They Came With the Rain

by Christopher Coleman

  In any case, Winston was in no hurry to dismiss them. He spoke with so few people in Garmella these days—and even fewer over the last year since what was once mere privacy had devolved into reclusiveness—that the company before him, as eccentric as they seemed to be, and the banter that came with them, was a welcomed surprise to his day.

  “Okay,” Winston replied finally. “I’ll play along. I have no reason to question your beliefs on Heaven and Hell, but as I said, I’ve never been a religious man. I was raised by heathens, I suppose.” He smiled softly, an attempt to bring levity to the conversation, but he received no indication of success on that front. He frowned and asked, “And what is this to do with anyway?” It was a question he’d asked at least three times already, and the answer was at least twenty minutes overdue. “What does my belief in any of this have to do with the Grieg?”

  The woman wrinkled her brow. “The telescope?”

  “This obviously has something to do with the Grieg, right?”

  “What is obvious about that, Mr. Bell?”

  Winston’s forehead now matched that of the woman, creased in confusion, and he thought back to the introductions on the stoop and the moment when he’d answered the door, the group of three standing in a perfect line beneath his portico. As he replayed the scenario once again, he realized they had never explicitly mentioned who they were or why they were there. Or, for that matter, that they worked for the Grieg at all.

  “You’re driving one of the trucks, aren’t you? One of the audit trucks? I assumed when you knocked on my door at ten o’clock on a Thursday morning, your visit was to do with the audits this weekend. Or about some maintenance going on, some news of the telescope. I don’t know.”

  As he questioned the group further, Winston felt whatever enchantment had been cast by the visitors slowly wane, and he grew a bit more suspicious, aggressive.

  “What are you doing here then?” he asked. “Specifically? And what are all these questions about Heaven and Hell?”

  “They are just questions, Mr. Bell,” the old man answered, a reply wholly unsatisfactory to Winston.

  “Is that so? Standard operating procedure for the Grieg auditors, is it?”

  No reply, and Winston suddenly felt the curiosity and camaraderie dissolve.

  “Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought. So, you know what I think I’ll do? I think I’ll give a call into the sheriff’s office to see if there are any scheduled auditing rounds going on today. It is Thursday, right? Not typical to come during the week, is it?”

  Again, he got no reply, and though Winston knew an audit beginning a day or two early wasn’t completely unprecedented, his instincts told him something was amiss.

  “Yeah, I think the sheriff is sure to know something about this. Or, if not, he would certainly be interested in hearing about it. Do you think?”

  The woman glanced to her peer beside her on the couch, a thin glare in her eyes as if blaming him for having blown their cover. Winston noted the look, and his instincts now told him he was definitely in the throes of a scam. He stood quickly and made his way toward the phone, picking it up and putting a finger to the first digit.

  “Our visit is tied to the telescope, Mr. Bell.”

  Winston’s back was to the group when the words rang through the room, but he knew instantly they had come from the third member of the group, the man who had yet to speak until that moment.

  Winston stopped and turned toward the visitor, who only moments earlier had been seated quietly in one of several velvet parlor chairs but who was now on his feet, strolling the perimeter of the room. The man scanned the walls and bookshelves, casually grazing the adornments with his eyes. He was the youngest of the group—by twenty years at least—but something in his demeanor, in the confidence of his posture and the tenor of his voice, let Winston know he was the person in charge.

  “Though, to be truthful, Mr. Bell, it is only tangentially related.”

  “Tangentially?”

  The man nodded once. “We are not, in fact, employees of the Grieg Radio Telescope.” He raised a finger now, pointing slightly. “Though, in fairness, no one here made that claim.”

  “Why would you drive a truck like that if you’re not a monitor? Why would you have that thing on the back like all the others. What is that for if not to monitor transmissions?”

  “Let us just say, Mr. Bell, that it allows us to move amongst them. To drive the streets without being...how shall we say...speculated.”

  Winston hung up the phone now and turned in full toward the man. “But why?” Winston squinted and rubbed his forehead, confused by this sudden shift in the conversation, this divulgence of information. And he was beginning to feel tired, drained of energy; the visit by the trio was beginning to feel heavy on him, stressing the limits of his body, the sickness inside him beginning to echo once more. “Move amongst them? I...I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “Not yet, Mr. Bell, but you will soon.”

  “Meaning?”

  The man sighed and bowed his head slightly, a sign that he was not quite ready to divulge the full thrust of his visit, but that he had the obligation to give at least some insight to the man in whose home they had been allowed entry. “As my associates have intimated already, there is a place...a place of the dead. For the dead. It is a place we know to be as true as any laws of physics or mathematics or chemistry.”

  “So, we’re back here again?” Winston mocked, trying to sound casual, slightly exasperated. He met the man’s eyes for a moment and then dropped his gaze immediately, revealing his true discomfort.

  “It is the place where most in this town will end up, Mr. Bell, so yes, we are here again.”

  The young visitor’s words rang ominously in Winston’s ears, and for the first time since the group’s arrival, Winston felt the sting of threat and violence, danger. The man allowed his staid gaze to linger a moment, to burn into Winston’s memory, and then he smiled, flashing a grin as large as a jack o’ lantern’s, as if he were truly infected with the joy of his answer.

  Winston swallowed and returned the smile, lips only, trying to measure the sanity of the man before him. He walked back to the chair where he was sitting previously and sat. “Hell?” he said finally, his voice cracking. “As in the literal Hell?”

  The visitor shrugged nonchalantly. “My personal belief is no, not exactly. I don’t believe it is the Hell as defined by Christianity.” He paused thoughtfully. “Though I suspect the inspiration for the religious fable did, in fact, come from this place.”

  Winston narrowed his eyes. “But you just called it that. Or at least your friend did only a few minutes ago.”

  “Yes, well, it suffices for our purposes. Though we typically use ‘Perdition’; the word carries with it a bit less sensation.” The man’s face grew stern now, steely. “And despite its violence and finality, it has gifts to offer. Perhaps one for you even.”

  “Gifts? What could that...even mean?”

  “How old are you, Mr. Bell,” the man asked, continuing his walk around the room until he reached the fireplace, where he stopped and ran a lone finger along a brass candlestick that sat empty atop the mantle, inspecting it as if he were some appraiser of fine ornamental parlor pieces. After a long pause, he turned to Winston again. “Mr. Bell?”

  “I’m not sure that’s an appropriate question to ask of someone whom you’ve just met.”

  The man pursed his lips and nodded, giving the slightest of chortles at Winston’s reply. “Yes, well, perhaps under most circumstances that would be true; my question would be uncouth. But my intention—our intention—is not to insult or embarrass you, Mr. Bell; it is to offer you something of unique import. Something that perhaps one man in a millennium gets the chance to accept.”

  The pitch, Winston thought now. Of course. He was right all along. These folks weren’t from the Grieg—they had admitted as much—but until now, Winston couldn’t peg the true purpose of their arrival.
But he could see it coming now. They were con artists. Bible-pushing predators bent on turning the world toward their beliefs.

  And now the priceless offer was to come—an offer which was certain to have a very definite price attached to it. Winston was a wealthy man, and old, the exacta for every good confidence man; and though Winston wasn’t wired into the internet the way most of the world was, he watched enough news and read enough papers to know that, aside from perhaps a woman of his same age and wealth, his demographic was the number one target for swindlers.

  Winston tightened his stare now, scanning each of the faces in the room for some signal being passed between them, some look that would let him know the swindle was indeed afoot. But if it was there, he was blind to it, as he saw only solemnness from the older members of the group, and the younger man was still standing by the fireplace with a look that was fixed, assured and waiting for Winston’s answer.

  “Okay, enough!” Winston exclaimed instead, avoiding the question of his age and getting back to the original thesis of the conversation. What is this really about?!”

  The leader of the group turned the full frame of his body toward Winston now, his eyes focused, his arms by his side like a soldier at attention. “We are here with an offer. One that has been written about in various forms for centuries.” The man spoke calmly and confidently but with the speed and passion of a Baptist preacher. “And though our offer does not require the Faustian price of your soul, it does require effort on your part. Some risk.”

  “Faustian price?” Winston smiled. “Are you really trying to sell me Hell? Is that really what this is about?” Winston chortled, bemused. “What...what does that even mean? I’ve never heard of this before. Most people in your field, that is to say, those who spend their days knocking on peoples’ doors, are attempting to sell Heaven. Peace and Jesus. You’ve heard of him, right?”

  The younger man nodded earnestly, indicating he had, in fact, heard of the Christ.

  Winston calmed himself and shook his head slowly, feeling bewildered that he was still in the middle of this conversation. “Hell,” he repeated to himself, incredulously. “Even if I did believe in...that place—which I’ve already stated I do not, despite your assurances that it exists—why would I be interested in an offer from there? I’m not a Satan worshipper. Do you see pentagrams or goat’s blood or anything like that in my house?” Winston lifted his arms high and waved them frantically in the air, inviting a full inspection of his residence for satanic memorabilia.

  Suddenly the fatigue was almost unbearable, and he felt light-headed, on the verge of fainting. He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. “I’m an old man,” he whispered. “And sick. If I have another year on this earth, it will be a gift. Nobody sells his soul to the devil at eighty. And especially not when they are terminally ill.”

  The man dropped his smile and glared toward Winston now, all humor and playfulness now drained from his face. He tilted his head and nodded ever so slightly. “Are you aware of the Egyptian versions of Hell, Mr. Bell? Or of those from Ancient Greece and Turkey? How about that of the Mayans?”

  Winston shrugged, his energy nearly exhausted; he wanted nothing more than to lie down and begin his late-morning nap. His face felt flush, his mind dizzy.

  “Each of the civilizations I have just named has a place similar to the Judeo-Christian version; that is, a place beneath the ground—the ground of this very Earth—where the souls of men descend when they die. It is why corpses have been interred for over a hundred-thousand years. Burial of the dead is the oldest known tradition of our species. That is not by accident. Man has known about this place beneath the ground for as long as he has walked on two legs.”

  Winston listened to the words without registering them fully; his breathing was now shallow, his head foggy.

  “But religion, as it is wont to do, has distorted this place, claimed it for its own purposes so that it might elevate certain men while diminishing others. In the Christian version, this world is a place of suffering and torture for sinners, of eternal damnation where a horned figure called Satan rules like a deity, jealous and bitter of God above him. You’ve read your Milton, I’m sure?”

  Winston’s eyes were half-open now, weary, and he saw the stranger slightly out of focus now, fuzzy. “What is your name?” he asked.

  “I am called Zander.”

  “Zander,” Winston repeated dreamily, the name sounding foreign on his tongue. “Is that with an X or a Z.”

  “Z. My acquaintances are Tehya and Ouray.”

  Winston nodded, satisfied that this information had been offered without hesitation. “Those are Indian names, yes? Hopi? Apache, maybe?”

  “The Stuwix tribe from which we descended has been on the brink of extinction for more than a century. We are perhaps the remaining three.”

  “Stuwix? I’ve...I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Few have, Mr. Bell. Perhaps a handful of scholars know anything at all about the tribe. Even at the height of their time in the eighteenth century, they occupied only a small territory of British Columbia.”

  “British Columbia? You’re a long way from home?”

  “Home is here now.”

  Winston shook his head. “I would have seen you before today if you were a resident.”

  “We’ve come to Garmella recently.”

  Winston closed his eyes and quivered his head, unable to process the reasoning for such a migration. “Why?”

  “Why what, Mr. Bell?”

  Winston felt cold now, depleted, as if the very presence of these visitors had begun to suck the power from his body, to drain him of what still remained of his life force.

  But it wasn’t the visitors who were to blame, at least not directly. His depletion came mainly from the scarring on his lungs, and the fact that he’d lived in isolation for too long now and was simply unconditioned to engage in extended social interaction anymore. The life of semi-hermitage—combined with the main culprit of pulmonary fibrosis—had both taken their toll.

  “Why are you here? Today? Why have you come to Garmella?”

  The man gave a sad grin now as he sat back in the parlor chair. But it was only for an instant before he sat up and shifted his body forward, quickly, until he was seated at the edge of the chair, his eyes burning with knowledge and secrecy. With both of his hands, he grabbed one of Winston’s, and then he leaned in, his nose nearly clipping that of his host.

  “That is the question, isn’t it, Winston? Why are we in Garmella?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Shit!”

  Ramon stood and slammed the phone into the receiver and then glanced up at Josh, who was studying him intensely from across the desk.

  “Sorry, Josh, the...the phone is dead. For some reason. It was...it was working fine this morning but—”

  “It’s to do with those things, right?”

  Ramon gave a defeated shrug. “I don’t know.”

  Josh nodded, appreciating the honesty of Ramon’s uncertainty. He then looked to his lap. “I...I can tell you now. If you still want to know.”

  “About what you told the thing in the woods?”

  Josh nodded.

  Ramon sat down slowly and nodded, trying not to show the eagerness he was feeling inside. “Okay. Yes, of course I want to know. If you feel comfortable about it.”

  Josh took a deep breath and closed his eyes, nodding. When he opened his eyes, he stared toward the ceiling, gathering his thoughts. “I didn’t want to do it at first, Sheriff,” he began. “I swear to God I didn’t. I said so at the time.”

  Ramon felt the urge to follow up on the ‘It’ of the sentence, but now that Josh was talking, he decided it best to keep quiet and let him get to the nub.

  “It was Mark’s idea. Right from the start. He was the one who said we should take his mom’s jewelry.”

  The nub.

  Josh sat straight in the oversized leather chair in front of Ramon’s desk, his hands acros
s his lap, shoulders slumped as his eyes pled for understanding from the authority figure looming before him.

  Finally, Ramon spoke. “What exactly are you talking about, Josh? What does this have to do with what you told that thing back at the Grieg?”

  “That’s what it wanted to know. That’s what it wanted me to tell it. It wanted to know the bad that was in me. But not just anything bad. It wanted me to know the worst thing in me. The worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  Ramon swallowed, haunted by the certainty of this middle-schooler’s words. He nodded. “I see. But how...how did you know what it was? How did you know it wanted that particular bad thing? The thing about the jewelry?”

  Josh shrugged. “It’s the only really bad thing I’ve ever done.”

  He wasn’t bragging, just being honest, and Ramon couldn’t help but grin at the earnestness of the boy.

  “Okay, tell me about this jewelry. What you took from your friend’s mother. You said his name was Mark?”

  Josh gave another sheepish, suspicious glance, knowing that there was no going back once the confession began.

  “You won’t be punished for it, Josh. I promise. I’m just trying to understand what’s happening, and maybe you telling the story can help. Someone is dead today because of this thing, and maybe with your help we can stop it from killing anyone else.”

  At least four people were dead for certain, and likely more, including Jerry Kellerman, Derrick Zamora and Amber Godwin, and God only knew how many more people in the town. To this point, however, Ramon had only told Josh about Riley.

  “Mark Yun, do you know him?”

  At the mention of the Yun name, combined with the detail of stolen jewelry, the pieces fell quickly into place, and it took no more than a few seconds for Ramon to know precisely where Josh’s story was going. But he only nodded at the question and said, “Of course.”

  “My stepdad used to be a plumber. And he did other handyman work also. Painting. Electrical repair. Stuff like that. And sometimes he did stuff for Mark’s family.”