A Latent Dark

by Martin Kee

“Naw,” he said, stretching his arms above his head. “It’s actually pretty boring.”

  “Is that why you don’t do it anymore?”

  In response, Dale again flashed his crooked arm.

  She went “Oh” in a small voice.

  “It’s okay,” said Dale. “I know it’s easy to forget about when I make up for it in personality and charm.”

  “Did you ever have to shoot anyone?” she asked, missing the sarcasm completely.

  “I did. Once.”

  “What happened?”

  “We had a ship approach that wouldn’t signal back, a small single person raft, overloaded with people, way too many. I flashed the lamp at them twice… three is the limit. After three you open fire, so that’s what I did. The rules are fairly simple.”

  As it turned out, they were refugees from Arist. There were so many bodies… parts of bodies. That part was worth omitting, he decided.

  He also didn’t tell her about the discovery later that evening, how he had repaired the broken signal lamp before anyone noticed.

  “Cannons do a lot of damage,” he said, staring at nothing.

  She kissed him. This time he almost believed she meant it.

  They left the tent and found themselves on the trail leading to The Hungry Skunk. They talked about the stars, the trees—apparently there weren’t a variety of trees in Bollingbrook—Dale pointed out the various species that he knew.

  It felt good. He felt brave and smart. She made him feel all the ways he hadn’t felt in a lifetime. He had a few coins in his pocket. At the very least, he could buy her a drink.

  *

  Skyla happened to be looking at the door when Dale and the girl came into the pub. The girl locked eyes with her, and Skyla felt a sharp stab of fear shoot down her neck.

  The girl was from Bollingbrook. Her name was Sarah Wilcox. Skyla remembered her from church, the day that woman died. The girl gave only the slightest hint of recognition, a faint light flashing across her face for only an instant. Then the girl sat down at the bar next to Dale. She laughed, clinging to Dale as if the two had just eloped.

  Marley’s voice broke Skyla out of her trance.

  “I need you to clean up in the corner,” he said, muttering. “Someone over-drank… sorry.”

  She saluted and went to grab the bucket. It must have been hours and a dozen conversations later, but the next time Skyla glanced at the bar, the two of them were gone.

  When she told Marley, he shrugged it off as he often did with her concerns.

  “I’m sure it’s just your imagination,” he said, latching the front door for the night. “Besides, you said that you were running from something. Who isn’t when they come here?”

  “I know,” she said, looking at nothing in particular. “It’s just that… well I knew her. I mean she went to my church. Her family wasn’t bad off, if you know what I mean.”

  Skyla rubbed an invisible coin between her thumb and finger.

  “Yeah, but you were pretty poor,” Marley said. “I’m sure what they had, might have looked like a lot of money…”

  She shrugged. “Some of her family was Holy Guard. They don’t take the poor.”

  “Bah,” Marley waved his hand. “You can talk to her the next time she comes by on Dale’s arm. I’m sure she’s got some skeleton in the closet you don’t know about.”

  Of that, Skyla had no doubt.

  Chapter 16

  “Father?” It was Julian. “There is a man who says he has a confession.”

  John looked at his watch. “Tell him I’ll be out shortly,” he said. “He can wait in the booth for me. I won’t be long.”

  “Father… is everything alright?”

  The look on Julian’s face brought him out of his sulking. He cleared his throat. “Yes... I’m fine. It’s been a trying week. I’ll be right there.”

  Julian nodded and vanished out the door. John turned and looked back at the figure hanging from a cross on his wall.

  I feel like a ticket vendor to Heaven, he thought.

  The wilted figure on the cross said nothing. He only stared.

  The chapel was empty except for a prospector’s backpack, complete with tin cups and rope. The barrel of a gun poked just out the top of the flap. John frowned.

  It’s going to be one of those confessions, he thought.

  He could hear the man shifting uncomfortably inside the booth. John stepped into his tiny room and closed the door behind him. He pulled a small handle on the connecting wall and a wood panel slid back revealing the abstract shape of a man.

  He said nothing. John cleared his throat.

  “I understand you have a confession, my son.”

  “Are you a priest?” the man asked, gruff and impatient.

  “I am,” he said and waited.

  The man was silent, his foot shuffled on the floorboards.

  “Normally,” Father Thomas said. “You would start with a prayer and tell me how long it has been since your last confession.”

  The man cleared his throat. “I’ve… never been to confession, Father.”

  “Go ahead, my son,” he said. “What is your sin?”

  Again the man was silent. I’m glad I had breakfast already, thought John. This is going to be all morning.

  “Father,” the man began. “I am not here to confess a sin, but… I believe I may have been responsible for a death, even if I have not committed the murder myself. I am a stranger to this city… I didn’t know where else to turn.”

  “I see,” said John. He leaned against the wooden wall.

  “Is it true that anything said here is confidential?”

  “Within reason, yes,” Father Thomas said.

  There was more nervous shuffling from the other booth. The man let out a sigh.

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning,” said Father Thomas.

  “I live on the outskirts of The Wilds, Father, North of Lassimir by about ten miles. Until a few weeks ago I never had a visitor…”

  The man began to spin his tale of a young girl, in a Bollingbrook school uniform who came into his house. He told the story of how he had let her stay one night but then sent her out into the wilderness without so much as a meal. As the story unfolded, John began to feel his pulse quicken. Warmth flooded his cheeks and he had to clench a fist to keep from pounding at the wall.

  It had to have been Skyla. She had found a place to stay, and you just cast her off like a bad penny.

  The story drifted into the strange, as the man recounted the nightmares, the shadows in his dreams, the insomnia. Horror began to creep into the conversation at the discovery of a young girl’s corpse in a pocket of runoff water outside the city walls.

  The man fell silent for a moment and John took the opportunity to speak.

  “This girl,” John asked. “Do you remember her name?”

  When he heard Skyla’s name, John slammed the wooden slat shut and tumbled, gasping out of the booth door. He stood bent over with his hands on his hips, taking slow controlled breaths.

  “Father?” A muffled voice came from behind the other man’s door.

  “One moment… I’m sorry.” Regaining his composure, John crawled back into the claustrophobic cubicle and opened the slat again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was rude of me. I needed air. You say her name was Skyla.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” the man said, his voice wavering.

  “You think you might have found her?“ He rubbed damp palms on the cushion of the bench.

  “Look,” the man said, “I… I just wanted to know if she lived in Bollingbrook or not. Maybe she returned here. I simply wanted to confirm whether it could have been her… for my own conscience. I’m sure your authorities would want to know.” He stood, opening the door. “I’ll leave you now. Thank you for your time.”

  John flung open his door and stumbled out to meet him. The man was taller than he, barrel-chested with a thick black beard and dark, wary eyes.

  “Wait,�
�� John blurted out. “Please, don’t go.”

  The man had already hefted his hiking pack and was moving to the door as fast as possible.

  “I’ve probably said too much. I don’t want any trouble from your police, understand?”

  “No,” John said, “It’s not that at all. Look, I knew her.”

  The man’s face went pale. He sat on the edge of a pew and looked up at the priest. John collected himself.

  “Skyla,” John said. “She went to this parish.”

  The man continued to stare at him, glancing uneasily from John to the exit.

  “Look,” John said. “Can we talk in my office? I promise, you will have my complete confidentiality.”

  After a long time, the man nodded, stood, and followed John.

  *

  The conversation was filled with unusual revelations as the two men shared their individual experiences in detail. John told the man—James was his name—about the strange case of Skyla and her mother. He told him about the incident at the church service, her mother’s disappearance, about the panic and near witch-hunt that ensued after. James listened with a stoic silence.

  “So, you said something about seeing shadows,” James said.

  Father Thomas nodded and then corrected himself. “Well, I thought I did. Some of the congregation certainly seemed to act like they saw something.”

  James looked at the floor as an aura of calm settled over him. He looked across the desk at the priest. “I thought I was going crazy.”

  “Oh there’s plenty of crazy going around these days,” John said with a dry grin. “Did Skyla mention anything about being wanted? Followed?”

  The confusion on James’s face was all the answer he needed. Father Thomas cleared his throat. “There’s a man,” John said. “Here, in Bollingbrook. He’s… ‘obsessed’ is the best word that comes to mind—with Skyla and her mother. I believe he burned their house. For all I know he killed Skyla’s mother.”

  The two men exchanged glances, the look of urgency unmistakable in the hermit’s face.

  “I’d like to see the body,” the priest said. “It needs a proper burial and an autopsy if we’re to know who it is, especially if it is as decomposed as you say. I can find a doctor—”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Father.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look at me. I’m an interloper in a town that has fliers of missing children strewn about. I come in here saying I ‘found’ a missing girl’s mutilated body.”

  “Then tell me where it is then. I’ll provide a proper burial.”

  “What if it is Skyla?” James asked.

  “Well, then I guess the Reverend will have one less thing on his mind,” John said. “But if it isn’t Skyla… well, that’s an even bigger problem, isn’t it?”

  The two men sat in silence for a time, each lost in their own thoughts. Outside Father John Thomas’s window, Bollingbrook’s war industry was grinding back to life. Dust and smoke, stirred up by training soldiers and rolling machinery had already begun to rise from beyond a distant spoke-wall, turning the sun orange. He imagined it would be the same scenario as the last raid, a way to protect the trade routes, a police maneuver to make the old general Perlandine still feel relevant. The Church would get to round up a new batch of heretics and The Reverend Lyle Summers would get his quarry: an eleven-year-old girl.

  In a year, the vagrants would set up camp again. Occupation was costly, but you would hear no complaints from the industries in Bollingbrook.

  A distant locomotive drew a long black trail of smoke across the horizon, delivering another hundred mechanics, soldiers, and potential customers. They would flow out and into the streets of Bollingbrook, collect a stipend up front (compliments of Lyle Summers) then proceed to spend that money right back into the city. It’s all good for Bollingbrook, right? he tried to tell himself.

  “The city looks like it is preparing for a war,” said James.

  John relaxed at the change of topic. He looked out the window. “They think they’re going to raid Lassimir.”

  James’s eyes sparkled humorlessly. “That old story again, eh?”

  The priest shrugged. “They have a lot of funding. General Perlandine seems to think they can do it. The Reverend Inspector seems to be funding it with deep pockets, so who knows?”

  “That preacher,” James said. “You really think he’s after Skyla?”

  “I spoke with him.” John let out a slow breath. “And yeah, he is very much after her.”

  “Do you think he’d…” The man’s voice trailed off.

  “Honestly,” John said. “I’m not sure what he wouldn’t do.”

  There was another thoughtful silence in the room, long enough that John watched the crucifix’s shadow melt down the wall. James stood up.

  “I’ll take you to see the body, alone,” James said. “And if you need to go further on to find the girl before this Reverend Inspector does, I can get you through The Wilds. Either way, I just need to know that she’s alive for the sake of my own sanity.”

  John immediately began digging through his desk.

  “Julian!”

  The page appeared as if he were a summoned ghost at the door. John looked up at him. “Julian,” John said, smiling, holding out a pen and paper. “How good is your handwriting?”

  *

  They were halfway to the gravesite by the time the police received the anonymous letter Julian wrote. Both men traveled largely lost in their own thoughts. Every so often, the priest would look over his shoulder through the fog-faded trees and see the orange-pink wall of Bollingbrook become smaller and smaller until it was no more than a curious sliver on the horizon.

  They kept mostly to the cliff edge, skirting The Wilds at a safe distance. More than once, John felt eyes watching him from the shadows. The grave rose out of the ground between two trees, the only man-made thing for miles. Already moss had begun to overrun the stones that had only been there for a day. The wilds wasted no time reclaiming what was theirs.

  “What’s that smell?” said John, crinkling his nose.

  James paused for only a moment. “Coyote urine.”

  The priest recoiled, appalled. “What? Why?”

  James looked at him as if it were obvious. “Scavengers.”

  He grabbed a stone as the priest stood with his mouth agape watching him. The man’s muscled shoulders tensed and released with a slow rhythm as he removed each stone with a mason’s skill. Finally the thin layer of dirt was removed and both men recoiled at the smell. John turned away at first.

  He crossed himself as James used a leafy branch to sweep the excess dirt from the girl’s face—or what there was to be seen of it. It looked at John from beneath a veil of mousy brown hair. Empty sockets gazed at nothing as a lipless grin greeted him. There was a hint of something green and yellow on one side of the torso. John’s stomach did a somersault and he turned away, heaving.

  James continued the excavation while the priest collected himself. After wiping his mouth, John looked back at the body, trying to be objective.

  “She was tortured,” he said. “There. Where the nails have been removed, that’s probably prior to death. The… hole in the side. Hot iron perhaps.”

  He knew what he was seeing as he spoke, but his mind refused to accept it. It was like an instruction manual from the Inquisitions.

  “They left her uniform on,” he noted. “Maybe they were in a hurry.”

  “Or maybe Bollingbrook has a murderer in its midst,” James added.

  “Maybe,” John said. “See the cut marks here? And here? They consecrated the body with scarring and then cauterized it… the throat has been slit…”

  “Is it Skyla?” James asked, his face grim.

  The priest shook his head. “No. I don’t think it is.”

  He pulled a sleeve up revealing another scar on the upper arm. The reddened flesh rose from the surrounding skin in the shape of a cross. James saw it too.


  The priest sat back against a tree running his hands through his hair. He looked at James, who was only staring at the corpse. Somewhere deep in the forest behind him a branch snapped. Both men startled, their heads spinning in unison at the direction of the sound. They waited for approaching men bearing guns to take them away. None appeared.

  Almost immediately James began to pull the girl by her feet with a crazed urgency. The priest stood, his mouth open.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” James said, not meeting his gaze. “I’m putting the body back where I found it.”

  “You can’t,” John said. He heard his own voice as if from a distance, it was almost an octave too high. “You can’t just discard it!”

  “Watch me,” the man said as he pulled the girl from the shallow hole by her feet.

  John rushed up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “James don’t, please,” he said. “We have to give her a proper burial. I have to consecrate the ground. This is sacrilegious.” His hand was trembling.

  James paused for a moment and looked at the priest’s hand on his shoulder as if it were a bug that had landed there. His eyes traced slowly up the arm until he was looking at John.

  “Father.” He spoke slowly. “You do realize that a group of men will arrive within hours. They will be carrying guns and they will see us standing over the body of a girl who has been missing for weeks. They will not ask me questions. They will either arrest me or—if the father is present—he may shoot me on the spot.”

  “But it’s—”

  “It’s what?” James asked. “It’s for her soul? Do you think she cares if the body decomposes in a hole or in a pond? Do you think that while the iron burned into her insides, she was hoping they would find a nice plot of land for her final resting place? Something under a tree with a flower arrangement, perhaps? Or maybe she asked them sweetly, as they pulled her nails from her fingers, if they could please put in a nice word with Jesus.” He gave the body another tug. “The dead are dead, Father. Meanwhile the two of us, who are alive, are going to be lynched for this.”

  “I’ll vouch for you,” John said, his voice desperate. “They’ll listen to me. I’ll corroborate your story. James, you did nothing wrong. Why do you think they will blame you?”