The name of the girl in the barbed-wire anklet was Ellen Braisted. She came from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, and Chandler's first wonder was what she was doing nearly three thousand miles from home. Nobody liked to travel much these days. One place was as bad as another, except that in the place where you were known you could perhaps count on friends and as a stranger you were probably fair game anywhere else. Of course, there was one likely reason for travel.
Chandler's own reason.
She didn't like to talk about it, that was clear, but that was the reason. She had been possessed. When the teenager trapped her car the day before she had been the tool of another's will. She had had a dozen submachine guns in the trunk and she had meant to deliver them to a party of hunters in a valley just south of McGuire's Mountain.
Chandler said, with some effort, "I must have been"
"Ellen, I must have been," she corrected.
"Ellen, I must have been possessed too, just now. When I grabbed the gun."
"Of course. First time?"
He shook his head. For some reason the brand on his forehead began to throb.
"Well, then you know. Look out here, now." They were at the great pier windows that looked out over the valley. Down below was the river, an arc of the railroad tracks, the wooded mountainside he had scaled.
"Over there. Chandler." She was pointing to the railroad bridge.
Wispy gray smoke drifted off southward toward the stream. The freight train Chandler had ridden on had been stopped, all that time, in the middle of the bridge. The explosion that blew out their windows had occurred when another train plowed into it, evidently at high speed. It seemed that one of the trains had carried some sort of chemicals. The bridge was a twisted mess. "A diversion, Chandler," said Ellen Braisted. "They wanted us looking that way. Then they attacked from up the mountain."
"Who?"
Ellen looked surprised. "The men that crashed the trains ... if they are men. The ones who possessed me and you and the hunters. They don't like these Orphalese, I think. Maybe they're a little afraid of them. I think the Orphalese have a pretty good idea of how to fight them."
Chandler felt a sudden flash of sensation along his nerves. For a moment he thought he had been possessed again, and then he knew it for what it was. It was hope.
"Ellen, I never thought of fighting them. I thought that was given up two years ago."
"So maybe you agree with me? Maybe you think it's worth while sticking with the Orphalese?"
Chandler allowed himself the contemplation of what hope meant. To find someone in this world who had a plan. Whatever the plan was. Even if it was a bad plan. He didn't think specifically of himself, or the brand on his forehead or the memory of the body of his wife. What he thought of was the prospect of thwarting not even defeating, merely hampering or annoying was enough! the imps, the "flame creatures," the pythons, devils, incubi or demons who had destroyed a world he had thought very fair.
"If they'll have me," he said, "I'll stick with them, all right. Where do I go to join?"
It was not hard to join at all.
Meg chattily informed him that he was already practically a member. "Chandler, we got to watch everybody strange, you know. See why, don't you? Might have a flame spirit in 'em, no fault of theirs, but look how they could mess us up. But now we know you don't, so what do you mean, how do we know? Cause you did have one when you busted loose in there."
"I don't get it," said Chandler, lost. "You're saying that you know I don't have a, uh, flame spirit now because I did have one then?"
"Chandler, you'll catch on," said Meggie kindly, suppressing a smile. "Can't have two at a time, you see? So if you're the fella you are now, and the same fella you were before, you got to be honest-in-the-flesh yourself."
Chandler nodded thoughtfully. "Anyway, Chandler," the girl added, "we're going to take time off to eat now. You just make yourself at home. Soon's we start the synod up again we'll see 'bout letting you in."
Ellen Braisted asked, "Can I help with the food?" Meggie looked at her patiently and she corrected herself: "Meggie, can I help with the food?"
"Not this time, Ellen. Just stay out of the way a little."
Ellen took Chandler's arm and led him to a sunporch.
All over the house the Orphalese were putting themselves back together again after the fight.
They didn't seem terribly upset, neither by their wounds nor their losses. They had. Chandler thought, a collective identity. The survival of the community was more important than any incidental damage to its members.
After three years of increasing alienation from a life he could not understand or accept, Chandler found that trait admirable. He liked their style ...
"Sorry about your hand," said Ellen Braisted.
He had not realized that he was rubbing it. "Oh, that's all right. I understand why you had to do it."
"Come over here." She opened a chest of first-aid supplies and took out cotton gauze. "Let me put this on it. You don't want it to stop hurting, that's the whole idea.
But you don't want it getting infected. What's that business on your head?"
He touched the scar with his free hand. He had almost forgotten it.
He found it easy to tell her about it. When he was through she patted his arm. "Tough world. You say you were married?"
"Yes." He told her about Margot. And about Margot's death. She nodded, her face drawn.
"I was married too. Chandler," she said after a moment. "Lost my husband two years ago."
"Murdered?"
"Well," she said thoughtfully, "depends on what you mean by that. It was his own hand that did it. Got up one morning, went into the kitchen, came back looking like I don't know -- his own evil nature. You know those cartoons? The Good You in white, the Bad You in black, whispering suggestions into your ear? He looked the Bad Him. And he cut his throat with a breadknife."
"Oh, God!" The words were jerked out of him. "Did he, didn't he say anything?"
"Yes, Chandler, he did. But I don't want to tell you what, because it was dirty and awful."
There was a smell of coffee percolating from inside the house, and sounds of dishes and silverware. "Let's sit down over here," said Chandler, pointing to a chained swing that looked out over the darkening valley. "I guess your husband was possessed. Or as they say here, he had a flame spirit"
"Ellen."
"Ellen, I mean," he corrected.
"Chandler," she said thoughtfully, "well, I don't quite go along with them on that. I've had quite a lot of experience with them, ever since my husband, ever since two years ago. They used me."
"For what?" Chandler demanded, startled. The concept of being used by the things was new, and peculiarly frightening. It was bad enough to view them as strange diabolic elements out of a hostile universe; to give them purpose was terrifying.
"You name it, Chandler," said the girl. "I did it. I've been practically all over the world in two years, because they used me for a messenger and other things. They used me for all sorts of things, Chandler," she said very temperately, "and some of them I don't intend to discuss."
"Of course."
"Of course." Then she brightened. "But it wasn't all bad. You wouldn't believe some of the things. I flew a jet airplane to Lisbon once, Chandler! Would you believe it? And as a matter of fact, I don't even know how to drive a car very well. When I'm myself, I mean. I've been in Russia and England. I think I was in Africa once, although nobody ever mentioned the name and I wasn't sure. Just now, I came up from San Diego driving a great big truck, and Well, it's been interesting. But I don't agree with the 'flame spirit' idea. They aren't ghosts or witches. They aren't creatures from outer space. Anyway, one of them is a man named Brad Fenell."
Chandler's heels dropped to the floor. The swing stopped with a clatter of its chains.