The Hallowed Ones

My breath disturbed a string of silk that trailed from the shadowed ceiling. It moved as intangibly as smoke. I was reminded of when I was a young girl and had disturbed a nest of corn spiders in the barn. The creatures had crawled everywhere, in my hair, my bonnet, down the neck of my dress . . .

Something up there moved, shifted. And glowing red eyes stared at me.

I saw the figure scuttle across the ceiling in a spider-like fashion, but it was human . . .

“Oh God!” I swore, jerking on the handle to the door. I rattled it, working my hands around the door, trying to find an emergency release I knew had to be there.

The creature on the ceiling approached as silently as those barn spiders, reached toward me.

My shaking hands found a cracked plastic button to the right of the door. I pulled at it, turned it, whimpering, finally slapped it hard . . .

And the door sprang open. I lurched through the doorway, running behind the bar.

I knew that thing was behind me. I ran past the line of washing machines, turned back to see it pawing along the ceiling. I didn’t watch where I was going, stumbled over a box of laundry soap. The powdered soap spewed all over the floor, and I slammed against the wall of dryers.

The glass door of one of the dryers sprang open from the impact, and I found myself face to face with the contents of the machine. At first, I assumed that they were merely clothes, but . . . that smell . . . it was the same as in the cooler.

I could see pale, broken limbs turned in on themselves, a claw of a hand tangled in a sleeve. It was a crumpled, stinking body.

I whirled, only to find the creature from the cooler walking down the wall of dryers, hands behind knees, then dropping upright, on his feet. He was pale and filthy, and he smelled like blood. But what was most unnatural was the way his eyes glowed, like a cat’s in the darkness. Behind him, I could see other shapes gathering on the ceiling.

I didn’t bother to ask him what he wanted. I knew.

He wanted to kill me. Like he and the others had killed the man in the cooler and the man in the washing machine. It didn’t matter why. There was no reasoning. This was the visceral fear of prey in the face of the predator, bitter like bile in my throat. But I was determined to run.

Chapter Nine

I sprinted for the door, breath burning in my throat. I felt the creature snatch the tails of my apron, drag me back from the door. I shrieked and flailed, my feet skidding on the sticky floor.

I heard stitches pop and give way, the sash of my apron shredding in the predator’s grip. I lunged for the door.

I heard a snarl behind me. I knew that I had no hope, that even if I reached to door, he had me. But I was determined to try, to reach that golden threshold of sunshine before I was mauled to death, before my head was torn from my shoulders like that poor man in the cooler or my broken body was stuffed in the dryer like canned meat.

I straight-armed through the door, landed on my elbows on the pavement as I felt a hand latch around my ankle. I tasted blood in my mouth where I’d bitten my lip, twisted and turned to stare my fate in the face.

And the creature hissed. Abruptly, he released my ankle, his hand smoking in the sunshine.

I scrambled to my feet and ran toward my bike. I could see the shadows seething in the Laundromat, the glowing eyes behind the dark glass, mirroring the light of the seductive Coke machine. Somehow, they were trapped, pinned there by the daylight, I realized.

I struggled onto my bike, pumping the pedals as hard as I could down the street into the shining afternoon.

I could not stop shaking on my ride home. I quaked so hard that it was difficult to keep the bike from trembling under the uneven weight of the dog food and supplies in my basket. I pedaled so hard that it felt like my lungs were going to burst, swerving on the dark ribbon of road away from even the shadows of trees. I was afraid of what may lay in that soft darkness.

I am being punished for my sins. That was my first thought. Clearly, the gates of hell had burst open. Those creatures in the Suds ’n’ Duds were not human. They radiated evil—evil like I had never known or could even have imagined before. When there had been news of a contagion, I had doubted the reality of a medical evil. What I had seen was clearly not the work of medicine. This reeked of spiritual evil, something beyond what could be fathomed by any technology belonging to man.

I licked blood from my lower lip. I knew. I knew what had happened to Seth and Joseph. And the rider on the white horse. They had fallen prey to these monsters. Tears blurred my vision. I longed to tell Elijah, but I didn’t know that I would ever be able to form the words. There would be no kind, gentle way of telling him that his brothers had been torn limb from limb.

I wrestled with whom to tell, what to say. Any tale I could tell began and ended with sins I’d committed and the discovery of the man in the barn. Given the ruthlessness with which the Elders had chosen to leave him Outside, I knew that telling would result in certain death for him.

And perhaps also for me. They might not kill me outright, but if the Elders still believed in a contagion, they would probably throw me outside the gate, to be fed to those monsters. I shuddered. My sense of self- preservation eclipsed my desire to protect my community. I would not sacrifice myself that way, I decided. It was not God’s will that I died. He had allowed me to escape, despite my sins. He had a plan for me and would not allow me to die, I reasoned. Not yet.

I pedaled back to the road where the gate stood. It seemed such a flimsy barrier against those shadow creatures. I heaved my bike over it, mindful not to damage the precious contents of the basket.

I paused here, at the border of our world and Outside. I stared down at my dress, sticky with splotches of the dead man’s blood. I knelt down to the ground, smeared some mud over the stains. I gathered some stalks of yellow mustard at the side of the road, tucked them over my basket to hide the contents and walked my bike home.

At the kennel, I was greeted by Copper and Sunny, who sniffed me vigorously. Copper flattened his ears and whined.

I reached down to rub him. “It’s okay, boy. I’m okay. I’m okay.” It seemed that the more I said it, the more it had to be true.

Sunny licked my filthy cheek, and I broke down. The bit of sympathy that the dogs showed me was enough to cause me to sit on the ground and sob. The terror and adrenaline drained out of me in my tears, shaking through me.

After I reached hiccupping, dry sobs, I scrubbed my sleeve across my face. I forced myself to stand and walk my bike into the barn.

The darkness made my skin crawl, but I reminded myself that I was safe here. I was no longer Outside. I unpacked the contents of the basket. The dogs investigated the bag of dog food, noses quivering. I lifted it and the cans up high on a rack, where they couldn’t reach.

“That’s for later,” I told them.

I gathered the antibiotics and headed back to the last paddock.

The young man—Alex—lay sleeping peacefully on the straw. I tore open a carton of the antibiotics, read the instructions twice. I removed three pills from the package, added a couple of ibuprofen. I propped his head up on my knee and forced the pills into his mouth. He gurgled and sputtered when I poured water past his lips.

“Antibiotics,” I said, curtly. “Take them.”

He did as he was told, swallowing the pills. His glazed eyes followed me as I sat back against the wall of the barn, a shaft of sunshine warming my back.

“There are enough for you to take for the next three weeks. Don’t lose any. There aren’t any more.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. His eyelids began to drift shut.

“No.” I shook him, hard. Anger burned brightly in my voice. I wanted answers. My Amish reticence faded in the darkness of what I’d seen, the urgency of needing to know: “Wake up. You need to tell me what happened