She turns and I follow.
The woman pulls farther and farther ahead. I feel alarm and try to catch up, but my body does not respond. My legs are weighted and I cannot hurry. I see her disappear through the door. I call out, but there is no sound.
Then I am inside the church and everything is dim. The walls are stone, the floor dirt. Huge carved windows disappear into darkness overhead. Through them I see tiny flakes wafting like smoke.
I can’t remember why I’ve come to the church. I feel guilty, because I know it is important. Someone has sent me, but I can’t recall who.
As I walk through the dusklike gloom I look down and see that my feet are bare. I am ashamed because I don’t know where I’ve left my shoes. I want to leave, but don’t know the way. I feel if I abandon my task I won’t be able to leave.
I hear muffled voices and turn in that direction. There is something on the ground but it is obscure, a mirage I can’t identify. I move toward it and the shadows congeal into separate objects.
A circle of wrapped cocoons. I stare down at them. They are too small to be bodies, but are shaped like bodies.
I go to one and loosen a corner. There is a muffled buzzing. I pull back the cloth and flies billow out and float to the window. The glass is frosted with vapor and I watch the insects swarm across it, knowing they are wrong in the cold.
My eyes drop back to the bundle. I don’t hurry because I know it isn’t a corpse. The dead are not packaged and arrayed in this manner.
Only it is. And I recognize the face. Amalie Provencher stares at me, her features a cartoon portrait in shades of gray.
Still, I cannot hurry. I move from bundle to bundle, unbinding fabric and sending flies rising into the shadows. The faces are white, the eyes fixed, but I do not recognize them. Except for one.
The size tells me before I open the shroud. It is so much smaller than the others. I don’t want to see, but it is impossible to stop.
No! I try denial, but it doesn’t work.
Carlie lies on his stomach, hands curled into upturned fists.
Then I see two others, tiny, side by side in the circle.
I cry out, but again there is no sound.
A hand closes around my arm. I look up and see my guide. She is changed, or just more clearly visible.
It is a nun, her habit frayed and covered with mold. When she moves I hear the click of beads and smell wet earth and decay.
I rise and see cocoa skin covered with oozing, red sores. I know it is Elisabeth Nicolet.
“Who are you?” I think the question, but she answers.
“All in robe of darkest grain.”
I don’t understand.
“Why are you here?”
“I come a reluctant bride of Christ.”
Then I see another figure. She stands in a recess, the dim snowfall light obscuring her features and turning her hair a lackluster gray. Her eyes meet mine and she speaks, but the words are lost.
“Harry!” I scream, but my voice is thin and weak.
Harry doesn’t hear. She extends both arms and her mouth moves, a black oval in the specter that is her face.
Again I shout, but no sound emerges.
She speaks again and I hear her, though her words are distant, like voices drifting across water.
“Help me. I am dying.”
“No!” I try to run, but my legs won’t move.
Harry enters a passageway I haven’t noticed. Above it I see an inscription. GUARDIAN ANGEL. She becomes shadow, merges with the darkness.
I call but she won’t look back. I try to go to her, but my body is frozen, nothing moves but the tears down my cheeks.
My companion transforms. Dark feathered wings sprout from her back, and her face grows pale and deeply creviced. Her eyes congeal into chunks of stone. As I stare into them the irises go clear and color drains from the brows and lashes. A white streak appears in her hair and races backward, separating a flap of scalp and throwing it high into the air. The tissue flutters to the floor and flies swarm from the window and settle on it.
“The order must not be ignored.” The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere.
The dreamscape shifts to the low country. Long rays of sun slant through Spanish moss, and giant shadows dance between the trees. It is hot and I am digging. I sweat as I scoop mud the color of dried blood and fling it to a mound behind me.
The blade hits something and I scrape the edges, carefully revealing the form. White fur clotted with brick-red clay. I follow the arch of the back. A hand with long, red nails. I work my way up the arm. Cowboy fringe. Everything shimmers in the intense heat.
