by Sam Best
Karen sat down in the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. She turned the car around and the tires squealed until they caught traction, sending her shooting down Main Street toward Roy’s small ranch.
9
Moses St. Croix knew that someone would come for him sooner rather than later. He had to take the proper steps to ensure that the town would be safe after he was gone.
He stared at the tarp-covered car parked in the large shed which stood behind The Last Valley Church. A crumpled blue plastic sheet covered most of the vehicle; its tires were still visible below the edge of the covering, but were clean and unsuspicious. After he reached up and pulled the long string attached to a light bulb suspended a few feet above his head, the room fell into shadow.
Moses sighed.
There should have been more time, he thought. It wasn’t guilt he felt, exactly, but something else; a deep regret, perhaps. It gnawed at the edges of his soul, taunting him, wanting him to believe that it was all his fault.
Moses knew that it wasn’t his fault; not all of it. Complacency was certainly one of mankind’s biggest weaknesses—a weakness which Moses had shared until quite recently. Seeing is believing, he told himself. Regretfully, he saw the approaching evil a little too late.
He gripped the rusty metal handle on the shed door and slid it closed. A shiny new padlock was swinging from a chain next to the handle. He picked it up and hooked its open latch through a hole in the door’s handle, then through a hole in a welded metal flap attached to the shed. Moses hit the latch with the palm of his hand and it snapped firmly into place. A couple of hard pulls were enough to convince him it would hold, at least for a while.
Moses turned to walk back to his church and stopped. A branch snapped behind the shed and leaves rustled in the woods. Moses slowly stepped to the side of the shed. He kept his distance and looked into the shadows between the trees. The forest by the church was old and the trees had thick, gnarled trunks.
Something was out there, watching him.
A blur of movement dashed between trees. Long moments passed. His heartbeat pounded louder and filled his ears with thudding rhythm. Moses looked up over the tree canopy and saw the thick stream of black smoke rising from the earth. It reached higher into the sky than ever before and was growing thicker by the hour.
Time was running out.
Moses looked down to the woods. All was silent.
The front steps of his church creaked with old age as he hurried inside. He took no time to admire how the midday sun was beautifully sending its rays through the stained glass windows of his dusty sanctuary to illuminate the twin rows of faded wooden pews below. The church rarely needed electricity during the daytime hours; the building had been constructed on a small hill and received natural light from sunrise to sunset despite the thick surrounding forest.
Moses tried to stop himself from wondering if anyone would ever sit in those pews again. Would he deliver any more sermons to the good people of Falling Rock? He knew that it didn’t matter who was delivering God’s message, just so long as it was still being delivered. His ego insisted it must be him that continued to preach the Good Word, but his quiet voice of logic—the voice he had learned to temper with equal parts faith and hope—whispered loudly that Moses’s focus must remain broad.
Within his mind, this voice of reason most often took on the persona of Edward Huxberg, his old mentor.
“Dear boy,” he could hear his teacher saying. “It isn’t about you, just as most things are not about you. If you survive to watch everyone around you perish, then what’s the point? You’ll become an old man like me, except you won’t have the luxury of company, as I have. It is them, Moses. Your flock. Even the people who refuse to listen to His Word. It is always them. Not you.”
Huxberg’s balding pate still shone brightly in Moses’s memory. They would sit on the seminary lawn for hours discussing doctrine and the ever-changing semantics of life. Those were the early days, before Huxberg earnestly pushed forward with what Moses originally thought to be all of his paranoid nonsense.
“Tell me of your past,” Huxberg once requested. “What led you to God?”
At that time, Moses had spoken of his personal history to no one. To others he was a mystery; a troubled yet gifted black man who came to the school searching for purpose. All they knew was that he had given up one of the most promising careers in medicine to heed The Call. Highly educated but clearly suffering some deep psychological wounds, Moses had been placed on the longest career track the school could offer for extended evaluation and counseling. His first few classes were practically tailored for him alone and focused on rooting out the source of his worldly torment. Something was keeping Moses’s soul anchored in the past, and if he was to be of any use to them, the Church would need to root out this vile seed, expose it, and finally destroy it.
It didn’t matter to them that he was at the top of his class in his old life; they didn’t care about his degree nor about his overwhelming intelligence. They wanted a man who could be good at what The Church needed most: bringing lost souls to God.
Moses had stared at Huxberg for a long time after the old man asked the question. With his wispy white hair, big nose, and thick, foggy glasses, Huxberg would have made a great cartoon character. He smiled at Moses and waited patiently.
“I could no longer see the point in anything else,” said Moses. “I could find nothing in which to put my faith.”
“Ahh,” said Huxberg with the air of knowledge permitted teachers and mentors. “And can you still no longer see ‘the point’, as you say?”
Moses looked at the campus around him. He and Huxberg were sitting on a grassy embankment outside the Mathematics building. It was lunchtime and the courtyard was filled with students and faculty. Moses observed his peers and his elders. He saw them laughing, flirting, arguing, studying. He tried to imagine them going out into the world and making a real difference.
He could not.
Huxberg smiled. “My dear boy,” he said. “It’s life. The point of it all. To live! To be! Happiness, love…all of that, as silly as it sounds. Sorry to spoil it for you, but you were drifting too far into the void.”
Moses turned to him. “It’s that simple?”
Huxberg closed his eyes and nodded. “It truly is.”
Love. Happiness. Moses had his doubts. Surely there was more…
He thought of those things as he walked down the center aisle of The Last Valley Church and opened the door hidden behind the large black curtain hanging over the wall at the rear of the sanctuary. His was a logical mind, a calculating mind, yet he had never fully grasped the concepts Huxberg was trying to endear him toward. Moses, in an act of extreme faith that he was often proud of, decided that these tenants of humanity were valuable enough to fully endorse even if he himself had never experienced them.
It was his dedication to those tenants—those of love and happiness—and to the very preservation of human life that gave Moses St. Croix the courage to go on; to do what needed to be done. The coming days would be a great trial, mentally and physically.
Death had never seemed real to him; it remained a far-off concept observed only rarely when one of his flock was at the end of his or her earthly visit. He was still young; he was still invincible.
“Not so,” interrupted the voice of Huxberg. “Foolish boy.” Moses pushed the old man from his mind in order to focus on the task at hand.
He flipped a switch on the wall and light fell on his cramped living quarters in the apartment attached to the back of the church. In his room were a small bed (over the end of which his feet dangled at night), a simple writing desk and chair, and a two-drawer dresser. A large crucifix hung on the wall across from his bed; the only decoration in the room.
A small green satchel, the same one that he used to carry his books at seminary, lay open on the bed. Moses opened the top drawer in his dresser and pulled out an old, weathered book. He wrapped it in a white undersh
irt before setting it carefully within the satchel. He looked down at his clothes he was wearing—black, long-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into black slacks—and thought about packing more; only God knew what awaited him once he left the safety of His house. He only owned one other pair of pants, and those were drying on a clothesline behind the church.
Moses settled on bringing one extra shirt before he buttoned up the satchel and slung it over his shoulder. He bent forward and flipped his small bed up on its side. The wood planking underneath was dark from moisture. He reached down and stuck his finger through a small hole at the end of one of the planks. Moses pulled upward and the plank squeaked free of its setting. He tossed the piece of wood aside and plunged his arm down into the dark hole beneath the floorboards.
Grunting, he withdrew from the blackness two long-handled tools. Their heavy heads were wrapped tightly with oilcloth. Each handle was of solid oak and each had been reinforced at the top to prevent the metal from slipping. Moses had etched delicate glyphs on the steel heads of the weapons; intricate designs which even he could not decipher. He had copied them from the descriptions outlined in one of Huxberg’s books. They appeared holy in nature, and so gave him comfort.
Without replacing the floorboard or returning his bed to its original position, Moses shrugged the satchel a little higher on his shoulder, flipped off the light switch, and left The Last Valley Church.
10
It was the last day of school before winter break and Tommy Bridges was alone.
Well, almost alone. Fat Brian Wilson sat on the ground like a lump, blood trickling out of his nose and dripping down onto his new blue polo shirt. He never looked up once after Kyle Laubin punched him in the face; he just sat there like a fat lump, sniffling and not saying anything.
Tommy Bridges stood with his back against a tree while Kyle and two of his friends, Jason and Billy, slowly closed in around him. Tommy looked over to Fat Brian for help but found none; the pudgy introvert was off in some distant, safer world of his own.
Tommy wished his friend Mitch were there, but he had left for his family vacation a few days earlier, saying, “So long, sucker!” from the back window of his station wagon as his dad drove their family away.
At school, the grass field where the students held recess stretched behind the main building and terminated at the edge of the woods. Usually it was a pleasant place, but not that day. On that day, one of the meanest boys ever to walk the halls of Falling Rock Middle School had heard something disturbing about a particular person toward whom he harbored a large amount of loyalty.
“Tell me that lie about my big brother,” said Kyle as he clenched his fists tightly. Tommy thought they looked like solid steel wrecking balls. “Tell me what you said about Mike.”
Tommy gulped and tried to press back farther into the trunk of the tree. A sharp knot in the wood where an old branch had snapped off dug painfully into his back.
“I didn’t say anything about your brother, Kyle.”
“That’s not what Fat Brian says.” Kyle pointed over to the sniveling boy on the ground, who turned his head away at the mention of his name. “Is it, Fat Brian?”
Jason and Billy laughed and took a step closer.
“Tell me what you said and we’ll make it easy on you.”
Tommy looked over Kyle’s shoulder at the school. The doors were still closed. Ms. Rathman, their teacher, hadn’t heard the commotion outside when Kyle and his cronies confronted Fat Brian and demanded information. Tommy wondered how they heard about it in the first place. Rumors still spread too quickly, even with fewer kids in the school.
“He’s lying,” said Tommy. He could see Brian’s face scrunch up even more as a fresh tear rolled down his cheek.
“Is that right?” said Kyle. “Well, maybe we’ll just ask him if he’s lying.” He looked at Jason and Billy. “Go on. Ask him.”
The two boys walked over and stood on either side of Brian. Billy clenched his fists and brought one of them up into the air, ready to swing it down into Brian’s face.
“Wait!” said Tommy. “Wait. I said it. It was me.”
Billy lowered his fist and Kyle looked at Tommy. “Said what?”
Tommy took a deep breath. Kyle’s older brother, Mike Laubin, was the town screw-up; everybody knew that. He’d been in and out of trouble since he was a boy, at first stealing candy then moving on to jewelry and cars.
“I was the one who said your brother Mike started the fire in the woods.”
Kyle moved forward quickly and slammed the palm of his hand against the tree trunk next to Tommy’s head. He leaned in close and spoke in a rushed fury. “My brother didn’t start no fire in no woods, you hear me? He’s got enough trouble as it is without people telling lies about him! Who told you he did it, huh? Who told you?” He turned his head to the side and put his ear next to Tommy’s mouth. When Tommy did not immediately answer, Kyle slapped his face and leaned back in with his ear. “Who told you?”
Tommy clenched his eyes and tried to hold back a tear. “My-my-my…my dad.”
Behind Kyle, Jason and Billy burst into laughter. “My-my-my!” they teased in unison.
“Your dad,” said Kyle. “And what would your dad know about my brother? Does he spy on him? Does your dad like spying on boys, Tommy? I think he does!”
“No,” Tommy said without energy. He prayed for the torture to end. “No, he doesn’t do that.”
“I think he does!” said Kyle again. He stepped forward, swung back his fist, and punched Tommy in the stomach. Tommy fell to the ground and rolled onto his back. An anvil had just landed on top of him, crushing out all of his air. He thought he would never be able to breathe again. “Go on,” said Kyle to Billy and Jason. “One shot each, and make ‘em count.”
Billy walked over to Tommy’s curled-up body and kicked him hard in the ribs. Still without air, Tommy jerked back and moaned in pain. Jason knelt down and punched his hapless victim in the back of the skull. Tommy’s face slammed into hard dirt from the force of the blow.
Kyle looked back at the school. “Let’s get out of here before Ms. Rat-Man comes back.”
Mercifully, that was the end of it. The trio of bullies walked away, toward the shadows of a small group of trees at the other end of the field.
Tommy rolled onto his side and finally his lungs opened. He gasped too much air on his first breath and coughed it all out in a quick series of painful spasms. The coughing made his left ribs burn as if a hot poker had been stuck between each one. After a few long moments he was able to open his eyes. The boughs of the tree overhead dissolved out of solid whiteness. He heard Fat Brian sniffling nearby and Tommy rolled onto his stomach to push himself off the ground.
His ribs got the worst of it, he figured. His stomach didn’t hurt and his head was clearing, but every time he breathed in, his left lung pressed against a knot of pain on the inside of his ribcage. He walked slowly over to Brian and sat down next to him.
“I’m sorry,” said Brian between sniffles. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Tommy. “Those guys are jerkwads. I just wish Ms. Rathman would have seen them. Then they’d be gone for good.”
“Yeah,” said Brian.
Old Ms. Rathman was an okay teacher, Tommy supposed, but she sure didn’t care about watching the kids whenever she sent them outside for some fresh air. She poked her head outside only twice: once to open the door on the way out and once to let the kids in after they had run themselves silly.
Kyle and his band of misfits owned the field. Wherever they went, the crowd parted. Whatever game they wanted to play, Kyle and his friends made the rules. It had been that way ever since Tommy first met Kyle when they were in elementary school. The sidekicks always changed, but Kyle remained the same. When Tommy complained to his parents about the situation at school, his father encouraged him to stay out of the way; he told him boys like that always got what was coming to them in the end.
Tommy wished whatever was
coming for Kyle Laubin would get there in a damned hurry.
“He shouldn’t have said that about your dad,” said Brian. He pulled up the bottom of his shirt to wipe blood from his face and tears from his eyes. “It’s not true.”
“I know it isn’t. Kyle’s a liar.” Tommy looked over to the three bullies huddled together in the protective shade of a large pine tree. They were laughing and shoving each other around. Looking up over the trees at the end of the field, Tommy could see the fading tip of the black stream of smoke his dad said was from the fire started by Mike Laubin and his rowdy friends.
“You think Mike really started that?” asked Brian. “It’s been burning for a while now.”
“That’s what my dad says.”
“How would he know who did it?”
Tommy shrugged. “Mike does a lot of bad things.”
“Yeah.”
The door on the back of the school building squeaked open and Ms. Rathman’s white-haired head popped out into the sunlight. “Time to come in!” she shouted, and swung the door wide. She leaned back against it and waited for the few remaining students at the school to walk over.
Parents were fond of pulling their children out of school early right before winter vacation. Most of the students were testing during the last week of the semester, and it was not unusual for one-third to half of the students with exemplary grades to be excused from the testing and to be allowed to leave a week early. This year, though, the amount of students who left early for vacation constituted more than two-thirds of the entire student body.
There were only thirty students in the school to begin with, but when more than twenty of them were taken out of the program early, the population disparity became impossible to ignore. Tommy knew that all of the town’s seasonal guests had driven or flown to warmer climates for the winter, but the thirty students who attended the middle school year-round were not all straight-A students, and should not have all been excused from exams.
