Beyond the Pale (11 page)

Sister Mirrim swayed and would have fallen save for Child Samanda, who grasped her arm. In two long strides Brother Cy was beside them to add his own steadying grip to the fire-haired woman’s shoulders.

A cracked voice rose from the audience.

“I’ve seen them, too.”

It was the blind man. He lifted his wrinkled sockets toward the stage.

Although his voice was low, Brother Cy’s words pierced the stillness of the tent. “What have you seen?”

“The dark birds.” The old man gripped his cane. “I ain’t seen a thing since I was a boy, but I seen them of late, flying before my eyes, like blacker patches of black on the black I always see. And …” His voice dropped to whisper. “… and I seen him as well.”

Brother Cy watched him with interest, and the old man shifted in discomfort, as if he could feel the force of the preacher’s gaze.

“Who have you seen?” Brother Cy asked.

“Him,” the blind man said, and his knuckles went white around the cane. “The pale one. I saw him once, with the night birds whirling round him, and he was white as snow—or so I’m guessing, as I ain’t seen snow in ’most a lifetime—and he shone against the blackness, tall and fierce and wearing a crown of ice, it seemed to me. And he was laughing. Laughing at me.” The old man shook his head. “He was something terrible, he was.”

The middle-aged woman in the skirt suit stood on the heels of the old man’s words. “Is it too late?” She wrung her hands. “Is it already too late for us to do something about the darkness?”

“No,” Brother Cy said. “It is never too late, not until the end—and even then, who’s to say if all is really over? The darkness approaches, but it is not yet fully here, and if we all do our part, it may never be.”

“But what is it?” a voice called out in frustration. “What is this darkness that everyone keeps saying is coming?”

Travis was shocked to realize the voice had been his own. He was standing now. Somehow all this hysteria about doom and darkness had gotten to him.

“That is the question I have been waiting for.”

It was not Brother Cy who spoke, but the girl. Her voice was soft, and it lisped slightly, yet there was power in it. The girl stepped forward, and her black-buttoned shoes tapped against the wooden stage like tiny deer hooves. Although her voice addressed the entire gathering, Travis was convinced that her too-knowing gaze was for him only.

“The nature of the darkness is both singular and multifidous,” the girl said, and heads nodded, as if the onlookers
understood her cryptic words perfectly. “Singular, in that it stems from one deep well. Multifidous, in that each of us must face it in our own way.” With a tiny hand she pointed to the audience. “Each of you has a battle to fight. That is why you came here tonight—although there are many, many more such as yourselves. Most of your battles will be small ones, yet that does not mean they are not important. For that is how this war will be won or lost, by a thousand little battles, each fought by one person standing alone against the darkness—or surrendering to it.”

“But how will we know our battle when it comes?” the trucker asked.

A secret smile touched Child Samanda’s rosebud lips. “You will know,” was all she said.

With that, the revival was over.

“Thank you all for coming,” Brother Cy said with a dismissing sweep of his arms. “Do not forget the seeings of Sister Mirrim or the words of Child Samanda. And do not forget to consider a small donation—a pittance that will allow us to bring our message to others like yourselves—as you depart.”

Brother Cy leaped from the stage and stood beside the tent’s entrance. Seemingly from nowhere, his broad-brimmed pastor’s hat appeared in his bony hand, and he thrust it out before him. A few people tossed in a handful of change or a crumpled bill as they shuffled past. Onstage, Child Samanda led Sister Mirrim toward the curtain. As they stepped through a slit in the ratty velvet, Travis caught a fleeting glimpse of a dim space beyond. He blinked, for it seemed to him that a number of figures gathered behind the curtain, tangled in a queer knot of crooked legs, sinuous arms, and curved swan necks. One of them, a young man—or was he old?—peered back at Travis with nut-brown eyes. Something sprouted from his forehead, something that looked almost like … antlers? Then the gap in the curtain closed. Sister Mirrim and Child Samanda were gone. Travis supposed it was all simply a trick of smoke and shadows, yet he found himself thinking of Waunita Lost Owl’s
delgeth
all the same.

He realized then he was the only one left inside the tent except for Brother Cy. He hurried to the exit. Avoiding the
preacher’s piercing gaze, he dug into the pocket of his jeans, found a creased five-dollar bill, and dropped it in the hat.

“Thank you, son.”

Travis said nothing. Head down, he reached for the canvas flap covering the exit.

“Your battle will be harder than most, son, if you choose to fight it.”

Travis turned around and laughed. It was a hollow sound. He rubbed his right hand. “You mean I have a choice?”

A knife-edged grin cut across the craggy landscape of Brother Cy’s face. “Why, we all have a choice, son. Haven’t you heard one word I’ve been saying? That’s what this is all about.”

Travis shook his head. “But what if I choose the wrong thing?”

“What if you choose the
right
thing?”

“How will I know?” Travis said. “Sometimes I don’t even know right from left. How can I possibly choose?”

Lamplight gleamed off Brother Cy’s eyes. “Ah, but you have to, son. Light or dark. Sanity or madness. Life or death. Those are our choices, those are the battles we must fight.”

Travis tried to absorb these words. Was there more to Brother Cy than he had guessed? Without really thinking, he reached into the breast pocket of his coat and drew out the iron box Jack had given him. He held it toward the preacher.

“You know, I think the man who gave this to me saw the same darkness you do. Maybe … maybe it would be better if you took it.”

Brother Cy laughed, a great booming sound. Then his laughter fell short, and his stony face went grim. He took a step backward, as if loath to so much as touch the box. “No, son. That which you carry is not for the likes of me. It is your burden to bear now, and no other’s.”

Travis sighed. He had been afraid the preacher would say something like that. There was nothing more for him here. He slipped the box back into his coat pocket and opened the tent flap.

“Wait, son!” Brother Cy said. “You need a token, something to bolster your faith, something to remember when all seems too dark, and home seems too far away.” He reached
into his hat, pulled out a small and shiny object, and pressed it into Travis’s hand. It felt cool against his hot skin.

“Thanks,” Travis said, unsure what else to say. “And I hope you stop your darkness, whatever it is.”

“It’s not my darkness, son. It belongs to all of us.”

In a disconcerting instant, the smoky world of the tent was replaced by one of empty gloom. Travis gasped. He stood outside the revival tent now, although he did not remember stepping through the door. He lifted his hand and uncurled his fingers. On his palm lay a silvery half circle. It was a coin, or rather a piece of one, for it was broken along a rough edge. There was a picture on each side of the coin, and he tried to make them out in the cast-off radiance of the revival tent, but could not.

All at once, like a lightbulb switching off, the tent went black and left Travis alone in the cold night.

Travis slipped the half-coin into the pocket of his jeans and started walking, although he had no idea where he was walking to. The crescent moon had gone behind a cloud, and the road seemed to lead only from darkness into darkness. His boots beat a lonely rhythm on the pavement.

He had gone only a short distance when, without warning, the fabric of night was riven by brilliant light.

Travis spun around, held a hand before his eyes, and squinted against the white-hot glare. The world had fallen silent except for an electric hum that vibrated on the air. It raised the hairs on his arms and neck, like a harbinger of lightning. How had they found him? But it was not so hard to understand. If they had not found what they were seeking at the Magician’s Attic, they would have kept searching. And there was only one road out of Castle City. This road.

For a moment he stood frozen, an animal caught in a fatal headlight snare. He caught a glint of crimson and glanced down. The stiletto Jack had given him was still tucked into his belt, and the gem in its hilt glowed bloodred. He jerked his head back up. The brilliant light floated down the highway.
At last fear broke through his paralysis. Travis turned and ran headlong into the night. His lungs caught fire. He ignored the pain, leaned his head down, and ran faster yet.

A rectangle loomed in the dark before him and brought him up short. He skidded to a halt and barely managed to avoid colliding with the thing. It was the old billboard. He stared at the back side now, for he had come upon it from the opposite direction than before. The webwork of posts that supported the flat plane looked like bones in the gloom. Urged by a compulsion he could not name, he moved around the billboard to gaze upon the front. Just then, in the sky above, wind tore a cloud to tatters, and the horned moon broke free. Its light drifted down to illuminate the face of the billboard. Travis gasped.

The cigarette advertisement was gone. In its place, fully revealed now, was the picture of the wild landscape. Before, when Travis had glimpsed a fraction of the picture through the overlying ad, it had seemed to depict a daylit scene, yet it was a night land that covered the billboard now. Mountains rose into a star-sprinkled sky, like a crown perched above the endless forest, and everything was dusted with a pearly sheen, as if the light of the moon above fell somehow too upon it. There was a beauty about the landscape that was both fresh and ancient, as though it had stood unspoiled for countless eons, waiting to be seen.

In all, the billboard looked just as it had in the 1933 photograph he had seen at the Magician’s Attic. Only as he realized this did Travis drop his gaze to the words written at the bottom in flowing script. He concentrated, and after a moment they sorted themselves out:

Laughter rose in Travis’s chest. So Brother Cy had been here back in 1933. That knowledge should have shocked him, should have sent him reeling off-balance. Yet, somehow,
after all that had happened, it did not. In fact, it all made an absurd sort of sense.

He looked up as something on the billboard caught his eye. No, it wasn’t on the billboard, but
in
it—something wispy, like a puff of cotton. Something that was … moving.

It was a cloud. It drifted above the brooding mountains, floated from right to left, and passed off the edge of the billboard and vanished. Fascinated, Travis took a step closer. It wasn’t just the cloud, he saw now. Everything in the picture was moving. Tiny trees swayed in the wake of an unseen wind, and the silver thread of a waterfall glinted as, from its base, clouds of mist billowed upward. Even the stars were alive, twinkling like real stars, now bright, now dim, now bright again as they wheeled in the sky.

It wasn’t a picture on the billboard at all. Somehow it had become a window looking into another—what? Another place? Another time? He thought of Sister Mirrim’s words. Another … world?

His thoughts were drowned out as sound sizzled on the air, growing louder every second. He turned and saw, over a rise in the road, a white glow. Even as he watched, the glow crested the hill like some terrible dawn. Then he saw them in the center of the light, coming toward him: sinister, spidery figures. Had they seen him yet? Had they recognized him from the Magician’s Attic? Travis didn’t know, but he couldn’t run anymore, he was too tired. Whatever the things in the light were, in seconds they would have him. He wondered if it would take long, and whether it would be very painful.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” he said. He clutched the iron box through the thick fabric of his coat. “I’m sorry I let you down. But there’s nowhere left to …”

His words trailed off. He turned and stared at the face of the billboard. Maybe that wasn’t true, maybe there was somewhere after all. It was impossible, but so had been a dozen other things he had witnessed that night. Maybe it made sense to try something impossible himself.

There was no more time to think—the willowy figures moved toward him with malevolent speed. Travis clenched
his jaw. He hesitated only a heartbeat, then he threw himself forward …

 … and fell into the billboard.

“All right, Dr. Beckett, I have just a few more questions for you,” the police detective said in a weary voice. He flipped a page of the legal tablet that rested on the cluttered desk before him.

Grace shifted on the hard wooden chair. For the last hour she had sat while the detective took her statement and prompted her for details concerning the deaths at Denver Memorial. Back at the hospital, when a pair of officers had told her they would have to take her to the Denver police station for questioning, Grace had offered no resistance. She had let them pry the gun from her fingers, and was grateful they did not handcuff her as they led her to the patrol car. But the two young officers had been sympathetic, and even admiring, as they bantered in the front seat.

“Bastard didn’t have the sense to know he was dead the first time around,” one of them had said with a low whistle. “Must have been high on something pretty damn amazing.”

“Takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” the other had joked.

The first officer had laughed at that. “Not after the doc here took care of him, he wasn’t.”

The second officer was angry now. “Yeah, she took care of that copkiller real good.” He turned around to look at Grace through the intervening grill. “You did the right thing, Doc, taking him out like that. You did the exact right thing.”