John Connolly - The Killing Kind

“A little,” I admitted. “Judging by the names on this list, you have at least one suspect.”

Brouchard nodded. “The preacher, Faulkner, unless somebody planted those boards to throw us off the trail and Faulkner is lying there dead with the rest of them.”

It was a possibility, although I knew that the existence of the Apocalypse bought by Jack Mercier made it unlikely.

“He killed his own wife,” I said, more to myself than to Brouchard.

“You got any idea why?”

“Maybe because she objected to what he was going to do.” The article Grace Peltier had written for Down East magazine had mentioned that Faulkner was a fundamentalist. Under fundamentalist doctrine, a wife has to submit to the authority of her husband. Argument or defiance was not permitted. I guessed also that Faulkner probably needed her admiration and her validation for all that he did. When that was withdrawn, she ceased to have any value for him.

Brouchard was looking at me with interest now. “You think you know why he killed them all?”

I thought of what Amy had told me of the Fellowship, its hatred for what it perceived as human weakness and fallibility; of Faulkner's ornate Apocalypses, visions of the final judgment; and of the word hacked beneath James Jessop's name on a length of dirt-encrusted wood. Sinner.

“It's just a guess, but I think they disappointed him in some way, or turned on him, so he punished them for their failings. As soon as they stood up to him they were finished, cursed for rebelling against God's anointed one.”

“That's a pretty harsh punishment.”

“I figure he was a pretty harsh kind of guy.”

I also wondered if, in some dark place inside him, Faulkner had always known that they would fail him. That was what human beings did: they tried and failed and failed again, and they kept failing until either they got it right at last or time ran out and they had to settle for what they had. But for Faulkner, there was only one chance: when they failed it proved their worthlessness, the impossibility of their salvation. They were damned. They had always been damned, and what happened to them was of no consequence in this world or the next.

These people had followed Faulkner to their deaths, blinded by their hopes for a new golden age, a desire for conviction, for something to believe in. Nobody had intervened. After all, this was 1963; communists were the threat, not God-fearing people who wanted to create a simpler life for themselves. Fifteen years would pass before Jim Jones and his disciples blew Congressman Leo Ryan's face off as a prelude to the mass suicide of 900 followers, after which people would begin to take a different view.

But even after Jonestown, false messiahs continued to draw adherents to them. Rock Theriault systematically tortured his followers in Ontario before tearing apart a woman named Solange Boilard with his bare hands in 1988. Jeffrey Lundgren, the leader of a breakaway Mormon sect, killed five members of the Avery family-Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their young daughters Trina, Rebecca, and Karen-in a barn in Kirtland, Ohio, in April 1989 and buried their remains under earth, rocks, and garbage. Nobody came looking for them until almost one year later, following a tip-off to police from a disgruntled cult member. The LeBaron family and their disciples in the breakaway Mormon Church of the Firstborn murdered almost thirty people, including an eighteen-month-old girl, in a cycle of violence that lasted from the early seventies until 1991.

And then there was Waco, which demonstrated why law enforcement agencies have traditionally been reluctant to intervene in the affairs of religious groups. But in 1963, such incidents were almost beyond imagining; there would have been no reason to fear for the safety of the Aroostook Baptists, no need to doubt the intentions of the Reverend Faulkner, and no cause for his disciples to fear to walk with him in the valley of the shadow of death.

The ME's Dodge arrived while we stood silently by the lakeshore, and preparations began for the transportation of more bodies to the airfield at Presque Isle. Brouchard was tied up with the details of the removal, so I walked to the edge of the trees and watched the figures move beneath the canvas. It was approaching three o'clock and it was cool by the river. The wind blowing off the water buffeted the ME's men as they carried a body bag from the scene, strapped onto a stretcher to prevent any further damage to the bones. From the north, the hybrids sang.

Not all of them had died here, of that I was certain. This land wasn't even part of the parcel originally leased to them. The fields they had worked were over the rise, behind the kennels; and the houses, now long gone, were farther back still. The adults would have been killed at or near the settlement; it would have been difficult to get them to come to the place intended for their burial, harder still to control them once the slaughter started. It made sense to bury them away from the center of the community in case, at some future date, suspicion mutated into action and a search of the property took place. Safer, then, to dispose of them by the lake.

According to Grace's article, the community had apparently dispersed in December 1963. The evidence of the burial would have been masked by the winter snows. By the time the thaws came and the ground turned to mud, there would be little to distinguish this patch of land from any other. It was solid ground; it should not have collapsed, but it did.

After all, they had been waiting for a long, long time.

I closed my eyes and listened as the world faded around me, trying to imagine what it must have been like in those final minutes. The howling became muted, the noise of the cars on the road beyond transformed itself into the buzzing of flies, and amid the gentle brushing of the branches above my head…

I hear gunshots.

There are men running, caught as they work in the fields. Two have already fallen, bloody holes gaping ragged in their backs. One of those still alive turns, a pitchfork clutched in his hands. Its center disintegrates as the shot tears through it, wood and metal entering his body simultaneously. They pursue the last one through the grass, reloading as they go. Above them, a murder of crows circles, calling loudly. The cries of the last man to die mingle with them, and then all is quiet.

I heard a sound in the trees behind me, but when I looked there were only branches moving slightly, as if disturbed by the passage of some animal. Beyond, the green faded to black and the shapes of the trees became indistinct.

The women are the next to die. They have been told to kneel and pray in one of the houses, to think upon the sins of the community. They hear the gunshots but do not understand their significance. The door opens and Elizabeth Jessop turns. A man is silhouetted against the evening light. He tells her to look away, to turn to the cross and beg for forgiveness.

Elizabeth closes her eyes and begins to pray.

Behind me the noise came again, like gentle footfalls slowly growing closer. Something was emerging from the darkness, but I did not turn.

The children are the last to die. They sense that something is wrong, that something has happened that should not have occurred, yet they have followed the Preacher down to the lake, where the grave is already dug and the waters are still before them. They are obedient, as little ones should always be.

They too kneel down to pray, the mud wet beneath their knees, the wooden boards heavy around their necks, the ropes burning against their skin. They have been told to hold their hands against their breasts, the thumbs crossed as they have been taught, but James Jessop reaches out and takes his sister's hand in his own. Beside him, she starts to cry and he grips her hand tighter.