Consumption (17 page)

I'm growing tired, Pill, and I don't think I can write much more of this without going crazy from the memories. Not at such detail, at any rate, so I'll try to tell you the rest as briefly as possible. The most important thing is that you understand the nature of this creature and its offspring, and that you know what you must do.

The miner that She left with us was a jovial fellow, and more than willing to answer our questions. It was a game for him, you see, because he was The Feeder, just as the woman had said. All his children were him.

“It isn't bad at all,” the man said. “Look at me. I remember everything that ever happened to me. Everything. It's just that now I'm more. Before…” He paused, as if unsure how to put this. “Before I Became, I loved to smoke. I'd smoke and smoke and smoke cigars like a chimney, but they were killing me, don't ya see. The doctor said my lungs were black with the smoke. But now…” He pulled a stack of rolling papers from his pocket and then a tin of tobacco, and began to roll a cigarette. “Now I'm saved. I'll live forever, and I can smoke what I want. Drink what I want, too.”

“How did you…
Become?
” someone asked.

“Oh, it weren't nothing much. You just eat a little bit of flesh. The smallest amount will do. Eventually, when you've Become all the way, you can feed others.” He looked up, and his eyes blazed with joy. “Don't you see what She's offering you? You can make others immortal. You can
choose
. There's a new order coming on this earth, and He's giving you the chance to be amongst the favored.”

“You're asking us to eat people,” my mother said. “Worse, to consume their…their
souls.
”

“It's the most delicious thing you'll ever eat, ma'am,” the man said, pinching the end of the newly rolled cigarette closed and then clamping it between his teeth. “The most
dee
-licious. Guaranteed.”

He told us other things, that miner. Him. The Feeder. One and the same, I guess. I won't go into them now, but I'll list them for you later. The important thing is to know what we did with the information. We decided to fight. We decided to stand.

We couldn't trust everyone. Which is not to say that they were not good people, those in my circus family. They were. But what was at stake was too much. My mother, Trees, Sacha, and I were the only ones in on the plan. It had to be that way. There was no other hope. If you had seen the slaughter in the tent, you would understand, Pill. Please don't judge me.

We would go down into the mines; that was our decision. We'd go down as if agreeing to The Feeder's demands. This meant that we'd have to convince the rest of the circus to go down with us, not an easy thing. But we did it. Humans can be convinced of almost anything in times of fear, and I am ashamed to say that many wanted what The Feeder offered them almost from the moment He opened his mouth. Power can be a hard thing to resist, Pill.

The others were not to know also because if they did, they might fight us. They were to go like lambs to the slaughter.

It was Sacha's idea to use the squirrels. “If I die, my darlings will die, too. Better they die a noble death. They would want it this way.” Even as he spoke, one of the creatures ran up and down his arm and along the side of his neck, chattering to him. The squirrel wore dress pants much like Sacha's but no shirt.

When the hour was up, we marched down into the mines, taking the bodies with us.

Down, down, down, on the backs of two show horses and on the backs of some of the men. I have never seen braver people. Down, down, down they went. I went, too, although Trees and my mother made me wait at the top. My job was to finish it all.

“It is a task worse than ours, Little Bear,” Trees told me, kissing me on the forehead before he, too, went down, down, down.

I did not cry. Not then. Not even when my mother followed Trees, when they all went underground and I saw them for the final time. Why didn't I cry? I don't know. I just couldn't. If I had cried, I would have lost all of my nerve.

Within the half hour, I felt the heat from the fire they'd started. The plan was for everyone to take the communion, or begin to take it, and then Sacha would let the squirrels loose. Each squirrel would have a bottle of alcohol and a gasoline-soaked rag tied to its tail. They only needed to be lit and then they'd be running firebombs, impossible to catch in their terror, impossible to put out. The timber of the supports the miners had put in to keep their caves upright would be the first to go. Trees and Mother would make sure of it. And then they would all die. Each and every one.

And if they didn't? I was to finish them. There was only one entrance to the mining caves, a narrow hole that had to be crawled down into with a ladder. At the top of it, I was to lay down the door and light a fire on top of it. And if they still came through? Just before he left, Trees had given me his gun. I knew how to use it, too, because he had taught me many, many moons before. As I said, Trees was as good as a father to me.

That is all I will tell you of it, for I am not proud of what I had to do to the few who tried to escape. When the fire was over, I went back to the tents, my gun in hand, and I found nothing left. Trees had set fire to them before we left so that there would be a cover for all of us to go down into the mines. Unexpectedly this fire had spread, and I found the town in a panic.

In the streets, I found Jimmy. He was covered in blood, screaming that his sister was dead. When I asked him how she'd died, he would not answer, but he took me back to his home and took care of me the best he could. Both his parents were missing in the fire, killed in the mines or in town, I never found out. Jimmy asked me no questions the first two nights. On the third night he asked me to marry him. I said yes.

And on the fourth night I shot him. I dragged his body to the back of the house and burned it. Everyone thought he'd simply died in the fires. No one but me knew. And now you. I killed him, Pill, killed him without ever really knowing if he was infected at all. But he'd been with Clara, you see, and you have to be sure, Pill. You have to kill them all. Each and every one.

Inside the large Lutheran church built in Cavus before the fire, all of the town's residents (all that were still alive, anyway) busied themselves setting up for the Feast so that everything would be just so—the dishes warmed and ready to go after the Service. There were the usual: Jell-O molds with carrots and marshmallows floating inside them, Mrs. Guernsey's peach cobbler, Gretta Morgan's famed green bean and mushroom casserole. Yes, all the usuals were there, but they looked haphazard. Hurried. Sarah Newman had even made her chocolate meringue pie with a frozen crust—a sin unheard of before this day.

The Feast was always held in the Event Hall, which was, in reality, half of the old Worship Room, where the benches had been torn out and regular tables and a small kitchen put in. The floors, however, were still the same beautiful old hardwoods of the main chapel, and the tall ceilings and one wall of stained-glass windows remained. The partition separating the Event Hall from the Worship Room was a thin wall of plaster decorated in various seasonal hangings. Now the Festival's Quilt Competition entries were proudly displayed, many of them featuring geometrical
representations
of black woodland creatures. Along one wall five long tables were laid out and covered with white cloths. Each table was full to the brim with food.

As Star and Mabel passed the hall, Star peeked inside, noting the women uncovering casseroles, remembering a time, just last year, when her mother would have been among them.

Inside the Worship Room, Star found a place in the last row, Mabel sliding in beside her. All the other pews were already packed. Everyone sat in silence, heads bowed respectfully. Usually, before services, an organ played and people chatted, but now there was nothing. Not a baby peeped. Not a toddler rustled in his seat. The congregation waited, calmly and quietly, for Father James.

Next to Star sat a woman in a polka-dotted dress. As she knelt to pray, the woman's elbow caught Star in the ribs, but the woman did not try to apologize. On the other side of Star, Mabel knelt, her skirt sliding up to reveal a good chunk of thigh as she did so. The front of her dress gaped open, too, revealing the ungodly tarantula-like mole on her friend's chest.

“Jesus,” Star said under her breath, and she did not know if it was a prayer or a comment. Overhead, the lights were dimmed, leaving only the copious amount of candles placed at the altar to light it. In front of her an elderly couple sat, the man with a bald head and his wife with a walker, which she left in the aisle beside them. As the lights flicked off, the man turned a startled head around, and then, catching Star's eye, smiled at her before taking his wife's hand. The gesture comforted her, and Star allowed herself to breathe more deeply. The comfort was quickly lost, however, as Star lifted her head to study the darkened church. The newly revealed shadows gave the place an eerie feeling, almost like they were in a cave underground, the shadows becoming jagged rock reaching from the top and bottom like teeth.

When Star had emerged from the bathroom at Mabel's, she'd done so with the full intention of leaving. But when she came out, there was Mabel, looking so
like
Mabel, that all Star had been able to do was fall into her arms, crying, her body weak from the vomiting, but her mind a little less clouded from what must have been a liquor-induced paranoia over Mabel's stupid cupcake joke.

“It's okay, Star,” Mabel'd said, comforting her. “Everything will be just fine. I know you've been through something—you must've, to come all the way here.”

Star nodded, burying her head in her friend's chest and letting Mabel stroke her hair.

“I know,” said Mabel. “And you can talk about it more when you're ready, okay?”

Star breathed her assent, barely keeping the tears at bay.

“All right, then,” said Mabel. “Right now, let's just go to church, and then we'll have some dinner. I know you don't believe much in the church, but I just have a feeling about tonight. Give it a chance, why don't you?”

So they'd gone, Star clutching her friend's hand as they walked together through the nearly empty streets. Now, looking around her at the eerily silent church, Star wondered if she'd made the right decision.

At the far end of the red-carpeted aisle, the doors burst open, and three women, walking single file and wearing white robes, entered. The women walked down the aisle and then up the three steps to the raised altar platform where the priest presided and behind which the choir sang. There was no choir today.

A man with a large belly and wire-rimmed eyeglasses followed the women through the doors and heaved his way up the steps and onto the stage. Star recognized him immediately as Mayor Thomas, a retired lawyer who'd been political head of the town for years. Last, but certainly attracting the most spectacle, came Father James. He wore a green robe today, and a tall hat, meant to commemorate the ceremony of the occasion. He held the Bible before him as he walked, a testament to God and the path he followed. Star noticed that Father James did indeed look like he was on the path to enlightenment; the smile on his face was beatific as he studied his flock in the candlelight, their heads solemnly bowed.

The mayor held up his hand to signal that things were beginning, and immediately the slight rustling in the crowd stopped. Everyone perked to attention.

“Greetings,” the mayor said.

Even though the candles were the only light present, Mabel's eyes glowed green, reflecting them.

The liquor Star'd drunk was beginning to wear off, and a deep unease was replacing it. She'd come here with Mabel because she hadn't known what else to do and because, if she was completely honest with herself, she'd wanted the comfort of the Church. She wanted all of what Mabel believed in to be true. She wasn't religious, but maybe today, if she prayed hard enough, she'd find a miracle.

“Welcome to the sixty-eighth annual Festival Service,” Mayor Thomas said. He paused for a polite smattering of applause from the crowd. “As you know, this year has been an especially important one for Cavus.” A murmur of agreement ran through the crowd, like the drone of small insects.

“This year, a year of turmoil and disappointment for most of the country, a year of grave economic unrest, has, for Cavus, been one of the highest boon.”

More applause.

Star saw that the woman next to her was physically trembling with excitement. She remembered Mabel's trembling, almost panting, that morning over tea. Star felt that jolt of unease hit her stomach again, and she sat farther back in her seat, pressing against the wooden pew.

“We are thankful,” said Mayor Thomas, “that SweetHeart Industries decided to honor our small town with its newest plant. The plant now employs roughly forty percent of this town.”

A yell from the crowd. More clapping.

Star had never heard such a response in the church before. Usually there was a silent but carefully followed law: no clapping. Even when the celebrated soprano from the Ozarks had come to bless the church with a song, no one had clapped at the end of the performance. They'd only bowed their heads, or tipped their upper bodies in approval. Now, though, the sound grew deafening. Star heard Mabel utter a low noise from the back of her throat.

It sounded like a growl.

“We are so blessed,” the mayor continued. “The plant has been open and running for almost three months now, and according to our dear plant manager, Mr. Anderson, we'll be ready for our first shipment of beet sugar sometime next week. Not only has Grady Anderson provided jobs for our town, he's providing them through service to the faith. SweetHeart Industries will distribute, along with their raw sugar, a special sideline of communion wafers designed for all the world to share in the bounty of our Lord.”

Now there was a rumble from the crowd. Star felt a vibration coursing through it, a barely contained emotion like the thrill of an exposed nerve against the air.

“In celebration, I'd like to welcome Mr. Grady Anderson, SweetHeart Industries's plant manager. Today he will do the honor of assisting us in distributing the Holy Communion.”

A hush descended on the crowd, and from a door in the back of the room behind where the choir usually stood, a middle-aged man with dark hair approached. He walked forward and into the line of women in white robes. They parted for him, like the Red Sea for Moses.

Star felt something very like fear blossom in her. She drew back even farther into her seat, not wanting the man to see her. On the stage, Father James walked forward and presented Grady with a cup, which he raised in one hand, and then a white wafer in the other. Grady took a sip from the cup.

He wore a yellow slicker. This in itself might have been excused due to the other odd costumes throughout the crowd. It appeared that no one had bothered to change out of Festival costumes for church this year. But the slicker didn't seem to be worn for the purposes of a costume. It was torn and dirty, a large hole running up the right sleeve that left that arm completely exposed. Holding the cup, the man walked across the stage with a loping gait, half dragging his back foot behind him and pulling his arms close to his chest. He wore sunglasses, even in this dark room, a pair of aviator glasses with tan lenses that hid his eyes. But mostly it was something else about him that bothered Star. Something intangible.

As the man in the slicker crossed the stage, the women upon it (from one of the high school class committees, Star saw, they wore banners like prom queens with their graduation year, 1964, on them—Eve Henderson front and center) moved backward to make room. They watched Grady eagerly, like a dog when its master is holding a ham. Grady stepped off the stage and extended his hands to the crowd.

“Mr. Grady Anderson,” the mayor said again into the microphone.

Grady kept his arms raised and his head bowed. The room fell into silence. “Hello,” Grady said. “And thank you. Thank you, thank you.”

And then she knew. Star understood what it was about the man that bothered her, that intangible element that she hadn't been able to express. It was in the way he spoke, the way that he moved and gestured. A way that was so close to being right that it almost was. Except…except that there was just the littlest something wrong. Like her father.

He reminded her of her father. Her father as he'd been these last few weeks. She knew it within the half a second that Grady raised his eyes to the crowd.

“Oh, God,” Star whispered. She looked toward the stage, then behind her to the back wall, then to Mabel, and then around her at the crowd. They were all like her father. All of them. A final, clarifying image of the ring pushed its way through all her protestations, all her repression of the event. The turquoise ring.

Except it wasn't just the ring, was it? Oh, no. There had been something beside the ring. Something she hadn't allowed herself to see. But now Star saw the image cleanly in her mind, without filter, as the church hummed to life around her, its dark corners pressing, pressing, forcing into focus the part of the memory she'd so carefully edited. She'd seen the ring on the ground of the junkyard, yes, but it hadn't been all she'd seen.

Beside the ring, its nail still painted a pearly pink, had been a finger. One single, solitary finger, with no hand or body nearby to claim it.

Like a mask at the end of Halloween night, the face of the town fell away, and Star saw clearly for the first time. They were monsters, all of them. Each and every one.

Onstage, Grady raised the wafer Father James had handed to him and the people cheered, pumping their fists into the air. “This communion wafer,” Grady said, “contains the first of what we hope will be many batches of the SweetHeart Sugar.”

Star felt a pressure on her arm, and Mabel's breath hot in her ear.

“There isn't enough for everyone,” the man in the yellow slicker apologized from the stage. “Not yet. We've only made the first small batch of the beet sugar.” The women descended into the aisles now, followed by Father James. They passed silver trays full of the wafers and wine cups down the aisle and, as per the church's custom, everyone took the wineglasses, drank from them, and then held the wafers, waiting for the command before they could, as one, consume them.

Father James moved down the aisles, and now he stood at the one in front of Star, the silver tray making its way closer to her.

“However,” Grady continued, and here he held the wafer high, “there is enough for all in this room who wish to partake, and to you I offer the wafers we have made. For you. In remembrance of our town. Take this and eat, as a solemn pledge of undivided love from me. From SweetHeart Industries. May we offer to our brothers and sisters of Cavus a life poured out in service to one another. For now and forever.”

Throughout the church, people took a wafer and passed the tray on. Most took, but not all. Some did not take because they were not members of the Church. Others because their parents counted them too young. A few old-timers who didn't like the way the priest was handing out the wafers like candy in a tin, instead of distributing them one by one at the front like he was supposed to. And several others did not partake because of something they could not name. Only that when they reached their hand out toward the silver tray something made them pull it back. Star was one of these. Finally, the silver trays made it through the room, and those who wanted one held a wafer.

Onstage, Grady brought the wafer down and then tucked it neatly into his mouth. In the congregation, others followed.

In the glow of the candlelight, Grady stood in his yellow slicker, a grin on his face as he stared below him.

All around Star, the candles blinked out.