Boys in the Valley(14)

“He’ll die long ’fore we get there,” Baker says, his fingers anxiously working the brim of his hat that he removed upon entering. “I’d say he’s got minutes to live, not hours, and it’s a three-hour ride to town. My next stop would be the Hill farm, but I don’t even know if he’d make it that far, and John doesn’t have any experience . . . well, with this kind of thing.”

Poole nods sagaciously, his eyes bright now, alert.

Andrew feels there’s something happening here other than a sick man, something being held back from him. He’s well aware of Poole’s time as a young hospital steward during the war, having heard countless retellings of battlefield horrors, terrifying deaths. Poole has done his share of surgery on dire men, but it was the priesthood—not the world of medicine or the field of battle—which called him home once the war ended. Andrew doesn’t know what ails the man the sheriff spoke of, but he must be desperate indeed to call upon a priest who last practiced medicine forty years in the past.

But he also has the feeling it’s not just medical treatment—not exactly—that the sheriff is referring to.

What is this man bringing to our door? Andrew thinks worriedly, but his thoughts are interrupted by an urgent-sounding Poole.

“Start at the beginning for Andrew, Sheriff. I must put on a garment.”

“Father, we don’t have much time,” the sheriff says as Poole shuffles away into the dark.

He does not stop, but only throws up a hand, his voice vacuous in the large room. “Then speak quickly! I’ll be no good to you frozen.”

Andrew rests a hand on Baker’s arm, hoping to calm the man. He only now notices how fervent he appears—his constantly-shifting eyes, the sweat running from his beaded brow, the hunched posture of someone being beaten, or hunted. Andrew forces himself to speak calmly, soothingly. “Just tell me what happened, Sheriff. Speak generally, if you must.”

The Sheriff sighs, eyes downcast, and Andrew once more notices the men standing past the open doorway beyond him, frowning and shuffling their feet like fearful children. They’re as skittish as the sheriff, he thinks. And is that mud that spatters their faces, or blood?

“We’ve come from the hills. From the forest,” Baker begins, drawing Andrew’s attention back to him. “Full bore the whole way back, but now the horses are run out and, as I said, we have a dying man in our care.”

Andrew nods for the sheriff to continue.

“Well, we went out there in the late evening looking for a young girl who’d been taken from a home just outside town.” Baker looks up, and Andrew is shocked to see tears in the grizzled man’s eyes. “She was only three years old, Father.”

Andrew swallows and spares a glance back to the darkened hallway, hoping for Poole’s expedient return. He chooses, for now, not to comment on the sheriff’s use of the past tense as it pertains to the girl.

“Anyway, a farmer out that way sent his son to me with word. He’d seen some odd things in the trees near their home. Men and women . . . fires . . . screams. Strange things. So, me and three other men rode out there . . .”

Baker shakes his head, takes in a breath. Andrew waits, his serene face belying his quickening pulse.

“It was awful, Father.” Baker’s voice cracks, turns pleading. “Hellish. There . . . there was a group of ’em. They’d . . . oh sweet Jesus, Father . . . they’d sacrificed her.”

Andrew’s blood turns to ice water, a spider-like chill crawls up the knobs of his spine. He swallows hard, thinks of reaching out a hand, to comfort the distraught man, but refrains. Part of him fears that his own hand would be shaking. “You say sacrificed?” he asks, trying to stay resolute. “Not murdered?”

Baker wipes his nose, taps his hat against his hip. “She was stripped naked, Father. And bound with straps to a flat stone. Tied down. And . . .” Baker pauses, lets out a breath, then rushes on. “They’d been cutting her, Andrew. The cuts were . . . patterns, I guess. Symbols of some sort. Deviltry. It was Satan’s work; I’d swear on it. Anyway . . . the man we’ve brought here? He was drinking her blood.”

Andrew tries to reply, to think of something—anything—to say, but his thoughts are a maelstrom, his head numb with the horror of what he’s being told. “Sheriff . . . I . . .”

But the sheriff plows forward, as if needing to get through the story, to purge the memory from his mind one last time. “We killed them all.” Baker’s eyes, which were widened and distant during his retelling, now go hard as flint. “We slaughtered the bastards where they stood. I never gave the order . . . hell, I hardly remember . . . we all just started firing. No one thought about it, no one questioned it. That girl was opened up, Father. I could see her heart.”

Footsteps behind him. Andrew turns to see Poole hurrying back. Thank heaven.

Behind him another, larger shadow emerges. Johnson. Sheriff Baker turns and motions to the men outside, and they disappear into the dark.

“This man you’ve brought,” Andrew says, eyeing Poole as he arrives. “The one you spoke of. He survived?”

Baker starts to reply, then stops as loud grunts and curses carry from outside, loud enough to be heard over the wind, which has elevated to a whining howl. Andrew hears the anxious whinny of a horse, the blown lips and foot stomps of another. Suddenly, three shadow-faced men block out the doorframe. Andrew raises his lantern, and his eyes widen in shock.