Deep Blue

by David Niall Wilson

  She placed the food quickly and carefully along one edge of the table within, spun on her heel, and fled. Her mother’s expression gave nothing away, but Elizabeth sensed it—a desperation to be free of something. It had taken eternities for her mother to cross the field to that tent, but seconds later she was back. So quickly that it was difficult for Elizabeth to tell if she’d ever been gone at all. She no longer held the food. Her mother’s face was white—ash white and stricken¾as if something important had been ripped from her heart.

  Elizabeth glanced up to her father’s face, seeking support. Nothing. There was no emotion, no twitch of his eye, or turn of lip to set things right. He reached one hand out, letting it come to rest gently on Elizabeth’s mother’s shoulder, but he didn’t speak, and the two did not meet one another’s gaze. Elizabeth bit her lip and fought the tremble that started deep in her stomach. She wanted to cry. She wanted to grab her mother’s dress and bury her face in that soft fabric and ask over and over what was wrong until she got an answer, but she couldn’t.

  Her mother wasn’t there, not really. Elizabeth could see the tall, slender frame, and the wide, brown eyes, but there was nothing behind them. The lips were pressed too tightly together, the shoulders were set too straight. From somewhere, deep lines had etched themselves over soft features. Elizabeth was afraid to shatter the silence . . . afraid that if she spoke, and this not mom answered, her world would crumble away completely.

  Reverend Forbes waited for them in the doorway of the church. His eyes were bright, searching. Nothing was missed: no detail, no face, no emotion. Those dark, hungry eyes fixed on Elizabeth for a long, drawn-out eternity of seconds, and she shrank against her father’s side. The motion was detected, noted with a curt nod, and passed over. Elizabeth shivered. She wasn’t forgotten, but there were other hungers, and other distractions. This was not her day. What she couldn’t figure out was whose it was.

  As the family passed through the dark doors into the dimly-lit interior of the church, Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder at that white-flapping tent, brilliant now in the bright morning sunlight. Beneath it, shadowed and covered in food and flowers, the odd, low-slung table waited. A feast? A party? Surely this was no party.

  The soft whisper of voices kept too low to be overheard echoed too loudly to be ignored. Elizabeth kept close to her parents, allowed herself to be guided and pressed down the narrow space between two pews and seated. She was against one aisle, hard wood tight against one hip and her mother against the other. There was some warmth in that touch, if no emotion showed. Elizabeth felt her mother tremble, and that tiny admission-by-example of emotion cut deep. Nothing was right.

  She scanned the pew before her, small shelves lined with hymnals and prayer books, interspersed with Gideon Bibles as far as the eye could see. Above that a line of black-clothed shoulders, jackets, hair pulled back in tight buns, hats jutting this way and that, feathers and veils and lace dangling in a dark, macabre impression of Sunday worship. There was no color anywhere, except in the brilliant scarlet drape that hung over the altar, beneath the candles, and the matching scarlet sash worn by Reverend Forbes, vestments gleaming. He had risen from behind the podium like a shadow, until he was suddenly just—there.

  Elizabeth gasped out loud as he spoke, raising his arms suddenly overhead and calling out to those gathered.

  “Brethren . . . let us pray.”

  As Reverend Forbes spoke, and all heads bowed in unison, Elizabeth heard the soft scrape of measured footsteps, robes whispering as the altar boys moved from the rear of the building, long brass-tipped torches gripped too tightly, knuckles white with the effort of concentration, moving to the front of the huge chamber. They passed by the Reverend, moving to the altar, and the array of white candles, touching their twin flames to each side in eerie unison. The candles guttered, then leaped to life, one after the other, backlighting Forbes’ tall, slender figure in the dim, stained-glass-tinted light.

  Elizabeth shivered and pressed back into the wood of the pew. It was too strange. The warm glow of the candles flickered too brightly. Reverend Forbes loomed over them, unusually intimidating and powerful from where she watched, pressed against her mother’s thigh, and wavered in that light. His eyes were too bright, like the candles. The air felt heavy with—something. Something dark and wrong.

  The prayer droned on, but the words were lost. All but the last few.

  “. . . Brother Halprin . . . he will be missed.”

  Halprin. Elizabeth’s eyes widened. Mr. Halprin was the baker. She had been in his shop at least twice a week, picking up loaves of bread, since she was old enough to walk at her mother’s side. The scent of bread was sudden and heavy, nearly making her gasp. Then gone. Donuts, fat and running with fresh sugar-frosting, the heady scents of coffee and hot chocolate assaulted her memory.

  “Momma?” She whispered the word softly, but it seemed to echo through the church. Elizabeth didn’t care. “Momma?” she repeated, tugging her mother’s dress.

  “What?” Terse, clipped word. Not a real question, a silencer, blocking the next “Momma” effectively.

  Elizabeth didn’t let the not-momma voice deter her. “Mr. Halprin. What did he say about Mr. Halprin?”

  Silence.

  “Momma?” Elizabeth felt her mother’s hand drop, felt her mother’s fingers gripping her thigh.

  “Shhhh. Not now.”

  Nothing more. Elizabeth wanted to continue. She wanted to press the issue, to lean over her mother and ask her father, but something in the tone of that single “shhhh” stole her courage. The congregation lifted their combined emotion in “The Old Rugged Cross,” time lagged, so lethargic it dripped from the air like sticky, too-sweet syrup. Not comforting, but drawing them all from one moment to the next.

  Elizabeth clamped her mouth shut and watched, letting it all wash over her, but refusing entry to any words, any emotion. Any song. She concentrated on an image of Mr. Halprin’s face, though she didn’t really know why. She thought of bread, and coffee, and bulging pies, cherry and blackberry. Anything but Reverend Forbes. Anything but that saccharine voice cutting through to her heart.

  The song faded, and Reverend Forbes’ voice rose again. This was the time he would launch into his sermon, drawing quotes from the Bible easily and fluidly. Wrongly. All wrong. Elizabeth didn’t know why, but his words would drone on and on, and she would know they really came from the big book her mother kept in the hall, but at the same time, they did not say what he said. They did not mean what he said. They were—pure.

  The sermon never came. When the prayer ended, the choir, very austere in robes of crimson and deepest jet, began to sing very low, and slow. Not the hymns Elizabeth was accustomed to, but low, mournful tones, blending into a deep chant. Shoes scuffled up and down the pews, and Elizabeth felt her mother gripping her by the arm—too tightly—and drawing her to her feet.

  Again she wanted to ask what was wrong. Again, the expression on her mother’s face forbade it. Not her mother at all, some alien-in-mother-form perversion dragging her down to the aisle. The chanting grew louder as they drew nearer to the choir loft, then faded like a passing automobile in the rain as they were pressed toward the huge wooden doors by the crowd. There were bodies everywhere, but none too near to them. Another bit of surreal madness to add to the moment. Hundreds of bodies, pressed together and moving, and one small open pocket with Elizabeth, her mother, and her father in the center. Ahead, the tent waited, somehow more ominous than before.

  The congregation filed in under that ceiling of white canvas in solemn silence. Elizabeth’s father followed the family ahead of them, Dan Fergusen and his wife Sherry, in stoic silence. No one turned to him. None of the quick, subtle gestures was directed his way. There was a good three feet between her father and the man ahead of him, and another three feet behind Elizabeth, before the Johnsons followed.

  Elizabeth couldn’t watch the people¾her friends, her friends’ parents¾so she turned her attention t
o the flowers, and the food, and the table. The air left her lungs, and she swooned, leaning against her mother and stumbling. Only the strong hand, tightening painfully on her shoulder, held her upright. Only the dull, empty glare that met her upturned gaze silenced her.

  The food didn’t rest on a table. Mr. Halprin lay there, buried in bread from his own bakery, pies and cakes, roasts and fried chicken, casseroles. There was a bunch of grapes dead center on his chest, dangling obscenely to one side, as though he’d been cut open and they’d spilled out. The table was slowly ringed in bodies, all sides closed off from the world.

  “Raymond Halprin was a good man,” Reverend Forbes’ voice rang out. “A caring man who did well by his family, and his town. He cared for his children,” the Reverend Forbes nodded at the Halprin twins, Betsy and Jason, “and he cared for his wife. He cared for all of us. Who among us hasn’t awakened to the scent of fresh bread and smiled?

  “Our Lord Jesus broke bread with those who followed and believed. Ray Halprin broke bread with each and every one of us. He was a good man. And he was a sinner.”

  Silence followed this last announcement, a great, combined out-rush of breath.

  “He was a sinner, as you are a sinner.” The Reverend’s gaze swept the crowd, omitting no one. “He was a sinner as we are all sinners, in the eyes of our Lord. He lived, and he loved, he sinned, and now the Lord has taken him from us. Let all gathered feel that loss . . . and let us pray.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t block out the words this time. Neither could she draw her gaze from the table, and the body, and the food. It was all wrong. Her mind flashed back to the stained-glass, still-frame Apostles and angelic Christ-image surrounding a long table. Food and wine—a feast—laid out before them.

  “The Last Supper,” Elizabeth whispered.

  Her mother turned, yanking on her arm and glaring at her. Elizabeth dropped her eyes to the ground and shook helplessly. There was a soft murmur of voices around her, rising from a whisper. The Reverend Forbes had grown silent, and the air crackled with dark energy.

  “There is a way,” Reverend Forbes continued. His voice was low now, but the silence of the moment allowed the words to carry as if he screamed. “There is one who can help, one who can take what is rightfully Brother Halprin’s and free his soul. There is a WAY!”

  Softly, those surrounding the table responded. “Amen.”

  “There is ONE,” Reverend Forbes continued, “who has the power to take and take and take again as life departs us. One who walks alone in shadow, one who has forsaken that golden road that beckons us. Dark. He is dark as night and hungry. . . .”

  The Reverend swirled, his splendid vestments rising behind him like a cloud.

  “He walks in places we cannot. He sees things we will never see, and feels those things that can shut the door between our souls and heaven. He holds it in; his hunger sets us free. He will set your brother free. Raymond Halprin will walk the road to GLORY, brothers and sisters, and this one dark man is the key. Pray for his soul. He cannot be saved, and yet we pray. He cannot be helped, but we reach out; our food, the bounty of home and hearth, we lay before him.

  “He is salvation.”

  The words died away to a soft murmur of Hallelujahs. Then there was nothing. The wind whipped the tarp over their head. Elizabeth pressed to her mother’s thigh—felt that comfort stiffen against her—ignored the sensation and pressed closer still.

  A murmur sifted through those gathered, like the rustle of the breeze through leafy trees. A subtle shift, and a break in the circle opened. At first, no more than a single pace, then widening. They slid away from one side of the ring like a door opening to nightmare.

  From the trees, his eyes stared at her. Through her. Elizabeth shuddered and tried to slide behind her mother, failed in that iron grip and stood knock-kneed and terrified as the brush parted beyond the circle. He stepped out, hair wild, spreading out around his face like a gray halo. His clothing was filthy and ragged, boots caked in mud, and jeans stained with the road and the trees and the earth.

  The crowd began to ripple at the edges. Those closest to the woods wavered, then pulled back slowly, domino-row of wide eyes, hanging on out of fascination—pulling back from disgust, and fear, the disgust and fear winning, drawing them aside like a curtain.

  Reverend Forbes held his ground. Elizabeth’s mother and father stood rooted, numb and insensitive to those flowing back and around them. At first it was a trickle, a few, here and there, slipping hurriedly and nervously from the tent. Elizabeth watched them out of the corners of her vision, trying to rip her gaze from the man—the creature slipping from those trees.

  Moments that lingered like years passed and they stood alone. Elizabeth, her mother, her father, Reverend Forbes, and the—man—from the trees. At the head of the table, the good Reverend stood, one hand on each corner, too close to the corpse for propriety, his eyes blazing. Mr. Halprin’s expression didn’t change, but Elizabeth wanted to cry out to him. To apologize. He looked so—forsaken—laying there.

  “You have come,” Forbes sang out. “For the sins of the fallen, for the salvation of his soul, you have come. Behold.” Forbes’ arms spread, sweeping wide to encompass the bounty of the feast. “The sins of the flesh, the substance of the flesh . . . the wine, that is His blood.”

  The man-thing stood and stared, meeting Forbes’ gaze easily. The hunger danced in those eyes, but not alone. Emotion rode the surface of each bright orb. Elizabeth watched as that emotion rippled over the man’s face. Not a creature . . . definitely a man, very familiar somehow. Those eyes swept the length of the table, took in the food, and the body. Swept up and locked with the Reverend’s again. Held.

  No words passed. Forbes grinned down the length of the table, the force of that glare withering, righteous and arrogant. He met wild, crazy hunger. He met unrelenting resolve. He met more than he could stomach, and now even Reverend Forbes was turning and staggering away, tripping, falling, and rising once more to run from the tent.

  Elizabeth ignored it. She watched now, enraptured. There was an undercurrent of emotion rippling through the tent. She felt her mother stiffen, then sigh softly, shivering. She saw her father take a step forward, and another, saw that huge hand that had so often stroked her hair and gentled her fear, stretching, reaching out. Grasping only air as the thin caricature of a man turned toward the table and moved in.

  No hesitation. No further notice paid to Elizabeth, or her family, or the Church, or the world. Food. Only the food, bread and vegetables, washed in endless streams of wine and water and tea, drumsticks devoured in seconds, bones flying in slow-motion arcs as more was grasped, driven between open lips and swallowed in heaving gulps. Too much. One thing to the next, to the next. Elizabeth’s mother grew tense as the man reached her casserole, upended it, and pressed it between his lips. Elizabeth thought for a moment her mother would speak, but all that rose was a choked moan as the dish was emptied, tossed aside, replaced by an apple pie and washed away in a torrent of red wine.

  Elizabeth’s father took another step forward, and that was all it took to break the spell of the moment. Elizabeth’s mother lurched after him, and Elizabeth was drawn along in the wake. She cried out, no coherent words, just a strangled, choked cry, but in that sound she packed a lifetime. She clung to her mother’s skirt and buried her eyes in that soft material.

  The man at the table spun on his heels. In that second, Elizabeth saw her father’s eyes staring crazily back at her. She felt her mother jerk, tilting at an odd angle, dragging her forward and down. Somewhere between that moment and the ground her father spun, grabbed them both in arms suddenly wide and strong again. He didn’t speak, but Elizabeth felt him there as she had not since they’d awakened that morning. He dragged Elizabeth’s mother into one strong arm, and Elizabeth into the other, and turned them as a single unit. Away from the table. Away from the insanity.

  “Daddy?” Elizabeth glanced up into his eyes, but he shook his head. No answer
, as he half-smiled through a sudden trickle of tears. Elizabeth had never seen her father cry. She had never seen him in any way show a weakness that could be attributed to others. When he wrapped her close and turned from that tent, from that table and feast and the crazy man devouring it. When he backed away from those eyes, so like his own, so eerily familiar, she pressed close to his leg and stumbled at his side.

  They passed from the shade of the tent, into the bright, mid-morning sun without a word. No glancing back, no turning. Straight down the mountain toward their home.

  Behind them, the sounds of crazed feasting echoed.

  Ten

  Liz grew quiet, and they all stared at her. The story wasn’t over, couldn’t be over, but none of them wanted to be the one to coax the rest out of her. Dexter rose, letting his fingers come to rest at last, and moved to the kitchen. The sound of running water and the lazy drip of coffee followed moments later, seeming to ease the tension in the room.

  “Mother and I were home before I even realized we’d left Daddy behind,” Liz went on. “I wanted to go back. Those eyes, the sound of the food being consumed, filled my mind. Thank God for my mother. She changed, once we were out of sight of that tent and the church. It was like she woke up and remembered who she was, who I was. She clung to me, her voice low, just talking. I don’t remember a thing she said, only that she didn’t want me to go. That she wanted me there, very close to her. That she told me everything would be okay, or, that it would be less okay if I didn’t stay.

  “I can remember clinging to her skirt as if it were yesterday. . . .”

  The door was heavy, stained wood with a heavy frame. Elizabeth stared at it, memorizing each crack, tracing the glittering curves of the brass knob with her gaze. She heard her mother speaking, but the words didn’t register. Her mind was filled with images, wild images of too-wide, too-wild eyes, long, low-slung tables, and food stacked so high Mr. Halprin’s features were hidden, then revealed slowly.