Suffer the Children #11
Sophia said nothing, which Addie knew meant she wished to say yes but knew she oughtn’t.
“I’ll be quick,” Addie said. “He’s probably down at the hall, talking to the mayor and Eleazar. I’ll find him, and then I’ll come straight back.”
Sophia nodded. Addie gathered her things and went.
Preacher was not in town. Neither was Mayor Browning nor Mr. Dobbs. As Addie learned, Preacher had been asking after them, and someone had last seen Dobbs and Browning heading into the woods, and Preacher had gone off in pursuit.
Addie followed. They’d taken the main trail out of town, which made tracking difficult.
She looked for small signs—a broken twig, a boot print in damp ground—and kept her ears attuned.
She was no more than a quarter mile from town when she heard Browning and Dobbs returning.
She snuck into the forest to watch as they passed.
Soon she saw them, trudging along, faces grim, not speaking.
There was a purpling bruise on the mayor’s jaw.
She stared at that, then began drawing back farther to let them pass, when she spotted something on Dobbs’s boots.
They were light brown, tanned leather…and one was speckled red.
Addie crept hunched over through the undergrowth, until she was close enough to see the glistening specks. More on his trouser leg. Blood. There was no doubt of it.
Addie tried to inhale but couldn’t force the air into her chest. Her heart pounded too hard.
Mr. Dobbs is speckled with blood. Preacher is missing. Preacher, who dared argue against their plan. Dared suggest it was not the work of God.
She held herself still until they were gone. Then she dashed onto the path and broke into a run.
Addie tore along the path, convinced she would at any moment stumble over Preacher’s dead body. She did not, which only made her more panicked, certain it was out there in the forest, where she would not find it, where scavengers would feast—
She took deep, shuddering breaths to calm herself, then began retracing her steps along the path, slower now, searching for any sign that someone had left the path.
When she reached the first fork, she heard something.
She stopped, her eyes squeezed shut as she listened.
Then she tore down the secondary path, branches whipping her face, until—
“Addie?”
Preacher’s voice. Preacher’s footfalls, pounding along the path. Then he was there, standing in front of her. No blood to be seen.
“Addie? Are you all right? Is it Sophia? Is she—?”
“Sophia is well.” She bent, catching her breath. “All is well.”
She hiccuped a laugh. All is well? Charlie is possessed by a demon monster. All is not well. But right now, it is. Preacher is fine. Unharmed.
Preacher came over, face drawn in concern, hand resting on her arm as she found her breath.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We were only worried about you. Me and Sophia.”
“Sophia and I,” Preacher said.
Addie burst out with a real laugh then. No matter how dire the situation, he could not fail to correct her grammar, as gently as if they were at the supper table, saying grace.
When she laughed, Preacher gave a crooked smile and shook his head, murmuring an apology before saying, “Well, you’ve found me. And I did not find what I was looking for.”
“The mayor and Mr. Dobbs? I saw them a ways back. Returning to town.”
“They’ve finished their mission then,” he whispered beneath his breath.
“What mission?”
He looked startled, as if he had not meant to speak aloud. “They were out here for something. I know not what. Come. Let’s go back to town.”
As they began to walk, Addie thought about the blood on Dobbs’s boot. He had not hurt Preacher, but he had hurt something. Some animal? She recalled stories of dark magic, with animals sacrificed to the Devil.
“Perhaps we ought to find where they’ve been,” she said.
“That’s what I was trying to do.”
“No, you were trying to find where they are. I can track where they’ve been.”
He hesitated. “All right then. I don’t want to leave Sophia for long, but if we can discover what they were doing, we ought to.”
Preacher
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, Preacher with Addie, who they’d dressed in Sophia’s clean 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 horrific 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.