Unburning: Chapter 53

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At five to nine there are seventeen of us behind the mess hall, along with a stranger wearing khaki pants and a long-sleeved grey t-shirt.

He's standing off by himself at the edge of the light from the kitchen door, dressed like any of the brothers on a work day, with short salt and pepper hair and a craggy, weathered face. Forty-five, maybe fifty. He hasn't eaten a single meal with us, I’d recognize him.

Silas comes out of the kitchen with a coffee and stands next to him for a minute without either of them saying anything. Then he turns around to us.

"This is the man you're looking for. Take a good look at him, because it's the last one you get."

We look. He waits patiently, and shares a glance with Silas that seems to contain more information than we have access to. He doesn't smile or nod at anybody, and when Gabe lifts a hand halfway, like you would to a new guy at a parish dinner, he looks at Gabe's hand until Gabe puts it down.

"Who is he?" Callahan says.

"Somebody who does this for real," Silas says. "He doesn't teach. He works. They loaned him to me for tonight, so say thank you if you find him." He checks his watch. "You won't."

At nine o'clock exactly, the man nods to Silas, and walks out into the dark. He doesn't say anything to Silas and he doesn't look back at us. He steps off the gravel onto the dirt without looking down to see where the gravel ends, and three steps after that I can't hear him.

I don't like him. I can't say why yet, but something about him was setting me on edge.

"Fifteen minutes," Silas says. "Get your eyes used to the dark. No one steps off the porch till I say."

I have my phone tucked into my front pocket, turned off. Nothing in your hands, Silas said, and I’m obeying at least the letter of the law. It's the only clock I've got. I'll take it up with God later.

At quarter past, Silas says, "Go," and we go.

Ocho and I stay close as we go down past the chapel and along the edge of the ball court. There's no moon, but there are more stars than I remember from when I was a kid, and they're enough to show me the shape of the backstop and the outline of the cinderblock storage building. Off to the left, somebody steps on a stick or something that cracks, and somebody else shushes louder than the step was.

At the corner of the ball court, where the fence starts, Ocho stops.

"Okay," he says, low. "Fence guy."

"You sure?"

"Creek. Cabins. You said it, I'm doing it." I can hear him grinning. "If I find him I'm taking all the credit."

"That’s fair.."

"If he finds me, I'm screaming your name."

"Also fair." He smacks me on the shoulder as he moves past, off down the slope toward the creek, and I can hear him for longer than Silas would like. Then he's gone, and it's me and the fence.

I put my hand on the first post.

There are twenty-one posts between here and the corner, and it’s dark enough that I run my hand along the wire carefully because I can’t be certain I’d see them in the dark. The wire is rusty but solid, and the posts are made of cedar gone soft and furry at the top where the weather gets it, and I pause, take a deep breath, and move on, counting again. It's easier than trying to look.

At the ninth post the ground starts to drop and the wire goes down with it into the creekbed, and I go down after it.

The creekbed is sand and river stones, quieter than the oak leaves up top, but uneven enough that I slow down to be careful. I put my weight down and wait for it to settle before I move the next foot, making sure I’m not going to turn an ankle.

Somewhere around the twelveth post I hear somebody up on the bank.

He's above me and to the right, going the same direction I am. He's quiet, but I can hear him. A step. Leaves and a long silence, then another step. I stop with my hand on the post, and he stops too, or he's gotten far enough ahead that I lose him. I wait, and keep waiting. My pulse is loud in my ears for a while, and then it settles. Nothing comes down the bank.

It could be any of the guys. It could be the man from behind the mess hall. It could be Silas, who's out here somewhere seeing how we do, and who has snuck up on me a thousand times in my life without me hearing him.

I count to five hundred and move again, slowly, carefully.

At the fifteenth post the fence climbs out of the creekbed, steep enough that I put one hand on the ground to clamber up over a piece of limestone that juts out and I wince at the noise. By the twentieth I can smell the road, dust something else in the air that’s different from the oak scrub. I crouch at the base of the twenty-first post with my back against it and turn the phone on against my stomach, under my shirt, so the light stays in the cotton.

10:51.

I turn it off and put it back.

The corner post is set deep, and when I put my boot on the bottom wire and my hand on the top of the post, the wire sags hard, but doesn't give. I go over slow and come down on the far side with both feet in the dirt, not the gravel, and stay there a second, listening.

Nothing behind me. Nothing ahead but the turnaround, and the road running off to the left of it, pale gray under the stars. Out from under the tree I can see the road and the verge and the posts of the fence running alongside it.

Fifty yards to go. I stay on the shoulder where it's packed dirt and dead grass, and I walk heel first and roll forward, which is how Silas taught me on a camping trip when I was twelve. It's still loud. Every step sounds like it's going straight back up the fence line. I keep walking.

There's a car at the far end of the turnaround, past an abandoned mattress. It's backed in with its nose to the road, and it's dark.

I’m right on time.

I go around to the passenger side and put my hand on the door, and it opens before I pull. Clarity straightens up as I open it the rest of the way The dome light doesn't come on.

"I took the bulb out," Clarity says. "This afternoon. Get in."

I get in, leaving the door open instead of making noise shutting it. The seat is still hot from the day, and the car smells like ink and dust.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi."

I can just see her. The side of her face, the line of her hair, but the inside of the car is too dark to make out anything else. Eleven days. I didn't know it would matter this much, sitting next to her in a car.

I pull my shirt off over my head. Then the medal. I hold it out in the dark and she takes it.

"Cup holder," she says, and I hear the chain go down into it. "How long do we have?"

"I left the fence at ten fifty-one. Whistle's at midnight. I want to be back over by twenty to."

"Okay." She unscrews the jar. "This is going to be by feel. I'm not putting a light on, not even my phone."

"Good."

"It doesn't have to be exact. It just has to be on you, roughly over the old one." She puts her left hand flat on my chest and moves it an inch to the side, then back. "There. That's close enough. Hold still."

"I know how." I hold out my hand. "Do you want me to hold the ink?"

She doesn't answer, but she puts the jar in my palm, and I hold it level on my knee. The brush goes in, comes out, and touches my chest, cool and wet. It doesn't feel like anything but a brush. Part of me still finds it hard to believe, but I know it’s real.

"Tell me about training," she says. "The parts you couldn't text."

I tell her about the vigil first. The chapel full of candles, the staff in chairs facing us, Vaughn up front telling eighteen men in four sentences that witches are real and the Lodge is dedicated to protecting people from them. Then the catechism. What is a witch? A lie walking. Half the room said it the first time. The other half was still sitting there with their mouths open.

"What did you do?" she says.

"I sat there with my mouth open."

Then Silas, afterward, taking me aside to thank me for acting like it was news. That he wasn't supposed to show me what he showed me when I was a kid. That he's the one who put my name on the list. She doesn't say anything. The brush keeps going.

I tell her about Vaughn's talks on the chapel porch, the iced tea, how he said it wasn't confession and nothing went in a book. I don’t tell her I lied to him. I’m not sure she’d care, but I don’t want think about why. Then it’s on to Monday. Vaughn playing a church lady named Pat, in a kitchen with somebody's kids' drawings on the fridge. Silas at the back door, saying he was from the parish about the funeral lunch. The zip ties.

"They wanted us to get a name," I say. "Somebody she knows. Silas said one name is a door. When it was my turn, I sat down at the table with her so I wasn't standing over her. There was a glass on the drainboard. I filled it and held it for her while she drank, because her hands were tied. And I asked her about her sister, and her pie. It took me nine minutes to get the sister's name."

The brush stops.

It stays stopped long enough that I look over at where her face is, even though I can't see it.

"Clarity?"

"Keep going," she says. "I'm listening."

"That's all of it. Silas told everybody to look at how I did it. Vaughn said I'd have had him." I put my thumb against the side of the jar. "I didn't do anything but talk to him. Er, to her, the person Father Vauhn was playing." I take a deep breath, let it out silently.

The brush starts again. Three more lines, slower than before, and then it lifts off and doesn't come back.

"Done," she says. "Don't shower till morning." She takes the jar out of my hand and caps it, and I hear paper.

"Here’s the decoy," she says. "Same as before. Four, deepest first."

The first sheet goes flat against my chest under her palm, rice paper, still a little cool. I count with her without either of us saying the numbers. Ten breaths. She peels it. The second. Ten.

"Your turn," I say. "Tell me about the circle."

"It’s grown." She says it on an out breath, between counts. "It was twenty the first time. Twenty-six on the third. Thirty-one and a half the week after that. Esther came out last Thursday with two of the others to show them. Reyna brought a mouse."

"A mouse?"

"A little white one. Esther let it go at the edge and it ran straight across, and it was fine. It ran out the other side and Esther caught it, and it was fine. Then Esther walked in herself." The third sheet goes down. "And then Reyna did. Nothing happened to either of them."

"So it doesn't kill things."

"Not anymore. Or not mice, or queens." She's quiet for a breath, two. "So now more people know about it, but we still don’t know anything about it, really."

"What are they doing about it?"

"Watching it. They put a ring around it, a couple hundred yards out, salt and stones and little white flags. If anybody crosses, it tells Esther and me which way they came, and maybe more if they get close." The fourth sheet, her hand flat on it. "They think somebody made it. Some practitioner. They think if they watch long enough, whoever did it will come back to look at their work."

"But they're not trying to stop it."

"They don't know how to stop it without making it worse." Ten. She peels it. "It's not enough. I know it's not enough."

"It’s not your fault," I say.

She puts the papers back in the bag and zips it, and she leans back in her seat for the first time since I got in.

I check the phone against my stomach. 11:31. "I have to go," I say.

"I know."

My shirt's on the floor by my feet. I reach for the medal in the cup holder, and she reaches for it too. Our hands bump in the dark, and neither of us moves.

Then gravel, outside.

Somebody's coming down the road from the corner, fast and not careful at all, like he's following something and thinks he's almost got it.

Clarity goes still next to me. I have the medal in one hand and the shirt in the other and nothing on, and ink drying on my chest that nobody can touch. There's nowhere to go.

The footsteps stop at the back of the car. Then they come around to my side, as my heart pounds and I try to think of a plan, any plan.

"Robin?" Ocho says. Then, a lot louder, delighted: "Bro. What are you doing?"

I turn toward her in the dark.

"I'm so sorry," I murmer, and I lean forward and kiss her.

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That's all for now...

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