Adam's Woods (33 page)

Sean screamed and turned and ran. Jake screamed as well, but it was mercifully quick. Sean felt the man behind him as he grasped the rusty doorknob they had screwed into the wood in proud completion of the cabin, had begun to open the door when the man caught the backpack.

The cabin had been built by boys, eager and determined but lacking proper knowledge and proper materials. The man pulled back with brutal strength, and if a master builder had been consulted, Sean would have lost his arms, his life and his soul. But the door tore from the cabin with Sean's fingers still locked on the knob. The objects set in motion, boy and door, did not stop, but crashed into the man. He howled and fell back as the wood made contact. Trapped between the man and door with no place to go, Sean closed his eyes and cringed as the door struck his forehead with enough force to blur his vision, and he gagged and choked from his contact with his brother's murderer. Sean slumped to the ground, and without his partial support the door teetered and its full weight fell into the man. Sean crawled away, and on his knees carefully slid the backpack off. He looked into the open doorway of the cabin, then back at the man, who managed to throw off the door and, writhing on the ground, spoke curses in his guttural language that hurt Sean's ears.

"Go to hell, mister," Sean said, and tossed the backpack through the doorway. The man's form went rigid as though an electric current ran through it, and he slowly turned his face towards Sean, which for the first time he saw clearly. And wept. Like his voice, the face had nothing remarkable about it: no devil’s horns, no fangs dripping with blood or decaying flesh falling from yellowed bones. The face that stared at him was the face of a neighbor, a cousin or uncle, the face of the guy behind the counter at the ice cream stand, a little league coach or a Sunday School teacher. A face that fit in, a face that when it smiled, you smiled back instinctively at its warmth and good nature. But it wasn’t smiling now. The evil that filled the hollow behind the innocuous mask seeped through every feature and pore. And then his body began to constrict; his arms and legs curled inward towards his torso, and his chin dipped to his chest as if pulled by ropes. They continued bending inward, beyond the point that any normal human body part could extend without permanent damage and pain, and further still, disappearing into the dark pit of his core. The edges of the now headless and limbless shape followed and rolled inward, faster, until reduced to a shapeless dark mass, a black hole lying on the leaf litter. This too curled towards the center, growing smaller and more dense, radiating arctic cold and then smaller, the seed of every evil thing, then consumed by itself until disappearing entirely. A black spot on the ground, as though scorched by fire - and the murder and destruction and the scars Sean would always carry within him - were the only things left behind. But Sean knew he wasn’t gone, would never be gone entirely from the world as even now someone shaped and kneaded the materials necessary to build him up again, but gone for now and gone from here. Sean shuddered in benediction.

What remained of the darkness in the woods lifted, the afternoon sun of a day already in progress lit up the forest, the dark cloud blocking its light and warmth finally past. And then the sounds fell all at once, tumbled into the silence as if dumped from a sack that the thief had stored them in; leaves shaking in a breeze, crickets chirping, birds calling, and a host of others, unidentifiable as they mixed into a single tune of summer. Sean covered his ears at the sudden noise, then slowly pulled them away, letting the chorus of life in.

"Sean" he heard, and for a moment hoped that it was Jake, that by undoing the man he had undone his work. But he saw Jake's body lying towards the back of the cabin and he couldn't go to him just yet, needed to forsake death just for a little while.

He looked into the cabin, and saw a boy. A real boy. Silas, no longer a ghost. He went inside and they embraced.

"Why didn't you go? I set them all free with the wood. You could have touched the cabin and gone. But you didn't."

"I knew what he would do. I'm sorry Sean. I didn't tell you about your brother because there was no other way. And I knew you would need help, in the end."

"He killed my brother, Silas."

"Yes. But no more after this."

Sean cried, finally, the tears of a ten year old. Silas held him without using empty words, telling Sean that it would be all right. They both knew too much to tell lies or believe them.

"How long will you stay?" Sean asked later.

"Until it's finished. We have to bury your brother." Sean nodded, and they stepped from the cabin. They carried Jake through the woods, back to the grove, along with the bones of the first child. Jake was heavy, but they found a way.

They put the body of the boy back in his place, along with his headstone, and then used the garden trowel to create a grave for Jake. The tool looked ridiculously small for the task, but the earth, soft and black, yielded to them. They set Jake within. Silas allowed Sean some time alone, and he spoke to his brother, about the things they had done together. He apologized for fighting over stupid things and being angry. He said goodbye, and they placed the rich soil over his body. He suspected that if he came back later, in a few months or years, a similar stone would mark the grave of his brother.

"I have to sleep, Silas. I'm so tired. Will you stay with me? You can sleep, too."

"No, but lay down and I'll sit next to you."

Sean lay in the soft grass next to his brother and Silas and closed his eyes. Silas sang quietly, a song Sean didn't know, and he meant to ask him what it was, decided to wait until later and was gone.

Silas sang all of the verses, and cried too. After a little while, the sparrow landed on a branch of a birch and sang with him. The boy heard his name called from nowhere and everywhere and answered, then smiled and stood up, ready to go. He stopped and frowned in concern, looked back at Sean sprawled on the ground.

"Should I wait? Will he be okay?"

The voice spoke and he smiled again and followed.

He waited in his front yard for someone to come. Finally a car rolled through, driving slowly. The man, just a man, stopped in the road and got out, looking all around.

"What happened? Where is everyone?"

"They're gone. Everyone's gone, sir."

"Gone where? Are you all right?"

"No. I'm not." He fingered the crude cross he had formed from the wood, that he had searched for and found again after leaving the grove, alone. He would refine it later, sand it down, make sure the two pieces were securely attached. But for now it worked.

No, he was not all right.

But he knew that he would be.

Eric switched off the laptop and sat back in the chair. He felt the detached numbness of waking up after surgery; the procedure was done, for better or worse, and the full measure of pain had yet to be felt. He had worked on the story non-stop since sitting down, pausing only to eat a bagel with cream cheese when sunrise had come, and to brew more coffee or use the restroom.

He didn't know if it was any good and didn't care. It was done, as was his time here in Lincoln Corners. He had found what he had hoped to find, but so much more than he had wanted to know. But he knew the truth, and he preferred it to any fiction. Isaac had yet to be caught, but he couldn't spend his life waiting for that. The phone had rung several times during the day, but he had ignored it. He didn't have an answering machine, hadn't gotten that far. Probably Mary, but even she seemed distant right now, everything and everyone hazy in the aftermath. Like Sean, he craved sleep, and sleep he would have.

He stumbled up the stairs and fell into the little bed, tried to stay awake to listen, to hear something to reassure, to confirm that he hadn't actually brought Sean's world here. As absurd as his mind knew it be, he held his breath until the distant sound of a car with serious muffler issues passed on the main road on the edge of town. And then he slept.

His first thought on waking, on realizing someone else was in the house, was that he never even heard the creak on the stairs.

"Isaac," he said out loud.

"Eric," came the reply.

He could barely make out his silhouette in the doorway. He felt no fear. Couldn't tell if Isaac held a knife, and didn't care. Death was simply another truth he had yet to know. But not before he had an answer.

"Why, Isaac? Why Adam?"

"Did my father tell you how my mother died?"

"She died of cancer. I already knew that."

"I don't mean what killed her. I mean how, the manner she died." His voice was strangely calm, as though relating a story that he had read and taken on as his own, but lacked the emotional charge of a first-hand account.

"No, he didn't. He only said she was in a lot of pain."

"Yes, terrible pain. In the end, the drugs didn't do anything at all for her. But my mother died cursing God, Eric. Cursing Him, and in doing so condemned herself to an eternity of pain and suffering. I loved her so much, but how I hated her then. The one consolation I had was that I would see her again someday, and she took that away from me."

"I'm sorry, Isaac. But why did you kill Adam? Why did you kill my brother? Why those other children?" He fought to keep his voice even, resisted the urge to throw off the covers and attack him, knife or no, kill him if it came to that. But he had to know the answer.

"Because I came to understand, Eric. God had a plan. Or rather used my mother's blasphemy to teach me His will, that it doesn't have to end that way. Her way. A child is innocent, up until the age of accountability; will not held responsible for their sins. So they're guaranteed passage into the Kingdom. I found children from the streets, drove out to the dens of iniquity and brought them here. From Erie and Cleveland. One from Altoona. Other places. Dirty children no one would miss, who would grow up to take and deal drugs, sell their bodies, fill the prisons, and go to hell. I gave them a gift they could never have had otherwise. Eternal life, Eric."

"But why Adam, Isaac? He wasn't one of those. You knew him. Why Adam?"

"I didn't intend to kill Adam. I had come through the woods that day...to see my father. He hated me, Eric. And could never understand my work so I hid it from him. But I came sometimes to watch him from the trees, and pray for him..."

Eric heard something more now, the real Isaac beneath the madness. A sad boy that missed his father. But a sad boy now driven by an insanity that had ended many lives.

"...and I saw Adam. So beautiful. He smiled at me, said hello. And I knew that I could give him that gift, that it would be wicked if I withheld it. Even though he might find it on his own. But there's no way to know, is there? But now we know. Saved from a life of suffering and hardship. But John Thomas Groves...he was too old, the voice of the Lord said to me. He would be accountable. He needed time, so lost and confused. But your brother is in paradise now, Eric"

"It was his choice, Isaac. Not yours. None of them were yours to take." Eric began to wonder how fast he could get out of bed, how quickly he could cover the ground between them, his stomach lurching with sickness at Isaac's twisted brand of faith. The kind that served poisoned Kool-Aid and flew planes into buildings.

"I did the Lord's work, Eric. And that work isn't finished. I accepted my imprisonment. Wasn't Paul the Apostle imprisoned? And Peter? Always there are those that live in the darkness that seek to hinder His work. But I was faithful, and He set me free, and you were his instrument. I thought perhaps that you understood. This is why I came back for you, that perhaps God had revealed this to you and you had returned to set me free. I thought perhaps that we were brothers in faith. But I can see now that you're like my mother, a dull yet useful tool in His hands. Goodbye, Eric."

Eric cried out, an unintelligible groan that expressed his pain and rage that no language had words for, and threw off the cover. He rolled off the bed but the sheet remained tangled around his foot and he crashed to the floor, gasping for breath with the air knocked from his lungs. He looked up, expecting an attack but the doorway was empty. He heard the screen door bang and jerked his foot until the sheet let go.