“We’re not done,” she replied and climbed into the still, moonlit lake. The water was cool, made more so by the rain and vestigial breeze, but she didn’t seem to notice.
Father Billy realized what was required of him and kicked off his boots and clothes as well before following Faith into the water. Together, they gently lifted Maia off the edge of the dock and brought her into the lake. Once there, she was light as a feather and Faith was able to carry her more by herself, though Father Billy helped steady the body.
“Come on,” she said bluntly, beginning to swim Maia out towards the diving platform.
Father Billy nodded and swam along.
It had turned into a gorgeous night, the ink black lake sparkling under the moon, a vast array of stars blanketing the sky, the kind of astronomer’s dream you only get far removed from city lights. Faith made the mistake of looking down at one point and saw a brilliant constellation, Cassiopeia, reflected in Maia’s half-opened eyes. The sight made her gasp and choke with tears all over again, but she fought back the tears and kept going.
It took them ten minutes to get all the way out to the floating platform. Once there, Father Billy began lifting Maia out of the water, but Faith merely shook her head.
“No. She stays in the water.”
Father Billy nodded simply and moved to hang onto the platform while Faith took Maia’s body and swam a few feet away. It wasn’t hard for the priest to imagine the two as dancers, playing out some beautiful, barely-lit pas de deux under the watchful eye of the moon as Faith moved her friend in a long, arcing circle through the water. One last time, Faith drew Maia near and leaned forward, kissing her gently on the lips.
“I’ll always love you,” she whispered. “Forever and ever.”
With grim finality, Faith let Maia’s body go and it soon sank a few inches below the surface, her face still visible. Her shoes weighed her down, but didn’t sink her. As Faith watched, the waves slowly began to carry Maia away and under, the glow of her body quickly receding. Faith closed her eyes tight, burning the image into her memory.
After a moment, Faith turned and swam back to the diving platform. Father Billy was still there, treading water as he bobbed up and down with the tide. He stared at her, trying to read her face, but seeing only darkness where her eyes might be.
“Faith...,” he began, but was suddenly cut off by a horrific, piercing pain that exploded from his torso.
“Oh, God!!” he croaked.
He reached down and felt the nail that Faith had just driven into his belly and left there. His hands came up lubricated with blood and he looked at her, staggered with shock.
“That wound won’t kill you,” Faith said evenly, hushed to the point of a whisper. “But you can let it by staying here in the water. You’ll eventually lose consciousness and, though it’ll be the water that killed you, I’ll still be your murderer in the eyes of God and, in your version of things, I’d still go straight to Hell for it.”
Father Billy wanted to cry out, his face twisted in pain, but Faith gave him a hard stare and silenced his groans.
“But if you were to, say, swim for awhile, exert and exhaust yourself, bleed out even more quickly, then slip under the waves and drown, that’d be your doing, no?” Faith postulated. “You’d be actively bringing about your own death, a suicide. Then, you’d have saved me from Hell in the process, no? It’s a choice, like everything. That’s why it’s a real test.”
Faith went quiet, staring at Father Billy as both of them wondered which he would choose. Finally and without another word, she turned and swam back to shore, leaving the priest alone in the lake, his features paling in the moonlight.
It took Mark and Phil much of the night to make it down the highway all the way to the exit that led to Camp Easley on bicycles. It had been a long, grueling marathon in the dark, often lit only by the moon or the headlights of oncoming cars. They kept their bikes far, far off the shoulder, bouncing along in the grass-strewn gravel on the side of the road and even though Phil had printed up a map off the internet to make sure they wouldn’t get lost, they hadn’t had to look at it once.
That said, when they finally got to the exit marked only as 42B, they might’ve missed it as it was backlit by the morning sun newly rising in the east, casting the face of the exit sign in shadow.
But Phil was being guided now more by instinct than road signs and easily made the turn, standing up on his pedals to ascend the ramp up to the small paved road that, down another three miles or so, would connect with a left-hand turn-off at a bent stop sign and take them the final twenty miles to camp.
The two boys knew the last stretch wouldn’t take anywhere near as long as their night ride because not only would they be able to see where they were going, they also wouldn’t be constantly worrying about being struck by cars. They figured, rightly as it turned out, that no one would be along at this hour and they’d have the road to themselves.
A few minutes later, after they made the unmarked turn-off to Camp Easley, Phil’s stomach began filling with a dread that adrenaline had successfully pushed to the side all night. He had wholeheartedly believed that they would find Faith alive, relieving him of his guilt about leaving her in the first place, but what if they didn’t? What if they found Father Billy and he decided that, this time, he was going to kill them?
But then Phil thought, if that was the course, then so be it. He’d decided to return. He could take the consequences, even if that meant he’d soon be staring down at the dead body of the girl he loved.
It wasn’t too far down the dirt road that they began inhaling smoke from the smoldering remains of the short-lived forest fire Father Billy had started the afternoon before.
“What happened here?” Phil whispered, staring at the blackened, fallen trees that suddenly surrounded the road as they bounced over scorched earth.
“I don’t know,” said Mark, taking in the spectacle. “Maybe a lightning-strike fire. The rain seems to have put it out, though.”
That may have been the most logical answer, but somehow, it didn’t ring true to either boy after the events they’d witnessed and they discussed it no further. They continued biking down the road, next coming across the camp’s Jeep, which had been completely gutted by flames.
“Jesus,” exclaimed Mark.
When they saw the bodies on the road behind the Jeep, ones that had fallen early to smoke inhalation, but were subsequently immolated by the fire, Mark hesitated and stopped pedaling.
“This isn’t what we expected, is it?” he asked Phil, fear creeping into his voice. “We don’t know what’s going on. This could be really, really bad.”
Phil, who was checking over the bodies to see if Faith was among them, shook his head.
“Father Billy said that this was Hell, right?” Phil replied glumly. “Where’d you think we were going?”
Mark nodded and they kept heading towards the camp.
Faith was sitting on the end of the dock watching a brilliant sunrise over the far side of the lake. A few low-hanging clouds were being illuminated by the spectacle, which made it almost look like the sky was on fire – a dazzlingly beautiful sight burning a pattern high into the atmosphere. As she stared at it, she thought about Maia and Colorado and the vanquished idea of a life lived alongside each other, a calendar of endless sunrises. Though she was incredibly sad, Faith understood for the first time what people at funerals meant about keeping someone in their heart after they died. Maybe she wasn’t dealing with the death properly or, more likely, wasn’t dealing with it at all yet, but she was able to perfectly imagine what Maia would say about the sunrise, how much she’d enjoy it, how her hair would look reflected in the glow and so forth as if she wasn’t dead, but was, in fact, sitting right beside her.
She had an overwhelming desire to lean over and kiss this hallucination, which she imagined was resting her fingers gently on her hand. But, of course, Maia wasn’t really there and Faith had to fight back the urge to cry.
>
“Faith...?” a voice said, far away. “Faith?”
Faith ignored this sound and closed her eyes, thinking of Maia. She thought of her first sight of her back on the bus, beginning with her sandals, though Faith now realized she’d probably been staring at her slim, sylphlike ankles. She thought of horsing around in the kitchen, thought of the two of them swimming, thought of the feeling of her arms around her, thought of when she finally let Maia’s body be engulfed in the waves of Lake Carlisle.
Remember, remember, remember, remember, she chanted to herself. Remember her eyes and the taste of her lips. Remember her beautiful hair and her beautiful feet. Remember the curvature of her body pressed tightly into yours...
“Faith!!” the voice – Phil’s – jumped up an octave and she knew she’d been found.
She heard the sounds of two pairs of footsteps.
Remember.
She figured Phil must’ve brought Mark. Mark from band. Mark who she didn’t really like so much, but who had been right about Father Billy.
Remember. Remember.
“Faith!” Phil cried, clambering down the beach and across the dock as Faith got to her feet and turned around. “Faith!”
Phil wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. She could tell he was already crying. She held him back and saw Mark coming up behind him. To her surprise, she saw that Mark was in tears, too. He made it to where the beach met the dock, locked eyes with Faith and the two of them, in that moment, came to an understanding.
After a few more seconds, Faith pulled away from Phil, smiling at him.
“Phil!” she said. “You came back for me.”
“Yeah, we both did,” Phil said.
“Thank you,” she said, putting her hand on his.
“Where’s Father Billy?” Mark called out.
“Gone,” sighed Faith.
“Did you kill him?” Mark asked simply.
Faith didn’t answer immediately, looking from Mark then to Phil then back to Mark.
“I don’t know.”
Mark seemed satisfied with this response and jerked his head back towards the bicycles.
“We should get you the heck out of here.”
Faith heard these three words and, for some reason, a bolt of panic flashed through her body. She couldn’t imagine leaving Maia here all by herself. She knew Maia’s body wasn’t her body anymore, but still, it was all that was left of her and she couldn’t escape the idea that it would be so lonely without her...
“Okay,” Faith said, her voice cracking.
Phil looked at her and knew that Maia was gone, but didn’t say anything. He put his arm around her and walked her back to the two bicycles.
“It’s all about who you trust,” said Mark, picking his bike up. “My handlebars or his?”
Faith feigned a half-smile and walked over to Phil. “Sir?”
“Madam,” he said, holding the bike steady as she climbed on.
Mark smirked, but then stood up on his pedals and pumped them up and down, racing past the screened-in classroom, the mess hall, past the cabins and back to the road. When he saw the old firehouse bell hanging in front of the administrator’s cabin, he slid to a stop, picked up a rock and heaved it at it. It missed, but Mark didn’t care.
“Clang,” he said, dryly, and then pedaled ahead.
Faith closed her eyes as Phil pedaled after Mark, her mind trying to block out the horrific images she now associated with these structures. She knew what was just past the doorstep of Cabin 4, bodies piled upon bodies.
She glanced back towards the lake, but Phil thought she was looking at him and he forced himself to look grimly determined at his task.
“You okay?” he asked, trying to sound like a soldier, unaffected by anything.
“Yeah,” she replied, and then looked over his shoulder at the water.
She thought she’d only take one last glance, but she ended up staring at its blue waters, the white-capped waves lolling up on the shore as the sun rose higher in the sky. She watched it until the lake was obscured by trees, though she knew which direction it was in and kept her eyes fixed there, as if hoping it might make itself visible one more time. When this didn’t happen, she focused on the few colors left of the sunrise, little pinks against the cotton ball clouds, dissipating up into a sheet of perfect blue.
When there was nothing left, she faced forward as the bicycle bounced along through the still-smoldering forest. As they went, two words repeated themselves in her mind like a totem:
Her angel, her Maia. Her angel, her Maia...
Afterword
I wish I remembered more, but I don’t. Names and faces blend together after awhile and junior high yearbooks, church photos and the recollections of others only took me so far. I can say, with all honesty, that Father Billy has stayed with me my whole life thus far and the memories of him, aside from those few days chronicled here, are pleasant. Those of a man who cared deeply about his congregation, who was a great leader to his students and campers in and out of the church (I didn’t mention it in the text, but he was actually the leader of the church’s Boy Scout troop, too, of which I was a member). I will never understand what he came to believe as his final “mission on Earth,” but I hope, in the writing of this, maybe you will.
-Mark Wheaton
Los Angeles
November 22, 2009
Mark Wheaton is a horror screenwriter (Friday the 13th, The Messengers) and graphic novelist (The Cleaners). Sunday Billy Sunday is his first horror novel, having previously published two horror novellas straight-to-Kindle (Last Tuesday, Bones). A print anthology is forthcoming with the additional story, The New Guy.
Cover design & illustration by Rahsan Ekedal
HTML coding for Kindle by Joshua Tallent (http://www.ebookarchitects.com)
Sunday Billy Sunday Page 20
