“That’s ‘bout what I figgered,” the door warden said and then spat out a brown stream of chewing tobacco juice. “I think we all know what’s going on. Miss, y’all can stop pretending.”
Sarah could suddenly feel her fingers again. They were gripping the pistol dangerously tight, especially the index finger which had half drawn back on the trigger. “Me, pretending?” she asked. Her mind buzzed: How did he know it was her? Had she been that obvious? Did she still look so much like her old self that she had been recognized by a man she had only seen on two brief occasions?
“I think you have it wrong. I’m not pretending, I’m Janice…” She was in the middle of her sentence when Artie opened his mouth to spew more crazy. Sarah grabbed his hand, and looked at him sadly. “It’s ok, Artie. I won’t let them hurt you. You’re going to be fine.”
The door warden shook his head at this. “I don’t know if’n he will be. Sometimes when the great prophet of the Lord cast out demons such as what’s in y’all’s friend, the poor feller up and dies. Like his body can’t handle the presence of the Lord.”
This talk of demons from out of nowhere made Sarah step back. “He casts out demons?” She was so surprised that she forgot to cast even the slightest of false veneers over her countenance. No one seemed to notice. Mark had stepped to the back of the group wearing a pissy look at being admonished. She went on, “Has he done a lot of this sort of thing?”
“It’s becoming a right epidemic,” the warden said. “Specially among all the new peoples that we has acoming through lately. The prophet of the Lord says that it’s the devil hisself trying to destroy New Eden with infiltrators. I seed it too, people going all crazy and then the prophet he touches them and they calm. It is honest-to-God miraculous.”
One of the door guards nodded in agreement and said, “Amen.” This brought on an uneven chorus of Amens from the rest.
“Amen,” Sarah said. She looked to Artie, hoping he would have enough sense to say it also, but he was mumbling under his breath. He would start in with his talk of beams and cell technology any second.
Sarah was clueless on how to proceed. She knew Abraham was a charlatan, and “casting out demons” seemed right up his alley, but the talk of people dying from it unnerved her. How did they die? Was that faked as well, or were the people killed on the sly and their bodies dumped where they could be “discovered?” Were there others in on it, or was it just Abraham working alone to increase his mystique?
The biggest question she had was how could she possibly bring Artie into New Eden knowing that he would likely be “diagnosed” as possessed and then even more likely killed? He was the perfect candidate; even then he was working himself up, his mumbling growing louder.
“We’ll talk about the beams, later,” she said, squeezing his hand. She was sure Artie would be one of the failures, one of those whose bodies couldn’t handle the exorcism. But how would Abraham fake the whole thing? Getting Artie to “go all crazy” would be easy, but how would he get him to calm? She pictured an accomplice with a poison dart and a blow gun shooting him in the neck; however that would be ridiculously obvious.
What about poisoned sacramental wine? Or a hypodermic needle hidden in the folds of Abraham’s linen robes? One of these last seemed most likely, which begged the question, could she really sacrifice Artie for her own gains?
She tried to feel the heat and the hate that, for the last month, had been brewing like hot bile deep inside her. Try as she might she couldn’t seem to kindle that same rage. It confused her. What did it mean? Was she willing to turn back—now, when she was so close to her goal. So close to getting Eve back? Just like the bile, answers to these questions did not come to her.
She couldn’t go on and she couldn’t retreat which left only one alternative. “Will the prophet see us?” she asked. The warden started to nod and she went on before he could say anything. “Out here, I mean? I’m afraid for Artie. Close spaces make him worse.”
The warden said he would ask, but could not guarantee anything. When he left, the two newcomers were asked to hand over any weapons in their possession. Reluctantly, Sarah handed over her pistol and allowed herself to be frisked. Artie was even more reluctant. He had to be wrestled to the ground, and he fought so hard that it took all four of the very large men to keep him pinned. They decided it was better to hold him there until the prophet arrived.
Unlike Sarah, Abraham had not changed in any appreciable manner since the night Jillybean had sunk two ferry boats and Ram had been killed.
The prophet swept out of the silo, his robes white as snow, his hair shining silver. He was flanked by two women who were dressed in azure robes. They were both somewhere in their thirties and very severe looking. Neither took much notice of Artie; their judging eyes were on Sarah who had been kneeling next to Artie.
“Hello,” said Abraham, the prophet. “Good day.”
Sarah could not bring herself to speak just then. Anger and hate ballooned in her with such sudden fury that she didn’t trust her tongue. Nor did she trust her eyes. In what she hoped was a display of submission, she dropped her chin to her chest and sunk lower on her knees. To add to her display, she also grabbed hold of the hem of Abraham’s robes as though she were groveling when what she really wanted to do was strangle him with the elaborately knotted cord he had tied around his waist.
“These are the two, my Lord,” the door warden said.
“Yes,” Abraham replied. She could feel his eyes on her and it was all she could do not to let a spasm of disgust show.
“They say you are a prophet,” Sarah said, forcing out the words. “And that you can c-c-c...” The idea that he had some sort of real power to cast out demons was so preposterous that the word caught on her tongue. She cleared her throat and spat it out, “Cast. You can cast out demons from people.”
“Yes, daughter of the Lord, I can,” Abraham said easily. “For every ying, there is a yang. For every up, there is a down. The Lord chose the earth for his epic struggle with evil and he sent me to do his bidding, to challenge the imps and demons and all the hate-filled things that worm their way out of hell. Sadly, these are more prevalent now than ever before.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Sarah said. “But...”
One of the women, her right hand hidden in her robe, stepped forward, aggressively. “We do not question the Prophet of the Lord. He can feel the presence of evil in his midst and can send demons back to the depths of hell with just a touch. This is not subject to question.”
“My child, my Amanda,” Abraham said to the woman. “Can you love me too much?” He laughed and she blushed like a schoolgirl.
“I can’t my Lord.”
His laugh was lighter now as he regarded Sarah. “Perhaps we should let this woman...”
He paused to allow Sarah to introduce herself, but as he did he touched the back of her head and this time her body was rattled by a shiver. Fearing that he would realize her revulsion, she opened her mouth to respond and, unbelievably, came within an ace of divulging her real name!
She stumbled over a few nonsense syllables before finally saying, “S-S...it’s, uh Janice.”
No one seemed to think oddly of her nervous behavior. Abraham’s smile even seemed to grow larger. Sarah guessed he enjoyed the intimidating effect he and his minions had on unarmed strangers.
Still with his hand on her bowed head, Abraham said, “Perhaps we should let Janice ask her questions. I’m sure she has a great many.”
Sarah nodded, making sure to keep most of her face averted from Abraham. “I do. They say you can cast out demons, but what can you do for Artie? He’s a good man and a good person. He loves the Lord, don’t you, Artie?”
If the two women with Abraham were enraptured by his presence, then Artie was doubly so. He had his head canted up out of the dirt at a scary angle, maybe even an impossible angle. His eyes were filled with tears at the sight of the false Prophet.
“I love the lord,” he said in a voice m
ade strange by the angle of his throat. It was a creaking sound like a frog speaking.
“Yes, you do,” Sarah said. She forgot herself then and looked straight up into Abraham’s face. “See? He’s a good man and a good protector and has done many good deeds in the name of the Lord, right Artie?”
“The Lord!” Artie croaked. “I love the Lord! He protects me from the beams and the blue electricity that speaks in tongues, sssss. He gave me victory in my election. He gave me Beth and now Janice...”
“Ok Artie,” Sarah said, cutting him off before he could say something to endanger her alias. She turned her face up to Abraham, remembering this time to squint. “You see? He’s not possessed, he just not, you know, thinking right. Some might say, uh, a little crazy.”
Everyone looked at Abraham who had lost his gleaming smile. He stared at Artie with a bit of curl to his lip, but then burst out in his usual booming laughter. “Oh, Janice, the Prince of Lies spins his deception with such intricacy that mere mortals would confuse up from down if he wished them to. Do not be fooled by the flower and the butterfly for that which seems most pleasing to us may be the purest poison.”
To this Sarah could only wag her head. Abraham chortled at her honest confusion and said, “Do you have the wit to see though the illusions of the devil himself? Insanity has always been the perfect cover for demonic possession. Thank the Lord of Hosts that I have been given the ability to see through such...how should I put it? Amusements. That’s all they are to me.”
In other words, Sarah thought, Artie was doomed. She had hoped to plant the idea of Artie’s insanity in their minds, but Abraham had countered her with his version of “logic.”
Only he could judge if a person was possessed or not and only he could “heal” him. If he wanted Artie dragged inside for a little theatrical healing that would very likely kill him, there wasn’t anything Sarah could do about it.
“That’s why I brought him to you,” Sarah said in a rush. She hadn’t known she was going to say anything at all, the words just shot out of her. “Everyone knows your power...I mean we’ve heard of it up in Maryland and there were people who came south out of...Boston, who had heard of you, too.” She had been close to saying New York, but stopped herself, not wanting to spark memories that could lead to her being recognized.
“Yes,” Abraham said. “My fame has grown immensely, which is why we can be more selective about whom we allow to join us. Only those with the deepest faith are permitted into New Eden so that it may remain pristine. Is that you, Janice? Do you have great faith?”
Sarah groveled in the dirt, holding his hem, fiercely. “Yes, I do. I see it clearly how much the Lord, uh, loves you, his Prophet.” Just then, she felt a certain pride in her acting skills, she had hit the exact right note, which was great for her, but not for Artie.
“Then I will help your friend,” Abraham said, again touching her. He began to turn away, to lead them down into New Eden where Eve waited to be rescued and where Artie would soon die.
Sarah had known this moment would occur. She had brought Artie along with the sole purpose to be sacrificed one way or the other. But now that the hour had come, she hesitated, filled with regret and second thoughts.
“Wait, please,” she said, holding the false prophet back by the hem of his robes. He waited with his pleasant smile slowly losing its pleasantness. Five long seconds ticked by.
With everyone looking at her, Sarah could think of nothing. Her mind was far too rigid in its thinking, far too linear for her to come up with a spur of the moment plan to save Artie. Her vision of the world was narrow, her paradigms hard and brittle as fired clay.
She knew facts: Abraham had begun to perform “exorcisms” in which some people died. New Eden had become more selective, yet Abraham was willing to bring in a clearly insane person. Abraham wouldn’t just stand there for much longer. Sarah knew the answers to save Artie were in front of her, but they would not arrange themselves in her mind in a cohesive manner. She couldn’t seem to figure out what to say or do. Her one thought was of Jillybean. What would she do differently?
Jillybean would change something. She would note the one thing that didn’t seem right, the one thing that wasn’t congruent, and she would turn it to her advantage.
What wasn’t right in this situation? Sarah’s first thought was: everything. Her second thought was more precise: Abraham was a snake, a charlatan, a kidnapper, and almost without question, a murderer. There was nothing pristine about him or about New Eden at all. The word “pristine” caught in her head. If New Eden was so perfect then...
“Artie can’t go.” The wardens were just getting ready to stand Artie up, but now they hesitated and looked to Abraham for guidance.
“Why is that?” he asked.
“B-because this was a mistake,” Sarah said, thinking on the fly. “He can’t go in if he’s a demon. I couldn’t think of anything that would be more blasphemous than to drag something so awful evil and dirty into New Eden. I don’t want that on my head.”
The false prophet beamed at this. “Your loyalty and faith in the Lord is overwhelming in one who has only just seen the light.”
“And so is my faith in his prophet,” Sarah said, pulling harder on the hem. “Please, if you see that Artie is afflicted with a demon, touch him now and free him. Do not let him suffer anymore.” This was so wholly an unexpected request that Abraham drew back slightly and gazed at her with sharp eyes. Perhaps he was looking for the angle Sarah was playing but, more likely, he was taken aback, put on the spot, forced by his own words into action.
“You are most considerate,” Abraham said at last. “And yours is a request from the heart. I will use the gift given to me by the lord.”
Abraham knelt before Artie and put out his hands to him as a camper would before a fire. Sarah, who knew full well that only a snake such as Abraham could find a way to wiggle out of the spot she had put him in, held her breath in the seconds that followed.
Her fear was unfounded. Abraham ducked displaying his “powers” of exorcism simply by declaring Artie free of demons. He even mussed Arties hair, but then he grew sad. “He is not a vessel of Satan, and for that we should rejoice. However, his sin has been very great. His mind has been turned inside out because of it. I’m afraid he will not be able to join the family of Believers until his soul is right with God.”
“Yes, my Lord, but...but what about me?” Sarah felt like a high-stakes poker player holding nothing but a pair of twos with her life on the line. She was afraid to move, afraid to swallow, afraid to look at Abraham and more afraid not to. What if he thought she was hiding something? Or worse, what if he saw that she was hiding something?
She sweated out the seconds, waiting for his answer, as the gritty sand bit into the bones of her knees and Georgian gnats began to form into a cloud above her head. Finally, he lifted her chin and looked her square in the face.
The two of them had never been this close before and his imperfections were obvious: there was a scar on his cheek under his left eye, the pores of his nose were large and deep, tufts grew out of his ears like weedy stands of sage in a desert. Even his hair wasn’t nearly as perfect as he wanted people to believe: it was flaked with dandruff.
Sarah was worse off and knew it. Her black and butchered hair bore no resemblance to the beautiful blonde mane she had once possessed and her once-smooth complexion had been replaced by peeling skin and fading bruises.
“You’ve seen some difficult days, haven’t you, Janice?” Abraham asked. The part of her that feared getting caught relaxed, slightly. Inches from her face and still Abraham saw only Janice Sills.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s horrible out there. I-I don’t want to go back.”
“Is your faith strong?”
Sarah had all the faith in the world. She had faith that she would either get her baby back or kill the lying piece of shit in front of her. “Yes, I do.”
“Your faith is your shield, dear Janice and it has sa
ved you,” Abraham cried with a flourish, standing tall and raising his hands to the heavens. “Come join the family of Believers!”
Chapter 28
Jillybean
Atlanta, Georgia
“Look at this,” Jillybean gasped, gingerly touching the bright metal and letting the sharp point indent the skin of her finger. “A speargun! Do you think it’s shootable?”
Ipes sat wedged between the Velveteen Rabbit and the crook of Jilly’s left arm—the little girl kept her right hand free whenever possible, just in case. Probably not, Ipes said. These sorts of things work with springs and rubber bands, I think. You can’t keep them ready to shoot all the time or they’ll break. But that’s only a guess.
They were a hundred yards from the dark waters of Carter’s Lake, standing in Doug’s Boats-N-Bait Shoppe, a fading building that wasn’t much larger than a standard sized hut. From its walls and ceiling, hung nets, plastic lobsters, singing bass and so many other fishing-related decorations that Jillybean felt as though she had wandered into a Red Lobster restaurant.
“This makes me hungry,” she had said when they first walked in. They had searched for food but found the speargun instead. In a shed next to the main “building” Neil and Sadie were thumbing through the assorted, rentable wetsuits, leaving Jillybean to explore as they usually did.
Sometimes she felt like an afterthought when they were busy with their grown up stuff. On a certain level she knew every kid probably felt this way at some point, however, as there weren’t any other kids left in the world to play with, the feeling was especially acute.
At least she had Ipes. Yes, he had been somewhat overbearing lately, but who could blame him? His job, as he constantly reminded her, was to protect her, and that had kept him very busy in the last few days. Still, there was something about the zebra that worried her on a level that went very deep, so deep that it felt like only a rumble of nerves or the sensation like the sweaty ending of a barely-remembered nightmare.
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