Andersonville (30 page)

The night they arrived in Oxford they were flagged down at the edge of town by a pair of Union cavalrymen flanking the road, their horses tied to a large oak tree.

They were forty miles out of Atlanta. Was the federal army so close now?

A red-haired corporal shone a lantern first in Barclay's face, as he was driving, and then in Whelan's, as his subordinate covered them with a Spencer rifle. Thankfully, Whelan had kept a spare suit of ill-fitting civilian clothes and Barclay had been able to change out of his filthy Union shell jacket and pants.

“Where you coming in from, Father?” said the corporal, an Irishman by his brogue.

“Andersonville,” the priest told him.

“Andersonville? The prison camp?”

Whelan nodded.

“And what were you doin' there?”

“Ministering to the sick.”

“Excuse me, Father. I'll have to take a look in the back.”

The corporal nodded to the other soldier, who uncovered the wagon bed and climbed inside.

“Is it as bad as they say it is?” the corporal asked.

“I don't know what they're saying in the North, my son. But I would wager it's worse than you've heard.”

After a moment he raised the priest's bag, opened it, and pulled out his purple stole, showing it to the corporal.

“Put that back, you ruddy heathen!” the corporal snapped. “Show some respect!” Then, to Whelan again, “And what's your business here, if I might ask?”

“I'm here to visit a colleague. Reverend Alexander Means, at Orna Villa.”

“And where might Orna Villa be? Near Atlanta?”

“No, my son; it's a house here in town.”

“Nothing else,” the private reported, getting out of the creaking wagon.

“Well, I'll have to accompany you, Father,” he said, untying his horse from the tree beneath which it stood.

It was a good thing Barclay was driving as he had not thought to give the priest directions.

As it was, he drove past the college quadrangle till they reached a large columned Greek Revival–style house glowing like a ghost beyond the walnut grove fronting the property. Orna Villa, the House of Birds.

He turned up the drive and pulled the hand brake, then, like any dutiful footman, took Father Whelan's bag and accompanied him and the red-haired corporal to the front door.

It was late in the windy evening, about ten o'clock, but a light flickered in one of the upstairs windows, and after the corporal rapped on the front door, it was answered quickly by a dark, wide-eyed housemaid.

“Yes?”

Over the woman's shoulder came a gravelly southern voice.

“Who is it, Fanny?”

“A priest, Reverend Means, and a soldier,” she called.

In a few moments the door opened wider, and a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman with wavy silver hair stood in the doorway, regarding the late night visitors with a critical eye.

“Yes, what—?” the master of the house began.

Whelan stepped onto the porch and said loudly, “Alexander, my old friend. How are you? I apologize for the lateness of the hour. We were delayed by the rain yesterday.”

To Barclay's satisfaction, he saw that the priest held his hands at his sides precisely in the manner he had been told to. Two fingers up toward heaven, five down to the earth.

Reverend Means saw it, too, and forced a smile but faltered as to what to say, his blue eyes flitting to the Union soldier standing on his porch.

Barclay stepped into the light of the doorway then.

When Means's eyes came to rest on him, they flashed briefly, then returned to the priest.

“I begged Barclay to stop by the side of the road again,” Whelan went on, “but he shut down old Father Peter again. He has no faith in my constitution,” he finished, and, perhaps overdoing his acting a bit, broke into a thunderous series of whooping coughs.

“He was right to insist,” said Reverend Means, putting his hand on the old priest's shoulder and guiding him into the house. “Come in, the both of you, or you will catch your death, Peter, you old rascal. Come in, Barclay. I shall have Albert put the wagon and horses away.”

The Union corporal cleared his throat as Barclay shrugged past.

“Ah, thank you, Corporal,” Reverend Means said stiffly.

“Very good, sir. But I should like to inform the gentleman of the individual we are searching for.”

“Rest assured, I shall tell him all about it,” Reverend Means said. “Good night, Corporal,” he said, slamming the door and locking it in the soldier's face.

When the door was closed, Reverend Means wheeled on Barclay.

“Just what is going on here, Mr. Lourdes? And who are you, sir? You are not, I think, a brother if I am not mistaken.”

“Well, a brother in Christ, at any rate. I'm Father Peter Whelan, sir,” the old priest said. “And I do apologize for disrupting your home.”

“Yes, Reverend, all apologies,” said Barclay.

“Never mind that. What do you mean coming here at this late hour?” Then he stopped short and waved the housemaid away. “Fanny, go and brew something hot for our guests, please.”

The last he had seen Means and Orna Villa had been on a visit to Oxford with Quit and his father. Wayman Day had formed a Mystic Seven society at the University of Louisiana and after inducting Quit into the rites was approached by his son to allow Barclay, his constant companion and the senior Day's private pupil, into the society. Wayman, Quit, and Barclay had all set out for Oxford on the occasion of the dedication of a society oratory chamber here in an upper room of Orna Villa, the home of the president of Emory College and the leader of the Mystic Seven chapter, to ask permission of the society to allow a Negro member.

Though he had passed every intelligence examination they had put him through, though he had demonstrated magical ability and a basic knowledge of their system, Reverend Means and the rest of the Mystic Seven of Emory had voted against his induction.

“Are you here for Quitman?” Means asked lowly.

“He's here, then?” Barclay asked. Thinking back on Quit's earlier assertion that he had to get to Oxford to perform the ritual, he had guessed that Orna Villa had been his destination.

Means curled his lip.

“What are you doing here, Lourdes? You're not permitted here. You're meddling in matters far above your understanding. Do you know what's at stake?”

“I know probably more than you do,” Barclay snapped. “Excuse me.”

He went across the foyer to the back stair.

Reverend Means caught his wrist.

“Get out of here, Lourdes, or I'll call back that federal to—”

Barclay pivoted and backhanded the older man across the lips hard enough to land him on his rear end on the polished floor.

“Barclay!” Father Whelan said, aghast, rushing forward to help the master of the house to his feet.

Barclay was already at the top of the stairs.

He stalked down the upper hallway and saw a light pinch out beneath a door.

He kicked it in.

There was a gasp from within the dim room.

A woman crouched there, dark-haired, pale, half hiding behind the bed.

“Excuse me,” he said, and backed out.

He went to the next door, found it locked, saw the undulation of candlelight beneath the door, and heard a low voice chanting from within.

He braced himself to kick that one, too, when Reverend Means appeared at the top of the stair with a revolver.

Corporal Reilly had reached the end of the property and was turning onto the road to rejoin Private Mackerson at the checkpoint. He was thinking of the insolence of the old Protestant and how he would like nothing better than to ride back there and set fire to his big damned house when a figure appeared in the road before him.

For an excited moment, he thought perhaps he had caught the lady spy they had been sent here from Atlanta to find, but the figure was far too broad and mannish. Still, he had seen quite a few more heifers than prime cut ladies in this country lately.

He drew his pistol and called down.

“Who goes there?”

The figure flicked its arm, and something lashed out with a sharp crack and wrapped itself around his throat so tightly that the breath was cut from him and hissed out of his open mouth in a puff of white.

Then there came a strong jerk that sent him flying from the saddle and hurtling into the dark figure's arms.

It was terribly painful, and as he glanced up at his attacker, who cradled his head, he caught a glimpse of a hellish, ruined face, nightmarish in the extreme, all blackened torn flesh and misshapen features.

The figure looked down at him, and its already drawn lips pulled wider into a ghastly perversion of amusement.

Though he tried to fight its grip, he found himself forced to look back at his horse, which reared in fright and gave a whinny.

Something tumbled from the saddle and was dragged bumping down the lane after the terrified mount.

He recognized his own yellow-striped sleeves on his own dancing arms as they receded down the rutted road, loosely flapping from his limp and headless body.

Then the world tumbled madly, and he felt the cool earth under his cheek and knew only blackness and the sound of heavy boots crunching up the drive back toward the house.

Barclay stared down the hallway at Means as the old man leveled the pistol at him. Blood leaked from the corner of his downturned mouth.

“Come away from that door,” the reverend ordered.

“No,” said Barclay, and popped it open with one swift kick.

He spared no further look at Reverend Means, and no bullet intercepted him as he entered the Mystic Seven's secret ritual chamber.

The red-curtained windows reflected the light of the circle of white candles in which Quitman Day knelt, wearing a slightly ridiculous-looking miter and silk robe. The whole room was filled with a haze of incense, the sweet smell of black copal heavy in the air. Barclay's father had taught him that the spirit world could be seen through clouds of the stuff.

Barclay recognized the pattern drawn in chalk on the black marble floor. It was the same as the glowing branding iron Day had taken from the iron bucket of red coals and was now brandishing toward his own chest as he pulled open his robe.

“Stop it, Quit,” Barclay said, coming to the edge of the circle but knowing better than to step inside.

Day opened his eye. It was heavy-lidded and shot through with blood, and his face was streaked with tears.

“Barclay. What are you doing here?”

“I'd ask the same if I didn't already know. You think you can end this by summoning Mastemah into this circle. You intend to use the blood from the knife you cut Wirz's arm with.”

“You saw what he could do, what that arm became. He must have been possessed for a long time to be able to manipulate his flesh like that. There's enough of Mastemah in that blood to do it,” he said.

The bloodstained silver knife sat on a low stone altar in the circle.
The
Chronicle of Mastemah
was open beside it.

“And then what? You'll make yourself the final sacrifice and call the ha-Mashchit against yourself.”

“It can work, Barclay. Mastemah and I will both be devoured.”

“It won't work,” Barclay said, hunkering down to speak to him at his level. “Remember that day in your father's cellar? You and I both know how susceptible you are to possession. If you invite Mastemah in, you won't be able to complete the incantation.”

“I can do it,” Day insisted. “You're wrong.”

“You know I'm not. But this plan isn't to save the world; it's to punish yourself.”

Day sighed.

“Atonement is required, Barclay.”

“And you'll make it. But not like this.”

“God wants this. For Euchariste and for—”

“You can't presume to know what God wants.”

“No. No, I know it. I must atone,” he wailed miserably. “I'm the final sacrifice. But you're right. The Shem ha-Mephorash. The name of God. I can't possibly recite it in time once Mastemah's in here with me. I'm Isaac. Come into the circle, Barclay. Be Abraham.”

“Abraham didn't kill Isaac in the end. In the end, God provided a different sacrifice.”

He dug deep in his pocket, coming out with the checkered bloodstained handkerchief.

“Here, look. Here's the answer. I didn't think of it myself in time or I would've given it to you earlier. Winder's blood. And Big Pete already branded Winder in the hand. Here's your sacrifice.”

Day stared at the handkerchief, blinking, as if waking from a dream.

He reached for the bloody cloth.

Barclay placed it in his hand.

Then Barclay saw Day's expression fall as his eye passed over his shoulder.

The hand holding Winder's handkerchief went up in a warding gesture.

“No, Reverend! Don't shoot!”

Barclay looked over his shoulder.

Means stood in the broken doorway, pointing the pistol. Father Whelan was there with him, clutching his free arm.

“It's all right, Reverend.”

“But you said,” said the reverend, confused. “You told me all mankind was at stake tonight.”

“It was,” Day said, looking at the handkerchief. “I think Barclay here might've just saved us.”

A third figure pushed into the doorway then. It was the dark-haired young woman Barclay had surprised in the next room. She was dressed in men's clothing, but her wildly curly hair was unbound.

“Reverend Means, what is going on here? Who are these men?”

“Miss Fair, please,” Reverend Means said, lowering his pistol.

“These men brought federals to your door. Why are you entertaining them?” she demanded. She next looked into the richly adorned chamber and furrowed her expressive brow. “Lieutenant Day, I do not know what you are about, sir, but if we are to depart for friendlier, southern climes, then we must not tarry longer.”

“Miss Fair,” said Day, “as I explained earlier this evening, you will be taken home in the morning. In the meantime you are in no danger here. The Yankees have not discovered you.”

“Then,” she said in a whisper, “how do you explain the man creeping on the roof outside my window?”

“What man?” Day, Means, Whelan, and Barclay all exclaimed almost in unison.

At that instant, the window behind the scarlet curtain of the oratory chamber smashed inward and a figure burst through the drapes, carrying with him a gust of night wind that snuffed the ritual candles and sank the room in a pocket of darkness.

“Good Lord!” Reverend Means exclaimed, and without further hesitation fired his pistol.

In the closeness of the room and with its queer, amplifying acoustics, the boom of the revolver was thunderous.

The muzzle flash illuminated Turner's leering burned face for a moment. He jolted from the impact of the bullet and from three subsequent shots but did not move otherwise.

Barclay ripped his concealed Colt free. He had changed the powder, and the first of the two bullets Whelan had blessed was under the hammer.

But Turner's whip lashed out and expertly snatched the revolver from his grip, sending it flying out the open window.

“Boy, you thought you got it bad last time,” he said, drawing back the whip again. “I am gonna put it to you savage as a meat ax now.”

The whip cut the air again and lashed around Barclay's neck with finesse and expertise. Barclay twisted the whip around his forearm to stop himself from strangling.

“Come along, you cockchafer,” Turner growled.

The jerk that followed was so strong that it could very well have popped his head from his shoulders, but at the same moment he sprang toward Turner and crashed into him.

Turner laughed as Barclay wrapped his arms and legs around his immovable torso, but when Barclay smashed the spirit bottle he'd taken from his shirt hard against his forehead, he screamed and stumbled back till both of them flipped from the upstairs window, rolled off the roof, and crashed into the front yard.

Barclay rolled away, sparing himself some broken bones and what happened next.

The hellhounds he'd trapped within the phial were freed from their prison. Something in the cloud of copal remained in his eyes, and he saw their phantasmic, fleshless canine heads burst free. They seemed to nip and snap at Turner's body, and finally two reared back with the man's soul stretched between their feuding jaws like a bit of cast-off steak.

Barclay stumbled farther back from Turner's jerking body.

The largest of the pack, the thing that in the material world had been Old Spot, bounded off into the night with the greater share of the shredded bounty, pointing its muzzle toward its infernal home somewhere beyond the walnut grove. The remainder veered off across the ground and ran off down the road in a silent pack back to Andersonville, where Limber Jim's briefly paroled spirit waited and Duncan's no doubt hovered above his body in the woods alongside the road to Americus. Their ravenous, ghostly howls faded into the distance.

Barclay sat in the dirt, his head between his knees, and pulled the end of the whip from his neck.

Father Whelan burst through the back door of the house. He approached Barclay and helped him to his feet.

“My God,” he muttered. “My God.”

“Those shots are going to bring soldiers,” Day called down from the broken upper window.

Barclay looked up.

“He's right,” he said to Whelan. “Let's get the wagon and get out of here.”

“The wagon will slow us down. Get a horse from the stable around back.”

“Just one?”

“Just one.”

The old man hobbled off for the back of the house.

Barclay stood in the dark yard for a moment and stared at Day framed in the window.

“Barclay,” Day called over the wind. “Did you spare me for your sister or for yourself?”

Barclay pointed up at Day.

“St. Louis Cemetery,” he said.

“Number Two,” Day said, and saluted.

Barclay hightailed it around the corner of the house as Whelan came out of the stable, leading a chocolate gelding.

“We're not gonna walk it to Savannah, Father,” he said, vaulting onto its bare back and holding out his hand to the priest.

When the old man was mounted behind him, he galloped off east at a run, cutting across the moonlit fields, avoiding the roads as the shouts of Union cavalry filled the yard of Orna Villa.