Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Down in the valley, standing before the moonlit First Baptist Church, I thought again of what I’d read. Nearly all of Evanstown and the surrounding counties belonged now to Old Pride Realty, including Llewellyn Cobb’s crumbling house. The smell of that place came back to me. The blood-stained mattress, the stars made of twine, and sticks turning in the light.

The First Baptist Church—the first black church that had been erected after the Emancipation—and the adjacent river valley seemed to move around me, to spin in the ghost light of southern high-summer night.

“They got that land again, they’s coming out of the shadows,” Jeery had said. “Now they got that river and that valley, the sacrifices been happening again. They found who should wear the Starry Crown, all right.”

Halfway down the list of real estate agents and lawyers that made up the governing body of Old Pride Realty had been Theodore Wallstone, owner and proprietor of Ashcroft Manor Bed & Breakfast. I didn’t return to my room that night. Instead I drove down into the valley, directly to the forgotten, black land of First Baptist.

I walked from the church to the river, its banks still muddy from the spring rains. I could hear it flowing up ahead. And then came a music, a beautiful music from behind me in the darkness. It sounded like it was emanating from the kudzu church itself, as if a forgotten choir had broken in and begun to sing. I stopped and listened to the dirge: solemn and reverent, growing in tone and intensity. Ahead of me the river glinted moonlight across its slow waters. I glared into the darkness, searching for the source of the low hymn.

Then lights began to appear. Flickering flames of candlelight dancing between the trees; first one, then two, then a multitude growing in number and intensity. At first they seemed apparitions, will-o’-the-whisps that were beckoning for me to touch them, to become enchanted. But the dirge grew heavier and more intense. My momentary flight into fancy turned suddenly terrifying as I returned to my senses and realized that these were candles being held by people, hundreds of people, and they were appearing out of the darkness like ghosts of Confederate soldiers passing across Gettysburg.

They were all-too real, walking amongst the thin trees of the river bed with candles, chanting a vaguely familiar rhyme that was beginning to worm its way into my brain.

Panic set in. Jeery was no old fool. He told of those infernal rites of the Starry Crown taking place on full moons, of a cult finally able to again practice on their most sacred ground.

I was trapped between the hundreds of moving bodies and the turbulent river beyond. I considered running under cover along the river bed, but I was overcome suddenly with the urge to know . So much of anthropology, archeology, and folklore is guess-work and estimation, tall-tales, and fabrications gleaned out of cultural cloth. It was my only chance to witness. It was my one chance to see, even if what I saw was horrifying.

I found a thick tree with branches low enough that I could shimmy up the trunk and grasp them. I pulled myself higher and higher, dripping sweat and choking back my straining breaths till I was confident I was out of eyesight. Like Zaccheaus sneaking a glimpse of Christ, I was trying to catch of glimpse of some secret satanic messiah.

The lights began to pass beneath me, flames held in lanterns by white-robed men and women who walked serenely toward the waters chanting their hymn, a strange version of “The Good Old Way,” but sung in low octaves, the rhythm and meter changed so that the soul of the song transformed from a quiet, heartfelt prayer to a dark, unrelenting march.

My first thought was that this was some kind of Ku Klux Klan rally but this was so different, so much more reverent, quiet and insidious. It wasn’t the hooded back-woods abortions that light fire to crosses and wave flags, croaking protests in bad English. This was organized, religious. Its darkness contained a certain beauty and ancient depth that even modern Christianity had difficulty recreating. I could make faces out in the glow of the candlelight. They were pale and serene, well cared for, bright and clean. They appeared to be from the upper echelons of society and, based on my research into Old Pride Realty, I had a feeling that these worshippers were of a class much higher than your typical Klansman or Neo-Nazi.

The number of robed men and women still continued to swell, a sea of glowing candles that spread out beneath me, stretching to the river’s edge. They deftly raised their voices to some dark god that I did not know, growing louder and louder as one in resonant chant until suddenly stopping as if a switch had been thrown. Everything along that river had turned silent.

There appeared a figure on the river’s other side, seemingly clothed with light. He stepped out from the trees, glowing with a luminescence that radiated from his robe like a lunar aura. He was adorned with a great crown upon his head that reached many, many fingers up to the starry sky. The gathered crowd stood silent and unmoved, but below me in the mud and patches of river-grass, terrified small animals scurried away.

Then the radiant creature came, gliding across the surface of the river without ever setting foot in the water.

And he was tall, much taller than anyone there. The stars on his crown glowed with a pulsing brilliance, and though his face resembled a human’s, it were as if carved into an old oak tree—some product of psychological pareidolia—rather than the face of flesh and bone. The creature’s mouth opened long and wide and was hollow with darkness while he remained suspended in the air inches above the muddy bank.

The crowd met him with bowed heads and silent reverence.

And then there was a boy. A black boy who was brought to the front of the horrid congregation by a man in a robe. I recognized the old, wizened visage as he led the boy before the creature with the starry crown. I had seen his face before in my delirium outside the town hall of records glaring at me from the back seat of a dark sedan.

There was no other sound but for the boy crying: an adolescent, I estimated, by his voice and build. The glowing figure moved to him through the air, and the boy screamed in terror. A great and terrible blade was handed to the starry king, and it was raised up over the screaming boy and brought down into him over and over again.

The boy’s body was dumped in the river. Baptized, like Jeery had told me, where no one would see his blood in a river of black.

The sun was rising over the eastern mountains when I was finally able to come down from my tree and make my way to the car. On the hood was placed a single lantern, its candle burned down to a nub. A warning.

I snuck into my room at Ashcroft Manor. I gathered my computer with all my work, dumped my clothes into my suitcase, and made my way back down the stairs.

“You heading out already?” Ted stood at the reception desk, neatly dressed, clean and pressed from head to toe, friendly and warm smile on his face. “You weren’t going to leave without checking out, were ya?”

I smiled but I was sick in my stomach. “Of course not.”

I signed his ledger and signed for the bill. Ted crossed his arms and looked out the window at my rental car. “That’s a nice car they gave you.”

I only kept smiling.

“Should get you back to New York without a hitch,” he said. He clapped a meaty hand on my shoulder and escorted me to the door. “Y’all come back now, ya hear?”

I nodded but kept my head down, unable to bring myself to make eye contact. I saw the residue of dark river mud on his boots.