Destroying Angel

by Michael Wallace

  Maude and Laura drew in their breaths. The deep shadows here between the cool sandstone fins seemed suddenly chill and oppressive.

  “So, an evil spirit,” I said. “It doesn’t live here, it hasn’t been waiting since the dawn of time. You called it, didn’t you?”

  No answer.

  “Annabelle!”

  Annabelle lifted a fistful of sand and watched it sift between her fingers and fall back to the ground, and then lifted another fistful. Her feet burrowed deeper into the sand.

  “Grab her,” I said.

  Laura got to her first. Annabelle fought back, but Maude and I joined the struggle. Together we pinned her arms and legs. I put my hand on her forehead.

  “Annabelle Snow Kimball!”

  She spat in my face. I wiped my eye against my shoulder while the rest of her spittle ran down my cheek.

  “In the name of Jesus Christ and with the help of the Lord and by authority of my endowments and ordinations, I—”

  “No!” She bucked, gave one final heave with such ferocity that her leg sent Maude flying. She got one hand free and clawed at Laura’s face, but Laura threw herself on Annabelle’s free arm and held it down with her entire weight. Annabelle got her other arm free, grabbed me by the roots of my hair, and yanked me from her chest.

  I kept my hand on the woman’s forehead. “I command this evil spirit to depart! Now!”

  Annabelle went limp. For a long moment, the four of us sat gasping for breath. Laura groaned and rubbed at her eye. During the struggle, Annabelle had struck her with a fist or an elbow. My scalp throbbed, and I lifted a hand to find tufts of black hair loose where she’d ripped them free.

  “Sister?” I said.

  Annabelle let out a sob. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have done it, I swear. I was so lonely and I didn’t—”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was lonely.”

  “You said that already. What did you do?”

  “I thought it was a dream at first. I was almost asleep. That day the Lamanite rode by on his horse and you yelled at me for not warning you. I came into the labyrinth because I was angry. You have been exercising unrighteous dominion.”

  “Unrighteous?” Laura said in a tone made all the more withering by her English accent. “We have a town to build, and we can’t have shirkers. Every woman needs to put her shoulder to the wheel.”

  I hushed my sister wife. “Go on. What happened next?”

  “I entered the labyrinth to think. I fell asleep underneath the arch—at least I think I did. Then my husband came to me and…it was only a dream.”

  “What happened in your dream?”

  “He came to me as a husband comes to a wife. You understand.”

  “He knew you as a man knows a woman.”

  Annabelle flushed. Maude and Laura exchanged a look, as if a secret were passing between the two women. But it disappeared so quickly I thought I’d imagined it.

  “Only when he finished, I saw that it wasn’t my husband. And I’m not sure I was dreaming. I seemed to be awake when the angel finished with me. He spoke to me, stroked me.” She lifted a hand to her neck and flushed again, but this time I didn’t think it was shame that crimsoned her cheeks.

  “And that’s what happened yesterday in the sinkhole,” I said. “The spirit took you again. Found you, or you found it, and you gave yourself over.”

  She nodded.

  “So that’s why you came back. You’re like a rat who has tasted a poisoned treat. You came for more, even if it kills you. You were waiting for the evil spirit to visit you again. To visit you with carnal pleasures.”

  “It’s not like that! I swear it!”

  “Then what is it like, Annabelle? Why have you given yourself to this thing, why would you invite it into our midst? It turned you. It would have destroyed you.”

  “It’s gone now, I swear it,” she said with such conviction that it was impossible not to believe her. “I’m cleansed. It will never happen again.”

  Laura took my arm as we picked our way from Witch’s Warts. She looked back, as if to make sure that Annabelle couldn’t hear—Annabelle walked with Maude, the two women speaking in whispers—and then Laura leaned in toward me. “It might not be an evil spirit.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Madness runs in her family. Her father was an orphan when the saints took him in, in Nauvoo. The rest of his family died in horrific circumstances.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Annabelle’s grandfather murdered his wife and two of his three children. Tried to shoot the boy too, but Annabelle’s father buried himself in the hayloft when he heard shooting. He looked out to see his father hang himself from the rafters. Joseph Smith adopted the boy and put him to work in the store to earn his keep.”

  I shuddered at the awful story. “I’ve never heard such a thing. Are you sure?”

  “From the mouth of our husband.”

  “Hyrum told you that? Why didn’t he tell me?”

  Laura looked ashamed. “I spoke to him before he left us at Cedar City. I couldn’t understand why he would abandon us to the wilderness.”

  “He has other wives, other children. He must get them out. It isn’t easy with the marshals searching and hunting. And some of the men who will join us are still in jail. Hyrum is helping their families too.”

  “Yes, I heard all of that.” Impatience clouded her voice. “But why you? You’re so young, and you don’t even have children yet—I’m sorry, sister.”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “I asked the same question. But go on.”

  “Hyrum said the prophet wanted you to lead. I couldn’t figure out why, so I pressed him. Why you and not Annabelle? It’s because they’re worried she suffers from her grandfather’s madness.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the two sister wives walking arm in arm. Maybe the madness had been there all along. Sleeping, waiting for the right moment. Snatch Annabelle from the city and drive her into the wilderness, and it would show itself.

  It was a strangely comforting thought. Insanity, I could understand. And unlike her grandfather’s condition, this variety seemed to afflict only the sufferer. She’d made no threats against her children or sister wives. When her husband joined us in the valley, he could give her another blessing—a real priesthood blessing this time—and cure her for good. I could take comfort in that.

  Yes, I almost convinced myself. But then I remembered that terrible moment in the sinkhole, when I saw a man or a shadow of a man on top of her. Ravishing her. And Annabelle with her dress up and her undergarments around her ankles, writhing in pleasure.

  I needed to take it to the Lord. I’d never asked to lead, and nobody—not even my sister wife—trusted me to do it, but the men gave me no choice. And maybe the Lord would tell me what to do about Annabelle Kimball. As soon as we got back to camp I’d retreat to my tent, drop to my knees, and pray.

  But those thoughts were soon driven from my mind, because we returned to find the camp in an uproar. A federal marshal had arrived and taken command.

  To Jacob’s surprise, the Department of Agriculture field agent brought an armed guard. It was the gray light of early dawn, and the two men stood atop the sluice gates at the east holding pond when Jacob and Stephen Paul parked the pickup truck.

  “What the devil does he want?” Stephen Paul asked as he tugged the keys from the ignition.

  “No idea, but don’t antagonize him,” Jacob said. “Let’s give him what he wants and get him out of here. Don’t volunteer information, either.”

  “You can count on that.”

  When they approached, the agent showed his badge, which bore the name Charles Malloy. “But call me Chip,” he said. He offered a hand of short, stubby fingers with a good grip. No calluses. He had a bushy mustache that completely covered his upper lip, and he wore cowboy boots and a bolo tie. The armed man was younger, dressed in neatly pressed khaki, and wore a cap with a DOA patch.
r />   Malloy followed Jacob’s gaze to the armed guard, then rolled his eyes and gave the barest shrug. “I had trouble in Fillmore last week.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Jacob asked, surprised.

  “You know, that business with the pork bellies. You probably saw it on the news. The owner of one of those big hog operations had independent thoughts on the subject, thinks the government shouldn’t intervene in the markets.”

  “Is that what this is about? Intervening?”

  “No, Mr. Christianson. Just gathering inventory. Contingencies, that’s all.”

  “I already e-mailed our estimates, bad as they are this year.”

  “And I’m sure they’re accurate. They want an eyeball verification is all.”

  “Why? Is it as bad as all that?”

  Malloy didn’t answer but walked across the top of the sluice gate. “This pond feeds your irrigation for the corn crop?”

  “No, the alfalfa. We haven’t needed much irrigation yet.”

  “Have you given any thought to increasing your grains for next year? The market is strong.”

  Jacob shrugged. “Probably not. We might tap storage if we can’t grow enough wheat, but I don’t like to chase the market. Anyway, we silage most of the alfalfa ourselves to overwinter the herds.”

  “Plenty of grass this year, though, with the wet spring,” Malloy said. “You could probably get an extra haying.”

  “Looks that way now. We’ll see.”

  “And where do you keep your grain storage? Just those silos I saw south of town?”

  He asked this in a casual, friendly way, but there was something unusually inquisitive in his voice. This was more than curiosity. Jacob caught a look from Stephen Paul.

  “That’s the only place we store grain, yes.”

  “Do you guard your grain?”

  “Guard our grain?” Jacob asked. “Are people robbing silos?”

  “Not yet. But I suggest you post a guard, just in case.”

  Jacob knew some ranches lost livestock to rustlers who would show up with a cattle truck and make off with several cows, but that had never happened to Blister Creek. Too isolated, and too easy to recognize outsiders. But at least he could understand cattle. Grain? He tried to picture someone pulling a grain truck up to a silo and robbing it in the middle of the night.

  Malloy took his stylus and made a note on his tablet. “Says here you’ve got four hundred acres in potatoes, is that right?”

  “Four hundred is the Griggs farm, yes. The Potts family has another hundred. Some smaller plots of five or ten acres.”

  “But it’s all sold through the co-op?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Good. We’ll take a look at that next. The two bigger farms will be enough. And then we’ll swing south and look at your corn crop. I want to see how it recovered from the frost.”

  “Not as well as I’d like, I’m afraid.”

  There was a reason, Jacob discovered, why Chip Malloy and his armed guard had come so early, even though they must have left St. George at four in the morning. Malloy wanted to see individual herds, measure fields with a laser surveyor to see if his numbers were accurate, and then inspect the grain silos. By the time the two DOA men left late that afternoon, Jacob and Stephen Paul were tired, hungry, and irritable.

  “What was that all about?” Stephen Paul asked as Malloy pulled away. They’d finished their tour on the far eastern end of the valley, miles from either man’s house and a good supper. The western horizon burned with the deepest red-and-purple sunset Jacob had ever seen. Ash from the volcano, he supposed.

  “Sounds like the government is planning to regulate the production and sale of food. Maybe nationalize the whole industry.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “In a national emergency,” Jacob said. “Other countries have done it. Australia suspended wheat exports yesterday. The Chinese are throwing a fit.”

  “And all because of a volcano in Indonesia?” Stephen Paul looked thoughtful. “You know what I think is happening?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t go spreading it around. I don’t want people worked up. It’s a natural disaster. They happen.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say,” Stephen Paul said. “Maybe it’s the Last Days, maybe not. But it could still be a test.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a warning. That’s what your father would have said. The Lord is reminding us. Because if this isn’t the end, it’s awfully close.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Jacob said. He wondered if the doubt showed in his voice. “Either way, we have to look after our own people first. Spread the word. Nobody mentions the bishop’s storehouse.”

  “You think it will come to that?”

  “No, but I’m not taking chances. We lose our grain storage and we’ll survive. But we can’t let them find the food storage. We’ll spread most of it around, keep a few thousand pounds of flour and beans in the storehouse. Give them something to find if they look, just enough that they don’t get suspicious.”

  “Smart.”

  Jacob looked across the ruined wheat field, which stretched for acres in every direction. It was fitting that they’d finished their tour on the most hard-hit corner of the valley. He turned back to Stephen Paul. “It’s what my father would have done. I don’t like it, but I might need his cunning if things get ugly.”

  A look of satisfaction passed over Stephen Paul’s face. “You’re a good man. I miss Brother Abraham, but you’re the one I want by my side if the armies of Satan come.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Krantz spread the map on one picnic table while Eliza put their lunch together on another. He tapped his pencil on the map while she worked, pausing occasionally to enter numbers into his GPS computer.

  Warm weather had returned to the Blister Creek Valley, and the park by the creek was filled with women in prairie dresses fixing picnics and chatting while their children kicked balls or climbed the cottonwood trees that shaded the grass. A few of the women gave Eliza curious glances, but she couldn’t tell if they were studying her pants and button-down blouse with disapproval or envy. Or maybe a little of both.

  A boy approached with a fence lizard squirming in his hands to ask Eliza if he could have her empty pickle jar. She rinsed it in the creek and punctured breathing holes in the lid.

  “Need any help?” Krantz asked after she sent the boy on his way with the jar and lizard and returned to making sandwiches.

  “Nope, almost done. You want tomatoes?”

  “Sure, fine. Come look at this.”

  “Just a sec.” She brought over the plates with ham-and-cheese sandwiches and chips. He took a couple of quick bites, then showed her the map while she ate.

  “San Juan County?” she asked.

  “Map came in the mail this morning. Fayer sent it.” He circled four spots marked with letter and number combinations: IU-34, NG-4, RI-2, and RI-12. “These are our boneyards.”

  “And what do these letters and numbers mean?”

  “I have notes.” He unfolded a printed sheet of paper. “This first one is an abandoned uranium mine. Contaminated with heavy metals and radioactive isotopes.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  “It’s toxic, but not particularly dangerous if you don’t drink the water. But what surface pools there are have killed a lot of animals. They come in from the desert, drink the water, and then die. A lot of bones around. Then there’s this one.” He tapped the pencil near Indian Creek west of Canyonlands National Park. “This is the site of a cattle drive in the 1920s that went wrong. It was a drought year, and they couldn’t get the herd to water. Bones have been bleaching in the sun for almost a hundred years.”

  “What about these two?” Eliza asked. “RI-2 and RI-12. What does that mean?”

  “No idea. That’s not an FBI designation. Fayer says they’re old military facilities, aba
ndoned since the end of the Cold War. Surrounded by dead animals. Don’t have much more than that.” He pointed back to the site by Indian Creek. “What do you think about this one? It’s desolate, way off the road. And it’s the closest by foot to Dark Canyon. Look here and here. Anasazi ruins. Might be more they never discovered. Like that place Taylor Junior hid in, up the box canyon.”

  She finished the first half of her sandwich and wiped her fingers on a napkin, then leaned in closer. “Better eat before the bread dries out.”

  He picked up his sandwich and frowned. “Too late. It’s like toast.”

  “Crispy on the outside, soggy on the inside. Welcome to the desert.”

  He ate it anyway. Meanwhile, Eliza took the pencil and measured with the tip from the nearest road to the site of the failed cattle drive. Could be the place—the terrain was similar to that of Dark Canyon. Maybe too similar.

  She turned back to the pair of military sites. “Can I see Fayer’s notes?”

  He handed them over. She scanned down the page to the e-mail Krantz had pasted at the bottom.

  RI-2 & RI-12—This is the place I flew over in the Blackhawk. They’re a pair of Cold War military facilities. Army won’t tell me what it’s about. Maybe classified, maybe they don’t remember and can’t be bothered to look. I didn’t see much, just a bunch of dead animals at the first one and a couple of shacks and a few more dead animals at the second. Might be worth a look. You can follow Hans Flat Road as far as Mount Teancum, but the road to the base seems to have washed out. You’ll need another way to cross those last few miles.

  IMPORTANT—site may be contaminated. If you check it out, call me FIRST.

  “So she flew over looking for Taylor Junior?” Eliza asked.

  “Someone spotted a campfire, and it got back to the FBI. She made a couple of passes, saw the bones. Not much else. That was only a few days ago.”

  “A campfire?” She was disappointed. “Not much of a refuge if he’s camping in the open. And what about his followers? Probably not our guy.”

  “No, it’s not much of a lead,” Krantz said around a bite of the sandwich. “I’m guessing that’s why they didn’t land the chopper or follow up on foot.”