All Things Bright and Strange

by James Markert

  “‘You see, Father, it’s just as I told you.’”

  “The next morning Mary Bellhaven didn’t remember what had happened. She ate breakfast with little emotion. But then afterward she scooted her chair from the table until it toppled. She started walking backwards—around the table and out of the room, then up the stairs. She hissed something about the woods calling her back.

  “The flies returned at dinnertime. The Bellhaven’s youngest boy, James, walked into the parlor naked as the day he was born. His older brother John joined him, and the two boys started tearing into the wallpaper like a cat would do. It was all very . . . disturbing.

  “That evening things calmed down. We were all gathered around the fireplace when we heard footsteps pounding up and down the main stairwell. Up and down. Up and down. And laughter, but there was no one there. No one. Then Mary Bellhaven started screaming. We couldn’t get her to stop. She fought us with the strength of ten men. Eventually, however, she calmed. Walked out to the back veranda and faced the woods.

  “I looked at Henry, who was distraught and defeated and asked him why he had not been stricken with the same affliction.

  “‘There’s something in the woods,’ he told me. ‘There’s a place where Mary took the kids. They went deep into the woods and found some chapel half buried in the growth.’”

  Father Radkin lowered his head. “He took me there the next morning. This chapel. A meager-looking, very Spartan place. I stayed in there for no more than a minute, but long enough to . . . to hear the voice of my father. He’d passed three years prior.”

  “We’ve all experienced similar things,” said Father Timothy.

  Anna Belle fidgeted in the pew. Ellsworth gripped her hand.

  Father Radkin said, “We hurried away. And I told him never to go in there again.” He paused, a stricken look on his face. “He begged me to perform an exorcism on the house. On the woods, even. But I told him that was something to be approved from higher up, by the bishop, at very least. And then I left the place. I’d already interviewed the family, didn’t know what else to do. Truth was, I never requested a church-sanctioned exorcism. I knew they rarely granted them, and if I ever hoped for advancement I didn’t want that bruise on my skin.”

  “So what did you do?” asked Ellsworth.

  “I returned and told them their request was denied. The two boys, James and John, beat their heads into the wall. Mary, her voice deepened by the devil, spoke of demons coming through the doorway.” Father Radkin massaged his brow. “I couldn’t just leave them like that. So I went back to the city and gathered what I’d need for a private exorcism. You don’t need church approval for that.”

  “So did it work?”

  Father Radkin shrugged. “I said prayers, made statements. Felt demons all around me—in the house, the woods. Flies swarmed in through windows that opened and closed. Candlelight flickered on and off. I made a small altar on the living room floor, on a little table brought in from the kitchen. I burned sage and sulfur throughout the house. Read psalms at the top of my voice. And suddenly the house went quiet. We believed it had worked. I was exhausted, but elated. But then a week later it all started again. Henry visited me at St. Patrick’s. The family was showing signs of falling back again. He didn’t expect me to help but just wanted me to know. He had his own plan, he told me.

  “‘It involves the chapel, Father. I know you told me to never go back inside that place, but I believe the cure resides in there. There’s good medicine in there, Father. But it needs more.’

  “He knew a man from the docks, a recently immigrated Italian artist who spoke of a mosaic floor he’d disassembled from a Florentine chapel and brought with him from Italy. It had originally been built in the seventeenth century by one of the Caravaggisti, the artists who mimicked the style of the great Baroque painter Caravaggio. And it had been blessed by the Holy Father himself. The mosaic depicted the angel of healing, the Archangel Raphael. The Italian artist called it the healing floor. He swore whoever knelt upon it was healed of their sickness.

  “Henry was paying the artist to install this very floor in that chapel—and more artwork as well. Frescoes and reliefs. Sculpture and colored glass. He believed that beauty would strike the demons away.

  “This Italian artist spent the next year inside that chapel, laying the floor, installing the glass, painting pictures on the walls. He slept in there, working day and night.” He looked over his shoulder. “Have you experienced the . . . acceleration of aging that happens because of that chapel?”

  “We have,” said Ellsworth. “We’ve all witnessed it.”

  “Well, this artist, he was thirty-seven when he began. He looked eighty when he finished. He celebrated the completion by slitting his own wrists right there on the healing floor. Henry Bellhaven had his sharecroppers clean it up. Then he brought each family member inside and performed his own exorcism, one by one. He prayed to the Archangel Raphael to free them of the demons.”

  “Did it work?”

  “He claimed it did. But they were never the same afterward. They couldn’t hold conversation or sleep. Couldn’t stop going into the woods. I told Henry to destroy that chapel and never return, but he couldn’t bear to destroy the work he had commissioned. So the chapel remained. And the next two generations of Bellinghams were weaker and more degenerate than the one before it, until the family essentially died off.” He grinned weakly. “Dropping like flies. The house fell into disrepair. The cotton fields got eaten up. Henry Bellhaven shot himself with a rifle on the outskirts of those woods.”

  Ellsworth waited through a moment of silence before standing. He fingered the brim of his hat. “One more thing, Father. Even before the artist finished the interior . . . you said this was 1870. Do you have any idea when the original structure was built? Or why?”

  Father Radkin shook his head. “I don’t know. But I remember my short time in there very vividly. My father’s voice.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He said, ‘Francis, close your eyes. Don’t look. There’s more than just slave blood in these walls.’”

  CHAPTER 26

  Father Timothy squirmed like a caged animal on the way back to Bellhaven.

  He had the car door open before Anna Belle pulled to a stop behind Ellsworth’s house, and was off running toward the woods before they could stop him.

  Ellsworth said, “Let him go. He’ll return.”

  Omar and his men still stood guard outside Ellsworth’s house.

  Up on the hill, half the town roamed Eddington’s property. Men and women held guns, but no one as of yet had fired a shot. Patrolling as empty threats. A vulture circled like a giant condor, casting an ominous shadow across the hillside, where Lou Eddington paced. What is he planning? Is he an evil man or a by-product of that house? A pawn himself?

  Eddington’s followers entered and exited the woods. Mayor Bellhaven watched over them, holding a massive gun. Upon second glance, Ellsworth recognized it to be a flamethrower like the ones he’d seen in the war. The mayor pointed it toward the sky, whooshing the flame upward like dragon fire.

  Over at the town hall, more people had gathered. They milled around, watching the yellow house on the hill. Two men smoked cigarettes on the roof. Others stood in the grass, the road, and the parking lot. Some hid behind parked cars, ready for a shoot-out Ellsworth hoped to avoid.

  “Ellsworth.” Gabriel’s silver-star badge sparkled in the sunlight. “I’ve locked up Rabbi Blumenthal. As soon as you left, he entered Father Timothy’s church with a sledgehammer. Took chunks from the altar. Then he went to work on the pews and the stained-glass windows. Looks like a bomb went off in there.”

  “Keep an eye out for Father Timothy. I think he went to the chapel.” Ellsworth entered the jailhouse after Gabriel peeled off. Two squirrels skittered across the floor near the hole in the back of the building. A swarm of flies buzzed over what could have been a charred raccoon.

  “The mayor did it.�
� Rabbi Blumenthal pointed at the burnt carcass in the corner. “He came in with that flamethrower.” He gripped the bars. “Please let me out. I’m sorry for what I did. It’s just that Father Timothy walks around like he’s right and I’m wrong. And he takes orders from that pointy-hatted man in Rome. They’re a cult, Ellsworth.”

  “What if they’re all cults?”

  Rabbi Blumenthal backed away, gnawed his fingernails. “It’s accelerating. The energy from that chapel. Every time someone enters, it grows stronger.” He laughed, hard. “But that’s the thing, Ellsworth. We can’t stop going. We can’t stop going, and the trees are dying!”

  “Around the clearing?”

  Rabbi Blumenthal nodded, animated. He gripped the bars again and shoved his face between two of them. “The tree moss falls like ash. The leaves shrivel and drop. Its twenty feet deep now around the clearing—and growing. Let me out of here. One last time.”

  Ellsworth turned away. “Sleep it off, Rabbi.”

  “I don’t think the chapel likes fire, Ellsworth.”

  Ellsworth turned. “Don’t know many buildings that do.”

  “No, listen. I struck a match outside the chapel, to light my cigarette. It immediately went out.”

  “Wind.”

  “There was no wind. You’ve been there, Ellsworth. It’s too calm. There is no breeze around that chapel.”

  “Go on.”

  “I struck another. It flickered as if ready to go out, so I moved away from the chapel, toward the trees. And the further I walked, the stronger the flame became. So I approached the chapel again, and the match went out.”

  Ellsworth chewed on the information. They’d need more than a match to burn that place down. He turned and left the rabbi alone.

  “That’s where they used to take the slaves,” screamed Rabbi Blumenthal. “The ones who disobeyed.” Ellsworth stopped at the door. “My great-grandfather, he’s in the chapel. He told me. Master Bellhaven, the first Bellhaven. They’d hang slaves from hooks in the ceiling and lash them until they could no longer walk. Let their blood drip to the floor and then make them clean it up. Later, five slaves found the chapel in the woods and tried to destroy it. Master Bellhaven thought they’d run away, and he killed all five that night. But the chapel was there even before the Bellhavens arrived. There’s slave blood in those walls, but that isn’t all. There’s those that came before the slaves. Before Master Bellhaven.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Colony plantations. They got attacked regularly by the Spanish from St. Augustine. And all the Indian tribes—the Catawba, the Peedee, Cusabo, Cherokee. The redbones, Ellsworth, and the Spanish. They bled in that chapel by the hands of the white men. The early settlers.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “America Ma. She told me so.”

  Ellsworth turned and approached the cell again. How far back does this chapel date? But he stopped cold when people started screaming outside. He hurried out the door. Mayor Bellhaven was down the road in front of the churches, firing bursts from his flamethrower, igniting trees and mailboxes and fence posts and screaming, “I’m the mayor of this town!”

  Gabriel approached the mayor. He fired. She jumped back from the flame.

  Atop the hillside, Lou Eddington sprayed machine gun fire into the air. Mayor Bellhaven froze, looked up the hill as if reprimanded. He fired one more flame whoosh at Gabriel, then ran behind the town square and up the hillside, where three vultures circled.

  Movement in the woods drew Ellsworth’s attention. Eddington’s armed men and women spread out in a line, like a disciplined Roman legion, right at the tree line. More came from deeper in. Ellsworth spotted Reverend Beaver and Linda May Dennison in their midst.

  Just then Father Timothy burst from the trees with a dozen other town people, hurrying away from Eddington’s makeshift army. “They won’t let us past the yellow trees,” he announced, panting. “They’re claiming the chapel for themselves.”

  Panicked voices spread through the square. “How can they do this?” “They have no right.” “I must get to that chapel.” They were ready to fight then and there.

  Eddington’s soldiers had halted at the tree line with their weapons leveled—pistols, machine guns, and rifles. Mayor Bellhaven, with his flamethrower, stood in the center of the line next to Eddington, who craned a rifle against his shoulder.

  Father Timothy started walking toward their line, hand raised in benediction, then broke into a frantic sprint toward the woods. A bullet tore a clod of mud and grass a yard from his next step—the first official shot fired. Father Timothy stopped in his tracks, took a pronounced step backward, and then ran for cover behind the parked cars at the town hall.

  The crowd around the town hall grew by the second as word spread that passage to the chapel had been blocked. Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel joined Ellsworth in attempting to calm their side down, but no one wanted to hear them. They wanted their chapel. They wanted their loved ones, the voices in that magical air.

  Ellsworth stepped in front of the town hall. “That chapel is killing us. It’s the devil’s trick. He’s luring us in and—”

  “I say we fight,” yelled a man Ellsworth didn’t recognize.

  Omar and his men forced their way into the middle of the crowd. “Listen to dem leader. Sheriff speak dem truth.”

  Gabriel towered above them all. “Something is coming out of the ground. Out of the chapel. It’s moving into the woods. Every time we go in there, we’re feeding it. We have to stop.”

  Anna Belle was on the periphery, pacing, antsy, as if torn between what she knew and what she craved. Ellsworth didn’t trust the look in her eyes. He took a step toward her just as she approached Donald Trapper, and pulled the rifle from his grip. She walked toward the gap between the jailhouse and town hall and fired toward the woods. Eddington’s soldiers ducked. She fired again and hit a man in the leg.

  The man screamed and bullets started flying.

  Ellsworth shouted, “Take cover!” They ran toward homes, behind cars and hedgerows. “Spread out!” If a fight was going to happen, he couldn’t let it turn into a bloodbath. He couldn’t have his side clustered.

  He made his way toward Anna Belle. She turned toward him with the rifle pointed directly at his chest, her eyes crazed.

  “Give me the rifle, Anna Belle.”

  “They can’t take the woods from us.”

  He stepped closer, hoping she wouldn’t shoot. “Give me the rifle, Anna Belle.”

  She lowered the barrel with shaky arms and tears in her eyes but didn’t give Ellsworth the rifle. Instead she hunkered behind a rusty black Model T and returned fire toward the woods.

  Ellsworth ducked with every gun pop. Dust scattered. People screamed. A woman was hit in the leg and Raphael pulled her to cover behind a hedge of azaleas.

  Old Man Tanner exited Ellsworth’s house, walking with a purpose and gathering a crowd behind him as he stormed toward his own place.

  “Tanner!”

  The old man didn’t stop. Ellsworth followed the group into Tanner’s house and down a narrow stairwell that led to the cellar. Along the far wall, highlighted now by a lantern Tanner had just lit, stood three wooden crates full of weapons.

  “What is this? Where did you get these?”

  They paid Ellsworth no attention. Eyes glowed as if they’d just been shown pots of gold. They reached into the crates and left with armfuls of ammunition and weapons—rifles, pistols, two machine guns, knives and daggers, dynamite, and what looked like one of those duck-hunting punt guns that was nearly as long as a car and needed two people to carry.

  Tanner gripped a rifle in each hand. He and Ellsworth were the last to leave the cellar. “I’ve been saving up. I always feared this day would come.”

  “Tanner, stop.”

  “I don’t see any other way. That’s my chapel. My wife’s in there.” He headed for the stairs. “You may have temporarily cured me, Ellsworth, but you forgot to pluck out
the seed.” He stopped on the stairwell and handed Ellsworth one of the rifles. “Listen, I’ve got something to tell you. I knew your father. And I knew your mother saw your birth as a miracle. Perhaps it was.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “All those years, I told no one about that chapel. I kept it hidden. But every time I went, I’d take an empty jar with me. I’d fill it up with air from the chapel and bring it back to inhale at night. I kept a trunk full of’m, right up there in my bedroom. Anyway, one night me and your father got to drinking, and he told me about his problem. Cried while he did it. Wanted a son more than anything. I felt real sorry for him. So I told him to wait a minute, and I went and retrieved one of my jars. I had your father unscrew the jar lid and inhale. He was too drunk to ask what for and didn’t even remember doing it the next day. But he did tell me your mother was frisky that night. And a month later they learned she was with child. She took it as a miracle, her dreams coming true. Your father, well, as you know by now, he always assumed she had another man.”

  Ellsworth followed Tanner up three more steps before the old man stopped again. “That’s my chapel. There ain’t a soul who can keep me from it.” Tanner hurried from the house with the energy of a man forty years younger. A man his real age.

  Ellsworth stepped out of Tanner’s house into a war zone.

  Bullets whizzed, cleaving sod and spitting gravel, plucking leaves from trees and blooms from flower beds. Bricks exploded and wood splintered. Windows shattered. Everyone hunkered behind whatever stronghold they could find, and Raphael led a line of children into Ellsworth’s house. Tanner’s ammunition and weapons were quickly distributed, everyone eager to join the fight.

  Donald Trapper and John Stone both held the punt gun, Donald at the trigger while John stood a few feet ahead holding the barrel on his shoulder. Donald fired. The entire gun shook. The blast took down a heavy bough at the edge of the woods. Retaliation came immediately from a machine gun, which tore the backside of Tanner’s house apart and set a black Model T aflame. On the far side of the town hall parking lot, Omar stood in his white mask and dark suit, firing at the hillside, oblivious to the oncoming bullets.