“This isn’t what we expected, is it?” he asked Phil, fear creeping into his voice. “We don’t know what’s going on. This could be really, really bad.”
Phil, who was checking over the bodies to see if Faith was among them, shook his head.
“Father Billy said that this was Hell, right?” Phil replied glumly. “Where’d you think we were going?”
Mark nodded and they kept heading towards the camp.
Faith was sitting on the end of the dock watching a brilliant sunrise over the far side of the lake. A few low-hanging clouds were being illuminated by the spectacle, which made it almost look like the sky was on fire – a dazzlingly beautiful sight burning a pattern high into the atmosphere. As she stared at it, she thought about Maia and Colorado and the vanquished idea of a life lived alongside each other, a calendar of endless sunrises. Though she was incredibly sad, Faith understood for the first time what people at funerals meant about keeping someone in their heart after they died. Maybe she wasn’t dealing with the death properly or, more likely, wasn’t dealing with it at all yet, but she was able to perfectly imagine what Maia would say about the sunrise, how much she’d enjoy it, how her hair would look reflected in the glow and so forth as if she wasn’t dead, but was, in fact, sitting right beside her.
She had an overwhelming desire to lean over and kiss this hallucination, which she imagined was resting her fingers gently on her hand. But, of course, Maia wasn’t
really
there and Faith had to fight back the urge to cry.
“Faith...?” a voice said, far away. “Faith?”
Faith ignored this sound and closed her eyes, thinking of Maia. She thought of her first sight of her back on the bus, beginning with her sandals, though Faith now realized she’d probably been staring at her slim, sylphlike ankles. She thought of horsing around in the kitchen, thought of the two of them swimming, thought of the feeling of her arms around her, thought of when she finally let Maia’s body be engulfed in the waves of Lake Carlisle.
Remember, remember, remember, remember, she chanted to herself. Remember her eyes and the taste of her lips. Remember her beautiful hair and her beautiful feet. Remember the curvature of her body pressed tightly into yours...
“Faith!!” the voice – Phil’s – jumped up an octave and she knew she’d been found.
She heard the sounds of two pairs of footsteps.
Remember.
She figured Phil must’ve brought Mark. Mark from band. Mark who she didn’t really like so much, but who had been right about Father Billy.
Remember.
Remember.
“Faith!” Phil cried, clambering down the beach and across the dock as Faith got to her feet and turned around. “Faith!”
Phil wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. She could tell he was already crying. She held him back and saw Mark coming up behind him. To her surprise, she saw that Mark was in tears, too. He made it to where the beach met the dock, locked eyes with Faith and the two of them, in that moment, came to an understanding.
After a few more seconds, Faith pulled away from Phil, smiling at him.
“Phil!” she said. “You came back for me.”
“Yeah, we both did,” Phil said.
“Thank you,” she said, putting her hand on his.
“Where’s Father Billy?” Mark called out.
“Gone,” sighed Faith.
“Did you kill him?” Mark asked simply.
Faith didn’t answer immediately, looking from Mark then to Phil then back to Mark.
“I don’t know.”
Mark seemed satisfied with this response and jerked his head back towards the bicycles.
“We should get you the heck out of here.”
Faith heard these three words and, for some reason, a bolt of panic flashed through her body. She couldn’t imagine leaving Maia here all by herself. She knew Maia’s body wasn’t her body anymore, but still, it was all that was left of her and she couldn’t escape the idea that it would be so lonely without her...
“Okay,” Faith said, her voice cracking.
Phil looked at her and knew that Maia was gone, but didn’t say anything. He put his arm around her and walked her back to the two bicycles.
“It’s all about who you trust,” said Mark, picking his bike up. “My handlebars or his?”
Faith feigned a half-smile and walked over to Phil. “Sir?”
“Madam,” he said, holding the bike steady as she climbed on.
Mark smirked, but then stood up on his pedals and pumped them up and down, racing past the screened-in classroom, the mess hall, past the cabins and back to the road. When he saw the old firehouse bell hanging in front of the administrator’s cabin, he slid to a stop, picked up a rock and heaved it at it. It missed, but Mark didn’t care.
“
Clang
,” he said, dryly, and then pedaled ahead.
Faith closed her eyes as Phil pedaled after Mark, her mind trying to block out the horrific images she now associated with these structures. She knew what was just past the doorstep of Cabin 4, bodies piled upon bodies.
She glanced back towards the lake, but Phil thought she was looking at him and he forced himself to look grimly determined at his task.
“You okay?” he asked, trying to sound like a soldier, unaffected by anything.
“Yeah,” she replied, and then looked over his shoulder at the water.
She thought she’d only take one last glance, but she ended up staring at its blue waters, the white-capped waves lolling up on the shore as the sun rose higher in the sky. She watched it until the lake was obscured by trees, though she knew which direction it was in and kept her eyes fixed there, as if hoping it might make itself visible one more time. When this didn’t happen, she focused on the few colors left of the sunrise, little pinks against the cotton ball clouds, dissipating up into a sheet of perfect blue.
When there was nothing left, she faced forward as the bicycle bounced along through the still-smoldering forest. As they went, two words repeated themselves in her mind like a totem:
Her angel, her Maia. Her angel, her Maia...
Afterword
I wish I remembered more, but I don’t. Names and faces blend together after awhile and junior high yearbooks, church photos and the recollections of others only took me so far. I can say, with all honesty, that Father Billy has stayed with me my whole life thus far and the memories of him, aside from those few days chronicled here, are pleasant. Those of a man who cared deeply about his congregation, who was a great leader to his students and campers in and out of the church (I didn’t mention it in the text, but he was actually the leader of the church’s Boy Scout troop, too, of which I was a member). I will never understand what he came to believe as his final “mission on Earth,” but I hope, in the writing of this, maybe you will.
-Mark Wheaton
Los Angeles
November 22, 2009
Mark Wheaton is a horror screenwriter (
Friday the 13
th
,
The Messengers
) and graphic novelist (
The Cleaners
).
Sunday Billy Sunday
is his first horror novel, having previously published two horror novellas straight-to-Kindle (
Last Tuesday, Bones
). A print anthology is forthcoming with the additional story,
The New Guy
.
Cover design & illustration by Rahsan Ekedal
HTML coding for Kindle by Joshua Tallent (
http://www.ebookarchitects.com
)