by John Hart
The call, when it came, was a tortured blessing.
Gideon sounded bad.
Something was wrong.
* * *
It took time to work her way back into town, and for the first time in her life she regretted the old Mustang. Cops knew it. It stood out. Turning at the shuttered plant near the tracks, she worked farther east and then down, passing the same chalk-yellow house and bending right at the creek. It was dim in the draw, and she drove as fast as she could, the hillside piling up on her right, old millhouses looking down.
The car at Gideon’s house was rusted and battered and unfamiliar. She didn’t think twice about it until she saw blood on the paint.
“I hit a whitetail out on one fifty.”
Her father stepped onto the porch. His face was crooked, the eyes somehow dull and impenetrable. Elizabeth straightened from the car, ran her fingers over the metal. “No dents.”
“He was already gut-shot when I hit him. Not much of an impact, really. Just bumped the car and slid off. I suspect he’s dead by now, lost in some field or another.”
She touched the blood. It was dry, but still sticky. “What are you doing here, Dad? Whose car is this?”
“It’s a parishioner’s car. I’m here for the boy.”
“And your neck?”
“I was doing some work around the parsonage. A bucket fell off the ladder. What’s with all the questions?”
“You know how I feel about this.”
She meant the boy, and her father knew it. Gideon liked church for good reason, but Elizabeth had her own demons, and the rules had grown clear over time. Church was for Sundays. The rest of the week her father stayed away.
“How do you feel about his private room? Or the money we’ve raised for his medical bills? You don’t think his father has that kind of cash, do you? That’s the church at work, your mother and all the people you no longer see fit to value.”
Elizabeth shrugged off the guilt; it was nothing new. “Did you ask Gideon to call me?”
“Things have taken a turn.” He shrugged. “Complications. Timing.”
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
“It’s all wrapped up together, childhood and innocence and trust.” He opened the door and held it for her. “Come on inside.” The dirt was as she remembered it, the greasy rags and bits of engine. “He’s in the bathroom.”
“I’ll wait.”
“It’s not like that.” He indicated she should walk with him. “Not in the shower or anything. The boy felt unwell and wanted to be in there just in case. He knows you’re coming.” Her father gestured again and let her move in front. He was to the left, one hand reaching for the knob as she settled into the hollow place between his arm and the door. “There’s such love in a child,” he said. “And that’s the thing I tell myself. Everything that happens. The road that leads from here.” His hand touched the knob. “It’s all about the innocence.”
“Are we still speaking of Gideon?”
“Gideon. Family. The next hour of your life.”
Her father opened the door, and Elizabeth saw it like a blur: Gideon and an injured girl, blood and skin and bright, silver tape. She saw it all and, in the span of a heartbeat, felt the world collapse to something inexplicable and cold. She didn’t know what was happening; couldn’t possibly. But the battered eyes were Channing’s, and that meant nothing in the world was as she’d thought. She moved on instinct to duck and turn, to find space to figure this out. But he was behind her and ready. He drove her into the doorframe with one hand and used the other to push something hard and slick against her neck. She got a foot on the frame, but knew even then she was too late. Energy ripped into her neck, and he followed her to the floor, keeping the charge against her skin as she twitched and drummed and felt a scream that never left her throat. Her body was burning, on fire. She smelled the charge and through the bathroom door saw Gideon, openmouthed, and Channing, the girl, whose own scream was every bit as trapped as hers.
* * *
The preacher stood, breathing hard. He felt old, but the feeling would pass. What he’d told Elizabeth was true. It really was about the love—what he’d done, what he was doing—and nothing was stronger than a father’s love for his daughter.
Not God’s love.
Not his wife’s.
He’d cherished his daughter more than all of those things combined, more than breath or faith or life itself. She’d been the world entire, the warm, bright center.
Of course, this wasn’t his daughter.
Not the one he loved.
He nudged her with a foot and heard the same voices in the dark of his mind, the lot of them disharmonic and thin, saying, “Stop now, turn away, come back to God.” But he’d learned years ago that the voices were but pale remnants of cast-off morality, mere ghosts that knew nothing of loss or grief or betrayal’s lancinating pain. He’d been a young father with a wife and his own church. His daughter had loved, respected, and trusted him. They were as God meant them to be. The family. The child. The father.
Why did she turn away from that?
Why did she kill her unborn child?
Those were the cornerstones of the great betrayal, and he confronted them every time he tried to sleep: the lowered eyes and false acquiescence, the secrets and lies and the blood on his porch. She was supposed to be in bed, yet he’d found her there, half dead and womb-stripped and unrepentant. His hands bore the stain even now, the red in the cracks only he could see. His daughter’s blood. His grandchild’s. She’d defied her own father, and God had let it happen, the same God who’d allowed the butchery in the first place and delivered her heart, in time, to Adrian Wall. The betrayals were so large they drove even light from the world. What room remained for the father who’d first held her? For the man who’d raised and taught her, and whose own heart, even now, was broken?
No room, he thought.
None at all.
So he did what he had to do. He took the gun, then bound her hands and feet and watched her eyes in case she woke. He didn’t care to explain or debate. He wanted her, at last, on the altar of her youth. There, she’d trusted him most, and there he’d find her if he could. Deep in the eyes. All the way down.
He looked at the children in the bath and felt the first and only remorse. Would they die, in the end? He didn’t know. Maybe Elizabeth would. Maybe it would be him. He only knew the clamor would cease. No more longing or despair, no voices in his head or plaintive cries from those he’d tried to love and buried, instead, beneath the church. He lifted the pistol and wondered. Would it quiet the voices if he put it in his mouth? Would it reveal God’s true face, at last? Such contemplations weren’t the first, but these were more immediate. He would find his daughter or not. And should he not—should she die in the search—did it not make sense for him to die as well? Would there not be closure in such a thing, a conjoining at last?
He tilted the gun and put it in his coat pocket.
“Stand up, son.” He gestured for Gideon, who rose as if on a string. “Come here.” The boy did as he was told, wide-eyed and washed out. “Necessary things. You remember our discussions?” The boy nodded. “Purpose. Clarity. Do you believe I possess such things, and that what may seem cruel is, in fact, a kindness?”
“Is she hurt?”
“Just sleeping.”
“And the girl?”
“Necessary things, Gideon. We’ve had the discussion many times. All I ask now is that you trust in my purpose, even if you can’t understand it.” He watched the boy blink and swallow, a windup toy waiting for the spring to tighten. “Do you understand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you try?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come with me, then.” He led Gideon to the front door and opened it with care. Nothing moved on the street. An old lady stood in the yard three houses down, shading her eyes in a housecoat and no shoes. “Open the car, Gideon. The back door. The hatch.
”
“Reverend…”
“Don’t argue, son. The hatch.” Gideon opened the hatch and stood immobile as the reverend put Elizabeth in, still loose. The girl followed, but was struggling in the tarp. Up the street, the old woman was watching, but he wasn’t worried. Things were moving too fast. “Get in the car, Gideon.”
The boy got in, and the preacher did, too. He would go to the church because his daughter had been baptized there and loved her father there. The good years between them were as baked into that church as the mortar itself, and that made the decision simple. Daughter or not, failure or success, it would end as it began, the father and the child and only honesty between them.
* * *
Gideon was smart enough to know that everything happening now was wrong. Liz shouldn’t be hurt like that, and not the girl, either. They shouldn’t be in a car that smelled like pee, and the reverend shouldn’t be so scary. He had never been before. He’d been firm and, at times, judgmental. But those were the little things, and Gideon never worried much about the little things. The bigger things mattered more, such as how the reverend was calm and quiet and seemed to know so much, the way he spoke of life and how it should be lived, and how he made every day seem solemn and purposeful. Gideon had always wanted a life that felt as if the minutes and hours had weight of their own. A life like that wouldn’t dry up and blow away. A life like that mattered.
The reverend whistled as he drove. The flat, shapeless tune raised the hair on Gideon’s arms. It felt as wrong as fingernails on a blackboard. But that could be the car, the blood, the way he looked at Gideon when the road got straight. “Do you know what a sand tiger shark is?”
His voice was quiet, but Gideon twitched because they were the first words the reverend had said in ten long minutes. They were beyond the edge of town. The girl had stopped struggling. “No, sir. Not unless you mean regular tiger sharks.”
“Sand tiger sharks have embryos that fight and die in the mother’s womb. Once they’re large enough, they go at each other right there in the tightness and the black. They tear each other apart until only one is left alive; and that’s the one that’s eventually born. Everyone else is eaten or left to rot. Brothers. Sisters. Even the eggs, if any are left.” He drove for another mile. “Does that sound like God to you? That savagery?”
“No, sir.”
“Does it sound like me?”
Gideon didn’t answer because it was clear he was not supposed to. The reverend was driving with his eyes down to slits, and muscles rolling in his jaw. Gideon risked a look behind him and saw the girl watching. She was sucking hard through her nose. Trying to breathe. She shook her head, and Gideon felt the same fear.
Crazy.
Full-on, batshit crazy.
Two minutes later he saw the church. The reverend drove past it twice, studying it, craning his neck. He stopped at the drive, watching the road through the glass, the rearview mirror. “Do you see anything?”
“Like what?”
“Police. Other people.”
“No, sir.”
“You sure?”
Gideon kept quiet, and after a moment’s silence the preacher pulled up the twisting drive and parked.
“Stay in the car.”
He opened his door, and wind carried the smell of every summer Gideon had ever known. For a moment, he thought of better times; then the hatch opened, and Liz started fighting, the thrashing so violent and loud and hard to watch that Gideon was screaming by the time she flopped onto the dirt, and the same horrible, crackling sound made her go as limp as if dead. He wanted to help her. But, the reverend nailed him with those dull eyes and crushed whatever part of him thought there would be an explanation. He’d imagined it mere seconds ago. The car would stop. The preacher would wink and laugh, and suddenly everyone else would be laughing, too. Joke’s on me, he’d realize.
But, it was no joke.
The preacher had his daughter on a shoulder. He was tearing down tape, leaning into a wooden door that opened with a lurch and swallowed them up. Suddenly, Gideon was alone with the girl. “Please, don’t cry. He’s just sick, I think. Or confused.”
But the girl fought when the preacher reappeared. She screamed behind the tape and fought as Liz had fought, so red-faced and desperate that Gideon got out of the car and pulled at the preacher’s arm as he dragged the girl out.
“Reverend, please! She’s just a girl. She’s scared.”
“What did I say about the car?”
“Let’s just go back to town, okay? This doesn’t have to be real. None of it has to be real.”
It was like a nightmare, and he was begging to wake up. But the sun was too hot for it to be a dream, the church too solid and tall. He tried again to stop what was happening, but the preacher shoved him away, hard enough to make something tear deep in Gideon’s chest. He fell hard on the ground and felt heat on his skin as the bandages soaked through. The preacher had the girl under an arm. Gideon caught his belt; tried to pull himself up.
“Let go, son.”
“Reverend, please…”
“I said let go.”
But Gideon refused. “This is not right, Reverend, and it’s not you. Please stop!” He pulled harder, his feet dragging in the dirt. “Please!” He tried a final time before the stun gun touched his chest, and the Reverend Black—without looking twice—pulled the trigger and put him down.
* * *
Elizabeth woke to movement and shadow, the church gathering around her as if conjured. She was being carried past tumbled pews and colored glass, and for that instant it felt as if childhood, too, had been conjured. She knew every beam above her head, and every creak the old floor made.
“Father…”
After a moment’s peace memory began its aching return, the pieces, as dull and scattered as crushed glass. Silver tape. Pain. None of it made sense.
“Dad?”
“Patience,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
She blinked, and more of it came, the kids and the back of a car and the burn that took her down a second time. Was it real? She couldn’t believe it, but her vision was blurred, and she hurt as if the most vital nerves had been stripped from her body.
He was looking down and smiling, but no reason was in his eyes. “We’ll be together soon,” he said; and the rest of it crashed down: the struggle and the silence, a blue tarp and movement and the heat of Channing’s skin. She fought then, so he dropped her and put metal prongs against her skin. When she woke again, she was naked on the altar. “Don’t cry,” he said; but she couldn’t help it. Tears burned her face. She was hurt and terrified and choking. This was not her father, not her life. She strained to sit, saw Channing on the floor, and cried for her, too, that she also was in this place.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Don’t be embarrassed.” He turned away, and she fought the ropes. “There’s no need for that here, not between us.”
He said it softly, removing his jacket and putting it on a pew. Beside the coat was a package. When he opened it, Elizabeth saw white linen, neatly folded. He shook it free, and that’s when the enormity of his sins took root and blossomed like some terrible flower.
His church …
Such horrible things …
“All those women.”
“Hush now.”
“This can’t be happening.” Her head rocked side to side. He put a hand on her forehead. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “Whatever’s happening here, whatever you think this is, you don’t have to do it.”
“Actually, I do.”
He shook the linen again and spread it with care across her body, folding it beneath her chin until the top edge lay just above her breasts. He adjusted it at the bottom and sides, smoothed the wrinkles until it was just so. All the while colored light hung on his face, the light of her childhood that, as a girl, she’d thought to be the light of God himself.
“Dad, please…” She was breaking; she felt it
. Her father. The church. “So many women.”
“They died as children. Stripped of sin.”
“What does that mean?”
“Hush now.”
“Gideon’s mother? God. Allison Wilson?” She choked again, but it was more like a sob. “You killed them all?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He stood by her side, both hands on the altar. “Does it truly matter?”
“Yes. God. Of course. Dad…” Her voice failed.
He nodded as if understanding her deeper need. “Gideon’s mother was the first,” he said. “I didn’t plan it that way, didn’t plan any of it. But I saw it in her eyes, right here: the pain and loss and hints of the child beneath. It began as simple consolation. She was distraught and confessed all that troubled her, the failed marriage and abuse and infidelity. It was an old story, yet as she wept, I came back to her eyes. They were so deep and unguarded and such a color as yours. When she leaned into me, I touched her cheek, her throat. After that it happened as if I were a passenger on some unstoppable vessel. Yet even at that remove I felt the presence of profounder truth, how we passed from the sway of time and mere things. I saw her, then. Truly saw her. That’s when I knew.”
“What?”
“Innocence. The path.”
“And the others?” Elizabeth asked. “Ramona Morgan? Lauren Lester?”
“All of them, yes. Children, at the end.”
“Even Adrian’s wife?”
“She was different. I would take that one back.”
“Why, for God’s sake? Why any of this?” Elizabeth was grasping, desperate. He leaned above her, his face scraped clean, the eyes deep and dark. He smoothed her hair, and she felt revulsion more profound than anything from the basement or the quarry. The sickness was too close. His eyes, like her eyes. The same eyes. Her father.