A Latent Dark (15 page)

There was another knock and John pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

“What now?” he said.

He heard the door open, followed by a young female voice. “Father?”

John lowered his hands and blinked at the girl. She was in her teens and remarkably attractive. He fished in the back of his mind for her name as she entered the room. Her face sagged with concern.

“Hello…
Sarah
,” he said. He stood and offered her a chair.

She wore a flowing yellow dress that swayed seductively despite her self-conscious attempts to appear modest. She perched on the edge of the seat, hands in her lap.

“What has the Reverend Inspector put you up to today?” he said. “An inventory of sacramental wine storage? How about a roster of the deacons, their names and addresses… again? Or last week’s sermon copied in triplicate perhaps?”

Sarah ignored him and looked at the ground as if trying to remember all the lines of a song before a performance.

John cleared his throat. “What can I do for you?”

“Father,” she said. “I’m wondering…” She looked around the room nervously then leaned forward, her voice low. “I’m not really here on the Reverend Inspector’s behalf today.”

“Alright…” he said, bracing himself for unseen traps.

“I… I’m wondering if it’s possible to forgive sin… preemptively?”

John sat upright in his chair. “Well,” he started slowly. “According to scripture, that was the entire point of the crucifixion. It was a sacrifice to forgive all sins. That includes past, present, and future.”

“So, God knows all the sins I will commit even before I know?” She gave him a troubled look, and John felt the back of his neck prickle with concern.

“That’s one way to look at it. But in all fairness, He does know everything.” He smiled despite his discomfort. “In the end, we do have a choice, Sarah, free will and all. God might know very well what will become of us based on those choices, but He gives us the choice to change it nonetheless.”

She thought about this for a long time, her forehead in a knot. “But, if God knows that I am about to sin, and forgives me anyway, why can’t I just choose not to sin?”

“Like I said, free will—Sarah, is someone making you do something you aren’t entirely comfortable with?” He leveled his gaze on her.

She gave a shy smile, her blue eyes resigned to whatever decision she had made. She shrugged her shoulders as if attempting to squeeze out the next question, her eyes drifting to the crucifix on the wall.

“What if I’m doing it for The Church? Then it’s not really a sin is it?”

John shifted in his chair. “What are you planning to do, Sarah?”

“Nothing, yet,” she said, twisting a piece of her dress with a nervous hand. “I’m just curious.”

“That’s good,” said John. “I hope you don’t. In fact, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You do understand that right?”

She nodded earnestly, her golden hair lapping over her shoulders. 

“I understand, Father,” she said, standing up. She started to the door and then stopped, looking at the floorboards, her head half-turned. Her hand rested delicately on the handle.

“Father,” she added. She began to say something and then seemed to change her mind. “You’re a really great listener. Thank you.”

And with that, she ducked out of the doorway. A few moments later John went to the door to ask more questions, but she had gone.
A great listener
, he thought,
and yet completely impotent when it comes to protecting a flock of one.

This whole situation was getting more and more ridiculous. First, there was the fire, then the delays, and now
this?
The archbishop’s letter was a warning for sure, but his friend’s invitation was clear. Maybe Christopher would have some answers. He called for Julian and informed him that Father Gladwell would be needed to cover the service that night.

“I should be back tomorrow. I have a meeting with the archbishop across town and I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

Julian gave another wide-eyed nod and dashed off.

*

While walking through the city John thought of his mother, who died of pneumonia when he was ten. He thought of coughing and blood, of religion and magical cures. He thought about the money he had stolen from the church coffers to buy a potion from the friendly salesman in his red and gold carriage. The potion was nothing but water, some bits of dandelion floating in a white cloud at the bottom.

It had done nothing but make him feel better—and maybe that was the point. As a child, John wanted the comfort more than he wanted the truth, even if the truth stared at him every night wrapped in red stains on white bed sheets. No gilded gates, no harps and wings.

I make my living from peddling delusion
, he thought.

The Reverend Summers seemed one far more interested in selling mirrors and miracle cures. There were big profits in marketing the afterlife.

The sound of burnt wood crunching beneath his feet brought him to an abrupt halt. He looked up, surprised to see the charred ruins before him. In his wandering, his feet had carried him unconsciously to a street corner in the Industrial Wedge—the Gutter Wedge, the Nameless Wedge. The factories had been firing up one by one. An airship hung, bloated on a leash, tethered in the air above one smoky building.

Jagged ruins that had once been walls sprouted up like skeletal fingers. He had known it was here, everyone had, somewhere in their minds. But this was the first time he had actually
seen
it.

The remains of Skyla’s home sat in a lush green yard scattered with tires and old cans. It didn’t look quite as “burnt to a crisp” as the Reverend Summers claimed.

He stepped across the charred floor, feeling the damp charcoal crunch and squish under his feet. Nothing burned forever; the evening rains and mist saw to that. Now what remained was a sort of blackened swamp.

The stairs had not completely collapsed, but it looked as though the upstairs room had fallen into the kitchen. He approached the first step and noticed a ragged gash along the wall of the stairwell. It looked as though someone had dragged a pickaxe across it.

It took something big to do that sort of damage
. Apparently the Reverend Inspector hadn’t been lying about that. According to Lyle, Skyla’s mother had been immolated, but John saw no evidence that a body was, or ever had been there; nothing to suggest a body had been removed either.

Why would he lie about this? Is he just trying to buy time? And enough time to do what?

Something caught his eye, a cigarette butt on the ground. The stub was crushed and damp, but intact. John picked it up as he noticed the unmistakable tire tracks of a car.

He’d have me believe that he came here as the house was burning, parked his car at the front door, just feet from the flames and had a smoke? Does he think I’m stupid?

The police wouldn’t be investigating any of it, not with The Church involved. Half the town wanted her dead after that day in the chapel, probably even before that. John picked up the spent cigarette and found another, on the charred floor, burnt and black, held together by the moisture alone. He grabbed that one as well and wrapped both in a handkerchief. Maybe the archbishop knew about all this, even authorized it. John knew that Chris could do that if he wanted to—but would he?

John turned and walked back up the street, the house fading from his mind as it drifted into the distance and out of his periphery. Fondling the cigarettes in his pocket, lost in thought, the priest failed to noticed the flier that blew past him. It stuck to a blackened board, held in place by dew. On it was the picture of a missing girl. She was roughly Skyla’s age, with wavy hair and a quizzical smile. Beneath the picture were the words:

MISSING: MELISSA MONTEGUT—DAUGHTER OF HAROLD AND FRANCINE MONTEGUT

Chapter 10

She sat above Marley, her feet dangling from the bunk. It had only been a couple of days, but she was already antsy to get out and see the city.

“You said ‘no’ yesterday,” she said, looking down at him.

“The answer is still no,” said Marley. “Not without an escort anyway.”

“Well, then escort me.”

“I have a pub to run,” he grumbled, shuffling something in the pantry below her mattress. “I don’t have time to whisk little girls off into the city.”

Skyla considered bonking him on the head with her heel. She leaned over and grabbed what was left of her shoes and showed him. They looked more like small dead animals than shoes anymore. To drive the point home, a buckle fell off and rattled on the floor. Marley paused to look at it.

 “If you really need new shoes, I can have someone fetch you some.”

“I can go alone,” she said. “I can defend myself just fine.”

Marley cracked a grin. “You can, can you?”

She glanced at the rings that encrusted his hand and felt sheepish.

“I can handle myself.”

“I’ll bet you’d kick the snot out of any ten-year-old.”

She thought for a moment, and then her face brightened. “Dale can watch the tavern.”

Marley laughed so loud she felt her bed vibrate. “Sure, I’ll just invite the thieves’ guild to look after my safe while I’m at it, maybe grab a stray dog to guard the pantry.”

“Well I can’t work for you barefoot,” she said. “Between the exposed nails and the broken glass it’s a miracle that I haven’t caught some disease. Don’t you have to go into town anyway to get supplies?”

“We get a supply cart once a week.”

“So tell them I need
shoes
,” she said. She tugged on the torn fabric of her school outfit. “And clothes? All I have is what I’m wearing. I’m starting to look like some of your customers… and smell like them as well.”

She was right. Marley knew she was. His broad white mustache shifted up and down as he thought about what the patrons might think. It certainly didn’t look good keeping the girl around like some slave.

He grumbled as he scratched his chin. “I suppose the delivery would never get here in time… and you’d have to try them on, of course.” He let out a great sigh.

He dug a hand into his pocket, pulled out a coin purse the size of her fist and plopped it into her open palm. It was more money than Skyla had ever seen in her life.

“And you’ll want this.” He grabbed his finger with the opposite hand and pulled. One of his enormous silver rings slid off, leaving a pale indentation below the knuckle. “You wear this on your thumb or on a string or something. Keep it somewhere people will see it.”

She held the ring in her hand. The surface along the sides displayed a decorative pattern, which twisted up to the wide plate on top. The centerpiece was of a man’s face, screaming, a fist emerging from deep within his throat. Some of the recesses in the engraving were crusted with what could have been dirt or dried blood.

She looked at Marley and then scrambled back to her rucksack where she pulled out a dusty length of twine. She fashioned a necklace and dropped it over her head. The weight of the ring pressed against her chest.

“Make
sure
people can see it.” He gave the makeshift necklace an appraising look.

“What’s it from?”

“It’s a fighter’s ring,” he said, no pride in his voice. “Only two ways you’d have that ring—if I gave it to you, or you killed me. Either way, it should keep away trouble… probably keep the vendors honest as well.”