The Apostasy

by Ted Minkinow

  “They’ll be gone,” Hattie said.

  “And if we do nothing?” Cassandra asked.

  “We’ll be safe, I’m certain of it,” Hattie said.

  “That possibility,” said Cassandra, meaning abandonment of Jeremiah and Warren, “was never a consideration in Leland Graves’s plan, was it?”

  Hattie shook her head. “Never.”

  “I for one,” said Tom, “am willing to entertain suggestions.”

  “We go out there,” said Cassandra.

  “And stay together, hold hands if we need to,” added Hattie.

  “We search for Leland Graves,” said Cassandra. “Close to the house at first, then we’ll go out further, he shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “I think I might know where he is,” said Tom.

  Neither Cassandra nor Hattie questioned his statement.

  “Then what?” asked Tom, but not as a challenge. He spoke with the urgency of a child at his parent’s bedside on Christmas morning.

  Cassandra and Hattie looked each other squarely in the eyes and Cassandra spoke for them both. “Then we’ll just have to figure out what comes next.”

  3

  A phantom ache blossomed from the foot on Tom’s bad leg. He could have sworn that it was his heart that stubbed the pinkie toe as it dropped from his chest to the floor.

  “That’s it?” he said, and moved his glance from one woman to the other. “That’s your plan? That’s our plan?” They did not reply so he continued.

  “Let’s review this so I don’t somehow mess it up. I mean it does sound complex.” He pointed a finger at Cassandra. “We go tiptoeing through the tulips, hand in hand no less, looking for this superhuman skunk,” he changed his finger to Aunt Hattie. “And when we find him in a snake pit, coiled and rattling like a herd of Mr. Ts, we… what? We kiss his thousand year old venom-filled snout and hope he disappears?”

  Cassandra said, “You got a better plan?”

  CHAPTER 75

  Time: Undefined, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  Fresh movement in the periphery so Marlin eased up on the trigger and positioned ARTY to scan the clearing. “The Man,” he whispered, and it was true…there among Rufus and the black man, and standing near the trees that restrained Chief Anderson and Brunson’s buddy.

  A thirty degree swing and ARTY found the Gray Man and his faded horse. The guy did not act as if heading for a tussle. Back erect, shoulders even, head unwavering; he resembled one of those figures carved on Stone Mountain outside Atlanta.

  No mistaking the destination. Marlin calculated the horseman would end up at the clearing in less than an hour. Marlin decided to wait until horse and rider reached the clearing before dispatching a bullet.

  Furball might be interesting. That brought a grin to the sniper.

  Tuesday, July 17, 9:48 pm, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  Rays of moonlight snuck through breaks in the clouds. The night began weighted with summer sweat but now they could see their breath fogging like darts of steam puffing from the stacks of miniature factories. In some measure he controlled their senses, and they knew it. Leland Graves demonstrated that much back in the house.

  They moved silently and deliberately, like a special ops team closing in on the jungle hideout of a drug lord. Special Ed Team came to Tom’s mind. At least Hattie did not make them hold hands.

  For her part, Hattie kept pace with Cassie and Tom, though Tom held back for her benefit. They avoided decaying limbs and leaves in as much as the parsimonious moon would allow.

  Only Tom knew the destination. He visited the place before, in his dream. Maybe it had not been a dream after all, he wondered as he held a low-hanging branch aside so Cassie and Hattie could pass. If the bad guys could plant visions, Why couldn’t the good guys?

  He eased the branch back to its place. Bare of needles or other plumage characteristic of summer, trees and plants seemed willing abettors to Leland Grave’s drama. Even summer insects held in abeyance…likely just following orders.

  Time: Undefined, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  “ARTY, meet Aunt Hattie.” Marlin had seen war; knew that some survived and some did not. “Tango Sierra,” he said. “Tough Stuff,” he sounded out the acronym just in case ARTY never learned the phonetic alphabet. For a moment, only the single beat of a hummingbird’s wing, he wondered if he really believed Tango Sierra.

  Corporal Tilbury raised his head and wiped his eyes, not bothering to keep ARTY focused on any of them…not Aunt Hattie, Brunson, Doctor Walters, and not Warren, Tom’s friend, or the gray rider. Aspects of both Tilburys comprised the whole; he knew it. Exact portions of the recipe eluded him, though he suspected the all-knowing, albeit not necessarily all-seeing Man stacked the deck…and he wondered how long the misery of life would continue once he completed—

  “The mission,” he said, and Marlin thought ARTY understood the Army euphemism for killing—one or many. Years before the Corporal sortied with no remorse; a condition made possible in the lesser part by psychological aspects of Army training and in greater by his buddies’ deaths.

  People who kill your friends make easy targets.

  His mind attempted to fit present circumstances into that handy rule of thumb but it did not work. Marlin would be the one killing his friends. Wasn’t Aunt Hattie his friend, even if the others were not? Marlin scrounged his memory but could find no ditty to cover this situation.

  He buckled back down for the coming battle.

  CHAPTER 76

  Estimated: Tuesday, July 17, 10:10 pm, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  1

  Hints of voices came to Cassandra as if carried by hesitant fingers of light reaching around the pine stand ahead. She signaled and the three came to a soundless halt. They exchanged no words because none were needed…all three felt certain Leland Graves stood on the other side of those trees.

  Tom inched in front of the others…toward the light. They carried zilch for weapons, Aunt Hattie had insisted. “Likely as not to shoot ourselves,” she said before they left her house. “And shooting ourselves saves Leland Graves the effort.” They all kind of knew that, although Leland Graves might end up vulnerable to something, it would not be to a weapon they could carry.

  Hattie and Cassandra kept as close to Tom’s footfalls as they could get. The light from the trees grew in intensity as if they were surfacing from a black depth.

  Tom might have screamed had battle-tested nerves not been able to absorb the immediate shock. Whether on purpose or by instinct, his arm shot out and blocked the two women he loved from what he did not want them to see.

  “Tommy?” Hattie asked. She expected this walk would end in terror.

  2

  A cleared flat parcel of damp land lay beyond the tree and fenced in by other towering but skinny pines. Several wider trees stood at the side nearest the lake’s swampy bogs. A fire—too weighty for a campfire yet not quite up to the level of a bonfire—lit the scene. Cassandra saw four figures—men—tied to those wider trunks. Recognition flared in the time it took for the message to pass from eye to brain.

  “Jeremiah,” she said, and made no attempt to quiet her voice.

  If the noise bothered Tom he did not show it. She recognized the other men too. Patrolman Rogers and, Tom’s friend from the airport…Sam something, she thought.

  The stench hit Cassandra and she almost vomited when the air carried the rot into her mouth. Bindings supported the two corpses and they stood heels together, knees splayed apart. Jolly’s head leaned mouth-open against his tree as if in incredulous response to a severely stubbed toe. Sam struck a similar jack-in-the-box pose; head tilted forward, unseeing eyes riveted to some infinity beneath the ground.

  Warren Anderson came next in the batting order as she moved her gaze from left to right. The Chief appeared limp, unconscious and alive, vertical only because of the ropes. His chin lay flat against his chest. Jeremiah, erect and in obvious pain round
ed out the gallery.

  Most dead to least dead, she thought. Cassandra also saw the two men skulking in front of the trees...Rufus, and his friend at the hospital. Now I know the skinny black man’s name. She wished she didn’t.

  3

  “Julius,” said Hattie as she stepped into the clearing. The malevolent idlers turned to face her. Hattie’s heart stuttered for just a moment as she looked upon, for the first time in eight decades, the handsome face of her lost love.

  But the countenance—the authentic signpost pointing at what lies beneath the surface—did not belong to her Jerome. Instead she both saw and sensed the malodor of wickedness—his twin brother Julius—radiating behind those…those lovely eyes.

  “Welcome Hattie Jackson and friends!” Leland Graves stepped out of pure darkness and into the flicker.

  Hattie could see that somewhere between the horizontal leap into nothingness and his subsequent reappearance on this tree, Jeremiah’s face had taken a pounding. Her Tommy would find a way to make Leland Graves, pay.

  “Hey buddy,” Tom said, “You look like you got a whole pouch of tobacco in your mouth.”

  Jeremiah glanced in their direction, a look more of pain than surprise on his face. “Yea,” he replied, and then grimaced at forming the words. “Two days with you crackers and I’m a redneck.”

  “What in God’s name are you?” Hattie asked, and she was speaking to Julius…a long dead Julius.

  The smile on Leland Graves’s oblong face shone with the black glitter of coal dust. “If I must drop a hint,” he said, “I will say that I am known by many names.”

  “Would His Butt-Holiness be one of them?” It was Jeremiah.

  Leland Graves clouded. He whirled to face Jeremiah, or more accurately, his torso whirled to face Jeremiah…legs and feet remained pointed forward. Leland Graves raised a hand and some invisible force smacked Jeremiah’s head against the tree with an epileptic “Thwack.”

  4

  Tom “Torch” Brunson, nee USAF, decided he would not survive the evening. He would die defending his backseater. The next time Graves raised a hand to Jeremiah, Tom would attack to whatever end that would come.

  5

  Leland Graves returned his attention to the group.

  “There’s gonna be a rear end kicked tonight,” Tom said, before Leland Graves could speak. “Might be yours, might by mine,” said Tom, “but there’s gonna have to be one.”

  Comprehension flabbergasted Leland Graves. Employee Scrolls forbade Naked Contact—Was it a caution or a warning? Leland Grave never paid attention to the dusty drivel so he could not remember. Shareholders banned Naked Contact, revealing corporate enchantment by exposing the true nature of one’s self to potential product, by consensus during one of the countless millennial gatherings. But Leland Graves always thought it was—Those delicious auras.

  “Exquisite,” he said, and his own voice startled him. But oh how Hattie Jackson, Thomas Brunson, and Cassandra Walters shone. Back now, Leland Graves thought…but he knew that was not correct. Back to now, that was it, was it not? Thomas Brunson…an insult.

  Leland Graves felt the eyes on him. The door stood ajar—just enough for a few to see and the legend to grow—and they watched…the way he planned it. Intimidation would be the launch theme for his new corporation. An audience brought with it responsibilities. An insult.

  6

  Hattie heard Leland Graves say “Exquisite,” and saw him glance behind. She sensed indecision. Keep him off balance, she thought. Hattie stepped forward. Even as her first foot landed in the mush, a hand enclosed her arm in a grip that did not permit further movement. Hattie could not help but retreat as Cassandra swapped places with her.

  7

  “I know who you are,” she said. Cassandra had also sensed Leland Graves’s hesitance. That pause pushed into her mind what hovered beyond reach back at the house. What she understood, though, amounted only to the second tumbler in a three-combination safe. She would have preferred to divine that third number, but the wild look on Tom’s face told her that time had run out.

  Time: Undefined, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  From his sniper’s nest several hundred yards away, Corporal Tilbury monitored through ARTY and wondered if other people really could read lips.

  Estimated: Tuesday, July 17, 10:18 pm, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  “A self-aggrandizing, loathsome liar,” replied Cassandra. “That’s who you are.”

  “Oh?” said Leland Graves.

  “The primal apostasy,” said Cassandra. “You mixed things up.”

  CHAPTER 77

  Time: Undefined, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  A misting rain rolled in and painted the trail with dampness that would soon solidify into clear husks of ice. Tilbury saw Hattie shiver as if shaking her bones could dislodge the frost. Cottony wisps puffed from her nose and then melted into the night.

  “Temperature must have dropped,” he told ARTY, “Dropped there, that is.” Thick heat surrounding his position seemed impervious to the clearing’s atmosphere. He scanned the others in Aunt Hattie’s party and vapor puffed in time with their breaths.

  He moved ARTY to The Man and his crew. “What the…” No condensation blowing from The Man, Rufus, or Julius. Though he expected as much, the anomaly did shock him just a bit. Tilbury pondered for a moment, and then brought ARTY’s near his mouth and breathed onto it. He had to be sure.

  Estimated: Tuesday, July 17, 10:20 pm, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  Leland Graves spread his lank arms wide. Action equaled control. He held his hands at waist level, palms pointed skyward. With solemn drama and a faint scowl, Leland Graves lifted his arms. This action kicked off the endgame.

  Time: Undefined, Place: Undefined

  “Finally,” said the Auditor after his clawing pried open the portal just enough to see around the couple of feebles brave enough to block his view. Even as the view cleared the Auditor fought to keep more feebles from filling the new void…and that made him notice something he would have understood had he not been so focused on Leland Graves.

  More than usual. Everywhere he looked more feebles gathered like carrion birds anticipating carcasses soon ready for the feeding.

  But whose carcasses, thought the Auditor.

  The humans?...Leland Graves?...Mine?

  Such thoughts were self-indulgent at the moment though they did frighten him. Leland Graves left his sight only a short while before and the Auditor’s unease rose the moment the portal slid semi-shut. What he saw now confirmed those bad feelings.

  Authority will be angry, he thought, and almost laughed at the understatement. There stood Leland Graves in a world created by him and arms upraised like Moses imploring the Red Sea to part…Now there was a neat trick. Authority would be angry all right…that and more.

  “Hide the enchantment.” That’s what Authority said time and again…and he was only quoting the employee scrolls…Rule number one, as a matter of fact, thought the Auditor. Even one inexperienced as he knew that if you exposed enchantment to the masses…What else would they believe?

  The truth, thought the Auditor…and that would never do. Truth and The Great Unsigned Contract could not coexist. Even the feebles gathered around him at the portal knew that much. Not only did Leland Graves create a false world around the people beyond the portal, he also looked close to a sort of incantation.

  The Auditor did the only thing he could think to do. He summoned Authority and wondered if he would arrive in time. Because if the Auditor could trust his senses, it appeared Leland Graves was about to harm worthies.

  Time: Undefined, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  Marlin kept his focus on the clearing below the two bands of gabbing antagonists. Typical, he thought and wondered how officers could talk for hours without saying anything important. Marlin started to swing ARTY to the left—to check on the gray rider—when the scope revealed yet another incredib
le sight.

  The Man spread his arms and raised his hands. As the distance between bony hands and the swampy earth increased, Marlin could see new movement in the clearing.

  Estimated: Tuesday, July 17, 10:21 pm, Copper Gulch, outside Vienna, Alabama

  1

  Jeremiah bartered searing pains through neck and shoulders to raise his head. Blood, his blood, leaked from scalp, forehead and ears. It flowed into and around his eyes, and found the ground in steaming drops as body-warmed fluid met frigid air. He maintained consciousness by force of will. His view of Leland Graves’s theatrics came from the cheap seats…from behind the stage. He heard what came next before he saw it.

  2

  Hattie attempted not to, but gasped anyway. Anyone would have. She reached for Tom’s arm, hoping it could restock the equilibrium that had melted like an ice sculpture on an Alabama beach.