Addie was indeed able to track where the mayor and blacksmith had gone. And when she found out, Preacher wished to God she hadn’t. He wished he hadn’t asked. Wished he’d found this on his own, before she’d arrived. A merciful God would have made sure of that.
She’d tracked Dobbs’s and Browning’s footsteps back to where they’d left the main trail. It had taken time, but she’d eventually determined that they’d taken a secondary one, little more than a half-cleared path through the trees. Preacher had not known where the trail led. Addie had. He was certain of it. But it was not until they saw the cabin ahead and he said, “What’s that?” that she said, “Timothy James’s place.”
Timothy James. An odd creature, like most who made their living in the forest. Preacher had heard whispers about Timothy James, that he’d come here fleeing the Mounties, that he’d been caught with a little girl. Preacher had been furious—if there was a man like that in their midst, they ought to warn the children. But Dobbs said it wasn’t true. Timothy James was merely odd. Preacher had always wondered if Mr. Dobbs’s reluctance to drive the man out had anything to do with the fact that he brought in good furs and he accepted less than market rates for them.
Now, seeing that cabin ahead, Preacher knew where Browning and Dobbs had been going. What they’d done there. He’d told Addie to wait while he ran ahead.
He found Timothy James behind his cabin. Lying on the ground. Rope burns around his neck. His shirt covered in blood.
“He must have fought.”
It was Addie’s voice. Preacher wheeled to see her standing there, looking down at the body.
“They tried to hang him,” she said. “Or strangle him. Like Rene. But he fought and they had to stab him.”
She stated it as a matter of fact, and for a moment, he was frozen there, unable to react. Her thin face was hard and empty, her eyes empty, too. He’d seen that look on her once before. That horrible day two years ago, when Addie had shown up on Preacher’s doorstep in her nightgown, her feet bare and bloodied and filthy from the two-mile walk.
Something’s wrong with my parents, she’d said.
They’d gone back, Preacher and Dobbs and Doc Adams. Rode on the horses, Addie with Preacher, dressed in someone else’s clothes, her thin arms wrapped around him. They’d gone back to her parents’ cabin, expecting they’d taken ill, and instead found . . .
Preacher swallowed, remembering what they’d found. Remembering Addie beside him, her face as empty as this, hollow and dead, looking at the terrible bodies of her parents.
Preacher strode over, took her by the shoulders, and did what he’d done two years ago—turned her away from the sight and bustled her off. She let him take her around the cabin, then dug in her heels and stopped.
“Why did they kill him?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. That’s why you made me stay on the path. You knew he was dead.”
Preacher hesitated. She was right, of course. She wasn’t a child. That was the problem. He wanted to tell her not to worry, not to think on it. She didn’t require an explanation. He was the adult, and he could make that decision, as parents did for their children. Yet he knew that to do so was to loosen his already tenuous grip on his foster daughter. Treat her as a child, and he’d earn her disdain. He would have taken that chance if he thought it would truly stop her from learning the truth. It would not. She’d proven already that she was as curious—and as dogged—as he.
“They killed Rene, too,” she said as he tried to decide what to tell her. “Is it the same thing?”
“Yes, it appears so. Eleazar claims that to give life . . .” He struggled for the kindest words.
“They must take it,” she said, again as if this were a simple matter, one that anyone ought to be able to see. “They killed the old man to bring back Charlie. And now they’ve killed Timothy James . . .”
He didn’t hear the rest of what she said. He knew the rest. They’d killed Timothy James to bring back another. Then, once that child was raised from the dead, there were five more . . .
“We must go,” he said. “Back to town. Immediately.”
* * *
Preacher heard the weeping before he saw the town ahead. Wailing and sobbing and crying out to God. That’s what he heard, and he ran as he hadn’t since he was a boy. Ran so fast he could no longer hear anything but the crash of sound, like the ocean’s surf, rising and falling.
From the end of the main road he could see the crowd. The entire village it seemed, gathered down at the hall, the mass of them blocking the road. People sobbing. People on their knees. People standing in stunned silence.
He looked back for Addie, but she was right there.
“Go to Sophia!” he said.
She hesitated, but she seemed to see the fear in his eyes, nodded, and veered off in the direction of the house. Preacher kept running. When he reached the crowd, he prepared himself for what he might see. The horrors that could cause such wailing.
On a normal day, if the villagers saw him coming, they’d make way. He was the preacher. But now, even when he nudged through, they resisted, pushing him back until he had to shove past, as if he were at a cockfight, jostling for a better view.
Finally, the villagers seemed to see him, to recognize him. Or they simply realized he would not be held back. The crowd parted. There, at the front, he saw . . .
Children. All six of them. Sitting up in their coffins, looking about, as if confused, their parents grabbing them up, hugging them, wailing.
Now that the thunder in his ears had died down, he realized what he was hearing. Sobs and wails of joy. Praising God. Thanking God.
He looked at those six children and those six families, and there was a moment when he wanted to fall to his knees with the others. To say, This is a miracle. To accept it as a miracle.
Then he remembered the body in the woods. Timothy James, lying in the dirt, covered in blood, staring at the sky.
Six children alive. Six people dead.
Dear God, who else did they take? Who else did they murder?
He reeled, stomach clenching, gaze swinging to Dobbs, embracing his child, his big body shaking with joy. Preacher glanced down, about to back away. Then he saw the blood on Dobbs’s boot. Timothy James’s blood on his boot. Timothy James’s murder on his hands.
“What’s going on?” a voice cried.
Everyone went still. The voice asked again, and it was a high voice, a reedy voice. A child. Preacher turned to see one of the resurrected—six-year-old Jonas Meek—pushing his mother away as his gaze swung over the crowd.
“Who the bloody hell are all of you?” the boy asked.
Eleazar leaped forward as the crowd gasped and the boy’s mother fell back, crossing herself. Jonas began to push up from his coffin, his face fixed in a snarl as he said something Preacher didn’t catch.
“Restrain him!” Eleazar said. “Quickly!”
Two men leaped in to do it as Eleazar strode forward, cloth in hand. He pressed it to the boy’s face, ignoring his struggles. Preacher caught a whiff of something vaguely familiar from his college science classes. Chloroform.
As Jonas went limp, Eleazar’s voice rang out over the stunned crowd. “I warned you that this might happen. I will sedate them all now, to prevent further injury. They are confused and will act most unlike themselves for a day or two. But all is well. Your children are returned to you and all is well.”
Preacher stepped forward, but before his boot even touched down, Dobbs was there, moving unbelievably fast for a man of his size. He planted himself in front of Preacher.
“You don’t belong here, Benjamin,” he said.
“I know—”
Dobbs stepped forward. “I said you don’t belong here.” He lowered his voice. “I would suggest you run on home, preacher boy. Back to your wild brat and your pretty wife. You ought not to leave your family alone.”
Preacher looked up into the man’s eyes and his gut chilled. There was nothing there. No compassion. No compunction. Perhaps there had been, when he’d undertaken his task, but now that it was done, Dobbs had severed any part of himself that might have felt guilt. He’d done right, and if Preacher dared suggest otherwise . . .
“He’s right,” another voice said. It was Mayor Browning, moving up beside Dobbs. “Go home, Benjamin. You aren’t wanted here.”
“But, Preacher,” someone said. It was Maybelle, pushing through the crowd. “What do you think of this? Can you speak to us about it?”
“No,” Browning said. “He cannot. This isn’t your preacher. It’s a false man of God, one who would deny this miracle, who would tell you it’s wrong, sinful.”
Behind Browning, Eleazar stood watching, lips moving, and that chill suffused Preacher’s entire body.
It is as if he is putting words in their mouths. As if they are puppets to his will.
“This preacher would take back our children,” Browning said. “Steal them from us again.”
Preacher started to argue, to say that was not it at all, but there seemed to come a growl from the crowd, and when he looked about, he felt as if he were surrounded by wolves, scenting a threat in the air—a threat to their young and to themselves. He saw that and knew what he must do. The only choice he had.
He closed his mouth, backed away from the crowd, and raced home.