Dwelling Places (17 page)

The camera pans again, as people nod and say amen. Then back to Reverend Francis, who has stepped from behind the pulpit and taken a stance at the very front of the platform. It reminds Kenzie of when Coach Arbuch stands before the gym bleachers to explain something that he wants to explain only once. In contrast, Reverend Francis's face looks full of concern about eternal things, not just rules or warnings.

“When these good people are killed off, then it's clear as day that Revelation has come to pass. This
is
the Tribulation, brothers and sisters. The Anti-Christ is
here,
and he's already got the government in his pocket, the educational system in his pocket, even most of the stores you shop at are in his pocket.”

Kenzie takes notes and glances at Mitchell, who is entranced.

She thinks about earlier in the week, when she worked up the nerve to knock on Mitchell's back door. He welcomed her with a huge smile and soon put water on to boil. He brought out cinnamon rolls, the kind you buy in packages.

“Hey, I want you to watch something,” he said. Then he put a cassette in the VCR.

“What is it?”

“Somebody I think you'll like.” And then the teaching began. After a few minutes, Kenzie pulled her own Bible from her backpack, just to keep up. This guy went through more Scriptures faster than anyone she'd ever heard, even the special speakers who came to the youth group retreats.

It was hard for Kenzie to concentrate on the lesson because she was so thoroughly enjoying herself. Here she was in Mitchell's cozy kitchen, having cocoa and cinnamon rolls, with Mitchell smiling at her the way a real friend smiles, and on top of all that listening to really good Bible teaching. It just didn't get any better than this. When God answered a prayer, he wasn't stingy. When the tape was over, Kenzie hurried home, but they agreed to watch the other tapes together too.

She brings her attention back to the present, as Reverend Francis describes the world they live in—full of people turning from the faith and turning to the occult, controlled by a government that has become atheistic, even anti-Christ. He describes it with such vivid phrases that Kenzie and Mitchell just stare at each other. Then Reverend Francis states that “what I've just read is not from some newspaper, not from some talk show, not from some opinion poll. These prophetic words were given to us thousands of years ago by the Apostle John, and they are right in the Bible you hold in your hand. God
knew
we would need this comfort. He looked ahead at the America we have today, and he told the apostle, ‘John, your brothers and sisters of the future are gonna need these visions. You see before you a vision of what those poor folks will be living in the middle of. So write it down. Write it down. Write it down.'”

Here it is, Halloween night, a night that generally belongs to Satan. But she is safe in Mitchell's house, enveloped in God's Word. After the tape is over, they take turns praying for Young Taylor and all the other kids who are deceived and heading for trouble.

At the end of each tape, Reverend Francis talks of a place where suffering Christians can “rest for a little season.” It's a retreat center his ministry has built, thanks to the generous donations of listeners. “You come to the Haven of Life and Truth, and we will let you rest. We'll feed you on God's Word—we'll even give you a white robe! And we'll prepare you for the battle to come.”

Mitchell's eyes appear to gaze into the future itself. “Sometimes I think that what I need most is to rest a while at Reverend Francis's Haven.”

“It sounds like a wonderful place.”

“Yeah, I'll check it out one of these days.” He smiles at Kenzie. “We can both check it out.”

Kenzie knows that even as she pedals hard and stares straight ahead, her new friend is watching until she disappears down the rise. It is reassuring to know this, because now her night vision has become home to dragons and white horses and demons, foretold by the prophets and winging their way to Beulah even now. Kenzie feels waves of fear from deep in her soul. But more than that she senses a new strength and determination that will give energy and power to her prayers.

Mack

Mack runs past the barn, down beyond the pond. His heart thumps violently, and his legs feel too heavy but labor forward anyway. Behind him he can hear his brother breathing hard, trying to follow him.

“Mack! Wait! You've gotta wait for me!”

But Mack runs anyway. If Alex catches up with him, something horrible will happen to them both. So Mack ignores his brother's cries. Why are they always in trouble? Why are they running? Mack can't understand the sharp pain in his heart, or why he can't bring himself to look at Alex. The sight and sound of his brother cause Mack to hurt all over. And the fear makes his feet keep going.

He wakes up cold, looks at the alarm clock, and sees that it's one in the morning. Alex's voice woke him. But of course not. His brother's voice leaked out of a dream and into this dark, chilly room in the middle of the woods. Maybe Mack's own voice woke him up. He watches his breath drift toward the ceiling. He can still feel his feet pounding over the pasture, can sense Alex just behind him. Mack used to tease Alex when they were small, used to take off when he got tired of Alex tailing him. Mack would just run somewhere, and Alex would yell and try to keep up, but Mack was not only older but faster. It was all in fun anyway.

But in the dream it felt utterly wrong and dark and full of sadness. His brother's voice still echoes around him, clear and desperate. A shudder goes through Mack, and for a few moments he feels that Alex is right beside him, a sensation he's never experienced.

Then again, it's never felt this cold in the stone house. It can't be below freezing. But he's never been alone here in late October—what is it, Halloween? But before, Alex was here with him, or Dad or Young Taylor, or all three. A couple of times he and Jodie stole a night or two, but that was summertime. Another body in the room makes a difference, whatever time of year. He gets out of bed and wrestles with the woodpile, hops around a bit while the fire gets going.

He does all of this without turning on a light. The moon is overflowing the cold sky, and the room seems in the middle of dawn or twilight. As the fire starts and snaps Mack stands at the north window and peers into the woods. There is nothing so still as trees on a frigid night. They appear to be waiting patiently for something—for snow or sunrise or deer.

Mack puts on his coat and boots. The woods look like a dream, a place that holds secrets. Since talking with George, Mack thinks more about dreams and secrets. He still doesn't put much stock in all the talking or in what his tired brain invents when he's not conscious. But most things feel like dreams these days, like locations that are more than they actually are. He walks across the clearing, toward the creek. The twigs and crusty leaves that crackle under his steps send echoes into the web of branches above him. He winces for the noise. A night like this shouldn't be disturbed. He looks for softer places and ends up on the side of the bank. The creek itself lies just over a small ridge. He finds the damp layers of fallen leaves, glued together with mud. His feet make no noise at all.

He comes up over the ridge and notices a tree he hasn't seen before, short and gnarly. How could that be? He knows this place by heart. But the tree moves, and he recognizes the large trunk as a long, dark garment. And what had seemed a broken end, a top without a top, is a face. What he first perceived to be light sky at the end of the
trunk is a face whiter than the moon. Mack sucks in air and feels his eyes grow large to understand what image they are registering.

He is seeing a profile. A man with a colorless face and dark hollows for eyes. The coat falls about the bank where he sits. Midway rest white hands, slender hands. One comes up to touch the nose briefly. This movement jars Mack to his center. His eyes and mind finally come together. He is looking at Alex. Alex, his dead brother. The dream was more than a dream after all. The angles of the face, the gesture of the hand. It is all perfectly familiar. The only things that don't match are the ghostly skin and absent eyes.

From where Mack stands, he knows that a person sitting where Alex sits cannot see him. Behind Mack is the house and trees, not the middle-of-night pale sky. He's come halfway down the bank and blended into the muddy absence of color or shape. He stands, his legs grown straight into the bedrock, and his thoughts gasp and leap. It is Alex. Mack has never believed in ghosts. Such things are not part of his religion or his family's stories. Yet the moon shines clearly on this person only yards away. Foggy breaths whisper from Alex's mouth. Ghosts aren't physical, are they? They wouldn't breathe real air, don't have hearts and lungs. None of this makes sense.

Mack extends his arms behind him and forces his knees to bend enough so that he gradually seats himself against the slope of the bank. This is a hallucination. It's the drugs or the stress or just his crazed mind and heart bursting out of bounds, going places they shouldn't be going. He is not right in his mind. Until now he has believed that things really weren't that bad, that it was mainly fatigue and grief that made his thoughts spin in his head with no place to land. That made him fear his own family, even himself. But this is a critical thing happening to him now. He is seeing, sensing a presence that cannot be. He almost shouts his brother's name, sure that the image will evaporate instantly, but then he realizes that if he has so little control over his mind that this thing could appear, what else might it do?

He should want to see his brother again, to talk with him, to seize the chance to say how much they've all missed him. But he imagines
Alex standing up, facing him, and speaking truth that the living cannot bear.
If only I could have talked to you. If only you had been stronger. If only you had helped me more to manage things.

Mack has to get out of here. He's shivering too violently to move with ease, so he inches backwards up the bank, the sounds of his movement covered by the gurgling of water in the stream. He crawls on all fours over the ridge but stays just the other side of it, where the ground is soft and soundless. He crawls along the bank at least fifty yards, then cuts across and back to the house from the other side. For a moment he considers getting in the car and driving somewhere, driving the roads until dawn, but he needs to get warm first. He all but sits on the stove until the trembling stops. He turns on the lamp by the sofa. He wishes like anything he had strong drink nearby, something to muffle his mind and take his fear away.

An hour goes by. For every minute of it he tries to imagine what Alex is doing. Still sitting beside the water? Walking through the woods? Walking toward him? Standing just outside the door? At three o'clock, he grabs the flashlight and heads for the stream. It has to be someone else. The moon was playing tricks on him. He marches noisily to the place he was before. The bank is empty except for its usual rocks and trunks. No sign of anyone. Mack walks up and down the bank, then cuts through the woods on a return to the house. He walks beyond it to the drive and the old barn. He disturbs the cows, who shift and grunt at him. Pigeons glare down at him from their beds upon the rafters. Mack goes back to the house, suddenly exhausted. He turns the radio on for company, but sleeps almost as soon as he lies down.

Rita

Rita watches Amos hand out Tootsie Rolls to the three youngsters on her doorstep. They are Disney characters, she thinks. She has already given each a handful of assorted wrapped candies and chocolates from the bulk bins at Wal-Mart. Amos brought his coffee can full of Tootsie Rolls and stationed himself in her living room, where he can watch
through the front window for trick-or-treaters and also see through the doorway to the television that's on in Rita's combination family room/dining room. Rita feels like telling him that kids hardly know what Tootsie Rolls are anymore, but she saves her breath. He thinks he's helping. He thinks she wants company. In a way she does, but Amos is clumsy and forgetful, and she feels inclined to look after him. “Company” for her would be someone who needs no looking after. She considers briefly—very briefly—that maybe there's good reason that some women become lesbians as they get older. They just get tired of taking care of men. They'd rather somebody take care of
them
. They find companions who can cook and deal with the house if necessary, somebody who understands the difference between bath salts and Epsom salts.

This afternoon she talked with Jodie, who doesn't bother with treats anymore. The few farm families nearby no longer have small children. Plus, Halloween's not much fun if your own children are too big to dress up and take around. Still, Rita feels abandoned. She and Jodie used to haul Young Taylor and Kenzie all over town and through the countryside too. The kids haven't done that for years, but it couldn't hurt to at least stay in the spirit of the thing. Jodie could have come over and sat here with Rita. They could pass out treats together and just visit in between knocks on the door.

She's got two teenagers and a husband who's not well, plus a job at the school. She doesn't have the time or energy to hang around with anybody, much less her mother-in-law.
Rita worries sometimes that she's turning into one of those old people who feel that everybody ought to love and serve them and who grow resentful at every hint of neglect, such as not getting called on the phone daily or not getting invited to every gathering. She delivers soup to a couple of people like that, and she tells herself at nearly every visit,
Just a little slip in your attitude, and that'll be you.

“Look at that little dollie—I think she's supposed to be Heidi. You know, the little girl who grew up in the Swiss Alps with her grandpa? I just loved that story.” Amos is grinning at six-year-old Stacy Enders,
pigtails bouncing, whose nine-year-old brother, Spiderman, is guiding her up the walk. Their mom, Jennifer, who used to babysit Young Taylor, waits in the idling car.