William Bernhardt - Dark Eye

“You mustn’t blame yourself,” Reverend Barton said. “God called her home, that’s all. She’s in heaven now, with the angels. We should be so fortunate.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” Ernie mumbled.

“It never does. We think, why did it have to be her? But remember-she went to be with Jesus. That’s a good thing, not bad. The Lord God moves in strange and mysterious ways. There is a plan, even if we have not yet discovered it. Evidently, God needed her more than we did.”

Ernie looked up at the minister, his eyes pleading. “What I don’t understand is, why didn’t God take me, too? We belong together.”

“You will be together again one day, God willing.”

“But why not now? I feel so-awful. I never should’ve gone out there with her.”

Reverend Barton knelt down and took the boy by the shoulders. “It’s not your fault, son. You were God’s instrument. You helped Him fulfill His plan.”

That night, she came for him.

“Ernie,” she said, standing in the dark at his bedroom door. The cat was curled between her ankles. “Wake up.”

“Can’t…,” he moaned, pretending he had been asleep.

She grabbed his head by the hair and jerked him upright. Ernie sputtered, wild-eyed, drool spilling from his lips.

He looked down at her other hand. She was holding the needle.

“Thought those damn fools would never leave.”

“Please don’t hurt me, Nana. It was so bad last time. Please don’t do it again.”

“You’re all alike,” she said, her eyes glistening like the silver dagger she held in her hand. “Your father took my first little girl away from me. And you took my next one.” She grabbed him by the collar of his pajamas, shaking him. “Did you do anything to her before you killed her?”

“No!”

“You disgusting men with your disgusting little things.” She shook him even harder. “Tell me the truth. What did you do to her? So help me, I’ll-”

“No!” He broke away, scrambling across the bed. He dove through the doorway but miscalculated in the darkness, banging his head on the wall. He leaped to his feet, stubbing his toe in the process. She reached out just in time to grab his leg.

“Gotcha!” She jabbed the needle into the soft underside of his foot.

Ernie shrieked, then tore himself away from her. He pushed ahead, but the cat raced in front of him and made him stumble. He collided with the banister, headfirst. She came after him, her teeth bared, her needle shining in the reflected moonlight.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he whimpered. “Please don’t.”

“You’ll take your punishment, Ernie. If I have to chase you to the ends of the earth. God punishes sinners. God and me.”

She reared up before him, her needle poised like a dagger.

Ernie kicked her in the stomach.

For a long moment, she seemed suspended in air. He could have grabbed her hand and pulled her back onto the landing. But the needle was in that hand.

He let her fall.

When at last her body stopped, the tumbled heap at the foot of the stairs did not stir.

Ernie moved quickly. He gathered together everything he wanted to save, threw it in a bag, and hid it in the forest. Then he killed the cat. He took his time about that, releasing much that had been pent up for so long, in a slow, protracted, highly gratifying dissection. Then he burned the house down.

The books he’d read had given him a good idea how to do it in such a way that it would not be obvious that he had done it, at least not to the rural cops he’d met a few days before. He left the gas burners on for a long time. He tossed a match. Then he went outside and watched it burn.

There was nothing they could do to him that wasn’t going to happen already. This way, no one would ever know for certain what happened. No one but him. And Virginia.

He was the Instrument, he murmured to himself as he watched the shutters and shingles turn to ash. Now he needed to find his God.

In and out of foster homes and reform schools all his teen years, Ernie never stayed in one place for long. Soon after he left his grandmother’s house he developed a stutter that plagued him until high school. The permanent deformity to his private member made gym class a nightmare and sports an impossibility. But he continued to search for some explanation, some meaning in his life, in the tragedy that had visited him. Which was what led him, during his sophomore year of college, to journey out into the desert to attempt a vision quest.

He had never seen such a desolate environment-flat, barren, bleak. Heat rose from the pavement creating miniature mirages, smoothing the road ahead. A man named Ralph Studi acted as his spiritual guide and instructor. The first three days, he learned, would be spent in preparation. The last four days he would spend in the desert, alone. “All this training will be geared toward one central objective-your spiritual growth. At all times, the emphasis will be on grounding you in the Spirit. Not just absorbing but owning the lessons learned. Because the true work of the vision quest begins when we return to our people.”

The first day on his own, out in the wilderness, he was bored to tears. The second day, he was starving-and bored to tears.

The third day, he saw the Raven.

He had fallen asleep, or thought he had. His legs were aching from the stiff sedentary drain of remaining in the sacred circle for so long. He kept the fire burning, even though the air was hot and oppressive, even at night. He longed to stretch his legs, to partake of the tiny ration of water he had been permitted. Sweat dripped down the sides of his face. His eyelids closed and he drank in the heady smell of smoke and whatever was in that wood they gave him to burn. He thought he was asleep. But when the Raven spoke to him, he was wide awake.

He couldn’t move. Somehow, the Raven had imparted a paralysis that he couldn’t shake.

“Why have you strayed from the Path?”

Ernie didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t believe he was talking to a raven, but there it was, perched on his shoulder. It wasn’t like other birds. It was larger, its face more expressive, more human. Its eyes terrified him.

“I-I didn’t know-”

“The Path was shown to you. But you have not followed it.”

“Well… I’ve been busy with classes and-”

“There are no excuses.”

“Look, just-just tell me what to do. I’ll do it. Really I will.”

“You know what to do.”

“I don’t. But if you could give me a little hint-”

“Nevermore!” The coal-black eyes flared, angry and intense. Ernie tried to inch away, but he was still unable to move. “I have been with Virginia.”

Ernie’s hunger was supplanted by an aching in his chest, a new emptiness. “You’ve seen her?”

“I have been with Virginia. And so could you.”

“But how-”

“In my realm, all are reunited. All are one.”

“I don’t know what that-”

“You have the potential for greatness. You could be what I am.”

“I-I’ll do whatever I must. Whatever you want.”

The Raven unfolded its wings and the span was endless, a dark umbra that spread from one perimeter of his vision to the other, swallowing him. He screamed, and somehow, the act of screaming ended the visitation. He was wide awake, able to move, fully conscious that he was alone in the middle of the desert.

But he was certain he had been visited by his totem, and that the visit had meant something. What was he was being called to do?