Now that faith was strong. Years of prayer, and hard work, had seen to that. An empty, accusing bed and thousands of meals with no one to share the sunrise had stiffened her resolve. She missed him, still. At the oddest moments, Brian’s face would fill her mind’s eye, blocking reality. She’d spoken to him more than once. There was never an answer, but she knew he’d heard.
Others had heard as well. It hadn’t taken Madeline long to realize she had to withdraw from everyone. From everything in the world, in fact, except her God. Even Elizabeth, in the end, had turned away. Elizabeth had been there that night. She’d seen her father walk away into those candle flames to never return. The difference was, she’d never made her peace with it. Alternately, Elizabeth had blamed her mother, her father, Reverend Forbes, God, and the world for that night, and none of it had mattered. Each direction she’d turned without finding the answers she’d sought had fed her frustration.
Her friends had shunned her. Reverend Forbes had told her of her father’s faith, of his gift to the community, and to the world, while his eyes sparked with a malice borne of nothing akin to any faith other than in himself. The Church couldn’t see it. Not then. They heard his words, felt the power behind them, and assumed it to be that of God. When he spoke of sin, and the road to heaven, and the unnamed sacrifice of one they called brother, Elizabeth had to be led from the church.
When Reverend Forbes had attempted to chastise Madeline for her daughter’s outburst, they’d had to lead her out as well. Permanently. She’d not set foot in the building since that day, preferring the company of her signs, and her crosses, and the power of her own prayers. It hadn’t been enough for Elizabeth, in the end. She’d wanted to leave. She’d wanted Madeline to leave, to go out into the world and find another place, a place with no Sineater, with no church bowing the people under like slaves. A place in a world that seemed real. She’d wanted a life, and that was the one thing Madeline couldn’t give her.
She didn’t own her life any longer. It belonged to God, as surely as Brian’s did, and it belonged to Brian. What she had left was the shell of what should have been his, but she couldn’t take that away. As long as he was out there, as long as they didn’t know for sure if he lived, or died, she would remain. She would pray. She would offer up her days and her nights on the altar of the love she’d denied. Peter had denied his Lord three times. Madeline intended to stop at one.
The shadow that had passed her window stuck with her, blocking the warmth of the morning sun. No one was in sight, but still she hesitated to move across the plane of the window. It had been a long time since a day had such an effect.
She couldn’t get Elizabeth’s face from her mind. Elizabeth’s face as she’d last seen it, streaked with tears and filled with a pain that would not be denied. Elizabeth’s face, turned to Madeline in the supplication only a daughter can bring to bear. Only the weight of guilt, and the surreal tension of the moment, had kept her from drawing her daughter close and fleeing that mountain forever. She’d last seen her daughter through the dust-streaked windows of a Greyhound bus, headed out into a world that might as well not exist. Gone, more surely, even, than Brian. Lost to her, but with one difference. Brian had left because it was his destiny. Elizabeth had left of her own free will. Madeline could understand her daughter abandoning her. She felt the burden of that guilt acutely.
What she could not forgive, or understand, was Elizabeth abandoning her father.
There was no other. No son. No heir. It had never happened in the history of Friendly, in the history of the church that Madeline had searched and learned and loved. There was always another, one to pass the sins along to, to free the one from the burden and carry on. Brian was out there, somewhere, alone. He had not been called upon in years.
There had been a movement, Madeline at its head, to plan the feast when Reverend Forbes had died. The church Elders would have none of it. That was part of what they feared and hated in Forbes, and with him gone, they had no intention of letting the traditions continue. They couldn’t control it, so they ignored it. Reverend Forbes had been cremated.
Madeline remembered, and she shivered. They had kept it quiet. Elders only in attendance. The crowds had murmured among themselves, grown restless, but in the end, they were only sheep. When the new shepherd appeared, they listened, rapt, as they had listened to Reverend Forbes. They wondered—for a time—about Forbes’ death, his funeral. They wondered about the feasts, and the shadowy figure who haunted the roadways and the hills, bowed under by the weight of the sins of their fathers. The new Reverend, and his successor, and the next, they helped. They steered thoughts in other directions. They planned things: family cookouts, bingo. When they saw too many sets of eyes trained on the surrounding woods, they changed tactics and held a “revival.” When too many wondered about Reverend Forbes, they would bring in a fiery speaker from down the mountain.
In time, it all faded. In time, anything can fade. Anything but faith. The problem with the faith of the masses was that it was collective. Madeline knew her faith intimately. It was all she had, all she dreamed of and strove to sustain.
They could have brought him back. She knew that. They could have sent men and women into those mountains, and they could have brought Brian back. They could have broken the spell cast by centuries of custom. They could have accepted him, brought him home. They did not. They chose to ignore him. To ignore everything that church they worshiped in had been built upon. They had chosen poorly.
Now shadows stalked the roads, moving toward that church, and they worshiped in ignorance. Still he waited. He watched. If they called, he would come. Madeline knew this deep within her soul. He could have come back on his own, but he did not. He knew his place, and he knew his purpose. Sometimes, Madeline believed he knew the future. She wished that she had that gift. It loomed too dark, too lonely, for her own heart to bear.
Finally she moved to the window, staring off down the road. She could see smoke rising from the cookout barbecue grills. She knew they were gathered, that whatever Reverend of the week had been driven in was railing at them, beseeching them to be generous in the collection and blessed in the meal they were about to receive. There was no sign of the shadowy figure who’d stalked her yard, but she knew where he’d been headed. They would never see him coming.
Madeline nearly went to them. For the first time in years, she had the urge to make her voice heard. There were so few with the true faith. A few, old enough to remember Forbes, and Brian. Even fewer who might answer her warning with anything but scorn. All her life, Madeline had heard stories of the Apostles, of the persecution of those who did the work of the Lord. She’d had an example in Brian’s father, and ignored it. Now she knew. She knew that future; she would speak, they would not listen, and then the dark one would know her as a stronger enemy than he’d believed. She wasn’t certain she would know him as quickly, despite the sensation his passing had caused.
In the end, she only stared down the road, listening to the voices raised in song, and waited. If he was darkness, she knew he would return. If he stood for death, then his true road was through her—and Brian. He would know that, of course, but he would ally himself with the living. He would find aid among those who had passed, as well. Those who’d passed without Brian’s gift. Those who’d believed, and died, and been abandoned by a church that didn’t believe in itself. Those who waited.
Brian would have helped them. Madeline would have set the feasts herself, had offered to, each and every time there was a death, until the responses turned from quiet negatives to violent anger. Those she’d once called friend would not give her the time of day. If someone died, they shunned her. If she made one of her infrequent trips to town, they turned away and pretended she was just another bit of sidewalk. They denied the past and Madeline could not escape it.
The sun had risen high above, cutting straight down through the trees to bake the roof of her home. Madeline had only a single, rusted fan, rotating lazily back
and forth on her desk, to ward off the heat. Totally overwhelmed, it whirred, and spun, facing the window, then away, moving tepid air about listlessly. Madeline watched it for a moment, empathizing.
With a long, deep sigh, she turned toward the kitchen and slipped into the brighter light provided by wide, open windows that overlooked the back of the home. The grass rolled away toward the tree line. To the left of the kitchen was Elizabeth’s room. Madeline hadn’t changed a thing in there. It was that window Elizabeth had slipped out, that rolling hill she’d made her way down, breaking the old ways to go to her grandfather. Elizabeth had always been the strong one.
Now Brian was out there, somewhere. Brian, and another. Madeline felt the draw of her husband’s presence, but she couldn’t go into those woods.
“He walks alone,” she whispered to herself, the words no comfort at all against the cold emptiness that was her heart.
Moments later, the stove was lit, and the kettle on to boil. Madeline sat down at the old table, back stiff against the wooden chair and her gaze locked on the line of the forest beyond her safe haven.
“Be careful,” she whispered. “Please, God, let him be careful.”
Reverend Hiram McKeeman was in rare form. He was just reaching his stride, just reaching the meat of his sermon, when the doors opened. This wasn’t a rarity, not at all. Folks wandered in late all the time. Hiram glanced up, nodded to the stranger, and turned his eyes back to the notes he kept on a small note card, hidden on the podium. Except, after he looked back down, he couldn’t seem to remember where he’d left off. He could see the words, but they made no sense.
“I . . .” He stopped. Glancing up, he sought those eyes once again, but the stranger had moved, taking a seat and losing himself in the crowd. Reverend McKeeman cleared his throat, eyes watering as if he’d caught a dark whiff of smoke, and reached for his water. The congregation had begun to grow restless at his sudden silence. He gulped the water, closing his eyes and saying a quiet prayer.
When he glanced back to the note card, everything was fine. The room came back into focus, and he felt a sheen of sweat on his forehead that had not been there before.
“The Devil takes many guises,” he continued, regaining his voice, but lacking the conviction it had had moments before. “He may appear as an angel of light, or a wolf, in the lily-white skin of a sheep. He may creep up on you by night, or shake your hand in the brilliant light of the sun and smile the smile of the damned. You won’t know him, but your faith can preserve you. You can’t fight him, but he can never defeat you.”
The lights were getting brighter—hotter somehow. Hiram brushed sweat from his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, knowing it was poor form, but blinded by the stinging invasion of salt. Colored streams of light leaked from the stained glass above and filtered down, confusing his sight as the perspiration formed prismatic halos.
“He will . . .” His throat was parched. Hiram reached for his glass, missed, toppling it from the podium in a bright glittering trail. The glass shattered loudly on the altar beneath him, and the icy liquid splashed out, reaching those seated in the front row of pews and scattering them. Hiram staggered back, reaching first for the glass, then the podium. He watched in fascination as the crowd parted, slow-motion dives to the side and legs lifted to avoid the water. Then it tilted. Everything, and Hiram gasped in surprise.
“He will come to you,” he whispered, “from shadows . . .”
Hiram saw, high above, the stained-glass rendition of Christ hanging from his cross. A bright flash of sunlight glittered through the heart of that image, shattering in a blast of brilliance that stole his breath. In that moment, with that final breath, Hiram tried to scream. The gurgle trickled off to silence, unheard.
Long moments of silence. Feet shuffling, gasped whispers, and a quick settling of those who’d moved to avoid the water. Reverend Hiram McKeeman did not move. He lay on the altar, limbs bent at odd angles and his eyes closed. A thick trickle of drool slid from the corner of his mouth, slowly staining crimson, diluted by saliva and staining the shoulder of his jacket. The cards that had held his words, the words he’d used time and again, drawn out in sequence from the massive files in his office, lay scattered on the floor, forgotten and mute.
Time passed. The low whisper of voices grew to a murmur, then to a low roar. No one moved. No one wanted to be the first to mount that altar, to come to his side and find out the truth. Finally old Martin Kramer rocked himself from his seat. His eyes were wide, and his arms and legs were slow to react, stiff from years and tension. He stumbled his first step, nearly pitching headlong, then catching himself. He looked up.
His near-fall had placed him, one knee to the floor, at the altar. From where he knelt, he could see Hiram’s face clearly. The eyes were closed, the slow trickle, now bright red, seeping from his lips had slowed as it thickened. There was no sign of breath, no twitch of arm or leg, to signify life.
Martin rose slowly and moved forward. He started to clamber over the altar, and that movement, that violation of the odd sanctity of the moment, triggered the crowd to motion. Others suddenly crowded in behind him, surging forward, one moment’s indecision becoming the next moment’s urgency. Martin was lifted, and he fell to his knees beside Reverend McKeeman. They swarmed around him, moving to the body as if there were something there to find, and Martin stayed still. Before him, stuck to the wooden floor in the spilled water from the reverend’s glass, shards of which were embedded in Martin’s palms, lay one of the cards.
Bright white, blue-ruled lines shimmering through Martin’s tears. Tight, dark script in compact lines.
“‘Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’”
Martin blinked, closed his eyes, and cried, rocking back on his heels as the congregation slipped around him. Voices cried out. Women screamed. Men shouted for help, for a doctor. For God. Martin wept.
In the distance, the lone howl of a wolf shattered the silence in his mind, but no one seemed to hear.
Twelve
Geoff Culpepper turned away from the body in silence. He slipped his stethoscope into his pocket absently. He hadn’t really needed it. The moment he’d seen Hiram’s face, he’d known the truth of it. Hell of a thing. Right there in front of, well, in front of God and everyone. Hell of a thing.
He shook his head as he turned, a signal to his assistant Glenn that it was over. What was needed was the hearse, and those who took things out. Forever. Geoff shivered.
He’d been Doctor, Coroner, Surgeon, and everything medical to the people of Friendly, California for so many years he could barely remember the years that had come before. College drifted through his memories like something he’d read about in a book. And cities? He could barely remember McDonald’s, let alone a good restaurant. Now this. It was one thing to pronounce the old and infirm to have passed. He’d seen accidental shootings, sickness that rotted from within. This was the worst. Every eye in the community was boring into his back, waiting for the words they knew he would speak. He knew, though nothing he could have done would have changed a thing, that some among them would blame him. That was how it worked in Friendly. Doctors healed. That was their gift. They were supposed to get it right.
Brushing through those gathered, he made his way to his car and slipped in behind the wheel of the old Buick, the door thankfully cutting him off from the world. He turned on the radio, but before the crackling static of the local country station could snap to life, he slapped his palm into the cassette halfway in, and halfway out of the tape player with a click! There was a long, steady hiss as the tape began to slide over the heads. Then the music cut in. Slow, sultry. Blues as they hadn’t been played in many years. Geoff closed his eyes and concentrated on the sound.
He couldn’t rid himself of the image of Reverend McKeeman’s face. So void of expression. Geoff had followed the direction of that gaze, glimpsed the face of Christ in that moment. It should have bee
n comforting that Jesus had been watching, but somehow it felt more like being caught by an angry parent. Geoff had turned away, drawing his hand from Hiram’s jugular and sighing softly.
Billie Holiday crooned from the speakers, and Geoff breathed deeply, trying to collect his thoughts. He slowly lowered his forehead to the steering wheel, then lifted it again and shifted the car into drive. He had to get clear of the church, out of the influence of his own past. All he could think of was a white flapping tent, dark, hungry eyes. The death had triggered it, as death always triggered it.
He smelled the food. He could see their eyes, the parents of his friends, Reverend Forbes swaying at the head of the table. He could see Elizabeth, her eyes blank, empty, and forlorn, her parents too stiff—too intense. Nothing had blocked Geoff’s view, and though Elizabeth had never looked his way, he had watched her. He’d seen when her eyes were drawn to the side of the clearing, and he’d followed her gaze with his own, and was trapped, as was she, in the hungry, empty eyes that glared back from the trees.
Geoff shook his head. Wide eyes stared at him through his windshield and he stomped the brakes, honking his horn loudly. Sarah Duponte skittered to the side of the road, directly in front of him, and he swerved, narrowly missing bumping her into the ditch with the Buick’s front fender. Geoff slowed and stopped for a moment, glanced into his rear-view to check on Sarah. She was nowhere to be seen, but there was a figure standing in the center of the road, gazing back at him and smiling with teeth too white to be real.
Deep Blue Page 19