Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  Better not to brood on that now. God would reward him as He saw fit. Buttoning his shirt, he stepped into the room.

  Just before waking her, he hesitated. It might not be so easy to convince her to come with him; there might be an argument – a struggle, even. Embarrassing, under his own roof. How could his mother have failed to realize that?

  She's crazy, said a mocking little voice inside his head. Why take orders from a crazy woman?

  Better to let Carol sleep, he decided. He would bring his mother out here to the farm; she would just have to be content with that. Backing out of the doorway, he continued down the stairs.

  He didn't see the thing that sat upright in the bed and crept down the stairs after him.

  The moon was higher now, a beacon at the center of the sky so bright it hurt his eyes to look as he hurried across the lawn toward the barn. He knew that, when he started the truck, the sound of the engine might wake the others, but that couldn't be helped; surely in a moment they'd fall back asleep, and by then he'd be gone. As he tiptoed past the dark outbuilding where Jeremy and Rosie lay sleeping, he heard the throbbing rhythm of the frogs, but he didn't hear the pale, naked figure that followed on his heels like a shadow.

  Rounding the corner of the barn and slipping inside, he opened the door of the truck and was about to step up to the driver's seat when, with a cry, he swore and jumped back, away from the form already crouched there directly before his face, little pink hands and plump red lips and wrinkles around eyes that were like razors now. Poroth recognized him at last.

  "Twas you in the park ten years ago,' he said. 'I remember now. What business have you here?'

  The old man grinned. 'Waiting for you, Sarr Poroth.'

  Poroth saw the eyes look past him briefly, to a place just behind his shoulder, and he would have whirled around, but the figure wielding the axe was too swift. Its blade caught him square in the back of the skull and buried itself in his brain.

  This is the part he likes. This is what he's waited for. The farmer has toppled like a dying tree and now lies sprawled lifeless at his feet, blood soaking into the dusty floor of the barn. Grasping an arm, the Old One turns the body over onto its back, then watches raptly as the thing that was the farmwife climbs naked astride the farmer and, crouching there, places her open mouth directly over his. A minute passes.

  Suddenly an old wound opens in her throat; her body crumples and goes limp, sagging in upon itself just as the corpse's eyes flash open. With an impatient swipe of its arm the thing that was the farmer shoves aside her stiffening body and gets to its feet. Blood continues flowing down its head from the gaping red crack in its skull. It looks at the Old One and smiles. . The man returns its smile. What a moment this has been! The being itself remains hidden from view – it's been more than a hundred years since he's seen it – but he's sensed the thing's presence tonight and has charted its progress as it made its blind way from mouth to mouth. He has seen the farmwife's cheeks bulge, then grow slack; he has seen the wriggling at the farmer's throat. It is lodged there now, just beneath the flesh, already accustoming itself to its new home. He still cannot see it, but he knows it is there, nearly close enough to touch: the one thing left alive after the Master's death; the part he'd left unburned; the organ with no clear human analogue, but corresponding roughly to a phallus, instrument of regeneration; the black thing, undying and unkillable; the Dhol.

  Silence within the darkened barn. Beneath the smell of straw, a faint whiff of decay. He grasps the farmwife's body by the ankles.

  'I'm good at hiding bodies,' he says, dragging the thing away from the truck. 'You have your own work to do tonight.'

  The corpse, heavy, comes to a stop at the doorway. He tugs on the ankles. Slowly it begins to move, then stops again.

  He gets a better grip and is about to pull further when the figure of the farmer steps forward, bends stiffly toward the floor, and picks up the corpse as if it weighed nothing. Slinging it roughly over one shoulder like a sack of grain, it strides into the night.

  It feels strong now. It flexes its great hands, heaves its massive shoulders, gazes down with pleasure at its lean, untiring form. The burden it carries is a minor one, so light that it might well be made of straw.

  Shortly before dawn a tall, shambling figure, the head still bloody from some recent injury, wanders along the borders of the property with the already stiffening carcass of a naked female slung carelessly over its shoulder, the black hair hanging almost to the ground. Making at last for the line of pine trees on the far side of the brook, it strides briskly downhill and, without pausing, steps into the shallow water, scattering the frogs. As if it were walking on dry land, it starts across.

  Just beyond the center of the stream, it comes to a sudden halt and stands immobile, the frigid water swirling unnoticed over shoes and ankles. Finally, after nearly a minute in the water, the figure turns and strides back onto the land, heading toward the old abandoned smokehouse by the edge of the woods.

  Unmindful of a few unsleeping wasps that still circle the building and are already stirred up, the figure yanks the sagging wooden door open wide and clumsily thrusts its burden into the darkness. Wasps, like bees, go for the eyes. Unlike bees, they can sting many times without dying. Maddened by the intrusion, insects circle the figure's head like attacking warplanes, dealing sting after death-dealing sting.

  But venom, however deadly, has no effect on things already dead. The hulking figure feels no pain, no more than it feels from the split down the center of its skull. Heedless of the tiny swarm and the needle-sharp spears that pierce the flesh of its face, the figure grasps the carcass by the legs and shoves it upward into the round hole in the smokehouse ceiling, as if to jam the thing into the tiny attic. But the body cannot fit; the legs wedge tightly in the hole, ridges of flesh bulging up around them. The body hangs head downward like a slaughtered animal, the long black hair swinging like Spanish moss.

  Dawn approaches. Leaving the carcass dangling behind it, the thing shambles toward the truck.

  Freirs stirred and woke at the sound of the engine, in time to see the broad, dark shape of Poroth's truck roll past the outbuilding and head out to the road. Dimly he could make out Poroth at the wheel. Without his glasses Freirs could not be sure, but the farmer appeared to be wearing a red skullcap. Rosie's bed, he noticed, was empty. Seconds later Rosie entered, wiping his hands and smiling. 'Had to obey the call of nature!' he said, winking.

  'Where's Sarr gone off to? That was him in the truck.'

  Rosie shrugged. 'You got me, partner. He said something about keeping an appointment.'

  The moon stares down as the truck pulls up at the foot of the grassy slope, just down the road from the little stone bridge. Heavily a tall, ungainly figure drops from the cab and lumbers up the slope toward the cottage, heedless of the darkness, trampling upon a bed of flowers as if they weren't there. Thorns tear at its clothing, but it doesn't slow; clumsily it blunders into the beehives standing on the lawn, knocking one of them over.

  The insects emerge in an angry swarm and attack the face and eyes. The shambling figure pays them no mind as it moves up the hill toward the house.

  At last it turns its shattered face toward the door. Clenching its huge fist, it knocks three times, the noise echoing hollowly in the night.

  'Mother,' it calls hoarsely. 'Mother… '

  July Thirty-first

  Ten a.m. now. Woke up feeling weak amp; disoriented. Dead spider floating in my water glass. Rosie was already awake amp; bustling energetically about, humming some tuneless little song. Said he'd be making Carol amp; me breakfast, as it's Sunday (I'd totally forgotten) and the Poroths have already gone to worship…

  But the Poroths were not at the worship that morning, and their absence excited much comment. 'I can't understand it,' muttered Amos Reid, waiting for the opening prayers to begin. 'For Brother Sarr not to be here at a time like this… ' He shook his head despairingly.

  Joram Sturtevant and
his family were not there either – they were home, all five of them, in the sprawling white farmhouse over on the next hill – but at least they had a good excuse: Lotte Sturtevant had gone into labor this morning.

  Lise Verdock, too, was absent; yet in another sense her presence was felt deeply by everyone in attendance. The worship was being held in her front yard, in fact, right beneath her window. It was a memorial service in her honor. She had died during the night.

  She had slipped away just after midnight without ever having regained consciousness, watched over by her grieving husband and daughter. In testament to the high regard with which she'd been held in the town, this morning's worship, originally scheduled for the home of Frederick and Hildegarde Troet, just across the road, had been hastily reconvened here at the Verdocks' dairy farm, where, in a moment or two, Jacob van Meer would be leading them all in a prayer.

  'It just ain't like Sarr,' muttered Amos. 'That woman of his, now, I wouldn't go countin' on her, but for Sarr to be late when it's his own poor aunt we're honorin'… it don't make sense.' He looked around. 'And where the blazes is his ma?'

  Matthew Geisel was standing next to him, thinking sadly of the departed woman while gazing with unconscious envy at the tall, newly painted cattle barn to their left, the lush fields and rich pasturage, and, in the distance ahead of them, the broad, imposing vista of the Sturtevant homestead.

  'Well,' he said, scratching his chin, 'maybe they're all over at Fred Troet's right now, lookin' for the rest of us.'

  A low burst of laughter came from Rupert Lindt, standing with folded arms behind them. 'That would probably suit 'em just fine,' he said. 'I don't know as those three ever had much use for the rest of us.'

  'I'm sure there's a good reason,' said Amos, half to himself. He stared down at his clasped hands as, with a burst of Jeremiah, the service began.

  'Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all… '

  It wasn't till all the prayers were over and the Brethren were deep into the hymn-singing that Amos, nudged by Matthew Geisel, looked up and saw what many others there on the lawn had already noticed: the thin black tentacle of smoke twisting toward the sky from the Sturtevant back yard.

  The egg in Rosie's hand was large, smooth, glistening white; and if it was a trifle heavier than any normal egg of that size had a right to be, no one was the wiser. Eyes twinkling with the contentment of a mother who knows no children in the world are better fed than her own, he cracked the egg on the rim of the already half-full bowl, let the yolk drop inside, and whipped the liquid to a yellow froth. 'Hungry?' he called gaily over his shoulder.

  'I'm always hungry,' said Freirs, slouched unshaven and tousle-haired over the table, and Carol, across from him, added, 'It's that famous country air.'

  Rosie chuckled. 'That's just what I like to hear.' He poured the liquid into the heated frying pan, where it hissed and bubbled like hell-fire.

  Breakfast left them feeling heavy and overfull. While Rosie fussed about the kitchen, the two stumbled groggily from the house and down the back steps, kicking off their shoes in the grass. It was nearly eleven, the sun high overhead. The Poroths still had not returned.

  Reaching out a sleepy hand for Carol's, Jeremy pulled her after him, and together they wandered downhill toward the brook, the unmown grass dry beneath their feet. The day was warm, and by the time they'd passed the smokehouse and the barn, Carol was finding it hard to keep her balance; the lawn seemed to slope more steeply as she neared the water, tilting in ways that didn't seem right at all, and she had to stop herself from falling forward into the weeds that grew along the bank. The greenness seemed to spin around her; she felt Jeremy's hand slip from her own, and then she was floating, blue sky underfoot, green overhead, or was it the other way around?… Carol blinked and shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. The sunlight from the flashing brook was dazzling, almost blinding. There was a rushing of water in her ears, and she couldn't tell if it was the brook or her own lifeblood.

  'I feel as if I haven't slept in weeks,' Jeremy was saying, yawning. She saw him remove his glasses and sink beside her to his knees by the bank of the stream, then lie back, and as she bent to kiss him she saw his eyes close in sleep. She lay beside him on the grass, feet toward the water, and just before her head fell back against the soft ground she thought, with a brief and terrible clarity, He's drugged us…

  They slept.

  But in the smokehouse, other things were awake – and angry.

  The wasps that inhabited the small, enclosed area just beneath the peaked roof had seen their tranquil world rocked shortly before dawn by the intrusion of a pair of human legs, naked and female, thrust roughly upward into their domain through the hole in the ceiling boards. A few of the insects had been away from the nest at the time; others, during the course of the morning, had by sheer chance managed to slip through a small crevice in the boards, the one small portion of the hole that the legs did not fill. But like dwellers in an attic who have found their trapdoor sealed, hundreds more of the insects were still imprisoned, bottled up amid the darkness and the heat, their passage to the outside world effectively cut off by a stopper of decaying human flesh.

  They were angry now, and frantic to escape, their frenzy mounting with each passing minute as the sun climbed higher in the sky and the air within the tiny chamber grew even hotter. In furious circles they swarmed around the grey, brainlike nest, blind things, maddened, stinging one another in their madness.

  The morning passed, gave way to noon. Shadows of clouds swept over their bodies, then a sun so fierce it would have wakened any normal sleepers. Insects circled buzzing around their faces, settled on their eyes; a dragonfly hovered as if with evil intent above Carol's half-open lips. Freirs' plump belly rose and fell without a break in rhythm as flies crawled over his skin and mosquitoes feasted on his sun-warmed blood. Two cats crept forward to peer inquisitively at him, and a pale, glistening slug crept in stately slowness over his wrist and down the other side into the grass. His glasses gleamed beside him in the sunlight. The glimmering brook murmured unheard at their feet.

  In the distance, up the sloping lawn, the screen door swung open, then shut with a bang. The old man approached them softly, peering at their sleeping forms. Briefly he knelt beside Carol, making curious passes over her face. Getting to his feet, he stood gazing down at them again, his eyes darting back and forth between a heavy-looking rock and Freirs' head.

  Suddenly he froze, listening; his expression changed, face hardening into a smile as his eyes scanned the edge of the woods along the far side of the brook. Casually, almost as an afterthought, he brought his foot down on Freirs' glasses, crushing them into the ground. Then, finding a series of stepping stones, he stepped delicately across the brook and disappeared among the trees.

  It was a mark of the Brethren's restraint, their sense of decorum and protocol, as much as of their religious devotion that, though all of them were soon staring with curiosity and alarm at the twisting thread of black smoke in the distance, they continued singing as if nothing were wrong, pressing on through the traditional sixteen hymns. Even when the service was over and the Bible shut, few of them made any move in the direction of the Sturtevants' house, preferring to stay and give Adam Verdock and his daughter (who, of late grown used to death, seemed to be bearing up better than her father) what small comfort they could. Too much curiosity wasn't seemly; there were those among them who'd even objected to the presence of the local newspaper in their homes, arguing, with considerable zeal, that what God intended men to know was already set down in the Bible and that other printed words were mere distractions.

  And so, in the end, when the assembly at last began to break up, it was only the more avidly curious among them – those such as Bert and Amelia Steeg
ler, Galen Trudel, Rupert Lindt, and Jan and Hannah Kraft – as well as those closest to the Sturtevants – Joram's brother Abram and his wife, the van Meers and the Klapps, Matthew Geisel, Klaus Buckhalter, and a dozen or so more, including Ham Stoudemire, whose wife, Nettie, would be in attendance as midwife – who actually walked, in a party, toward the Sturtevant farm.

  The house itself, a broad, white-shingled Colonial with low single-story wings on each side, was set well back from the main road at the end of a pathway bordered by tall shrubbery. The first things the party encountered, after ascending the path, were the Sturtevants' three young boys, normally a rowdy, outspoken bunch, standing in uneasy silence by the front of the house. 'Father won't let us inside,' the oldest boy explained somewhat fearfully. 'We have to stay here in front. Aunt Wilma's in there, though. So's Sister Nettie.'

  This last had been addressed to Klaus Buckhalter, whose wife, Wilma – Lotte Sturtevant's older sister – was already inside, helping Nettie Stoudemire with the birth.

  Buckhalter conferred briefly with his nephews, then turned back to the group. 'I think Abram and I had best go up alone.'

  The others hung back as the two men climbed the front steps and knocked, almost timidly, at the door. After some moments, it was opened by Buckhalter's wife. She looked as if she'd been weeping.

  'You can all come in,'she said. 'It's done now… She's alive.'

  'And the child?' asked Abram.

  She shuddered and shook her head.

  Frowning, the two men entered the house, Wilma standing at the door as the rest filed nervously in behind them. Ahead of them, at the top of the stairs, the midwife stood wringing her hands.

  'Is my brother up there?' asked Abram.

  Wilma pointed, trembling, in the direction of the yard. 'Back there.' She turned and started up the staircase; as if by unspoken agreement the women in the group filed upstairs behind her, continuing toward a doorway at the right, from which issued a series of low moans. Left to themselves, the men stood awkwardly in the downstairs hall, then followed Abram toward the back of the house.