“They weren't interested in redemption,” I answered her evenly. “And they didn't want salvation.”
“And you do?”
I didn't answer.
“You won't achieve salvation with a gun in your hand,” she persisted.
I leaned forward. “Amy,” I said softly, “I've thought about these things. I've considered them. I thought I could walk away, but I can't. People have to be protected from the urges of violent men. I can do that. Sometimes I'm too late to protect them, but maybe I can help to achieve some measure of justice for them.”
“Is that why you're here, Charlie?”
A noise came from behind me and Doug, Amy's husband, came into the room. I wondered for a moment how long he had been there. He held a large bottle of water in his hand. Some of it had dripped from his chin and soaked the front of his clean white shirt. He was a tall man with pale skin and hair that was almost entirely white. His eyes were remarkably green. When I stood to greet him, he held my shoulder for a time and perused me in much the same way that his wife had examined me earlier. Then he took a seat beside Amy and they both waited in silence for me to answer Amy's question.
“In a sense,” I said at last. “I'm investigating the death of a woman. Her name was Grace Peltier. Once, a long time ago, she was a friend of mine.”
I took a breath and looked out once again at the sunlight. In this place whose only purpose was to try to make the lives of those who passed its way a little better, the deaths of Grace and her father and the figure of a child out of time, his wound hidden behind cheap black tape, seemed somehow distant. It was as if this little community was invulnerable to the encroachments of violent men and the consequences of acts committed long ago and far away. But the apparent simplicity of the life here, and the clarity of the aims it espoused, masked a strength and a profound depth of knowledge. That was why I was here; it was, in its way, almost the antithesis of the group I was hunting.
“This investigation has brought me into contact with the Fellowship, and with a man who appears to be acting on its behalf. He calls himself Mr. Pudd.”
They didn't respond for a time. Doug looked to the ground and moved his right foot back and forth over the boards. Amy turned away from me and stared out over the trees, as if the answers I sought might somehow be found deep in their reaches. Then, at last, they exchanged a look, and Amy spoke.
“We know about them,” she said softly, as I knew she would. “You make interesting enemies, Charlie.”
She sipped her tea before continuing. “There are two Fellowships. There is the one that appears in the public form of Carter Paragon, the one that sells prayer pamphlets for ten dollars and promises to cure the ailments of those who touch their television screens. That Fellowship is mendacious and shallow and preys on the gullible. It's no different from any of a hundred other similar movements; no better than them, but certainly no worse.
“The second Fellowship is something entirely different. It is a force, an entity, not an organization. It supports vicious men. It funds killers and fanatics. It is powered by rage and hate and fear. Its targets are anything and everything that is not of, or like, itself. Some are obvious: gays, Jews, blacks, Catholics, those who assist in the provision of abortion or family planning services, those who would encourage peaceful coexistence between people of different races and different creeds. But in reality, it hates humanity. It hates the flawed nature of men, and is blind to the divine that exists in even the most humble among us.”
Beside her, her husband nodded in agreement. “It moves against anything that it perceives to be a threat to itself or its mission. It starts with polite advances, then progresses to intimidation, property damage, physical injury, and then, if it deems such action necessary, murder.”
Around us, the air seemed to change, for a wind had blown up from across the lake. It brought with it the scent of still water and decay.
“Who's behind it?” I asked.
Doug shrugged, but it was Amy who answered. “We don't know. We know what you know; its public face is Carter Paragon. Its private face remains hidden. It is not a large organization. It is said that the best conspiracy is a conspiracy of one; the fewer who know about something, the better. Our understanding is that there are no more than a handful of people involved.”
“Policemen?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps. Yes, almost certainly one or two policemen. It sometimes uses them to cover its tracks, or to stay in touch with any legal moves against it. But its primary instrument is a man, a thin man with red hair and a fondness for predation. Sometimes he has a woman with him, a mute.”
“That's him,” I said. “That's Pudd.”
For the first time since we had begun to talk of the Fellowship, Amy reached out to her husband. Her hand found his and gripped it tightly, as if even the mention of Pudd's name might invoke his presence and force them to face him together.
“He goes by different names,” she continued, after a pause. “I've heard him referred to as Ed Monker, as Walter Zaren, as Eric Dumah. I think he was Ted Bune once, and Alex Tchort for a time. I'm sure there were others.”
“You seem to know a lot about him.”
“We're religious, but we're not naive. These are dangerous people. It pays to know about them. Do those names mean anything to you at all?”
“I don't think so.”
“Do you know anything about demonology?”
“Sorry, I canceled my subscription to Amateur Demonologist. It was scaring the mailman.”
Doug permitted himself the ghost of a smile. “Tchort is the Russian Satan, also known as the Black God,” he said. “Bune is a three-headed demon who moves bodies from one grave to another. Dumah is the angel of the silence of death, and Zaren is the demon of the sixth hour, the avenging genius. Monker is the name he uses most frequently. It seems to have a particular resonance for him.”
“And Monker is a demon as well?”
“A very particular demon, one of a pair. Monker and Nakir are Islamic demons.”
A picture flashed in my mind: Pudd's fingers gentling brushing the mute's cheek and softly whispering.
My Nakir.
“He called the woman his Nakir,” I told them.
“Monker and Nakir examine and judge the dead, then assign them to heaven or hell. Your Mr. Pudd, or whatever you wish to call him, seems to find the demonic associations funny. It's a joke.”
“It seems like kind of specialized humor,” I said. “I can't see him making it onto Letterman.”
“The name Pudd has a particular meaning for him as well,” said Doug. “We found it on an arachnology web site. Elias Pudd was a pioneer in the field of American arachnology, a follower of Emerton and McCook. He published his most famous work, A Natural History of the Arachnid, in 1933. His speciality was recluses.”
“Spiders.” I shook my head. “They say people start to look like their pets, in time.”
“Or they pick the pet they most resemble,” answered Doug.
“You've seen him, then.”
He nodded. “He came out here once, he and the woman. They parked over by the chicken coops and waited for us to come out. As soon as we did, Pudd threw a sack from the car, then backed up and drove away. We never saw them again.”
“Do I want to know what was in the sack?”
Amy answered. “Rabbits.” She was looking at the floor so I couldn't see the expression on her face.
“Yours?”
“We used to keep them in a hutch out by the coops. One morning we came out and they were just gone. There was no blood, no fur, nothing to suggest that they'd been taken by a predator. Then, two days later, Pudd came and dumped the sack. When we opened it, it was filled with the remains of the rabbits. Something had bitten them. They were covered in gray brown lesions, and the flesh had begun to rot. We took one to the local vet, and he told us they were recluse bites. That's how we discovered the significance of the name Pudd for him.