Twilight's Burning

by Diane Guest

She nodded and he lifted her to her feet.

  Everyone was out of the house, wrapping themselves in wet blankets. She was astonished to see how calm and controlled the children were. She knew they were frightened. She was herself. But they did as they were told without question. Holding tight to Susannah, Sylvanus began to give orders. "Abby, you take Aaron. Mame, you take Matthew. Run for the bay. Jenny, you and Hester take hold of Ethan. Let's go."

  He grabbed Susannah with one hand and they all began to run, Susannah's breath coming in ragged gasps of pain. In the few minutes it took them to reach the water, she saw enough horror to convince her that alone she would never have had the strength to save herself, that without Sylvanus to drag her on, she would have thrown herself down in the dirt, unable to bear the sight of one more burning child, one more shrieking, agonized person.

  The deafening sound of the wind was accompanied now by great blasts of living fire, crashing like waves at the height of a nor'easter. Except that there was no water. Only searing blasts of unbearable heat and white-hot sheets of fire, driven almost parallel to the ground by the cyclonic winds.

  Susannah had lost sight of her children in the clouds of smoke, but she could see people falling to the ground, screaming for help where there was none to be given, flashes of fire illuminating their faces in the darkness.

  Once she and Sylvanus stopped, paralyzed in horror as a woman running before them burst suddenly into flame, writhing and curling like a piece of burning paper. In the time it would have taken for her body to hit the ground, she was gone. Incinerated. Ash.

  Susannah was suddenly aware that Matthew was beside her, struggling to free himself from Sylvanus's iron grip. "Boy," he choked. "I have to get Boy."

  "Boy can take care of himself a lot better than you can," Sylvanus said, pulling Matthew forward.

  "But he'll die," the child shrieked.

  Sylvanus said in a voice that should have put an end to further protest, "We'll all die if we go back."

  "You don't have to go back." Matthew was frantic now. "I will. Please, oh please. Let me go."

  Susannah dragged herself back from the edge of unconsciousness and put her arm around Matthew, summing strength she thought had long gone. "Run, Matthew," she said softly. "To the bay. I don't want you to die. I love you. Please, Matt. There are other horses but there's only one you. Run as fast as you can and don't look at anything. For me, Matt, do it for me."

  He hesitated for only an instant and then, because she had asked it of him, he ran off toward the bay to save himself.

  Her breath was coming now in ragged, sucking gasps. She tried to yank her hand away from Sylvanus, wanting only to lie on the ground and bury her burning face and hands in the dust. She was scarcely aware that she was naked, her clothing burned away except for a charred scrap of blanket she still held around her head. And the world shall be destroyed by fire, she thought. The hour indeed is at hand. And my children, oh, dear God, where are my children?

  As they came near to the water, she could see people standing within just a few feet of relative safety, standing like Biblical pillars of salt, their eyes turned up toward heaven, waiting in silent submission for the end of the world to come.

  "Get in the water!" Sylvanus yelled as he dragged her along. A few moved, activated by the sound of his voice. Most stood where they were, waiting.

  "This is the end," Susannah said. "We're all going to die."

  "The hell we are!" Sylvanus shouted. "Goddamn it, I didn't come this far to die now." She felt herself being half-dragged, half-lifted, and the next thing she knew she was neck-deep in water.

  Still clinging to the scrap of blanket, she was force-ably dunked under the surface and felt the inrush of water as it went up her nose. She came up gagging. "What did you do that for?" she choked.

  "Because your hair was on fire. Now stay close to me."

  Volumes of flame rolled over them, setting logs ablaze that were floating free in the bay. Susannah could see people bob under to extinguish their flaming hair, some never to surface again. At one point, she saw Sylvanus reach out to take a small child from the back of a frantic cow that was swimming in a wild circle around them.

  Susannah took the child and held it close for a minute before passing it to its horrified mother. She began to watch events transpire before her with a numbness that made her immune to fear or even compassion. Death swirled everywhere, without direction, hideous, impersonal, but she was hardly aware, dunking her head mechanically, scarcely conscious of anything but the thought that turned over and over in her brain. My babies. Oh, God, please take care of my babies. You have to because—Oh, God, Jesus, help me—I cannot.

  Edwin's eyes opened wide. He didn't know how long he had slept, nor was he instantly conscious of where he was. Every muscle in his frame ached from spending too long a time in this cage. Why had they put him here? What demon agent had driven them to be so cruel? He knew they hated him. That was sure. But why?

  Then he remembered. Of course. The thought slipped away from his mind like sand through an hourglass. No matter. He shrugged and began to inch his way toward the small opening under the steps, drawn by the strange, soft glow he could see filtering into his prison cell. They have left the door open, he thought in wonder, and crawled outside.

  He stood up slowly, testing his weight and then, cautiously, carefully, he lifted his eyes to the horizon. His jaw sagged in wonder at the glory of the spectacle he saw unfolding before him. The heavens were erupting in the most triumphant display of power and majesty his mind could ever have conceived.

  He fell to his knees before the face of this incredible manifestation of the might of the Lord, his eyes one with the celestial arc, and in a voice raised in triumph against the thunder, he cried, "Let God arise and His enemies be scattered; and let those who hate Him fly before His face."

  His soul exploded within him at the awesomeness of what he was seeing. He walked up the steps to the rear door of the church and paused. No, he thought. I mustn't creep in the back door like a skulking mongrel. My time has come. I must take my church back with courage, secure in the strength of the Lord. For He has come upon the wings of angels.

  He walked with slow pomp around the side of the church to the front door, unaware that the wind was almost lifting him off his feet. He turned the brass knob but it slipped around under the pressure of his hand. He looked down and was surprised to find that the skin had melted away from his palm. He met the discovery with calm detachment, and the second time he gripped the knob with stoic determination, ignoring the hissing sound it made against his flesh. He felt nothing.

  The door swung inward and he stepped into the empty church. "Behold!" He threw his arms wide, embracing the emptiness. "Let us all rise and pray to the Lord."

  The only answer was the furious howl of the wind as it blasted through the open door on wings of flame.

  Fire began to crawl along the backs of the pews along the plank floor, creeping up his legs, but Edwin paid no heed. He climbed to the pulpit, turned to face his congregation and began. "This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us be glad and rejoice therein." The flames began to eat at the sides of the pulpit. "The right hand of the Lord hast wrought strength."

  The shrieking roar outside the church was deafening, but Edwin heard nothing. "The right hand of the Lord has exalted me," he cried, looking around to make sure they were all listening. "The stone which the builders rejected is become the headstone of the corner: this is the work of the Lord and it is wonderful in our eyes."

  Now the interior of the church was filled with fire, reflecting off the long windows like a furious, glaring sunrise. "I will extol Thee, O Lord, for Thou hast upheld me, and hast not made my enemies to rejoice over me." His voice now was a high shriek as the fire curled up around him, wrapping him in a flaming shroud.

  With a great shuddering blast, the glass in the paned windows exploded outward, giving the inferno passage to enter. A sudden uprush of fire roared toward the ceili
ng in a great spiral column of heat and gas, splitting the church in half, ripping the pulpit from its base, hurling it through the roof.

  And from the heart of the inferno, an image seemed to rise up, a Face devoid of trunk and limb, a Face filled with unutterable pain and sadness at the pathetic nature of His creation.

  OCTOBER 9, 1871

  Sometime before dawn—she had no notion of time—Susannah became conscious of the cold, the bone-chilling, excruciating cold and the click-clack chattering of her teeth. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut but she was aware that Sylvanus was pulling her. Together they crawled out of the water and lay for a time, numb, exhausted, taking small comfort in the heat that still radiated up from the burned-out soil.

  And then she was counting in her mind. One, two, three. Bodies. Pulverized, formless, eyeless, tongue-less piles of ash, all ground together around her in a hideous, nonliving, stenching, ghastly porridge.

  Four, five, six, seven.

  And the stench. The overpowering, putrid, nauseating, sick-sweet-sweet stench of charred flesh. Eight, nine, ten, eleven. Why am I not dead, she asked herself. Everyone else is.

  And then she lifted her head so sharply that she almost snapped her neck. The children, she screamed silently. The children. She rolled over and grabbed Sylvanus by the arm. "Sylvanus," she whispered, "where are the children?"

  "We'll find them," he said, pulling himself to his knees. He looked as far as he could see in the gray, dim light of predawn. Nothing remained. No houses, no stores, no mill. Only a wild confusion of burned fragments, melted glass, wagon irons. And bodies. Everywhere, bodies.

  Here and there he could see survivors, drifting like ghosts, soundless, despairing, turning corpses over with burned, shoeless feet, peering into blackened faces.

  He stood and picked up a coat someone had left behind. Tenderly, he covered Susannah's shivering, naked body. "You wait here," he said. "I'll go look."

  She tried to open her eyes wider but the lids were too badly scorched. "No," she said. "I have to."

  He lifted her to her feet and they stood motionless, eyes moving from horror to horror, unable to gaze long on any one awful, terrible sight.

  One, two, three, four. She began to count again silently in her head, the numbers of the dead clicking by like stitches off a knitting needle. Five, six, seven, eight. People. These had been people only a few hours before. Living, alive, breathing, living people. Living, not dead. Living. Now… She dropped her eyes, afraid to look anymore.

  "Sylvanus," she whispered. "What if one of those things is Hester. Or Matthew. Or…oh…"She began to shake. They must be dead, she thought. They have to be.

  "Come on," Sylvanus said gently, and they began to make their way up from the bay, stepping around the scorched bodies.

  Bodies. Some living. Most dead. Burned out of existence by the hell that had shrieked down on them only a few hours before. And those whose dead faces were not burned beyond recognition were frozen in an attitude of perpetual screaming, open-jawed, gaping, making sounds no human ear would ever hear again.

  And the survivors. There were more of them than she had first imagined, but all were silent, as if they could not possibly describe the incredible awfulness of what they were experiencing.

  Susannah walked horror-stricken through the ash, her eyes drifting over the carnage, not daring to look for long, mentally measuring each corpse. She stopped only when she came to the small bodies, those who might have been children. My babies, she screamed in her soul and her heart. My babies.

  And then they found Abby. She lay within feet of the water, dead, yet untouched by flame, her lungs burned out by one single blast of unbearable heat. Susannah knelt and lifted her head. "Abby," she whispered. "Abby. Please, oh please. Don't be dead." She held the lifeless form to her breast and rocked her slowly back and forth. Who will listen to my tears now, Abby? she thought. If you are gone, who will be my friend?

  Sylvanus bent and took her arm. "Darling," he said softly. "Come away."

  She shook her head and looked up at him through eyes that could barely see. "Not yet, Sylvanus," she whispered. "Just let me tell her that I loved her." How do I tell you now, she thought. But you knew, didn't you? My friend. My dear, sweet, loyal Abby. She dropped her head and rested it against the fringe of Abby's hair. "Just let me tell her good-bye," she said.

  He nodded and turned just in time to see Jenny and Hester, with Ethan between them, standing knee-deep in water, not yet sure whether it was safe to come out.

  He pulled Susannah to her feet. "Over there!" he shouted, pointing. "They're alive!"

  Through swollen lids she could see the three children trying to help one another onto the shore. The tears came now, tears that had refused to come in her grief and her horror, searing her charred eyelids, washing the soot and ash in dirty rivers down her blistered cheeks. How she managed to cross the distance between them, when only moments before she was sure she would never find the strength to walk again, was beyond her. And then she saw that Ethan wasn't walking. He was hanging between the two girls, supported by them with no strength of his own, his head lolled to one side like a broken doll.

  "Momma," Hester choked. "Momma, Ethan won't breathe. We can't make him breathe."

  Susannah pushed Sylvanus away and pulled the lifeless body of her son the last few feet to the shore. "Ethan," she said softly, and her voice had a sound of faint surprise. "Ethan?"

  And then she knew there would be no answer. She knelt and took his face in her hands. "Oh, sweet child," she said. "Oh, sweet baby. Please, oh please." She closed her arms around him and cradled him against her. Breathe in, she told herself. Ethan is dead. Breathe out. My child is dead. Breathe in. I cannot save him. Breathe out.

  She lay down beside him, holding him to her, and gave herself up to utter desolation, allowing herself one single, blessed moment to grieve alone, to mourn for the child who had been alive and now was dead. If only I could just lie here, she thought, and never get up again.

  Hester and Jenny stood shivering in the shelter of Sylvanus's arms, knowing that there was nothing to be done but to leave Susannah alone in her anguish.

  When she was ready, Susannah took a deep breath and lifted herself to her knees. "Hester," she said softly and caught her stricken child to her. My son is dead, she said to herself. My daughter lives. Ethan is dead. Hester is alive.

  And then deep inside her, she heard their names, first soft, drowned out by the sound of Hester's tears, then louder, more insistent, nagging, then growing to a deafening roar inside her head. Aaron, she screamed. And, oh, Jesus, Matthew.

  "Where are they?" she cried to Sylvanus. "Oh, my God, where are they? Are they dead, too? Like Ethan?"

  She turned away without waiting for an answer and began to stumble from one stricken survivor to the next.

  "Have you seen Aaron Snell? Or Matthew Shepherd?" But no one answered, some because they were unaware that she had even spoken to them, others because they had no tongues left with which to speak.

  Sylvanus pulled some blankets from the clutches of the dead and wrapped them around Hester and Jenny. "Stay right here," he said. "We'll be back as soon as we find the others."

  He found Susannah kneeling beside the hideously burned, grotesquely shrunken remains of Mame Keefe. "They're dead, aren't they?" she said softly, never looking at him. II wasn't really a question. "Matthew and Aaron. They are, aren't they? Just like Ethan and Abby."

  "We don't know, Susannah," he said and held her against him. "We won't know until we've finished looking."

  She gagged and swept her hand over the smoldering ruins. "Look at it, Sylvanus. Look at them." She pointed to a small family of corpses, huddled together, arms entwined. They had tried to shield one another in death as they had in life. They had failed, and were left fleshless, grotesque, without hair, without eyes, without souls.

  Susannah took a deep, sucking breath. You have to find them, she said to herself. But, oh God, please don't let me find them l
ike that. Please don't let them be dead. Not like that.

  And then, all at once, she was staring down into two blackened, tear-streaked faces, unrecognizable except for the fact that from one small face her own gray eyes stared back at her.

  "Momma," Aaron whispered through cracked lips and burst into tears. "Where have you been?" he sobbed. "Matt and I have been looking and looking."

  With a burst of thanksgiving to God in His heaven, she pulled the two little boys to her. You have taken one from me, she cried without a sound, but you have given me back the others. Never in my life again will I ever ask You for one single thing. Never. Not ever.

  She looked over their two small heads across the scorched, blackened land toward the east, where the sun was just pushing over the rim of the horizon. I love you, Ethan, Susannah whispered. I always will. In my heart I will cry forever.

  And then, in her desperate concern for her children who had been spared, she accepted the death of the child who was not.

  Matthew and Aaron buried their faces against her and were lost in their tears. "Hush, my babies," she said to them and looked up at Sylvanus. "It's going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right, isn't it, Sylvanus?"

  He looked down at her and for a minute he said nothing. Then he began to smile. "I'll be damned if I know how or why," he said, shaking his head, "but I think you're absolutely right."

  And softly, in nature's own time, it began to rain.

  EPILOGUE

  On any fine day, you can drive up the shore of Green Bay on a road that winds and dips through gentle, prosperous farm country, past cows and fences and orchards, past efficient, productive-looking dairy farms with well-kept, crisply painted barns and outbuildings, past neat frame houses with comfortable, sit-down porches, past endless patches of forest and open field, nursing endless varieties of trees and wildflowers and huckleberries.

  From town to town the road winds gently northward, angling now away from the bay, then back again, crisscrossing through pleasant, rolling farmland and peaceful, industrious towns. Finally, with a firm bend to the east, the road crosses the Peshtigo River and moves on into Michigan.