Sweat blinded Billy, and he frantically rubbed his eyes to clear them, expecting the strange combatants to come hurtling back. "It's sin, Billy," a quiet voice said from just behind the boy. Startled, Billy looked around. His father, gaunt and sad-eyed, sat there on the clay floor in overalls and a faded workshirt. "Daddy!" Billy said, astounded. "What're you doing here?"
The man shook his head gravely. "This is all sin. Every last bit of it."
"No, it's not! Gram said ..."
John leaned forward, his blue eyes blazing with reflected firelight. "It is rotten, filthy, black evil. That woman is trying to mark your soul, son, so you'll belong to Satan for the rest of your life."
"But she says there are things I have to learn! That I've got a purpose in me, to . . ."
Billy almost reached out for him. His father's eyes were bright and pleading, and he could tell how much his father was hurting for him. Still . . . something wasn't right. He said, "How . . . how did you get here? We came in the car, so . . . how did you get here?"
"I came on the bus as fast as I could, to save you from Satan's pitchfork. And he'll stick you, Billy; oh yes, he'll stick you hard and make you scream if you stay in this dark place. . . ."
"No. You're wrong. Gram said . . ."
"I don't care what she said!" the man told him. "Take my hand."
Billy stared at the fingers. The fingernails were black. "You're not . . . my daddy," he whispered, recoiling in terror. "You're not!"
And suddenly the man's face began to melt like a wax candle, as Billy saw him clearly for what he was. The nose loosened and oozed down on thick strands of flesh; beneath it was a black, hideous snout. A cheek slid down to the point of the chin like a raw egg, then fell away. The lower jaw collapsed, exposing a thin mouth with two curved yellow tusks. One blue eye rolled out of the head like a marble, and underneath it was a small, terrible red orb that might have belonged to a savage boar. As the face crumbled, that red eye was unblinking. "Boy," the thing whispered in a voice like fingernails drawn down a blackboard, "get out of here! Run! Run and hide, you little peckerhead!"
Billy almost lurched to his feet in panic. The awful face—the same face he'd seen on the road—loomed closer, red in the flickering light. It thundered, "RUN!" But as before, Billy was frozen with fear.
The thing paused, and then roared with laughter that hurt Billy's head. The second blue eye rolled out of its face, and the two red orbs glittered. Billy almost leaped up and ran—but then the image of the majestic eagle surfaced in his mind, and he steeled himself. He looked the beast in the face, determined not to show he was afraid. The thing's laughter faded. "All right," it whispered, and seemed to draw away from him. "I have better things to do. Finish this travesty. Learn all you can, and learn it well. But don't turn your back on me, boy." The shape began to melt down into a black, oily puddle on the floor The misshapen mouth said, "I'll be waiting for you," and then the figure was gone. The shimmering puddle caught blue fire, and in an instant it too had vanished.
Something touched his shoulder, and he spun away with a husky groan of fear.
"Lord God, boy," Rebekah said, her eyes narrowed. "What's got into you?" She eased herself down before the fire again, as Ramona added wood and leaves to the embers. "You're shakin' like a cold leaf! We've just been gone for five minutes!" She stared at him for moment, and tensed. "What happened?"
"Nothin'. Nothin' happened. I didn't see a thing!"
Rebekah glanced quickly at her daughter, then back to the boy. "All right," she said. "You can tell me when you like." She helped him to the edge of the fire again, and he stared sightlessly into it as she began to knead his neck and shoulders with her strong brown hands. "Havin' this gift—this talent, I guess you could call it—isn't an easy thing. No kind of real responsibility is ever easy. But sometimes responsibility blocks you off from other people; they can't see into your head, they can't understand your purpose, and they mock you for doin' what you think is right. Some people will be afraid of you, and some may hate you ."
As the old woman spoke, Ramona looked at her son, examined his face in the firelight. She knew he'd be a fine-looking young man, handsome enough to knock the girls for a loop when he went to Fayette County High School; but what would his life be like? Shut off from other people? Feared and hated by the community, as both she and her mother had been? She recalled Sheriff Bromley's words, that things would never be the same for Billy again, and she felt an aching in her heart. He was growing up right now, in front of her eyes, though she knew that in following the Mystery Walk it was essential to keep part of childhood always within you as a shelter from the storm of the world, and also because a child's vision and understanding were most times better than a grown-up's hard, rational view of the world.
". . . but usin' that talent right is harder still," Rebekah was saying. "You've got to think of yourself as a gate, Billy, on the edge between this world and the next. You've got to learn to open yourself up, and let those in need pass through. But you'll have to keep their fear and pain inside yourself, like a sponge soaks up water, so they can pass through with an unburdened soul. That's not an easy thing to do, and I can't help you learn it; that'll come from within you, when the time is right. And doing it once doesn't make the next time any simpler, either, but you'll find you can stand it. The first one is the worst, I guess, 'cause you don't know what to expect."
"Does it hurt?"
"Kind of. Oh, not the same hurt like gettin' a shot at the doctor's office, or scrapin' your knee on a rock, but it hurts in here"—she touched the center of her chest— "and in here"—and then her forehead. "It's a hurt you'll inherit from those you're trying to help. And I won't say you'll be able to help all the time, either; some revenants just won't give up this world, maybe because they're too afraid to go on. If they were mean or crazy in life, they may try to do . . . worse things, like hurtin' people." She felt his shoulders tense under her hands. "Or, more rightly, they scare folks into hurtin' themselves, one way or another."
Billy watched the wet leaves curl, blacken, and burn. He sat still trembling from seeing that awful boar-thing, and now he tried to puzzle out what his grandmother was saying. "I thought when you passed on it was like going to sleep, and if you were good you went to Heaven. Isn't that right?"
"But what if you had to go to sleep, but didn't want to? Wouldn't you toss and turn for a while, your restless self just makin' you miserable? And what if you were doin' something real important, or plannin' big things, or lookin' forward to a fine tomorrow when all the lights went out? Or what if you tried to sleep with an awful pain in you? Then you'd need help, wouldn't you, to rest easy? I'm not saying all revenants cling to this world; most of them find their own way through. In your lifetime you might only be called on to help two or three, but you will be called, and you'll have to do something with it. ..."
"Like what?" He blew sweat off his upper lip; he was still very dizzy, and heard his grandmother's voice as if listening to crosscurrents of echoes from out of a dark, deep cave.
"I put mine into pottery," Rebekah told him. "Your mother put hers into her needlepoint. Your great-grandfather could sing up a storm in a hot tub on a Saturday night. That's up to you to find, when you have so much hurt inside you that you'll have to get rid of it or . . ." Her voice trailed off.