David Wilson - Hallowed Ground

At some point the scent of searing meat told her Balthazar was cooking again, and as hard as she tried to ignore him and concentrate on those others, her body betrayed her. She was ravenous. Her mouth prickled with it, and she licked her lips. Her stomach screamed to be filled, and she felt weak again.

The shadows melted into the night. When Balthazar handed her a plate, a slab of meat and some sort of vegetable he'd fried in the grease, she wolfed the food, unheeding of his warning to take things slowly. The plate was empty in moments, and she glanced up. Her first instinct was to ask for more, but then she suddenly realized she was no longer hungry.

Balthazar took her plate and stepped back.

"The bed is in back," he said again. Then he turned away.

Mariah was exhausted. She lifted herself from the chair, where she'd sat all that day, and her legs nearly betrayed her. She steadied herself on the arm of her chair, took a deep breath, and tottered to the wagon. She worked her way down the side, using it for balance. She wondered if Balthazar was watching. She thought he wasn't, but she didn't waste the strength to turn and check.

After what seemed like hours, she reached the rear of the wagon. There was a single step, and it was nearly at her waist level. Above the dark interior of the wagon waited. She laid her cheek against the side of the rear panel of the wagon. It was too far – too high. She felt as if she might fall, or just lean there, letting the wagon support her weight as she drifted off into oblivion.

From very far off, she heard a sound. It was very faint, and she thought maybe it came from behind her, but then it shifted. It came from the wagon…from the shadows. It was the voice of a child, a newborn, crying. It was the voice of regret, the voice of loneliness and pain. She gripped the wagon so tightly her fingers grew white from the strain and lifted her leg so that her knee found the first step. She saw this would not work, that the next step – the floor of the wagon – was too high, and with a groan of pain, she lifted her leg again and brought her foot up to the step, bending at the waist. The crying redoubled, and she cried out.

With a lunge that spent every bit of her remaining strength, she clawed her way up and over the lip of the wagon's rear door, spilling onto the floor. There was almost no light, but it was enough. Ahead, to her left, was a rough mattress, covered with dark blankets. She crawled to it, scraping her knees and her hands on the rough plank floor, dragged herself onto the bedding, and closed her eyes. The crying faded slowly, as if moving away from her. She dropped into fitful dreams, chasing the sound and yearning for her child.

Balthazar stood at the rear of the wagon, watched her just for a moment, silhouetted in the moonlight, and then gently closed the wagon door, cutting off the night.

Chapter Fourteen

Colleen Daisy Tranter woke in darkness.

There were things that needed to be done, things, she was sure, that needed to be said, but she wasn’t in a mood for doing or saying. She lay in the darkness and tried to get her bearings. When she'd first come under the influence of Silas Boone, she'd been young, and pretty, a girl of only eight years. She'd also been afraid of the dark. Nothing about Silas Boone, or the life he'd given her, had provided a reason to let go of that fear. Some fears were worth holding onto. It didn’t matter that she was twenty-three, not eight, or that the years had stolen her beauty. She hadn’t felt pretty for a long time. The darkness had become a constant companion, fuelled by her imagination and full of horrors just beyond her sight.

She lay still, listening and remembering; the world moved around her but she was removed from it. The sounds of the darkness were far from comforting. Still, she listened to the unfamiliar grunting and sighing of the Deacon’s flock as they moved about their labors. There were those more comfortable working, and living, by night. They worked to the sound of the lonely caws of the crows, a melancholy song if ever there was one, and to the distant ghosts of music and laughter far away on the other side of Rookwood. She heard all of this, and she listened, but she captivated by the voices of the Deacon’s freaks.

It wasn’t just the darkness, or the strange dislocated sensation she'd felt since awakening that frightened her now. It was where she was and the knowledge of who she was with. Her thoughts returned to The Deacon . . . she felt the ghost of his touch on her breast. It was the least sexual of contacts she had ever experienced. And yet . . . and yet it had gone deeper than physical contact. He had had been inside of her, reached into her soul. That was the only way she could think of it. He had reached into her soul and he had healed it, somehow. She didn’t understand, but on some instinctive level she knew understanding wasn't necessary.

What was important was that she had answered the holy man’s call. She remembered the incense and the smoke, and some of the words, the Deacon telling the congregation that she walked in the darkness – how right that had sounded to her - and most of all, the overwhelming power of his voice. She'd felt a physical need to approach him, as though some part of her soul needed to be with him. That was the one undeniable truth. She had gone to him because she had to – something deep inside her had compelled her.

But she hadn’t been ill; the Doc had checked her out a dozen times in the last year as part of the service he offered Boone. She’d been given a clean bill of health every time, maybe accompanied by some unguent for the stinging in her private parts, and a stiff brandy to purge any lingering bacteria. The worst she'd had was a dose of the clap, hardly life threatening.

The memory of The Deacon's hand on her breast lingered. She recalled that tiny flare of light shared between the two of them as he touched her – how she'd stepped into that touch.

And out of the light, the serpent.

Had she been dying inside, slowly? Was that it? Had there been some sort of cancer eating away at her while she was oblivious to it? She didn't know what the serpent had been, but she felt its absence, and marvelled.

‡‡‡

Before long, the freaks found her.

It was as though thinking about The Deacon drew them to her.

There were three of them, sisters of grief, mourning and lament. Suffering was etched into each of their faces, the lines of their lives ground in hard. Their stories were inked in pain, and scored into their skin.

"The Deacon wants you," the tallest of the three said, "and he is not a man that likes to be kept waiting."

"Patience is not his virtue," the shortest echoed.

The middle one said nothing.

Colleen pushed herself up out of the blankets and tried to stand, but her legs were weak and they buckled beneath her. She would have sunk back down onto the bed but the sisters didn't let her. They swooped in, withered little arms slipping out from beneath the black folds of their mourning dresses to grasp her at elbow and thigh. Then with strength that belied their brittle bones, they hauled her up to her feet.

The chill of the night air hit her like a physical slap, stinging her back to awareness.

"Best not to keep him waiting," the tallest said, steering her by the elbow.

She followed, dragging her feet. She felt nauseous. Her head spun. She looked down at her feet as they swam in and out of focus.

"Head up, girl," the shortest sister told her, and with a bony finger under the chin lifted it. "And smile, he saved your life. Be thankful."

Still the middle sister said nothing. She walked, stern faced and forbidding, two steps behind, pushing Colleen forward every couple of steps when she faltered. The Deacon’s camp was a hive of concentrated activity, his misfits laboring with crates and baskets and hauling on guide ropes as they erected another canvas construction. It wasn’t a pavilion, though it was similar in size to the Deacon’s private tent. The sisters steered her through a line of wagons and lean-tos