Hallowed Ground

by David Niall Wilson

  She lashed back and forth in his iron grip but there was no escape. He pulled the branding iron away and tossed it toward the fire, but she was in no state to care. Every nerve in her body screamed in pain, white-hot light flashed behind her eyes. He leaned in close and began to speak into her ear. At first she couldn't understand him - it was a babble of shapeless words and formless sound - and then something changed. She fell silent, stopped struggling, and opened her eyes.

  Balthazar stepped back and smiled. There was no pain, but burned into the flesh of her forearm was a strange symbol. It looked like three circles, forming a triangle. Each of them had a trailing tail, making it look as if the entire thing was almost circular. She turned her gaze to his, eyes wide.

  "When your enemies are near," he said, "you'll know because it will burn. When I am near? It will grow very cold. This, of all the things I have given you, is the most precious gift. When the heat flares in your arm, do not think. It means you are in danger, and you must act. It will save your life."

  He stepped closer, and she hissed. It felt as though she'd plunged her arm into icy water. He stepped away again. "Now you will recognize me. It's time to eat, have some coffee, and rest. There will be work for you soon enough."

  She started to speak, but again he held up his hand to silence her. This time he cocked his head, as though listening to some far away sound. He stood like that for a long moment, and then he smiled.

  "It seems," he said, "that you may be tested sooner than I thought." He licked his lips, as though savoring the thought. "Something unexpected has begun. Eat. We will travel by night."

  With that, he turned and left her. Mariah brushed her fingers across the puckered skin scarred by the brand. There was no pain, but it was deep. The scent of roasting meat reached her, and she was wracked by sudden hunger pangs.

  She rose, took her plate, and moved to the fire.

  Far away, a wolf howled. She stood still, listened.

  There was a reckoning at hand.

  She just needed to be certain she understood the stakes, and that when the time came she was strong enough for the payoff.

  She ate furiously, shoveling the food into her as though it was her last supper.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  As the sun set over Rookwood, the last of the wagons and horses slowly moved out of town. Brady stood in the center of the street, staring after them. His own horse was saddled and ready. He wasn’t a religious man, far from it. What he was, was a careful man – and he took his job seriously. After the night he’d lived through he wasn’t about to take any chances.

  Every man jack and swaddled babe in a ten mile radius of town was headed for the Deacon’s camp. There was no way in hell he could’ve protected them all, not the stragglers and the keen who raced ahead, so he’d deputized half a dozen men he grudgingly trusted and sent them around to fetch the reluctant and downright lazy. No one was to be left behind.

  For the most part it was easy enough. No one wanted to miss the festivities. Nothing this close to exciting had happened around Rookwood in years, the place was buzzing with talk of last night’s gunplay and the coming revival. Suddenly there was life in Rookwood, and like everything else in this place it had a name, and its name was Danger. Something, some sixth sense, set Brady’s skin to crawling. He walked with his hand never more than a few inches from the trigger, alert to the point of edginess.

  As it was, they flocked together as they headed out of town, like crows, he thought as he stood watching them. He didn’t move on until he was sure he’d seen the last of them go. If the crow men chose to come back today they’d find nothing but dust.

  Creed had lit out at the crack of dawn and not returned. Brady hadn’t exactly been sorry to see him go. The way he saw it, whatever was going on with those strangers Creed was slap bang in the middle of it. It wasn’t about Rookwood, it was all about Provender Creed. So, with Creed gone he could concentrate on getting the rest of the town out to the revival tents and back safely.

  Behind him a door slammed. He turned. Silas latched the tavern door with exaggerated care. When the barman was done, he looped the key around his neck on a long leather thong and started up the street toward Brady.

  "Reckon we’d better get on with it," Brady said. "The last of ‘em headed out a few minutes back. We can catch up to them, watch the rear. I got deputies all along the trail from here to the Deacon’s camp. Don’t know how much good they’ll do if those…strangers…return. Anything else, though, we should be able to handle."

  Silas grunted and slid his shotgun into the sheath beside his saddle. The two men mounted up, and turned toward the edge of town. Behind them, the town lay empty and gray. Every light had been snuffed out. No one wanted to come home to a fire. Brady glanced back, and couldn’t suppress the cold shiver that slid down his spine. Rookwood looked like a ghost town.

  He turned toward the road and jabbed his spurs into his horse’s flanks. Silas followed a moment later, and they galloped off after the last of the good citizens of Rookwood.

  ‡‡‡

  The Deacon stood at the edge of his camp and greeted each and every man, woman and child who entered, taking the time to grip arms, smile, offer reassurance and welcome. He very deliberately positioned himself several yards inside the circle bisecting the incense bowls. The main tent was lit up brightly. The canvas pulled on its guide ropes, loose ends flapping in the wind. Music played. It wasn’t happy, it wasn’t sad, but there was something off about it and not merely that it was out of tune. When the first wagon had rolled in, the Deacon recognized McGraw, the piano player from the saloon, and had him escorted to his own keyboard, an ancient, upright console that hadn’t carried a tune for several months. With no one to play it, the Deacon had let it run to wrack and ruin, but listening to McGraw hammer away at the keys it was like the old soundboard had never been silenced. The eight-fingered piano player had an oddly full repertoire of hymns and spirituals. The music hung in the heavy air like shards of broken glass.

  Somehow the missing digits on the musician’s hands fit the old piano, and the camp, in a way they’d never been able to merge with the saloon. McGraw played with his eyes closed, lost in the music. Several of The Deacon’s people gathered round and raised their voices, filling in the missing notes so that piano and vocals came together in what could only be called joyous noise.

  Finally, the Sheriff and the barman rode in. The Deacon held out his hand, but neither man made a move to take it. He made no sign they’d ruffled him. He simply nodded, and they followed the rest of the citizens of Rookwood toward the main tent, dismounting and tying off their horses in silence.

  When they were safely inside, the Deacon nodded toward the shadows. Sanchez and the boy rose and took off at a trot. Sanchez carried a small torch. The Deacon’s instructions had been clear. No more than fifteen minutes to make the circuit of the camp and light the braziers. They were to be careful to remain on the near side of the four bowls – the camp side. When they were done, they were to wait for him near his tent. Near Colleen and the child. The Deacon wasn’t certain what would come of the next few hours, but he knew that once the wards were posted and the circle was sealed, he wanted anyone he might call an ally on the inside.

  When everyone had made their way into the main tent, The Deacon slowly followed suit. He didn’t enter by the main door, but circled toward the rear. He passed Longman’s trailer, and stopped, just for a moment, to peruse the latest design.

  It was a skeleton, advancing on some unseen foe. The beautifully rendered bony hands gripped a scythe tightly, brandishing it into the unknown. At the creature’s feet, decapitated heads glared up. All of their eyes watched The Deacon as if alive and daring him to proceed. In their midst, however, a sapling sprouted. On that small, struggling branch a single leaf budded.

  In the Tarot, he knew Death did not necessarily mean death, not in the same way as it did in life. It meant the end of one thing, the beginning of something new. It was a ca
rd of new beginnings and shifting power. He walked on from the wagon, rounded the main tent and slipped between two flaps of canvas into the rear of the services, which were already in full swing.

  Cyrus was speaking, faithful, dependable Cyrus. He was a man of few words, and most of those he knew were culled from The Bible. He read with passion and in the dim, candle-lit tent his oddly deformed features only served to enhance the already deep tones of his voice. He read from Psalms, and then he led those gathered into song.

  The Deacon pulled his watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and nodded. There had been sufficient time for the braziers to be lit. The circle should be solid. It was time. There was no turning back. Along the back of the tent, the sisters had set up a rickety table. On that table a kettle rested. It was large and cast in iron. The Deacon had mixed the refreshments himself. Soon he would call for them to drink – to toast their lord – to wash away their sins.

  He closed his eyes and saw the flash of serpentine coils. He heard the deep, insistent rattle of warning. He shivered, just for a second. The pouch throbbed against his chest. The Deacon smiled. He heard the last strains of The Old Rugged Cross rolling across the tent…and he stepped from the shadows, raising his arms on high.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Off beyond the outskirts of town, in the direction of Deadman's Gulch, Provender Creed stood beside his horse. The beast was skittish. It dug at the dusty earth with its hoof, tossed back its head and snorted. Creed rested a steadying hand on the animal’s neck, and then tangled his fingers in its mane. "Gentle, girl, gentle," he soothed, whispering to the horse until it settled some.

  Creed shielded his eyes against the glare of the bright, nearly full moon, and watched as the camp gradually filled. The big tent where they'd held Ma Kutter’s funeral was lit within by kerosene lamps and candles. Voices rose in song; only the vaguest hint of the melody reached him. Creed frowned when he realized he was humming along.

  He didn't know what he'd expected to find. He didn’t even know what he should be looking for. Since the first night the damned crows had flooded Rookwood, things had slipped a little further south each passing minute.

  He thought about the woman. He’d never found a trace of her, and the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. No two ways of looking at it, that was strange. The Deacon’s men had rolled her out of that camp in a flat wagon. There should have been sign of where they dropped her, even if they took the time to dig a shallow grave and shovel some dirt over her bones. Buzzards should have circled. There should have been flies, and stink.

  Creed had seen death more times than any good man should have, and despite checking everything for a good ten mile radius around the camp, the woman was nowhere to be found. It didn’t make a lick of sense. It wasn’t as though she could have gotten up and walked out of there herself. He couldn’t shake the damned image of her pale face, nor the way the Deacon had dragged the child from her. It was seared onto his soul. A whole lot of things didn’t make any sense, and they were worming away under his skin.

  He tied his horse to a small tree with a break-away knot and slipped closer. He moved low and fast, constantly alert, checking over his shoulder, to the left, and to the right. He didn’t want to risk being spotted from the camp, but he wanted a good view of what was happening. He’d seen Brady coming in at the last, and suddenly the distance between himself and the Deacon’s big tent seemed a lot farther than it had by the light of day. The strange scent of incense carried to him on the breeze. Even as thin as it was the aroma was intoxicating. He shook his head and tried to clear the slight fog it caused, but it didn’t make a lick of difference.

  He kept to the shadows and moved quickly toward the perimeter, scuffing his feet as he ran. He slowed up, dropped to a crouch, and scanned the camp. The Deacon’s odd little crew came and went about their business. None of them looked his way. They were all, every last one of them, wrong in some way, damaged, broken. Had the Deacon gathered them to him out of the goodness of his heart or did he simply attract misfits and freaks? Creed licked his dry lips. There wasn’t an ounce of moisture in his mouth. He looked up at the sky and the rising moon, and then started running again.

  Twenty feet closer to the camp he slowed again, and as he lifted his foot to cross a fallen log, a searing pain tore through his chest, cold and so sharp it bit like fire. He gasped in pain and stumbled back. Creed clutched at his chest with his hands. It took him a moment to realize it was the locket, and that as he backed away from the log, the pain ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

  Creed stood hunched over in the shadows, hands on knees, gasping for breath. Wincing, he straightened up. He clutched the locket through his shirt and felt the smooth curve of it in the palm of his hand. There was no hint of cold, no trace of pain. Very slowly, he moved toward the log again. Tentatively, he reached out, holding his hand above it. He felt the locket grow suddenly icy. He backed away.

  "What in the Sam Hill . .?"

  He took the chain and tried to lift the locket over his head. It slipped through his fingers before he could work it up over his chin, and it fell back beneath his shirt collar. He grabbed it again, and again, but each time it slipped through his fingers, or tangled in them, and somehow ended up settling against his skin as though it had taken root and become a part of him.

  Creed turned to the camp again. The music had shifted. He heard a deep, baritone filling the night with the strains of "The Old Rugged Cross." He edged closer until he was just short of the log, and hunkered down to watch. He didn’t know what the locket was warning him against, but he knew, on some deep, primal level, that it was a warning. There was no doubt in his mind. There had been no malice in the pain. He would have felt it. It had subsided the moment he stepped away from the camp, its purpose served.

  Provender Creed licked his lips.

  His skin prickled. He looked back over his shoulder, expecting to see a dark winged shadow there. He was alone. It didn’t matter. Suddenly the incense, the crow men and everything else that had happened over the last few days took on darker and more sinister overtones. He glanced up into the trees, but there was no sign of birds. He swept his gaze along the perimeter of the camp, but nothing moved. Every living thing for miles was inside that tent – except for a lone cowboy named Provender Creed.

  He shivered. Days ago he would have said it meant someone had walked over his grave. Here, now, he was sure of it.

  In the camp, the last strains of "The Old Rugged Cross" faded away. For a long moment, the silence was broken only by the canvas flapping in the breeze. He watched the dancing shadows playing across the backlit surface of the tent, straining to see if he could make anything out of them. He thought he could see where the altar stood, and where pews stretched to the right and left but beyond that it was impossible.

  A tall dark blotch moved toward the center of the tent, the shadow image of The Deacon, hands upraised to the heavens in a sustained supplication. Creed knew it was the man’s shadow from the way he moved. It was something Creed noticed. The way a man carried himself was the kind of thing he tucked away without thinking about it. If you studied how a man walked, it could tell you a lot about him, enough to keep you alive if it came right down to it and Creed had a knack for surviving. The Deacon moved like a man so sure of himself he’d walk into the pits of Hell and have the balls to tell the Devil to turn down the heat. The thing about men like that, men so blinkered by their own holy importance, was that more often than not they underestimated their enemies.

  A few minutes after stepping to the center of the tent, the Deacon raised his voice, coming close to reaching the volume of the entire gathering when they belted out their hymns.

  Creed listened, for what good it did. The words made no sense. He’d attended church services as a boy, and before the old preacher had died, he’d stopped in from time to time to pay his respects to him and Him up there. He wasn’t exactly God-fearing, but he was hardly a stranger to the Word. What he heard
now sounded almost like it could have been from the Old Testament, the thunder and lightning vengeful God stuff, it was damned loud, for sure. He listened as the strange words rose. He felt them deep in his bones, resonating with his meat and the belly of the earth beneath his feet. He felt an icy tingle from the locket.

  "Michael, Sword of the Maker, Wrathful Warrior, Archangel, defend us in this our battle. Be our shield against the wicked snares of Satan and his cursed minions. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And you, Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell the Fallen Son of Light and the other evil spirits who prowl the world for the ruin of souls. Protect those who need you more now than ever. Be our armor and our sword. Amen."

  There was a momentary silence, and Creed saw that The Deacon, who’d been facing down the centre aisle, away from the altar, east, turned. It was impossible to read from his shadow whether he faced north or south.

  "Uriel, Guardian of the Garden, Watcher in the Wilderness, Archangel, carry our praise of Glory to God in the Highest High. Praise him for his deeds, for everything that is good and wonderful. Holy Archangel Uriel, protect and look after the rains and the rivers and deliver us from the mighty rush of floods. Give us of your water to drink, for life springs up from it and so long we sup at it we are eternal, and as you bless us we have no fear."

  Again, The Deacon turned.

  "Archangel Raphael heal and align my body, mind and soul, I beseech thee. Make my flesh a vehicle for the healing of others. Channel thy gift through my bones that I might reach out and raise them all, the sick and weary, the wounded and the dead. Grant me focus and give me the strength of Creation. Help me to dedicate myself to the path of ascension for Earth and self. Help me to pierce the heart of the world and draw forth that vital spirit that is needed to heal separation and fear."