The Miracle Stealer

by Neil Connelly

  Remembering all that happened with Cabin Five and my dad brought an idea to my mind: If Volpe and the Abernathys and the Wheelers didn’t have a building, they couldn’t have their prayer service. And if they didn’t have that prayer service, Daniel might stay safe. Listening to the darkness of the woods, it occurred to me that for my brother’s sake, I might have to burn down the only church in Paradise.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I woke early in the morning to birdsong and a stiff and achy back, the price you pay, I guess, for a night in an Adirondack chair. Gradually light came into the world, first as a glow crowning the mountains across the lake, then as beams splitting through the woods around me. I watched the show, in no particular rush to get moving with my plans for the day. Of course I knew arson was a crime, and the fact that my potential target was a holy building occupied by the spirit of God likely qualified it as an unpardonable sin. But wouldn’t it be worse to let Daniel get hurt? Since my father left, I hadn’t prayed—not once—but it crossed my mind to ask for divine guidance. But I doubted that Jesus would give an approving nod to a pyromaniac, no matter how noble my intention. All night long, I’d tried to think of different options, but nothing had occurred to me. So, with no other choices and with the sun high enough to light the forest floor, I started my Sunday, thinking maybe I’d save my brother with spite and with fire.

  Inside the house, I heard my mother in the kitchen, probably getting things ready for their trip to the Abernathys. Some part of me secretly wanted to be going with them again, and not just to go and visit the baby, but next week, even to the UCP. I missed the easy comfort of believing that everything happens for a reason. Blind faith removes the hard choices of your life. I decided to not even go inside and say good morning. When they couldn’t find me, they’d assume I was out jogging.

  I headed for the shed. Inside, the dim lightbulb seemed about to go dead, so it was hard to see except for the hazy morning glow forcing its way through a grimy window. Dust floated in the air, and I picked my way around the riding mower and a green bicycle with a busted front wheel. I fished through one of my dad’s old cigar boxes, shoving aside spare keys and odd batteries until my fingers found a book of matches. Just to be sure, I struck one and it flared instantly. I also cracked open Dad’s toolbox and took hold of the familiar red pocketknife. Over the years since he left, I’d used it on plenty of chores, but I always replaced it. I never carried it around like it was mine.

  Five minutes later I was in the kayak, shoving off from the dock and paddling south on smooth water.

  Like most days at that point, there was hardly anybody on the lake. Over on the west side, a couple kids were splashing in inner tubes just off their dock. Behind me to the north, up close to Roosevelt Park, the sharp white triangle of a single sailboat cruised along.

  When I paddled past Cedars Marina, there was no sign that anyone was awake yet. I wondered if Jeff was lying on that bumpy bed, maybe thinking of me. I stayed near the shoreline till McGinley’s Cove, where I veered out into the open water. As I passed the mouth of the horseshoe-shaped cove, I glanced in at the sheer rock face of the cliff. From the surely haunted cave along the base to the Lookout above was a two-hundred-foot drop. Rocks in the water made the cove impossible to boat in, and the stony shoreline offered no beach. Supposedly, this was where the bodies of Irene McGinley’s boys were found after they drowned, so even before Michelle Kirkpatrick drove her car off the edge on prom night, most people avoided the place. As kids, Jeff and I had climbed down there more than a few times, picked our way along the jagged rocks, dared each other to go deeper and deeper into that cave.

  On the lake, I tried to forget about where I was and where I was going. Instead I concentrated on the rowing, the reach-dig-pull of the paddles’ rhythm, which fell as it always did into a cadence like running. But every so often, my cheeks would warm with heat and I’d imagine the UCP engulfed in a pillar of flame. The wrath of Anderson Grant.

  Ten minutes farther south, I rounded a bend and came into view of the corpse of Action Water Thrill Ride City. Mayor Wheeler announced that dumb name after he convinced the city council to give the land to an amusement park company in hopes of luring tourists. This was just after the new highway aimed them all away from us. Eighteen months later the park opened up with a day of free admission to everyone in Paradise, and of course my parents brought me and Daniel, then just a toddler. Gayle went all out and ran a full front-page story in the Gazetteer, complete with an aerial photograph. In the back, skirting the forest’s edge, the photo showed the asphalt loop of Thunder Road, where you could race a whining car in circles, and the Around the World in 18 Holes miniature golf course. Along the lake was a basketball court–size sandbox that led up to the kiddie pool. Behind it were three huge slides (painted red, white, and blue—honest) that sloped down into the giant wave pool. But the main attraction, the hallmark ride that was supposed to bring them in from other states and other time zones and make us some kind of international tourist destination, rose from the center of the park: the Twin Terrors, a pair of hundred-foot, tubular green slides that curled in to each other. The day the park opened, everything was shiny and new, and Mayor Wheeler cut the ceremonial ribbon and announced, “Paradise is on the rise!” And we all believed him.

  But just five years later, by the time I was paddling past in the kayak, the park was long-since dead, ravaged by the same ice storm that my dad drove off into, the one that freed Samson and did in the Black Hole Bridge. Through the cyclone fence, I saw that crabgrass and weeds had claimed the sandbox, the big blue slide leaned precariously, and the red and white ones had collapsed, leaving forty-foot stairways that led nowhere. Somehow both Twin Terrors survived, but now there was so much mold and mossy growth along the sides of the green tubes that they resembled monstrous filthy snakes emerging from the earth. On the concrete wall of the Snax Stand, somebody had spray painted what all of us had thought at one point or another: THIS IS PARADISE?

  After I passed the park, I could see the dam in the distance, but there was nothing else to distract me. I found myself thinking more about that book of matches in my pocket.

  The UCP was built in a clearing that faces the lake, complete with a rolling grassy hill that leads right down to the water’s edge. But since I didn’t want to be discovered, I started steering the kayak toward land well before I reached holy ground. I found a place a hundred yards north where some branches draping the shoreline would provide enough cover. After I drove the kayak’s tip onto the rocky bank, I scanned for witnesses. Once I was sure no one was around, I grounded the kayak and started into the woods.

  After I hiked up the incline for a few minutes, the white cross atop the steeple became clear through the trees. Next I saw the slate roof, and beneath it the white wooden walls with their slim, stained glass windows. The grass parking lot, which would fill later with cars for the three o’clock service, was empty.

  I knew the big wooden doors out front would be locked, and even trying them would put me in plain sight of anyone passing by on the lake. So I broke from the woods back behind the building, shimmied an oil drum used for burning leaves up to the bathroom window, flipped it over, and then climbed up. Unfolding the blade of my father’s pocketknife, I pried the lock and broke into the house of God.

  I squeezed through the window and had to put my hands on the floor, which was gross. As I stood and turned toward the door, somebody else moved in the shadows. I flinched, and the figure in the shadows flinched too. I stared into my shady reflection in the mirror above the sink and shook my head. I washed my hands and headed for the door.

  In the dark hallway, I inched along the wall with one arm out in front of me like a blind man. In the years since I’d been inside the UCP, I’d forgotten that peaceful smell—the pleasant blend of candles, mothballs, and incense. Once I reached the sacristy, dull light leaked beneath a doorway, and I shuffled toward it. And when I pushed through the door and stepped out behind the altar, the main room
seemed huge, like a cavern. Early morning sunlight slanted through the stained glass, bathing the pews in purple and yellow and red. Dust hovered in the tinted brightness.

  I found myself drawn to the lectern, where as a child I used to stand on a metal milk crate so I could read from the Bible. I remembered my mother helping me learn how to pronounce “abominable” by drawing a picture of a bull with a stick of dynamite inside it. Usually children read only at Christmas or Easter, but I was kind of a special case. Who knows why, but people said I had a calling to serve the Lord. Don’t laugh. There was a time when the idea didn’t seem so crazy.

  Alone in the church, I wrapped my fingers around the worn wooden edges of the lectern and looked out over the empty pews, but I saw them standing there, all the citizens of Paradise. Mayor Wheeler and his wife in the front, my mother and Daniel right behind them. My father. The McDormits and the twin Cullen sisters. Jeff Cedars and his family. The MacKenns. The Zanines. Lute Moody. And if all of them were really there, right then in that moment, what sermon would I have preached to them, with hate in my heart and those matches in my pocket?

  I stepped away from the lectern and went down to the pew my family always occupied. Leo told me that faith is about believing when you have no reason to believe, but looking back at all of it, I don’t blame myself for deciding that I was wasting my time. The truth is that my faith left town with my father. After he drove off, I vowed I’d never pray again. Even if there was a God, He was no friend of mine.

  Of course, feeling this way was one thing; lighting a church on fire was another. Something was holding me back, maybe doubt in my plan, maybe a lingering flicker of faith. But I took a deep breath and decided that it had to be done. The only question was how. I looked around and figured my best bet would be to gather up all the hymnals and make a pile up on the wooden altar. Thinking of that image, an altar I once considered holy aflame, it just seemed wrong. So instead of collecting all the songbooks, I sat there in silent reflection, and it’s true, I felt tempted again to pray for guidance.

  When I first heard the whiny rattling sound outside, I took it for a motorboat out on the water. But then it got louder, and I wondered if somebody wasn’t trolling the woods on a four-wheeler. I walked toward the front doors, thinking to peer out on the grass field stretching to the lake. Before I could, though, a huge shape cruised by the side of the church. Its shadow through the stained glass windows made me think of a whale. Whatever it was swung around to the front door and the motor cut off. Immediately I heard voices. I dropped down and slipped beneath a pew, belly to the carpeted floor.

  A key worked in the front double doors and then one swung open, allowing the morning light to fall upon the floor. Two sets of shoes came in: one comfortable sneakers, the others heavy boots, the kind you might see on a serious hiker. They passed by me and stopped a few pews up. Sylvia Volpe’s voice said, “Welcome to our little church.” By its location, I knew she was the sneakers.

  “Every church is the size it should be,” the boots said. His voice was deep and rich, calm too.

  “It’s not too small?” Volpe asked.

  “If people fill the pews, we’ll open those doors. They can stand on the grass.”

  “Of course,” Volpe said. She was clearly delighted. “I think I can rent a tent over in Hawley.”

  “No need,” the boots said. “I have one in the back of the bus somewhere.”

  Now the sound of the motor was familiar and the whale shape made sense.

  “It’s old but it’ll keep the rain off peoples’ heads if need be. I’ve had it forever. Used to use it all the time back in my more active days.”

  There was an awkward silence, one even Volpe seemed to recognize. She cleared her throat. “You know,” she said, “I saw you years ago. I was just a teenager.”

  “Really?” the boots said. “I’ll be.”

  “Outside of Cleveland, a muddy hillside. You preached on the Beatitudes.”

  Boots laughed. “I remember that hill, but not the sermon. Guess I’m getting old.”

  They were quiet again for a few moments.

  “It was kind of you to invite me here, Sylvia, truly. I really don’t travel much at all anymore, and it’s been good to be out on the road again. It gets the blood moving.”

  “The honor is mine. I’m pleased the church will meet your needs.”

  “It’s a fine church, just lovely. But between you and me, I’ve always preferred being outdoors. Makes me feel closer to God. I was up in the woods the other day, down by that park. I walked up and found the clearing where the boy fell in the well.”

  “The fairy fort?”

  “It’s a special place, touched by God. I met some interesting people up there, and they felt it too. If it weren’t quite so difficult to get to, I’d try to talk you into having a service up there.”

  “I could speak to the council and see if we—”

  “No, no. When a local church makes itself available, I always use it. Or I used to, back when I did this kind of thing more.”

  “Whatever you think is best, Reverend.”

  “You’re most kind,” he said.

  I felt foolish clutching those matches now, realizing that even if I did burn the church to the ground, these people would go right on with their Holy Roller services. They’d just have it out in the field or on the lawn at Roosevelt Park. And I’d be watching like the Grinch looking down at Whoville on Christmas morning.

  The two sets of shoes moved past me again, stepping on the sunlight and heading for the door. Volpe asked, “Should I seek out some people who might benefit, if Daniel feels moved to share God’s love at the service?”

  I wanted to kick her shins. She wanted to round up sick folks for Daniel to heal. This was exactly the kind of crap I’d been afraid of all along, that he’d be pressured into performing miracles he couldn’t.

  “I don’t think that’s called for,” the Reverend said, surprising me. “In any group of people, there will always be those in need. We will gather to give thanks and offer our praise. I’ve learned to let God take it from there.”

  Volpe said, “Whatever you think is best,” but I could tell by her tone she wasn’t pleased.

  The Reverend didn’t seem to notice. “I’d like to meet the family before the service. I understand the boy lives with his mother.”

  “Nancy’s been through a great deal. After Daniel’s accident, her husband, a man of slim faith, left her.”

  “So she’s alone, then?”

  “She has another child, a teenage daughter who is causing, well, complications.”

  “That would seem to be the role of teenagers in our world.”

  He chuckled and I couldn’t help but smile. It was his warm voice, I convinced myself, that made it hard to dislike him.

  “Reverend,” Volpe said, “have you ever considered coming out of retirement full-time? The world has lost its way. It needs men of great conviction.”

  “I’m old, Sylvia,” the man said. “Old and tired. Besides, preachers do their work on TV now. No one goes to tent revivals.”

  “If they knew you were available, many would invite you to their churches. Halls can be rented.”

  “You sound like a manager.” The old man laughed. “The whole notion is tempting, but we know the source of temptation. It would take a great sign to get me back on the road. Something truly extraordinary.”

  “Daniel is extraordinary.”

  This froze my blood and caught that preacher’s attention. He took a big breath and said, “So you say.”

  Volpe pressed her advantage. “The two of you together, you’d make a powerful team for the Lord.”

  The preacher rocked on his boots and I could tell his mind was working. Finally he said, “I’m open to the will of God. We’ll pray for His guidance.”

  They kept talking as they walked out, but I couldn’t hear what else they said. As I slipped out from under the pew, my mind rolled through what sounded like their plans f
or Daniel. They wanted to take my brother away, drive him off in that white bus and go on a nutjob miracle tour of America. I pictured the Reverend’s tent set up in a field somewhere, with Daniel inside, fevered and pale, waiting for those in need of healing.

  Since Volpe locked the church doors behind her, I had to crawl out through the same window I’d broken into. As I hiked back to my hidden kayak, the matches felt silly in my hand. The whole notion of burning down the church seemed childish, unsophisticated. I needed a more subtle strategy.

  Paddling north on the lake, I thought about some of the things Jeff had said. He was right about one thing: The problem was that I had to find a way to make folks stop believing. Something had to happen, like in those stories I’d read of defrauded miracle workers. Somehow I needed to convince everyone that Daniel was a fake, a hoax like the Scarecrow thought he might be.

  All of this was settling into my head as I passed McGinley’s Cove. And I stopped paddling and laid back, let the kayak drift, and listened to the silence of the lake. I heard the water gently sloshing up against the rocks on the shoreline. I saw the huge open mouth of the cave and the cliff that rises up two hundred feet, to the Lookout that Michelle Kirkpatrick sailed her car over on prom night, wearing the dress Mrs. Bundower sewed for her. I don’t believe much in visions, but as I was imagining what that must have looked like, I could almost see the car racing over the edge. Something was wrong with the image, and I saw that the car wasn’t Michelle Kirkpatrick’s, and the driver was me. As I floated on the water, the Anti-Miracle Plan came to me, fully formed. I knew what I had to pull off before that church service next Sunday and I knew exactly how my hoax would work. Best of all, I finally felt confident in what I needed to do next: get a car and find some blood.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The very afternoon of the Sunday when I had my Anti-Miracle vision, while my mother and Daniel were again over at the Abernathys’ and the true believers of Paradise attended the regular weekly service in the church I hadn’t burned down, I called Jeff on the phone and asked if he’d help me pick out a decent used car.