"When you are well again we’ll have our picnic. I won’t need it before then, and it will give you something to look forward to. Until then, let it be a reminder of me."
She set the pack in her lap and loosened the leather ties binding the flap. When Benjamin had left it in her room there had been a bottle of dark red wine, a tablecloth he’d intended to spread over the grass, a book of poetry he’d bought from a man who’d come in from the east, all tucked away inside. They had shared the poetry, a verse at a time. After each new verse, he tucked the book back inside the pack with the promise that the next one was for the future.
She rifled through the pack. There was no bottle now. She pulled out a blue silk dress, a gasp of recognition slipping past her lips. It was the dress she’d worn the night he proposed. It slipped through her fingers. Something dropped to the floor, hitting the wood with a clink of metal.
She saw the locket on the floor and tears streamed from her eyes. They ran down her cheeks, wetting the cotton gown she wore. It was white, like the lilies. She pulled at it with her fingers. She knew what it was, there was only one thing it could be given the coffin and the altar and the offerings: a shroud.
There was a book in the pack, and she lifted it out, expecting the volume of poetry. It wasn’t, but she knew it well enough. It was her journal, bound with a ribbon. The end was frayed from all the times she’d teased it open and tied it closed. She started to unfasten the knot, and then thought better of it. She tucked it back into the pack, rolled the dress around the locket, and stuffed it all back inside. She tied the flap, shouldered the pack and rose.
As she did, the church door opened, and a man stepped through. At first he didn’t notice her. It was obvious he expected to be alone. He was humming a mournful little tune. He wore a dark suit and a tall hat, and his name came to Mariah’s lips unbidden.
"Reverend Criscione?" she said softly.
He spun as if slapped across the back of the head and backed up against the door. His hands came up instinctively, as though to ward off more unseen blows. Mariah took a step toward him. She held out her hand, but stopped when she saw the white terror blazed onto his face.
"Father in Heaven," the preacher rambled, tripping over every syllable before he got it out of his mouth.
He crossed himself and reached behind his back for the door handle. He fumbled the latch, tried again, and then turned, slamming the flat of his hand against the wood in blind panic. He gripped the door and yanked it wide open. Daylight streamed into the chapel.
"Please," Mariah called after him. "Don’t leave me. I need help…"
But he wasn’t listening. There was no help to be had in this room, no salvation for her lost soul. Reverend Criscione disappeared into the light beyond the door, and Mariah didn’t know what else to do but follow. Her legs were weak. She stumbled twice before she reached the door and had to clutch it to stop herself from falling. She called out to him again, but her pleading fell away, unheard. As she stepped out of the church she saw his back disappearing down the main street into town.
"Reverend, wait!" she screamed. "It’s me. Don’t you recognize me? It’s Mariah…it’s," she frowned and shook her head. No, it wasn’t. "It’s Elizabeth – Elizabeth Tanner."
Her words echoed from the buildings, but no one heard because it seemed there was no one to hear. She started toward town, clutching the pack’s straps tightly. She had to find her father. He would know what to do. She had to make him see. It had all been a mistake, a horrible mistake. She had been ill – very ill – but she wasn’t dead. They’d got it wrong. She wasn’t dead.
Sunlight hurt her eyes. She walked with one hand up to shield them as she neared the edge of town. She had to squint to see more than blurred outlines and darker shadows. She heard voices. She sobbed with relief and stumbled forward. She thought she recognized the reverend, but it didn’t matter. Whoever it was, they would understand. They would help her. She had so many friends in the town; she had grown up here with them, they all knew her and loved her. Everyone did, and not only because of who her father was. If she could only find Benjamin, she could make it all right. They would find the wine, and the poetry book. They would go to the meadow and lie in the long grass and everything would be good. Everything would be as it was supposed to be.
"There she is!" a voice cried, cutting across the lie she was telling herself.
"Dear God!" another cried.
"It’s true!"
"She’s come back . . . from the dead," a fourth cut in. This voice sounded drunk – and frightened.
Reverend Criscione stepped forward. He held two silver candlesticks, one in each hand, and had them braced in the shape of the cross. His eyes blazed with righteous fury, and though he did not step forward between his two companions, his voice boomed out loud and strong.
"Get thee gone, foul creature of Satan! Return to the grave from whence you came!"
"Reverend?" Elizabeth said softly, confused.
He took a step forward and brandished his makeshift crucifix. "Begone, foul spirit! Leave us, or be destroyed!"
Elizabeth took a step back and the three advanced, gaining confidence as she faltered. She started to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Tears streamed from her eyes.
"She weeps like the virgin!" one of them cried.
"It’s a lie! A trick of Satan! Kill her!" another barked, and that sparked a roar of approval from the others.
He fumbled at his belt, and Elizabeth realized he was going for a weapon. She turned and ran, fleeing back toward the church. Sharp chips of stone dug into her bare feet, but she didn’t slow, and she didn't look back. She heard more voices now, others shouting to her pursuers. They fell away behind her, and she knew they were gathering.
She hesitated. If enough of them joined the group, she thought desperately, maybe someone would listen. Maybe someone could see the truth. She snorted bitterly. If the group laid hands on her she was as good as dead – again. They wouldn’t listen. They would be rabid, hungry for the kill. She laid her hand against her heart and felt it beating strongly. She was alive. She was no demon, no matter what they thought. She was the same girl she had always been. Surely she could make them see that?
These people had loved her . . .
She stopped running and turned. The mob slowed, coming cautiously toward her down the dusty street. Someone had brought out a torch despite the fact that it wasn’t dark – and she realized they meant to burn her. The flames flickered over his head, dancing in the breeze. They all spoke at once. Reverend Criscione called out to her, quoting lines of scripture. She had never found him particularly comforting, and now – with torch’s flame dancing off his sweat-coated face – he looked and sounded terrifying.
"Please!" she begged them to understand. "It’s me! I’m alive! I don’t know what’s happened, but you must believe me. Please! Find my father! Find Benjamin – they will tell you. They will show you. I…"
A stone whizzed through the air, landing a couple of feet from her. She followed its trajectory, shocked, watching it bounce away harmlessly. Another landed closer. The third wasn’t harmless; it struck her on the thigh.
She screamed in pain. A fourth stone flew straight at her face and she raised her arms to block it, turning her face.
"Do you think they’d be so quick to stone their risen Messiah?" Balthazar’s mirthless voice echoed inside her head. She spun around looking for him. He would help her. He would stop this! He wasn’t there.
The air exploded with sound. A screech of rage blasted the silence. A dark form dropped from the blazing sky like a black bolt of lightning. It struck the fourth stone from the air inches from Elizabeth’s face, and then soared upward with a powerful sweep of wings, screeching.
"A demon!" Reverend Criscione cried, pointing. "You saw it! A demon! She called a demon to protect her!"
"It looked like an owl to me…" another chimed in.
Elizabeth didn’t wait. She turned and fled. Blinded with tears s
he bit back on the pain and ran without a sound as the road tortured her feet. She ran as she’d never run in her life, back to the church, and beyond. She stumbled through the lichgate into the graveyard, running between the stones, and tripped, slamming her knee painfully into a gravestone. She lurched away from it and stopped dead in her tracks. Another step and she’d have tumbled into an open, empty grave. She didn’t need to look down. She knew what it was. She knew who it was for.
There was a wooden plank hammered into the earth to mark the plot. Scrawled across it in dingy whitewash barely visible in the sun, her name shimmered back at her. She sobbed and pushed herself away, moving through the graves more carefully. Behind her, she heard them coming, their voices drawing nearer. Without looking back, she ran on. Her breath came in deep, heaving gasps, but she didn’t stop. She knew there was a narrow path beyond the graveyard, and that it curled down the side of the hill to the gulch. She looked up. The sun was still high in the sky. Night was maybe an hour away. If she reached it there would be places to hide. They might not follow her across. Not in the dark. All she had to do was wait for the night.
She found the trail and started down. It was more overgrown than she remembered. She moved as quickly she could, wriggling between the trailing branches and trying not to cry out as limbs slapped at her and roots cut into her feet.
The voices seemed more distant now, disembodied, as though she were gaining ground. She forced herself on, stumbling down and down the narrow track.
Something cried out above her. She spun and stared up through the trees, trying to see what had made the sound, but could make out nothing through the thatch of branches overhead. As she turned back to the trail, the strap of Benjamin’s pack snagged on the stub of a branch. She tried to yank it free, but the branch refused to surrender its prize. She pulled hard again, so hard she lost her balance and started to fall. She waved her arms wildly, trying to find her balance, and the pack tore free. She stumbled back, almost made it upright, and then lost her footing completely and plunged over the edge of the gorge.
She heard the inhuman scream of a great bird, and her mind went blank.
On the cliff above, Reverend Criscione and the others watched as a great dark shape rose, silhouetted against the failing sun, and then – without warning – disappeared.
The ground beneath her back was cold and hard. Stones dug into her side. Her head spun. Somewhere inside she lost herself, who she was. Her eyes were gummed shut with the grit of dust and sleep. She rubbed at them with her knuckles and opened them.
She screamed.
A man stood over her, a strange man with coal black, furtive eyes that glared at her with such inhuman intensity it stole her breath and stilled her scream. His nose was oddly narrow, his eyes set close to the prominent ridge. A dark tangle of hair sprouted from his head in a wild tumble, glossy and blue-black. He wore a hat, and a long dark coat that fluttered up and created strange shadows around him. It wasn’t like any coat she’d ever seen.
Elizabeth tried to back away. The cotton gown hung off her in tatters. Somehow the ragged clothing made her feel more naked than if she'd been wearing nothing. She tried to wrap it around herself, but the man leaned down and, with one powerful yank, stripped the remnant from her body. It fell about her feet in tatters. He stared at her. His glare was hideous and uncomfortable but there was no lust in it. Still, she tried to cover herself.
That was when she noticed.
She didn’t understand. It was wrong.
Horrified, she looked down and instead of seeing her bruised and bloodied feet, saw her belly. It was round and full. She clutched at it, trying to make sense out of what she saw. Elizabeth shook her head, working up a scream, but the man leaned in, tangled his fingers in her hair, and shook his head. She stifled the cry. Her eyes swam with the madness that threatened to take her.
She's fallen. Surely it couldn't have been more than a few moments since then? She'd lost her grip, slipped and fallen from the narrow cliff edge into the gulch. Images and memories warred for control of her mind. Mariah and Elizabeth grasped the frayed ends of her memories, each trying to weave a different picture and both falling short of their shared reality. She heard trailing wisps of Balthazar’s insidious whisper echoing through her brain, and the visions he’d shown her complicated what her mind told her had to be true. She had been pregnant, and her child had been taken. She had been Elizabeth. Her name was Mariah.
She had fallen but she hadn’t struck the ground – she had been snatched out of the air and borne up by something huge, and dark. She was pregnant. Her name was Elizabeth, and she had been dead. When Balthazar found her she’d been on that doorstep a second time. Was she alive at all? Was this hell?
She sat up, groaned at the sudden pressure this put on her swollen belly, and tried to rise. She didn't have the strength. She ached all over. A sharp pain on her forearm caught her attention. She glanced over and saw long, deep welts scored into her soft flesh, as though she'd been gripped too tightly in gigantic hands. Or talons? A wave of dizziness swept over her. She saw the ground falling away with sickening speed, felt the darkness swallow her and the wind suddenly lash against her face. Whatever had taken her had gripped her arms and its grip had not been gentle.
The flap of the tent opened and a second man entered. He was so absolutely physically identical to the first that she had to blink and shake her head to be sure she wasn't seeing double. The newcomer threw something at her and she raised her hands to catch it. She realized her mistake, and lowered them in confused misery. What struck her was a rolled bundle. The double men turned and left the tent. The flap dropped closed behind them. Elizabeth glanced down at what she held.
Draped across her impossibly swollen belly were pants and a threadbare shirt. She sat up quickly. Her head swum alarmingly as she fumbled with the roll of clothes. She struggled into them. The shirt was several sizes too large, but given the sudden swelling of her belly that was a good thing. She buttoned it quickly and squirmed on her backside, wriggling into the unfamiliar pants. Ladies did not wear pants, but she didn’t hesitate.
She had trouble finding a place for them to ride her hips that wouldn’t cause undue pressure. She reached for Benjamin’s pack and pulled it closer. Even the buttons on the pants seemed beyond her. She couldn’t think, or concentrate.
None of it was possible. She couldn’t button her pants because the pants and the tent could not exist. She was not pregnant. She believed she might be dead. She believed she might have fallen from the cliff, broken something that could not be repaired, and ended up lying in a heap at the bottom of the gorge spending her last moments of life trapped in a nightmare.
The tent she did not believe. The men with faces like predatory birds were not possible. The only thing that she could see that made any sense was the pack – but even that took her back to the events leading up to her fall. She’d woken up in a casket. She’d been stoned by the minister who had baptized her as a child.
She managed to fasten the pants and felt slightly better. She rolled to her knees, rested for a moment, and then brought one leg up. In a moment she had both feet beneath her. She stood on weak and trembling legs.
Beyond the tent, she heard the crackling of a small fire. She stumbled toward the sound. She reached out to pull back the tent flap, but before she touched it, she glanced back at the pack lying on the ground. She felt as though she should pick it up – that it was important to keep it with her. She half-turned, taking the first step to go back for it, but a sudden sharp twinge in her belly – the baby kicking? – stopped her. Wincing, she pulled back the tent flap and stepped into the clearing.
She didn’t find a campfire. The dark men in their eerie coats and peculiar hats were nowhere to be seen. Four feet from the front of the tent where she stood, a pillar of flame poured into the air. The flame had a soft phosphorescent glow; the light radiating from the heart of it was almost subdued. It pulsed and writhed in a harlot’s dance. She thought, more t
han once, that she saw a face pass over the surface, or hands clutch at the edges of the flame and then, as quickly as they surfaced, they were gone.
Elizabeth stepped out from the safety of the tent. Only a single step forward at first. But then she took another, and then another. As she walked, she felt her weight shifting, and suddenly there was an imbalance caused by her compensating for her pregnant belly that Elizabeth didn’t understand. She laid her hands on her stomach, panic flaring in her mind. All she could think was that something was wrong. Her belly was flat and smooth. Her baby was gone. Her hands were thin to the point of emaciation. The bones stuck out against sallow skin. She stumbled forward one more step, coming closer to the flickering flames. She felt the heat on her skin. She heard voices. They were screaming and crying out but she couldn’t understand them. She reached out a tentative hand, expecting the flame to burn. She wanted desperately to touch it, to purge herself.
A hand clawed out from the fire, raking the air. Before she could pull away strong fingers wrapped around her wrist and heaved her off her feet. She fell forward, screaming, face first into the flames. She felt her skin sear, shrivel and crack, and the liquid in her eyes and mouth boil, then parch as all the moisture was burned out of her. Her skin flaked and charred – and then the overwhelming agony, the screaming, the fire beneath her skin, was gone.
She blinked; tears stung her eyes. She sat in the chair beside the low softly crackling fire. The storm still raged in the distance, forks of lightning flashing across the sky. She trembled violently.
"Ah, I see you have returned to me," Balthazar said. He sounded almost amused. He rose, and reached for her hand. "Come," he said. "We have work to do."
She stood shakily, unable to pull her gaze from the dancing flames.
Hallowed Ground Page 13
