Later, Owen found an entire folder dedicated to financial documents, signed by Everett Crouch and Peter Jebson, the church accountant, which contradicted the cartoonist's idea of monetary gain. "The church really was flat broke," Owen said, shuffling through past-due notices and official letters of foreclosure.
"They would have lost it, with or without the flood," Jo said.
"But they still fought against it," he added. "They still went down with the ship. That's pretty goddamned determined."
"Don't confuse determination with crazy," she said, leaning into a cardboard box and rooting through it. "There it is," she muttered to herself, and came back with a classroom cassette player, and a tape, which she clunkily inserted into it.
Suddenly a man's voice filled the dusty, cramped living room. Owen recognized it right away: blustering, pompous; a televangelist's voice. It could only be Crouch. He pictured the man pacing before a soft chair, speaking into a small microphone, and wondered if what he saw was memory or imagination.
"—beyond which none of us may travel," the voice intoned, "a dark void much like space—" Jo pushed a button, zipping Crouch's voice along at warp speed. Another clunk as she pressed play. "I stood before it, shaking with despair, thundering my fists upon the soil—"
"Listen to this," Jo said, as if he could help it. As if Crouch's voice hadn't already wormed its way into his subconscious, deep and pleasant and unwavering. He sounded a lot like Gregory Peck—a voice tailor-made for orating. A voice you couldn't help but believe.
"—in the darkness I cried out to God, 'Take this burden from me, Lord!'" A crinkle of paper. It went on for a moment. Then: "I cried out to God, 'Why have you put this obstacle in our path? Why, when all we do is spread your Good Word?'"
Jo was watching for his reaction.
"What is this?" he asked her.
"Crouch recorded all of his sermons when he rehearsed them. This one is where—" She shrugged. "Just listen."
"—the mighty Mushkoweban, awash in moonlight—" Crouch corrected himself. "A jewel in moonlight. And as I knelt there in the dirt, garments filthy with my own impudence, my hubris. For it was certainly the sin of Pride which put me on the shore that night, brothers and sisters, I confess this to you right here and now." He cleared his throat. A tiny scratch of pen on paper. "And as I knelt there, I noticed the water wasn't making the splishy-splashy sounds you and I have grown accustomed to, brothers and sisters. The water was speaking to me."
"It's his burning bush story," Owen said.
Nodding, Jo said, "Listen."
"—it was speaking my name. 'Crouch!' it said. 'Crouch! Crouch!' And at first I thought, 'I must be mad.' Isn't that what they call me out there in the big bad world? The Mad Preacher? Yes, yes," he calmed his imagined defenders. "I'm no stranger to the epithets. I may be a sinner like the rest of us, but willful ignorance is not my sin of choice. I thought I must be mad. Firstly, to wander out to the river in the dead of night, and then to hear voices in the waterfall calling out my name! I put myself in their shoes for a moment, the men and women who curse me as Noah was cursed in his time, or Lot and his wife, and I thought to myself, 'It's no wonder they call me a lunatic!' And yet where the ungodly trusts not his eyes, and turns away his ears, the holy man instead must listen. Don't we all yearn to hear the voice of God, our Creator? So I listened, brothers and sisters. I opened up my heart, and the Lord filled me with the Word.
"I said to Him, I am here!"
Owen felt his heartbeat quicken, hearing his sister's words in Crouch's voice.
"And God said unto me—" Crouch paused. "I know that, Woodrow. I'm getting to that part now."
Jo stopped the tape, looking up at Owen expectantly.
"Woodrow!" Owen said. "He was there in the room with him. He was telling him what to say!"
"I didn't hear his voice," Jo said. "Did you?"
She rewound the tape, pushed play.
"—filled me with the Word. I said to Him, 'I am here!'" Jo leaned close and cranked the volume as high as it would go. Tape hiss filled the air, as loud as a storm in the trees. Crouch's voice boomed, rattling the photos of Jo and her parents on the bookshelf: "AND GOD SAID UNTO ME—"
For a moment there was nothing. Owen and Jo moved close to the tape player, straining to hear through the hiss, the click and whir of the spools. Suddenly a strange, alien muttering made Jo flinch back from the machine, a sound like unintelligible, muffled words spoken through a loudspeaker.
"I KNOW THAT, WOODROW."
Jo reached out, stretching an arm toward the cassette player as if she were afraid to go near, and stopped the tape.
"What was that?"
"I don't know," she said, her eyes widened in fear. "Maybe he was talking to Woodrow over the phone?"
"Maybe." Crouch could just as easily have been speaking to him from the next room. "Maybe it was God speaking to him," he said jokingly.
Jo flashed him a look, turned the volume down, and set the tape whirring again.
"And God said unto me, 'I have seen the misery of My people in your village, and I am concerned about their suffering.' These, you may recall, are the very same words God spoke to Moses through the burning bush. God does not love suffering, people, contrary to what the unbelievers would have you think. He feels the suffering of a single person as much as He feels that of an entire people. That is the lesson of Job in the land of Uz. It was not a test of Job's faith in Him, but a testament to God's own love for Man.
"There's no question Job was pious," Crouch said, to his imagined parishioners. "A little holier than thou—we can agree on that, can't we?" He chuckled softly, as he if he were laughing along with his congregation. "Each morning Job sacrificed a burnt offering for each one of his children—if we count them up, it was ten burnt offerings every single day—in the vainglorious belief that his children might not be as holy as their father, and that they may have cursed God's name in the night. This was an affront to God, I tell you—this insinuation!"
He paused a moment, cleared his throat.
"But never mind that. Biblical scholars would have you believe the misery set upon Job was at the behest of the Lord, though if you remember, God said to Satan, 'Behold, all that he (he, meaning Job) all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand.' Thy and thine. Well, it's clear enough to me the Lord is giving instructions to Satan, which means it was Satan, not God, who slaughtered Job's livestock, who murdered his children. It is the Adversary himself who afflicted Job with boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head!"
That inhuman muttering filled the next pause.
"Yes, I'm aware of that. Would you let me continue?" Another pause. "Yet Job… blames God. He accuses God of having mercy for evil men, yet no pity for the devout, such as himself. Job's friends implore him to confess his sins. God would not punish a righteous man unjustly, they tell him. But Job persists. He argues his own innocence. He pleads his case. He begs the Lord—in some, let's face it, rather flowery speech—to erase his birth from history. To cast him into the darkness!
"In the meantime, God seems to have put aside his little deal with Satan, at least until pious Job starts finding fault in Creation itself." He chuckled softly. "And the Lord so loveth Job that He spoke to him through the whirlwind, justifying His work to Job, all the while under the pretense of challenging Job for his insolence!
"The Lord then proceeds to punish Eliphaz, Bidlad, Zophar and Elihu for daring to question Job's critique of His Good Work. He punishes them for defending Him. He then doubles Job's fortunes and bestows upon him new, ever more beautiful daughters to replace those children Satan had murdered. All of this Job receives for daring to challenge the Lord's wisdom.
"What I'm saying to you, friends, is that God is forgiving. God is understanding. He sees our despair, yours and mine, and like Moses at the burning bush, like Job and the whirlwind, He spoke to me through that waterfall—the very instrument of our impending ruin. But from it… He o
ffered salvation for our Ministry. 'The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me,' the Lord said—'"
As if on cue, a baby began to cry in the background. "Lord help us," Crouch cursed under his breath. "Can't I get a moment's peace?"
The recording ended suddenly, leaving only the hiss of blank tape. After a moment, Jo pressed the stop button.
"'The firstborn son you shall give to Me,'" Owen repeated. "I'm his firstborn son. His only son, as far as I know. If he was planning to—to sacrifice me…" He shook his head, feeling sick to his stomach, to his soul, unable to believe his own father, as sick as he was, had meant to murder him to save their church.
The old man was sicker than you thought, Lori. And he's still trying to finish the job, even now. Does he actually believe God will part the water? Does he still think there's a chance?
Owen answered himself aloud: "He died believing my death would spare them. They probably believed it right up to the end, that if my mother and I had stayed, if he'd gone through with the sacrifice… God would have spared the church."
"You want to know what I think?" Jo offered. "I think Everett Crouch was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, and instead of medication, Peace Falls gave him a pulpit. It's one of history's most flammable combinations: power and paranoia. They go together like Christian terrorists and abortion clinics."
Owen considered it. "I just don't understand why no one noticed until it was too late."
"Can you tell the difference between old-fashioned religious fervor and a schizophrenic's religious preoccupation? Before it becomes dangerous, I mean." She waited for his reply. When none came, she continued, "I mean, think about it for a second. There's a giant angry man in the sky who created everything, and lets us do whatever we want. But if we don't fear him, he'll send us to a lake of fire for allll eternity. Imagine somebody telling you this, if you'd never heard anything about God before. Do you think you'd look up in the sky and tremble? Or would you dismiss it as the ramblings of a madman?"
"Good point, I guess," Owen said.
"George W. Bush said God told him to end Saddam Hussein's tyranny in Iraq," she said. "Pope Benedict said God told him to quit being the Pope and devote his life to prayer. Now are we meant to believe God literally spoke to them? Why would God ignore extreme poverty, rape, torture, terrorism, one environmental catastrophe after another… and then give His undivided attention to a couple of right wing megalomaniacs?"
"You're starting to sound a bit like Job," Owen said.
"Maybe that's because, if God exists, Job was right." There was fire in the dark pits of her eyes. "That's why God gave everything back to him—along with some new daughters who were even prettier than the ones he'd had before, but let's not even get into that. Maybe God didn't do all that because He loved Job, but because God realized what He'd done to Job was the biggest of all dick moves."
Owen grunted in agreement.
"Anyway, we've gotten way off topic," Jo said. "All I know for sure is that God didn't speak to Crouch through the waterfall that night or any night. Crouch spoke to Crouch. In his own mind."
"Or this Brother Woodrow. You heard the voice on the tape."
"I heard something. Whether it was a voice or not, I don't know."
"Whatever it was, all this stuff only cements what I said earlier. It's me he wants. Lori knew it all along. He's been following me my whole life. Haunting me. I've tried to ignore him, to push him away, but if I just… maybe he'll leave the rest of you alone, if I just let him take me."
Jo fell back from her knees, dropping down on her butt with her back against the sofa. "Don't say that, Owen. There are other ways. There has to be another way."
"What if there aren't?"
"Can't we at least try? What if we can—I don't know, what if we can reunite him with Woodrow?"
"What makes you think that would help?" Owen only realized he'd snapped at Jo when her mouth closed hard. "Sorry," he said. "The problem is, we'd have to find him first. And there's no telling if that would even work. I'm the one he wants, not Woodrow. I have to go back down there. I have to find them."
"Then I'm coming with you," she said, the look in her eyes suggesting devotion—or a death wish.
He nodded. She would follow him whether he wanted her to or not, he knew that. Just as he used to follow Lori around, as if she'd been the older sibling, there would be no stopping Jo.
CHAPTER 11
Abaddon Uncovered
1
TWO LOVERS STOOD side-by-side on the dock at Fisherman's Wharf, dressed in their diving gear. Jo turned to him. "Are we crazy, Owen?"
"This is the only way," he said.
"No, I mean, are we crazy? Maybe all of this is just a bunch of awful coincidences. Maybe that church down there drove the whole town nuts, and we're the only ones stupid enough to believe our own eyes."
"What happened to the girl who practically dragged me into the water last night?" he said.
Her shoulders drooped. "Maybe a part of me hoped they would take us, the way they took my parents," she said. "It'd be a pretty poetic death, as far as deaths go, don't you think?"
"Yeah," he said. "Real Romeo and Juliet."
"All I know is death, Owen. At least you had your mother and sister. I had no one. I have no one."
Owen draped an arm over her waist. "You've got me now," he told her. "I'm not going anywhere without you."
Her voice was small when she said, "You mean that?"
He nodded. She looked up, met his eyes, and kissed his lips. A bead of saliva stretched from her mouth to his as she pulled away. He wiped it from her lips with his thumb, and she smiled at the easy tenderness of the gesture.
"Are you ready?" he asked her.
"I guess I've been preparing for this dive almost my whole life, so I should be." She shrugged. "If we don't make it out of this alive, I want you to know…" She started to speak, then hesitated. Finally, it came out in a rush. "I could love you again, if that's what you want."
Owen smiled at the thought of it. He couldn't remember if he'd ever really loved anyone, not even Allison, whom he'd been with the longest—or if she'd even loved him. Their relationship, the two or three years or so it had lasted, had been one of convenience. Lori had introduced them at a party, and they'd fallen into bed together, fallen into step with each other. They'd had many of the same interests, architecture being one of the main ones, but their lives had eventually drifted apart. "I guess, maybe, I could love you, too," he said.
Crazy Jo Dunsmuir threw a good punch at his shoulder. He laughed. "What?"
"Don't be a jerk," she said. "I'm trying to have a moment here."
"You're gonna have to get used to me spoiling the moment," he said, shrugging. "It's kind of my thing."
"Is that a threat?" she said, raising an eyebrow.
"It's a promise," Owen told her.
He dove in. Jo was mere steps behind.
2
There were other divers swimming languidly through the ruins in rays of sediment-mottled sunshine, floating among schools of crappies and sunfish, plucking rocks and junk from the dirt and tossing them away in mild frustration, searching for treasured keepsakes and knickknacks left behind when Peace Falls had been abandoned. Most of them would leave empty-handed. They might find a rusted Zippo lighter, or an old toothbrush scaled with silt, and imagine who they'd belonged to some thirty years ago—but the real secrets lay elsewhere, in a place none of them had dared go. The church cast a menacing shadow over the old town. According to Jo, few had attempted to gain entry since the Crucified Jesus had crushed a young boy to death in 1981 and the windows had been boarded, the doors chained shut.
Jo and Owen stood in its gloom, craning their necks to see the opening she'd kicked out in the second story window. Her plan had been to kick out all the boards barring entry, to let in the light, to provide the most daring explorers access, hoping they would find what others hadn't—what Jo herself couldn't, because Crouch wouldn't let her get close.
Standing in the shadow of the church, Jo pointed to the opening she'd made, and then turned to him, shrugging up her shoulders with a troubled look. Still want to risk it?
He nodded.
Jo swam ahead, kicking up silt. Owen followed. He saw Jo slip in through the window and into the darkness beyond. He paused at the windowsill, unable to see through the murk inside. He drew the LED from his belt, flicked it on, and aimed it into the black maw of the haunted church, expecting to find the Reverend Everett Crouch inside, a welcoming smile on his dead man's face, and seated in a comfortable chair, bidding him to his side. There was nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief into the regulator, and then hauled himself in through the window.
His flippers came down on a heap of sediment that had been swept up against the window by the internal current of the church. He stood in front of a large desk and chair, close enough that he'd almost banged his knees climbing in. He swept the LED over the rest of the room. More eyes rose from the gloom, human eyes, flat and tacked to the walls: tattered posters that had somehow weathered the flood. Combo chair desks were scattered about the floor, others were gathered in a pile by the far wall. The pile shifted suddenly in a small avalanche, as if something had disturbed their rest.
This must have been our Sunday school. Maybe even our only school, after the Schism. Was it just Jo and me, sitting in the front of the class, listening to—who? My mother, or one of the others Selkie couldn't name, teaching us our ABCs and 1-2-3s? Or Crouch, rapping to us about God?
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