All Things Bright and Strange

by James Markert

  She patted Ellsworth’s shoulder. “There’s a scabbard downstairs that goes along with it.”

  Ellsworth fought tears. “Thank you.”

  She leaned down, kissed his cheek. She smelled of oven dust and forging tools, of safety. “Say, Ellsworth, I was . . . I mean, I’ve been wanting to . . .” She wiped her brow and sighed. “When you went into that slave house, back when we were nine . . .” She shook her head.

  He knew what she wanted to ask. But answering it now would put too much finality on things, such as they were. So instead he put his hand around the back of her neck and kissed her mouth. When he pulled away, her cheeks were red and her eyes glowed. “You were saying?”

  She blushed even deeper. “Oh, nothing. Never mind. Just lost my head there for a moment.” She laughed and wiped her mouth. “Always hoped you’d be my first kiss. I just never imagined it would take this long.” She pointed to the closet, where a beige suit pinstriped in red hung on the outside of the door along with a matching fedora.

  “I set that out for you.” She flashed that half smile again. “Always thought you looked fetching in it.”

  Ellsworth limped down the street with his fedora slanted against the morning sun, the sword in its scabbard around his waist, and a shotgun propped against his shoulder.

  Anna Belle walked beside him wearing a white blouse, brown vest, and trousers that looked like Calvin’s, rolled up at the ankles and cinched with one of his belts. She had a rifle in her left hand and extra ammunition draped over her right shoulder. Will bullets even work? Who knew, but it made sense to have something.

  Following Rabbi Blumenthal’s advice from a few days ago—“I don’t think the chapel likes fire, Ellsworth.”—Gabriel hefted two flaming torches. Hopefully they’d stay lit when they got close. If they got close.

  Uriel was with them too, striding with a pistol on each hip, a coiled rope around his neck, and the mayor’s flamethrower in both hands.

  And Raphael stuck close by Ellsworth’s side, carrying a medical kit inside a satchel he’d propped over his shoulder.

  The street seemed strangely deserted, and Ellsworth wondered briefly if it would be just the four of them going to battle in the woods. If that’s the way it is, we’re ready. But then they skirted the town hall to find the whole town gathered in the field on the edge of the woods. At least it looked like the whole town. Every religious leader stood with his flock—not in huddled clusters, but as one collective line with no breaks, one congregation blending in with the next.

  Rabbi Blumenthal stood armed with the Talmud. Reverend Beaver carried a Bible and a candle. Reverend Cane carried an open Bible and recited verse. Omar, heeled with a couple of pistols under his jacket, held the Koran outstretched in both hands. Father Timothy carried a gold cross; Reverend Hofhamm a cross and a German Bible. Reverend Moses Yarney stood side by side with Bo Blythe’s unhooded Klansmen, the lot of them whispering prayers as they gazed out toward the woods. The Watchtower people stood toe to toe with the Latter-day Saints. Even Lou Eddington had been prepared for battle, propped atop a brown mare with his legs fastened in stirrups and his lower back braced by wood across the saddle.

  Ellsworth looked up and down the line and spotted Father Radkin twenty yards to his left, dressed in deep purple and holding a thurible of smoking incense.

  “He came after all,” he whispered to Anna Belle.

  “I heard he arrived just after sunup,” she whispered back. “Now what’s the plan?”

  “Just what I said last night,” he said. “We all go in together.” He took a step toward the woods, and the rest of Bellhaven followed.

  It was beautiful in the woods this early in the morning. Dew dappled the colorful blooms of every tree, flower, and bush. Butterflies danced and fluttered through patches of sunlight. Hummingbirds twittered and darted. But twenty yards in they saw the first dead deer. Raphael insisted they stop to bury it with deadfall.

  Over the next quarter mile they found a dozen more deer lying stiff, all in positions that suggested retreat. Brave animals. Frontline soldiers. They left them where they’d died. It was too risky to stand still for the amount of time it would take to cover them. Even in the five minutes it had taken Raphael to bury the first deer, everyone had grown panicked. The antsy feeling of being watched had overwhelmed them. They’d had to move on.

  Once they were past the yellow trees, everything in the woods seemed to bloom more vibrantly—violet azaleas and white oleander, pink and red camellias, sun-bright goldenrod. Don’t be fooled by the beauty. They pushed their line onward, separating only to navigate trees or cross gurgling streams lined with colorful foliage and berries. They sang and recited verse in defiance of the increasingly loud, buzzing drone of the unseen.

  Lou cantered his horse up next to Ellsworth. “I had a dream last night of a great fire. And I dreamed I died today in these woods.” They walked silent for a minute. “I think I’m ready,” said Lou.

  “You don’t go into battle unless you are,” said Ellsworth. But am I now? Memories of last night with Anna Belle still resonated. Her shoulder nestled in the crook of his arm. The smell of her hair and the beating of her heart against his palm. He stole a glance and found her eyes on him as she moved through the woods with rifle in hand and that belt of ammo over her shoulder.

  Lou rubbed the horse’s neck. “My wife and two kids, they were dying from the Spanish flu. It hit them so fast—they were fine one day and the next day they were at death’s door, literally gasping for air. Deborah begged me to do what the doctor would not. Nobody ever recovered after being that far gone, and she couldn’t stand to see our boys suffer like that, even for another night. She begged me to let her go at the same time they did, all of them together. She feared that if they died at different times, they’d be separated somehow in the afterlife.”

  Lou paused, swallowed, and looked down at Ellsworth with anguish in his eyes. “So I liquored up and injected them one-by-one, lay with them until the end. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I’ve wondered ever since.”

  Ellsworth clenched his jaw, patted Lou’s leg. “What you heard in the chapel . . . you’re forgiven.”

  “But am I? We both know now that it wasn’t really them talking.”

  Ellsworth didn’t have an answer to that. Lou was right. Everything they’d heard there was fool’s gold. But he touched Lou’s boot again, and they continued on together.

  Birds flew both above and below the canopy of dark gnarled boughs and flowering magnolias, twittering and whistling as they fluttered in and out of sunlight and shadow, surface and sky—cardinal birds everywhere, plus blue jays and sparrows, warblers and hummingbirds. A woodpecker tapped against a nearby tree. Donald Trapper stopped to watch, and Gus Cheevers grabbed his arm to keep him moving. Heads turned at every sound. Eyes flicked with every gust of wind.

  Ellsworth warned them to ignore it all. When the woods got denser, he used his sword to strike down vines and clear deadfall. As the droning intensified, he walked with both hands on the hilt, the blade poised in front of him, ready to strike, just as he’d been ready to cut the imaginary slave masters had they come out of those slave houses years ago.

  “The air’s getting thicker,” said Gabriel. “Harder to breathe.”

  Father Timothy shifted his cross to one arm so he could loosen the collar around his neck. Others had begun to scratch at their hairlines and arms. Lou’s horse neighed and bucked and dug its hooves into the ground. Raphael coaxed her into moving forward again.

  The cardinal birds flew low, dipping more than they had previously, fluttering over shoulders and between legs as if trying to communicate. And then roughly two dozen clustered to form a ball in the air before scattering, spinning away like wind-tossed rose petals, diving low to the ground again and kicking up loose leaves.

  “They’re trying to slow us down,” said Tanner, whose pace had quickened as they ventured more deeply into the woods. He was now only steps behind Ellsworth and Gabrie
l, holding a torch and a jar of gasoline. “They’re trying to distract us.”

  The drone grew louder, painful, forcing many in the line to slow and hold their ears. A yellow warbler flew directly into a tree trunk and dropped to the ground. A sparrow did the same against another tree five yards away.

  Gus Cheevers slowed, then stopped. He watched the birds and scratched at his neck, his breathing labored. His eyes glazed, and his hand rose toward his head, pointing the barrel of his revolver toward his temple. His grip shook, but just as his finger twitched against the trigger, Anna Belle grabbed his arm and pulled him from his trance. He gulped, sweat dripping, and thanked Anna Belle with a nod.

  It was that way up and down the line, but they pressed on, helping each other. Father Radkin clinked the thurible with small, controlled swings, pushing incense and smoke across the path, reciting Latin prayers as he shuffled along.

  Another cardinal bird flew into a tree and dropped dead to the ground.

  They neared the clearing, which had indeed grown outward to a hundred-yard radius of dead trees and black, ashy leaves, shriveling so fast now it was visible to the naked eye. The smell of burnt leaves was so thick it made the air even harder to breathe.

  Their torches rippled. The flames whooshed, grew weak, then whooshed again.

  Reverend Hofhamm dropped to his knees, coughing and grabbing his throat, as did dozens on down the line, ripping at their collars. The buzzing drone pulsed with the wind, and with it came the screams. Reverend Cane and Reverend Yarney held their Bibles high and walked deeper into the charred clearing where moss burned like wicks and leaves crumbled black.

  Bo Blythe fired toward the chapel in the distance, the broken door swaying as light flickered inside, casting prisms through colored glass. More drew their weapons and fired as Bo clutched his neck and dropped to the ground, choking and gagging.

  Father Radkin’s voice grew louder, spitting out Latin verse, sifting incense, his posture wavering. Father Timothy helped him along, the two of them walking deeper into the unknown, where unseen voices cut through the wind and echoed so loudly that ears began to bleed.

  The blade of Ellsworth’s sword moved as if tugged. Pressure against his legs made walking almost impossible. The air was quicksand. He cut his sword in a swath, and it moved in slow motion.

  Dooby Klinsmatter suddenly screamed, stopped cold, and then began methodically walking backward, firing his rifle into the air. Linda May Dennison ran full steam into a tree trunk and dropped in a bundle. She got up slowly and did it again before Raphael could get hold of her resisting arms.

  Omar gripped the Koran in his left hand and fired with his right. One of his men clawed at his throat, dropped to the ground, choking. Seconds later two more men dropped.

  The chapel door rattled, then flung open and slammed against the façade.

  Ellsworth felt more pressure against his sword. “Something’s coming through.”

  How can we fight what we can’t see?

  Thousands of cardinal birds circled. They’re here for a reason. Then a massive cluster flew toward Ellsworth, spinning and fluttering until they formed what looked to be the contour of a man standing seven feet tall and approaching unimpeded.

  The birds had outlined the unseen shape, made the invisible visible.

  Was this what Raphael saw on the outskirts of the woods when he got to Bellhaven? The man made of cardinal birds?

  Omar fired as the figure stepped forward. The birds scattered from the bullet but formed again a few feet away—around another approaching figure. Omar fired again with the same result. Across the clearing, both in the open space and the area between the charred tree trunks, birds swooped from the sky with a purpose, clustering together to form the contours of whatever was emerging from the chapel’s door.

  Tanner had called them demons. There were dozens of them now, all coming toward their line. All made visible by the clustering birds.

  Shots fired, birds scattered, reformed. The forms charged, blowing their line back. Many of the town folk hit the ground, coughing and clutching their throats.

  One of the cardinal-bird forms approached Ellsworth. He swung the sword in an arc and cut a path through the birds, clipping feathers and beaks before the birds scattered and reformed three paces back. Another figure approached, and another. Ellsworth cut the first with his sword, a parallel swipe to the ground that severed the form at the waist, but the second was upon him, reaching with arms of flapping wings, clicking beaks, and beady eyes.

  A yellow warbler flew in the clot of cardinal birds, as well as a green hummingbird. A shot rang out, but unlike the sword, the bullet did little to scatter the form. More birds hurried in, mostly cardinals, but also birds feathered white, yellow, blue, and black.

  Two dozen forms now attacked their line in a flurry of feathers. Bullets cleaved but passed through, taking chunks from the chapel and trees and plunking into the stream. Are the bullets doing anything? Ellsworth hacked with his sword and scattered another form.

  We have to get to the chapel somehow. Have to burn it down. But so many of the cardinal figures now stood in their way, and all the torches were flickering low as if they were choking too. Gabriel fought off form after form with the torches in her swinging hands, her fists colliding in puffs of red feathers as more of her brethren dropped around her. Uriel fired the flamethrower in bursts of orange light, daring them closer, and they seemed to be afraid of the fire.

  But is it too late? Had we all been in the woods too long?

  Has the evil grown past our ability to fight it?

  Old Man Tanner burst into the clearing and ran toward the chapel. Three forms swarmed him. He hunkered down, swung the torch as he moved, but they smothered him, so many birds twittering and shrieking around his flame. Choking and gasping for air, he unscrewed the lid to his gasoline jar and doused himself with the pungent liquid.

  “No!” yelled Ellsworth. But Tanner hugged his torch and his body ignited, scattering the birds and giving him enough space to stagger toward the chapel door, diving in just as more forms of redbirds emerged into the clearing. One of them leaped at Eddington’s horse, knocked him to the ground. Lou fired twice but then clutched his throat as he gagged and writhed on the ground. The mare backed up with a terrified neigh.

  Twenty yards down the line, Donald Trapper and two others carried buckets of pitch, tar, and gasoline. Ellsworth ran toward them, slaying bird forms left and right. In the background he saw Anna Belle firing her revolver and swinging someone’s torch. They were holding their own for now, but they were all quickly becoming overwhelmed.

  Trapper dropped his buckets to the ground, fired his pistol, and screamed like a maniac. Ellsworth closed his eyes, gathered himself, and then plunged his sword into Tanner’s buckets, then ran the coated blade through one of Gabriel’s torches. Flame burst forth from the blade, licking orange-blue fire.

  He corralled Eddington’s horse, climbed atop, and kicked it forth into the clearing, slashing the flaming sword through cluster after cluster of cardinal figures. They backed away from his swinging blade. And then Gabriel stepped into the clearing with her two torches upraised. To Anna Belle’s dismay, Raphael did the same, tiny compared to the rest but unafraid.

  Uriel hung back, fiddling with the flamethrower, which had stopped working. Finally he threw it down, secured the ten-foot rope he’d had draped over his shoulder, and ignited the tip of it until it flamed orange-red.

  The roof of the chapel was burning. Tanner had accomplished that much. But bird forms continued to pump from the open door, some larger than the ones before.

  Ellsworth urged his horse forward. His cohorts had formed a small circle with him, swinging their fiery weapons. Ellsworth rode through the clearing, slashing his flaming sword from side to side. Uriel swung his flaming rope in controlled arcs, cutting through the birds as efficiently as Gabriel and Raphael did with their torches—she swinging above while the boy swung low.

  The chapel rumbled, and th
e earth shook through another aftershock. Ellsworth counted four seconds of movement before the chapel door popped off as if pulled. The threshold around the door cracked, then crumbled as if something huge was forcing its way through.

  Birds swarmed toward the door, clustering, churning, and finally forming the contour of a beast that stood ten feet tall, with a tail that scraped like a brush across the ground. It flailed its arms as if trying to deter the birds, but the cardinals kept coming, thickening the mass, slowing any progress. The giant form thrust a hand toward the outer edge of the clearing, blowing back those who remained standing, clearing them out like a scythe through a field. On the ground they choked and grabbed their throats. Hands tightened against revolver grips, and the barrels moved toward their heads.

  Ellsworth charged, thrashing and swinging Blue Fire, but the fire was growing weak around the blade. The giant form knocked him from his horse. He rolled but held on to his sword.

  The beast raised another arm of flapping birds and swung it in an arc. They ducked. Torches flaming, Gabriel charged directly into the body of the beast. The birds dispersed, then reformed. Uriel swung his rope, which burned shorter with every swing. He was tiring. They all were, and their fires were weakening. Raphael attacked the beast’s tail with his torch, but every swing held less force.

  Ellsworth went for the head and thought he’d severed it. Cardinal birds scattered and reformed like wind knifing through fog. And then a voice sounded from the woods.

  “Push’m back, Michael. Push’m back to the deep and burn this place down.”

  America Ma.

  Latin cadences sounded behind him. Father Radkin had pushed in closer to the chapel with Reverends Cane, Beaver, and Yarney, his voice booming as if performing the largest-scale exorcism ever administered. Radkin flicked holy water from a bottle he’d pulled from his purple robes. The smaller bird forms cowered. Reverend Hofhamm had found his feet and held a cross up high, singing loudly in German. Rabbi Blumenthal approached with his Talmud, Omar with his Koran.