Kornwolf (38 page)

Livid, Jacob would have ordered his friend to drive him home at once. And after a year of pounding ties, he would've been no one to argue with. Yoder would have taken him through New Holland, past the gorge, to the Speicher lane—doing his best, all the while, to quell Jacob's anger with reason. To little avail.

This would account for Jacob's temper on showing up, out of the blue, at his parents' home. Said to have been in a spluttering frenzy, he'd frightened his mother “half to death” and even threatened his father with violence before running out of the house in tears.

Maria, “
thank God
,” had not been home.

By the end of the afternoon, Auntie continued, a long-haired, muscle-bound, bearded Jacob in denim, a T-shirt and dark
sunglasses had been seen in the back of an English vehicle, looking the worse for wear and tear.

By dusk, he and Yoder—a young man said to have lost his faith in God already—had been spotted at a bar on Old Route 30, drinking themselves into blind confusion.

By midnight, they'd been arrested for public misconduct, then locked in a precinct cell. And, by morning, Jacob's district council was set to convene and rule on his case.

With nowhere to go, estranged from his family and penniless after their wild night, he would have been left with no choice but (as rumored) to sleep in a ten-acre plot of forest belonging to Jarret Yoder's uncle. For the first few nights, Yoder might have brought him blankets and food, and even kept him company. But nobody else would've known (or been sure of) his whereabouts.
Or
of his worsening condition.

However, once he had missed his date of return to the highways, that would change.

Within ten days of his last known appearance in Blue Ball, a pair of military officers had come around, asking questions at market. Rumors would circulate, rumors that Jacob had left the country, or maybe gone west. Members of District Seven would humor the officers, up to a point, with conjecture. But nothing would come of it. Eventually, they would be left with no choice but to go on their way. By early October, Jacob's fate would have been consigned to the great unknown—yet one more innocent lost to the war.

One week later, the killing had begun.

To start off, one of the Stoltzfi's layer houses had fallen under attack. A flock of hens had been ripped to pieces. No explanation would come of the incident.

Three days later, it would happen again. But this time
fifty-one
birds would be killed. A warning would quickly go up through The Basin: a mountain lion was stalking the poultry.

In days to follow, many acres of corn would be ravaged, uprooted and ruined.

Then, less widely acknowledged, Mary Ann Schnaeder, the Bishop's sister, had been assaulted by a “foul-smelling, devilish beast.”

Over the course of the next weekend—all inside of forty-eight hours—three herds of cattle would be attacked, a goat would be mangled and left on the highway, a storage bin would be drained of corn and a “rabid bear” would be seen chasing traffic …

“
Does any of this sound familiar?
” Auntie spoke, interrupting the flow of images.

Slowly, she stepped away from the window. Something about her was different now. Her eyes were lustrous, wide, unhinging.

Behind her, the moon had appeared through a break in the clouds, washing over the tree-lined escarpment. The Basin glowed in a milky haze. It was radiant, luminous. It spilled through the window.

Facing it, Ephraim sat breathlessly comatose. Both of his arms were unresponsive. His body felt shackled, entombed and increasingly distant with every passing moment. He hadn't been conscious of Auntie's voice or diction through most of the preceding narrative. Even now, he couldn't rely on the testimony of his perceptions—i.e., her question, and his having heard it. All he could summon was one of his own. In German, with difficulty:

“
Und meine mutter?
”

Slowly nodding her head with a flexuous look of
now we're getting somewhere
, Auntie came forward. “
Yes. Your mother
,” she said. Her voice was palpable finally.

The floorboards groaned beneath her advance. “
Your mother was already living at home—in your home—when Jacob returned that autumn. Benedictus had bought the estate from the Nolts, who'd gone to Kentucky in April. His plan had been to move in as soon as he and Maria were wed in November. Meantime, she would attend to the house. Her mother would help her equip the kitchen. Her father would till and nourish the land, and her friends and relations would sleep in the back room
.

“
For all of our apprehensions, Jacob would only appear on one occasion
.”

Auntie stopped to catch her breath. This seemed to be taking a toll on her nerves—her voice was cracking now, torn with sickening dread and what sounded like anticipation.

“Your mother and I were upstairs that evening. By rueful coincidence, Benedictus and Bishop Holtz were down in the cellar. The two men had been taking structural measurements. Normally, they wouldn't have been in the house. The timing couldn't have been any worse—as, at that moment, seemingly out of nowhere, a desperate cry had gone up in the woods. We ran to the window … We spotted him there—on the lane, at a hobble—approaching the house. He looked like nothing we'd ever seen—like a tortured ghost. He looked like an animal … Your mother let out a scream at the sight of him. At once, she ran for the door to go after him. But Benedictus barred her way. And when I intervened, the bastard hit me. Then he locked us both in a closet. Wailing, your mother collapsed in tears.”

Auntie leaned forward: “
And that was the last we ever saw of the Jacob we knew. In his place”
—she settled her gaze on Ephraim firmly—“
days later, came forth your progenitor
.”

Ephraim blinked in sudden confusion.

She drew in closer. Her breath smelled of blackening apples and vinegar. “
Yes
,” she said. The veins on her neck were like ruts in the candlelight. “
Yes
…” she repeated, and this time the word was drawn out as a hissing gaseous emission.

“
I don't understand
,” Ephraim muttered.

Scarcely able to summon his breath, he rocked on the desktop. He felt like a giant, throbbing artichoke beached in silt.

“
I don't understand
.”

Repeating himself …

Auntie closed in, beaming, exultant.

She seized his testicles, clamped down and
twisted
.

The jolt that tore from his thorax to every appendage so far exceeded all previous forays into the world of pain—a cross of electrocution, impalement and ratcheting steadily flush in a vice grip—the regents of hell would have squirmed in discomfort.

Auntie brutally wrenched his scrotum. Crying out, he fell to his knees. She wrung both hands. Her fingernails gouged him. Something popped. He went into convulsions. He felt himself losing control of his bowels.

Speaking out there, she was—hissing and warbling off in the storm.

What was she saying?

He couldn't distinguish her words in the hammering downpour of images flooding his mind. Panels of black and white now alternating to complementary colors: red, green—red, green—orange, blue—purple, yellow—purple, yellow—orange, blue—red, green—red, green … Increasing in frequency, slowly dissolving in tone and uniformity, darkening, withering, smoldering in from the edges: blossoming ringlets of cancerous black—out of which shades of light and movement began to materialize, gelling to form …

…
through a hazy, vaporous, moonlit field sat the Bontrager home. His father's house. But the Minister didn't appear to be present. The place looked newer, less gone to the dogs
…

The motionless figures of two young women stood, side by side, in the sitting room window. Staring across the yard, toward the forest. Something was out there. Beckoning, calling them
…

Fade to black
.

Return: both women in nightgowns, walking across the clearing, familiar somehow: both seeming absent within the moment—unconsciously driven
…

Fading again
.

Then there was jostling bulk in the grass—snorts and labored panting in time, a soft, impassioned gasp on the wind. Succeeded by steady, labored breathing
…

More darkness
.

The women, divested of garments—Auntie (and Mother?), impossibly younger—lying still on a bed of lilac
…

Darkness
.

Then a primal
scream …
A torrent of deviant, carnal excess: requited in full, among three with abandon: two vestal maidens, one blighted pariah. The odor of sweat and ammonia, rancorous. Slapping of tenderized flesh on bone—and of writhing. And thrashing. And snarling. Fluids.
Rapture: flaring to white-hot emptiness—out of which seed would take root in each vessel
…

Ephraim, screaming, exploded from both ends.

And
now
—she warbled, out there in the maelstrom, her voice at a squalling, murderous hiss—
now, after so many years of silence, bearing the burden of knowledge exclusively, after an age's charade in The Order—at last, the cycle would be completed. With the sacrificial lambs of marriage and motherhood fully consigned to the task, the tragedy set into motion by Jacob years earlier would enter its final act. Tonight, the blight would be consummated. Tonight, the curse would come to term—though not by way of Ephraim's sister. No one would ever know about Fannie. Fannie herself would remain unsuspecting. The blight would never awaken in her. Auntie had seen to ensuring as much. Her daughter had been given every amenity, every security, growing up—a faith and a future within The Order … As Ephraim might have been given the same … But, through circumstance, Ephraim had been destroyed. There was only one purpose left for him: he alone would complete the cycle. All he required was a jolt to ensure it
…

“
You pitiful bastard
,” Auntie spat.

She twisted his mangled scrotum a hundred and eighty degrees, then tightened her grip. She pitted one foot to his torso and
heaved
with all of her strength. He brayed like a hinny. A snapping of bone sounded, growing louder. All at once, the candles blew out.

A howl went up from Ephraim's throat.

At last, his testicles hardened and swelled in her grip. A blow to her jaw disengaged it. She fell to one side, hitting the floor.

Above her, the moonlight was blotted out suddenly.

Stumbling around in the dark, he was. Moving now. Painfully. Coughing and hacking, he shuddered, then turned on her.

“
Fastnacht Sweet
.” She laughed.

With the riding gear straining and rumbling under his buggy the whole way out of town, Minister Bontrager lashed his reins across the back of the lurching pacer. The underfed animal, having been held in police impoundment, neighed defiantly. Cursing, the Minister lashed again. The leather held taut in his clammy grasp. His feet were moving, flopping around the trunk.

He had been in this state all day.

Just after dawn, on returning from the most tumultuous nightly patrol so far—a patrol during which the entire party had spotted The Devil in flight from the ridge of one bank along Hollander Pike, on the left, toward another, a full twenty yards to the right—suspended above their wagons, cutting across the moon in a lopsided profile, then dropping, vanishing, leaving the party below in a startled, hollering panic—he'd found his whole property littered with garbage, the waterwheel broken, the porch in shambles, the hinny, untended, wandering hungry, and the house siding blotted with streaks of paint.

Whereupon, he had taken leave of his senses, storming around the yard in fits. By eight o'clock, Jonas Tulk had appeared in a manner of no-less-livid duress. His pantry house had been burned to the ground. Both men cursed and spat in the dirt.

Within minutes, Emmanuel Stoltzfus appeared in his wagon, also raving and jabbering: someone had tossed a dozen empty field
traps over the compound wire. The alarms had gone off, but Ezekiel Stoltzfus, guarding the building, had seen no intruders. Emmanuel insisted The Devil was taunting them, promising wrath in the hours to come.

Thereupon, joined by Grabers and Cleon, they'd set out for town to find the beast.

For years, rumors had been in circulation that, in fact, it was still alive—and, moreover, hiding in residence locally: several community members vouched to have spotted it prowling the streets on occasion.

Initially, talk of this kind had been somewhat predictable, given the subject in question. Most of The Order, at least in The Basin, dismissed it as baseless superstition.

However, on that matter, most of The Order knew very little about The Devil—including the name that it went by now. Only a handful of elders, among them Tulk and the Bishop and Benedictus, would have been able to recognize it. And normally, none of them would have been reading the English papers. The Ordnung forbade it. The month of October had been an exception only by cause of circumstance. At market, Orderly vendors had followed the daily coverage with vested interest. Too much stock had been in peril for all concerned, including the mill owners.

Earlier on in the week, Benedictus had spotted the article indirectly. Jonas Tulk had left the sports page out on a table to be discarded. The Minister, never intending to look at it, only caught sight of the photo by chance. The text verified it. And Tulk would concur: The Devil, dressed in street clothes, walking away from the camera as though in disgust.

It was older and bigger. Yet unmistakable. Benedictus would never forget: he had seen that face from his window, had barred it from entry, had turned it away at the door. The mark of the damned would remain with it always—the look of a blighted, contemptible wretch. Even when tempered by age, it was evident.