Part 3 (1/2)

Above my father's church there was a place he used to go. It was a small stone cottage, so old that no one remembers who built it-what kind of people they were, or even if we descended from them. It was just there, had always been there. The church was the same. We kept it up, put in a stone walkway and built some trellises around the graveyard behind it, but none of us knew how long it stood there-not even my father. I asked him, but he only knew the history back as far as it had been recorded in writing.

”That was more than 150 years, and he believed from the words recorded in those early times that the church was old when they were written. We will probably never know, and I don't think it's important. The last time I saw that church was his funeral.”

”Tell me,” Kat said. She'd caught the hesitation in his voice, and he bit back the sharp reply that threatened. He didn't want to tell her. He didn't want to think about that place, or that day.

”It was a very long time ago,” he began slowly, ”but I remember it as if it happened yesterday.”

Abraham had not thought of that old church, or of his father, in longer than he'd been willing to admit to himself, let alone to another. His father's funeral was a memory of darkness and mourning. He remembered sitting between his mother and his Uncle Keith on the bench in the church. They'd brought in the preacher from Friendly, California, Reverend Forbes; a skinny, stick of a man with wavy hair and wild eyes. He'd glared at them from the front of the church as if they'd all been caught masturbating in a closet, not like a man of G.o.d who was troubled over the loss of a fallen comrade. Abraham had spent every Sunday of his life in that small stone church, and the sensations Reverend Forbes brought with him had felt as alien and impossible as the loss of his father.

That preacher stared them into silence and began to speak. He began while they were still coming in the doors. He had his Bible in his hand, like he was afraid that if he let it touch the old stone pulpit of Abraham's father's church, it would be contaminated. He shook it at them. He fanned the air with it, and he gripped it white-knuckle tight in the dying light of the later afternoon sun, but he did not let it touch the stone. He did not touch the stone. If he could have floated above the floor, Abraham was sure he would have done so.

Reverend Forbes did not talk about Jonathan Carlson at all. He railed against sinners everywhere, the tone of his voice showing clearly that he felt that everything beyond his own church in Friendly became steadily more evil, and that Satan's blood dripped down the sides of the mountain, infecting all of those below with his darkness.

There were reasons for his words, of course. Some of the meaning had been clear to Abraham, even then. The stone chapel was not the only church close by, and though there was no one preaching at that other, there was no longer anyone preaching at this one either. No one that belonged.

Both houses of wors.h.i.+p lay empty, waiting for G.o.d, or someone, to fill the pulpits and draw the people. Between those times they would live beyond the sight of G.o.d, unless of course they wanted to find their way further up the mountain to Friendly every Sunday. Reverend Forbes mentioned that too. He'd been very concerned for their souls.

It was obvious early in the ceremony that he had not known Reverend Jonathan Carlson, and equally obvious he did not count this as a spiritual loss. He intimated that G.o.d had begun to cleanse the mountain. He spoke of shadows hovering beyond the sight of civilized men, waiting to sweep in and blot out the light of the Lord's love. He talked for what seemed hours, though in retrospect, Abraham knew his mother and the others gathered would not have stood for that, even if he did frighten them. It had probably lasted no more than an hour.

The words had poured around Abraham in a meaningless jumble. He'd sat huddled up against his mother, who sat numb and motionless, staring through the preacher and the back wall of the church as if gazing into the pits of h.e.l.l. Abraham was used to his mother being close and far away at the same time. He was used to her mumbling words he couldn't understand, or starting from her seat and crying out when nothing had happened. He was used to the stares of his neighbors, and the quiet disapproval of his family.

Jonathan Carlson had been loved and respected, but Sarah Carlson had never been welcome on the mountain. She was not one of them; her beliefs were not their beliefs. More than once Abraham had heard it whispered that she belonged more with that other church-that other preacher. The one who'd led the congregation at the white church. They said she dragged Jonathan Carlson into the shadows, and now, with his body not even in its grave, their enmity bubbled to the surface.

When the spew of fire and brimstone finally burned itself out, they trickled outside. Reverend Forbes, looking exceedingly uncomfortable in the bright suns.h.i.+ne, hovered in the back corner of the small graveyard. They had brought Jonathan Carlson's body around slowly, his box built of the same rough-hewn wood they used in the church-taken from the mountain, and returned to it-as was their way.

Reverend Forbes said nothing, but his mood darkened. His brow knotted with furrows of disdain and his lip quivered with the desire to scream at them all. Abraham saw it in the man's eyes, and the shaking palsied grip he kept on his Bible, which he brought no closer to the vines or flowers of the graveyard than he had to the stone of the church itself. Something in the moment kept him quiet. Maybe it was the grim, solemn faces of the men who carried the casket. Maybe it was the dark, shawled and hooded silence of the women, or the whisper of the wind mocking them from the tree branches and filling in words where all of them disdained speech.

Reverend Forbes didn't belong. He knew it, they knew it, and whoever's idea it had been to invite him into their church, and their lives, regretted it. He couldn't wait to remove himself from the graveyard. He was ready to rush back to his own congregation with tales of the barbarians in the hills, the ancient evils that permeated their stone church, and the pa.s.sing into darkness of all that was not born of his own mind.

Abraham had heard stories when he'd grown older. They were a different sort up in Friendly, California. They had ceremonies and beliefs that were born of different blood. Not younger or less deeply rooted, but very different. There were very few on the mountain with contact or kin in Friendly. Many of their number had filtered down toward San Valencez, or further over the mountains into Nevada, or Arizona, but in those hills and mountains the roads separating one folk from another might as well have been on different planets.

They laid his father in the grave gently, lowering him one slow inch at a time by ropes knotted firmly into eyelets at each corner of the crude coffin. As they worked, they sang in very low tones, more a rumble of sound than a hymn. If they fell silent, there were echoes of their voices in the deep thunder of falling stones, or the soft brush of wind through trees. They sang in the tongue of the mountain, and it was over this that Reverend Forbes spoke the final words Abraham remembered.

”Ashes to ashes, dust...”

That p.r.o.nouncement had been all Abraham could stand. Without a word he'd bolted from the graveyard, smas.h.i.+ng one knee on the iron gate in pa.s.sing. He cried out, and for a moment the Reverend Forbes had been silenced.

Abraham hadn't seen what came next, but he knew the ritual. He knew the exquisitely slow process of returning the dead to the earth. He knew the words that would be spoken, both those that Reverend Forbes would use, and those that the family would speak. He knew what would be sprinkled into the dirt, and what would be buried with the dead.

None of it made it any more real. He had seen the box, but he could not equate it with his father. He heard the words and the moaning, keening song echo in his mind, but none of it was familiar. None of it rang true. None of it would make the slightest difference in the long run, because it could not bring back his father.

Abe grew silent as the memory faded. There was more, but he couldn't force the memories into words that would make sense. Somehow, while he spoke, Kat had found a way to slip up under his arm and lay her head on his shoulder. She'd listened quietly, not interrupting, or even moving, as far as he remembered.

”What happened to the church?” she asked after a long, shared silence. ”I mean, when your father died, who took over?”

”No one, as far as I know,” Abe shrugged. ”There were a few elders, but none of them was an educated man, and they all had families and responsibilities. Somehow, when one keeper pa.s.sed on, there had always been another ready to take over. It wasn't a ministry in the same sense as you'd find here.”

He drifted off again, just for a second. In his mind he saw the old church as he'd last seen it. He saw the stems of dried, forgotten flowers, and he knew that his mother had been there often, to the church, and to his father's grave. No one else went there. They all remembered-there was no way they could forget-but after Jonathan Carlson's death, and the flight of his son into the world beyond the mountain, they had hardened their minds and their hearts.

Some went up to Reverend Forbes's church, as he'd told them was proper. Others found their moments of wors.h.i.+p on their own, gathered in barns and parlors, or even took the long drive down to the Catholic Ma.s.s at San Marcos by the Sea, though the journey meant being up hours before the break of dawn and being half way down the mountain. The old ways were not the ways of Reverend Forbes or of the churches in the valley and on the coast, and they would not die easily. Still, without the central focus and leaders.h.i.+p Abe's father had provided, it was difficult to imagine how things could have been preserved as they were before.

At first Abraham and his mother cleaned the stone church. She had gone twice a day, dusting and sweeping, and he had weeded the path, patched leaks, and kept the grounds clear. All but the graveyard. Abraham hadn't set foot in there since the funeral, and this lent a further solemnity to the memory.

He had never had a proper moment to pay respect to the man who'd helped to give him life, and who had taught him so much about what he could do with his hands, and his mind. Nothing on Earth could have pried Jonathan Carlson off his mountain, but he'd known of other places, and other times, and he'd shared that knowledge with his son.

”I wouldn't be here now,” he concluded, ”if he hadn't given me the dreams, and for that I thanked him by running away, abandoning my mother, and never even visiting his grave.”

There was a sudden bitter edge to his voice that he fought to soften, and failed. The dreams and reminiscing had opened floodgates of emotion he'd worked years to sh.o.r.e up, and he had no defense against it.

”But,” Katrina's voice cut the deepening silence, ”what does it all have to do with what's happening now? I mean, why the letter? Who is 'back?' Who was that on the phone, and these dreams...?”

Abraham hugged her and leaned his head sideways to rest on hers.

”I wish I knew,” he said at last.

”Will you go back?” she asked softly. ”At least to see your mother?”

”I don't know,” he replied. ”I want to see her. I'd even like to see the mountain, and maybe visit my father's grave, but I don't want to be sucked back into that place-or that life.”

”You still didn't say who 'he' is,” she chided, poking him in the ribs. ”The note said 'he's back,' and I know it can't mean your father. There are still things you aren't telling me.”

Abe nodded slowly. ”I'll tell you-probably soon, now that it's all coming out in the open, but not tonight. It's a long story. In fact, if the 'he' of the note is who I sense that it is it isn't any more possible than if it were my father she spoke of. That man is dead, as well-though maybe a part of him lingers on. Some things should never be left unfinished.”

”What did you leave unfinished?” she asked, her voice taking on a note of exasperation. ”Abe what are you talking about?”

”I'm sorry,” he replied, and hugged her tightly. ”I'm thinking and talking at the same time. I didn't leave anything unfinished. My father did. He didn't finish 'The Cleansing'.”

Kat started to poke him again and ask him to explain, but at that moment, the phone rang.

SEVEN.

Sarah climbed slowly up the ancient path. It had been several years since she'd made the climb, and it was obvious from the condition of the path that no others had been up it recently. The undergrowth to either side had encroached so that, had she waited another season, it might have been difficult to find where the trail had run.

There had been a time when Sarah had climbed to the old stone church daily, sometimes more often than that, if something needed fetching. Now the ache in her back and the scratches of the weeds and brambles lining the path made her wonder if she could accomplish it even once. She leaned on an oak staff she kept for such journeys, and she depended on it for support more than she would have liked. She was painfully aware of the solitude of the path, and the dangers of the forest. Not that she feared wild animals, or the men of the mountain. She had lived with those perils since the day Jonathan brought her home. It was that other. She felt him in every step. He seeped up through the dirt and gra.s.s beneath her feet, wrapped around her ankles in the caress of long gra.s.s and vibrated in the breath of the wind. She still didn't know for certain who it was this time. The sh.e.l.l did not matter as much as the essence, and that she recognized well enough. The day was hot. Wherever the sun had regular access to the earth, it had dried to dust. The surfaces of rocks gave off a hazy, surreal wave that warped her vision of what lay beyond them. Sweat rolled down her forehead, matted the graying ends of her hair, and plastered the cotton of her dress to her back. She gripped the walking stick tightly and plowed ahead. She wanted to make it to the church before noon so there would be plenty of time to get back down the mountain before sunset.

There were ways to protect yourself, but they were less effective with the sun down behind the horizon and shadows dancing around your feet. All the rules changed when you were in the enemy's front yard. That's what the forest had become. Every branch, every twig of it would bend to his will if he called to them, and though she had a much more powerful support to lean on, there was no sense in being foolish.

Jonathan had been foolish. Jonathan had trusted too much in the inherent good nature of a race that was not known for its inherent good nature. Sarah had told him again and again that he could not expect others to react to life in the same manner that he himself reacted. In all the years of her life she had never met another man like him-though Abraham had shown promise of becoming something very similar.

Jonathan's faith had been his strength, but in the end it had proved his weakness as well. It was wise, Sarah knew, to be careful whom and what one placed their faith in-whether it was church, friends, or kin.

The trail seemed longer and steeper than she remembered. Still, despite the heat and the extra exertion, it wasn't long before she came in sight of the old church. It wasn't like that other, with its gleaming white walls and peaked roof. Jonathan's church was low-slung and built by hand.

It had no high walls, or baptismal pool. There were no fine oak pews; the stone benches were cold and uncomfortable from early fall through the spring, despite the fireplaces centering the walls on either side. Rough-hewn wood framed the windows and the door. Most of the gla.s.s was still intact. The door hung open, but the hinges, though rusty, still held its weight, and it swung easily.