BRETHREN

The ruins of old Brethren lay up in the heavy woods of Yotahala Mountain, a name the Oneida had given it, meaning “sun.” But there was precious little of that as Will’s Ford made the steady two-mile climb over the narrow dirt road through heavy woods barely touched by the late-afternoon gloom. A light early-October snow had begun to fall. The wispy flakes danced in the glow of the Model T’s headlights. The car hadn’t much heat, and Evie shivered as she sat in the backseat, absorbing every bump.

“Close now,” Will declared above the steady whine of the engine. “Look for a twined oak. That’s the turnoff.”

“I wasn’t doing a thing but walking past,” Evie said, continuing an earlier conversation. She was still shaken up about the encounter with the faithful outside the fairgrounds. “Not a thing.”

“It isn’t your fault. There’s nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he’s right,” Will said. He was hunched over the wheel, craning his head this way and that, not content to trust Evie and Jericho to do the searching on their own. “The records keeper told me there’s been a resurgence in the Brethren cult in recent years.”

“But why on earth?”

“When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear,” Will explained. “Let’s hope they remain at the fair. I’d hate to think what would happen if they should discover us exhuming the body of their prophet’s son.”

On the right side of the road, where trees with bark like skinned knees stood guard, Evie spied an animal-skin charm branded with the familiar pentacle hanging from a scraggly branch. Mechanically, she drew the flap of her coat across her bare neck. “I think we’re getting close.”

“There’s the twined oak.” Jericho pointed to a massive tree whose gnarled limbs had come together in a strange ballet of twisting bark.

Will angled the car off the road and into the clearing, parking it behind a still-lush thicket and saying, “Hopefully these bushes will obscure our presence long enough.”

From the trunk Will retrieved a kerosene camping lantern, which he lit and keyed to a soft glow; a flashlight for Evie; and two shovels, one of which he handed to Jericho. As he did so, Evie was reminded of their grim purpose. Will shouldered his shovel and lifted the lantern toward the imposing wooded mountainside ahead. “This way,” he said, leading them up the hill over a faint scar of dirt path. The hazy, dying light lent the woods a deep grayness. Evie tried to picture young John Hobbes living in such isolation, away from the welcoming fires of taverns and the fence-post talk of neighbors, these woods his only companion.

It was straight uphill, and Evie’s legs protested the climb. She was glad she’d worn sensible shoes. The air thinned, making each breath more of an effort. She glanced behind them and could no longer see the Ford in its hiding spot.

“How… much… farther?” Evie panted out. Her muscles screamed.

“Almost,” Will answered, just as breathless.

Almost magically, the path evened out, flattened. It wound around a jutting face of hillock and the little breath left in Evie’s lungs caught.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Old Brethren,” Will said in a hushed voice.

They’d come upon the abandoned ruins of the old camp. A handful of moldering log cabins were spread out in the clearing. A splintered door hung open on rusted hinges; its dark, empty windows gave it the appearance of a skull house. Weeds sprang up around the stone carcass of a well. A stone path was still somewhat visible beneath the cover of leaves and clover. It wound through the mist-shrouded trees. To their left, the sound of the river mingled with the chirruping of crickets and birds. Evie’s flashlight reflected in the eyes of a fox, making her jump. The fox skittered back to safety; the flashlight shook in her hand.

“The old church,” Will said, making quickly for a large square in the center where a raggedy mess of charred timber lay in silent testament like a mausoleum. Carefully, Evie stepped over the splintered threshold, ticklish with tall weeds, and into the remains of the church. In all their late-night philosophical wranglings about the nature of evil, nothing had prepared her for the feel of it, the actual weight of some hungry wickedness pressed against her bare skin. For the old church of Brethren carried within its decay the unmistakable heft and patient persistence of evil. Under the wind, she could nearly make out a child’s laugh, a swell of moans, a threat of whispers. She wanted to run. But where was there to run? What place lay beyond the reach of evil?

Piles of crumbling bricks formed a semicircle in one corner, and Evie recognized it as the fire pit she’d seen when she’d held John Hobbes’s ring. It was nothing but a blackened trough now, the bricks gone gray and slick with moss. Just behind it in the grass lay a branding iron. Evie picked it up delicately. The Pentacle of the Beast. She dropped it quickly, startling a tiny grass snake slithering out from under a pile of stones. Evie peered into the abandoned pit and saw fresh kindling, half nubs of candles. Someone had used it recently. Her heartbeat quickened at the thought of who or what could be out there in those woods.

“They’re still using it as a meetinghouse,” Will said, as if reading her thoughts. He pointed to the arrangement of flat rocks placed in a circle around a tin sign. With his shoe, he nudged the sign over. The back was also adorned with the five-pointed star and snake.

Will gazed up at the fading light. “Let’s find that grave.”

Dusk fell quickly now. The woods were shrouded in dark-blue shadow. A half coin of gauzy moon appeared as they walked beyond the burned church and down the hill. The low stone wall of the graveyard appeared in the light of Will’s lantern. Behind it, blackened gravestones tilted like crooked teeth in a rotting mouth. Evie shone the flashlight from stone to stone, trying to read the names there. Jedidiah Blake. Richard Jean. Mary Schultz. Each gravestone bore the inscription HE WILL RISE.

“Look for anything out of the ordinary—animal bones, a pentagram, charms or other offerings. They’d probably want to venerate his grave,” Will instructed.

Evie stuck close to Jericho. Her heels sank into the soft ground, and she tried not to think about what was buried beneath that ground. She wished she had on her woolen stockings; it was much colder here than it was in the valley. Their breath came out in small gray puffs, their lungs expelling ghosts of air. The last of the light had slipped from the sky, like a hostess shutting the door on lingering guests. A smattering of early stars twinkled awake. The beam of Evie’s flashlight bounced over gravestones made ghoulish in the glare.

“What if we can’t find it?” she said.

“We’ll have to dig up every grave until we do,” Will answered.

The wind whistled over the mountain again. It felt like fingertips brushing her skin, turning her about in some child’s game where she was blindfolded.

“Over here,” Jericho called. Will came to his side and held the lamp over a spot marked by a simple wooden cross hung with charms. The skull of some small animal had been left at the base of it.

“Do you suppose this is it?” Evie asked.

Will wiped a smudge of dirt from the cross, revealing initials carved into the wood: YHA. “Yohanan Hobbeson Algoode,” Will said. “Let’s start digging.”

Will parked the lantern by the cross. He and Jericho removed their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and got to work with the shovels. Evie’s job was to keep the flashlight trained on them and keep alert for sounds. She jumped at everything, swinging the flashlight wildly.

“Just hold it on us if you would, please,” Will advised.

Evie needed something to keep her mind occupied, and so she watched Jericho’s forearms working the shovel, paying attention to the pull of muscle, the strength of his grip. She remembered the feel of his hand over hers, like a shield. He was a mystery to her in many ways, and she found that she wanted to know his secrets—not ripped from him via a wallet or favorite pen, but given to her as a gift. She wanted to prove trustworthy. Special. There was something about him that unnerved her. He was slightly dangerous; so was she. It would never work for her to be with a man who didn’t understand that about her, the darkness behind the devil-may-care facade, who flirted with it but who would run scared if faced with the storm inside. She watched Jericho’s large hands work and imagined those hands caressing her bare skin, imagined the taste of his mouth, the press of his body against hers.

Just as quickly, she tried to rid herself of those images. Jericho was Mabel’s fella. Evie thought of her friend’s many letters on the subject. But they were romantic schoolgirl fantasies. Jericho and Mabel weren’t right for each other. If they had been, it would have happened already, wouldn’t it? Evie couldn’t take away what Mabel never had, could she?

Silently, Evie scolded herself for even thinking it. Jericho probably needed someone like Mabel. Good, steadfast, sensible Mabel, who would remember to turn off the lamps and bring in the milk. A girl who would take care. Evie had the terrible feeling that she, herself, was the careless sort: Clothing left on the bed unfolded. Books stained with coffee spots. Tabs not paid until the last possible second. Boys kissed and then forgotten in a week’s time. She understood this, but understanding it did not bring comfort.

A hollow thump echoed from the grave as Jericho’s shovel struck wood. Despite the cold, he and Will were soaked in sweat. Jericho hopped down into the hole. He jimmied the thin edge of the shovel around the edges of the coffin’s pine top, loosening the seal. With a grunt, Jericho pried off the lid, exposing the rotted corpse of John Hobbes.

They’d had no body to bury when James died. Nothing to commemorate his passing. There was a grave, which they visited every year on his birthday, but it held no bones, no uniform, no essence of her brother.

The body of John Hobbes lay quietly in his wooden trough in a plain woolen suit, the Pentacle of the Beast pendant shining around his neck. His lips had been stitched together with thread that had sprung free in the corners, revealing long, yellowed teeth. His body was as hollowed of life, as decayed and ruined, as the abandoned cabins of Brethren. He was a thing. Inert. Like a stone. Like a memory. This, then, was what death looked like. Irrefutable. And Evie felt a strange relief that she’d not seen James’s body after all, as if in that refusal, she could pretend he had never died.

Jericho reached in and removed the pendant, handing it up to Evie, who held it like she would hold a lizard by the tail. He climbed out and brushed his palms against his pants—a useless gesture, as his pants were as filthy as his hands.

Evie stared at the thing she held. She wanted to throw it out, to burn it right then and there.

“I don’t think I should hold this,” she said. “Could I have your handkerchief, Unc?”

Carefully, Evie wrapped the pendant in its protective covering. She was just about to hand it over to Will when a high-pitched trill sounded off to the right. Evie swung the flashlight in the direction of the sound. The light trembled over autumnal branches scratching together. Dried leaves scuttled over the ground in the empty space between headstones. Nothing, and then the sound again, from her left. This time she swung the flashlight quickly in that direction. The beam caught a fleeting movement. Evie’s hands shook. Another birdcall, straight ahead. Another from behind. To her right, then left. Perched on the edge of the grave, Evie swung the flashlight wildly.

The men from the fairground stepped into the light. Evie counted five of them, plus the boy who’d muddied her coat. They carried rope and hunting knives. The boy held a hunting rifle rigidly at his side. The rifle seemed too big for him, as if he were playing dress-up.

“This be private property. Hallowed ground,” the boy said.

Evie concealed the handkerchief-covered pendant in her fist and moved her hand behind her back.

“Yes, yes. Of course,” Will said. He sounded frightened, at a loss, and that scared Evie more than the men did.

“What transgression be you about?” the man pressed.

“We heard there was gold buried here,” Jericho said suddenly. “It was wrong of us. We see that now. We’ll be going. Sorry to have troubled you.” Calmly, he bent to retrieve his shovel. A rifle shot punctured the stillness of the graveyard, startling Jericho into dropping the shovel.

Jacob Call came from behind, the rifle still smoking in his hands. “Our enemies deceive us. The Lord said, in the times of tribulation before the Judgment Day, your enemies will be more than the sins of man. They will deceive you,” he preached. “This is the word of the Lord’s messenger here on earth, the Blessed Pastor Algoode. Amen.”

“Amen,” the others chorused.

“The faithful have kept his covenant. We be awaiting the Lord’s will and purpose. The comet confirms it: ‘When the light burns the sky as a dragon’s tail.’ The Beast will rise.”

“He will rise! Hallelujah!” the men exclaimed.

“Judgment Day be comin’. Blessed are we. Hallelujah!”

“Hallelujah,” they echoed.

“Please. Listen to me.” Will put out a hand to stay them. “John Hobbes is not the Beast his father prophecied. He has no intention of returning to the spiritual plane once he is fully manifest. He is only fulfilling the ritual of the offerings so that he can rule—”

Jacob Call slapped Will hard. “The Beast will slay the wicked. He will bring forth plagues and pestilence upon their Sodom and Gomorrah. The faithful will be anointed.” He pulled open the neck of his shirt to show two brands, and Evie could only imagine that there must be more. “We will be known by our marks and spared. Our great army will rise and throw the Beast back into the fires of hell, where the chosen one will be resurrected and glorified! He will rise to the heights of heaven and sit on the heavenly council with Pastor Algoode, and this country will be a Godly country. Hallelujah!”

“Hallelujah!” the faithful echoed.

“How will you send him away once his task is finished? What if the Beast refuses to be vanquished? Have you thought of that? What if, having gained the whole of the earth, he decides he doesn’t care to relinquish control?”

“It be ordained. The path be promised in the Book of the Brethren. It is God’s will. What God has set in motion, no man may put asunder.”

“Hallelujah!”

There was no reasoning with these people. Evie could feel their hatred. Their conviction. They might destroy the pendant and the ghost of John Hobbes, but they couldn’t kill what lived on after. The world was a bully.

The boy whispered to Jacob, who trained his narrow eyes on Evie.

“What have you there, Daughter of Eve?”

“Nothing.” Evie kept the hand holding the pendant behind her back.

“The harlot lies,” the boy said. He brought his gun off his shoulder.

“Don’t believe you.”

Evie looked to Will, who nodded. Slowly, she brought her hand forward and showed them the pendant.

“Thieves. Idolators. Fornicators. Sinners. What be the punishment for the enemies of God?” Jacob Call thundered.

“They shall burn!” one of the faithful called out. A torch was passed from hand to hand till it reached the tall man, who set it alight. The flame cast ghoulish shadows over the trees’ moon-pale trunks.

“You don’t want to do this,” Will said as a second torch was lit. “It will only bring the police.”

One of the men on the edge of the circle began rocking and speaking gibberish, his upturned palms gone stiff. Spittle foamed at the corners of his mouth.

“It will bring attention before the Beast can rise! He will be angry with you!” Will continued desperately. The torches had all been lit. Two of the men approached with the rope. Jericho grabbed his shovel, ready to fight.

“Quiet the deceivers!” Jacob Call ordered. The men came for Jericho, who swung the shovel, keeping them at bay.

“Just let us go and we’ll never come back,” Will said. But the men kept coming. Jericho swung again and the boy cocked his rifle, ready to take his shot. They were trapped. Helpless. They’d come all this way for nothing. The bullying world would win, just as it had the day her brother was blown apart, leaving nothing to bury and everything to mourn. They were as good as dead.

“The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen,” the boy shouted, and something broke inside Evie. Her fear turned to anger. She glared at the smug, triumphant boy who would burn the whole world in order to be right. She spat in his eye.

“Then that son of a bitch will really like me,” she growled. With one quick move, she threw the lantern hard into the grave, where the flame caught on John Hobbes’s old woolen suit, setting his corpse ablaze.

“Run!” she yelled and took off into the woods at a clip.

The action and the startling heat of the blaze stunned the new faithful of Brethren into a few necessary seconds of stasis as they tried to decide which was more important: saving the body of their beloved elder or giving chase. It was enough for a head start.

“This way!” Evie shouted, racing down the hill in a direction she hoped was correct, for it had gotten darker, giving the woods a uniformity of color and appearance that made it hard to know where they were.

“Will! Jericho!” she called.

“Here!” Jericho shouted back, and she saw his shirt off to the right.

They ran together as a pack, Evie still clutching the pendant in her fist. The wind picked up, driving into them, the noise of it like a hundred angry voices. She leaned into it, pushing back. The crack of a rifle sounded on the ridge above them. A warning.

“Where’s… the… car?” Evie huffed out.

“This way!” Jericho dragged her after him. She glimpsed the Ford in the trees and ran to it as if it were a lifeboat.

Will ripped open the driver’s-side door and slid behind the wheel, fingers seeking out the clutch. “Why won’t it start?” he growled.

“The motor’s too cold. You’ll need the hand crank,” Evie said.

“Jericho… crank,” Will gasped out.

“I’m buying you a new car; I swear I am,” Evie vowed.

Jericho raced around to the front of the car and placed one hand on the hood for balance. With the other, he reached for the crank. Another shot rang out.

“Jericho! Keep your thumb beside your fingers in case the crank snaps back!” Evie called. “You don’t want to break your arm!”

Jericho nodded. He pushed the crank forward, once, twice. The motor belched and coughed and then went silent again. Torches winked in the shadowy trees just above them. The fires on the crest of the hill paused, held their flicker to one space momentarily as if lost, unsure whether they should destroy or illuminate in those woods. Jericho gave one more push. As Evie had warned, the metal bar snapped back quickly, and Jericho barely had time to jump back and avoid injury. The engine shuddered to life—ta-thacketa, thacketa, thacketa.

Shouts came from up the hill. The torches, indecisive no longer, zigzagged down the slope, leaving angry tails of flame and smoke. The engine spasmed and threatened to die again.

“No!” Evie shouted, as if her reprimand could get the Tin Lizzie running.

With grim determination, Will worked the clutch, and this time the motor caught, humming into readiness. The torches were close. Evie could make out the full shape of the mob as Jericho came around the side of the old Ford.

The rifle cracked. Jericho recoiled, bumping back into the car in an awful dance.

“Jericho!” Evie shrieked.

Jericho moaned and fell to his knees.

“Will, I think he’s been hit!”

“Keep the motor running!” Will said. He ran to Jericho and Evie slid behind the wheel. Her heart thudded in time with the Ford’s engine and she cried reflexively, as if she could exorcise her fear through tears and shallow breath. The mob was on the move again.

Will dragged Jericho into the backseat as Evie pumped the accelerator, careful not to flood the engine.

“What are you doing?” Will said.

“I’m driving!” The car lurched forward, the tires spewing up pebbles and leaves as the Ford rattled onto the dirt road. Gunshots followed, but Evie was too fast for the faithful. By the time they reached the road, she had put several car lengths between them.

Jericho moaned as his head lolled against the backseat. Evie’s foot pressed down on the accelerator and she took the curve at a dizzying pace, her back wheels sliding out. Uncle Will stared down the cliff at the lights of the valley below. “Dear god,” he gasped.

“My father owns a dealership,” she shouted. “I’ve driven everything you can imagine!”

“Just get us there in one piece!”

She hugged the turns, swerving once as she narrowly avoided a car on its way up the hill. The Ford wobbled on two wheels before slamming down onto all four again. In the backseat, Will cursed. At last the lights of the village were visible ahead.

“Where’s the hospital in this backwater?” Evie yelled as they rattled onto Main Street.

“Take us back to the inn,” Will directed.

“Sweet Mary, he’s been shot, Will! He needs a doctor!”

“We can’t take him to a hospital.”

“Why not?” She turned around.

Will’s face was grave. “I’ll tell you later. Just trust me for now. We’ll tend to him at the inn. Watch the road!”

Evie wanted to scream. She wanted to yell at Will—for the case, for Brethren, for Jericho. It was insanity, and she’d had enough.

“You’d better be right, Unc.” She jerked the car away from the center of town and headed back to the inn.

“Whatever I do, follow along,” Will said when they arrived, dressing Jericho in his overcoat and buttoning it closed. He disappeared inside and came out with two men, who helped hoist Jericho and haul him into the inn’s parlor. The innkeeper’s scowling wife looked on with tight-lipped disapproval from behind the desk at this filthy trio dragging a barely conscious young man into her inn.

“I’ve told you about the wages of sin,” Uncle Will said loudly enough for the innkeeper’s wife to hear.

“My brother,” Evie added, doing her best to look contrite and concerned. She still shook from the ordeal. “Father tries so hard.”

“These young people today,” the lady clucked.

Once they were inside the room, Uncle Will placed the woozy Jericho on the bed and thanked the men with a tip. Evie shut and locked the door while Will washed the graveyard dirt from his hands and removed Jericho’s overcoat. She couldn’t see exactly where Jericho had taken the hit. There was no blood to be seen, though his shirt, which was covered in dirt and grass stains, was sopping wet.

“Evie, I need you,” Will said. “Open my bag and take out the small zippered leather pouch inside.”

Evie found the pouch and handed it to Will. Inside were four small vials filled with a thick blue liquid and a strange syringe. “What is that?”

“No time to explain. Quickly, before his body shuts down. Place the vial in the chamber of the syringe.”

Evie did as she was told. There was a sharp sound as Uncle Will ripped open Jericho’s shirt. Evie struggled to comprehend what she saw. For a moment, the world slowed as she tried to make sense of it and couldn’t. The bullet had left a large hole just below Jericho’s heart. Beneath the wound was some sort of machinery, an intricate system of brass tubing and wires.

“Evie!” Will’s voice snapped her attention back to the task at hand. Will grabbed the syringe from her, tapping the glass of the vial to clear the bubbles from the blue liquid.

“There’s no time to secure him. He’s going to become agitated at first. You have to be ready.”

“I don’t understand….” Evie started, staring in horror as Will plunged the syringe into Jericho’s chest and released the lever.

“Another!”

Evie loaded the syringe with a second vial, which Will administered. Jericho didn’t move.

“Again!”

“No! We need a doctor!”

“I said, again!”

“Dammit, Will,” Evie muttered and loaded a third ampoule.

Will aimed the syringe just as Jericho came off the bed in a fit of thrashing, like a man possessed. His eyes were wild, searching, as if he didn’t know where he was or who they were. His left arm swung out, sending the bedside lamp crashing to the floor. His right arm caught Will in the jaw, and he crumpled to the floor, dazed.

“Evie! Push it in. Now!”

Evie dove for the discarded syringe and plunged it into Jericho’s leg, scuttling backward into a corner as he whirled around violently.

“Jericho…” Evie whispered.

He staggered toward her, wobbled for two seconds, then fell onto the bed and was out.

Evie was still crouched in the corner. “Is he…?”

Will touched his swollen jaw, wincing, and sank onto the other bed, exhausted. “He’ll be fine now. Let him sleep.”

A loud knock startled them both. Will covered Jericho with a blanket and Evie ran to the door, opening it a crack. The innkeeper’s wife tried to see around her but Evie kept the opening narrow. “What the dickens is going on in there?”

“My brother fell and broke a lamp,” Evie said, breathless. “My father will pay for the damage, of course.”

“This is an establishment for decent folks. I’ll have no riffraff here.” The woman strained to look over Evie’s head.

“Yes. Of course.”

Evie shut the door and sat on Will’s bed watching as he expertly sutured the ragged skin on Jericho’s chest. She watched Jericho sleep. He seemed an angel now.

“What was in that fluid?”

“It’s a special serum. I can’t tell you much more than that.”

Evie’s mind reeled out to the breaking point. Her mouth struggled to form words. “What is Jericho?”

“An experiment,” Will said with finality, the teacher dismissing the class. He clipped off the thin suture wire and stowed the tools in the kit containing the syringe and vials. “Where is the pendant?”

In the chaos, Evie had forgotten. She went to her coat and retrieved the filthy object, which she handed to her uncle. “What do we do with it?”

“When we get to the museum, we’ll form a protective circle. Using what you’ve gleaned from the missing page, we’ll bind his spirit back into the pendant and destroy it.”

“Do you think it will work?”

“I have to believe it will,” he said.

“I want you to tell me about Jericho,” Evie commanded.

Will took out a cigarette. He patted his breast pocket. “Where the devil has my lighter gone to now?”

“You’re always losing it.” Evie passed him a book of matches. “Jericho?”

Will lit the cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke. “I think it best to let Jericho tell you. It’s his story to tell, not mine.” He paused. “Evie, that was well done tonight,” he said, offering his hand for a shake, which Evie ignored. It if bothered him, he didn’t let on. “I think in light of our visitors this evening we should leave early, before dawn,” Will said. “You should get some rest.”

Evie shook her head. “I’m going to keep watch over Jericho.”

“There’s no need. He’ll be fine.”

“I’m going to keep watch.”

“There’s no need—”

“Will! Someone has to keep watch!” Evie’s tone was both angry and pleading, the whole terrible night spilling over into this refusal to be moved from Jericho’s side.

Will nodded. “Very well. I’ll sleep in your room tonight.”

A moment later she could hear him moving about on the other side of the thin wall, probably pacing and smoking. Evie soaked a towel and gently wiped the dirt and serum from Jericho’s wound. Then she crawled into Will’s empty bed and lay on her side, watching Jericho’s chest rise and fall. She kept watch for as long as she could. But she couldn’t fight her own exhaustion, and she drifted into restless dreams.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 708