by Jack Cady
To say that Miller was vain would be to misunderstand the word. Miller was vain when he was asleep. When awake, the vanity took a sort of Spanish flamenco presence. Over the years an unusual number of blond-haired and blue-eyed children were born to his congregation.
To say that Miller was lazy would be like describing a dead turtle as indolent. At the same time he was a flaming good preacher of the hell-raising sort. On stage, though, he became mesmerizing. From the diaries of two of his admirers — behind the lumpy misspelled prose of one, the smooth-flowing and articulate self-lies of the other — rises a picture of a man who was a vision of ambivalence. He was sometimes kind, but the kindness always turning to detestation or vengeance or both.
At age thirty-three he was killed by a man named Bill McCord, who was drunk enough to be suspicious and sober enough to act. McCord followed Miller through dark streets until he was near McCord’s house, and wife. He stabbed Miller. The jury looked upon adultery in a traditional light and released McCord. Mrs McCord did not testify.
James Miller left two good suits, three hundred dollars in gold and a near-idiot Indian girl named Mary who was found crouching and pregnant in his apartments. Mary was at least fourteen, did not know her last name; but her issue, Ruth, acquired Miller’s name and became a member of the parish. Mary went to an insane asylum where she died early in the twentieth century. She never realized that she had briefly lived beside a nightmare more terrifying than madness. After all, it was born of a man of God.
The dream came and went and came again. It cycled through the muttering of John Tracker, pulsing, throbbing, as centuries of nightmare culminated, centuries of which John believed he knew nothing; of blood-smeared swords and cries of “Santiago”; centuries of the carnal muttering of dogmatists, the blood revenge levied beneath the shadow of steeples. He dreamed of twisting fires engulfing staked figures, of Indians roasted alive by sacred flames, of the iron tongs of the Inquisition and of Jews grimacing skeletally from lime pits as machine guns chattered. The sound of the guns drew a historical line: through history most men would live beneath that line, a few would live on it, and a very few would live above it…
Stiffness in his arms woke him. The emotional depletion of hours in this house, plus the revelation about his father, had overcome his determination to stay awake. He raised his head from his arms, felt the journal at his hand. He turned quickly to look at Amy, noted her even breathing and was relieved. He checked his watch. Nearly five am. Time to leave soon. He leafed through a journal, stopped, was captured by a phrase:
“Evil will attack the woman first.” In Justice’s opinion, there would be two reasons why Amy had been attacked in the maze and later by the screams. The Devil, being revolutionary, sought fecundity; sex was the Devil’s revolutionary act. Institutions, being counterrevolutionary, sought heaven. Justice seemed to take wry amusement from the thought that the Devil was technically on the side of life, while institutions were on the side of death, or life after death. John felt neither wry nor amused by it. “As important,” Justice wrote, “evil attacks those who are most vulnerable. Women and children are most vulnerable. In denying their humanity society has made them so. It has taken their humanity and given back only vanity. The Devil takes to vanity like a vulture to carrion.”
Tracker put down the Journal. He shouldn’t have slept, too risky, but nothing had happened. He stood slowly, nearly lost his balance. His knees were weak, his shoulders ached from the awkward sleeping position, he was hungry. He moved his body to loosen it and felt like he was tottering. He thought dully of all that had happened since they’d come to this place less than a day ago. The strange behavior of Vera, the dying screams, Amy saying that she loved him…that made him feel better. He crossed the room and sat down beside her. She might even be sufficiently rested and in control for them to leave. Then later on he could come back to finish his business. It was a sensible feeling that came from the long rows of journals and books, from the orderly and businesslike arrangement of the room, and it nearly proved to him that the house was as ridiculous as he thought. Except he did not know what to think of the dying screams.
He touched Amy and she woke up, but she seemed no more rested than he was as she blinked, lay still, tried to become oriented and then closed her eyes.
“It will be dawn soon,” he told her.
She shuddered and refused to open her eyes.
“Have you been dreaming?”
Her mouth tightened.
“We have to leave now,” he said. “There will be time to come back later.”
“I have to stay, at least for a little while.” She reached for his hand and brought it to her face.
Her hand felt thin. “Something out there is capable of killing,” he told her. “I think we really must leave.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not — ?”
“Something bad is happening to me, I don’t know what it is. I’m afraid if we try to leave it will get worse — ”
“What do you mean? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
“We should eat something,” he said, stalling, trying to divert her. “Come with me to the kitchens.”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded more filled with despair than fear, although the fear was there too. She seemed trying to see his face. She sat up, nearly lost her balance — as he had — and then stood.
He took her arm, which seemed thinner, the bone rising under his fingers at her elbow. Her skin seemed terribly fragile.
“Do you feel sick?”
“More confused…”
The kitchens smelled differently when they arrived. It wasn’t the smell of burning, but it was enough to cause Amy to check the stove, sniff the air, search for fire. John sat at the table and found that his thoughts were still uncommonly slow. His face was hot and dry. The warmth in the kitchen didn’t feel like a normal sort of heat. With the outside cold and the size of the house it was impossible, he reasoned, to raise the temperature in the kitchens much above sixty degrees. But if the quality of an X-ray could be translated into heat it might feel exactly this way. He touched his face, touched sweat, yet his fingers were dry when he drew them away.
“Do you feel it?” he said, turning to Amy who was opening a can.
“Yes.” Her voice was low. Her fingers fumbled the opener.
“Have you felt it before?” Surely she would have said something.
“Not nearly as much before.” She dropped the can, stooped like an old woman to pick it up.
“I’m afraid again.” His mind was moving slow as oil on ice. He knew he wouldn’t have said a thing like that if his mind were quick. He’d have considered it and held it back.
“Someone’s out there, I hear someone.” Amy did not move.
Tracker listened, and heard nothing. “I’ll go see.” As he stood his knees ached so that he nearly stumbled. He did not want to go.
“Gone now,” Amy said.
“I’ll still look.” He left the kitchens, walked through three rooms and felt as though he had stepped from the middle of a desert onto a cold plain. The internal feeling of dryness and intense heat left. He reentered the room and the heat returned. He went to the kitchens, took Amy’s hand and led her back through the rooms. When she stepped clear of the zone of heat she gasped, then began breathing slowly.
“I feel better.”
She doesn’t look better, he thought as he watched her face, and knew that confusion must also show on his. He was getting a sliding-away feeling that she had two faces. He couldn’t see the second one but felt it lay right behind the face he was watching. Illusion caused by tension, he supposed, but he had the distinct feeling that Amy’s smiling face was like a rubber mask that could be peeled away.
“I think we should leave.” He w
as sure they should.
“I do feel a little better.”
“Let’s go,” he said. “I think I activated some kind of electronics in the kitchen. I don’t know much about electricity.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?” He was tired, found a chair, sat down.
“Honey, I feel bad. I feel better, but I still feel bad.” Her voice quavered. She’d never called him anything but John. “Something is happening to me and I don’t know what.”
“We’ll leave now.”
“I don’t think we can.” The mask was smiling, but her words were hesitant, almost stammering. “I feel like you must feel when you get old…I don’t want…I can’t stand to be old. I’m afraid if we leave I’ll be old.”
Tracker would never know how long they stayed in the room just beyond the zone of heat. Now they heard slow footsteps approaching.
“It must be Vera.” Amy’s voice sounded husky. “If it is, she couldn’t have been the one who was screaming.”
“Let me handle it.”John didn’t know what he was going to do, but he knew that the confrontation was his. He got up from the chair. The footsteps stopped. He looked around. They were in the middle of a central room where doors led to different corridors of the house. The room was an intersection for one side of the house. You didn’t always follow the natural, direct routes from door to door; you imagined two isosceles triangles, one laid crosswise over the other, their tallest points in the two far corners of the room. You walked in the space covered by those triangles.
Behind him a door slowly began to swing open. He turned to face it, motioning Amy to stand behind him. The door pushed toward him. He waited for Vera to step through.
The open doorway was empty.
“Over there,” said Amy.
He turned to see another door opening, knowing as he watched that it would stand before another empty passage.
“Tricks,” he said, and made his voice as bored as possible, determined not to show anger or fear. “And,” he said to the second empty doorway, “we were naturally worried, I always worry when the old folks get childish.”
A third door began to open. This time he walked toward it, intending to pull it quick and perhaps bring Vera with it. He took three steps and was staggered by a wall of heat. He stepped back and the cold returned. “It’s Theophilus,” he told Amy. “Vera’s not this good. Vera’s just good with her mouth.” He turned. The fourth and last door was opening.
It too was empty.
“Show yourself, old man.”
They were surrounded by heat, yet it wasn’t touching them. A time shift began, alternating waves of energy and weakness went through him. It was like, he thought, being bombarded with time. For a moment he felt like a child, in the next moment like an old man. He reached out and felt heat, behind him, more heat. Tracker wondered how long he could hold his composure. He remembered the screams and was afraid that this was no trick at all.
How did you kill a witch? A warlock? He did not know what he was facing, but now, with his knees like unoiled hasps, and with that rubbermask smile of Amy’s, he knew he must act.
The heat increased at their backs as he felt it move away from their faces. He took a step, the heat followed. He stood firm. The heat pressed, burning inside, like it would scorch bone while leaving flesh unharmed. He led Amy another step forward. They were being driven toward the kitchens, driven deeper back into the house.
“The kitchens,” he said. “That far and no farther until you show yourself, damn you.”
The heat disappeared before them as the Red Sea must have parted in front of Moses, and they walked on the retreating edge of the heat.
It could not happen. Just because it was happening didn’t really mean it could happen. But, oh yes, it was happening.
How to kill a warlock? Moving before the heat, he thought of Justice. A man wasn’t mad if he spent his life on real things, and this heat and this house were real.
He squeezed Amy’s hand, she looked at him.
“I love you. I do.”
Loving someone ought to be real. His words did not touch the heat, which was steady and inexorable. As they approached the kitchens the sound of footsteps returned. Someone, Vera or Theophilus, walked in that kitchen.
Without some quick action he knew he was lost, but didn’t know if lost meant dead. Lost. Well, he would not go into that kitchen. The heat gathered at their backs. Through the open doorway the sound of footsteps was heavy, the angle hiding a view of the walker.
The heat at their backs was not touching them, but it was intensifying. Amy was trembling, the mask smiled, lips moved…“us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen, Hail Mary…” For a moment Tracker almost saw through Amy’s mask, then the heat gathered again, and evil seemed to gather around them like a sound-dampening cloak.
Think, think quick about an answering decency. The first real job he’d ever had was picking the tassels from corn when he was eight. He could remember the fields, the paper feel of the leaves and the softness of the tassel if he pulled in the right direction, the roughness if his hand moved against the grain. The cultivated earth had a thin rain crust about the base of the stalks, the wind moved low and easy through the rows, indifferent to the heat and sweat of a kid earning his first thirty cents an hour…and another job once when there was a big forest fire and he was fifteen and he worked all summer against the far bank of that wide river planting seedling pine; the burnt smell of the dead forest, the young smell of the loamy rooted seedlings, he remembered…And the smooth roll of the Ohio River, mud-colored, catfish home, where the fish hovered like black indolent spirits under the cuts in the bank, the sun riding orange on the mud color of the slowly rolling river…and when Theophilus had first heard the dog get into the chickens he’d kicked that panel over there and grabbed a shotgun and yes, maybe you could kill a warlock if you used his own tools…
Tracker jumped through the doorway, kicked the panel, grabbed blindly, came up with a thirty-thirty that had a broken stock; wheeled, pointed — neither Vera nor Theophilus was anywhere to be seen.
Their masks came down then. When he turned back with the broken rifle like a clumsy oversized tackhammer in his hands, he saw the aging face of Amy, and her silent, numbed reaction when she looked at him.
He dropped the rifle and reached for her as she slumped, brought her back to consciousness by rubbing her hands, her wrinkled face, managed to kiss her when she started to come around. She looked at him, and he thought he could see her making a resolution, willing herself to act. And then she touched his face. And they knew, even if by an unknown force, that they were irrevocably bound together.
Chapter Fifteen
John Smith was John Tracker’s great great grandfather on his mother’s father’s mother’s side. Smith died late in the nineteenth century, so old he did not know his age. It was said that he served as a seaman, a ship’s boy, in the slave trade. The Importation of Slaves Act took hold in 1808, the same year that Andover Theological Seminary was established.
Before the Civil War, Smith lived along the Cincinnati waterfront, though his wife, Mary Blessing, was not with him. During the Civil War he trafficked westward as a scout. After a ranging life, Smith returned to Cincinnati and died of old age. His only accomplishment was a hundred years of life. He was buried beside the Ohio River and the grave has since been washed away. Among his many failures was the fact that he managed to live so long, and never learned a thing.
Understand or die. Tracker’s knees hurt, there was rheum at his eyes. His confusion felt greater, if that were possible, than his fear. Understand or die, he instructed himself. He had lived all these years, scouting the angles and making the deals, yet had learned nothing that he was even reasonably sure could help him now.
He looked at Amy. Wrinkles now cluster
ed about her eyes. Her high cheeks were undercut by emaciation. Pursed wrinkles were on her upper lip. Amy looked a tired woman of sixty. Tracker checked the backs of his hands where thin veins stood beneath thinner skin. If his shoulders and elbows ached it was surely because the habit patterns of a forty-year-old were being forced on a body that must be a worn seventy.
They must leave, or failing that he must understand the forces that were operating on them. There was no logical explanation to lead him to that knowledge, only acknowledged feeling. If only they could leave with their essential selves intact, even the age would have to be considered not too great a cost.
He was unconsciously jerking on his belt. His clothes were too big. Understand or die. Or maybe it was understand and die anyway, but he still had to understand.
He doubted if Amy would, could leave. This shock, on top of the others, must have her unbalanced. She was certainly standing quietly, eyes like those of a frightened patient or a prisoner. Try to renew her hope. “I think we should try to get outside,” he said. “Come with me.”
She stood still, then shook her head.
“We need to try to go outside and see if we’re still old. The power of this thing may not work outside.”
A flicker of hope. She walked toward the doorway, her manner not quite so mechanical.
“Wait,” he said, “I have to get something.”
The heat and presence disappeared when he grabbed up a gun. Which made no sense, but he walked to the still open panel and took out a large pistol, a .45 Colt on a Smith frame. A blunderbuss. It made him feel ridiculous. It also provided a foolish sense of security. The loads looked useable, but the pistol could kill nothing in this house, except maybe Vera or Theophilus. The pistol certainly could not kill unseeables like force or heat.
Through rooms, around traps, past hidden doors that might open at their backs Tracker walked beside Amy so slowly that he sensed her impatience. He was nearly doddering, the pistol feeling as heavy as his steps. They were in one of the oldest parts of the house. Kids had played here. He had played here. He stopped to listen. Another time shift was beginning? The pistol felt lighter, the voices he’d first heard in the house returned, less distant this time, more pronounced…a child laughed, then another, and then the two voices were giggling together. Somewhere two women seemed to be arguing, a man cursed and footsteps that did not approach Tracker and Amy seemed to approach the women’s voices. The voices stopped, there came a tinkling run of piano music, and then he and Amy were again enclosed by silence.
