Decoration Day

by Vic Kerry

  At the foot of the steps, David looked up. The light spilled out from the third floor. Excitement almost overwhelmed him. The light had been such a burden when he thought of it as a nightmare. Now that it was God, it excited him more than anything else ever had. Soon he would be in direct contact with the Almighty. Any doubt he’d had about staying in Innsboro left him.

  As he started up the first step, a hand touched him on the shoulder. A surge of excitement jolted through him. God touched him, but none of the electrical feeling of the light joined the touch.

  “Where are you going?” Marsh asked.

  David looked down at the man. Grave concern etched lines on Marsh’s face. The preacher tried to brush the other man’s hand off his shoulder.

  “I’m going to the light, to God.”

  “There is no light,” Marsh said.

  David looked at the third floor. The light still spilled over the edge of the landing, but had dwindled. He reached toward it.

  “It’s boiling out like fog,” he said.

  “There is nothing there. Let me take you back to your room. You don’t need to be out of bed. Ebenezer said that your fall has aggravated the concussion. You’re probably hallucinating,” Marsh stepped around him and tugged on him to go back to his room.

  “What is the problem?” Ebenezer asked, coming up the stairs.

  “Reverend Stanley has wandered out of his room, trying to get to the light that he’s been dreaming about,” Marsh said.

  “It is real. I see it spilling from the third floor.” David pointed down the hallway, which was now lit with electric light. The God light no longer drooped down but clung to the flat ceiling.

  “You need to return to your room,” Ebenezer said. “Alistair found you unconscious on the floor of the church. You’ve aggravated the concussion you received. You need to get off your feet.”

  “The light is God. He wants me to come to him,” David almost raved.

  “He is hallucinating,” Ebenezer said to Marsh. “Get the others up here to help get him to his room. I’ll go get some medication to help him.”

  “Nahum, Horace, please help me,” Marsh yelled down to the ground floor.

  Ebenezer let go of David’s arm, but before he attempted to wrench himself away from Marsh, the other men were upon him. They dragged him down the hallway and back into his room. Without any ceremony, they flung him onto the bed. The springs sank and jabbed into his back. The men loomed over him, holding him place. David thought about lashing out, but they kept a secure grip while pressing him down.

  “Don’t you understand that the light is God?” He looked up at the ceiling. The purple light continued to shine around the edges of the moldings. “He called to me.”

  “He took quite a bump to the head,” Marsh told the others. “He believes the light from his nightmares is talking to him. Ebenezer is going to get something to help him settle down.”

  Nahum looked up at the ceiling. David thought the man saw the light. Something in his eyes gave it away. The oldest of the men looked back at him. “There’s nothing up there but cobwebs.”

  David started to say he’d never said the light was on the ceiling, but Ebenezer came in at that moment. He saw him uncork a small bottle that he recognized as the sleep dram. They planned to drug him again. He knew what he’d seen and what he’d heard.

  “Open up.” Ebenezer squeezed his jowls until his mouth opened.

  The liquid filled up his mouth. The doctor closed his lips and held his mouth shut. Ebenezer rubbed his throat, forcing David to swallow the dram. Now God would be angry. He hoped that the Almighty would hold them accountable. Once he’d swallowed, Ebenezer let go of his mouth.

  “The wrath of God will be upon you,” David said.

  He tried to struggle, but the drug worked fast. All his strength drained from him. His limbs went limp, and his lids slipped shut. All he saw was the purple light. The thrumming of it echoed through his head. The men let go of him. He willed himself to jump up and run, but the dram sucked everything from him.

  “Is he out?” Marsh asked.

  David felt his arm rise and fall. “Yes,” Ebenezer said.

  “Is he really crazy?” Nahum asked.

  “Look up,” Horace said. “What do you think?”

  “He’s not,” Ebenezer said. “He’s delirious from that damned light but not crazy.”

  “That light has never shown up in all the years we’ve celebrated Decoration Day,” Nahum said.

  “It’s because he’s the one. I am almost sure of it. No other preacher has ever been so affected by the place, and none has ever been so determined to work at our church,” Marsh said. “I just hope that the light isn’t too much for him.”

  Before he could hear the remainder of the conversation, David fell into deep sleep.

  “Good morning.”

  David opened his eyes. Harsh, overpowering sunlight blinded him. He put his hand in front of his face to block the light. For a moment, David forgot where he was. He reached out for Anna, but his hand fell off the bed.

  “Are you awake, Reverend Stanley?” Marsh said.

  Reality set in. Anna was dead. He lay in a bedroom of a very creepy mansion in Tennessee, and God had talked to him last night. It had been more than that. God had beckoned him to join him. He sat straight up and stared his host dead in the face.

  Marsh’s steel-blue eyes looked hard and not very friendly. David wondered if the man’s eyes had always looked so harsh. He couldn’t remember. The thing he did remember was that Marsh and the other elders had kept him from meeting God.

  “I want to leave,” he said.

  “Why?” Marsh’s eyes softened to a look of curiosity.

  “You kept me from God.” David threw his feet off the bed and stood up.

  A wave of dizziness washed over him. The room made a half whirl before he plopped back down on the bed. The springs creaked and popped under his weight. The wall tilted back the other way and finally stopped. The sun shining through the window seemed harsher. It stabbed his eyes and pierced his brain.

  “What did that doctor give me?” he yelled, grasping his head as he did.

  “The same sleep medicine that he gave you before.”

  “I don’t believe you. You had me drugged. I heard you talking about me being the right one. What are going to do to me?”

  Marsh walked around and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress depressed. He suddenly had a very fatherly, worried look about him.

  “I was going to let you preach,” Marsh said, “but I’m beginning to reconsider it. I think you are losing grip on reality.”

  “The only thing I’m losing is my patience. Tell me what is going on.”

  “Ebenezer believes you are suffering from a kind of delirium. He believes that our isolation here has made it worse.”

  “Why isn’t it affecting you?”

  “Probably because we are used to the isolation. It is part of us,” Marsh said. “It’s in our character.”

  “How about the light?” David asked. “Is that part of the delirium, or is it God like I believe?”

  “I think it’s part of the delirium even though it started before the road ended up blocked. As for it being your God, I highly doubt that.”

  “Why? Don’t you have faith?”

  “I have faith in many things, Reverend, but I also know that you didn’t hear your God’s voice until you had another blow to the head. I find the two correlate.”

  “I’m not crazy,” David said.

  “I don’t think you are, but I do think you’ve had two severe blows to the head that are affecting your judgment and rationality.” Marsh stood. The mattress rose free of his added weight. “You will stay with me until Sunday. I don’t want you back at the church. It has ill effects on you.”

  David knew he wasn’t going to win this particular battle. Marsh owned the town as best he could tell. If Marsh didn’t want David at the church, it wouldn’t happen. Also, God had come to him in
this room. He might do it again.

  “I’ll stay,” he said.

  “Are you going to cause any more excitement?”

  “I’ll try not to.” As Marsh started out the door, David continued. “I left my sermon notes in the graveyard. I’m afraid they’ve been ruined by the weather, but could you fetch them?”

  Marsh smiled. “I saw the pad out there when I found you unconscious in the church. I brought it back with me. I’ll have it sent up with some food.”

  “Thank you,” he said and thought about all the canned goods. “Could I get some fresh fruit with it?”

  “I don’t think so. We don’t have any. There’s not enough time to eat up the surplus before Decoration Day.” Marsh smiled and closed the door behind him.

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot,” David said.

  The sun no longer blinded him. Clouds covered it so thickly that the light entering the room looked like twilight. Rain began to patter on the windows. David felt like he was living in a rain forest of some kind. Risking another wave of dizziness, he stood. His brain heaved forward and then backward but was not overcome with unsteadiness. He knelt by the bed, almost daring the demons of dizziness to overtake him. Everything pitched forward, toppling him face-first into the mattress, which was fitting since he planned such a position. While the world still moved in large loops, David began to pray.

  “Our Father who is in heaven.” David stopped and thought over his words. He wasn’t making a public prayer but a private call of supplication. “My Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your matchless name. Oh Lord, hear me. Don’t blame me for not coming to you last night. I was hindered in my way by forces beyond my control. You have called me to this place. Now stumbling blocks are before me everywhere. Give me guidance. Tell me what to do. Give me a sign. I need the reassurance that I am not losing my mind, and that you have given me a new calling and have revived my faith for the betterment. Protect against evils that hold back your powerful light. Free me from the nightmares and walking horrors like the woman with the octopus face. Oh Lord, give me a sign.”

  A tap came at the door. David looked up from his prayer. The sudden movement didn’t send his brains reeling. Thomasine stepped inside, carrying a small tray with food and his legal pad on it. She placed the tray on the dresser and left without saying a word. David felt he might have gotten his sign. The woman bore a violet aura around her.

  “In the name of your crucified Son, amen.” He ended his prayer and stood.

  The vertigo he’d experienced all the other times he’d stood was gone. He walked to the dresser without any trouble. A bowl of what looked like chicken salad sat on the tray with a few saltine crackers on a platter. Olives also garnished the meal. The ink on the legal pad looked undamaged by the weather. Both the lunch choice and the sermon cheered David.

  “God to be praised,” he said aloud.

  He picked up his sermon notes and walked back to the bed. The chicken salad would be fine in a few minutes. He wanted to review his work. The fervor with which he had written yesterday undoubtedly had left the page full of brilliance. The beginning of the sermon read just as he remembered it. The time it had taken to pull those words from his mind gave them extra power. After half a page, the words became incomprehensible. They were not illegible. Each letter curled just so in dark ink. The letters themselves looked foreign, but not any language David had ever seen. Despite the alienness of the letters, he recognized his handwriting.

  A strong pull came from deep inside him. He walked to the window and looked out toward the church. Through a gap in the landscape he had never noticed before, the church’s spire jutted upward. A violet aura surrounded it. Something as deep inside of him as that pulling told him the words would be translated there. The Holy Spirit lived there; David knew it. That great gift of God would provide translation.

  Wooziness overtook him again. He stumbled back to the bed and collapsed there. The pages of his notepad crinkled beneath him as he passed out.

  David screamed. The force of it tore through his throat, making it feel raw. After what seemed like an eternity of expelling the shriek, it broke off because his voice could take no more. The terror still clenched him. It took a long moment to realize what he screamed at. The woman in black stood at the foot of his bed. Her veil was piled on top of the large-brimmed hat she wore. The tentacles of her face reached out for him. She was like a strange Medusa who didn’t turn men to stone but paralyzed them with terror.

  His voice caught its second wind, and the scream blared out again. It took on the rhythm of a child wailing, a siren sound. The writhing appendages drew closer and closer to David’s face. He almost felt the sharp suckers on his skin. The tentacles retracted, and the woman disappeared into a fog, like rich purple velvet.

  The bedroom door slammed open. Marsh rushed in, wild-eyed, looking in all directions. Thomasine followed close behind him. She held a broom with the bristles up, poised to swat at whatever caused him to cry out.

  “Are you okay?” Marsh asked, coming to his side.

  “That was the woman with tentacles for a face.” David knew he ranted. “She attacked me at the church the other night. That’s why I fell and hit my head again.”

  Marsh pushed David back into a lying position. He examined the preacher’s face. David looked into Marsh’s eyes. They had genuine concern in them. He felt the palm of one of Marsh’s hands on his forehead and the back of his other hand on his cheek.

  “Thomasine, get Thomas to fetch Ebenezer. Reverend Stanley is burning alive with fever. I am afraid it’s boiling his brains.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” she said. “I’ll bring up some ice too.”

  “With a washcloth and cool water as well,” Marsh said. “We have to get this under control.”

  “I thought God gave me a sign of peace.” David rose up and grabbed Marsh by the arm. He squeezed much harder than he intended to. The other man winced. “Why has he allowed this demon to come to me?”

  “Lie back down,” Marsh said. “You are getting more delirious due to the fever. You have to try and calm yourself.”

  “I have to leave this place before I lose everything,” David said.

  “You need to calm down.” Marsh stood. “I’m going to get the ice and water. I can’t wait on that dastardly slow Thomasine while she lollygags.”

  Marsh left the room, not closing the door after him. David felt happy about that. As long as he wasn’t completely isolated, he had a shot of surviving. Any more time alone and that woman would do him in.

  Bugs crawled under his skin. They itched. He scratched at them and felt his skin moving as they bored a path just under the top layer. They moved toward his face, toward his brain. Before they made it even to his elbow, he felt them boring into his cerebral cortex, making it look like Swiss cheese. A scream rose up in his throat but hung there.

  Other things happened around him. At the seam between the molding and ceiling, the God light glowed down, but it was a faint, pastel lavender color. The sight worried him but not as much as what ran up the walls. Raised places milled around under the wallpaper. They looked like tentacles moving just beneath the surface. They sought a way free of the paper. A sudden realization came to David. He looked down at his arms, where the bugs crawled under his skin. Instead of seeing a scattering of small bumps sliding up his arms, veins appeared to move and slither toward his face. The tentacles crawled under his skin. The scream came free. He beat at his arms with a flattened palm as if trying to put out flames. He alternated the beatings from arm to arm in a spastic fit.

  Marsh burst back into the room. He slammed a bowl on the dresser. Marsh grabbed David’s wrists and pressed his arms to the bed. The man used remarkable strength. His appearance belied his ability.

  “Thomasine, get in here now!” he said.

  “Let me go!” David struggled. “The tentacles are heading toward my brain.”

  “What is the matter with him?” Thomasine asked in her usual flat to
nes. However, in David’s near-crazed hearing, the words echoed.

  “He’s having a fit of some sort. Wrap some ice in that washcloth and get it on his forehead,” Marsh said.

  David struggled again to gain freedom from Marsh’s grasp. He failed but laid his head down. Cooperation might give Marsh a reason to lessen his grip, and David could jump up and escape. He closed his eyes to feign calmness. The whole time the writhing tentacles moved in his arms. Marsh’s hands stopped their progress for the moment, but the movement still felt maddening.

  Thomasine placed the ice pack on his head. The pain of the sudden coldness stabbing into his brain radiated from David’s forehead to his temples. The shock of it caused the writhing behind the wallpaper to stop. The squirming beneath his skin eased off as well. The weak glow continued right at the edge of the molding and the ceiling.

  “That worked fast,” Thomasine said.

  “Good.” Marsh sounded relieved.

  David felt relief too. Clarity began to come back to his mind. He still felt the urge to run, but wouldn’t. The sharp pain the cold pack brought to his head faded as well.

  “I was afraid you were about to have a seizure,” Marsh said to him.

  He licked his lips. Terror left his mouth as dry as kindling. “I think I almost did.”

  Every word hurt as it came out. The screaming had ripped his throat raw. David smacked his lips in hopes that either Marsh or Thomasine would understand he wanted water.

  “If I let go of your hands, are you going to stay still?” Marsh asked. David nodded his agreement. “I’ll get you some water.”