by Greg Walker
Sean read its command and stepped out of the grove. He swung the wood in a wide arc. A group came in a rush, and he braced himself for the contact. They stopped short of him, but within range of his weapon and waited expectantly, had come to fall on his sword and its offered freedom. He swung his scrap of wood, the contact rewarded with with sweet smiles, childrens’ laughter, whispered thank you's and his name spoken again, but with near adoration and he laughed with them, this killing a thing of beauty and wonder.
And then he faced the remnant, a group like the first boy, that could never be enticed to come on their own accord, had lived in the dark too long, light and its remembrance leached from their souls. At least thirty of them, boys and girls of all ages. One appeared to have been only four or so when the man took him. Sean went for him first out of pity, felt the first of their blows as they closed around him, attacked and shouted until he was hoarse to drown out their ceaseless jabbering. The sparrow flew through them, breaking up their attacks as they swatted at it like he had at the wasps, its distractions allowing him to single them out.
He felt a tug at the backpack and a strap fell from from his shoulder. He turned and skewered another child with the wood who writhed in agony and then ecstasy on the ground. But still they came. Several more got behind him and pulled fiercely on the pack. He hit a small girl, but her partner wrenched it free and flung it to the rest, a final group of a dozen or more. Sean ran at them, his arm and head aching, bleeding real blood from their phantom scratches, but in renewed desperation. If he lost the bones, he lost everything.
But they had it open before he could get there, was confronted with what must have been a farm boy in life who meant to stand his ground, and stopped. He had failed. Even the sparrow had disappeared. A girl with dirty brown hair but a pretty face that he would have been shy around in another time and place turned it upside down and dumped out the remains. They laughed, all except the girl. She reached down and lifted the skull, looked into the eye sockets and then touched her own face. The others, aware of her silence, stopped their noise and watched.
Then slowly, she walked towards Sean. She held out the skull and said in broken English, "This...I was. This you...Sean...are. Be Sean. Kill him." She rushed forward, onto the wood he had held out in defense, and shrieked. Her momentum had carried her close, her face only inches from his. He caught the skull with one hand before it could fall to the ground and shatter. She relaxed, the ancient lines around her eyes smoothing to taut, youthful skin, and she smiled. Life bloomed in her sky blue eyes. She leaned forward slightly and kissed him on the mouth. A light, innocent kiss from one who would never know another, a kiss he would remember to the end of his life. She vanished, and he closed his eyes to take in the smell of lilacs and springtime left behind.
The remaining children came to him, carrying the backpack. They had replaced its contents, and Sean added the skull and once more threaded his arms through the straps. He didn't have the heart to attack them. The fight was done. He held up the wood, and one by one they came and grasped it. The power it held did its work, and he stood alone in the forest again.
He no longer felt tired. The sparrow flew overhead and back the way they came. To the cabin and the man. And to Silas, the last ghost to be set free.
He expected the man to try and stop him, but the return journey was easy. He made out the shape of the cabin as they approached, and thought that by destroying the evil within the children, maybe he had destroyed the man. That Silas hadn't known everything.
Only ten paces away. The bird had stopped leading and sat on a branch behind him, but it didn't matter now. He just had to step through the door with the bones, and it should be over, maybe an empty gesture but he would follow it through to the end. He began to feel the heavy weight of this experience lift, and stirring beneath the grief for all that had been lost.
The man stepped out from behind the cabin. In one hand he held a knife, long and cruel. With his other arm he encircled the neck of a boy. Not a ghost boy. A real boy. Jake, his brother.
Jake was two years older than him, looked more like their mother, a tall, quiet boy that loved the woods and streams, fishing and camping. They were brothers and friends. The joy he felt at seeing Jake alive was overshadowed by fear that made his stomach clench.
"Let him go! Jake, are you okay? Let my brother go!"
"Give me the bones, Sean, and you can have your brother back. I don't want to hurt him. I killed all of the others, but not him. I just couldn't. He's too much like you."
He looked for a sign from Jake, to tell him what to do. Jake shook his head quickly. The man sensed the movement and tightened his grip. Jake grimaced.
"Give them to me, boy. Or I'll slit his throat while you watch."
"Okay, here. Take them." Sean said, and shook off the backpack. He set it on the ground at his feet.
"No, pick it up and bring it here. But throw the wood away first."
Sean tossed the wood into the brush without hesitation, then picked up the backpack and took a step towards him.
He heard Silas speak from within the cabin.
"Sean, don't do it." "He'll kill your brother anyway, and you too. He'll take us all and start again. You have to bring the bones in here."
"No, Silas. I can't. He's my brother. He's Jake," Sean said, beginning to cry. He took another step, and the man smiled. He couldn't see the features, but he knew he smiled. "Promise me! Promise you'll let him go!”
"Yes ,Sean. I promise.” The man smiled, and Sean felt a warmth and sweetness emanate from it, and despite all he knew wanted to believe.
"He lies, Sean. You know he lies. I told you he always holds one back. Just for this. You can't stop. Jake will die, but so will he. Your brother won't suffer like we did."
He hated Silas, then. Hated him because he knew he told the truth. His brother would die. He knew this but took another step. Three more and it would be over. He shuddered involuntarily at the thought of the man's touch. How Jake stood up against it, he didn't know. Perhaps he could open and close the abyss inside at will. But Jake had always been the strong one. He began to take another step, and hesitated. He searched Jake's face. Jake made eye contact with effort, smiled a sad goodbye, and managed the slightest nod.
Sean screamed and turned and ran. Jake screamed as well, but it was mercifully quick. Sean felt the man behind him as he grasped the rusty doorknob they had screwed into the wood in proud completion of the cabin, had begun to open the door when the man caught the backpack.
The cabin had been built by boys, eager and determined but lacking proper knowledge and proper materials. The man pulled back with brutal strength, and if a master builder had been consulted, Sean would have lost his arms, his life and his soul. But the door tore from the cabin with Sean's fingers still locked on the knob. The objects set in motion, boy and door, did not stop, but crashed into the man. He howled and fell back as the wood made contact. Trapped between the man and door with no place to go, Sean closed his eyes and cringed as the door struck his forehead with enough force to blur his vision, and he gagged and choked from his contact with his brother's murderer. Sean slumped to the ground, and without his partial support the door teetered and its full weight fell into the man. Sean crawled away, and on his knees carefully slid the backpack off. He looked into the open doorway of the cabin, then back at the man, who managed to throw off the door and, writhing on the ground, spoke curses in his guttural language that hurt Sean's ears.
"Go to hell, mister," Sean said, and tossed the backpack through the doorway. The man's form went rigid as though an electric current ran through it, and he slowly turned his face towards Sean, which for the first time he saw clearly. And wept. Like his voice, the face had nothing remarkable about it: no devil’s horns, no fangs dripping with blood or decaying flesh falling from yellowed bones. The face that stared at him was the face of a neighbor, a cousin or uncle, the face of the guy behind the counter at the ice cream stand, a little league coach or a Sunday
School teacher. A face that fit in, a face that when it smiled, you smiled back instinctively at its warmth and good nature. But it wasn’t smiling now. The evil that filled the hollow behind the innocuous mask seeped through every feature and pore. And then his body began to constrict; his arms and legs curled inward towards his torso, and his chin dipped to his chest as if pulled by ropes. They continued bending inward, beyond the point that any normal human body part could extend without permanent damage and pain, and further still, disappearing into the dark pit of his core. The edges of the now headless and limbless shape followed and rolled inward, faster, until reduced to a shapeless dark mass, a black hole lying on the leaf litter. This too curled towards the center, growing smaller and more dense, radiating arctic cold and then smaller, the seed of every evil thing, then consumed by itself until disappearing entirely. A black spot on the ground, as though scorched by fire - and the murder and destruction and the scars Sean would always carry within him - were the only things left behind. But Sean knew he wasn’t gone, would never be gone entirely from the world as even now someone shaped and kneaded the materials necessary to build him up again, but gone for now and gone from here. Sean shuddered in benediction.
What remained of the darkness in the woods lifted, the afternoon sun of a day already in progress lit up the forest, the dark cloud blocking its light and warmth finally past. And then the sounds fell all at once, tumbled into the silence as if dumped from a sack that the thief had stored them in; leaves shaking in a breeze, crickets chirping, birds calling, and a host of others, unidentifiable as they mixed into a single tune of summer. Sean covered his ears at the sudden noise, then slowly pulled them away, letting the chorus of life in.
"Sean" he heard, and for a moment hoped that it was Jake, that by undoing the man he had undone his work. But he saw Jake's body lying towards the back of the cabin and he couldn't go to him just yet, needed to forsake death just for a little while.
He looked into the cabin, and saw a boy. A real boy. Silas, no longer a ghost. He went inside and they embraced.
"Why didn't you go? I set them all free with the wood. You could have touched the cabin and gone. But you didn't."
"I knew what he would do. I'm sorry Sean. I didn't tell you about your brother because there was no other way. And I knew you would need help, in the end."
"He killed my brother, Silas."
"Yes. But no more after this."
Sean cried, finally, the tears of a ten year old. Silas held him without using empty words, telling Sean that it would be all right. They both knew too much to tell lies or believe them.
"How long will you stay?" Sean asked later.
"Until it's finished. We have to bury your brother." Sean nodded, and they stepped from the cabin. They carried Jake through the woods, back to the grove, along with the bones of the first child. Jake was heavy, but they found a way.
They put the body of the boy back in his place, along with his headstone, and then used the garden trowel to create a grave for Jake. The tool looked ridiculously small for the task, but the earth, soft and black, yielded to them. They set Jake within. Silas allowed Sean some time alone, and he spoke to his brother, about the things they had done together. He apologized for fighting over stupid things and being angry. He said goodbye, and they placed the rich soil over his body. He suspected that if he came back later, in a few months or years, a similar stone would mark the grave of his brother.
"I have to sleep, Silas. I'm so tired. Will you stay with me? You can sleep, too."
"No, but lay down and I'll sit next to you."
Sean lay in the soft grass next to his brother and Silas and closed his eyes. Silas sang quietly, a song Sean didn't know, and he meant to ask him what it was, decided to wait until later and was gone.
Silas sang all of the verses, and cried too. After a little while, the sparrow landed on a branch of a birch and sang with him. The boy heard his name called from nowhere and everywhere and answered, then smiled and stood up, ready to go. He stopped and frowned in concern, looked back at Sean sprawled on the ground.
"Should I wait? Will he be okay?"
The voice spoke and he smiled again and followed.
He waited in his front yard for someone to come. Finally a car rolled through, driving slowly. The man, just a man, stopped in the road and got out, looking all around.
"What happened? Where is everyone?"
"They're gone. Everyone's gone, sir."
"Gone where? Are you all right?"
"No. I'm not." He fingered the crude cross he had formed from the wood, that he had searched for and found again after leaving the grove, alone. He would refine it later, sand it down, make sure the two pieces were securely attached. But for now it worked.
No, he was not all right.
But he knew that he would be.
Chapter 21
Eric switched off the laptop and sat back in the chair. He felt the detached numbness of waking up after surgery; the procedure was done, for better or worse, and the full measure of pain had yet to be felt. He had worked on the story non-stop since sitting down, pausing only to eat a bagel with cream cheese when sunrise had come, and to brew more coffee or use the restroom.
He didn't know if it was any good and didn't care. It was done, as was his time here in Lincoln Corners. He had found what he had hoped to find, but so much more than he had wanted to know. But he knew the truth, and he preferred it to any fiction. Isaac had yet to be caught, but he couldn't spend his life waiting for that. The phone had rung several times during the day, but he had ignored it. He didn't have an answering machine, hadn't gotten that far. Probably Mary, but even she seemed distant right now, everything and everyone hazy in the aftermath. Like Sean, he craved sleep, and sleep he would have.
He stumbled up the stairs and fell into the little bed, tried to stay awake to listen, to hear something to reassure, to confirm that he hadn't actually brought Sean's world here. As absurd as his mind knew it be, he held his breath until the distant sound of a car with serious muffler issues passed on the main road on the edge of town. And then he slept.
His first thought on waking, on realizing someone else was in the house, was that he never even heard the creak on the stairs.
"Isaac," he said out loud.
"Eric," came the reply.
He could barely make out his silhouette in the doorway. He felt no fear. Couldn't tell if Isaac held a knife, and didn't care. Death was simply another truth he had yet to know. But not before he had an answer.
"Why, Isaac? Why Adam?"
"Did my father tell you how my mother died?"
"She died of cancer. I already knew that."
"I don't mean what killed her. I mean how, the manner she died." His voice was strangely calm, as though relating a story that he had read and taken on as his own, but lacked the emotional charge of a first-hand account.
"No, he didn't. He only said she was in a lot of pain."
"Yes, terrible pain. In the end, the drugs didn't do anything at all for her. But my mother died cursing God, Eric. Cursing Him, and in doing so condemned herself to an eternity of pain and suffering. I loved her so much, but how I hated her then. The one consolation I had was that I would see her again someday, and she took that away from me."
"I'm sorry, Isaac. But why did you kill Adam? Why did you kill my brother? Why those other children?" He fought to keep his voice even, resisted the urge to throw off the covers and attack him, knife or no, kill him if it came to that. But he had to know the answer.
"Because I came to understand, Eric. God had a plan. Or rather used my mother's blasphemy to teach me His will, that it doesn't have to end that way. Her way. A child is innocent, up until the age of accountability; will not held responsible for their sins. So they're guaranteed passage into the Kingdom. I found children from the streets, drove out to the dens of iniquity and brought them here. From Erie and Cleveland. One from Altoona. Other places. Dirty children no one would miss, who would grow up to
take and deal drugs, sell their bodies, fill the prisons, and go to hell. I gave them a gift they could never have had otherwise. Eternal life, Eric."
"But why Adam, Isaac? He wasn't one of those. You knew him. Why Adam?"
"I didn't intend to kill Adam. I had come through the woods that day...to see my father. He hated me, Eric. And could never understand my work so I hid it from him. But I came sometimes to watch him from the trees, and pray for him..."
Eric heard something more now, the real Isaac beneath the madness. A sad boy that missed his father. But a sad boy now driven by an insanity that had ended many lives.
"...and I saw Adam. So beautiful. He smiled at me, said hello. And I knew that I could give him that gift, that it would be wicked if I withheld it. Even though he might find it on his own. But there's no way to know, is there? But now we know. Saved from a life of suffering and hardship. But John Thomas Groves...he was too old, the voice of the Lord said to me. He would be accountable. He needed time, so lost and confused. But your brother is in paradise now, Eric"
