Hallowed Ground

by David Niall Wilson

  He hit the far side of the gulch at a dangerous gallop, shot through the trees and off toward Rookwood, riding as if the devil's breath warmed his back. The night air was cold, and the sky was a deep mottled gray, peppered with the soaring wings of crows.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Deacon's people left Mariah's still body on a rough bed of stone. They drove far enough into the desert that it was unlikely she'd be found by anyone out of Rookwood - at least not while what was left of her was recognizable. The vultures would not be long in discovering her, once the sun rose, and even as the wagon's wheels creaked off toward camp, coyotes caught the scent. They were cautious, tricky hunters, and they would move in slowly, but once they found her, she wouldn't last long. The bones would be picked clean within a week's time. Insects and the sun would do the rest.

  The group had been almost gentle in laying her out. All the roughness they'd exhibited in the vicinity of The Deacon had slipped away. They were a sad lot, life-worn and broken. They sensed a kindred spirit in the thin, broken frame - and maybe something else.

  When the wagon's mournful voice had faded, she lay alone. Though it was cold, she didn't shiver. If a shard of silver had been held to her lips, the faintest mist might have clouded it. Nothing could have lived within that ruined frame, and yet the crows remained perched atop the trees and stone outcroppings, watching patiently.

  The silence gave way to a slow, rhythmic thump, the creak of leather, and the soft clink of glass on glass. It began as a distant murmur and grew louder with each passing moment. The moon was high and bright. A tall, ornate wagon rolled into sight on the horizon and made its way cautiously across the rough desert floor.

  The wagon stopped beside the stones where Mariah's ruined body had been laid out for the scavengers. The driver sat still for a while, as if he heard something in the wind, or saw messages in the stars. He glanced down at Mariah, and a flash of white betrayed a crooked smile.

  He was tall and slender. His hair and moustache were dark and well groomed. His suit was darker still in sharp contrast to the white of his shirt. A silver watch fob dangled from his breast pocket, and he wore a worn but elegant silk hat. On his hip the pearl handled grip of a well-oiled revolver peeked out from beneath his jacket. He rode easily, and the matched team of black horses pulled the wagon intuitively, barely requiring a touch of the reins to shift, or to stop.

  The man cocked his hat back on his head and rubbed his chin, then climbed gracefully down from the wagon. He walked around to the rear of the wagon, fished a skeleton key out of his pocket, and inserted it into a large padlock. The tumblers spun smoothly.

  He clambered up inside, rummaged about a little, and came out with a small bag, a folded blanket, and his tinderbox. He unfolded the blanket and laid it out on the ground closer to his wagon. He gathered a handful of stones and placed them in a circle. To the left of where he stood, a small stand of shrubs shot up at unruly angles. He laid his hand on one thick branch. The sparse leaves grew limp, curled in on themselves, and fell away from the branch. The wood lightened in color, then grew pale. Moments later, with a flick of his wrist, he broke the small tree free of the ground. He snapped the trunk into shorter logs and carried them to his stone circle, carefully laying a fire.

  He sat cross-legged on the ground, just beyond the ring of stones surrounding the sticks, and reached for his tinderbox. He withdrew a small handful of dried sage and slivers of wood, and his flint. He tucked the tinder in beneath his carefully stacked branches, and began tapping the flint, waiting patiently for it to spark. As he worked, he cast a glance at the pale, still figure lying a few feet away on the stone.

  The flint sparked, and the kindling caught. He leaned in close and blew gently, fanning the flames to life. The dead wood caught almost instantly, and in moments he had a healthy, crackling blaze. He stared into the flames as if they called to him, watching them lick and tease their way up the wood. Then, with a gentle shake of his head, he set aside the tinderbox, stood, and turned to the girl.

  "So," he said softly, "you have come to me after all."

  He stepped closer and leaned down, lifting her in an easy, graceful motion. She dangled over his arms, limp and lifeless. The moonlight on her skin shone pale silver, giving the illusion he held a wraith, or a body formed of clouds. He carried her to the blanket he'd laid out before the fire and lowered her onto it gently. He brushed back her hair and studied her face.

  His expression was curious – almost amused.

  "Such a pretty thing," he said. "Beneath the scars and the dirt."

  He returned to the rear of his wagon and came back with a second blanket. This one he laid across her naked, ruined flesh, ignoring the dirt and the blood. Her body had not yet begun to stiffen with rigor, and her lips were opened gently. In that second, she almost looked peaceful.

  "It seems a shame," he whispered, kneeling at her side, "to wake you to this world when you are so close to that other, but there is work to be done."

  He leaned down, placed his palm on her cheek gently, and kissed her. He breathed and mist curled from the points where their lips touched. A long, rattling shudder shivered through her thin frame and her back arched off the blanket. She drew in his breath in a gasp that echoed across the desert and through the hills. The crows, still roosting nearby, burst into flight, curving back toward the gulch, and The Deacon, toward the town and those near to death.

  As he glanced up and watched them go, he held Mariah's shivering, shaking body in his arms.

  "Go," he said. "There is nothing for you here."

  As if they heard him, the crows banked toward Rookwood and disappeared into the dying night.

  Chapter Twelve

  She woke to a pink haze. Her head throbbed, and every muscle, bone, and inch of her skin burned, itched, and ached. Her throat was raw and parched. Those first movements refused to come, and for a long moment she was certain she was paralyzed. Something crackled nearby. Her thoughts cleared and she realized it was a fire.

  As sensation and feeling crept back, the pain flared. Her arms and legs tingled from lying in the same position far too long. Every breath tore like sand through her throat. She tried to speak. She was only after a single word, but it was far out of reach. She gasped, trying to force a sound through her lips. She spat dry air.

  Someone moved.

  She heard a voice, but the sound echoed and warped – she couldn't concentrate on the words – if they were words. Was this delirium? Was it the fever of death? A hand slid smoothly under the back of her head and lifted her slightly, and the rim of a tin cup pressed to her lips. A trickle of water dribbled into her mouth and down her throat. She tried to savour it but she couldn’t. She couldn’t swallow and instead started to choke. The cup was pulled away. She hacked up a lungful of something thick and syrupy and the stranger wiped her lips almost tenderly. The act of coughing the water from her windpipe brought back another breath of vitality. When he returned the cup to her lips she was able to swallow properly. Even so, she was only allowed a few short gulps.

  "Not too fast," the voice said. This time the words were clear, though it still sounded as they were being voiced under water – or perhaps it was her who was trapped at the bottom of a deep well, an infernal pit where it was so hot it leeched the moisture from skin and bone. Mariah closed her eyes. "It would be a shame if you drowned in the desert; after all you've been through."

  Memory sliced through her like a railroad spike to the heart.

  "My baby," she croaked. She struggled to press the air from her lungs and scream.

  Her body gained strength from the flood of images, and she arched up off the blanket. She nearly slid from the grasp of whoever held her, but she barely noticed. Mariah's mind returned to the pain. The aches and agonies coalesced and made sense. She felt empty and drained, as light as a sliver of sloughed skin. Empty.

  The man laid his hand on her forehead and spoke softly. Where he touched her, a chip of ice melted through the heat of
the pain and the withering storm of emotion. A chill spread from that single point, back through her mind and down finally into her heart. The pain was not diminished, but compressed and walled off. It rode in her breast. Her muscles relaxed, and she sank back onto the blanket, her head again resting in his hand.

  She turned her gaze on him then, a tall, dark man silhouetted against a backdrop of morning sunlight. He was angular and thin, and she risked a small shake of her head in an attempt to smooth and round him. For the span of a heartbeat, his form wavered. The lines spread out and widened, his eyes deepened. Mariah turned away, and saw the wagon.

  Glittering with reflected sunlight, the wooden side was a marvel of color and gaudy decoration. The central focus was a large shuttered window. The outside of the shutters were emblazoned with huge colourful letters. At first it was too bright for her to make out the words. When her eyes focused, she read slowly. Her reading had been confined to the books of The Bible, but her father had insisted that she learn.

  "Dr. Samuel Balthazar's Travelling Show

  Magic, Mystery, Cures & Tinctures

  Charms for every ailment"

  The words were surrounded by curling designs that wrapped around one another and became serpents, or . . . or dragons. There were beakers and bottles with arcane labels painted across their fronts. There was a unicorn, and what looked to Mariah to be a mountain lion with wings. She didn’t know what it was called.

  The man laid her gently back onto the blanket and stood. He towered over her, and where his shadow crossed her the icy chill left by his touch intensified. Mariah shivered.

  He followed the direction of her gaze and smiled. It was not an unkind smile, but neither was it the most beneficent of smiles. It failed to reach his eyes, she realised, but had no had reason to believe her eyes with so much mugginess in her mind.

  "That is me," he said, waving his arm in a flourish toward the wagon. "Samuel Balthazar, at your service."

  Mariah tried to concentrate.

  "My baby?" she asked. "Is he…dead?"

  "You were alone when I found you," Balthazar said. "The boy taken, but – and I have a sense for such things – I do not believe he is dead, though I have little doubt whoever left you here either believed that you were, or intended that you should be. It is fortunate – nay – fortuitous that I happened along when I did. One might believe fate lifted you and dropped you in my path."

  Mariah tried to sit up. She pressed her palms flat onto the blanket and pushed with what small strength had returned to her. She thought he might lean down and help her, take her arm or shoulder and lift, but he did not. The peculiar man of angles stood where he was and watched.

  Her first attempt failed. She barely got her shoulders off the ground before she fell back. The impact drove what little wind she had from her lungs, and she lay there, gasping, as he gazed down at her.

  "You will have to be stronger than that," he said. The tone of his voice was matter of fact, but as she lay helpless, gazing up into his eyes, she saw that it wasn’t just that the smile didn't reach his eyes, but rather that no emotion did. They were empty. His lips curled, broadening that dead smile. His eyes stared through her into the earth.

  She fastened onto his gaze and felt the ice shiver through her again. The cold flared where he had touched her forehead, and she concentrated on it. Mariah pressed her hands to the blanket again, closed her eyes, and pushed herself upright. She struggled, nearly fell a second time, and then with a grunt of pain, sat up straight.

  The minute she was upright, he knelt at her side once more, suddenly solicitous. He braced her back with his arm and handed her the water again.

  "Drink slowly," he said. "If you swallow too quickly your stomach will convulse and you will choke again. There is time. There is always time."

  She heard his words, and forced herself to drink slowly, needing all of her strength and concentration to remain upright. She didn't know why it seemed important. In the back of her mind, his voice echoed.

  He'd said, "You'll have to be stronger than that."

  Mariah handed the tin cup back to him, turned her face up to meet his gaze once again, and asked, "Why?"

  She thought she might catch him off guard. She thought he'd ask her what she meant, but he held her gaze, and that false smile of his widened. A flicker of something crossed behind the black pupils of his eyes.

  "You'll need to be strong," he said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, "because there is work to do and there are truths to be told. I have not been entirely honest with you, young Mariah. While I have suggested it was fortune and chance that brought me to you, I have, ah, obfuscated. That is to say -- I lied. I knew you would be here. How could I know, you might ask? I'll save you the breath of asking. I called you here."

  That he knew her name didn’t surprise her. "My baby…" She said. She needed to ask if he'd known about her child, to know if his calling had been the reason for her early labor. And then another thought wriggled into her mind – did he know what had happened to the others from the camp? Did he know why they hadn't followed her?

  "Your child's fate was sealed before I called," he said. "That is not on my hands, but those of another. Believe me; I would have called you with child, or without. I need you – have needed you for a long time. As I have said, there is work to be done. It was my work, but now…now I think it will be our work. That is to say it will be personal, and that will make it all the sweeter."

  He did not say to her that he was sorry or offer his regrets or condolences. "What work?" She nearly toppled from the effort of raising her voice. "What work?" she said again. "I have lost my child. I have lost all of those who care whether I live, or die."

  "All is rather absolute, don’t you think? All suggests none are left that might care a jot or even an iota. Now I might take that personally, Mariah," he said. "I believe I've just brought you back from the very brink of that dark place – more than a few would consider that to be an act of caring."

  "You don't care." She said. It came out like a rasp, but she couldn't help herself. Anger boiled up inside her and she couldn't repress it. "You don't care if I live or die. You didn't care about my child. You tell me what you want. Tell me where my baby boy is. If you care, tell me that."

  The smile that was not a smile left his face, but his voice remained calm and his tone even.

  "In good time, I will tell you," he said. "Not because you demand it, so we are clear, but because it serves my purpose. That is to say I will share these things with you because you will serve my purpose. It is all a circle you see…life, death…all a grand pattern. A wheel through time. A cycle. What begins ends, what ends, well; let us just say that what ends almost never does, that such decisions of absolutes are arbitrary. Does the summer end at an appointed hour or merely fade into winter only to begin again? Do you think you can tell the moment when summer is past? The precise second? Is there even such a thing? We are privileged to observe, but rarely get the opportunity to make a real difference. We do not bring the scythe down on summer. For you, that's about to change. Welcome to the game."

  Her anger dropped to a dull throb. She found that it gave her strength, though she was far from well.

  "Is there food?" she asked.

  "There is," he said. "I was about to break my morning bread. I wasn't sure you'd awaken in time, but here you are. Shall we eat then?" He inclined his head, as though by agreeing to breakfast together made her complicit to whatever ritual he was about.

  Balthazar made several trips to and from the rear of his wagon. Mariah sat and watched him furtively from out of the corner of her eye. She was starving, but she didn't want to show weakness. She had no desire to see that empty, icy smile shift in her direction, wrapping more threads of debt and guilt around her.

  Her memory continued clear. She remembered wind. She remembered a tall man in a dark suit – a different man, not Samuel Balthazar. She remembered his voice, and the crying of a baby. She remembered
the jolting, rocking motion of a wagon and the death-cold bed of stone. She locked onto the memory of that one, mournful cry. She fed her anger to that memory, trying to rebuild the face of the man who'd taken her child – the man who'd left her for dead. When Balthazar laid his hand on her shoulder and shook gently, she started violently and nearly toppled over again in shock.

  "If you are going to share this bacon," he said, his voice surprisingly soft, "you are going to have to join me on this plane. Those others," he waved his hand dismissively, "those voices and faces in your head, they'll be there whenever you feel the need to return for them. The eggs and bacon, fresh biscuits, and coffee will not."

  He gripped her by her arm, fingers digging in. It was sudden, and she had no time to think. He lifted, and she rose. Her legs felt soft – it was as though she had no bones. She ached, and the pain helped her focus. Balthazar helped her balance.

  "Allow me?" he said, though it was anything but a question.

  She didn't answer, he was already moving. He led her to a folding wooden chair beside the fire. Another chair sat across a wooden crate set out at as table. None of it seemed real. The fire had burned down low, but on the makeshift table two tin plates were heaped with hot food. Flames snapped and crackled. The moment the scent of the food reached her, her mouth watered. Hunger hit her so hard and so fast she swooned into the chair. She tried to reach for the biscuit, but too soon. Vertigo rose through her and toppled her sideways. Only Balthazar prevented her pitching face first into the fire.

  "Slowly," he said again. "The food will be here as long as you need it, and there is more. You have to have the patience to build your strength. Anger will carry you – but only so far. That is to say, anger is best saved for the moments of greatest need. I assure you, they will come, and your anger will be glorious but for now…" he nodded at the food.