Chapter 1

From the back door of the diner, all you could see were two glowing orbs like pupil-less eyes. The sounds fed into the darker thoughts, the way dust funneled through the alley tearing air to a buzz, and don’t forget that growl of the engine. What great beast lurked in the dusty shroud?

It had a jaunty whistle, though.

“A radio? In a car?” Margaret asked for not the first time. “Don’t that distract you?”

The bootlegger sat in the forest green pickup without a word. All ready for the coming storm, he had on goggles pulled off the Red Baron’s body but the boy was too young for that. In nice clothes—nice and dirty—with a bandanna over his mouth and nose. Hard to say if he was enjoying the broadcast, but she wasn’t. She was busy sweating, hefting a 5-gallon jug from the back. She paid $50 a jug, knowing half was water. It wouldn’t have been this heavy otherwise, heavy, but not this heavy, and a gentleman might’ve offered to unload it for her—heck even a good businessman would’ve offered, but this boy from Appleseed didn’t need to be a gentleman or a good businessman. He had a good business. Could charge what he wanted. Help how he wanted. Listen to whatever show he wanted.

She went back under the tarpaulin.

Box of tools.

A spare tire.

“There’s only one jug back here.” She went around the cab to knock on the door. “Hey, I paid for two and there’s only one back here.”

The boy looked down on her saying nothing.

“Now I’m a good customer but I won’t continue to be with this kind of service.”

“Tell the sheriff,” he said and the engine revved up to head out at speeds too dangerous for a town the size of Tphloknaktsa, Oklahoma.

Never heard of it?

Look on the map.

Still can’t find it?

What you need to do is get a map from 1862 before the Homestead Act then look at a map from anywhere in the 1920s and you see that little speck you thought was a printing error? That’s Tphloknaktsa.

But family, this story takes place in 1935 and don’t you dare look on a map after that because it won’t be there.

“Who’s winning?” Margaret asked as she came in the diner. Not a one in here offered assistance with the jug, either, but that was all the better. From the kitchen, hidden by a half wall and a curtain, she quietly turned on the tap, hoping their banter covered the sound.

“Sheff,” Adelaide, one of the farmhands, said. “As usual.”

“Ah, you’re only here for the drink.”

“And the smile of Ms. Tully. But how’s it--” Adelaide heard something.

“Just washing up.” She came out from the kitchen with a towel in hand. “Y’all may be cheats and scoundrels, but this here is a respectable establishment. Now who’s parched?”

The hands went up.

The glasses went round.

The faces got red.

The pot got bigger.

Margaret even won a hand, being the only clearheaded one. She wasn’t trying to peek but it was hard when the banker yawned with his Hearts over head.

The quarters and dimes got passed around, but one stack kept growing.

Adelaide said, “Maybe you oughta come work the fields, Sheff.”

The general store owner had a good hand coming up, he just felt it in his bones, like he knew the rain was coming any day. “I’ll knock a dollar off all y’all’s tabs. What do you say?”

The harbinger wind howled round and banged the Dutch shutters against the siding.

“You’re out,” the sheriff growled.

“Can be a dollar each and y’all just spot me a dollar collective.”

“Walk it off.”

“You’ll see! I just know I almost—”

“Go home, Willy!”

“Now wait just a damned second! I had the best hand last time but you just—you said—you—you!” He rose up out of his chair so quick the thing tipped back onto the hardwood with a thunderous clatter.

The table went quiet. No running the tap at this juncture.

When Margaret came running out the kitchen past the coat rack, she witnessed the sheriff slowly rise up. He didn’t have his star on him tonight. Probably for the best because where the star went, the revolver followed.

A friendly game of Texas Hold’em was set to turn into a not so friendly game of fisticuffs.

Margaret said, “Now, Willy, why don’t you check your coat pocket? You’re always stuffing your winnings in there. And Sheff, what you doing bullying this boy? How about another drink? I was just turning the stove on, too, for a late night snack if y’all looking to soak up the gut rot.”

Willy desperately rummaged in his coat pockets at the rack, careful to take only his coat and take it far from the others, lest they think something untoward was happening.

A few hands went up for drinks and a few more for sandwiches.

Two hands went up in celebration. “You were right, Ms. Tully! I’m a darn fool. I always stuff my winnings or change in my pocket and play with it as I’m heading home. Lets me savor that victory. Watch me win back all I lost with just this lucky dollar. Sheff, a sandwich on me? No hard feelings. Two more sandwiches, Ms. Tully.”

The bacon and eggs joined the smoke in the air and then all the sandwiches came out toasted. Sheff took two and said, “Thank ya, Willy. No hard feelings.” There wasn’t another leftover for him.

“Fifty-one,” Margaret muttered into her accounting book, writing in red.

Margaret carried away the glasses and plates into the back.

“Can we help, Ms. Tully?” Willy asked with five dollars stuffed in his pockets and his hat in hand.

“Yes, Willy, you can help by going.”

The glassy-eyed lot of them said their thank yous and goodbyes and Margaret Tully took to cleaning. First the dishes. Rinse, wash, dry, and place them in the cabinet and seal it.

As she turned away from the sink window, just a screen of dark dust out there that even the White Way couldn’t do more than cast silhouettes, one such silhouette approached the window.

The shadow watched through the glass as she cleared the table.

“Save all them crumbs for Abner,” she said in her mocking tone. She brushed them down into a sieve, knowing it unnecessary but still worrying what dust might do to her baby’s baby, and the dust that fell out—if it were sugar, it’d be enough for the sweetest cake. She worried what this dust might be doing to all them.

Then last and probably least, she grabbed her broom and dust pan.

No matter how she stuffed cloths and towels under the doors and around the windows, dust got in. Even the church with its vestibule entrance had a thick layer of dust whenever you opened the hymn book. No power greater than Gods’ but perhaps there were other matters to attend.

It’d all be back in the morning but there was some dignity in leaving a place tidy. She gathered up a nice little pile then listened for the wind. Today, the leeward side was the window above the sink.

She set the dust pan on the floor.

Then unlocked the window.

Then she bent down for her dust pan.

And when she rose to toss out the day’s filth…

She sneezed and it went all in the sink.

She just sort of stared a moment. “Messy Margaret strikes again.”

The window got closed and locked as did the door behind her and once outside with a scarf pulled over her mouth, she circled the building to latch the shutters. They did their part, however small, in keeping the dust out. And silhouettes.

If she were new in this one-horse town, it’d be easy to get lost on a night like now. The storm was in full force. Maybe she could’ve waited it out. They never lasted long. But it wasn’t the big one. And she liked getting home before the witching hour.

As she followed those too high orbs lighting a vague way down Main Street, she couldn’t hear herself think. A gale force wind sent nipping particulates across her cheeks and she turned away as she trudged on.

And at first, she thought her mind must be playing tricks on her. A bit of Midnight Madness striking a weary mind. But her eyes kept on it, trying to focus, trying to filter out the smokescreen, until she was certain:

Someone was following her.

“Howdy, neighbor!” she called.

But she did not stop.

She released her clutch upon her scarf to wave. “We best be getting home before this really picks up.”

Her voice could be getting carried two towns over for all she knew. And perhaps the same was true for the silhouette.

She continued down the street, her pace faster now.

“Gotta get out of this storm!” she tried again.

Faster still.

Losing her breath, catching a mouthful of dust instead.

Soon she was at her gate. It wasn’t more than a block away from the diner. Everyone knew her house. Everyone knew she had sugar or recipes or a hammer. Everyone knew, unlike everyone else, she kept her doors locked.

How many times had that saved her?

Not now.

She had her key in hand before she ever stepped on the wooden porch. It really needed replacing and she meant to last year before it got cold but maybe this year, maybe this summer, and the pattern boards would sit tight together.

Her eyes never left the figure behind her. They were just across the street now. She hoped they’d pass.

Perhaps if she had prayed…

She fumbled for the lock but aiming without looking is bad business.

She felt the hole with her thumb but when she tried lining it up, her hands trembled too fiercely and she missed, lost her grip on the keys, and they fell. Onto the porch with boards that did not touch.

Still her eyes stayed locked on the figure nearly at the gate. If he--and she was sure they were a he now--opened that gate, she’d scream. She’d scream the whole way. She’d scream whatever happened.

But like the lock, it’s bad business feeling for keys without looking. Especially on a deck with space between the boards. The moment she felt the metal of the key, she nudged it just enough to fall through to the dirt beneath.

She had to look.

The keys had disappeared into the abyss where no light reached.

No more looking.

No more waiting.

Just screaming.

Bang, bang, bang!

“SARAH!” she screamed. “Uncle Pete! Unlock this right now.”

Bang, bang, bang!

A look back.

Where was he?

She heard a lock undo.

He was coming through the gate.

“Gonna wake the neighborhood like that.”

The front door opened and Margaret Tully charged in, knocking the book out of her teenage daughter’s hand.

“Who walked you ho—? Uncle Pete? He’s long…” At 17, Sarah was taller than her Mama and a good deal sturdier, too, but a mother on a mission can’t be stopped. Before Sarah could finish a thought, Mama slammed the door shut with all its chains and locks fully engaged. Then she disappeared into the kitchen, but she got her answers when Mama returned with Uncle Pete’s shotgun (Gods rest his soul).

She aimed at the door.

They waited several minutes. Long enough Sarah almost said something but thought better of it.

Then Mama lowered the gun.

She didn’t put it away, but she did remove her finger.

“No one came by tonight?” she asked.

“No, Mama.”

They waited several minutes more and this time Sarah did say something.

“My only suitor was Abner.” She waited for Mama’s response. “I didn’t let him in though.”

Mama breathed finally. “I brought him a present.”

“Any apple cores?”

“Two.”

“He’ll love them.”

Mama had come in charging but trembling. Now her nerves were still. Sarah had the opposite reaction. She trembled as reality set in, her eyes scanning the window for anything but getting nothing. Mama put the gun away and instead put her arms around Sarah.

It was just them in this big house these days. Only a month since Gran passed and already a lot of things happened: the two had gotten closer, the schoolhouse closed, they started dragging themselves to church, and soon a lot more would.

Mama looked out the window a bit longer. Even a flashlight wouldn’t cut through. Best wait till morning to get the key she dropped. She felt braver with a babe to protect, but not to the point of foolishness.

“Now what are you doing up reading past midnight? That’s how your eyes fall out.”

“Waiting on you,” Sarah shot back. “The Board of Education sent a note. New teacher’s coming next week.”

“I guess we can take tomorrow to rest.”

“No church?”

“No church. But don’t go celebrating! Celebrating is a sin!”

Sarah stifled her smile until she was in Mama’s arms again and then let it spread wide. She hated that creepy old pastor.

Chapter 2

In 1862, Congress passed what was known as the Homestead Act, signed by Lincoln on May 20. In 1863, the first settler took to living on and improving their land. Soon 3 million would follow with 1.6 million officially obtaining necessary documents for the 160 acres of nearly-free land. Nearly-free because there was a small registration fee, and the price of tools and materials to build a new house, and the fact that this was already Native land, some legally given to tribes after they’d been forced to move once before.

But to the ignorant, predominantly white settlers taking advantage of this, none of that mattered.

Do you know how long it takes to walk the length of 160 acres?

90 minutes without dillydallying.

Do you know how long it takes to tear up the grasslands, plow, plant, tend, and reap 160 acres?

A whole lot longer, family.

And these inexperienced farmers laid claims without a single thought to that and many found out a whole lot longer was in fact too long and parceled out acres here and there until the size was manageable and being neighborly with houses on either side was feasible after a hard day’s work.

With so many farmers, ranchers, miners, speculators, and the rest, they needed infrastructure. They cobbled it together like they cobbled together their houses. They weren’t the first to discover it but certainly they acted though they were.

For example, it didn’t make sense for so many farmers to head out to the City to sell their crops. That was time not spent growing their crop. So they set up somebody’s son to sell all the farmers’ crop in the City and then come back and pay them 90% of the earnings. And while he was out there, bring back some supplies for the farmers.

They later realized this was a store.

Then Farmer Fred started putting up fencing and his neighbor Farmed Ted argued Fred had intentionally lay claim to Ted’s land. Neither had any way to prove their stolen land was their own, but the collective commissioned the smith make a star and they pinned that to the ugliest, meanest man who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot someone. He locked up folks just for whistling at too high a pitch.

They called him Sheff.

Then farmers started catching sick and a guy pretty good with a horse was put in charge of all hoarse throats. They wouldn’t be named such if they weren’t connected. They started calling him Doc and people thought he must be or they wouldn’t call him that. He did alright, as well as anyone should’ve expected, but eventually he got old and an apprentice replaced him who could actually read and the population boomed.

And with the farmers multiplying, there were a lot of children running around unable to read and that was no good because a church was coming next. So they set up the St. Thomas Aquinas church for the old pastor that seemed like he’d come as naturally as the town. He was ancient, as all pious folks were, and his long, gaunt fingers traced the words as he read them. His voice shivered and quake and he promised these wet years would continue so long as they kept up the intensive farming.

“Rain follows the plow,” were his words and the words of old wisdom.

And 60 years later, 60 years after Tphloknaktsa was the official name for their little collective turned town, the curse came collecting.

It was, as many things are, the curse of ignorance.

Stolen land.

Poor farming.

The death of natural diversity.

All for a quick buck.

And little in Tphloknaktsa was set up in antagonism toward ignorance.

That little was Ms. Catherine Tully’s schoolhouse who passed 60 years later, just short of 100, an age no one would question her fate, and soon a terrible dust storm five miles high would smite the folks for their ignorance.

Chapter 3

The day had been pretty clear.

The coolness of March was giving way to April and little dust wafted through the air without a breeze so everyone could go about their business with their bandannas around their neck or perhaps stuffed in their pockets. Some of the ruder men used them in place of a handkerchief, but when the inevitable storm came, you knew they didn’t change them before putting them on.

But all in all, today it was easy to forget about their troubles: the drought, the economy, all the goodbyes to folk chasing a better life in California. Those faded into the background like a cricket’s song and however briefly, the idyllic days had returned.

Then Willy came running into the diner.

“You forget your hat, Willy?” Margaret asked.

“You gotta come look!”

A Cadillac on an old country road in the days after a dust storm announces itself like a war.

The curious from the diner joined the curious already in the town square and soon a crowd formed almost higher than Willy could count without pulling off his socks, all to peer down Main Street at the cloud forming the horizon.

It approached until the haze faded and the red dot at the center grew larger until you saw there was green trim and it was in fact a car growling down the road and not some Otherworldly beast that had its sights set on Tphloknaktsa. The folks there always were worrying about that.

“That’s a bootlegger’s car.”

“Think it’s the boy from Appleseed?”

“He drives a truck,” Margaret said. Then added, “Don’t he?”

Willy gulped. “What do they want with us?”

Sheff was the last to join the crowd, if you didn’t count Sarah who only peeked up from her book and out from her shed at the conversation around the vehicle.

But when the crowd moved to the parking spots the Cadillac occupied in front of the general store, Sarah stayed on the bench in her shed and closed the door.

“Howdy, sir,” the sheriff said as a man in black stepped out of the car.

This stranger was not aged, perhaps in his early 30s, but there was something old about the twinkle in his eyes. The way he took in the rapidly expanded landscape, building a mental map of the town, comparing it with one already in his mind, erasing the most modern buildings, and looking, scanning, searching for some landmark to orient himself. Even in this town with low-lying buildings and their wide yards, the skyline hindered his view.

Not once did his gaze dip to the man addressing him, nor the crowd surrounding him. He was unconcerned with these folks. But they were concerned with him.

His clothes were as nice as his car. Black with crimson and green trim, and trim those clothes were on his slender body. His head stuck out above the crowd and if any folks ran up at this moment, they’d know exactly who everyone was gawking at and why. While his tight buttoned collar did a good job of hiding, it didn’t do a perfect job and just below, there were deep scars.

When his eyes eventually did condescend to meet the crowd, he regarded them wordlessly. The sort of wisdom of a man that knew to think before he spoke, the sort of wisdom of a man to who you listened when he spoke, and if he didn’t speak and instead started doing something, it must be important. So when his eyes settled on the sheriff’s badge and suddenly he stooped to reach back inside for the passenger seat, the town collectively held their breath and the sheriff readied his anger in place of his revolver, but the stranger was just grabbing his wide brimmed hat.

The crowd breathed once more.

Finally, he said, “Which one of you local yokels want to show me to the schoolhouse?”

There was disdain in his voice.

“Yokels?”

“Calling us ignorant.”

“Ignorant?”

“Uneducated, Willy. Illiterate. Idiots. Bumpkins. Fools. Stupid, stupid!”

Two murmurs at opposite ends ran through the crowd.

“The new teacher?”

“In that car? No… What do they pay teachers elsewhere?”

“City fools think reading people superior to feeding people!”

Both conversations found their way to either ear of the sheriff.

“Pardon, friend, but might I ask your name and business? I seen this sort of transportation and I know what company it follows. And what company it attracts. This here is a Christian society and we don’t mind keeping the schoolhouse closed.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” he replied slowly. “But the Board of Education does. And I can already see I have a lot of work to do here. And a lot to undo. Don’t worry. The car won’t bite. If you’re understandably green, I’ll take you for a spin sometime, Sheff.”

The sheriff didn’t much care for the accusations in that answer. “Your name, boy.”

“Call me Ishmael.”

Margaret could see the rising tension as red filled up the sheriff’s face. “That’s certainly a unique name, sir. You’ve had a long trip, I imagine. Perhaps someone could show you to the schoolhouse to get you acquainted.”

“I’d be touched if you did.”

She raised her hands to say not her, just now realizing she still held a pen and notepad with someone’s order half-written. “I’ve got my diner to tend to. But—SARAH!” she yelled suddenly.

Her eyes trained over his shoulder and it made him turn his head to see a tall, lean, slapped together, wooden shed with a pitched roof and occupancy for one. The door stayed shut a minute. As if the occupant, this Sarah, was finishing up her business. He raised an eyebrow at the thought of putting such infrastructure in the center of the town square.

Eventually, the door opened.

“My daughter is not otherwise occupied and she’ll be one of your students, one of the best and brightest you’ll ever see.”

He doubted that but did not say. “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll make introductions and y’all can return to your little lives.”

“Little lives?” someone muttered.

He marched across the brown grass to meet his star pupil. She had a book in hand. The Secret of the Old Clock Tower.

“I respect you rising above your environment and learning to read, but I cannot ignore the locale. A latrine?”

Sarah’s head cocked in confusion. Her eyes found the crowd still watching, though her mother had gone back inside. Perhaps if the windows had been cleaned, she’d see Mama watching through the window as well. But when she searched for answers over her shoulder, she realized. “You’re mistaken, sir. This is a reading shed. One of the farm boys put it up. There’s a door so it keeps the dust out and when the wind comes, it don’t turn the page on me.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I assure you it does all that and more!” she said, wondering how this newcomer could argue with her. Men in this town always thought they knew everything and apparently men in other towns thought the same.

“It looks like an outhouse.”

“No, it don’t!”

“Doesn’t.”

“Glad you see reason.”

“Your grammar. If you’re the exemplary student, I worry about the rest of the crop. How’d your poor, previous teacher survive so long?”

“Don’t speak ill of Gran.”

The stranger caught his tongue. And softened it.

“Your gran was the previous teacher? Ms. Tully? Ms. Catherine Tully? Making you Sarah Tully?”

“First true thing you said. And maybe I didn’t take to every lesson but she taught me just fine to not let myself be bullied by some--”

“By some fool from out of town. Let me start over. I apologize for my initial tone. My prejudice of country folk maybe extended unfairly onto you. I’m sorry, Sarah Tully.”

This wasn’t the first time she’d been insulted by an adult or by a boy or even by a man belittling her on purpose or because of how he was raised, but it might’ve been the first time she remembered one correcting himself.

“It won’t happen again. You have my word.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Call me Ishmael.”

She let out a laugh. “Ha! That for true? Or did your folks just fancy Moby Dick?”

“You’ve read it?”

“Gran made me.”

“My wife’s favorite book, even before it found its place in the canon.”

“Your wife don’t—doesn’t name you.”

“Maybe that’s why she liked me, though.”

“A flimsy foundation for a marriage.”

“Maybe that’s why she isn’t here.”

It was Sarah’s to soften her tone. “Sorry, sir, for whatever happened with her. My daddy’s gone, too. Sir… Ishmael, Mr. Ishmael? What did my mother send you to me for?”

He gathered himself with a big breath. “I want to see the schoolhouse and perhaps meet your classmates to arrange the start of classes once more. I’ll take you in my Cadillac.”

They returned to the crowd. It had dispersed enough to perhaps be called a company instead, but the sheriff watched with a suspicious eye. He could love and accept all, as the Good Book told him, but he didn’t have to trust them.

When the new teacher pulled out of the parking spaces, before he put the car in drive, he had to ask his burning question.

“So your mother owns the diner?”

She nodded.

He had to be sure.

“And her name’s Tully, too?”

“’Course.”

“Margaret Tully?”

“You got a good memory, sir.”

“I do now. I do.”

He drove off down the street, following her guidance. Sarah assumed he wasn’t used to the dust yet, heck even she wasn’t, because as a smile crept over his face, a tear formed in his eye.

Chapter 4

In 1967, our nation closed its last one-room schoolhouse, but in 1930s rural America, they ruled America. The Church of St. Thomas Aquinas set up Tphloknaktsa’s to give children and adults the opportunity of reading the Good Book themselves. Did that violate a separation of church and state? No, because in those early barbaric days, the state had no involvement in the schools and it wasn’t until 1909 that Boards of Education were nationally instituted.

By then, Ms. Tully Sr. had already separated church and school.

Sarah was meant to be directing her new teacher to the schoolhouse, but she got lost in the leather seats and knobs. Instinct told her to play with them all and he didn’t say nothing when she did. He kind of watched. Not supervised. Not cautioning. Observed. That sort of look like at Christmas time when you’re trying to memorize the look on Mama’s face as she opens your gift.

Sarah stopped playing. But didn’t stop thinking about playing. She had never been in a car like this before. A few pickup trucks and farm equipment, of course, but nothing that reeked of luxury. She didn’t like it.

But when they arrived at the schoolhouse, she hesitated to step out.

Maybe she liked that it was different.

“How did you know where—?”

He cut her off. “It has a recognizable shape. Clearly not a house or business. Clearly not the church. I got lucky.”

“Unlucky if you wound up in Tphloknaktsa.”

The teacher went to inspect his workplace. He’d be spending a lot of time in here, except in summers, of course, and it was almost summer. An odd time for the Board to send a new teacher, if you asked her, but adults rarely did. Regulations are regulations, however nonsense.

The walls were painted white last summer. Sarah had helped. Gran had supervised. Some desks dated back to before she was born, but whenever one broke, it got replaced, and since they didn’t all break on the same day, an array of history was on display. Various names carved into the desks, some with hearts round them. Rude words. Crude pictures. The roof was all new as a tornado came by and ripped it off three years back—a scary time in Tphloknaktsa but now, the folks might welcome a tornado if it took all the dust with it and dumped it on Appleseed.

When Sarah chased him in, she heard escape from his lips, “It’s not the same.”

“Same? Same as what?”

“Not as I expected.”

“Reading too much Little House on the Prairie?” Sarah had a gnawing suspicion inside her.

The newcomer rifled through the desk drawers, but though he found names, notes, and even drafts of letters for parents that got a second, gentler attempt, nothing seemed to satisfy his curious itch. “There must be something,” he muttered.

“What’s it you’re searching for?”

He ignored her because one drawer was locked.

It did not open with a jiggle and he went once more through the drawers looking for its key.

She would not help until he proved himself. “Say, Mister, where are you from?”

He moved onto the library, a single bookcase in the corner with texts on all manner of subjects: math, grammar, history, geography, a dictionary, and the rest novels of varying quality.

“Paris.”

“France? You don’t got no accent like in books.”

“Do you like books?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know.” The personal question sent defensive blush to her cheeks and accompanying shyness. Both slowly dissipated. “That’s like saying ‘Do you like people?’ However many thousands of folks on this planet, I’m bound to like some. They’re full of new perspectives and insights and stories but at the heart of them all, a struggle so shared it must be human.”

“Paris, Illinois.”

Paris at that time would’ve been close to 10,000 folks. 10,000 folks don’t get you taught in Geography class.

Sarah grabbed her grandmother’s—well, his pointing stick and slapped the map. “Point to it on the map, Ishmael.” Then she dropped her impression and added, “Sir.”

Without so much as looking up, he jabbed empty green land. Without a label and without knowing better, Sarah doubted he’d be anywhere in the right vicinity of Paris, Illinois, but with a bit more insight, her jaw would’ve dropped.

Instead she shrugged.

His investigation turned up nothing, but frustration.

“Tell me about your gran.”

The pastor arrived in time to see the schoolhouse be assembled.

“You gathered some fine workers, Father,” Ms. Catherine said.

She’d seen him creep toward them since the roof started being patched and it took his ancient legs a long while to carry him. He might’ve once been a tall man, but he had since curled over with age and his features existed behind a thick white beard and even thicker eyebrows. What was lost on his head seemed glued to his face.

“They’re proud folks, but they know to submit.”

“Soon they’ll be reading all the verses on their own,” she said.

It wasn’t long before the children had their letters memorized and some of the youngest picked up words quickest and helped their elder kin to sound out each word and after no more than six months, every child had a book in hand and affection in heart.

The men, on the other hand, arrived before dusk and left before dark and six months in, they had affection in their heart but Trent Walker led the way on pride in stupidity.

Ms. Catherine asked him to come to the board and spell his name.

“X,” he scrawled in chalk.

He turned to the class. “It’s good enough for any contract!”

The class knew his daddy was the sheriff.

The class knew he’d probably be, too, some day.

The class knew to laugh.

Ms. Catherine knew, too, but didn’t. “I don’t mind a learner needing extra time, but I do mind folks who squander my time. What are you here for if not to learn?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Catherine, I am. I’m here to learn.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Cross my heart.”

“Then I’m sorry for doubting—”

“Here to learn about you.” He bumped up against her shoulders with a dopey grin and the class knew to laugh.

After class, Trent tried to apologize without an audience. “Let me make it up to you. I’ll show you I can be an ass, but that deep down I am trying, and maybe you’ll see something special in me too, like I see in you.”

“I have no romantic interests, Trent. Please ask your son for help on those ABCs.”

There was one man, Herman Bartleby, that did not attend classes, but he was in the church after service running his finger over words, repeating what the pastor had said. The words the pastor had said and the words Herman touched were not the same words but an illiterate man had no concept of that.

“Herman, my roof is leaking something awful since the last storm. Could you—?”

“Of course, Ms. Catherine. Today?”

“It’s a day of rest,” she said.

“But tomorrow the children will be in. And there’s rain a-coming.”

“You raise a good point. Shall we head there together?”

And as he fixed the roof, she’d read for him stories. He liked stories. Who doesn’t like stories? Even Trent liked stories, so long as they were his or he could see himself as the lead.

But as she read, as she often had to, she stopped to cough. Herman hopped off the roof without even using the ladder and ran inside to catch her as she collapsed to her knees, trying to extricate the phlegm with only her lungs. He patted her back, a little roughly, to help and eventually she recovered but the reading finished for the day.

Soon the roof was fixed, but she’d enjoyed his company so she asked for help with the windows. They didn’t open. He’d work during morning classes and listen in. The man was simple and unassuming and he took to learning the stories quickly as many do when given opportunity and patience.

“The Bible is a bit unfriendly to beginners. Heck, it’s unfriendly for even me. This one is a bit better,” she said after class.

And with what he picked up both listening and watching, he read better within than Trent with a lifetime of opportunity. But within a week, the windows all opened to let in a breeze for summer and he’d finished another book, twice actually to really understand it.

“Herman, you tricked me!” she declared.

“I haven’t! See?” He demonstrated how easy it was to open each window.

“You’ve been here spending time with me pretending you can’t read just so I’ll read them to you. That’s your dirty trick.”

“No, no, I just know the sounds you taught me, and I don’t have much else to do when sleep won’t come so I just light a candle and practice.”

Then the door didn’t hang even. So he took to that, but he was too good with his hands and that took only a day to look at it and a day to get proper parts made. And in that time he finished another book.

“You’re always welcome at classes, Herman.”

“You’d welcome a wolf, but Trent wouldn’t welcome a sheep unless he planned on eating it.”

It didn’t matter how she persisted, what she promised, even kicking Trent out, an empty threat since Sheriff Walker would not accept that--Herman wouldn’t attend.

But she had nothing else for him.

Four weeks of tasks and he’d done such a good job that nothing new needed fixing. Sure, she’d see him around and maybe in church, but it wasn’t the same as everyday and in the privacy before students arrived or after they left. There’d be no more quiet moments when it was just them.

“I could teach you!” she said. “You helped me so much.”

“But Ms. Catherine, you have classes in the morning till afternoon and then the grown-ups come after supper. When would you fit me in?”

“At night, Herman. Come by my place. I’ll fit you in.”

Friday night, Herman arrived at the Tully house in his Sunday best with a book she loaned him from the library. Ms. Catherine’s plan was that they’d head out to church in his Sunday best, slightly wrinkled.

However, she had to turn him away. “I’m sorry, Herman. I promise next time.”

From the porch, he saw the pastor seated in her parlor before she closed the curtains with a somber expression.

The sudden request caught her off guard. But Sarah prided herself on being quick on her feet. “I don’t know what you want to know but everyone liked her. Sometime around January, a boy was giving her lip because he didn’t want to chop wood but it was his turn! I did it just the day before. Gran did it on the weekend! But you know how boys are, thinking they’re already grown, and so he shoots up cussing out of his chair and grabs the ax and says, ‘You wanna see how good I am at chopping?’ It all happened so fast all we could do was stare. We all knew he wasn’t talking about wood at that point. Gran asked, ‘What do you want to happen next?’ and he took a second to think before settling down and going to chop wood.” Sarah took a second to settle herself. “I think if you locked a lion in with her, she’d come out queen of the jungle.”

“Tigers live in the jungle. Lions are the savanna.”

She doubted very much Georgia had an lions but sometimes it was best not to argue with a teacher. “You know a lot about the world. It must be bigger and better than old Tphloknaktsa.”

“We are but specks in a big world and the world itself is a speck within the cosmos, Sarah, but be warned: the world outside is different with layers of polish over diseased viscera. We must build our own shelters to withstand the storms.”

Locals said similar. That this here was the Gods’ great bounty. An oasis in a drought of faith. Whatever extend beyond our borders was vile, wretched, and corrupting, but the way he said it, maybe because it came from the horse’s mouth, she believed it and that did not quell her yearning, nor did she think he wanted to. This was a teacher preparing her honestly.

He asked, “Chopping wood at her age? No one ever thought to let the old gal retire?”

“They don’t exactly ask my opinions on such things.”

“Tell them anyway.”

“Gran said the same…”

He’d spent that whole story searching with no fruits. Nothing on the door frame. Nothing under Gran’s desk or the students’. When he opened the sash window, he frowned deeper than elsewhere, testing its smooth track and finding trouble in its fresh coat of paint.

His goal was clear when he returned to the desk.

He gave it so violent a tug the whole thing moved and white scratches appeared near the feet.

Gone or not, his or not, this was her Gran’s desk that he abused. “Sir, please, the littlest of respect for her property.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I need in that drawer. Where’s the ax?”

Her eyes went wide and she held her breath with an internal struggle, before she stepped outside to the chopping stump. The ax was in Abner’s barn. But she reached under the stump and came back in with a handful of dirt that held a dull, golden prize: the key.

It fit perfectly in the locked drawer.

With trepidation, Sarah watched him pull it open, not sure why, not sure what inside her gave her these shivers, but certain she could trust them.

Inside was a Bible.

“That’s it?” he said.

“No!”

Sarah couldn’t put her astonishment into words. Parents often came by asking why their child didn’t have more verses memorized and Gran would tell them they were at the wrong place. Whatever the old ways were, Gran had shirked them. She didn’t attend church. She didn’t keep a Bible. She said she feared but did not love.

“Gran was not a pious woman. She kept us out of church each Sunday.”

“As she should. The best defense against sin is education. Immorality and ignorance go hand-in-hand.”

Sarah bit her lip. Was that a common saying? How else could he quote Gran?

Chapter 5

The main house on the Bertrand farm housed just three folks but seemed like a mansion. With the original 160 acres of land, there was room for a mansion.

And in his room, Junior, a 16-year-old boy with roughly shorn hair and more freckles than stars in the sky pulled on his overalls. Years helping out his pa on the farm did nothing to build out his short frame. He was as thin today as he’d ever been. He could turn hay, hold a bull, drive in fence posts, shovel manure, carry pails of milk, but not a task created muscle.

Maybe, in comparison to his stocky father and the other farmhands of all genders, he felt a little out of place.

He put his hand on the Bible the pastor gifted him yesterday.

New for Junior, but annotated with passages underlined and bookmarks and a separate piece of paper stuffed in the front. A note. Three words that rang truer to him than any cowbell.

“Consider the cloth.”

His pa’s heavy footstep roused him from woolgathering and he met the older man at the steps. His pa was short, too, but even half-retired after an injury took full use of his leg, the man was strong.

Junior’s face was bright as he greeted him. “Feeling well today?”

“Well enough for another sunrise. Don’t you worry. Your old man still has some years of toil left in him.”

A knock came at the door. At this hour, it must be one of the workers.

“Can I help you down the stairs anyway?”

Bertrand Sr. lifted his arm to accept the boy’s shoulder and they made their way down the steps together until about halfway down, his pa said, “But once when my toil is gone, the bounty we’ve created here will be yours until your child’s ready for it.”

At the bottom of the steps, his pa broke away to answer the door on his own, leaving Junior with his thoughts. He grimaced.

At the door was an old worker, Adelaide. She’d been here many years. A bit of a sour temper, but managed the farmhands well, working as a liaison between them and Mr. Bertrand.

“A fever? Harry’s welcome to a day off with all the usual meals,” he told her. “But fields don’t grow if we don’t tend them. If fields don’t grow, we can’t keep on so many hands.”

Chapter 6

The teacher drove at speeds faster than any of the Gods’ creations past the farmland in a man-made machine, but began to coast with his eyes in the sky as he saw a bird dropping mist upon the crops. A loud, noisy bird. It had an unsettling rhythm. The chop of air. The buzz of unmoving wings. Like a bug too big.

His fascination almost laid his goals to rest then and there till Sarah screamed and he jerked the steering before he found the ditch.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s been a long day’s drive. Perhaps this should be our last stop.”

Sarah’s curious itch kept getting the better of her. The teacher had stuffed Gran’s Bible into his Gladstone bag. She tried to peer inside. That bag might be her biggest clue to who this newcomer was and how he seemed aware of things he should not be aware of. But when he set it in the back with her, when his eyes weren’t on her, she found the bag locked with no means of opening. The combination could’ve been hundreds of possibilities, she reckoned, and there was no point raising his suspicion of her at this point.

They ventured out to the Bertrand farm. A rarity in the town because the 160 acres had not been parceled off. The Bertrands, dating back to 1880, had been good upstanding folk coming from a farm in Iowa to farm in Oklahoma. It was like they spoke to the land. And the land spoke back.

Just a decade prior to the Dust Bowl, other farmers scented their town like bread and popcorn as they burnt surplus hoping to drive up the prices, but the country had too much in store to care. At least they were warm without needing expensive coal. There was even talk of joining the Farm Strike until the National Guard began rounding up mob leaders who threatened the judges evicting farmers and the dairy trucks on deliveries.

Meanwhile, Bertrand Sr. did his part to support this town’s finances and bellies.

So Sarah directed the teacher there. “Several classmates work the farms with their parents. A good place to spread the word.”

Now that they approached, she added a caveat. “Remember, these folks value respect. They know they’ve earned theirs, but they don’t know if you’ve earned yours.”

“How do I know they’ve earned theirs?”

They arrived without an answer.

The workers played poker on their breaks. This wasn’t the high stakes game at the diner where a week’s wages might be on the table. This was a game of pennies and you knew someone meant business if a nickel got thrown in. Just something to pass the quiet time while eating a sandwich.

As the Cadillac pulled up, they regarded it as they might any other car then returned to their game. Once the teacher stepped out, alone, suddenly break time was over and it was back to work.

He hailed them. “What’s on the agenda for today, folks?”

The five here had not more than a quality shared among them: Young, old, black, white, male, female. Two exceptions: place of employ and disinterest in strangers.

“How old might you two be?” he asked the youngest.

“Whatever you’re selling, we ain’t buying so skedaddle before you look a fool,” said Adelaide while another grabbed a wooden maul.

“I do not fear looking a fool, I do not fear not fitting in, I do not fear the violence of the ignorant. I only fear that such a cycle will repeat itself once more,” the teacher said. “School starts once more tomorrow.”

“Violence?” That got them all in good spirits at his expense. “A maul ain’t made for violence, friend. It’s made for service. And we got fence posts to replace. Come back tomorrow and maybe they’ll be free.”

“Hand it over.”

He waited for the maul.

“I’ll assist so no one’s too tired for reading tomorrow. Everyone’s welcome but it’s mandatory for minors.”

“Only farmers here.”

This crew saw little in the teacher to respect but if he was offering his services, maybe they’d find a place for him. After all, he wouldn’t be teaching much without any students so it was good to have a fall back.

Adelaide spat. “You can hold the posts.”

Sarah watched from the car, deafened by the distance and the windows, as to exactly what was transpiring but her new teacher lugging a cart full of fence posts while marching beside an armed woman did not sit right with her.

Still, were he to survive in this county, he needed to prove himself to its people.

And to Sarah.

And Junior was there. A boy kind enough to build her a reading shed in the town square was a boy to be trusted.

Tall though he was, to steady the post in place he needed to hug it as another swung the maul near his head to drive it in. The older workers offered up Junior to stand on the cart full of posts and swing with the brunt of his power but when he hesitated, that Adelaide took over to show him how it was done. She swung and if the teacher got hit, he shouldn’t have been there. He did not get hit, though it came near, and he did not flinch.

Instead, he spoke up after the second post. “Perhaps work would go quicker if we switched spots.”

“I been doing this half my years, and you think you can do better than me?”

“No disrespect intended, but I’ve seen how you can do it. You haven’t seen how I can.”

She burned her gaze into his eyes but if the threat of a crushed skull couldn’t do it, why did she think a stare would faze him? Begrudgingly, she handed off the maul.

With a deep breath, the teacher watched the crop duster from before as it landed down the way on a dirt strip. The plane seemed to be the first thing to unsettle him today. But who wasn’t afraid of flying?

He draped his coat over the side of the cart. Then without the button on his sleeve, he rolled them up fine. And lastly, his undone collar revealed pinched, glossy skin running down his collarbone and deeper into his shirt. Where the scars stopped was impossible to say.

Crack

The worker’s eyes went big as she pulled further away. Just an extra inch to save her.

The teacher’s arc had violence within it but following the first swing came an identical second. A third. A fourth. Power surged from his astride position up through the hips into the shoulder and at the crest, his hand slid down the shaft.

Crack!

For the next post, the trajectory did not change but the speed did. He’d found his rhythm. Nothing would stop him but completion. His eyes trained on that post as if he was not seeing a wood as his target but some vendetta.

CRACK!

Deeper the fence post sank into the dirt.

“HEY!” Adelaide’s anger rolled over itself in her voice.

The teacher stopped his swing.

“You did that on purpose!”

“You’re an insightful one. I did.”

The admission flabbergasted her. In all her days, never did she expect someone to admit it!

“Indeed, I hit that fence post on purpose.”

“You know what a caved skull does to a smart mouth?”

“You there, boy,” he called to the thin lad from before who had been watching as wide-eyed as her. “Was that last swing any different?”

Junior started to stammer before coming to grips. “No, sir. I mean, I didn’t notice anything off about it.”

“You weren’t worried until someone shouted?”

“No, sir.”

“Was it me shouting when that maul came near my ear?”

“No, sir…” Guilt seeped into his voice and he averted his eye from Adelaide.

If her death stare didn’t work on the teacher, it’d work on the boy whether he looked or not. She scrambled up the cart to snatch that maul from the man. Her huffing and puffing and the wild look in her eyes--he knew what the thought bouncing around that head of hers.

“Consider your first strike because retaliation requires no hesitation.”

Before this came to a head, an older man hobbled toward them from the barn. The cane he used for support was enough but just the same, Junior went running to his pa.

“We saw you up there!” There was an uncanny likeness. Needing a few more inches and a few more pounds, surely, but the strong nose was the same. “One day, you’ll show me a roll, won’t you?”

“At dinner, sure. We get a new hand?”

“A teacher,” Adelaide scoffed.

“And why’s there derision in your voice?” Bertrand Sr. was a stout man. The wiry graying hair in his beard held all manner of dust but it didn’t bother him.

“Is this green bean what we want the next generation turning into?”

“Separating our farmers from our scholars got us into this drought. We need farmers teaching and we need learners plowing.”

“The babes can’t plow if they’re locked in school.”

“Yes, I understand, this farm certainly can’t survive without babes, can it, Adelaide?” He regarded her with a cold tone. Then he turned his attention to the teacher finally. “Sir, the name’s Russel Bertrand Sr. And this here’s Junior, or Russ if you take to him. He’s got 16 years in him and he knows his reading fine, but his arithmetic could use work. Do you know much about the agricultural sciences?”

The teacher began buttoning up his collar and sleeves once more, but left the coat folded over his arm. It was too warm for such dressings after exertion.

“I’ll help him.”

“And what should he call you?”

“Ishmael will do. ‘Sir’ if it’s too odd.”

“Ishmael will do. A name should command the full usage of the tongue if it’s to be worthy of respect.”

About this time, Sarah had some business to attend to.

She crept out of the car, keeping a watchful eye on the folks arguing. The maul seemed no longer a concern with Mr. Bertrand in control. But she required the smallest amount of discretion here and when no one was looking, she went around the barn.

There was a sweaty farmhand on the other side. Certainly it was getting warm, yes, he hammered away at the new strip of siding with nails in his mouth, but the sweat pouring from him seemed in excess to her.

Whatever his particular ailment was, it was none of her business. She was only thankful that she could slink by with heavy footfalls without drawing his attention but when he stopped pounding, she stopped walking.

He muttered something to himself as he took a new nail.

Sarah’s eyebrow cocked.

Family, that wasn’t English. Nor Spanish. Nor any other language she’d heard here or there. But the world was large and she tried not to think it strange enough to stop her mission.

It’d been a long day and how much longer was untold. She knew the Bertrand farm. She knew Russ. She knew where the outhouse was, though she much preferred to go in-house.

And as she exited, she heard a scream unlike any she thought possible by a human.

The agony seemed to ferment in his belly before erupting out in boiling, gaseous pleas for Grace but those prayers fell on deafened ears and Sarah was the first on the scene.

She did not see what happened first to split his leg in uneven twain but the man already had the jean scrunched up revealing a foot hanging on by one flap of ankle skin. At first, she looked away, repulsed as any might by the bone and the gore and things only doctor’s should know exist, but it was her duty to help this man how she might.

She began screaming, too, as she raced to him.

Then stopped racing but kept screaming.

The teacher was the next on the scene, his pace quickened further by Sarah’s distress. He brandished the maul and did not drop it.

“Snakes!” she repeated from the ground.

His eyes scanned for any near but he saw none.

Another farmhand took over handling the injured, but Junior left his father’s side to take to Sarah with more care than the teacher. “What do you mean, Sarah Tully? Did you get bit by a snake? You didn’t hear a rattle, did you?” He yanked at her shoe to see her leg.

“No! Snakes!” and she hissed the final letter like one herself.

“You got bit by multiple?” When he revealed her leg, not a mark was found.

“Not me!”

The boy looked perplexed at the scene, at the blood, at the man in the distance that had little hope for his life, let alone for his leg. “I don’t think a snake bite or even many could do that.”

Mr. Bertrand, however, pieced together an account of the events that satisfied him. “That fool Harry probably stepped into a nest and when he felt one climb up a pant-leg, he took to striking his own foot. Junior, how do we protect our legs?”

“Pants in boots,” the boy said, checking his own.

“No, that…” Sarah started to stammer. She stood of her own accord, shaking off her friend. That was nonsense. Illogical. It wasn’t what she saw. It was wrong!

“Y’all should head out,” Mr. Bertrand said. “Take the boy with you. Work is done for the day while we tend to the injured. I’ll tell the other workers to send their kids tomorrow.”

“That’s not what—!” Sarah yelled but the teacher cut her off.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll take good care of them.”

She kept fighting to say her piece as the teacher ushered her away. Mr. Bertrand had no interest in changing his mind and Russ thought she’d caught madness from the situation, giving her little mind but much sympathy.

She did not quiet until the teacher looked her in the eye and said, “I believe you.”

They marched to the car and in the backseat, she felt her own legs. She had never seen inside a leg before, but she had legs. There were no vacant pockets in her flesh. The fool Harry, as Mr. Bertrand had put it, hadn’t stepped in a nest of snakes. The nest of snakes had slithered out of him.

She tucked her pants into her boots.

“Russ, how bad is it to get bit?” she whispered.

“Not too bad if it’s not a rattler. You hardly feel the bite until later, but the bite ain’t the problem. The infection is.”

She pulled her sleeve down. She’d had a fever before. No problem.

“They say if you get bit, always keep the snake.”

We put our dogs down for the same offense, but you keep the snake? she thought. Too late anyway.

Chapter 7

On occasion, the teacher glanced in his rear-view mirror to catch the girl’s eyes but her thoughts were out the window miles away. She had more to say, certainly, but she wasn’t saying it.

Junior, on the other hand, wouldn’t quit yammering. “I ain’t never seen an accident like that.”

“And I hope we never have to again,” Sarah muttered.

“Even when my pa got his leg crushed by Mr. E, it certainly didn’t cleave off like that. You ever see the insides of a person, Sarah Tully?”

“I have now!”

The teacher’s eyes darted to the mirror as her voice rose a little.

“What was it like?”

“Junior, I don’t particular like the memory nor dwelling in it.”

He grabbed at his leg, flexing his foot to see how the muscles moved and digging his fingers in deep to get a sense how big the bone was within his calf. “I can certainly feel there’s meat inside and surely we’re not so different from beasts, but—”

The car skidded to a stop so suddenly there was impact against the seat behind the teacher. He whipped around with impatient fury in his eyes. “Boy! Do you not hear what’s she saying? She’s asking you ever so politely, ‘Enough!’”

Sarah rubbed her head. “Sir, what in tarnation was that? Do you want to send me home bruised? Gran tolerated no whooping and neither will Mama.”

The air was thick and uncomfortable and it wasn’t just the dust. He searched for an apology but then his eyes locked on where Divine chance had set to place this disagreement.

Just down the way was the largest building in town. A few modern businesses had been constructed of brick, but wood houses ruled this land. Brick? Wood? This was made of neither for this was no house. This was no modern business. This here with the two Gothic spires was the Church of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Each spire was like some terrible and ancient creature had hammered a spike from under the crust, then liked it so much they did again. Folks here saw the stain glass with its 12 symmetrical circles and reckoned it a clock though there were no hands and no numbers. The actual clocks on all four sides were wrong. Wrong in different ways, mind you. One read 6:10, the next 3:11, the next 1:15, and finally 10:14. None moved. The clock never once corrected itself or stubbornly continued on its path. They simply sat as a reminder. Something to set your eyes upon and forever keep in your heart.

To an outsider, it must’ve been odd having a Gothic cathedral in town large enough to hide the population during a storm, but for those raised here, it was no different than being born with webbed fingers. If it didn’t cause problems, it was just how it always was and an assault on it was as an assault on the town.

After enough silence, Junior found his words again. “I just pray Mr. Styles will make it.”

“Enough!”

“Don’t yell at him.”

Junior’s eyes fell to the floor. Just rolled into town and already dusty. But what stuck out as odd to him was the Gladstone. The bag certainly wasn’t big enough to fit all his belongings unless very little belonged to him. Junior thought about stuffing his entire life into this and maybe, if he only needed a single spare set of clothes and the Bible, then sure, it’d all fit. But when he found the bag locked, and with the teacher already angered, he set it down.

“Say, Mr. Ishmael, what might you want us for today? I understand Sarah was showing you around, but surely I’m—”

The car roared to life, cutting the boy short, only to slow as they approached the church’s lot.

There was a girl holding a ball.

“Who is she?” the teacher asked Sarah.

“Never seen her to my knowledge.”

Her penetrating eyes met the teacher’s and soon the two were locked on one another.

Junior spoke up. “Maybe if you attended church every so often. That’s the vicar’s daughter.”

“Don’t get all high and mighty, Russ.”

“Tell me about the vicar.”

“A rough fellow, but the path to salvation is a windy one, they say, so I know it’s not my place to judge. He blew into town just this year with a bindle and his daughter, but the pastor welcomed him in to the legion.”

“Then why don’t she come to class?”

Junior shrugged suddenly out of answers. “Maybe the church is all she needs to be one of them acolytes like her daddy. He moved up the ranks so quick you’d think he’d been born in that church.”

“You’re right, Sarah. Why doesn’t she? Let’s offer an invitation.”

His words were hospitable enough, but his tone--she knew a lie when she heard it. And as the car revved up once more with awesome power just to go several feet, she kept her eyes on the girl who had never once looked away. A steady gaze like that… What had she seen?

“Hello, girl. What’s your name?”

Junior hadn’t known that either.

And after some waiting, neither did the teacher.

Certainly she was younger than the others, perhaps 10 if his estimation was generous, and the sort of rail thin of a picky child with unaccommodating parents. Her hair cut was rough. Definitely her daddy’s doing. But the feature that would forever stick in the teacher’s minds was those eyes. Hypnotically wide, dark, and unblinking.

Sarah and Junior stepped out to try their hand. Every child knew the silence adults expected when they were near, so perhaps some words from an older sibling-type might coax her into speaking.

“You can call me Sarah if you like. That’s a nice ball you got.”

Nothing.

“They call me Junior, but I can’t get them to stop. Sins of the father, right? What should we call you, honeybunch?”

A stare.

The two companions turned toward one another but the teacher could not look away from this porcelain doll. No child should be in such clean clothes, not even at a church.

“Can I help you, neighbors?” a voice called from the door. The vicar wore a white dalmatic trimmed with gold that matched his tooth as he smiled. “Come here, Amelia.”

Seeing the low, out-stretched hand, the girl trotted off to take her place beside him. There was an almost imperceptible quiver.

The teacher tore his focus from the girl. Then to Sarah’s surprise, his words were coated in honey. “Well hello! Don’t know if word reached you, but you got a new teacher in town. We’ll be opening up tomorrow. Amelia’s your daughter? You can send her round 9:00 or earlier if you got other business.”

Was this his first time cracking a smile? Sarah did not like it.

“She’s learning her verses fine here, but it’s been a pleasure, sir.”

The smile on either of them really.

“We’re happy to accommodate all subjects. Mr. Bertrand asked that his boy be taught the Earth sciences. We can certainly round that out with Heavenly scripture, too.”

“You think you’re more insightful than the Church?”

“I do.”

“Excuse you?”

While children scrapped with tooth and nail and all manner of tugging on hair, Junior had heard his parents argue enough in front of him to know these were fighting words. “Perhaps we should wait in the car, Sarah.”

“Perhaps you all should,” the vicar declared. “We’ll see you again sooner or later.”

Junior already had his hand on the door and Sarah was reaching for the teacher’s suspenders when an ancient voice bellowed from the back of the cathedral.

“Wait,” it croaked.

The vicar’s gold—toothed smile twitched as he steadied his breathing.

“Bring them to me.”

Baited breath bellowed from the ribbed vaulted ceilings as the party followed their chaperon past kaleidoscope stained glass windows. Wide though the structure was, it felt claustrophobic with tall candelabras dotted by the the pier-raised pointed arches, and the vicar caught Junior staring instead of watching where he wandered.

“I know the artwork’s morbidly fascinating, but be assured that they are cautionary tales of sin and little more.”

Certainly the windows were a sight, but no story jumped out of the broken rainbow in its glassy prison to catch the boy’s attention. He’d seen them before. He’d seen them just yesterday.

But what he hadn’t noticed was the sound.

Perhaps it was the organ music playing, the bustle of neighbors congregating with one purpose, the holy hum of hymns, or the pastor’s raspy sermons, but he had not heard this sound yesterday.

The buzzing.

The clerestory windows were large and clear and sunlight filtered through best it could.

However, the triforium windows were much smaller with tight artwork full of nooks for critters to build nests. But those nests didn’t appear without material. Wasps for example went skittering to the nearest tree, or wooden construct, to chew up and build a pulpy nest. Bees used wax made of oils from pollen. It might be noticed if wasps came chewing on the pews. And bees had no interest in the dead, pale flowers that decorated the crimson carpet running the length of the aisle.

“Need help with the cleaning?” Junior yelled, digging a pinky in his ear.

The vicar whipped around at the implication. “I tend to it myself.”

As a holy man, his patience was short.

The 2nd floor walkway approached the windows enough that surely he would’ve seen any nests in there, so it must simply be the distance and the detail playing tricks on Junior. As a kid, he always dreamed of watching a sermon from there. And maybe continuing on to the spires on either side to ring the bell. But for not the first time, he failed to find the tucked away stairs.

Vicar Emile led the four of them to the raised pulpit. Each Sunday, Junior and most of the town gathered in, finding seats with family and friends, murmuring polite talk about the weather and the week before silence snatched the crowd and everyone rose to watch the ancient pastor hobble up the steps. The youngest became antsy midway. Mothers mouthed to their babes, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” but they dared not speak it. Even the elderly, though not the same ancient, found their legs incapable of enduring the anticipation and they’d take the arm of someone near because at this moment, to sit was to sin. The vicar always offered an arm to the pastor but was always refused.

Today, the pulpit was empty.

Given the pastor’s top speed up the stairs, Junior tried to imagine where the leader called from so loudly and how far he could get in the time it took to enter.

Rather than lead them to the antechambers on either side, the vicar ascended the steps. Sarah, with her upbringing, saw nothing sacred in these steps, and Amelia followed, but Junior hesitated.

There was a room behind the pulpit, but what lay beyond was shrouded in teenage mystery. There was no Earthly way of knowing without taking up the cloth. One day he might know.

“Come now, you two,” Vicar Emile called.

Behind Junior, he now noticed, the teacher also hesitated, but his reverence was not toward the stairs.

Instead, the stranger stared at the shadows on the 2nd floor walkway.

Perhaps he, too, fancied ringing the bells, and a brief bit of imagination had Junior swinging from the rope of one and the teacher swinging from the other and outside, Sarah listening, and from all three faces beamed wide smiles. And as he painted each smile in his mind, Sarah’s, then his own, he shuddered at the toothy maw that might appear if stranger’s somber expression broke.

The teacher ushered him up the stairs with blasphemous disregard.

What had he seen? Junior wondered.

The light of the windows did not reach the hunched pastor standing before a large wooden double doors. Oil lamps provided a dim view of the uneven walls. No decoration. No beauty. Just imperfect human craftsmanship for the House of Gods. Brazen youth fleet of foot might stumble on the floor. Though, that was not why Sarah walked slowly.

The others had lagged behind, leaving the girls alone before the pastor.

She’d rarely seen him.

Maybe a few times as a child when her father had insisted on attending, usually Christmas and Easter or when money was tight. Then again after Gran passed. Between those times was at least a decade.

At the start of someone’s life, 10 years is a lot. You start being able to do nothing but cry, learn to babble and crawl, walk and talk, lose all your teeth, grow them back.

And it seemed to Sarah that 10 years should always be a lot. 7 to 17 had changed her significantly. Surely Gran, too, though so gradually that without a photograph you wouldn’t realize. Aged, thin, the smoke of a smoldering fire. That was Gran day in and day out. She had crystallized in Sarah’s memory.

The pastor, though, had the disadvantage of years without notice.

Do people stop aging at a point?

And what was that point? Because Gran, however slowly, still aged up to nearly 100.

While Sarah was lost in thought, Emily had gently taken her hand, and the little girl’s tremor only fed discomfort.

“An unfamiliar face,” he groaned. “Girl, why have we not met before?”

The teacher fell in behind her. “Nice to see you, Pastor.”

See? Sarah thought. Not meet or make his acquaintance or—

“Your father?” the pastor asked and the absurdity caused a chuckle that raised to a laugh and she could not stop herself, cackling in hysteria between these two men.

“Sorry, your holiness, sir, my father long left this town. I’m Catherine Tully’s granddaughter.”

“Ahh, the Tullies. You do not attend at her guidance.”

“Well, ever since…” She trailed off. Of course he knew of her passing. “My mother’s been making an effort, but we sit in back.”

“Seems your mother is not all fool then.”

The subtle implication left Sarah’s mouth a gape as though she’d been slapped.

“That leaves you, boy. What is your business here?”

Sarah listened keenly as well.

The teacher eyed the old man. His liturgical clothes were as pale as his skin. However many hairs he had as a lad, he now had equal number of wrinkles. His eyes were glass beads of cataract beneath sinking bald brows. And yet the hair covering his mouth was long, white, and full. Tall though he was, the cloth hung on him like he had an older brother.

“Why did you call us here?” the teacher asked. His polite tone was back but it was cracking with this feverish energy tossing in its cage, eager to free itself to the chaos of the world.

The doors, the wooden double doors studded with iron and a black band running horizontally, towered above even the teacher. The Cadillac could’ve fit through. And how many labored to carry these massive creations in here?

But the pastor reached back with a single hand and the door swung open, dragging along the stone.

Sarah took a breath.

Clear air.

Another. What an awesome miracle. She could breathe!

No dust getting swept by the perfectly fit doors.

The tears in her eyes were not speckled with microscopic flecks, but there was something sour on that wind.

“Join me for an early supper,” he told them as the air cleared of creaking, too.

“Russ,” the teacher said. “That bag you were playing with in the car? Fetch it for me. Now.”

Before the boy could jump at the chance to help, the pastor said, “It can wait.”

“Go on, Junior.” The teacher’s voice quivered.

“Emile, the doors.”

“Russel!”

And at the pastor’s command, the doors they’d unknowingly passed through to this chamber were sealed and with the gust of wind that followed, the torches went out, leaving the hall in darkness but for the dim candle light upon a table set for a feast. The sound of a key in a lock.

“I guess it can wait, sir. Is it some remedy you needed or…?”

The teacher, a fiery silhouette now, passed by the children into the dark room.

The smell caught Sarah.

Perhaps there was no dust in the air, but something had died in a corner.

Amelia sat first, the other children on the opposite of her with cloches, pots, and candles between them, and the teacher at the foot of the table.

As he sat, he did something amiss, though. Each candle had burned near the end of its life. They were flat pucks of wax. He extinguished the tallest then drew it into his shirt. She did not peg him for a petty thief. An impatient, arrogant outsider but a thief, too? Gran must be rolling in her grave.

Junior also sniffed the air but he had no visceral reaction to the odor. Instead it inspired him to lean close to the table, eager to peek beneath the lid, but he caught himself as the pastor’s shoes shuffled along the stone.

“Smells great, sir. What are we having?” He slapped a pest unseen in the shadows.

Sarah did not think she was so picky as to wretch at what others considered a delight. Her eyes caught the teacher’s but he either did not notice her in the low, flickering candlelight or had too much cause to watch the pastor.

Chair legs scraped against the stone.

As the pastor drew it back, Sarah’s eyes adjusted enough to see a spiral stairwell down into darkness. Strange whispers emanated. A storm cellar, she told herself, but still the whispers. She listened.

Instead, she heard the pastor. “Sir, would you like to say grace before the meal?”

“No,” the teacher said.

“I can do it,” Junior said.

“A good sheep.”

“Oh Heavens above, hear your servant’s plea.

From the desire of self, Deliver these fools,

From the desire of esteem, Deliver these ingrates,

From the desire of belonging, Deliver these exiles,

From the desire of safety, Deliver these cowards,

From the desire of need, Deliver these mortals,

For within You, I shall welcome Death,

As Death welcomes me to You.”

This was not a prayer Sarah knew and her eyes searched the table for other reactions. The pastor’s chin lifted toward the heavens, an expression of divine bliss, while the teacher lowered his. The shadow on his face hid whether his eyes were closed or not. And without other dissenters, Sarah felt like a blasphemer for doubting the words and she scrambled for explication. A strange translation from Latin. Context within the holy text. But all she came up with was ignorance on her part and her head bowed, too, in shame.

To end, beaming at his good memory, Junior said, “Amen.”

He raised his head to receive praise from the pastor, who offered a solitary nod, all the pastor needed to give to widen that boy’s smile more. Then Junior’s hands went for the knob on the bell-shaped dome nearest him, and after a second nod of approval, he lifted it up.

The smell that hit Sarah.

Whatever had died was not in the corner, but on the plate.

Shriveled, browned fruit slices with a rug of mold along the grapes.

“Pastor, I think…”

Junior popped a grape in his mouth with delight, then revealed more dishes.

A congealed stew with colonies of dull blue bacteria.

Her eyes went frantically wide as Junior ladled a bowl, passed it to the pastor, then another to her, another to the teacher and finally his own. Hers had a roach.

He stopped. Good, his eyes adjusted. Soon he’ll grow sick at the thought of the rotten grape in his belly, but no, no, no, he stopped, but only to ask, “Is there a bread knife, sir?”

The teacher did not pass it down, but instead cut a piece for Junior, smothered with rancid butter.

“Mr. Ishmael, sir, maybe you should…”

He gave her a soft smile and passed the bread down, but continued to grip the knife.

“Why is a non-believer in my inner sanctum?” the pastor asked suddenly amid Junior’s chomping.

A tense silence hung in the air.

Then with a lightness to his tone, like a joke, “I think he’s talking to you, Sarah.”

“I believe!” she said, but added in a whisper, “I think.”

“Me too,” Junior chimed in though the choir boy was not in question.

“Then we all agree,” the teacher said. “There is Something out there. The cosmos borne of nothing? No. Close your eyes and feel that eternity is assured. But not some old man in the clouds, Pastor, whatever your aspirations. Hooves that gleam like polished brass. Hybrids akin to creatures in the deepest depths covering hands and faces with a godly amount of wings. Now your flock are in darkness, as you have led them, but to see these venomous desert snakes will burn your eyes blind. Ignorance and insight are two sides of a coin and we must walk that thin edge between. What is out there is terrible, Something to be feared, and what they want from us is beyond mortal reckoning. So I believe, but I do not love.”

Junior, caught up in the teacher’s rising voice, shouted back, “Don’t you think that’s a bit rude, sir? I don’t mean to talk back but we were invited here and you say heretical things?”

“A pig squealing before the slaughter.”

Junior started speaking back, but Sarah interrupted. “Who are you?” she screamed. “How do you quote Gran? Were you a student? Did you know her? What are you doing here and why are you lying about replacing her?”

The teacher went quiet at the accusation.

“Replacing?” The pastor’s lips curled up beneath that beard. His teeth were either missing or dead turned a bluish color. And the glass cataract over his eye was like a full moon that glowed ominously in the dark. “Tell me, girl, did she retire?”

“Sir?”

“Your grandmother. Ms. Catherine Tully. Why does she need a replacement?”

“Well, retirement, yes, sort of.”

“Say it plainly!” he barked as his patience wore thin.

“She died.”

A maniacal cackle escaped his lips. From the depths of his dusty lungs, the laughter roiled, growing upon itself, each echo growing in volume rather than diminish, disturbing even Junior, until it seemed the voices of several heads, several people, several beasts, all mingled among one another to create madmen’s mirth.

Sarah’s quivering uncertainty only grew as the laughter faded into the dark stairwell behind him as one candle flame went out.

Then the teacher was out of his seat.

The medieval doors banged with the force of a bull.

Another candle winked out of existence.

His hand gripped the pastor by his holy collar.

The doors rattled on their weakening hinges.

Junior restrained the other arm, though, and the final flicker of light glinted off the serrated knife.

The vicar’s daughter stared silent.

“What do you think you’re--”

A giant of a man kicked the doors flat. This tall, gaunt creature dragged a bag behind as it lumbered toward them. He? It. Draped in tattered cloth that revealed a chest full of markings, terrible deeds painted on desecrated gray skin. And the room was briefly bathed in darkness as the teacher spun round to knock the table over and with it, the final candle.

But that persistent little flame did not die. It found new fuel upon landing. The tablecloth went up. Then the table itself. Then the echoing laughter returned as the teacher dragged Sarah by the wrist away from the door and the ever approaching Bag Man into the darkness of the stairwell.

Chapter 8

Round and round they went. Tiny, cramped steps under a dark ceiling so low the teacher hunched. The rope anchored to the wall guided him down, but Sarah was being yanked by supernatural caution and it’d be accurate to say she stumbled down five flights of stairs.

Though she’d done little more than tried to survive, her skin glistened with sweat despite the cold air. Her breath was vapor. But she could not see without a speck of light showing.

Still, she sensed the spiral stairs had opened to a large room.

The teacher’s heavy breath next to her turned to indiscriminate cursing. “You cack-crusted caitiff!” he screamed back up. Between panting, he said, “There was no time to grab her, too.”

The confession died in the dark.

In its place, the rush of footsteps, more careful yet less stable than his own. Sarah thought they’d rush off once more but where to in this darkness? The ability to navigate her house at midnight often resulted in banged shins or stubbed toes and that was with a mental map of the place. Here? Somewhere she never suspected existing? Whatever that thing busting down giant wooden doors was was less of a threat than dying lost down here.

The teacher must’ve known the same. He did not rush off. He did not move.

He called, “That you, Junior?”

“It’s me, sir!” His voice quavered.

“That’s a good lad. Come on down. Just you?”

“Yes, sir!” he reported, thinking it good news.

“Dammit!”

The footsteps stopped.

“Take your time.”

“’Take your time?’” Sarah repeated flabbergasted. “That thing will kill him. Don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster your friends, huh? Is that it? Hurry, Russ!”

“That thing is Death, to be sure,” the teacher murmured. “But Death is slow, patient, and relentless. There is no rush because eventually, it will come for us all. So careful with your steps, boy.”

She seethed. If Junior had time to be careful, they had time to hash this out. “Who are you?”

“I told you.”

“You lied!”

“Only its cousin: half-truths.” There was heavy breathing between them both. He softened his tone to say, “If we survive till morning, you may hear it all.”

Junior bumped into her as he descended. She caught herself on an odd wall. Tightly packed knobs with holes between and every so often something larger, rounded at parts with contours, two circular holes and a triangular divot.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“The ossuary.”

“The… what now?” Junior didn’t read much.

Sarah took her hand from the wall. “It’s better if you don’t know yet.”

“The catacombs where bones are kept. We need to move.”

Junior froze in place and Sarah knew ignorance in this case had been the better option.

“If you don’t want yours counted among them, keep your left hand on the wall.” The teacher began assaulting both in the dark, knowing each only by their structure and clothes, searching for their limbs. He placed Junior’s hand on a bone.

The farm boy wasn’t a fool.

“Whatever happens, keep your hand on the wall and follow my voice.”

“Russ,” Sarah said gently. “Here.” She took his trembling hand in her own. She could feel the dead walls for him. Together, the friends steadied one another.

Her fear?

The whispers that emanated from these depths.

She heard them as everyone caught their breath.

They fell into the background as the huff and wheezing of a slumbering beast.

“Still there?” Junior called.

“Yes.”

Initial progress was slow. When he said, “Follow my voice,” they assumed that’d be a regular breadcrumb but the birds had picked it clean. More often they bumped into him at a turn.

They wandered the labyrinth in an agony of despair. Steps instead of light gave them some indicator of time passing, but even then, in the silence, thoughts crept up on them. Was that Junior’s breath behind her? The teacher’s steps ahead? Were they headed up or down? Was there even an end? Another exit? Was all this wandering just to loop back around while the Bag Man lost itself within the maze? What was going on at the Church?

Sarah found her fingers in a nose triangle, but she was getting used to touching death. “Teacher, what was with the food?”

Russ answered instead. “He wanted to lull us into a false sense of security. But what feud do you have with the pastor? I hope he escaped, too. If it weren’t for that giant, I’d’ve stayed up there and called the sheff.”

“Traps are best broken by the ruse of folly. To approach the trapper, you must approach the trap. Same is true of the bugs, the window, the girl.”

“Bugs?” Sarah hated bugs.

“The vicar said something about windows, too, but they were just stained glass, right, Sarah Tully?”

“I think.”

“In time, you’ll open your eyes,” the teacher said and continued through the dark.

Occasionally, following the wall led them around two interior corners and Sarah knew they were backtracking. She tried building a mental map of this place, but it was impossible to know how much ground they lost. And her mind was as dark and fuzzy as this basement. It was too cold and she was too hot from exertion. Occasionally, her hand dropped from the wall before quickly finding its place again. For all she knew, they were back at the beginning.

Then, after some steady progress, she crashed into the teacher.

“Another turn?” Junior asked.

The teacher shushed him.

Sarah knew in her heart they’d stumble into the den of that slumbering beast, but no, the snores echoed from elsewhere. Instead it was the heavy plop of footfalls.

“What is it?” Junior called with no guile or restraint.

The Bag Man.

He plodded along behind the wall to their left. Was it her trembling hand or did each step really rattle the bones?

There was no turn behind them.

Ahead?

Were they headed straight to its turn? To follow the left wall was now to march into its path, but to switch to the right was to lose all progress and to follow neither was assured death. What was the safest option? What should they do?

“What—”

Sarah’s hands forgot the wall, forgot Junior’s preference for her hand over that of the dead, and they found his fool mouth.

“Shh!” she cried.

Had it heard? Could it find its way to them on sound alone?

Or perhaps could such sounds lead it astray in the dark?

Her hand found the wall, but she had spun on Junior, and she switched walls, but had she spun halfway round or fully? She reached ahead to find the teacher’s shirt. And she did find some fabric, but the thought crept in: was it him? Was it the impostor she’d known or the impostor chasing them? And suddenly Junior was lost somewhere around her, just stifled breaths in the dark?

“Tea—” She silenced herself. This was all leading that creature to them and for what? Mad panic!

A match struck alight and passed to a small puck of wax revealing the teacher.

“I won’t let anyone hurt my students. Trust me.”

The light.

She spun around to find Junior. And she found the wall they’d been hugging this whole time. What the darkness held ahead she did not know, but for now, she saw enough to feel safe.

But as the relief washed over her, it did not matter what was ahead, for just as the door offered no resistance to this gaunt hulk, so too did the walls cave beneath his kick and a foot passed between them, spraying bone chip shrapnels, and Junior, succumbing to mad panic anew, forgot the plan and ran off into the darkness, not a hand on the wall, taking whichever turn he came to.

“Wait!”

She, too, almost followed.

But the teacher gripped her wrist tightly. “Your misguided concern will kill you both.” And they ran the opposite way, a petty puck of light to guide them. And with the rush of movement, soon that died, too.

The sweat of her brow stuck swatches of hair to her forehead. She wiped but the sweat did not stop in the frigid catacombs. Her breathing was too hard.

“I want to know why we’re being pursued!” she cried.

The teacher was a ghost. He glided along the floor, kicking up mushrooms and bones, but no amount of distance, speed, effort, fear compromised his composure. “Because you’re still talking.”

His grip rubbed her wrist raw.

She yanked free. “I’m not moving another step until you tell me why.”

Behind them, the Bag Man plodded. They had a few minutes at most if it kept that pace and why should it when she’d given up on stealth. Charge ahead, bust every wall. It knew where they were with supreme precision. This was a game of chicken, and Sarah would not budge.

The footsteps grew louder. There’d been a turn but little did that matter to this ascendant corpse.

“Then the fool of us will die.”

“I could die a fool or live with answers. The choice is yours, teacher!”

He grasped her hands.

She would not go.

He placed her left to the wall.

Then he ran off on his own, making all manners of bestial sounds.

In her right hand, he had placed the candle and a box of matches.

She dared not mutter the degrading thoughts she had, but they could be summed up as, Foolish ingrate, left to ponder my own mortality in self-imposed exile and what do I find within my heart? Cowardice.

The steps were so far as were the distractions until they died suddenly.

She told herself, once the Bag Man caught the teacher’s scent, he’d gone silent so as not to actually be found, but perhaps the darker possibility was more likely. His beaten body had been stuffed within the bag to be carried back to the pastor as a prize.

Her toe kicked a hard ledge.

A wall?

She reached out but no.

She stepped over it and found in place of solid floor a bath.

She thrashed for edge but to swim suddenly in the dark, you lost all sense of up, all sense of distinction between air and water, and when buoyancy did carry her up, she didn’t know. She needed a wall. A ledge. That ledge she’d kicked. Any ledge!

Unbeknown to her, as she kicked in the depths, tendrils probed at her shoes. A single touch was all it needed to taste the promise of prey and if she stopped kicking, the suction cups would find purchase.

A strong hand grabbed her as she surfaced.

No!

Any pursuer would not be friend!

She withdrew. She fought. She’d rather drown than wind up another prize in that thing’s bag!

She sank lower toward the tentacles. They didn’t need stillness if they could find her waist.

“Quit splashing, Sarah Tully!”

The familiar naive voice dragged her to an edge.

It did not have the strength alone to pull her free.

That lent credence to an identity.

The Bag Man could’ve pulled her out and whipped her around. The teacher would’ve hauled her out with nary a grunt.

Only Junior would need her to do half the work.

As she went over the side, the tentacles retreated to their patient position.

“Was a trip to the swimming hole really bright right now?”

First thing she did when on solid ground was hug him, though she wound up clocking his face. “How did you find me?”

“That thrashing.”

“It’s pitch black, Russ!”

“By the Gods’ grace then.” He did not tell her he thought his eyes might be adjusting, for it seemed this abyss had nothing, and only the Devil could see down here. However, there was a logic to it. When he had regained his senses, he followed the same left wall, and like a coin flip, he’d been right, confirmed when he came upon the busted wall and scattered remains. “Same way I escaped whoever passed me. They headed the other way and we were both pressed to our walls and they did not seem to notice me. Too small for that creature. Could it be the vicar?”

“Or the teacher.”

She knelt down suddenly searching for the candle and matches. She’d dropped them in the panic. But the only conclusion she came to was they’d fallen into the water. All the teacher’s plans crumbled to blood-stained dust in the presence of her inanity.

“He left you?”

“You hear him taking part in this discussion? He wasn’t just letting me drown!”

“Should’ve expected as much. If the pastor’s at odds with him, he must be a villain.”

She wanted to clear his name then and there, but she needed time to admit her own stubbornness probably doomed him.

And it was almost time when Junior continued with excitement. “We need to turn around.”

“Why?”

“I found a way out.”

He guided her back the way he came and when they felt the shattered wall, he dragged her in and picked up the pace. No more wandering. He knew where they were and how to get there.

Junior shoved a rock into the wall and listened for the plop of water. “Look!”

Never did she think she’d be so happy about dirtying a well, but when she peered upward there was the night sky. It might as well have been blazing daylight by comparison. The cosmos painted itself upon oily black and blue with only the suggestion of red, red dust.

Yes, great, a skylight, but they were 60 feet down.

“How do we get up?”

They spoke in whispers. Even their exclamations were little more than a breeze.

“Don’t you remember when we were kids and we’d race to the crown of an oak tree? What’s so different about this?”

Rocks that can be pushed from the other side do not provide the same support as branches. There is not the same grip on smooth stone as there is on bark. And however their eyes might have adjusted, to find holds was a tactile task at night and how sensitive could their shoes be? She did not like this plan.

“Didn’t you nearly die doing that?”

But the alternative…

“We need the teacher first.”

“Why?” Junior had an unfamiliar spit in his voice, like one of the farm dogs had just nipped him at dinner time. “What could we possibly need that cretin for? He’s here to poison the well. The pastor only retaliated with that…”

People see what they want to see, but a leap of logic cannot cross the Grand Canyon. Such moments will cause pause, but as they turn back and see their previous leaps, they cannot fully renege on their beliefs.

He tried another route.

“That man left you!”

“I made him. I said I wasn’t budging until I got answers and whatever secret he’s holding onto, it’s worth dying for but not worth getting someone killed for. Rather than doom us both, he led that thing away.” She was shaking. She did not feel that much shame or guilt but she shook all the same and it picked at Junior’s pity.

He said, “We came in as three; we’ll leave as three.”

No matter how big the maze, rats following the same path are bound to run into each other. That was the gamble they continued into the dark with and to win was to find the teacher, but to lose was to find the other.

But Sarah’s fevered mind said if shouting raised the risk, it also raised the chance of victory.

“Mr. Ishmael!” Junior yelled.

“Teacher!”

Their voices reverberated off the walls in a way that brought a clearer image to life. How near they were, how far. Just as that brief candle had renewed hope for Sarah, so too did the noise lessen the solitude. Perhaps she’d have felt different if it was just hers, but to have a friend beside her, going along with the plan, those tears were of happiness, relief, the accumulation of tension finally setting her down gently.

“We found a way out!”

But after each call, they listened for a response, and all they heard were the heavy steps of their pursuer as it dragged a heavy bag.

Perhaps that was their answer.

Wiser children might accept they came in as three but would leave one short, but the Gambler’s Fallacy says that if there’s a 1% chance of finding him with a single call, then a hundred calls means success is assured.

Finally, Sarah stopped at a turn. This was the last turn her heart could handle. She was tired, dirty, sweaty, shivering, and most of all…

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, teacher! Scold me, whoop me, stare at me in disappointment for I have failed you, and I am truly, terribly, with all my heart—”

“Misguided concern will kill us all, child.”

The whisper came from behind a wall.

“Teacher, we found a way out! A well we can climb up with some persistence and—”

Victory was short-lived.

“I, too, have found a way out. The stairs we came down, and at the top is my target.”

Her hand off the wall, she went in search of the source of those lunatic words and when she got her hands on him, she yanked him by his collar. “What do you mean, sir?”

“Take the well. It’s the safer option.”

“He ain’t coming, Sarah.”

“I will not leave this place without either of you.”

“Is it true?” Junior asked. His voice hurt as did his pride. “When I was alone, I found our escape but I did not take it until you were with me. Can you say you’d’ve done the same?”

“I—I—”

“Or are you only concerned with this backbiter and not your lifelong friend? Whatever you say, swear it and I’ll believe it.”

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “But the three of us are here now and why? Why can’t we leave together? Climb out and come back through the front doors as we entered! Come back through the dark for all I care. But wait! I am of my right mind now and I am not leaving without you both.” Her voice grew louder as her breathing grew ragged. “You said you would not let your students die tonight, sir. What if the biggest risk to them is your action now?”

She had him. She knew. He’d soften. He’d relent. He’d escape with them.

“If my guidance falls on deaf ears, that is your decision.”

At a loss for words, she found herself in darkness worse than around her. The brightness of her mind had had something at the edges creeping in but she had not noticed until her vision was a pinpoint and the snakebite in her veins was more than she could bear.

She collapsed.

Chapter 9

The only two remaining customers at the diner were the sheriff and his daughter sharing a piece of rhubarb pie with custard. Every week they ordered a different pie for their next daddy-daughter date night.

“How old are ya now, miss?” Margaret asked.

She held fingers on both hands.

Margaret raised her spectacles to her eyes to get a clearer count. “Really? 13 already?”

1 and 3.

“And her birthday’s in a month. Tell the nice lady how old you’ll be then, honey.”

“23? Time flies!”

The adults had a good laugh at bad jokes and the girl only felt the warmth of the evening and not the teasing. The sheriff ordered a sugar cream pie for next week and Margaret was writing it down when Junior came running in.

“Ms. Tully!”

“Catch your breath, boy,” the sheriff said.

“Sheff.”

“Looks like you been playing hard. How’s old Harry?” she asked.

“I don’t—” Big breath. Swallow of thick saliva. Looking at the little girl. “It’s Sarah. She’s come down with a fever.”

The sheriff called after the two, “I’ll turn the stove off. Don’t you worry,” as the door chime tinkled against the glass.

In the Cadillac, Margaret found her daughter soaked with sweat and her clothes damp with some foul-smelling stain. She raved unintelligible phrases about the bag, but Sarah hardly carried a bag and she hadn’t earlier. Her forehead burned Mama’s heart.

“I’m here, baby. Mama’s here,” she cooed.

The teacher watched in the rear view, a mother nursing her daughter, fretting about the worst possibilities, and when she glanced up, her eyes burned with accusations.

He drove them home.

On the sofa, Sarah’s words continued like a madman’s cutting through rapid breathing. “Bones, no bones.”

“Your bones are fine, dear.” Margaret moved the girl’s hand to feel her knee. “See? Still there. Now stop your yakking.”

“We need to get her clothes off.”

“Are you a doctor now?” Junior asked.

“Quiet, Junior. He’s right. Go home if you’re shy. She’s dirty, wet, and covered in Gods-knows-what. She’ll need a cold bath to keep the fever down.”

They carried her upstairs, the teacher at her head and the others grabbing a leg, and they set her down gently in the Art Moderne tub. The slop on her sullied the colorful back splash tiles they’d ordered by mail last year. Junior stepped into the hall for this. Just wasn’t right, and truth be told, he was quivering, wondering what it could be, and as the bath water ran, the others found the first hints.

“Ain’t ever seen a limb balloon up like that. Some sort of bite?”

“Bite?” Junior called. “She was asking about snake bites after Harry got hurt.”

With furious footsteps, the teacher rushed into the hall. “Get a sharp knife from the kitchen. Something small but sharp.”

“Well, shoot, sir, if it’s just a rattler, she’ll probably be fine in the morning.”

“And something to catch the pus.”

“She will be fine in the morning, right, Mr. Ishmael?”

“Go now.” After he examined the affected region further, trying to find a bite, but it was all purple on pale skin, two injection ticks would not stand out.

Margaret watched him with keen regard. He was tender to the ill, but his voice cut to Junior’s insecurities. Bad teachers existed, but they often did their best to put on a nurturing persona. Was that all he was?

“Excuse me, sir. Now might not be the right time, but did you serve in the war? A medic or something?”

“You’re right. It’s not the time. This was no rattlesnake bite and we need antivenin.”

“Who are you?” Sarah’s fluttering eyes popped open to clutch his sullied collar. “Just tell me truly!”

“Sir?” Junior was in the doorway with a fruit bowl holding a paring knife

“Arm or bowl, boy?”

“What? No, no, I--”

“She needs you, Russ, or she is going to lose an arm and that won’t be the worst of it. Now hold the bowl. Miss, I’m going make a cross-shaped incision in her arm. The more she moves, the more it’ll hurt so hold her arm steady.”

Margaret held her daughter’s hand and arm and hoped that was better comfort than a smiling, hopeful face, because she couldn’t muster such strength.

“Junior.”

“I’m ready, sir.” The crack in his teenage voice betrayed his heart. But bravery isn’t the lack of fear, but action in spite of it. Perhaps that’s what you want from a man, anyway, hesitation, overwhelming concern, because to act robotically meant you had too much trauma to care anymore.

A wail of anguish cut the still country night and the neighbors knew something was afoot.

Junior washed out the kitchen sink.

Upstairs had gone quiet behind the approaching storm. They didn’t need him anymore. And this stuff smelled awful. Especially after he coated it with his own half-digested lunch.

He poured himself a glass of water when he heard heavy steps coming down the stairs and a door open.

He flew after the teacher, making it as far as the porch. He shielded his eyes with his arm, turning away from the wind. “Sir! Wait! Where are you going?”

“To concoct a remedy. Does your farm have animals? Cattle? Horses? Anything big?”

“C-c-cows?”

“That’ll do.” The man did not stop and opened his car door.

“Don’t you need help?”

“All of this is my responsibility.” He hesitated in the driver’s seat. Then he started the engine. “Are you going to help me find a snake in the dark on 160 acres with a dust storm coming? Russ, think about what it is only you can do.”

“What only I can do…? What if that thing comes a-knocking?”

He shrugged. “Don’t answer.”

Junior’s eyes scanned the roads as the Cadillac roared away. It was too dark and dusty to see forever, but every obscured shape at the terminal of his vision could’ve been the Bag Man in pursuit.

“Junior!” Margaret called and he ran up to help her dry, dress, and carry Sarah down the stairs.

Up with the sun, asleep with the sun. That was the farm’s way but a few farmhands stayed up chatting, reading by candlelight, or writing home. They weren’t from here but maybe a county or a state over, crossing borders to find something new or flee something old, but all were welcome if they pulled their weight.

Tonight, a trio gathered round a lantern in the dairy barn and talked of pooling their wages. Their voices were low and their shadows, like their hope, danced low and high with the flame.

“You been here as long as Bertrand, Adelaide. You see how he runs his farm. Why can’t we do that?”

“Buy 40 acres and set us up something nice.”

“With rabbits?”

“We can have rabbits.”

And on a country night, the engine could be heard before its light cut through the dust curtain.

“Expecting someone, Adelaide?”

“Don’t think so.”

A farmhand went to the door and when he saw a figure approaching, he opened the door just long enough for them but not enough for more than a handful of dust.

Adelaide’s curious look turned to grimace as she saw the teacher. “Did you bring the boy back?”

The teacher looked around at the barn. There was hay and it smelled of manure. “Where are the cows?”

“Storm’s coming. Put them in—”

“Why?” Adelaide asked. The teacher’s damp shirt had a layer of mud just barely covering red-brown splatters.

“I need a cow or a horse that’s been bitten by a lot of snake in its lifetime. Do you keep records of that?”

“Sir, you have a lot of gumption coming round here while we’re still reeling from the loss of Harry. I ain’t saying that was your fault, but--”

“He died?”

“Prayer tonight. Burial in the morning.”

“Might I offer a prayer?”

And the farmhands might’ve agreed. The teacher might’ve gotten what he needed. Sarah might’ve been fine if it weren’t for Adelaide, if it weren’t for earlier, if it weren’t for the late hour, and if the teacher hadn’t let loose a faint smile.

She said, “Rouse the others. And bring Mr. E.”

Margaret was in the kitchen making them something to eat. Sarah would need her strength when she woke up and until then, her caretakers needed their strength as well. And to have her hands busy kept her mind from wandering.

“Ms. Tully!” Junior’s voice rose up from the living room. “Do you have more bandages?”

“Is it bleeding through again? That man cut too deep. Probably wasn’t ever a surgeon or medic or anything like that. Just read about it in some dime novel and thought, ‘I’m a man. I can do anything!’ Let me get them.”

What the teacher had said before leaving stuck in Junior’s head. What could he do? He was a boy. He had no idea what was going on with the church. He’d never had medical training or nothing, only once when he was younger while playing with a throwing knife, trying to flip it and catch it, he cut his arm dearly. No amount of pressure would stop it. He sheepishly showed his pa who didn’t bother trying the same and instead got a knife of his own. A butter knife. And he’d heated it on the stove’s flame until it glowed and the metal got soft. It wasn’t like when the teacher had sterilized the paring knife. His pa wanted it hot and he would not tell Junior why or else he’d have fled. Death was preferable to pain. And the burning hot side of a blade was painful indeed. The noises he made might’ve caused a stampede, and when the boy awoke, the bleeding had stopped, the wound was seared closed, and he had a cauterization scar to forever remind him never to play with knives.

“Maybe we could cauterize it,” Junior suggested.

She looked at his scar then tried to silence that superficial concern approaching her mouth. “Better a marred arm than an empty one. Help me bring her to the kitchen. We’ll use the stove.”

Sarah’s sweating continued and her breathing was shallow and weak, but her words had stopped. They didn’t know if that was good or not.

And as they struggled with her, Margaret had to ask, “What even happened out there?”

Junior took the freshly washed paring knife and compared it to the bandaged wound. His father had used something bigger than needed, but maybe that was better. And what if it didn’t work? How deep did he need to get? If the wound wasn’t just surface level, she could bleed inside. He just stared at the reddening bandage, uncertain how to proceed or if this is what the teacher meant by something only he could do.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. He rested the knife on his patchwork jeans. “Maybe we ought to just sew her up.”

Then he wondered what next his eyes would find and how else he might try to risk her life.

“Russel, there are a lot of answers and I don’t know which is right either, but I know fretting and doing nothing isn’t going to help.”

He knew she was right but he didn’t have the judgment of experience.

“Wizened and wisdom might as well be synonyms, which is just a nice way of saying I’ve had a lot of time to mess up. Even tonight. Let me decide.”

She went upstairs to get her garment bag full of needles and patches.

Her hands trembled as she fed the needle through the string and this strong mama bear whimpered as she peeled away the bandage. “Maybe it’ll stop with more time.”

“Another second fretting is another drop of blood. I’ll do it.”

When the needle passed from one trembling hand to another, Junior found his nerves ease with a deep breath and the focus on urgency. Not about if it was right or wrong, what would happen next. Who cares if it left an ugly scar? At least she’d be alive and if the arm still worked, even better, and if it didn’t, she could blame the teacher but right now he was helping his friend and that gave him strength.

He got the needle in and ran it through enough to tie an anchor point, then he worked his way up like he’d always done when patching clothes, pulling tightly after each loop through, keeping tension on the line, until he was about halfway through.

Then a knock came at the door.

His attention was so focused on the suturing that he didn’t notice, but when he asked Ms. Tully to wipe away the blood so he could see, she called back, “Just a minute!”

A hand caught the teacher by the throat.

He bent back the thumb till he could suck in a deep breath and his attacker squealed, but that wasn’t his first choice of defense. His choice was staved off by fingers clawing at his forehead because they didn’t want him biting again.

The kerfuffle was 5 on 1 with old Adelaide watching from a distance in case a murder was on hand. If it was someone she knew, she’d fetch old Mr. E. If it was the teacher, she’d see how magnanimous she was feeling. Shoot, the fight had started with 6 of them but the first thing that madman did was claim a chunk of flesh from Lenny’s forearm and spit it back on the man.

But that was when the workers knew this wasn’t friendly wrestling.

It didn’t matter if someone twice his size held his lanky limb, somehow that string bean overpowered each, but since this wasn’t a friendly match, there was no sense in playing fair.

Headbutts, kicks, scratches, and chokes.

And when they were two to an arm with the heaviest fellow sitting on his legs, they knew he’d go limp soon enough.

But his blood boiled.

His eyes searched.

His mind raced.

That rack of tools.

The ax would cleave limbs. The pitchfork would pierce hearts. The scythe would reap lives.

But there was a familiar weapon.

Blunt, destructive, but would bones could be set easier than limbs reattached.

The maul.

If only he could get free.

Before he could, Adelaide went to the barn door.

This was never 5 on 1 or 6 or 7 including her. From the whipping shroud of black blizzard, the eighth stepped through holding the reins of Mr. E, a dappled longhorn stud with horns that extended over 100 inches. He huffed and scratched and the woman holding him seemed about to let go whether intentional or not.

“He don’t like being woken up so I suggest you settle.”

The teacher’s smile only grew.

“Just what I was looking for.”

Junior armed himself and crept around to the doorway, but when he saw it was just the sheriff, he hid the large chef’s knife behind his back. It still had a slice of onion on it.

“Ahh, Junior, how are you, boy? Just wanted to check up on Sarah. Neighbors heard some wailing and thought it best I investigate, you know, with that newcomer around. Like we always say, be welcoming but vigilant.” The sheriff’s eyes scanned Junior. His shirt was covered in blood. He was shaking in his boots. And he had a hand hidden behind his back.

Junior suddenly said, “She’s fine!”

The man showed himself in. No sense letting the dust in. “What do you got there, lad?”

“Sheff, Sarah had a snake bite, a cut and a fever. We’re putting out fire after fire and Russel here was just stitching her arm.”

“That stranger brought awful bad luck with him.”

“If he could influence those snakes, surely we’d welcome him greatly.” Margaret turned to Junior. “Did you get the wound closed?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And the blood stopped?”

“Yes ma’am.”

The sheriff stepped off the foyer rug with dirty shoes and no invitation. As he moved in, Junior moved, too, keeping the knife hidden behind his back.

“Can you enlighten me as to what happened with Sarah?”

“You were there when I heard the news, Sheff.”

“Yes. From Mr. Bertrand here. Boy?” The big man stepped closer.

“I-I-I don’t know. We were on the farm when the teacher came by with Sarah.”

“The teacher again?”

Junior backed up toward a table with photographs of the late Ms. Catherine Tully. If he could be very gentle, he might be able to set the knife down on the tablecloth without a sound. But not with the sheriff in his face. He was shorter than the sheriff, and by his estimation, that man’s eyes could peer over his back and see the glint of metal he’d armed himself with. “This was the first time I met him. He told us school’s opening up again and then everything with Mr. Styles happened and I think Sarah got bit then.”

“He seems at the center of all this.”

“Mr. Styles?”

“The teacher.” Finally, like storm clouds parting and letting the sun shine through, the sheriff stepped away from the boy to peer out the window. The Cadillac was nowhere to be seen. “Where is he?”

“I can’t say.”

Then straight back to the boy the sheriff charged, a raised voice asking, “Why not?”

Margaret wanted to answers, too, but something about the sheriff’s suspicion did not coincide with her own. “He went to fetch a doctor, I believe. Russel was down here during the more gut-wrenching parts and that was when I suggested the teacher go fetch professional help.”

“How long ago?”

“An hour, maybe.”

“Still not returned? With a bootlegger’s car? It’s an emergency, isn’t it?”

His tone riled something in Margaret. “Yes, and we need to tend to my daughter before she loses an arm, so if there’s nothing else, sir, please leave us to it.”

The sheriff nodded apologetically then started toward the door, and Junior finally found a chance to set the knife down, but it was premature. The sheriff glanced back. “What’s that for, boy?”

“When we heard the knock, I didn’t know who it was. And after tonight, like you always say, be welcoming but vigilant, right?”

He nodded with a smile. “Right.”

Once the door was closed, Junior sighed with relief but that boy always raised his arms before the finish line. Margaret asked, “Can we really trust him?”

“The sheriff?”

“The teacher.”

The farmhands had closed the pens on themselves so in the long corridor of hay, the teacher only had to continue forward to walk out into the dust of fog. He could even pet the bull along the way, should he so choose. The bull that paced around.

It was late. It was loud as the storm brewed closer to its climax. It was an unfamiliar situation and animals are creatures of habit--chaos only stirs in them insecurity and that is a short path to aggression.

When the teacher reached for the maul, the farmhands cheered.

“Put on a show, teach!”

“Hit it harder than you did those fence posts!”

And whatever happened now, they were justified.

This armed madman came in asking for a cattle or corpse and he’d get it.

The bull scratched the hay.

Then to the disappointment of the crowd, it turned around to gaze out the double doors. They’d been pinned back and still they rattled at the hinges. Another huff. Then a long, mournful moo that built to a rolling boil of violence that was cut short by a bag slamming the ground.

The animal leaped as much as a 1,200-pound beast could.

It backed closer to the teacher, kicking its hind legs, calling for its herd with battle cries, shaking its massive horns that lowered, ready to charge.

The teacher did not fear the tail-end of a bull.

He feared the gray hand that reached through the dust wall.

The Bag Man ducked under the large doorway to creep inside.

To the farmhands, a large but still human man robed in a matador’s flowing cape had just stepped into the path of a riled-up bull, but that illusion shattered after the bull charged. They yelled. They clapped. They made themselves big trying to save this man but to no avail as the bull reached its top speed ready to gore him.

Before impact, the Bag Man lifted one massive foot and stomped the bull.

The dust and hay kicked up.

The farmhands didn’t know what had happened and started clambering over the gate. They’d be in a mess of trouble if some fellow had just wandered in and gotten pierced. And that was the idea they had in mind so to see reality, it’d take a massive shock.

Then that creature kicked the dazed bull to the side, crashing through the fence of pens, and it single-mindedly looked round for its target.

Though it had claimed victory, the teacher saw the horns had taken their toll. The foot-long gash had torn flesh and robe. You could count the ribs on that thing. And even if you weren’t educated that humans typically had 12 sets of ribs, you’d know there were too many. Much too many. They were not larger ribs proportional to the height. Just many, many ribs stacked on top of one another so it had a certain flexibility as it bent back and bellowed. A putrid scent filled the air. The stench of the ossuary. The stench of pyramids. The stench of Death.

More importantly, the teacher saw its gray skin painted with terrible deeds and a singular theme ran through each: snakes.

And his maddened smile grew larger still.

After leaving the Tullies’ house, the sheriff drove down to the doctor’s home. He knocked at the door, waited a short while, then pounded at it, yelling he needed to talk.

Sheriff Walker wasn’t like Sherlock Holmes, a name he heard once from Sarah Tully and asked, “That that traveling merchant?”

No, he was a real cop. His work was bluster and violence and quiet abuse of power.

Every now and then, though, the angry little beaver damming up his thoughts took a day off and as luck would have it a leak sprung and the sheriff had a thought.

Perhaps the teacher had gotten the doctor and returned to the Tullies’.

This wasn’t correct, but it was reasonable.

So in his car he got and drove back, but no Cadillac sat out front.

But a beaver that’ll sleep through sunrise might also sleep an hour more.

Maybe the teacher took Junior back home. His parents must be worried sick.

Sometimes it really is better to be lucky than good, but for the sheriff, that brief glint of fortune would curdle into damnation.

The illusion began to shatter one-by-one, kick-by-kick.

First was poor George flying to Mr. E to check on the prized stud, and before he could see the ribcage dented and cracked and the nose leaking blood, he got a foot to the gut and a close-up view of the rafters. His spirit ascended to heaven right then, at least I hope he did not suffer, but his body came tumbling down with a mess of chains used to hold a cow in place. They weren’t often needed. But they were run through a pulley system in the hayloft and rooted into the concrete foundation.

Adelaide saw it consume the soul and grow larger. It be not proud.

And the next folks came out to stop this drunkard.

Surely his violence would quell in the face of numbers.

The three of them got crushed by the bag and the center one died instantly (and its skin lost all color to a mighty and dreadful hue). The others’ vision just went black, but unfortunately, as the Bag Man soldiered toward its target, an unconscious fellow got crushed beneath an unearthly weight.

And Adelaide saw the Truth reveal itself with each dead until she, too, saw Death incarnate.

There was no stopping Death.

All they could do was buy time.

“Not yet can you kill me!” Adelaide shouted with a scythe in hand and while it focused its ire upon the teacher, she went for the heel, and that thing sank to a knee with a wail you might hear in the depths of the seas. The way its agony echoed in her mind, the reverberations in every part of her skull, rattling through her bones into the soft fleshy tissues then tracing her every nerve to its tip sent her standing at attention, every muscle tightened and tearing and wetness formed in her eye as she saw! She saw!

Death, too, was not immune to its own perilous journey that ended in the pleasure of rest, but there was more beyond Death, there was worse to fear than Death, and if anything she should welcome its poppy charm before she met its siblings!

It rose once more and pulled back a great slapper.

As its tension broke, ready to release judgment upon her (and she hoped it quick), it was not her death rattle striking a chord in the dairy barn. Instead a chain rattled.

The teacher was not a man to watch.

Nightmares demanded defiant action.

The Bag Man did not understand his wrist had been chained. It tested it again and the barn shook at its very foundation.

When the teacher went to shackle the other wrist, the creature flung venomous claws across his shirt, but no flesh sizzled. And if the wrist would not hold, then a rail-thin neck would do.

It scratched at the teacher, at Adelaide, but they were too far.

Once a king of this domain, now it flailed like a desperate man until its chains tangled themselves about each other and its claws turned to its own neck but Death is many things with many tools available: it is eternal without interference; it is patient; it is relentless, and it is inevitable; it is as willing to pursue the gentle as it is the wicked--and therefore, smart is not among its qualities.

The maul would not clobber Death. Instead the teacher had selected an ax and with all the might bestowed upon him, he swung down upon the kneeling leg. One swing would not chop ancient bone. But a second, a third, he wasted no time until the fossil severed.

From that leg came a familiar sight. If Sarah had been here, she, too, might know it.

Surrounding ancient bone, between pockets of muscle and systems of circulation, snakes now disturbed from the burrow slithered out. Some in a rage, hissing with fangs bared, but others fleeing with information to their charmer.

“What nightmare lurks betwixt our worlds?” cried Adelaide.

Her legs did not work. Her heart fell silent and heavy into a gaping abyss within her gut. All that worked were her eyes. Her eyes gazing upon some fresh horror and her eyes that poured out floods.

Then this stranger said, “I am a man steeped in nightmares, but still I choose to smile.”

At the teacher’s call Adelaide broke from her spell. She fled to the storm to find Mr. Bertrand but before she could leave the door, she turned back at the rattle of the barn. A sturdy piece of architecture now shook and creaked worse than it ever did in the worst tornado as what was once fury became desperation.

The roar of a former soul unwilling to be chained. If the chain would not break, the anchor might.

And as the teacher swung for the other leg, Death should have been strewn up by an arm and neck, crucified as it did so many before, but the weight of Death is a burden a barn cannot bear, and Adelaide watched as the hayloft collapsed onto the two otherworldly foes.

When Bertrand met Adelaide outside, he was armed with his hunting rifle and she could not go back. She could not see what carnage she’d wrought by trapping a bull with that man. And Bertrand was left to sift the rubble himself.

He found a half-collapsed barn and the teacher severing the heads of snakes among the body of some he called friends. The moon beamed down on him as he beamed up at it. Three farmhands did not move, but three more did, in dazed and injured ways with groans. And there was a… man? The remains of one. A large torso separated from its head, arms, and legs, and it rested inside of a pail with its innards draining.

What nightmare had he stumbled into. Worse than many things in the war, but he knew there was worse still.

He shook his head then raised his rifle then lowered it.

Had it been a trick of the night? The late hour and the odd sight, the bit of drink he allowed himself, old memories, Adelaide’s ravings?

The gray skinned corpse dissolved to black puddles that seeped into the soil and the teacher was left with a bucket of blood.

The man reached inside to remove a placenta.

And Bertrand watched him leave.

Chapter 10

The Sheriff didn’t care about the hour as he pounded on the door of the Bertrands’ house. Given the collapsed barn, the farmer should be up from the commotion. Bertrand Sr. came around the back with his signature limp, sweating profusely and holding a shovel.

“What happened there?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Couldn’t or—”

“I awoke to bury three workers and a longhorn, so I’m not in the mood for baseless accusations. Been trying to get the story out of--”

The sheriff slapped his hand to his heart, but even such theatrics couldn’t stop it from breaking. “Not Mr. E!”

If the sheriff’s heart wasn’t a shriveled raisin, he might’ve cared more about his fellow townsfolks and he might’ve gotten answers in time, but as it were, Bertrand gave no more. Whatever that teacher needed a still for, there had to be a reason better than heartbreak over a bull.

The sheriff closed his car door once more and concentrated real hard but the beaver was back at work. He gave up.

He needed a drink.

There was no knock.

The door kicked open.

Junior went running with his knife once more, no onion slice this time, and even Margaret went for Uncle Pete’s shotgun, but as she crossed the doorway to get it, she saw the disheveled man covered in blood, little of which was his own, and in his Gladstone bag, glass vials clinked together as he stepped across the threshold. He was lucky she didn’t keep the gun loaded.

“How is she?”

“Fever broke.”

Junior returned to changing her bandage and the teacher’s eyes went wide at the sutures. Rage filled his eyes but he kept a calm voice. “What happened?”

“You nearly cut to the bone,” Margaret snapped. “Russel here had the bright idea to sew your handiwork shut, and he did a lovely job.”

“You did.” The teacher opened the Gladstone to pull out a syringe: an empty chamber between a three-ringed metal plunger and a long needle. “I’m sorry my zeal put you in such dire straits.”

Junior almost blushed at the compliment. “Shoot, it could happen to anyone. We were all panicked. You did your part; I did mine.”

“I am a man of mistakes but I learn from them.” The teacher slotted a glass vial inside the chamber.

Margaret turned the clear liquid over in her mind. In the flicker of lamplight, it seemed off. It wasn’t like water. It wasn’t perfectly clear. There was a murky yellow tint almost imperceptible, but it gave her pause.

“This will ensure another sunrise, I swear it.”

He rolled up his sleeves. First the left. Then the right. They were so filthy, his fingerprints smudged on the vial and he washed his hands once more. They shook. Margaret watched closely so she noticed but the man, for all his confidence and bluster, for all the trials of tonight, he trembled. The body of a man but maybe somewhere inside all of us there’s that nervous child.

But upon returning to Sarah’s side, his nerves steadied. He found a patch of flesh on her shoulder that he rubbed clean with a towel. Then between thumb and forefinger, he spread taut the skin ready to pierce it when Margaret caught his hand.

“Who are you to be injecting her with anything?”

“This syringe is full of antivenin. When an animal is exposed in low doses, it begins to develops natural defenses. This is a distilled form of those that will give her body a fighting chance.”

“I’m not asking what it is. Let me be plain.” Her hand drew his away from her daughter. “Who are you and why are you here?”

He paused with pursed lips before opening his secrets. “Your mother the schoolmarm was Catherine Tully, born the 24th of April, 1835, correct?”

“What does she have to do with…?”

“She should’ve seen her centennial year.”

“No more riddles!”

“I’m here because she did not go gentle into that good night. And as that creature took your mother, now it yearns for your daughter and this here will save her.” His shoulders heaved with deep breaths as though speaking this much was of great exertion to him. “If you fear its efficacy, watch as I inject it into myself.”

He rolled his sleeves up higher until the band of cloth formed a tourniquet above his elbow. She just barely saw the second of long jagged lines of raised red flesh and she suspected there were more claw marks hidden. And as the veins raised up from the depths, he aimed the hollow needle point.

“Wait.” Margaret let go of her suspicions for now. “Doesn’t she need all of them?”

“I made extra.” He continued to hold the needle tense to his arm.

And again, Margaret’s hand guided his away. “Save them for her.”

The sheriff walked into the last remaining woods on the horizon. It was not far past the Bertrand farm. There was a new truck, an old house, and carnage at Appleseed.

It cut his faith in humanity in half and gave it to his ire. Of the three bumpkin brothers, one played nurse using whiskey instead of medicine, another was stupid drunk with a twig bandaged around his legs, and the last scrubbed the still of blood.

“Boys, what in tarnation is happening?!”

“Some lunatic needed our still.”

“Who? Some rival coming into our turf?”

The boys looked to one another and the drunk one laughed.

“Can you make alcohol out of blood?”

The sheriff drew his revolver. “Let’s find out. You know what bleeds a lot? The head!”

That sobered up two of the boys real quick.

“I want answers and I want retribution.”

But the drunk one laughed more with the gun to his temple for he had seen the end once already and survived. He’d seen it in that man’s eyes. That man’s disregard for his own life, let alone that of the trio, and yet here the boy stood (lay) still. “That was a bootlegger’s car but we pride ourselves on a certain air of dignity. A rich history of outlaws: Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Kissin’ Kate Barlow. That devil is something worse. He treads outside the grace of Gods.”

There was no benefit to interrogating a madman, a drunk one at that, and the sheriff put away his revolver.

The schoolhouse was the only place he knew that teacher would wind up and he’d always found those desks easy to sleep at.

Chapter 11

After her 12th injection, all they could do was sit for three hours when she’d get 2 more until all 20 were emptied, but shortly after that initial dosage, her forehead dappled with sweat grew hotter under the wet cloth and they could not change it fast enough to keep it cool.

“Show Junior how to do it,” Margaret demanded suddenly. “The injections.”

“Me? Why?”

She ignored the boy and returned from the kitchen in a coat and mask. “You say my mother was killed. She may not have been perfect, but she deserved dignity and that means having her fate known. I’ll dig.”

The teacher said, “A corpse is better left alone.”

“Must I beg for the burden of insight?” Her voice rose above the buffeting wind. Tonight the storm was in full force. Not a soul to be seen out on the streets for who would be fool enough to step into the abyss? It granted no death but it stripped away layer after layer of top soil as it did the same to flesh. “To never know is to be maddened by curiosity!”

“A gentler strain of the illness.”

“Satisfaction be my medication,” and in her words were a prayer that he could not ignore.

Chapter 12

Ms. Catherine Tully spent the entirety of her life dedicated to that schoolhouse and it seemed only proper that she’d find eternal rest there. Maybe that makes it a prison, as children have been calling schools since their invention, but logic and sentiment sometimes reach separate valid conclusions.

The sheriff sat in wait in the schoolhouse expecting a conclusion at dawn’s early light and shortly, as he had in so many class so many years before fell asleep at a desk. His snore could be mistaken for a bear.

The Cadillac cut its growl to a whisper lost in the storm. Though the teacher had navigated here on his own, once out of the car, Margaret led the way to the grave holding a shovel.

For one unused to digging, it was hours of work until the blade dinged against a pine box.

“Consider this once more,” the teacher cautioned. He would bear witness to this but he would not be party to it. He bore enough guilt.

And every shovelful after his warning was consideration. As she scraped clean the top half of the box. It was adorned with a holy symbol that her mother would’ve hated but it gave Margaret some vacuous comfort that the soul would be accepted. And every shovelful entrenched her further. This must be done.

The teacher hopped down only once the coffin was revealed. He did nothing to dig out the remains, only held the lantern to dig by, but when it came time for the viewing, he was there to pry open the lid.

He gave one last warning. “There is no turning back if we do this.”

“Is there turning back now? Sunrise approaches and we just bury the coffin, chalking up my sweat and my tears to a spell of hysteria?”

“It is your choice.”

“I commit.”

The teacher helped leverage the shovel into the seam and lift until the nails popped open.

And there she was. 99. Maybe two weeks shy at this point, but no, no, her soul was so much older, so much wiser, and this crude material was in her image but it was not her essence, it was not her luminous being--it was not her, I tell you!

The teacher looked away. Some dust had gotten in his eye.

But Margaret was transfixed.

She brought the lantern closer and wiped away some dark spots on Catherine’s cheek.

But the spots did not rub away. The spots were not dirt. Nor were they blemishes. Her fingers dipped inside. They were… holes? A tight grouping with thick walls between, something akin to the honeycomb pattern of a beehive, too narrow for her smallest finger, and their depth remained a mystery.

“These were not here when she was buried.”

The teacher examined the holes under the light of the lantern then drew back.

“What do you know?” she said.

“Who found she had passed?”

“She was asleep in the schoolhouse one evening and it turned out to be her last. Emile reported it.”

“Who--?”

The timing.

Had the sheriff not awoken with a crick in his neck, had he not wandered outside with a full bladder, had he not seen the lantern light and the teacher’s head poking out of the grave, had Margaret’s concentration been as committed as her heart, she might’ve seen not the glint of the sheriff’s revolver aimed down but instead the egg rise to the top of the hole on her mother’s cheek and erupt with a tiny larva that molted its just born self into a full formed mosquito. The drone near her ear lost itself among the storm.

But it found her cheek and took its first meal and left a gift of its own as the sheriff yelled, “Hands up! Identify yourselves, devils… Margaret?”

He almost lowered his revolver when the teacher stirred.

“No! I can shoot the wings off a mosquito at a hundred yards, blizzard or no, and you want to move on me, friend?” The sheriff fixed his gun on the teacher specifically as he circled around to see what they were doing. “We need to have a little discussion.”

“I know what this looks like, Sheff, but we have a good reason for digging up my mother.”

“I’m sure you do, Margaret, and I’m sure he has his own nefarious purpose. Now if you would join me in the barn just yonder, we can discuss this out of the storm. Let’s pay old Abner a visit.”

The barn outside the schoolhouse was nothing comparable to the Bertrand’s collapsed masterpiece. Technically it belonged to the Smiths who had left two years back when the piglet was a runt, and so by unanimous decision, the barn now belonged to the school. As did all of its implements. The Smiths’ ax replaced the schools when the handle started to splinter. The pitchfork was perfect for turning hay, another chore for the students, and the shovel for the least favorite chore.

At its best, the barn could hold six animals and even during the best of years, it didn’t and this was not the best of years. Abner was all they had left. He attended classes and often followed kids home from school. Some said he could read better than the sheriff, which was silly, because the sheriff was a cop; all should be saying such things.

Abner had his choice of pens but he liked the back corner. He was a dark lump tonight. He didn’t snore like a pig. Wet, slurping sounds. Swallow your spittle, Abner! Such is not the time for fawning.

The sheriff addressed Margaret but his gaze and his gun never wavered from the stranger. “We’ve had our share of problems in this town, Lords know, but overall, it’s a slice of paradise, wouldn’t you agree?”

Though the bullet would not come near her, she still felt its threat and gave a rote answer. “Yes, Sheff.”

“But he comes to town and things start happening.” The sheriff’s voice stayed low, just barely audible over the storm. “Sarah falls ill.”

“I don’t think he’s responsible exactly.”

Ignored.

“The Bertrand barn came tumbling down.”

“What?” she asked the sheriff.

“And a boy from Appleseed got a maul to the ankle and we don’t know if he’ll walk again.”

“What?” This time to the teacher.

“He was in my way.”

“My very conclusion as well!” the sheriff yelled. “But what I can’t figure out is why act as a teacher to set up your own operation within our town? You going to hire out students to be your bootleggers?”

“There is no pretense in what I do. I am here to educate and open the eyes of the ignorant, and you, Sheff, fallen though you may be, you are lost, you are chief among the blind, but I do not think you are beyond salvation.”

“Silence or feel my lead wrath!”

“Lead? What of such impure weapons! Fire! Free me! Fear how small you are in this world!”

The sheriff shook with an impotent rage as his finger found the trigger but he hesitated as he saw the teacher repent. Fear entered his eyes at the reality of the situation. He backed away from the sheriff. Authority had won as it always should.

But acquiescence would not alter history’s course.

The sheriff could not have a rival. This town flourished like an oasis in the midst of a desert thanks to the sheriff. The Bertrand farm? Petty coppers by comparison. Clean in the eyes of the laws, but the law of this town was him and he alone kept it afloat! They’d die without him!

And that assertion would be challenged in the coming days.

Because the teacher had not feared the revolver.

He feared the dark lump of Abner stirring in the back.

No.

Not sweet little Abner.

Raised from a small piglet that could not nurse at the Bertrands’ and so he was donated and so Sarah had raised him as her own. Others had pups, but she had a pig. A pig who hopped and squealed and rooted in all manners of muck and once found a bone!

But now something else had found Abner.

That pathetic little runt that’d make lean, gamy bacon had grown big. Blue ribbon at any fair. Love will do that to anyone.

But now, with his juices sucked out, he was plumper than ever for that thing did not just drink Abner; it filled the pot-bellied pig with its own progeny. Abner died alone, squealing, with dust in every crevice, while this creature lusted for more. Whatever had been slurping in the corner had not been sleeping but finishing its first meal. And the sheriff was the second.

A large proboscis pierced his belly.

The pain squeezed the itchy trigger finger and a bullet rang out.

The sheriff, feeling his life drain out of him, reached behind to grab the 6-prong skewer. Two needles had sawed in. Two held the wound open. One sucked the color from him and the last pumped a new, terrible color back in.

The teacher grabbed Margaret’s hand and dragged her into the storm. He needed his bag.

However, as they ran past the tool rack, she thought, it must be safer with this than without. She wielded an ax ready to die in defense of her daughter.

“What are you doing?” he screamed.

“That thing, like a mosquito, it hunts blood and Sarah’s wound will draw it! Two deaths in this barn tonight.”

“Yours and his,” the teacher said.

“Then I pray I satiate it.”

The sheriff stumbled out the door, a bloated husk of his former self, then collapsed, but right behind it was that overgrown parasite, a silhouette in the shadows but growing closer and clearer and Margaret only wanted to close her eyes or turn and run but she could not.

The illusion of this world shattered for her tonight.

That thing…

It had once been human but now the torso curled back on itself--how many cracks and breaks were required to contort that way? Head rested on ass. Its shorter arms like hind legs, each bone cracked to form two additional elbows, and the belly was pregnant and stretched and the blood inside radiated a wicked light through the stretched skin. And the face… Her face… there was still a face on that poor woman, a face Margaret could not and would not recognize, nor should she, for the pity she’d feel might break her. The lips, the eyes, dried leather peeled back in four rolls of a panged expression as that proboscis had sprung forth from her skull.

Margaret raised her ax not in defense of her daughter, but in vengeance for a neighbor. It did not matter who.

The teacher ran to the Cadillac.

If Margaret was to play bait, he’d not waste a second. He ran as fast as his legs took him. He leapt over the freshly dug grave. Without opening the door, he dove in the window to grab his Gladstone bag.

042435

He unlocked it. Under the Bible. Under spare clothes and silver razor was his own revolver, much much older than the sheriff’s, and loaded in the chamber were six silver bullets.

But she’d been correct before. It was drawn to blood. And it ignored her. It was not after the dried blood on his shirt, but the fresh wound the gunshot had created. His shoulder oozed dark juices and the creature yearned.

This would not satiate it. Nothing could. But it had no eyes and saw the world in smells and pheromones and the ones given off by fresh crimson liquid sent shivers through its deformed vessel and it would forever seek satisfaction until its last day.

Which was today, Margaret resolved.

What was that thing made of?

She was not one to keep up with her own mother’s wood chopping but an ax had weight! An ax had an edge!

And still that needle nose did not bend, did not sever.

Each swing sent it into the dirt which it shook off, scratched with its forepaws, the woman’s feet, and then continued its pursuit with greater speed and urgency--not for feeling threatened but for the buzz of excitement.

Smell, touch, these were all it had and to be touched was a wonderful thing!

It was on her! It was close! It felt it! It stabbed!

It missed.

She had backed up so far she’d fallen into her mother’s grave. A six-foot unexpected fall is rarely a blessing but for this moment, it had saved her.

“Margaret!” the teacher cried.

But the smells permeating from that hole drove it into a frenzy. A parent defending its nest.

“Margaret! Where are you?”

It peeked over the side and bristling tremors ran through it and though it had only a needle and no mouth, it needed to scream. It crawled in on top of Margaret, pinning her under its gelatinous belly of blood and babies and it already had one nest in here, another would do fine.

“If you do not give a holler, Sarah will see a sunrise you don’t!”

“HERE!”

And instantly after, a gunshot rang out.

Blood flowed that was not its, was not the woman’s it stole, but the sheriff’s and Abner’s and now, she feared, maybe even traces of her mother’s until globular eggs clogged the exit wound.

“Are you hurt? Did it nick you?”

A trembling mess, Margaret shoved the carcass off her.

“Margaret?” his voice was soft and full of pity and she cried in anguish as she rose high the ax head and brought it down severing limbs no longer human before splitting the skull at its back and forever detaching the sucker.

The two were both covered in blood.

The two were in a world steeped in madness, but what is madness? Do not mistake it for illness. Madness is to see the invisible strings manipulating the world and being unwilling to cut them. They were not mad. They were human and they cared and it broke them, but they had each other.

As the teacher returned to his Cadillac with someone who counted herself his ally, he saw he’d left his Gladstone bag open.

There were still his clothes and his razor.

But someone had taken Ms. Catherine Tully’s Bible.

Orange Peals

Orange Peals

NaNoWriMo

Orange Peals

Week 4: 25,641 words (~90 pages)

Orange Peals