by Jeff Crook
The chair rocked itself to a stop. Deacon stared at it for a moment. “Sometimes it does that when I leave the door open.” He tried to laugh. “Must be a draft.” There was no draft. His eyes nervously searched my face for some indication of what I had seen. I didn’t give it to him, not yet anyway. Not until I knew what was bothering him.
He pointed at the picnic basket. “What’s that?”
“Dinner.”
* * *
While we ate I told Deacon what I had found on Reece’s computer. We sat on paint buckets in the dining room, a suitcase propped on dusty boxes of plaster for a table. A couple of altar candles burned in golden candlesticks on the mantel. Deacon picked at his food without tasting it. He hardly seemed to be paying attention to what I said.
When I finished, he asked, “Do you remember that scene at the end of Out of Africa, when Karen is sitting in her empty house just like we are sitting here, all her things sold off, just a few trunks remaining?”
I poured some wine into his glass. “Never saw it.”
“Really? Never?” He picked up a limp piece of asparagus and bent it across one finger. “Well, her house is empty and she’s about to leave Africa and everything she loves. She says to Denys Finch-Hatton, ‘We should have had it this way all the time.’”
He was trying to be casual, but his eyes were jumping all over the place. He laughed nervously and dropped the asparagus spear onto his plate. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He stood suddenly and walked to the window, rested his hand against the brick that filled it. “You probably noticed most of my saints have abandoned me. They are too afraid to come here. They believe this house is cursed, haunted. About a month ago, something happened in the cellar. I don’t know what. Several men were working on the plumbing when they saw … something. They couldn’t describe it.”
“What do you mean, they couldn’t describe it?”
“They didn’t know the English words for what they saw and I didn’t understand their Spanish, but it scared them so bad they refused to return. The others heard about it. They started leaving during the night, one or two at a time, sometimes a whole family.”
He turned and set his back against the bricks. “I want to be honest with you, Jackie. When I hired you, I had two purposes. The first was to capture details of the house. But I also hoped you would capture an image of the evil that dwells here, so that I would know what I’m fighting. Or that perhaps you could see what I could not, and help direct me. But whatever it is, it hides itself from you and your camera.” He took a large envelope from the mantel and gave it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked as I opened it.
“That is why I called you. I took the best pictures you have given me so far and had them developed,” he said. “Look what came back today.”
The envelope contained two dozen 8 × 10 glossy photos of the interiors, mostly shot in the first days before the dust really started ruining my work. I had given him good image files, but all of these were obscured by orbs. “Are you sure you sent the right files?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
I set the plates on the floor and opened Reece’s laptop, pulled up the files where I had stored all the usable images I had taken. They were ruined, every single one. Next I checked the files I hadn’t transferred from the camera. Same result. As a final test, I shot a picture of Deacon standing in front of the fireplace. Deiter had told me orbs were caused by specks of dust reflected in the camera’s flash. Because of the candlelight, I set the ISO to 400, f-stop to 2.0, shutter speed to one-quarter.
Deacon’s face was completely obscured by orbs, even though I hadn’t used a flash at all. He stood behind me, looking at the image of himself on the camera’s LCD display. “I feel evil all around me, trying to get inside, infect my soul. I have blessed this house a dozen times and it does no good at all. Only the power of my faith has kept me safe. Ruth fed me visions of a grand temple filled with song and joy and overflowing collection plates. My pride watered and fed this evil, gave it fertile ground in which to grow.”
His Bible appeared in his hand as if by magic and he began to pace the room and speak in his booming, preacher voice. The old dry wood of the empty house resonated and amplified it, until it seemed to come from everywhere, as though the house itself were speaking Deacon’s words. “My place was among the poor and hungry and the sins they commit out of fear and want and desperate need, not these wretched millionaires and their greed, their pride, their all-consuming lusts, sins for which they want no forgiveness, no redemption. They feel no shame or remorse. The Gospel is wasted upon them, like pearls before swine. The Church, to them, is just another market—in this shop I buy insurance for my investments, here I buy insurance for my properties, and here I buy insurance for my soul.”
Spirits began to appear all around the room, stepping out of corners and shadows, old men and young girls, slaves in rags, slaves with white gloves and black ties with tails, gangsters doffing Al Capone hats with their molls dressed in flapper gowns, fat white planters with bulging bracers, shirtless sharecroppers with their overalls dangling, Army-green soldiers and soldiers of a more sordid kind dressed all in white. Deacon’s headless Republican Guardsman stepped out of the corner wreathed in flames of hell. They came from Purgatory to hear him preach and maybe find redemption or escape from their soul’s plight.
Deacon flipped open his Bible and held it spread upon his palm. “I did not listen to Paul’s clear warning in his letter to the Galatians, chapter five. I sought to minister to debauchers, idolators, selfish people full of envy and ambition and petty jealousies. I strayed from my true path. I traded my mission for empty robes of gold.”
He turned and faced me, arms outspread, not in a gesture of victory but of surrender. “Like the early Church fathers in their pride and their greed, I also lost the Gospel. But the Gospel of Jesus wasn’t lost. It was suppressed. The early Church fathers saw the danger of Jesus’ message. So they took into their greedy hands the keys to heaven and locked the doors and set up a ticket booth outside. Join our church and receive the one true truth and heaven will open its gates for you and you alone. Those who do not join will burn in lakes of fire for all eternity. God will punish them, but you will be loved. You will be anointed. You will be given secret knowledge and true understanding and a crown in heaven. But I ask you this, what do you want with a crown? Why do you want Jesus to anoint your head with oil? Why do you want to see your fellow man burn in lakes of fire for all eternity?”
“I don’t,” I said, but he didn’t hear me. I wasn’t even there. He was preaching to the lost souls of that house and the shades of the children in the woods. I could hear them outside, singing that wire-briar-limber-lock song, and I wondered if Deacon heard them, too. If he did, he didn’t show it.
He dropped to his knees and gripped his Bible to his chest, wrapped his arms around it as though it were the only thing keeping him from sinking into the earth. “That’s when the Gospel lost its power. That’s when they started spreading the Good News at the point of a sword. Their followers lost the ability to do miracles and speak in tongues. Speaking in tongues isn’t nonsense, it isn’t yabbadabbado television-preacher jibberish. We learn in the book of Romans that at that time, it was Pentecost and people were gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world. So that each and every one of them should have the opportunity to hear the Good News, the Holy Spirit possessed the apostles and spoke through them in the tongues of those who had gathered. The apostles spoke the known languages of the world—Aramaic, Syriac, Latin, Egyptian, Greek. But when the Good News was lost, so were the gifts of the Spirit. God does not bless those who lie. His bestows His gifts upon they who carry his Gospel in their hearts. People like Jackie Lyons, who can discern the spirits of the dead.”
He slumped forward, his head to the floor, the Bible clutched beneath his chin. I knelt beside him and heard him whispering. “The debt of sin has been paid. Our souls are assured a place
in heaven.”
“Come on,” I said as I pulled him up by the arm. He left behind a puddle of sweat soaking into the floor. “Let’s get you to bed.”
44
I LOWERED DEACON to the mattress. He rolled over and curled up into a ball with his Bible to his lips. I gathered up the scattered sheets and blankets and spread them over his body. He seemed to already be asleep. I started to leave, then he said, “Jackie, will you stay with me while I pray?”
He hadn’t moved except to lift his head a little from the pillow. I said that I would stay.
Deacon’s breathing was regular and deep. When I was sure he was asleep, I got up to leave, but paused at the doorway. I couldn’t leave him alone, and there was no one else to watch him. I thought about calling Jenny, but remembered she had the kids and couldn’t leave them. I sat on the floor beside the mattress and watched his chest rise and fall.
He sat up suddenly and stared hard at the dark doorway. A slave woman stood there, holding a dead slave girl in her arms. Her face was streaked with cuts or welts, as from a razor or whip.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I thought…” He paused. The woman turned and walked into the darkness. He lay back down and pulled the sheets up to his chin. “I thought you had left me,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m glad.” He reached his hand out of the blankets and I took it. “This is my Garden of Gethsemane.”
“Are you OK?”
“I am now. You are here. I’m at peace.” He rolled up onto his elbow. “And hungry.”
I went downstairs and brought up his cold dinner and the bottle of wine. We sat on the mattress and I watched him eat. Deacon asked me to honestly tell him what I had seen tonight. “All day long I have seen you wandering this house,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t you. I knew it was Satan taunting me with what I most desire. I also know that you have seen things tonight you have never seen in this house before. Don’t deny it, Jackie Lyons. The first battle, the battle within my soul, is over. But the Romans are waiting at the gate.”
Even though his continuing Messianic allusions didn’t fill me with confidence that he wasn’t about to nail himself to some cross, I decided to tell him what I had seen. Of the old man in the rocking chair, he said, “Overton Stirling. Ruth said he killed himself. She didn’t mention how.” He seemed especially interested in the congregation of the dead, asking had they looked redeemed by his Gospel message.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.
“Did they walk off into a heavenly light?”
“Not that I noticed. I was trying to get you upstairs. You’re not an easy man to shift.” In truth, they had faded back into the woodwork much the way they had come.
He seemed disappointed, not in them but in me for ignoring the things most important to him. I suppose I should have left him lying on the floor to chase ghosts through the house.
I collected our plates and returned them to the picnic basket while he poured the last of the wine. “What did you mean about the Romans at the gates just now?” I asked.
He reached across the mattress and picked up a piece of paper from the floor. “Not all my enemies are supernatural, nor have all my saints abandoned me in fear of the dead. Many have been arrested by Roy Stegall for immigration violations. Others have been harassed and attacked. I have received threatening letters in the mail. And then there was this.” He tossed the paper into my lap. “Luther Vardry’s restraining order, stopping all work on the house while he challenges Ruth’s will in court.”
“What’s he challenging?”
“Everything. Ruth didn’t just give me this land and the money to build my church. She left me everything, her entire estate, donated to the church. Luther got nothing.”
“Did you know?”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand why she has done this, but I have to stop work until it gets out of probate.” He sounded defeated already.
“Ruth wouldn’t have signed that will unless it was bulletproof. Luther can challenge it, but he can’t win.”
“Even if he doesn’t win, he can bury it in court for years.”
“Let him. You’re younger than he is. He won’t live forever.”
“He’s Ruth’s son, a Stirling. He could live another twenty years, easy.”
“But aren’t you going to fight? You’ve got the money.”
He tossed his wine back with one smooth swallow and set the plastic cup carefully on the floor beside the bed. “Money, yes, I have money, but even in Malvern money isn’t everything. This is Luther Vardry’s county. He’s got the biggest, wealthiest church around and all the power, influence and money that position brings. He’s pastor to all the judges. He owns a United States senator. He doesn’t want the True Gospel cutting into his take.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from this brave, strong, fearless Christian warrior, this man who had battled demons and spent his lonely vigil in the Gethsemane Garden of his soul. Luther Vardry’s unassailable power was the best reason to fight, not give up and blow away.
Deacon continued despondently, “I offered to give Luther everything else, if he would let me keep the property, plus enough money to restore the house and build the church. He refused. I don’t blame him. I don’t know what got into me, preaching that way in his church at Ruth’s funeral. Pride, I suppose, that old demon. I get so high on it, I can’t stop myself. I didn’t even follow Ruth’s wishes. She wanted me to preach the story of Lot, but I barely touched on it. All I wanted to do was jab a shiv in that old preacher. I guess I succeeded. He won’t even talk to me now except through his lawyer.”
“Screw him then. You’ll own him in court. I know a lawyer who would take your case just for the pleasure of sticking it to a guy like Luther Vardry.”
He took my hands and pressed them between his, trying to get me to understand. “I can’t beat him, Jackie. Ruth died before our church was built. She was the only thing standing between me and Luther. You, of all people, should know you can’t go against the government in a small town, not unless you’ve got a bigger government on your side.”
“But you can’t give up.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that.” His demeanor was so disgustingly Christlike, I could almost see the bloody holes in his hands. “I hope you never give up, never stop fighting.” He leaned forward and kissed me, once, on each cheek.
* * *
We lay together, sharing a cigarette, which was my second favorite thing to do in bed. I blew a couple of weak smoke rings, which made me cough. Deacon took the cigarette from my fingers and flicked the ash onto the floor. “Even if Ruth had lived, I wonder if the church would ever have been built. Very little was getting done.”
“It’s a wonder Mrs. Ruth could stay here alone all those years,” I said.
I rolled over on top of him and took the cigarette, inhaled one last drag, and dropped it into the empty wine bottle. He reached up to me, cupping my head with one hand while I leaned down and forward, my hair falling down around my face and framing his.
Deacon closed his eyes. I paused, hearing a scream outside. The stained-glass window at the far end of the room shattered and suddenly the room was full of fire. Flames leapt up over the mattress and ignited the blankets. We threw them off and rolled into the hall. The window behind us shattered and fire surrounded us again.
We made it to the front door but the front porch was an inferno. The dining room boiled with smoke and hellish light, its exit the mouth of hell. Flames came tumbling down the stairs like children on Christmas morning. Two-hundred-year-old Zuber wallpaper curled and turned to ash just from the heat. Every doorway was a sheet of fire, and black smoke drew down around us like a curtain. “The tunnel!” Deacon shouted over the roar of the fire. I don’t know where he got the air to breathe.
We headed for the basement, slipped and fell halfway down the steps, ended in a heap against one wall. The bricks were cool an
d the air breathable, but there were already gaps of flickering light showing through the boards above our heads. Deacon grabbed a flashlight one of the plumbers had left behind and we dove through the jagged entrance he had knocked through the cellar wall.
I snatched the flashlight from his hand and clicked it on, grabbed his arm and started to pull him down the passage. He jerked free and said, “Wait.”
Someone was upstairs, inside the burning house. She was screaming Deacon’s name.
“That sounds like Holly.”
Deacon? Deacon, where are you?
“What’s she doing here?”
“She must have seen the flames.” He hurried back to the cellar and shouted up the stairs, “Holly! Down here!”
Deacon! Oh my God! Deacon help me!
“How did she get in the house?” I asked.
He started up the steps. I remembered the voice of Reece Loftin calling out to me and Lorio, that night on the levee. I remembered her voice behind me on the bed. I remembered the little girl and the dark shape that tricked me into the dusty tomb at the other end of this tunnel and locked me in. I grabbed his arm. “Deacon, don’t go. It’s not her.”
“I have to go.”
“It’s them. The voices in the forest.”
Deacon! Please, where are you?
“Jackie, I have to go,” he said.
“But it’s not Holly!”
“If there’s even a chance.” Glowing cinders drifted down the stairs as the house groaned and cracked. The upper floors were collapsing. “I can’t just let her die.”
“I’ll go with you.” I looked around for a fire extinguisher but the place had been stripped bare.
“I have to go back and try to save her. You owe nothing to Holly.”