“No.” Then: “You knew.”
He didn’t have to answer. “Go get her,” he said.
She went to Brother Jerome and picked up the Winchester. The chapel was near enough she could see the light coming through the open doorway, splintered by the intervening leaves.
“Rest here,” Stella told him. “I’ll be back with her.”
She thought about striding through that church door, one more time. She had a shotgun now, but the math remained bad: two shells in the Winchester and thirty feet of aisle between the door and Brother Paul’s pistol. She gave herself even odds of killing him before he killed her. But that left the rest of the Georgians, and Uncle Hendrick.
Then she realized what she had to do.
She edged up to the chapel, staying out of sight of the door and that white light. Squatted next to the generator and ran a hand along its side, then the back of it. There, above the power cord: a switch.
She flipped it. The engine coughed and stopped. The lights inside went out.
Hendrick angrily commanded someone, anyone, to go outside and refill the generator. Stella stepped back behind the door. A figure stepped out, bent over the machine. It was the skinny cameraman. She slowly reached out with the gun and touched the barrel to the back of his head.
“Run,” she said.
His hands went up. He didn’t dare turn his head to look at her.
“Quiet,” she said.
He stood up. Turned, slowly, and then walked down the trail toward the house. When he was a dozen yards away, he began to run. Stella thought, One down.
Inside the chapel, Hendrick argued with someone else—probably Brother Paul. “Stanley!” he yelled. Stella waited. The men went silent.
Hendrick called out, “Stella? Is that you?”
They wouldn’t be sending out any more deacons. She figured there were eight men left in the sanctuary: two ancient Uncles up front, three deacons in the pews, one soundman, and Uncle Hendrick and Brother Paul.
She could think of only one way to reach the hole alive.
She set the Winchester on the ground and opened her palms. The strands slid out of her, tasted the air. A gauze of milky scarlet settled over her vision.
She thought, Time to run across the pews.
* * *
—
she slipped through the door and ducked to her right. A gun fired, and the wall beside the door splintered. They’d seen her shadow cross the doorway. She wouldn’t give them that shot again.
The men burned bright, fiery against the cool red that filled the room. She had no trouble distinguishing them. Hendrick stood on the platform behind Brother Paul; Paul’s arm straight, the pistol appearing to her as a cold, inky blot. His hand moved, unable to find her in the dark. The soundman had backed into the corner, still holding the microphone.
She ran up the side of the chapel, between the pews and wall. One of the Georgians stood in her way, though he didn’t know it; he was swiveling his head, trying desperately to spot her.
The strands shot forward and slipped between his ribs. No! Then, I’m sorry. She moved to catch him but his body thumped to the floor.
Brother Paul turned, fired at the sound.
The tendrils licked at the body’s neck and face. She yanked them toward her, and they reluctantly slipped out of his body. She ducked between the pews, and the filaments trailed behind, thrashing. “Everyone get the fuck out!” she shouted. “Run, and I won’t kill you.”
Paul fired again and the bullet smacked the pew in front of her. The strands whipped around her body in a frenzy.
“Where is she?” Hendrick yelled. “For God’s sake, shoot her!”
“Shut up,” Brother Paul said.
Stella concentrated, tried to calm the tendrils. She couldn’t control them like Sunny. Back in the Acorn Farm, the girl had killed that mouse gracefully, and the strands had retracted obediently. She was the next Revelator. Stella was last year’s model, in as much control of the strands as of her heartbeat.
She peeked over the top of the pew. Paul was walking slowly across the front of the sanctuary, gun arm moving. He was too far away for her threads to reach.
On the other side of the room, two Georgians decided they’d had enough, and scrambled through the door, robes flapping. Thank God, she thought. The pews were empty now, except for Morgan Birch and John Headley Martin. If the old men didn’t move—and why would they?—they might survive the night.
Hendrick called out Stella’s name. “This is ridiculous. The God is coming. This is what you wanted, too!”
To her right and three rows ahead of her, the fiery figure that was Brother Paul tilted his head, studying the shadows between the pews.
“Just talk to me,” Hendrick said. He dropped to his knees, looking for something on the floor. “If you’re worried about Sunny, I’m sure we can figure something out.” Trying to distract while he searched for something. Stella wondered if the soundman was recording this.
Paul moved to the next pew. He was only ten feet from her now. The strands whispered as they slid over each other. Stop it, she thought. Obey me.
“You don’t have to worry about Sunny,” Hendrick said. “The world will adore her. They’ll absolutely…”
A light flicked on. Hendrick had found a flashlight. The beam swept the sanctuary. Flickered across her eyes.
The gun fired. The bullet struck her, knocked her sideways. Paul stepped to the end of the pew and leveled his gun. “What in God’s na—”
A hundred long needles entered his face. Paul’s body remained standing for several seconds. Then the gun arm drooped, and his body fell forward, onto her. The flashlight beam roved the wall.
“Brother Paul?” Hendrick called. “Brother Paul!”
Stella shoved Paul off her. The tendrils dripped into his body, tearing the robes. “Enough,” Stella said. “Enough.”
She didn’t know who or what she was talking to. Another Stella, perhaps, who’d always lived inside her. But the tendrils ceased their probing.
Something was wrong with her right arm. Her shirt was soaked with blood, a hot, orange color. It was impossible to tell whether it was Paul’s or her own. She pulled herself up with her left hand, and the strands there gripped the top of the pew, supporting her.
Hendrick’s light found her. Stayed on her as she walked toward him. Her right arm hung at her side, an electric ache pulsing from shoulder to wrist. The strands, though, were alive, and dancing.
As Stella grew closer, the light began to twitch. Hendrick couldn’t hold his hand steady.
“What are you?” he asked.
He sounded so afraid. She couldn’t fathom his weakness. He’d come here to see a god. Now that he’d finally witnessed a miracle he couldn’t bear it.
“You never knew?” Stella asked. “Never suspected?”
He shook his head. All the Revelators he’d known, and he’d only seen what he wanted to see.
“You can’t go in there,” Hendrick said. He stood in front of the hole. “I won’t let you interrupt this.”
“Won’t?”
“Why are you doing this?” His voice climbed. “Just let it happen, for God’s sake! This is the most important thing that’s happened to the world in two thousand years. The world is about to change.”
“I don’t care a whit for the world. Or your god. I’m here for Sunny. She’s my responsibility.”
“She hates your guts.”
“True enough. Still.”
“Let her do what she wants! Let her become what she wants.”
“Can’t do it,” Stella said. She was six feet from him. “I made a promise.”
“To who? For what?”
It was too much to explain. She was done explaining anything to Uncle Hendrick.
She held out her left
hand. The threads danced like fireflies trailing silk. “Step aside.”
Hendrick lowered the flashlight. “No. I won’t let you ruin this. I will see the God. I’ll be the one to announce his presence. I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.”
“I know,” she said.
Threads pierced his robe, his skin. They slipped through muscle, over and under his ribs, sewing through him, and found his heart.
* * *
—
she stood at the lip of the cave, trying to steady herself. The muddy odor wafting out of the hole was as familiar as the smell of her own body. When she was a girl, she’d never hesitated to enter this place, not from the first day she found her way inside. That should have told her something. But a child doesn’t know from normal. What the world shows you, that’s what the world is. All the times she’d walked in here, even that last time, ten years ago, she’d never felt fear. She felt it now.
“What’s going on?” a voice asked. In the front row, Morgan Birch and John Headley Martin stared into the dark with wide eyes, like two children waiting for the start of a magic show.
“Get them out of here,” Stella said.
The soundman had pressed himself against the back wall, hoping the darkness would hide him. He’d remained still throughout the killing, holding his microphone like a talisman. He didn’t move now.
“Drop the equipment,” she said.
He slowly unslung the reel-to-reel machine and set it on the floor. Placed the microphone next to it.
“If you tell anyone about this, I will hunt you down. Do you understand?”
He didn’t answer.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Stella stepped down, into the hole.
25
1938
Motty was trying to feed her. A hunk of corn bread, a bowl of steaming soup beans. The smell made her stomach clench.
“Just let me sleep,” Stella said. “Please.”
She’d barely left the bed for three days. A couple of visits to the outhouse, with a blanket draped around her, because of the remaining needs of this body. She lived inside a heavy machine that she didn’t have the strength to turn off. Not yet.
Motty held the spoon to her mouth. “Come on now. One bite.” Stella allowed a dab of the oily juice to pass her lips. She didn’t lift her bandaged hands.
“Did I miss the funeral?” Stella said.
“You ain’t going. You’re in no condition.”
Stella didn’t want to go to the service—she wanted to know when it was over. Some time ago, maybe yesterday, she’d heard Elder Rayburn’s voice, speaking to Motty. She didn’t try to make out their words.
“The police will be coming over here soon to talk to you.” Motty had told her this before. Five times? Six? “You need to get straight in your head what happened.”
Stella closed her eyes.
“Lincoln came to see you,” Motty said. “It was six or six-thirty, after supper. You went up to Abby’s and sat around the fire, talking. The three of you started drinking. Say it back. Stella? Come on now.”
Her eyes stayed shut. Motty went through it three times, finally gave up. Stella heard the scrape of her stool as she stood.
“What about the baby?” Stella asked.
“Don’t say nothing about the baby.”
* * *
—
she could hardly keep her eyes open all day but that night she found herself wide-awake. It was snowing, making the light coming through the window tremble. She stared at whatever the moonlight showed her: the spines of books, her jacket on its hook like a patient stranger, the picture on the dresser.
Motty had found the carpetbag. Unpacked it and put her belongings back in place, because there couldn’t be any clue that she was planning on leaving town with Lunk. The story was the story.
The brightest object in the room was the glass covering the picture.
Stella slipped out of the bed. The floor was cold against her bare feet. She took down the frame. In this light it was hard to make out the figures in the photograph, but she saw them clearly in her mind’s eye; she’d memorized every detail years ago. The proud men in their cowboy suits. The skinny, delicate Lena Birch.
She turned over the frame. Her hands were clumsy in the bandages, but she managed to slip the picture free. The penciled words on the back were too faint to read, but she’d memorized those, too: Cherokee NC Feb 3 1924. Not once in all those years gazing at the picture in Abby’s cabin did she wonder at that date. Not even when Abby gave her the picture on her birthday. March 15. Stella was born six weeks after that picture had been taken.
Lena wasn’t her mother. Ray Wallace wasn’t her father. And Abby Whitt, he wasn’t anything at all.
Stella slowly tore the picture down the middle. Tore each half again, and kept going, until the pieces were too small and the white tatters fell through her fingers.
She went into the hall. Followed small sounds to the kitchen.
Motty looked up as if she’d been caught in a devious act. She sat at the table, the baby in her arms, feeding it with an Allenbury bottle shaped like a banana. The tiny child sucked at the rubber nipple, its eyes half closed. Its skin was aswirl with white and scarlet.
“You want to try?” Motty asked.
Stella shook her head.
“You’re going to have to learn.”
Stella sat across from them and watched it feed. The wooden stove was burning, and the air was warm and moist. The child grew sleepy, but its mouth kept working the nipple.
Motty dabbed at the child’s chin. “We’ll have to keep her hid while the police are here,” she said. “And for a few months after that. Keep you out of sight, too.”
“And then what?” Stella asked.
“Then she’ll be yours.”
And Lincoln’s, Stella thought. That’s what everyone would think.
“You have to give her a name,” Motty said.
“No. You do it.”
“It’s your right. I named Selena, and she named you.”
The child’s eyes closed, and its mouth stopped moving. Motty set down the bottle and wiped the white mixture from its lips. “Why don’t you hold her?”
Stella didn’t move. Motty shook her head in disappointment. She laid the sleeping child in a crate lined with blankets. Went to the sink and started pumping, but no water came. The pipe was frozen. Motty cursed.
Stella said, “Show me your hands.”
“What?”
“You owe me that much.”
Motty stared hard at her for a moment. Then she held out her arms. Opened her fists. Her palms were deeply fissured, ringed by hard, pale calluses. A lifetime of work.
“All the way,” Stella said.
Motty’s eyes narrowed, her lips pressed tightly together. She was embarrassed, Stella realized. The old woman said, “I’m not like you.”
“I need to see.”
Motty closed her eyes. Her fingers spread slightly. The flesh of one palm cracked open.
Two black threads emerged. Blood welled around them. Each thread was stiff and only an inch or so long. Motty sighed and three more pushed their way out.
Stella touched one of them, and Motty flinched.
“I can’t give it what it wants,” Motty said. “I was never good enough. But Lena, she had so much more to work with than I did, her communion so clear and strong.”
“So she kept going back.”
“That’s the way it goes with us. Every generation gets a little closer.”
“Closer to what?”
“What it needs. Someone who’ll understand it, full and complete. I was flawed, and Lena was better. But you, you were near to perfect.”
Near to. That week Stella lost, after her l
ast communion, she’d been out of her head, not knowing where the God ended and she began. And yet, she wasn’t able to hold on. She’d failed. Of course the God would move on to the next vessel.
“Most of them die,” Motty said. She closed her fists. “I can’t tell you the number of dead things I’ve pulled out of them sows. But once in a long while, one of us lives.”
One of us. Esther. Motty. Lena. Stella. And now this child. All daughters of the God in the Mountain.
Motty wiped her hands on a dish towel. “I won’t forget the night Lena and I delivered you. There was a cold snap, and the wind cut through the barn timbers like a knife. But you, you were so alive. You came out fighting mad.” Motty seemed anxious to tell her the story, at last. Blasphemy made into something beautiful.
“I always wondered why I was never afraid of it,” Stella said. Then: “You should’ve told me.”
“I knew you’d find out on your own. That’s a hard day. To find out you’ll never be like them. That boy was never going to love you. Lena ran off with Ray Wallace, thinking she could play house with him, keep you like you were her own. Hope nothing ever jumped out of your hands. She knew if he ever found out, he wouldn’t look at her the same way. Or you.”
Stella understood this already. She’d known it the second Lincoln looked at her on the road, saw his face opening in terror to revulsion. He was right to fear her. When the moment came to choose him or her god, her body knew who it belonged to.
And now, another child. She seemed perfect. But only the God would know if she was good enough for her purpose.
“It’s been making children for a hundred years,” Stella said. The thoughts that had been inside her made a little more sense. “Or trying to.”
“He puts his essence into the sow,” Motty said. “Lets it grow there. Borrowing the womb.” And Stella thought, Not just its own essence.
It took from the Birch women, too. Taking from the old to make the new.
“What are we?” Stella asked. “Are we even people?”
“What we are,” Motty said, “is sisters.”
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