by David Nickle
A false oracle.
The Oracle stood under an overhang of roof, at the back of a wide platform overlooking the square. Rainwater dribbled off the roof in front of her, like a waterfall. Lily let that water course over her as she sang, and the multitude sang too. They were supplicant, all right. But the Oracle felt a twang of doubt. It was one thing to sing and holler and tell kin—tell Feegers—that they needed to get off their behinds, take up their axes and bows and clubs, and take their Word on a crusade. Another entirely to tell these folk, who only now felt the touch of the Son on them.
Would they follow her? Would it be enough, to speak some words at them and take them along, down the river to the towns of the heathen folk—would they travel with their sticks and axes and bows and guns? Just because the Feeger Oracle said?
She clutched the infant to her breast, let its drying flesh, its needle teeth tease her.
It would be easier, she thought, if she had another—not a false one, but a real Oracle. He might help—keep these folk alive, and strong behind her. Travelling south, with the young. . . .
“Where,” she said aloud, “is Missy?”
Lily shrugged, and Lothar—who’d been attending near the gate—got to his feet.
“I go look on her?” he asked, and the Oracle smiled on him. “You go fetch her,” she said, and touched her cousin’s brow. “Fetch me that nigger too, if Missy think he’s right for it.”
He bobbed to and fro, and smiled broad, and climbed down into the crowd.
Lily stopped singing and looked at her.
“You think the black man is one?”
“Mayhap.” If Missy didn’t come with some word—then the Oracle would have to preach it herself. Would it be a fair enough sermon for the Son, who had settled up in the rafters of the cathedral, waiting for His due?
She held the Infant tighter, and watched the crowd—and after a moment, she smiled.
“Mayhap,” she said, as she looked to the crowd, and saw the dark, familiar face among so many pale. “Mayhap.”
30 - Rapture of the Juke
Andrew Waggoner mounted the stone steps of the cathedral. Ahead were great gilded doors, filigreed with sunbeams. Beyond those: the Dauphin waited for him.
Andrew was glad. Dimly, he recalled a time when he’d turned away, and he might have thought the Dauphin would not welcome him . . . that he had spurned Him. This would be enough to cast Andrew down, among the bones of those he’d failed.
If only Andrew had let the Dauphin guide his shaking physician’s hand—how much suffering might he have prevented? How much less misery might he have caused?
“Don’t cry, Doctor.” Annie Rowe stood on the steps to the Cathedral with him, her face glowing in its light. “Christ’ll save you.”
“I’m already saved, Annie,” said Andrew. He didn’t know whether he’d say Christ was saving him, exactly. But Andrew had been saved some time ago—on the mountainside he’d wandered alone, full of doubt and anger, befuddled by the hill witch’s narcotics. He’d come to him, the Being, the Dauphin—the Juke, he thought—and Andrew had turned away, but it hadn’t mattered.
Once touched by the Divine, Andrew carried the spark.
If Annie saw that as Christ . . . well, all right. The one thing he’d learned about the Juke—the Dauphin—was that he lit that spark differently in every soul.
Now, he bore that spark home. To this great cathedral, swimming with angels, surrounded by a multitude. As he reached the top, one took his hand.
“I’m Lily,” said the Angel, and Andrew looked at her again, and sure enough, it was Lily.
“How about that,” he said, and walked across the platform—the dais—to the Oracle, who stood waiting for him. She smiled radiantly.
“You,” said the Oracle. “You are one. An Oracle too. Yes?”
“I am.”
“You stopped asking questions.”
“I have.”
“Will you speak?”
“I will.”
She unfolded her arms, and indicated where Andrew had been. “Tell them,” she said, her arm sweeping over the crowd of the wretched, lost souls of Eliada. “Tell them how to worship right.”
§
The last drops of rainfall steamed off Sam Green’s bent back. Jason could just see it from the front doors of the hospital: Green had made it a good way down the roadway to Eliada. His shirt was badly singed, and the flesh of his right hand, which clutched the jar, was slick, an awful mix of bright red and black.
“You see,” said Ruth, who stood beside him, “it is Sam Green. Not your father. Your father’s dead.”
“I see that now,” said Jason. He held Ruth’s hand, and looked at her. The flesh of her brow was slick too, even though she hadn’t yet stood in the rain. That might be fever, maybe exertion, maybe just all that time kept in that hot, airless room. With Sam Green gone, carrying the Cave Germ, there was less need to keep her there, and when she’d insisted on coming with him to follow, Jason couldn’t make an argument otherwise.
Jason squeezed Ruth’s hand, and let it drop. “Hush,” he whispered, and ran down the steps. It wasn’t a long distance, and until he was just a step away, Jason thought he might have gotten the jump on the Pinkerton.
But in that instant, Sam Green spun around, his free hand clenched in a fist.
“Jason!” cried Ruth.
“It ain’t your business anymore, boy,” said Green.
And then Jason was on his back in the mud. His jaw felt like it might never close properly again.
Green stood over him. In the light of day, it was sure clear that Jason’s father hadn’t come up from Hell; but Green looked like he hadn’t been anywhere too different. Half his face was red and peeling, and bloody meat hung in tatters from his right cheekbone. His hair was patched on his scalp. What flesh was intact was sooty and black. He winced as he reached to his belt and drew his revolver. He aimed it at Jason with a steady hand.
Jason kept steady too—steady as his ma would have, as she had . . .
“You’re aiming to let the germ out—ain’t you?” asked Jason.
“It’s the only way.”
“You know what it does, and you’re still goin’ to do that?”
Green narrowed his eyes. “I know,” he said, and gestured over his shoulder with his head. “I know what they do. The Jukes. I’ve seen it, Jason. You have too. They take men’s souls away. Take them away.”
“There’s a thousand folk yonder. You open that jar, they’re all going to die.”
“That they are,” he said. “But you saw what those things—that Mister Juke—what it can do. Just one of them, not too old . . . drives a fellow to think he’s seen God. And then it gets bigger—and what do you think happens then?”
“I expect . . .”
“Everyone thinks they’ve seen God. Everyone,” said Green. “They’ll do anything for that monster. Their souls—the ones entrusted to the True God. And eventually—they’ll run like a plague themselves over the land, mad with that thing.” He drew a ragged breath. “The Devil will rule the Earth.”
“Mr. Green,” said Ruth. She’d come up while they spoke, slowly, teetering in the mud. “What’s happened to you?”
Sam Green squinted at her. The gun faltered. “Miss Harper,” he said. “There’s been a fire . . . and a fight. I’m sorry to tell you—your father, your mother . . . They all died in it.”
“And yet you did not.” Ruth’s voice took a brittle quality. “You survived.”
“I fought them off. Best I could. Miss Harper—men from up the hill. Burned the place down—murdered as many as—”
Jason didn’t let him finish. He pivoted on his hip, and kicked out and Green shouted out as his knee buckled to one side. The gun flew from his hand, and landed quietly in the mud.
Jason dove at Sam Green’s middle. “I’m sorry,” he said as he connected, sending the bigger man sprawling under him. The stink of cooked flesh was overpowering, and Green was slippery
underneath his shirt, like he’d been skinned. “I know you’re hurt.”
Jason grabbed for the jar, but Green moved it out of his reach with one hand, grabbed Jason by the hair with the other and yanked him back. Jason cried out, and he felt ashamed: Green hadn’t so much as whimpered.
Jason pulled away hard enough that he left a fistful of his hair with Green, and drove his fist crosswise into the other man’s gut. Green coughed and bent, and Jason got the upper hand for an instant—just enough to get high and come down hard on Green’s shoulders, so he pinned him in the mud. He reached up to where Green’s burned-up fist held the jar. He closed his own hand around it and tugged. But Green wouldn’t let go.
“You can’t kill a thousand folk,” said Jason. “I seen less than that killed and it was awful. You can’t kill a thousand. Not like that.” He yanked again at the jar, but Green’s fist tightened.
“Boy, that jar’s a gift from God. If what your aunt says’s true, it’ll be enough to stop this.”
“You can’t kill a thousand.”
Jason realized he was crying, his eyes soaking up with tears. His voice was weak, a child’s voice. Some damn hero he was being for Ruth Harper and his mama and everyone else.
And Green—that bastard—he saw it too.
“No, Jason. You can’t kill a thousand. You might’ve. If you’d killed your aunt . . . you might’ve been able to. But you can’t and you shouldn’t. Leave it to one with blood enough on his hands already. You run on and—oh Jesus—look after that girl.”
Green glanced over to where Ruth stood, and perhaps trying to distract Jason, shifted in the muck, and pushed up hard. But Jason had the leverage and pushed back harder.
Green glared up at him. “God damn it, boy. She’s got my gun.”
“It’s all right, Ruth,” said Jason, not taking his eye off Green. “I got him.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ruth move into view. There was the sound of a hammer drawing back.
“She wants to make sure,” she said, in a strange, strangled but supremely confident voice; it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
Green struggled and motioned to her. “God damn it, boy. Look at her!”
Jason spared a glance, then looked again. Ruth stood like a lost child, feet close together, eyes darting here and there . . . one arm up over her breast—the other holding up Sam Green’s Russian, pointed at them both. Her eyes were wide, and the lids trembled—like there was a scream inside her that couldn’t get around that strange talk.
“She wants to make sure you don’t turn on Me too,” said Ruth, in a voice like a chorus.
“Jason,” whispered Sam, “you got to let me up. She’s gone like old Bergstrom went.”
“Like Bergstrom?”
“Thought the Juke was talkin’ through him. Before he died.”
Ruth’s lips parted—and between them, wasn’t there the hint of teeth, sharp and ready to tear at him?
Jason looked back at Green.
“What’s happened to her?”
“Juke’s in her, I’m guessin’. You two got taken away—didn’t you now? Bergstrom said it, before he died. She was in a safe place. Somethin’s made her like Maryanne Leonard.”
“Raped her, you mean.”
“Raped her.”
Jason let up on Green.
“And it’ll kill her.”
“Might just.”
Ruth spoke, but this time nothing like words came out—rather a trilling, high song that Jason now understood was not entirely or even mostly coming from her. The trees around the hospital were filled with it—the whistling that he’d heard from the creatures, the Jukes, that filled this town . . . the quarantine.
They were the things that had tried to prick him, and put those eggs inside him, under the skin like a fly lays . . . they were the things whose call Ruth had heard, as they crept around the quarantine last night . . . the things that had drawn her in, to lie with Mister Juke.
The gun moved as though at the end of a tree bough, and settled on them. Jason felt transfixed—like he was when he stepped up to Mister Juke himself, in the quarantine, and only a cut hand broke the spell.
Now, Ruth Harper herself held his gaze, as she aimed the gun at the two of them.
“She will hide herself,” said Ruth, “while I make manifest.”
And then, the world became brilliant, as the voices—Ruth’s included—coalesced, and one solo voice rang out across the Kootenai river valley. Jason swallowed, and felt himself swept in it.
§
“There are not ghosts,” said Andrew Waggoner.
He stood on the highest steps of Heaven, and looked down on the multitudes before him. At his side, the Dauphin’s woman—black-haired Oracle girl—stood, and whispered to him, in the fast and unmistakable tongue of the Dauphin . . . and she whispered: Worship nothing but him.
“There are not ghosts—there are not Devils from Hell,” said Andrew, and the people before him nodded, agreeing. “There’s no point in trying to impersonate them. You won’t fool anybody—any more than you will live well, coming here and sawing up wood for a rich man.”
The Oracle whispered to him, and he nodded, and went on:
“You won’t live well following those priests—your pastors. Because they talk about God far removed, who promises things later that might not be as fine as you’d heard. Not the one you see, right here in front of you.”
As he spoke, Andrew found he could also see farther, and that made a certain kind of sense. This place was high up—a mountain-top. The Oracle whispered at him, and he craned his neck and looked down the great river—all the way down, where men toiled in darkness and made up ways to hate, to elevate themselves above one another. He thought he might be able to see all the way to New York, where his father and his horses toiled too, hauling barrels of beer from a brewer to a tavern—thinking that well, at least he’d sent his son, his boy, to Paris.
“And you’ll live as poorly,” shouted Andrew to the multitude here, “following your reason. Why, reason misleads us. Same as those false priests, those frightening ghosts. It takes us to places where we can say such is so, and such else is so, and then—without knowing it—this further thing must be so. But it’s an error. A fellow could think himself away from—” from the Juke “—from this here . . .” the Dauphin “ . . . this Son.”
The Oracle whispered once more: Get them ready.
The world swirled about Andrew then, as the golden sands of Heaven flew into the air in a great cyclone, and Andrew drew higher. And he saw this multitude, turning to the south, and in a great line, making their way down the riverbank—some of them crawling on board the steamboat—and bearing on their shoulders a great Ark, that held in it the substance of the Son. Down the river they crawled and floated—until they came upon another Cathedral like this one, filled with folk, but empty of God. With guns and axes, they overtook it. And Andrew—Andrew preached the truth to the ones that lived; and gathered them into their army.
And from there, they swept the world.
Andrew spoke it—but he didn’t speak it: with the Oracle at his side and Annie Rowe holding his arm, he sang it. The whole world sang too, sang, and whistled—while in His Cathedral, the Son—the Juke—the Dauphin . . . was pleased.
And if a shadow moved beneath—if it didn’t sing as clearly—well, Andrew thought, what’s a small speck, in the all-seeing eye of God?
§
She has chosen him.
Lothar Feeger stepped forth from the shadow, his burden thrown over his shoulder. He carried his hatchet in one hand, and looked upon the back of the Oracle. She stood next to the nigger, bent, and held her prize—the prize that he, Lothar, had brought her—she held it between the two of them.
Lothar was not wise—he knew this about himself, and every time he forgot this someone would remind him—but he was wise enough to know that when he lay with Patricia, he had not taken her as a bride and had no claim over her. She was
bride to the Old Man if to anyone, now that she had gone Oracular.
Lothar was at peace with that; same as any man, he would stand aside for God. Why, if God chose to murder young Missy, strangle her in the space between beds—leave her there, as the Mothers squirmed and cried out . . .
If that were His choice—Lothar would not object.
But the nigger . . . the pretending nigger—taking up the song, standing here at his Oracle’s side . . .
Lothar wouldn’t allow it.
Lothar stepped out—he resisted the song, with all the agony in his heart.
He would show her, the sweet girl who would not spill more blood than she needed. He would show her, what the crone and the nigger had done to her sister.
Lothar pushed forward, and knocked the pretender aside. And as the Oracle stared at him, he dropped the still corpse of her sister at her feet. And the nigger . . . he screamed like a pig.
§
The cyclone stilled, and Heaven sloughed away; what had been gates made from gold, turned back to weathered grey timber. Those multitudes, ready a moment ago to do battle for their God, knelt in mud. Andrew Waggoner crouched not at the top of a great stone staircase, but on the loading platform of the sawmill at Eliada.
At his knees—
—a dead girl. Just a child—the child that Germaine Frost had murdered, while Andrew stood helpless.
That’s three you didn’t save.
Andrew drew a ragged breath. There was no time for remorse; he’d been given a reprieve, the pain that sheared up in his arm gave him a moment away from the sorcery the Juke worked. And that remorse—that guilt—was a fast route back to the lie.
He blinked in the morning light and took stock. The girl was on the deck in front of him; to one side, a black-haired young man dressed in the buckskin uniform of these people, a hatchet in his hand. The Oracle girl knelt now to touch the child’s brow; her sister, Lily, stood with her fists bunched, eyes in tears. And just beyond, stood Annie Rowe, her hands clasped in prayer as she looked with eyes that nearly glowed, to the open doors, the dark cavern of the sawmill itself—like she was looking through the Gates of Heaven, toward salvation. Andrew looked there too. It was all dark, but for a square of light at the corner. It could be salvation; that was the riverside loading bay. Past it was a dock, and then the frigid waters of the Kootenai.