The Hallowed Ones

by Laura Bickle

  After we ate, my father retired to his favorite chair by the fire to read the Bible to Sarah. Ginger slipped upstairs to go to bed. I wished that I could have done something to soothe her, but I could not have predicted today’s events. I only know that I felt pity for her.

  I helped my mother with the dishes, washing and rinsing while she dried. We worked mechanically until she spoke.

  “I know it’s difficult, liewe,” she said.

  I stared down at the dish that I scrubbed. I doubted that she understood any part of what I was going through.

  She kept going. “I was jealous, once, of a girl your father used to know. She was a nurse.”

  I looked sidelong at her. Hard to imagine my father casting an eye at anyone other than my mother. “Oh?”

  “Yes. Her name was Mindy. She was much more intelligent than I was. Better spoken.” She rubbed at a spot I’d missed with a striped dishtowel. “She was prettier, too.”

  I crinkled my forehead. Mindy wasn’t a traditional Amish biblical name. “How did he meet her?”

  “On Rumspringa. We went to one of the nearby towns, a large group of boys and girls. He met her at the bowling alley. I think some of the other boys had a taste for English, and they egged him on.”

  I swallowed. “How did . . . how did you deal with that?”

  She smiled into her reflection in a glass. “There is only one way to a man’s heart. Through gentleness. Not by getting angry or jealous.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand.” Maybe I didn’t want to.

  “Elijah still cares for you. Else, he wouldn’t come around.”

  “I think he just wants to control me.”

  “He just wants to know that he has a place in your life, now that things have changed.”

  My fingers wrapped around the neck of a jar in the sink, hidden by the suds. “He has chosen to change things. I was happy with the way things were.”

  “You need to grow up. Things change. Once you accept that, you’ll be happier.”

  I felt the jar collapse soundlessly in my hands, the glass bite into my palms. I lifted my hands from the water, speckling the suds pink.

  “Oh no.” My mother wrapped the dishtowel around my hands, pressing them together. The red soaked through the cloth, and she called for my father to get some bandages.

  I passively watched my mother bind my hands, clucking under her breath. My father looked on anxiously, the worry mark between his brows deepening.

  I looked from one to the other. I could not now imagine Elijah and I having what they did.

  I began to cry. My mother held me, thinking it was from the pain of the cuts.

  I let her, too exhausted to resist.

  ***

  Night called me.

  I lay in bed, listening to the soft settling noises of the house, to Ginger’s snores, to the sound of the breath whistling through the gap in my little sister’s front teeth. I could hear the crickets and the sound of the breeze through the trees.

  Beyond that . . . I heard something more.

  I wrapped the pillow around my head, muffling the night sounds so that I could hear my pulse thumping in my ears. But I still heard it, that strange sound in the darkness I’d never heard before. It was eerie. Seductive.

  One of my classmates who’d gone on Rumspringa last year had brought back a shell. He’d gone as far as the ocean. He said that I could hear the sound of the ocean in the shell. Swallowing my jealousy, I pressed the shell to my ear, heard that soft roar. I closed my eyes, listening to that sound that was not unlike blowing across the lip of a bottle, that distant hiss of ocean captured in a pink whisper. I listened to the shell for an hour, imagining what that vastness must be like in person. I wondered what that broad blue horizon would smell like, how the sand would feel between my toes.

  This was like that, that soft summoning. I could hear it in my bones, no matter how hard I tried to muffle it.

  I rolled out of bed, padded across the floor. I shook Ginger’s shoulder to wake her, to ask her if she heard it too. But she was deep in slumber and just mumbled and turned over.

  I went to the window, slid it open. Cool dark air washed over me. The moon above had burned through the clouds, sketching out the landscape in black and white. I saw no sign of anyone in the yard below, only a rabbit hopping out of my sister’s pumpkin patch.

  I closed my eyes. I could still hear it, but louder. I shivered as it slid over my shoulders, tickled the hem of my nightdress. It sounded ethereal, soothing. My thoughts buzzed and felt fuzzy, much the way they did the time I got into hard cider at a party. The moon swam at the edge of my vision, and I clutched at the window sash.

  Something was out there.

  Something siren-soft, seductive. Beautiful.

  For a moment, I wondered if it might be God.

  ***

  As if in a trance, I put on my dress from yesterday and slipped down the stairs and out the kitchen door, not even bothering to put on my shoes.

  The breeze played with the edges of my dress, teased a strand of hair free from my bonnet. I let the wind take it, pull it back, slide its hands through my skirts. I half closed my eyes, smelling honeysuckle and hearing the siren call of the night so loudly that it moved in my veins, the way the tides echoed in the back of that shell.

  I stepped outside, closing the door behind me. The rabbit from the pumpkin patch peered up at me, chewing clover. Everything was serene, beautiful in the soft wash of moonlight. It was as if I were in a dream, moving in air that seemed thick and supportive of my limbs. My fingers splayed, feeling the movement of it, capturing a shred of that call I felt with every fiber of my being.

  Dully fearless, I began to walk. I walked past the pumpkin patch, into the pitch-black beyond the house, where the field grass tickled the palms of my hands. The whole meadow was alive, seething with life. Deer grazed peacefully yards away from me, a doe and two fawns beginning to lose their spots. I stared at them dreamily, wondering if they’d seen the white horse.

  The doe lifted her head, flicked her ears. Her head turned, her nostrils flared. She blinked, then bounded away with a flash of white tail. The fawns followed in their mother’s wake.

  The string of that call snapped, and the spell broke. It left me standing alone in the field, barefoot, shivering as a sudden awareness of danger slapped me in the face like a bucket of water.

  I sucked in my breath, wheeled back to the distant light of the house.

  Too late.

  Something roiled in the grass. I could see it moving toward me, at terrible speed, zigzagging violently through the stalks. It kept low as it rushed toward me, but I spied a glimmer of red, like the eyes of the terrible creatures in the Laundromat, sliding through the shadows.

  I ran.

  It plowed into me, knocking me down from behind. My face pressed into the ground, and I tasted dirt. I felt something heavy on me, ripping at the skirt of my dress. Claws sank into my arm, and I shrieked.

  The creature hissed like steam in a kettle, recoiled. It was then that I dimly realized that I was wearing yesterday’s clothes. And the Himmelsbrief was still in my pocket.

  I dug into my pocket with my free hand and grabbed the envelope in my fist. The creature released me, howling. The weight on my back vanished.

  That was all I needed to run—run like the very dogs of hell were on my heels. I gave no thought to direction, just away. I plunged headlong into the field, my breath rattling in my mouth. The landscape bobbed around me, sharp grass slashing my bare arms, the wind whistling in my ears, tearing my bonnet off my head.

  I saw the dim, shadowed hulk of the kennel ahead of me, the hex sign peeling away. I slammed up against the door, tried to work the latch, whimpering as my hands shook.

  The door slid open suddenly, and I pitched forward into a pair of waiting arms.

  I fought against them, kicking and snarling as they wrestled me back into the darkness. I was flung to the floor. The door reeled back, blotting out the ni
ght.

  I scuttled blindly on the floor with straw in my fingers. A light came on, the yellow beam of a flashlight. I blinked stupidly.

  “Alex?”

  The light showed his outline in the pitch-black. I saw that he was holding a shovel in his right hand like a weapon, the flashlight in his left. I could not see his face.

  “Show me your teeth,” I demanded.

  The idea had crossed my mind, but I had shied away from it. I didn’t want to consider that I may have been the one to bring this evil upon our community. That it was me who had let the Hexenmeister’s Darkness in. Perhaps Alex was a vampire, and my stupid sympathy, my flouting of God’s will, would kill us all.

  The shadow remained still. Bile rose in the back of my mouth.

  “Show me,” I commanded, a note of hysteria creeping into my voice.

  The flashlight turned back around to illuminate Alex’s face, turned ghastly in bright planes and jagged shadow. I held my breath. His lips curled back around perfectly ordinary and smooth teeth.

  I let out a sob.

  The flashlight aimed back at my face. “Now you.”

  I pulled my lips back in a grotesque simulacrum of a smile. The light flashed on me, then receded.

  I blinked in that red darkness. I heard footsteps, the clink of a chain. I gasped aloud as something wet and cold pressed against my neck. I reached up to discover it was a dog’s nose.

  “What are you doing here this late?” Alex kept the flashlight trained away from me, but I could still see his bare feet and chest. I glimpsed shapes of ink on his broad chest and his back.

  I looked away, buried my fingers in Copper’s ruff. “I don’t know . . . I heard something. Where’s Sunny? Is she all right?” Panic stung me.

  “Eh. Sawing logs in the back paddock. Puppies are kicking her hard, and she’s sleeping.” I heard the note of worry in his voice. “What did you hear?”

  “I can’t describe it . . . It was like a whisper. Or music. It was beautiful.” I pressed my hand to my forehead. I didn’t understand why I did it. “I went outside. That was stupid. They’re here.”

  I heard Alex suck in his breath. “They called you.”

  “They what?”

  “There’s folklore about vampires being able to hypnotize, to summon people they have a connection to.”

  I shivered, wrapped my hands around my arms. “I don’t have a connection to them. But they came after me, anyway.”

  The flashlight washed over me again, and I protested the sudden light in my face. I felt my undone hair being thrust back from my neck, felt Alex’s warm hands on my face, turning my head right and left.

  “Did they bite you?”

  “No . . . no.”

  He didn’t believe me. He grabbed my arms, shoved my sleeves up to inspect my wrists. The light illuminated only a scratch on the inside of my right forearm, where the vampire had caught me.

  “No one just escapes the vamps. Not at night,” he said. “Not without holy ground.”

  His hand remained holding my wrist. I didn’t protest.

  “Holy ground doesn’t matter anymore,” I said. “They killed cows last night.” I explained to him what I’d seen in the field that morning.

  “I don’t understand. If they’ve broken holy ground, entered this place . . . I don’t understand how they had to lure you from the house to get to you. Why didn’t they just kill you? Why didn’t they follow you here?”

  I was silent, feeling my pulse beat against his hand as he thought.

  I cast my eyes down, reached into my torn skirt, and fished in my pocket for the Himmelsbrief. “I think it was this.”

  He took the envelope from me, and the warmth around my wrist was suddenly gone. He opened it, scanned it. “I can’t read this. My German sucks.”

  I took it back from him. “It says: ‘Keep thine own faith. Wear love around thee like a shield, and no harm shall come to thee, even when thou walk in the valley of darkness. God bless and protect thee, and keep the road before thee straight and open. In Jesus’ name, Amen.’”

  “A prayer?”

  “More than that: a Himmelsbrief, constructed by our Hexenmeister.” I struggled to put the concept into words. “It’s a letter to heaven.”

  “I’ve heard of the Hexenmeister . . . kind of a throwback to the old days when kitchen witchery was practiced by Germans. It’s not a typical Amish thing.”

  I protested. “He’s not a kitchen witch. He’s a man of God. And we have always had such men of God here.”

  “That’s anthropologically bizarre, and I’d love to write a paper on that, but . . .” He shook his head. “More importantly, he writes spells that protected you from the vampires. What else does he do?”

  I shrugged. “He makes all the hex signs on the barns.” I looked up. “He painted the one here.”

  “He’s a pretty powerful wizard, then.”

  I made a face that he couldn’t see in the dark. The term “wizard” implied an old man with a pointy cap and a robe painted with stars. But . . . was that so far off from the bearded man who painted stars on the sides of buildings?

  Alex sat, hunched over, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands steepled before him. “Even if the vamps are here, all might not be lost.”

  “It will take time for him to make a Himmelsbrief for each man, woman, and child,” I began.

  “Not just that. I’m thinking about their tactics. They didn’t go into the house after you. Maybe they couldn’t come in. Your houses, after all, are all churches.”

  “Ja. We each host church once or twice a year.”

  “Holy ground within holy ground. I’m betting that you’d have to invite them in, or they’d have to lure you outside in order to get to you.” He looked up into the gloom of the barn. “And if your Hexenmeister is the genuine article, I’m betting that his hex signs keep evil away just as well as the Himmelsbrief.”

  Hope flowered in the back of my throat. “We may survive this?”

  “If you guys play it well, maybe. What happened with the cows? Do they understand what they’re dealing with?”

  My hands balled into fists. “Ja. And no. The Elders were told. But they chose to lie to the congregation. They told them that it was wolves. That the idea of vampires is simply a lie.”

  He shook his head. “If they’re running propaganda, I think you guys are well and truly screwed.”

  “But what can I do?” I cried. “They would call me crazy.”

  “Even the Hexenmeister?”

  I paused. Deep down, I knew that the Hexenmeister had a firmer grip on evil than the rest of us. “I’m not sure.”

  “Tell him. Tell him everything. He might believe you. Especially if those ‘wolves’ get more active.”

  “Well . . . I won’t tell him everything.” I glanced at him.

  He sighed. “I’m as good as dead. You do what you need to do to save your own skin.”

  “But . . .”

  “Hey, I’ve had nothing but time to think about how this plays out. I can’t stay here forever, like one of the dogs. You’re gonna run out of food to smuggle to me. Or one of the others is gonna catch a glimpse of me stealing apples from the tree out back. That’s if the vamps don’t get me first.” In the shadows, his mouth turned down. “I’m a goner.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, softly. “I will protect you.”

  Alex’s gaze was resolute. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Bonnet. Really, I don’t. But I know that I’m on borrowed time. Any additional sunrise I get is, in its own way, a blessing.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “You’re a strange one to talk about blessings.”

  He shrugged. “Hey, I’ve been hanging out in a barn for days with nothing to do. Osiris and I have made our peace.”

  My eyes flicked to the ink marks that covered his spine. “Are those more devotions to Osiris?” I asked timidly.

  “Heh. I suppose.” He turned the flashlight to his back. I saw a pillar that traveled
the length of his spine, similar to the one I’d seen earlier on his arm.

  “Another Djed pillar?” I scooted closer for a better look, and he handed the flashlight to me.

  “Yeah. But I had to be drunk for three sittings in order to get that one finished.”

  It was intricate, much more so than the one on his arm. The architectural details of the pillar curved sensuously up over each vertebrae, flaring out to cradle the back of his neck. My fingertips hovered above the tattoo but didn’t touch it. “That must have hurt.”

  “Actually, I don’t remember the pain.”

  “You must have been drunk.”

  He turned in the light, showed me a mark on his chest, right above his heart. “This one hurt more. I was sober for that one.”

  “I was going to suggest that you spend a lot of the time drunk,” I said dryly.

  This looked like a stylized cross, burned black. I peered at it. “It’s a brand,” I said, in startlement. I’d seen enough of those on cattle. I reached out to touch it in spite of myself, feeling uneven skin.

  “Yeah. It’s what the hipsters called scarification. You basically let a couple of buddies hold you down while some tattoo- covered sadist who calls himself an artist drops a red-hot brand on you.”

  I glanced up at him. “Are you nuts?”

  “Eh. Off and on.”

  I stared at the symbol. It seemed both familiar and foreign. “And what does this one mean?”

  “It’s an ankh. The Egyptian symbol of eternal life.”

  “Strange tattoo for a man who believes he’s about to be dead.” I pulled back my hand.

  “Hey, you buy into the eternal life thing too. Just in heaven.”

  “Maybe. But we don’t have to be branded to obtain it.”

  “I think I’d rather be branded than submit to some of the things that you have to.” He said this without spite, just a soft statement of fact. “I’m not strong enough to do that.”

  I wrapped my arms around my knees. I had nothing to say to that. I didn’t feel strong. I felt small and weak and not nearly worldly enough to face what was happening.

  Alex reached out, pushed a tendril of loose hair behind my ear. His touch was light as a feather. Not the clumsy fingers that I was accustomed to with Elijah. I shivered.