Preston pushed forward with renewed determination, frantically scouring the ground in front of him, looking for signs of a recent footfall.
We cannot let any escape. This place must be purged.
The noises of movement from either side diminished as the men around him began to fan out, making their own way through the thickening woods. He turned to look over his shoulder and saw the familiar faces of two men following too closely in his wake.
‘Pieter, Jacob… you must spread out some more. We must-’ Turning forward again, the light from his lamp suddenly picked out a trail of kicked-up snow crossing directly in front of him. ‘Look! There! More tracks.’
Several people by the looks of it, running together.
A drift of snow was disturbed and flattened to one side of the tracks.
Someone weakened and fell, perhaps stumbled.
‘We have them!’ He smiled.
The three of them veered to their right, following the recently made tracks, taking them up the gradually increasing gradient. Their breathing grew more laboured as they pushed onwards, and after a while the noises of the other men out combing through the trees were all but lost, except for the occasional distant voice calling out a find, calling to each other.
The tracks suddenly separated.
Preston stopped and studied them. ‘Four of them, I would say. Three went this way, and one has gone to the right.’
Pieter Brumbaugh squatted down and pushed a lock of long, dark hair from his square face. ‘Look! Can you see, one of the three is hurt — do you see it?’ he said, pointing to a train of ink-black stains in the snow. He dipped a gloved finger in one and held it close to the lamp. He looked up at them, invigorated by the chase, his eyes wide.
‘It’s blood all right.’
‘Then you and Jacob hunt them down,’ Preston said. ‘And mark my words, there’s trickery in them. Don’t let them talk. Be quick when you find them. Kill them immediately. They’ll try to trick you, get inside your head and turn you on each other. Do you understand?’
Both men nodded, breathing hard with exhaustion, fear and excitement.
‘God will be with you both. Now go!’
Both men set off, following the larger set of tracks. Preston turned right, to follow the one heading off on its own.
He watched Preston, hunched forward, his oil lamp held aloft in one hand, lighting the way ahead. The man moved with the clumsiness of one unused to tracking through woods, unable to find firm footing on the bumps and troughs beneath the deep snow.
He lacked agility; he lacked grace.
There is no beauty in him. He is as ugly on the outside as he is within.
My promise to you. He is yours.
Thank you.
He moved with effortless speed up behind the man, following delicately in his wake, stepping only on the compressed footsteps in the snow, no crunch… no noise at all… and now only a dozen yards from him.
If you turned around, you would see me, Preston. You might even have one chance to fire your gun at me if you were quick enough.
He smiled. This was fun. He had been following the outsiders like this, only a few minutes ago; the Indian, the tall southern man and his dying Negro girl, listening to their ragged breathing, the terror in their muted whispers. To be so close as to smell the odour of fear that trailed behind them and yet remain unseen was such good sport — he had to struggle not to laugh out loud with the excitement of the chase.
He’d been close enough to kill them.
But the angel was wise. The angel told him to use them as bait.
The tracks suddenly ceased.
Preston stopped dead. Confused, he knelt down, moving the lamp closer to the ruffled folds of snow. The hurried, carelessly placed footsteps of one fleeing alone simply ended.
‘What?’ he muttered.
To his right he noticed the thick, gnarled trunk of a cedar tree. He looked up at the bare branches above him, each coated with undisturbed snow, like icing on a layer cake. Except one bough directly above him. The snow had been brushed off this branch, where two hands must have grasped it.
Tricky devil.
The angel, Nephi, had often warned him of that… the trickery of evil, the games of deception that Satan and his advocates played for their amusement. He stood up, craned his neck to look up into the dark branches above him, raising his lamp as high as he could to project the dim amber light further.
‘I know you’re up there!’ he called out.
Only one of the smaller imps, one of the ones daring to masquerade as a child, would have had the agility to pull itself effortlessly up into the tree like that, like a monkey.
‘Child!’ He used the word, though the taste of it curdled in his mouth. ‘Come down this instant!’
The tree’s limbs swayed with the clicking of twigs on each other in the gentle breeze.
‘Child,’ he called out again, softening the cadence of his voice this time. ‘Come down and I will help you eject the wickedness that has crawled inside you.’
Preston knew the Lord would forgive him that small lie; there was no cure for these creatures. But he was a man of compassion and love — he would make its death a mercifully swift one.
How can a man be so blind, so unaware of the space around him?
He stood behind Preston, now no more than an arm’s reach away, swaying silently and struggling to keep from laughing aloud. He couldn’t wait for the stupid, arrogant idiot to turn round and see him.
You are so blind, Preston.
The tall man in front of him, calling up a tree like a fool, was going to die in just a few moments. But before he died he wanted Preston to know who it was that was going to kill him… as he’d managed to do with Eric Vander. Saul Hearst’s killing had been unprepared; it had happened in the blink of an eye, amidst a red rage that had clouded the moment. He would have liked to have taken his time with Saul, to let the dirty old man understand what fear truly was, for him to comprehend what a despicable creature he was… but most of all, to have him know for certain before he died that he would burn in the pits of hell for eternity.
He’d had that exquisite pleasure with Eric.
And now it was Preston’s turn.
A gentle breeze tickled his bare skin as he rose up from his hunched posture, now standing straight, the soft clink of bones unheard. He whispered.
William…
Preston spun round at the sound of the gentle hiss of his name.
‘Oh my!’ His voice froze in his throat instantly. The head-rush of fear and awe, terror and elation left him momentarily rigid and silent, his pursuit of the child-imp in the tree completely dismissed from his mind.
Preston… the apparition before him hissed again quietly.
He dropped to his knees, and looked up in stunned, silent awe at the tall skeletal form standing over him. Love, joy and elation forced a choked sob from his throat.
‘Nephi, is it you? You… you’ve come to me at last!’ His voice quivered with gratitude. Tears rolled from the corner of his deep eyes, down hollow cheeks into the dark thatch of bristles beneath his jaw.
‘Oh thank the Lord! I thought I had disappointed Him, disappointed you somehow… that you’d sought someone else for this work.’
The angel remained still. Preston’s eyes wandered up the pale form, over the spines and bones that protruded from it, up to the long, horned skull and two dark eye sockets through which he thought he saw the reflected glint of his flickering oil lamp.
‘It’s done! We… we have cleansed this place as you asked.. cleansed it of devilish parasites; they’ve all gone.’ His voice trembled with excitement. ‘Pure enough that y-you’ve come back to us.’
The angel raised a long bony finger up to a jagged row of teeth. Shhhhh.
