David Wilson - Hallowed Ground

This time she was not alone.

It took her a moment to realise what it was that had woken her – the wet phlegmy sound of a baby crying.

Colleen rolled over on the uncomfortable mattress. Beside her, wrapped in a bundle of rags lay the baby the Deacon had been comforting.

The old man stood silhouetted in the doorway. "What you were too frightened to ask for," he said, and left her, only this time she was not alone. He had offered her anything, and she had asked for nothing, yet in her heart of hearts Colleen Daisy Tranter yearned for that one thing she could never have – and with this boon the Deacon had bought her soul.

She had a child of her own to care for.

Chapter Fifteen

The three sisters stood together in the dust, waiting. When The Deacon climbed down from the wagon, he saw them, and nodded. They regarded him without expression, as was their way.

"Let's get on with it, shall we?" he said.

They turned then, and started away from him. Their movements were eerily synchronized, as if joined by some thread or binding that could not be seen, but that they were unable to resist. The Deacon waited until they were a few yards ahead of him, and then followed more slowly. Few of his flock commanded his respect. Most of them were sad, pathetic things, unable to exist outside the tiny world he'd created for them. The sisters had come to him as they were, and they were a strange lot.

The sisters’ tent stood just off to the right at the rear of the great tent. It was old – the fabric stretched taut over its poles and frame like the wings of a great bat. The Deacon had touched that fabric once. The memory was so vivid he felt his gorge rise at the thought of it. It had felt alive, and when the wind lifted and teased at it, flapping it against the posts, it seemed to breathe.

The sisters stopped short of the tent, and The Deacon, though he feared nothing, expelled a breath he hadn't consciously meant to hold in. Their fire smouldered in a ring of stones. There were larger stones circling the fire…three on one side, and only one on the other.

The sisters parted, rounded the fire, and crossed between and behind one another in an oddly intricate pattern before seating themselves. The Deacon hesitated only a moment, and then took the solitary stone for his own.

"What would you know?" The tallest sister asked. Her name was Lottie, and she was always first to speak. If she spoke, her sister Attie, the shorter sister would respond. He had never heard it otherwise, not in a greeting, or an exclamation. The third sister, Chessie, never spoke. She never smiled. Hers was the most expressionless face The Deacon had ever encountered, perfectly framed by her more animated companions.

"There is something in the wind," he said. "Something has raked its claws through the crows and set them to flight. Darkness is on the land, and if that darkness should be headed my way, I want to know. For all our sakes," he added, "I want to know."

Lottie cackled at this. Attie glanced over at her, and grinned. Chessie stared straight ahead into the fire. The Deacon noticed that she now held a leather bag in her lap. The bag had not been there when she sat down. It was too large to have been carried with her. Sweat trickled down The Deacon's neck and stained his dusty collar.

"He's worried about darkness," Lottie said.

"It's dark here," Attie added. "Darker than here, then, very dark"

Chessie was silent, but her skeletal fingers worked the ties on the bag, and the knot released with a soft hiss of leather. She tugged the top of the bag open, but she did not glance inside.

The Deacon fingered the leather pouch at his neck. He frowned. He knew they mocked him, but he needed their knowledge. He had the vague sensation that, though he ruled his small kingdom, and the power that kept it whole was his alone, these three stood outside that circle. They made the hairs on his arms and the nape of his neck stand and dance in the chill breeze, and their laughter cut through him like blades of ice, but they had never steered him wrong. Each and every time they'd answered his call, their words had rung true, and the world had followed their pattern.

"Tell me," he said.

Chessie upturned the bag.

Bones fell in a sun-bleached rain. Small skulls, fingers and legs, teeth and ribs. They tumbled and scattered at Chessie's feet, but still she stared straight ahead. The others bobbed and cackled, but they did not glance down. The bones settled into a pattern – but The Deacon refused to look at it, waiting for their words to give the moment substance. When all was quiet, and the fire settled, Lottie and Attie fell silent, and Chessie began to speak.

"She died," Chessie said. "She died, rose, and nearly died again. She comes. The crows know her – the crows guide her. She follows the sound of a crying child. She follows the drag of un-kept promises on her heart.

"She is his, and she stands alone. Hers is vengeance, and hunger. Hers is the blade and the stake. Hers is the gun..."

As Chessie spoke, she grew agitated. She had been sitting very still, staring into the distance with a placid, emotionless mask. As the words flowed from her lips, her features contorted. Her expression was that of someone captivated by something a great distance away. She frowned. Sweat beaded on her withered brow and rolled down her cheeks. She pulled her feet up onto the stone and clutched her knees tightly, then she began to rock up and back, and side to side. The Deacon feared she'd topple from her perch, but he did not interrupt.

"She will bind the contract," Chessie said. "She will find what has been lost and it shall be free. Her blood is flame. She comes."

Chessie's head turned slowly, almost as if controlled by some unseen forced. Her gaze locked onto The Deacon's. The temperature in the small clearing dropped so far, and so fast that her breath emerged as a blast of misty fog. Her final words dropped from that mist in icy chunks that drove into The Deacon's heart.

"She comes for you."

A sudden wind whipped through the camp and caught the sister's tent. The already taut material made a whip-crack that nearly stopped The Deacon's heart. He closed his eyes, then blinked, then focused.

"No more to see – no more to tell," Lottie said. All the mirth and cackle had drained from her voice.

"No more. She comes," Attie added.

Her voice sounded brittle – old and worn. She sounded drained.

"Who is she?" the Deacon asked. "Who is coming, and why?"

"It is late," Lottie said. "Our sister is tired – very tired. We must let her sleep."

"There is not much left of the night," Attie offered.

The Deacon opened his mouth as if to protest, then clamped it shut. The three made almost no sense on a normal day – after this he was as likely to get a real answer from them as he was to walk in on The Last Supper and take the seat of honor.

The fire, which had burned so brightly only moments before, was no more than a pit of spent coals. Wisps of smoke rose up and around the three women, obscuring them from view.

The Deacon glanced down at their feet. He searched the ground, but found no sign of the bones. The dirt in front of Chessie's stone was bare and undisturbed. He glanced up. The bag rested in the old hag's lap. The drawstrings were tied, and it bulged – as if the bones had not only been returned to it, but augmented in some way – as if there were more bones, or those that there were had grown larger.

He rose, turned, and strode away from the fire. He did not look back, but as he stepped away, he heard – and felt – the flames rising. Whisper-thin voices floated in the air and tickled at his senses, but he could not make out their words.

He rounded a large wooden wagon and stopped short.