“A SHREW?”
Minerva forked chunky, tasteless stew into her mouth. They were sitting in the mess: Minerva, Ellen, Micah. Ebenezer was back in the bunkhouse, waiting for the doctor to look at his ankle.
Ellen had found them here shortly after her encounter with the children. She could only manage a bite of stew. Her appetite was gone. She had buried the poor shrew in a patch of dirt along the fence. Its body was swollen to double its size from the ant venom, so much that its skin had split open.
“They pinned it on top of an anthill,” she said. “They tortured it.”
Minerva picked mystery meat from her teeth. “Little shits. Well. Who am I to criticize? I had a magnifying glass as a kid. You think I used it to look at stamps? I must’ve fried a small city’s worth of ants.”
Ellen nodded. She, too, understood how kids could be. But it was one thing to allow nature to take its course—to watch a spider consume a fly in its web, say—versus actively pushing a horrible outcome. There was something sadistic about it. Not to mention there had been four of them. One child engaging in solitary sadism, okay. You put that kid on a watch list. But to see four of those children celebrating an animal’s suffering . . .
The mess was empty apart from the cook who had served them the stew. When they had asked the cook where they should sit, he just flapped his hand toward the back of the mess.
“They didn’t look well,” Ellen said. “The kids. They looked . . . malnourished. I’ve never seen anyone with scurvy—could that be it?”
“They could be underfed,” said Minerva. “Who knows what they eat out here, or how often. Could be some lean days.”
“Yeah, but isn’t that abusive?”
Minerva shrugged. “Not if they signed up for it. Not if they stay.”
“This place,” Ellen said. “I don’t like it. I don’t like him. The Reverend.”
“We will soon depart,” said Micah.
They might—the hired guns. Ellen realized they had been tasked with getting her here, nothing more. They had lost their guns the other night, and it was not shocking that they would want to leave, seeing as the denizens of Little Heaven were quite unwelcoming. But could she go? After seeing those kids and catching a sense of the sickness that appeared to infect this place—and after encountering those things in the woods last night, the creatures that had chased them relentlessly—could she leave without her nephew? What could she tell her sister? Sorry, Sherri, the place creeped me out. I had to hightail it. Even if Nate seemed okay now, who was to say he wouldn’t soon be infected by whatever was spreading around here?
But was anything happening? Or was she just spooked by Little Heaven’s weird vibe and its pompadoured head honcho? It wasn’t like they were sacrificing virgins or dancing naked in the light of the moon.
Not that you know, anyway, said a wary voice in her head.
“I don’t like not having our guns,” Minerva said.
Micah nodded his agreement. “Our weapons are a ways off,” he said. “We do not want to return to the campsite. Not yet.” He lowered his voice. “We will keep an eye out. Perhaps there is a way to get our hands on something.”
The chapel bell tolled as the service ended. People began to file into the mess. They had a glaze-eyed expression that made them look like sleepers roused from a pleasant dream. They filed in silently, shoes whispering on the floorboards. Most of them wore field clothes, overalls and dungarees, even the women. They took notice of the new arrivals, but nobody stopped to say hello. There were about forty in all. Ellen counted fifteen children, including the four who had tormented the shrew. The oldest could have been thirteen, the youngest a toddler.
Reggie and Nate came in last. Ellen’s heart lifted, then sank.
She had not seen her nephew in years. But she recalled a ruddy-cheeked and, well, robust little fella. A stout bowling pin of a boy who had careened recklessly around her sister’s front room, shrieking merrily as Sherri chased him and tickled him under the armpits. The Nate she spied now was pallid and drained, as if there were leeches at work under his clothes. He had the look of a future telethon case: a boy propped up in a bed with tubes poking out of his arms while dewy-eyed viewers called in their pledges.
His father didn’t look a hell of a lot better as he shuffled into the mess behind his son. The skin hung slack off Reggie’s neck, and the flesh under his eyes was the yellow of an old bruise.
Reggie and Nate got in the chow line. Neither of them glanced in Ellen’s direction.
Micah raised his eyebrows. That them? Ellen nodded.
The Reverend Amos Flesher came in last. The sermon had evidently revivified him—it was as if he had stolen vitality from his worshippers and taken it for himself. He passed down the queue, offering that limp-fingered blessing until he reached the head of it.
Great way to cut in line, Ellen thought sourly.
He took his meal—it was served on a fine china plate, Ellen noted, while everyone else’s stew was plopped into green plastic bowls—to his table at the head of the mess. There was only one chair at it.
When everyone was seated, the Reverend stood. The congregation followed suit.
“Mighty Lord,” the Reverend intoned, “thank You for this bounty You have placed before us. Thank You for this bread, this meat, this wine.”
“What’s he talking about?” Minerva whispered so low that only Ellen could hear. “I don’t see any wine.”
“Your beneficence, dear Lord, is unending. Without You we are nothing. You nourish and sustain all things. You provide food for all Thy creatures. Blessed art Thou, Lord, who feeds and waters His children here at Little Heaven. And blessed is Your mouthpiece, who carries Your divine word to the ears of Your flock.”
“Nifty,” said Minerva.
“Amen,” said Reverend Amos Flesher.
“Amen,” said the congregation.
“Amen,” said Ellen, uncomfortably.
Absolutely nothing, said Micah and Minerva.
A strained silence prevailed during the meal. Few people spoke, and if so, they did so in whispers. Even fewer hazarded glances in the newcomers’ direction.
Ellen watched the Reverend. He had an aggressive manner of eating: he held a slice of bread a few inches away from his face, and instead of bringing it to his mouth, he would dart forward like a predatory bird, snapping off bits of crust.
“We have guests tonight,” said the Reverend once he’d finished pecking at his food.
The congregation turned to them now, as if given permission. It was not unlike a single organism with a hundred eyes turning its concentrated gaze upon Ellen and her companions all at once.
“The Lord has brought them to our doorstep,” the Reverend said. “They fell into the pit dug by Brother Langtree and Brother Fairweather.” He clapped his hands, a dry sound like wood planks spanked together. “Finally! They managed to catch something!”
Laughter from the congregation. Ellen cast a sidelong glance at her nephew, Nate, sitting with Reggie. She caught no spark of recognition in their eyes. Good.
“They will stay with us only as long as it takes the fourth member of their party to heal,” he said. “If that is more than a few days, we will arrange for transport to the outside. The Lord has put this hurdle before us and we must abide.”
He’s speaking like we’re poison, Ellen thought. As though our presence is tainting his perfect utopia.
Dessert was passed around next. Tapioca pudding, as tasteless as the stew. Perhaps the Reverend viewed flavor as a sin? They ate in silence as before.
“Well, whoop-de-doo, what a fun bunch,” Minerva muttered. “What do they do on wild nights, watch paint dry?”
Twilight gathered against the mess hall’s plastic-sheet windows. Wind hissed through gaps in the walls with a zippery note.
Two men entered the mess. They had the look of brothers: the same sharp cheekbones and ferret-thin frames. One had a scoped rifle slung over his shoulder. The other had a revolver holstered at his hip like a Wild West gunslinger.
They moved briskly to the Reverend. All three inclined their heads in conversation. The two men spoke animatedly yet in hushed tones; the gunslinger made a few wild flourishes with his hands. The Reverend nodded and signaled for them to depart.
For a minute, the Reverend sat very still with his eyes closed. He opened one eye once, briefly, and his gaze was trained on Ellen’s table. His jaw worked side to side and his lips moved as if in silent prayer.
In time, he stood. His eyes remained closed. His body trembled slightly. The congregation sat riveted. Ellen caught sight of Reggie out of the corner of her eye. His face was cheese white and twitchy as he stared at Amos Flesher, enrapt.
“There come a test,” the Reverend said in a stagey kind of whisper. “In the life of every man there come a test . . .”
Nods from the congregation. Yes, oh yes, Ellen could picture them all thinking. The Lord tests the faithful.
“The son of Brother and Sister Rathbone has wandered into the woods.”
A shocked group inhale from the congregation—it was as though they had taken a breath as a single unit.
“Eli?” said a woman in a paisley frock. “Eli Rathbone’s missing?”
The Reverend paused, as if unsure of the boy’s name.
“He is safe,” Reverend Flesher said sharply. He cast a baleful eye upon the woman until she sat down again. “The Lord assures me of this. Brother Swicker and Brother Neeps have been looking for him, along with his parents. But now we all must gather. The light draws thin. The poor boy shall not spend the night outdoors.”
Everybody rose. People were animated now—their bodies moved with the jerky-limbed mania that grips a group of people on the cusp of mass hysteria. The Reverend’s chin was tilted upward, his face set in a mask of forbearance—Ellen wondered: Did he envision the boy’s disappearance as a test for himself?
Ellen, Minerva, and Micah filtered into the square, where the adults were gathering. The children had been sent off to the bunkhouses. A few people had flashlights. Ellen spotted Reggie carrying a lantern that gave off a weak glow, its glass blackened with kerosene smudges. Rags were tied to the tips of scrap two-by-twos and dipped into a bucket of creosote. The jury-rigged torches were lit with a Zippo passed from person to person. This all happened quickly and silently. The two-by-twos, rags, and creosote were all at the ready, as if waiting for this very eventuality.
The armed men who looked like brothers addressed the throng.
“Eli’s folks is out thataway,” the one with the rifle said, pointing at a general area past the fence. “They ain’t seen the boy in a few hours. They thought he was with the others in the play area.”
The man with the holstered gun was smoking a home-rolled cigarette. He flicked the butt into the weeds and said, “A mother ought to keep mind of her kids.” He cast an eye on the group, picking out the mothers in its midst. “Ain’t that a pure fact?”
Nobody spoke against him. The torches crackled, sending up plumes of stinking smoke. The flames flickered on the worshippers’ pale pinched faces.
“We’ll fan out,” said the rifleman. “East, west, south, north. No telling whichaway the boy went, or how far afield.”
“Better not be too far,” his partner said. “The woods are a dangerous place to be at night.”
The rifleman grinned. “Lovely, dark and deep.”
Ellen did not care for these two. They seemed to be taking delight in this. The rifleman then pointed at the outsiders.
“You stay here. This is not your calling.”
Minerva and Micah were already holding torches. Micah levered his torch back on his shoulder until his face grew dark. “Your call,” he said.
“It is,” said the rifleman, and spat. His partner rested the heel of his palm against the butt of his revolver. “And I say sit.”
The group exited through the main gate. The monolithic expanse of the woods dwarfed them; the flimsy light of their torches quickly dwindled under the brooding darkness of those trees. The worshippers paired off and began to sweep the woods. Voices called out from every direction.
“Eli?”
“Eli!”
“Eli!”
“Child, come home! God wants you to come home!”
The light of their torches was swallowed by the night. Soon their voices were gone, too. Ellen, Minerva, and Micah stood in the parade square. There was not much else to do. It wasn’t like there was a horseshoe pit or a bingo game they were missing.
A lone figure rounded back into the compound. Charlie Fairweather.
“I don’t care what Cyril or Virgil says,” he said. “That boy needs all the help he can get.”
“Okay,” said Micah.