The Keeper's Heart

by Catherine Stovall

  Dusting the cobwebs from her clothing as best as she could, Amara quietly crept back down the stairs. She took each step with careful deliberation, feeling as if she were a trespasser on sacred ground. The house around her held secrets she would never know, but their presence was a heavy cloak on her in the silence of the dark stairway. The bottom seemed forever away, but she finally reached it, embracing the light and airy atmosphere of the kitchen.

  Searching through the refrigerator, she found a plethora of cold cuts and other simple sandwich ingredients. “Hey, you guys, come in here!” The resonance of her voice echoing through the halls of the house made her cringe, but she was rewarded with the sounds of the others approaching.

  “Did you find something?” Anthony’s expectant face appeared in the doorway.

  Desiree came to slip up under his arm, eyes wide as she looked around the brightly painted kitchen with burnt orange walls, white trim, and shiny clean marble countertops. “Oooh, food!”

  As Marcus joined them, the hunt and the bodies of the dead in the next room were temporarily forgotten. Around mouths full of food, they discussed the places they had searched and ideas of where they might look later on. Each of them was tired, worn, and filthy from their efforts, but none more than Amara.

  Her arm throbbed and her head had begun to pound. The overwhelming things she had put her human form through threatened to devastate her once more. Reaching into her pocket, Amara pulled out the small vial and downed the contents.

  Scrunching up her nose a bit, she asked, “So, do you think we should go ahead and deal with the reverend and the Bryan now? Get it over with before they start to get…um…gross…or well…grosser?” She couldn’t help the freaked out shiver that ran up her spine.

  A chorus of unenthusiastic replies followed the question as they rose to venture back into the church area of the house. Amara’s hand reached out to twine her fingers with Marcus’s once more as they walked slowly through the dim, wood paneled hallway. The dread filling her was a heavy weight on her physical body and her mind, until she heard Desiree snicker.

  Turning around to look over her shoulder, Amara couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. Anthony, the tough guy, had a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. The look on his face was as serious as Amara had ever seen it, but the picture he made was quite hysterical.

  “What do you plan on doing with that?” she asked, absolutely perplexed.

  Bristling at the astonishment in her voice, Anthony replied, “Snakes! Those things are probably still in there, and I’m not getting bit by one.”

  Four voices briefly rang out in laughter, but solemn silence reigned once more as they entered the chapel. The mother’s head still lay staring bleakly through unseeing eyes, and the son remained beneath the pew. His face was a waxen mask of terror and pain, and his hand still lay stretched out, reaching for her.

  Suddenly, Anthony’s broom and mop didn’t seem such a farfetched idea. Letting go of her, Marcus took the broom and carefully moved forward, Anthony at his heels. Sidestepping Peggy’s head, they stood, breath held, listening for the sound of the smaller rattlers. Sensing no danger, Marcus very gently brushed the broom’s bristles down the front of Bryan’s shirt.

  “I’m trying desperately to be respectful here, Amara, but I am not going to lose a finger for this,” his worried voice trembled as he spoke.

  Amara knew if he turned, she would see terror in his deep blue eyes. “It’s okay. You’re fine. Just make sure they are gone.” Turning to Desiree, she grabbed the girl’s hand and led her up the stairs where the baptismal stood behind the pulpit. “Come on. Let’s drain the water. We can put him in here. At least it will be better than lying under the pew.”

  Desiree sniffled, but she held her chin up in an angle that declared she would tough out the situation. Together, they found the switch to the pumps and drained the pool of water as the boys declared they had found Peggy’s body. Her raggedy skirts and blouse covered in the blood from where head had been severed.

  “Go into the kitchen and see if you can find some rubber gloves,” Amara called from the dais. “Don’t touch all that mess with your bare hands.” Guilt ridden by her own callous attitude, she began to gather the flowers from the spilled vases and decorations—using them to line the pool.

  Desiree gave her a questioning look, but bent down to scoop up an arm full of lilies. The plastic leaves rustled and she threw the flowers to the floor, screaming as she did. Fleeing in reverse, to remove herself from the perceived danger, her back slammed into the podium, knocking it sideways to the floor.

  The resulting crash made the girl yell out as if the devil himself had hold of her. “Oh no! No, snake! Snake, Amara, Snake!”

  The sound of the boys running back down the hall and Desiree’s screeching had Amara doubled over with laughter. “Des. Desi! Desiree! There’s no snake. They are plastic flowers, honey, that’s what made the noise. You are fine.”

  Desiree stopped, mouth open and wide eyes blinking in utter shock as she slumped to the floor with her hand over her heart. “Oh god. Oh my god. Oh. That’s not funny. Amara stop laughing at me!”

  Anthony’s angry voice cut through the noise, “What happened?”

  Amara tried to respond, “Sh—she—” The laughter couldn’t be held back and she covered her mouth as she continued to giggle. All the while, she felt horrible, knowing her actions were not respectful to the dead. As a Keeper, she had possessed a profound knowledge of life and loss. As a human girl, her mind could not handle the stress and the horrors, replacing it all with a sort of temporary madness.

  Shaking his head, Anthony knelt down by his crying girlfriend, wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders. “Babe, what happened? Are you okay?”

  She sniffed once, then twice, her mouth opening to explain. Instead, her tears turned to laughter, as well. Finally, between giggling gasps, she managed to explain.

  When she was finally able to wipe the tears from her eyes, Amara looked up, surprised to find Marcus standing back from them with his mouth turned down in a scowl. She followed his gaze downward to the place where the bodies lay. At first, she was too distracted by the grotesqueness, but when she continued to stare, she saw the indention in the floor.

  A slight sagging in the red carpet, a shadow of a line where the plush material had been cut, a corner slightly rumpled. All these things came together in her mind, and she knew somewhere deep inside, they had found what they were looking for.

  “They must have been trying to escape when the Apollumi caught them.”

  Marcus nodded, “I thought they had been trying to hide, turns out they were trying to run.”

  “What are you talking about?” Anthony looked from Marcus and Amara to the pew and back again, unable to see the subtle differences.

  Desiree, who stood with her head cocked to the side studying the scene before her as if she was part of a murder mystery, answered her boyfriend’s question. “There’s a door, under the carpet, Bryan was trying to get to it when they died.” Then looking at Amara with a questioning expression, she asked, “Right?”

  Amara nodded. “Right.”

  It took all of them to move Bryan’s body, rolling it onto one of the heavy velvet drapes and using the corners to hoist him into the baptismal. Once they had him inside, they prepared to move Peggy as well. It was only right that the mother should be with her son as they went to meet their God on the plains of justice. Amara wondered if such a God could forgive people who would have murdered her in his name.

  The old woman’s body, covered in all manner of blood and gore from her beheading, was light. Avoiding the sticky mess as much as they could, Marcus and Anthony placed her on another curtain. Amara fought down the bubbling nausea threatening to overcome her, the sandwiches had seemed like a good idea, but she severely regretted them at the moment.

  No one could touch the head. The dripping cranium with the dead fish eyes was just too much. Standing a few feet from
where it lay, they silently measured themselves up to the task, not one of them sure they could bring themselves to scoop it up and place it back with the body it belonged too. An odd sense of dread filled Amara each time she thought of her flesh coming near the matted, blood stained hair.

  Anthony gripped the handle of the broom, and Amara knew he was contemplating sweeping Peggy’s face. The idea of head hockey would have been funny had it not been a serious reality quite literally staring her in the face. Without a word, she looked at Anthony and shook her head. He tilted his, looking somewhat relieved, and she knew he had understood her clearly.

  The minutes ticked by, the quiet indecision growing heavier with time. Until finally, Desiree lifted her chin, a telltale sign that she had her mind set, and scooped up Reverend Peggy Macklin’s severed appendage as if it were nothing. Wasting no time, she turned to place it next to the body, but froze mid-step.

  Chapter 15

  Through a Brief Darkness

  Desiree’s eyes glazed over and turned into bowls of ivory-white milk as her body shook in small tremors. Amara and Anthony both reached for her, desperate to offer assistance, and yet, fearful to touch her as she twisted.

  Suddenly, a voice called out, not from Desiree, but from the head in her hand. “You have succeeded in your task, demon. You have killed off my flock with your evil. What more can you demand of an old woman’s dead spirit?” The animated face twisted into a mask of hatred.

  Amara’s eyes narrowed into hard slits as Marcus and Anthony’s widened. “Reverend Macklin, I want nothing else from you. I’m sorry for your passing and what occurred here. It was never my intention to cause you or your congregation any harm. However, I’m going to have to ask you to release the human form that holds you.”

  Peggy’s sandpaper laughter echoed in the silence that followed, leaving shivers of tension in its wake. “Lift me higher.” At her command, Desiree’s hand raised, holding Peggy’s head to eye level. “You have nothing to barter with, she-demon. I can keep this body as long as I like.” Looking sideways at the vessel that held her haggard old soul in its hand, Peggy forced Desiree into a wobbly, slow turn. “It is rather refreshing to have able limbs once more. Perhaps I will leave this disengaged skull and live within her.”

  “Reverend, plea—”

  Before Amara could finish, Peggy’s eyes snapped up and her mouth turned down in a harsh frown. “I could kill her, you know. This body is mine to do with as I please.”

  Anthony lurched forward, seething with his fists tight at his sides, unwilling to hurt the girl he loved to get at the spirit who threatened to harm her. “Get away from her. Don’t you have a light to go into or something?”

  Seeing the battle in the boy’s eyes, Peggy hissed, “I’ve only come to deliver the message to which the demon was intended to have. I will go on to receive my reward once this is done, and you shall all rot in the bowels of Satan’s den.”

  Amara drew the hag’s attention back to her. “Then what is this message?”

  Peggy grimaced as if the words were poison sickening her tongue. “The grave itself is but a covered bridge. Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!”

  As soon as the words fell from her lips, Peggy’s eyes closed, and Desire’s body convulsed. She fell, without will to prevent the hard landing, Peggy’s hair still gripped in her hand. Marcus, Amara, and Anthony paused; caught in a moment of fear and indecision, terrified she was dead.

  A shuddering breath rocked Desiree’s body and she audibly gasped. The simple gestured brought the others to their knees at her side. Questions bombarded her from every side as they hoisted her to her feet and freed the bloody strands of hair from where it was ensnared around her trembling fingers. Desperate to know she was okay, they babbled over top of each other.

  “What happened? Get off me!”

  Anthony scooped her into his arms, holding her as tightly as he dared. His words were muffled against Desiree’s neck as a curtain of hair hid their faces. Once again, a strange longing rose up inside Amara. The need to feel sweet words whispered against the warmth of her flesh, to feel the sting of joyful tears in her eyes, and to know someone would die rather than live without her. All those things she wanted, but could never have.

  Not wanting to pull the two young lovers apart, Amara scooped up Peggy’s head and made her way to the baptismal. She placed the decapitated appendage as gently as she could alongside the body, surprised she still felt sorrow when looking down at mother and child. No matter what sort of life a person lived, it was a life, and Amara had begun to lose her understanding of death. In its place grew a seedling of fear that the same would happen to her.

  Marcus appeared beside her and whispered the words Peggy had given them, solemn as if it were a prayer.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  He shook his head, “No, but I recognize it. When I was little, I read poetry—more than I care to admit. It’s a quote from Longfellow’s The Golden Legend.”

  “Perhaps the meaning will become clear somewhere down the road. For now, we still have to figure out where that door beneath the pew leads, and we need to do it quick. I’m not sure why they haven’t returned yet, but the Apollumi are sure to come back to search for us.”

  Anthony and Marcus pushed back the carpet to reveal a solid wooden door. There was no handle, only a notch worn into the top corner where it could be lifted by hand. As Marcus slowly lifted the panel in a squeak of wood against wood, dust fell into inky blackness and a cool draft that smelled of earth and decay rose up from within the depths.

  They held their breaths, listening and waiting, but nothing came­—silence prevailed.

  Carefully lowering her head, Amara peered into the darkness, letting her eyes adjust to the ebony night that seemed to stretch endlessly out before her. She felt a longing, as if something down below were calling to her, beckoning her. For a split second, the Reaper in the mist appeared in the back of her mind and then faded. Not a prophecy or vision, simply an image stirred by the smell of sweetened death.

  Her vision cleared, and Amara could just make out a light switch near the top of the stairs, bare wires hanging indifferently. She cautiously reached out and flipped it into the on position. Hundreds of tiny lights had been strung down both sides of the stairs and through the tunnel below, lifting the gloom, but not the edgy feeling crawling across her flesh.

  Marcus led, Anthony and Desiree followed, and Amara brought up the rear. Step by creaking wooden step, they slowly lowered themselves down into the tunnel. Though Amara was meant to be their protector, she was shamelessly grateful when Desiree’s hand crept back to close around hers.

  Their breathing and the soft tread of their steps were the only sounds as they navigated through the twisting passage. The walls seemed to have dips and arches, none clearly defined beneath the thick cobwebs and heavy dust. The floor was uneven with small chunks of stone sticking up at odd intervals as if it had once been cobbled.

  One such stone caught Amara unaware. The toe of her shoe snagged on the rough edges, and she fell. Releasing Desiree’s hand, she toppled forward, her arms flailing wildly. Her right hand grasped out for the wall, trying to keep her balance. Instead of finding purchase, her palm slid on a smooth surface and she landed face first in the dirt, an astonished cry escaping her lips.

  Marcus came, taking her by the elbow and lifting her up. His hands instantly moved to brush the filth from her body as she spat and sputtered the dry dust from her mouth. “You okay?” Real concern burned in his eyes, enough to make her flush with embarrassment.

  “I’m fine, really. What the heck is that wall made of? It felt like glass…” Amara stopped mid-sentence as she turned to see where her hand had left a smeared imprint.

  It appeared a window pane hid beneath the grime and dust, and when she bent slightly, she could see something just beyond. Amara moved closer, the smell of putrefaction stinging her nostrils as she attempted to see what lay on the other side. At first,
only see the gauzy outline of a lumpy form could be seen. Pressing closer, her face almost touching the glass, she stared harder.

  “Oh…” Her head swam as her words failed her.

  “What’s wrong? What is it?” Anthony demanded, looking around as if some unseen danger lurked in every shadowy corner and may leap out and attack them at a moment’s notice.

  Amara stepped back from the small pane, carefully measuring her footsteps so she did not fall again, but her eyes remained locked onto the thing that hid within. “It’s…it’s human. There’s a body in there.”

  She looked around her. A new indention began every six inches and stretched six-feet across. As her eyes roamed floor to ceiling and as far down the hall as she could see, tiny glints of light reflected here or there. “We’re surrounded by them. We’re surrounded by death.”

  She could hear the others talking, their voices muted drums sounding in the distance. Suddenly, the space beneath the house became unbearably hot and Amara felt sick. The others wouldn’t know, couldn’t understand, the fear that wrought itself upon her. In a place that reeked of death, where the bodies of men, women, and children dwelled, she was surrounded by all the Reaper was. More than the Apollumi, more than anything, she feared him and what he meant to do.

  The spasm of terror faded, and her eyes refocused. Anthony, Marcus, and Desiree had wiped sections of glass clean, revealing the grotesque and frigid grins of the mummified souls of the long dead. Morbid human thrill held them in thrall as they gawked into the doorway of another’s decay.

  “Hey, I hate to bring the freak show to an end, but we do have something more important to be doing.”

  The snappish tone in Amara’s voice raised a few eyebrows, but the others fell back from the walls. They walked for what seemed forever before the high arch of a doorway appeared at the end of the passage, gaping like an open mouth. The rows of twinkling lights wrapped around the opening, but ended there—leaving the room beyond cast in darkness.