by Martin Kee
James remained still, his eyes open, unfocused and catatonic. Skyla considered finding a mirror and holding it beneath his nose.
Then he snored, making Skyla nearly scream a second time. It was a gut-wrenching, roof-shaking snore that she could feel in her chest. It was followed by a second.
And then a third.
It became softer and more rhythmic, until James closed his eyes as if nothing had happened at all. But Skyla lay awake until her heart stopped racing. Eventually the sound of morning birds gently nudged her into unconsciousness.
*
She awoke the next morning feeling groggy and tired. She nearly closed her eyes again until she realized that the fold-up bed was hidden in the wall. Events from the night before still drifted in and out of her memory like a tide. A beam of sunlight stabbed at her face. Her tongue tasted like something had died there and her eyes still ached with fatigue.
James sat at the dining table, his face unreadable. She opened her mouth to greet him and then closed it. He was looking at her as though she were a deer he might shoot. Skyla’s heart skipped a beat. She had seen that look before on every street in Bollingbrook, on every citizen as they crossed themselves when she passed. She saw it on the faces of beggars who would turn away from her and groan.
“What are you?” said James, as if talking to himself.
His elbows rested on the table, his fingers steepled.
Skyla said nothing.
“What are you?” he said again, directing the question at her.
Skyla’s mind drifted to the axe that sat embedded in the stump outside.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
James flexed his fingers on the table. “You aren’t from Bollingbrook,” he said. “I’ve met the people up the hill.”
“Why would I lie?” Her voice was small, unable to believe what she was hearing.
“Because,” he said, waving at her leather backpack. “Bollingbrook is industrial, but I’ve never seen arcane technology like those goggles come from there.”
“I told you,” she tried to keep her voice even. “They aren’t from Bollingbrook—”
“Oh, I know,” he said rolling his eyes. “They were a gift.”
He spat the word like a curse.
“They were a gift.” She felt her cheeks growing warm.
“Sure they were,” he said coolly.
Skyla stifled a gasp. She knew that if she spoke her voice would tremble and crack.
“You know who does make arcane artifacts?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“Rhinewall,” he said. “And do you know the sort of folk who steal things from Rhinewall?”
She only glared at him, her mouth set in a line.
“Bandits, that’s who. How long were you going to scope my house out before your Lassimir buddies broke in? A week? Were you going to case my cabin and then move on up to Bollingbrook and scam whoever you could up there?”
“I told you!” She was furious now.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “You’re from Bollingbrook. Let me guess, you’re the only poor one there, I bet. Explain to me what ‘orphan’ can afford a private school uniform.”
“It’s my—”
“Your story stinks.” His eyes were small pinpricks now. “I’ve met the Bollingbrook folk. They are good people, honest hardworking people who did not once lie to me.”
He punctuated “once” by slamming his hands on the table, palms open. It rang like a gunshot in the silence. Skyla jumped and wiped a tear from her cheek. She turned away. She could see where this was going.
This is my curse, she thought, rising from the couch as if being barked at by an angry dog; she collected her things.
James continued to rant. “How long have you been doing this? You get a stranger to take you in, you look at his house and then what? Bandits? Thieves…”
She did not dare look at him. His ranting was almost hysterical, as if he were no longer angry with her, but terrified of her.
And he was.
He almost sounds like he’s trying to convince himself nothing happened last night, she thought. And then a more troubling thought crept into her mind: Why did it go after him and not me? I thought they were following me.
The thought passed through and left like a breeze out a window, disrupted by the tirade.
“You tell your thieving cohorts that James Mulligan would sooner shoot them in the face than let one of your ilk stay here ever again!”
She took her pile of clothes into the washroom. When the door slammed, the yelling ended as if a faucet was turned off. She dressed as fast as possible, her mind drifting out to the rucksack in the other room.
He’s going to take it, she thought. He’s going to take it and try and return the goggles to wherever he thinks they are from…
Rhinewall? There was that city again. She filed it away in the back of her mind and emerged from the bathroom. She was transformed into an urchin again, but at least she was fed and clean. Her shoes felt as though they had shrunk a size and creaked as she walked across the floor. James was a silent, brooding mountain in his chair. He did not look at her as she passed him, only stared at the dormant metal stove, his eyes wet.
Skyla felt a pang of pity for the man. She opened her rucksack and exhaled as the goggles stared back at her. She patted her pocket and sighed at the comforting weight of the coin. Well at least he didn’t rob me, she thought.
Or worse, a voice in he back of her head warned.
She pulled the goggles out and placed them on her head, lenses raised. She tightened the chinstrap then turned to face him one last time. She jabbed a finger at the leather cap defiantly. “A gift.”
The last time Skyla saw James before slamming the door, he looked diminished and ashamed. His red-rimmed eyes stared off into nothing. The only emotion they betrayed was relief as the door closed.
Skyla stepped back out into the wilderness. Orrin called to her from a nearby branch and landed on her shoulder from behind. Without looking at him she raised a hand, which he gladly ducked beneath to receive attention. She stroked his smooth feathers. It was comforting to her as well as Orrin, who made little gleeful chirping noises whenever her fingers would scratch at just the right spot.
“If anything happened to you,” she said, but didn’t finish the thought. I’d what? What could I do?
It wasn’t clear if he had understood her—if Orrin ever understood her, or it was her imagination. Maybe everything, including the shadows was just in her mind, a child’s game that she might as well start growing out of. But, that didn’t explain what happened to her mother, or James for that matter. He had certainly seen something.
The intersection greeted her with an embarrassing familiarity. The path you should have taken, chided the voice.
She turned and drifted down the path again as the woods became dark with tiny shafts of light through the dense leaves. A low cliff emerged and flanked her along the trail, its walls covered in deep green moss, ferns sprouting from its crevices. Her footsteps sounded muted and dull.
Even Orrin was quiet, which seemed odd for him. Usually he would be chatting with all the other birds in the branches above. It dawned on her that there were no birds chirping in the trees at all. In fact, the only sound was the monotonous shuffling of her tattered shoes in the gravel.
She followed the edge of the cliff until the path narrowed between trees so dense she almost had to walk sideways to get between them.
“Do you think we are even on a path anymore?”
Squawk.
As if to answer her question, the skull of a large cat appeared, pinned to a tree, staring at her with wide vacant sockets. Skyla looked around carefully. It didn’t do much good. The trees were so packed together, anyone could have been watching her and she never would have known it.
Her toe caught an exposed root. She made a failed attempt to right herself, but her other foot caught on something as well. Orrin launched from her shoulder as sh
e plunged into the soft earth hands first. There was instant burning pain in her palms where dirt embedded itself. She only managed a muffled squeak before the lenses slammed shut over her eyes from the force.
The world went dark.
Someone stepped over her. The first thought that went through her mind was how could anyone have been following her so closely. The second question was: Why aren’t they helping me up?
A foot landed just beyond Skyla’s head. The girl completely ignored her; she glowed white. She wore a pea coat and an oversized, square rucksack that stuck out beyond her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of aviator goggles…
Skyla’s mouth dropped open as she watched the other girl take a few more steps and then slip. The Other-Skyla made no noise when she fell. A second girl sprouted from that one and continued to walk as if nothing had happened. She stopped and spoke to someone. A third Skyla sprouted from that one. In the meantime, the first one who had fallen was sitting and crying, goggles still raised above her eyes.
Her world went bright as another Skyla fell almost directly on top of her. The goggles slammed shut over the girl’s eyes and for a strange moment, she was looking into a mirror. The two girls could only stare at one another as they lay on their stomachs. Skyla reached a tentative hand out and watched it pass through the girl’s face as if it were mist. It was no reflection; it was another her.
Nausea gripped her stomach. She quickly grabbed the lenses and turned them upward with a deep breath as the world returned to normal. All the other versions of herself vanished, leaving nothing but deep, green forest.
She pulled herself up and sat on the root that had tripped her, feeling the warm pain from her wounded palms. Orrin was on a nearby branch.
“You weren’t with any of them,” she said. “Why is that?”
But Orrin wasn’t looking at her. Instead he stared at something just outside her field of vision as a sound startled her.
It was the click and twang of a crossbow being cocked and armed.
Chapter 7
“You do realize,” said Father Thomas, “that you are maybe the only person in all of Bollingbrook who has ever seen that house.”
The Reverend Summers sat across from him, hands clamped casually behind his head. Father John Thomas couldn’t put a finger on it, but something about the man made his scalp itch. Maybe it was the fact that he had been given so much sudden authority, or maybe it was just the way that those pale eyes never blinked.
“Well I am good at my job,” said Lyle with a smile that faded just short of his eyes.
“I suppose that’s the reason they hired you without notifying me.”
The Reverend Lyle Summers feigned confusion. “Now why on God’s green earth would they notify you?” There was a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Because,” said Father Thomas, “the girl and her mother were my parishioners. I was responsible for them.”
“You ejected them from your church, Father.” Lyle spoke slowly, as if to a child. “I believe that when you decided to do that, you pretty much abandoned that cause.”
“Well, cause or not, I would like to think that I could have helped before all this happened.”
“And just how would you have helped?” said Lyle, leaning in. “I’m genuinely curious. You know as well as I do that something was protecting that house, otherwise your citizens would have burned it years ago. They were sharpening their pitchforks as soon as she got that woman killed.”
“I could have gotten them to invite me,” said Father Thomas. “I honestly think that the daughter trusted me.”
“Well, it was bound to happen eventually,” said Lyle. He reached into his jacket pocket and winced. “A woman with those kind of problems. Poor thing.”
Spare me the theatrics, thought John.
“I still would have appreciated some notice before you went ahead with this investigation,” said Father Thomas.
The Reverend Summers held his hands out, palms up. “Father Thomas, if I had done that, it would have meant contacting every parish in the archdiocese. Do you honestly think that I had time to go through your bureaucracy? Events were already in motion.” He grabbed the silver cigarette case from his coat and drew a small white roll from it.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t smoke,” said Thomas.
Lyle let the cigarette dangle in his mouth. He placed the silver container back in his pocket with an exasperated sigh.
“Father Thomas,” he said. “I did not come here to get your blessing. I am perfectly capable of blessing my crusades all by myself. In fact, I did not have to come here at all. For all I care, you could have just gone on wondering why Lynn might have burned her house down. I know how touchy The Church is about suicide.”
“Either way,” said Father Thomas. “It doesn’t do anyone much good, now that a family has been destroyed and a girl orphaned. You’re lucky if I don’t go straight to the archbishop with this.”
Lyle laughed. It was a high cackle. For a moment the Reverend Lyle Summers looked like a corpse, animated through an electrical current and dressed in his finest white linen suit.
“Oh, you go right ahead and do that,” said Lyle, wiping a tear. “In fact, we could both go see him together.”
John only stared at the man. He began to say something but his mouth wouldn’t move. The Reverend Lyle Summers grinned at him.
“I think you overestimate your pull with The Church these days, John. Now, how about we get back to the matter at hand?”
John let out a slow breath. “Are there any remains?”
“None,” Lyle said. “A clean burn. I’ve seen it a hundred times. The demons possess them and they lose control. Burn themselves up before they lose what’s left of their souls… not that suicide matters at that point. A damned soul is a damned soul after all.”
“And you exorcised the premises?”
“I did,” Lyle said with a nod, fondling the unlit cigarette between two fingers. “What was left of them, anyway.”
“So the entire place was burned when you got there?”
“To a crisp.”
John gave a skeptical grunt.
“Now,” said Lyle. “I believe I have been generous enough with your interrogation and I have a few questions of my own.”
John leaned back in his chair and exhaled. The Reverend ignored his exasperation.
“First, you knew that there was witchcraft in your city, and yet you did nothing. Is that correct?” The Reverend had become formal, as if recording the conversation.
“‘Witchcraft’ is a very dated term, Reverend Inspector. You are talking like a man out of the Dark Ages. And I was going to do something until you showed up.”
“Please,” said Lyle, “The house would have burned while you waited in your pulpit for them to invite you in. Who would be so stupid?”
“Lynn was troubled, she—”
“The woman was a witch,” Lyle snapped. “Her daughter was a witch and is running loose as you sit here wasting time in your nice big wooden chair.”
“It is a mental illness. Lynn was schizophrenic, saw things that weren’t there.”
“As did several members of your congregation, if I recall.” He whipped out a small notepad and flipped through the pages. “Dark shadows in the corner of the church. Someone recalled the woman drawing a demon out of the walls. Any of this ring a bell, Father?”
John stumbled over his words for a moment, as if tripped.
“People see things when they’re scared,” said John. “The mind plays tricks. What you are talking about is ridiculous, frankly.”
“You can call it whatever you like,” said Lyle. “Trust me on this. Something big was summoned to do the damage I saw in that house. That was no hallucination.”
I thought you said it was burned when you arrived, thought John. “You were investigating the house, Reverend. Were you at the church?”
“The reason I am here,” Lyle snapped, “is not to answer questions. I am h
ere to ask them.”
John leaned back in his chair and gave a drawn-out sigh. He waved a hand. “Ask away.”
“Let’s talk about the incident that happened to your parish,” Lyle said. “When the woman became possessed.”
“I don’t think she was possessed,” John said. “She was very aware of what she was saying. And she clearly believed what she saw.”
Lyle waved this away. “Unless you’ve been possessed yourself, I doubt you are in any position to judge. Have you ever run an exorcism?”
John gave a conciliatory shrug. “All priests are trained in the methods, the ceremonies—”
“But you yourself have never performed one?”
“I know how if I felt the time—”
“But you never have, have you?”
John flushed. His eyes darted between the Reverend Summers and his little notebook. He gave the man an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Lyle raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve seen the records,” John said. “I don’t have anything to add.”
“Lots of people got hurt that day,” Lyle said. “One even died, didn’t she?”
John said nothing. Lyle leaned in.
“You’re lucky to even still have a parish after that.” Lyle grinned. “I mean, you must be on very good terms with the archbishop.”
“We go back a ways, but that—”
Lyle held up a hand, palm out. “No need. I understand perfectly,” he said. “It was during a service though, wasn’t it? I’m just curious… indulge me.”
“It was.”
Lyle waited as John took a breath before continuing.
“I was giving a sermon on some fairly… dark material, I admit. There had been some concern with the deacon about Lynn and her daughter. I was trying to prove that there was nothing for them to be worried about. My plan was to promote some understanding, some forgiveness in the community.”
“Such good intentions,” said Lyle, sweetly. “They pave the way to Hell, you know.” Lyle grinned with off-white nicotine teeth. “Anything else out of the ordinary?”
The priest looked away a moment, wincing inwardly at the memories.