by A. Sparrow
“Nice of him … I suppose. I hope that Donnie’s feeling better.”
“Mac’s worried, this might be more than a stomach bug. But Mac said he can do the rites if he has to. He has a copy of a deliverance manual. Same one that the Reverend uses.”
“If Mac knows how to do these … then why did we—”
“John. We talked about this. Last Hope is the best in the business. Mac’s just trying to give a little support. It’s taking him away from his other work. Least we can do is make him comfortable.”
“No problem. I’ll get him his ice cream.”
A steely coldness crept into Cindy’s eyes. “You’ve got a thing against Mac, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, whenever I talk about Mac you get a little bristly.”
“No, I don’t. I like Mac. He’s our Pastor. He’s a great … Pastor. Quiche for dinner, alright?”
“Seriously, John? Don’t you’d think steak’d be a better bet with these folks?”
“But … we like quiche.”
“Think about our guests, hon. I’m not even sure quiche is in their culture.”
“What? They don’t know eggs and cheese and bacon? They’re Georgians, Cindy. It’s not like they’re from … East Uzbekistan.”
Cindy wrinkled her nose and gave him a palliative smile. “Get us some nice steaks. Some burgers. Chicken. Those kind of things. ‘Kay?”
“Okay,” said John, sighing.
***
After a morning of catching up with chores, he and Jerry had sandwiches for lunch. Tammie and Rand showed up just as he was about to head out to Ithaca to shop for groceries.
“Where’s Donnie?”
“He’s still under the weather,” said Tammie. “He’s gonna try to come out later with Mac.”
“There’s some cold cuts in the fridge and bread in the cupboard. Help yourselves.”
“Thanks,” said Rand. “We stopped to eat on the way out.” He held up a crumpled Wendy’s bag.
At Wegman’s he rolled his cart down the aisles, he had to fight against his foodie inclinations. He let culinary cliché guide his choices, loading up the cart with collared greens, pork skins, red beans and rice, grits. Did southerners really eat grits for breakfast? He didn’t even know how to cook them, but he picked up a box regardless.
Jerry had made a special request for some Miller Lite. A case jingled beneath the basket of the carriage. He paid for the groceries, six bags worth, using a debit card with a balance barely large enough to cover the damages. Cindy had better cash that commission check she had been hanging onto or they would be in the red and soon.
As he waited for the receipt, a frizzy-haired kid with a black raincoat came rushing past a row of shopping carts with a ream of posters and a stapler, stuck one up on a bulletin board, and ran back out to a white carpet cleaning van which zoomed across the lot.
John glanced at the poster as he went by. It announced a performance by Vida, a well-known local band. They had played last Spring at the Ithaca Festival in Stewart Park. He remembered them playing a sort of retro progressive rock, Yes/ELP with minus the wankery and with a hip-hop sensibility. They got good write-ups in the local rags, weekly, but John couldn’t care less about hearing them again.
His eyes trailed down a blurb describing the opening act—Kolektiv. He had never heard of them. There was a small photo in the corner of a woman with her arms wrapped around an upright bass, her face in the throes of what could pass for ecstasy or agony.
The caption read: ‘Featuring: Bassist Aerie Walker, formerly of the Hollis Brooks Quartet. A jolt shuddered through him. This was the girl he had met on the roadside. The hell house gang was playing a gig in Ithaca—an ordinary gig with an ordinary rock and roll band.
He chuckled. His chest heaved in vindication. Here was the evidence that he had been right all along. This was only rock and roll. No demons, just a normal band, avant-garde maybe, but with the same aspirations and motivations as any group of youthful musicians.
He was tempted to yank down the poster and stuff it in his pocket. Too many eyes watching. He thought the Reverend should see this, but then again, maybe not. Why inflict these deliverance folks on these poor kids? It would only ruin their gig. It would be like sending in those crackpots from Kansas who crash military funerals to protest gays.
He noted the date and the location and continued on his way. He might have to find a reason to be in Ithaca on Thursday night.
***
Back home, the white pickup was still parked in the driveway, but Cindy hadn’t made it back from Syracuse. He found Jerry in the kitchen all geared up in camouflage coveralls, boots and slouch hat. He was standing by the kitchen sink filling a matching Camelbak water pack from the tap.
“What’s up?” said John, as he loaded the two half gallons of ice cream into the freezer: one vanilla, one mint chocolate chip. “Going for a hike?”
“You know these woods out here?”
“Kinda. I went on some walks when we first moved in. Got lost once.”
“I’m about to do a reconnoiter. Care to join?”
“Um. Sure. Let me put away these groceries.” He stuck the fresh veggies in the crisper. “Heard from Donnie? How’s he feeling?”
“Like crap. He stayed back at the hotel. Rand and Tam are here, though. They’ll keep watch over the house.”
“Keep watch?” John snickered. He went upstairs and changed from khakis to jeans and put on a chamois shirt, and his Orange Syracuse ball cap. It felt strange not having to look after the boys, but he jumped at the chance to be out in the woods. He was never a hunter, but had been an avid hiker before he met Cindy, who did her only rambling in shopping malls.
Downstairs, he found Jerry pacing nervously by the front door. He shouted into the family room. “Rand, we’ll be on Channel 7. Give us a radio check every half hour.”
“Roger,” said Rand, over the radio.
As they left the house, Jerry took John’s elbow and redirected him into the side yard. “I want to show you something interesting.”
They crossed the lawn to the rhododendron border. “This is where we saw that shadow. Notice anything strange?”
John looked down and saw only cedar mulch and fallen leaves at first. And then a faint line caught his eye, a strip about a centimeter wide that passed through some of the dead leaves. At the end of the bushes it curled and doubled back.
He picked up a leaf. Only the veins remained, the intervening patches having been turned into a greasy black powder that sifted away in the breeze.
“Looks burned,” said John.
“Feel it. It’s slippery. Like graphite.”
John rubbed his thumb against it, leaving a greasy streak.
“Never seen anything like it,” said Jerry. “I tried tracking the line up through that woodlot, but it disappears halfway up the hill, almost as if, whatever it was fell out of the sky … or crawled out of the ground.”
A queasiness gripped John. He was having second thoughts about this hike.
“C’mon.”
“Where’re we going?”
“I saw some trails heading off that other road. I wanna see what kind of terrain we’re dealing with.”
They crossed the street and cut across the woods to the main road. They passed the hell house, finding its driveway vacant, interior silent. Jerry gripped his shotgun more securely as they walked by. From the bulges under his coat, John suspected he was packing a handgun or two as well.
“Right here,” said Jerry cutting in towards the blackberry patch at the head of the clear-cut for the abandoned subdivision.
The blackberry bushes were turning purple and red, their leaves mimicking the cycle of berries long shriveled or eaten. Jerry strode through the patch and onto a path that led straight up into the forest, past the glacial boulders that flanked the path like sentries. This was no mere game trail. Many saplings bore the mark of machetes and hatchets. Hunters, it seemed, from the deer stand high i
n a broad-limbed beech tree.
Jerry kept his eyes on the ground. They found plenty of deer sign—scat, hoof and browse marks. Behind a dead oak, he toed some canine looking turds that must have come from a coyote.
Mushrooms sprouted everywhere and were of every imaginable type: spongy and gilled, peaked and domed, both solitary and in massive clusters of all ages.
They passed through areas of secondary growth that had once been fields in which were embedded groves of towering beeches and oaks that had probably been woodlots when the area had been farmed. The massive boles awed and humbled John. He doubted it was virgin forest, but these patches were certainly ancient.
They passed traces of the former inhabitants: dimples in the ground that had been their root cellars, partially collapsed stone walls. They nearly didn’t notice a tiny cemetery with grave markers of nondescript shale, their names and dates flaked off by frost.
“No wonder these folks didn’t make it,” said Jerry. “This is bad land to farm. Steep. Rocky. How did they ever expect to plow up here?”
Wings exploded behind them like a muffled machine gun. Jerry swung his shotgun around, its arc crossing John’s torso.
“Easy! It’s just a grouse.”
Jerry breathed hard. Sorry about that. “Sucker startled me.”
They crossed an unpaved and overgrown road. The land began to decline. Through gaps in the trees they could see deep down into a valley to a small lake flanked by marshes.
“Cayuta, must be,” said John.
“That’s Cayuga?”
“Nah. Cay-u-ta. With a ‘t.’ Cayuga’s the big one east of here. Cayuta’s a puddle by comparison. It’s the only Finger Lake that drains southward. All the others drain north.”
“Really?” Jerry seemed alarmed by that factoid for some reason. “Sun’s getting low,” he said. “Let’s head back. I think we can cut across this way and catch that first trail farther down. And if not, Connecticut Hill Road runs east and south. Should be easy enough to find.”
They bushwhacked through a soggy patch of red maples, entering a cleft crowded with hemlocks and their black and musky humus, flat needles choking light, making it seem like night. John picked up the pace, passing Jerry, striving to reach the light atop a ridge. Emerging into a brighter stand of white pines was a relief.
The radio clicked. Tammie’s voice came over the air. “Demon One this is Mission Central. Radio check, over.”
“Roger Mission Central, Demon One here. All clear. I say all clear. Over.”
“It’s getting late out there guys. Y’all coming back soon? Over.”
“Yeah, Tam. We’re heading home. Over.”
The hill seemed stacked upon other hills here, slopes deflecting them from the beeline they attempted to follow. They paused to rest on a hilltop with a view into the main valley. They could see the little hollow harboring the little town of Alpine, at the junction of the road to Watkins Glen. Across the valley another expanse of sparsely inhabited uplands caught the light of the sinking sun.
“You know, this ain’t wilderness. Not even close. But I gotta say, this place is a lot wilder than I ever expected to see in a place like New York.”
“What’d you expect? The whole place was like Manhattan?”
“Pretty much so.”
A patch of oak leaves rose up in a swirl of wind, and collapsed. And then another farther down the slope, longer lasting.
“Praf diavol,” said Jerry.
“Excuse me?”
“These whirls,” said Jerry. “I been seeing an awful lot of them. There’s something a little more twisty to the winds in this place.”
“They’re just dust devils,” said John.
“Nah. Not just. These woods are potent with signs. Those abandoned settlements. That lake flowing opposite the others. Those are examples of what Donnie calls ‘infernal properties’. Things going against nature. Moss growing on the wrong side of trees. Roots branching out of the ground. Water flowing uphill. That sort of thing.”
“You saw water flowing uphill?”
“Not here. Those are just examples,” said Jerry. “But there’s enough going on here to make me concerned.”
John felt his nerves kick up, and add to the sweat pooling in the small of his back. “Shouldn’t we have crossed that trail by now?”
“I woulda thunk,” said Jerry. “Maybe we overshot it?”
“Hope not. I don’t want to be out here in the dark. You got a flashlight?”
Jerry patted his front pocket. “Nope. Didn’t figure we’d need one.”
They started down the hill, and up and over the next ridge. Too many trees surrounded them to reveal the lay of the land. The going was easy for the most part, the trees widely spaced, the undergrowth sparse.
Around the next rise, they chased a buck out of a bed amidst a tangle of wild grape vines. One of its antlers was broken and jagged. Jerry clutched his heart, his face looking a little ruddy above his beard.
“We should have hit the road by now,” said John.
“Let’s cut due south,” said Jerry. “I think we got suckered into angling too far east.”
They were on the back side of Connecticut Hill now, in shadow as the sunk sank low over Seneca Lake. John’s heart was beating hard, not just from the exertion.
Something sickly sweet invaded their nostrils, like road kill.
“Jesus!” said Jerry, recoiling from a dark lump at his feet. “What the fuck is that?”
John was almost afraid to look. It was the corpse of an animal with charcoal fur and a pointed snout. Its open mouth revealed powerful canines.
“Well, what do you know,” said Jerry. “It’s a fisher cat.”
“Doesn’t look like any cat I’ve ever seen,” said John. “Looks like a ferret on steroids.”
“Oh, they’re not feline at all,” said Jerry. “They’re in the weasel family.” Jerry pulled out his cell phone and snapped a flash picture. “We don’t have these in Georgia.”
They moved on, maintaining a steady course south by keeping the brightest sector of sky to their right. The trees thinned out. They passed stumps and other signs of logging: brush piles, wood chips. A large cloud of leaves and dust spun up, towering over their heads before dissipating, leaves floating back down to the ground.
“Where the hell’s the road?” said Jerry. “We must have walked twice as far coming back as we did going out.”
The slope leveled off onto a mossy terrace. A smudge stretched through the leaves underfoot, thicker and greasier than the one in the rhododendrons.
John froze. “Um, Jerry?”
Holy shit!” Jerry crouched down and ran a finger across it. “Whatever thing made the one at your house ….”
“This one’s a lot bigger,” said John.
“You got that right,” said Jerry. “I wonder … if this is what killed that cat?” He got up and they tracked the line into a series of moss-covered ledges. The path led them on a circuitous course, looping back on itself, veering and snaking.
“Jesus,” said Jerry.
The line cut through a patch of moss, lush and green everywhere except for where a perfect circle had been burned down to bedrock. Other lines breached the outer expanse of moss and converged on the ring, which was down to soil and bedrock, as if someone had poured gasoline in a circle and ignited it. A pale grit, like coarse beach sand, sprinkled the interior of the ring.
“A fairy ring?” said John.
“Ain’t no fucking fairy ring. Fucking thing reeks of the infernal. Look at all that black slime.”
John found it difficult to believe what he was seeing. He struggled for a benign and natural explanation. A candle-lit picnic gone awry? It looked more like a landing site for a UFO.
Something rumbled behind them.
“What’s that?” said Jerry.
“I think it’s a … a truck,” said John.
They hurried towards the sound. At the lip of the terrace, the bulldozed clearing that the dev
elopers had abandoned opened up below them. The one functional street light in front of the house had come on in the twilight and shined through the trees.
“Hallelujah!” said Jerry. They started jogging down the hillside.
A white van swung around the corner, headlights glaring through the dusk.
“It’s them,” said Jerry. “Get down.” He crouched, shotgun cradled in his lap.
Chapter 17: Visions
Holy Fire guttered in a nub of a candle on the desk. Donnie slumped in a chair in his non-smoking room, watching the muted talking heads on CNN jabber in silence.
His bed looked like Gettysburg, the day after. Sheets all twisted and tangled. Blankets on the floor. A pillow uncased and stained.
The night had been as miserable as any he could remember: writhing, rolling, staring at the ceiling, the cramps in his belly making it impossible to pay attention to the fluff crossing his TV screen, or to think about anything but his intense discomfort.
He had even lost the will to pray. But that, of course, was the intention of whatever had possessed him. He fought against this infernal apathy as best he could, muttering a prayer of healing under his breath, repeating it until it poured forth from his lips on automatic, disconnected from his brain.
When it first struck, he thought he had simply over-eaten, that it was just a little indigestion. But then the cramps started and then the chills and then wave after wave of vomiting, diarrhea, sometimes bloody. He prayed for the respites in between, the twenty glorious minutes of calm, before the next bout clamped down on his bowels and sent him moaning and stumbling towards the bathroom.
He had to get his ass out of bed and fetch a fresh candle from the suitcase candle before this one burnt out. He had packed a box of La Flor Dominicans as well, but didn’t think his stomach could take the smell of a cigar right now. As it was, he found it hard to convince himself to budge from the only position that didn’t make his head throb.
Sharp raps on the door, like ice picks in his ear drums. “Reverend Beasley? Are you still in there?”
Donnie didn’t want the interns to see him this way, with his cheeks all bristly and sunken, his hair pointing every which way. He couldn’t let them know what he suspected, that he had taken the brunt of a counterattack from whatever possessed the Swains’ neighbor, that the Good Lord was using his body to shield the others. He stayed where he was, on the bed.
