Alternate Ending to The Devil and Miss Prym

 

by Ms. Weaver, English department

 

     As the women from the village walked away from her home, Berta noticed their silhouettes growing darker against the approaching skyline. It was a red sunset, a shade as bold as mortality, relieved only by the weak, soot-colored clouds that scattered in uneven streaks against the sky.      

     “And so I too shall be setting soon,” Berta whispered, her stale breath clinging to the window pane. She heard the voice again, the girl who must have died young. It had been so long since any child had lived or died in Viscos that Berta wasn’t sure what living person that voice had once belonged to. Once, several years ago, the voice had woken her from troubled dreams, and she wondered if maybe it had come from inside her own mind. But later that same day, the voice of the young girl repeated itself again: “God wept when I died. Tell him God wept.”

     Tonight, the girl was whispering again, clutching at her ankle.

     “What is it?” Berta asked. She had given up trying to figure out the girl’s name or age. She was young and too focused on what she needed to say.

     “Lead me into the woods,” the girl whispered, but the tone of her voice made it seem as though they had already been in the woods and going there was simply a way to recognize what had always been.

     As she walked into the woods, Berta felt the girl’s hands tugging at her apron, leading her to a Y-shaped rock with a mound of fresh dirt. Berta sat on the rock, since she had always been sitting on the rock, and waited, since she had always been waiting.

     She might have become a part of that rock if the stranger hadn’t stumbled through the trees, sweating under the weight of a large bag filled with ten gold bars. Berta looked at him, just as goodness looks into the face of a sinner. He feigned a polite nod and turned away from her, heaving the bag of gold onto his back.

     “The bag that you carry weighs as much as my flesh.” Berta had not stopped looking at the stranger, though he would not turn to face her as he replied.

     “Your flesh, my flesh, anyone’s flesh,” the stranger replied.

     “Not a young girl’s flesh,” Berta said. She felt the girls hands tightening, one wrapped around her knuckles and the other on her wrist. “God wept when your daughter was killed.”

     The stranger turned his face to Berta but didn’t set down the gold bars. Berta continued to speak but knew that the words were not her own.

     “She never cried during the kidnapping. She never asked your wife if they were going to live or die. The last thing she saw before the bullet entered her body was her guardian angel, reaching out his arms.” The girl had crawled into Berta’s lap, as children do when being read a bedtime story. This time, however, the girl was both storyteller and audience.

     “She saw two things after she died. At first, she stayed in the room, held by her guardian angel. She watched as one of the terrorists stood over her body, his hands tearing into his own hair and pulling his skin across his face. He was young, he would be a father soon too. He grabbed at the collar of another of the terrorists and the two men scuffled and struggled until the door broke down and the FBI agents poured in.” If Berta had looked at the face of the stranger, she would have seen his hands tearing through his hair and pulling at his skin, but she saw now only through the eyes of the child.

     “The second thing she saw was you. You were standing in your home, after hanging up on the phone call that told you that your family had been killed. You wept, but your tears were not your own. You screamed, but your cry was not your own. You fell to the ground, but your agony was not your own. As she watched you weeping, she could hear only the crying of God, who suffered in your suffering.”

     The girl touched Berta’s cheek and was gone. The stranger stood in silence, spine aching under the weight of the gold.

     “How long have you known my daughter?” he asked.

     “Since her death,” Berta replied. “But she doesn’t speak to me very often.”

     “God chose to weep for her but not to save her,” the stranger said, his demon raging in the presence of the girl’s guardian angels.

     “Man chose not to save her,” Berta said. “God chose to give man freedom. Without freedom, we wouldn’t know suffering. But without suffering, we wouldn’t know love.”

     “Will you let me ask my daughter a question?” the stranger said.

     “Will you weep for me once I am dead?” Berta replied.

     “Let me speak to her,” the stranger said. “And I will tell the town to save your life.”

     “You will weep for me, but you cannot save me,” Berta told him. “The choice, like my life, is no longer in your hands.”

     The old woman stood up and walked away faster than he expected, and being weighed down by the gold, the stranger quickly lost sight of her in the woods.

     He turned around and ran through the forest, taking the gold back to its original hiding place. I won’t show them the gold, the stranger thought. And then they won’t kill her.

     His hands and clothes were covered in dirt as he emerged from the woods. Chantal was there, walking through the place they first met, and he called to her to stop.

     “I will save her now,” the stranger said. “The gold is buried. Berta will live.”

     Chantal wrestled her arm away from his grasp. The stranger was sweating and looked as if he were a starving dog. He clutched her arm again.

     “She spoke to my daughter,” the stranger said. “She answered me.”

     Chantal tried without success to pull her arm away from him. His test didn’t matter to her anymore, the gold could stay buried.

     “They will kill her,” Chantal said, her voice rising in urgency. “Let go of me.”

     “I have the gold, and I have the answer,” the stranger said. The sun had almost vanished. Only a few streaks of mortal red lingered across the black sky.

     Chantal drove her elbow into the stranger’s chest, as she broke free, calling out Berta’s name and running toward the monolith. She could make it in time, she would make it in time. Berta would live because that’s what was mean to happen, that’s what had already happened. She was alive, she was always alive.

     The stranger ran faster than she did, so he was standing at the monolith before she arrived. Berta’s blood was soaking into the ground near his feet, and the townspeople were demanding the gold.

     “You fools,” he wept. “You fools!”

     “You promised us the gold,” the mayor shouted.

     “You made them kill for it,” the priest said, reminding the townspeople of their guilt.

     “Fools!” the stranger cried. “You are fools just like me. A fool who made fools, a wolf who made wolves.”

     The stranger turned to Chantal and grabbed her wrists. “She spoke to my daughter,” he repeated. “She spoke to her. And now I have murdered my daughter all over again.”

     Chantal made no attempt this time to pull her wrists away. She waited until the stranger fell to the ground before going to Berta’s body and placing a hand over the dead woman’s eyes.

     The murmurings and shouts of the townspeople grew louder and louder, only to be silenced by the vacant cry of the rogue wolf. For a moment, they stood in silence, listening to the howl of the animal as it was echoed by the howl of a man, kneeling in the dirt and weeping for his child. “That wolf is dead,” the stranger pronounced. “It has always been dead. I will kill the rogue wolf, because I have already killed it.”

     As the stranger reached for one of the shotguns, none of the townspeople made any effort to stop him and no one explained that the guns had an equal chance of holding blanks or holding bullets. He fled into the depths of the forest, seeking his atonement.

 

     Chantal saw to it that Berta received a proper burial in the village cemetery. No one objected when Chantal moved her belongings from the hotel into Berta’s house, and no one commented when the priest said he would be taking a leave of absence. He promised them that a replacement would soon arrive, but when it didn’t, the town still didn’t object.

     A few of the townspeople left Viscos in the months following Berta’s death.

     “Folks might start asking questions,” the mayor said. “And folks might not keep their mouths shut for long.”

     The blacksmith saw to it that a fountain was built in Berta’s memory, and a few of the townspeople stood in front of it each day, remembering their guilt.

     Sometimes the townspeople would break into fights that would end in bloody noses and teary eyes. Sometimes the townspeople would sit outside, telling stories about Ahab and St. Savin and wondering what the punishment would have been if Ahab had killed St. Savin that night, wondering what their own punishments would be.

     A few of the townspeople tried to search the forest for the gold, but the forest was too vast and the gold was now too dull to fill their desire.

     Chantal sat on the front step of Berta’s porch, watching and waiting for good to return to Viscos. Ever since Berta’s funeral, Chantal had been having conversations with the old woman, telling her about the townspeople and listening to her warnings about the future of the town. One day, she was visited by Berta and her husband. Another day, Chantal’s grandmother sat next to her, silent the whole time but resting her hand in the crook of Chantal’s arm. When she heard the stranger’s voice, she nodded in reply, letting him know that she understood his mind and she accepted his apology. He told her where the gold was hidden, and he warned her of the rogue wolf’s lair, but Chantal sat on the front porch, watching over the village. She listened to the townspeople tell legends of a hidden treasure in the forest, and she watched as tourists came to scour the land in search of the unseen gold.

     When a young treasure-hunter offered to take her to far and exotic lands if she could offer any clues as to where the gold was hidden, Chantal paused.

     “The gold does not exist,” she told him. But after he thanked her, he headed straight towards the forest, and Chantal watched as his silhouette approached the skyline, growing darker against the red of the sky.