The Apostasy

by Ted Minkinow

  Cassandra closed her eyes and waited for the knife to scramble her brain.

  The curtain squealed open across its metal track. "Sorry to bother you doctor, but we have a patient."

  Cassandra recognized Nurse Delaney's officious voice.

  "Doctor Walters?"

  Cassandra opened her eyes. Except for the nurse, the partition stood empty.

  "You all right Doctor?"

  Cassandra fought the urge to leap up and hug the old biddy.

  "Tell them I'll be there in a minute," Cassandra said.

  As Nurse Delaney turned to leave, Cassandra took another look around the empty room. She jumped off the bed to follow.

  CHAPTER 55

  Tuesday, July 17, 03:17 am, Brewton-Brunson Mansion, Vienna, Alabama

  1

  Jeremiah slept in fits, his mind shell-shocked by stimuli since the moment he opened his car door. Visions came instead of dreams…visions set in a backdrop of a musty cold so biting he felt his fingers turn blue. Sleep was as elusive as full-grown jackrabbit and Jeremiah flailed in bed…got up, and found his way downstairs to the sitting room by the front door.

  Steady rain fell outside and he could hear it plinking the roof. An oil-lamp stood sentinel in the window—Don’t remember that being there—and raindrops outside cut through the glow like tiny icicle spears. Fire burned in the hearth—When did Torch light this?—but no warmth radiated even though Jeremiah moved toward the flame. As he stood there shirtless and with the backside of his boxer shorts hanging inches from an impotent fire…the front door jiggled.

  Someone put a key in the lock and Jeremiah moved to stand behind the sofa…mostly because he wasn’t dressed and didn’t want to scare one of Tom’s friends. The door opened and man strode in from the dark, stopping to push the heavy oak door closed. He returned the key to the lock and twisted. Jeremiah could hear the click.

  This new person wore the uniform of a Confederate cavalry officer. ..Jeremiah knew that much from paintings in the Pentagon. The visitor glanced around the room and up the stairs. He swiveled his head in Jeremiah's direction, but did not appear to see his boxer-clad observer.

  It's like watching a play, thought Jeremiah…and his mind wondered at the incongruity of it all…fire…lamp…freezing…uniform. And why did he stand there and do nothing? Shouldn’t he at least announce himself…ask what was going on…get Torch?

  The officer placed a wet overcoat over a chair close to the fire, and put his hands so near the flames Jeremiah thought the man's shirt could erupt at any moment. The soldier looked at home with his surroundings…and that made Jeremiah uncomfortable.

  Firelight illuminated the face. It looked about Torch's and Jeremiah's age. It also bore scars. Not physical disfigurements, but evident enough to Jeremiah, or anyone else who spent time in a war zone.

  The officer sat on top of his damp overcoat and rested his forehead in his palms for a moment and then reached in his pocket. He pulled out a letter.

  He took care as he unfolded the paper, then brought it to his lips and kissed it. He leaned nearer the fire to read…and the message must have startled him because he dropped his hands and shook his head. He brought the letter back to the fire and read it a second time, and a third. He sat in thought for a moment then flew up out of his chair, his face a mixture of rage and fear. He paced toward Jeremiah and then back to his seat, the whole time gripping and releasing the handle of a revolver tucked between belt and shirt.

  The man focused toward the front door, as if he expected someone to come crashing through. He extinguished the oil lamp and moved against the wall, beside the front window.

  Taking care not to expose his silhouette against light from the fireplace, the Confederate soldier peered outside. Satisfied for the moment, he returned to the room, moving to a small table behind the sofa.

  He displaced china figurines to the floor, tipped the table on its side, and loosened the bolt holding the top to the wide, round wooden support column. The Confederate officer removed the column and pulled a bundle of letters—tied together by a red ribbon—from a hollowed area. He added this latest note to the stack, then turned in Jeremiah's direction, and fixed his gaze until their eyes locked.

  Jeremiah sensed pleading in the man's eyes…the soldier darted his gaze toward the door once more then back at Jeremiah. This time there was anxiousness. Jeremiah sensed danger; but understood that it could touch only the soldier.

  "Go!" said Jeremiah. "Get out of here while you can!"

  The visitor returned the stack of letters to the column and re-attached the tabletop. Jeremiah, still freezing, stood motionless behind the sofa.

  The officer righted the table, drew his revolver and aimed in the direction of the front door. The door splintered, exposing the cold night and stabbing sheets of rain, but nothing else. Facing some foe unseen to Jeremiah, the Confederate soldier fired three inaudible shots through the opening and fled toward the back of the house. Black powder lingered in the air in solidarity with the fog in Jeremiah’s mind.

  Light exploded into Jeremiah's eyes, jolting him from…from what? Was it sleep? He looked down at the goose bumps on his arms and legs.

  2

  "What’s up backseater?" Tom stood in his underwear at the bottom of the stairway. Sudden light and strange surroundings confused Jeremiah…and when the mental mist cleared, he realized how stupid he must look…downstairs instead of up, huddled behind the sofa and shivering, clad only in his Valentine’s Day boxer shorts.

  "You been in the firewater?" Tom said.

  Jeremiah could not help but chuckle. No witty reply—or reasonable excuse—leapt from the top of his tongue.

  "First time I ever walked in my sleep," he said, his face splotching crimson.

  Tom said, "I know exactly what you were doing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You were casing the place. I bet I wake up tomorrow and all the furniture is gone."

  "Yeah, Torch, I drove all the way from Washington to steal this cracker crap."

  "Go back to bed,” Tom said and then added with a wink, “If you want I can tie you into it…or put a baby gate at your door."

  "Funny," Jeremiah said. He followed his friend back up to the guest room. Just before the downstairs disappeared, Jeremiah scanned the room and did not see the table. He rubbed his hands across his freezing arms and wondered about cold summer nights in the Heart of Dixie.

  3

  Lights on or off downstairs did not matter to the force stationed in the middle of the room. Each passing day brought more coherency, clearer reason for being. No longer did it roam in aimless, painful confusion. Now it understood the difference being and darkness, and the reasons it would not rest. A battle loomed.

  CHAPTER 56

  Tuesday, July 17, 05:37 am, Marlin Tilbury’s Apartment, Vienna, Alabama

  Early morning sun sent rays scouting into Marlin’s room as if to identify what would interest the vanguard to come on the hour. Marlin’s mind lingered east of reality. Bones would normally ache and muscles stiffen from sitting in one position for so many hours, but what passed for normal in Marlin Tilbury’s life no longer existed…not since the night they wheeled the dead transient into the emergency room…when The Man finally caught up.

  Some of Marlin remained under the mental haze, and it now clawed to exert influence. He would obey orders, no doubt existed there. But total control over any being required more energy than even The Man could marshal. So his instructions left some room for discretion. For a fleeting moment left in his finite existence, Marlin would make use of the loophole.

  Methodically and without pause, he plied his janitor’s trade and scrubbed every wall, baseboard and stick of furniture in both rooms. Years of dust moved onto the rag, grease stains disappeared from the stovetop and oven walls. In less than two hours Marlin's apartment shone.

  Satisfied, he rifled through the closet for the only clean and relatively wrinkle-free shirt and pair of pants he owned. He took
a moment to dress. He walked out the door and into the storage shed outside…and found a rusting five-gallon Jerry can sloshing with gasoline. Marlin returned inside and began spreading.

  He sprinkled fuel over his bed and made a trail through the short hallway and into the living room. He soaked the couch. Barely cognizant of his actions, Marlin made his way to the kitchen and covered the cabinets and stove with gas. Mission almost complete, his final sane vestige guided him back to the bedroom where he stopped in front of his chest of drawers.

  Marlin dumped the top drawer’s contents across his bed. The item shown through all the coupons and knickknacks left behind by the previous tenant. Lying in the middle of all these echoes of life sat the one treasure ever entrusted to Marlin...his Congressional Medal of Honor.

  He touched the blue ribbon lightly, reverently; and the human Marlin Tilbury threatened to surface. He failed, not the medal…and wanted to ask for forgiveness and hear the medal tell him all would be fine. But it sat motionless and mute among the bric-a-brac.

  Marlin tossed the drawer's other contents from the bed. He straightened the sheet and comforter into perfect military order, complete with sharp-angled hospital corners and a tight tuck. He grasped the medal in both hands and arranged his nation's token of sublime valor across the pillow.

  "Don't do this!" A voice of reason sparked, but he banished it. Thinking a little would obscure the unalterable path. Thinking too much would displease the North Vietnamese officer and end up getting Marlin killed. He stood for a moment, and returned his stare into nothingness as he walked out of the bedroom.

  Each step toward the kitchen pushed Marlin back into the trance that held him through the night. He rummaged through the kitchen drawers…found the book of matches in the second compartment. Marlin trudged to the front door where he kicked over the jerry can. The remaining contents pooled at his feet. Without hesitation or display of emotion, he opened the matchbook and freed a stick.

  It ignited on the first strike. An instant before flames erupted; Marlin took a long step through the door and into the early morning. His foot did not land on the run-down front porch, but found mushy, stinking soil instead. As Marlin moved his back leg up and forward, the flames behind disappeared and he found himself wholly in the clearing at Copper Gulch.

  "Welcome, Corporal Tilbury," the North Vietnamese officer said as he stood in front of the dilapidated slave shack. Smoke billowed from the roof, implying a warm meal cooking inside. Marlin sloshed toward the structure.

  "I commend your punctuality." The officer moved forward and slapped Corporal Tilbury's back. Marlin nodded, and noticed a familiar weight across his right shoulder. He moved his hands to the XM-21 rifle hanging in the kill-position near his hip. "As you see, it is exactly as I promised."

  Corporal Tilbury followed The Man to the shack.

  Scant miles away, the apartment would burn to the ground before the Volunteer Fire Department could respond in sufficient numbers and equipment. Among the smoldering ruins, an investigator would find a semi-melted blob of metal framed by charred slivers of blue ribbon.

  CHAPTER 57

  Monday, July 16, 1928, 4:47 pm, Sally Jackson’s House, Vienna, Alabama

  Hattie ran headlong through the door—did not pause to shut it against heat leaking in from outside—and nearly knocked the man standing there off his feet.

  “Jerome?” Hattie asked, and the incongruity of Jerome’s standing in Nana Sally’s house while at the same time doing the same in his grocery a couple miles away did nothing to diminish her blossoming joy.

  “Get off me, fool,” Jerome’s voice said.

  “Julius.” Hattie spit the name the same way she’d spit a gnat that found its way in from a summer swarm.

  “Damn right,” Julius Washington said. “Blind as my brother,” he said.

  The insult seemed so small in comparison to what she just faced on the road home that Hattie almost laughed. But she stopped herself. Best not to bait Julius…especially when he looks like this. And he did look bad…scared.

  “What are you doing here?” Hattie said, and tried to make it not sound like an accusation.

  “I sent for him,” Sally Jackson said as she stood from the sofa. And then, “What has you, child?”

  Hattie did not know where to start—Leland Graves, the Rufus fellow—and now this…Nana Sally inviting Julius? She decided to wait until later…after Julius left. Can’t stand his snickering on top of it all.

  “Why?” Hattie asked Nana Sally, and her grandmother seemed to understand Hattie’s reluctance.

  “The killing,” said Nana Sally.

  Hattie knew about the killing in Copper Gulch…happened a couple of days earlier. She didn’t understand what Julius could have with that business. Transients often squatted down in Copper Gulch and that type tended to settle slights with a blade.

  Nana Sally must have seen her confusion because she said two words that rocked Hattie’s already teetering world to the point of founder: “Miss Bennett.”

  CHAPTER 58

  Tuesday, July 17, 06:09 am, Brewton-Brunson Mansion, Vienna, Alabama

  1

  Cassandra hoped she could sneak in without waking them. The incident in the emergency room—Incident or imagination?—left her exhausted and teetering on the seesaw of sanity. At the same time it left her wired. Over the past hours she played and replayed the event, and the more time she put behind her, the more she thought the whole thing a dream...kind of a spastic brain reaction to stress and exhaustion.

  She opened the door and the unexpected aroma of breakfast wafted past. Cassandra slipped in and guided the door shut…found them both in the kitchen.

  "Cassie! Come on in!"

  Tom opened his arms and she accepted the embrace…and was slow to loosen her grip when he did.

  "You all right?" he whispered in her ear.

  A slight nod from Cassandra.

  "You two go right ahead with whatever you need to do. I'll just sit here and, ah, watch." Jeremiah broke the moment.

  2

  "Believe it or not Cassie," Tom fumbled the words, "this slug you see here is my best friend." As Tom spoke he kept his eyes fixed on Cassandra.

  Jeremiah grinned. "Mike Johnson," he said while getting to his feet, "and you could never know what a pleasure it is to meet you."

  She took his hand and returned the smile.

  "Nice to meet you too, Mike. If only half the stories I've heard about the dynamic duo are true, then I'm anxious to see what will happen next."

  "First of all," Jeremiah said, "Please call me Jeremiah."

  Cassandra nodded.

  "Second, let me point something out.”

  Tom could feel the hit coming.

  "As far as stories of his own heroics are concerned, the only way to tell if a fighter pilot is lying is if his lips are moving."

  She laughed, but Tom thought he saw something in her eyes…the way she kept them on him. Maybe she’s just tired…or hungry.

  "How about breakfast, Cassie? I'll throw an omelet together for you."

  "Thanks, but I think I’d be happy with a piece of that bacon and a scoop of grits."

  She sat beside Jeremiah.

  "Coming right up," Tom said. He ladled a serving of grits and put bacon beside it.

  3

  Jeremiah took a sip of tomato juice and appraised Cassandra. A bit skinny overall, he decided…definitely a memorable body.

  Cassandra must have noticed his stare…she smiled back.

  Jeremiah thought she’d do just fine for old Torch. He bowed slightly and raised his glass toward Cassandra in salute. Perhaps she understood because she winked in return.

  4

  "Jeremiah and I are going fishing in an hour or so. Want to come with us?" The question put her into a fright. She felt too exhausted to go fishing, but at the same time she did not care to spend a single moment by herself, not after that crazy dream about the psychopathic gropers. Jeremiah must have noticed her hesitati
on.

  "You know Torch," he said as he grabbed another piece of bacon, “I think I got out of bed too early this morning; especially after that late night tour I took in your house." He finished chewing before continuing. "Do you mind if I go back up to my room and take it easy for a couple of hours before we do anything?"

  Cassandra exhaled in relief.

  "No problem, Jeremiah. Just let me know when you're ready," Tom said as he divided the omelet on two plates and dished out more grits and bacon for everyone.

  5

  She wanted to tell him about the bad night in the emergency…wanted to tell Tom…but not necessarily Jeremiah. Cassandra looked at Tom.