Black Noon

by Andrew J. Fenady

  “It’s an eclipse, Reverend,” Joseph grinned, “That’s what we’ve been waiting for, isn’t it, Caleb?”

  Caleb Hobbs smiled what appeared to be a benevolent smile.

  “That’s why I wanted to delay the sermon. You see, m’boy, this year the eclipse falls on the day of the Summer Solstice.”

  “But why . . . why are you doing all this?”

  “Why? I will tell you why soon enough. We didn’t just find you. We changed several signs along the way . . . as we’ve done before.”

  The room swayed and so did the people in it. Their faces billowing in festive contentment or so it seemed to Jonathon Keyes.

  “And,” Caleb nodded toward Hawkins, “you must be wondering about the doctor in Tres Cruses, if there is one. We still don’t know. Sam took a short ride into the desert, then doubled back, out of sight until today. And now it is nearly time for our ceremony.”

  Caleb Hobbs took a step forward, then turned slightly toward the doorway.

  “But first we want to reintroduce you to one more member of our congregation. Come in friend. We’ve been expecting you.”

  From out of the crowd by the darkened doorway, another figure emerged.

  MOON.

  The others laughed even harder.

  Keyes was frozen.

  “No! You’re dead! I killed you! You’re dead! I saw your grave! I . . .”

  “The grave is empty,” Caleb said. “It was all a game . . .”

  “A game?!”

  “. . . A sham to keep you here.”

  Moon had the same malevolent smile on his face as he withdrew both guns and held them waist high.

  “They’re beautiful aren’t they . . . and deadly . . . but sometimes quite harmless, as when filled with blanks, like the one I threw toward you.”

  “But WHY ?!”

  “We have made a covenant with death,” Joseph’s eyes took on the look of evil incarnate, “and with hell are we in agreement.”

  “Some call it a Sabbat,” Caleb’s voice was mellow as always. “And for our ceremony we need a man like yourself... who in the eyes of your world is pure and uncorrupted. Ah, but were you, Reverend Keyes?”

  Caleb paused and let the question sink in before answering his own query.

  “No. Reverend, within you was the seed of corruption. We merely tended that seed and nourished it . . . all of us . . . Joseph, Bethia, Moon, the Bryants, even Ethan, Sam Hawkins, and of course, Deliverance . . . until you fell from grace.”

  Joseph picked up the wedding picture from the desk, then took another picture from his pocket and held it up.

  “Last time it was him.”

  It was a picture of the man in the mirror. But young, handsome, clear-eyed and smiling.

  Keyes looked at the picture, then at the place where the mirror had hung.

  His hand went to his head, covering his eyes for just a moment in sudden realization.

  “He . . . was trying to . . . warn me!”

  “So it seems. But you see, m’boy, we are not from Connecticut. We are from a village in Massachusetts . . . a long time ago.”

  Keyes looked at the placid, smiling face and uttered her name.

  “Deliverance . . .”

  “My name is Lilith . . . ‘the witch that Adam loved before the gift of Eve.’”

  She opened her hand and let what was left of the image of Lorna drop from her hand.

  Keyes screamed.

  “No!!!”

  The scream echoed through the veil of darkness.

  NOON.

  But a Black Noon.

  The sun completely eclipsed by the moon in a sable sky.

  Reverend Jonathon Keyes, stripped to the waist, was hung upside down near the pulpit inside the church.

  Leaping flames had already seared his body—but not his open Bible on the pulpit.

  And he could hear the chanting voices of the congregation.

  Go blat . . . som blat . . . carradon . . .

  go loos. Com blat . . . go blat . . .

  go loos . . . carradon . . .

  In a final, fading effort he managed to whisper.

  “Father . . . I am prepared to enter . . . heaven or hell . . .”

  CHAPTER 60

  Reverend Jonathon Keyes awoke from the dream with a start.

  Neither in heaven, nor in hell.

  He was lying in the Conestoga under the canvas cover of the wagon with his wife, Lorna, now awake at his side.

  This was not the first time since he had come home from the war with a head wound that his sleep had been breached by a bad dream.

  “Jon . . . are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m . . .”

  “You’re trembling, wringing wet.”

  She reached out and gently touched the back of his head as she had done before.

  “Jon, was it that dream again? The war? The battle of Yellow Tavern? The wound . . .”

  “No, Lorna. It was a dream but not the war . . . something else this time.” He tried to smile.

  “Tell me what it was, Jon. Maybe you’ll feel better.”

  “No. I’m really all right, but if you want, I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “I want . . . promise?”

  “I promise.”

  From the desert darkness there came the cry of an animal.

  “Did you hear that?”

  This time he did smile.

  “Probably some lonesome coyote.”

  “Not as lonesome as I was when you were away.”

  “That makes two of us.” He moved closer and kissed her forehead. “Now go back to sleep. We’ve got a ways to go before we get to Saguaro.”

  “All right, but I still want to hear about that dream.”

  “I’m not so sure you do . . . but I’ll tell you on the way to Saguaro.”

  It was not possible to differentiate the next day from the scores of other desert days they had traveled across the burning sands under a scorching sun in the bald sky. Miles and miles of endless espadrille rimmed by distant purple peaks, a lost, silent land with the rising sun pulling the heat up with it.

  The Conestoga’s canvas top, ribbed with curved metal frames, swayed gently like billowing sails as the creaking wagon rolled southwest toward the barren horizon.

  Jonathon Keyes had been unusually silent, still partially under the spell of last night’s torturous vision.

  By midmorning Lorna had twice brought up the subject of his dream. Each of those times Keyes had managed to avoid answering, changing the subject by pointing out some scurrying rabbit, or peculiar rock formation.

  “Look there, Jon.”

  “Where?”

  “That sign, ‘San Melas 5 miles.’ It’s pointing south.”

  “San Melas,” he whispered almost to himself. He had never even heard of a place called San Melas until the dream. It actually existed. Did those same people he dreamed about exist?

  As he stared at the sign a troubled look overcame his face, more than troubled—he shuddered with fear and dread, doing all he could to regain control over the frightful image still burning in his brain. San Melas. San Melas. San Melas. Was it all just a dream—or a foreboding—a precursor of things to come? Things that ended in a fiery death? Whatever San Melas was, it was something he had to avoid.

  “Jon, do you think we ought to spend the night there, refresh the horses and check our supplies?”

  He snapped the reins hard.

  “The horses are all right, and we’ve got enough supplies. I thought you were anxious to get to Saguaro.”

  “I am. But I just thought you . . .”

  He snapped the reins again, harder.

  “I think we ought to keep going,” he said in a manner she had never heard from him before.

  Then he quickly softened and even managed to smile.

  “Lorna, let’s not tarry. It’s already taken us longer than we expected, and . . .”

  “It’s perfectly all right, Jon, and you’re right, we should ge
t there as soon as possible, but you’ve been at those reins a long time. I thought you might feel . . .”

  “I feel fine . . . and I’m sorry I was . . . abrupt.”

  “If you were, I didn’t notice. You’re the captain of this ship, my husband. Sail on!”

  Captain of the ship, Keyes thought to himself, that’s what Caleb Hobbs had called himself at the construction site.

  “Captain of the ship,” Keyes said out loud, “out here in a sea of desert?”

  “Why not?” Lorna bantered. “They call these Conestogas ‘Prairie Schooners,’ don’t they?”

  “They do,” Keyes did his best to paint on a happy face.

  He looked at her and began to sing.

  A capitol ship for an ocean trip With a walloping wind o’blind;

  No wind that blew dismayed her crew Or troubled the captain’s mind . . .

  “That’s better, Jon, ‘no troubled mind . . . ’”

  “Not as long as I’ve got you, Lorna . . . and my Bible . . . and the Henry.”

  He pointed to the rifle leaning against the seat and the Bible next to it.

  “Yes, Jon,” she smiled, “but have you forgotten your promise?”

  “What promise?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” she teased. “You know exactly what I mean. That dream that was not about the war. Not about Yellow Tavern and Custer, or Stuart. Not about the wound you suffered there. That promise.”

  “Oh, yes,” he feigned, “that promise. Thanks for reminding me.”

  He was a sunk duck and he knew it.

  But Reverend Keyes had decided that in the telling he would be better advised to either omit, or edit some of the events—even though they weren’t actual events—in the abridged version that he would relate. In fact he would almost make light of the whole thing. He saw no reason to mention his ties with Deliverance in the yard, the Secret Garden, and in the shed.

  “Well, it seems that we had lost our way . . .”

  But suddenly it was no longer a desert day like all the scores and scores of other desert days they had come through.

  Luckily, Keyes had seen it coming.

  He pulled up the reins and the team reacted, slowing down abruptly. He jerked one of the leathers to the right, and the Conestoga veered in that direction.

  “What is it, Jon? What’s the matter?”

  “The matter is that swirling cloud of dust coming at us. See it?”

  “I see it now.”

  “Dust devil . . . I’ve seen worse . . . but this one’s bad enough.”

  He whacked the ribbons, and the horses picked up speed.

  Keyes nodded toward a semicircled outcrop of rocks, brown boulders ahead. They made it to, and inside, the sheltering formation.

  “We won’t get much of it in here, but we’d best get inside under cover. I’ve headed the horses against what’s coming. I think they’ll be all right.”

  They both scrambled over the bench and to the area where they had slept, and Lorna snuggled close to him. They could hear and feel the whirling wind and sand, but with a minimum effect within their rocky haven.

  “My hero!” Lorna smiled and cuddled closer.

  “Well, your husband—I don’t know about the hero part.”

  “I do,” she patted his shoulder, “and always have, Jon,” she paused, “this is a good time for it.”

  “For what?”

  “For . . .” she smiled, “. . . for you to go ahead and tell me about that dream. We’re so nice and cozy in here, aren’t we?”

  “I guess you could call it that.”

  “Then go ahead.”

  “Well, let’s see, where were we?”

  “It seemed,” she said, “that we had lost our way.”

  “Oh, yes, lost our way . . . missed one of the signs I guess. We were in bad shape, especially you. Unconscious, and I nearly was, too.”

  “That was bad. Go on.”

  “Just before it was too late we were rescued by three people; a man named Caleb, the other was Joseph, and there was a young woman with them, Caleb’s daughter, Deliverance . . .”

  “Was Deliverance . . . attractive?” she chided.

  “Well, sort of, I guess you could say that, but she was mute.” He omitted the fact that she looked like the woman in his dream.

  “They took us to their nearby village. It was a strange sort of place . . .”

  “What was strange about it?”

  “Well, it didn’t look very much like a western town, more like New England, where they had come from, and they had suffered a series of misfortunes.”

  “Misfortunes?”

  “Church burned down, lost their minister and doctor . . . a mine they depended on had played out, and there was a young boy, Ethan, who had an accident and couldn’t walk . . .”

  “Reminds me of a line from Shakespeare, how does it go? ‘When troubles come they come not single spies, but in battalions.’”

  “You know your Shakespeare better than I do; at any rate, they did the best they could to help you recover.”

  “Seem like nice people.”

  “Seemed nice . . . except for a creature called Moon, who had been extracting tribute from them and still demanded payment even though the mine was no longer productive. They couldn’t fight back because their religion was nonviolent. . . . They didn’t even have weapons.”

  “General Custer would have settled Moon’s hash.”

  “Yes, but Autie was not around; however, good fortune did smile on them.”

  “Was that your smile, Jonathon?”

  “No, but they did ask me to do a sermon in an open field, and in the midst of it the young boy rose and walked . . .”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Not only that, but later when Ethan and the other children were playing in the mine some timbers collapsed, and Ethan was trapped under a beam . . .”

  “Not so good.”

  “No, but we managed to get him out.”

  “We?”

  “Well, I was there to help.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” she nodded.

  “Not only that, but a rich new vein was discovered in the mine, and they decided to rebuild the church.”

  “More good fortune.”

  “Except for your condition. You didn’t get much better, in fact, quite worse . . . and strange things began to happen . . .”

  “What sort of strange things?”

  Keyes paused. He decided not to tell about her seeing the masked children chanting in the yard and the man he saw in the mirror.

  “Oh, I don’t really remember all the details, but the church was being rebuilt, and then Moon came back and there was a terrible confrontation and . . . he was killed.”

  “Who killed him?”

  Another pause.

  Then he answered.

  “I did . . . with one of his own guns . . .”

  “You, Jonathon?”

  “But it was in self-defense. In the dream I had no other choice.”

  “I’m sure it was the right choice . . . in the dream. Please go on.”

  “I was asked to give just one more sermon in the rebuilt church during one of their . . . holy days, and then . . .”

  “And then, what?”

  “During the sermon there was an even stranger change . . . in the congregation . . . and . . .”

  “And?”

  Keyes lifted himself to his elbows and listened.

  “The storm stopped.”

  “What storm?”

  “The dust devil outside. We’d better get going while the going’s good.”

  “But . . .”

  “No ‘buts,’ Lorna, let’s get a move on.”

  Keyes rubbed down the horses, fed them grain and water from the barrel tied to the side of the wagon.

  In the aftermath of the storm, as they rolled away from the shelter of the rocks and were on the road west again, the sky was almost clear, but there were still particles of sand and dust
drifting in the air.

  “Well, go on, Jon,” she said.

  “I am going on.”

  “You know what I mean . . . go on with the story.”

  “It wasn’t a ‘story,’ it was a dream.”

  “Jon,” she smiled, “let’s not quibble over definitions. What happened?”

  “Not now, Lorna, there’s still quite a bit of dust floating around.”

  He pulled the red scarf up over the lower part of his face.

  “And you cover your nose and mouth with a bandana or you’ll be breathing and swallowing a lot of this desert.”

  An hour or so later the air was clean and clear, the sky its usual cloudless granite gray as they approached a divide in the road. Keyes tugged at the reins and the wagon came to a stop.

  “Well, Lorna,” he said as he lowered the red scarf from his face, “this is the last chance.”

  She did the same with her bandana.

  “Last chance for what?”

  “To change our minds. That’s Eagle Pass just ahead . . . and Saguaro. The other road would take us up north toward Fort Lincoln and Custer and Libbie.”

  “I thought we already decided,” she said with obvious surprise.

  “Sure we did. But we can still undecide.”

  “You wanted so much to be of service to Reverend Mason and his congregation in Saguaro.”

  “I still do, but . . .”

  “But what, Jon?”

  “I can, also, be of service to the soldiers of the Seventh Calvary,” he touched the scarf around his neck. “The fort is not all savagery; there is society. And you’d have the company of the ladies at the fort, officers’ wives. There’d be parties and dances, old friends and new ones.”

  “I don’t need any of that and neither do you. Don’t you think Autie and the Seventh can get along without you? Why Custer and the Seventh will be riding to glory to the tune of ‘Garry Owen’ and you know it.”

  “You’re right about that, and I do know it.” He smiled. “I just wanted to make sure about how you felt.”

  “Was there ever any doubt?”

  “Not really, sweetheart. And ol’ Custer will teach those Sioux a thing or two about strategy, he’ll spank their chiefs and send them back to their teepees or up to their happy hunting grounds.”

  “I’m not sure who’ll teach whom,” she said, “but we promised Reverend Mason, and a promise is a promise.”