Nothing ever comes to court. They test the sample and say it is a possible match, that they will do further tests, but never get back in touch with me. My bloody-headed friend has arranged everything.
I begin to think about taking a new wife. I owe it to my children, I owe it to myself.
My eldest daughter becomes more and more lovely each day. She is well on her way to becoming a woman.
“What is it, Daddy?” she asks when she sees me looking at her.
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m just glad that you chose to come down from heaven to be part of my family.”
“Oh, Daddy,” she says, embarrassed. Then a few minutes later she asks, “Do you think Mommy is happy in Heaven?”
“She is,” I say. “But I bet she misses us.”
I come into my daughter’s room at night and look at her as she sleeps. She is so lovely. If she wakes up, I don’t know what I will do.
My daughter stays up late at night watching television with me. Sometimes she lets me put my arm around her and pull her close. I kiss her on the forehead, smell her hair.
“Now that your mother is gone, you’re the lady of the house,” I tell her. “That’s a lot of responsibility.”
“Oh, Daddy,” she says. But I know she likes me to say it. It makes her feel important.
I buy her things, little trinkets, and leave them on the table beside her bed. She finds them and I see her privately treasure them, but she never says anything to me about them.
I can’t stop thinking about her. It makes it difficult to concentrate.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“Why do you keep saying that, Daddy?”
“I really love you, I guess,” I say.
She lets it pass. She is pleased by the attention, but cannot see that I am courting her. I would marry her if I could, if society would allow it.
On the way home from work I see in the crowd ahead of me one of the boys from my congregation, the Bavens boy. He is drifting slowly, aimlessly, bouncing a tennis ball, a racket case slung across his shoulder. He is a handsome boy, good enough to swallow.
I follow him through the crowd, hurry to catch up with him.
“Bavens,” I say. “James Bavens, right?”
He turns, startled, and sees me. “Provost Fochs,” he says.
“How long has it been since we talked, Jimmy?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Have we ever talked?”
“We should,” I say. “We should be talking every six months. How’s your spiritual welfare?”
“I dunno. Fine, I guess.”
“Come by and see me.”
“Well,” he says. “Maybe.”
“Sure,” I say. “I don’t bite. Tomorrow night. Nine o’clock. At the church.”
“I guess,” he says, embarrassed.
“You’re a handsome boy, Jimmy,” I tell him. “You’re becoming a real man. We need to talk about that.”
“I got to go.”
“Sure,” I say. “If you have to. See you tomorrow.”
The next night he doesn’t show. I am all afire with disappointment. I wait for an hour and then give up, tramp the streets home.
On the way home I pass through the woods, the moon limning everything pale and visible. I stop at the clearing where the girl died and sit on the rock. It seems a place like any other, completely ordinary.
I leave and go back home.
The children are already in bed. The babysitter sits at the dining room table with books spread all about her, writing a paper. When she sees me she starts closing the books, gathering them into a stack.
“How were the children?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says. “You have such good kids, Provost Fochs.”
“Thank you,” I say.
She gathers her books and stands.
“No need to go so soon,” I say.
“Oh,” she says. “No, I have to get back.”
I take the books out of her hands, put them on the table again. I lead her over to the couch.
“Come on,” I say.
She sits awkwardly down on the very edge of the cushion.
“Relax,” I say. “You’re still being paid. Stay awhile and talk.”
She relaxes a little, but not much. I ask her questions about herself, her family. About the classes she is taking in school. I inch toward her until I am very close to her indeed. I reach out and brush her hair behind an ear.
“You know,” I say. “You are a very beautiful girl.”
“Please don’t say that,” she says. She keeps shrinking back into the corner of the couch. I put my arm around her.
“Please,” she says.
I kiss her. A chaste little kiss is all.
And then before I know it she is crying, trying to get her clothes back on as quickly as she can. I am not sure of all the details, but I am lying there watching her, savoring the way my body feels. My youngest is crying. The twins are at the top of the stairs looking down. I get up to put my pants on, shout at them to go to bed.
“What did you do to her, Dad?”
“Nothing,” I shout. “Go to bed.”
The girl is crying so hard that she can’t find her way to the door. She keeps stumbling into the table. If I weren’t in my own house, this would be murder number two. I yell at the twins to go upstairs and they go. I go over to the girl and take her by the arms. She shudders, tries to get away.
“Harlot,” I say. “Jezebel.” And thrust her out of the house.
I take a rag from the kitchen and wipe up the blood. I sit down at the table to think. Her books are there. I scoop them up and take them outside and dump them on top of her.
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” I say. “They will blame you.” In fact around here that is generally what they do.
“And get off my porch,” I say. “You can’t stay here.”
I go inside and close the door.
I stay downstairs a few hours, calming down. I watch the television until the national anthem comes on, but I am not tired. My skin is buzzing.
I climb up the stairs, look into each room. My youngest has cried herself to sleep. The twins are asleep as well, crouched against one another in the same bed.
Going into my eldest’s room, I lean over her bed. I reach down and kiss her lips. When I lift my head I see her eyes open, watching me.
“What is it, Daddy?” she says.
I lie down beside her on the bed, kiss her again, longer, with my tongue.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
“I don’t like that, Daddy.”
“Please, Daddy,” she says. “Don’t!”
“Daddy!” she screams. “No, Daddy, no!”
CHAPTER 21
Rebirth
The first thing Rector Bates does when I step into the office is to hit me in the face. He knocks me down, stands over me until I scramble out from under him and stand up again.
“You bastard,” he says. Then he goes and sits down and holds his head in his hands.
When he lifts his head he looks all around the room, seems unwilling to meet my gaze.
“I’ve been a fool,” he says. “I never should have believed you.”
“I thought the Spirit told you to believe.”
“I heard what I wanted to hear. You’ve used me all along, Fochs,” he says.
“Have I?”
“Your babysitter called me,” he says. “I went over and saw her. Jesus, what you did to her, Fochs.”
“She’s lying,” I say.
“She’s not lying,” he says. “She’s a twenty-year-old woman,” he says. “She has no reason to lie. And those kids,” he says. “They weren’t lying either. The only liar is you.”
“I never lied.”
“You should hang for what you did,” he says. “At the very least you should spend the rest of your life in jail. All those people who trusted you.”
I start to protest. He raises his hand, stops me.
“You
won’t go to jail,” he says. “The woman has agreed not to press charges. Besides, it would be too damaging for us. We’ve invested ourselves too thoroughly in this.”
It seems to me that it is less in their interest to cover it up, but I am not in a position where I would care to say so. Instead, I smile.
“What are you smiling about?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
“If it was my choice,” he says. Then he stands, paces rapidly, sits down again. He leans forward, places his palms on the desk. “I must respect the wishes of my spiritual betters,” he says.
“Whose choice is it?”
“I can’t say,” he says. “My burden in this is to be obedient.”
I just nod.
“Go home,” he says. “Get out of here. Get out of my sight.”
So I leave. So I go home.
In a few days my daughter begins to trust me again. The next time I am gentler with her. I am still provost, I still go to church every Sunday, nothing having changed except I have been forbidden by my area rector to conduct private interviews with the youth.
Still, I get a few in. An interview with the Bavens boy, for instance. He proves a good pupil, better than I would have suspected.
It goes on for a month maybe, the area rector not speaking to me at all. I have free run of the youth. My daughter and I become closer. God loves me.
Rector Bates calls me into his office again. This time he is at least civil.
“Things have been arranged, Fochs,” he says. “I don’t like it, but it’s not my place to complain.”
“Arranged?”
“Don’t ask me who,” he says. “I can’t tell you that.” He leans across the desk. “You are moving,” he says.
“Moving?”
“You’ve been given a job,” he says. “I’m not sure who has agreed to it or how many general authorities know. I know at least one does. And I respect him.”
“What do you mean, moving?”
“They’ve arranged a job for you. At the Church College. You’ll be teaching accounting. Any hint of nonsense and you’re through.”
I put up a show of resistance. “What if I don’t like it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You’ll do it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’re on your own.”
I reach across the desk and shake his hand. He takes it reluctantly.
After a few minutes, I walk out of the office, whistling. I am a free man, and pure. I am on my way home to celebrate with my daughter. I have been forgiven. We are allowed to begin again, with new souls to save. We are all of us about to be reborn.
Funder Acknowledgments
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Praised by Peter Straub for going “furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice,” Brian Evenson is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He is also the winner of the International Horror Guild Award and the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel, and his work has been named in Time Out New York’s top books.
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