“There’s nothing out there, Nate. You’re imagining things.”
His father wouldn’t look at him. Nate’s disbelief shaded into dread as a sinister realization began to dawn on him.
Either his father couldn’t actually see what Nate was seeing—some protective part of his brain had switched on, erasing the four gruesome children from his sight…
Or else—and this possibility was unspeakably worse—they were seeing the exact same thing, only his father was either too terrified or too cowardly to acknowledge it.
“Oh, Dad. Dad, please—”
“There’s nothing out there,” his father said robotically. “Not a thing.”
A profound desolation settled over Nate. He felt alone in a way he had never thought possible. He might as well be at the farthest reaches of the universe, at the point where all light died.
“Go back to bed, Nate. You’re being silly.”
His father turned—Nate got the sense of his dad’s body as a tightly coiled spring on the verge of snapping. He ruffled Nate’s hair. His fingers were hard and his nails too long; it was like being raked with sharp twigs. He lay down on his bed, his back to Nate.
Nate’s gaze fled to the window. Eli and the others had vanished. But he could see something in that rip of darkness. Just an outline.
A figure. Far too tall to be human. Long-legged and long-armed, with a giant cask belly. It capered and jigged with evident merriment. Smaller shapes, children-sized ones, danced around it. The discordant melody of the flute cut through the night.
The shape retreated. The smaller shapes followed it into the wooded dark.
31
AMOS FLESHER AWOKE to the sounds of his empire crumbling.
He was unceremoniously hauled out of a contented sleep—a dream where the world was covered with living black oil and he had the only rowboat. The Voice bubbled up from the oil, whispering and hissing…
Next: hysterical shouts. Names hollered over and over.
“Elsa! Elsa!”
“Billy! Elton!”
“Oh God! Oh God, it’s happened again!”
“ELLLLLLSAAAAAA!”
Next: rapping on his door.
“Reverend!”
He opened the door only to be confronted with the agonized faces of several worshippers. Maude and Terry Redhill, the Rasmussens, a few more.
“She’s gone!” Anna Rasmussen screamed. “Our baby girl!”
Worshippers were streaming into the square by then, their faces bloated with sleep. The Reverend’s mind whirled as he processed the situation, calculating the new configuration of things and finding his own angle within it.
“Calm down,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”
“She’s gone!” Anna Rasmussen screamed, harpyishly. “Our daughter! Her bed was empty this morning!”
“And Billy and Elton’s, too,” said Terry Redhill.
Amos’s mind clicked and ratcheted. “You’re telling me—”
“Reverend! They’re gone!” Maude Redhill spat. “They’ve been taken just like Eli Rathbone got took!”
Everyone watched the Reverend. Amos was struck by how sick they all looked: their bodies withered, their postures sunken. Their weakness made him ill. His gaze twigged on Reggie Longpre and his son. There was something in their faces he couldn’t intuit and didn’t entirely care for.
“Have the grounds been searched?” he said. “Every nook, every cranny?”
Nobody spoke. The Reverend sensed their collective uncertainty and needled through that gap.
“Search the compound!” he said. “Everyone, now! They could be hiding somewhere. A game to them.”
“It’s not a game!” shouted Anna. “They’re gone! Taken into the woods! Gone just like Eli and Eli’s parents!”
“We don’t know that, Sister Rasmussen. I understand that you’re—”
“We should have left—all of us! As soon as Eli went missing and then came back… came back…”
His worshippers’ faces reflected a vaporous panic—now laced with a hint of resentment directed toward Amos himself. He must step nimbly here.
“Search the grounds,” he said emphatically. “I must confer with the Lord our God, seeking His guidance.”
The worshippers reluctantly dispersed. Anna Rasmussen glanced over her shoulder at him—a poisonous, hateful glare. Amos pictured his hands closing around her throat and tightening until her eyes filled with blood…
“Cyril’s gone, too.”
Amos turned to find Virgil Swicker standing beside him.
“What?”
“Cy.” Virgil looked spooked. “Can’t find him anywhere.”
The Reverend’s mouth filled with bitter saliva. He could barely contain the nervous energy building inside of him; he wanted to scream to let it free.
“If he’s not there, then who is watching the boy?”
Off Virgil’s stunned silence, Amos started across the square at a fast clip. He had to restrain himself from breaking into a run. Virgil tagged along on his heels. He reached the bunkhouse where Eli Rathbone was being held. Cyril’s chair was empty. Amos took a deep breath and unfastened the padlock.
The bunkhouse was empty. Only the fetid stink of the boy’s now absent body remained. Amos closed and locked the door again.
“You keep your mouth shut,” he said to Virgil, who nodded in docile assent.
Amos needed a plan. Quickly. He sized up his options.
One, they could abandon Little Heaven. But if the children really were missing, nobody would agree to that with the little bastards still lost in the woods…
Two, they could accuse someone of taking all four children. A scapegoat, or scapegoats. By Amos’s count, there were two possibilities. He cocked his head, as if to catch the strident bleating of the goats best suited to his purposes—those whose necks could be most easily slit.
“Go to the outsiders’ quarters,” he said. “Do not let them leave.”
A FRANTIC SEARCH ENSUED. The compound was scoured. The children were not found. By the time the worshippers returned to the square, Amos was ready.
“I held palaver with the Lord,” he said. “And I heard His Voice, clear and unfiltered.”
The faces of the worshippers changed: they went from fearful, perhaps even slightly mistrustful, to enrapt—even that bitch Anna Rasmussen, with her hopeful red-rimmed eyes. They wanted answers. Which was all people like them ever wanted. Any answer at all, so they didn’t have to think on their own.
“The evil comes from outside,” he said. “From those not pure of heart or spirit. We opened our door to them, as good and God-fearing folk must, and they have repaid our kindness with malice of the deepest and most hateful nature.”
He pointed at the bunkhouse shared by the English faggot and the burn-faced woman.
“Them. They are the evil that has come as a plague upon us.”
This was the smart bet, and the shrewdest move Amos could make under the circumstances. His flock was already suspicious of the outsiders—Cyril and Virgil had overheard their whispers, and filtered them back to him. It would be an easy pill to swallow; they wanted to swallow it. He watched their faces. Sweat trickled down his neck and soaked his collar. He had worked hard, so hard, for years to put these people under his yoke. They trusted him… or they had until just lately.
One by one their faces began to reflect this. They began to believe. Yes. Of course. The evil lurked, as it always did, in the hearts of men. And the four outsiders had come from far away, bringing a terrible curse with them. They were the devil’s Trojan horse. Little Heaven had accepted and sheltered them, only to be poisoned by them. The Reverend’s people needed a target to channel their rage and fear into. All Amos had to do was provide one.