Sister Cadence

Author’s note: In the fall of 2013, I attended a non-fiction class taught by the brilliant Carol Lauhon, in which we studied the many different types of essay – the essay being a form of writing which I had previously and purposely left un-studied, it being a vehicle for the loathe of my life, non-fiction.

However, one particular type of essay absolutely enthralled me: the spiral essay. In this very obscure essay type, one chooses a subject, and entwines the essay around it; this can be done in various ways, but in “Sister Cadence”, I chose the more advanced version, the double-spiral – the theme could be described as your basic boy-meets-girl love story; what entwines it are the lives of the two lovers. Hers begins at the beginning of her life, working forward in time; his begins at her end, working backward.

On a very fine day, Edwin Godfrey died violently in a patch of lush green grass. His fingers turned cold while curled around the handle of a revolver, which he had just shot clumsily, though effectively, into his mouth. But as you will see, he died for love; so pity him, and try to understand: the heart wants what the heart wants.

That’s what she always said.

v

Cadence Benison grew up ragged and reckless on a dusty, suffering farm. At age four, she tried to ride the neighbor’s unbroken young stallion, with painful results: both of her legs were shattered by the creature’s vicious kicks, and she walked with a limp ever after. When she was ten, Cadence decided she wanted to be a bird; she leapt from the roof of the barn, attempting to fly. Fortunately, she landed in a pile of hay. Unfortunately, she also landed on the pitchfork. She wasn’t fatally wounded, but she would always bear a long and jagged scar that began under her left ear and stretched all the way down to her left wrist.

Thus scarred and limping, and still dressed in rags, Cadence suffered through high school, laughed at and ostracized. When she had the audacity to show up to prom in a poorly mended thrift store gown, a group of wealthier and prettier girls chased her into the dark alley behind the school gymnasium; they pushed her into a pile of garbage, and she ran away in humiliation, bleeding profusely from a cut on her face caused by a broken bottle. Her booby prize from the prom was yet another ugly scar.

Back at home, she was beaten regularly by her father, who had always been a bit disgusted with her, as she’d been “damaged goods” since the tender age of four. These beatings went unchallenged by the girl’s eternally drunken mother.

And there were his nightly visits.

v

Edwin’s fingers shook as he loaded the gun. He barely knew what he was doing – a few hunting trips as a boy was all the experience he had with guns, and until this moment, he’d had no reason to further his knowledge. He hated violence, loathed guns, and only pitied his brothers who had grown up with their father’s love for killing animals.

He closed his eyes and could still see her, fading into the sunlight. That dear scarred face with the eyes so blue and kind; the generous tender mouth; the halo of pale hair – waiting, now. Waiting for him.

The gun barrel went into Edwin’s mouth. Oily, bitter metallic tang-taste. He clung to the memory of her, hearing again the sweet voice whispering in his ear. The heart wants what the heart wants.

Edwin pulled the trigger.

v

The morning she left, she parted her hair in the center. For the first time since the long-ago accident, she let the sun fall warm and soft upon her scars. She walked out the front door, battered suitcase in hand; her mother watched, and didn’t say a word, though her knuckles were white around her ever-present bottle of gin. Cadence turned and said: “The heart wants what the heart wants.” She walked out, and did not look back.

Supposedly, the unfortunate Mrs. Benison was grieving for the lost-presumed-dead Mr. Benison, last seen four months ago and not heard from since. Truthfully, the missus did not miss the mister. The beatings, after all, had not been saved just for Cadence over the years.

“So, she’s going,” said the faded old woman. She looked into her gin and saw nothing. “Good for her.”

She listened to the old car start up, its aged engine complaining as always; then the sound faded as Cadence left the farm. The girl had just graduated from high school; and would never see her mother again.

v

The woods were quiet – so quiet – and for a moment, Edwin could close his eyes and breathe in the beauty of the day, whilst ignoring the lump of cold metal in his jacket pocket. But only for a moment; the smell of death was in his nostrils, and death was spread out before him, shining in the sun. There was nothing else to do. And yet there was no peace upon him.

His hands began to shake. He reached into his pocket.

v

Cadence met the big city head-on, facing it with scars exposed and eyes alight. She was aware of a million alien sights and sounds – her nostrils flared with the alternating scents and aromas and stenches from sweet to sharp to repulsive – her eyes blinked wide at rushing traffic and massive soaring buildings and countless other miracles she’d never seen before. The sun-baked sidewalk seemed to flow like water beneath the heels of her well-worn loafers as she pounded the pavement in her eternal amazement.

She had never before seen a street vendor, and she purchased a hot dog from one such person; the bun was soft, the tube of meat slightly scorched, and the mustard bright and tart. It seemed to Cadence the best meal she’d ever eaten.

She had never seen a subway, and though she didn’t care to travel on it, she went below ground to investigate, and found the dark tunnels every bit as intimidating as she’d imagined. Every sound seemed to swell, echoing off the walls; and the smell of dirt was constant, pressed together by the masses of people.

She had, however, seen drunkenness; it lingered on her mother’s face every day of her life that Cadence could recall. And so she recognized both the odor and the mannerisms of the man as he stumbled toward her. As she’d done so often with her mother, she leapt nimbly out of his way and quickened her pace to put distance between herself and himself.

Hot, very hot for early June; but the heat went out of the day quickly, like the fading of a child’s smile when its balloon has been accidentally released into the sky. With the heat gone, the light began to fade, finding Cadence scrambling to achieve her destination before nightfall. Her sweaty hand clutched the address she sought – she’d meant to attain the mission by late afternoon, but had been sufficiently distracted to let the hours pass before her eyes like so much falling sand.

It was indeed nearly dark by the time she arrived; in fact she could just see the last strains of sunlight on the horizon, or what horizon she could ascertain from the ever-present high buildings that blocked it. She’d moved from Skyscraper Land to Project Land, her inexperienced eyes scarcely noting the staggering differences between the two. She did, however, notice the emergence of certain menacing black figures slowly seeping from the dark alleyways that haunted her new neighborhood. It was with no little relief that she recognized her intended objective.

She was welcomed into the Mission of Hope with open and grateful arms. The aged pastor who ran the mission, his white-haired and smiling wife, their red-cheeked nephew and his pregnant wife – this small and modest board of directors cared nothing for Cadence’s scars or limp. They saw a Christian worker ready to toil on the mission field; they heard her gentle voice and witnessed her humble smile and knew that she was their sister.

For the next twenty-three years, Cadence would remain in God’s service at the mission. She would do her good work there and try to forget her dark and ugly roots. She would hope never to leave. But she’d left secrets behind, and eventually she would have to deal with those secrets.

v

The forest chirped, buzzed, and murmured discreetly around Edwin on this, his final day of life. There were moments when he wanted to cut his hands from his wrists for what he’d done. But he felt sure that the afterlife offered forgiveness; and when he closed his eyes, he could feel eternity like a cool gray mist settling over him. He didn’t know if he strictly believed Cadence’s ideas about Heaven and Hell; he didn’t feel the sensation of hellfire licking at his doomed ankles, and he didn’t believe he was damned, despite the terrible thing he’d been forced to do.

It had, after all, been necessary. Absolutely necessary. She wanted to stop, and alone, she could not; she needed Edwin, as she’d always known she would. She had meant well; but Sister Cadence’s nights prowling the back alleys of the city were over, and the endless string of her human sacrifices could finally be considered complete. How odd that the missionary angel would end up being the instrument of destruction; and the pathetic drunken bum whose life she had saved would become the instrument of salvation.

Edwin surveyed the unhappy fruits of his day’s labor. He had discovered the root of all her unintended evil, the beginning of her corruption, though she would never in this life have recognized it as such. He felt that he deserved to feel a sense of peace; he’d done his duty, the duty she had chosen him for, whether consciously or unconsciously. But there was no peace for Edwin Godfrey, for his love was dead, and by his hands, and for such a one, earthly peace cannot be possible.

v

She came to the mission with a new identity. Only a tiny lie had been necessary: for, with her steady hand and a pen of black ink, she had easily transformed the name upon her birth certificate from Cadence Norah Benison to Cadence Narah Behlson. She’d never heard the name “Narah” before (she did not know that it was not, as she thought, an invention of her own; but a Gaelic name, which meant “joyous”; and also a Greek name, meaning “happy”, either of which would have pleased her), and wasn’t utterly satisfied with it; but in the end, it hardly mattered. For one thing, she’d done the best she could to alter her real name; and for another, when she got a state-issued ID, only her middle initial appeared; and Cadence N. Behlson seemed perfectly acceptable.

Her new name was often misspelled as “Bellson”, which she didn’t mind; she may have “accidentally” used that spelling herself a time or two. She endured, with secret pleasure, teasing from the old pastor of the mission that she was the “belle” of the neighborhood. (Such a thing could only be considered comedy, of course, as far as Cadence was concerned; she had no false images of her own disturbing and scarred countenance and drunken limping gait.)

In her early days at the mission, whenever she was called “Miss Behlson”, she gently corrected the speaker, directing them to call her Cadence. However, Pastor Fields felt that the staff should avoid being on a first-name basis with their parishioners, the drunken, lonely, drugged, and disorderly denizens of Bride’s Alley (such was the name of the neighborhood, after a decades-old story of a young bride who had been murdered in the area by a heartbroken former lover).

And so, she’d been given a new title: Sister Cadence. She’d changed her name to cut ties with her past, to keep her secrets from catching up with her. And as the years ticked by, as she served the poor and hungry and drug-addled Bride’s Alley residents, it seemed that her past had faded into nothing but memory – and her memory only, for she alone knew the truth.

But she kept tabs on the past, quietly and discreetly; and in time she learned about the illness and impending demise of her mother – remarkable that the drunken old woman had lived so long, Cadence reflected coldly, hating herself for the bitter feelings but unable to repress them. It had been two decades since Cadence had been home, and it was with great loathing that she took herself back to the dusty country of her dark childhood. The heart wants what the heart wants; and there was, indeed, something she wanted back home.

v

The shovel struck something hard – not a rock, for Edwin felt the slightest give. His stomach clenched and he tossed the shovel aside, rooting through the black earth with his bare hands. White gleamed up at him; with ill-suppressed horror – but with not a jot nor a tittle of surprise – he raised the skull to the light.

v

Her mother was an old woman now. Her age was not the culprit; she’d had Cadence when she was only sixteen, after all. But years of heavy drinking – among other bad habits – had aged her cruelly. She’d never been terribly pretty; of course, at sixteen when the late Mr. Benison had “knocked her up” (after which they’d proceeded with a quick shotgun wedding), she had the bloom of youth upon her. That freshness quickly died; life with an unpleasant and violent man gave her wrinkles and gray hairs by age twenty-six.

Now, at fifty-four, she was ravaged both by hard life and cancer. Cadence scarcely recognized the wasted, scrawny creature that lay coughing in the marriage bed she’d shared with Cadence’s father.

“Hadn’t you ought to be in a hospital?”

“Can’t –“ A fit of coughing engulfed Mrs. Benison. She sputtered and finally recovered. “Can’t afford it, kiddo. Been awful tight since you left. Your dad never left no life insurance or nothin’. Anyways, he weren’t declared legally dead til some years later. Left some debts, all right.”

“No doubt a hefty tab at every local bar,” Cadence said smoothly. “But then, you’d know quite a bit about all that, wouldn’t you, Mother?”

The dying woman flinched. “Guess you got your reasons for hatin’ me, daughter. I never did no right by you, I s’pose. Had enough problems of my own.”

Cadence regarded her mother – once a pretty sixteen-year-old with a baby on the way – with bright and cruel eyes. This from the angel of the ghetto who had gazed with kindness and compassion on so many drunkards and bums.

“Yes, you had problems, all right, Mother. You were beaten by him as much as I was, weren’t you? But how often did he visit your bed, Mother? Especially compared to how often he visited mine?”

Mrs. Benison cringed away and coughed again. “What d’you want me to say, girl? I couldn’t do nothin’ to stop him. He’da likely killed me if I interfered, huh? Ever think ‘bout that? No, I guess not. Coulda left him, huh? That what you’re thinkin’? Coulda taken you and left? Ha! Old monster never gave me two pennies to rub together ‘less it was for groceries and whatnot. Never enough to get away.”

“Not,” said the daughter coldly, “that you ever tried.”

More coughing. No other response.

A long, slow, and very unpleasant smile crept across Cadence’s scarred face. This was not the Cadence that Bride’s Alley knew. Not the angel of the mission, the limping benefactress of the vile streets. This was Old Remembering Cadence, who recalled in vivid disgusting detail every loathsome touch from her drunken sire. Sister Cadence, she of the soft kind eyes and gentle smile, Missionary Cadence, Angel Cadence, did not think of such things. But Sister Cadence was not here today.

“Good-bye, Mother,” she said. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

It was Old Remembering Cadence that lifted the pillow and pressed it down on her mother’s gasping face, who held it with the crazy-strength of the damned until the old women stopped moving.

v

He found the place easily enough, with cues from her diary. It was a bright, fresh morning when he arrived; he parked his truck by the highway and hiked into the woods. On his shoulder he carried a shovel.

Why? he asked himself again. Why bother? Just end it. Be with her. The shovel was giving him blisters. Not that he’d be around much longer to suffer from them. But the sun was hot and the forest ticked grudgingly around him and he wanted to be gone from this place.

Arnold Carter Benison had disappeared, never to be seen again, six months before Cadence Norah Benison had graduated from high school. It had taken Edwin some time to track down his beloved’s real name and identity, longer still to discover her roots, and longer yet to learn of the disappearance of her father the winter of her eighteenth year.

After seeing her hidey-box (that’s what she called it – her hidey-box) Edwin knew what had happened to Arnold Benison. Now he was here, in a wide mossy clearing deep in the woods behind the former Benison farm. A crick ran through the clearing, with cold, cold water chortling over little stones.

Edwin knew what was here. Why dig it up? Why bother?

Because his heart wanted to see. The heart wants what the heart wants.

He began to dig.

v

A woman with lung cancer suffocating on her own dying breath was not considered worth any kind of investigation. Allison Cadence Benison was buried quietly in the local churchyard. Her daughter wore a dark veil across her scarred face. Old Remembering Cadence was not here; it was Sister Cadence who wept for her poor mother’s wasted life.

She paid her respects and went home. But the dark version of herself lingered and remembered her father. His sweaty touch and his foul breath in the night; and the satisfying way his eyes had bulged when he’d died. This image set up housekeeping in Cadence’s head – and, more importantly, in her heart. The image of evil passing from this world spread out black fingers and wrapped itself around her heart. And her heart began to want, in earnest. In a way, she wanted what she’d always wanted: good triumphing over evil. But no more merely feeding and sheltering the poor drunkards and bums.

Ah, no; that wouldn’t be enough. Not anymore.

Still, it was over a month after Cadence’s return to Bride’s Alley that she took action. The night was dark and windy, and the air felt dirty and somehow wrong. Cadence had gone to bed innocently as her Sister self, with not a thought of doing anything but sleeping til morning.

It was a new thing that roused itself an hour or so after midnight. Old Remembering Cadence had wrapped its tendrils around her heart; and it had blackened to a dark thing. A shadow. And it was Shadow Cadence who rose and quietly dressed, who crept down to the kitchen of the mission and fetched herself a long sharp knife.

Shadow Cadence slipped out into the windy night. The knife was pressed tightly to her side as she lurked in the dark corners of the Alley. She watched and waited, and her eyes were dark bits of flint in her scarred face.

The drug dealer, high on whatever substance he was currently peddling, didn’t even see her coming.

v

He rummaged through the room – he knew it was here – but where had she hidden it? Edwin closed his eyes and tried to think like Cadence. In her soul, she was a benevolent goddess, charitable and loving. But the darkness had overcome her on sixteen separate occasions – not counting once for her father, once for her mother (so he assumed – Edwin would never know the truth about Cadence’s trip home to visit her dying mother, but he made a very educated guess).

Edwin tried to imagine where Shadow Cadence would have hidden a secret. And it came to him quickly. Because of the multiple rapes she’d suffered as a child and teenager, Cadence unconsciously viewed a bed as a dirty thing, a symbol of forced pain. That’s where she’d hide a dirty secret.

He shone his flashlight under the bed; nothing. He’d expected that. He put the light down on the desk and shoved the bed out into the middle of the room. Low, low on the wall, previously hidden, was a loose brick. Edwin eased it out of its place. His stomach held a dull fire of anguish that he scarcely noticed. After all, the worst was over, wasn’t it? He wasn’t really alive anymore. Her confession had killed him.

Behind the brick was Cadence’s hidey-box. Edwin sat on the bed and investigated. He pulled out a sheaf of newspaper clippings, folded and rubber-banded together. Gently he unbanded the papers and noticed that the papers on the bottom of the pile were yellowed with age. He started with these.

It was the story of her life. First was the news article from long ago and far away, announcing the unexplained disappearance of Arnold Benison. It was noted that Mr. Benison was given to intoxication, and it was suspected that he’d wandered off drunk into the wilderness and died of exposure (it was a very cold December when he vanished). The article mentioned his family, including an eighteen-year-old Cadence.

The second article was a tiny blurb from the same newspaper – news of Cadence’s graduation from the local high school.

And then the murders.

There were more than sixteen. Sixteen was what she’d told him; he could only believe that the last remnant of good in her had simply been unaware of the other killings. The total dead in Bride’s Alley over the past three years was twenty-seven.

With a last, long look at her, with tears running down his face, Edwin left the room and the mission forever. He got into his truck and began to drive. He had a long journey ahead of him, and it would end his life. That thought alone brought him some measure of peace.

v

She didn’t remember, in the morning, what had occurred. She knew something was amiss; she awoke fully dressed, and there was a knife under her mattress. It was clean. She didn’t understand but she also didn’t question. There seemed to be a stain on her skirt. Mud, of course, she reasoned. Quietly she changed into new clothing and set her skirt to soak in soapy water. She did not remove the knife from its hiding place. She wanted to forget; and the heart wants what the heart wants.

v

He couldn’t look at her, where she lay on the little white sofa, a slim line of blood trailing down her face. Why hadn’t he thought to wipe the blood! he cursed to himself. Nothing to be done now; he simply could not bring himself to touch her again.

v

The next few nights, Sister Cadence stayed in her own bed – no midnight wanderings. From the second day she’d given no further thought to the knife or the blood-stained skirt. (She did work all the stains out, scrubbing patiently and absently, refusing to think about anything except the task at hand.)

But the time came again; and Shadow Cadence rose silent and cold from the bed and headed out into the night. This time it was a young prostitute. The girl had come into the mission several times, seeking food and shelter; she’d been cared for, and Cadence had spent hours talking with the girl about her lifestyle, and how to escape. On several occasions the girl had agreed to seek help; but always, the next day, she was out on the streets, looking for someone willing to trade pleasure for the drugs that she so desperately craved.

Unable to stop her addiction, the girl had eventually drifted away from the mission. Cadence hadn’t seen her in at least six months; and on that night there was no Sister Cadence to soothe the girl and usher her into the warmth of the mission. Now there was only the shadow and the knife.

As she watched the girl die, Shadow Cadence took a moment to consider her deed; but found little to consider. The girl was a waste of God’s precious life, and her time was over. Then, without another thought except the tiniest thrill of victory, Shadow Cadence slipped back into her own room and went to sleep.

This time she checked her clothing for stains. She found none.

v

Long moments crept by; at last Edwin came to himself and realized that he had to leave, now. He couldn’t risk discovery. He had work to do yet. So tenderly, he picked her up and laid her gently on the little white sofa. He laid her hands at her sides; then the feel of her cold flesh put such a horror in him that he stumbled backwards, his hands raised as though to ward off some unseen evil.

v

The Shadow grew savvier over the next few years. It did not linger in Bride’s Alley; it was too clever for that. It took its host all across the city, to the darkest streets and the most evil corners. It took the lives of the very least of the city’s population – the degraded, the disgusting, the already-doomed. It took those who would not be missed – those whose death would not warrant any special investigation.

At first, Cadence awoke with no memory of her dark deeds. As time went on, she became aware of nightmares that, when remembered, seemed too sharp to have been only dreams. But she lived her regular life during the day, loving and caring for the needy.

During this time, she met Edwin Godfrey.

At first he was just another dead-drunk bum; she fed him, covered him with a warm blanket, and ministered to his spirit. After only two days at the mission, Edwin accepted Christ and begged to be allowed to remain at the mission – to serve in any way he could. The rest of the staff was wary; but Cadence pled his case. Something had changed in his booze-reddened eyes; he was different than the bum who’d come stumbling into the mission, and Cadence knew it.

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” she told her fellow missionaries. “His heart wants to change, wants to serve. Let him do it.”

She was right. Edwin gave up drinking cold-turkey, enduring the spasms and stomach sickness of withdrawal. He was a changed man, volunteering endless hours at the mission, working hard and without complaint. She marveled at him; and felt that his transformation was not merely that – Edwin was a truly pure spirit, who had been previously trapped in a life that he wasn’t meant for. Now, released, his real self came forth to serve those around him. His compassion touched her heart; instead of merely waiting in the mission for lost souls to come in, Edwin went out into the world, seeking the cold and hungry and misguided on the city streets far beyond the boundaries of Bride’s Alley.

To assist with the financing for the feeding and clothing of more homeless than the mission had ever seen, Edwin set about to raise money for the mission. He was able to attain financial aid to attend night classes at a local community college, where he studied leadership and fundraising in non-profit organizations. Studying at night, Edwin put his new knowledge into practice after his first semester of school. He organized blood drives, door-to-door donation appeals, persuaded a local printer to donate flyers for the mission’s various events – his work dazzled Cadence as he dove into ways of improving the mission, ways that she herself would never have dreamed of.

Edwin was a force for God, and she fell in love with him.

What Cadence didn’t know – but perhaps, as a woman, suspected – was that a part of his zeal was due to her. Edwin had loved Cadence since the moment he’d first looked into her eyes, and her scars meant nothing to him, for the heart wants what the heart wants. While he truly did feel love for God, truly did believe in the cause of the mission, everything he did was secretly for her. He worshipped her, saw her as an angel, and saw himself as her guardian angel, put in her life to serve her and protect her.

As Edwin’s status progressed from homeless bum to one of the leaders in the mission, he finally dared to ask Cadence out for dinner. She accepted. From that point, the two were inseparable – except at night. Until and unless they were married, Cadence would stay in her own little room upstairs, and Edwin would continue to sleep on a cot downstairs, voluntarily putting himself on the same level as the homeless people he had vowed to serve.

Cadence lived her days in a dreamlike daze of joy; she felt sure that she and Edwin would be married within six months, as he’d been making subtle suggestions about things like ring size and white dresses. Her replies had been promising; and she knew he was as excited by the prospect as she was.

But her nights were not restful. The waking Cadence was becoming slowly aware of the Shadow’s nighttime activities. Although at first she hadn’t questioned – possibly attributing various clues to innocent sleepwalking – when the strangeness persisted, she began to wonder. Her subconscious desire to squash the truth finally lost the battle when she awoke, one morning, with a human finger in her pocket.

Cadence sat up in her bed. The morning sun shone through her gauzy white curtains, making her pretty bed frame glow with all the polish she’d lovingly rubbed into it. Her face felt cold, and her hairline prickled. The thing lay in her hand, a solid ice-cold chunk of human flesh, whose origin she had finally begun to guess. It was a sturdy, thick digit; a man’s finger. A man’s ring-finger, for it wore a gold band. The fingernail was clean and neatly trimmed. She had a vague memory flash – a middle-aged businessman, creeping down to the ghetto to buy cocaine, a man with a nasty habit but not an evil man, a man with two small children and a wife that he was in love with and intensely faithful to, a man with one dark secret, a man that deserved to be punished by the legal system for his crime, perhaps, but not –

And she remembered with hideous clarity. Her hand holding the razor-sharp knife. Shadow Cadence creeping up behind him and with cat-like quickness despite her limp, slicing deep into the flesh under his chin. She’d turned him over and stood over him, her knife dripping with his blood while he babbled and pleaded for his life (for she had not yet struck the death-blow). She heard about his sweet wife and his two children, a little boy and a little girl, something about a brand-new red wagon, something about an unpainted fence, and the pleading – I’m so sorry, I only do it sometimes, my wife doesn’t know, I swear I’ll stop, please please please please please

And she’d killed him, taken the knife back to his throat and cut more deeply and watched as his life-blood oozed out onto the dirty concrete. And then a moment of rebellion, when the Shadow wavered, and Cadence herself reached down and cut off the man’s ring-finger from his left hand. Put the finger into her pocket. And the Shadow took over again, and whisked Cadence away to clean off the blood and slink back to bed.

In the painfully clear morning light, Cadence knew what she’d become. She wrapped her slim fingers around the dead digit and remembered with unexpected relish what she’d done to her mother. Something in her hardened. He had deserved it. Yes. Of course. Why else would a godly woman like Sister Cadence find it necessary to end his life? And something in her died; something pure and innocent, the spark that made Edwin love her so; and she surrendered to her destiny.

She did not know that Edwin was watching her from the attic, peering through a small hole in her ceiling.

v

He crept up to her room in the dead of night. The mission was silent. He could faintly hear the snores of the homeless taking shelter in the downstairs main room, full of cots, one of which he had occupied for the last year and a half.

The upstairs hallway was dead calm. He knew which room was hers. He turned the knob ever so slowly and eased his way inside.

She was waiting for him. He’d thought she might be.

“Edwin,” she whispered. Her dear scarred face was terribly pale. She sat on the white sofa, her hands twisting restlessly in her lap.

“Cadence,” he murmured. “My love.”

“Sit with me.”

He sat, instead, on her bed, across the room. It was second-hand, as most of her personal belongings were; but Cadence had spent hours polishing the handsome old wood frame until it shone. Just as she’d scrubbed and bleached the little sofa, once badly stained, until it was white again. So she had told him, once, during better times. He admired her pride in her work; and indeed the old cast-off furniture was charming in her small room.

Edwin did long to join his love on the white sofa, to sit close and look deeply into her soft eyes. But now, with all the fears that he must address with her, he dared not be close to her. He needed to know the truth, ugly though it may be.

Of course, she knew the purpose of his coming. She always knew these things.

“How did you know?” she asked softly.

He folded his hands and stared at the ceiling. “Do you remember Burt?”

She did remember. About four months before, a large drunk man had staggered into the mission crying. Said his wife had kicked him out because of his drinking, he had nowhere to go, he was hungry and frightened. Cadence cared for him; and he made a sexual advance toward her. She wasn’t angry; he was drunk and confused and upset, and she gently redirected his attention and got him into bed.

“I was disturbed,” said Edwin. “You want to see the good in everyone, but I saw something wrong when Burt accosted you. There was something in his eyes – some kind of gleam – and his mouth went slack – well, it’s hard to describe it, but I saw it. I tested myself, rethinking the moment, trying to make sure I wasn’t paranoid. But after I examined myself, I knew it was true. I had a feeling that Burt would bear watching.”

And he told Cadence what she already knew, that Burt had left the mission the next day, sober and well-fed and claiming to have plans to reconcile with his wife. He’d left on his own, with thanks to his benefactors.

“And I followed him.”

Her eyes widened in shock. Edwin continued.

“He went down the street, apparently back to where he’d come from. Then he stopped. Looked around, looking over his shoulder, looking back toward the mission. Didn’t see me; I was hiding behind a dumpster. Burt doubled back and went back toward the mission, using the side-alley, you know – the one we hardly ever use?”

She nodded.

“He broke into that abandoned building across the alley from us – I think it used to be a gas station, that little building with the weird yellow siding. You know.”

She did.

“So Burt just kind of hunkered down inside that building and watched the mission. I had a feeling that he was waiting for dark, so I slipped back down the alleyway and made my way back to the mission, making sure he didn’t see me. I told you I was going uptown for some errands, kissed you good-bye. Do you remember?”

“I think so. That day was just like any other day to me, remember.”

“Of course. But that night – well, maybe that was just like any other night to you, too; but for me, it was a revelation, and not one I wanted.”

Edwin kept talking, twisting his hands nervously while he did so, not looking at his sweet Cadence. After saying good-bye to Cadence, Edwin had returned to the alley and found a sheltered place behind a decrepit fence, where he could see Burt through the old dusty window of the once-gas station. Burt watched the mission, quiet as a mouse, and Edwin watched Burt, even quieter. At one point in late afternoon, Burt left his post for twenty minutes, returning with a brown paper bag from which he drank conservatively, making it last over the next few hours.

Evening came, and ripened into night. The moon rose high in the sky. The mission went to bed, turned off its lights.

Burt rose for what dark purpose Edwin could only guess at – to break in, rape Cadence, perhaps; maybe even kill her, who knew? But just as Burt stepped out of the abandoned building, a slim white figure came walking delicately through the darkness.

Burt must have chortled to himself, feeling lucky – here was his prey, coming to him like a lamb to slaughter, making his crime all too easy. He advanced toward Cadence; and Edwin emerged from his hiding place, silent and angry but not revealing his presence yet. He drew a revolver, which he’d recently purchased and didn’t really know how to use. What the heck was Cadence thinking? Was she trying to confront Burt alone? Was she truly that blind to the evils of humanity, that she believed she would not or could not be harmed?

He had a lot to learn, as it turned out.

“Evening, pretty lady,” Burt drawled. He was quite drunk from whatever substance he’d been imbibing from the brown paper bag. “Did you come to see me?”

“Yes,” she said, and smiled enigmatically. “Back so soon, Burt? Do you need another hot meal and a cot for the night? Or did you have something else in mind?”

Her voice was low and sultry, a tone Edwin had never heard from her.

Burt, too, seemed caught off-guard; he moved toward her, stumbling a bit. “Well, I guess maybe I did have something else in mind, sweetheart. Maybe you’d like to take me upstairs and entertain me or something.”

“I’ll choose … or something.” Cadence made a quick movement – Edwin didn’t see it clearly but he thought he saw something glint in the moonlight. It flashed toward Burt and the big man gave a muffled yell. Another flash and he fell to the ground, making a kind of wet burbling noise. Cadence stood over him. Now Edwin could see that she was holding a knife. It dripped blood.

“I was put on this Earth to rid it of creatures like you,” Cadence told the dying man. Her voice was calm – too calm. Oily. Wrong. Edwin hardly recognized her voice or her face; the woman in the moonlight was a cold-blooded murderer, and her features were sharp and cold. Edwin dared to creep a bit closer.

“This is not the first time I have cleansed the world of vermin,” she said, “and it will not be the last. We live in a world of good and evil. I fight for the cause of good; and to that end I will not rest while pieces of filth like you walk these streets. I have killed whores and drug pushers and pimps and thieves, and I won’t stop. I will never stop. You? You’re a joke. I would have let you go, if you hadn’t tried to come back. What did you hope to accomplish, anyway? Attack me? Rape me? Kill me?”

And she laughed; and it was a repulsive sound.

Burt tried to say something; Cadence did not reply, but leaned down and casually stabbed his left eye out. The dying man tried to scream but the only sound produced by his ravaged throat was a hideous wet croak of agony. Cadence calmly watched him die; then turned and walked down the road, away from the mission, on a mission of her own. Edwin was tempted to follow her, but he’d learned enough for one evening.

He clumsily holstered his gun and went to Burt’s side. Burt’s eyes were still open – well, one was, already glazing over. The other was a bloody ruin.

Edwin felt no sorrow or remorse at Burt’s death. He was scum, and he’d meant to hurt Cadence. But this death – from the cold and hateful hand of a woman Edwin no longer knew – was not justice, it was slaughter. Edwin had not stalked Burt in order to kill him. He was ready to protect Cadence, ready to prevent the man from breaking into the mission, yes. If he was forced to use his revolver (and he hoped to God that he’d figure out how), he would have attempted first to disable Burt, then call the police; his plan had not been murder. Edwin’s greatest crime in his dark days of drunkenness was simply that, the helpless depressed spiral into the dark; he’d only ever harmed himself. Finding a new life with Cadence had been like stepping into Heaven.

And now Heaven had a shadow.

“After that,” Edwin said, forcibly returning himself to the present, “I watched you every night. I simply couldn’t believe that what you’d said was true. I couldn’t imagine you doing – well, doing what you did to Burt, but doing it over and over again.”

He saw that she was crying. He tried to ignore that and went on.

“But you did, Cadence. Over and over and over again. Not every night, but almost. When you killed, you weren’t the woman I knew and loved. You were like … a dark version of yourself, I guess.”

“Shadow Cadence.”

It was the first time she’d said it out loud; and she did so with a sob.

“Something like that,” said Edwin. He wanted to cry himself; but he couldn’t, not now, he had a job to do. “You weren’t like yourself at all. I thought it must be like schizophrenia or split personality or whatever they’re calling it these days.”

“Dissociative identity disorder,” she said in a small voice.

“Sure. Because I couldn’t rationalize my Cadence committing these horrible murders. Oh, Cadence … you killed a child. How could anyone do such a thing? How could you?”

She sobbed. “It – she was – she was already a whore.”

“She was ten years old. Her mother was a drug addict, forced her into it. You stabbed her in the gut and let her die slowly, Cadence. She was a child.” Edwin paused. He wanted to scream and rage at her; but he had to be quiet. He forced himself to calm down. “And now I have proof, Cadence, that you do remember everything you’ve done. I mean, I was pretty sure before now, but … you just admitted it. So it’s not like you blacked out and did all this evil without knowing about it.”

“At first I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t remember. I didn’t … I didn’t know …”

“But then you did.”

“But then I did.” Her eyes were red from weeping. He tried not to look at her.

“And you kept doing it.”

“I was helping!” she moaned. “I was purging the world. I was purifying. I was reaping, I was the angel of death and I was, I was cutting out the evil, Bride’s Alley was so dark and I wanted to kill them all and make it go away and I saw, I saw – the results of sin every day, and I saw battered women, drunk husbands, and I saw little children with bruises –“

“Little children like the ten-year-old you tortured to death?”

“No no no …” She wept and rocked back and forth and Edwin knew that her mind was going, if it wasn’t gone already. The good part of her could not deal with the evil thing she’d become.

And he knew what he had to do.

He’d come up here with the intention, but until this moment, he hadn’t known if he could actually do it. Now he knew.

“Cadence,” he said gently. She didn’t answer. He crossed the room and knelt before her, taking her cold hands in his own. “Cadence. Listen to me. Look at me, darling.”

She looked up.

“I can’t let you continue to kill. Do you understand that?”

“Are you going to turn me in?” she whispered.

“No. I can’t do that, either. You see, Cadence, you’ve become a legend in this city. You’re an angel; you’re a guardian of the needy, you’ve received awards for your good work – everyone knows your name and you’re like a saint. Your legend must not become tarnished with these horrible murders that you have committed. Do you understand? The work of the mission must continue, and if this comes out, it will surely be shut down. You don’t want that, do you? I know you believe in your cause, but there must be a rational part of you that still understands that it’s wrong, that it’s evil, what you’re doing.”

He saw a flash of sanity in her eyes.

“The mission,” she whispered.

“Yes. If you continue, you will be caught eventually, and everything you care about will be destroyed. Do you understand?”

She was like a lost little girl. But she nodded. Part of her did understand.

“Do you still love me?” she whispered.

They were both weeping but Edwin now smiled. “Yes, I love you, I’ll always love you. I’ll meet you in Heaven very soon.”

Her eyes widened.

Edwin drew his gun. “I’m so sorry.”

She lunged at him, her eyes wide and rolling madly, her hands arched into claws. Her lips peeled back from her teeth, like a wild horse, and she snapped at him, trying to bite, trying to claw. Edwin was caught off-guard by the attack – but only a bit. He’d anticipated a final appearance from Shadow Cadence, the evil thing making a last attempt to save its own neck. Edwin wrestled her to the floor, blinked back his tears, and shot her in the chest.

Cadence stiffened. Her eyes squeezed shut, then flew open; and they were clear now, pale and beautiful, gazing at him with at least part of her sanity restored. Blood trickled from her mouth as she strained to smile.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Thank you for releasing me.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He clung to her as she died; rocking her; stroking her hair. An hour passed and her body cooled in his arms. It was done.

Edwin wanted peace and release for his beloved; he wanted an end to her torment, and to his.

The heart wants what the heart wants.