Destroying Angel (9 page)

And then he reached the drop. There was no warning, no breeze, only a hollow void where his shaft dumped into a larger one that fell straight into the bowels of the complex. He paused above the hole for several seconds, felt around the edge to reassure himself of its dimensions, and then started down into the darkness.

The wider opening relieved the pressure on his shoulders and arms from forcing himself through the narrow passageway, and the crushing claustrophobia eased. But in the wider shaft he had to wedge his feet against one side and his shoulders against the other. Lose his grip, and he’d fall. He crept down foot by agonizing foot until his muscles trembled with exhaustion. He must be seventy feet down now, maybe a hundred. How much more?

And then his shirt caught on another rivet. It wasn’t much, only a little snag. But it caught him high on his shirt, near the collar, and there was no way to relieve his weight from the rivet and unhook the snag. His back, arms, and legs were too exhausted to crawl back up the ventilation shaft. He spent a few minutes trying to free himself, more terrified with every moment.

“Help me,” he said. His voice made a hollow echo up and down the pipe. “I’m going to die in here. Please!”

He strained his eyes against the blackness, as desperate to see the angel now as he’d been to avoid it earlier. But the angel didn’t appear.

And then the solution came to him. It was so simple that he laughed out loud in a release of nervous tension. Take the weight off it, then either get it free or leave it behind. He unbuttoned his shirt, wriggled his arms out one after the other. The rivet hadn’t hooked his undergarment, which was good, since it was a single piece that went all the way from the wrists to the ankles.

But when he got his second arm free, the canteen strap fell off his shoulder. His fingers clutched for it, but it slid off. He expected it to fall and fall, booming against the sides of the shaft all the way to the bottom. But it clattered to a stop only ten feet or so below him. He let out a shuddering gasp of relief.

With his weight off the shirt, it was easy to get it free. He reached the bottom of the shaft moments later and squirmed back into his shirt in the cramped space, then crept along again on his belly. A gray light came to his eyes. He rounded a corner and there it was, a metal screen opening in the ceiling of a small, brightly lit room. He kicked out the screen and dropped to the floor.

He found himself in the rear lounge. There were three women in the room. One was nursing a baby, another changed a toddler’s diaper. A third woman wore only her undergarments and was getting ready to put on a dress.

A small refrigerator hummed in the corner. The carpet was twenty years old by style, but clean and barely worn. The couch and lounge chairs looked like something from a hotel lobby. The room held the faint scent of air freshener. A television played the news, some droning broadcast about food riots in the Philippines. After so many months outdoors, the scene assaulted Taylor Junior’s senses more than any number of noxious smells, animal bones, or dead bodies ever could.

Upon his appearance, the three women gasped and the undressed woman threw a hand over her crotch and an arm across her breasts. Two of these women were Aaron’s widows, and the third had belonged to Eric Froud. They were his now.

Taylor Junior pulled the plug on the TV, then turned back to face the dumbfounded women. “Who is in charge? If he doesn’t have a good explanation, I will kill him.”

From the personal journal of Henrietta Cowley.

Laura and Maude joined me to confront Sister Annabelle about the angel. We found her in Witch’s Warts, her bare feet buried in the cool sand beneath a sandstone arch. Two boys had discovered the arch stretching between a pair of sandstone fins, and when the weather turned exceeding hot, kids would come in after finishing the chores, scale the arch, and leap into the sand, laughing as they tumbled down the hill. But it was the middle of the day, and even the children were working.

Annabelle looked up. “You’ve got counselors now, is that it?” She fixed Maude with a hard look. “And you’ve started in on my sister wives too, I see. Turning them against me, poisoning their minds.”

“We’re worried about you,” Maude said.

“Can we give you a blessing?” I asked.

“A blessing? Hah!” Her voice came out like a crow’s jeering caw. “What, have you given yourself the priesthood now?”

“It’s no different than the initiatory.”

“This isn’t the temple, so yes, it’s completely different. You have no right, no authority. It is blasphemy. An abomination.”

“Annabelle, we have no men. We’re on our own.” I nodded at Laura and Maude. “There are three of us. We’re no men, but maybe, if we all have faith, we can call down the power of heaven. The priesthood would be better, yes, but surely the Lord will hear our cries. We’ll cast this thing from our midst.”

“You’re a fool. You can’t get rid of him. He lives here, this is his home.”

“Whose home? Who are you talking about?” When she said nothing, I pressed. “What is this thing? An evil spirit?”

“An angel,” she said at length. “A destroying angel.”

Maude and Laura drew in their breaths. The deep shadows here between the cool sandstone fins seemed suddenly chill and oppressive.

“So, an evil spirit,” I said. “It doesn’t live here, it hasn’t been waiting since the dawn of time. You called it, didn’t you?”

No answer.

“Annabelle!”

Annabelle lifted a fistful of sand and watched it sift between her fingers and fall back to the ground, and then lifted another fistful. Her feet burrowed deeper into the sand.

“Grab her,” I said.

Laura got to her first. Annabelle fought back, but Maude and I joined the struggle. Together we pinned her arms and legs. I put my hand on her forehead.

“Annabelle Snow Kimball!”

She spat in my face. I wiped my eye against my shoulder while the rest of her spittle ran down my cheek.

“In the name of Jesus Christ and with the help of the Lord and by authority of my endowments and ordinations, I—”

“No!” She bucked, gave one final heave with such ferocity that her leg sent Maude flying. She got one hand free and clawed at Laura’s face, but Laura threw herself on Annabelle’s free arm and held it down with her entire weight. Annabelle got her other arm free, grabbed me by the roots of my hair, and yanked me from her chest.

I kept my hand on the woman’s forehead. “I command this evil spirit to depart! Now!”

Annabelle went limp. For a long moment, the four of us sat gasping for breath. Laura groaned and rubbed at her eye. During the struggle, Annabelle had struck her with a fist or an elbow. My scalp throbbed, and I lifted a hand to find tufts of black hair loose where she’d ripped them free.

“Sister?” I said.

Annabelle let out a sob. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have done it, I swear. I was so lonely and I didn’t—”

“What did you do?”

“I was lonely.”

“You said that already. What did you do?”

“I thought it was a dream at first. I was almost asleep. That day the Lamanite rode by on his horse and you yelled at me for not warning you. I came into the labyrinth because I was angry. You have been exercising unrighteous dominion.”

“Unrighteous?” Laura said in a tone made all the more withering by her English accent. “We have a town to build, and we
can’t have shirkers. Every woman needs to put her shoulder to the wheel.”

I hushed my sister wife. “Go on. What happened next?”

“I entered the labyrinth to think. I fell asleep underneath the arch—at least I think I did. Then my husband came to me and…it was only a dream.”

“What happened in your dream?”

“He came to me as a husband comes to a wife. You understand.”

“He knew you as a man knows a woman.”

Annabelle flushed. Maude and Laura exchanged a look, as if a secret were passing between the two women. But it disappeared so quickly I thought I’d imagined it.

“Only when he finished, I saw that it wasn’t my husband. And I’m not sure I was dreaming. I seemed to be awake when the angel finished with me. He spoke to me, stroked me.” She lifted a hand to her neck and flushed again, but this time I didn’t think it was shame that crimsoned her cheeks.

“And that’s what happened yesterday in the sinkhole,” I said. “The spirit took you again. Found you, or you found it, and you gave yourself over.”

She nodded.

“So that’s why you came back. You’re like a rat who has tasted a poisoned treat. You came for more, even if it kills you. You were waiting for the evil spirit to visit you again. To visit you with carnal pleasures.”

“It’s not like that! I swear it!”

“Then what is it like, Annabelle? Why have you given yourself to this thing, why would you invite it into our midst? It turned you. It would have destroyed you.”

“It’s gone now, I swear it,” she said with such conviction that it was impossible not to believe her. “I’m cleansed. It will never happen again.”

Laura took my arm as we picked our way from Witch’s Warts. She looked back, as if to make sure that Annabelle couldn’t hear—Annabelle walked with Maude, the two women speaking in whispers—and then Laura leaned in toward me. “It might not be an evil spirit.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Madness runs in her family. Her father was an orphan when the saints took him in, in Nauvoo. The rest of his family died in horrific circumstances.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Annabelle’s grandfather murdered his wife and two of his three children. Tried to shoot the boy too, but Annabelle’s father buried himself in the hayloft when he heard shooting. He looked out to see his father hang himself from the rafters. Joseph Smith adopted the boy and put him to work in the store to earn his keep.”

I shuddered at the awful story. “I’ve never heard such a thing. Are you sure?”

“From the mouth of our husband.”

“Hyrum told you that? Why didn’t he tell me?”

Laura looked ashamed. “I spoke to him before he left us at Cedar City. I couldn’t understand why he would abandon us to the wilderness.”

“He has other wives, other children. He must get them out. It isn’t easy with the marshals searching and hunting. And some of the men who will join us are still in jail. Hyrum is helping their families too.”

“Yes, I heard all of that.” Impatience clouded her voice. “But why you? You’re so young, and you don’t even have children yet—I’m sorry, sister.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “I asked the same question. But go on.”

“Hyrum said the prophet wanted you to lead. I couldn’t figure out why, so I pressed him. Why you and not Annabelle? It’s because they’re worried she suffers from her grandfather’s madness.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the two sister wives walking arm in arm. Maybe the madness had been there all along. Sleeping, waiting for the right moment. Snatch Annabelle from the city and drive her into the wilderness, and it would show itself.

It was a strangely comforting thought. Insanity, I could understand. And unlike her grandfather’s condition, this variety seemed to afflict only the sufferer. She’d made no threats against her children or sister wives. When her husband joined us in the valley, he could give her another blessing—a real priesthood blessing this time—and cure her for good. I could take comfort in that.

Yes, I almost convinced myself. But then I remembered that terrible moment in the sinkhole, when I saw a man or a shadow of a man on top of her. Ravishing her. And Annabelle with her dress up and her undergarments around her ankles, writhing in pleasure.

I needed to take it to the Lord. I’d never asked to lead, and nobody—not even my sister wife—trusted me to do it, but the
men gave me no choice. And maybe the Lord would tell me what to do about Annabelle Kimball. As soon as we got back to camp I’d retreat to my tent, drop to my knees, and pray.

But those thoughts were soon driven from my mind, because we returned to find the camp in an uproar. A federal marshal had arrived and taken command.

To Jacob’s surprise, the Department of Agriculture field agent brought an armed guard. It was the gray light of early dawn, and the two men stood atop the sluice gates at the east holding pond when Jacob and Stephen Paul parked the pickup truck.