The Bone Field

by Debra Bokur

  “My father says we need to help you, you see,” continued the voice. “He says that your soul is in mortal danger, and that it is our responsibility to save you from damnation.”

  It was Abigail Waters. Kali made the recognition just as the woman came into focus, stepping out from a corner of the room to her left and switching on a tall lamp.

  “I know it’s difficult for you to understand,” Abigail said, her voice both soft and urgent, “because no one ever taught you any better, but you’ll be grateful to us someday. When you see the gates of Heaven open to let you in, you’ll understand.”

  Kali didn’t try to speak. Behind her another light, brighter than the lamp, switched on. Then came a low cough as someone cleared his throat, and a man moved into view, joining Abigail. He slipped his arm protectively around her shoulders, regarding Kali gravely. Even in her compromised state, Kali noticed that Abigail seemed to stiffen at her father’s touch.

  “Hello again, Detective.” Abraham smiled. Kali’s gaze wavered and then settled on his face. She noticed for the first time the length of his front teeth, the sharply pointed canines revealed as his lips drew outward into a thin smile.

  There was another male voice, and she tried to move her head to see who was speaking.

  “Hello, Miss Mhoe. You remember me?”

  It was Nathan. Yes, I remember you, she thought to herself. You’re the scary one.

  Nathan nodded at her, the movement brief. “I apologize for tying you up. You’re probably finding all of this difficult to comprehend, and you probably don’t feel much like speaking.”

  She didn’t. The room smelled sour and dusty, as though it had been sealed up for too long without an open window to dispel the odors that had been trapped inside years ago. The side of her head throbbed, and her hands were numb. She flexed her arms, willing the blood to flow toward her fingertips, and was rewarded with the intense, prickling pain of renewed circulation.

  Nathan moved closer to her chair. He pushed up the short sleeve of her T-shirt to expose the warrior band tattoo on her upper arm. He reached out with one finger, tracing the outline of it, the movement gentle. Then he frowned and pulled away, staring her in the eye.

  “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: Therefore glorify God in your body.” He shook his head. “That’s from 1 Corinthians. It means that this mark on your body is an abomination. It is witchcraft, and it will not please God.” His gaze was intense. “Have you any others?”

  Kali said nothing. She tried to keep her eyes locked on his, to not glance involuntarily toward her hip, where her other treasured tattoo could be found—the one she and Mike had chosen together years before. As she focused on Nathan, her eye caught the glint of metal from beside him. There was a small, rolling cart next to where he stood. It had several shelves, and on the top was a tray of what she assumed to be surgical tools and knives. Next to them were bottles of hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol, and a stack of cotton bandages and pads.

  She took a deep breath.

  “My goodness.” Her voice sounded weak. She looked from Abigail to Nathan. “Don’t you mind that your grandfather has you doing his dirty work for him?” She focused on Abigail. “It’s just like when you were a child helping at the pineapple plantation, convincing the people you met that your father was some kind of miracle worker instead of the con man and rapist that he really is.”

  Nathan stepped forward, arm raised. Kali held her breath as he hit her, the force nearly knocking the chair over.

  “You will speak no word against my grandfather,” Nathan said, eerily calm. “Do you understand? I won’t have it. Everything we do is God’s work. We are merely His servants.”

  Abraham stood silent. Kali felt powerless, and was filled with silent fury. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lip. The slap had split the skin, and she could taste the warmth of her own blood. She forced herself to look at the tray of knives resting on the surface of the stainless steel. A chill ran through her, and another wave of nausea roiled through her stomach.

  Abraham ignored her and spoke to Nathan. “She will not be able to hear God until the marks of the devil are gone.” Abraham came to stand beside Kali. He studied her tattoo, then spoke to Nathan as though instructing a group of young surgeons on procedure. “The fortunate thing about tattoos is that they are confined to the surface of the body, not like evil thoughts embedded in the mind. These marks of the devil can be removed, but the true work is not removing these offending symbols—it is to make certain that the mind has been purified as well.”

  Something clicked when Kali heard his proclamation. “The man in the refrigerator,” she said. “You couldn’t cleanse his mind, could you, Abraham? You couldn’t force him to think like you.”

  Abraham turned to her, his face grave.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s why you cut off his head. You thought his thoughts were impure, and you couldn’t decontaminate his mind. What was it that he was thinking about, Abraham?”

  Abigail made a small, choking sound. Kali kept her focus on Abraham, but from the corner of her eye she could see that Abigail was becoming agitated. Abraham noticed it as well. He reached out his hand and rested it on his daughter’s arm. Kali saw her cringe—the response was involuntary and subtle, but it was there nonetheless.

  “I offered him the key to the doors to Heaven,” said Abraham. “But his mind had been given over to evil and lust. He desired another man, you see. He was gormless and uneducated. What I did was for the benefit of his eternal soul.”

  “But he was my friend,” said Abigail, her voice barely a whisper.

  The tension in the room grew stronger. “He was your friend,” repeated Kali, “and you couldn’t bear to see what happened to him, to see what your father had done to desecrate his body. So you put the pineapple on his shoulders, and you left him with a charm from your bracelet. You meant it to protect him, didn’t you?”

  There was a look of terror on Abigail’s face. Abraham paused, regarding her with disappointment. He sighed. “Did you leave a charm with everyone, Abigail?”

  “I gave him the anchor after we became friends. He carried it in his pocket. I sewed it closed for him so he would never lose it.” There was a note of hesitation in Abigail’s voice now, elusive and guarded. “I was only trying to help, Father. I was only trying to lead him along the path to God.”

  Abraham listened. He nodded his head. “And the others?”

  She hung her head, ashamed. “It seemed like a small thing to do to help their souls on their journey to judgment.”

  Kali spoke into the silence that followed, revolted by all that she had heard. “Do you know about the legends of monsters on Lna‘i, Abraham?” said Kali, in an effort to distract him from his tray of knives. “The old stories say that evil was banished from the island, but that’s your true power—you brought all that evil back.” She took a deep breath as a new wave of dizziness swept over her. “And now you’ve brought it here, to Maui.”

  There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and Ruth Waters stepped into the pool of light near Abraham, accompanied by another woman. They were dressed similarly to Abigail, their blue skirts brushing the floor. Ruth’s hair was pulled back into a knot, but the other woman’s hair flowed freely across her shoulders, snowy white and still thick despite her age.

  “You’re Linda Bragden,” said Kali, her breath labored. “You were on the ferryboat.”

  The woman looked at her. “Linda Waters,” she said, correcting Kali. “Yes. I saw that mark on your arm.” She smiled at Abraham.

  “What are you doing here with these people?” asked Kali, attempting to appeal to the woman’s reason, if she still possessed any. “Is it because of your daughter? You couldn’t save her, so you felt a need to punish yourself? Or did Abraham help you punish Matthew Greene instead?”

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nbsp; Linda looked directly at her, but Kali couldn’t read her expression. The woman seemed to have blocked out her words. She said nothing, only took Ruth’s hand and moved closer to her. Ruth’s presence seemed to comfort her.

  “I’m so glad we got here in time to witness this salvation,” said Ruth. Her voice still carried some of the snarl that had been present when she’d shouted at the police station. She gazed at Abraham with adoration. “Truly we are blessed.”

  “Did you move the vehicle?” asked Abraham.

  “We sent two of the girls to bring it here. They should be back any moment now.”

  Kali looked around the room. There was a row of three narrow windows close to the ceiling. The walls were covered in cheap wood paneling, and she had the impression that the space she was in had been built partially underground. One end of the room held a wooden platform and what appeared to be an altar in front of it. Folding chairs had been stacked along one wall. There was something scraping the glass of one of the windows, as though shrubs were growing close enough for the branches to reach it. She thought about the buildings she’d seen on her visit to Abraham’s Maui address. Basements weren’t typical in Hawai‘i, and she tried to picture which building she was being held in, deciding that she must be on the lower level of either Abraham’s house or Abigail’s.

  Then she realized it didn’t matter. There was little chance of reaching the windows, or making her way to the door. She tensed her arm and leg muscles and released them, doing her best to wake them up fully. Abraham didn’t seem to notice. Stepping toward the steel cart, he chose a pair of surgical gloves and slipped them on, then lifted a small knife with a thin blade. Kali felt her heart race as she watched him examine the edge of the blade.

  “Killing me isn’t going to help your cause, Abraham.” Her voice sounded shaky, even to her own ears.

  He turned to her, eyebrows raised. “Kill you? I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to remove your tattoo and give you the opportunity to repent, to choose the path of righteousness.” He lifted the bottle of alcohol and a cotton pad, and walked to her chair. He gestured to Nathan, who stood beside her. Nathan held up her sleeve as Abraham poured alcohol onto the pad and began to rub her arm where her tattoo snaked across the flesh of her deltoid.

  “What’s the point of sterilizing my skin? If you cut away that much skin, I’ll bleed to death and you know it. You may not be a good surgeon, but I’ll bet you learned at least that much in medical school.”

  He smiled at her. He looks like a crocodile prepared to devour something small and meaningless, she thought.

  “If you bleed to death, it is nothing to do with me,” he said. “It is simply God’s will. I suggest you begin to pray and to ask for His forgiveness.”

  “That’s the same excuse every religious fanatic uses to explain their choice to commit evil,” said Kali. She knew she should be quiet, but she couldn’t help herself. Whatever they were planning to do to her was likely to end badly on her side, and she felt an urgency to let Abraham and Ruth and Abigail know that she was aware of what they had done. She struggled to recall the facts she’d learned while discussing cults with Hara. “Let’s see—off the top of my head, the history books have Theodore Rinaldo in Washington State, arrested for rape of a minor; religious leaders William Kamm, Warren Jeffs, and Wayne Bent, who all raped children—Bent through the auspices of his Lord Our Righteousness Church; Graham Capil, who headed up the Christian Heritage Party, and who went down for sexually abusing little girls who hadn’t even reached their twelfth birthdays; plus . . .”

  Nathan stepped forward. He was no longer calm. His eyes blazed with wrath. “Enough!” he shouted. He raised his hand to strike her again. She braced herself, feeling the skin of her lip split wider as his hand met her cheek, the force of the blow making her swoon. The taste of salty blood filled her mouth again, and she spat on the floor.

  “And then, of course,” she said, blocking out the pain, enunciating each word clearly as she spoke directly to Nathan, “there’s your mother, who was raped by her own father when she was thirteen.” She turned toward Abraham.” Isn’t that right, Abraham? Or maybe you’ve already told your grandson the truth?”

  Abigail’s eyes met Kali’s, then darted away. She twisted her hands anxiously. Beside her, Nathan smiled. Kali looked at the two of them, standing side by side, and suddenly knew the truth. The stocky, broad-shouldered man with the round, freckled face and dark, curling hair reaching toward his short neck. The tall, narrow woman with the pronounced forehead and the blue eyes. The photos of Helen Stafford and Reggie McCartney flashed before her eyes, and she felt the missing pieces fall into place like bits of broken glass drawn back into shape by some invisible, magnetic force.

  “You don’t look much like your mother, do you, Nathan?” she said.

  Abigail looked up sharply.

  Kali met her eyes. “This is not your son,” she said. “Your child died at birth. You stole this boy and his life, and you left your dead infant lying next to another woman in an old field of fruit. What will your God have to say about that, I wonder?”

  “Do you know the meaning of the name ‘Nathan’?” asked Abraham. His voice was unnervingly calm. “It means ‘gift from God,’ and that is exactly what he was to us and our family. When Abigail’s child was born without the breath of life, Ruth and I knew at once that Helen’s child was meant to be hers. It was so clear.”

  “Helen was disobedient and willful,” said Ruth. “She slept with her friend and became pregnant when she knew her duty was to carry Abraham’s child.”

  Abraham waved his hand in the air, the knife flashing against the light. “Enough of this,” he said. “Let us begin.”

  “Hallelujah!” said Nathan. He looked at Abraham, ecstatic. “You’ve saved so many souls from damnation, Grandfather. Today I will do my part to share God’s love!”

  Nathan began to sing. Kali knew it was a hymn, though she didn’t recognize the words. His voice rose and fell, and Ruth and Linda joined in. As they bowed their heads, Kali could see that their eyes were closed. The singing was beautiful and trancelike, and she had to shake herself from falling under its spell.

  Abraham signaled to Nathan, who stepped forward and grasped her arm firmly just above her elbow. Abigail backed away, against the wall. Kali tried to keep the desperation from her voice. She took another breath and spoke again.

  “Nathan! In my pocket! The official report, the autopsy report that proves you are not Abigail’s son!”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. She felt the deep, piercing cut of the knife slice into her flesh, striking the bone of her upper arm. The room spun around her. She heard herself scream as the blood poured down her arm. There was a roar like the walls collapsing as she threw herself backward with all her might, and her chair tipped over, slamming to the hard floor. She was dimly aware of a door crashing open and a man’s voice shouting in words she didn’t understand. The cart with the surgical equipment hurtled through the air, the clash of knives and the metal shelves loudly ringing as they struck the wall. The prayerful singing reached a wailing pitch. Then came more screaming. Only it wasn’t hers. One man’s voice thundered above the others, and she imagined that she recognized it. Then the light was extinguished, and she remembered thinking how odd it was that her last thought on earth would be a blurred vision of Elvar’s face.

  “Stay still.”

  Then she heard Elvar’s voice, but it made no sense. I’m hallucinating again, she told herself. She dreamed she was being lifted into the air as the outline of everything receded and the edges dissolved into black.

  CHAPTER 32

  Kali cautiously fingered the edges of the wound where the sutures had grown stiff with dried blood, wincing as a tidal surge of pain washed through her arm and up her neck, landing with a spectacular burst in her head. From the angle of sunlight illuminating a stretch of the scratched floorboards, she concluded that it was early afternoon, and that she’d successfully slept away mos
t of the day.

  “About time you rejoined us,” said Walter. He leaned back in the old armchair in the corner of her living room, his hands dangling off the ends of the armrests. He’d pulled the coffee table close, resting his feet on its surface.

  “Get your feet off my table,” she said.

  He snorted. “Don’t give me housekeeping lectures.” He swung his feet to the floor. “This chair I’m sitting in has enough dog hair on it to build a whole new dog. Nina’s going to make me sleep in the garage when she sees the back of my shirt.”

  “I’m constantly surprised she doesn’t make you sleep there every night,” said Kali. She winced as she pushed herself into an upright position on the sofa, looking around. “Why am I out here and not in bed?”

  “That’s as far as your boyfriend wanted to carry you. He said this is where you sleep most of the time anyway.” Walter looked at her inquisitively. “Is that true?”

  She shrugged. “It’s closer to the coffeepot. And he’s not my boyfriend.”

  Walter observed her carefully, noting the bruises on her face, the black eye, the sutures on one arm, the rooster scratches on the other. “You’re a real mess,” he said. “I think you may be carrying the whole battle-scar-collection mission a little too far. At least lay off the roosters. And put some fresh ice on those bruises.”

  She stood up, feeling shaky. “What are you doing here anyway? I don’t need a babysitter.” She looked around. “And where’s Hilo?”

  Walter regarded her, a half smile on his face. “You were pretty out of it after the painkillers. The medics and the emergency room team sewed you back together. Hilo’s with your neighbors. The sister stopped by a little while ago and left you a big salad and some banana bread. Oh, and some fish stew, which was excellent.”