“He was warning us to stay out of his business. We had been making inquiries about the Fellowship. We stopped after the visit.”
She raised her face and there was no indication of how she felt, apart from a slight tension around her mouth.
“Is there anything more that you can tell me?”
“Rumors, that's all,” said Doug, raising the water bottle to his lips.
“Rumors about a book?”
The bottle paused before it reached his mouth, and Amy's grip tightened on his hand.
“They're recording names, aren't they?” I continued. “Is that what Pudd is-some kind of infernal recording angel, writing down the names of the damned in a big black book?”
They didn't reply, and the silence was suddenly broken by the sound of the men filing into the house for their midmorning break. Doug and Amy both stood, then Doug shook my hand once again and left to make arrangements for the meal. Amy guided me away from the dining room and walked me to my car.
“As Doug said, the book is just a rumor,” she told me, “and the truth about the Fellowship still remains largely hidden. Nobody has yet managed to link its public face with its other activities.”
Amy took a deep breath, steeling herself for what she had to say next.
“There is something else I should tell you,” she began. “You're not the first to have come here asking about the Fellowship. Some years ago, another man came, from New York. We didn't know as much about the Fellowship then, and we told him less than we knew, but it still provoked the warning. He moved on, and we never heard of him again… until two years ago.”
The world around me faded into shadow, and the sun disappeared. When I looked up, I saw black shapes in the sky, descending in spirals, the beating of their wings filling the morning air and blocking out the light. Amy's hand reached out to take mine but all of my attention was focused on the sky, where the dark angels now hovered. Then one of them drew closer and his features, which had previously only been a chiaroscuro of light and shade, grew clear.
And I knew his face.
“It was him,” whispered Amy, and the dark angel smiled at me from above, his teeth filed to points, his huge wings feathered with night; a killer of men, women, and children now transformed by his passage into the next world.
“It was the Traveling Man.”
I sat on the hood of my car until the sickness had passed. I recalled a conversation in New Orleans some months after Susan and Jennifer had died, a voice telling me of its belief that somehow, the worst killers could find one another and sometimes connect, that they were sensitized to the presence of their own kind.
He would have found them. His nature, and his background in law enforcement, would have ensured it. If he came hunting for the Fellowship, then he would have tracked them down.
And he would have let them live, because they were his own kind. I remembered again his obscure biblical references, his interest in the Apocrypha, his belief that he was some kind of fallen angel sent to judge humanity, all of whom he found wanting.
Yes, he had found them, and they had helped to fan his own flame into being.
Amy reached out and took both of my hands in her own.
“It was seven or eight years ago,” she said. “It didn't seem important, until now.”
I nodded.
“You're going to continue looking for these people?”
“I have to, especially now.”
“Can I say something to you, something you may not want to hear?”
Her face was grave. I nodded.
“In all that you have done, in all that you have told me, it seems that you have been intent on helping the dead as much as the living. But our first duty is to the living, Charlie, to ourselves and those around us. The dead don't need your help.”
I paused before replying. “I'm not sure I believe that, Amy.”
For the first time, I saw doubt appear in her face. “You can't live in both worlds,” she said, and her voice was hesitant. “You must choose. Do you still feel the deaths of Susan and Jennifer pulling you back?”
“Sometimes, but not just them.”
She saw something in my face, or caught something in my tone, and for a brief moment, she was in me, seeing what I saw, hearing what I heard, feeling what I felt. I closed my eyes and felt shapes move around me, voices whispering in my ears, small hands clutching at mine.
We've all been waiting for you.
A small boy with an exit wound for an eye; a woman in a summer dress that shimmered in the darkness; figures that hovered at the periphery of my vision-all of them, each and every one, told me that it wasn't true, that somebody had to act for those who could no longer act for themselves, that some measure of justice had to be achieved for the lost and the fallen. For an instant, as she held my hands, Amy Greaves had some inkling of this, some fleeting perception of what waited in the depths of the honeycomb world.
“Oh my God,” she said.
And then her hands released mine and I heard her move away and disappear into the house. When I opened my eyes I was alone in the summer sunshine, the smell of rotting pine carrying to me on the wind. Through the trees a blue jay flew, heading north.
And I followed.
THE SEARCH FOR SANCTUARY
Extract from the postgraduate thesis of Grace Peltier…
Letter from Elizabeth Jessop to her sister, Lena Myers, dated December 11, 1963 (used by kind permission of the estate of Lena Myers)
Dearest Lena,
This has been the worst week I can ever recall. The truth about Lyall and me is out and now we are both being shunned. The Preacher has not been seen for two days. He is asking the Lord to guide him in his judgment upon us.
It was the boy that found us, the Preacher's son. I think he had been watching us for a long time. We were in the woods together, Lyall and I, and I saw Leonard in the bushes. I think I screamed when I saw him but when we went to find him he was already gone.
The Preacher was waiting for us at supper. We were refused food and told to go back to our houses while the others ate. When Frank returned that night he beat me and left me to sleep on the floor. Now Lyall and me are kept apart. The girl Muriel watches over him, while Leonard is like my shadow. Yesterday he threw a stone at me and drew blood from my head. He told me that was how the Bible said whores should be punished and that his father would deal with me the same way. The Cornishes saw what he did and Ethan Cornish struck him before he could throw a second stone. The boy pulled a knife on Ethan and cut his arm. The families have all argued for forgiveness for the sake of the community, but Lyall's wife will not look at me and one of his children spat on me when I passed her.
Last night there were voices raised in the Preacher's house. The families were putting their case to the Preacher but he was unmoved. There is bitterness among us now-at me and Lyall, but more at the Preacher and his ways. He has been asked to account for the money he holds in trust for us, but he has refused. I fear that Lyall and me will be forced from the community or that the Preacher will make us all leave and start again in another place. I have asked the Lord to forgive us our trespass against him and have prayed for help but part of me would not be sorry to leave if Lyall was beside me. But I cannot abandon my children and I feel sadness and shame for what I have done to Frank.