Chesya Burke
“Much of the power of Western horror-lore was undoubtedly due to the hidden but often suspected presence of a hideous cult of nocturnal worshippers whose strange customs — descended from pre-Aryan and pre-agricultural times when a squat race of Mongoloids roved over Europe with their flocks and herds — were rooted in the most revolting fertility-rites of immemorial antiquity.”
I entered the horror genre a fresh nub, having read many of the classics of horror literature but feeling as if most of it didn’t relate to me in my life. One of the good things about being a newbie is that more experienced writers are quick to tell you the “must read” titles, whether you ask or not. Atop each and every list thrown my way was H. P. Lovecraft. I had not read him, so I quickly picked up everything I could find. I read, with growing trepidation, the descriptions of those things that Lovecraft feared. For me, those fears sounded all too much like… me. Brown people and black people and yellow people, and Jews, Lovecraft believed, would corrupt the good, decent Aryan race.
Lovecraft, it seemed, feared me and those like me. More importantly, horror (and speculative fiction generally) had built an entire genre around this fear of The Other. The hoard, the zombie, the monster, the fear of anything that isn’t white, pure, and virginal.
So my question, when confronted with the above quote was: What happens when you’re a member of a corrupt system and you gain the knowledge to resist it, as Lovecraft did? What happens when that system is unopposed, left to continue unchecked, unchallenged? What happens to later generations who refuse to confront it?
So for this piece I did something that I rarely do; I wrote about white people. A white man. A man who has the choice, as Lovecraft did, to accept or reject the ideologies fed to him by society.
Understanding society as I do, it is, even for me in writing this, a difficult choice.
♦
Edgar Kay Morrison died for the first time on August 13, 1900. He would die many nights after that, it would seem, always for the same reason. He was an enigma to some; to others, an evil devil sent to bewitch; and still yet, a prophet to most. However, on that night, he was none of those things. He was a seven-year-old boy who thought God had sent his chariots down for him, on the count of him having been such a good boy all his years.
At least that was what his momma whispered in his ears as he lay there wrenching in pain. The cramps started in his legs two days before, and had quickly taken over his body. That was when Momma sent Papa to get Doc Warner. He would know what to do, she said.
“Calm yo self, boy. God ain’t gonna set no pain on you, as you cain’t take.” Even as his momma spoke, another cramp seized his body. “Them chariots gonna be worth all this if they get you tonight,” she sounded so sure, but he saw tears rolling down her too-pale cheeks.
Edgar closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see her this way. He felt guilty. His sister had died just the year before, and his momma had stayed in bed for two weeks. She had cried so much that she said she had run out of tears. He didn’t want her to go through that again.
The pain — like a lead pipe snapping down on the small of his back — seized him again, and his body contorted; his arms flailing behind him, his head thrown back. He looked for all the world as if he were trying to roll himself up in a big ol’ ball, backward. His fingers were knotted in peculiar shapes, and he couldn’t get them to move.
“The devil,” his younger brother, David, whispered from somewhere behind his head.
“Shush up, boy. Now go on over there and get me something to put under his head. Go on now.”
David watched for another moment, and as Edgar screamed again, he jumped and ran into the other room. He didn’t come back for a full ten minutes, when he did, the only thing he brought with him was the old thick Bible, which was the only thing Momma had gotten from her father when he’d died twenty years before.
Momma took one look at him and shook her head. “Get… Give me that thing.” She took the Bible from David, and placed it under Edgar’s head. “This here will give you comfort in your time of trouble.” She told him, kissing his hand and touching the Good Book.
Outside, thick drops of rain hit the crude windowpane that Papa had cut himself just the year before, before Edgar’s sister had died. David went to the window, rubbed the condensation off, and stared out into the night. He was scared. Edgar couldn’t blame him, but what he couldn’t make out was if the boy really thought that he was the devil.
The wind hit the old wooden shack hard, rattling the whole thing, breaking through the door, and engulfing the whole room with its power. Momma ran to the door, trying to close it as the rain rushed inside. It covered Edgar’s feet, but he didn’t mind. He relished the coolness of it.
Late August in Eddyville, Kentucky, often brought thunderstorms and wild winds. Eddyville was a prison town. The Kentucky State Penitentiary dominated everything, and the town completely revolved around the massive stone structure that oversaw the township. Although the prison could be seen from every corner of the city, the stench of town never managed to leave the muddy grounds of the prison. But now Edgar smelled it, the rot of street funk that fed from the normal hardworking people. It was overpowering. It had taken over the room within a few dog seconds. And that was fast because everyone knew that dogs didn’t live as long as people did. The smell was kinda like dead things — lots of dead things — as if they had gotten in under the floorboard and taken up there. Like that coon had back two summers ago. It just lay under there and died. Papa had the hardest time getting that thing out of there.
But this was worse. Much worse.
Another seizure overtook him, and he got this feeling all over him. Like something wasn’t right. Like something wasn’t never going to be right, not ever again. He closed his eyes and felt cold; not like the rain had been, but like the coldest night of the coldest winter. Kinda like that, but not really. This was something else, something bad.
Inside his head something broke. He lay there just knowing Momma had been right, God was coming for him. Somehow, he was all right with that. Sometimes, as Momma said, people weren’t long for this world, which is what she had said to herself about Cilia, his little sister. Maybe this was true for him, too.
Just then Papa appeared, Doc Warner right behind him. He helped Momma with the door — it took both of them to close it. The wind fought them, but Papa was strong.
Inside the room, the smell itself seemed to resonate from Edgar, and the doc checked him for wounds that may have gone ’grene. His mother assured the man that he had not been injured.
“That smell,” the old man said, “it’s not right. Something died.” The doc looked around.
“Musta got under the house again,” Papa said, “Them damn coons.”
Lightning struck somewhere outside, which was followed by a loud boom. It was close, too close. It was coming for him. They’ll come for you, the voice in his head said. Some people just are not long for this world.
His daddy was still pointing toward the floor, as if he were illustrating his point, and, as Edgar looked down, he saw a shadow move across the floor. It was small and almost unnoticeable at first, but, as he watched, it grew bigger, climbing the wall to within a foot from the ceiling. It stood there, still, unmoving, watching. It was only a shadow, but he knew there was something unnatural about it, something wrong. The dark shape grew even larger, getting its strength from the people within the room. From him, Edgar knew. No one else in the room seemed to notice the shadow. This scared him more than anything. There was something there, watching them, but only he knew it. Only he saw it.
Maybe it had always been there. Maybe he was the one changing. As he thought it, he knew this to be true. He knew somehow that the thing there, above their heads, was somehow eternal, not unnatural at all, but that it was hiding away, in the shadows, watching them, always. It was inevitable. He saw something wild and longing, something deep, a knowledge not afforded to man. He felt like this thing had been there longer than any man, and would be there well after every man had gone. He knew he was getting a glimpse of something forbidden, and, for his part, it would cost him his life.
He lay back accepting this, the one gift given to the dying, the one truth. He lay there taking that knowledge to what he thought was his death.
The book beneath his head grew harder with each moment, as if the thick pages were on his head instead of beneath it. He sensed knowledge of not only the being above him, but of other things as well. Big things. Smart things.
It was the book, it was too heavy. Too big. Too many words; too much knowledge.
He wiggled his body until his head was no longer on the book, but beside it. He touched it, closing his eyes to finally allow the inevitable to come, but wanting to know the Good Book was near him. In the distance somewhere, he heard his mother gasp, as the doctor told them he didn’t think Edgar would make it too much longer.
“Not another child of mine,” the woman said to no one but God — or the devil. She said she had given Him all she had to offer, but her son was not for sale. That was how she had put it, “My boy is not for sale.”
Just at that moment, another great gust pounded on the house, blowing open the doors as they rocked back and forth on their hinges, the house shaking and rattling as if it were coming apart around them. His brother screamed and rolled himself up into a ball right on the floor, holding his knees to his chest. Almost simultaneously, the dark thing dodged at Edgar, and before he could even move, it had seized him. Grabbing a hold of him, mind and soul. Edgar couldn’t see or hear anything going on around him.
The boy felt a longing so old and deep he couldn’t control his emotions. Inside, he cried and screamed and pleaded, as things he didn’t know or understand fought to control him. It was knowledge too great for any man to bear, he realized. And still yet, he was no man. He tried to move, but his body was no longer his own.
Suddenly a bright light blinded him, and he could feel it engulfing his heart and soul. It seeped from his pores and into his humble room, in the small shack that he shared with his family. If Edgar had been aware, he would have seen the doc, his father, brother, and even his mother, repel from his dead body as if it were diseased.
Finally Edgar knew.
After what seemed like a lifetime, he opened his eyes and fully expected to be sitting at the gates of heaven, surrounded by thousands of Good Books as far as the eyes could see. Instead, he awoke with his mother and father and brother staring at him. His mother’s eyes were red and stained with tears.
“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying?”
His papa had always called his momma quick, and this was no different. She looked at him and at the Bible he clutched in his hands — the one she said she couldn’t get him to read within a month of Sundays. “Rabboni?” she asked, quoting what Mary said to Jesus after he had risen. It meant teacher.
“I have seen the Lord,” Edgar answered. It was the same answer her Savior had given in her precious book.
♦
Edgar hated going into town with his mother anymore. He thought he must hate it almost as much as the woman did herself. She said that it stank from the unclean denizens that roamed the streets where they didn’t belong. There were too many people, too many that did not worship Christ as they should, or not at all. Instead they littered the streets, speaking in dozens of strange tongues, begging for food, needing things that they wanted others to give them after a hard day’s work. Too many people had relocated to Eddyville to be closer to their pathetic family members, criminals serving out long sentences for offences that ranged from petty theft to murder, and everything in between. It was said that a life sentence there was no different from a death sentence. And that sat just fine for most people in those parts, considering they were talking about convicts.
Edgar, however, had begun to see other things, too. It had been two whole weeks since he had died and come back to life in his humble home while his mother cried on her knees beside him, and now Edgar had changed. The shadows that had appeared that night had not gone away … they had multiplied. The vestiges of the unclean masses of Mongoloid people who walked the streets during the day only fueled the impure nocturnal worshipers feeding from their obscenity and misery, unseen, unknown. They watched him, darting from dark corner to dark corner, mocking him. He’d tried to look away, pretend he hadn’t been awakened to their presence. But he couldn’t; he saw them. And what’s more, he was sure that they knew he saw them, too.
Edgar was glad that they didn’t have to go into town very often. Most anything they needed they got from the farm, a mule, chickens for eggs and meat, and Betsy the cow for milk. Momma even made lye soap at home, by pouring water over wood ashes. Edgar and his father hunted, rabbits and some deer, but not too often, gunpowder not being something they could grow in the stubbly fields. Tobacco brought in the money, what little there was of it. They’d barter some things. Anything else, they just did without, mostly. Once or twice a year, Momma would shop at the store for a big bag of flour and cornmeal, which would last them half a year or so. She brought him along so that he could carry it for her.
The dry goods store, Charlie’s, sat just off the main street, opposite the courthouse. Compared to that grand building, the goods store looked like a shack house with one door and one large window, which sat oddly in the frame. It had been broken more times than most people could count, and so Charlie, the owner, had stopped spending extra money on fitted panes, and he’d just tell them to give him whatever they had cheap. Behind the store, the dirt road led to a loading dock of sorts for wagons and dark folk who saw fit to shop there.
Inside, the store was dark and smelled liked smoked meat. The shadows moved oddly in the corners. They shimmered, getting lighter and darker as Edgar moved through the door of the store, following dutifully behind his mother who fondled her apron too much and carried three dozen brown eggs. His mother walked up to Charlie, who stood behind the counter counting coins. She smiled, but her lips were cracked, dry. She looked too old, too worn.
“How you do, Mr. Charlie?”
The man didn’t look up, but nodded toward her direction.
“I have some eggs for fair trade, sir.”
“How many?” The man stood up, looked at the woman.
“Three dozen.”
He sighed. “The price of flour and cornmeal has gone up to two dollars, that’s not a fair trade.”
“I…” His mother looked around the store for a moment. “I… I will need a little time to come up with the money, you see.”
The man looked at her coldly, “Your credit is not as good here as it once was. I cain’t extend you more credit.”
“I’ll pay it back, Mr. Charlie. I always pay it back.”
The man looked to the ceiling and then to the floor, sighed again. “Okay. But just the flour and cornmeal. Nothing else.”
His mother thanked the man and walked toward the back of the store. Edgar watched her go, her back more bent than it had been when she entered.
A short, muddy colored man and little girl slid open the back barn-like door and stepped inside. The man was dirty, his nails and shoes caked with filth. His daughter was just as grimy, her dull eyes darting back and forth, not focusing on anything or anyone. She had a useless lazy eye.
They looked wrong. Didn’t belong.
“What you wont, boy?” Charlie noticed them as soon as they came inside.
“New shirt.” The man’s English was broken. Wrong.
“Ain’t got none.”
The man looked around the store, then pointed to a few white men’s shirts on the shelf toward the back of the store. “One of those. Just fine.”
“Ain’t got no shirts. Do you have money?” Edgar moved so that he could better see the pair. His mother was somewhere in the back of the store.
The man stared at Charlie for a while, moved his lips to speak, thought better of it, and grabbed his child’s arm. “Good day.”
“Oh, no you don’t. I asked you a question. You got money? What you doin’ with money? Where you get it, boy? From me? You stole my money, boy?” The white man was screaming while he grabbed his would-be customer’s grimy overcoat. Several of the people in the store ducked around shelves of canned foods and bagged goods, staring at the wretched man and his plaintive offspring.
The shop owner began rubbing his hands along the man’s body, searching him. “What you do with it?”
“Nothing,” the man said calmly, reached, again, for his child.
People were watching. A white man with a big wide-brim hat walked over and grabbed the dark man, helping Charlie search him. He pulled a few dollar bills from the accused’s pocket and held it up for everyone to see. Then the white man in the hat reached out and slapped the dark one, hard. He almost fell to the floor before he caught himself; his daughter never let go of his hand, and helped him to his feet when his legs wobbled too much for him to stand on his own.
The girl clutched her father. “Stop it!” Her voice seemed so tiny in that room of shouting men. Suddenly a woman walked up and pushed the little girl to the floor. Her dress flew over her head as she fell, her bloomers showing for everyone to see, and her butt hit the floor hard. She was, it seemed, as pathetic as her father. “Where the rest of my money, boy? Where’s my money?”
It all happened so quickly. Several people rushed in and stopped Charlie and the other man from hitting the poor slob any more, but his face was already swollen and bloody. The sheriff broke through the crowd, stared at the scene, and sighed, “What happened? What’s going on?”
Burly white arms were holding on to the beaten man, keeping him on his feet.
The whole time, the poor fool didn’t say a word. Edgar wondered why he didn’t just offer Charlie the little bit of money he had, and maybe the shopkeeper would let them go.
The sheriff asked again. “What’s going on here?
Finally the man spoke, his lip broken in two places: “Just misunderstanding,” he said simply. The shadows scurried around the man’s feet, feeding from his misery.
His daughter wiped the dirt from her butt and made her way over to him, trailing dots of blood behind her. She was the only movement in the whole store, and it seemed as if everyone was frozen in their spots. Her eyes darted back and forth between the men and her father.
“I saw him take it,” a voice from the back spoke up. A familiar voice. Edgar’s mother. The woman walked up slowly. He had never noticed how slight she had become, how her limp had worsened since last he noticed, her back a bit more hunched. “I was watchin’ him close when they come in. He took money right off the counter there. I saw it.”
“There was money right there on the counter, is true.” A small woman from the back ducked around the canned corn. “I’m…I’m sure of it.”
Edgar thought back to the moment he entered the store. He remembered… There had been coins, no bills… He was sure, they had been on the counter, just as the woman said. And his mother wouldn’t lie. She had been in the back of the store, but maybe she had come back up without him noticing. Why hadn’t he noticed? He had been so busy watching those damn shadows, which had now gathered around the grubby, beaten man and his little girl’s feet. Perhaps, Edgar had been wrong. Perhaps the creatures were not feeding from this man at all. Perhaps, they were a part of him. Perhaps they were a part of them all.
Edgar nodded. He’d seen them take the money all along. He just hadn’t realized it.
The sheriff was a big beefy man who didn’t carry a gun — said he didn’t need one — but he carried a wooden ax handle. The hickory was polished to a shine, and smooth and yellow like churned butter. “Y’all sure? You saw these two take that money?”
Nobody said anything at first.
“Yes.” Edgar’s mother was sure.
“Yes.” The small woman was sure.
“… Yes.” Edgar was sure.
The thief rubbed the sweat and dirt from his face, reached for his daughter’s hand. The girl grabbed it, clung to her father while the darkness clung just as tightly to their souls.
The sheriff carted them away, two fewer leeches sucking the lifeblood of natural society.
♦
He began to hear them after that. The treacherous songs of a fallen, squat race of Mongoloids who had once roved the Earth. He knew them now. He heard every formerly muted whisper, every foul threat against humanity within their painful cries.
Whispers. Whispers.
He heard them all the time now. They called to him. Filling his head with foul thoughts. Putting doubts in his mind. Making him question all of the things that he knew to be true.
Rabboni. He was the teacher. The one who could lead others. His mother assured him of this. She knew. He knew.
But, dear God, the voices. They mocked him.
He lay in the bed in which he had first died only weeks before, again writhing in pain, again lost to all around him. His mother placed a wet cloth on his forehead, assuring him that “this too shall pass, son.”
She was so sincere. But the voices in his head made him doubt her, challenge every word. Did it matter if it’d pass, when his pain was so great now? Was this the excuse that you give when you have no answers?
She touched him again, her hands feeling like rusty nails over his skin. He moved away from her touch. She looked at him, hurt. “Everything happens for a reason. Everything.”
Yes, mother, but whose reason? Edgar’s thoughts had long been out of his control. His body ached, a painful reminder that he was to suffer as Christ had suffered. Or, he reasoned, a reminder that every word from his mother’s treasured book, every word that lingered in his head like a heavy burden, was written, forged, just like his schoolbooks. And just like his schoolbooks, they taught a specific knowledge.
The aches in his body would not let up. They had taken over, and it no longer mattered that he could not feel his mother’s touch, that he did not want to feel her hands further corrupt his flesh, and his mind. She had lied to him, deposited secret messages into his head that could not easily be removed. He was not taught to love, as her precious book demanded. He hated. With all of the power that he had within him. He feared. Feared things that he could not see or understand. Knowledge was the enemy of his mother’s teachings, and so she had kept him stupid. Accepted nothing less than his acquiescence.
“No!” He screamed out in pain. Not the pain of his body, but that of his thoughts that were betraying everything that he had ever known, ever understood. What was there in life if not his understanding of the Good Book?
And, yet, he knew the Bible now. The words swam around in his brain, mixing with the memories of what he had been always been taught.
Edgar, like the Lord he knew, had been put here to suffer — and suffer, he did. His body twisted and contorted in a way that would never have been possible if he’d had full control over his limbs. Seeing this, his mother said a silent prayer, asking Jesus to protect Edgar, beseeching the Son of God instead of the Lord himself. But somehow they had become one and the same in his head. Or, had they always been so? He could not remember any longer. Could not distinguish his old memories with his new ones, his old understanding of things with these new corrupted thoughts.
The shadows, they taught him. Who are the least of these? The Mongoloids, the hordes of dark flesh that seek to undermine good society. Where can they be found? He knew the answer. Right outside, in the sewers and gutters where all trash can be found, with the least of these.
For God shows no partiality. Unless of course man is White — pure.
Pain gripped him, and he rolled off the hard lumpy mattress onto the harder cold floor. Edgar’s brother David, who had watched on silently, made no move to help him. The boy now scorned Edgar as he did others. His mother rose laboriously to her feet, stared down on her fallen son. He feared for a moment that she could read his mind, see his corrupted thoughts. But she could not. No one knew his vile memories.
Edgar pulled himself up to his knees, staring into the woman’s eyes, reached out to her. She touched him, and his skin burned under her fingers. He did not pull away, did not reject her. He could not; she was all he had known. How do you reject that which is engrained?
Edgar turned and looked to the ceiling, imagined white clouds, fluffy, pure. “Why have you forsaken me?”
The Lord did not answer.
♦
They decided to hang the pair of thieves in the public square outside of the penitentiary the following Saturday, reasoning the daughter was accomplice to her father’s crime. Edgar’s mother got herself dolled up in her best Sunday clothes to attend. She had Edgar and his brother wear their Sundays too. Everyone who had been in the store was to testify before the town; presumably the crooks would confess, but, even if not, they were to be hanged by the neck until dead.
They were an example. A warning to other Mongoloids and Negroids and heathen who would think to move to Eddyville to corrupt the people there. Corruption was just another word for sin. The shadows were vivid, loud and demanding, that morning. They screamed unimaginable things in his ears, condemning him, mocking him.
Edgar and his family took the buggy into town instead of walking the seven miles. This was a special occasion, and his mother didn’t want to get her good clothes dirty in the muddy streets. His father pulled the buggy into an empty spot directly opposite the prison. Edgar jumped down from the carriage and then helped his mother down. He stared at the giant building as if he hadn’t seen it before.
Called Castle of the Cumberland, the prison sat high on the hill overlooking the Cumberland River. The giant had taken more than six years to finish and had killed many workers helping to build the structure in record time. Everyone knew the old state penitentiary in Frankford had been a disgrace. The conditions had been called “inhumane” by the newspapers, and had forced lawmakers to quickly find another solution.
That solution was Eddyville and its new castle.
The building stood over the top of the trees, staring up like a vengeful child. When he had been small, the children all told stories of the old, narrow cell house, which led underground from the prison proper, into the hills. They called it “the dungeon,” and said that was where the guards chained unruly inmates. They said that you could sometimes hear the cries of the hopeless men at night, their wails calling out over the waters of the Cumberland.
In town, people were gathering around the prison, waiting for the show. The shadows lay at their feet, as if they were ordinary, normal vestiges from the sun’s radiant glare. They were not. They were evil. They sought the souls of every living being in attendance. Perhaps they would get them.
Thunder broke the quiet, and Edgar looked up, hoping that the rains wouldn’t come the way they had the night before, and the day before that. A thin cloud passed in front of the sun, and he realized that no rain would be forthcoming that day. He said a quick prayer, thanking God for that.
The thunder had come from the massive building, as if the walls themselves were moaning. The giant steel doors swung open, releasing the doomed from their temporary cages into the arms of their final embrace — the ropes around their necks.
Edgar and his family crossed the street, and narrowly avoided getting run down by a grand four-horse buggy that raced toward the prison. On the other side of the road, a woman carrying a small child pushed past them, trying to get closer to the gibbet. She smelled of old, dirty things. Tears streamed down her face as she looked away from the show that had begun to unfold.
Three guards and a tall man in a top hat led the condemned man and girl out from the prison gate. The woman beside Edgar let out a loud gasp, reaching absently for the pair whom she would never embrace again. Her family, Edgar reasoned. Somehow he had not thought that there would be people to mourn them. As he watched them, he was surprised to see how tiny the girl looked. She couldn’t be older than twelve, although she was small even for this generous estimate. The girl followed her father, silently to her death. She knew what would happen to her, he could see the look of resolution on her young face.
The terrible, terrible whispers of the revolting shadows filled his ears, his head, his thoughts. He could hear them mocking him.
The doubts rushed back to him: Will you testify? Will you?
The crowd of people was thick toward the center of town, and people were talking and laughing as if they were there to see a Broadway show in New York City. Several more thunder-like sounds rose over the crowd from the state penitentiary. Every time, all conversations would pause, and people would stare at the building hoping things were getting started.
Finally the man with a top hat and suit of clothes that were years out of fashion appeared over the high stone wall. He waited a moment for everyone to quiet down before he spoke.
“Good evening, everyone. As you all know, I’m the commissioner of Lyon County, Saul Williams.” People began clapping and shouting the man’s name. Smiling, he said, “Now quiet down, folks. We’ll be getting this show underway here soon.” Everyone laughed and clapped for a long time. Edgar just stared. “Also, when we’re finished, we’ll have a viewing. You’ll all be able to see the bodies for yourselves. No pictures now.”
Suddenly the father dashed forward, nudging his child to the side, behind him. The crowd jumped, afraid that he’d come for them. Edgar stared, he wasn’t afraid. “I confess.” The man’s daughter broke down, crying. He turned to look at her, then back to the crowd. “I did it. I did it. I took that money. It wasn’t mine. And I took it…” He looked down, glanced for a moment at his child. “My daughter. Did nothing. She didn’t know. She’s fourteen. A child. Spare her.” No shadows stood beneath his feet, only beneath the crowd’s.
The woman beside Edgar held her breath for a moment. No doubt that she was torn between wanting her daughter to be spared, but not wanting the man who had spawned her to die. Edgar turned to look at her for a moment. He saw her, as if for the first time. Her face was red from the tears and the emotion. Her gown was worn and caked with dirt at the bottom, though this was probably her best dress. She had a scar down her left cheek, from a lashing, perhaps. It had healed wrong, thickened. Her eyes were swollen from the tears, but clear. She would watch every moment, remember. Most of the people there would have forgotten within a week’s time. Edgar wasn’t sure if he could forget.
For a very long time, there was silence. Complete silence. Even the shadows surrendered to the moment.
“No,” the girl spoke loud enough for everyone to hear her. “No. He didn’t.”
With nothing left to say, the man in the top hat spoke: “Now, if we can have those who will testify step up? Speak your piece before the good people of this town so that they know the crimes that have been committed by both this man and his offspring.”
One by one each of the people who had been at Charlie’s that day told what they saw, as they saw it. The father and daughter were a gang of roving thieves by all accounts. They were vestiges of an undeveloped people who needed to be extinguished from the earth, or at least from Eddyville. This was the day to begin the purge.
After the others had spoken, Edgar stepped forward. He looked to the girl and then her father and then back to the girl again. Too small. Sick. Unhealthy… Unclean. After a moment, he opened his mouth to speak his truth. The shadows and the people of Eddyville were there to receive it.
♦
Jesus wept for man in the Bible.
Edgar never fully understood why.