He began to wander aimlessly towards the Underground system and traveled on the trains at random, taking a last opportunity to examine his fellow men before taking his leave of them. He watched them in their activities, in their haste and self-importance, and as it all fell away from him he passed wraith-like through the crowds, leaving a trail of fearful and uncomprehending expressions in his wake.
Finally, he felt the dream intruding into his waking mind and the states of consciousness and sleeping became intertwined. The vast black void loomed up and he found himself savoring the destruction of his meaningless thoughts. One by one they disappeared, like spent candles.
The universe had become a tomb. Across its intolerable immensity everything was dead and black. The stars had gone out, their fuel having been spent long ago. No planets rolled in the illimitable darkness. They had turned to dust. Eternal night had conquered everything. There were no sounds, for all energy had been exhausted. Only an utter silence remained. Time itself ceased to have any meaning. The universe had been dead for the infinitely greater part of its existence, the period of activity being only a moment at the beginning. The cosmos was cold, bleak and black. But it was not empty. There were ghosts haunting it, deathly white apparitions screaming silently in the black void. At the end, in dust and darkness, in infinite and eternal desolation, these dead souls prowled its edges and were lost forever.
As one they drew near to him. Their hair was white and their skins were fixed in a state of permanent corruption. Pulpy fingers groped towards him in an idiot embrace. He joined them in the eternity of horror, in their manic dance, and tormented clawing at each other. There were billions of them, scattered across the cosmos—and he finally become one with all the other ghosts of dead angels.
THY SPINNING WHEEL COMPLEAT
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO lives in Richmond, California, with three autocratic cats, and has been an award-winning professional writer for more than forty years. During that time she has sold more than eighty books, including twenty-three volumes in her Saint-Germain historical vampire series. She has published numerous works of short fiction, essays and reviews, and also composes serious music.
A recipient of the 2003 World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, she also received the Fine Foundation Award for Literary Achievement in 1993 and (along with Fred Saberhagen) was presented with the Knightly Order of the Brasov Citadel by the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in 1997.
“Back in the 1940s and ’50s, on my occasional visits to my grandmother who lived in the Sacramento Valley, I often noticed a large farm a couple of miles away from her farm,” remembers Yarbro. “It was run by a religious community and was known for quality produce of all kinds.
“The women all wore white bonnets and long skirts and rarely left the place; the men wore loose trousers, long smocks, and short, square beards. They were very strict, and their leader was of the fire-and-brimstone variety. I used to wonder what their lives were like.
“One of the possibilities became this story.”
Make me, O Lord, Thy spinning wheel compleat
Thy Word my holy distaff make for me ...
—Huswuffery
CHARITY BLAINE STOOD AT THE WINDOW, staring eastward at the long freight train rolling past, a half-mile away, bound north. She counted the cars—one hundred four, one hundred five, one hundred six—and wondered where they would all end up. There were places between here and Canada where the trains could be shifted in other directions, so the cars passing by might end up in Seattle, or Boise, or maybe Saskatoon. Even at this distance she could see the large HAZARDOUS MATERIALS stickers on the tank cars, but could not read what they were carrying. Something poisonous, no doubt.
She shuddered and began to pull at the ties on her apron, suddenly aware that she should be on the back porch where two chickens in buckets of scalding water were waiting for plucking. The caboose, at the end of one hundred nineteen cars, was just sliding into view as she turned away from the window; she was secretly—and sinfully—pleased that out here at the edge of the compound, she could see traffic and trains: not at all like most of the other twenty-three houses, the majority of which were situated to keep the corrupt, wasteful, modern world away from the ninety-six residents of the Brethren of the Word commune.
Passing through the kitchen, she saw her younger sister working the churn, and her grandmother shucking peas. Poor Grace wasn’t right in the head, Charity thought as she watched the vacant way the seven-year-old cranked the rotary handle—Grandmother always said that if muscle can do it as well as electricity could, muscle should— and wondered again what God had intended when He had given Grace the fever two years ago that robbed her of all her brightness and charm, leaving only this blank husk of a girl. Not that she was questioning God’s Will, she added inwardly with a quick glance over her shoulder as if to reassure herself that this lapse of hers had gone unnoticed. Such lapses on the part of one of the appointed angels would not be tolerated.
“What were you doing out front?” their grandmother asked sharply.
“Watching the train,” said Charity, knowing it was wrong, and useless, to lie.
“Ten’s too old for such idleness,” said their grandmother. “Remember to ask God to forgive you for your backslide while you attend to your chores. You disobey like that, and Brother Whitelaw will not let you remain an angel in the Daughters of Esther.”
“Yes’m,” said Charity, and went onto the back porch, taking care to close the kitchen door tightly so no flies could get into the house; it might be autumn, but the flies were still about in quantity, and Grandmother would have a fit if any got into the kitchen: Beelzebub was known to be Lord of the Flies, and so it was doubly important to keep the pests out.
The two headless chickens were upside down in a pair of three-gallon buckets, their russet feather sodden with red-stained water that still steamed faintly in the warm air; Grandmother had removed the giblets and the rest of the innards, so at least she was spared that messy chore, and Grandmother would attend to the singeing when Charity finished her work. Charity drew up a three-legged stool and sat down to her unpleasant task, seizing handfuls of feathers and pulling them against the grain to expose patches of pale skin that reminded her of the look of her grandmother’s arms. She put the feathers into a net bag to dry them, and soon bits of fluffy down hung in the air, as bothersome as insects in every way but noise. She tried to pray as she worked, as Brother Whitelaw commanded all his angels do, but her thoughts kept drifting, and the prayers eluded her.
Knowing her grandmother would be listening, instead of praying, she recited part of the old Puritan poem that she had learned before she started at the compound school. “ ... My conversation make to be Thy reel, And reel thereon the yarn spun of Thy wheel. Make me Thy loom and knit therein this twine, And make Thy Holy Spirit, Lord, wind quills ...” The recitation became a chant, and earned a sharp rap of disapproval from Grandmother on the kitchen wall. Charity bit her lower lip and continued to pluck in silence.
When both chickens were fletched, she went to get the tweezers to pull out the pin-feathers still left under the chickens’ skins. This was demanding work, made more difficult by the day’s heat. Every few minutes, she had to wipe the tendrils of hair that had strayed out of her two long, light-brown plaits out of her eyes. “Then dye the same in Heavenly colors choice, All pinked with varnished flowers of Paradise.” The old words rang in her ears, their outmoded form giving her comfort, for it helped her to realize that what she did was part of a long, long line of women’s devotion to God’s work. Continuing to recite the poem, she kept on with the tweezers, her work timed to the pace of the meter.
Those words she did not completely understand she invented meanings for: “And make my soul Thy Holy rule to be,” she now understood to mean more Holy Rood, or Rod, than it meant reign; so make my soul Thy Holy Cross, not my soul Thy Holy Reign. Holy Cross made sense—Holy Reign did not; and the measuring k
ind of rule, as Ruth Bradley had suggested, they were told was a heretical notion, but she did not know why. And “Thine ordinances make my fulling mills,” now that had been a puzzler. She had concluded that it had something to do with getting a word wrong, and that fulling was probably pulling, and had to do with blocking, as she had been taught to do with new cloth and knitted garments; she still had no idea what mills had to do with it, but that would have to be for a later explanation. She liked the end, though: “Then clothe therewith Thine understanding, will, affections, judgment, conscience, memory, My words and actions that their shine may fill Thy way with glory, and Thee glorify.” The images seemed to go with the earlier parts of the poem and it fit with the last lines: “Then mine apparel shall display before Thee That I am clothed in holy robes for glory.”
All the angels in the Daughters of Esther knew the poem, and all of them were taught to adhere to its principles: to do the work of angels was to be one with the angels.
The afternoon had advanced more than an hour by the time she was through with the chickens. She removed them from the buckets, carried them into the kitchen and put them in the smaller of two sinks, then went to dispose of the bloody water and to hang up the feather-nets out in the breeze. On her way, she stopped next to Grace, who was pressing the new-made butter into molds. “You’re doing a good job there, Grace,” she said, because Grandmother said Grace needed more encouragement than most children did.
“Good job,” Grace repeated; there was no way to know if she comprehended what she was being told.
“See you don’t get any of that blood-water on the melons. Only on the green-leafies,” Grandmother reminded Charity. “And follow it up with a good watering, so it gets deep into the roots.”
“Yes’m,” said Charity, and went to take up her buckets to carry them outside. The back-steps were narrow and creaky, but made to be sturdy. Charity crossed the small parking area where the tractor stood during the good weather, and the pick-up was left at night. She let herself into the vegetable garden through the gate in the high, chain-link fence. The green-leafies were on the left, so she turned that way, trying not to spill any of the bloody water. Her arms were getting a bit sore from all she had done, and she had an instant of annoyance as she realized that she had more Women’s Work instruction to attend that evening at the meeting of the Daughters of Esther.
Reaching the kale and spinach rows, she poured the contents of one bucket into the watering declivity that ran between the rows of plants. As she watched the liquid start to sink into the earth, she went to get the hose to make sure all the bed got some of the water. Blood was good for these plants, she knew. When she was finished, she went on to the cabbages, celery and kohlrabi, and repeated the process there. She stared at the bulbous kohlrabis with their absurd, plumey fronds poking out of the globular plant; they always seemed weird to her, but she made sure they, too, were nourished with bloody water and soaked before she returned to the house. As she climbed the backstairs she looked up and saw a large Northwest jet lunging into the sky from the nearby Tri-County International Airport. “Wonder where they’re going?” she asked in a whisper as she watched it until it was nothing more than a silver sliver against the blue.
“What are we to say about the virtue of Esther?” Brother Whitelaw asked the group of ten girls, all between the ages of nine and fifteen. He held his hands up as if he expected to be struck by divine lightning, and waited for an answer; the girls sat around him in sturdy wooden chairs at the edge of the gymnasium floor in the central commune building where the Brethren had their offices and school.
Tirzah Flemming raised her hand first, as she always did, and Brother Whitelaw called on her automatically: Tirzah was fourteen and the oldest daughter of their founder, Joshua Breedon, and his second wife, Naomi Flemming; everyone had high hopes for Tirzah, who was taken in faith more often than any other girl in the commune, and was the fourth angel of the Daughter of Esther—Charity was the ninth. “She was obedient to God’s Will, and loyal to the land of Israel. She risked her life and soul for God.”
“To the exclusion of her own thoughts,” added Brother Whitelaw, his reproach given with a look of sorrow.
Coloring to the roots of her russet hair, Tirzah added sheepishly, “To the exclusion of her own thoughts.”
“And what does that teach you to do?” Brother Whitelaw asked of the other girls. “What can you learn from Esther?”
Charity raised her hand, “That females owe more allegiance and devotion to God than males, for the transgression of Eve, and must be prepared to put His Will before our own in all things. That is the creed of the angels, and those who do the work of the angels.”
Brother Whitelaw smiled. “Very good, Charity.”
“My mother told me that, before she left on her mission,” said Charity, trying not to sound proud of her mother, although she was. Her mother was the second angel. “I’ve remembered it to honor her, and to keep her faith.”
“Your mother is an inspiration to all women,” said Brother Whitelaw. “Would that more were as devout as she.”
Tirzah smiled with mendacious sweetness. “How much longer is she going to be in prison, your mother?”
“A while yet,” said Charity, knowing that the earliest she could get out—presuming she lost her appeal—was in twenty-eight years.
Brother Whitelaw stopped the sniping with a few sharp questions. “How many of you can think back to the day Salome Blaine left here to undertake her mission? Do you know how much of it she accomplished before she was caught and tried?”
Martha Hill, the oldest of the nine, spoke up. “She left here in August, four years ago. She was twenty-five, when it was revealed to Brother Breedom that mission should begin—”
“As revealed in Scripture,” Brother Whitelaw interjected.
Ruth Bradley coughed but said nothing.
“Yes,” said Martha, going on crisply, “She was caught ten months later by the federal agents of Satan, having killed thirty-eight people and injured another ninety-two, all unbelievers and idolaters. Her sentence is being appealed. She is our second angel, and so far, the most successful of all of those who have been sent on missions.”
“Salome was one of our most devoted operatives, and she deserves our thanks and emulation. She chose her targets with great care: theaters showing un-Godly films, malls praising Mammon, arcades of games given over to the lure of false achievements and unholy adulation, schools where science is advanced over religion. All of you girls should ask God to make you as staunch as Salome Blaine has been, especially those of you who are not yet doing the work of angels. She never flinched from her task, though she risked her freedom and her life to do so, and has accepted her martyrdom without complaint.” He nodded to Charity. “You have a great deal to live up to, Charity.”
“I know,” said Charity. “I pray for my mother every night, and I hope I’ll do as well when my time comes.”
“She was a sniper, wasn’t she?” Ruth Bradley asked.
“A very good one,” said Charity, with a satisfaction she knew was wrong. “I hope I can do as well, when my mission comes.”
“If she was so good, why was she caught?” Tirzah challenged.
“God wanted her as a martyr as well as an angel,” said Ruth.
“She had no way to depart from her position,” said Charity.
“First things first,” said Brother Whitelaw, calling them to order before the girls got to bickering. “No matter which path of redemption you choose, you will have to give us Brethren at least one child before you depart on your mission—no child, no mission: so our founder has taught.”
“I intend to have two children at least before I go out to kill,” said Tirzah, smiling smugly at her own ambitions.
“If you do this for yourself in order to advance yourself, God will be displeased,” said Delilah Marsh, who was twelve and just beginning to show real promise. “You must not ask God to smile upon what you do if you aren’t doing
it completely for Him, without expectation of praise or distinction. Make me, O Lord, Thy spinning wheel compleat.”
“I will have them for God, and for our faith,” said Tirzah with a pious expression.
“As will you all,” said Brother Whitelaw, again quashing an argument. “Your lives are to be an expression of your faith; you will give an untainted life to the Brethren, as a pledge of salvation, and you shall remove sinners from the world, for the glory of God. It is your honor to avenge the honor of God. You will offer all those lives in expiation for the sins of Eve, and you will humbly thank God for allowing you this opportunity. That is what you are here to learn to do—to deliver the world from the—”
“—The sins of the world, to return to Eden,” said Ruth. “We will restore the Grace lost to us by our Mother Eve.”
“And then we will have a choice of how we are to show our devotion,” said Martha, her serious young face brightening. “We can be snipers, or poisoners, or explosives’ handlers, or arsonists, or garotters, so long as we bring down those who have turned away from God, we do Him service.”
Visitants-Stories of Fallen Angels and Heavenly Hosts Page 14