“If I may ask, my lady, why are you here?”
“I have a mission of my own,” Teresa told him. “But I wished to encourage you in yours.”
He marvelled as he looked down at the village again. “Such a small place,” he said. “A tiny cell. Who would have dreamt so much consequence would be attached to it?”
“We do not know what we are,” Teresa said. “Nor of how much consequence. The view is different from this side, but even we in the cloud do not see the whole. As you know now.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder, not put off by the blood and the dirt and his battle-weary aspect.
“Go, friend,” she said, and spoke the benediction of Oneness for ages past: “You are not alone.”
Chapter 7
At first, Tyler thought he was imagining the man who stood in his path. It was dark, for one thing, an hour yet before dawn, and he could see the man too clearly, almost as though he exuded some kind of light. His search for Reese had taken him up into the cliffs again. Chris was searching on a lower path, a hundred feet down. This stretch of path was narrow and rocky and beset before and behind with prickly scrub; it was not exactly an auspicious place to meet an angel.
Which was Tyler’s second guess. Because the man was still there, stern and tall and muscular, and now that he looked more clearly, the man was glowing, or something like it—at least it wasn’t moonlight that made him so clear against the dark cliffside, and it certainly wasn’t Tyler’s flashlight.
He clicked that off. The man was still lit.
“Umm,” Tyler said. “Are you an angel?”
The man ignored the question and asked one of his own instead. “You’re Tyler MacKenzie?”
“I’m not sure I should answer that question,” Tyler said.
“I have a message for you.”
Ignored again. Tyler cleared his throat. “For . . .?”
“For Reese,” the man said. “Listen to me. When you find her, tell her that she’s wrong. Tell her Patrick says she’s wrong. Things are not what they look like. Tell her I know it’s dark, but this is the darkness that requires patience.”
“You’re Patrick?” Tyler asked.
“Yes.”
“And you’re an . . . angel?”
Patrick shook his head. The longer he stood there, the more human he looked. In fact, Tyler thought he could see dirt and scratches on the man’s skin. And he was wearing a leather jacket.
“What are you?” Tyler pressed.
“I’m . . . dead. But not how you think of death.”
“Apparently not,” Tyler managed. Suddenly his questions were almost more than he could manage, and he felt a sudden fear that the man would disappear and leave him there with everything he wanted to know unanswered. “Wait, you said Reese is wrong. About the Oneness? She’s not really an exile?”
“Just tell her what I said, all right?” The dead man looked uncomfortable at this whole situation, a fact which Tyler found ironic.
“Do you know where she is?” Tyler took a step forward.
“No.”
“Why don’t you go find her yourself? Why am I the messenger?”
The man shook his head, apparently as frustrated as Tyler felt. “I don’t know, okay? None of this is normal.”
“You’re telling me,” Tyler said under his breath.
The man heard, and to Tyler’s surprise, he laughed. “We’re even, I guess. Listen, I don’t know where Reese is. Just that you will find her—I’m sure you will. If you weren’t going to find her, I wouldn’t have been given a message to pass on through you.”
Tyler considered this, but other questions were pressing hard and fast on him. “Can you tell me how you’re here? I mean . . . you said that you’re dead . . .”
“I am,” the man, Patrick, answered. “But death is a bit flexible when you’re Oneness.”
“Why?”
“We are risen.” Patrick fixed his blue eyes on Tyler. “Listen, kid, I don’t know the plan . . . I mean, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here. I was told to give you a message, and you would give the message to Reese. But if you want some advice—and you should—don’t let your role end there.”
“What do you mean?” Tyler asked, feeling all at once dwarfed by the night sky and the bay and the way that death wasn’t death, but was standing and talking to him like a brother. Or a father.
“The Spirit isn’t wasteful,” Patrick went on, “so me talking to you . . . most likely it’s for you too. I can see you got questions, a lotta them. And some hurts too, if I’m not imagining it. Well, listen: there are answers. You might just have to go looking for ’em. But the fact that I’m standing here, talking to you, means they’re already looking for you too.”
Tyler swallowed a lump in his throat. “I’m not sure what to do with that.”
“Nobody ever is. You’ll figure it out. Just do what comes to hand. And let yourself believe in things.”
Tyler cracked a smile. “Like dead people talking to me?”
“Things like that. Although the power of visitations from beyond the grave is generally overstated. Ask Reese, when you find her.”
“Right. Any clue how I’m supposed to do that?”
Chris’s voice carried up from below, shouting Tyler’s name. He tore his eyes from Patrick for a moment and caught the sweep of Chris’s flashlight on the path below. He waved. “Up here!” When he looked back at the man in the pathway, Patrick’s eyes glinted.
“I don’t know where she is. But just a thought. It ain’t like Reese to run from a fight. She’ll run to it more often. You want to find Reese? Find the fight.”
Chris’s footsteps were pounding the dirt of the path. Tyler opened his mouth to ask another question, but Patrick vanished.
The path was plunged into darkness.
A moment later, the beam of Chris’s flashlight shone from behind.
“Your battery go dead?” Chris called.
Tyler switched his own light back on and turned to face his approaching friend. “No. Just trying to use the natural light . . . see if I can see anything.”
Chris shielded his eyes as Tyler’s ray caught him in the face. “Not much of that tonight.”
Tyler lowered his light. “Sorry. When you were below, did you . . . did you see anything up here?”
“No,” Chris said. “Your light went out and I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Tyler turned back and stared at the place in the path where Patrick had stood. “I hope I am. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“I don’t know. I believe in things . . . that there are a lot of things in this world we don’t know much about, and lots of things people have been hiding. Ghosts might figure in there somewhere. Did you see one?”
Tyler kept staring at the path. There was no sign that anyone had been there, but then, it was so dark he might not see such a sign if it was there. “I may have.”
“It talk to you?”
Tyler nodded. “Said he had a message for Reese.”
Chris stood a little straighter at this. “He say where to find her?”
“He said go where the fight is.”
Chris shone his flashlight beam in a broad arc, cutting a trail of light through the dark air beyond the cliff toward the bay. The moon had gone behind clouds; the water was barely visible, highlighted only by the lights of the village. “Seems like we’re in the wrong place, then.”
Tyler nodded, and by unspoken agreement, both headed back toward the trail that would take them home. As far as they knew, Mary was still there—doing what they weren’t sure. Praying, maybe. Having visions or dreams that might help them. They had felt out of their element from the start, going into the night like this. Nothing that was going on was really human; how could a search in the scrub and the dark really help anything? But they’d had to do something. They both knew that.
* * *
Mary sat on the phone in Chris’s kitchen and let it ring for what seemed like twe
nty minutes before someone on the other side finally picked up. It was a voice she hadn’t heard in decades, and they exchanged greetings and pleasantries for a few minutes before she sat back in the chair at the kitchen counter and braced herself to start digging.
“David, tell me, do you know a girl called Reese?”
She forced her voice to remain calm, nonchalant, though inside her soul was in turmoil. This was not the first call she had made. She’d been making others all through the night, calling up cells she knew better, people whose hearts were linked to hers by an unbreakable chain. This cell, the Lincoln cell, she did not know nearly as well. For some reason she had dreaded calling them.
Perhaps that should have told her everything she needed to know.
David was silent on the other end. She wondered what he looked like now, twenty years after she’d met him as a young man—just before the greatest tragedy of her life. He had been new to the Oneness, she a member from childhood. Both had become leaders since then.
His silence made her want to jump out of her skin.
Finally he said, in a voice heavy, “Yes, we know Reese.”
Mary licked her lips. Stay calm. “She came from your cell?”
“Listen, Mary, what do you know about this girl?”
“Not as much as I’d like. She passed through the village but I was never able to come into contact with her.”
“Be just as glad you didn’t,” he said. His voice was sharp. “She’s dangerous. Mary . . . she’s been exiled.”
“Yes.” Her voice was small—so small, and scared. She hated the sound of it. “I know that.”
“I know you don’t understand.” His voice was strained, but he was trying to reassure her; she could hear that caring, protective timbre in it despite the weariness. “I don’t understand myself. We’re still trying to figure out what happened. How she turned against us like that.”
Mary cleared her throat. “Can you tell me about it?”
“She betrayed us,” David said. “I don’t know what happened to her . . . how the enemy got to her. But he did. She was working against us—lying, poisoning the body. She was on a mission to attack a hive, but they somehow got control of her. She led one man to his death.” David sounded like he was trying not to cry. “A good man. Patrick. A brother to me. Reese led him straight into a trap and stood by while he was slaughtered. She tried to come back, but we could smell it—see it—all over her.”
“Like disease,” Mary said. Her voice was still so small.
“Like gangrene.” He paused. “We had to do it.”
“I didn’t know it was possible.”
“Neither did I. But a man can’t imagine sawing his own leg off until that leg is killing him. Then he finds strength he didn’t know he had.”
They talked a few minutes more. When Mary hung up the phone, she sat beside it woodenly, staring into the tiny living room, weighed down.
The front door opened, ushering in two exhausted young men and the light of dawn. They didn’t look surprised to see her. They did look like they needed sleep.
Chris strode across the living room and placed both palms on the kitchen counter, leaning over toward Mary.
“Tell me,” he said in a voice raspy with weariness and the outdoor air, “if we wanted to find the heart of whatever’s going on—the fight, if you want to put it that way—where would it be?”
Mary didn’t expect the words that tumbled out of her own mouth. “You’re not equipped for this.”
Chris banged a hand on the counter, and Mary jumped. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“This is a supernatural battle,” she said, leaning forward herself, gathering fire. “You can’t fight it. You shouldn’t even be in the middle of it.”
“Well, it seems we are,” Chris said. His voice sounded bitter. “You told us about angels and demons. What about ghosts?”
“Ghosts?”
“Dead people! Dead people walking around and talking to guys like Tyler in the middle of the night.” Chris pointed to his friend, who was still standing in the doorway as though he wasn’t sure what to do next.
“You saw . . .”
“His name was Patrick.”
Tyler’s words fell into the room like snow, and Mary was suddenly, instantly, fully awake. Her eyes passed Chris and focused on the younger boy.
“What did he tell you?”
“He said to tell Reese that she’s wrong and nothing is what it looks like. She’s not an exile . . . she’s wrong.”
Mary abruptly turned her eyes back to Chris. “You want to know where the battle is?”
“Yeah.”
“I think I might know. It’s in Lincoln.” She set her jaw grimly. “It’s in a hive.”
* * *
Although the cave was pitch-black at night and somewhat dim during the day, April was losing the ability to tell the difference. Between her hunger and the adjustment of her eyes to the darkness, nothing really looked normal. The cave stank, and she could feel her body breaking down; she was dizzy and faint, and it was getting harder to think straight. It seemed to her that the breakdown was moving too fast to be due just to lack of food. Shouldn’t people be able to fast for a while without suffering too terribly much? A week at least? She was still getting water from the mud, and needing it badly enough that she almost didn’t mind how nasty the whole experience was. She suspected her head injury was at least partially the culprit for how bad she felt.
But all that paled in comparison to her painting. Whenever she was awake, she crawled or staggered or walked to the mud and covered her hands with paint. Even in the darkness she could see her work now, clear as daylight before her eyes, and she was driven to it: driven by it, driven through it. The mural had sprawled. It now covered not only the original wall, but two others, and parts of the ceiling that were low enough for her to reach. The rose vine grew through all of it, bearing flowers and leaves and thorns. All around it were people and places, connected by the vine. Nick. The old people at the home she used to go and visit. Various fishermen and the woman who ran the bar and would sometimes give April a coffee and talk to her. Mary. Richard. Even Teresa. And others—people she didn’t know, people she’d never seen before.
At some point the pictures stopped being just pictures and started telling a story. Where the story came from she was not sure. She felt that she was getting it from the Spirit. It surprised and dismayed her even as it sometimes gave her hope. Other creatures joined the plot—angels and demons, gods and demigods, intersecting with the vine and warring one with another. It was a fantastic panoply, a myth spreading itself within this hidden dying place for no eyes but hers—and those of the already dead—and she did not know why but she knew that it had to be done. While she worked on it, her hunger and thirst dimmed and her eyes cleared. She was often aware of Teresa’s presence lingering in the cave, though not often visibly. When she did come visibly, April noticed a gauntness to her form, a hollowness to her cheeks, that spoke of her own difficult history. Someday, the Oneness believed, those who had passed into the cloud would receive their own bodies back again, fully healed and restored and made new. But their spirits, for now, bore some of the marks of their past history on earth.
April often wondered about Teresa and wished they might spend more time talking face-to-face, as friends. But though the cloud was always close, and though the Oneness held, that a separation did exist between them was evident. Thankfully, that did not stop Teresa from coming and looking over the painting, commenting on it now and then. Always she told April that it was important, this thing she was doing. That the story needed to be painted here in the dark. And she reiterated, once or twice, that she did not think April was meant to die here.
Well, April reflected as she lay on the floor of the cavern after a long painting spell, letting the rock overhead meld into the familiar fuzzy darkness that was part absence of light and part April’s own weariness, no one in the cloud was infallible.
A deeper darkness was pressing in. She could feel it—a pressure gathering around her head, around her heart. Feebly, she fought it—Teresa had told her many times to fight it. But she was so tired.
April closed her eyes.
Seated at April’s side, Teresa bowed her head and said a prayer for her friend.
Chapter 8
The roar of passing semitrucks on the highway dulled Reese’s discomfort as she rode in silence beside the kindly old man who had picked her up. Awkward but trying his best to be helpful, he tried to make conversation once or twice before giving up and contenting himself with driving. After that the trucks and the miles took over, and neither felt a need to talk.
It was an hour’s drive into Lincoln, and to her surprise he took her all the way. He dropped her off next to a corner store and stuffed a few dollars into her hand. Genuinely grateful, she thanked him.
“It was nothing,” he said, and drove off. Untrue, she thought. Kindness is always something. His unassuming help made her think of Tyler and Chris, and she pushed away a sense of guilt for leaving them. She had done it for them, after all. The enemy was after her. Better that she die here, in a city so full of people that everyone was anonymous, in an alley or a parking lot somewhere, than that the final fight happen in the village where its repercussions would touch everyone.
Exile she might be, but Reese had never stopped thinking in terms of connection. All things were connected, after all, though few recognized or believed it. The Oneness was different because they recognized and threw themselves into the connection. For that reason they functioned as the threads holding together a world that was trying to break itself apart.
The door buzzed as Reese pushed her way into the corner store. She stood at the counter in the back of the store for a moment, the floor beneath her scuffed and dirty from those who had come before her. Her eyes roved over the line of coffee thermoses, paper cups in three different sizes, and a sausage warmer next to a basket of half-warmed pastries. Quickly counting out the money in her hand, she grabbed a plastic-wrapped danish and a large coffee. The clerk barely acknowledged her as he took her money and made scant change.
Back outside, Reese looked over the street and considered where to go. The Lincoln skyline—nothing impressive, just a few central banks, law firms, and other businesses in three midsize skyscrapers—loomed to the west, probably a twenty-minute walk away. On the other hand, she could stay out here in the grungier, less professional part of town, with its gas stations and restaurants and corner stores crowding the main streets and housing divisions at the back of them.