“It bled a lot, but it’s not deep,” Will said, reapplying the tape.
“Tell me something, dear. Why did you get on that donkey?”
“I thought it would be fun, but my parents said no. Then my friends bet me that I couldn’t ride it—and that only made me want to ride it more.”
“Besides Leo getting hurt, did you—did you see anything out of the ordinary?”
Will shook his head and looked at the ground. “No.”
“Will.” Aunt Lucille put her hand on his sharp chin and lifted his gaze to hers. “Tell me.”
“I think I’m tired. It was nothing.”
“Tell Aunt Lucille what you saw. Don’t be afraid, dear.” She leaned close, and in her huskiest voice added, “I can help you.”
“It was a shadow.” Fear washed over Will’s face. He ran his thumb along the jagged, tooth-marked brim of his pith helmet. “It was black, like a phantom—right next to me. Everything got icy cold.”
Lucille placed a silken arm around the boy. “It was a spirit. You saw a dark spirit, Will. You’ve probably been seeing them for a long time, hmm?”
Will nodded. “How did you—”
“There is a reality all around us that most people can’t see—but you can. It’s a precious gift. I’ve only known one other person in my entire life who could see those things. He told me that everywhere we go, there are bright, good spirits and dark, malevolent ones.” She could see the concern in his eyes. He looked as if he wanted to run away. “Oh, listen, whatever you do, you must not be afraid.”
“If you saw this thing, you’d be scared too,” Will said. “It was like a monster—a black hole—and it stretched all over the yard.”
“When did it appear—exactly?” Aunt Lucille asked.
“Before I got on the donkey and right after Leo got hurt.”
“So it appeared twice?” Aunt Lucille knit her eyebrows in concern.
“Uh-huh,” Will responded. “They usually disappear, but this one stayed put.”
“Will, our gifts are given to us for the good of others. We are all set apart for some great work. This may be part of your work,” Aunt Lucille said, rubbing his shoulder. “I promise to help you make sense of this gift, and you might even be able to help me, dear.”
“What do you mean?”
Aunt Lucille hesitated. She tapped her hand on the pith helmet resting on Will’s knees. “There is a book that your great-grandfather kept—”
In a rush, Deborah and Dan barged into the room still bickering about Will’s punishment.
“…then I’ll give him chores to do around the house for three weeks,” Deb told her husband.
“How does that teach him a lesson?” Dan demanded.
Will started to speak, but Aunt Lucille shushed him with a flutter of her hand. “Deborah, I have an idea. Why don’t you let Will serve out his punishment with me?”
“N-n-n-no…he’s not going to Peniel,” Dan sputtered, shaking a finger in the air. “We’ve discussed it. He’s not going there.”
“Did I say he was going to Peniel?” Aunt Lucille said, rising to her feet with annoyance. She pulled the brocade collar of her silk jacket up around her neck, ignoring Dan. “I have been doing some volunteer gardening at the church. St. Thomas has that piece of land along the river with nothing on it—looks ghastly. Will can come plant the new trees I bought for the churchyard.”
“Is this the help you were talking about?” Will whispered to her.
Aunt Lucille shot him a cold look and pressed on. “The planting will take at least two weeks. What do you say?”
Dan and Deborah turned to each other, and just as they opened their mouths to respond, Aunt Lucille clapped her hands. “It’s decided, then. Father Cash will be so excited when I tell him we have another volunteer. Meet me at the church in the morning, Will. And bring your helmet—the sun can be brutal. Now, where exactly is Leo? I want to see his cast.” With that, Aunt Lucille shook her strawberry-blond curls and sped toward the waiting room door as Deb trailed behind her.
Dan Wilder apprehensively approached his son, one hand firmly clutching the other. “Just do the garden work, and after a few weeks…assuming you do a good job, we’ll reevaluate.”
Will nodded in agreement. He placed the old pith helmet on his head, pulling the brim down over his eyes.
Dan stared at the hat in disgust. “Do you have to wear that…thing…indoors?” he mumbled.
Emergency workers pushed two stretchers down the hallway, past the waiting room window. One carried a catatonic man with wide eyes; the other, a squirming, dripping-wet middle-aged woman.
“This guy’s vitals are not in normal reference range. He’s unresponsive. Slow heart rate. He hasn’t said a word,” one of the paramedics informed the attending doctor. The man on the stretcher wore a damp captain’s uniform and stared up at the ceiling, frozen, as if he were a mannequin.
The hefty woman on the other stretcher kicked her blood-streaked legs as she attempted to sit up. Shredded fabric dangled from the bottom of her purple dress.
“Something was in the water!” she screamed hysterically to the medics pushing her. “Don’t tell me I was scratched by some sunken tree branches. I felt—claws! Look at my legs. Something is out there!”
Through the thick glass Will and his father could hear the muffled sound of the woman’s voice, but neither of them could decipher her words.
The water gushing over the boulders at the falls created a soothing backdrop of sound that enveloped St. Thomas the Apostle Church. The building seemed to spring from the rocks alongside the Perilous River. One of the church’s stone walls rose up from the water’s edge, capped by a central spire. In its shadow, Will unhappily counted the trees leaning against the rear of the church, wishing he could be anywhere but there.
As the bells tolled, marking the end of the Monday morning Mass, Will saw a handful of people—no more than eight—walking toward their cars. Soon Aunt Lucille and a pink-faced, roly-poly priest in green vestments emerged from the rear door of the church. Aunt Lucille descended the stairs with her usual swift grace. She was wearing a long-sleeved wheat-colored silk outfit that didn’t look anything like gardening attire. The jolly priest remained on the top step as if he were the pope preparing to address a crowd gathered below.
Perspiration dotted the bald priest’s forehead, and he seemed out of breath. Waving a hand in the air, he blared, “Billy boy!” Will startled. “I want to thank you so much for volunteering to help out with the yard. Your aunt Lucille tells me you’re in for the long haul. Is that right, Billy boy?”
“I guess so, Father,” Will nervously said, faking a smile. “And my name is Will….”
Father Ulan Cash scrunched the features of his basketball-shaped head into a mock grimace. “Is Billy sad today?” he bellowed in an absurd baby voice. “Don’t be! Sun is shining and the day is new. Now look, Billy, I wish I could get out there and shovel some earth with you myself. But this is the only two weeks I’ll get off till after Christmas. Gotta catch a flight to Minneapolis in a few hours.” He panted as he continued. “But you won’t be alone. Old Tobias Shen’ll take care of you.”
“Tobias?” Will shot a confused glance at Aunt Lucille.
“He’s the groundskeeper around here—helps out in the church too. If you and your family came to Mass more often, you’d know Tobias. See, when you skip church, you miss out on so much! Haaaw-haaw-haaaw.” He quickly recovered from the simulated laughter. “Tobias has been at this parish a lot longer than I have. From near the beginning, right, Lucille?”
Aunt Lucille nodded, turning a chilly eye on Will.
“Lucille and Tobias go way back. Anyway, he’ll tell you where to plant the trees. He’s doing Mass cleanup now, but he’ll be along shortly. In the meantime, why don’t you drag those saplings to the middle of the field so you’ll be ready for his direction? Look, it’s great seeing you, Billy. Come back and let’s have a chat sometime, okay? Okay?”
&n
bsp; “Sure, Father,” Will said halfheartedly.
Father Cash gave a double-handed wave with his massive palms, flashed a yellowed smile toward Aunt Lucille, and disappeared into the church.
Will did as he was told. He bent over and clumsily hugged a tree twice his size. He squatted to hoist the thing into the air, but it was so heavy he couldn’t really straighten up, so he waddled in a low crouch to the middle of the yard.
“Well done, Will. The shovels and hoes are in that storage shed behind the church,” Aunt Lucille said, straightening the emerald-green necklace at her throat. “Call if you need anything. I’ll be just a few minutes away.” Aunt Lucille slid her purse strap toward her elbow as if she were about to leave.
Will unceremoniously opened his arms, depositing the tree on the spot where he stood.
“Uh, Aunt Lucille?” he said, removing his pith helmet and mopping his forehead with the back of his bandaged hand. “I thought you volunteered to do yard work and I was going to help you.”
“You are helping me, dear. You’re taking my place. This is a job for one man, not a man and an old woman. We learn more by doing than observing, Will. Sometimes it’s better to be thrown into the middle of things. How would it look if I were out there in the blazing sun doing backbreaking yard work while a strapping young man like you stood around staring?”
“It’d look fine,” Will countered.
“I think it would be embarrassing—for you, dear….Besides, I know nothing about gardening. I made that up to get you out of sitting in that vile city hall for days. Do I look like a gardener? I have a museum to run, which I really must attend to.” She glanced down at her watch. “Oooh. Tobias will give you instructions once he arrives.”
“So I’m doing this alone?”
“That’s usually the best way to experience a punishment. Now please keep the pith helmet on your head or you’ll burn to a crisp, and stay away from that river. There was some nasty business downstream yesterday. Very nasty business, apparently. Whatever attacked those poor people is still out there, so you stay on dry land. Oh, and let me know if you see anything out of the ordinary.” Her voice dropped to the basement, and with a wink she added, “You know what I mean.”
“What if one of those shadowy things comes back? You can’t leave me alone—”
“If you see anything, just tell Tobias. You can trust him, and he’s quite capable. All you have to do is follow his directions. I’ll check in with you later.” She turned to leave.
“What about the book my great-grandfather kept? The one you started to tell me about at the hospital.”
Aunt Lucille stopped walking and slowly turned her head toward Will. “Not now. Not yet….” She hesitated as if she wanted to say something more. “There’ll be time to talk about the book and your great-grandfather…later.” She blew Will a kiss and headed for the parking lot.
Will petulantly popped the pith helmet onto his head. He couldn’t believe that his favorite relative had condemned him to weeks of lonesome gardening servitude. Answering phones at city hall would have been a lot easier. He unhappily kicked his red sneakers into the dirt while hatefully eyeing the pile of trees waiting to be moved from the church. I can’t do this for weeks, Will thought. There’s got to be a way to get off yard duty. Maybe I can make a deal with Tobias?
Behind him, Will felt a strange presence. The fear straightened his spine. He shut his eyes, gathered some courage, and abruptly spun around. Standing no more than six feet away was a slight Chinese man in a gray workman’s uniform. Deep, sun-carved lines surrounded his eyes and mouth. He had a full head of white hair and an expressionless round face.
“You move like a turtle in a snowstorm,” he said, without so much as a hint of humor. Strands of his hair floated like mist in the humid wind as he stared at Will. “I am Tobias Shen. We will be working together.” He carried a folding chair and an unvarnished walking stick.
“Did Lucille tell you to move the trees here?” Tobias’s face was fixed as stone and unreadable.
“Uh, yes—I mean, Father Cash did.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Move the trees.” Tobias gestured to the ground with his walking stick. “Here.”
“All of them?”
Shen’s faint eyebrows rose. “Let’s make a deal. You move eleven of them here. I’ll move the last one myself.”
Will scratched his head. “If you tell me where you want them planted, I could drag each one to the right spot now.”
“Trees are like people—they enjoy being close together. After you move all eleven here, we will discuss their placement.”
“But that’s double the work,” Will complained. “Why don’t we let the trees have their family time now, and later I can move them to their final resting places?”
“Shhhhhh.” Tobias threw his walking stick to the ground. “Obedience requires following one direction at a time, Mr. Wilder. When you complete one task, then you receive the next task. Very simple.” With a flick of his wrist he opened the folding chair and jammed its legs into the ground.
“So you want me to move all those trees to the middle of the yard, then move them again?”
“Good listening. Yes, Mr. Wilder. Stack eleven of them here, and I will move the twelfth myself. I came to assist you.”
Will shuffled over to the back wall of the church, imagining Tobias Shen was following behind him. But the man with the downturned mouth remained standing by the folding chair, never taking his black eyes off Will.
“From over there you look just like your great-grandfather Jacob Wilder,” Tobias said, finally breaking into a smile, deep wrinkles running from his eyes. “Of course, he moved much faster than you. I knew him when I was a boy. Are you warm?” Shen squinted and looked heavenward. “It’s very warm out here today. I need my hat. Continue moving trees.” Like a toy soldier, Shen stiffly made his way down the path toward the gray stone rectory next to the church, as if his knees no longer functioned.
Will exhaled in protest, bitterly threw his arms around one of the trees leaning against the church, and wobbled out onto the field. From a distance, his unwieldy attempt to balance the huge tree resembled that of an ant trying to relocate a telephone pole. By the time he got to the middle of the yard, Shen had emerged from his house wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat. “Now we both have protection from sun,” Shen said as he walked.
Attempting to lower the tree to the ground, Will lost control and somersaulted over the trunk onto the grass.
“Urgh,” Will moaned, adjusting the helmet he was glad to be wearing.
Looking down at the boy, Shen clasped his strong, craggy, age-spotted hands in front of his body. “Even a turtle in a snowstorm must get off his back and keep moving. Up, up, up. Nine more trees, Mr. Wilder.” Shen fell into the folding chair. “If your great-grandfather had moved like you, this town would still be a wilderness overrun by wild beasts.”
“I know, I know,” Will huffed, leaping to his feet.
“Tell me what you know.”
“I know that my family founded Perilous Falls. My great-grandfather Jacob built the town. Then my grandfather Joseph and Aunt Lucille helped grow it….”
“Jacob built this church right after World War II. Did you know that?”
“I guess not.”
Shen pointed to the back wall of the church. “When you select your next tree, read the plaque on the cornerstone there. Go, go, go.”
Will tilted the pith helmet back and followed orders. The bronze plaque had a small frieze of Jacob Wilder, who did share Will’s crescent eyes, sharp cheekbones, and chin. The plaque read:
THIS CHURCH ERECTED JUNE 13, 1947,
BY JACOB WILDER
FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE RELIC OF
ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE,
A GIFT FROM ARCHBISHOP PIETRO TESAURI
OF LANCIANO-ORTONA, ITALY.
“FOR CHARITY DELIVERS FROM DEATH AND KEEPS ONE
FROM ENTERING THE DARKNESS.”
&nbs
p; TOBIT 4:10
Will embraced the next tree and teetered out into the field.
“Almost there,” Shen cried out. “Now only eight more.”
Will tossed the tree next to the others in the field. Winded by the effort, he bent at the waist to catch his breath. Glancing up at Tobias, he asked, “What’s this St. Thomas relic all about?”
“You don’t know about the relic?”
“Nope.”
“You have never seen the relic?” the old man asked with astonishment.
“Nope.”
“Pity. It is the finger bone of St. Thomas. We keep it protected inside the church.”
“Why does it need protection? Who’d want it?”
An exasperated Shen folded his arms and leaned back in the folding chair. “Do you know what many people believe keeps the river from flooding this town?”
Will shrugged and shook his head.
“The relic! The relic of St. Thomas! People pray to the saint, and his prayers have great power in heaven. Miracles wait on his intercession. Like a magnifying glass focuses sunlight, so the relic focuses faith.”
“Hmm.” Will smirked skeptically.
“Do you know who St. Thomas is?”
“An apostle who followed Jesus?”
Shen slapped his thighs and pursed his thin lips. “The great-grandson of the man who built this glorious shrine to Thomas knows nothing about the saint. If you don’t know your past, you will never discover your future, young Wilder. St. Thomas was the doubting apostle—like others I know.” He raised his eyebrows and got very still. “The only way he would believe the Savior had risen from the dead was to shove his hand into the Lord’s side and his finger into the nail wounds of Christ.”
“And that finger is in this church?” Will asked, sitting in the grass.
Tobias Shen wiggled forward in his chair, the promise of a smile on his lips. “The relic is in a special Keep designed by your great-grandfather. We display the finger bone once a year on the Feast Day of St. Thomas—coming soon—on July third. But at all other times, it is locked in the church Keep.”
“Is that some kind of safe?”
Will Wilder Page 4
