In one corner of the hall stood a knot of women, all of them maybe Stepmama’s age or a bit older. They wore print dresses that came down well below their knees. The women chattered together though not in a prayerful way. More like crows cawing.
In another corner several men in overalls were huddled, talking in hushed tones, their hands making strange signs in the air.
Just then, four men marched in from a door at the back of the sanctuary, carrying wooden boxes they set down on the table in front of the benches. The boxes all had sturdy tops.
There was no one my age at all in the church, though several boys who looked like they were already out of high school stood together in the far back, jawing. And one girl who might have been anywhere from fifteen to twenty, heavily pregnant, was a row behind us, pointedly not looking at any of the boys. Of course in those days, it wasn’t unusual for mountain girls as young as fourteen to get married. My own mama had me when she was barely sixteen and she and Papa had been married for over a year at that point.
Every now and then, the boys looked over at Stepmama, and the tallest, blondest one nodded at her. He was handsome in a heavy-lidded way, his hair combed straight back to show off his broad forehead, which served to emphasize his eyes and those heavy lids. He tried to act as if he didn’t know he was being watched, but of course the satisfied half smile gave him away.
Stepmama nodded back at him with one hand raised, and with the other, she pushed me toward the front of the room.
I could only wonder at this church and these people. However did Stepmama find it in the first place, and what possibly kept her coming back?
It was all terribly strange.
And about to get stranger.
•17•
STEPMAMA REMEMBERS
Now we come to the moment that my plan unfolded. I had waited with the exquisite patience of the serpent. Snow would either accept me and the Craft, accept that I would take seven years from her life in exchange for knowledge, or she would die—but not at my hand. Her father would slip away in sorrow. The land would then become mine by marriage right, with no shares to any other person alive. The dead have no rights in this country.
And with that money, I would find some other young person just on the cusp of adulthood. I was still a young woman myself. There was no rush yet. Master had made many servants of the Craft before me. I would make many in my turn.
And hadn’t I earned my widow’s portion these past few years, stuck out in this forsaken mountain town, tied to a man whose silent fight against my potions has all but maddened me; his daughter’s small, insignificant rebellions only proving an irritation.
The mirror has promised me everything I asked for and more. Or at least it seemed that way: “Wait until the time is right,
You’ll have what’s yours without a fight.”
Days, weeks had gone by. I wondered if I had misread the answer.
But when I found the With Signs church, everything came together. Everything I wanted, I found in this one dismal place: fear and hope, rage and renewal, poison and antidote.
The boy teetering on manhood is my linchpin.
My stepdaughter just entering womanhood brims with magic and years.
I tremble in anticipation. The mirror has made promises. I will work to make them come true.
The serpents are to hand.
The serpents are to hand.
Hush—the charm’s wound up.
•18•
MARK 16 : 16–18
I didn’t know why, but even in that hot room, I was shivering and on the edge of my seat as the preacher and two of the other men motioned everyone to sit. The preacher’s two help-I ers drew up chairs from somewhere and sat on either side of the table where the wooden boxes had been set.
The man on the right had hair the color of a night sky, and the little black hairs on his well-scraped chin had already started coming through again, like a shadow on his otherwise unremarkable face. The man on the left was his exact opposite, one of those white blonds we have throughout the county, his cheeks reddening noticeably in the heat of the room.
Then the preacher came around in front of the table, Bible in hand. He was a thin man with a long face, like a vulture’s, and black, watery eyes. He nodded right and left at the members of his congregation but didn’t say a word. There was something compelling about him, something that his congregation might have called holiness, but what looked to me more like hunger.
The preacher was waiting, I think, till everybody was focused directly on him. Then, without warning, he suddenly turned and pounded his fist on the table, which set up a strange racket from the boxes. I must have been the only one surprised, because no one else jumped at the noise. I gave a little hiccupy shudder that threatened to turn into full-blown shakes.
Stepmama’s hand reached out for mine. Not to comfort, but to silence me.
“Be silent, child,” she hissed, “and be ready to learn.”
I turned to her. “Learn what?”
She smiled and I bent my head under that uncomfortable grimace. Her voice came hissing again toward me. “The Craft,” she said.
“What craft? Knitting? Needlework?” And why, I thought, would I learn it here in this strange church?
She snatched her hand from mine. “Stupid girl. The Craft that shapes the world.”
I couldn’t think what she meant and shook my head.
“It starts here. Open yourself to it.”
I couldn’t speak but shook my head again.
“Stupid. Child.” Then she leaned forward and watched, totally transfixed, as the preacher took a little hop-step toward us holding his Bible in one hand; his face was full of a kind of happiness and yet sad, too.
The preacher stared at the congregation, saying, “There is death in those boxes. But life as well. As it was promised to us. If we believe. If we are strong enough to believe.” He opened the Bible and thrust his finger down at a passage. “Mark chapter 16, verses 16 to 18,” he said.
Mark chapter 16, verses 16 to 18. I sure wished I knew what those verses were about.
A soft rattle of amens sounded all around me. I said amen, too. Just in case.
A woman behind me began crying out, “Lord, God . . .” And then what followed was a long line of nonsense words, or foreign words, sounding like “La-la-lal-bam-balling-ing-star-randle” and so forth. Gibberish. I started to turn around to look at her, but Stepmama grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back.
Another woman, small, wiry, came forward with a tray on which sat three glasses and a pitcher in which a tiny bit of clear liquid sloshed. She put it to the side of the boxes, then nodded at the preacher.
“And death as well as life . . . ” the preacher continued, “in the drink.”
“Strychnine,” whispered Stepmama, leaning forward eagerly.
It wasn’t just plain water in that pitcher. I knew how poisonous strychnine was—Papa used it to get rid of mice where he stored the seeds. I started to stand up, thinking that there was little that was holy in this church, but Stepmama gripped my arm and pulled me down and closer to her.
“Mark chapter 16, verses 16 to 18,” cried a man’s voice somewhere in the room.
The preacher nodded. “Amen, brother.”
The trickle of amens around the room opened up again until it was a flood. This time I wasn’t carried on the wave of emotion but began whispering amen over and over out of fear, until it began to sound just like the other woman’s gibberish.
At that, Stepmama let go of my arm, misreading my response, and I let her think I was under the church’s spell. If that let me get away from With Signs, I’d babble away all night.
The preacher raised his hand to quiet everyone and then, in a small, almost secretive voice, he whispered, “Where there is the Believer, there, too, is the Way.”
This time when he turned to the table, he slapped the Bible down on it, and the strange buzzing noise started again.
There was something
in those boxes, but I didn’t know what.
“Let us sing,” the preacher said. And we began a rousing chorus of “We Shall Not Be Moved,” which drowned out all other sounds.
While we were singing, the two helpers got up, went over to the stove. One came back with a jar of what turned out to be kerosene because when the other stuck a burning brand from the stove into it, flames flared up.
I wondered what the jar was for but didn’t have to wait long for an answer. When they got back to the preacher with the burning jar, he reached out for it and held it under his chin with the flames still flaring up. His lips darkened till it looked as if he’d been eating ashes. The sight made me shudder again, tremors rippling across my shoulders, partly with horror and fear, partly with wonder and awe.
The congregation started out singing again, “Wheel in a Wheel,” and the room almost burst with the song. I found myself singing along. Stepmama didn’t sing, of course, but she nodded in time as if satisfied with me joining in.
The preacher licked his blackened lips and gave the jar back to the dark-haired man. Only then did horror and fear win out, and I felt my stomach turning sour as if I’d eaten something rotten. I wondered if I was going to throw up and fought it down. But a kind of shadow of that sour taste remained in my mouth.
“Stepmama,” I said, turning to her, wanting to ask where the toilet was or if this place only had an outhouse. More than that, I had to get away from the church, where boxes buzzed, people screamed out in gibberish, there was strychnine in a pitcher, and a preacher held burning kerosene under his chin till his lips turned black. I wanted to be back in Cousin Nancy’s church, where Jesus—heart in hand—looked down on me with his comforting gaze.
“Be quiet,” Stepmama snapped, but continued to stare at the preacher, her lips curved up in a semblance of a smile.
I tried to quiet my stomach, my heart, my fear. I was not entirely successful.
The woman behind me started up again, shouting out her nonsense, and then I heard her stand up. When she walked past me to the front, I saw it was the pregnant girl. Her arms were up in the air and she had her head thrown back. All the while she kept on gabbling, “Noo-na-nannno-sing-a-bam-Lord Jesus-mam-a-bobble,” babbling over and over. And then she flung herself down onto the floor onto her side and then her back—it would have been hard to go forward onto her stomach for she was that pregnant. Her legs and arms began to flail about. But she never missed a beat.
At last her gabbling sank to a murmur. The two helpers on either side of the preacher came over to get her up, propping her into a sitting position till her voice trailed off in silence. Then they eased her onto her feet and steered her back to her seat while all around the amens came fast and furious, though this time I resisted joining them.
I couldn’t understand why Stepmama had brought me to this place and just as I was about to say something to her, the preacher started speaking again. His voice was at first like a dry rustle but it soon gained in power and intensity. I turned back, drawn in by his words.
“I’ve seen the spirit of the Lord,” he whispered. And then, louder, “Spirit. Of. The. Lord.” He rocked back and forth on the last four words.
“Amen!” called out the pregnant woman.
“It follows me like a cloud overhead,” said the preacher. “But not a thundercloud, oh no. This cloud is long and blue and electric. The color of God’s true love for us.”
“Let it shine, brother,” someone called out, and the congregation answered with the hymn “This Little Light of Mine,” which I know and so I sang along for a while, just to calm myself more than anything else. But soon half the congregation was up and dancing in front of the table, arms in the air swaying, including the pregnant girl.
I thought about getting up and dancing my way around the room, then making a break for the door. But it was dark, there was a long road home, and Stepmama was sure to catch up with me. Her punishment would be . . . Well, I couldn’t guess what it would be. But something awful, I was sure.
Just then, the pregnant girl started to flail about again and sink to her knees, but this time someone caught her, a man—maybe her husband—who held her in his arms and they swayed together until the hymn was done and he walked her carefully back to her seat and the dancing was over and so was my chance to get away.
The whole thing seemed like playacting somehow. We’d done plays in school, but none as strange as this, and I was having trouble getting my mind around it. I couldn’t laugh though it had some funny moments, because underneath there was a deep strangeness that was truly scary.
As it turned out, the strangeness still had a ways to go, for when everyone who’d been dancing sat down again, the preacher walked back to the table and moved one of the wooden boxes forward.
“The devil comes in the night,” he declared, now in full throat. No more whispers. “The devil riiiiiiides the south wind.” He strung out the word ride until it was like he was singing it. “The hot wind. The wind from Hell.”
“It’s been blowing, brother!” shouted the blond-haired helper.
“And we know . . .” said the preacher, stepping forward and then back, rocking as he spoke, “we KNOW what that means.”
“Tell us, oh, tell us!” someone from the back cried out.
Stepmama moved a bit, shifting her weight forward, leaning toward the preacher again, her mouth unaccountably open as if to receive some kind of communion.
“Who’s ready to go?” the preacher continued. “Who’s ready to do what the apostle tells us to do? Shall we? Shall we alllllll do it? Shall we take up our deaths? Show the Lord we’re not afraid because we live forever in His holy name? Shall we . . . ?” He stepped forward till he was standing over Stepmama and me, sweating now as he had not been sweating when the fire had been held beneath his chin. I saw a drop roll down his forehead and slide down his cheek, resting on the point of his long chin. I was hypnotized by that drop. I couldn’t stop staring at it.
Then Stepmama slipped a white handkerchief out of her pocketbook and handed it up to the preacher, who took it without a word, wiped his face, then handed it back to her and she spread the handkerchief on her lap. Neither one of them looked directly at the other the entire time, and it felt like a long-practiced move.
Turning back to the table, the preacher put his hand atop one of the boxes. The strange rustling sound commenced again. “If we belieeeeeve in the Lord, if we follow his wishes, we will not be taken this night,” he said. “Not you, brothers. Not you, sisters. Not any of us. Because we believe.”
Stepmama sat back on the bench, as if satisfied. She crossed her right ankle over her left, her hands down by her sides. The white handkerchief, damp with the preacher’s sweat, was still spread out across her lap.
“Do it, brother,” a man called out. “Do it now, Brother. We’re with you. Let the Lord see how much you believe.”
The pregnant girl started babbling again.
The preacher took the top off the box and pulled out something long and thick and dark. And when it started to twine itself round and about his hand, I realized it was a rattlesnake. The preacher moved toward the congregation again with his now-familiar rocking step. “And these signs,” he said, “shall follow them that believe.”
He turned to the left. “In my name they shall cast out devils. Yes, they shall!” He turned to the right. “They shall speak with new tongues. Yes, they shall!” He stood dead center and held the snake above his head with one hand. “They shall take up serpents. And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. That’s in Mark, verses 16 to 18.”
With his free hand he gestured toward the pitcher and the glasses, which up till that moment I’d forgotten all about. After that he began inching closer and closer to the front benches, the snake now cradled in his arms.
Where we sat.
Stepmama and me.
Caressing the snake’s spade-like head, the preacher suddenly leaned over and kissed the top of it.
The snake paid him no attention but looked straight at me, its smile startlingly familiar. It took me a moment before I realized it was exactly Stepmama’s smile.
Then the rattler opened its mouth. That mouth was dark, cavernous, the teeth shiny. Its forked tongue flicked out. At me.
That was when I felt myself slipping sidewise into the darkness, down and down and down right onto Stepmama’s lap, with the left side of my head on the damp white handkerchief.
I don’t recall being carried to the car or anything about the drive home. I don’t remember getting sick. When we arrived back in Addison, Stepmama left me there in the car, its windows all opened wide, to wake up on my own, my dress spoiled and smelling of vomit.
It was early Monday morning when I woke at last, the sun not yet over Elk Mountain, so the sky had that pearly look. My mouth felt full of cotton. My stomach ached. I was shaking with the cold. And the smell in the car was unbelievable.
I gathered myself together slowly, managed to get out of the car, and hobbled to the house on wobbly legs. At least Stepmama had left the front door unlocked. For such small favors I had to be grateful.
As I walked into the house, my left hand on the wall to keep from falling, I remembered some of what had happened at the church as if it was a series of small black-and-white photographs: the handsome blond boy looking at me, the preacher speaking about Mark 16 to 18, the pregnant girl reciting gibberish, the wild singing and clapping that had set up echoes in my heart, the burning kerosene in the jar turning the preacher’s lips black, the poison in the pitcher. I could scarcely make sense of it. Images tumbled about in my head like water over stones.
Water over stones.
Papa used to say water had to travel over twenty-one stones to be pure. I shook my head. I didn’t believe there was anything pure going on in that church last night, and I trembled with the memories.
But once I’d washed my face, brushed my teeth, changed out of my stinking clothes, and fallen into bed, it was the snake I dreamed about.