“What’s all this, then?”
I turn to my left, toward the voice. David has woken, standing on the other side of my cot, staring out the next window. His head is tilted toward the graveyard, and I assume he’s seeing the same things I am, but I have no answer.
“Hey!” Another voice calls out to my right. “It’s Bartholomew!”
A small group of boys have grouped against the window to my right, all of them staring outward, gawping and excited. More boys leave their beds and jostle past me for position, relieving me of my view of the graveyard.
Distracted as I was by the strange men and the bodies, I had forgotten about seeing Johnson stalking out for Bartholomew. I look that way now and understand why it’s gotten the others so worked up.
Bartholomew stands in the snow, still as a statue. The gaping mouth of the hole’s hatch still open behind him, Johnson readying to drop it back into place. I study the thin boy as he walks, seemingly unbothered, through the blanket of snow toward the orphanage. Johnson, seemingly surprised to be left behind, hurries to catch up, walking in stride with the boy. He asks him something, but Bartholomew doesn’t respond.
As they get closer, Bartholomew tilts his head upward, toward the dorm windows.
I try to imagine what he’s seeing: pale faces through distorted glass, hands pressed in curiosity and greeting, all eyes following his crossing back to us, to warmth and comfort. To reality.
I get jostled again but hold my place. Something about what I’m seeing strikes me as odd, but I can’t put my finger on it. I rub a sleeve across the glass, wiping clear a patch fogged by a thin film of condensation.
Bartholomew is close now, almost beneath us. He still stares upward, and for a moment it feels like he’s not only studying the windows, but looking at me directly. I can’t help the sensation that he’s meeting my eye.
I realize then what’s off about him—something I’ve never seen from a boy who just spent a long, cold night in the hole.
He’s smiling.
14
ANDREW WATCHES POOLE AND THE SHERIFF WITH A dreamlike disconnect.
He’s exhausted, emotionally and physically trampled, and still reeling in partial disbelief over the events he witnessed only hours ago.
The deputy Paul Baker had stabbed in the neck was dead. Paul Baker, also, was dead. The sheriff and his two remaining deputies had apologized to Father Poole, and to Andrew, for bringing horror to their doorstep. It was obvious they’d had no idea what they’d been up against.
Andrew is convinced Paul Baker had been possessed, which was implausible but—as he’d been taught many times over, with acute examples and firsthand accounts—nowhere near impossible. Demons were out there, an infestation among the people on the planet, the remnants of a battle fought since before the existence of man, a war that raged on every day. In Andrew’s mind, there was simply no logic, no hidden rationale, that accounted for the injured man’s strength, or his ability to continue living and breathing despite brutal physical damage. His strange vocal emanations and his violent, painful reaction to Poole’s attack, fueled by nothing more than prayer and blessed water, were inexplicable.
The discussion now, in the early morning light, is about burial. Sheriff Baker wants to bury his brother at the orphanage, and return the body of the deputy to his family in Chester.
“No one but me is gonna mourn him,” Baker says, nodding toward the graveyard. “Rather he be buried out here, in the open, near a holy place. Maybe his soul will find rest.”
Finally, Poole agrees, albeit reluctantly.
Meanwhile, Andrew grows more anxious about the children. It’s getting late in the morning and he knows they’ll be waking up, expecting to be told the day’s responsibilities, to be fed a meager breakfast.
But it had taken hours to clean up the mess. The kitchen staff had been woken by Johnson, and despite being horrified by the scene, they had nonetheless proceeded to sponge blood from the walls and floors. With Johnson and Andrew’s help, they wrapped the bodies and brought them outside. Poole’s mattress and bedding had been dumped behind the orphanage with other trash meant for burning, replaced by a mattress from the spare guestroom.
The bedframe, and its broken, jagged bedposts, remained.
Poole had insisted upon it.
“Let it serve as a reminder of the work we have left to do in this world,” he’d said. “A reminder of the strength of the evil we fight against.”
As Poole agrees to bury the diseased man in the orphanage graveyard, Andrew holds back a shudder. He has no wish to be reminded of last night’s battle, of the poor man’s mutilated body, that sonorous voice betraying the hidden voices within, the pure evil of his enraged face, those blood-splotched eyes.
Regardless, it is Poole’s decision to make, and he will abide by it.
The two remaining deputies load their murdered associate into the wagon, gently lay him down where the sheriff’s brother recently lay, bound and hooded. When Sheriff Baker isn’t looking their way, Andrew sees one of the men spit on Paul Baker’s corpse.
He can’t say that he blames him.
Sheriff Baker shakes Poole’s hand, tips his worn, brimmed hat toward Andrew, and gives orders to what remains of his posse.
As the riders and wagon pull away, the dead deputy’s horse tethered behind, Paul Baker’s body lies on the ground where they’d left it. A parting gift from their late-night visit.
“I’ll have Johnson and the kitchen man Stewart bury him this morning. No need for the children to see a body lying around,” Poole says wearily, exhaustion etched deeply into his face. “A horrible thing,” he says, as he and Andrew watch the sheriff and his men ride off. The wagon rattles and bumps over the snow-covered road, the wrapped body rolling and swaying in the rear.
“Should we ready the children, Father?” Andrew isn’t sure what the day will look like. Everything feels out of sorts, and although he’s too tired to analyze the true events of what occurred during the night, he feels it’s important the children not be affected.
“No,” Poole says, staring at the distant horizon, Baker and his men already small shadows pushing up the gentle slope of the valley road. “I think we all need a day to recover, including the children.”
Andrew looks at him questioningly, and Poole chuckles softly.
“I’ve been doing this a few decades longer than you, my son. I guarantee you those kids heard a good amount of what went on last night. Johnson told me this morning he’d spotted the two oldest boys spying from the top of the stairs.”
“Peter?”
“Yes, and David. An unlikely pairing, those two. But good boys.”
Andrew nods. “Peter will make a fine priest. It’s my hope he’ll stay on. He’s good with the young ones.”
Poole nods but says nothing. After a moment, he turns back toward the orphanage. “I must rest, Andrew. I think you should, as well. Neither of us have slept, and tomorrow will be a big day.”
Andrew turns away from the horizon to follow Poole’s departure, and sees Bartholomew and Johnson are stepping inside. Somewhat surprisingly, Andrew notices that Bartholomew looks none the worse for wear. Still, maybe Poole is correct. They could all use a day to rest and reflect. Tomorrow, after Mass, he’ll be going to the Hill farm for supplies, and for that journey he’ll need to be refreshed. Even if he is planning on enlisting help.