The Waking Dark

by Robin Wasserman

  He clamped down on her hand. Not in the way of a man reaching out for a girl, not like a father, or a lover. He held on because he needed her for his cause. Because he wanted her to burn bright.

  She could see it in him now: he wanted everything to burn.

  “Let me help you find your way back,” he said.

  She tried to pull her hand away. “I’m leaving.”

  He squeezed tighter. And she slapped him.

  It was as if her arm had worked of its own accord. They both gaped at it, equally surprised.

  “You’re very disturbed,” he said. “I can see we have a lot of work to do.”

  She slapped him again.

  He snatched her wrists before she could go in for a third.

  He would let go if she insisted. She knew that about him; she thought she knew that about him. All she had to do was follow through on her word and walk out.

  But you haven’t.

  You’re waiting for him.

  “I won’t stand by and let you kill someone tomorrow,” she said. “I won’t let you.”

  He laughed. “You won’t ‘let’ me?”

  “People listen to me now. You saw to that.”

  “Let me tell you what’s going to happen if you go through that door, Eleanor King.” This was not the honey-voiced peacock who fluffed his feathers for her at every opportunity. This was someone new, someone cold and honest and empty of illusion.

  The real Deacon Wally Barnes, she thought, and was afraid.

  “Let me paint you a picture of how this is going to go if you leave here like this, much less if you try to stop me tomorrow, or anytime from here to eternity.”

  You want him to make you scream.

  If you wanted to stop him, you would make him scream.

  You would slice him up.

  Slice it off.

  There was a letter opener on his desk. She could see it over his shoulder, through the door, sharp and gleaming in the fluorescent light.

  You know who you are.

  Soon everyone will know.

  Give in to it.

  Give in.

  It had to be the voice of God, she thought. It knew too much. It saw her too clearly.

  “I will tell everyone in this godforsaken town how you tried to seduce me —”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “— how I’ve put up with it for the sake of trying to guide you back to the way of righteousness, but I can put up with it no longer.”

  “No one would believe that.”

  But she could see that, already, he did.

  “Silence, harlot. They will believe it because it’s God’s truth, and because you’re stained in a way that will never wash away, and when I open their eyes, they will see.”

  “Then I’ll tell them you —”

  He held up a finger, and she fell silent. “Don’t be so foolish as to believe you have the support of this town. You’re an empty vessel for them. You’re a tool. Without me speaking for you, you’re nothing.”

  She shook her head. But, true to his word, she could not speak.

  “I’ll tell your parents you’re a godless harlot, and they will believe it because they already know it to be true. And when I tell them it’s best for them to put you out, when I tell them the only way you’ll find your way back to the light is if we let you stumble into deepest darkness, they’ll believe that, too. The town will know you to be a fraud. That you’ve never spoken to God, never heard His voice, that you’ve been lying all along, that you’ve made fools of them, and let me tell you, Ellie, no one likes to be made a fool of. No one likes that at all. You’ll knock on doors, begging for a place to stay, for food and drink, for a single friend in all the world, and all will turn you away, because they’ll take one look at you – pathetic and, soon enough, stinking of the streets – and know I speak the truth, that you’re worse than nothing, you’re a pretender, and they will shut their doors to you, and expel you into the wilderness. You will have nothing left, and nowhere to go, and naught to do but crawl into a hole and wait to die.”

  The bath awaited. She needed only strip herself bare for him and let him guide her down.

  “Your choice.”

  Slice it off.

  Her eyes betrayed her, straying to the bulge in his trousers.

  Watch the blood spurt.

  An eye for an eye.

  Justice served.

  The voice knew what she wanted, but she knew what was right.

  She fled.

  And all that he predicted would soon come to pass.

  You didn’t sleep. Not on meth. You got high, then you tweaked, then you went cold and dark and took some more so you could feel something other than empty. Then you started again.

  So maybe she hadn’t slept. She couldn’t have. But somehow, lying in that bed, she lost herself for a time. When she found herself again, she found herself in Scott’s doorway.

  He was naked, tangled with the woman and the sheets.

  Jule was holding his knife.

  If he looked up and saw her there —

  If it happened again, and the next time, she zoned out through not just the retrieval of the knife but its use —

  If she had gotten a taste for it, and the knife had gotten a taste for her—

  It was a silly thing to be afraid of. But she had no idea how she’d ended up there, or how the blade had ended up in her hand, or what might have happened next. In the dark, on that particular night, anything seemed possible.

  In the dark, the drug leaching from her system, nothing seemed bearable. Not lying down in that bedroom, beside that bleached-out spot in the carpet, not with the Prevettes assembled down the hall, not with Scott knowing what she knew and worrying about what she would say. Not trusting herself to stay safe and stay hidden in her sleep.

  She packed a small bag, tiptoed down the stairs, and fled.

  She brought the knife.

  Daniel couldn’t sleep. Not knowing what was going to happen to Cass tomorrow; not until he found a way to stop it.

  He’d exhausted the narrow range of legal options. Demanding she have a lawyer, an arraignment, contact with her parents or with anyone in the world outside the quarantine lines – none of it had done any good. Unable to get a straight answer from the cops, he’d gone to Deacon Barnes, thinking that a religious man might realize that things had gone too far and have the moral authority to rein them in. But he’d forgotten what his father had taught him about religious men. The only help Barnes had to offer was an explanation – in short sentences and small words, as if Daniel were slow – that Oleander was on the cusp of transformation. Step one would be remaking the criminal justice system in God’s image, complete with final judgment. Even then, he hadn’t quite believed it. Not even when he saw what was being built at the center of town, the tower of scrap wood that he recognized from his history textbook as a funeral pyre.

  The town was angry, he got that. Crowds could be more violent than individuals – stampedes, riots, lynch mobs. People could go crazy, swept up in a storm of emotion. But he’d known the people of Oleander his whole life. They weren’t the type to hang a girl from a tree or set her on fire.

  That’s what he thought when he went down to the station that last day to persuade someone sane to shut it down. Before he had the chance, Coach Hart, varsity football coach, Eisenhower High gym teacher, and all-around bane of Daniel’s existence, had barreled past him, dragging his wife behind. Both were drenched in a massive amount of what looked like blood. Only the wife was screaming. She was also naked. They were instantly surrounded by cops, all with weapons drawn. “Better let go of her, Sal,” one of them said, but the coach held tight. She had her arms wrapped across her chest, but it did little to hide her ample bosom and nothing to shield the rest of her. Blood was everywhere.

  “I have to confess to a murder,” the coach said in a flat voice. “And my wife here has to confess to adultery.”

  He squeezed her shoulder, hard enough to ma
ke her wince. In a similarly flat voice, she said, “It’s true. I’m an adulteress.” And then, as if the admission had broken something in her, she started pounding at his chest and shrieking something incoherent. Daniel was pretty sure he caught the word blowtorch.

  The chief pushed his way to the front of the cluster of cops. “Now, what’s all this fuss about, Sal?” he asked, as if the man had wandered in to protest a parking ticket.

  “Caught my wife in bed with George Stilton,” Sal said, slapping her on the ass, hard, the way he did his players after a touchdown. George Stilton was the high school principal. He wore suspenders, had pubic-like hairs sprouting from his chin, and looked like the kind of guy who’d been carrying a briefcase around since he was six years old. Daniel couldn’t imagine him in bed with anyone. “Spent the last couple days taking care of him. Put what’s left out on the front stoop for you fellows to collect. But I’ll tell you, I just don’t have the heart to handle Amelia. A man shouldn’t have to bring judgment down on his nearest and dearest, am I right?”

  The chief sighed, sounding put-upon. What he did not do, to Daniel’s horror, was slap the cuffs on Coach Hart and drag him away. Nor did he offer the coach’s wife something to wear.

  “What do you want us to do?” the chief asked, as if honestly curious.

  The coach shrugged. “I always liked that part in church when they talk about stoning the wicked. Figured as long as we’re changing things around here…”

  “You don’t think we have enough to deal with these days, Sal? You want us to start stoning people? For adultery?” He shook his head. “It’s a man’s job to tend to his wife, says so right there in the Bible – maybe you weren’t listening to that part in church.”

  The coach looked suitably chastened.

  “You want her stoned, you’re going to have to do it yourself. And next time, don’t come down here to bother my men unless you’ve got a real problem for us to handle.”

  “But, sir,” one of the younger cops piped up. “We’re just going to… send him home? That’s it?”

  The chief laughed. “You’re right, Jackson. I almost forgot. Can’t have people thinking we’ve gone soft around here. The new regime wouldn’t like that much. Write him a ticket for… oh, let’s say making a public nuisance of himself. And another for improper disposal of garbage. Pretty sure leaving a body sitting around on a porch can’t be exactly hygienic. That sound all right to you, Sal?”

  “Fair enough,” Sal said. “I’ll get out of your hair now, if these men will be so kind as to lower their weapons.”

  The men did. Coach Hart – grip on his wife never slipping – waited for them to scrawl out his tickets, then steered his wife out of the station and into the bright afternoon.

  “What are you looking at, kid?” the chief asked, catching Daniel gaping at the scene. “You here to visit your girlfriend again? Better hurry – you know what they say: act now, supplies running out!” The room broke into laughter. Daniel had a very difficult time suppressing his urge to run – not just out of the building, but all the way to the edge of town, to throw himself on the mercy of the soldiers who stood posted on the border, to drop to his knees and beg, if necessary, to let him the hell out.

  He had not run away. He had descended into the basement, where they kept Cass locked up. The dark row of cells was familiar to him – he’d been there enough times to bail his father out of trouble – but no matter how many times he tramped down those stairs, his chest still seized when he hit the bottom. There was something about the place, the way sounds echoed off concrete, the stench of drying piss and puke, the scuttle of small creatures in the dark, the shadowed figures that peered out from other cells, shouting at him or at their god, or moaning, or crying, or arguing with the voices in their heads. Maybe it was the cells themselves, always so many of them empty, as if waiting for him. As if he belonged in one, and the jail was just biding its time, waiting until he crossed the wrong line and it could swallow him up. That day, after what he’d seen, it was harder than ever to walk down those stairs – hard to believe he’d be allowed back up. But he forced himself to go to her. He tried not to stare at her bruises – she didn’t like that, had refused to answer his questions about what they’d done to her, about whether it hurt. Of course it hurt. Instead, as usual, he dug up something trivial to talk to her about, stories of a happier past. He couldn’t even remember now what they had talked about, had barely been aware of it at the time, his mouth running on autopilot while his brain worked the problem, thinking through possible escape routes, none of them possible. He just wasn’t the kind of person who planned jailbreaks.

  He’d gotten out of there as quickly as he could without letting her know that anything was amiss and, half afraid it was a mistake, hiked out to Jeremiah West’s place. The football player had helped Cass out once already, and as a potential ally, he came with some serious advantages, not least of them muscle bulk and a proximity to Baz, whose father surely had access to the cell keys. But West wasn’t there, and his parents hadn’t even let Daniel in the door. He’d met the Wests before, pushing pies at school bake sales and manning the dunk tank at the spring carnival, and they’d always been farm friendly, all too willing to offer a welcoming hug to anyone even tangentially related to their son. This time, Mrs. West would open the door only a crack, and as Daniel peered through, he caught a glimpse of Mr. West pacing in the background, holding what looked to be a rifle.

  So he had gone home.

  Only to find his father in the backyard, with Milo, teaching him how to shoot a semiautomatic.

  It was the first time since Cass’s capture that Daniel had seen Milo smile.

  “Put down the gun,” Daniel said.

  Calm, he thought. Careful.

  “You kidding?” Milo shook his head. “It’s an M16. They use it in the army.”

  The Preacher ruffled his younger son’s hair. “And now we’ll use it in ours.”

  Milo grinned.

  Daniel didn’t know how he was going to keep his brother from finding out what the town had in store for her, or how he’d face Milo if he couldn’t find a way to stop it. The kid had been inconsolable when they came for Cass. For some reason that he refused to explain, he blamed himself. He’d cried for two days straight, and even after Daniel bribed him out of his room with the promise of a junk-food binge, he hadn’t managed a real smile. Not like this.

  There was almost nothing he wouldn’t do to cheer Milo up. Father-son gunplay, however, wasn’t on the list.

  “Put down the gun and go in the house.”

  “You don’t want your little brother to burn in the hellfire, do you?” the Preacher said. “Now, Milo, it’s important you aim for the head, because —”

  “Milo!”

  The boy flinched. The gun fired. Twenty feet away, bark exploded from a tree, and a bird squawked into the sky.

  “You nuts?” the Preacher roared. “Shouting at a little boy holding a gun?”

  “Milo, please,” Daniel said to his brother, whose face had gone pale and pinched. He looked back and forth between his father and his brother, then solemnly placed the rifle into his father’s hands.

  “Permission for a pee break, sir,” he said.

  “Permission granted.” The Preacher saluted, and Milo returned it with a shy smile, then ran into the house.

  “You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?” the Preacher said. “You still grouchy about that girl they’re going to light on fire?”

  Daniel had never been this angry, or this terrified. “Stay away from him.”

  “My son? I think not.”

  “No more guns,” Daniel said. “No more army talk.”

  “I’m his father. I think I know what’s best for him a little better than you do.”

  The Preacher’s eyes were clearer than usual. He was, against all odds, sober. For a long time, Daniel had harbored a secret hope, only allowing himself to creep toward it in the dark, when he was on the verge o
f sleep, and he could be trusted to forget it by morning. If, someday, the Preacher stopped drinking – if he cleaned himself up, finally moved on from the death of his wife, remembered he had children to care for, threw away the bottles, got himself to a meeting and then another one, if he went stone-cold sober – then he’d be himself again. He’d be the father Daniel could barely remember, gruff and occasionally cruel, but a father nonetheless, who’d hugged him and cooked him franks ’n’ beans and told him bloody bedtime stories that made them both shudder and laugh. If darkness could fall, surely it could also lift – wasn’t Cass proof of that?