The Obsidian Blade (26 page)

“I haven’t been watching the news.”

“A whole flock was roosting in a tree by Hardy Lake last week, and they were all up by Grouse Creek this morning. People get on buses and follow them. Nobody knows where they came from.”

“The birds or the people?”

“The
birds
! God sent them as a harbinger.”

Tucker had his own ideas about how the passenger pigeons had come to Hopewell.

“You should definitely come see Father September tonight,” the blond girl said.

Tucker remembered Lahlia talking about a new preacher taking over the Church of the Holy Word. The so-called miracle worker. A creepy feeling ran up his spine. There had been a time when he might have believed in a preacher who performed miracles, but after all he had seen recently, he suspected that this “Father September”— and the passenger pigeons — had more to do with diskos than with miracles.

The girls told him that the revival was in the county park, just south of town. Tucker promised to be there, then continued walking up Main Street. Hopewell was small enough that he quickly left downtown behind. He was halfway home when someone on a bicycle appeared ahead, riding toward him. Tucker recognized Will Krause. Will pulled up in front of Tucker and stared at him, openmouthed.

“Tucker?”

Tucker nodded.

“You got a beard! You’re taller, too!”

“I had a growth spurt.”

“No kidding. Jeez. You look like — like you’re old enough to vote! What happened to you? Tom said you must have run off with Lahlia.”

“Lahlia is gone?”

“She disappeared the same time you did. The Beckers think she got kidnapped. Some people think she ran off with you. I figure she took off to get away from Ronnie since he’s kind of a dick.”

“Ronnie’s still around?” Tucker had the same feeling about Ronnie Becker.

“Yeah, he’s all religious now, but he’s still a dick.”

“What about this preacher who does miracles?”

Will rolled his eyes. “Supposed miracles. Like making blind people see and stuff. He predicted the pigeons would return, and then they did, and then he predicted all this other stuff. My dad says it’s all hooey. He says September’s a phony, and his so-called miracles are all fake. Like, he made this blind lady see, but there’s no way to know if she was really blind to start out with. And the pigeons might have already been here. The only good thing is that he’s against math. They say you shouldn’t teach math or algebra in school. That would be cool. No algebra.”

Tucker thought about Awn and her aversion to numbers.

Will looked down at Tucker’s feet. “What kind of shoes are those?”

“Oh, just something I got in Wisconsin. How’s Tom doing?” he asked.

Will’s face clouded. “I don’t really know. He hasn’t been around much. I was hoping I might see him in town. He joined up with the Lambs. He’s what they call a Pure Boy. Some sort of altar boy, I guess. My dad was, like, ‘You’re going straight to hell, young man!’ Mom’s totally freaked.”

“You’re kidding me.
Tom?
” The Tom Krause he knew was no more religious than a cat.

“I think he’s just doing it because Kathy Aamodt joined up,” Will said.

That made more sense.

“Where you going?” Will asked.

“Home.”

“Like, to your house?” Will gave him an odd look.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Um . . . I think there’s somebody else living there now.”

A
BLACK
SUV
WAS PARKED IN FRONT OF THE GARAGE
, and someone had mowed the lawn. Tucker stopped at the end of the driveway and stared up at the roof. The disko wasn’t there. He walked to the front door and raised his hand to knock, then thought,
Why knock?
It was his house.

He opened the door and walked in. The furniture in the living room was the same, but the house smelled different. The coffee table was piled with unfamiliar books and magazines. Everything seemed smaller.

He heard the sound of running water and went to the kitchen. A woman with long red hair was standing at the sink, wearing one of his mother’s dresses.

“Hello?” he said. His voice sounded hollow and distant.

The woman turned, let out a startled yelp, and dropped the pan she was holding.

Tucker’s heart stopped. The pan clattered on the floor.

It was his mother. Except it wasn’t. This Emily Feye looked like his mom in his parents’ wedding photos — a young woman of twenty.

“Mom?” he heard himself say.

She yelled something — it sounded like
Tamm!
— and edged toward the back door.

Tucker said, “Wait!”

The screen door banged open and a man with curly black hair and a yellow T-shirt rushed into the kitchen. He fixed his eyes on Tucker, ran at him, and threw a punch. Tucker easily avoided the fist, grabbed the man’s arm, and swung him against the stove.

Even as it was happening, Tucker thought,
When did I get so fast?

A ceramic pitcher exploded against the cupboard.

Tucker ducked and shouted, “Mom! Cut it out! It’s me!”

The younger Emily Feye did not stop. She flung a plate at him, then a coffee cup — anything she could grab off the counter. The plate struck him on the shoulder, the cup shattered against the wall, and the man came at him again from behind and wrapped an arm around Tucker’s throat. Tucker threw himself forward, flipping the man over his shoulders and slamming him to the floor.

The woman reached for another plate.

“Stop it!” Tucker shouted. “This is my house!”

The woman hesitated, looking from Tucker to the man on the floor.

“I
live
here!” Tucker said.

The man groaned and pushed himself up.

“Who are you?” the woman asked. It was his mother’s voice, but with an odd accent.

“Who are
you
?” Tucker countered.

The man regained his feet and started toward Tucker again.

“Tamm, wait,” said the woman.

The man stopped.

“He says this was his house,” she said.

“It is
our
house,” said Tamm. His accent was stronger than hers.

Tucker ignored him and stared fiercely at his mother — or the younger version of his mom — trying to make sense of it. Was this his mom before she had given birth to him? Before she had married his dad? She looked just as bewildered as he felt.

“I live here,” he said.

“
We
live here,” said Tamm. “We have permission.” He pronounced it
pair-miss-own.

“Permission from who?”

“Father September. You go now.”

The woman said, “Tamm . . .”

“He must go,” said Tamm. He turned to Tucker with his fists clenched. “You go
now.
”

“Okay, okay,” Tucker said, “but this is still my house.”

The woman set the plate back on the counter. “You say you lived here?” she asked in the soft, sane voice that Tucker had not heard since before his mother had gotten sick. Was it possible that she hadn’t died, that the Medicants had cured her — and made her young again? But then where did she get that accent?

“I lived here. My whole life. And so did you. Don’t you remember anything?”

She shook her head, confused.

“You don’t recognize me?” Tucker said.

She stared hard at him, then shook her head again.

“I’m your
son
!” It came out like a sob; he felt as if his chest was crumbling from the inside out.

“I have no son,” said the woman.

Tucker stared at her. He could hear himself breathing. He could hear his heart beating in his ears. “How did you get so young?” he asked in a ragged whisper. “You can’t be more than nineteen or twenty.”

She winced as if he had slapped her.

“You were twenty when I was born,” Tucker said.

Tamm made an animal sound deep in his throat and again advanced upon Tucker. He seemed to be moving in slow motion. Tucker stepped easily aside and gave Tamm a shove, using Tamm’s own momentum to send him headfirst through the screen door.

“Tamm!” the woman screamed and ran to him. Tamm moaned and, with her help, slowly extracted himself from the torn screen.

“I’m sorry,” Tucker said.

She looked over her shoulder at Tucker and said, “You have done enough. Look, he is bleeding!”

Blood trickled from a small cut on Tamm’s forehead.

“Go and talk to Father September,” she said. “If he wants us to leave this place, we will go. Until then, this is our home.”

“Where do I find him?”

“At the church,” she said.

“You really don’t know me?” he asked.

“I have never seen you before.”

On the walk back to town, Tucker tried to figure out what had just happened. His dad, back in the tomb, had told Tucker she was “gone,” that the Medicants had told him she “zeroed.” Maybe “zeroed” didn’t mean she was dead, but that they had erased her memories and made her young again. But then how had she ended up with that guy Tamm?

The other weird thing was how easily he’d been able to fight off the older, bigger man. When Tamm had attacked him, his perceptions had sped up, and he had suddenly felt stronger and quicker. Tucker picked up a jagged stone the size of an egg, drew his arm back, and threw it. The rock sailed out over Aamodt’s cornfield and landed somewhere on the other side, well over two hundred yards away.

That wasn’t normal.

We have enhanced certain of your functions,
the Medicant woman had told him.

What had they done to him? He tried jumping straight up. He got a little higher than he expected, but nothing any basketball player couldn’t do. Too bad — for a second there, he’d hoped he could fly. But being strong and fast was good.

He continued toward town, walking more quickly. He imagined himself going back to the tomb in Jerusalem, fighting off those Roman soldiers, saving his dad, telling him that Mom was alive. If the disko on his house reappeared, he could go to the pyramid, then jump through the disko that led to Awn’s woods, and from there he could get to Golgotha . . .

He thought about his mother again, and the fantasy of saving his father fell away. It didn’t help that he was stronger and faster. His mother was alive, but he had lost her just the same. He slowed as a feeling of utter isolation overwhelmed him — he wanted to collapse there by the side of the road and be absorbed into the earth. Tucker stopped and closed his eyes.
Nothing,
he thought,
is worse than being alone.
And then it hit him that he was not alone.

There was God. A wave of guilt swept away his other emotions. The last time he had actually
prayed
had been on Golgotha.

Had the Medicants taken away his faith, as they had his father’s?

He tried to imagine God looking down on him. For a moment he felt a terrible blankness, a sense of being anchorless and forsaken. A panicky feeling rose up inside him. He opened his eyes and looked at the gently sloping field of corn to his left, at the cattail marsh to his right. Straight ahead, he could see the top of Hopewell House poking above the horizon. If God was not making his presence known at the moment, then so be it. Maybe God was with this Father September, who had supposedly given away his home and who also — if what Will and the girls in town said was true — was able to predict the future.

Maybe this was a test of his faith. He could pray later.

First, he had business with this new preacher.

T
HE FRONT OF THE SMALL CHURCH WAS MUCH AS
T
UCKER
remembered. Even the sign — the holy word — was unchanged. Four teenage girls selling T-shirts were blocking the front steps. Tucker walked up to the one who seemed to be in charge, a tall girl with curly brown hair and glasses.

“Is Father September in there? I need to see him,” he said.

The girl laughed; her friends provided an echo of giggles.

“
Everybody
wants to talk to him,” she said, looking him up and down. “Only you don’t look like a reporter. Anyways, he doesn’t see anybody.”

Tucker ignored her and started up the steps to the double doors. The girls moved aside and watched him. Tucker tugged on the doors. Locked. The doors had never been locked before; his father had always been proud of that fact.
What would they steal?
he had once said.
Salvation? Forgiveness? Truth?