying it. “I always knew. It’s just… I can see you like it.” It hurts like hell to admit, but he does it anyway. “The hunting. And no matter what I do, I just can’t do it. It scares me.” It scares him that he cannot stand against a ghost and be able to move, or think straight, or even breathe freely. It scares him that he is no help at all.

“Honey, did you pause to think about that maybe it’s the hunting part that I like, and William has little to do with it?”

“I tried. Yes. I mean I think so. But he’s pretty attractive, you have to admit that.”

“Yes, he wears his scars in a way that’s pretty appealing. Even his age counts in his favor. Vintage. Good year,” Deborah says, grinning. “You noticed. Shouldn’t I be worried you’ll run off with him into the sunset?”

Jacob snorts into his pillow. “I’m sorry,” he muffles into the fabric when the spell of laughter is gone. Moments later he feels Deborah’s hand on the small of his back and the warmth of her against his side.

“I know.”

He falls asleep with her hand stroking his hair. He’s not yet forgiven. He’s not sure he deserves to be forgiven just yet, but he will try and earn it just the same.



Part Six :: Master Post :: Part Eight