by Joe Hill
18
In an unexpected turn of events, Father Storey—completely recovered and wearing an immaculate surplice—told Harper to go unto the old school bus, at the gates of Camp Wyndham, and keep a watch on the road. He even used the word unto, like someone quoting verse from the Bible. He issued this command from a throne of bleak white rock, at the center of the Memorial Circle, while his flock emerged from the vast red doors of the chapel behind him. The people of Camp Wyndham were in gay spirits, laughing and chattering animatedly, while some of the children sang “Burning Down the House” in their high piping voices. Harper was troubled to observe some of the adults lugging big red cans of gasoline.
“What’s going on?”
“It was foretold we should have a cookout,” Father Storey informed her. “For we expect friends to come upon us tonight, bearing happy tidings. I say unto you, arise and go along the road and keep your watch. We will prepare the cookfire, and roast s’mores in the name of the Bright.” He winked at her. “Don’t take too long and I’ll save you one.”
She wanted to ask who had done all the foretelling, but time skipped before she could find out, and then she was walking along the road, beneath a dark and starless sky. In the distance, she could hear the congregation roaring the Talking Heads, bellowing about the sweet release of burning it all down. She hurried. She didn’t want to miss s’mores. She wondered who had brought them chocolate and marshmallows. Probably the same person who had been foretelling things.
She was in such a hurry she almost stumbled over the man in the road. She took a wild lurch into high, wet grass to avoid stepping on him. She had not yet reached the bus, which was farther down the hill.
Nelson Heinrich lifted his head and looked up at her. She knew it was Nelson by his ugly Christmas sweater, even though half his face had been flayed off, to show the red bunching muscles beneath. His foggy, good-humored eyes peered out from that glistening crimson mask. He looked almost exactly like the anatomical bust that had once been on the counter in the infirmary.
“I told you I’d get here!” Nelson said. “I hope there are enough s’mores for everyone! I brought friends!”
The Freightliner rumbled at the bottom of the hill, filthy smoke coming unstrung from the exhaust pipe behind the cab.
Nelson pulled himself another half a foot, arm over arm. His guts—long ropes of intestine—dragged in the dirt behind him. “Come on, guys!” he shouted. “I told you I could show you where to find them! Let’s go get something sweet! A spoonful of sugar for everyone!”
Harper fled. She didn’t flee as well as she used to. At eight months pregnant, she ran with all the agility and grace of a woman carrying a large stuffed chair.
But she was still faster than Nelson, and the Freightliner wasn’t moving just yet, and she crested the hill ahead of both of them and came into the light of the great fire. An enormous bonfire blazed, a mountain of coals as big as a cottage, great tongues of flame lapping at the overcast night. Instead of stars, the night was filled with whirling constellations of dying sparks. Harper opened her mouth to scream but there was no one to hear, no one standing around the fire with marshmallows on sticks, no knots of adults drinking cider, no children chasing one another and singing. They had not gathered to enjoy the fire; they were the fire. It was a great sagging hill of black corpses, flames squirting through the eye sockets of charred skulls, the heat whistling through baked rib cages. The fire made a quite cheerful sound, knots popping, bodies seething. Nick sat on the very top of the bonfire. She could tell it was Nick, because even though he was a cooked and withered corpse, he was staring back at her with his burning eyes, gesturing frantically with his hands: Behind you behind you behind you.
She whirled just as Jakob pulled the air horn of the Freightliner in a shrill, heartrending blast. The truck idled, headlights off, twenty feet away, her ex-husband no more than a dark figure behind the steering wheel.
“Here I am, darlin’!” he shouted. “You and me, babe! How ’bout it?”
And there was a great crash as he threw the big orange truck into gear and the headlights snapped on, so much light, so much—
19
—light shining into her face. She blinked and sat up, one hand lifted to shield her eyes from the glare. Bile stewed in her throat.
She peered past the beam of the flashlight. Nick stood behind it, his eyes wide in his small, handsome face, his hair a delightful mess. He lifted one finger to his mouth—shh—and then pointed to Father Storey.
Whose eyes were open and who was smiling at her, showing her his old, soft, kindly, Dumbledore smile. His gaze was perfectly clear and alert.
Harper sat up and turned to face him, hanging her legs off the side of her cot. A candle guttered in a shallow dish at his bedside.
In a quiet, fragile voice, Father Storey said, “From time to time my friend John Rookwood has teased me by saying the study of theology is as pointless as a hole in the head. I understand from Nick you saved my life with a quarter-inch drill bit through the back of my skull. I think that puts me one up on John. We’ll have to let him know.” His eyes glittered. “He also liked to tell me that religious people are closed-minded. Who has the open mind now, eh?”
“Do you remember who I am, Father?” she said to him.
“I do! The nurse. I’m quite confident we were friends, although I’m afraid I’m having trouble recalling your name just now. You cut your hair, and I think that’s throwing me off. Is it . . . Juliet Andrews? No. That’s . . . that’s wrong.”
“Harper,” she said.
“Ah!” he said. “Yes! Harper . . .” He frowned. “Harper Gallows?”
“Close! Willowes.” She touched his wrist, took his pulse. It was strong, steady, slow. “How’s your head?”
“Not as bad as my left foot,” he said.
“What’s wrong with your left foot?”
“It feels ant-bit.”
She went to the end of his cot and looked at the foot. In between the big toe and the second toe was an infected lump, where it did indeed look like he might’ve been bitten by a spider. There were other, older red marks where he had been bitten other times, and all of it was encircled by a yellowing bruise.
“Mhm,” she said. “Something got you. Sorry about that. I was probably preoccupied with looking after that hole in your coconut. You suffered a serious subdural hematoma. You nearly died.”
“How long have I been out?” he asked.
“A little over two months. You’ve been in and out of consciousness the last few days. After your head injury, there were . . . serious complications. You suffered at least two seizures, several weeks apart. At one time I doubted you’d recover.”
“Strokes?”
She sat on the edge of his bed. In sign language, she asked Nick to get her “heart-ear-listen-to-him thing” and he went to the counter to find her stethoscope.
“Are you talking to my grandson in sign language?” Father Storey asked.
“Nick is a good teacher.”
He smiled at that. Then his brow furrowed in thought. “If I had a stroke, how come my speech isn’t slurred?”
“That doesn’t always happen. Likewise, partial paralysis. But you have feeling in both hands, your feet? Your face isn’t numb?”
He stroked his beard, pinched his nose. “No.”
“That’s good,” she said in a slow voice, thinking it over. Seeing in her mind the swollen red spider bite between his toes, then dismissing it.
Nick brought her the stethoscope. She listened to Father Storey’s heart (strong) and lungs (clear). She tested his vision, asking him to follow the head of a Q-tip with his gaze, moving it in toward his nose and then out.
“Will I slip back into coma?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Where did the IV come from?” he asked, looking over at it.
“That’s a long story. A lot has changed in the last few months.”
His eyes brightened with e
xcitement. “Is there a cure? For the ’scale?”
“No,” she said.
“No. Of course not. Or we wouldn’t still be hiding at Camp Wyndham and you wouldn’t be treating me in the infirmary.” He studied her face and his smile became something sad and worried. “Carol? What has she done?”
“Let’s keep the focus on you for now. Would you like to try a sip of water?”
“I would. I would also like to have my question answered. I believe I could manage both at the same time.”
She did not ask Nick to get the water, but went and poured some herself. Wanted the time to think. When she came back to the bed, she held the cup and waited while Father Storey struggled to get his head off the pillow to take a sip. When he was done he slumped back and smacked his lips.
“I think it would be best for Carol to speak to you herself,” Harper said. “She’ll be relieved to know you’re awake. She’s been—at her wit’s end without you. Although she’s had the support of Ben Patchett and his team of Lookouts, and that’s meant a lot. They’ve kept things going, anyway.” She thought that was a politic way to put it.
Father Storey wasn’t smiling anymore. His complexion was pale and sickly and he was starting to sweat. “No, I better see John first, Ms. Willowes. Before my daughter is notified I’m awake. Can you bring him to me? There are matters that won’t wait.” He paused and then his gaze met hers. “What was done with the person who attacked me?”
“We don’t know who attacked you. Some think it was one of the prisoners, a man named Mark Mazzuchelli. But he insists that you split up in the woods and when he left you, you were fine. I raised the possibility you might’ve been assaulted by the camp’s thief, who wanted to shut you up before you could—”
“Expose them over a few cans of Spam?” Father Storey asked. “Anyway, what do I know about the thief?”
“You told me you knew who it was.”
“Did I? I don’t . . . I don’t think I did. Although I suppose I might’ve and forgot. There are several things I don’t recall, including who decided to thump me in the head.” He pursed his lips and his brow furrowed, and then he shook his head. “No. I don’t think I ever figured out who the thief was.”
“You told me in the canoe that someone would have to leave camp. Do you remember that conversation?” Harper asked. “The night we rowed to South Mill Pond together?”
“Not really,” Father Storey said. “But I’m sure I wasn’t talking about the thief.”
“Who do you think we were talking about, then?” Harper asked.
“I imagine we were discussing my daughter,” Father Storey said, as if it should be obvious. “Carol. She called a Cremation Crew on Harold Cross. She set him up—arranged the whole thing, so when Ben Patchett shot the poor boy, it would look like he had to, to protect the camp and keep Harold from giving information to our enemies.”
20
Harper had a sidelong look at Nick. He had settled on the foot of her cot, hands folded together under his chin, to watch his grandfather. His face was a serene blank. The room was very dark, with only the low flame of that single candle to cast any light, and she had no sense Nick had any idea what Father Storey had just told her. She reminded herself that he wasn’t much of a lip-reader even in the best light.
“How do you know this?” Harper asked.
“Carol told me so herself. You will recall, the last time I spoke to the congregation, I discussed the need to find it in our hearts to forgive the thief. Later, when we were alone, Carol and I fought over that. She said I was weak and that people in camp would abandon us if we didn’t show strength. She told me I should’ve made an example out of Harold Cross. I remarked that a very terrible example had been made out of Harold Cross, one I was sure pleased her. I was being nasty and exaggerating, but she got confused and said, in a flat voice, ‘So you know.’ I felt all icy through my chest and said, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘That I used him to set an example.’
“Of course I only meant that Harold had disobeyed and got himself killed, but Carol misunderstood me and thought I was confronting her over what she had done. She said it was just as well she called a Cremation Crew on him. If she hadn’t done it, Harold would’ve been discovered eventually anyway, only there might not have been anyone close to keep him from being captured alive. She said she wasn’t ashamed of herself. She had saved me, and my grandchildren, and the entire camp. She was flushed and looked—triumphal. I said I didn’t believe Ben Patchett would be part of such a scheme and she laughed as if I had made a very good joke. She said I had no idea how hard it was, to carry on the pretense that everyone was as good and kind as I hoped they’d be, to perpetuate my childish fantasies of everyday decency and abundant forgiveness. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t think. She said in a lot of ways I was as responsible for Harold’s death as she was, that I had forced us all into a position where he had to be shot. She told me if there had been more severe punishments right at the beginning—if, for example, we’d kept him in leg irons or taken a birch to him in public—he wouldn’t have continued to put everyone at risk by sneaking out of camp. Well, before I could come up with a response, Ben Patchett was hammering at the door, saying it was time to go. Honestly, I didn’t dare try to answer her arguments, not with Ben and Carol both there. I know my daughter wouldn’t hurt me, but I wasn’t sure what Ben might—”
“How sure?” Harper asked. “If she was rattled, if she thought she might be exiled, don’t you think she could’ve been the one who clubbed you in the head?”
“Not for an instant. My daughter would never, ever try to have me killed. I am as sure of that as I am of my own name. No. I abjure the notion entirely. Tell me—while I was unconscious, did she seem in any way ambivalent about my recovery?”
Harper inhaled deeply, remembering. “No. In fact, she threatened to have me driven from the camp and my baby taken from me if you died.”
Father Storey blanched.
“She was—she has been—hysterical at the thought you might die,” Harper added and then gave her head a little shake. She was remembering what the Fireman had told her, that Carol had always been desperate to have her father all to herself, that he was, in a sense, the one true passion in her life. Love could turn to murder, of course. Harper understood that better than most, perhaps. But somehow . . . no. It didn’t feel right. Not really. Carol might set a death warrant upon Harold Cross, but not her father. Never her father.
Father Storey seemed to see this exact conclusion in Harper’s frowning expression. “You mustn’t imagine Carol felt I represented any kind of threat to her. Nor was she ashamed of what she had done. She was proud! She sensed, of course, that if the entire camp knew, it might crack us all apart, that there was a need for secrecy. But not a need for shame. No, I can’t believe my own daughter would conclude she needed to kill me to preserve my silence. It is impossible to imagine. I am sure she hoped I would come around to her way of thinking with time, accept that a little murder was necessary to protect the camp. At the very least, she hoped I would continue to be the loving, decent, charitable face of our nightly chapel services, and leave her to see to the ‘dirty details’ of looking after the community. Those were her exact words.”
It maddened Harper that she couldn’t put together what had happened to Father Storey in the woods. She felt it was all right there, everything she needed to know, but it was like meeting an acquaintance and not being able to remember the person’s name. No matter how she strained, she couldn’t see it.
So leave it, she thought. Didn’t matter. She didn’t need to figure it out. Not right now.
“Bring John,” Father Storey said gently. “Then we’ll talk with Carol. And Allie. And Nick. I’d like my family around me, now. If there are difficult things to say, we’ll get through them together. That’s what we’ve done in the past and it hasn’t failed us yet.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you think—people will understand what Carol did to Mr. Cross? Do you th
ink they’ll forgive her?”
Harper wondered how many people would forgive Father Storey for exposing her, but didn’t say so. He saw her doubts in her face, anyway.
“You think it will be the end of our camp?” he said.
After a moment, she replied . . . not with an answer, but with a question of her own. “Do you remember all the talk about Martha Quinn’s island?”
“Yes.”
“It’s real. We know where it is. I’d like to go there. There’s a medical facility where I can safely deliver my baby. I know some others would like to go as well. I think . . . after it gets around about Harold Cross . . . and that you’ve recovered . . . I think, yes, camp might break up. The night you were attacked, you told me someone was going to have to be exiled from camp. Sent away for good. I didn’t know you meant Carol. I suppose”—she drew a deep, steadying lungful of air. She was about to suggest an idea she found perfectly loathsome—“she could come with me. With us. Those who will leave, if we’re allowed to go.”
“Of course you would be allowed to go,” he said. “And perhaps it might be better to keep Carol here after all. In some form of confinement. I would stay behind as well, to look after her. To help her back to her best self, if at all possible.”
“Father,” Harper said.
“Tom.”
“Tom. Maybe we should wait for another day to talk to your daughter. You’re very weak right now. I think you should rest.”
He said, “I’ll rest better when I’ve seen my granddaughter and John. And yes, my daughter. I love Carol very dearly. I understand if you can’t—if you hate her. But know at least that whatever she’s guilty of, whatever her crimes, she always believed she was doing it in the name of caring for the people she loves.”
Harper thought Carol had a sick need to make others conform—to yield—that had nothing to do with love at all, but Tom Storey could no more see that in his daughter than Nick could hear.
She didn’t bother to say so, though. If Tom really meant to deal with her tonight, there was plenty of unpleasantness to come, and she didn’t care to add to it. So: John first. Send word for Allie. Allie would bring Carol. Whatever Father Storey had to face, he wouldn’t face it alone.