A Latent Dark (4 page)

He noted the Bible lying open on the floor next to the bed. He stepped over to it and glanced at an open passage from Deuteronomy.

“They sacrificed to demons, which are not God, gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods that did not hear…”

“Sir?” came a voice from outside the room.

“In here,” said Lyle.

He turned and looked around the room. The broken door frame was bowed out and almost circular. He reached out to touch the crumbling paint.

“Big one,” he said, thinking out loud.

“Sir?” The voice was close now, a boy’s voice.

“Nothing, Charlie,” he said, running a hand along the shattered wood. “Do you mind bringing in my kit from the car?”

The young soldier left and returned a moment later carrying a small leather case. Lyle opened it and took out a shiny metal knife, wiping a smear of blood on the nearby bed. Squinting under his white hat, he scraped some of the paint into an envelope.

“Is it true what they say?” asked Charlie.

“What’s that?” asked the Reverend, still focused on his scraping.

Charlie looked away for a moment, and then shyly turned back to the Reverend. “They say you are the Pope of the South.”

Lyle paused for a moment, then chuckled. “They say that do they?”

“Is it true?”

Lyle turned and faced the boy, holding the silver blade to his side, “Don’t believe half of what you hear, son. I may be old, but the Pope I am not.”

“Oh…” The boy looked down, embarrassed.

Lyle cleared his throat. “Now, that’s not to say He and I don’t work closely.” He raised an eyebrow.

The soldier looked up at him again. “So, you are here on His errand?”

“You could say that.” He went back to scratching.

“Is it true that you have a hundred mansions east of the Mississippi?”

“My Father’s house has many mansions,” Lyle said, amused with himself.

“Sir?”

“Well, when you say it like that, you make it sound as though all those houses are mine and not Houses of the Lord.” He beamed a smile at the young man. “What you need to understand is that I have millions of sheep in my flock and I need places for them to gather all over the country. It’s all part of the job.”

“I wish I had a big church like that to go to,” said Charlie, feeling more candid. “All our churches here are old. They have to close the one on the North Wedge when it rains.”

“It rain much here?”

“Only in winter, but they can never afford to fix it. My cousin lives in North Wedge. She has to truck herself all the way across town for Mass.”

“That is a shame,” said Lyle, adjusting the brim of his hat. “For some reason I thought this was the poor side of town.”

Charlie laughed. “No way. This is beyond poor. I didn’t even know there were people living in this wedge. They used to call it the Gutter Wedge…” His laugh was cut short by a severe look from the Reverend. “Sorry, sir.”

Lyle said nothing, only stared at the boy until his face broke into a sudden grin. He placed a hand on the plate that armored the boy’s shoulder. He rubbed at some of the etching with his thumb and noticed a subtle grain beneath the gloss finish that gleamed in the light.  

“That’s some remarkable craftsmanship,” he said, leaning in to get a closer look.

“Thank you sir,” the soldier said. He puffed his chest a bit and looked at nothing in particular. “We make them here. Bollingbrook’s finest.”

“I can see that,” said Lyle. “Surprised your city doesn’t sell more of these to the local municipalities.”

“There is less of a market during peace-time. Ever since the
Maka-Sichu
crusades, there hasn’t been much need for armor.”

Lyle laughed. “Sounds like what you folks need is more wars. Nothing better for a man’s soul than a crusade.” He slapped the boy on the side of his pauldron.

“Yes sir.”

Lyle turned back to the shattered wood that lay all around him.

“Now,” he said. “The reason you never saw anyone living here”—he reached up and tore a piece of wood away from the bristled frame—“is because you weren’t allowed to see.”

“Sir?” The boy frowned.

Lyle turned to him, holding the splinter out. “Birch. Witches. It’s all witchcraft and trickery, my boy. The mind sees what it wants. It picks and chooses sometimes. Some know how to take advantage of this. I bet you never guessed that you had such summoners living right in your midst.”

And yet you yourself let one of them get away
, he thought to himself.

Charlie blinked. “No sir. Bollingbrook is the center for the archdiocese. We would have known about this. The archbishop would have exorcised the premises.”

The young soldier shivered as he looked around, looking as if he felt the house would collapse in on him.

“You would have to have been invited in order to see it, much the way a vampire can only enter your house if you invite them. Evil has to be invited into the heart, just as the heart sometimes has to be invited to do evil.”

Charlie laughed in spite of himself. “
Sir
. Vampires? There’s no such thing.”

Lyle did not laugh. “Awfully sure of yourself, aren’t you boy?”

The soldier looked as though he had been slapped. All that remained of the old man’s jovial nature poured from his face like water from a pitcher. What remained pierced Charlie’s soul with chill blue eyes as the Reverend spoke slowly, cold and serious.

“I’ve seen things that neither you nor this dirt clod of a town could possibly imagine, boy.” His voice was as rough as dried leaves.

Charlie shrank under his gaze. “I… I’m sorry sir.”

As if a switch was flipped, The Reverend Summers smiled at the boy, slapping him again on the shoulder. He continued his inspection in silence as Charlie watched.

They traveled up the stairwell and young Charles Wilcox swore he had never seen anything quite like it. A pool of blood was congealed at the base of the stairs, black in the dim light. A deep gash ran ragged from the living room up to the attic where the daughter had lived.

Everyone knew about them of course, the way they do of the town drunk or the local haunted house. It was something that was never spoken of aloud or on purpose. Ghost stories were told about the mother who saw demons and the girl who could read people’s souls like a book. When they walked down the street people diverted their gaze for fear of catching an evil eye and being turned to stone. The mother could wish people dead and have it become so. Or so the stories went, anyway.

Charlie believed maybe half of them. He didn’t know the woman or her daughter, but what was rumor was as good as fact when invoked by the fearful and superstitious.

Being here, seeing the house in person was anticlimactic to say the least. He had been expecting rooms full of bones and cauldrons, chicken carcasses dangling from the ceiling and decorated with strange herbs; skulls of children with glass eyes. He wanted to see a magic wand on the bookshelf and a closet full of flying broomsticks.

He had expected, well… witches.

The young girl’s room, even in shambles just seemed too
ordinary
. The most remarkable thing about it was the level of poverty it presented. All the clothes were the sort of thing any child would wear, no black pointy hats or robes. Charlie had wondered if they even had the right house.

Then the girl had screamed when he grabbed her and a shadow seemed to engulf his face. It might have been a crow, but it had talked—screamed even. That was certainly not normal… but witchcraft? Was that what witchcraft was? Did it feel so real? He shuddered and crossed himself, wondering just how close he had come to losing his soul right then.

“So, Charlie,” Lyle finally broke the silence. He was standing at the massive hole in one side of Skyla’s wall. “Tell me about this cousin of yours.”

“Her name is Sarah,” he said, taken aback.

“Pretty?”

“Sir?”

Lyle looked directly at him and Charlie felt his skin shrivel at the gaze. “Is. She. Pretty? Charles.”

“Y-Yes. She is, sir. We are almost the same age—she’s a few years older.” Charlie paused. “May I ask why?”

“Her family suffering from the bad economy as well?”

“They get by, sir,” said Charlie. “Not as bad off as these folks, but, well, we could all be doing better these days.”

“Do you think she would be interested in helping me out?” said Lyle.

“Sir?”

“I’m going to need someone to show me around, run errands. That sort of thing. I need someone who knows the city and the surrounding area. I’ll pay her for her time, of course.”

Charlie’s eyes grew excited. The Reverend Summers nearly reeked of money. “Yes sir. I believe she would love to help. And yes, she is very pretty, sir.”

“And she is pretty.” He echoed, more a statement of fact than a question. “There’s always work for pretty girls.” A wiry grin crept along his thin lips.

He plucked something black from the mess of glass and debris and walked over to Charlie, holding it up in front of his face. It was a large black feather like something from a hawk. Lyle twisted it in his hand and Charlie saw the pale lamp light dance blue-black off of it.

“Do you know what that is, Charlie?”

“It’s a feather, sir.”

Lyle sighed, “Do you know what
kind
of feather that is, Charlie?”

Charles looked fearfully between Lyle and the feather he was holding. “A... crow feather?”

“Close,” said Lyle. “It is a
raven
feather. Do you know anything about ravens, Charlie?”

“They are like crows aren’t they?”

“Well, now, that’s like saying that whales are just big dolphins.”

“Sir?”

“All ravens are crows, but not all crows are ravens,” Lyle sang. He continued to twist the feather in his fingers. “While your average crow is as common as vermin, ravens are thought to be magical servants of the underworld by heathens and their ilk. They are crafty and smart and far more clever than you. That raven was a witch’s familiar.”

“I thought witches had cats, black ones.”

“They cavort with all messengers of the Devil, my boy.”

“So this was the right house then?”

“Yes, Charlie. I do believe it was.”

“Where do you think they went?”

“I don’t know,” said Lyle, sighing. “But they won’t be coming back here. Fetch the kerosene from the trunk, will you?” He handed the tool kit back to the soldier, who returned it to the car.

*

Skyla watched from the shadows as the two men talked. With his helmet off the young one looked much less frightening than he had in her room. Her skin crawled at the memory of him grabbing her with those black armored hands. They spoke for a while as she watched from the fence, unable to make out what was being said. She heard the words “witch” “raven” and some other connecting syllables, but nothing she could make any sense of.

Finally, the man in white reached down and picked up a feather that belonged to Orrin. Skyla’s forehead went cold as he twisted it between two gloved fingers. He held the feather out and showed it to the boy, his shadow pulsing in random, manic shapes as he spoke. It was the ugliest thing she had ever seen.