Chương 29: Chapter 28 - Old Religion

I left Ernst still lecturing Not-John about the history of Louisiana and got directions to the only bookstore in Fort Rive. After buying the highest quality journal they had, I went over to the library. When I left there, five hours later, the first three pages of the journal were crammed, front and back, with notes about the Chitimacha. They weren't dead. I felt grimly pleased about that.

Not only were they still alive, they were the only tribe in Louisiana who still owned and lived on a portion of their original homeland. Their endangered language had been rescued through the work of the last two fluent native speakers and a group of dedicated scholars, and they were teaching it in their tribal schools. My heart flew as I read the story. Humans could be so horrible. And humans could be so beautiful.

Ernst had left out a lot of details regarding their history, but everything I found while lost in my rabbit-hole of research confirmed what he'd said about them being the oldest tribe in the area. The Sovereign Nation of the Chitimacha had even created a website! I read about how a deity had taught them to weave their world-famous baskets from river cane, and how they were still being woven the same way.

Their section on legends had several stories, including one about how a god had taught them to make their dugout canoes using mud, fire, and clam shells, and I glanced over their recipes while trying not to drool. Unfortunately, there was no convenient link taking me to the page where they described, in detail, what kind of magic devices their ancient magicians could make.

"Holes like a hooker's fishnet stockings," I muttered to myself. I was taking a shortcut through an unfamiliar area of town to get back to the grocery store. Jay finished her shift at seven, and she'd said that she could help me take some groceries back to the motel. I would arrive long before I was due, but I could stop and grab a coffee somewhere— I glanced up at the sky. The sun was already tucking itself behind the colossal trees that were taking over the town. It was getting late.

Caffeine probably wouldn't be a good idea, but I could grab a cocoa somewhere. Or a decaf coffee, if I was desperate. I was still lost in my thoughts about the Chitimacha, the lopsided web of history, and why on earth anyone would invent decaffeinated coffee, when the small houses that I'd been walking through tapered off. Part of my brain noticed the change and drew my attention to the fact that I seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. I stopped to look around.

The houses were gone, but I hadn't left town by some unfamiliar path. That was a relief. I didn't want to have to tell Conrad and Kappa that I was late because I'd wandered off in a distracted daze. The teasing would've been unbearable. The reason the houses were gone was because I'd wandered into a graveyard. The overgrown grass around me was empty, but only a yard off was the first of many raised oblong stone monuments. They were lying, tilted, like a thousand ruined altars.

Some were only a foot tall, others were four feet high. The omnipresent water that seemed to shape everything in the state had left its mark on every stone. Red and dark brown streaks crept up from the ground. Splotches of green showed where some microscopic life—mold, moss, or algae, I couldn't say—was claiming its inevitable victory over death. Time was winning too. It had crumbled the edges of the graves and worn away the names and dates until only hints of the inscriptions remained.

Behind the field, at the top of a shallow hill, a church stood watch over them. It was similarly stained, and the edges of the stones that made up its walls were worn, but its four steeples stretched into the evening sky. As my eyes followed the line of the towers, trying to take in the unexpected height, I noticed that someone was crouched near the graves closest to the church. It was Daniel Vance. He blended in with the rest of the churchyard so well that I might have missed him if it wasn't for The Hair.

It was the only white in the area that wasn't stained with other colors. I smiled and picked up my pace. He was kneeling beside a grave, using a set of trimming shears to cut back the sprawling grass. When I was only two feet away, I said, "It's the grave man tending the graves." I would've bet good money that he hadn't heard me coming, but he didn't jump when I spoke. Maybe he'd smelled me like Conrad could. Or maybe his hair could sense vibrations in the air, like whiskers.

"Someone has to do it," he said.

"This land doesn't care about our fancy burials. We'd be hip deep in skeletons if we didn't weigh them down with stones. Even then…" He paused to dig out the roots of a weed.

"Every flood season I have to come out here to try to re-level the graves and make sure the bones have stayed where they're supposed to."

"You've been at this all day, haven't you?"

"I was out here with the sunrise. I'll be going home in an hour or so." That was why the lurkers hadn't been able to find him.

"Can I ask you something?" I said. He didn't bother looking up.

"I suspect you can. I suspect you will." Conrad had insisted that I take his phone with me. I pulled it out, opened up the photos, and turned the phone toward Vance, revealing the photo of the sketch that I'd sent to Iset.

"Have you ever seen an object like this?" I asked. Vance stopped what he was doing, took the phone, and pulled it closer. I watched him as he inspected my sketch of the lamp. The wrinkles of his worn face deepened when he squinted. His salt-and-pepper eyebrows, with some hairs so long they really did look like whiskers, pulled together.

"No." He handed the phone back to me. I should've felt disappointed, but I didn't. My chest opened like a cage with its doors flung wide, and part of my soul left my body so it could stretch its chest to better belt out hallelujah! If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. He hadn't lied to me. He wasn't hiding anything. There was nothing in his face except simple honesty.

"You might be my favorite person in the whole world right now, Daniel Vance." When he glanced up, he caught me grinning at him, probably with love-light shining out of my eyes. He grunted and looked back down at his work.

"You're too young for me." I laughed.

"Are you sure? I like a man who can cook a good gumbo."

"I'm sure, you loony." He finished trimming the edging and stood up, using the grave beside him to help him to his feet. He nodded to the phone still in my hand.

"Is that what the lurkers are searching for?"

"Yes," I said.

"I'll keep an eye out for it."

"Thank you." Vance stooped long enough to pick up the worn canvas tote that had been beside him. He put the shears inside, pulled out a bottle of water, and sat back on the grave, confident that the owner wouldn't mind. Despite the heart-breaking rejection I'd suffered, I still liked Vance. I could relax around a man who was so comfortable with the dead. I sat down on the grave beside him and gazed over the graveyard.

"I heard that this area doesn't have much in the way of stone."

"It doesn't. That's how you know it's not natural." Vance nodded to the field of altars—every one, a precarious and broken offering to tradition.

"All of this had to be brought in. People can be stubborn, but they aren't going to win. Not against a land like this. They pay me to delay the day it falls apart."

"That's a lot of trouble to take for a Christian burial." Vance had taken a long drink of water. He lowered the bottle while shaking his head. Then he swallowed.

"Not Christian," he said.

"Huh?"

"It's not a Christian church. Take a closer look." I turned to look at the church behind me. There were no crosses on the steeples, no sign in front of the double doors, and no lambs or doves set in the row of stained-glass windows. I wondered if it was Jewish, but there was no Star of David either. There didn't seem to be any kind of religious icons. Then, behind a dark stained-glass window in the far top corner of the church, someone turned on a light, making the pattern in the glass stand out.

Hidden in the center of all the red, purple, and blue shards was a symbol crafted from thin strips of milky-white glass. It looked like a line disappearing into a two-dimensional mountain, then reappearing on the other side. The emblem from the cabin's attic.

"You okay?" Vance asked. I found myself on my feet even though I didn't remember standing.

"Um…yeah. Yeah, I'm"—my brow furrowed as I looked back up at the window—"I'm fine."

"You look like you've seen a ghost." Close. But a ghost would've bothered me less. Probably. Depending on the ghost. I pointed.

"How old is that church?"

"It's the oldest building still standing. You want to know more than that, you'd have to ask someone else."

"Who'd know about it?" Vance shrugged.

"You could start with whoever's in there."

"Can…can I go in?"

"It's a government building now. If someone's in there, you can go in." I didn't even think to give him a proper goodbye before I made my way to the front of the old church; I was too busy scanning the building, trying to pick up some hint of what I was about to encounter. It's a government building, part of me said. You're going to encounter paperwork. It's a church, another part of me pointed out. There'll be pews.

But the rest of me remembered climbing into the attic of the empty cabin and finding it filled with artifacts protected by a magic circle. There could be anything. I grabbed the handle on the door. It didn't turn more than a few millimeters. When I let go, it didn't rotate back to its starting point. It sat there, hanging off its base plate at a slight angle. The door inched open on well-oiled hinges. Apparently, it was easier to oil hinges than it was to replace a centuries-old door knob.

The only thing that would keep that door closed when the church was empty was the anachronistic dead bolt they'd installed. I pulled the door open and slipped inside. My first instinct was to call out that I was there, but the "hello" shrank to nothing in my throat. This was a church! You weren't supposed to yell in a church! Vance said it's a government building. You weren't supposed to yell in those either! Anyway, it didn't look like a government building. It looked like… something else…

Immediately inside the door, to both the left and right, were two narrow flights of stairs enclosed by interior walls. In front of me was an opening in the wall as large as the double doors I'd come through. I walked past the opening into the main room. There were pews—the part of me that had said there would be felt smug about it—but instead of facing the front, they were lined up around the walls to face the large empty space in the center.

The stairs behind me led up to a balcony that overhung the seating area below. The part of the balcony that I was facing was walled off to create two rooms. The sides and the front of the balcony had more pews, crammed as close together as possible. Two large chandeliers hung over the empty area. They were crude and simple, but there was room for a lot of candles. None of them were lit. The only light came from a row of small electric sconces spaced along the interior wall.

Their mellow orange light barely reached the center of the room. I walked further in, letting my hands gently bounce off each pew I passed. The room, the pews, the empty space—they reminded me of something, but the dim light made it feel like I was trying to remember a dream. Every time I touched the worn wood of a pew, I wondered, idly, if I should sit down. I never did. They were so close together that I'd knock my knees on the bench in front of me.

But when I reached the last row, there was nothing in front of it but a wide-open wooden floor. I sat down—an audience of one, watching an empty stage. The preacher must have been an odd one if he needed that much space to give his sermons. I tried to imagine him, striding across the boards, turning in all directions as he spoke.

He'd point at people in the crowd, calling them out by name, gesturing with his whole arm, and only occasionally laying down his oversized holy book onto the small table left in the center of the empty space— A table. In the center of an empty space. That was it! The room reminded me of the room back in Craftborough where I'd watched Olivia Oliversen give her one-year report on her witch's apprenticeship. This church—if it was a church—had been designed by a magician. Movement caught my eye.

The stage was no longer empty. There was a man there—the same man, but there were two of him. Both figures had the same thinning dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, the same tight, small features and narrow jaw, and the same glare. It seemed to be the only way he could look at the world. Both of him were visible, but they were as insubstantial as the mist rising off the swamp. He wasn't a ghost. As intangible as the figures were, they were in color.

I could see the dark green of his breeches and vest, contrasting with the off-white of his linen shirt. And he didn't act like a ghost. Neither of him did. They both moved through their roles in perfect silence, unaware that I was there. In one of the two pantomimes, he wore a waistcoat and, over that, a hooded indigo cape with white trim. It went over his shoulders and down to his waist, both the front and back, but it didn't cover his arms.

Around his neck, sitting on top of the cape, was a pale stone pendant carved into an abstract shape. He stood addressing the crowd around him. He wasn't the ranter I'd imagined, but he did stride, using all the space he had to deliver his silent sermon. His body was rigid with a natural intensity, as if he had wooden joints that were fit too tight. And, always, that glare. As I watched him, the crowd he was addressing became visible, revealing a haze of serious-minded men and enraptured women.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sleeve move. Beyond that, a pale fan fluttered, but when I turned my head to look, there was no one beside me. I went back to watching the preacher, wondering what he was saying that made the men frown like that—but as he crossed the open space, he passed through himself, and my eyes were drawn to his twin, crouched on the floor, his waistcoat and hood thrown to the side.

One hand was on the paper beside him, the other hand was holding the chalk he was using to draw the runes along the edge of the circle. The crowd faded. The magic circle became clearer. Even without an audience, he was tense. The lines on the floor were drawn with slashes. Arches were scrawled with the same motion as gears grinding in a circle, and he glared at his paper the way he'd glared at his congregation. I never questioned the idea that he—or that version of him—was alone.

It didn't even feel like I was there. My mind, usually a hopeless, noisy tangle of thoughts, images, and distractions, had gone quiet. I'd become nothing but a set of eyes—my only role, to witness these moments. A feeling of curiosity dawned in me, but it was so faint I couldn't have put words to it. Faint. Faint and fading. Nothing but eyes. Less real than his glare. A hand grabbed my shoulder. My whole body clenched, and my gasp dragged cold air all the way to the bottom of my stomach.

I turned and looked up into the sad, concerned eyes of Lily Carver.