FATHER NERVE pulls us from school the very next day. We stand in the registrar’s office while he talks to the principal. The principal seems disappointed but not surprised by the decision. We hear from the receptionist that we’re the fourth faith full “family” to come in today for the exact same reason. The promise of the rising god has infected all of us.
“Is it the end days?” the receptionist asks, as we wait in the office for Father Nerve to finish filling out some paperwork. “Like Armageddon or something? I don’t really understand your faith—I’m Pentecostal. I didn’t even hear of the faith until I moved here.”
“It’s not an end, it’s a beginning,” Ray explains. “The god is waking.”
“Yeah, but what does that mean?”
“We don’t know.”
“You don’t know what your god is going to do?” The receptionist sounds skeptical.
“No.”
“What if he comes back and is really angry?” She chews on the end of a pencil. “I always used to worry about that as a kid. Well, I’d worry about my god. As human beings, we’ve done some really bad things. We aren’t really living in His image.”
The twins exchange looks. I see doubt flicker in their eyes, just for a second, but it’s enough. Theo. I don’t even know the guy. I’ve barely met him, but I can see his influence on the twins as clearly as if he were standing above them, pulling them about with strings. I’ve never hated anyone before, but I think I might be very close to hating Theo.
Father Nerve finishes his paperwork and ushers us outside. The sky above the school is a strange, green-gray color I’ve never seen before, and the clouds are swollen and lumpy like a newly sown field after a storm. The air smells different, too—it has a sweet, earthy taste to it.
“Another sign,” mutters Father Nerve. “Get in the car, all of you.”
“Where are we going?” Ro asks.
“We’re going to your father’s parish,” says Father Nerve.
“We’re going home?” the twins say in unison. Neither of them sounds particularly pleased by this news.
“Your father has been following the movements of the god as he dreams. He’s plotted out the ripples the god has left in the earth. He believes he knows where the god is going to rise, and we should be there to meet him, in all his glory.”
Ray shudders, and Ro quickly grasps his hand and squeezes it.
“Something wrong, Regis?” Father Nerve asks.
“It’s the wind,” says Ro. “The smell. It’s giving me the chills, too. It smells like something rotten, doesn’t it?”
Now he mentions it, it does smell like something rotting. I swallow. For the first time the waking god feels real to me, really real, like something that could actually happen.
“Just get in the car, Roland,” says Father Nerve wearily. “I’ll put on the air conditioning.”
WE DRIVE. And drive.
Faith full country is flat. Once we leave the village center, the fields stretch out before us in every direction. It’s impossible to judge distance; the fences and demarcation lines of different crops create a kind of optical illusion. Sitting in the passenger seat for the first time in my life, I find it hard to focus on anything between the end of the car and the horizon. When I do, my vision blurs and swirls. In addition to that, the smell of the wind has seeped into the car, and it’s making me feel nauseous.
I wonder how Father Nerve can control the car in these conditions—it must be next to impossible to stay on the road….
The twins sit in the backseat, still loosely holding hands. I can’t remember seeing them hold hands before, not since we were really little kids. They’re looking out the windows in opposite directions, biting their lips in identical ways. They’re scared, more scared than I am. I don’t remember ever seeing them scared before.
After we drive for a few hours, we start to see ridges in the fields. At first they’re just little mounds or piles of earth, as if someone’s buried something. As we continue, the ridges get higher and wider, jutting up above even the highest crops, brown islands in a sea of yellow and green. It’s as if a wild and giant animal has clawed through the skin of the world.
There are signs of overgrowth, too: whole trees sprouting from the lip of the ridges, nearby crops growing twice as tall as they should, and giant bulbous flowers spilling out across the field. The flowers are invariably pink, ugly colors, fleshy colors, and the trees have pale, almost luminescent bark. There’s something grotesque about it, something surreal.
Sometimes we see animals by the side of the road. Some are regular roadkill, I guess, but others are positioned in such a way that we can see a strange, black ash spilling out of them. As if they’ve been burned up from the inside.
Father Nerve’s hands are white around the steering wheel. He’s driving too fast, but this far from civilization, there’s rarely any police to slow you down. Now and then I hear him praying under his breath, prayers for the earth and the sky but also prayers for us. I want to ask him about the god, but I’ve come to understand that at this point, Father Nerve is as lost and ignorant as we are.
We reach the Piedmonts’ property at dusk. The sky has changed color again to a yellowish-blue, like a healing bruise. We all clamber out of the car, picking at our sweaty clothes. The Piedmonts live in a long, wooden ranch house—a big house, but not the country mansion I expected—and their fields contain only grass and sheep. We wait outside the house for a few minutes, stamping our feet and casting nervous looks at the sky, until Father Piedmont arrives.
“You came,” is the first thing he says. “Good. We’ve work to do.”
“Is the Bishop here?” Father Nerve asks.
“The Bishop will be coming,” says Father Piedmont. He takes a deep breath and puts his arms behind his back, drinking in the smell of the strange wind. “Can you feel the god?” he asks us. “Smell that air, taste it. He has awoken, make no mistake.”
Ray’s face turns white, and he runs away from us, around the side of the house. Soon we hear the sound of him throwing up.
“Weak,” Father Piedmont mutters, and Ro winces. Clearly despairing of his sons, Father Piedmont turns to me. “What do you think of this all, Ennaline Whitehall?”
“I can smell it,” I say. I try to keep a grateful smile on my face, but it’s hard. I’m struck suddenly by how unprepared I am for this adventure. I don’t know how long we’re going to be here. I haven’t brought any changes of clothes. I don’t even have a toothbrush. I’m sweaty and my hair is filthy and the twins are scared and sick and I don’t know what to do at all.
“Come with me, Ennaline.”
Father Piedmont takes my arm and leads me away from the house and into the fields. Wordlessly he points north. I realize that a big rise in the distance, a rise that’s big enough to be a cliff, is actually another ridge. Its surface is lush with greenery and jungle-like plants: ferns and flesh-colored flowers. The ridge is only a few hundred feet away from the Piedmonts’ house.
How close is the god to us now? I wonder. Is he right under our feet?
I’m amazed we haven’t felt or seen the god moving the earth by this stage. There have been no earthquakes, nothing that would suggest a giant being is trying to force their way out of the earth. I think about the silly tricks we used to do to get people to believe in the god, to confirm their faith: the lightbulbs and string and hidden recording equipment. We just wanted to give people evidence that the god was there. And now here we are, with the marks of the god scratched indelibly across our country, as bold a proof as anyone could make for the existence of the god.
I wish I could be truly happy about it.
I wish I wasn’t so scared.
“When did it happen?” I ask.
“It appeared after I woke up. Sometime between breakfast and second prayers.” Father Piedmont’s handsome face is almost rapturous. “We measured it—it’s fifty feet long, and thirty high, and at its center is a deep chasm. The flowers grew as we walked up the chasm. The god has blessed my land.”
“I felt an evil,” says Father Nerve. “When I first saw a hole like that. The growths, the plants, too. They’re unnatural. They aren’t from our world.”
“They are gifts,” says Father Piedmont. “Gifts from the god.”
“They’re killing other crops,” says Father Nerve. “We saw them as we drove here. They’re destroying everything in their way. They grow unchecked and quickly.”
“What are you trying to say?” Father Piedmont snaps.
“Cancer grows like that,” says Ro.
Father Piedmont smacks him across the face.
The sound seems as loud as a gunshot in the heavy air.
“You won’t speak to me like that,” Father Piedmont shouts, red-faced, spitting in his rage. “You won’t speak of the god like that! You will pray to him. You will worship him. You will know him. Get on your knees, boy.”
Ro folds over onto the earth, presses his hands together, and begins to pray.
He’s crying. I’m crying a bit too. I don’t know what to do at all.
IT SEEMS that we’re going to stay at the Piedmont ranch for as long as it takes for the god to wake. Mrs. Piedmont, a woman as severe and beautiful as her husband is intimidatingly handsome, shows us to a guest room. There are two bunk beds there, and no sheets. Ray asks his mother meekly about the other rooms in the house, but apparently the Piedmonts are expecting other faith full to arrive soon.
By the afternoon the Piedmonts’ driveway is full of cars, mostly station wagons. Faith full folk mill about outside, looking simultaneously lost and beatific. Many of them have brought their dogs and some have even brought sheep and horses. Standing by the door, I hear them talk of the god—of the god’s plans, of the god’s dreams, of the god’s ineffable ways. They don’t sound fearful; they sound exhilarated.
I don’t share their excitement. A day ago I was worried about marriage plans and letting down the twins and the god. Now I’m wondering if I’m going to survive this at all. The smell in the air is worse—it’s rot, it’s definitely rot, a deep, earthy rot of something that has been decaying for a long time in a closed space. It makes me want to gag, and I can’t bring myself to eat dinner.
Flies start to appear, and then mosquitoes, and then ugly black beetles with spade-shaped bodies and horned heads.
The faith full pray.
When evening falls the twins come to find me in our room. Without a word they take my hands and lead me out of the ranch. We walk into the fields until we come to a twisted tree with red, raw bark.
“We need to talk to you, Enna,” says Ro. “We can’t do it in the house. Too many people are listening in.”
“I’m listening.”
“Okay.” Ro takes a deep breath. “You know Theo, the guy we’ve been hanging around with lately? He’s been telling us about the god. About gods, actually.”
I cough. The smell is really getting to me. I can feel it in my lungs. “So what? So he’s faith less?”
“No. He’s not faith less. Not exactly.” Ro looks at his brother for support. “He believes in the god. He says he knows the god, or at least he knows gods like it.”
“There is only one god.”
“Enna! Please, listen. Hear me out. Theo says the god isn’t the only god. Theo says there are many gods sleeping in the earth and sometimes they rise when bad people worship them. Well, not just bad people, sometimes misguided people, too. People who don’t understand what the gods are. People like us. He says that the god will bring nothing but death and destruction. He says if the god wakes, it will consume us all.”
“That just proves he knows nothing about the god!”
“He says he’s seen it happening before.”
“No.”
“Many times, he’s seen it happen many times. Mostly in communities like ours, places that are cut off from the rest of the world, rural places, quiet places. But sometimes he’s seen it happen in cities. Whole neighborhoods swallowed by a god like ours. He’s spent years trying to stop it happening, to warn people. Sometimes he succeeds and sometimes he doesn’t.”
I can’t take all this in. I don’t want to. “Why did he tell you? Why did he find you both and no one else?”
“He says we’re special.”
“Special.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or hit them.
“We don’t know why. Maybe because we’re twins. He wasn’t clear. But he said we were special, and we ought to get a chance to save ourselves. And if we did, he’d help us.”
“What do you mean a chance to save yourselves?”
But I know. I’ve known all day what they’re planning. I just can’t believe they’d really do it. I’ve always thought they loved the god deeply, completely, without question. They chose to become companions of Father Nerve. They want to become Fathers of the faith themselves when they’re older. What could Theo have possibly said to change their minds… to change their entire lives?
“We want you to come with us, Enna,” says Ray.
“I can’t.”
“We love you. Please.”
I shake my head. My heart is breaking. It’s the worst betrayal.
“We’ll look after you. We’ll protect you. We’ll make a life away from all this. It doesn’t matter about your… about your coldness, or whatever you call it. We want to be with you.”
“What part of no don’t you understand? I am faith full, unlike the pair of you!” I’m shouting. I never shout. “I love the god. I serve the god.”
The twins exchange looks. Then they both lean in and kiss my cheeks.
“We love you, Enna. If you run, we’ll be waiting for you. This doesn’t have to be the end.”
THEY LEAVE an hour later. They hot-wire a car belonging to one of the faith full and drive away into the night.
I know I should tell someone, but I don’t. In my heart I know it’s my fault they left. It’s my fault because I couldn’t love them the way men should be loved by women. If I was normal—if my flesh burned warm, not cold—we would all be sitting in the ranch on a bunk together, eagerly waiting for the god to rise. We would be prayer full. We would be faith full.
We would be happy.