Deep Blue

by David Niall Wilson

  As her gaze flickered from the tree line, he stepped forward. When he spoke, low and deep, Madeline nearly leaped from the cross and ran.

  “Hello Maddy,” the man said softly. “I have been waiting to meet you for some time.”

  She turned back.

  He stood, nearly as dark as the shadows that bordered his slender form, black hat tipped down over one eye, silver hair streaming out over his shoulder, the other eye glittering like the moon itself. Mesmerizing. Cold. Madeline curled her arms around over her breasts and clutched herself, shivering.

  “Who are you?” she asked. As an afterthought, “Don’t call me ‘Maddy.’ No one has had the right to call me that for a very long time, and surely not you.”

  “I’m sorry, Madeline. I feel as though I’ve known you forever—from the words of your neighbors. They call you Maddy, and if that is an offense, then let me apologize. No offense was meant.”

  “Who are you?” Madeline whispered. “You were here before. I felt you, saw your shadow. You came here before you ever went there. Why?”

  “So many questions.” The man’s one visible eye glittered. His lips twisted into a smile that was nothing of the sort and Madeline felt herself begin to shake, slowly. “So many answers I could give you, lady, and none you would understand, fewer still you’d accept.”

  “Why have you come?” She knew she had to remain strong. No way she could appear anything but terrified, and yet, within the flames of the candle-cross, she didn’t really fear him, so much as loathe him.

  Stepping closer, the man tilted his hat back further, exposing smooth, dark skin and a second eye as cold as the first, completing that snake’s gaze she’d expected, and never seen.

  “Who are you?” Madeline breathed the words this time. Almost no sound, and yet she knew he heard, knew he’d anticipated the question before she’d known she would form the words. She waited, still clutching herself in a death-grip hug.

  “They call me Payne,” he answered at last, voice smooth and slick as quicksilver. “Reverend Payne. That isn’t important. Not to you, Maddy, or to Brian.” He hesitated then, letting his words sink in. “What is important, well, that would be my past. I know people, Maddy. I knew your Reverend Forbes, and I knew your Brian’s daddy. I know about the feast, and I know about the hunger.

  “You know that hunger, don’t you Maddy? You’ve felt it, through him. You’ve known the need. How do you think he feels, your Brian? How do you think he’s been this past year, since Shane—Reverend Forbes, passed? You think time has been kind to him, Maddy? You think he’s one with the forest, maybe? You think he started his own little commune of love out there?”

  Shifting his gaze, the man stepped toward the wooden cross, and its symbolic, warped wooden tenant.

  “I think not,” he went on, whipping his gaze back to hers, lashing her and pinning her in place, all in that single motion.

  “He’s hungry, Maddy. He’s so hungry his mind is going, slowly, and there is only one thing you, or anyone, can do for him. He has to feed. They have to pass. It is the way it has always been, the way it always will be, for Brian. You know that. You knew that when you met him. They told you to stay away, didn’t they? Told you he was to be left alone, but you couldn’t do it. Now he is hungry, Maddy, hungrier than any have been in the span of years of your mothers and grandmothers, and the weight of that hunger is yours to bear. The others, they remember, but they don’t know. They don’t know what to bring to the feast, or how to react once they are there. They don’t know why they do it, nor do they have anyone to turn to but you.

  “You know those answers. You know what will bring him home. Only you.”

  “You know.” Madeline whispered the words. She didn’t even know how she knew them as truth, but she did, and they were, and she waited.

  He watched her, eyes blazing for a moment, and then softening. His lip twisted again, that smile that was no smile, but that smile cracked as well and melted to laughter that rippled and rolled from his too-tight lips, echoing up and down the side of the mountain. The man’s features rippled oddly, his body bending nearly double with the effort of regaining his self-control. Then, as if it had never wavered, he stood, facing her again, leaning on his cane.

  “They will not listen to me alone, Madeline.” he said at last. “They will listen to you. They trust my knowledge of the old ways, as they trusted Reverend Forbes before me, but they trust your knowledge of he who walks alone. They trust you when it comes to his hunger.”

  Turning to her yard once more, sweeping his gaze over the small army of crosses, their hand-lettered messages, largely ignored, but timeless in their vigilance.

  “You are the only one, Maddy, who has kept that faith. You are the only one, through all of this, who still believes. They remember. They know what they believed before, but it has been stolen from them, packed away and ‘washed in the blood of the Lamb’ by watered-down men of some other God. Not our God, eh Maddy? Not He who watches over us, or over you. Not He who demands the feast and the hunger.”

  Payne turned then, gazing directly at the wooden parody of Christ, dangling from its rickety cross. A quick nod of his head, eyes flashing, and Madeline gasped as the gnarled, twisted wood burst into flame. She took a step back, nearly burning herself on the votives, eyes locked to that burning wood. Deep within the flame, something moved. Imperceptibly at first, difficult to focus on, too bright and suddenly hot enough that the sweat poured down her brow and soaked her blouse.

  A face, wizened by age and lined with the creases of infinite sorrow, pain she could not fathom, so deep and pervasive that Madeline’s legs gave out, and she fell, painfully, to her knees, trapped there in that gaze. His gaze.

  “No,” Madeline whispered. “Dear God, no.”

  Brian watched her as white-heat licked at the features of his face, dancing and blazing where hair and beard should have shielded him from the elements. The wood shifted, moving and writhing in time with the flames. Limbs formed, reformed, and disappeared once again into the tangle of twisted wood. Acrid smoke permeated the yard, floating around her, clouding the trees and the road and even dimming the light of that flame. Only his eyes pierced that gloom, and breathing became more and more difficult.

  Madeline toppled forward, arms reaching out toward him, forgetting the candle-flame cross and he who had watched her moments before. She forgot everything but those eyes, focused on them and crawled. The candles lit her blouse, and still she crawled, trying to roll side to side and quench the now-too-close flames, but not stopping her forward motion for it, even when the heat seared. Even when the flames began to lick their way up toward her hair.

  “Brian,” she whispered. “Brian, I’m so sorry.”

  There was a roaring sound from above, a roaring she first confused with that of the flames, but Madeline ignored it. She concentrated, sliding another couple of feet toward the cross, toward Brian. She didn’t know why, didn’t know what she would do, or why, but she had to try.

  The pain grew and she rolled over and over in misery, flames eating away her clothing and searing her flesh, threatening ever closer to her hair, and only a few scant feet remained. A distance she could have covered in a matter of a few steps, that she couldn’t seem to crawl, that she couldn’t pass through, and all that while his eyes, down-turned and tracking her as she moved. As she failed.

  The roaring grew, and very suddenly, Madeline grew afraid. She was not only outside the cross she’d so carefully formed, but her flesh screamed from the searing heat, and no matter how many times she rolled over and over on what should have been cool grass, the flames danced higher.

  It was loud, like a tornado, a freight train of air crashing down from the mountain, and dark, so dark that with the flames, it made an ebony curtain back-dropping the flaming cross. Madeline shifted her gaze to the sky, watching, trying not to, trying to retain her grip on the image of Brian, to roll over and finish her journey, drag him out of that fire and . . .

&nbs
p; Sudden crash of air, chill, driving thought and sight from her in an instant, washing over flame and cross and yard and trees, blacking it out completely. One moment the skies opened, spilling darkness and whirling, faster and faster, a vortex drawing Madeline’s sanity up and away and then . . .

  Nothing.

  Madeline lay on the soft earth, eyes clenched shut and arm wrapped tightly to her chest. Her dress was plastered to her, clammy-sweat causing it to cling to her thin frame. Her hair fanned out behind her, bedraggled and full of leaves and pine needles. There was no breeze. No heat. The burning had snuffed quickly and completely.

  With a soft moan, she opened her eyes and turned, lifting her head weakly. The cross stood, as it had stood since the day she’d erected it. The gnarled wooden image, not Brian, not resembling Brian, but left by his hand, hung in its place. Untouched. No scorch marks. No burning. No face.

  Madeline collapsed, inhaling a long, gasping breath and fighting to still the trembling that shook her frame. Slowly, she managed to rise to a sitting position. The road was empty. The trees held no shadowed figures, nor did she catch the white flash of eyes from the shadows. Alone.

  She turned to the ruined cross on the sidewalk. The candle-drawn symbol was the only evidence of the reality she’d faced. No one would believe. She didn’t know what she believed. She saw where she’d toppled over the flames. She felt that heat, searing her flesh, and yet her blouse and skirt were intact. Her skin, a bit scuffed and scraped, was unscathed. Her mind whirled.

  From the woods, so soft it might have been mountain wind and hoot owls, though she knew it was not, that too-slick voice floated back to her.

  “He is hungry, Maddy. So hungry.”

  Madeline shook her head and blocked that voice out. With painful determination, she turned, kneeling in the yard, alone, as the hour grew later and the moon’s illumination became an eerie silver blanket over the scene. Inch by inch, she moved forward, feeling the small branches, pine needles, and stones jabbing her knees as she went. To the cross. This time, she made that short pilgrimage slowly, but with no resistance.

  Madeline knelt before the cross, and laid her cheek against the center of the twisted wooden Christ-image. Her arms wrapped around that, and the cross, and her shoulders heaved with sudden release as the tears began to roll down her face, wetting the wood, trickling down and running with the dirt from the yard to stain her collar and her sleeves. Madeline didn’t see it, nor did she hear, as the tires of the van slowly crunched their way up the road from the church below.

  “Jesus,” Shaver commented, as the van continued the bouncing, painful climb up the mountain, leaving the church, and the small community of Friendly, California behind. “You didn’t tell us it was a fucking expedition into Deliverance.”

  Liz would have laughed, maybe, had she not been lost in a cloud of painful memories. Nothing much had changed. There were a few new homes, a few buildings not where she remembered them being. Not progress, really, but change.

  As they had driven through the streets, and on past the church, the few locals they’d passed had watched them closely, trying to peer through the dingy windows of the van and figure out who, or what, was invading their little world.

  “I’m betting they don’t get a lot of out-of-towners here,” Brandt said softly.

  “Almost never,” Liz said, answering at last. They were only a few curves in the road from the home she’d once shared with a father and a mother she only vaguely recalled. “No one ever came here. Almost no one ever left.”

  Shaver leaned down from the front seat and kissed her on the forehead. “That time is over now,” he said. “We’re here, you’re here, and right now the important thing is that we find your mom and see what she knows about your dad.”

  “If she’ll talk to us,” Liz replied, her voice breaking slightly. “If she doesn’t hate me now for leaving her here, alone. Just like Daddy did, only he didn’t really leave. At least he had a reason beyond his own selfish needs.”

  “It isn’t selfish to want a life,” Synthia said from the back seat. “It isn’t selfish to want your parents to see that you have your own mind, or your own visions. It isn’t selfish to want them to listen.”

  Synthia’s words silenced them all, and the only sound that accompanied the last few hundred yards of their journey was the soft crunch of gravel.

  The trees continued on in a straight line as they rounded the bend, but to the right, the ground was open and grassy, stretching up in back until the tree line started again. Nestled at the base of that slope, the small home glittered in the moonlight, white against a backdrop of shadow. The entire scene was eerie, silver-white light brighter than anything most of them had ever seen.

  “It’s the city that steals it,” Dexter said. “In the city, there are so many lights, you never really see this. Night and day, they hide the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Liz nodded, but didn’t speak. Her breath was stolen by that first sight of her home. It was odd to think of it as such, but now that she was there, and could see it, she knew.

  “What’s that in the yard?” Shaver asked, leaning to the windshield and squinting as they drove nearer. The headlights of the van cut an odd, yellowish swath through the already well-lit yard, glaring off white signs, and the white house, and something else. Something tall and odd in the center of the yard. And moving.

  “It’s a cross,” Liz said softly. Then, even more softly, “Mother?”

  Dexter pulled in and killed the engine, leaving the lights on for just a moment, spotlighting Madeline, who froze, trapped like a deer by the brilliant light. Her face registered shock, and then a mingling of fear and anger. She looked like someone who’d been intruded on during a very private moment.

  The others waited as Liz yanked open the side door and clambered out, stumbling a little at first as her stiff limbs stretched out. She leaned against the van for a moment. Madeline stood very still in the center of the sidewalk, as if deciding whether to wait to see who it was, or turn and bolt inside.

  “Mama?” Liz said.

  Madeline started at that, turning back slightly, though looking no less frightened. “Liz?”

  The two were moving, probably as they inhaled the same breath, slowly at first, then more quickly until they were flying down the walk and then together, clinging and wrapped tight, swaying in the breeze that had blown in again. Shaver and Dexter watched in silence as two generations embraced.

  “Seems as if she’s welcome,” Dexter observed. “Hope the rest of us are as well received.”

  He was silent for a moment, then he slapped his knee, turned to his door, and opened it slowly. “I hope she has coffee.”

  They were gathered around the small table in Madeline’s kitchen, coffee hot and steaming in each cup and more brewing. There wasn’t much light inside.

  “I use the candles, mostly,” Madeline had apologized. “Sometimes I forget when the bulbs are gone.”

  The truth was, she rarely went to town for anything, and electric light wasn’t high on her list of priorities. Not nearly as high as privacy. Her nerves were completely on edge with so many young strangers in her home, but the sight of Liz, after all the months and years, held her together.

  Liz sat beside the window, staring out toward the forested mountain beyond. “Is he still out there, Mama?” she asked softly. “Will he come?”

  “I don’t rightly know that, as a fact,” Madeline replied, choosing her words carefully, “and yet, I do know. There is something between your father and I, something I can’t quite explain. I believe I’d know if he were gone. I don’t believe, if I knew that he were gone, that I could go on.”

  Liz didn’t answer that, but neither did she turn her gaze from the line of trees across the long, sweeping yard from them. Her mind was lost in the past, wandering memories she’d tried very hard to suppress. Memories that Brandt and the others had dragged from her so easily. When she finally turned, her eyes were wide.

  “Is
it right, Mama? Should we go through with it? I know he is chosen. I know it is his destiny, and I know he will never come home—but should we put this burden on him? Reverend Forbes? So much sin.”

  Her words trailed off, and her mother’s chin drooped to her chest.

  “I don’t know that the choice is ours, Liz,” Madeline said at last. “I think he made the choice himself that night, so long ago, and it would be disrespectful of us to not take that into account. He did it for us. He did it for everyone on this mountain. How can we not prepare the way?”

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Brandt cut in softly, “but Synthia and I have met the man you talked to out front, and we’ve all seen him. I have to say, I don’t think he would be promoting anything that was going to be good for anyone. Question is, why does he want this to happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Madeline answered, turning slowly to stare out the window. “I don’t know the answers to that sort of question, though I’ve prayed to know day in and day out most of my adult life. What I do know is that I’ve always counted on Brian to know what was important. He never let me down, not in our life together, and certainly not since. If there is something wrong, he will let us know. He will stop it, if he can.”

  Brandt thought about this for a few moments. “I will stop it, if I can,” he said. “I don’t know why I’ve been drawn to this place, at this time, but I do know who drew me.”

  He stood and moved to his bags, piled alongside those of the others along one wall in the front hall, and drew forth a folder. From within that folder, he pulled Liz’s drawing, carefully pressed between thicker pages. Without speaking, Brandt crossed the room to where Madeline stood and offered the paper.

  She took it, not turning to meet his gaze. She scanned the drawing, one hand holding the paper and the index finger of the other stroking the lines of the drawing, tracing the deeply etched lines of the face. Tears crept slowly from the corners of Madeline’s eyes, and Liz, watching her mother’s reaction, rose, moving to wrap her arms around her mother, comforting her.