Risen

by Strnad, Jan

  "I came here from Anderson. Something very strange is happening there. It's something I think you know about." Brant glanced at the orderly leaning in the doorway. If he pushed Pritchett too far and he became upset, the orderly would order them out. He had to proceed cautiously, and yet, there was so little time. Who knew what might be going on in Anderson?

  "It's like what happened in Eloise," Brant said.

  If the name meant anything special to Pritchett, he gave no sign. Brant continued.

  "Some people have died. But Donald..." he shot another quick glance at the orderly. "They didn't stay dead. They came back."

  Donald Pritchett stopped rocking, stopped humming. His eyes remained focused on whatever distant sight they beheld, but Brant knew that he had the old man's attention.

  "We think this is what happened in Eloise. There was a man who was struck by lightning. Everyone thought he was dead. But he came back, didn't he? Were there others, Donald? Others who came back?"

  Pritchett's mouth tightened. His eyes narrowed.

  Tom saw the orderly, who had been leaning against the door jamb, straighten and scowl.

  "What is this?" the orderly began, and Tom stepped forward.

  "Please," Tom said. "I know this sounds crazy, but it's very important."

  "Is that what happened sixty years ago?" Brant asked Pritchett. "First, they come back. Then...what?"

  Pritchett worked his lips and finally a single word came out. "Come," he whispered.

  Brant leaned in closer.

  "Come," Pritchett said, louder this time, and then he said the word again, drawing it out like a mantra: "Come."

  "Come where, Donald?" Brant asked. He glanced over at the scowling orderly. He saw that Tom had placed himself between the orderly and himself. If Pritchett became agitated and the orderly tried to intervene, Tom could hold him off for a few precious seconds. Those seconds might provide the clue they needed.

  Pritchett's lips moved slightly, mouthing words he seemed to hear in his head. Brant put his ear close to Pritchett's mouth. He could feel the old man's breath, and he realized that Pritchett was singing. The tempo was all wrong, drawn out like a record played too slowly, but Brant could make out the words.

  "...church in the wildwood...." Pritchett sang.

  Brant sat back.

  "What is it?" Tom asked.

  Brant stood, wincing at the stiffness in his ankles and knees.

  "He's singing 'Little Brown Church,'" Brant said. "That's the hymn they were singing last Sunday. 'Come to the church in the wildwood, come to the church in the dale....'"

  "I remember," Tom said.

  "I think you two should go now," the orderly said.

  "Look, I know how this must appear," Brant said, "like we should be checking ourselves in at the front door. But the fact is—"

  Tom interrupted. "We think this delusion Pritchett has about people returning from the grave is at the heart of his psychosis," he said.

  Brant was impressed. He'd almost blown it by starting to level with the orderly about the goings-on in Anderson. If he had, of course, they'd have been hustled to the nearest exit. Tom had instinctively known better, and he'd come up with a plausible lie that would sit better with the orderly than anything as unbelievable as the truth. The kid had a future as a reporter.

  "We're trying to develop rapport through a shared delusion," Brant said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial level.

  "You understand," Tom said confidently.

  "Uh-huh," the orderly said.

  "I must've sounded like a nut case!" said Brant.

  "You probably thought we were crazy."

  "Yeah, you had me going there for a minute," the orderly said.

  "I just have a few more questions for Mr. Pritchett. Do you mind?"

  The orderly shook his head. "I guess after all he's been through, a few crazy questions won't hurt."

  Brant smiled and thanked him, then he sat on the bed opposite Pritchett. Pritchett's voice had gone silent and he was rocking again, slowly, in time to the tune in his head.

  "Donald," Brant said. "There was a man. He lived in Eloise, but he wasn't like the others. Do you know the man I'm talking about?"

  Pritchett appeared not to hear.

  "He was different. Special. You...you buried him."

  "Come, come, come, come," Pritchett intoned, "Come to the church in the wildwood...."

  "Do you know the man I'm talking about? You buried him, but they say he wasn't dead."

  "Come to the church...." Pritchett sang loudly.

  "They say you buried him alive."

  Louder: "...in the vale!"

  The orderly stepped forward. Tom blocked his path, putting a hand on the man's chest.

  "Wait! This is the breakthrough we were hoping for!"

  The orderly glared, but he took a step back.

  "He wasn't alive, was he, Donald? He was dead when you buried him. But he came back."

  "No spot is so dear...." Pritchett sang. His head trembled. Brant could see the pounding of Pritchett's heart in the veins of his neck, pulsing under the thin skin.

  "Was he the one responsible for Eloise?"

  "...to my childhood...."

  "Was he responsible for the slaughter?"

  Pritchett's eyes bored into the past and his voice cracked with emotion. The words poured out with anger, with a vehemence born of outrage and loathing.

  "...as the little brown church in the vale!" he sang, shouting the words, his sunken chest heaving, his voice hoarse with effort.

  "Is that why you killed him, Donald," Brant persisted, "and then buried him so he couldn't come back?"

  "That's it!" the orderly announced. He shoved his way past Tom and grabbed Brant by the arm. "You're out of here! Come on!"

  Brant let himself be hauled to his feet but he didn't take his eyes off Donald Pritchett.

  "It's happening again, Donald!" he said. "In Anderson! You have to help us! What do we do to stop it?"

  "I said that's enough!"

  The orderly dragged Brant toward the door. Tom rushed in to take his place in front of Donald Pritchett. He bent down and took the old man's hands. He spoke quietly but with urgency.

  "Tell us, Donald! How do we stop it?"

  Pritchett's eyes moved, locked onto Tom's. Tom saw that the pupils were dilated with...what? Fear?

  "Seth!" Pritchett said with a sudden clarity that took Tom by surprise. "Kill Seth!"

  "Who's Seth?" Tom asked frantically as his side vision registered the orderly's form closing on him.

  Tom felt strong hands on his arm as he was yanked to his feet and propelled toward the door in a flurry of profanity. His last view of Donald Pritchett was over the orderly's shoulder as the orderly shoved him into Brant and forced both of them into the hallway, cursing steadily.

  He saw that Pritchett had curled one bony hand into a fist. The tendons stood out on his thin forearm as he shook the fist, beat it against his leg.

  "Kill Seth!" Pritchett shouted as loudly as his aging lungs could manage. "Kill Seth!"

  ***

  "Where are we going?"

  "Wildwood Cemetery."

  The sun had been going down as the two security guards escorted Brant and Tom to the parking lot of the Greenhaven Convalescent Center. Now, as they raced back toward Anderson, the sky was on fire with a glorious sunset that spread all around the horizon from west to east. It was a spectacle so grand, it demanded a keen and profound appreciation. Though he'd witnessed such sunsets many times before, Tom couldn't take his eyes off the sky. Was this the last awe-inspiring sunset he would see? Did Risen appreciate such things even more than the living, for having seen the other side?

  "Seth," Brant said, shattering Tom's reverie. "That's a Biblical name?"

  "I suppose." The overwrought synapses of his brain reconnected. A memory leaped forward. "It's Egyptian," Tom said. "Seth. Set. All the Egyptian gods had a dozen names."

  "Who was Seth?"

  "Bad n
ews. I think he was the god of chaos or evil or something. He tore out somebody's eye and got castrated for it."

  "So, we're looking for a ball-less ancient Egyptian deity."

  "Or somebody who gets his power from Seth, or someone who named himself after Seth, or maybe it doesn't mean squat."

  "Whoever Seth is," Brant said, "his powers are limited. Donald Pritchett, at the age of eighteen, was able to kill him, to stab him to death apparently."

  "For what it was worth. Apparently he came back, probably at midnight. He couldn't get out of the coffin, and so he suffocated to death."

  "And without him, the Risen of Eloise lost their ability to defy death. They dropped where they were, though they'd been killed hours or days earlier."

  "That would definitely baffle the police," Tom observed. "They'd look for murder weapons and signs of struggle that could've been miles away and cleaned up by then."

  "But the wounds on the bodies would be fresh. The murders would appear to have happened simultaneously all over town, but they could've taken place days earlier. The police would have been looking for one impossibly active killer, or for an extremely sudden and widespread outbreak of murderous mass hysteria."

  "I wonder...." Tom began, his voice trailing off.

  "Yeah?"

  "About Seth. When he woke up inside the coffin and wore his fingers to the bone scratching to get out, was it just that one time? Or did it happen over and over? Did he come back every midnight for sixty years until he finally wore through the coffin and dug his way up through the earth?"

  "That's what we need to find out at Wildwood," Brant said.

  "We should just go home."

  "Cemetery's on the way."

  The sun went down while Tom thought about waking every night to find yourself entombed. It was truly a fate worse than death. Did Donald Pritchett realize the hell he was sentencing Seth to when he buried him at Wildwood Cemetery? He must have. That thought alone was enough to drive anyone insane. The guilt....

  Brant asked Tom to check the map. "In the glove box," he said. "There's a little flashlight in there, too."

  Tom dug out the map and unfolded it.

  "What am I looking for?" he asked, refolding the map to their section of the highway and scrutinizing it under the flashlight's beam.

  "There should be a road on our left that leads to the cemetery."

  "Just ahead. Half a mile or so."

  They drove the distance in silence. The road appeared and Brant slowed for the turn. As the headlights swung around they splashed a large, almost billboard-sized sign.

  Brant backed up to toss the lights back on the sign.

  Future Home of the Coyote Creek Power Facility read the headline, and there was an architectural drawing of a domed generating station, the nuke plant.

  Brant drove on down the road until he encountered a twelve-foot chain link fence and a security checkpoint. They'd missed shift change for the construction workers and the guard had a moment to talk.

  "The cemetery?" he said. "Shoot, they moved that when they cleared the site. Moved it over to Landon County."

  Brant gave the guard his thanks and turned around. He drove back down the access road, shot a glance over at Tom and found the boy looking at him grimly.

  "So Seth didn't have to dig himself out," Tom said. "The electric company did it for him."

  "What about the people of Eloise?" Brant said. "Did they come back when he did?"

  "If so, you'd think it would make the paper."

  "You'd think."

  "Maybe that's another limit on his abilities."

  "Could be. My guess is, he left them for someplace new."

  "Anderson."

  "Anderson," Brant echoed, and there didn't seem to be anything more to say for the next several miles. They'd discovered what they set out to find. Whatever was going on in Anderson had happened before, sixty years earlier in the tiny community of Eloise. It was the work of a man named "Seth," and to put an end to it, they had to find Seth and kill him...and worse. It could be done—Donald Pritchett had done it—but Seth would certainly have learned from experience. He wouldn't be so easy to catch this time. Maybe they shouldn't even try. Maybe they should grab Peg and Annie and run, get out of town and hope they found someone of authority they could tell their story to, someone who wouldn't write them off as a bunch of hysterical crazies who belonged in the Greenhaven Convalescent Center.

  "Oh, Christ!" Brant said.

  "What?"

  "I just thought—remember what Madge Duffy said about John, about his bursitis being gone after his rise?"

  "Yeah."

  "The last time I saw Doc Milford, he wasn't limping. He's a damn Risen."

  "Mom would need his okay to move Annie. She's talked to him."

  "They know what we're planning to do."

  Tom stared out the side window at the passing fields and turned these thoughts over in his head.

  The sky was inky dark under the barest sliver of new moon as they approached the city limits. Brant slowed, then eased over to the shoulder and coasted to a halt.

  "Shit," he said, and he cut the engine and the headlights.

  Tom poked his head out of the side window to peer into the darkness. Ahead of them, across the turn-off, were flashing lights and a police barricade.

  "They've sealed off the town," Brant said.

  Twenty-One

  "I love you, Franz," Irma said.

  She lay spread-eagled on the bed, her hands and feet tied to the bedposts. Franz had not gagged her, knowing she wouldn't scream. She didn't want to draw attention to herself any more than Franz did.

  Franz hustled around the room, packing a bag, trying not to listen.

  "That's the only thing that's stayed the same through it all," she continued. "When we were young, I thought you were the handsomest man I'd ever seen. You could call it infatuation, I suppose, but it felt like love to me. I couldn't believe you wanted to marry me. I was afraid of you on our wedding night, did you know that?

  "I don't know what I expected. For you to hit me, I guess. If I'd had money, I'd think you were marrying me for it, but I was poor as a church mouse. I couldn't imagine....

  "But you were so gentle and patient, so kind. You are the kindest man, Franz. Oh, I've seen you bluster and I know you're stubborn as an old blind mule, but your heart is grand. Even when the sickness moved in and I felt so confused in my mind, I loved you. I couldn't say the words or show it in any way, but the feeling was always there. You made me feel safe.

  "I love you now, Franz. You think I don't, you think I'm some kind of monster, but I'm not. I'm clear-headed for the first time in ages. I've made the farthest journey, Franz. I've been to infinity. Seth was there and he healed me, and he sent me back to bring the joy of his love to you. I would never hurt you, you have to believe that.

  "Can't you believe me, Franz? I love you. I love you so much."

  Franz snapped the suitcase shut and headed for the door. He glanced at Irma and saw the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  "Please don't leave me like this," she pleaded. "Don't let someone find me like this. Untie me. I won't try to stop you. You can't get away. They'll stop you. But don't leave me like this. Please, Franz. Please."

  Against the wall, a bedspread covered Elmer's body. Blood stained the floor, the knife lay under the bed where Franz had thrown it. His leg burned from the gash Irma had made in his calf, and every breath he drew reminded him of his cracked ribs, one of which had saved his life. He'd felt battered and sore before his fight with Irma, and now he was limping from the leg wound, imperfectly bandaged, and his mind was in a fog. His body went through the motions of packing while images assaulted him from the mist, appearing before his eyes like hallucinations, too alien to be real.

  Irma descending on him with the knife.

  His fist knocking her unconscious.

  His hands tying her to the bed.

  Images of Irma screaming with the night terrors, of Elmer
spinning across the floor, of the Ganger boy's car hurtling at him down the highway, of the boy's face at the moment of impact, grinning like a madman.

  He stood in the doorway with his suitcase in one hand, the other hand on the knob, and felt the blood pound in his temples. He had to get away and leave the madness behind. He had lived with madness for too many years and he could not take any more.

  He closed the bedroom door behind him. Irma continued to plead with him to cut her free, her voice rising behind the closed door. Only after the door was shut did Franz remember the shotgun in the bedroom closet. They'll stop you, she had said.

  He didn't know if he could stand to go back into that room. He didn't know if he could stand looking at Irma again.

  They'll stop you.

  He twisted the doorknob and saw Irma's face brighten with hope as he entered. Her mouth curled into a smile and she spoke his name with such warmth, such love, that it made a lump rise in his throat. He looked away from her and strode to the closet. He looked away, but not fast enough to miss the disappointment and the hurt in his wife's eyes.

  He hated himself for what he was doing, as if he was walking out on her when she needed him the most. He had to remind himself that she'd try to kill him. She'd tried before, that Friday night when she rose with the night terrors and he'd found her in the kitchen, terrified out of her wits, and she'd come at him with the knife. It was madness then and it was madness now, but this new madness was worse. It was a quiet and seductive kind that would wrap itself around him and pull him in if he didn't fight it with every ounce of strength and will.

  His hand closed around the barrel of the shotgun. He drew it out of the closet and reached up to the shelf for the box of shells.

  He tried not to look at Irma as he walked back through the room. She had gone silent, perhaps in fear. She didn't say a word as he closed the door and marched out of the house he'd lived in for forty-seven years, leaving it, if need be, forever.

  He threw his suitcase into the back of the pickup and limped around to the driver's side. He tossed the shotgun on the seat and climbed in. It felt odd, not having Elmer at his heels barking to go along. It felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.