Attack

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  Jacob flushed. “I submit that one who has been an ardent member of the corruption that we now call Oneness for so long cannot clearly say what it is to know the Spirit or not.”

  She pictured him living here, a young man dwelling among tombs, for three years.

  “You fixated on darkness for so long,” she said. “How do you know you can trust your knowledge?”

  She turned her back and walked away through the grass, her eyes trailing the gravestones, every one calling up spectres of lives lived in lust and greed and damage, the picture Jacob had painted. She wished she could believe he was wrong about all these people.

  But she didn’t.

  She’d seen too much in Lincoln, as part of the cell that was forever tracking and fighting the demonic, to question him much on that point. But it shook her now, to look back. Because they had always just gone after the demonic, and in all of her years that had never truly solved the problem. It was always people at the back of things. People using each other. People turning on each other. People destroying each other.

  And it was people they never really stopped.

  People the Oneness only tried to help, to serve, to save.

  What if Jacob was right?

  What if you couldn’t win the battle that way?

  What if some people simply had to be stopped, taken out of the way, so that they could not live ninety-eight years of darkness worse than demons?

  What if, instead of using their swords to make a real difference, they had been play-fighting on the field of the world all these years?

  And what if he was right about her—and years of closing her ears and eyes to the truth had warped everything she thought she knew, so much that she could not trust herself to know anything?

  Tyler appeared beside her.

  “You’re letting him get to you.”

  “He’s . . .”

  “He’s not right.”

  She stopped. “He could be.”

  “Reese, he’s not. I’m new to the Oneness. I haven’t been ignoring any ‘truth’ for years and years. And I know the Oneness is good, and Clint is evil—the demons are evil, Clint’s power is evil. What you do, what all of you do, is good and right.”

  She looked around the graveyard, its neat, silent stones monuments to something. Jacob was waiting by the giant headstone of Bertoller, keeping his distance, letting them talk. She imagined him again a young man, thrashing out his questions and his grief among the dead. He was mad. Or a prophet.

  And she thought of Chris.

  “We let his wife die,” she whispered.

  “But you didn’t let me die. Or Chris. You saved Chris, Reese.” He hesitated. “Besides, I don’t think you can blame yourselves for what happened to his wife. Bertoller did that.”

  “And we didn’t stop him.”

  “It’s not your job to stop him.”

  “It’s our job to combat corruption. It’s our job to hold things in order, to hold them together. It’s our job to keep the world safe in the hands of love, to be the hands of love. Are we doing that if we let men like that go unopposed?”

  Tyler didn’t answer. He looked confused and lost.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know these are heavy questions. Honestly, I’ve never asked them before. You’re right. He’s getting to me.”

  She lowered her voice and scuffed the ground. “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

  Tyler looked back at him and squinted, as though he was trying to see the man more clearly. Then, unexpectedly, he said, “He was right about one thing for sure.”

  Reese raised her eyebrows. “And that is?”

  “You and Chris. I think you’re meant to be together. He really loves you. You love him too. But not before he’s Oneness. Jacob is right about that.”

  She just stared at him.

  He looked down and shuffled his feet in the dirt. “I’m sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t.

  He wasn’t sorry at all, and she didn’t want him to be.

  “No,” she said. “You’re a good friend.” She turned to look at Jacob again. “I don’t know what to do about him. I’m supposed to be bringing him back into the fold so he won’t be a threat to the Oneness anymore. I’m doing a terrible job.”

  “Well, ball’s in your court now. Right? You’re taking turns. So you take him somewhere.”

  “Where? I can’t compete with this!”

  “Because you don’t believe in what you’re saying,” Tyler said, “so you can’t think of anything to support you. Jacob believes in himself so much he’ll find proof of his beliefs everywhere.” Tyler looked at her with an expression between a command and a half-questioning suggestion. “Maybe you need to figure out what you really believe, instead of just trying to figure out what he does.”

  She found it in her to grin. “When did you get so smart?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. Just born that way, I guess.”

  She swatted him, leaning hard on her crutches to give herself a free hand, and he ducked and laughed. “Maybe you’re right. But this was not the plan.”

  “Plans come from the Spirit, right? Is the Spirit usually predictable?”

  “I meant my plan.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “Tyler . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Standing among the gravestones, with his sneakers scuffed and his hair in a long tangle as usual, he looked like a little boy. And she wanted to smack him and hug him at the same time.

  “Thanks for being so difficult. I think I need you right now.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  And together, their eyes strayed back to Jacob.

  He had left the huge gravestone and was wandering, reading the smaller stones, reviewing all he knew about these people.

  His failures.

  His vision for the future.

  Reese realized she’d been waiting for him to take control again, to tell them it was time to go and move on to the next place. But it was her turn. Technically, she was in control now.

  Even though she felt a lot like the world had turned upside down.

  “Well,” she said faintly, “I guess it’s time to go.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “What you said,” she answered. “Figure out what I believe. Figure out whose side I’m on.” She flashed him a tired smile. “There’s no point in continuing all this if I don’t know that.”

  She motioned to Jacob when he looked their way and headed back toward the car, feeling heavier on her crutches than she had when they’d arrived.

  Heavier in her heart, in her mind.

  She knew what she didn’t say.

  If Jacob was right, and she accepted his beliefs as true, she was exiling herself again—cutting herself off from everything and everyone she loved.

  Choosing it this time.

  But if she had learned anything from what David had done to her, it was that truth mattered.

  * * *

  Mary’s hand shook as she reached for David’s. His eyes were trained on hers, in hers, riveting, compelling.

  He was a liar, a practiced liar, yet she hoped to find truth by entering into his soul.

  This was madness.

  And yet she had no other choice.

  Truth about him—worse, truth about herself.

  It was she, he insisted, who had sent him down this path years ago. She who had twisted him, perverted him, turned him against the Oneness. She who had done to him what he was trying to do to others.

  Two things, she feared.

  One was this power. Yes, Oneness could do this. Yes, they could enter each other’s hearts to this degree. Yes, they could go past all the normal boundaries of human knowledge, all the normal limitations. They did not do it. Not because it was morally wrong, but because it cost.

  It cost to enter so fully into what they were.

  And a voice whispered to her:

  If you are afraid of the cost, you will never enter the ful
lness of what you are or of what I am.

  The second thing she feared: that she would see herself through David’s eyes and know herself to be the enemy of all she truly loved, to know herself a hypocrite, to know herself a darkness greater than any she had tried to fight.

  Since she was a teenager, Oneness had been Mary’s life.

  She had given herself to it, served it, proselytized for it. It was her family, her passion, her work, and her heart.

  She feared discovering that from some deeper place within her, she had been working to undo what she loved so much.

  That her whole life would prove to be a sham.

  A desperate bid to convince herself she meant something and lived for something beyond herself without uncovering the truth.

  Behind her, April and Chris were talking, their voices a low murmur under the sound of the waves, the boat kicking up spray, the sail flapping, the birds calling.

  Before her, David’s eyes drew her in.

  He took her hand—she had not found the courage to take his.

  He closed his eyes.

  And she closed hers, knowing that in that moment she was stepping outside of the world where the sun was, where the waves were, where her family was. And she was stepping into a man’s soul.

  The first thing she knew was darkness.

  Darkness washed over her, but not the darkness of fear. This was the darkness of a womb, of a deep, quiet, sacred place where life was formed.

  Silence here was a heavy hush, a brooding.

  Then a rush of thought, emotion, and being—like a freight train bearing down on her, screaming over and through her, overwhelming.

  She gasped and woke up.

  She was in a place she recognized. A house. She couldn’t remember why she knew it, or what had happened here—only that in some sense she belonged in this place. She looked down to see where she was sitting and found that she could not see herself.

  Nor could she see David. She was not looking through his eyes. But he was there—a presence she could feel, but as invisible to her as she was herself.

  He was younger here.

  This was a long time ago.

  Twenty years ago.

  That should mean something to her, but in this moment, here, it didn’t.

  She had a sense that she was to wait, and to watch, as much outside of herself as she could be. And so, very conscious that she was doing it, she quieted the voice of her own mind and sank back into his.

  She became nothing.

  Or nearly nothing.

  It was impossible, she found, to be rid of herself completely.

  Someone in the room was talking. The conversation was nothing of consequence—so little so that she drifted out of it without really taking in what was being said, distracted by other details. It was night, and an open window was letting a cool breeze through ruffled curtains. The occasional car passed on the street outside, and the distant thumping of a stereo added its rhythm to the night, but it was late fall and the neighbourhood was indoors—cozy behind closed doors. Here, the sense was overwhelmingly one of comfort, of home. Of fellowship and connection, belonging.

  It was Oneness at its best, warming her heart, enveloping her. Oneness giving even the shabby decorating of the house—a large house she thought, having a sense of space beyond this sitting room—a meaning and glow beyond themselves.

  Someone walked into the room, and she turned to look at him, and felt her own heart lurch.

  Hers, not David’s. Her heart asserting itself because this face, this young man, meant so much to her.

  Her brother.

  Her twin brother.

  He was cradling a child, a three-year-old who was half asleep snuggled against his chest. Like hers, Sam’s build was slight, but he was strong, and more than a head taller than she was.

  The bond with his spirit was as strong, as vital, as she remembered it being. She realized she had known he was there even before he entered the room. They exchanged a glance now and smiled without words.

  Exchanged a glance?

  Yes, she was there too—in a corner of the room that she could not see, physically there, her younger self.

  But she wasn’t in that self now. She was in David, seeing—to some extent—from his perspective.

  She was supposed to be learning, so she wrested her attention away from Sam—oh, how she wanted to leave it there!—and tried to divine how David felt about her presence in this place twenty years ago. If he already viewed her as an enemy, or if—

  Her attempt was thwarted by the blast.

  She remembered this.

  It all played out like she remembered it. It was the back of the house that blew off, killing everyone who was there, sending off a blast of heat that ripped through now and burned them all as they stumbled out the doors, coughing and choking in air that had been cool, had been moving lace curtains, and now was a black inferno.

  The house was big—bigger than the impression she’d had standing in the sitting room. Big enough that nearly as many people managed to get out before the rest of the house blew as had died in the initial bombing.

  Fear rose up and choked her, more blinding than grief, and she didn’t know if it was hers or David’s. But she saw Sam stumbling out, with his child in his arms, and the rest of the family—his wife and two other children—running to him from another door where they had escaped. And then they all joined hands and ran.

  Ran from the second blast.

  The second crippling, burning wave of heat.

  She’d never forgotten the cries of those who didn’t get far enough away.

  She opened her eyes and was back on the boat. She looked across at David—somehow they were both lying on their backs now, side by side, with the spray stinging their eyes.

  Her eyes were full of tears.

  His were not. But she saw the pain in them anyway.

  “These are my memories too,” she said, licking her lips as though they were still burned, cracked and bleeding. “You weren’t the only one who suffered. Who lost.”

  Sam. Now the grief rose up—sharp as it had been the first day after he was killed by the drug-addled teens who came so much later, when it should have been all over but wasn’t.

  She had never stopped grieving his lost, but somehow the pain had been buried under the years, matted down by time and other concerns and the company of others she loved.

  It was not buried now.

  She cried, tears just running down her face, pain too deep for sobs.

  If anything, David looked satisfied.

  But she hurt too badly, in this moment, with the smells and sounds of that night so fresh, to hate him for it.

  “We aren’t done,” he croaked.

  The memories weren’t easy for him either.

  She closed her eyes again.

  Again the womb-like darkness, the rush of personality and feeling, and then she opened her eyes and they were in the country, twigs and dried grass snapping under their feet, mud sucking at them, insects biting. There were people before and people behind, urging children on, comforting each other. There was pain—the burns from the blast, the burning lungs from breathing it in and then running, and not stopping, convinced that they were running from something more terrible than a fire. More diabolical than a freak accident, a gas line blowing, whatever else the media might call it.

  Hell was on their heels, and they knew it.

  She recognized that Sam and his children were in this group, that these were still her memories. She had fled down this road, in this hour, under this moon. She had fled with this conviction of being hunted.

  Which meant that David had been there too, right alongside her, the whole time.

  And yet she had not remembered him.

  The split presence—that this was both her memory and his—made it hard to stay tapped into him, to let herself relax into his personality and quiet her own thoughts.

  Once again, she took herself in hand and ordered her o
wn mind, her own heart, to quiet. It was harder this time. Knowing that Sam was here made her want to stay present.

  But she did what she had to do.

  This time she felt the throbbing confusion and heartache. The question drumming through David’s veins with every step, every tortured breath.

  Why?

  Why?

  Why?

  And she felt his terrible grief, grief that was still partially numb but was fighting for his attention, threatening to overwhelm him, stop in his tracks, throw him into a ditch to stay there and weep and die.

  Unlike her, he had lost someone he was especially close to in that blast.

  Not just close to . . .

  She heard the cry of his heart:

  My baby!

  She opened her eyes again. Back to the yacht. Back to the sun and the salt air, and the ropes overhead and the great white sail.

  “You lost a child,” she said. “You’re a father.”

  “A real one,” he said bitterly. “Not just some house parent.”

  But this time, as she stared into his eyes she didn’t see the pain that had been there before. This, he had walled off. This, he would not go back to. And she thought, maybe, the bitterness was a wall. A protection he had built just so he would never have to face that pain again.

  “Are you inventing theories?” he asked. “Trying to understand my pain so you’ll know why I turned? You know nothing. I didn’t turn against the Oneness for costing me my daughter. I believed your propaganda—that death was nothing, that we’d still be One, that she would be there on the other side. Death did not sting that day like it should have.”

  “It stung enough. I felt it.”

  “I was a man,” he said. “I had a heart.”

  “You still are. You still do.”

  He closed his eyes. She realized he was weak—and so was she. This connection, this depth of being One, was costing them both.

  She wondered why exactly he wanted it.

  Why he was so open.

  “No,” he said, “I do not. I exorcised my heart a long time ago. If you see pain in my eyes, it is only because a man does not need a heart to feel pain. A man is an animal, and he can be tormented and whimper like one.”

  She closed her eyes too.

  “I’m sorry for you.”