by Karen Harper
As the guard opened the gate and gestured for them to enter, it was clear they were expected. “I almost had to tie Tess down to keep her from coming along,” Gabe whispered as they were allowed to go up the curved walk alone.
“Bet they tie people down here who don’t cooperate—and waterboard them.”
“I said, don’t start, Char. Not here, not now. It’s in Bright Star’s power to let us in or kick us out.”
“I know.” She sighed and bit her lower lip.
Inside, they were escorted down a long hall and into a large, unfurnished, low-ceilinged room draped in muted, shimmering silver-and-pale-yellow swags of cloth. The colors of starlight? she wondered. Another man ushered them toward a plain wooden coffin with a split, hinged lid. It was bare, unfinished pine and, she figured, was probably made here on the grounds. The lower part of it was closed, and the upper third open so only Lee’s shoulders and face were visible. It was him, but it didn’t look like him, slack-faced and white with his hair—beaver-brown hair—combed too flat. Of course, he was clothed in cult garb, so this whole thing looked like a pioneer funeral. No flowers, only more draped cloth, and a podium near the head of the coffin.
“The battle behind him and now peaceful in eternal repose,” a soft voice behind them said, as their escort was replaced by Bright Star himself. A low murmur swept through the crowd of forty or so adults behind them, standing in neat rows. Was that sibilant sound of whispers due to the presence of outsiders, including the sheriff, or because their master had just entered?
“Sad when he was so young and healthy,” Char said, staring into Bright Star’s pale eyes, though that gave her the shivers.
“A tragic accident from our view, but planned from above.”
She almost said, I’ll bet! but she’d promised Gabe and Matt she’d control herself. And then, over Gabe’s shoulder, she saw Grace.
“Excuse me,” Char said, and moved away to hug her. It wasn’t easy with her bulbous belly. Though she was not even thirty, Grace looked older, a pale ghost, not a woman blooming with child. “I’m so sorry, Grace.”
“Me, too—for everything.”
“Will the children be here?”
“Best not. Char, I have to get out of here.”
“You’re feeling faint?”
“Out of here, this place, away from being chosen. From that man,” she whispered, even as Gabe and Bright Star walked over to join them. “Don’t tell Gabe. Force won’t work,” she added, speaking so fast Char could hardly catch her words. “Fewer know the better.”
Char fought to keep calm. No reason to make a fuss now. Gabe would be furious, and they were outnumbered. Besides, the children weren’t here and could be held hostage or even spirited away by the time Gabe got help in here. One hand on Grace’s arm to steady her, Char stood stock-still, as Gabe gave the young widow Tess’s condolences and Kate’s, too, explaining Kate was out of state and that Tess was pregnant.
Char saw Grace’s hand drop protectively to her belly. “That’s wonderful. Please tell Tess I wish blessings on her.”
Char knew she had to get a moment alone with Grace. Just then, Bright Star stepped between the two women and murmured something to Grace, who nodded. He stroked her upper arm, just once, shoulder to elbow, but Char thought in a possessive rather than a comforting way.
The next hour was a blur. Everyone stood during the funeral service, including Grace, who seemed to waver on her feet, but Char was too far back in the lines of the faithful to get to her. Bright Star gave a eulogy, rambling on about how starlight could guide Lee through the dark valley of death and about a shepherd losing one of his sheep. But Char wasn’t really listening. She was racking her brain for some way to spring Grace and her two kids out of here, despite the guards, the cold weather, not to mention Grace’s condition. It seemed Grace was ready to run, and, whatever it took, Char was going to help her.
* * *
Caped and cloaked like pioneers of old, the Hear Ye members stood outside in brisk wind on a barren plot of land—the new Hear Ye cemetery. In Char’s sorrow, it seemed just right to see a beautiful winter sunset with the clouds catching the red rays of the sun, smearing crimson across the sky before it all disappeared—just like Lee. The wind howled as his coffin was lowered into the frozen earth that must have been hacked open with the pickaxes Char saw leaning against a nearby tree. She felt numb, not as much from the cold as from the unreality of all this. Thank God, Gabe stood beside her, but she wished it was Matt. Yet neither of them would understand what she had to do.
It annoyed her when Bright Star recited the common words of comfort for a funeral:
“In My Father’s house are many mansions. If it was not so I would have told you...”
He emphasized the My and I as if he were the Lord himself speaking. She could tell Gabe caught that, too, when he stiffened and gave a little snort beside her, but the flock of the faithful stared transfixed like loyal soldiers.
Bright Star stood over the grave while four men quickly filled it with shovels of soil that thudded like heartbeats on the wooden coffin. Char quickly went to Grace, hugged her again and whispered in her ear, in the wail of wind before anyone could come near. “I’ll be waiting in that western line of trees tonight from seven to eight, and every night for a week. If you can get Kelsey and Ethan, come here to the grave, and we’ll get away.”
Grace blinked back tears half-frozen in the wind. “So soon? I—I— They’ll chase us. The master wants this child.”
Char was getting panicked as others came closer, including Gabe. “If you get stopped before coming here, say you just had to say goodbye again at his grave—with the children,” she told Grace.
“Yes, I want to. I’ll try...” was all Char heard before others put their arms around Grace. Their capes and cloaks seemed to open, then swallow her as they led her away.
18
Matt struggled to keep his mind on his work. He had a lot of it, but his thoughts kept skipping to Char making another visit up on the mountain this morning, while she was grieving Lee’s loss. Meanwhile, he’d fielded questions on the phone and in person from home owners. He’d done more research about Green Tree and Lacey Fencer, who had just married her right-hand man, Darren Ashley. From their wedding photos on her Facebook page, Matt saw he was the burly tobacco spitter in the picket line.
He kept watching the clock, wondering when he’d hear from Char and when Joe would be back from Columbus so he could find out about the water sample. As the early winter sun set, he fought to focus on the here and now, still worried about Char at that crazy cult funeral, even if Gabe was with her. He was about ready to head home when Ginger knocked on his door for the meeting he’d set up with her and had forgotten. As she came in, quiet for once, he moved out from behind his desk, closed the door and sat across from her in the other chair.
She was looking at him warily so he went right to what he wanted to ask. “I told you earlier about the arrow that was shot into the back of my house on Saturday evening. The sheriff has it now, but, just looking at it as an amateur, I think the arrow could have been one of yours.”
“You all should have showed it to me. That sketch you made of the first arrow wasn’t enough for me to go on. But you said to think it over and, yes, it could have been mine. And no, I don’t have a clue about who would have shot it, ’cause it sure enough wasn’t me. I don’t go ’round setting those kind of fires, Matt, if you know what I mean. As for me setting my sights on living targets, pheasants, wild turkeys—the occasional wild human male—sorry, don’t mean to make light of that. The thing is,” she said, uncrossing her legs and leaning closer to him, “lots of folks hereabouts could have my arrows. I ask students to buy their own either at a sports store or from the commercial ones I keep here, but I use mine on the archery range. Students could retrieve or take a couple I’d never miss. But let me t
ell you,” she said, recrossing her legs and leaning back in her chair, “I don’t miss much.”
Matt could think of a couple of smart follow-ups, but he kept his mouth shut. Besides, he knew from Char that Henry Hanson had taken some of Ginger’s arrows out of the trash. He planned to question him, too, but he had to be careful with what Woody had called “mountain pride.” Char was so happy Henry was going to drive the new school van that, if the guy took offense at Matt’s implications and quit his new job, there would be hell to pay from Char and Royce.
“Oh, I also meant to ask,” he said as if it were an afterthought. “Have you ever shot birds from a tree stand?”
“No way. I don’t like heights, and tree stands are for big game where you have to let them come to you so you don’t spook them. I shoot in the open field. You can get plenty close to game birds if you sneak up on them real quiet. Was there a tree stand behind your house?”
“No. Just curious. But back to people having access to your arrows. What about Orlando?”
“Ha! Sports endeavors, except the kind that’s private, are not up his alley. He thinks he’s using me, but it’s the other way ’round. Okay, I know I speak too frank sometimes, but if someone’s using my handmade arrows to make me look bad, I don’t know who it would be. You don’t think little old me has a motive to do that?”
“No, I don’t. I think you’d be shooting at Royce, not me.”
“Right, and I don’t dare to really cross him any more than you do. He doesn’t care about me, but he loves you, Matt. Really, he does, like the son he never had. I can tell that kind of irks Orlando, who worships the ground Royce walks on.” She chattered on about Orlando’s rough childhood, then his graduating from the “school of hard knocks,” and how that made him different from others she’d “known.”
For someone who was admittedly using Orlando, Matt thought she cared about him more than she admitted. That spoke well for the man, didn’t it? Maybe Matt was looking at the guy in the wrong way. After all, he had to admire his loyalty to Royce, even if he was well paid for it—and Matt realized he had no clue how much Orlando was paid. The man was always at Royce’s beck and call.
Though he’d intended to head home, it really was a house and not a home, so he stayed after Ginger left. He knew he’d become a workaholic over the years, but now it didn’t seem fulfilling. He stood, looking out his office window into the dark night. He’d meant to ask Ginger about that handmade quiver of hers, but no way was it beaver. He really didn’t think she was a liar. On the contrary, she usually blurted out too much, and he preferred that to someone not telling him the truth.
* * *
Char hated lying to Matt, but she’d done it, told him on the phone she was exhausted and grieving, so could they please postpone dinner so she could rest up. He’d been concerned but had agreed, said he still had a lot of work to catch up on and he’d be in his office if she changed her mind about later. Later? How would she ever put him off a second night if Grace didn’t show up tonight? He’d insist on going with her, call Gabe or his deputy in if she leveled with him. They might gang up on her and refuse to let her go at all. And she was convinced that a posse would spook Grace even if she did show up.
But worse, what if she was being set up by Grace? She didn’t think so, believed Grace was sincere about getting out of the cult with her kids, just the way she’d believed Lee about big bucks and poison water. Lee’s death must have opened Grace’s eyes. Maybe she knew something about it not being accidental. Maybe Lee had been the one making her stay.
But as Char thought back on it now, Grace had made one quick comment that could be both monumental and devastating: “The master wants this child.” So then, wouldn’t Bright Star be watching Grace like a hawk, her kids, too, in case she tried to flee? But she didn’t believe she was being set up by Bright Star because the man had hovered over Grace so. If he’d told Grace to lure Char onto their grounds, he would have given them more time to talk. As it was, each time Char huddled with Grace, Bright Star or the others had quickly swarmed her.
Char also agonized over what it could mean for Grace to be “chosen.” Just because new lives in the cult were precious? If she was chosen to bear Bright Star’s child, was that why Lee turned against him the only way he could—to let her know that he was in cahoots with Royce, who was poisoning the water with his fracking...
She stopped pacing and looked out the front window for the tenth time, grateful Matt had not come to see her, because she would surely have blurted out to him what she planned to do. Her thoughts were dark, just as it seemed outside, even with the streetlights on the snow, the pale moon and the blinking red-and-green early holiday lights on a house nearby.
She closed the curtains and sat at the kitchen table to study her cell phone screen again. She’d used an online map to find a place to park her truck near the old asylum property. She’d even chosen a way to walk into the forest that edged the plot of land where they’d buried Lee. Her plan was to stay hidden in the trees until she was sure Grace and her kids had come alone.
She wondered if Tess had called their dad out West to tell him that Lee, his nephew, was dead. Lee, who used to be such a gangly, happy kid. Lee, who, like his father and her own dad, had inherited the gift of dowsing to find pure drinking water on the old Hear Ye grounds. What if that was polluted by the fracking, too?
She shook her head to clear it. Again she made sure the note she’d left for Matt in case anything went wrong tonight was propped up on the kitchen table where they’d shared a meal just two evenings ago.
Dear Matt, I have a chance to help Grace and her kids escape B.S. and I had to take it. She begged me to come alone. No one else knows yet. I plan to take her to Gabe and Tess’s until she can find a place to hide, to have her baby safely. I pray you will understand. Char
She pulled on her black jacket, cap and earmuffs, put her phone on vibrate, locked up and hurried out to her truck.
* * *
A little before seven that night, Matt was still at his desk, eating a cheeseburger from the lodge kitchen, and finishing up. He’d just decided to phone Char when someone knocked on his office door, and he looked up.
“Joe! Come in. I was getting worried. You should have called. I’m going to get you a cell phone, necessary for the job around here, anyway. I should have thought of that last night. Sit down. Can I get you something from the kitchen?”
“Sorry it took so long, but your friend Clint had an emergency with bad-smelling city water when I got there, and your testing had to wait. I didn’t let the water sample out of my sight, though. Like you said, guard the chain of possession.”
“And he did the test?”
“He says he’d like to come here to retest, get control samples of groundwater and more surface water. But it has traces of bromides, which made Pittsburgh and other cities change how they treat their drinking water. I’ve got a written report here for you,” he said, digging it out of his jacket pocket. “Bromides aren’t toxic per se but can combine with disinfectants in drinking-water treatment plants—”
“Which is how we get our water here.”
“Right. When they combine, it can produce cancer-causing compounds. Man, I’m glad I’m moving my family now—just in case. Also, see there,” he said, handing him the paper and pointing. “He wrote a note about naturally occurring radiation that was brought to the surface by drillers. It was found in a Pennsylvania creek that flows into the Allegheny. There’s a big risk of wastewater from fracking leaking into ground or surface water. It could even get into the fish.”
And maybe beavers, Matt thought. “I see, below all that, he’s noted here there were also traces of methane in the sample.”
“Yeah. He said there’s not much research done on if that harms humans.”
“But I also see,” Matt said, skimming the paper, “that four years ago
natural methane gas leaked into a well in Ohio. The methane had escaped from an inadequately cemented vertical well drilled into sandstone. Local drilling is into shale, but it could react the same. And it says here, if methane gets into basements or sheds, it can cause explosions! Damn, that’s all we need.”
“Bottom line, your friend Clint says the stuff from runoff water, which can bubble up outside fracked shale wells and those so-called lagoons, can really cause problems.”
“Cause problems, for sure,” Matt echoed. “But this is all still in the what-if stage around here. We’ll have to get him here, let him retest. Joe, I’m asking you to keep this quiet until we do. I guess I needed an assistant around here as much as a new head groundskeeper.”
“Sure, ’cause I know you’re on it and will make it public as soon as you can. He said call him again, and he’ll find some time to come down and do controlled samples. And I told him he needed to keep this quiet for now, tell no one but you—well, and me, too.”
“I hate keeping secrets, cloak-and-dagger stuff. But sometimes, it has to be done.”
* * *
Char wished she’d told Matt and Gabe, but too late now. She parked her truck about a half mile from the outer edge of the old asylum grounds and hiked in through what she was certain must be the edge of the woods that went up to the cult buildings and the snowy field with Lee’s fresh grave site.
She tried to tell herself it was possible that food poisoning had killed Lee—since others were sickened, too—but she still believed Bright Star would sacrifice others to protect himself, and maybe, his business partner, Royce Flemming. After all, it was Royce’s money that had allowed the sect to move to their spacious new grounds and build anew there. Maybe Royce kept donations flowing in—especially if Bright Star knew something about the poison water Lee had alluded to in his note. She didn’t put it past that phony messiah to bribe or threaten someone as powerful as Royce, let alone Lee.
