On top of the altar were several bunches of decorative plants, but they were brittle and flaked into dust when Sam touched them. They were not flowers at all, but dried ocean weeds and scraps.
He picked gently at the arrangements and found mummified kelp and kale twisted with wires to keep their shape, and fitted with urchins, sea horses, and even the needle-thin bones of a small fish.
His eyes landed on an ivory-white coil strung like a necklace around the front of the podium. At first he thought it was another gruesome backbone, but when he touched the thing it was dry and clean, not made of bones at all. He peered at it hard, and used a trembling finger to lift one end to the shimmering light from the nearest window.
He’d seen such leavings before, on the beaches here and there. If he remembered correctly, they were the remains of the creatures that live inside conch shells. Usually, they were sandy and clotted with sea detritus from having washed up onshore. This one had been bleached and stretched until the coiled shape had loosened, and then it had been given a clasp—in case anyone wanted to wear it, Sam supposed . . . though he couldn’t imagine why anyone, anywhere, would ever want to do so.
He let it go, and it flopped back around the podium corner with a crackling whisper.
The sensation of being watched was almost more than Sam could stand. He breathed harder, even though the air was too hot to swallow; and he looked around for another exit. There was another door behind the baptismal font. It might lead outside.
He tripped over to it and gave the latch a tug. The door swung open and out, but not into daylight.
Sam had found an office. Rows of shelves lined the walls, each one so stacked with books that it drooped in the middle, and an expensive-looking mahogany desk was pushed up against a wall. The whole place smelled like old paper and seaweed, but at least it was brighter than the chapel. A window with ordinary glass overlooked the desk and illuminated the area, but it was closed tight and there was no ventilation.
The books were all written in other languages and Sam didn’t see a single one that looked like a Bible. By that point, he wasn’t surprised.
The only thing that did surprise him was how badly he wanted out. There was more to his desperation than the terrible overwhelming heat, and there was more to the urgency than the way the ambient dust tortured his nose. He sneezed once, twice, and almost a third time before he could stop.
Through watering eyes he pushed himself over to a second door. A small cutout window in the door told him that yes, this was the way out; but as he got a handle on the latch, a loud noise from the chapel made him freeze with fright.
Someone had entered the chapel through the front door.
Paralyzed with indecision, Sam left his hand on the latch and fought with himself over whether to flee immediately, announce himself, or hide. His first impulse was to dash, but the door wouldn’t move. He bucked himself against it, but it refused to budge.
Two voices rumbled from within the chapel, coming closer to the pulpit, to the font, and to the office door.
At a loss and running out of time, Sam hopped back behind the first door so that when it opened, he would be hidden behind it. But the door didn’t open. It stayed blessedly shut while the two people on the other side carried on a conversation that drifted a few words at a time into the office.
One of the voices belonged to Henry; Sam could tell that much immediately. The other belonged to a woman. Sam might have guessed that it was Mrs. Engle, except that she didn’t sound elderly or infirm. She sounded youngish and irritable, and Henry sounded annoyed and impatient as well. They weren’t arguing, exactly, but they weren’t agreeing very well, either.
“. . . he’ll be leaving soon.”
“How soon?”
“Tomorrow, I think. We have to . . .”
Sam tried not to assume that they were talking about him. It didn’t work. He was almost certain they were talking about him. He wished he could hear the conversation better, but he didn’t dare press himself any closer to the door.
Then Henry’s companion said, closer now—close enough that Sam could hear the word clearly. “How?” They were definitely closer. They must have walked up by the pulpit.
The woman made an exasperated sigh. “What, do you want to just beat her with a hammer?”
“I don’t know; I don’t know if it even matters.”
“I think it probably matters. There ought to be—”
“What?” he interrupted. “We know we haven’t got much time. If that paper-pushing fool gets anyone to listen to him—”
“So why not eliminate him from the equation?”
Sam’s heart seized.
“Because for all we know, he might be missed. No one but us will notice if the girl is gone. And how long are we to wait? You’ve complained about how long it’s taking more than once, so let’s follow the situation where it takes us. Let the meddling outsider force the moment.”
“But it has to be tonight?”
“I think it does,” he said.
“All right,” she finally said. “What time should I tell people?”
“Tell them eight o’clock.”
“Eight? It’ll barely be dark!”
“Eight. I’m going to need to collect a few things. Don’t worry about what,” he said, preemptively cutting short some implied objection. “Just get everyone there. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“But I am worried about what. Maybe I can help.”
“I don’t need any help. Do your job and let me do mine.”
Henry said it with a finality that made Sam’s ears pop, but the office door didn’t open even though the chat ended. By the sounds of things, the woman went back out the front and Henry was milling around in the stifling little sanctuary, but there was no telling how long that would hold true.
Sam tiptoed back to the other door, sweating as much from the stress as from the heat. He gave it another cautious, firm squeeze . . . and it opened with a squeak that felt as loud as a gunshot.
He pulled the door open and wondered why it had stuck before, but he didn’t wonder about it long. Wasting no time, he took a fast step into the afternoon sun and sprawled onto the ground. Even though the building was propped on blocks to protect against flooding, there was no back stair leading away from the office. It wasn’t a long hop, but it was a surprising one if it wasn’t expected, and Sam had not anticipated it.
He almost ripped the latch free as he fell. He let go just in time to keep from pulling the door down from its hinges with his body weight, and as he hit the ground with a thud, the door swung shut behind him.
Sam pulled himself together long enough to scramble up and around the corner.
When Henry opened the door, wondering what had made the noise in his office, he saw nothing outside. He closed the door again.
Too afraid to move and too astonished by his own behavior to do much more than quietly panic, Sam huddled against the building’s blocked-up supports and hugged himself. He was crouched on the shady side of the church, and a pleasant breeze curled around its corners; or perhaps he was just so overheated from hiding inside the church that any motion in the air felt like heaven.
While he lurked there, trembling and gasping, he twisted his neck back and forth to watch both directions—in case someone came to investigate from around the front, or from that back door with the missing stairs.
He didn’t hear anything. Not inside, and not outside.
But he did see something.
In the blank backyard made of patchy scrub and sandy gray dirt, patches of brown leaves and darker mulch pocked the landscape. The more Sam stared, the more it looked like they made a track from the edge of the woods to the door of the chapel . . . and then back out again.
He didn’t want to call them footprints. The stride was too long to be a man’s, and they didn’t take the shape a boot or a shoe might leave. They were puddles of dried mud and crushed leaves. And if they made a path, or a track, or a trail, t
hen it must be Sam’s own imagination.
He brushed away the clinging dirt and picked sandspurs out of his pants, and then, while he still had the nervous energy to do so, he started to run.
The Promise of Peril
He could’ve run down to the Sandbar and grabbed Dave. He could’ve gone back to the island’s lone hotel, packed his things, and announced that he was taking the next ferry east, back to the mainland, and away from that damned island. But in the end, Sam decided that he didn’t want to talk to Dave. And he didn’t want to go straight back to the hotel, because Dave was as likely to be there as anywhere else; so he’d returned to the courthouse, to his awful temporary office up in the attic.
Over and over again, he replayed the conversations in his head—analyzing and sorting, pretending that the words had all been committed to paper. It was easier to understand that way. And Henry had been right: Paper-pushing was what Sam did. It wasn’t his passion, but it was his forte.
If his hands hadn’t been shaking so badly, he might have written down what he remembered; but his hands were quivering and that was fine, because he remembered plenty enough to be scared, and curious, and confused.
The thing that bothered him most was not the oblique suggestion that he, personally, ought to be removed from the picture. Henry had shot that down, which was good of him, Sam thought. What bothered him now—barring immediate threat to his own well-being—was the “her” they meant to destroy.
It had to be the statue at the house—the house that Sam was supposed to watch, examine, and report upon. Of course, if Sam was right and Henry meant to go destroy objects on Salvador Langan’s potential future property, then Sam had an obligation to prevent it.
He wanted to go back.
He wanted to go see it. Her.
At the bottom of the courthouse stairs there was a clock on the wall. Sam left his desk area long enough to tap down to the end of the stairs and see that it was not yet six o’clock. Henry wouldn’t be back there until eight. Sam had two whole hours to figure out what to do.
He ran down the stairs just in time to pass Francis, who was going home for the afternoon. She said hello, and he said hello back, but he barely looked at her as he dashed for the door. He wasn’t worried about being locked out. They’d given him a key, and besides, no one ever locked anything here—including the civic buildings. It drove Sam crazy, though on this particular occasion it would come in handy.
Out on the street the stores were closing up and people were walking home. The shadows were stretching out long, but it was still intensely hot, and everyone who had a reason to be indoors was sticking to it. Dogs skulked from shady patch to shady patch, children idly splashed themselves in the one working street pump, and even the squirrels looked wilted and slow.
Sam was the only person in sight who was in a hurry.
It was only half a mile to the deserted beach house, but by the time Sam reached it, he was panting and wishing for one of those iced Cokes he’d seen back at the market. He put his hands down on his knees and wheezed, while sweat streamed down his neck from his hair. Damp spots spread under his arms and slicked the creases of his thighs. He lifted one hand up and leaned against the courtyard wall, poking his head around the side. The square inside the rough peach wall was deserted except for some tiny green lizards and a seagull, all of which scattered when they saw Sam.
And she was there, too.
He crossed the courtyard, still breathing hard as he stepped between the overgrown paving stones and the broken tiles. The grass was knee-high between the fountain and the wall, and it buzzed with insects when he pushed through it.
Panting and shooing at gnats, Sam came to stand in front of the statue. He smeared his slick wet hair away from his forehead and pulled at the shirt to peel it away from his skin.
Why would anyone want to break her?
She was perfect, if perfectly strange. Curled and crouched, nearly fetal, except for that one outstretched hand, warding away . . . what? She looked so afraid.
“This is nuts,” he said to himself. “I’m nuts,” he clarified.
He lifted one of his legs and extended it as far as he could, drawing himself across a tangled patch of thorns and settling down as close to her as he could get.
From this nearer vantage point, he examined her: the way she was sitting, and the way she was posed. He’d been afraid that she might have been built into the wall, but this was not the case; she was a separate piece sitting on a ledge. He could move her without a chisel and hammer.
If he could lift her.
Sam wriggled one arm behind her, wedging it between her body and the wall. He wormed the other arm underneath her legs and gave a tentative shove. Then he leaned harder and gave a hearty heave. It was only after his firmest, sternest effort that she shifted a fraction of an inch.
She must’ve weighed hundreds of pounds.
He had no idea how he could transport her without a truck.
But there was a truck on the island. There was a wagon, anyway, the old fire wagon that had been stranded by the storm when the ferry wasn’t sturdy enough to return it to the mainland.
He could get the wagon. He’d need help, but he could get Dave, if he had to.
Again he pulled at the stone girl and tried to calculate how much strength he’d need to transport her. “I can’t do this,” he concluded. “Not by myself.”
He retrieved his arms from beneath and behind the statue. He hopped down off the wall and dusted his hands against his pants, then started for the archway that would lead him out into the open lot.
“Where are you going?”
Sam froze. He whirled around and looked back into the courtyard, but it was empty except for the statue. The open lot around the house was cluttered with trees—big magnolias and a pair of enormous banyans with roots that interlinked like long-fingered hands.
“Who said that?” he demanded.
“You can’t leave her there.”
“Who said that?” Sam was almost shrill, almost hysterical.
“If I show you, it will only upset you more.”
Sam wheezed rhythmically and adjusted his glasses, trying hard to trace the voice. It must be coming from one of the trees. It originated over at the biggest banyan, a monster of a tree the size of a small house. The tall, stiltlike roots were dense and stringy. Someone could reasonably be hiding within them.
“Who are you?”
“You can’t leave her there,” the voice repeated. “The minister and his horrible underlings will destroy her.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. He faced the speaking tree. “You know about that?”
“Of course I do. And I’m the reason you know about it, too. I wanted you to know. She needs your help.”
“Why do you keep calling it ‘she’ like it’s a person?”
A rustling noise behind the tree shifted, and settled, and crackled. “For the same reason you do in your own mind, and when no one is watching. You know as well as I do that she’s inside there, fetal and fragile.”
Sam was on the verge of losing his breath again, even though he was standing still.
“What . . . what is she?” he finally asked.
The speaker did not answer immediately. Another round of rustles and leafy twitches indicated that someone was stirring, and maybe considering what to say. “She is,” the voice said slowly, “a work in progress.”
“I don’t get it,” Sam complained.
“I am not surprised.”
“Look.” Sam threw his hands up. “Would you just come out here? I feel stupid talking to this goddamned tree. If you want me to do something—if you want me to move her, or help her, or save her, then you’re going to have to help me out.”
After a beat of silence, something brown and only barely more than shapeless stepped sideways, away from the shelter of the banyan’s cluttered roots. It limped and shrugged as it walked, huge and hindered by some crippling hurt.
It was bigger than a man an
d rougher around the edges, flaking and shedding its borrowed skin and crunching bones. Sam’s brain fought to describe it and process it.
It’s not a person. It’s not an animal. It’s . . . something else, as if a child were asked to mold an ape out of things it found on the ground.
He tried very hard to muster some rational response to it.
So he fainted.
When he opened his eyes a few seconds later, he was face-to-face with the thing—for it was holding him up to its own eye level.
Strings of ants trooped in a spiral column down its neck, and the chewed-looking pulp of leaves, twigs, and dirt were arranged unartfully to approximate facial features. Gravel cheekbones flaked as the big thing spoke, a hole opening and closing where the mouth ought to be.
“No,” it said. It shook him, and it set him back down.
Sam’s knees buckled and he sat down hard on the sandy dirt.
“No?” he echoed.
“No. Pull yourself together, fool. She hasn’t got much time.”
It swung a small kick at Sam’s leg. Sam didn’t think to dodge, so it clipped him. The creature’s foot crumbled, almost came apart, and then mostly held itself together.
Sam curled into a defensive position and tried to roll away.
“I tried to tell you,” the creature complained. “But you insisted on seeing me, so now you’ve gotten your wish, you wretched little beast. I need your assistance. She needs your assistance. You can lie there and whimper like a dog, or you can behave like a civilized man, for whatever value such a performance might have.”
Sam stopped retreating, but did not uncurl. “What are you?” he asked, the words not nearly so steady as he wanted them to be. He peeked up from over his arm, not even realizing he was roughly imitating the stone girl’s pose.
The creature shrugged. “Get up,” it said. “You have to help me move her. I cannot do it myself, and they’ll destroy her at dusk.”
Sam scrunched his eyes and shook his head. “No, we have until eight.”
“I know what you heard,” it argued. “But I also know what they’re doing. They’re running early, and so must we if we’re to save her.”