The Everborn (38 page)

Perhaps Bari bore insight enough to know how Salvatia got that name, that she was one day meandering around sixteenth century England when, not long after she’d heard the words of her own prophecy, she came upon the ramshackle outpost of a church bearing the words SALVATION TO ALL upon a broken wooden banner, the SALVATION portion split in two. She took that as a sign, far beyond more than literally, and, combined with delusions of grandeur, the name hence evolved.

Whatever the reason, a teenage babysitter was at that moment engaged in verbal dispute at the side of the house behind the outside wooden gate over a matter of
who’s chucking dirt clods at whose window
with a teenage neighbor cradling over the partitioning fence...

...and the Everborn twin was with them.

As for Bari, even
her
attentions were drawn into the feud.

And the twins were
separated
.

Salvatia waited no more.

As she glided her way from atop the Plymouth and across the school parking lot, crossed the boulevard and approached the house, she gazed down upon herself in awe at how remarkably
material
her silvery skin tone was, and in the next instant how clearly and rapidly she was developing a transparent signature of own her form breaking into the visible world.

This was indeed a true soulless Dreg twin she was after and this unmistakable physical materialization was the truest indication; the prophecy clockwork was already ticking its maiden voyage of tocks. Everything from this point on was guaranteed free flying, entirely in the Magdalene’s favor.

It
had
to be, no question about it.

Inside the house, within the twin infants’ bedroom of blueblack wallpapered stars and shooting stars, a woman’s pair of silver-toned hands, extending outward by likewise matched arms of intertwined muscle, protruded from the solid wall not far below the double window facing the outer front yard. The surreal hands searched and pawed until, lowering and lowering still, they settled past the painted white wooden bars of a crib as if the bars were merely holographic images from some unseen projector’s eye. The lustrous black of vulture-like claws discovered the infant twin Dreg with a harmless prick against the soft flesh of its inner thigh.

The child barely gave notice. It was wide awake and in diapers, tumbling its fingers through the air above itself and towards an overhanging mobile of plastic swirling balls of planets and more stars, which glowed in the semi-dark. The bedroom door was open halfway, the living room light streaming in on a webbing of illuminated dust-swirls. A solitary muffled voice could be heard coming from the kitchen, combined with a distant door slam.

She had very little time to act.

The presence of her hands at last caught the child’s attention, and it ceased all movement as though suddenly stunned, as though it hadn’t noticed them there before nor their touch, its widened gaze now fixed upon the silvery intrusion...and then the intrusion fixed itself upon the child, lifting it, lifting it up within its two sizable yet feminine palms and reaching it nearer to the double window. The hands shifted and transferred the baby to one palm and one hand retracted, disappearing through the wall. The hand then reappeared the next instant, grappling with the screen of the open window until the screen tore loose and the infant was hoisted up and out the window as easy as pie.

Triumphant, the Magdalene stole the Dreg child into the night, making certain what could be seen of her wasn’t seen by anyone...an exercise she hadn’t had to worry about for hundreds of years....

***

Salvatia had established a sort of lair several cities away, a cannery long since abandoned, which proved to be the perfect location from which to meditate upon the location of the Dreg twin. She had made herself home in a multitude of sanctuaries leading up to this one, a haven of serene solitude and vacuous quiet, a place of rest and away from the whole wide world.

It wasn’t that she had to
hide
from anyone. She just couldn’t bare the
distraction
of
seeing
anyone.

She needed to concentrate.

And this was why she carried the infant Dreg twin all the way back. She had been close enough to sense him from there, and now she
had him
just as she had foreseen from there.

Now, the best thing to do was take him back there, at the risk of being seen…now that she could be seen, albeit partially, and if not her, then a flying and literally bouncing half-naked baby boy.

Back, to the Rothchild Cannery.

Where there were plenty of black widows.

***

The abandoned Rothchild Cannery was a viciously hollow deep labyrinth full of perilous traps should anything physical feel free to sojourn into its dark abyss.

It was ideal enough for Salvatia to carry the Dreg child throughout several city suburbs to return there.

Black widows were to be found
anywhere;
locating a black widow or two didn’t depend upon a greater success rate at finding them at the cannery, but hanging her hat there was ideal also for what was to take place after she’d locate a few. The prophecy the Magdalene had been told of, entailed a sure-fire sign concerning a final test of the Dreg’s hidden fortunes and capabilities, something further that would prove beyond a doubt that a Dreg could do everything a Dreg was supposed to: aside from the obvious materialization power he invoked in her, a Dreg was promised to exhibit the ability to be impervious to any poison or the bite of the most venomous creeping thing.

In this could he also provide her
another
service.

***

Salvatia maintained custody of the infant for as long as she could, as long as was necessary. She couldn’t keep him inside for too long, for either he’d eventually be discovered or surely die. And neither would be to her best interests.

A handful of months had passed since the child Dreg’s abduction now, and Salvatia had time and again fancied the repercussions of his disappearance from his home. His cries had been heard throughout the abandoned cannery all the way to the outside world, and those concerned who happened upon them had returned with moderate rescue teams who searched to no avail and departed empty-handed but with the notion that the property was haunted by a Wraith-child that existed only in the whimsical minds of the impressionable who may or may not have actually heard any cries at all. To them, the cries could have been anything. An infant’s footprints could have been anything, too. And no connection was ever made between this and the missing Erlandson child. The miles of separation had suited the scheme and fate was serving Salvatia well.

Until she had to snuff out the lives of those unfortunates who came sniffing about way too close for comfort.

That was remarkable, and it felt good to kill. It had been so long since Salvatia could even kill a cockroach.

How she cared for her Dreg child. She’d built him an inconspicuous makeshift nest. She changed him, kept him warm when he was in need of warmth, kept him cool in the Summer heat. She brought him food, brought him playthings; at times she’d bring to him other children’s half-broken toys, other times he was at play with living things such as, well, cockroaches. Or rats. They couldn’t infect him with their bites, whenever they
did
bite, and when their bites caused him to cry he would only play with them in angered roughness. And the silvery beast was always there to take away the pain.

Then, one day, without any effort of her own, the children came.

They arrived on their own, their curiosities sealing their fate...and particularly for one, who bore the honor of meeting the Wraith-child face to face, the one who ventured with his childhood chums into the treacherous innards of the dilapidated cannery on a capricious dare, the most innocent of the lot.

The time was at hand for Salvatia to release her beloved somehow, anonymously, and when the spider’s bite had been imposed upon the poor mortal boy...

...well, with the Dreg’s power imposed upon herself as it was, the watchful eyes of the dead resurrected through that power would make do and monitor him in her absence from that day forward.

On, until the final hour when she could use that Dreg to re-emerge into the real world fully, finally, and ultimately for all time....

34.

Simon BoLeve

-
1975
-

An overgrowth of hibiscus bushes cradled the overhanging metal casing of an electric signboard, a street-side sign situated before a tiny brick wall. The brick wall sprouted from behind the sign on both its left and right, extending and corralling the well-landscaped front lawn of the
Church of the Divine Jesus Christ’s
worldwide headquarters in Stanton, California. The plastic black replaceable letters of the sign was sequenced to read ALL WELCOME AND ENJOY THE FRUITS.

There was no other sign than that, for the
Church of the Divine Jesus Christ
was a Christian cult which didn’t believe in publicity, so its presence was ambiguous to the surrounding community. To most passers-by, the look and shape of the homely two-story brown building was like that of an undersized hotel, and many of them took it to be so; some even supposed that ENJOY THE FRUITS referred to a continental breakfast. In fact, ENJOY THE FRUITS meant to
enjoy the fruits of the Spirit
.

The
Church of the Divine Jesus Christ
was elusive that way. Particularly the Stanton one. What, with being the worldwide headquarters and all, they felt they
had
to be elusive. They were the one and only church on the planet who understood what the Holy Bible was
really
talking about, and all other Christian denominations were Babylon. As for other
religions...
hell, they were broken vessels damned beyond repair.

Its members were predominantly of Chinese descent, as the church was founded in underground World War II China, its founding fathers evading communist tyranny by exporting themselves by the definition of
exporting
to California. They hid inside hay-filled cargo crates nailed shut by close friends left behind, and fed on wafers and drank from water jugs and relieved themselves in leather pouches and through holes in the crates until they were recovered at a San Francisco harbor.

Their entire journey and discovery was enough for a newspaper’s front page.

The word of the Lord they brought with them delighted the ears and captured the souls of a growing multitude of followers, mostly those sharing the same heritage as none of the founding fathers spoke English. Even now, the pastor of the Stanton main headquarters had to make use of an interpreter, and to those who spoke English his sermons were distracting and difficult to follow. But they loved him anyway.

To Eliza and Malmey, the whole
Church of the Divine Jesus Christ
scene was a way of life. If not for them completely, then it was at least a way of life for both their families. And they were stuck in the middle of it all, two girls of recent high school graduation, doing their best to fit in.

Both of them stood casually against a tall concrete wall behind the camper shell of Malmey’s father’s pick-up truck at the far end of the side parking lot, where no roving eyes could catch sight of the smoke of their cigarettes. They were dressed in proper conservative attire, with ankle-length skirts and cotton-white tops buttoned to the neck. Both were Caucasian, pasty-faced and make-up free and if they were dressed any plainer they’d likely be mistaken as Amish. Unlike the majority of fellow church-mongers, their lives as devotees were increasingly overwrought with social concerns outside the church, though on Sundays one would never know by looking at them. Unless one caught them smoking. They each took a drag of their cigarettes and blew the smoke over the wall.

“Did you know that raccoons rape cats when the cats venture into their territory?” Malmey asked.

“Really,” said Eliza, stricken oddly by the question. “No kidding. What a subject to talk about, when you’re about to teach in
Children’s Study.”

Children’s Study
was the
Church of the Divine Jesus Christ’s
version of Sunday School.

It was Sunday and the parking lot was filling with the vehicles of those anticipating another morning of education and worship,
Divine J.C.
style.

Malmey flicked her ashes. “Yeah, well, the night before last the BoLeves came over for dinner.”

“That’s right,” Eliza said in recollection. “How did that go? They were going to adopt that one boy....”