Ancient Eyes

by David Niall Wilson

  Abe reached down and lifted the leather thong with its dangling, equal-armed cross pendant. He fingered it absently, and feeling the motion, Katrina glanced up and watched him.

  "Your father gave you that," she said.

  Abe nodded. "This and a lot of other things, including some that I didn't want. He gave me the dreams, and unless I'm wrong about all of this, it's because of him that it's all come back to haunt me now."

  "But," Kat lifted her head from his chest and stared at him, "you told me your father was dead."

  "He is," Abe nodded, still fingering the medallion. "He died before I left the mountain. My mother is still there." He hesitated, still staring at the medallion and turning it over and over in his hands. "I wasn't sure of that until I got the letter."

  He held the small cross still, its rough, hand-molded contours catching the light from the bedside lamp and glittering softly. Abe turned to face Kat.

  "My father wore this until the day he died. My mother gave it to me after his funeral. She told me he wanted me to have it—that I needed it, but she didn't tell me why. Not then. In fact, she didn't tell me until just before I left the mountain for good."

  "You shouldn't have to have a reason for owning something of your father's," she chided him softly.

  "I have other things of my father's," Abe replied. "This isn't a gift, it's an anchor. It's like wearing a big psychic weight around my neck, and every time I turn in any direction but toward that mountain, I feel it drawing me back. I've taken it off dozens of times. I even had it in an envelope once, ready to mail it to her and forget about it forever, but something always happened to distract me, or to change my mind. In the early days, holding this and praying was the only way I could escape the dreams."

  "You've never been back?" she asked. "You haven't called and talked to your mother?"

  "There are only about half a dozen phones on the entire mountain," he laughed. "My mother would have no way to get the message, unless she went down to Greene's Store and paid to use his phone. If she'd done that, the old buzzard would have hovered over her shoulder and listened in on every word.

  "Things are different up there. If you drive up to Friendly, it's pretty rustic, but if you take the fork past Greene's, you hit a long stretch of nothing, and shortly after that you'd be hard pressed to prove to yourself you weren't in another universe."

  "But," Katrina frowned, trying to picture it, "how do they live? What do they do?"

  "The same things folks on that mountain have done since the Spaniards first came to California and people started to settle. Some of them farm; there are grapes on the side of the mountain. Others raise goats and livestock, pigs, chickens—some do sewing, hunt and fish. You'd be surprised what you can get by on once you get yourself out away from the cities and the rules of modern society. They get an occasional sheriff up there, and now and then a Highway Patrol car braves the potholes in the road, but for the most part the people on that mountain might as well not exist to the world down here. I suppose that will change one day."

  He stared off into the shadows for a moment, thinking. His fingers continued to work over the surface of the coin, tracing the patterns again and again. Then he snapped back to the moment.

  "Then again," he said, "maybe not. There are things about that mountain that defy description. There are stories I have never told anyone because when I tell them to myself, they sound ridiculous and surreal. I have memories that I could be convinced were nothing but delusions, or dreams. At least, you could have convinced me a few days ago."

  Katrina stared at him, waiting for more. He saw the confusion in her eyes and closed his own, trying to settle the memories, and the roiling mass of questions that had surfaced over the past two days, into something he could tell her that would make sense.

  "There were two churches on the mountain when I was a boy," he said at last. "One was my father's. It was the highest thing on the mountain that I ever saw, except one. There were peaks that reached further, but I never climbed them, and I don't believe anyone I knew ever did either. The church was like a boundary, cutting us off on the upper reaches. The other church was lower, the furthest thing down toward the back road out of that part of the hills. I came out past it when I left."

  Above my father's church there was a place he used to go. It was a small stone cottage, so old that no one remembers who built it—what kind of people they were, or even if we descended from them. It was just there, had always been there. The church was the same. We kept it up, put in a stone walkway and built some trellises around the graveyard behind it, but none of us knew how long it stood there—not even my father. I asked him, but he only knew the history back as far as it had been recorded in writing.

  "That was more than 150 years, and he believed from the words recorded in those early times that the church was old when they were written. We will probably never know, and I don't think it's important. The last time I saw that church was his funeral."

  "Tell me," Kat said. She'd caught the hesitation in his voice, and he bit back the sharp reply that threatened. He didn't want to tell her. He didn't want to think about that place, or that day.

  "It was a very long time ago," he began slowly, "but I remember it as if it happened yesterday."

  Abraham had not thought of that old church, or of his father, in longer than he'd been willing to admit to himself, let alone to another. His father's funeral was a memory of darkness and mourning. He remembered sitting between his mother and his Uncle Keith on the bench in the church. They'd brought in the preacher from Friendly, California, Reverend Forbes; a skinny, stick of a man with wavy hair and wild eyes. He'd glared at them from the front of the church as if they'd all been caught masturbating in a closet, not like a man of God who was troubled over the loss of a fallen comrade. Abraham had spent every Sunday of his life in that small stone church, and the sensations Reverend Forbes brought with him had felt as alien and impossible as the loss of his father.

  That preacher stared them into silence and began to speak. He began while they were still coming in the doors. He had his Bible in his hand, like he was afraid that if he let it touch the old stone pulpit of Abraham's father's church, it would be contaminated. He shook it at them. He fanned the air with it, and he gripped it white-knuckle tight in the dying light of the later afternoon sun, but he did not let it touch the stone. He did not touch the stone. If he could have floated above the floor, Abraham was sure he would have done so.

  Reverend Forbes did not talk about Jonathan Carlson at all. He railed against sinners everywhere, the tone of his voice showing clearly that he felt that everything beyond his own church in Friendly became steadily more evil, and that Satan's blood dripped down the sides of the mountain, infecting all of those below with his darkness.

  There were reasons for his words, of course. Some of the meaning had been clear to Abraham, even then. The stone chapel was not the only church close by, and though there was no one preaching at that other, there was no longer anyone preaching at this one either. No one that belonged.

  Both houses of worship lay empty, waiting for God, or someone, to fill the pulpits and draw the people. Between those times they would live beyond the sight of God, unless of course they wanted to find their way further up the mountain to Friendly every Sunday. Reverend Forbes mentioned that too. He'd been very concerned for their souls.

  It was obvious early in the ceremony that he had not known Reverend Jonathan Carlson, and equally obvious he did not count this as a spiritual loss. He intimated that God had begun to cleanse the mountain. He spoke of shadows hovering beyond the sight of civilized men, waiting to sweep in and blot out the light of the Lord's love. He talked for what seemed hours, though in retrospect, Abraham knew his mother and the others gathered would not have stood for that, even if he did frighten them. It had probably lasted no more than an hour.

  The words had poured around Abraham in a meaningless jumble. He'd sat huddled up against his mother, who sat numb and motio
nless, staring through the preacher and the back wall of the church as if gazing into the pits of hell. Abraham was used to his mother being close and far away at the same time. He was used to her mumbling words he couldn't understand, or starting from her seat and crying out when nothing had happened. He was used to the stares of his neighbors, and the quiet disapproval of his family.

  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 unfinish
ed. 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 recently. 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.