Children of the Earth

by Anna Schumacher

  “Listen, guys, there’s no easy way to say this, and I’m not one to beat around the bush. We found Janie’s body strung up on our rig this morning. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  All the blood drained from Doug’s head at once, leaving a rushing sound in his ears like a vacuum cleaner turned up high. The hazy world before him telescoped inward, and he stumbled forward, dizzy and nauseated and unable to think. Then the lightheadedness got the best of him, and he sat down hard and kept falling, coming to rest with his cheek in the dirt.

  Janie. Body. Loss. Strung up. Sorry. Body. Loss. Janie.

  The words knocked around in his brain like marbles in an empty room, bruising the inside of his skull. It couldn’t be right.

  But it had to be right.

  Janie had been gone for days.

  Janie had left and hadn’t come home again.

  Janie had been his wife, and now she was dead. Dead with her body strung up on an oil rig. Dead along with their son, the son he had only just forgiven her for losing.

  The dirt around his face turned dark, then sticky, mud clinging to his cheeks. He realized he was crying, sobbing into the earth. He hadn’t felt the spit of tears on his face in years. Now it felt like his cheeks would never be dry again.

  There were so many tears.

  All the tears he had never cried for Jeremiah.

  All the tears he had never cried for his own shitty childhood, for the dark nights spent cowering from his father’s belt and nursing bloody red whelps in the musty back of his closet.

  All the tears he had never cried for his town gone sideways and his marriage gone wrong.

  All the tears he’d never let Janie cry.

  All the tears she would never cry again.

  “You need my help getting him out of here?” he heard Dale ask Vince. Vince’s voice was so tight Doug couldn’t hear his reply—or maybe he was just sobbing too loud, no longer caring what his father or the guys from the rig or Dale or anyone thought, absolutely anyone at all. He had lost the one person who ever cared about him, who ever believed in him, who didn’t abandon him when things got rough. She was gone, and he’d never even told her how much he loved her, how amazing she really was. He’d come damn close to not even realizing it himself.

  He heard trucks start up and pull away, one after another, and he curled up tighter on his side, glad to be alone with his grief. Maybe the fire would come and take him and then they could be together again, him and Janie and baby Jeremiah, a real family at last. What a sweet relief that would be, to be with them for eternity and never have to face the world of the living again.

  “Get up, son!”

  Misery shuddered through him as he realized he wasn’t alone. His father still towered over him, making Doug feel very small and very alone, the frightened little boy sniffling in the back of his closet.

  “C’mon, you heard what he said about the fire. Get up now.”

  “Leave me here.” It came out in a broken whimper.

  “I’m not gonna do that, son.” Vince sighed heavily. “You’re a loser and a pansy and a freak, but you’re my boy. My only boy. Now let’s go.”

  “No.” Maybe if he curled up tight enough, he would just disappear. Maybe he would melt in a puddle of his own tears. That would be better than anything right now. It would sure as hell be better than going with his dad.

  “You get up or I’ll make you get up!”

  Doug knew what those words meant. He braced himself for a hard slap in the face or a kick in the ribs, steeled himself for the sting of his father’s belt across his back.

  But instead he felt a pair of hands wedging themselves under his armpits, heard his father groan as he struggled to drag him to his feet. He was so confused that he forgot to stay limp, to fight his father for his right to stay huddled and brokenhearted on the ground, in the only place that felt right now that his wife was dead.

  Instead, he was on his feet, his father’s arms tight around his shoulders, half-pushing and half-dragging him to the parking lot.

  “C’mon, son,” Vince was saying, his voice gruff in Doug’s ear. “It’s time to go home.”

  28

  DAPHNE SAT BETWEEN AUNT KAREN and Uncle Floyd in the first row of the new Carbon County First Church of God, gagging on the scent of fresh varnish and lilies. The waxy flowers filled bathtub-sized urns flanking Pastor Ted’s gilded pulpit and cascaded from baskets surrounding the coffin behind it, the coffin in which Janie’s lifeless body lay.

  As huge as the new chapel was, with soaring ceilings, pews that stretched all the way back to row JJ, and floor-to-ceiling stained glass, it wasn’t nearly big enough to contain the Peytons’ grief.

  It had been two days since fires ravaged the hills around Carbon County, yet Daphne still felt burned inside and out, scorched to empty blackness by her cousin’s death and tortured by memories of her last vision, reliving over and over again the moment that her knife plunged into Jim’s heart only to have his face melt away to reveal Owen’s. She’d barely slept since then, choosing instead to stay up nights fixing hot drinks and cool compresses for her aunt and uncle, to let them sob soft and helpless on her shoulder. They were broken now, their hearts trammeled beyond repair, and even though she knew she couldn’t fix them, the least she could do was be there.

  Her aunt and uncle clutched her hands through Pastor Ted’s sermon, their skin as brittle as parchment. Floyd sat slumped and colorless to her left, a man aged twenty years in two days. On her right, Karen was a shivering lump, a steady stream of tears.

  “Satan’s forces have taken Janie Peyton!” Pastor Ted’s words sizzled through the microphone. He was larger than life behind the pulpit, his eyes blazing blue over the crowd. Videographers crouched in the aisle, recording the funeral for his TV show. Pastor Ted addressed his next missive to them.

  “Unless we fight back,” he continued, pounding a fist on the lectern, “they will take more. We have to purify our souls for the End Times, because, my friends, my flock, the Rapture is coming! Soon it will be too late to get right with God.”

  Get right with God. Daphne glanced from her aunt and uncle to the larger-than-life Jesus staring at her in wavy stained-glass reproach. She was the one with a direct line to God, the one He’d chosen to hear His voice and receive His visions. She’d seen one of them come true before her eyes when Owen stood by the rig controlling fire with his mind, and she understood that they were predictions, omens of what would come to pass. If only she knew what to do about them, how to stop them. If only she knew what God wanted.

  “It’s time to confess our sins and cleanse our souls!” Pastor Ted’s face gleamed under the layer of matte powder he wore for the cameras. “It’s time to cast away all vestiges of doubt and open ourselves fully to God’s glorious light!”

  Daphne closed her eyes and prayed as hard as she could. But instead of feeling God’s glorious light, she heard the echo of Janie’s voice, cold and angry in the snowy forest, uttering some of the last words Daphne would ever hear her speak:

  A child is missing. My child is dead. What kind of God would allow this?

  Looking around at the miserable faces in the church, she had to wonder if Janie was right. Would a good and just God orchestrate so much destruction, so much suffering? Would He stand idly by and watch the mountains around Carbon County burn while one by one all the people she truly loved were torn from the face of the earth? Would a fair and loving God tolerate the years of abuse she’d endured at Jim’s hand, an innocent child with nobody to turn to for help? And why would He send her a vision during one of the darkest moments of her life, reminding her how scared and alone she’d felt all those times with Jim and of the terrible night when she’d taken a life just to put an end to it?

  The voices around her swelled in plaintive wails of “Praise be!” and “I believe!” It seemed so cut and dried for everyone else: Pastor
Ted said to believe, and they believed. But what did they believe? What was she supposed to believe? Was it enough to simply believe in God, or did she also have to believe that He was always good and always right, that His way was the best way, the only way? Because that was where it got tricky, where her belief began to slip and falter and fail. That was where she started to wonder if there couldn’t be another, better way, one with less pain and suffering, one in which fewer innocents died.

  “A great battle is coming, a battle between the Children of God and the Children of the Earth,” Pastor Ted went on. “The tablet predicted it, and our very own prophet, our own Daphne Peyton, saw it in visions sent to her from God! It’s coming, oh Lord, it’s coming, and as God’s chosen army it is our duty to fight.”

  Pastor Ted stared pointedly down the aisles. His youth group had stationed themselves at the edges of the church, guns cradled in their arms and ammo belts slung over their dark mourning clothes. Uncle Floyd had tried to protest, saying it wasn’t seemly to have guns at a funeral—or cameras, for that matter—but Pastor Ted insisted. The End Times were so close, he’d said earlier in his office, gold cuff links gleaming in the soft light. They were so close, and the Children of the Earth were so nearby, and so unpredictable. There was no telling what they’d do and when. It was best to be armed and ready. The day of reckoning was at hand.

  Daphne snuck a look at the young militiamen flanking her aisle. Their expressions were blank, a far cry from the clenched fury and tear-streaked faces in the front pews, where those who had known Janie sat. Hilary sobbed openly in her mother’s arms, the skin around her nostrils pink and raw-looking. Elderly Madge and Eunice clung to each other at the edge of the second row, fingers trembling as they dabbed their faces with soggy lace handkerchiefs.

  But starting in row E, the congregants’ eyes were dry. They were newcomers drawn to Carbon County by the power of Ted’s televised sermons, and most of them had never known Janie. They had never seen her apply blue mascara in the Peyton trailer’s closet-sized bathroom or chase Bella through the pine grove. They hadn’t heard the horsey warmth of her laugh or felt the soft ferocity of her hugs, hadn’t played hide and seek with her as children or arranged her train before she walked down the aisle. To them, this was not so much a funeral as a call to arms.

  Pastor Ted concluded his sermon to a thunderous round of applause sprinkled with shouts of “Amen!” and “I believe!”

  “And now Floyd Peyton would like to say a few words in remembrance of his daughter,” he said.

  Floyd’s hand stirred in Daphne’s. He rose slowly and grasped the back of the pew for support. Daphne had always loved the way her uncle stood tall and proud, like he owned the world even when he had nothing to his name but his trailer and the land it stood on. She loved the way the skin around his eyes wrinkled when he looked at her—friendly and kind, even though she knew the squinting was from poor eyesight. She loved the broadness of his shoulders when he hugged her, and how it made her feel protected in a world that hadn’t always been kind.

  Now it was all gone. Floyd’s shoulders hunched as he shuffled to the pulpit, his face slack and empty as a discarded plastic bag. His leg shook as he took his first step onto the dais, and his entire body trembled with such force that after a long, uncomfortable moment the preacher reached down a steady hand to help him up. With Pastor Ted’s firm grip on his elbow, Floyd reached the pulpit looking like a sad-eyed hound dog half-drowned in grief.

  “Well.” Floyd’s voice boomed hollow through the microphone. “This wasn’t the speech I wanted to give my first time standing up here. But it is what it is. My daughter is gone, and my heart is gone with her. I hope you—all of you—I hope you never have to feel what it’s like to lose a child. There are no words.”

  His voice cracked, and he bowed his head, revealing a bald spot that Daphne had never noticed before, ringed by a shivering nimbus of graying hair. There was rustling in the back of the church, and she turned to see parents pulling their children close, praying silently that they’d never have to grieve like Uncle Floyd.

  “Yes.” Floyd raised his head, noting them. “Hold your kids close to you. Protect them however you can. Nothing will ever be as important as your family. Nothing . . .”

  He stopped, choking on the words. A thin, raspy cough threaded its way through the church’s speakers.

  “I mean, my God, what happened to this town?” His voice was a plaintive cry.

  “Here we are in church, at a funeral, and there are guns here. And cameras.” Floyd shook his head slowly. “I mean, they found my daughter strung up like an animal on our . . . on the . . . oh my God.”

  Floyd crumpled, his head hitting the microphone with a crack that resonated through the sound system in a squeal of feedback. The congregation hurried to cover their ears, but Daphne couldn’t move. Her hand was frozen in Karen’s, her heart suspended in her chest.

  “You’re not well.” Pastor Ted grasped Floyd by the shoulders, pulling him away from the microphone. The squealing stopped, plunging the church into silence. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “No.” Floyd shook off the pastor’s hands. “They found our Janie on the oil rig. That thing—nothing’s been right since we struck oil.”

  Pastor Ted shot a nervous glance at the cameras. “You should sit down," he said to Floyd. It was no longer a suggestion. “This is a normal stage of grief, placing the blame where it doesn’t belong. That oil has been nothing but good for our community and our church.”

  “It’s been everything but good!” Floyd’s voice shook. He shouldered Pastor Ted out of the way and slammed his palms down hard on the lectern, leaning into the microphone. “Listen, all of you, listen! This is important. It’s something I should have realized a long time ago.”

  Daphne felt Aunt Karen stir next to her. Together they leaned forward, barely breathing, waiting for Floyd’s next words.

  “We were fine before we had that oil. We were poor, sure, but we were rich in spirit. We had everything that mattered: our faith and our family.”

  For the first time since Janie’s death, Aunt Karen’s shoulders stopped heaving. Tears glistened on her cheeks as she gazed up at her husband.

  “Now my daughter’s gone, and my grandson, too. And my faith? Well, that ain’t doing so hot either.” The sad plastic bag that was Floyd’s face was inflating, filling with heat. “When we tapped that oil we released an evil that isn’t going back in the ground. It drove us mad with greed and made us turn our eyes from what’s important. I thought it was a gift, but it was a false gift, and we worshipped it like the Israelites worshipped false idols. But that wasn’t the gift. The real gift was right here in front of our eyes all along.”

  His eyes landed on Daphne. “You were the gift, Daphne.” His voice was coarse sand. “You’re our family. You’ve been like a daughter to us, and now, with Janie gone, you’re the only daughter we have left.”

  A ball of emotion rose in Daphne’s throat, almost choking her. It was the validation she’d always wanted, the only validation she’d wanted: that she was important to her family, loved and treasured. But it had come at too high a price.

  “And that’s what’s important. Family,” Floyd said in a hoarse whisper. He turned back to the congregation, to the sea of mouths dropped open in shock. “People, stop worshipping the golden calf of the oil! Stop buying gilded pulpits and automatic weapons! Stop pretending that anything but love matters. Because it doesn’t. It doesn’t. And from now on, there will be no more oil, no more greed, no more false idols. I’m shutting down the rig. Enough is enough.”

  He paused to wipe a tear from his eye, and Pastor Ted used that moment to dive in front of the pulpit, blocking her uncle from saying another word.

  “I’m sorry, my friends,” he said into the microphone, a bead of sweat trickling down the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Peyton is not well. He doesn’t know what he’s talkin
g about.”

  “I know what I’m talking about!” Floyd thundered, trying to muscle his way around the preacher. Two of the burliest youth group members bolted up the stairs and grabbed him by his elbows, practically dragging him back to his seat.

  “I’m not done talking!” Floyd yelped, struggling in their arms. “It’s my daughter’s funeral, you could at least let me finish!”

  He kicked one of them hard in the shin and twisted free of their grasp. Daphne wanted to cheer as her uncle made another run for the pulpit, but at that moment the church’s doors flew open and every head in the room turned to gape at the newcomers.

  A bolt of sunshine streamed down the center aisle, blinding Daphne as she whipped around in her seat. For a moment, all she saw were silhouettes: thirteen of them, dark against the tangerine sunset.

  Then she saw their eyes. They glowed green, fiery beams that cut through the chapel and set the very air on edge.

  “God, help us!” Pastor Ted screamed into the microphone, his fight with Uncle Floyd forgotten in the sudden cold terror of the invasion. “It’s the Children of the Earth.”

  29

  LUNA FLUNG OPEN THE HEAVY church doors and stepped inside. This was her moment, the moment she’d been feverishly working toward. The God of the Earth had whispered to her, promising that if she did everything he asked—if she found a sacrifice, if she chanted the words, if she did it all where the Children of God could finally see and understand—he would rise up and save them all. Before the night was over, she would accomplish what she’d been set on earth to do.

  The God of the Earth was almost to the surface, so close she could feel it. She felt it in her belly like a flame, lighting her up from the inside, making her eyes glow green. She felt it in the vibrations under her feet, trembling the church’s cement foundation. She felt it in the strength of her brothers and sisters hot as the August sun on her back, their powers at their apex, their bodies and minds moving as one.