SATAN! 'I don't want to go to Hell!' he moaned suddenly, and tried to fight free of the constricting blanket. 'I don't want Satan to get me!'
Rebekah quickly gripped his shoulders and said, 'Shhhhhh. It's all right now, you're safe right here.' She let him lean his head on her shoulder and rocked him gently while Ramona added wet leaves to the fire. After another moment he calmed down, though he was still shaking. The heat was stifling now, but most of the smoke had risen to the ceiling where it undulated in thick gray layers. 'Maybe Hell's just something a man made up,' she said softly, 'to make some other man afraid. I think that if Hell exists, it must be right here on this earth . . . just like Heaven can be, too. No, I think death's apart from all that; it's another step in who and what we are. We leave the clay behind and our spirits take flight.' She tilted his face up and looked into his eyes. 'That's not saying, though, that there isn't such a thing as evil. ...'
Billy blinked. His grandmother was a shadowy form, surrounded by a halo of reddish white light. He felt weary and struggled to keep his eyes open. 'I'll . . . fight it,' he mumbled. 'I'll hit it . . . and kick it, and ...'
'I wish it was as simple as that,' Rebekah said. 'But it's cunning and takes all kinds of shapes. It can even make itself beautiful. Sometimes you don't see it for what it is until it's too late, and then it scars your spirit and gets a hold on you. The world itself can be an evil place, and make people sick to their guts with greed and hate and envy; but evil's a greedy hog that walks on its own legs, too, and tries to crush out any spark of good it can find.'
As if in a dream, Billy lifted the pipe and drew from it again. The smoke tasted as smooth as a licorice stick. He was listening very carefully to his grandmother, and watching the undulating smoke at the ceiling.
The old woman brushed a sweat-damp curl from his forehead. 'Are you afraid?' she asked gently.
'No,' he replied. 'But I'm . . . kinda sleepy.'
'Good. I want you to rest now, if you can.' She took the pipe from him and knocked the ashes into the fire.
'Can't,' he said. 'Not yet.' And then his eyes closed and he was drifting in the dark, listening to the fire's soft crackling; the dark wasn't frightening, but instead was warm and secure.
Rebekah eased him to the ground, tucking the blanket in around him so he'd continue sweating. Ramona added more leaves to the fire and then they left the smokehouse.
19
Billy came awake with sudden start. He was alone. The fire had burned down to red embers; the heat was still fierce, and thick smoke had settled in a calm, still cloud at the ceiling. His heart was beating very fast, and he struggled to get free of the blanket. The grinning ceramic skull glinted with low red light.
And suddenly something began to happen in the fire. Flames snapped and hissed. As Billy stared, transfixed, a long fiery coil slowly rose from the embers. It rattled, sending off tiny red sparks.
A burning, spade-shaped head with eyes of sizzling cinders rose up. Red coils tangled and writhed, pushing the fiery length of flaming rattlesnake out of the fire and toward Billy. Its eyes fixed upon him, and when its jaws opened drops of burning venom, like shining rubies, drooled out. The snake slithered closer, with a noise like paper charring, across the clay floor, Billy tried to pull away, but he was tangled up in the blanket. He couldn't find his voice. The flame-rattler touched his blanket; the cloth sparked and burned. It reared back, its body a seething red, to strike.
Billy started to kick at it, but before he could, something gray and almost transparent swooped down from the cloud of smoke at the ceiling.
It was a large, fierce-looking eagle, its body and wings wraithlike, flurrying smoke. With a high, angered shriek that echoed within Billy's head, the smoke-eagle dropped through the air toward the flame-rattler, which reared back and spat sparks from between its burning fangs. The eagle swerved and dived again, its smoky claws gripping at the back of the snake's head. The two enemies fought for a few seconds, the eagle's wings beating at the air. Then the fire-snake's tail whipped up, striking into the eagle, and the eagle spun away.
Balancing on tattered wings, the smoke-eagle dropped down again, its claws clamping just behind the snake's head; the flame-rattler buried its burning jaws within the eagle's breast, and Billy could see its dripping fangs at work. But then the eagle slashed downward, and parts of the rattler's body hissed through the air in fragments of fire. Coils of flame wrapped around the eagle's form, and both of them whirled in a mad circle for a few seconds like a burning gray cloth. The eagle's wings drove them both upward, up into the cloud of smoke, and then they were gone except for a few droplets of flame that fell back into the embers.
Sweat blinded Billy, and he frantically rubbed his eyes to clear them, expecting the strange combatants to come hurtling back. 'It's sin, Billy,' a quiet voice said from just behind the boy. Startled, Billy looked around. His father, gaunt and sad-eyed, sat there on the clay floor in overalls and a faded workshirt. 'Daddy!' Billy said, astounded. 'What're you doing here?'
The man shook his head gravely. 'This is all sin. Every last bit of it.'
'No, it's not! Gram said ...'
John leaned forward, his blue eyes blazing with reflected firelight. 'It is rotten, filthy, black evil. That woman is trying to mark your soul, son, so you'll belong to Satan for the rest of your life.'
'But she says there are things I have to learn! That I've got a purpose in me, to . . .'
Billy almost reached out for him. His father's eyes were bright and pleading, and he could tell how much his father was hurting for him. Still . . . something wasn't right. He said, 'How . . . how did you get here? We came in the car, so . . . how did you get here?'
'I came on the bus as fast as I could, to save you from Satan's pitchfork. And he'll stick you, Billy; oh yes, he'll stick you hard and make you scream if you stay in this dark place. . . .'
'No. You're wrong. Gram said . . .'
'I don't care what she said!' the man told him. 'Take my hand.'
Billy stared at the fingers. The fingernails were black. 'You're not . . . my daddy,' he whispered, recoiling in terror. 'You're
And suddenly the man's face began to melt like a wax candle, as Billy saw him clearly for what he was. The nose loosened and oozed down on thick strands of flesh; beneath it was a black, hideous snout. A cheek slid down to the point of the chin like a raw egg, then fell away. The lower jaw collapsed, exposing a thin mouth with two curved yellow tusks. One blue eye rolled out of the head like a marble, and underneath it was a small, terrible red orb that might have belonged to a savage boar. As the face crumbled, that red eye was unblinking. 'Boy,' the thing whispered in a voice like fingernails drawn down a blackboard, 'get out of here! Run! Run and hide, you little peckerhead!'
Billy almost lurched to his feet in panic. The awful face—the same face he'd seen on the road—loomed closer, red in the flickering light. It thundered, 'RUN!' But as before, Billy was frozen with fear.
The thing paused, and then roared with laughter that hurt Billy's head. The second blue eye rolled out of its face, and the two red orbs glittered. Billy almost leaped up and ran—but then the image of the majestic eagle surfaced in his mind, and he steeled himself. He looked the beast in the face, determined not to show he was afraid. The thing's laughter faded. 'All right,' it whispered, and seemed to draw away from him. 'I have better things to do. Finish this travesty. Learn all you can, and learn it well. But don't turn your back on me, boy.' The shape began to melt down into a black, oily puddle on the floor The misshapen mouth said, 'I'll be waiting for you,' and then the figure was gone. The shimmering puddle caught blue fire, and in an instant it too had vanished.
Something touched his shoulder, and he spun away with a husky groan of fear.
'Lord God, boy,' Rebekah said, her eyes narrowed. 'What's got into you?' She eased herself down before the fire again, as Ramona added wood and leaves to the embers. 'You're shakin' like a cold leaf! We've just been gone for five minutes!' She stared at him for moment, and tensed.
'Nothin'. Nothin' happened. I didn't see a thing!'
Rebekah glanced quickly at her daughter, then back to the boy. 'All right,' she said. 'You can tell me when you like.' She helped him to the edge of the fire again, and he stared sightlessly into it as she began to knead his neck and shoulders with her strong brown hands. 'Havin' this gift—this talent, I guess you could call it—isn't an easy thing. No kind of real responsibility is ever easy. But sometimes responsibility blocks you off from other people; they can't see into your head, they can't understand your purpose, and they mock you for doin' what you think is right. Some people will be afraid of you, and some may hate you .'
