Xeno Sapiens (52 page)

“
Stanton Dru,”
A voice said from
behind him. “She calls it
Stanton Dru.
”

David whirled around, the sudden shock from
this intrusion making his heart hammer. Whisper Storm had appeared
from nowhere. She stood before him, back draped by the churning
ocean waters, dressed today not in her habitual black, but in
something like a gray, sack dress. Like a beachcomber, she was
barefoot, her face clear of makeup and unhealthily white.

She seemed tired, less combative today, the
fire in her eyes not even embers. Quickly gathering his wits, David
saw her wet footprints tracking down the beach, parallel to the
surf. She had walked up on him unawares while he was deep in
observation of the totem. He hadn't warmed to the woman; couldn't
say he really liked or disliked her, but he felt no great joy at
seeing her. She passed by David and walked further inland into the
shade of the trees. David followed her until she stopped.

“Stanton Dru,” David repeated. “What is
it?”

“It's
her
place.
Their
place.
You thought it was all a harmless bit of folklore, some ancient
culture kept alive by one dotty woman. Now you know what they're
capable of. They wanted Rose and she fought them. Now they want
your daughter and they're using you to get to her. She needs to be
baptized. She needs to be washed in the blood of Christ.”

She looked up at David, her eyes dreamy and
misty behind her glasses. “We could do it here, purging her soul in
the very shadows of her bloody, Pagan idols. Jesus will still the
waters, like He did at the Sea of Galilee.”

David put a calming hand on her forearm,
willing himself to be patient.

“Not now, Miss Storm. This isn't the time or
the place to discuss this. You can't really take this seriously.
This isn't the eighteenth century.”

Whisper cut her eyes to the impossibly
perfect circles of trees where silent skeletons screamed their
death agonies endlessly into living wood.

“Even after this, you still think it's a
joke?”

“Not a joke. History. A hundred and fifty
years have passed. Whatever happened here and whoever did this are
long gone. This place is no different from a battlefield where the
guns have gone silent.”

Whisper seemed to debate saying something,
then remained silent. Perhaps her more docile demeanor was her
attempt at a peace offering. At her age, she hadn't made the
arduous trek for her health. She meant to speak to him alone.

“It happened during the War of Northern
Aggression,” she said, looking at David. “The rebels knew better
than to use our little town as a staging area for the blockade
runners. Some things endure even through the horrors of war. But
not the Yankee sailors. Maybe their vessel ran into difficulties;
maybe they wanted to invade the town. Who knows? But their biggest
mistake was not in being Yankees. It was in being Christians. Maybe
they saw the abominations carried on by the bloody Irish in this
town. Maybe they tried to put a stop to it with their guns and
cannon. It didn't matter.” Whisper swept her arm around at the
brooding trees.

“This is what happened. Men of pure
Christian blood.
English
blood, and they were martyred for
it. From that day forward, the sentinels of the Triple Goddess were
placed here and none have bothered us since.”

“Triple Goddess?”

“
Their
unholy trinity. Birth, death,
renewal. Earth, air and water. Past present and future. Ignorance,
learning, wisdom.” She gave David a sly look.

“You think me a backwards old woman,
intolerant and blinded by my faith. They see me as filled with
typical Christian greed. Life isn't enough for us, they say. We
want eternity, too. But I'm no fool. I know my enemy.”

“How can you know all this,” David asked.
“Certainly what happened here was horrible, but horrible things
happen in war.”

Whisper regarded him knowingly. “You saw the
sign on the anchor? Do you know what it means?”

“No.”

“It was a sign given by God to the Roman
general Constantine, the first Christian emperor. There was a great
civil war in Rome in the year 312 with Constantine and Maxentius
vying for control of the empire. Camped out the day before the
ultimate battle and outnumbered by the legions of Maxentius,
Constantine saw a flaming Cross of crucifixion written across the
sky by God's finger and the words
'In hoc signo vinces'
written on it. That night he ordered his legions to paint the sign
of the cross on their shields and the next day his army emerged
victorious.”

“And,” David prompted. “What does it
mean?”

“
'By this sign we conquer,'”
she said
simply.

David recalled his uncomfortable impression
that the sign was mocking. The sign of the cross hadn't been enough
to save the Yankee sailors. That made him think of the den he had
found and he wondered if Whisper knew anything about that.

“It's the lair of the Green Man,” she told
him.
“Their
all encompassing deity. I had hoped he was
finally gone, but I've seen him from time to time, skulking through
the fields, watching from the trees. But my God protects me and
it's my Christian duty to protect others, to warn others, no matter
what they think of me. This town is the last unspoiled place in
this country and once the heathens are stamped out, it will be the
closest thing to heaven we have on earth.” She paused. “Someone has
to save the children, even if their parents won't.”

“Miss Storm,” David said, not rising to the
bait. “I've been to the cross quarter festivals. There's no
sacrifice going on, nothing evil. Can't you just let Wilma be?”

“Do you think they would let you see it? An
outsider? I said they were evil, not stupid. They work in darkness,
but they hide in the open.” She grasped David's right hand with her
left and traced an outline around the caduceus on his forearm, his
almost new tattoo. “They've placed their devil's mark on you
already. But you have the makings of a good, Christian man. I can
see it in your eyes and hear it in your voice when you sing in
church. But your soul is at risk here. And your daughter's soul.”
She gently pressed David's arm away from her grasping hand. “Be
careful what you wish for, Mr. Moore. You might just get it. I'll
pray for you.”

She abruptly pushed past David and began to
trudge away the way she had come.

“Miss Storm...”

She didn't acknowledge his call as she
walked away from the relics of Stanton Dru and back up the beach.
He watched her as she slowly shuffled her way up the sand, never
looking back.

Once out of sight, David took a last look at
the disturbing totems of the triple goddess. He wanted to get out
of here, but he couldn't make himself go back into the sunless
ruins of Stanton Dru and past the lair of the Green Man.

He walked back along the beach, following in
the wet footprints of Whisper Storm.

********************

David Moore had already thought it to
himself on his way to Vister: Some things are best left to vanish
in the mists of time. Some things are best forgotten. On short
acquaintance, Vister seems like any other hidden backwater:
peaceful, hard working, maybe a trifle odd. But as he becomes ever
more ensnared in the twin webs of the bewitching Wilma, and the
fundamentalist Whisper Storm and the ladies of the Crystal Sphere
League, he learns that there is more to Vister's strange culture
and the tongues that give it voice than he could have imagined. And
on that perilous journey to discovery, he finds the dark secret
dwelling within him: a secret that will consecrate or condemn him.
Welcome to Wandil Land…

Available at
www.wandilland.com

By

Victor Allen

Copyright © 2006 all rights reserved

From
We Are the Dead..
.

Over her second piece of Margie Saunders'
fabulously fattening Pecan pie, 'Scilla had become right at home.
Margie's kitchen reminded her so much of her grandmother's home.
The ratty old stuffed armchair she sat in fit in perfectly with the
homey, dimly lit feel. A prehistoric cast iron cook stove brooded
over the humped and buckled floor. A cheap kitchen table balanced
on rickety legs like a baby taking its first steps. The stovepipe
wove its crooked path through the ceiling after too many twists and
turns to be reasonable. Innumerable kitchen utensils and pot
holders hung from the hooks and runners like dozing bats. Ricky
polished off the last bite of his Persimmon pudding and belched.
Margie glared at him.

“Honest to God, Ricky. I don't know why you
have to do that in front of company. Bad enough you do it in front
of me.” She looked sympathetically at 'Scilla, a handsome woman, a
little on the plump side.

“Don't mind him,” she said. “That moonshine
he drinks has left him senseless after all these years. If you
encourage him, next thing he'll be stickin' his finger so far up
his nose he can stir the little brains he has left.”

Ricky smiled benignly. He was unknowably
ancient, a stooped, grinning, green slacks-clad gnome. A cloth hat
was plopped on his head. He held a cane in his right hand.
Hyperpigmentation marks lay like shadowy sunspots against the pale,
puffed and shiny skin. His teeth were stained brown from a lifetime
of chewing tobacco, but his smiles were frequent and sincere.

“Margie's just kvetching. She's always said
I wouldn't have sense enough to poor piss out of a boot with the
directions printed on the heel.” His anxious gaze fell on 'Scilla.
“That pie okay?”

“It's wunnerful,” she answered around a
mouthful of pecans and Karo syrup. “I've never had better.”

Ricky swelled in his chair. “Margie's the
finest cook for miles around. She purt near always wins the blue
ribbon at the 'coon dog races, though we ain't been in several
years. Ain't that right, Margie?”

Margie acknowledged the compliment with a
modest nod.

“You get on her good side,” Ricky advised.
“She'll show you a hunnerd ways to fix cabbage so it don't blow a
hole in your longjohns.”

Margie rolled her eyes. “Hell's bells,” she
muttered. “Would you like more tea? Lisa? 'Scilla?”

“Yes, please,” 'Scilla answered. “If it's no
trouble.”

“Not at all,” Margie said, picking up a
gallon jar of tea. The jar had once held pickles. She filled
'Scilla's and Lisa's glasses. “Slop it up until your back teeth
float.”

Ricky produced a tin of snuff and wedged a
bit into his mouth. He gauged the distance to his tarnished brass
cuspidor with a practiced eye. It hunkered on the floor, its faded
brass surrounded by juice stained floor panels.

“I'm glad it was somebody like you that took
the old Morgan place,” he commented. “I'da hated to see it go to
rack and ruin like so many of the fine old homes around here. A lot
of history in that old place. You can turn it into a real showplace
if you're of a mind to. If you need some help with the
carpenterin', Phillip Anderson is a plus man. If you can get him to
let you in his house to do some hirin', that is.”

“I wouldn't think someone who depends on
service work for a living to be standoffish,” 'Scilla said.

“Oh, he's far from standoffish. Most likely
he doesn't want you to see those chintz curtains, lavender sheets,
and good shoes in his house. I'll give you directions when you
leave.”

Ricky spat a thin stream of brown juice at
his cuspidor where it plopped home with a ding. 'Scilla looked
helplessly at Lisa, who simply shrugged.

“Me and Willie Morgan went back more than
seventy years before he passed over last year. House has been empty
for all that time, until you bought it. He was a fair plumber, no
doubt, and a better than par 'coon hunter, but-not to speak ill of
the dead-his brain always seemed to be in a perpetual state of
brown out.”

“An oddball,” 'Scilla asked.

“Not always,” Ricky answered. “Everybody's
best reckoning was it was the fire that pushed him off the deep
end.”

“The fire?”

“Back in '28, it was,” Ricky said. “The fire
started in the old furniture factory. We had no FD to speak of and
the only water pumps around were hand pumps on the wells. The whole
town turned out in a fucked up Chinese fire drill, hauling slop
buckets and milk buckets full of water, but I think we might have
done just as much good by pissing on it. The whole town burned
flat, except for three buildings. The furniture factory where the
damn thing started, Willie Morgan's house, and the place you're
sittin' right now. And if it hadn't been for Willie almost killing
himself, I might not be alive today.”

“How is that?”

“At that time there was nothing but woodland
all around except for these two houses and that little dirt road
that was closer to a horse trail back then. My dad had gone off to
town, helping with the main fire. He had left me at home to get the
animals out of the barn just in case the fire did spread up this
way.

“The smoke came up the valley, thick with
burning green wood and sickening with that turpentine smell of
burning pine. I could hear the cows bawling and the horses banging
in their stalls, trying to kick them down. I went out to let 'em
have their head and their eyes were all white, rolling around in
fright, their mouths foaming and their flanks soaked in fear sweat.
I remember that, but not much more. The animals stampeded out of
the barn, running at me, legs flying and hooves pounding dust up
all around. I covered my head and tried to get out of the way,
making my way toward the door with the horses shrieking and cows
bawling. I made it out into the sunshine that even then was
starting to darken. 'Twasn't thirty seconds later that the smoke
had put me out. It was God's own mercy that I passed out face first
and got down beneath the worst of the smoke.”