Embracing Darkness

by Christopher D. Roe

  Zachary paused, as if taken aback by Father Poole’s unwillingness to give him what he wanted. “Really?” he replied coldly. “And tell me, priest, how can a man protect this child from Zachary Black if that man meets his Maker before she does?”

  Father Poole gasped in surprise, scarcely noticing that Zachary had picked up the lamp from the desk. Immediately Zachary smashed the priest over the head with the base of the lamp. Blood gushed from Phineas’s head as he collapsed to the floor. Jessie screamed and covered her mouth in disbelief.

  “Come to me!” said Zachary Black calmly.

  As Jessie ran for the door, her attacker stalked after her, knowing she couldn’t escape him.

  The entire rectory was now engulfed in flames. Jessie covered her mouth against the acrid smoke and ran out the front door. She thought that her brothers would be waiting outside for her, but she was alone on the hill, the other boys and I having already run down it to safety. Recognizing her isolation, Jessie dashed toward “The Path to Salvation” but stopped short of racing down the hill, remembering that Father Fin was still inside the rectory. She didn’t want to leave the hill until Father Poole was with her, or until she knew for sure that he had perished.

  She ran back to the rectory but couldn’t enter it, since flames from the staircase leading up to the second floor were now licking the front door. The longer Jessie stood there, the more helpless she felt. She wanted more than anything to risk her life for Father Poole, as he had risked his immortal soul for her, and as she thought of his final words, vowing to protect her as he had neglected to do earlier, she wept for him. “FATHER FIN!” she screamed. “FATHER!”

  Noticing movement in the doorway and completely forgetting about Zachary Black in her concern for the priest, Jessie walked toward the rectory’s stairs. From the doorway, however, emerged not Father Poole but Zachary Black. She ran to the first place she could think of, which was the Benson house, but once there Jessie realized that her pursuer could trap her inside the residence. She then remembered the maple. Jessie hid behind its massive trunk before Zachary Black made it to the back of the rectory.

  As she crouched there, her heart pounding in her ears, Jessie waited for the impending arrival of her attacker. “Where is he?” she whispered to herself, her nerves increasingly on edge as the seconds passed. Meanwhile her fingers ran along the ridges of the maple’s coarse bark. Digging her fingertips inside the gaps, she pulled back in pain, having slightly cut one.

  She saw the various inscriptions on its trunk: “THEO IS #1,” “JONAS & JOEY WERE HERE ‘35,” and the curious “PP + EF.” Jessie also saw the heart she’d etched into the bark with the pledge, “JB + BN,” and she immediately thought of Billy Norwin, wishing he were now here with her. He had been the one person Zachary Black knew would be a match for him. As she stood there careful not to make a sound, she could hear the noise of the glass windows blowing out and the overwhelming crackling of the conflagration itself. She lamented the place that had been her home ever since she could remember. She also grieved for Father Poole, who she believed could not have survived either the massive blow to his head or the fire in the rectory and church.

  Jessie wanted to see where Zachary Black was but thought that, as long as she didn’t hear footsteps or breathing, he was far enough away for her to be safe. Too consumed with fear and fatigue to notice any new graffiti that adorned the far side of maple’s trunk, she closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath, just as a hand grabbed her from the side.

  She screamed and pulled away from Zachary Black but lost part of her shirt in his vice-like grip. Running around to the other side of the tree, she acted on her first instinct, which was to climb the maple. By the time Zachary rounded the trunk, Jessie was already aloft.

  “COME TO ME!” he shouted, but she only climbed faster.

  Zachary considered the gigantic trunk, remembering his loathing of the maple as a child. Although he had never scaled the tree, he wasn’t afraid of it. Placing his foot on the first nailed crosspiece, he began his ascent. He climbed slowly at first; then, once he cleared the first thick branch, his progress quickened. Even so he was unexpectedly frustrated by the maze of limbs and the density of autumnal leaves still attached to them.

  All these impediments made it more difficult for Zachary Black to find his way up to Jessie, angering him beyond measure. Now he was more determined than ever to kill her. His hatred mounted with every scratch on his arms, every cut on his hands, and every slap on his face from obstructing branches and leaves. Enduring these setbacks, Zachary thought of how he was going to end Jessie’s life. He planned to throw her from the tree’s upper reaches. After she plunged to her death, he would rape her corpse, and he made this known to her as his threat reverberated loudly through the foliage.

  From where Jessie was perched, almost as high as she’d ever gone, she could see the rustling below her. She gauged that her attacker was only three or four body lengths distant. As the movement of the limbs underneath her came closer, her fear increased. Looking up at the last few branches between her and the maple’s crest, she knew that there was nowhere else to go but down.

  Then Jessie stopped to reflect. The maple was wide and large enough that she could descend by a different course. Those limbs that were not as sturdy as the ones of her usual path near the center, but she knew that she was light enough to be supported by the weaker branches.

  She therefore climbed over to her left onto a thinner branch. She tensed, hearing the limb’s strain, but Jessie was confident that it would support her. She then probed with her foot for the next lower branch, finding one further down than she wanted, but it was the only one strong enough to carry her weight. Jessie unlocked her legs and let her body drop five feet down to the next limb. She wrapped her whole body around it.

  Just then she heard Zachary Black call out again, “COME TO ME, SOW! COME TO ME NOW! I’LL LOVE YOU AS NO OTHER MAN CAN! COME TO ME!”

  Jessie reacted swiftly, finding yet another limb that would lead her further down. Zachary had been so busy looking upward that he was unaware of the fact that his quarry had descended to almost the same level where he now was. As he climbed further up and passed her, Jessie’s hopes for survival were reenergized. She smiled in spite of her tears and watched as her pursuer ascended higher and higher into the maple’s canopy.

  She climbed horizontally now, further toward the tree’s center where Zachary had been just moments before. As she leaped onto the next branch, it made a crackling noise, as if the limb were ready to split. She gasped and saw Black’s face through an aperture among the leaves, closer than she thought he’d been. He must have realized that she’d been coming down and so reversed his course.

  Zachary Black was suspended not more than fifteen feet from where Jessie was positioned. She screamed again, and as she went to move the branch cracked. She froze in fear, thinking that she was about to fall to her death. Just then, as Jessie’s legs wrapped themselves more tightly around the branch, she felt something pushing against her right buttock. Reaching back to her hip pocket, she pulled out the magnifying glass. A way to use it as a protective weapon dawned on her.

  While Zachary Black struggled to descend from the tree, having encountered a tangle of impassable branches, Jessie directed the magnifying lens at one of the yellow maple leaves. Within a few seconds she saw that nothing was happening. The sunlight in that part of the tree wasn’t strong enough to ignite the leaf. Scooting up toward the branch’s perilous end, Jessie found a clearing where an intense beam shone through the foliage. She focused the magnifying glass on an orange leaf. Soon smoke and tiny flames expanded outward. Jessie kissed the limb on which she was hanging and said, “Forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

  Just then the cluster of leaves ignited. Jessie pulled down the branch just above her and brought its leaves to the flame. As soon as they were lit, she released the limb, which snapped
back like a loaded catapult. It set fire to the next set of leaves and branches, but they didn’t burn as quickly as Jessie had hoped. What’s more, there wasn’t the slightest breeze to fan the flames. Meanwhile Zachary Black was gaining on her and getting closer every second. “PLEASE, GOD!” Jessie cried aloud. “PLEASE! HELP ME! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

  At that precise moment she heard the rustling of leaves around her as a breeze began to blow. It was as impromptu as anything Jessie had ever seen. Before, the air was completely inert. Now, inexplicably, what she needed most came to her: a gust of wind to swallow up the entire maple in a calculated inferno. Soon it spread through the dancing branches and leaves, making its way up the tree.

  As the flames rampaged out of control, Zachary’s monomaniacal concentration on Jessie broke. For the first time in his life he began to panic. Seeing the flames below him now almost licking his boot heels, Zachary Black believed the fires of hell were finally coming for him, and he acknowledged with a loud growl that he would have much to answer for.

  “I’LL BURN DOWN THERE SOON! I’LL BURN FOREVER! AS LONG AS YOU WANT ME TO! AS LONG AS YOU THINK I SHOULD! BURN AS EVERY MAN SHOULD! JUST LET ME FINISH OFF THE SOW! LET ME END HER FIRST!”

  Everything below him was ablaze. While Jessie made it safely to the ground, the flames now reached to where Zachary was clinging. A few seconds later she heard branches snapping, along with several high-pitched screams from Black. His blazing body hit the ground with a solid thud and as hard as his body impacted with the earth, his legs still kicked outward and his hands continued to flail in the smoke-filled air. Jessie could hear miserable cries of panic escaping his constricting throat in the short distance that there was between them. The thought of how pain this incredible could even exist must have passed through his evil mind, even if only for a moment. A thought he’d never cared to consider for any of his victims.

  Jessie thought she’d withdraw from the privilege of being the solitary witness to the demise of her rapist, but she didn’t. Moreover, she assumed her terror should be replaced by ecstasy; the ecstasy that one feels when wrong has been made right, when fear has ultimately turned to hope, when out of the shadow of uncertainty comes clarity. She waited for some fleeting redemption of bottled up emotion to steal her away from the harsh reality with which she was now afflicted. Her rapist was now dying before her, and yet her relief and satisfaction were nowhere in her to be found.

  She stood like a Greek statue and watched with as much anticipation and emotion as a man at the races who hasn’t bet so much as a cent on his horse. She only breathed deeply, inhaling the overpowering fumes of the burning tree and rectory into her lungs and not reacting to it in the least. All this as Zachary Black struggled with the extreme pain of being burned alive, no doubt praying for his end to be near.

  As she began to wonder just how much longer justice would continue to be served, Jessie heard a hoarse voice, burdened with anger and hatred coming from the convulsing lump of human kindling. She could have sworn that she even heard a brief and disjointed series of cackles, malevolent and menacing in its delivery.

  “YOU LIVE! BITCH! SO THEN LIVE! AND NEVER FORGET! NEVER!”

  And as the flames penetrated his ocular sockets and melted the soft gooey organic matter that was his eyeballs, she heard him begin to choke on the gurgling phlegm that now boiled in his throat. The beast’s brain cooked and then scorched and finally with one last jolt of his body that quickly slowed to nothing more than a fading twitch before coming to a complete halt, the monster’s agony arrived at its end, as did he.

  At the same moment the rectory’s roof collapsed, and the church’s burning steeple set fire to the Hartley house. Jessie ran from the hill, believing that all she had known—Father Poole, the rectory, St. Andrew’s, the maple—were now lost to her forever.

  While all of Holly watched the Catholic enclave on the hill crumble to the ground, not one person offered to help. The fire companies of Holly, Exeter, and Stratham, small as they were, came to the rescue but only after irrevocable damage had been done. By the time the inferno was extinguished, nothing remained but a pile of charred wood. The Hartley house was equally devastated. As for the maple, she was now a standing skeleton.

  “What’ll happen to the tree?” one of the firemen asked his chief.

  “She’ll make good firewood,” he replied.

  Jessie was given a blanket and a cup of hot water with lemon as she sat in the police station waiting for any word from the hill. That evening she finally lay down on the bench she’d come to know so well that day. She slept, surprisingly, for about ten hours, during which time she dreamed of the burning maple, of Father Poole coming to her with a big gash in his head, and of Zachary Black chasing her while on fire. None of these dreams, however, caused her to awaken.

  By the next morning there was still no information for her. Jessie was truly alone now. She hadn’t seen any of us boys since we’d made off down the hill, and somehow Jessie knew she wouldn’t see most of us again.

  About 3:00 in the afternoon, on the day after the fire, a Sergeant Billingsly approached her. He sat on the bench and attempted a smile, but he knew there was nothing to smile about. “We found three bodies in the rubble and one in the grass,” he reported.

  “Three in the rubble?” she asked. “How three?”

  “I’m sorry?” replied Billingsly.

  “Zachary Black, the one who attacked me, died outside the rectory. He’s the one you found in the grass, but only Father Poole and Mrs. Keats were inside the rectory.”

  “We suspect that one of them is Captain Ransom, who’s been missing since he left word that he was going up the hill yesterday morning. We’d been planning to send a few men up there to inquire about him yesterday shortly before the fire.”

  “Suspect?” Jessie said, fearful that it might have been Mr. Hartley or, worse, one of her brothers. “Don’t you know? Can’t you be sure?”

  Sergeant Billingsly shook his head. “No, miss. All the remains were charred beyond recognition. The fire burned for so long, you see. But we don’t believe any of the remains to be those of a child, if that helps at all.”

  “Thank goodness for that, at least.” she replied.

  “We’ll take it from here, miss,” said the officer. “The first thing we need to do, young lady, is to find out whether there’s anyone who can claim you.”

  “What about my brothers?”

  “Brothers?”

  “The boys who lived with Father Poole in the rectory, the abused and abandoned boys Father Poole took in.”

  “I don’t know what happened to them. They probably ran off or went back to their own families.”

  Jessie was offered a place to stay by Dwight Mason, who’d taken immeasurable pity on the poor girl and given her sanctuary in his home above the General Store, much to the annoyance of his wife. Jessie helped out with customers and around the Mason’s apartment. She did anything to keep her mind off the tragedy, but she would always be reminded of it when the people of Holly, always looking for something to talk about, asked her how she was.

  “Oh, you poor little dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Kelly, pinching Jessie’s cheek. “My, my, but you are a pretty little thing! You know that if you ever need anything you can come to me or to Mrs. O’Day. We were great friends of Father’s and Sister’s, and we’ll be more than happy to take care of you.”

  “Yes, indeed!” cried Mrs. O’Day, pinching Jessie’s other cheek. “Great friends of theirs!”

  The next day Jessie walked outside. Turning to Holly Hill in the distance, she viewed the burnt remains of the maple. She’d avoided looking at it for too long. Initially hoping it would give her the strength to go on, or a sense of thankfulness for having survived, she felt emptier and more alone than she had in her entire life.

  Jessie shuffled morosely back and forth inside the sto
re as the days passed and noticed the calendar behind the counter. The month of October was slowly drawing to a close. At night she’d sit in bed and read the article from the Biloxi Daily Times about the man who had fooled them all and, in so doing, taken away the souls of so many people whom she loved with all her heart.

  On the morning of October 27, while she was on the stepladder reaching for the top shelf to put away the new stock of baking soda, Dwight Mason told Jessie that there was a letter for her.

  “A letter?” she asked, almost falling off the ladder. “For me?”

  He read the envelope, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Yeah. It says, ‘To: Miss Jessica Benson.’ I guess by now everyone knows you’re here. This letter’s postmarked from out of town.”

  This time Jessie did fall off the ladder but was luckily caught by Dwight. She anxiously broke from his arms and took the letter with her into the back room, hoping it was from Sister Ignatius.

  “Thought you should know,” began Dwight. “that they’re planning on cutting down the rest of that tree tomorrow morning.”

  Jessie heard him, but didn’t react. Her only objective at that moment was the mysterious letter. The envelope didn’t indicate the sender’s identity, so she heaved a sigh and opened it with quivering hands. She read:

  October 23, 1942

  Dear Jessie,

  I hope you are sitting while reading this because I have a feeling you may faint as you continue on. Prepare yourself, dear child. This is Father Fin. As you can see, this letter is dated after the fire on the hill, so you know I am alright.

  Let me explain. I awoke in my office as the smoke grew more intense. I leaped to my feet, jumped out the office window, and ran down the hill, figuring you’d already escaped. I went immediately into Exeter, afraid (ashamed as I am to admit it) to show my face around Holly in order to find you. I made it to St. Luke’s, my former church, and collapsed at the door of a good friend of mine, Father Brian Leonard. Injured and exhausted, he nursed me while I remained unconscious for an entire day. When I came to, he told me what he’d read in the paper about what had happened to you and Zachary Black in the tree, and that I was presumed dead. I don’t know what body they had mistaken for mine, but I see this as divine intervention.