Rob Thurman - All Seeing Eye

“Why did you do that to Fuji? He’s harmless.” The question broke into my thoughts and held exasperation, if not much surprise.

“Because, Hector, he feels sorry for me being dragged into this by blackmail but has his nose up Thackery’s ass anyway. He doesn’t have a brother to free, like you. He does have a shred of conscience but no excuse for ignoring it. Besides, and this goes for all of you, if you’re going to benefit from what I can do, you should get to experience some of the downside. Although, trust me, hearing about it sure as hell isn’t the same as living it.” I gave Hector a sideways glance. “If I could give this gift to you and spend the rest of my life digging ditches, then maybe I would get a little God in my life, because it’d be a damn miracle.”

“You might get part of your wish.” Hector folded his arms as he kept his eyes on the still water. “This is one of the few sites rumored to show a genuine ether recording of the event. People throughout the years claimed to have seen Brother Job at work, always as the sun sets.”

“Yeah?” That had been when the baptisms took place. “Seeing it isn’t the same as feeling it, but I’ll cross my fingers and take what I can get.”

In the very next moment, get it I did.

And a lot more.

I heard one of the soldiers, unarmed as they’d been at the mill, for all the good that had done, yell in shock and fear or a damn good imitation of both. He was standing on the high rock wall on the other side of the quarry, opposite where we stood seventy-five feet down on the narrow strip of gravel and red mud beach. I looked where he was pointing, to see a white blur under the water glowing with the fire of a descending sun. I crouched and put my one ungloved hand fisted around Charlie’s keys against the ground. The blur rose, and the body of a woman surfaced. Her arms were spread, hovering on the top of the water like the wings of a bird. Her hair was black, I knew, although I couldn’t see it. It was covered by a white scarf. A woman’s hair is the jewel of God. Let no man but her husband see it.

“Rachel Adams. She was fifteen.” I knew I said it because I felt my lips move, but I didn’t hear the words. She drowned. Brother Job baptized his followers until their life and their sins fled their bodies. And if God deemed them worthy, he would return that life to them and send the sins to hell. Funny, no one proved quite good enough for God to step in. Job was mighty disappointed. Mighty disappointed, as he and his disciples held the men and women of the Trials under the quarry water. Even more disappointed when he himself held the head of his last disciple under and that man proved too sinful to return as well.

Another body floated up, dark pants, white shirt, open eyes reflecting the bleeding rays of the sun.

“Adam Jacobson. Nineteen years.”

Then another.

“Joseph Bevins. Eight.”

Another.

“Mary Bevins. Five.” She held a doll, a rag doll in a pink dress.

There was more shouting, men who’d seen war horrified by the virtual photo of a long-dead little girl. Only an image out of death’s memory album revealed for a moment, and their brains short-circuited.

Walk a mile in my shoes? They couldn’t walk even a second.

“Mary Bevins. Five,” I repeated, my eyes fixed on the small spot of pink. “Lungs filling with water as she screamed for her mommy.”

Pink doll. Pink shoe. A wide quarry or a narrow well, was there any difference?

Mary Bevins. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, until Brother Job said nursery rhymes were the work of the devil. Mary, Mary, whose mommy was right there, her hand with Brother Job’s, holding her little girl under the water for God.

Mary and Tess. Five years old, screaming to be saved, but no one listened.

The pink patch bobbed in the water. It wasn’t the dress on a doll. It was a shoe, a pink shoe. Tessie’s shoe. The floating form wasn’t a little girl named Mary. It was my sister. It was Tess, and this time I wouldn’t be too late. I lunged into the water after her. I took two long steps and dove into the water. I was with Tess in seconds. I wrapped an arm around her to lift her up, lift her to the air, lift her to life.

My arm passed through her. I tried again with both arms and the same result. I was there, right there, and again I couldn’t save her. Just as I couldn’t all those years ago.

Another set of arms wrapped around me this time, the grip solid and unbreakable.

“It’s not her, Jackson. It’s not Tess.”

I was being yanked back through the water as I fought.

“Shit, I’m a goddamn idiot,” Hector swore savagely at himself. “There was no way I shouldn’t have known this could happen.”

Not Tess.

It couldn’t be Tess.

Tess was gone.

I wasn’t reliving the life of Job. I was reliving my own.

The dying rays of the sun shifted, and I saw my sister change into a girl with soaked brown curls and wide-open gray eyes before she disappeared, leaving only the waves I’d made in her wake. All of the bodies disappeared with her, and that’s when the yelling turned to screaming. And the screaming turned to gurgling and praises to God on high.

“God accepts your soul and returns it to thee.”

It echoed over and over again from four different throats as the last ray of sun disappeared under a velvet purple bank of clouds.

“God accepts your soul and returns it to thee.”

“God accepts your soul and returns it to thee.”

The echo of four became one wailed litany. “God accepts your soul and returns it to thee.”

God hadn’t planned on returning those souls to anyone, but it was a little late for that warning.

I spit water and said hoarsely, “Charlie.” I’d dropped his keys in the water, but I didn’t need a reading from them to know what the hell was happening. No one did. We had ten men: Hector, me, Thackery, Fuji, and six soldiers. Brother Job had his disciples to help him conduct the baptisms. Three soldiers were doing their best to drown the other three, and Fujiwara was up to his chest in the water, both arms beneath the surface to his shoulders, and Thackery was nowhere in sight.

And right then, I began to wonder why only those who committed violence and not the victims had their personalities imprinted to be replayed when triggered by Charlie’s attempts to return. Thackery had said that violence frayed the ether. Why that and not fear and terror? Thanks to Boyd, I’d experienced all three, and fear and terror felt just as powerful as dealing out aggression. But I wasn’t an asshole with a giant brain and a degree in physics like Thackery, so I guessed I’d never know.

“Jackson…”

And maybe I should stop wondering and help save some people from following the fate of the cult of Job. I couldn’t save Tess. Tess wasn’t there. She was long gone, but I could save someone else.

We were in the shallows of the water, and I shook Hector off. “I’m okay. I just… I’m okay now, all right?” I didn’t wait to see if he believed me or not. I went back into the water, heading for the nearest soldier holding his thrashing comrade under for the glory of God. Hector hadn’t come across with a Taser yet, but he had slipped me a nicely illegal pair of gloves before we’d left that morning. These did more than protect me from psychic images. They had lead weights sewn into the knuckles, and they gave a punch an extra snap-which I delivered to the back of the soldier’s neck.

He went limp. I caught his shirt with my other bare hand-reading nothing of consequence-and kept him from sinking while his unwilling come-to-Jesus participant erupted out of the water, coughing and wheezing. He was still expelling quarry water, and his eyes suddenly took on a fanatical glow as he tackled me and the unconscious soldier. “God… accepts-” was all he managed to choke out before the three of us ended up buried in what could have been our unpleasantly wet grave.