Embracing Darkness (79 page)

“Come to me,” he hissed, “or get out.”

Instinct told us to choose the latter option. We opened the window behind Father Fin’s desk and hopped outside through it.

While the stranger went about his business in Father Poole’s office, Charlie and I heard the sounds of breaking glass and slamming drawers. We didn’t want any part of what he was doing, and we didn’t want anyone to know we’d even been in the office around the time that Jack White was ransacking it, for the simple reason that we didn’t want to be blamed for what was now happening. We ran to the front of the rectory near the downward slope of the summit.

There Charlie and I began frying some ants in the grass. In another few weeks there would be no insects at all to burn, so we tried to enjoy the activity while it lasted. I put the magnifying glass up to my eye, making it look enormous, and Charlie laughed. Then I had him put it against his own eye. After this novelty wore off, I tried to think of something else to do with the gadget. Charlie then asked what I thought Jack White was doing in Father Poole’s office.

“He must be looking for something for Father Fin,” I said. “I mean, Father Fin trusts him with everything. I just hope he doesn’t tell on us.”

Just as I finished speaking, Charlie cried, “Ouch!” and began sucking the skin on his arm. I asked him what had happened. He began to cry like a baby and showed me the small wound on his arm. It took me a minute to see that I’d inadvertently burned him with the magnifying glass. Strangely, this got us going again as we quickly resumed burning any insects that crossed our path.

By the time Jessie came out from the Benson house about twenty minutes later, Charlie and I were immersed in our game. Standing behind us, she asked what we were doing.

“We’re frying bugs!” said Charlie, apparently no longer bothered by the burn on his arm. “We’re doing ants mostly, but we also did a fat spider and a few dead bees.”

“That’s cruel!” replied Jessie, snatching the magnifying glass from my hands. Somehow she knew that I was the one who’d gotten it out of Father Fin’s drawer. Shooting me a nasty look, she put the magnifying glass in her back pocket, as she had done the last time with Ziggy, and then surveyed the hill.

“Where are the other boys?” she asked, as I got up and wiped the dirt off the knees of my pants.

“I dunno,” I said, angry that she had ruined our entertainment for the morning. “Go look for them yourself. Charlie and I are going to find something else that’s fun to do.”

As I put my arm around Charlie’s shoulders, he said, “Yeah!” and stuck his tongue out at Jessie.

With the two journals tucked tightly inside my pants, Charlie and I walked around to the other side of the rectory again, not far from the window of Father Poole’s office. It was quiet in there now. Charlie and I were tempted to see whether Jack White was still in there and, if he wasn’t, to see what he had done. Unable to reach the window, however, we abandoned the idea and went to where there was some sunlight, since the shade was quite cold that early October morning.

While sitting off to the side of the hill just behind the Benson house, I felt a lump in my pants. I reached back and pulled out the two journals I’d found. I opened both of them and switching back and forth, began reading.

Jessie went back inside the rectory, waiting for Father Fin to return. She was anxious to find out whether Sister Ignatius had given him permission for her to visit. She paced back and forth in the foyer as Gabe and Lou ran past her chased by Theo, who was in pursuit to retrieve his toothbrush that the other two had taken from him.

Jessie then recognized that Jordan was the only one she hadn’t yet seen that morning. She decided to go upstairs to say hello to him and see what he was up to. As she arrived at the top of the stairs, she was about to turn right toward Jordan’s room when she noticed a light coming from the end of the hallway. It was something she wasn’t used to seeing. The light was coming from Jack White’s room, and he’d always kept his door closed. It now was open. Jessie listened closely for footsteps or any other movement in the room but heard nothing. She walked closer. As she did she could smell the scent of Jack White, and tried to remember if she’d smelled it before falling unconscious during her attack. She couldn’t remember. Jessie retreated a step, thinking that White might be in the room.

Believing she would be doing nothing wrong by simply going to his doorway, Jessie stepped in front of it and looked inside. With the exception of a pair of his shoes strewn on the floor, the bed’s being unmade, the Nazi jacket on his pillow, and a half-opened bag on top of it, the room was tidy.

She breathed deeply and walked in. The bag, albeit not at all identical, reminded her of the one that Father Poole had told her to keep in a safe place. With Father Poole gone for so long, she had worried that the fetus would begin to rot sitting in that satchel, but she kept her promise and left it in a safe place—the lower left drawer of Father Poole’s desk.

Jessie went over to the bed and stuck her hand inside the stranger’s bag, pulling out a newspaper clipping from the
Biloxi
Daily
Times
dated Thursday, April 10, 1942. It was in regard to one of the privates who had found Rex Gunther dead in his barracks back in February. This same private was now being sought in the death of another private.

“What’s Jack White doing with this?” Jessie thought before recalling the letter she’d received from Rex just before he died: “This asshole’s name is Private Zachary Black. If anything happens to me, remember his name.” She was trembling now, worried about what she’d find next. She dipped her hand further into his bag and pulled out two items at once. The first was a lighter. She immediately remembered the burn that had been inflicted on her arm and vaguely recalled the lighter that her attacker had used to injure her. The two were identical. She dropped the lighter on the floor and the sound echoed noisily in the hallway. She made her shaking hands into fists and at once noticed something she’d been holding. It was a small piece of cloth, one inch by four. She opened her hand. It was a name patch on green camouflage that read in bold letters, BLACK.

Jessie let out a brief, shrill scream, realizing that Jack White and Zachary Black were the same person. With no hesitation whatsoever now, she plunged her hand into the bag again and felt something smooth and large. She pulled it out and her eyes fell upon it. She screamed and threw it onto the bed. It was the deformed pig mask she’d seen during her attack.

Just then a voice behind Jessie said, “You.”

She jumped and screamed again, but it was her first scream that had brought Zachary Black up to his room. He looked at the pig mask on his bed and the patch bearing his name in Jessie’s hand along with the newspaper article.

“What do you think you’re doing in here, little piggy?” he said as he walked slowly toward her, causing Jessie to retreat. “So have you finally figured it all out?” He was speaking in a raspy whisper, almost under his breath.

“Stay away from me,” she replied, stumbling over the man’s shoes. “You’re sick!”

“Come to me, Jessica,” he crooned. “I want to love you one last time. Won’t you let me love you?”

She began crying. “It
was
you. I knew it.”

“No, you didn’t. If you did, you would have slit my throat in my sleep, but I’ll tell you what. I have some work to do here to clear the area before I can attend to you, so I’ll give you a head start. Would you like that?”

He sneered at her, his yellow eyes widening in anger, before moving to the side and unblocking the door to the room.

Jessie squatted down and ran past him, immediately falling over a large bag in the middle of the hallway that made a clinking sound, like that of bottles being knocked together.

Zachary Black emerged from the room with his bag now bulging, evidently from the possessions he had shoved back inside it. As he approached Jessie, she scrambled back, unable to regain her footing well enough to stand. He reached inside the bag Jessie had tripped over and pulled out a kerosene lamp, which we used when the power went out on the hill. Then, pulling out a lighter, he watched Jessie while he lit the wick. He began whistling the “Piggy” song. Without taking his eyes off Jessie, he threw the ignited lamp into his room. A loud crash of breaking glass was followed by the roar of kerosene catching fire.

“Come to me,” Black said, walking slowly toward her.

“NO!” Jessie screamed, lifting herself off the bag of kerosene lamps and starting to run down the stairs while shouting “FIRE!” By the time she reached the landing below, she heard the sound of another kerosene lamp smashing, but this one seemed more distant. “RUN!” she screamed. “EVERYONE OUT OF THE RECTORY! FIRE! FIRE!”

Gabe, Lou, Theo, and Jordan ran from the common room in a panic. Just then they heard a pounding on the stairs. They all saw Jack White coming toward them. The boys immediately ran for the front door, but Jessie just stood there face to face with the man whom she felt freer than ever to hate. Her abhorrence for him, however, was nothing compared to the hatred he felt for her and everyone in the rectory.

He reached into his bag for another kerosene lamp. Lighting it, he ran to the common room and hurled the fire bomb against the piano, which it engulfed in flames within seconds. Running back to his bag, he grabbed another. This one he aimed for the curtains by the large bay window on the far side of the common room. As he turned to leave the room, he noticed one of Charlie Ryder’s marbles on the floor. Zachary Black dropped it into his back pocket, as if he wanted to keep it as a souvenir.

By this time Jessie had run into the kitchen to alert Mrs. Keats. Jessie tugged the confused woman’s arm so hard that Mrs. Keats dropped the heavy pot of water she’d been planning to boil, which landed on her foot.

“Mrs. Keats!” screamed Jessie, trying to get the woman to understand what she was saying. “We’ve got to get out of here! There’s a fire! Mr. White is destroying the rectory! We have to go!”

Mrs. Keats fought off Jessie, unable to understand what she was saying, and grumbled while pointing at the large puddle of water on the floor. Jessie began pushing Mrs. Keats toward the side door that led to the sanctuary.

Just then Zachary Black stormed into the kitchen. Convinced of the malice at hand as the intruder lobbed another kerosene lamp into the church, Mrs. Keats took a frying pan from her collection overhead and lunged at the man, hitting him over the back of the head. He didn’t react in pain but just turned slowly around, his face registering an anger that caused Mrs. Keats to back up.

Not taking his eyes off the cook, Zachary Black told Jessie that unless she wanted to watch Mrs. Keats die she’d better run.

“KEEP AWAY FROM HER! LEAVE HER ALONE!” screamed Jessie.

As Mrs. Keats did her best to make a run for it, Zachary Black took his slingshot from his back pocket, loaded it with Charlie Ryder’s marble, aimed it at the back of Mrs. Keats’s head, and released it. The projectile penetrated Mrs. Keats’s skull and lodged in her brain.

Mrs. Keats was dead before she hit the floor. In a fit of rage Zachary Black then began destroying the kitchen, even pulling out the pipes from the stove.

Knowing that she couldn’t do anything more for Mrs. Keats, Jessie ran into the dining room. She was about to go out the front door when she thought of Father Poole. She went to check back down the hallway that led to his office and remembered the dead fetus. Jessie ran into the office, pulled the desk drawer open, and grabbed the satchel. As she looked up, Father Poole was standing in the doorway.

“FATHER FIN!” Jessie screamed, dropping the satchel and running over to him. She grabbed his neck hard and squeezed it. He pulled her away quickly and said in a panicky voice, “Jessie, what are you doing in here? The rectory’s on fire! We’ve got to go!”

“I know, Father Fin, but there’s something you need to know about Jack White.”

“It can wait until we’re safely outside. Now come on!”

As they turned to leave, a figure was standing at the door, causing the two of them to stop. The man blocking their way to safety was wearing the mask of a deformed pig. Father Poole gasped and said under his breath, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints preserve us!”

The man approached them slowly as they began backing up. The smoke from the fire and the fumes from the burning furniture began to permeate the office. The window behind the desk, however, was still wide open, and the cool autumn air outside offered, for the moment anyway, plenty of oxygen.

“Who are you?” demanded Father Poole of the man in the mask.

“Father Fin!” cried Jessie. “Look at him! Look at what he’s wearing! It’s Jack White, but that’s not his real name. It’s Zachary Black! He’s the one who killed Rex! I found an article that said Zachary Black was wanted for killing another private. And Rex mentioned him by name in a letter he wrote to me. He told me to remember the name.”

“Rex?” Father Poole said incredulously to the man in the mask. “You were with Rex in Biloxi? Tell me it’s not true, Zachary.”

“You knew who he was all along?” asked Jessie, unable to comprehend what was happening.

The priest lowered his head in shame and nodded. “For a long time now. I became sure of it a few weeks after he arrived. He lived here as a boy. He was thirteen when he came here. You were just a baby and don’t remember him.”

The beast in the mask stood completely lifeless before them. Jessie, meanwhile, was unable to believe a single word she was hearing.

Glancing at the arsonist and murderer, Phineas shook his head. “Tell me you didn’t hurt Rex, Zachary. Tell me it’s not true.”

“Yes, it’s true!” hissed Zachary, pulling the mask off slowly. “And now you and I see each other for what we really are. Incredible that you knew that freak! Saying it’s a small world wouldn’t do it justice. God
does
indeed work in mysterious ways, Father, doesn’t He?”

Jessie was hiding behind Father Poole. “He just killed Mrs. Keats,” she cried.

“No.” whispered Father Poole. “Dear woman. It can’t have been…”