Decoration Day

by Vic Kerry

Marsh let go of David’s hands. He moved them to bring back the circulation. All the excitement had caused them to go numb, but nothing seemed to crawl under the skin anymore. Marsh brought a cup of water. He put it to David’s lips. The liquid felt like what the rich man begged Lazarus for from hell, a great relief.

  “Bless you,” David said. “I think I can hold the compress on my head.”

  Marsh nodded for Thomasine to let him. He pressed the cloth tighter to his head. The closer the ice cubes could get to the skin, the better. He closed his eyes. The faint glow on the ceiling was the last thing he saw. It seemed to brighten as he did so.

  “Hopefully, Ebenezer will be here soon,” Marsh said. “Stay still and keep your eyes closed. Thomasine and I will keep you company. Don’t worry; we’ll be quiet.”

  David was happy that they were staying. The creature seemed to fear Marsh. It disappeared as soon as it sensed him coming. Silence would also be welcome. His hearing seemed amplified. He was positive he could hear the rain hitting the oak leaves on the other side of the wall. As for now, David focused on the blackness behind his eyelids.

  “Come along, Reverend Stanley,” a friendly feminine voice said.

  He opened his eyes. A raven-haired woman with porcelain-white features stared down at him. Sunlight lit everything. The addition of that wonderful natural light made the room much less oppressive. The woman didn’t hurt things either. Her beauty was like nothing David had ever seen. It looked almost otherworldly. For a moment he felt that he might be looking at an angel beckoning him away from his dead body and taking him toward heaven.

  “Am I dead?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’m here to take you on a tour of our town. Alistair sent me to do so.”

  “Who are you?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “What day is it?” David sat up in bed. His head didn’t swim. Nothing felt out of place.

  “Monday,” She put her hand out to him. “Come along. Time is wasting.”

  He got out of bed and took her hand. It felt soft, warm and welcoming. He hadn’t held a woman’s hand like that in quite a while. It made him miss Anna. They walked to the parlor downstairs. A little boy of about eight waited for them. He too had dark hair but vibrant blue eyes. David thought the boy looked like the son he’d wished he had, but God had not seen fit for him and Anna to have children. The boy smiled, full of life and boy vibrancy.

  “This is my son,” the woman said. “He’ll be coming with us.”

  “What’s your name?” David asked the youth.

  “Boy,” he replied with no guile whatsoever.

  “Who’s your daddy, Tarzan?” David laughed and looked at the woman. Neither reciprocated. They must not have gotten the joke.

  “Are we ready?” she asked.

  “Let’s go,” David said. “Will Thomas be driving us around?”

  “We’re going to walk. It’s a very nice day.” Boy took David’s other hand.

  The trio walked through the front door that opened by itself. The warmth of the sun radiated around him as they stepped onto the porch. The light washed out the entire image. Everything looked blanched. David wanted to shield his eyes, but had no need. The light didn’t sting like he’d expected. The woman and Boy pulled him forward. They stepped off the porch onto the sidewalk. The town started to come into focus as the brightness of the light began to fade away.

  David felt as if he floated down the street. He looked at his feet, but they disappeared into the white light. So did the woman’s and Boy’s. He allowed the two strangers to pull him down the hill into the heart of the town.

  People walked down the street, normal-looking people. None of them hunched over like toads. The café he’d seen days before looked brand new, gleaming with the light reflected off the windows. Patrons ate lunch and waved as they passed. He saw the library bustling with children. Sale advertisements hung in the window of the grocery store. The bright letters announced fresh ground chuck at $2.50 per pound, a good deal indeed. Across the creek that sparkled in the sunlight, a bright green starburst spun in the air of the gas station. Cars filled up, ready for a new day.

  “What happened to this place?” David asked.

  “You gave us this,” the woman said. “You saved our town.”

  “What do you mean? How?”

  “We can play again,” Boy said. “It has been forever since we played.”

  The sound of giggling children filled up his ears. That was joined by the sound of laughing women, and then chuckling men. The joy of Innsboro swelled within David. Warmth like he’d never felt radiated from deep inside him. The light brightened again until it completely washed out everything. A cold gush of water hit him in the face.

  David awoke to Ebenezer washing his face with an icy cloth. The room looked different. The ceiling was high and ornate. Scrolled moldings lined it. A gold chandelier dangled over the bed. Each bulb glowed with an orange filament. Water spattered on the window as it rained.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  “In my bedroom,” Marsh said, walking into his vision. “We decided to move you here for comfort.”

  “I was fine. The woman you sent to me walked me around town. It looked wonderful. Children played at the library, and folks ate lunch at the café. The sun beamed.” He looked out the window at the rain streaking the glass. “What day is it?”

  “Still Friday,” Marsh said.

  David turned to look at his host. A painting hung on the wall behind him. It was the portrait of the woman who had given him the tour. “She’s the one who took me on the tour.”

  Marsh looked over his shoulder. “That’s impossible. She’s been dead for years.”

  “She and a boy came into the room upstairs. They said you sent them.” David feared he was starting to rant again. He didn’t feel as well as he had only a few minutes ago.

  “Was this the boy?” Marsh took a frame from the bedside table.

  A small oil portrait of Boy stared at him. “I believe it is. He is a little bit younger in the painting.”

  “That is my son.” Marsh pointed to the portrait on the wall. “That is my wife, Louisa. They could not have taken you on a tour.”

  “Fever dreams,” Ebenezer said. “He probably drifted between waking and slumbering while we moved him. He saw the pictures, and they became part of the dream.”

  “It was real. I felt them. They said it was Monday and that I made everything better,” David said.

  “Lie back down.” Ebenezer pushed on him. He put the cold cloth on his forehead. “I have something I want you to take.”

  “No more sleeping dram,” Marsh said. “I think it’s making things worse. He needs to be with us on Sunday.”

  David heard Ebenezer rattling in his bag. The old man held a plastic bottle up to his face to show him the medicine. David read the white block letters clearly: Tylenol. It was the first thing he’d recognized the whole time, and even in his fever stupor, he felt relief.

  “This will break the fever yet.” Ebenezer opened it and put the bottle to David’s lips. “Drink until I tell you to stop.”

  “Don’t give him too much,” Marsh said.

  “Let me be the doctor, Alistair.”

  The artificial cherry flavor filled up David’s mouth. The bitter undertone of medicine lingered after he swallowed. By the time Ebenezer removed the bottle from his lips, a quarter of the liquid had gone into him.

  “You’ll feel better soon,” Ebenezer said. “Sleep now and let the medicine work.”

  David agreed. He felt too sick and tired to argue. A sleep void of any dreams would be welcome. He began to snore but wasn’t fully asleep yet.

  “We have to do something else to stop it from completely taking him before time,” Ebenezer said. “What about some kind of religious talisman?”

  “I found a cross around his neck before you got here,” Marsh said on the other side of David’s closed lids. “That wasn’t keeping it away.”

>   “What about one its symbols?” Ebenezer suggested.

  A fist rapped on the headboard above David’s head. He almost opened his eyes, but exhaustion kept him completely still. His hearing began to go in and out as sleep overwhelmed him.

  “The bed has one carved into it,” Marsh said. “I believe it protects me. Let’s hope it does the same for him.”

  David heard nothing else of their conversation despite his efforts to hear more. Either exhaustion or the liquid Tylenol put him into a deep sleep.

  Saturday

  David walked beside Marsh, who held a large black umbrella over both of them. The rain pattered on the nylon material as they walked on the brick paths through the flower garden. Of everything in the whole town, David thought this place looked the most vibrant and fresh. Nothing of the stale dustiness of the town stayed in this place. Every single plant popped with color as if they had been colorized from some old black-and-white movie. He thought that might be exactly what it was. David knew he wasn’t in a movie, but supposedly humans dreamed in black and white. Perhaps everything from the last week was a lengthy nightmare that fought to be in color. Only the flowers and the strange purple glow made the most of the toehold color took in his dream.

  “I am sorry for walking in the rain,” Marsh said. “Ebenezer said that you need to get fresh air to help you convalesce. If that fever is something more than just the aggravation of your concussion, I fear that this dampness will make things worse.”

  David looked back from one of the bright orange lilies blooming along the path. “I welcome the air. It feels good even if damp. Come to think of it, everything always seems damp around here. Why does it rain so much?”

  “The geological nature of this valley,” Marsh answered. “Supposedly cold water springs underlie this whole place. The creek in the center of town just bubbles up from the ground a few yards from the base of the mountain. Hot downdrafts cause all the moisture when they encounter that cold water.”

  “So does it rain this much in the winter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  David stopped walking. Marsh continued a few steps, allowing the umbrella to quit shielding David from the rain. He walked back, covering them both again.

  “How do you mean you don’t know? Where do you go in the winter?”

  “I go nowhere in the winter,” Marsh said.

  “Then why don’t you know if it rains a lot?” David pressed.

  “I wasn’t listening to your question when you first asked it. I was hopelessly lost in other thoughts. Yes, it rains just as much in the wintertime.”

  “Where were your thoughts, Decoration Day?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “I’ve noticed that it is a very important day to the people of this town. Everyone uses it as a marker like New Year’s Day. It’s almost like it’s a religious holiday.”

  “We need to keep walking. Doctor’s orders.” Marsh patted him on the shoulder to get him moving.

  Both men ambled through the garden. They passed a bed of marigolds. The orange and yellows exploded with color like Fourth of July fireworks. The smell from the blooms wafted to David on the damp air. He couldn’t remember such pungent marigolds. The smell reminded him of the hot summertime and his grandmother. He recognized all the flowers today, unlike the last time he visited the garden.

  “Our past is important to us,” Marsh said. “That is why we hold Decoration Day so dear.”

  David could still smell the marigolds. The smell almost spoke in the voice of his grandmother. He understood the importance of ancestors too. It still didn’t answer the question about the particular day.

  “What happens after Decoration Day?” he asked.

  This time Marsh stopped walking, and David continued into the rain. The minister returned to the shelter of the umbrella. The other man stared at him as if some great question of the ages had been popped on him without any notice. David waited for the answer. Time passed with the tom-tom beating of the rain on the umbrella’s fabric.

  “Nothing,” Marsh finally said. “Everything continues just as is.”

  “Why doesn’t the grocery store order fresh food, then? Every time I ask, they say it is because the town cannot eat the surplus before Decoration Day. That tells me something changes on Monday,” David said.

  “I don’t know,” Marsh said. “You are asking questions that I cannot answer. All I can say is that it’s the way it has always been done.”

  Frustration built up in David. Since he had been there, the town seemed to be keeping secrets and then blocking him from discovering them. He tired of the games and would put all his cards on the table.

  “Something more is going on, Alistair. I haven’t been dreaming, have I? Something comes to me at night and in the daylight. I’ve heard you and the others talking about how I am the one, and how this thing seems to like me. Tell me now what is going on.”

  “We should go back in before all this moisture negatively affects you,” Marsh said.

  “No. We stay here, and you answer my question.” David grabbed hold of the other man’s arm. He gripped it tightly enough to dig his fingernails into the skin.

  “Our town is cursed,” Marsh said. “We have been waiting for a preacher who can lift it.”

  “What do you mean?” David asked, keeping hold of Marsh’s arm.

  “We decorate the monuments to our ancestors to remember the Battle of Innsboro. They were massacred before the battle. We were so angry that the town elders petitioned a great power and sold the soul of the town to it for victory. It granted our petition, and we have been cursed ever since.”

  “The town sold its soul to the Devil?” David asked.

  “Not to the Devil, to something far more powerful, an ancient thing that you cannot understand. The exposure you’ve had to it in spirit form has nearly killed you. That is why we are trying to keep you from it as long as possible. On Decoration Day, you will vanquish it, and we will be accursed no more.”

  “I’m a sacrifice?” David let go of Marsh’s arm.

  “No.” The answer came quicker than David would have liked. “According to the contract with the thing, a man of the One God will come and free us.”

  “So what happened to the preachers who haven’t succeeded?”

  “They leave,” Marsh said.

  “All I have to do is preach?”

  “That’s it. I think this great old thing is trying to stop you because you will break the contract. We’ve waited so long,” Marsh said, almost looking excited.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this from the start?”

  “You wouldn’t have believed us. You’d have left as soon as you arrived. I knew last Sunday that you were different. Typically we put out an ad for a pastor a month before Decoration Day. Every other year one or two answer it. We take the more likely of the two. No one answered the advertisement this year, and then you came of your own will. The One God talks to you and tells you to save us.”

  David couldn’t deny this, but Marsh implied the light was the thing holding the town enslaved. That couldn’t be because God spoke from that light. He needed help, divine help. Prayer was the only answer.

  “I need to pray about this,” he said.

  “We can go back inside,” Marsh answered.

  “I need to pray at the church.”

  “I don’t think that is such a good idea. You are the most susceptible to the thing there. It is trying to stop you.”

  “I pray there, or I leave town. I’ll walk up the mountain and climb over the rock fall.”

  Marsh looked at the ground. “So be it. If you will stay and try to help us, then I will oblige you, but wear this.”

  He reached in his pocket and brought out a necklace with a talisman on it. The small silver charm looked like the weird star at the church. Marsh handed it to David.

  “What is this?” He took it and put it around his neck. The dreams and fever had been powerful, so if this small thing could ward it off,
then David would use it.

  “A fetish of the thing that curses us. The metal has protective powers. The shape is its symbol.” Marsh pointed to the house. “Let’s go back in, and I’ll have Thomas return you to the church.”

  David knelt on a small wooden rail before the pulpit. A velvet cushion padded his knees against the hardness of the wood. He prayed. The words flowed from him. They weren’t eloquent or elegant, just what he needed from God. The Lord had led him to this place. Now he’d discovered what the town wanted from him, but he needed more of what the Lord wanted for him. The revived evangelistic fire inside him sputtered with Marsh’s revelation. He couldn’t help feeling that, like Christ, he was the lamb being led to the slaughter. The prayer said all this and more. David ended with amen but remained kneeling where he was. Drops of sweat rolled down his back. The church pulsed with heat.

  Until today, every time he’d entered the sanctuary, the place felt comfortable if not cool. The newfound heat seemed strange. This part of the building had no electricity, so no heating that didn’t require someone to stoke a fire of some sort.

  “Whew, if it ain’t hot in here,” Hester said from the back of the room.

  David turned to see the frumpy maid walking down the aisle between pews. She fanned a rag in front of her face as she did. He stood to greet her.

  “Why in blue blazes did you put the woodstove to heating?” she asked.

  “I didn’t. The place was like this when I got here,” he said.

  “Got to fix that. You’ve got water in that apartment, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, fill up the bucket I keep down behind the pulpit and bring it back for me to pour on the fire in the woodstove,” she said. “We’ll sweat off ten pounds in here if you don’t. I just wonder who lit that thing.”

  “Perhaps it was an altar boy getting ready for tomorrow,” David said, stepping onto the pulpit platform.

  “What altar boys? We don’t have any of those.”

  He stopped and looked at her. “Mr. Marsh told me that an altar boy would light the chandelier before services tomorrow.”