The Searcher

by Simon Toyne

  The church was still there. Solomon looked down at his chest. The cross was still there too. And so was the altar.

  He glanced over to the door and saw his jacket and shirt folded on a chair next to it.

  “Forget it,” Palmer said. “You’re not going anywhere. You took a real knock to the skull and you lost a significant amount of blood from that wound on your back. How did you get that, by the way? It looks surgical.”

  “No idea,” Solomon said, unwilling to get into it. “Where’s Holly?”

  “In the next room. What about those bruises and contusions on your wrists—any idea how you came by those?”

  “No. Is she okay?”

  “She’s stable. She lost a lot of blood but she’s been transfused. That tourniquet she arrived with probably saved her life. I’m guessing that was you?”

  “You need to take extra care of her,” Solomon said.

  “We always do.”

  “No, I mean extra care. Run an HCG test on her, you’ll see.”

  Palmer raised an eyebrow. “Really?” He wrote more notes on the clipboard. “You should take care of yourself too.” He hooked the notes back on the end of the bed and headed to the door. “And get some rest. I don’t want to find you wandering around the corridors.”

  “Don’t worry,” Solomon said. “You won’t.”

  94

  SOLOMON STEPPED OUT INTO THE MORNING LIGHT AND BREATHED IN THE cool air.

  He stiffly slipped his arms into his jacket and started to walk toward the church, the new dressing on his back feeling tight beneath his shirt. His hands and wrists hurt, and he flexed his fingers as he walked along, trying to work out some of the stiffness. His legs felt shaky too.

  “Man, you need to get yourself in shape,” he muttered to himself as he stepped into the shade of the boardwalk and headed along it to the church.

  There were trucks and fire crews and out-of-town police vehicles crowded around what was left of the Cassidy residence. The side nearest the church had collapsed entirely, with half rooms exposed as if a giant had smashed his fist down on it. A couch was hanging over the splintered edge of an upper floor and wallpaper fluttered like streamers in the morning breeze.

  The church appeared relatively untouched, but as he drew closer he saw that a large crack had spread up the stone wall by the door like a streak of black lightning, and bright pebbles of glass littered the floor where the stained-glass windows had shattered.

  There was a strip of black-and-yellow tape across the door with DO NOT ENTER written across it, but Solomon ignored it and went inside.

  The church was deserted, everyone clearly focusing their efforts on the ruin of the Cassidy house, probably still looking for the mayor, hoping they might find him alive, though Solomon doubted they would. Death must have seemed like a preferable option, given what else the mayor would have faced had he lived. The trusts would pass to the church now and there was little to no money coming in from anywhere else as far as he could see. Cassidy might have saved the church, but the town would die anyway, along with his name.

  He moved down the aisle past the mannequin that had toppled over and now lay in stiffness staring up at the ceiling. All of the windows on the right-hand side of the church, the side closest to the blast, were broken, the depictions of the various commandments rendered abstract by the pieces that were missing.

  Four large black crates were lined up along the aisle but whatever had been inside them had been removed. Solomon sniffed the air as he walked past and smelled the lingering ether of gasoline.

  The altar cross lay toppled and dented on its side. Solomon reached the plinth it had stood upon and saw the words revealed on the inlaid stone surface, the exact same design he had seen on the drawings Holly had produced at the campsite.

  I

  THOU SHALT HAVE

  NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME

  He ran his finger over the words and probed the I and the mark on his arm throbbed in concord, as if it was a living thing anticipating what was about to be revealed.

  The recess of the I was loose, compacted dust rather than solid stone. Solomon leaned forward and blew on it to clear it and the hole got deeper. He repeated this, working the dust loose with his little finger, then blowing it away, until there was no more left to clear.

  He took the key from around his neck and carefully fit it into the slot.

  It was a perfect fit.

  He twisted it gently, aware that the lock had not been used for almost a hundred years.

  It was solid.

  He took the key out again and moved over to where a candle lay on the floor, knocked over by the blast. He rubbed the tines of the cross over the waxy surface to lubricate it a little, then moved back to the plinth, spat in the hole, and tried again.

  This time it shifted a little, and he wiggled it in the lock, twisting it ever more until something gave and the whole of the inlaid square of stone moved and a line appeared where it met the lip. Solomon pulled it up, using the key as a handle, and revealed what lay beneath.

  The niche was filled with a twist of cloth that had yellowed with age and been knotted in several places in the approximation of arms and legs to make a doll. Solomon reached in and lifted it out to reveal a book beneath it. It was as small as a paperback and as thin as a cigarette, its plain black cover tied shut with a long black ribbon that wound around each edge and was secured by a bow in the center, like a solemn Christmas present. There was a folded page trapped near the back of the book, bulging the pages on either side of it.

  Solomon carried the book and the linen doll over to a pew, lay the doll down on the bench beside him, and pulled the frayed end of the bow to open the book. Inside the pages were filled with neat copperplate handwriting that swirled and looped across the page. Solomon turned to the first page and started to read.

  I write these words on the twenty-third day of December in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and twenty-seven. Two days from now it will be my birthday. I will be eighty-six years old, or I would be if I were to make it that far . . .

  He read quickly, learning the true account of how Jack Cassidy had really survived in the cauldron of the Arizona desert, the sacrifice of Eldridge, the drinking of his blood, and the light in the darkness. And when he reached the end, where Cassidy told of the miracle of finding the missing page of the Bible out in the vast desert, Solomon knew what the loose folded page in the back of the book must be.

  He pulled it out and examined it. It was old and yellowed and carried the ghost of printed words upon it. It looked as though it had been roughly scoured with grit to remove the original text, but enough remained for Solomon to see that he was holding the missing page of the Bible. It had been folded in such a way as to form an envelope, and Solomon could feel something inside it, something flat and irregular and solid.

  He unfolded the page, being careful not to tear it along the fragile creases, and a sliver of glass fell into his hand, along with a second folded page. He held the glass up to the light, turning it in his hand, and saw that it was a fragment of mirror.

  He held it up to his face and caught his breath when he saw, not himself reflected, but a desert at night, vast and empty save for a dark figure standing close by and staring straight at him.

  “Hello, Jack,” Solomon whispered.

  He turned the triangle of glass in his hand and the reflected landscape shifted, showing him what the land had been like before the town was here. He could see the mountains and the sky, unchanged and timeless, and the V in the mountain range, there long before it had served as a background to James Coronado’s childhood photographs. And when he turned the glass back to his face, the dark figure of Jack Cassidy had gone and it was only himself reflected. Or was it? There was something different about his eyes. They were darker now, a deep brown instead of pale gray, and his eyebrows had some color to them too. He rubbed his thumb across the surface of the glass to clear the dust and regarded himself again. It was him but not him. A
slightly fuller version of his previous self. A blank page, but at least with some writing on it now.

  He slipped the glass into his pocket and was about to unfold the second sheet when he noticed writing on the inside of the sheet he had already opened. He held it up to the light and saw the faded commandments still faintly visible beneath a declaration written in brown ink:

  I, the man known as Jack Cassidy, hereby pledge to exchange that most treasured and immortal part of myself so that a great church of solid stone may rise from the desert and spread God’s word and charity until all savagery is driven from this land and Christian people have taken dominion here.

  JC

  So here it was. Jack Cassidy’s shameful secret. He believed he had sold his soul in the desert in exchange for a fortune and a church and a town.

  Solomon gazed around him at the broken church and listened beyond the walls to the sounds of voices and splintering wood as people continued to search through the rubble for Cassidy’s last remaining relative. Maybe he had. The town certainly seemed cursed rather than blessed.

  He took the second folded page and carefully opened it. It was as old as the first page and of the same quality and size. There was writing on both sides, a note from Jack Cassidy on one side and a dedication in a hand he did not recognize on the other. He read it and felt everything click into place.

  He rose from the pew and hurried back to the entrance, taking the linen doll and the notebook with him. The Plexiglass box that protected the old Bible had shifted in the explosion, with cracks around the screws that held it to the wooden base. Solomon pounded the side of it and it came away entirely, exposing the old Bible beneath.

  It had lain open at Exodus for almost a hundred years but Solomon closed it now and opened it again to the first few pages, searching for a dedication page. He didn’t find one. Instead he found a fine tear close to the binding, three pages in. He took the page he had just read and held it up. The serrations at the torn edge of the page matched perfectly. This second page had been torn from this Bible too.

  He reread the dedication on it and smiled. He no longer needed to save James Coronado. He already had.

  95

  HOLLY WOKE GRADUALLY FROM A DREAM OF JIM.

  They had been riding in the desert on one of those cool evenings where the light was like liquid warmth, and she woke with a smile on her face, which melted away as soon as she realized where she was.

  She was propped up against some pillows, her leg heavily bandaged and tubes coming out of her arm. She felt like she’d been run over by a truck, but then the memory of what had actually happened came to her and the truck seemed like a better option.

  Her whole body was in pain, both inner and outer. She looked around for an alarm button to press so she could call someone and maybe get a sleeping pill to send her back to her happy dream. That’s when she spotted the folded piece of paper on her nightstand with “Holly” written on it.

  She reached over, pressed the button, then picked up the folded sheet of paper and settled back on her bed. The note was written on a scrap that had been torn from her medical notes.

  “Your husband was right,” it said. “The lost Cassidy riches were exactly where he thought they would be. This page was torn from the Cassidy Bible. You can verify that by matching the ripped edge. The rest is written on your study wall.”

  There was no signature, but she knew who it was from.

  A second sheet of paper was folded into the note, much older than the first, and she carefully unfolded it now and saw old-fashioned writing on both sides of the page. She read the longer note first:

  I have sinned, God knows I have sinned, but I pray to He who is merciful and just not to visit my sins upon those who carry my name by setting down this confession.

  Before I found riches and built a church and made a town and a new name for myself, I was another man with another family and another name. In my vanity I thought it was my family who was holding me back from all I imagined I could be so I abandoned them in order to seek my fortune, only to realize too late that there are no greater riches than the name you are born with and those who will carry it on into the future. By the time I realized this, it was too late, I was already trapped by my new name and the fame of it and realized if I confessed the truth I risked the ruin of everything good I had wrought.

  I did confess this grave sin once, to the priest who gave me this Bible, but he died and took my secret to the grave with him, as I now take it to mine.

  The foundation I set up for abandoned families and the orphanage attached was my way of trying to find the family I had abandoned without risking the ruination of the Cassidy name. It was my penance too. I only pray that my lost family managed to thrive without me and that sometime, in a more civilized future, the two halves of my broken past might be reunited and made whole again. For as the priest told me when he took my confession:

  “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches.”

  PROVERBS 22:1

  JC

  Holly finished reading just as the door opened and Dr. Palmer walked in.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been shot.” She turned the page over to the dedication on the other side of the page.

  “Apart from that, how are you feeling?”

  “Awesome, I guess.”

  The dedication was in two parts. The first recorded when the Bible had been given to a Father Patrick O’Brien by the bishop of Limerick in 1868. The second was written in a different hand, a spidery scrawl that hinted at age or infirmity. The date was May 1, 1879, and the message said simply:

  I HEREBY BEQUEATH THIS BIBLE TO JAMES CORONADO, TRAVELING UNDER THE NAME JACK CASSIDY.

  SIGNED–FR. PATRICK O’BRIEN. MA

  She read the names again then realized exactly what Solomon’s note had meant.

  The rest is written on your study wall.

  She pictured Jim’s family tree, traced back all the way to his oldest relative, the man he had been named after.

  James Coronado. Or Jack Cassidy. They were the same.

  He had spent his life idolizing the Cassidys, not realizing he had been one all along.

  She looked up, aware that Dr. Palmer had been speaking to her. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

  “No,” she said. “I was a little . . .”

  “An inability to concentrate can be one of the side effects of hormonal imbalance, along with nausea and a whole bunch of other delights.”

  Holly shook her head, confused. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with me?”

  Palmer smiled. “You really didn’t hear a thing I said, did you? There’s nothing wrong, Mrs. Coronado, nothing at all. You’re pregnant.”

  96

  MULCAHY FELT A JOLT OF DéJà VU AS HE EASED OFF THE ROAD AND ONTO the ramp of the Best Western. The layout was different from the one he’d been in the previous day, bigger accommodation blocks and fewer of them, but the feel of the place was identical: impersonal, functional, slightly depressing. He parked by the reception office and checked cars as he walked to the office. Old habits.

  A collection of tattoos and piercings in the shape of a man handed him a site map then the key to the room he pointed at and was back to playing Candy Crush Soda on his phone before Mulcahy was even out of the door.

  The sunlight hurt when he stepped back outside. He ran his finger along the paintwork of the Jeep before getting back inside, leaving a long clear line in the dust. He’d been driving through the night, stopping only for gas and coffee, and his eyes felt like they’d been peeled.

  The room he had chosen was in the block farthest from the road. It was a family unit, slightly bigger than the one from the day before, but otherwise identical: same kitchenette at the back, same lumpy twin beds facing a TV about as ancient as the A/C unit that rattled when he turned it on.

  He grabbed the remote, turned on the set, and sat heavily on the bed. Springs dug into him through the thin s
heets and bedcover. All he had to do was lie back and he would be asleep before his head hit the mattress. But he couldn’t sleep. Not yet.

  Sound and picture faded on the screen and he nudged the volume up and channel-surfed until he found a local news station. The events at Redemption were all they were talking about, fragments of the last twenty-four hours of his life flashing before his eyes like a hallucination.

  He forced himself to his feet and moved over to the kitchenette, his eyes fixed on the screen, faces and voices smearing into each other. He pulled the fold-up cot away from the connecting door and fit his key in the lock. There was a noise on the other side, like someone had been standing on the other side, listening. Mulcahy pulled the door open and stared at Pop. His hair was sticking out as if he’d just gotten up and he had dark bags under his eyes. He looked Mulcahy up and down. “You look like shit,” he said.

  Mulcahy felt the weight of the last twenty-four hours settle on him and something tightened in his throat. “Mom got married again,” he said, before he knew what he was saying.

  Pop blinked. “I know,” he said. “Good luck to her.”

  Then he stepped forward and hugged him tight, like he hadn’t done since he was very, very small.

  97

  SOLOMON FELT THE STRETCH OF HIS LEGS AND THE WIND ON HIS FACE AS he walked out of Redemption. He was on the road that passed the mine and the airfield and the livery yard. The horses were back in the corrals when he reached it, flicking their tails as they munched the hay that had been laid out for them. A couple of palominos looked his way when he walked up the track toward them and laid something on the ground where it couldn’t easily be seen. They returned their attention to their breakfast before he walked away again. After a few steps he heard snorting and sensed something behind him. He stopped and turned to look back up the track. The ghost of the girl had appeared. She was standing where he had just been. She stooped down and picked up the twisted cotton doll he had left for her, then looked up at him, smiled, and faded away.