Cold Ennaline

by RJ Astruc

When evening falls the twins come to find me in our room. Without a word they take my hands and lead me out of the ranch. We walk into the fields until we come to a twisted tree with red, raw bark.

  “We need to talk to you, Enna,” says Ro. “We can’t do it in the house. Too many people are listening in.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Okay.” Ro takes a deep breath. “You know Theo, the guy we’ve been hanging around with lately? He’s been telling us about the god. About gods, actually.”

  I cough. The smell is really getting to me. I can feel it in my lungs. “So what? So he’s faith less?”

  “No. He’s not faith less. Not exactly.” Ro looks at his brother for support. “He believes in the god. He says he knows the god, or at least he knows gods like it.”

  “There is only one god.”

  “Enna! Please, listen. Hear me out. Theo says the god isn’t the only god. Theo says there are many gods sleeping in the earth and sometimes they rise when bad people worship them. Well, not just bad people, sometimes misguided people, too. People who don’t understand what the gods are. People like us. He says that the god will bring nothing but death and destruction. He says if the god wakes, it will consume us all.”

  “That just proves he knows nothing about the god!”

  “He says he’s seen it happening before.”

  “No.”

  “Many times, he’s seen it happen many times. Mostly in communities like ours, places that are cut off from the rest of the world, rural places, quiet places. But sometimes he’s seen it happen in cities. Whole neighborhoods swallowed by a god like ours. He’s spent years trying to stop it happening, to warn people. Sometimes he succeeds and sometimes he doesn’t.”

  I can’t take all this in. I don’t want to. “Why did he tell you? Why did he find you both and no one else?”

  “He says we’re special.”

  “Special.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or hit them.

  “We don’t know why. Maybe because we’re twins. He wasn’t clear. But he said we were special, and we ought to get a chance to save ourselves. And if we did, he’d help us.”

  “What do you mean a chance to save yourselves?”

  But I know. I’ve known all day what they’re planning. I just can’t believe they’d really do it. I’ve always thought they loved the god deeply, completely, without question. They chose to become companions of Father Nerve. They want to become Fathers of the faith themselves when they’re older. What could Theo have possibly said to change their minds… to change their entire lives?

  “We want you to come with us, Enna,” says Ray.

  “I can’t.”

  “We love you. Please.”

  I shake my head. My heart is breaking. It’s the worst betrayal.

  “We’ll look after you. We’ll protect you. We’ll make a life away from all this. It doesn’t matter about your… about your coldness, or whatever you call it. We want to be with you.”

  “What part of no don’t you understand? I am faith full, unlike the pair of you!” I’m shouting. I never shout. “I love the god. I serve the god.”

  The twins exchange looks. Then they both lean in and kiss my cheeks.

  “We love you, Enna. If you run, we’ll be waiting for you. This doesn’t have to be the end.”

  THEY LEAVE an hour later. They hot-wire a car belonging to one of the faith full and drive away into the night.

  I know I should tell someone, but I don’t. In my heart I know it’s my fault they left. It’s my fault because I couldn’t love them the way men should be loved by women. If I was normal—if my flesh burned warm, not cold—we would all be sitting in the ranch on a bunk together, eagerly waiting for the god to rise. We would be prayer full. We would be faith full.

  We would be happy.

  5

  NO ONE mentions the twins the next day.

  I don’t know if that’s because no one has noticed they’re gone, or because their lack of faith is too shameful to acknowledge.

  I want to talk to Father Nerve, but he’s busy with Father Piedmont and the other leaders of the faith. I hear rumors that the Bishop has arrived in the night, but I don’t see any sign of him. Mrs. Piedmont catches me pacing aimlessly up and down outside the ranch house and gives me a list of jobs to do. Fill buckets with water so people can bathe. Chop vegetables for lunch. Clean up outside as best I can.

  The last job is the worst. While the Piedmonts have accommodated many of the faith full inside the ranch, many more have had to spend the night outside. The stench has caused many of them to be ill. There is vomit everywhere. There are also not enough toilet facilities—the Piedmonts only have two toilets and both are inside. People have dug holes in the ground and covered up after themselves like dogs.

  As I walk around the area, armed with a rake and a mop, I feel like I’ve stepped into a war zone. Already people are filthy, their clothes and faces covered in red dust. They aren’t complaining, though. Instead they sit on the ground and pray, amid muck and filth, to the waking god.

  I’m sick a few times myself, but I manage to hold it in for long enough to get a good way away from the main camping site.

  Just before lunch, a car drives up in a cloud of dust. A pair of teenage girls gets out. They’re dressed in bright, modern clothes, and both have long blond hair tied back from their faces. I’m almost certain I recognize them from school—they’re a few years above me. One of them runs track, and the other one is a mathematics whiz. If our school was big enough to have a cheerleading team, they’d probably be cheerleaders.

  “Jackie,” one of them shouts, running toward us. “Jackie, are you here?”

  “Oh Christ, Lisa,” the other says, covering her face with her arm so she doesn’t have to breathe in the smell. “This is crazy. This is disgusting.”

  “Jackie? Where are you?” The first girl, Lisa, pulls at her hair in frustration. “Stop complaining, Jessica, and help me look. We’ve got to find her.”

  Jessica shakes her head, clearly wary of getting too close to the assembled faith full. Lisa swears and goes back to her search. The faith full watch her in silence. They’ve stopped praying. I wipe vomit from my face and watch, too.

  “Jackie! You’re here!”

  Lisa has found her friend. She’s on her knees now, shaking the dust-covered girl by her shoulders. Jackie’s head wobbles back and forth loosely, as if she’s half-asleep, and she lets out a quiet, sobbing sound. Muddy streaks on her face show the paths of her tears.

  “Jackie, it’s me, Lisa. What have they done to you?”

  “This is so… so wrong,” Jessica says. “It’s a cult. My mom said it was a cult. When Jackie was talking about it? Man, we should have known. Christ, this is so screwed up.” She says the word Christ like a prayer, rather than a curse.

  “Jackie, you’ve got to come with us. We’ve brought a car. Please.”

  Jackie is like a rag doll, only moving when Lisa shakes her. I can’t tell if she’s in shock or if she’s sick or if this is her way of resisting Lisa’s pleas.

  Jessica shouts, “Lisa, she isn’t coming. We’ve got to get out of here. It’s weird. It’s really… it’s all wrong. Let’s go.”

  “I’m not going without her! We drove miles to get here. We aren’t leaving until we get her away from all this. Look at her! She’s filthy! Look what they did….”

  Lisa trails off. Mrs. Piedmont has appeared at the door of the house. Unlike the other faith full, she is immaculately dressed in a simple black smock, and her dark hair is coiled high above her head. Both Lisa and Jessica seem to shrink in her presence. Suddenly there’s no sound outside, neither wind nor mumbled prayers.

  “Why are you here?” Mrs. Piedmont says.

  Lisa swallows. “W-we came for Jackie. She doesn’t belong here.”

  Mrs. Piedmont doesn’t respond. Her eyes are fixed on Lisa, who shivers. It’s difficult for me to look at her, not in the least because she looks so very like the twins.
But if she’s worried about the welfare of her missing sons, she doesn’t show any sign of it.

  “You got to let us take her,” Lisa says. “She’s… she’s, like, seventeen. This is really messed up. Okay? She doesn’t belong here. You guys keep your cult. We just want our friend back? Please?”

  “Please, ma’am,” Jessica mumbles. “She’s our best friend. She doesn’t want to be here….”

  Mrs. Piedmont says, “Take her, then.”

  She turns on her heel and vanishes into the ranch.

  Lisa lets out a whoop, and Jessica exhales. The two begin to chat to each other, relieved and happy.

  “Oh my, oh my God, I can’t believe it!”

  “Unbelievable. Jackie, it’s over. We can go!”

  “Thank God. Oh man, that was easy.”

  “Jackie, let’s get out of here. We can go home.”

  “You can stay at our place, Jackie… Jackie….”

  At some point they realize that Jackie isn’t making any move to come with them. No matter how Lisa pulls at Jackie, Jackie isn’t getting up. After a few attempts, Lisa starts to pull harder, yanking roughly at Jackie’s shoulders.

  “Jessie, help me. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  Jessica runs over to help pull. Together the two of them drag Jackie to her feet, but her legs buckle under her. The girls stumble in a lopsided circle as Lisa and Jessica try to work out what’s going on.

  “Jackie, you got to walk! What’s wrong with her? Has she been drugged?”

  “Snap out of it! Come on, we got to go.”

  And finally, they get a reaction from Jackie. She throws her head back and starts to scream. The sound of her voice is ragged and guttural.

  “I am here for the god!”

  Jessica and Lisa let her go instantly, as if they’ve been burned. Jackie falls onto her knees, and then her hands. Her fingers flex in the dirt.

  “Oh Christ, oh Christ….”

  “Jackie, what’s going on?”

  “I am here for the god!”

  “It’s crazy, hon, it’s crazy, you got to come with us….”

  “I am here for the god!”

  “You can’t mean that. It’s me, Lisa. I’m not going to hurt you….”

  Lisa reaches for her friend, desperately, hopelessly, and with a sick smile on her face, Jackie bites her hand.

  I don’t know what happens to Jessica, Lisa, and Jackie. I can’t watch any more. I turn around and start running, until I can’t hear Lisa screaming anymore.

  THE PIEDMONTS’ property uses rainfall tanks as its only source of water. By midday there’s not a drop left, thanks to a dry summer and a lot of dirty and thirsty faith full. I have to wipe the dust out of my face with an old towel I find in the ranch. I don’t understand how the Piedmonts can stay so clean.

  I wonder how the twins are doing, out there in the world with Theo. I hope Theo is looking after them. It’s going to be hard for the twins to live outside of the faith full.

  Like me, they’ve never known anything else.

  Mrs. Piedmont runs out of tasks to give me by the afternoon. There’s nothing I can really do, anyway—we’ve run out of food and water and there’s nothing at hand that could help clean up after the hundreds of faith full gathered outside. She sends me to my room to pray.

  As I walk to my room, I notice two of the rooms that lead off the main hallway are in complete disarray—bedsheets everywhere, broken furniture, and shattered ornaments. I remember the Evans’s house and their mysteriously overturned room… and I remember Father Nerve’s signs of the god. I can see the marks of dust and dirt on the Piedmonts’ bedsheets, evidence of the strange, rot-smelling wind that seems to follow the god’s movements.

  The strange wind that destroys.

  In my room, I kneel on the floor by my bunk, my face pressed to the sheets, my hands clasped over my heart. I say the prayer for the sky and the prayer for the earth and the prayer for the night, until the words run together and I realize I’m not praying, I’m babbling. I sound as crazy as Jackie.

  I am here for the god.

  I close my eyes. I think of the twins again, their sweet faces and their wicked smiles. Would it be easier for me if they were here? Or would they be afraid too? And a tiny flicker of doubt enters my mind: I should have gone with them.

  I should have left before it began.

  I push the treacherous thought away before it takes root and spreads.

  I’m interrupted in my misery by shouts and cheers coming from outside. I run to the window and throw it wide open….

  There’s a new hole.

  It’s fifty meters from the Piedmonts’ house, within the boundary of their fences. The ridge that surrounds it is twice as wide as the ranch and three times as tall. Its sides are covered with pink flora and lumpish white buds as big as loaves of bread. Vines wind around its peaks, some snapping loosely in the foul-smelling wind. I can’t quite believe my eyes. The ridge has risen without a sound, and without unsettling the earth around it. Is it a miracle or a blessing or something else?

  The faith full are on their feet. Their dirt-streaked arms are raised toward the ridge, and they whisper prayers. They sway like cornstalks as the winds move through them, rocking onto their toes, bumping shoulders and swinging away. I can see they’re drunk on their love for the god, and I wish—despite my doubts—that I could share their joy. I wish I could want the god to wake. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

  Maybe it’s the coldness in my heart. Maybe I’m immune to the love and works of a god of fecundity.

  I close the window and crawl back to my bunk. I want to pray, but I can’t find the words. I was born into the faith full. I was adopted by a Father of the faith full. Since I was three years old I’ve lived in a temple. The god is my whole life. But I feel evil in the air. I’m sure of it, the way Father Nerve did in the Evans’ house. The closer the god gets, the greater that feeling grows. And I can’t stop thinking about what the twins told me before they left.

  The god will bring nothing but death and destruction.

  If the god wakes it will consume us all….

  It takes me almost an hour to get control of myself. When I’ve stopped crying and shaking, I join the rest of the faith full in the shadow of the ridge.

  It’s where I belong.

  A STORM comes to the Piedmonts’ property. It starts off as a wind that batters the walls of the ranch and sends the faith full toppling into each other. The smell of rot intensifies, so that every breath feels like swallowing sick. Then the rain comes, big, sweaty drops of water that steam when they hit the ground and leave oily marks on our clothing. If they touch skin they leave a rash.

  Thunder rolls, but there’s no lightning. The sky grows dark, and clouds the color of bruises congregate above the ranch.

  I stand amid the faith full and wait for my god to wake. Mud oozes into my shoes and socks, and my clothes are coated in red dirt. All around me are people I know, some from the temple, some kids from school, people I’ve met in markets or at festivals or in doctors’ waiting rooms. My whole community has come to see the god, to welcome him into the waking world.

  And finally, he arrives.

  We see the hands of the god first, rising above the lip of the ridge.

  They are brown and lumpy and each one is the size of a car. Where the fingers should be are a few dozen tube-like appendages that look like swollen tree roots. The god’s wrists—although it’s hard to tell where the hand ends—are covered in warts and green moss. They push through the ridge, clawing through it, and the smell gets thicker and more intense.

  Then the god’s head emerges from the earth, and we see his face for the first time. Like his hands, his head is gigantic, as big as the temple-barn I grew up in. His skull is a wizened nut at its core, and from it spring a thousand snaking tendrils, pale as worms. Each tendril has at its end a flesh pink flower.

  The god has no nose, no eyes, no mouth, just this cloud of twisting worms that bends
and flexes against the wind.

  The god I have worshipped and loved my whole life is a headless giant, half plant, half maggot.

  A monster.

  Looking upon the god, I feel no thrill of devotion. I am here for the god, I tell myself. But in his presence I feel only fear, pure, naked, fear.

  But I’m alone in my terror. The faith full around me start to cry and chant, not prayers but wordless chattering. They stumble toward the god, bleating, and the god, in his infinite majesty, lowers his hands to meet them, to draw them to his body.

  I start to back away. One step, and then another, my feet sinking deep into the mud.

  The god reaches out to his faith full.

  Where the god’s fingers touch, plants grow. A flower bursts out of a woman’s shoulder, its petals springing open to display a yellow heart. Another woman is on all fours as a vine snakes out of her knee and winds its way around her neck and arms, sprouting leaves as it goes. A man in the simple smock of a Father clutches his head and staggers this way and that, until there is a wet, slick sound and a white bud emerges from the back of his skull.

  I see the man’s face before he falls into the mud.

  The man is Father Nerve.

  Things go dark for a time. The sun is swallowed by the clouds. I feel as if I’m dreaming. Everything seems disconnected. The mud licks at my calves with a lizard’s tongue. I’m aware, distantly, of tall blue flames in the fields and the howls of dying sheep. I see people bursting into flowers and melting into the earth. I’m grabbed by someone; I push them away, only to find I’m not touching a living person but the smooth surface of a vine. The god’s fingers drive into the ground and take root. I touch my face and it comes away covered in black ash. I scream. The rest of the faith full launch themselves forward to meet their fates, like animals running blindly into a slaughter house. I fumble my way backward, still screaming.

  Then I feel a hand against the back of my neck and spin around.

  It’s Mrs. Piedmont.

  She’s still clean, still immaculately presented, in her simple black smock. Her eyes are dark and hollow as the holes of the god.