Thwack. He hears it too late. Identifies the source, dumbly. An arrow, embedded through the canteen’s strap, neatly landed between his outstretched hands. He could have lost a finger, could have been crucified through either palm. Instinct kicks in, and he dives over the dead log again, flattens himself in the fallen leaves for cover. The Ruger, lost to him now. Canteen, pinned to the clearing floor. He can’t quiet the blood pumping in his ears. The attacker only has to come at a slight angle for an open shot. There could be more than one; he could be surrounded. Paul strains for footsteps and hears nothing. A shimmy of overhead branches. He tilts his chin, looks up.
Not squirrels, after all. The quivering bow, a cocked arrow aimed true, and a set of dark eyes squinting right at him.
CHAPTER 21
It is time.
Rebekah worships the sun, the stars, the waterways, and all the great mysteries of the universe. Through a glint of the needle’s eye lies a passage, and she will float there, she will sink there, she will come.
Rebekah is in the river, dress soaked and heavy as a grain bag, fabric sucking at her thighs, scratching her wet skin. She wades deeper, deeper until her feet cannot touch and she begins to kick. Her apron billows wide and weightless, air trapped under, puffing it up. She is free, so free. Arms outstretch to the tiny suck of toothless fish, feet churn to keep her afloat. Water rushes like voices—fairy music—and wind sets all the leaves above her to dance. The pale green shoots of cattails whistle and bend. Sunlight dazzles the river’s surface: diamonds, heaps of them, everywhere she turns. Below are bottom dwellers, whiskery cat fish, mud-wallowing creatures in the shadows. Beyond that, moon-coloured river stones beckon from the murky bed.
She follows them.
This river runs the length of the Farm acreage. The current is swift. It fills roadside ditches and flows out past the orchard bluffs where it swerves and snakes back, and abruptly disappears into the hallowed ground. Sinkhole. Water rushes there, determined, and so does she. Into this womb, this secret opening, past the bones and the stones of the ancestors, into the earth’s own den. Now she is carried into the abyss, wet and cold and lost to all that she loves.
She is twirling the whirlpool tide, sucked under, mouth full of water, lungs on fire. Her body bangs against the subterranean rock. She is thrown, bruised and wanting. She bobs to the surface, eyes wide and beyond terror. She is caught on the shale. Water streams her gasping face. What is this place? She is in an underground cavern, down among the fossils and cavefish and the secretive troglobites. A round, midnight pool—she knows it from her dreams. Blue-black reflections on the rock walls lit by a finger of sun that spears a prehistoric fissure above, pointing down, down, light years from its source. Here, among the drippings and splashings, lurks something unnamed, something fearsome and older than the earth itself. What is it? She could stay here, creep onto a sharp abutting ledge and cling to it with all her strength. But what for? What manner of life or non-life will embrace her when she finally can no longer keep her grip on the rock?
She releases.
She doesn’t believe in God anymore. Only in the Mother, the land of the Mothers—the Dreamtime, where all is revealed to the watchful eye.
Now the river runs colder, faster. Far ahead there is another small opening: golden daylight. She knows where it will resurface, where she must go—this time for keeps. This is how she’ll enter the Garden. Not through the locked and guarded front gates, but on her own terms, in her own time. Up the river with the fishes to safely beach on the sun-drenched shore under the glorious canopy of the forest, where she shall embrace them at last: the mothers, the babies, each of the betrayed dogs. There, in the meadow, in the wild and tangled grass, will she lie down to rest. There will Paul find her someday, waiting.
Birds call and roost in the wild understory. Foxes leap the tall grass. Bears follow the bees and hunker down at water’s edge. In the centre of the mystical woods, this river is life, feeding and cleansing and endlessly carrying away. She has become it, now. It is kin. She is in the river, of the river—the eternal rushing to an unknown sea.
CHAPTER 22
When the end bell chimes, Susan opens and closes the fingers of one hand. The left is locked in an arthritic spasm. Children stagger up and huddle for warmth. They shake limbs, massage sensation back into feet and calves.
Susan wants her own cot. She wants a bath, a fresh slip. She needs looking after, and there is no one to tend her wounds. Her face is puffed, hot. She cannot find her way to standing. Her joints are too stiff.
Hannah’s long robe sweeps past, and Susan grabs the fabric with her good hand. She whispers, “Help me.” Hannah stares in disgust. Susan must look rough. Nevertheless, Hannah allows her to cling to her arm, her shoulder, while she straightens. Hannah nearly topples with the crippled weight of her, but finally Susan is as upright as she’ll get.
“Time for a walking stick, Mother Susan. Shall I get you the broom?”
“Don’t mock me. It’ll be you, next.”
Hannah shakes off Susan’s grip as though she were contagious. She gathers the trail of her long robe and hurries toward Father’s warm chamber. Now that his furor is spent, no doubt she will reap the guilty goodness, the crumbs of his remorse. The children head for the latrines—how can anything come out when nothing’s gone in?—and Susan is alone.
She shuffles to the bedroom, to blurry rows of grey cots. One night away, and she sees it as though she is a stranger: bad smells, cheap beds. It reminds her of the state-run children’s ward where she spent many unhappy nights years ago. A pale shape out of place. The slow swing of it. Susan’s hands are on the damp cotton before her eyes adjust. The strange tilt of neck. Hair cut to the scalp. Face, swollen and blue, tongue protruding in ghastly taunt, blood trickling out her nostrils. Rebekah.
“God have mercy.”
Susan stumbles and gasps. She wipes her bruised face with her sleeve. She limps back to shut the door. The children must not see. When she hears the familiar lope of Silas’s footsteps in the hall, Susan opens a crack and calls: “Cousin Silas, tell Ruth to take the children to the classroom. Get Father Ernst. Now.”
“Are you all right?” he says. He pushes, but Susan blocks the door with her body.
“It’s urgent.” She shuts the door firmly, drags a chair in front, and settles herself on its seat.
She would prefer not to see him just now, Father Ernst. It has been some time since he demonstrated that tenor of rage. Memaw always handled him easily, or so it seemed. He doted on Deborah, too. Mary could sometimes pacify him; she was the most submissive. They likely took turns easing his delicate states, cajoling, distracting him. Stoking his ego like a campfire; tending it, feeding it just so, to keep a steady flame. Not letting it burn out. Not letting it billow and devour the forest beyond.
He used to have other outlets for his temper—challenging politicians in public debate, blasting enemies in his famous sermons, whittling their loud resistance down to mewling and whinging, then nothing. He’s lost more than a favourite pastime by coming below. Now there are just women and children. Mayhap he has lost sight of the true opposition. Boys—his own blood, about to become men, his only rivals. Girls—good only to be broken as brides.
Father Ernst’s brisk knock wakes Susan, who has drifted off. He tries to open the door and, of course, it bangs against the chair back. She scrapes the chair legs as she moves it aside, and Father Ernst cringes at the noise. He throws the door wide, but will not enter. He says nothing. Does he even see the body?
“I found her just so when I come back from the Sit,” says Susan.
She steps closer. She will make him look at his work. All of it. The low-generator lighting is dim, but it cannot hide Susan’s swollen eye, her split lip. Icing would have helped, but they’ve no ice. There’d been no time before the Sit for a cool compress.
Father Ernst’s eyes land on her. Flit away.
She watches him squint. Hesitate. His eyes dart to and from the figur
e hanging in the room beyond her. His throat works. A flash of vulnerability—perhaps fear, perhaps shock? Then nothing. That same smooth face, hard as bunker walls and equally impenetrable. Whatever Father Ernst might feel is locked inside that vault.
“Cut her down,” he says. “Take the body to the pantry storage.” Then he leaves.
Obviously Susan cannot do it alone. She can hardly stand. Hardly walk. Silas lurks in the hall shadows. Silas, book smart and almost useless, dry heaves when he enters the room.
“Come now,” she says, “show some strength.”
The boy wrestles with Rebekah’s stiff limbs. She must have been hanging for most of the day. Silas climbs the cot and cuts her down.
The noose is woven from Rebekah’s own hair. Susan pulls a fresh bed sheet from storage and spreads it on the floor. “Wrap her good,” she says. Silas yanks Rebekah’s skirt to reposition her and Susan swats him. “Show some respect.”
The boy half-carries, half-drags Rebekah. Susan strips the bed. Soiled sheets. A fusty smell in the blanket. A few curls. Susan twines them together and tucks them in her pocket. Beneath the pillow, Susan finds an infant’s baptism bonnet. Always they are white on white, a token of purity given unto God. This abomination in Susan’s trembling hand is white cotton embroidered with morbid black thread. It is Rebekah’s signature smocking, impeccable and delicate, with what looks like dark seed pearls. On closer inspection, they are tiny bits of repurposed ballpoint pens: finials, caps, nibs, plungers, and circular centre bands, all jet. Black silk ribbon and lace trim, probably from Rebekah’s own mourning shawl, to finish. It is chilling, exquisite work. Susan stuffs the bonnet into her dress pocket.
The girl was wrong in the head. Sick.
Susan recalls hearing Rebekah hack and spit, hack and spit, all morning, weeks ago. Nothing to puke up, but still the girl heaved, and her skin was tinged green with nausea. Her despair, the salt traces of tears—so unlike Rebekah. But so very like Susan herself when she was with child, which had been often enough, before.
Susan piles the sheets. The mattress, when she hoists and leans it bare against the wall, reveals another message. It’s a poem embroidered by Rebekah’s fine hand in multi-coloured thread, all the precious end bits.
Housework
Lard soap slivers
Bob and float
Scrub Scour Rinse
Scrub Scour Rinse
Rag dunk bucket
Wringing wringing
Red knuckled attrition,
My sackcloth and ashes
Stains lift—Hallelu!
Stains set—coffee, semen, so much blood
Never absolved
Verily, verily, upon my weeping knees.
What to make of this heresy? Susan wrestles with the sodden mattress, attempts to flip it so the poem is against the wall, but then the terrible stain faces outward, and she is not certain which is more upsetting. The poem. Father Ernst will set to in a fierce rage if he sees it. And yet, something about the terse words speak to her own life. Who has washed more floors than Susan? Scrubbed as many laundry loads? No one. She drapes a clean sheet to cover the soiled bits and, beyond exhausted, collapses on her cot. Verily, verily. She hauls her feet up and stretches carefully on her side. She and Rebekah weren’t close, but still Susan has been abandoned. Again.
She starts to cry.
She stops. It never helps. She must build resolve; this is no time for cowardice. Instead, Susan mouths the words: Take me with you. She cannot speak her furtive prayer aloud.
CHAPTER 23
Father Ernst ejects Hannah from his chamber. As she begins to voice complaint, he raises a menacing hand. She scurries. Father Ernst slams the door and locks it. He paces. He gnaws on his thumb knuckle. This is like his troubling dream: Father Ernst holds a miniature bunker made of glass, like a snow globe from his childhood. He shakes and shakes it. He marvels at the tiny blizzard inside, and then it is slipping from his grasp, falling, smashing on the concrete floor at his feet. Tiny figures writhe, impaled on shards of glass.
How did the Dark Angel infiltrate? Mayhap when Cousin Paul left, days ago. The unsealing: that sudden movement of air, contaminating his domain. Rebekah had been moping about ever since. And now this final disgusting act.
“Female trouble,” says Father Ernst aloud. “The spiritual crisis.”
Ruth, floundering. Susan, suddenly impertinent, and Hannah unbearable—Satan must have lain in wait and slipped inside their haven unnoticed. Satan sought out the fickle heart of woman to turn it, to rot it in the core.
Unless Satan was already among us.
Father Ernst freezes. The boy. So like his dark-haired traitor sire. Those black eyes always judging, the smirk on his wide lips. Infecting his blond and blue-eyed tribe. Of course! When the boy left to scavenge food, Evil lost its Host. Satan would not ascend; he already owns that domain. Topside is virulent with sin—the whole earth, Hell and Purgatory at once. Only here, below the rubble, here in Father Ernst’s Holy nest, persists a light so pure and white that Satan yearns to put it out.
Father Ernst rakes fingers through his hair.
Judas. He should have never allowed the boy entrance. Should have known that serpent’s seed would triumph even over his daughter Ruth’s goodness. Now, when he should be building strength and growing his tribe to prepare for the glorious Ascension, when he should focus on the Seventh, he will have to roust out demons.
If Paul returns, he must be destroyed. An exorcism, a spiritual cleansing and a culling, all in one ritual. Father Ernst did not expect to fight this battle below. Yet, of course, he must. For the Devil lurks in every heart. Father Ernst has grown complacent, just like the Family. Had he been more vigilant, perhaps he could have saved her.
Rebekah. Deborah’s youngest and most elusive child. Coy. Often silent. Something in those watchful eyes rankled him, even when she was a toddler. His second home on the farm, Deborah’s, was abundant as opposed to Memaw’s clean, quiet A-frame. Noise and mess; children and the chaotic evidence of their lives were everywhere—diapers, crayons, toys strewn about the carpet. Rambunctious Saul and Matthew, his first sons. Then Jeremiah, whom he chose as his Second, and Thomas, also spirited. The boys were devout, mostly obedient. Dead, now. Two martyred in the Standoff, two whilst procuring for the bunkered Family.
The other girl, the eldest, was wilful. Corrupted in her teens. Father Ernst will not utter her name. The first to defy him. Shouting matches, subterfuge. She stopped at nothing to provoke his ire—and that was settled, finally, when he discovered her fornicating with a Mexican field hand she met in town. His bones nourished the pigs. How it broke the mothers’ hearts, particularly Deborah’s, to strike the girl’s name from the Family Bible. To shear her, gather her siren’s locks, and burn them with all of her clothes, with all her worldly possessions. Ernst stripped her while the other men held her arms. He spoke in tongues, whipped her in a frenzy. Then she was made to walk through the fire of her former life, naked, away from their bounty, away from their goodness and the sanctity of their land. Weeping. For shame, Lilith!
Father Ernst sits heavily on his bed. He toes the rug beneath his feet. That failure injured him profoundly. Still, it served to instruct. No one who witnessed the casting-out would ever forget it. Rebekah, compared to her sister, was meek. But something was astray. Of all the children, Rebekah with her unruly mop, her pale scrutiny, would appear suddenly at his elbow while he sipped bourbon and wrote sermons and speeches, late into the night. Watching him. Or when he rehearsed at the pulpit in an otherwise empty church. The growing awareness of her relentless gaze would make the hair stand at the back of his neck, gooseflesh rise on his arms.
Once they’d gone to ground, it was different. Rebekah could no longer amble the shadows like a cat. He’d watched her mature slowly. Made his intentions known. Deborah and Memaw protested, said it wasn’t natural to take his own child. But who else was there to wed? Out of respect, he waited until they both passed before proceeding.
Rebekah took up her role with a reticence that, frankly, unnerved him. He intended to cure her of that impassivity, as he had the others. But their relations were stilted, repellent. He always had to push. She would lie there, staring, unaccommodating. She didn’t fight or argue, but her flesh never yielded. Had to do everything himself. Fumbling with her clothes was the worst. Ernst could not stand those wrathful eyes, judging. He would roll her over, obliterate her face in the pillow, tear at her skirts. He relied on God to fuel him—how else could he perform his conjugal duties?
She’d borne Leah and Abel, the two youngest. But as soon as Hannah ripened, he took her next and henceforth left Rebekah undisturbed. A weakness. Was Ernst himself being punished for not tending Rebekah’s due course as wife?
That shall not happen again, he swears.
He checks the lock on his door. Beside the bed is a bookshelf, which he moves away from the wall. Behind it, his hands feel for an indentation. He presses, puts his weight behind it, and a segment of wall gives with a click. The secret door swings open, and Father Ernst steps inside the hidden storage room, shuts the door behind him. Low lighting flickers and hums. Two shelves of bottled water, emergency supplies, cases of dehydrated high-protein meals, military issue. Gun vault and secure panic room behind another hidden bulletproof door on his right. It’s dead quiet here, secluded, and dry with dust. A whiff of the forbidden stirs him. He falls on his knees. Be sober, be vigilant; for your adversary the Devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking who he may devour.
He raises his hands. “Forgive me, Father in Heaven.” Father Ernst removes his robe, folds it, and sets it on the floor beside him. Same with the flannel shirt he wears beneath. He unbuckles his belt and rolls it in one hand. He repeats a mantra: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
Belt in hand, he begins the mortification of his own flesh, thumping his shoulders, his back. Leather on skin builds heat. The hits land hard, slapping and stinging. It builds to an exquisite song of pain and pleasure, an adrenal rush, purification tearing away the faults and frailties of this human body, this mind. Leading him at last to redemption, to the Eternal Garden, to a purity of thought, word, and deed. The flesh flayed and beaten. The heart baked like a coal and eaten.
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