Passover

by Aphrodite Anagnost

  Enwright eyed Rachel and whispered, “Jews are always liars. They’ve murdered our children as well as our Lord. Now they want to be called the Children of God and take dominion over us all.”

  “Stop right there.” Rachel held up a hand. “I won’t listen to such things at my house, or anywhere else.”

  “I’m trying to save you,” he said. “They know how to manipulate minds. Every radical movement since 1945 has had either a Jew out front of it or a Jew behind it, tricking some Goyim into mouthing his words. They’ve taken over banking, education, the press, libraries, Hollywood, the Freemasons, television, the major political parties in America, and the army. Like the Indian god Vishnu, Jews are possessed of hundreds of hands, each of which feels the pulse of public opinion. They control the markets. This Jew of yours, Lev, has been sent to mislead, to destroy you. A time bomb ticking away in your house.”

  “I would like you to leave, Mr. Enwright,” Rachel said.

  Listening from the crack of the porch door, Zack felt his hands curl into fists. “Call me Tripper.”

  “Please leave.”

  “Have you read the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion?” said Enwright.

  “Why should I?” said Rachel. “They’re an anti-Semitic hoax. A forgery. No learned elders met in the nineteenth century, or at any other time, to plot world domination. There was no meeting at the Prague cemetery, no cigar. Only hatred and prejudice against Jews, which people like you help keep alive.”

  Enwright yanked at his hair and his huge head bounced up and down. “I’ve come here to give you a warning.” His voice rose. “I’ve seen what Jews do in my legal practice. It doesn’t matter who wrote the protocols or why; what matters is that they reflect the truth. Jews cooperate with each other, internationally, in commerce. They control money and land, and formulate propaganda. Through their magazines and news shows, as well as their sitcoms, they create false ideologies to pit Gentiles one against the other while they make off with the loot.”

  Zack almost laughed. He saw a smile come to his mother’s lips. Enwright was such a tool.

  “You mean people like Freud, Karl Marx, the followers of Darwin and Jewish colleagues of Stephen Hawking?” she mused. “The Jews behind Roosevelt?”

  “That’s right!” Enwright beamed, as if he’d proved a point. “Psychology, Communism, Evolution, the New Deal, the atheism of Stephen Hawking—all ideologies designed to divide and confuse non-Jews. Jews support those things and debunk them as well. All parts of an act to make every one else in the world vulnerable.”

  Zack and Rachel both laughed. Enwright’s face reddened under its black stubble.

  “Jews study the Jew television show, Seinfeld. They see the Jew, Seinfeld, as a psychiatrist leading the neurotic Christian, George Costanza, into confusion, joking about him, speaking to him ironically. They learn how to master us and destroy our society and culture, thus take over. This is how it is with the Jew. You will not survive this night unless you send your Jew away. That is all I have come to tell you.”

  “Go home,” said Rachel. “I don’t want you here.”

  “Neither do I,” said Zack, opening the door. “If there’s anyone here secretly involved in something bad, it’s you.”

  “I’m—”

  “You are.”

  “I resent what you’re saying, son.”

  “Your head is too big,” said Zack. “It’s filled with water.”

  “Zack’s right,” Rachel said, “It’s too big.”

  Two minutes later, Enwright’s red Corolla was pulling out of the Sheltons’ driveway in the rain, on its way back to Onancock.

  Dave stood stunned as if a board had slammed him in the face, his yellow rain-slick glossy and shiny with rainwater. He gasped at the half-hidden shack in a clearing of thick woods a half hour deep in the forest to the east of Ewell’s house. He stared back at the men, then dug in a pocket for his phone and took a picture of the clapboard ruin.

  Creed was standing under the anemic shelter of a pin oak. He checked the coordinates with his GPS, then panned the clearing in the hardwoods with the scope of his rifle.

  The sheriff was stuck between the branches of two soggy elms that had grown together. He lifted a heavy arm to clear thorns of sweet briar out of his way, then heaved a great thigh out of a patch of wet poison ivy.

  “My God,” said Lev, mouth hanging open. He broke free from the underbrush behind the sheriff and moved up next to Creed, bumping his rifle.

  “Back off, Lev,” said Creed, pointing his Winchester at the remains of the quiet, waiting house.

  The sheriff leaned against a large hollow trunk, widened his stance, and cocked his pistol.

  Before them, in the drizzle, stretched a line of low split-rails painted black. Whole sections were missing, others pushed over by wind. Beyond the fence a chimney rose, its mortar crumbling, bricks slashed by soot. Beneath the chimney grew a chaos of brambles. Charred timbers, half-decayed, lay like forgotten soldiers slain in battle. Obscured by new growths of chokecherries and wild blackberries, the rubble of a fire had oozed its blackened mass over the house’s foundation.

  Behind the ruin, loblolly pines swayed high above the chimney, their trunks painted black and scorched by fire. Nailed to the surrounding trees were scraps of rotted clapboard, each with a faded, painted image—naked women, with long necks, no facial features, and no nipples or pubic hair. Red paint splattered waving blades of orange flame against a background of gray brick walls. Crimson holes were bored into the foreheads of featureless faces. A baby was being torn from its mother by a pair of hands in cuffed white gloves.

  Lev freed himself from a thorn that’d hooked a pants leg and crept over the fallen logs and rocks and swept his eyes over the panorama of faded murals. “This whole scene is a depiction of the Holocaust,” he said, squinting at the weathered paintings.

  Dave’s eyes fixed on the tiny emblems on the cuffs of the white gloves. “Swastikas?” Dave’s heart jumped in the throes of an eureka moment. This was the place that had caused everything. This place held the answer. Dave studied Wise’s face. He probably knew it too. He was probably putting it all together with secrets only he knew. He looked at Wise.

  “Damn it, Sheriff. Did you know about this? Don’t you think it’s about time you open your trap and let the rest of us know what’s going on?”

  “I didn’t know about this,” said the sheriff. “I don’t know how it fits into anything.” He pulled a burr off his pants. “But I’d bet dollars to donuts it does.”

  “So what else, Sheriff?” said Dave.

  “What else what?” said Wise.

  “What do you have tucked down your pants you’re not telling us, Sheriff?”

  “Now listen here,” said Wise. “Everything I know is so out beyond the breakers even I have trouble believing it. So I’m not passing it along until I’m sure.”

  “Yeah.” Lev stared off into the woods, eyes unfocused as if he were lost in thought.

  “What about those holes in the ground?” Dave blinked away the streaks of rain that blurred his vision and pointed toward a grassy mound interrupted by depressions, as if great bites had been taken out of the earth.

  “Looks like an old family cemetery,” said Creed. He climbed over fallen logs and brush to the edge of the foundation. “Graves sink after the pine boxes decay. Be careful. Might be skeletons in those holes.”

  “But I don’t see any headstones or crosses,” said Dave.

  “Broken.” Creed shivered, his wool jacket heavy with rain. “Or maybe rotted away.”

  Lev snapped out of his daze and watching his step, walked to the nearest painting. He pulled off a glove and ran a finger down the side of the sodden wood. “No signature. But there’s something.”

  “What kind of something?” Dave tore through a patch of high rye on the perimeter of the clearing. The grass smelled moldy even in the rain. He yanked some seeds off a head and put them to his nose and inhaled. He coughed.

>   “Well,” said the sheriff. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. And I’m glad I haven’t.”

  “Reminds me of one of two things.” Lev mused on the image of the mother and the child and the specter of the white gloves. “Could be the hand of a Nazi soldier ripping a baby away from his mother. Or an Egyptian baby being torn away by the angel of death.”

  “Didn’t know angels wore gloves,” said the sheriff.

  “Didn’t think the angel of death was a Nazi,” said Creed.

  Dave realized he’d bitten his tongue at the moment he tasted blood. The whole miserable day had become a prolonged nightmare. He twisted the red string he’d allowed Beatricia to tie on his wrist. He wasn’t a religious man, but knew that true believers found comfort in such talismans. Now he was glad he had one.

  “See the serpents coiling at the mother’s feet?” said Lev. “Could be Egyptian, you know. Remember the Egyptian priests who laid down their staffs at Pharaoh’s feet after Aaron’s slithered off?”

  “Don’t recall that one,” said Creed. “And what do swastikas have to do with Egypt?”

  “It was originally Egyptian. A solar sign.”

  Creed frowned. “How do you know all this?”

  “He wasn’t always a stable manager,” said Dave, spitting blood from his mouth and rubbing a raw spot on his tongue with a gloved finger.

  Lev shrugged.

  “No, really,” said Creed.

  “My parents used to drag me to synagogue three times a week. Four years of Hebrew School. I quit after my bar mitzvah. I became an engineering student.”

  “So you’re a Hebrew scholar?” said Creed.

  “No. An unemployed civil engineer. I live in an apartment in a barn, and I’m dating a Methodist. I’ve forgotten almost everything.”

  “This place gives me the creeps.” Dave looked into the darkening sky and shuddered, as if he felt some poisoned arrow had swooped down from the sky and pierced his heart. His chest hurt. His feet grew heavy. His legs became numb.

  Musn’t let on. Mustn’t let the others know. Must be the way Wise feels too, Dave thought. Maybe I’ve been too hostile. An attack was coming from somewhere just out of view, invisible. And the attacker was who? Or what?

  “Phil, I have a suspicion what we’re dealing with is not quite human.”

  The sheriff’s eyes darted, then fixed on Dave’s face. Wise coughed, then nodded.

  “We need to search this entire place,” said Lev.

  Creed guffawed. “I can’t believe the old lady put us onto this. She’s probably known about the place for years. Probably used to picnic here with her boyfriend.”

  “She’s a true believer,” Dave said. “Not a practical joker.”

  Creed curled his lip and raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you think your mother-in-law has used a Ouija board to pinpoint the dump some nut-job is using as a base to kill off his neighbors?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Dave shrugged. “I’m just saying she wouldn’t try to fool us on purpose. Whatever she did or said, right or wrong, she believes. Don’t doubt that for a minute.”

  “I think she’s a whack job,” said Creed. Phil Wise grimaced and looked away.

  “There could be a scientific explanation,” said Creed. “A climactic disturbance. An electrical charge that accumulated and sent all the metal in the room flying.”

  Dave laughed.

  “What about the finger flames?” said Lev.

  “Everyone was wearing a ring,” Dave pointed out. “Even the kids. I don’t know. Seemed real. Might have been an electrical storm. But maybe not.”

  “What about you, Sheriff?” Creed asked.

  “I don’t think anything yet,” said the sheriff. “I’m still looking things over. When I can, I take testimony. When I have enough, I’ll set my mind to sortin’ it out. What I want to know right now is how old these paintings are.”

  Dave scratched his head and studied the paintings. “Well. This is older than it might look to you. High-quality outdoor latex paint. Even has a base coat. No peeling—just fading. Painted in layers. See? The negative space, the sky and earth, were painted first. Pretty good for Zebulon. I’ve seen work like this sell for thousands at outsider art expos in New York. I think they’re at least twenty years old. Nailed up with heavy-duty iron and decades of rust.” He scratched a nail head and brushed reddish-black powder off his fingers.

  The sheriff patted his gun belt through his cold, wet slicker. “Then whoever did this work is most likely forty years old or older.”

  “But he can’t be too old,” said Creed. “Not if he’s the killer.”

  “Why’s that?” Lev shivered. “It’s getting cold.”

  “Because no old man could kill those people,” said Dave.

  “Or move all that furniture, acting alone,” said Wise, mumbling. “Unless…”

  Dave looked at the sheriff. The man had an idea. It probably came from Bea. It was probably weird as shit.

  “I got a new theory,” said Creed. “This site doesn’t have anything to do with the killer. That little house over there looks like it burned down years ago. Nobody’s been here for twenty years or more. The old lady is bat-shit crazy. Either that or she’s just trying to seem important.”

  “Well, that’s not it.” Dave squirmed. His collar was choking him, scratching his neck. He was unaccustomed to defending his mother-in-law. It made him itchy. “I know Beatricia is eccentric, yes—but she was right about Cardinals winning the World Series. She was so confident, she bet ten thousand dollars on it. And tried to get us to bet the farm. I’m not kidding.”

  “She’s the killer.” Creed laughed.

  “Well, let’s not get too far off the subject,” said Sheriff Wise. “You boys pull the nets in together. Lev, you go over and check out those big things over there nailed to those trees. You know, those shields with the eyes painted on them. Dave, walk around and check out every inch of grass. Then figure out why the fence is black. When it was painted. It sure as hell ain’t been twenty years. Creed, stand right where you are. Cock your rifle. Be ready to shoot.”

  “Okay, Sheriff.” Creed grinned.

  Dave looked over at Creed. The little man liked to take orders, especially if they had to do with holding a rifle.

  “But try not to shoot yourself.” The sheriff took the Glock out of his holster, checked his clip, then returned it to its leather sheath.

  “You can kiss my butt, Sheriff.” Creed raised his rifle and swept the perimeter.

  Dave didn’t like the idea of splitting up, but it was already afternoon and the sun had begun to sink behind the darkening rain clouds.

  He squatted in the grass, scraping at the concrete base of a fence post with the blunt end of one of his car keys. A dandelion had crept around his ankle, tugging at his jeans, as if it intended to capture his attention. He gasped and cut its wet stalk with his key, then stood abruptly.

  “The fence is twenty years old, or more,” he called out to the sheriff. “The post was painted the day it was embedded. There are paint drops mixed into the cement.”

  The sheriff hiked to the top of the pile of burnt rubble that had once been a house, like a goat mounting a hill of garbage. “Whatcha got, Lev?”

  “God’s eyes. Hamesh hands.” Lev lifted his voice from a spot between two looming pines, tilted as if they would tumble down at any moment and crush him. “Jewish symbol of protection from the old evil eye. Ancient.”

  Dave walked up behind Lev to study the symbols. “Interesting art.” The shields were edged with bands of repeating sequences—hands, feathers, cats, scarab beetles, and pintail ducks. In the center of each was a faded golden eye that was itself shield shaped, but tipped on its side.

  “Keep looking,” yelled the sheriff. He walked down the hill of spongy, burnt detritus.

  From its edges, he began pulling out pieces of blackened timber.

  “What do ya' see?” yelled Creed.

  “Something’s under
here,” said the sheriff. “Come help me.”

  Everyone dropped what he was doing and headed toward the sheriff, who was yanking burnt clapboard off the pile. “Help me clear this debris. Think I’ve found a hatch.”

  Wise rolled up his sleeves and wiped rain from his brow. Lev, Dave, and Creed walked to the pile and leaned their rifles against a dead tree.

  “Not you, Creed. Keep that rifle in your hands. Be ready to use it. You just never know.”

  David and Lev helped the sheriff pull back timbers and kick away pieces of roof. Soon, they cleared a cellar door split in two parts, each having a handle made from a scrap of pine with a rusty nail driven through the middle of it. They hoisted both sides and lay them back like pinned moth wings, then peered into the pitch black hole. They all stepped back.

  Wise grimaced. “Now who wants to be the first one down there?”

  Dave got a whiff of rising musk from the floor. He sneezed. Dave peered into the gloom and his pulse quickened with both fear and fascination. “I’ll go.” The mystery of the cellar was as magical as it was dangerous. He was simultaneously attracted and repulsed and he imagined skeletons and old torture devices and then forgotten treasures all somehow blossoming without light.

  “Step aside,” said Lev. “You’re too heavy. The ladder probably can’t take it.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Dave clicked on the penlight on his keychain and swung the beam into the space like a slow pendulum, illuminating a bare dirt floor and a descending ladder of vertical timbers and crude cross planking.

  The sheriff touched Lev on the shoulder. “That wood looks flimsy. You sure you wanna go?”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to go?”

  “Well, maybe you think there’s spooks down there,” said the sheriff.

  Creed reached up and put his palm on Lev’s chest. “Stop. No one’s going down that death ladder. Spooks my ass.” He gripped the fabric of Lev’s raincoat. “Sheriff, the only thing you’re gonna get by sending this young man down there is a kid with a broken neck. You’re supposed to be protecting these people. Not exposing them to more risk.”

  “I’m in charge of this investigation. This looks like a sound ladder. If we don’t proceed, we’ll never get to the bottom of this investigation, Creed. Lives are at stake.”