Ceremonies

'Well, maybe I am, maybe I ain't. All I'm sayin' is, there's holes in those woods, there's underground springs, there's pockets of gas in the swamp… Such things'll make a bit of noise, as I'm sure Brother Rupert remembers.'

Lindt nodded, pleased to be singled out. He was the youngest man there, and the largest; he had a habit of saying disagreeable things, often in a booming voice, but these people had known him since his boyhood and tolerated his ways. Any time they needed help, they knew they could count on his strong shoulders.

'I grew up near the Neck,' he said, 'and I know the sounds the swamp can make. But this time I ain't so sure. I've heard the thunder too, and it ain't the same. I think it's a sign. Just like all the snakes we've had this summer.'

Van Meer paused in his rocking. 'What are you drivin' at?'

Lindt shifted uneasily in his seat. 'All I'm sayin' is, let's look at what we got. We got us a new influence in the community – a snake in our bosom, so to speak – and I think you all know who I'm talkin' about.'

'I follow you, all right,' said Adam Verdock, 'but I think you're makin' a mistake. I met the boy too, that day in the store, and I liked him all right. Seems to me he's got a good name, too; it honors the prophet.'

'Or mocks him,' said Lindt.

'I asked Sarr about him,' said Bethuel Reid. He drew deeply on his pipe. 'Sarr says he just reads books all day.'

There was a round of head-shaking. Idleness was sinful when there was land to be worked.

'Ever see the fellow's hands?' said Lindt. 'Soft as a baby's. Any fool can see he's never done a day's work in his life. Must have a lot of money stuffed in his pockets – like all those city people.'

Reid nodded, glad he had no pockets of his own. 'Yep. That's their trouble.'

Steegler nodded too, and grinned with a sidelong glance at Lindt. 'All I know is, he had some young woman out here the other week. He must be doin' more than just readin'.'

'Well, you know those city folks,' said Lindt. 'They don't believe in marriage anymore.'

Lindt's thoughts had turned more than once to Carol since he'd first seen her. He himself was married and unhappy; he spent little time with his wife and had come alone tonight.

'And when they do get married,' he added, 'they don't stay that way for long. Some day, you mark my words, that city's gonna be smote with fire, like the Cities of the Plain.'

There was a chorus of assent, with several abstentions.

'Well, I spoke to Sarr about it,' said Verdock. 'Tain't as if I didn't try reasonin' with him. I told him -1 said it just ain't proper, takin' a man's money and callin' him a guest. But Sarr, well, when he makes up his mind he's hard to change.'

'That ain't it,' said van Meer. 'Tain't proper to bring someone like that into our little congregation, someone who don't fear the Lord and don't know our ways.'

'Our Rachel was talkin' about that just the other day,' said his wife. 'She says Amos don't want his children exposed to such people.'

'I don't think it makes much sense to worry 'bout such things,' said Lise. 'Not now, anyways. All we can do is say our prayers, trust in the Lord, and keep watchful.'

She waited for the amens, but they were slow in coming.

Minna walked slowly from the kitchen, carrying a broad wooden tray whose hand-painted rose border had almost entirely peeled away. She ducked her head as she passed beneath the low beam of the doorway.

'Here we are, Hannah. This'll get you off to sleep quick enough.'

The old woman was sitting up in bed, her head turned toward the open window in the wall behind her. She didn't look around when Minna entered, and turned only when she felt the tray placed upon her lap, to stare fretfully at the bowl of oatmeal and the cup of steaming milk.

A cool breeze blew through the window, bearing the smell of damp earth and summer leaves and almost masking the odor of sickness and decay that hung about the room. Insects wandered up and down the screen. Minna heard the night sounds of the forest, the sound of things calling to each other, the chant of the crickets and frogs.

Scowling, the old woman tried a mouthful of the oatmeal and took a sip of the warm milk. Suddenly she slammed the mug down and shook her head.

'No,' she said, waving away the food, 'I can't get to sleep! If it ain't one thing, 'tis another. First there's the thunder, it made my head ache – and now this! Tis too damned quiet.'

Minna smiled stiffly. 'Quiet? With all that commotion out there? You just listen to those crickets for a spell and have yourself some o' that milk – there's honey in it – and you'll be sleepin' like a baby in no time.'

'Hmph,' grumbled the woman. 'More like the dead!'

She took a few more swallows of milk, then set the cup back down and turned around on the bed to stare once more out the window.

'Watch out that don't fall now,' called Minna, pointing to the tray balanced precariously on the old woman's lap. Ducking through the doorway, she went into the kitchen.

There were plates to wash. The little house had no running water, and Minna took the bucket that hung by the washstand and walked outside, down the front path to the pump. She gave the pump handle a few vigorous strokes, her arm strong as a man's. Above her a shooting star streaked across the sky.

From the house came the crash of falling crockery. I knew it, Minna thought, cursing herself as she hurried toward the bedroom.

Fragments of the shattered bowl gleamed amid a pool of oatmeal. The cup lay overturned on the rug. Minna noticed these things before she saw the woman twisted half off the bed – her mouth stretched wide, eyes bulging, hands clutched stiffly to her throat. From the gaping mouth came the last spasmodic moments of her death rattle.

Minna was a strong girl and had seen death at close hand before. She did not scream. She jerked the woman by the shoulders, shook her, slapped the dead white face, listened for a heartbeat. There was none.

'Dear Lord,' she whispered, 'take the soul of Sister Hannah to Thine everlastin' mercy. Amen.'

Methodically she laid the body straight upon the bed, pulled the blankets up over the face, and bent to clean up the shards of crockery, the spilled oatmeal and milk. Only then did she scream -when, lifting the overturned cup, she saw what had lain curled beneath it: the tiny white shape, thin as the finger of a child, coiling and uncoiling on the rug.

Three A.M. The building is asleep. Outside, in the darkness, a chilly rain drums against the pavement. A streetlamp on the corner makes oily reflections in a puddle. Lampposts in the distance are obscured by mist.

The lobby is deserted, the light dim. Barefoot, dressed in baggy shirt and pants and clutching his little bag of tools, he tiptoes down the stairway to the basement. The corridor winds before him like a maze, its turnings illuminated by bulbs in metal cages, its ceiling just a foot above his head, as if pressed down by the weight of the building. From somewhere comes the hum of huge machines.

His teeth are out; his mouth hangs slack. The concrete floor is cold beneath his feet. He hurries past the steel-grey doors of the laundry room, the storeroom, the room where the superintendent keeps his mops and pails. Here it is at last, a battered metal door marked No Admittance. Impatiently he slips a strand of wire into the lock and gives it a twist. The door swings open.

The room is dark; from the darkness comes the hum of a machine, louder than before. Reaching inside, he switches on the light. Beneath him, down a flight of iron steps, stands the furnace.

It is huge. It fills the room like a monstrous metal tree, a vast tangle of pipes arching from its central core and spreading like branches across the ceiling.

Shutting the door behind him, he rushes down the steps and crouches like a supplicant before it, emptying his tool bag on the floor. A screwdriver tumbles out, then a wrench, then a pair of thick asbestos gloves.

It takes him but a minute to remove the boiler plate midway up the side. Within, the gas burns a bright and steady blue, and the roaring it makes is like a waterfall. The flame is not high now – in summertime the furnace only heats the building's water – but its force is still intense; as he lays aside the metal plate, his face is scorched by blasts of burning air. In the firelight, the black streaks on his skin look like a sunburst.

Stepping back to where the heat is less intense, he takes a stub of blue chalk from his pocket and hurriedly scrawls the circles on the floor, and then the circles within circles. The design is crude, simple, totally unlike a cabalistic star of tetragrammaton. It has eyes, a tongue, and claws. It resembles, in fact, a kind of beast: