Among the fallen, p.11
Among the Fallen, page 11
Polly banked east, and before Omar was ready, distant mountains grew from a narrow blue undulation on the horizon to an imposing barrier of peaks and ridges, the highest of which married the clouds. Agrona deftly guided Polly through the gaps and valleys between summits looming dark above them like impending judgment. A steep ridge of fractured stone and stunted pine tumbled across the valley ahead of them. “Down there,” Agrona yelled, pointing toward a tiny dot of bright blue just below the crest. She seemed to be aiming the plane directly toward it. As they approached, the circle grew to an opening that Omar thought might be almost wide enough for the plane to pass through. Almost.
“Climb,” he shouted. It came out a scream.
“Close your eyes!” Agrona shouted back.
The policeman did as he was told. Through his closed lids, he sensed a brilliant flash like lightning without thunder. His ears popped loud in his skull as the craft plummeted like a raptor on her prey. An instant of shadow and roar and Omar opened his eyes to featureless gray. He had a momentary impression that they were flying upside down until the cloud thinned to a faint blue of sky above and mottled green of forest below.
Omar’s stomach finally caught up with him as they emerged into clear daylight and around them loomed the close high mountains and beneath, rising gently to meet them a broad verdant field. A dirt track ran tan and straight ahead of them and Polly aligned with it. Agrona shouted, “The Mission Field,” as the wheels touched earth lightly, once, twice, then rolling slower and slower to stop and still. Agrona cut the engine. Silence rang in their ears. Omar lifted his goggles and wiped tears from his eyes.
Nineteen
Wendl VonTrier sat on the back row, near the entrance. Up front, on a huge screen, Lewis Redding pointed out features of a projected image of the future Restoration Cathedral. According to Redding, this grandiose edifice would be the birthplace of a mighty moral movement to restore the nation to righteousness. The standing-room-only crowd was eating up his spiel.
Wendl, configured to resemble a tourist he passed on his way here, attracted no undue notice. He spied several people he knew among the throng, but none recognized him. He was just one more stranger among many attendees, some already converts, some attracted by this populist gospel of lost privilege regained, and some merely curious to see what the show was about.
Off to one side, Orville Hawke and Wilbur Corvid perched in a shadowy corner, constantly scanning the massed faces. Wendl thought they probably had a vague sense of his presence, which would account for their evident uneasiness, but in this maze of conflictant energies, they could not isolate his persona. He concentrated on damping his own aura, rendering his presence bland and dim.
Up on stage, Lewis began winding up his appeal, “They burned our church. They thought we would be silent in our loss. But they were merely clearing the ground for the sowing of a mighty harvest. We have been delivered of our lesser things so that we can build a true temple of righteousness and judgement where the wicked and destroyers cannot abide.”
Across the congregation came shouts of Amen and Praise as people stood waving their arms and dancing in the aisles while the former Justice Fork deacons fanned out with buckets that shortly brimmed with cash. An organ boomed out a hymn about soldiers marching to war, and a thousand throats began singing the words, ready to march and war against any enemy encountered or imagined.
Hawke and Corvid wheeled front and center a cart piled with books. It looked just like the Battered and Bartered table from Vintage Reads. Lewis Redding pointed at the books as his amplified voice filled the tent. “And this, friends, is the poison they are using to foul the innocent minds of our youth.”
A chorus of shouts became a roar. The congregation was morphing into a mob. Lewis held up his hands and silence fell immediate and absolute.
Into this stillness, the preacher spoke softly, almost gently, “And you all know where this came from.” A single candle burned before an arrangement of flowers center stage. Lewis took it, held it high, then dropped it onto the books. The books, prepped for this event, instantly were enveloped in flames.
Wendl slipped from his seat and made for the entrance. He knew where this was going to end.
Abigail watched through her front window as the three crows landed on her walk. They cocked their heads and regarded Hemlock Cottage as if sizing up accommodations. By now accustomed to the strange flock of seasonal guests Tsula had recruited this year, she wasn’t greatly surprised when, after a bit of hopping about while exchanging a mutter of clucks and caws, the feathered trio morphed into three tall and dark women.
Abigail had been expecting them all morning. The Morrigan sisters, Bobbie, Mirabel and Nan, had reservations for a month, starting today. They were apparently old friends of Tsula, although Wendl had been less than enthusiastic at the prospect of their arrival. He said that on Otherworld, their presence was synonymous with trouble. “They love to foretell defeats and disasters,” he confided to Abigail, “and delight in fulfilling their own prophesies.”
“They sound like half the women in Drover’s Gap,” Abigail replied, her voice brimming with amused skepticism.
She thought they seemed nice enough in person. At least as agreeable as the typical run of tourist. Abigail turned on her best tourist smile and opened the door as they approached, “Welcome to Hemlock,” she beamed.
“Such a lovely place you have,” said Bobbie.
“Tsula Stone has told us so much about this house,” cooed Mirabel, “It feels like coming home.”
“Such a quiet and peaceful town,” murmured Nan. “Ripe for excitement.”
“Let me show you up to your room,” Abigail said, gesturing for the sisters to follow. They had specifically asked to share one room. Neil had spent a morning helping Abigail rearrange a double and move in an extra bed. By the time they reached their room two flights up, the Morrigan sisters each carried a stuffed travel bag. Abigail no longer gave a second thought to the peculiar logistics of the alien guests her púca assistant had enticed to Drovers Gap. The sisters apparently deemed their quarters appropriate to their preferences. Nan hovered above her bed for an instant, as if she was about to become a crow again and fly away, then settled upon it as lightly as a flake of midnight snow.
“There’s some drink and snacks downstairs when you’re ready.” Abigail said. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything. Dinner is at six.” She closed the door and left the three mysteries to themselves.
Dinner had been Tsula’s idea. She was convinced that the clientele she was bringing in would feel more at home if they didn’t have to go out into the town for meals. When Abigail protested that she couldn’t possibly handle all the extra work entailed in cooking an evening meal for a houseful of guests, Wendl had volunteered himself as chef and Owl as his sous, “just until we hire permanent staff.” Luke and Neil refitted the kitchen and Luke one evening presented Abigail with a surprise, a carved and painted wooden sign to hang above the front porch. In the dark of a late-summer night, not long before the Morrigan sisters arrived, the Hemlock Cottage sign came down and the sun rose next morning on Hemlock House.
Abigail Trammell’s guests were at least as entertaining to Drovers Gap residents as the town was to the “away people,” as the locals referred to them. Since they all left money behind when they departed, they were not only tolerated, but more welcome than some of the natives were inclined to admit aloud. They were also easy targets for the rantings of Lewis Redding and his flock of culture vultures, who tended to regard anyone who might converse privately in some language other than English, as subversive and immoral individuals and anathema to pious and patriotic society.
Willie Graham couldn’t remember when he first heard the voices. In the beginning, he didn’t even recognize them as voices, just random sounds at odd quiet moments, like wind or rain or tinnitus. After some time, they evolved warm and modulated as human speech, though he could not identify words, or any particular language. The voices flowed like a small stream through the back of his mind, a barely perceptible murmuring behind the ordinary events happening on the surface of his days. Eventually, the voices began to shape words he could understand, but they never spoke to him, they floated around in his awareness like a conversation overheard from the next room. Willie decided the past was not gone after all, that the dead, however long since they last breathed, were never quite departed.
So, on a gentle September evening in Drovers Gap, the sort of end-of-summer night when half the people who speak to you on your walk home from the Wild Leek Pub are ghosts, Willy was only mildly surprised when he turned into his yard to see his mother sitting on his front porch, rocking gently in the soft breezy shadows.
“Hi Mom,” said Willie, “It’s been awhile.”
Evelyn Graham kept changing form as she spoke. Willie couldn’t decide if there were two of her becoming one, or one of her gaining multiplicity. You’ve stayed out of trouble of late, son of mine. I’ve been content just to watch. Frankly, I didn’t think you had it in you. Her voice in his head kept wavering between singularity and a Greek chorus.
Willie sighed, sat on the steps, and stared down the hill toward Main Street. It made his head hurt to look at his mother when she got like this. “I’m getting old, Mom. Just like you did. I don’t have a lot of energy to spare for naughtiness these days. But I must have done something amiss, or you wouldn’t be here.”
Don’t talk to your mother like that. I’m only here to help, Willieboy, as any mother would. She sounded exactly like Evelyn when she was only human. Willie glanced around, and there she was, just an old lady, his mother, sitting in her rocking chair to catch the evening breeze.
“Don’t recall asking for help,” Willie mumbled.
Evelyn bit her words. I’m not deaf anymore, Son. I can hear it even if you don’t let it out of your mouth. Willie opened his mouth to fire a retort, but couldn’t think of anything to say, so just sat there staring at his mother.
You’ll catch flies. Willie closed his mouth and she went on. I thought, after what I told you about the place, you were going to make old Boyce Miller an offer on those acres up by Potter’s Shoals he’s been trying to sell for years. What changed your mind?”
“Location, Mom. It’s nowhere. Down in that holler, too steep to build on, no views, scrappy timber, bad road, no sun in winter. I’d be stuck with it just like Boyce has been. I can’t run my business on your tall tales.”
Evelyn flared up like a campfire then died back down into herself. They’re not tall tales. I heard them from those who were there. There’s more in that ground than you’ll find on your county maps, Willieboy.
“Mom, I hated it when you called me Willieboy while you were breathing, and I don’t like it any better now. I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
Willy didn’t see his mother anymore, but imagined he felt her hand ruffling his hair as she passed, or maybe it was only the night breeze. A whisper in his ear, Why Willy, you’ll always be my very own boy.
He wanted to tell Evelyn he wasn’t her boy anymore, but before he could open his mouth to say it, she had flown away.
Willie was hungry after his encounter with the living dead, fancied he might like some pizza, but too tired to walk back down the hill to the Wild Leek, he stuffed his face with week-old cornbread and washed it down with buttermilk, gulping it from the carton. He almost passed on his evening shower, but he was cold. His knees ached. Thinking the hot water might ease him into himself, he proceeded with his nightly ritual, washing the detritus of a mildly frustrating day from his hide, and the clutter of vague discontents and ghostly dialogues from his brain. He pulled the covers up around his chin and, clean and empty as a newborn, let sleep swallow him whole.
Deep in the night, the moon shone down on Willie’s pale face and dark open mouth and he dreamed frightening dreams about runaway trains and murderous strangers and blind justice, but he never stirred. Willie woke in the morning, dry-mouthed, but rested, dreams forgotten, buried in that deep dark among all the secrets he kept hidden from his waking self.
On the way to his office, he stopped by Home Ground, grabbed a sausage-and-egg biscuit with a cup of coffee from Doug, who was too busy to gossip. When Willie finally arrived at Mountain Realty, Betty was already there, and a customer from down the mountain in Pearis Falls was waiting, primed to find out if his dream retreat was still on the market.
Willie put his biscuit in his desk drawer, set his unopened coffee carefully beside it, and smiled at his prospect. “Why certainly, Mister Bonner. We can run up there right now and take a look, if you’d like.” Frank Bonner liked the idea very much.
By late afternoon, Willie arrived back in town with a check in his jacket pocket. He waved as Frank drove away to a city thirty miles east and a thousand feet closer to sea level. Willie still wore his big smile when he came into the office and handed Betty the binder to lock away.
Getting ready to close that evening, Willie watched Betty tallying Bonner’s check into the day’s bank deposit. “Can I buy you dinner to celebrate?” he asked. “It’s our biggest deal so far this year.”
Betty sprinkled her little giggle across her desk. Willie couldn’t decide if she was laughing at him or with him, and when she looked up, decided maybe she was just embarrassed. “I’d love to Mister Graham, but I’m eating at the Smoke House with Brian tonight.”
I could do better than barbecue. Instead, Willie said, “I’ll ask you again at the closing.”
Betty smiled, nodded, went back to her paperwork. Willie wondered what it was like to be Brian. As she tallied the figures, Betty paused suddenly, “Mister Graham, have you been behaving yourself lately?”
“I always behave myself, Betty. Why?”
She giggled nervously, perhaps afraid she’d overstepped some boundary. “Chief Longshadow was in while you were out. Said he wanted to ask you some questions.”
While enamored of Bettys many and obvious charms, she irritated Willie the way she dribbled out information. “What about? Did he say?” straining the impatience out of his voice.
“Just said he wanted to ask some questions about the Miller property. I told him to call you in the morning.”
Willie remembered what his dead mother said to him last night. He’d just taken a binder from Frank Bonner for that same piece of worthless ground.
Twenty
Even on a day too warm for September, the sun set right on schedule. The day-trippers drifted away down the mountain toward home and the moon rose on the sort of late summer night when the stories come out in Drovers Gap and if you aren’t careful, one of them might catch you unawares and swallow you whole.
If Willie Graham believed in ghosts, he didn’t believe in stories. He didn’t do much reading beyond his bank statement and would on no account read fiction. But on this September night, as he clicked off the light and locked the door on Mountain Realty, his departure did not go unnoticed.
He turned and watched his secretary walking away under the street lamp toward her car. Her four-inch heels clicked on the pavement. She didn’t wear them to work, but tonight she had a date with a young man Willie wished was him.
“Don’t stay out too late, Betty,” he called after her. “We have an early day tomorrow.”
“Don’t you worry, Mister Graham. I’ll be here on time,” she answered, without turning around, bending to unlock her little vintage Miata. Willie admired the view. He kept trying to persuade her to call him Willie, but she steadfastly refused. Betty’s Miata came alive and purred away. Betty’s boyfriend, who found the car for her, was an excellent mechanic.
Willie sighed, threw his jacket over his shoulder and began walking along the street. The shadow beneath his mailbox detached itself from the store front and slithered down the street after him. Willie had on rare occasions been afraid of his own shadow, but this one, he never saw coming.
Willie didn’t want to eat by himself, so, Bettyless, he stopped at Wild Leek Pub, was grateful to find his preferred corner table in the back vacant. There he was less likely to be noticed observing and eavesdropping nearby patrons. Eventually the server did notice him, and since he was a faithful tipper, vectored in on his table.
“What are you having tonight, Willie Darlin’?” The words dripped off her tongue sweet and thick, like an invitation to some illicit activity. Willie knew she talked to all her customers like this.
He handed back the menu without opening it. “Shepherds Pie, and a glass of Forester Stout, thank you, Darnella.”
“You always order pie and stout, Willie, and you always come in here by yourself. You need to change your routine, get more sociable.”
“I might be more sociable if I weren’t so hungry,” Willie said through his smile.
“I’ll bring your beer now,” Darnella tossed over her shoulder, already turning to her errand.
Willie watched a woman he didn’t know laugh at something the man at her table was saying. Willie wished he could make Betty laugh like that. He did make her laugh sometimes, but not like that. She always laughed at him, not with him. He wasn’t a clown, just a klutz. He didn’t elicit laughter, he was just the object of it. Nobody in Drover’s Gap took him seriously. He thought that might be why he almost never sold property to anybody local. All his best deals were with people from away, people like Frank Bonner, who took nobody but themselves seriously, and never laughed at anything.
