Ancient Eyes Part 11

When Harry George stepped off the trail that led up toward Jacob Carlson's farm, he heard loud voices, and he stopped. It was still early. He'd already visited Rachel Sherman and Cyrus Bates. There weren't many names left on the list he'd been running through his mind since speaking with Abraham. There were far fewer than he would have liked.

Footsteps approached, and Harry stepped to the center of the trail. Whoever he heard was angry, and he didn't want to spark a wild shot from a rifle or cause a fright.

"Who's there?" he called out. Best they know someone was on the trail before they saw him. Things had been strange on the mountain over the past few years, and it was always a good idea to be sure of the level of welcome before you walked onto a man's land.

The voices grew silent, then the footsteps continued, moving more quickly. A moment later, Jacob Carlson rounded the corner ahead, followed by his boy Amos. Harry started to raise a hand in greeting, and then stopped. Jacob's face was contorted with a mixture of anger and worry that chilled the marrow in Harry's bones.

"Jacob?" Harry said. The single word was statement and question at the same time.

Jacob stopped and stared, but his expression didn't soften. He strode down the trail, reached up and slapped Harry's hair aside from his forehead. Behind him, Amos had leveled a wicked-looking shotgun and was covering his father's actions.

"Wha..." Harry backed off a step, and then he understood. He reached up and held the hair aside, baring his forehead. "It's not there, Jacob," he said. "It's just me."

Jacob Carlson stood in the center of the trail and stared hard at his old friend. Despite the many years they'd known one another, they seldom met. The families on the mountain were spread out and kept their distance. It had always been that way. It had been almost five years since the two had spoken.

"She's gone," Jacob said simply. He started to shake, and his hands came up to his face. The mask of fury he'd worn seconds before broke like soft earth and crumbled away. Harry stepped forward and reached out, as if he'd put a hand on his friend's shoulder to comfort him, but he stopped short. Amos hadn't dropped the barrel of the shotgun yet.

"What is it, Jacob?" Harry asked, keeping his voice even. "Who's gone?"

"Elspeth is gone," Amos barked. He lowered the barrel of his gun, but only a little, keeping it at an angle from which he could raise it quickly. "Elspeth's gone. They took her to that church. We aim to get her back."

The boy wasted no words. From the set of his jaw and the gleam in his eye, Harry didn't doubt he meant every word he spoke.

"That right, Jacob?" Harry asked. "You heading over to the old church alone?"

"He ain't alone," Amos grated.

Jacob held up a hand to quiet the boy.

"I have to get her back, Harry. Her ma is in a state you wouldn't believe, and half the rest of the family is already over there, that d.a.m.nable blasphemous mark on their foreheads. It's happening again, all of it, and so fast..."

Jacob faltered, and Harry stepped forward this time, putting an arm around his old friend's back. He stood there for a second in silence before speaking.

"He's back, Jacob, Jonathan's boy is back. I was up at the stone church yesterday. I spoke with him, and he means to make things right. There are ways to deal with this."

"We already know how to deal with it," Amos cut in. The boy's face was red and it was clear that he resented anything that came between him and the chance to blow someone's head off with his shotgun. The last time Harry'd seen the boy, Amos had been waist-high and full of smiles. Now the cut of his features showed few of the lines Harry a.s.sociated with smiling, and the way the boy's knuckles tightened on the trigger and stock of his gun, it was a d.a.m.ned good thing they were on the same side of the present situation.

"It won't work, son," Harry said gently. "You can march in there with all the guns you want, you won't walk away with your sister. You might get lucky and take one of them out, maybe a couple if you're quick, but in the end they'll either feed you to the snakes, or turn you into one of their own. If you and your sister ever left together it would be with his mark on you, and there's no soap on the mountain that can clean it off."

"That's c.r.a.p," Amos spat the words, then, for emphasis he spat on the trail. "There's no man born that can stand down a shotgun. I'm tired of all your stories-and his. I'm getting my sister back."

Jacob turned then, and the fire was back in his eyes as suddenly as it had melted to tears.

"You ain't' going nowhere, boy. You stand there and listen for a minute while I talk to Harry. When I'm done I'll decide what we're going to do. If you love your sister, you'll listen to me, and you won't spit at folks who're trying to help you."

Harry glanced at Amos, who took this like a slap to the face, but fell silent. "You say Abraham's back?" Jacob asked. Harry nodded. "He's already cleaned out the old church. He's staying up at the cottage. I told him I'd find those who still believed, and those who might be taught." Jacob nodded slowly. "What about his ma? Sometimes I wish..."

"She's dead," Harry replied. "Abe buried her himself, up at the cottage."

Jacob stared at him. "Dead? But I saw her. . ." He fell silent and thoughtful. "d.a.m.ned if I know when the last time I saw her was. I used to stop by, now and again, but I never knew what to say."

Harry nodded. "I know, Jacob, I know. If we could turn back the years, there are a lot of things I'd change. Fact is, we can't, and what we have now is one chance. That chance is named Abraham, and he's waiting on us up at the chapel."

Jacob nodded again and turned back down the trail the way he'd come. "Come on up to the house, Harry. I'll have to tell Barbara what's happened. She'll want to come too."

Amos stood his ground stubbornly. He held the shotgun at a forty-five degree angle, pointed into the trees beside the path.

"Where are you goin', pa?" he asked, his voice incredulous. "They still have Elspeth. How can going to a church change that?"

"Maybe your cousin can explain that better than I can," Jacob replied. "This isn't the first time this mountain was dark with the likes of Silas Greene. Maybe it won't be the last. We beat it once, though, or thought we did. We should have finished it, but we let it go. Live and let live, Jonathan told us. Enough is enough. It wasn't enough, and now your sister is gone.

"Harry's right about one thing. If you go waltzing into that churchyard with your shotgun, you won't come back. Not like you are now. Not caring a thing about your sister, or your ma-not caring what I say. Is that how it is now, boy? You going to go marching off against my orders, or are you going to trust me and stand with your kin? We don't have any time to wait for you to decide. Every minute we're here, they could be doing things to her. Every word we waste she could be screaming our names and if we want to help her-really help her-we need to get up that mountain."

Amos wavered. He glanced down the trail. His knuckles were still white on the gun's stock, and the tendons in his neck stood out like ropes. He wanted to go. He wanted to prove he was a match for whatever lay down that road, but he was used to doing what Jacob told him. He was used to respecting his Pa, and that respect won out in the end.

"The Murphy's is gone over," he said at last. "Tommy and Angel, for sure. I saw Ed down at Irma Creed's place. The two of them are marked. A lot of folks are marked."

Harry nodded. "They got Henry too," he said. "He's gone and I don't expect he'll be back. Not unless he comes for me. We all stand to lose if we don't do something to stop it."

Jacob nodded. He started off down the trail, and Harry fell in at his side. Amos stood in the path a moment longer. His gaze flickered one way, then the other. In the end, he shook his head angrily and followed his father back down the trail toward their farm, their mother, and whatever solution they sought. He had no idea what they were talking about, but he knew about his cousin Abraham, and he'd heard plenty of stories about the stone church. He also knew stories about that other church, and if they were true, maybe having a few more folks-and guns-along for the ride wouldn't be a bad idea after all.

They reached an old wooden gate a few moments later. It was open, and after they had all slipped inside, Amos pulled it closed behind them and latched it. It was another quarter of a mile to the house, and the three of them walked it in silence.

Barbara Carlson stood on the porch, watching them return. She glared hard at Jacob. When she saw Harry, her features slipped to a mask of confusion. By the time they reached the porch, she was heading back inside, and Harry knew from long years of experience that when she returned she'd have a coffee pot in one hand and cups dangling from the fingers of the other. Jacob followed her inside; Harry took a seat in one of the old wooden chairs on the porch. Amos chose to stand at the foot of the stairs. He didn't lean his gun against the rail, or set it down. He held it at the same forty-five degree angle and glared alternately at the house, Harry, and the road leading off into the distance.

By the time Jacob and Barbara returned, Jacob had filled his wife in on all that Harry had told him. Her eyes were alight with fear, but there was something else there as well. Hope? Determination?

"Abraham Carlson," she said, pouring thick black coffee into thick ceramic cups. "I never expected to hear that name again. And Sarah dead..."

"We should have seen this coming," Jacob cut in. "I told you I saw those Murphy boys in their truck, loaded with enough wood and paint to build a new barn. And the marks. There's no way to mistake those marks."

Barbara nodded, but turned away.

Harry glanced up and saw with satisfaction that their door bore the same symbol that Sarah Carlson had etched into hers. He was surprised to see it, as well. His own door had fallen off one hinge several years back. Henry, who knew little and cared less about the past, had built a new one. It had been a surprise, and Harry had foolishly allowed the boy to place it in the frame. The old door was burned as firewood, and somehow Harry hadn't gotten around to replacing the symbol. It was good to see the old ways followed. He only wished he'd had as much sense-his boy might be sitting on the porch with him if he had.

"We need to get up the mountain," he said after a moment. "Abraham is hoping to call what remain of the elders to council, and to hold services. It has to be this morning. If they've taken Elspeth, then they have begun."

"Begun what?" Amos cut in. His voice was too loud, and the glitter in his eye spoke of patience near the point of snapping.

"Best hope you never really know the answer to that, son," Jacob replied, draining his coffee and standing. "Best hope none of us ever knows. What went on in that place when you were a baby was unspeakable. We never saw, not really. We saw what was left, at the end. We should have burned it to the ground and buried the ashes, but we didn't."

"And now it's happening again," Barbara murmured. "Sweet G.o.d in heaven, it's happening again."

Harry nodded wearily. "If you folks know any others not marked, then we need to get word to them somehow. I've walked nearly all these old legs will walk. I've got about enough to get back up that mountain."

Jacob nodded. "Barbara and I will come with you," he said. "We were both elders, and we're going to need those who know what we face."

"What about me?" Amos asked. His bravado had dropped a notch at not hearing his name attached to the journey up the mountain.

"I need you to spread the word," his father replied. "You can move a lot faster without us. Take the truck, if you need it. Get around to every family you can find. If you see that mark, you get out. If you don't, tell them to come to the church. No set time, get there when you can. We won't do anything until there's been a service."

"I have to get some things," Barbara said. She turned and disappeared back into the house. The two older men stared at Amos, who watched them uncertainly. He clearly didn't know what to think of their words, or their actions. He still held the gun as if he might wait for them to leave, then make a run on the church himself and drag Elspeth free without their help.

"Don't do anything foolish, son," Harry said, breaking the silence. "We've all wanted to take a gun into that place at one time or another. I wanted to burn it-and it may yet come to that-but there are other ways. There are older ways. We don't want to pull people out who will still be bound to that place by strings we can't even see. We need to put an end to it and free them all. We need to reclaim our mountain."

"A cleansing," Jacob whispered. Harry nodded. Amos shook his head, shouldered his shotgun, and headed around the house toward their barn and their truck. Harry and Jacob watched him go.

"Will he go to the others?" Harry asked.

"I think so," Jacob replied. "Don't know what he'll do after, but he'll do as we've asked. He's a good boy. A lot like I was at his age, but a good boy for all that. He'll do the right thing."

"We all will," Harry replied with a sigh.

"Let's just hope that's enough."

TWENTY-ONE.

Abraham stood behind the stone pulpit and watched the open doorway of the chapel. The sun had risen high toward noon, and light bathed the pews from the open windows. His mind whirled with so many conflicting emotions and images he couldn't begin to calm them, so he stood and watched dust motes dance in the sunlight and waited. He didn't know how many would come. He didn't know how long they had before they would have to act, or be swallowed by the darkness he felt swelling the walls of the old white church below and pulsing through the mountain.

Only his memory kept him from running down the mountain after Katrina. He knew where Greene had taken her, or where he would take her before the day was complete. He tried not to think about that, but visions crashed about him like waves and threatened to drown his thought and courage in shadows.

He knew that he should have expected it to be different this time. The power he faced had grown over long years of evil. The thing in the church had not been destroyed, only crippled. This time there was no hesitation. There was no slow buildup of energy, but a surge. Abe had felt it as he climbed the mountain. Sibilant voices had whispered to him, calling him back down. The weight of those eyes-her eyes-bored into his shoulder blades as he wound his way up the trail, and only fell away as he entered the doorway of the old chapel.

Whatever happened to Silas Greene and those who now followed him in that forest had come to them as a sudden revelation. They were true believers from the first moment-not necessarily happy about it, but bound to that church, and that man. What had taken Reverend Kotz insidious decades to build had come complete and ready to use for Silas.

Similarly, Abraham had no time to waste learning and preparing. He couldn't wander up and down the slopes of the mountain, gather loose stones and give thanks for them to the ground beneath his feet as he built a new altar. He didn't have his mother's wisdom to draw on, or his father's faith. He knew what had to be done. He knew how it had been done in the past, and what he didn't know others would remember. Some of the elders remained, and some of the wisdom had been pa.s.sed on, despite the empty pews of the stone chapel and the abandoned cottage on the peak.

Abe wondered how much the white church below had changed. He closed his eyes and leaned forward on the small stone lectern. He still saw the trail leading down the mountain that long ago night as if he walked it every day-and in a way he had. Despite his a.s.sertions that he'd put his past behind him and that none of it mattered any longer, he had dreamed of Reverend Kotz and his church a thousand times. He woke up in a cold sweat as often as not with strobing images of too-white walls and bright glowing windows. He heard the voices of great birds and the hiss and rattle of snakes. He heard voices chanting.

The chant was monotonous, atonal and rhythmic. The words ran together, if they were words at all. Those words ran over and around syllables that seemed to make sense if you listened, but that danced away if you listened too hard, or too long. Abe kept his mind focused on his father's back and the increasingly difficult task of placing one foot in front of the other. The white church pulsed with sound, and he thought that if it were a giant serpent, poised over them and ready to strike, that the chant would be its rattle, meant to mesmerize and confuse them.

Jonathan Carlson marched slowly down the trail. In his hand he held his crucifix, and a small vial of water. Those who walked at his side carried other things: a book, a small bag of powder, candles and torches, a long, tapering sword of carved wood. They moved as one unit down the mountain and turned onto the forest path. Abraham stayed to the rear of the group, partially to be out of the way, and partially out of fear.

Trees loomed dark and ominous on all sides of the trail, but where they walked the shadows pulled back. It seemed to Abe as if even the darkness softened. His father's voice carried through the night and rea.s.sured them all. It was deep and resonant, and it echoed from the sides of the peaks stretching up into the hills, and flowed out through the trees in waves.

The trail was wide and well traveled. They pa.s.sed through the last clearing and turned into the wide dirt lane leading toward the white church. The shrubs and underbrush had been cut back from the trail, and all protruding roots had been chopped free of the rocky soil. The earth was hard-packed. The trees were bare for the first twenty feet or so, and then branches sprouted in all directions at once and stretched across the top of the trail like a vaulted ceiling.

Before the church was in sight they pa.s.sed that first lofty, leafy gate, and Abe felt the shadows press inward. If he had walked that trail alone-if any of them had-they would have been swallowed whole by shadow and spit into the waiting maw of Reverend Kotz's den.

But they were not alone. Their candles flickered, but did not go out. The torches wavered and danced, but they illumined the trail ahead and the underside of the leafy boughs above. Now and then, as he glanced up through the trees, Abraham saw the stars.

No one came to greet them or to prevent them. The woods wore their silence like a shroud. Nothing moved in the underbrush, and they heard no footsteps. Abraham's heart pounded from the moment they stepped clear of the old stone church on the mountain, but the fear was unfounded. They climbed down the trail, crossed the woods, and broke through into the cleared churchyard of the white wooden church without interruption.

On the edge of the tree line, they stopped and fell momentarily silent. The doors of the church were closed, but the windows were brightly lit from within. The light glowed a sickly greenish yellow, as though filtered through a colored lens. Silhouetted figures moved beyond the window, their shapes elongated and alive with flickering motion. It was hard to see for certain what they were doing. The chanting was low and resonant, and the ground at Abraham's feet shivered. The leaves of the trees shook, though there was no wind. The hair on Abraham's arms and at the base of his neck stood on end and rippled with the sensation of caressing fingers ... or talons.

The moon shone down on the church and shimmered along the white walls. It was strange, but that silver light didn't cross the line of what seeped out from within. Abraham watched the windows in fascination and would have sworn they breathed; they wavered and stretched with the pulse of the chanting voices and the exterior of the building shifted colors each time. It throbbed-the entire building throbbed like a pounding heart, and the energy leaked out at the edges to try and draw them in.

Before he saw it-the head above the doorway-Abraham felt its pull. He didn't call the thing 'her,' because it was too hideous. He couldn't a.s.sign any human characteristics to it. It did not belong on the mountain, but it grew there all the same. The roots were deep and snaking deeper very day. From the edge of the clearing they heard her voice. She used the lips and throats of others, but there was no mistaking the siren call, or the answering shiver of shadow that responded.

Near the back of the church, the last set of windows before the rear wall, Abraham saw a shadow of a different kind. It moved like the others; swayed in time with the chanting rhythm and dipped now and then in the dance, but it was larger, and very strange. It looked like a tree swaying in the breeze, or the head of a gigantic buck c.o.c.ked and listening for a hunter.

Then the shadow moved, and Abraham watched, fascinated. It pa.s.sed one window, and then the next. It moved steadily toward the near end of the church. Jonathan Carlson saw it as well, and he stepped forward out of the trees and stood in the center of the path, facing the main doors of the church.

Like a dam bursting, or an explosion too close to your face on the Fourth of July, the doors to the white church crashed open. Reverend Kotz stood in the doorway and glared out at Abe's father. Kotz's arms were cast to either side and caught on the frame of the door. Shadowy antlers rose above his head, very clear in that moment, and they brushed through the walls and doorframe.

A loud rapping sound brought Abraham out of his reverie. He shook his head groggily from side to side and stared ahead, half-expecting to see Reverend Kotz in the doorway, arms flung wide and eyes gleaming with fiery light. It was a woman, slight and gray-haired, dressed in a long dress with a shawl over her shoulders, despite the heat. Her hair was gray, but her eyes glinted like those of an eagle as she tilted her head to stare at him through the top half of thick bifocals.

"Didn't mean to scare you, boy," she said gruffly. "I guess I didn't believe you were really here until I could see it for myself." Abraham recognized his aunt immediately. Barbara Carlson was thinner, almost waspish, but there was no mistaking the eyes. He'd spent some days chopping wood for her and helping with her ch.o.r.es when her husband, his uncle Jacob, had broken his leg one year.

"h.e.l.lo, Aunt Barb," he said, recovering from his confusion and smiling thinly.

"You looked like you'd seen a ghost, Abe," she said. Her expression never really made its way to a smile.

"I was remembering," he said simply. "I've done a lot of that lately. Thinking, as well."

"We don't have much time left for thinking, I expect," Aunt Barbara replied. "Abe-they took Elspeth. This morning. My daughter is down there somewhere, and..."

She faltered and Abe was around the lectern in a second, supporting her by her arm and gently leading her to sit on the first pew. He sat beside her and pulled her head onto his shoulder.

Abe remembered his cousin Elspeth, but she'd been a baby when he left the mountain. He knew as well as Barbara what it meant to be "taken" to the white church. There were ceremonies they performed that trickled over the mountain from lip to ear until they lost all coherency, but one thing was always present, no matter how many times removed the story you heard might be. The pool. The baptismal pool was the center of the fear they held of that dark place, the pool and the ritual it represented. It was a b.a.s.t.a.r.dization of their belief, a stolen word twisted and tortured into something unrecognizable.

Cleansing. Reverend Kotz had called it cleansing when one of his followers was led through the curtains at the rear of his church and into the room beyond. Baptism had always been a ritual of cleansing, but this was no baptism. Not of the Holy Spirit, or born of G.o.d, in any case. It was no cleansing, either. When someone who was not part of Reverend Kotz's flock made the mistake of entering that church, they found themselves led away down the center aisle. There were tanks filled with serpents in that room, but they were only secondary to the central focus. The pool was nearly six feet across, four deep, and filled with water that moved without the aid of wind or pumps. It sloshed and swirled. Small waves broke out on its dark surface.

That pool was broken once. Jonathan Carlson did it himself with a heavy sledgehammer. The water drained slowly. It leaked over the broken rim like pooling blood, though it was as cold as you'd find in any stream. Abe had stayed far away until the last of it flowed down the side of the pool toward the walls and began to dry. The snake cages were broken hulks, shards of broken gla.s.s and twisted metal frames canted at odd angles.

Now Silas Greene, or whatever controlled him, had brought it back. In the days when the white church was first built and Reverend Kotz was new to the mountain, it was more difficult to do the work. There had been no Home Outlet in San Valencez, nor had there been many trucks or cars on the mountain. It took a long time to gather the proper stones and get the mortar placed and set-but this time the pool had been brought back to life in a matter of days.

Abe had no doubt the broken tanks had been repaired and supplemented, and that snakes of every dangerous design swarmed around and over one another behind a myriad of gla.s.s walls. He had no doubt the water rippled darkly across the surface of the pool, or that if he did not hurry, both Elspeth and Katrina would feel the touch of that dark fluid and bear the weight of that mark on their foreheads. He hoped he was strong enough to stand up in the face of that and ignore the part of his heart that would want him to go to her. If he did that; if he left the others and went off on his own, they would all fall to the shadows. He reached up reflexively and rubbed his forehead.

Barbara caught the motion and smiled thinly. "He hasn't got you, Abe. Your skin is clean." Abe nodded. "He has part of me," he told her. "He has the woman I love." Briefly he outlined how he'd gone to Greene's store to use the telephone, and instead had found the cooler.

"She's a good girl," he said at last, staring at his hands. "She's probably better than I deserve. I should have told her what I was coming here to face. I should have warned her, especially after those phone calls started, but I was too caught up in my own past to notice the present, or to worry about the future. Now I've given Greene a hold on me he didn't have before-a distraction that I don't even know if I can ignore."

"The strength for moments like these doesn't come from you, boy," Barbara told him. She reached out and laid her hand lightly on his arm. "If it was just up to us, we'd all have marks on our foreheads and things would be a sight worse, even, than they are."

"You mean G.o.d?" Abe asked. His skepticism must have shown, because his aunt's features hardened again.

"Yes, G.o.d," she replied. "But not just that. You know it's more than that, Abe. You may have moved away, but some things burn themselves so deep into a person's soul they can't be shaken off by years or our own desire. The mountain is with you. The strength of this place, of those who've gone before us, and of those who will come. The power to resist is in your blood, and in mine. We should have been closer, Abe. We should have accepted your Ma into our family and treated her as one of our own, but we didn't. I'll never be able to properly show you how badly I feel about that."

"She..."

Barbara cut him off. "I know, son, I know. She's dead. We move on. I'll tell you something now I never would have said in your father's day. I wish your ma were with us now. I wish I could talk to her right now about what's happened to my Elspeth. I wish, when we start down that trail, that she'd be with us."