His head reeled. He closed his eyes, tilted his face to the floor, and opened them again more slowly.
He saw the grain of the pine floor first. Dust swirled across the surface, visible in the beams of sunlight that lanced down from each window, then disappearing into the shadows between. The patterns of light and darkness made his eyes water, and he nearly closed them again—would have closed them again—except he knew where he was. In a flash of realization so sudden and absolute that the blood froze in his veins, he took in his surroundings and tried to gather the air into his lungs for a scream.
He managed only a quick puff of breath and a sound lost somewhere between a squeak and a wail. Footsteps approached from somewhere ahead of him. He turned his head to the left. He glanced up and found his father's emotionless, glazed eyes staring back at him. Beyond his father, he saw his mother, her hands still clenched in her lap, rocking up and back like the metronome old Dame Multinerry kept on top of her piano. Silas turned his gaze to the floor once more and found that two polished black boots now broke the even pattern of planks. He slowly ran his gaze up pleated pants legs and the tails of a dark jacket until Reverend Kotz's dark gaze snared him.
He saw the cold, calculated glare of the fighting cock in those dark, endless eyes. Reverend Kotz's lips were pressed firmly together in a grim line. Silas shivered, and as he did so, something shook loose inside and he became aware of his body.
Thudding, pounding pain crashed against the inside of his temples where he'd struck the pew.
His balance was strange, canted forward, and he gaped, suddenly aware that his hands were between his legs, and of what he was doing. He felt the stiff heat and whipped his gaze upward once more.
"The Lord has called you, boy," Reverend Kotz boomed. "There is evil among us. It floats in the air.
We breathe it in and it soaks out in our sweat. We take it in and it burns away our purity in its heat. I know you feel that heat, boy.
You have it in your hand—it's soaking your shirt—I can see it swimming behind your eyes and watching me.
"Do you know why it watches me, boy?" Silas shook so hard his teeth rattled. He wanted to pull his hands away from his flesh. He wanted to bow his head to the floor, lay it beside the man's boots and pray for the moment to end.
He wanted to feel the sunlight on his back, not in stripes through the high windows, but in warm, pleasant waves. He wanted his breathing to slow to normal and for those breaths to be sweet, fresh air.
Reverend Kotz bent suddenly and gripped Silas by the hair.
"The evil is in him," the Reverend intoned. "It has driven its spike into his heart and his mind, and claimed his flesh. We may be strong, but the evil is stronger.
You cannot
fight
it brethren. You cannot
ignore
it. You cannot
escape
it. It brushes over you with the heat of a thousand tongues and whispers into your ears to deceive you, twisting everything away from the light."
A murmur of voices rose and shivered through the air.
Silas couldn't make out the words, but he'd heard this sound before.
He shuddered and pulled back hard, trying to yank his hair free of Reverend Kotz's grip.
It didn't matter that they were all watching, that his parents would see and be angry and fear for his soul.
"Cleanse him." The voice was high-pitched, shooting at Silas from his right and behind. Whispered echoes floated around the room. Voices rose together to form a rhythmic chant.
They swayed in their seats and as Silas looked around wild-eyed, they became a single flowing motion of bodies, arms raised and heads thrown back. Hats dropped to the floor, hair came unbound, and they pressed, one to the other and in toward the center aisle where he knelt. Their collective heads turned and their gaze fell full on Silas' young, trembling face. He knew they saw him clearly—the sweat coating his body and the way he gripped himself, the heat where he still stroked himself uncontrollably.
They watched him squirm, and their voices rose in volume, almost drowning out Reverend Kotz's own impassioned plea.
"Cleanse him!" they cried. "The evil is in him, wash it away. The spirit is pure—cleanse the clay."
Over and over they repeated the words, some missing a beat and falling into the chant in the spaces between beats, fleshing out the sound and driving it in waves that shook the rafters and rattled the glass in the windows far above. The sunbeams wavered with it—like heat waves rising from blistered stone, shimmering and blurring their vision.
Tears streamed down Silas' cheeks.
He struggled like a fish on a hook, held easily in Reverend Kotz's iron grip.
He rose when the Reverend lifted and stumbled to his feet. The room faded to a rainbow-hued dream. Everything he saw had a shimmering aura formed of bright sunlight and hot tears.
Reverend Kotz backed away down the aisle, and Silas stumbled after him. His scalp screamed in pain, but he could not free his hands from their labor, could not release himself long enough to ease the pain of being led by his hair.
His tears dripped in a spotted trail toward the pulpit, and the chant, louder with every beat, drove him onward. The heat in his groin had grown maddening, but he couldn't form a clear thought.
He knew it was wrong, that he should be thinking about—something—but he could not.
Then the weight of that glare hit him, the palpable sensation of twin beams of pure hatred drove in on either side of his spine and he arched. His knees grew weak and the heat flowed out and down. Reverend Kotz lurched backward and pulled Silas through the curtained arch toward the room beyond the pulpit. Toward the pool.
The chant of "Cleanse the clay" roared in his ears, or maybe just his pulse, hot blood pumping too fast. He heaved in gulps of air, but he couldn't catch a full breath.
The curtains closed behind the two of them, muffling the sound and weakening the weight on his shoulders, but all this did was focus the pain in his scalp as he was dragged forward against the wall of the baptismal pool.
He slammed his eyes closed and pressed his hands, which had swung worthlessly at his sides since the heat in his groin released, into the pool wall. He tried to press himself back and away, but Reverend Kotz held him easily.
"It is our way, boy," the man said softly.
"It is her way."
Another voice intruded. Silas tried to concentrate on Reverend Kotz's words.
He knew they were important. He knew he should remember, that if he survived the next few minutes he would need them—the words and the knowledge behind them, but he couldn't concentrate. Someone, or something, hissed loudly in his ear and he shook his head from side to side, even as Reverend Kotz pressed down on the back of his head and forced him toward the pool. Silas shifted, and the world shifted with him. He screamed.
Silas sat bolt upright. He glanced down and saw that he still sat with his back to the baptismal pool. He heard the hiss again, very close, and he frowned. He glanced slowly around. They were everywhere. The floor was alive with writhing, serpentine bodies. Rattles whirred, and smooth scales slid over one another, over his arms and legs. They had wrapped about him and adorned him. His head bowed slightly and he lifted it, aware of the added shadow-weight and carrying it easily.
Silas didn't panic.
He rose slowly, keeping the serpents twined about his arms and allowing them to slide in and around his legs. He turned and stared at his reflection in the pool, a modern-day Medusa with serpents dangling from every limb and curling down over his collar like hair.
He threw back his head and laughed. The sound echoed off the walls and down the aisle between the pews. It shot out the open door into the darkness beyond and echoed off the hills.
Silas lowered his head, shook it back and forth in disbelief, and then smiled at his reflection. He winked at himself and said softly.
"I remember."
As if on cue, the generator that had powered the lights sputtered, low on gas, then died. The church and baptistery dissolved into silent shadows.
Harry George picked his way slowly up the trail.
It had been many long years, and though he knew that the act of climbing was part of the faith, and that he should trust in the mountain to lift him and bear his weight, he struggled. His breath was ragged, and sweat coated his body.
He held a cut branch in one hand as a walking stick, and he leaned on it heavily.
As he climbed, he remembered. The final march down this trail had drained something from him, and he fought to get it back. He thought of the others who had climbed with him that night. He remembered Jonathan Carlson's furrowed brow as he heard their pleas. He remembered the boy, as well, and remembered how they had forsaken him after his father's death.
The flood of memories was dark and deep and he had to concentrate on putting one foot before the other to prevent a misstep that would send him tumbling back down the mountain. There were others he would have to see. He didn't expect to sleep under his own roof until it was done. They would come, at least some of them, but they would have to be approached one by one. He would have to remind them of their duty. He smiled ruefully as that word slid through his thoughts. It was such a tricky thing, duty, sneaking up on a man in the twilight of his life to bear down on tired shoulders with its full weight. As a younger man, filled with fire and outrage, this climb had taken an eternity.
Nothing happened quickly enough. Now he stumbled up the mountain, bent by years and stooped from carrying his guilt through most of them, and the climb took an eternity.
He paused about halfway up to the old church and sat heavily on a large outcrop of stone.
It was hot, but the trees blocked most of the sun. Harry took out his canteen and tipped it, letting the still cool water run down his throat and splashing a bit onto his forehead to trickle over his face and under his collar.
He saw the sky through a pattern of tree trunks and limbs, blue and white backdrop to nature's line drawing.
He blinked. The lines formed by the trees were familiar, and he frowned.
He tilted his head slightly, searching for perspective, and the memory flashed into view.
Sarah Carlson's hands were slender, her fingers long and deft. She shuffled what appeared to be a small pile of sticks before her rapidly and spoke softly under her breath. Harry craned his neck to watch her flying fingers. Others were gathered, as well, and he had to lean in over young Ed Murphy's shoulder to see.
None of them could make out what she was saying.
They were gathered in the small stone cottage, far up the mountain. Reverend Carlson sat beside his wife on the floor, and the others gathered around. Abraham sat huddled in one corner of the room, near the fireplace, and watched with wide eyes. The room held more bodies than it had been designed to hold. The air was hot and sticky, and everyone except Sarah Carlson felt it.
Their faces ran with sweat. Their hearts raced.
They weren't sticks, Harry knew. They were Yarrow stalks. He knew because he and two others of the elders had gathered them, fifty in all, careful to make them even in length and to dry them in the sun. Sarah's instructions were exacting, and strange. Even as Harry had plucked the flowers from the earth and carefully cut the stalks, he'd prayed. This was not his way—it was not the way of the mountain, or of the church.
Sarah placed the first of the stalks on the floor in front of her. She split the remainder into two piles. She placed the pile in her right hand on the floor and plucked a single stalk from it, placing this between two fingers of her left hand. Then it began, so rapidly that none of them were able to follow her movements. The counting was precise; sometimes in fours, sometimes in fives, and each time another small pile of Yarrow wands crossing those that had been counted before, until all were accounted for in a single stack. Sarah stared at them for a moment, scratched a broken line onto the paper at her side, and continued. She gathered the entire pile of fifty wands up and started again.
She completed the process six times. Each time she scratched either a solid or broken line on the paper at her side. When she was finished, she tied the bundle of yarrow together reverently and handed them to Jonathan, who took them without comment. Up until that moment, the rest of them might not have existed. They stood and waited, and Sarah glanced up, catching first one set of eyes, and then another.
She rose in a fluid motion, gripping the paper in her right hand.
"
Hsi
K'an
," she said simply.
They blinked at her without comprehension, and she held up the diagram she'd drawn. "The symbol is
Hsi
K'an
," she repeated. "It is a water symbol, a symbol of containment and control." There was no reaction at first, but then heads nodded slowly and reluctantly.
"There is danger," Sarah continued.
"Great danger, both spiritual and physical. There will be things revealed in this endeavor that, perhaps, you will not want to know. This will not come without cost."