Jonathan Carlson had been loved and respected, but Sarah Carlson had never been welcome on the mountain. She was not one of them; her beliefs were not their beliefs. More than once Abraham had heard it whispered that she belonged more with that other church—that other preacher. The one who'd led the congregation at the white church. They said she dragged Jonathan Carlson into the shadows, and now, with his body not even in its grave, their enmity bubbled to the surface.
When the spew of fire and brimstone finally burned itself out, they trickled outside. Reverend Forbes, looking exceedingly uncomfortable in the bright sunshine, hovered in the back corner of the small graveyard. They had brought Jonathan Carlson's body around slowly, his box built of the same rough-hewn wood they used in the church—taken from the mountain, and returned to it—as was their way.
Reverend Forbes said nothing, but his mood darkened. His brow knotted with furrows of disdain and his lip quivered with the desire to scream at them all. Abraham saw it in the man's eyes, and the shaking palsied grip he kept on his Bible, which he brought no closer to the vines or flowers of the graveyard than he had to the stone of the church itself. Something in the moment kept him quiet. Maybe it was the grim, solemn faces of the men who carried the casket. Maybe it was the dark, shawled and hooded silence of the women, or the whisper of the wind mocking them from the tree branches and filling in words where all of them disdained speech.
Reverend Forbes didn't belong. He knew it, they knew it, and whoever's idea it had been to invite him into their church, and their lives, regretted it. He couldn't wait to remove himself from the graveyard. He was ready to rush back to his own congregation with tales of the barbarians in the hills, the ancient evils that permeated their stone church, and the passing into darkness of all that was not born of his own mind.
Abraham had heard stories when he'd grown older. They were a different sort up in Friendly, California. They had ceremonies and beliefs that were born of different blood. Not younger or less deeply rooted, but very different. There were very few on the mountain with contact or kin in Friendly. Many of their number had filtered down toward San Valencez, or further over the mountains into Nevada, or Arizona, but in those hills and mountains the roads separating one folk from another might as well have been on different planets.
They laid his father in the grave gently, lowering him one slow inch at a time by ropes knotted firmly into eyelets at each corner of the crude coffin. As they worked, they sang in very low tones, more a rumble of sound than a hymn. If they fell silent, there were echoes of their voices in the deep thunder of falling stones, or the soft brush of wind through trees. They sang in the tongue of the mountain, and it was over this that Reverend Forbes spoke the final words Abraham remembered.
"Ashes to ashes, dust…"
That pronouncement had been all Abraham could stand. Without a word he'd bolted from the graveyard, smashing one knee on the iron gate in passing. He cried out, and for a moment the Reverend Forbes had been silenced.
Abraham hadn't seen what came next, but he knew the ritual. He knew the exquisitely slow process of returning the dead to the earth. He knew the words that would be spoken, both those that Reverend Forbes would use, and those that the family would speak. He knew what would be sprinkled into the dirt, and what would be buried with the dead.
None of it made it any more real. He had seen the box, but he could not equate it with his father. He heard the words and the moaning, keening song echo in his mind, but none of it was familiar. None of it rang true. None of it would make the slightest difference in the long run, because it could not bring back his father.
Abe grew silent as the memory faded. There was more, but he couldn't force the memories into words that would make sense. Somehow, while he spoke, Kat had found a way to slip up under his arm and lay her head on his shoulder. She'd listened quietly, not interrupting, or even moving, as far as he remembered.
"What happened to the church?" she asked after a long, shared silence. "I mean, when your father died, who took over?"
"No one, as far as I know," Abe shrugged. "There were a few elders, but none of them was an educated man, and they all had families and responsibilities. Somehow, when one keeper passed on, there had always been another ready to take over. It wasn't a ministry in the same sense as you'd find here."
He drifted off again, just for a second. In his mind he saw the old church as he'd last seen it. He saw the stems of dried, forgotten flowers, and he knew that his mother had been there often, to the church, and to his father's grave. No one else went there. They all remembered—there was no way they could forget—but after Jonathan Carlson's death, and the flight of his son into the world beyond the mountain, they had hardened their minds and their hearts.
Some went up to Reverend Forbes's church, as he'd told them was proper. Others found their moments of worship on their own, gathered in barns and parlors, or even took the long drive down to the Catholic Mass at San Marcos by the Sea, though the journey meant being up hours before the break of dawn and being half way down the mountain. The old ways were not the ways of Reverend Forbes or of the churches in the valley and on the coast, and they would not die easily. Still, without the central focus and leadership Abe's father had provided, it was difficult to imagine how things could have been preserved as they were before.
At first Abraham and his mother cleaned the stone church. She had gone twice a day, dusting and sweeping, and he had weeded the path, patched leaks, and kept the grounds clear. All but the graveyard. Abraham hadn't set foot in there since the funeral, and this lent a further solemnity to the memory.
He had never had a proper moment to pay respect to the man who'd helped to give him life, and who had taught him so much about what he could do with his hands, and his mind. Nothing on Earth could have pried Jonathan Carlson off his mountain, but he'd known of other places, and other times, and he'd shared that knowledge with his son.
"I wouldn't be here now," he concluded, "if he hadn't given me the dreams, and for that I thanked him by running away, abandoning my mother, and never even visiting his grave."
There was a sudden bitter edge to his voice that he fought to soften, and failed. The dreams and reminiscing had opened floodgates of emotion he'd worked years to shore up, and he had no defense against it.
"But," Katrina's voice cut the deepening silence, "what does it all have to do with what's happening now? I mean, why the letter? Who is 'back?' Who was that on the phone, and these dreams…?"
Abraham hugged her and leaned his head sideways to rest on hers.
"I wish I knew," he said at last.
"Will you go back?" she asked softly. "At least to see your mother?"
"I don't know," he replied. "I want to see her. I'd even like to see the mountain, and maybe visit my father's grave, but I don't want to be sucked back into that place—or that life."
"You still didn't say who 'he' is," she chided, poking him in the ribs. "The note said 'he's back,' and I know it can't mean your father. There are still things you aren't telling me."
Abe nodded slowly. "I'll tell you—probably soon, now that it's all coming out in the open, but not tonight. It's a long story. In fact, if the 'he' of the note is who I sense that it is it isn't any more possible than if it were my father she spoke of. That man is dead, as well—though maybe a part of him lingers on. Some things should never be left unfinished."
"What did you leave unfinished?" she asked, her voice taking on a note of exasperation. "Abe what are you talking about?"
"I'm sorry," he replied, and hugged her tightly. "I'm thinking and talking at the same time. I didn't leave anything unfinished. My father did. He didn't finish 'The Cleansing'."
Kat started to poke him again and ask him to explain, but at that moment, the phone rang.
SEVEN
Sarah climbed slowly up the ancient path. It had been several years since she'd made the climb, and it was obvious from the condition of the path that no others had been up it recen
tly. The undergrowth to either side had encroached so that, had she waited another season, it might have been difficult to find where the trail had run.
There had been a time when Sarah had climbed to the old stone church daily, sometimes more often than that, if something needed fetching. Now the ache in her back and the scratches of the weeds and brambles lining the path made her wonder if she could accomplish it even once. She leaned on an oak staff she kept for such journeys, and she depended on it for support more than she would have liked. She was painfully aware of the solitude of the path, and the dangers of the forest. Not that she feared wild animals, or the men of the mountain. She had lived with those perils since the day Jonathan brought her home. It was that other. She felt him in every step. He seeped up through the dirt and grass beneath her feet, wrapped around her ankles in the caress of long grass and vibrated in the breath of the wind. She still didn't know for certain who it was this time. The shell did not matter as much as the essence, and that she recognized well enough. The day was hot. Wherever the sun had regular access to the earth, it had dried to dust. The surfaces of rocks gave off a hazy, surreal wave that warped her vision of what lay beyond them. Sweat rolled down her forehead, matted the graying ends of her hair, and plastered the cotton of her dress to her back. She gripped the walking stick tightly and plowed ahead. She wanted to make it to the church before noon so there would be plenty of time to get back down the mountain before sunset.
There were ways to protect yourself, but they were less effective with the sun down behind the horizon and shadows dancing around your feet. All the rules changed when you were in the enemy's front yard. That's what the forest had become. Every branch, every twig of it would bend to his will if he called to them, and though she had a much more powerful support to lean on, there was no sense in being foolish.
Jonathan had been foolish. Jonathan had trusted too much in the inherent good nature of a race that was not known for its inherent good nature. Sarah had told him again and again that he could not expect others to react to life in the same manner that he himself reacted. In all the years of her life she had never met another man like him—though Abraham had shown promise of becoming something very similar.
Jonathan's faith had been his strength, but in the end it had proved his weakness as well. It was wise, Sarah knew, to be careful whom and what one placed their faith in—whether it was church, friends, or kin.
The trail seemed longer and steeper than she remembered. Still, despite the heat and the extra exertion, it wasn't long before she came in sight of the old church. It wasn't like that other, with its gleaming white walls and peaked roof. Jonathan's church was low-slung and built by hand.
It had no high walls, or baptismal pool. There were no fine oak pews; the stone benches were cold and uncomfortable from early fall through the spring, despite the fireplaces centering the walls on either side. Rough-hewn wood framed the windows and the door. Most of the glass was still intact. The door hung open, but the hinges, though rusty, still held its weight, and it swung easily.
Sarah stood in front of that door for a long time, staring. She watched the wind catch it, swing it wider, and then crash it back into the frame, only to have it swing open again at the insistent call of gravity.
She walked slowly around the left side of the building. The untended grass grew up and over the stones that had been laid in place of a sidewalk. Those stones, she knew, had fallen from the mountain—Jonathan would have said, "Given freely, and returned." They had been rolled into place, one by one, using no tool but an old spade for digging the holes, and occasionally a wheelbarrow so old that the wheel had been solid rubber and nothing but faith prevented the rusted bed from breaking loose of the frame.
Sarah had stood by and watched as Abraham steadied that precarious conveyance more than once, wondering if the rocks it carried were going to crash down on his foot, or break his leg. Jonathan had always mumbled something about faith at those moments and trundled on.
The rocks had spared Abe's feet, and the path was paved with the very bones of the mountain. From the first time Sarah had walked across them, they'd emanated a sense of permanence that was hard to explain. Like the church itself. It had been built and maintained by hand for over a century. Every bit of it, with the exception of the glass, had come from the mountain, and Sarah knew that if Jonathan, or those who'd come before, could have found a way to grind the glass for their own windows, they would have done so cheerfully.
She followed the stones around to the back of the church and stopped just short of the rear wall to steady herself. The sun was high in the sky, and what there were of shadows were short and impotent in the mid-day brilliance. Despite this, a shiver snaked up her spine. She took a deep breath, rounded the corner, and followed the walk leading away from the rear of the building. A moment later, she passed beneath a wrought iron arbor snarled with vines and flowers and humming with the rhythmic pulsing life of hundreds of bees.
The graveyard was as she remembered it. Sarah hadn't seen it since the day of Jonathan's funeral, except to tend it once or twice. The disuse and overgrowth couldn't distance this day from the one so long ago. The flowers had been carried in that first time, instead of growing up through cracks in the stone and dangling on vines from the fence. Instead of a cotton dress, Sarah, like everyone in attendance, had worn black.
Sarah wasn't sure where the congregation had gotten their clothes. She'd never seen most of them in anything but overhauls or jeans, but they'd come in that day, heads bowed, starched and pressed into strange, surreal cubist versions of themselves, all the lines too harsh, all the angles and shades drained of their softness and their shades of gray.
Sarah walked down the center of the small lot, ignoring the stones buried in the earth to either side of her. They bore the names of generations of men who'd built and tended the church. Their stones, like those of the walk, came from the mountain. She stopped near the rear and turned.
Nature had not done half-bad as a gardener. The earth surrounding Jonathan's grave was fairly clear of vines and leaves. The stone was easily visible, a jagged point of rock sticking up from the earth at an angle, as if pointing the way to Heaven. In the face of it were carved the words "The Reverend Jonathan Carlson. 1932—1992. God called him home."
The script was crude, but legible, and it had borne the brunt of sun and storm. Sarah was startled by dampness on her cheek and the sudden hot rush of tears that followed. She had visited this place now and then in the year or so following Jonathan's death. Then, as time wore on, and the elders let the church fall into disrepair, open to the weather and the animals, she slowly cut down her visits, first to once a week, then once a month, and now? Now it had been a least a year since she'd trekked up the mountain to pay respect to the only man she'd ever loved.
She remembered clearly standing next to that same grave and watching Abraham tear out through the arbor beneath the vines as if the devil himself followed on his heels. She had wanted to follow him and comfort him, but there was no comfort for the boy that day, and she had duties of her own. Jonathan would not bury himself, though considering the selfless way he lived his life it would not much have surprised Sarah if he had.
And Reverend Forbes, from over in Friendly; what a mistake it had been to invite him into their group. What should have been a day of thanksgiving and a send off for her husband to meet his God had become a surreal blend of painful images she couldn't wipe from her memory. Sarah hoped fervently that Jonathan had been beyond watching what transpired in the world he'd left behind by the time Reverend Forbes began the final rant that had ushered the casket into the mountain's embrace.
A sudden gust of wind caught her hair and lifted it from her shoulders. Leaves swirled around her feet, and she glanced up at the sky in shock. Moments before it had been warm, the sun bright and lighting the land with its golden rays. Now dark clouds scudded across a darkening horizon and she saw that another storm was rolling in.
Dismayed
, she turned toward the gates of the cemetery and the church beyond. It was no place to weather a storm. The shutters on the windows needed repair, and the door wouldn't stay closed. She could get a fire going in one of the old fireplaces, but that would provide only minor solace in the face of a mountain thunderstorm.
It wasn't natural, that much was obvious to her. The day had been beautiful and golden, and she had not sat in the graveyard very long. The mountain was known for its "mood swings" of weather, but there was an ominous, brooding presence in this wind, a biting chill that was out of season and somehow very personal.
She shouldn't have come here alone. She shouldn't have left the protections of her home without being certain that she could return to them. She had consulted with no one before making her way up the mountain. It was a mistake that Jonathan would have warned her about, had he been present.
The front door of the old church slammed shut with a screech of rusted hinges and an explosion of sound that nearly stopped her heart. Birds erupted from the two chimneys and nearby trees, startled into sudden flight by the sound. They wheeled off up the mountain in search of shelter. Sarah followed their progress with her gaze, and she knew what she had to do. There was only one place she could go where she might be safe. She'd never make it down the mountain before the storm hit, but if she went up…
She hurried from the small graveyard and gasped as the wind whipped a spray of dust and leaves into her face. She shielded her eyes with one hand, turned away from the church and the path back down the mountain and followed the trail leading up the mountain. It wasn't too far, she knew, but it had been a very long time since anyone had passed that way. The path was there, but overgrown and narrow, and it was impossible to move quickly.
The trees themselves seemed bent, leaning inward to block the way with new growth of slender, whip-like bows and green clinging leaves. The sun was all but gone, and the dark shadows of the storm crept just beyond her sight, darting from tree trunk to tree trunk and circling her feet when she glanced away.
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