Agnes at the End of the World

by Kelly McWilliams

  “There are men on the moon?”

  “People, anyway,” Jazz mumbled. “Sometimes.”

  Zeke’s face reddened. He looked furious, disbelieving, and betrayed. Agnes knew what he was feeling. People walking on the moon… it was such an unbelievable story. If these Outsiders were lying, how could he laugh with them again? And if they weren’t lying—well, that meant he’d been denied the wonder of knowing people walked on the moon. In a way, that was worse.

  Agnes’s hands played in her lap, wanting to help—to save him—but she couldn’t. She didn’t doubt that Outsiders could walk on the moon if they wanted to, and, vaguely, she thought one day she’d like to hear all about it. But not tonight. The world was growing too fast as it was.

  “You’re lying,” Zeke snarled. “There can’t be people on the moon because God would never, ever let it happen! The Prophet said so—not ever!”

  The sermon on the evils of technology. Agnes could recite it verbatim. According to the Prophet, Outsiders pretended they possessed powers that God would never allow them to have. Such as the power to travel among the stars.

  Agnes moved to take her distraught brother into her arms, but Matilda beat her to it. She hugged the stuttering, crying boy and whispered in his ear.

  “I think it’s time for Zeke to go to bed,” Matilda said calmly. “But maybe we’ll read a bedtime story first. How does a book about the moon landing sound?”

  The Outsiders looked expectantly at Agnes, waiting for her to decide. Danny held especially still.

  She isn’t like us.

  He’d said it, and it had hurt, but it was also the truth.

  “You can read to him,” Agnes whispered. “Anything you want, as long as it’s true.”

  When Zeke was gone from the room, she fixed her eyes straight ahead while the Outsiders shifted around her, uncomfortable. Telling herself, I must not cry. I must not cry.

  Miraculously, she didn’t.

  When Agnes turned in to bed that night, she discovered Zeke curled in his sleeping bag with a book clutched to his chest. Sheep had been sentenced to spend the night on the cold floor.

  Curious, she raised the camping lantern: The Moon, For Kids!

  It must’ve been Matilda’s way of proving that Outsiders weren’t liars, and that, impossible as it sounded, people really had walked on the moon.

  In thick white suits and glass helmets, apparently.

  Zeke’s eyes snapped open. “Agnes?”

  Behind her, the door creaked on its hinges. Benny.

  Zeke sat up. “Can he sleep with me? Please?”

  Agnes smiled. “You’d better ask him.”

  The cat mewled expressively.

  “He wants to stay,” he said firmly. “Just, shut the door. In case.”

  “Oh, Zeke, what if he has to use the bathroom, or something?”

  “He can use the bucket.”

  She didn’t think cats worked like that, but her brother insisted. Still, she was pleased to see him embracing an Outsider habit—even a messy, furry one.

  “All right. But promise you’ll sleep.”

  He bundled the cat into bed. Agnes smoothed the blanket along his sides. It was just like at home, except it was terribly quiet without the other kids rustling, talking.

  For years she’d looked after her siblings like a mother, tying shoes and kissing bruises. Her throat burned, knowing what it must’ve been like for them when she disappeared.

  At first, they wouldn’t have believed it. The twins would’ve held more tightly to their cloth dolls. Confident, methodical Sam would tell them not to worry, that they’d probably just gotten separated. He’d wander among the other families, asking, Have you seen Agnes? Have you? He wouldn’t believe the King boys when they said she wasn’t there. He’d think they were just pulling his leg.

  The other kids—they’d believe in her.

  They’d believe, right up until the moment the Prophet commanded them to pray for the destruction of her soul.

  She buried her face in her hands.

  Zeke’s eyes opened. For a crazy moment she thought he understood her pain. But he was still a little boy, overwhelmed with the work of shedding his home like a skin.

  “Agnes, why did Father lie about the moon?” For him, this was the lie that unraveled everything.

  She sighed. “Maybe Father didn’t know.”

  “Did the Prophet know?”

  She hesitated. “Zeke. The Prophet lied to us. All of us. He knew.”

  He looked battered, and her chest ached. “You miss your brother and sisters, but that’s okay,” she whispered. “Missing is a way of loving, too.”

  “You don’t miss them,” he accused. “Not as much as me.”

  “Every minute I’m thinking of them. But I’ve got to think of you, too. Your future.”

  He said nothing.

  “Remember Matthew?”

  A long, stubborn pause. Then, “Blessed are those who mourn,” he recited leadenly.

  “For they will be comforted,” she urged. “You still have your faith. That you get to keep.”

  Benny nudged his small skull into the palm of Zeke’s hand, begging to be petted.

  “We’re never going home again.”

  Not a question. A statement.

  “There’s nothing to go home to,” Agnes answered.

  She blew out the lantern and snuggled into the sleeping bag with him, The Moon, For Kids!, and Benny, whose eyes glowed yellow in the dark. For a long time, Zeke cried in that quiet, muffled way you learn when you grow up in a trailer full of people.

  Their little tin home—it was a million miles away, as remote as the moon.

  She pictured it on the hillside, abandoned and empty.

  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted, she repeated to herself, drifting into troubled dreams. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.

  32

  BETH

  Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!

  —HABAKKUK 2:12

  You’re a fool, Cory Jameson,” Beth said, after he’d proclaimed, for the thousandth time, that he was going to hell for his betrayal of the Prophet.

  His head rested in her lap. He rolled his blue eyes up to her, his look full of naked hurt. She’d snapped, but it wasn’t entirely her fault. They’d been trapped in the church for three days, huddled between the pews and eating only what she found in the basement: watered-down wine, stale crackers, moldy cheese. She could’ve gone out for more, but Cory couldn’t bear to be separated even for a moment—not since the smell of rot had started billowing around him like a cloud of death flies.

  For three awful days, she’d tried everything to help him. She’d washed his wound with soap and vinegar, but still the edges had curled, turning sickly green. When the veins beneath turned black as ink, she’d poured boiling water over the lesion, deafening herself to his agonized screams. She’d nursed him as well as she could, but it hadn’t mattered.

  His fever persisted. He was clearly dying. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to face the end alone.

  “Why am I a fool?” he demanded.

  She gestured helplessly, knowing she couldn’t tell the truth. It hurt to have your faith shattered—hurt like dying, and he was already doing that. Why should she make his last days more painful?

  At least the kids never knew. The thought hurtled towards her like a meteor, unstoppable. Whatever happened to them after she and Cory left, they never had to wonder if their whole lives were built on a foundation of lies.

  Cory snorted. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with you. You’ve been cruel and moody even though I’m the one who’s hurt. I don’t know where you get off acting like—”

  “I hate this place, okay?” she shouted, and his eyes widened. “I hate this church! I can’t breathe, knowing—”

  “What? What do you think you know?”

  It was a challenge, and it worked. Thinking abo
ut the kids when she tried so desperately hard not to had pushed her over the edge.

  She exploded. “A hell of a lot more than you! I mean, so you broke the Laws of Red Creek. Who cares? They were only invented to torture us.”

  “Beth—” Cory warned.

  “Don’t say it,” she hissed. “Don’t tell me to get ahold of my weak woman’s soul. I read the Prophet’s diaries and his grandfather’s. Those awful men have been lying to their people for almost eighty years.”

  “You did what?”

  She colored slightly. “I wanted to understand how Jacob Rollins could trap the faithful in that—that tomb. Cory, I don’t think they’re ever coming out again. It’s only a matter of time before Toby or Magda spread their sickness.”

  She hated the pictures her mind painted. Sam with gem-hard skin, and the twins—

  Stop, she ordered herself. Stop or you’ll scream.

  “They’re waiting for God,” Cory said. “It’s the opposite of dying. I should know.”

  She forced herself to look into his face, which had shrunk down to his bones. She remembered the first time they’d kissed at the canyon’s edge. How vital and golden and downright cheeky he’d been.

  “I want to be a faithful man,” he’d told her while the desert wind teased his hair. “But not just yet.”

  Then he’d kissed her, striking a match that sent sparks flying throughout her body. They’d been unable to part until sunset, when the cold forced them home, and after that, they’d been unable to keep away.

  In the church, a strange mix of yearning and sorrow made her head swim.

  “Cory, Red Creek isn’t what you think.”

  The diaries were tucked inside a knapsack she’d found. She felt the hate inside those pages, smoldering like coals.

  “Then tell me.”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  In his silence she sensed an opening—a hairline crack in his faith. But odds were she’d never get through to him. There just wasn’t time.

  I’m so lucky I don’t love him.

  If she did and he denied the truth of her story—as surely he was going to do—her heart would shatter.

  “You can’t interrupt me, not for anything. No matter how crazy it sounds. If you say one word, Cory, I won’t speak to you for the rest of your life.”

  A long, awkward pause.

  “I don’t mean because you’re…”

  Cory looked at her. “You can say it.”

  “Well.” They locked eyes. “We both know you’re dying.”

  “True,” said Cory, shooting her his sexiest grin.

  Beth caught another confusing vision of the boy he’d been—exasperating, irritating, irresistible—and felt like crying.

  Don’t think of the past and don’t think of the kids. Don’t think about what will happen after he dies—how then you’ll be truly alone.

  She stoked her courage and began.

  “A long time ago, there was a young trapper named Jeremiah. He was charming and handsome, but poor as dirt. He managed to find himself a wife, a farmer’s daughter who followed him all over the West while he sold pelts. But he’d always believed his destiny was to become a Prophet, because he’d been born with a special power.”

  She risked a glance at Cory. His face was impassive.

  She continued. “The power was—weird. He could hear the earth humming and the stars singing. He kept it secret because he didn’t want to sound daft. More than anything, he wanted to be respected, feared… and revered.”

  Beth could picture him: this young Prophet with a budding power exactly like her sister’s. She saw how the air must’ve shimmered around him, how he would’ve been charming, entrancing when he tried.

  Not that Agnes ever tried to be charming. She was too good—too responsible.

  “In any case, nothing remarkable would’ve happened in Jeremiah’s life if it hadn’t been for a girl, the daughter of the constable in a town called Gila. Jeremiah worked odd jobs. Fence building, roofing. He was thirty-two. The girl was only fourteen, but he fell in love with her anyway. When he couldn’t stop wanting her, he decided God wanted him to steal her.”

  Beth’s voice grew wispy, thin. She could slide so easily into that girl’s skin and feel what she’d felt.

  “He kidnapped her in the middle of the night. Knowing her father would stop at nothing to hang him, he ran. But he had a problem. No Outsider church would allow him to marry the girl, because marrying more than one woman is an Outsider crime.”

  Cory huffed. “But we know better, right? Plural marriage is God’s will.”

  “How do you know?” Beth demanded. “Other than because the Prophet told you so, over and over again?”

  “It makes people feel holy,” Cory said. “Men and women.”

  “No,” she snapped. “It makes men feel holy and women feel worthless. What does it feel like when a woman is told that one man is worth six of her? Speaking as a sixth wife, I can tell you. It feels like hell.”

  Cory jerked as if she’d stabbed him. A shadow crossed his face and Beth’s bones felt heavier.

  She’d wanted Cory passionately. But she’d married his father. According to church rites, she’d be married to him forever. Even in death.

  “I’m sorry I interrupted. Please don’t stop.”

  She raised her finger. “One free pass. One.”

  He nodded, acquiescent.

  “Anyway. Jeremiah convinced himself that God wanted him to marry this girl, but God was just an excuse. Hearing the earth, the trees, the stars—it twisted him. Made him selfish and entitled.”

  From a young age, I knew I must be the greatest man alive, he’d written.

  “Jeremiah managed to evade the law. Eventually, he found his way to a place where the earth sang louder than anywhere else. A powerful place.”

  This part she could picture, too. Young Jeremiah, smiling at the fantastical sight of a land protected by the forest on one side and a canyon on the other.

  “Jeremiah performed his second marriage ceremony on the ground where he planned to build his church.” Beth swallowed. “The girl’s name was Sarah Shiner. Though she cried, begging to go home, what she wanted never mattered.”

  She was an insignificant creature, but beautiful. Her greatest sin was in failing to see my power for what it was—a sign that God upheld my will.

  Cory kept still.

  “But here’s the clincher. Sometime during their wedding night, Jeremiah’s power disappeared. He couldn’t hear the earth humming, even when he got down on his knees. The stars didn’t sing. Marrying Sarah, he’d transgressed against his gift. For that, his power abandoned him—though he never saw it that way.

  “He took out his frustration on Sarah. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore. Years later, she fled like Hagar into the wilderness. Jeremiah vowed that all her descendants would forever suffer her disgrace.

  “For decades Jeremiah prayed for his power to return while he amassed ever more wives and followers. But the earth never made another sound.

  “In his final years, he was rotting from the inside out. From the way he wrote…” She spread her hands, a helpless gesture. “In the end, Jeremiah went mad.”

  She looked meaningfully at Cory.

  “The point is, God never spoke to him directly. Not once in all his life. And Jeremiah remained, until his dying day, a miserable, hateful man. He considered driving his people over the canyon’s edge or forcing them to take poison… but he didn’t. He clung to one last hope: that one of his sons would be born with the power he’d lost.”

  Her voice fell to a whisper. “They never were. But a grandson was. His name was Jacob Rollins.”

  Cory let out a breath. She stole a glance at his face, worried that he’d fight rather than hear his Prophet maligned. To her surprise, he looked sad.

  She felt sad, too. But the truth begged to be told.

  “Just like his grandfather, Jacob set about becoming the most entitled, horrib
le man he could—keeping up all of Red Creek’s lies and adding some of his own. For all I know, he even believed them. Men, it seems, convince themselves of what they want to be true.

  “Jacob kept his power a long time. Then he started beating one of his less obedient wives—his fourth wife—and the power disappeared. He’d squandered it, like his grandfather before.”

  She dropped her eyes, feeling suddenly tired.

  “Beth, look at me.”

  Stomach churning, she remembered all the times she’d avoided looking at him: in the days after she’d been called a whore, and then again, on her wedding day.

  Now she felt desperate not to run—or deny, evade. She looked at him squarely, like Agnes would’ve done.

  His mouth twitched.

  She blinked. “You’re not upset?”

  “I read the diaries while you were sleeping,” he confessed. “So, I already knew the story.” His voice hardened. “Those ‘Prophets’ were a couple of filthy bastards.”

  She shoved him. “Why did you make me tell it, then? Why did you make such a fuss?”

  “Beth, you know better than anyone that I never could stay faithful, much as I wanted to. I think… because, deep down, I always knew there had to be something wrong with any place that would keep us apart. I used to have god-awful nightmares…

  “But when I woke up, I’d think, Perfect obedience produces perfect faith.” He licked his lips. “I needed to hear someone say, out loud, that the Prophet lied.” He looked tenderly at her. “I should’ve known it would be you who finally said it.”

  She bit her lip. “Did it help, hearing it out loud?”

  “I’m still scared of hell,” he said. “I can still see the lake of fire, clear as day.”

  She almost said, Give it time. But time was the one thing Cory Jameson didn’t have.

  “I worried you wouldn’t believe me because you’re a man,” she admitted. “After the Prophets, I thought all men might be destroyers at heart.”

  “The Prophets were mad,” he said vehemently. “That crap about magic powers and hearing stars—obviously, they were out of their fucking minds.”

  “Cory,” she said slowly. “That part was true.”