For a fleeting moment, a shadow passed over the moon. Abraham thought about the space beneath that circular door, and shivered. He could imagine the smooth, dark coils of a serpent, trapped but alive, ready to strike at anyone foolish enough to open that portal. He almost faltered. He had begun to raise his foot from the floor to take a step backward, when the moonlight burst free of the clouds and shot a bright silver beam of light through the lens on the cottage roof. It bent and shone directly onto the carved cross, deepening the black lines in contrast to the brilliant, sparkling light. Abraham closed his eyes, but the image of the cross was burned across his sight. It strobed gently in his mind and his heart rate and breathing slowed.
He'd need to hurry and gather wood before it got any darker. The memory of the very real snake in the hedge came back and again, he shivered. It wouldn't do to remember all of the magic of the mountain if he neglected to remember its dangers, as well. Not all of those dangers were human, or even walked in that guise.
His stomach rumbled with hunger, and he grimaced. This would not be an easy night. He had chosen to come with a single canteen of water and no food. He had not counted on the loss of blood in the hedges, or the emotional turmoil he had already faced weakening him. The fast was necessary, but he wondered if he should have waited.
The sky had darkened very quickly. Abraham stood in that darkness with his arms full of firewood and kindling. He was a few feet from the door of the cottage, and he turned to face the side of the mountain. He sensed things moving below. The air tingled, and he would have sworn that in that vast silence he felt the pulse of blood through every creature in the forest and the touch of their breath on his cheeks. He closed his momentarily useless eyes and reached out with his other senses.
He tried to picture the layout of the mountain, the homes he remembered, the road trailing down to Greene's store, the placement of the other church. He felt a chill as this thought crossed his mind. In that utter blackness he was suddenly aware of a darker spot, a blemish in the harmony of the silence. Within that darker cloud was motion, writhing, twining motion, and as if on cue, the voices of crickets cut through his reverie, their insistent whir too much like the voice of a serpent.
Abraham nearly dropped the wood, and he took a full step back before he opened his eyes to the moonlit night. The hissing sound died away to the harmless backdrop that it was, and he turned to the door and the hearth with his wood. He had a small flashlight, but he was conserving the batteries. He used it sparingly as he arranged the fire. He stacked the logs as his father had taught him so long ago, and tucked the kindling and bark up beneath. He lit the tinder and watched it crackle and snap as the flames licked their way up through the slightly larger twigs and reached hungrily for the logs.
He knew he'd need more wood before the night was done, but for the moment it was good to have the cottage brought back to flickering life by the dancing flame's light.
With the long night ahead of him, he took stock of his surroundings with a more critical eye. He managed to loosen the mechanisms that held the glass-framed windows tight and latched them open to let in the cool night air. Once this was done, he took the old broom that leaned in one corner and set to work. He started high and cleared the horizontal surfaces. He had to take the mattress outside to knock the dust from it. Miraculously, neither rodents nor insects had infested it, and the cottage had remained dry, so there was no mildew.
Despite the cottage's diminutive size, it took more than an hour for Abraham to be satisfied. He was thorough, sliding the broom into any crack or crevasse large enough to allow it. He worked the piles of dust and dirt toward the door, and then brushed them out into the night. The fire crackled and danced, and when he'd completed his circuit with the broom, he made himself a torch from one of the longer branches and a bit of his torn shirt. With this for light, he managed to gather another armload of wood. He repeated this three times, making certain he had enough to fight off all the hours of darkness and the chill of the night air, then he sat on the bed with his legs crossed and leaned back against the stone wall. He was exhausted, but his mind raced, and he knew sleep was not going to be quick in coming, if it visited at all.
He thought about Katrina, and for the first time since he'd written the note and left it on the table, the ache returned to his heart. She'd never understand. She would have understood if he'd explained it in person. He might even have convinced her to stay behind while he came to the mountain to straighten things out. He wasn't as certain about his own strength. He might not have tried hard enough to prevent her. In the isolated silence of the cottage, he missed her more than he'd ever missed anything in his life.
He thought of the food, blankets, and belongings he'd left behind in his mother's home. It had seemed foolish, at the time, to lug any of it up here without checking first. He'd intended to make the climb, then return to the cottage below and come up with a plan. He hadn't counted on the hedge, or the serpents. He hadn't counted on finding his mother dead on the mountain. He hadn't counted on the deep-rooted sense of accomplishment that cleaning out the old place and lighting a simple fire had brought him. He sipped his water, not wanting to waste it, and sat very still, watching the fire.
He knew that he should be mourning his mother's death, but it hadn't hit him. It had been so long since he'd seen her that there was a rift, deep inside, he would have to cross if he wanted closure. He had a list of things in his mind he'd wanted to say to her, questions he wanted to ask. It was too late for all of that now. It was too late for his mother, and his father, but maybe it wasn't too late for the mountain. Sometimes all that's left to the sons and daughters of the world is to make certain their actions validate the lives and loves of their parents.
He glanced around the room slowly. There was a comfort in this old place, despite its solitude and long neglect. The warped door effectively shut out the night, and the open windows let in just enough of a breeze to keep the fire from overheating the room, and to make it dance.
Abraham thought briefly of removing his shirt and checking the extent of the cuts and scratches, but thought better of it. He had very little water with him, not enough to drink and to cleanse his wounds. Once he got started he'd have to do it right, and he also had no material, other than the torn shirt and jeans themselves, with which to make bandages. Best to let it alone until morning.
He had come up the mountain without fanfare, but he knew that when he came back the following day it would have to be different. He would have to walk in the open, and without wavering. Everyone who could see him should see him, and those who did not see must hear it from those who did. There was no morning news on the mountain, but there were plenty of voices, and it wouldn't take long to spread all the way up to the peaks, and down to San Valencez, that Abraham Carlson had returned.
There were rituals. He couldn't just come here, as he had this day, if he wanted them to follow. If he wanted to see them trickle in, one by one, to his father's church, he would have to give them what they expected. What they believed he had denied them so many years before.
There had been no one to preach in the stone chapel since Jonathan Carlson died. Abraham had been young at the time, and his dreams of a world beyond the mountain were strong. His mother told him, quietly, what his duty was to the people, and to the mountain, and their God. They shunned her, called her evil behind her back, or named her witch, and still she had defended them.
Abraham had been outraged at the time, and was outraged still. If it were just about the others, his own family and the other folk on the mountain, he would not have come back at all—or if he had come back, it would only have been to get his mother out. That was before she sent him the note.
He wasn't sure why it made a difference. His family had all but disowned him when he chose to remain with his mother after his father's death, and that disownment had been complete when he turned his back on them all and took off down the mountain to the world beyond. He remembered them—their names
and faces, the stories of their ancestors—the stories of the mountain itself. He knew the other families as well, had played with their children, now grown as he was grown, had eaten cookies in many of their kitchens and fished for trout with their fathers.
All of them had their lessons to impart, and Abe's father had made certain his son was available to learn them. He could probably have passed on the same stories himself, but somehow it mattered that they come from others. They weren't just stories of the stone church, or of a single family. They were the roots of the people who lived up and down the side of that peak, the blood and beliefs of a dozen countries, and they stretched out to lands and times so far away, and long past, that it was hard to separate them, one from the other.
Now they were in danger. All of them were in danger. Abraham had felt it as he came up the mountain, and he'd felt it again outside these walls, trapped in the hedge and staring down the rattlesnake. He'd seen it in the empty, hollow pits that had been his mother's eyes, and known its voice when it howled in the winds of the storm. If his father were alive they would already be lined up outside this door, waiting.
Jonathan Carlson had not lived in the cottage, but in times of crisis, he'd stayed there. That was the first transgression—that he chose not to live in the cottage and tend the church day and night, but instead tended his own family and came on Sundays, and when he was needed. It was not the old way. It was not their way, and they had resented it, calling it more of the witch's work. When things grew dark, their resentment did not prevent them from coming for help. They had come that night so long past; the night the darkness was driven from the white chapel with its tall steeple and pealing bell.
Abe turned and lay down across the mattress on the old cot. He could still see the fire from where he lay, but his eyelids were suddenly very heavy. He heard the crackle of the fire and felt the soft breeze from the window, but he could concentrate on neither. The exertions of the day were catching up with him. In moments, he was asleep.
He dreamed.
They climbed the trail up the mountain, torches held high, and stretched off around the winding curves of the road until they curled out of sight. From where Abraham stood beside his father, waiting for their arrival, the lot of them might have been a fiery dragon slithering up through the trees. All he saw were their torches, occasional flashes as the flames reflected off of some metal buckle, or pair of glasses, and he heard the low hum of their voices.
They were still too far away for him to bring faces or single voices into focus. Farther down the mountain he could just make out the glow from that other church. It stained the tops of the trees a deep orange and its light seeped out across the top of the forest. Others gathered there, he knew. Abraham had never been to that church, but he had seen it. He had stood cloaked in the leaves and branches of the surrounding trees and watched as the tall, powerful Reverend Kotz entered and exited the building. As others came and went, some familiar faces, and others obviously from "somewhere down mountain," as his father had liked to say.
That was why Abraham watched. He dreamed of valleys, and oceans, deserts and fields so flat that you couldn't see a mountain on the clearest of days. He had read about such places in the books his mother provided, and heard about them in his father's stories—those from The Bible, and others. He had heard stories of "the old country" from so many different sources that all of the old countries had blended into one wondrous place in his mind and became a powerful, magnetic force, dragging at him from the world beyond. He stood at his father's side and waited, but his mind was a thousand miles away, and the hypnotic sway of the torches winding up from below did nothing to draw him back.
The first two men stepped clear of the trail and stood before the doors of the old stone church. They stood in silence for a long time, watching Jonathan Carlson and his son, and waiting as the others filed in behind them, forming a semi-circle. In the end the crowd hung back, and only the two leaders stepped forward.
Abraham recognized Harry George and Ed Murphy. They stood, their features highlighted by the torchlight, grim lines of anger etched into their features—anger and something more. Abraham's father stood stoic and silent, returning their gaze.
"You know why we've come," Harry George said at last. "If it was up to me, we'd be down there right now, setting torches to that place, but it isn't our way."
Jonathan Carlson nodded gravely. Abraham couldn't decide whether to stand, as his father, and meet the other men's gaze, or turn to see what the reaction would be.
"My brother is down there," Harry threw in. "His wife and two sons, and little Emma."
Abraham knew people who attended that other church as well, or had known them. Mountain families kept to themselves, but there were no secrets. There was no way to keep a thing secret, and that church made no effort at privacy. It drew them in like moths to a bright light, and when they came back out they were never quite the same. Their eyes were dull and lifeless, and they mumbled when they spoke. Abraham had not seen any of the boys of those families at the lake, or in the forest, except in passing.
"The time has come to do something about it," Harry went on.
"You know it's true, Reverend. We have been patient, and we have turned both cheeks to the evil. It eats our families from within."
"It hasn't eaten you, Harry," Jonathan Carlson replied. Harry was silent, as if the words had removed some vital support he was counting on. At last, Ed spoke.
"It isn't as though we haven't thought about it. I had to drag my own wife through the trees to keep her away from that place, and she's locked at home now. My sister Jenny is down there now, with her boy."
Reverend Carlson said nothing.
"They aim to baptize him," Ed said, his voice breaking. "That boy helped me put up my wood shed not two months back. He's a good, hard working boy. They aim to baptize him in that pool, Reverend. I can't let that happen."
Ed Murphy's voice broke then, ending in a soft, high-pitched squeak. The man flushed from head to toe, but he stood his ground.
Abraham shrunk closer to his father, shaking.
The pool. Everything had gone south at the white chapel when they installed the baptismal pool, and the tanks; some said five, others said as many as ten. Glass tanks like Abraham had read about in books, meant to house glorious schools of colored fish and bright coral. Only about half of the tanks in the white chapel held water. All of them held serpents, and the baptismal pool was the center of it all. Abraham had never seen the place, but he'd heard the stories.
Men and women with snakes twined around their arms and throats, winding up their legs, standing like moving sculptures of pagan statues. Children led through the center to that pool, through the threat of fanged poison and the writhing bodies of their own parents by the Right Reverend Kotz to the pool of cleansing, where their sins would be washed away, if they were pure. If they were found worthy, and did not come up wanting. If they ignored the writhing bodies and flickering tongues surrounding them and weathered the storm of fangs.
No one who had actually witnessed this ceremony could be found to explain it or to verify it. Some had tried to slip close and peer in the windows, but of those about half had been drawn in, and the other half had lost their nerve. Bits and pieces could be had, though, mumbled words from those who passed through, needing this done, or to buy a little of that. Those who attended the white chapel were not dead, and they still lived on the mountain. The mountain was too small for secrets to thrive, and Reverend Kotz went to no pains to hide his actions. His words and his faith spread like poison over the face of the mountain, and now those who stood against it had come to Abraham's father.
"We must break the pool," Jonathan Carlson said softly. "We must cast it down and scatter the serpents. If you want your families to be safe, there must be a cleansing."
Whispered words wound their way back through those gathered, and the volume of the murmur of voices raised a notch. Abraham shivered again. He didn't know what his fathe
r meant, but he saw the effect of the words in the other two men's expressions. They were frightened, but their eyes glittered brightly, and their fists clenched on their torches. The torches drew shadows from the men's forms, and Abraham, watching those shadows, wondered who was more powerful in each—the man with the glittering eye, or the dark man who danced in the shadows beyond the light.
"Leave me," Jonathan Carlson had said. His voice was powerful, and they obeyed him without question, but Abraham knew his father well enough to hear the weariness in his tone, and the doubt.
A branch snapped in the fireplace, and Abraham started awake. For a moment he still saw the wavering torches and the long, endless line of men and women slowly winding away down the mountain. He felt his father's presence, and that faded slowly to the comfort of the cottage itself.
He sat up, rose, went to the fire, and tossed a few more branches in to bring up the light. A slight chill had set in, and he closed the windows carefully, being certain the old wood frames sealed properly. It was a ritual he could recall his father performing, and the act soothed his churning thoughts.
He hadn't thought about that white church, or the baptismal pool within, for years, but it was still as clearly etched in his mind as if it had only been days since he'd seen it. He had seen it, after all. Everyone had seen it, but not until after the cleansing. Even then it had left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd been unable to remain in that church under the eyes of the hideous old statue above the door.
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