EROSION
Harper
I’M SURE NOBODY GOES ON vacation expecting to be dismembered and put through a woodchipper, but some tourists are just assholes and deserve their fate.
Like the guy in the Buoy and Beacon Pub last year who cornered Selma Dayton by the bathrooms. I was there. I heard her tell him no. When I came around the corner from the bar, he was trying to kiss her and slide a hand up
her shirt. Piece of shit.
Woodchipper.
Or the guy who got drunk and high and crashed through a fence at Dale Linden’s farm and then proceeded to chase his horses through the field.
They panicked, of course. One of them fell and broke a leg. Dale had to put it down. Even though he called the cops, Sheriff Yates was too lazy to do anything more than write a police report. As usual.
Woodchipper.
Or the man whose dismembered hand I’m holding now. Mr. Bryce Mahoney. I saw him at Carnage Country Grocery, trying to take pictures up women’s skirts with his phone. When I stole his wallet and looked him up, I found he’d already been discovered and charged with the same crime in two other states. And yet, there he was, traipsing around Carnage like he fucking owned the place, barely concealing the fact that he was up to the same shit
yet again.
Definitely the woodchipper.
I hum to myself as I examine his palm, the skin pale, like a wax imitation of the real thing. It’s cold. Heavier than I expected, especially with such stubby fingers. I turn the severed hand over and trace the network of veins that weaves over the bones. They were full of life only hours ago. He knew their pattern. He could probably tell me how he got the jagged little scar over one knuckle. I’m sure he had a story about how he got the stitches that marked his skin with dots of scar tissue. Maybe I should feel guilty that I took those memories from him.
“But I don’t,” I say as I toss his hand into the hopper of the blue woodchipper. Cookie Monster has been my faithful tool through twelve tourists now, including Mr. Mahoney. And he’s always hungry for more.
Just like me.
The pitch of the chipper drops a few notes as it chews through flesh and bone, spraying it onto the tarp I’ve set up next to the flower bed.
Maybe once upon a time, I would have felt remorse. But I left that person behind when I came to Cape Carnage four years ago. When I started a new life. When I promised to keep my past hidden and protect this sanctuary of secrets.
And I’m not about to let anyone like Bryce Fucking Mahoney ruin my town.
I cast my gaze across my garden. We’re in that in-between time of year —not spring, not quite summer. Only the daffodils and tulips and snowdrops have bloomed. And yet, the tourists have already started to come. They’re chartering fishing boats. They’re renting equipment and booking tours of the sunken HMS Carnage our town was named for and the numerous other shipwrecks hidden off the rocky coast. They’re exploring the museum. They peruse the artsy and quaint and quirky downtown. They trek up the one hundred and fifty-two steps to the Cape Carnage lighthouse.
They head to the local distilleries and vineyards to sample whiskeys and wines.
It might be odd. A little macabre at times. But to me, it’s a paradise.
Our little town only has a few thousand permanent residents, including me. When the height of tourist season peaks with the Taste of Terror food festival at the end of the summer, we’ll be wildly outnumbered. And I get it,
I really do. With a moniker like Cape Carnage, it makes sense that the town wants to leverage its unusual name and history to attract vacationers. These short, precious summer months will sustain us in the depths of winter when no one will come. So, I take my role in keeping the town beautiful very seriously. Just like I do keeping it safe.
I return my attention to the bloodied plastic bag at my feet. I’ve saved the best for last—Bryce Mahoney’s lower leg. There’s a cheap tattoo of a trout on the waxen skin beneath thick hair. Just a single hideous fish hiding a flat scar. I crinkle my nose and then push his leg into the hopper, readying myself for the deep sense of serenity that will inevitably wash over me as every last inch of flesh and bone is consumed by the machine.
Except that’s not what happens.
The chipper screeches and whines. My hands fly up to cover my head.
The smell of burning rubber floods my nostrils. It’s an assault on my senses.
Deafening and pungent and confusing. It takes an instant too long for it to click that I need to move. I hit the kill switch on the fender of the tractor to stop the PTO shaft, but not before there’s a bang so loud that my ears ring.
I turn off the tractor engine and stare in shock at the chipper.
“Jesus, Cookie. What in the ever-loving fuck?” I hiss. Breaths riot in my lungs. I stare at Cookie Monster as though the woodchipper has personally wronged me. But when I finally open the panels and access the blades, I find the problem wasn’t the chipper at all. The problem is fucking Bryce, mocking me from the afterlife. I yank his mangled leg from the machine.
The bone is shattered, half of it gone. The other half is fused to a titanium plate with surgical screws. Part of the trout’s tail is still intact on the torn skin. I clearly underestimated the scar hidden beneath the blacks and grays and greens of the tattoo. It never occurred to me that the asshole might have metal plates beneath that fuck-ugly trout, and I know this simple mistake is going to chew away at my thoughts until the end of fucking time.
I drop the leg on the plastic bag and heave a weary sigh. “Motherfucker.”
Before I can spend too much time imagining Bryce’s smirking face from beyond the grave, I trudge to the shed to grab replacement shear bolts and my tools. It takes me nearly half an hour to remove the broken parts and replace them. The blades are damaged, but they’ll work well enough for
now. I use my hatchet to cut Bryce’s bone above the titanium plate and de- flesh it, and then I start the motor back up and toss the rest of the leg into the hopper. This time, it goes as planned. But I’m still too rattled from the near-catastrophe of a badly broken Cookie Monster to feel much peace as I watch the last remnants of Bryce Mahoney’s body splatter across the tarp.
When nothing further flies from the curved spout, I turn everything off.
As I kneel next to the pile, a familiar caw caw draws my attention to the tree near the garden gate. I glance toward a black shadow hidden among the branches. “Om nom nom. Feed me,” the raven demands.
“Give me a minute,” I say. But the raven only caws and repeats his request, his voice a near-perfect replica of my own. Turns out, when you hand-raise an orphaned raven, it’s incredibly easy to train it to speak with a little fresh meat. The only downside is that they’re very persistent when they spot something they want. “You know it’s coming. Settle down or you’ll attract the gulls.”
With a gloved hand, I scoop up some of the mess and take it to the bird feeder, a black platform with Gothic pillars to hold up a peaked roof. I made it just for Morpheus, who hops down to the stone wall that surrounds the garden to watch my every move, his inky feathers glistening in shades of black and indigo and deep forest green. I deposit the ground flesh and bone on the platform. I’ve barely taken two steps back before Morpheus lands on the feeder to dive beak-first into the muck. There’s harmony in it. A shitbag person nourishing a wild creature. There’s something in the closure of that loop that brings me a moment of peace.
I turn back to the pile that was once Bryce Mahoney and pick up my shovel from where it rests beside the tarp. One shovelful after the next, I unload the slop and shattered bone into the holes I’ve dug in the garden bed, pausing to plant flowers that aren’t yet ready to bloom. Rhododendrons.
Irises. Dahlias. Lilies. Before long, the body is gone, buried among the young plants. It will feed them, just like it’s fed Morpheus. Just like it feeds something in me, something that grows hungrier with each season that passes. Something that never stays sated for long.
I clean up my mess. Put away my tools. Spray down the woodchipper with Piss-Off!, which I’m just going to assume works for blood since it
bleached my outdoor plastic furniture when I used it on the cat pee from Doug, the neighborhood stray. I take the remaining piece of Bryce’s leg bone inside my cottage, wrap it in tinfoil, and place it in the fridge, and then I head upstairs. It’s not until the shower is on and heating up that I get a good look at my reflection. There are smears of blood and dirt on my face.
There are bits of Bryce in my hair, gleaming among the dark strands. I look feral. Much like I did the day I got away from that house of horrors where the vultures watched from the tree. I was all wild eyes and broken heart. I might be more settled now than I was back then, less haunted by fear and raw grief, but there’s still something reckless in my reflection. Like I could take off at any moment and run into the untamed corners of the world, never looking back.
But I’m determined not to. This is my safest place. Stumbling upon Cape Carnage after trying and failing to wander away from my grief was like discovering a magical portal to a land where I could become whoever I wanted to be. Maybe not a fresh start, but as close to one as I could ever hope to find. It’s my home now. And I’m needed here.
I lean closer to the mirror, closing in on myself until my breath fogs the glass. I press my bangs back from the fair skin of my forehead. There’s a thin band of lighter hair before it transitions to brown so dark it’s almost black. Blond roots. Sometimes, it feels as though my body is fighting who I’ve decided to become.
Chewing my bottom lip, I turn my attention to my phone on the counter, logging into my sock puppet account for the Undiscovered Truths private message board, an amateur online sleuth group I keep occasional watch on.
This particular group was the most active in trying to find me after I first disappeared, and every now and then my name still comes up on their site. I open the general thread where the primary conversations occur and scroll through recent posts. There’s chatter about a cold case in Washington State.
Some about a serial killer who was murdered in Louisiana. A few missing people. But I find nothing specific or concerning in the stream of messages over the recent posts. Certainly nothing that mentions my fucked-up past.
Even stories like mine simply fade away in time. It’s easier to disappear when you don’t have any family left to keep your memory alive.
With a relieved sigh, I make a note in my phone to pick up more hair dye before I set it down and step into the shower.
It’s just after noon when I leave the cottage on the southern edge of the estate’s extensive grounds. With Bryce’s mangled bone in my bag, I head toward Lancaster Manor, an imposing stone structure that casts a shadow of generational wealth across Cape Carnage. Even more intimidating than the house itself is the man who resides there. My favorite person in the town.
My best friend.
I’m one of only two people who can simply walk into his home.
There’s nothing to greet me when I enter the foyer. A little spike of fear hits my veins. There’s usually a constant curtain of sound that seems to warm the austere stone: classical music, or old movies, or Arthur talking to himself in a low rumble. But there’s rarely silence.
“Arthur …?” I call out as I enter the formal living room. There’s no answer. I frown and continue toward the library, where he spends most of his time reading beside the fire, even in the warmer weather. “Arthur … I’m here to make you some lunch …”
I’m just starting past the hallway that leads to the kitchen when Arthur springs from behind a statue with a knife clutched between his teeth, which is quite a feat for an octogenarian with a walker.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Arthur—”
He steadies himself before grasping the handle of the blade to brandish
the weapon at me. “Who are you?”
“It’s me. Harper.”
He rolls a step closer with the walker and twists the knife in a threat. “If you’re here to steal from me, I’ll cut you—”
“I’m not here to steal from you. I’m Harper. Your gardener. I live in the cottage.” A fleeting wisp of confusion passes across Arthur’s weathered face at my words. “I’m here to make you lunch. Just like I do every day.”
“Lunch …?”
“How about your favorite sandwich today? Pastrami on rye. Are you hungry?”
Arthur blinks, his thick white brows lifting as the fog seems to fade just enough that he lowers the blade. A little piece of my heart seems to fall with
it. I reach my hand out and he stares at it as though trying to uncover the secrets beneath the lines that cross my skin. “Harper,” he finally says as he lays the handle of the knife on my palm. “Of course. I thought you were a thief.” When I raise a brow in doubt, his eyes narrow. “Someone is coming in here and stealing from me.”
I try to keep my expression neutral as I take his arm and turn him toward
the kitchen. “What makes you think so?”
“My shoes went missing.”
“Someone stole your shoes?”
“Yes.”
“Why …?”
“They’re Stefano Riccis,” he grumbles, as though I should know what that means.
“And someone would want to take them because …?”
“Because they’re Stefano Riccis,” he says, rolling his eyes as though I’m the biggest pain in the ass to walk the earth. “They’re exquisite.”
“Okay,” I say as we enter the kitchen and I guide him to the breakfast nook. When he’s settled, I lay my bag down on the marble island before washing my hands. “So someone stole your exquisite, used, old-man shoes.
But on the off chance someone didn’t break in to take your beautiful shoes, I can have a look for them later, just in case you misplaced them. Anything
else?”
“My Swarovski Signum sugar bowl.”
I blink at him. “A sugar bowl. Someone stole your sugar bowl.”
“It’s an expensive piece.”
“Are we talking Pauly’s Pawn Shop expensive, or international black market sugar bowl expensive?”
Arthur glares at me, but I know how much he enjoys being needled. It’s the reason we became friends in the first place.
When I came to Carnage four years ago, I didn’t know I was supposed to be intimidated by his curmudgeonly attitude and considerable wealth, and he found that endlessly refreshing. “Pauly wouldn’t know a Wassily from a
Modway knockoff, you uncouth wretch.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
“Chairs, for Christ’s sake, Harper.”
“Not the Wassily chairs,” I say, pressing the back of my hand to my
forehead. “I am aghast.”
“I thought you promised me pastrami.”
“Indeed.” I give him a little bow and head to the fridge, opening the stainless-steel door with the intention of finding the pastrami and provolone. But I find more than meat and cheese. I don’t turn around when I say, “That super-special sugar bowl … Is it green?”
“Yes. With a Swarovski crystal on the lid.”
I lift the lid of the bowl that sits eye level on a shelf in the fridge and sigh. “So … like … this one?” I turn to face Arthur with the sugar bowl in hand. The momentary burst of surprise in his eyes quickly dissolves into a glare, as though the bowl itself is at fault.
“I didn’t put that in there,” he declares. And though I could argue that no one is coming into his home to steal his shoes or place his sugar bowl somewhere he won’t find it, I don’t. It won’t accomplish anything more than upsetting him, because he simply doesn’t remember. Just like one day soon, he won’t remember me.
He drags a newspaper close to him, fidgeting with the corner of a page as he watches me for a long moment before finally lowering his gaze. He never used to do that. Fidget with things. Stare at me as though he can’t work me out. Ever since I came to Cape Carnage, he’s been the one person who truly understood me. But now, it’s as though walls are forming between us, ones we put up to preserve the person he still wants to be. And maybe that’s the hardest part of watching his slow decline.
I clear my throat and pull my phone from my back pocket, starting a message. “I bet Lukas put your sugar bowl in the fridge by accident. I’ll text him now to let him know.”
I’m throwing you under your grandfather’s judgy bus.
“Yes. Thank you. He mustn’t do that again,” Arthur says with a disgruntled cluck of his tongue. “It must have been Lukas. Tell him he must treat my belongings with more care next time he comes.”
My phone vibrates.
Fucksakes, Harper. One of the stills just exploded. I have literally no idea what the fuck I’m doing. I don’t need to be run over by the judgy bus.
Too late. It’ll make him happy. Under the judgy bus you go. Just lie there and accept your fate.
Fuck you.
“Lukas has been a little distracted lately, I think,” I say, then chew my dark grin into submission as the anticipation of winning a round of our game of sabotage buzzes through my veins.
“You’re right. Lukas is a bit absent-minded these days. Tell him I need him to come clean the gutters. The fresh air will do him some good.”
Judgy Bus says you’re coming to get some fresh air with the gutters.
But I hate heights.
You know, the septic alarm went off the other day. I was going to call someone out to fix it, but I could offer that instead?
Tell him I’ll be over on Wednesday.
I truly hate you.
“Done. Lukas will come by on Wednesday.” I grin as I slide my phone back into my pocket and wash my hands a second time under the weight of Arthur’s sharp, assessing gaze. His grunt of approval quickly follows.
“How are things going at the distillery? Has he filled you in?”
If the revitalization of Lancaster Distillery were happening two years ago, Arthur would have given me a running list of everything going well and everything going awry. But now, he hesitates. He drums crooked fingers on the cherrywood table. “It’s fine,” he finally says, returning his attention to the newspaper. And I smile, because even though I know it’s not fine, I don’t want him to stress about something that will only manifest in other ways. Like sugar bowls in the fridge. Or a phantom shoe thief who
stalks through the house as he sleeps.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
I finish making Arthur’s sandwich. He requests some light background music: Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. Nothing like the tale of a supernatural statue besting an arrogant nobleman to set the tone for your lunch after finding your wayward embellished sugar bowl, I guess.
But who am I to complain? It makes him happy. And despite the sharp words that often cut their way free of his tongue, he’s a good man … I think. At the very least, a lonely man. So, I sit with him as he eats. We talk about the town. The tourists who are starting to appear. He reminisces about moments from long ago, ones that are still easier to remember with his Alzheimer’s than the more recent experiences he struggles to recall. He tells me about the Cape Carnage he used to know, when it was an isolated place.
Before food festivals, and shipwreck tours, and nighttime ghost walks with lanterns and costumes. Before repainted trim on Victorian houses and karaoke at the Buoy and Beacon Pub.
He talks about the kind of town where grief was not just a legacy, but a presence, as real as the fog that obscures the rocks that rest among the waves, waiting to crush hulls and claim lives. When Arthur was young, life was never easy in an isolated fishing village like Cape Carnage, which relies on the treacherous waters off northern Maine’s remote coastline for its livelihood. Death was only a bad storm or a hidden rock or a hard winter away. It’s not the town I know, though the echo of it still remains in the monuments to lost ships erected at the top of the promontory, facing the sea.
But when he tells me the tales of Cape Carnage, I feel as though I’m the steward of those stories. Like he wants me to hold on to memories he knows are slipping away.
When Arthur has finished his meal, I give him his pills and wash up before settling him in the library. Even though my stomach is growling and a caffeine headache is starting to buzz through my brain, I stay with Arthur until he falls asleep in his favorite recliner for his post-lunch nap, a book splayed across his lap.
With a final, bittersweet smile at the old man, I leave the estate and walk
into Cape Carnage.
My town.
