Resurrection (61 page)

In the end, the walkers dragged off the corpses of soldiers, those dead and those near-death. The 4/1 held and Pearle was still alive, damn them all. The walkers had gotten what they’d come for. When it was over, fires were still burning and the air was a repellent brew of smoke and steam from burning bodies and the dank smell of falling rain, the smell of rotting meat and spilled blood. Bodies were strewn everywhere. Parts of bodies. Limbs and trunks. Mostly from the soldiers themselves. Pieces of the walkers were scattered from inside the sandbagged perimeter right to the prison gates, slithering and worming bits of non-life.

Pearle rallied his forces.

Using entrenching tools, they shoveled the dead into the ditch until their area was clear. Then they lit it all up with the flamethrowers. When it was all burning high and bright, Pearle looked please.

“God bless America!” he called out.

And the rain fell and the perimeter flooded and the mud sluiced in rivers. And behind the prison wall, there was the sound of feeding. Of chewing and tearing, licking and sucking.

It went on all night.

14

“Arrogant, I was, Mitch Barron,” Wanda Sepperly said with some pain knitted beneath her words. “Old age has not only made me soft in the head, made me lapse into dream and lost memory at the goddamnedest times, it has brought me conceit and confidence that I should have no truck with. Do you see what I’m saying to you, son? Is that light bulb popping over your head like in the funnies when I was a girl? I’m saying to you that not only am I often right, but oftener wrong.”

Mitch and Tommy sat at Wanda’s kitchen table while she examined the carcass of a chicken, sprinkling spices and powders into pans of water she had set out. There was weird smell in the air like cinnamon and sage and dried flowers that came from the burning incense pots in the living room. It was so strong in there, it practically made you want to gag. When they came in, Wanda Sepperly told them that they’d have to learn to live with and like that smell, for it was a smell that those outside could not stand. They would stay away, she said, for her medicine was stronger.

Mitch came because he had to find Chrissy.

Maybe Lily was gone, but something told him that Chrissy was not. That she was alive. Wanda had told them earlier that Chrissy would come to him in her own time, but Mitch wasn’t so sure about that. Maybe he wasn’t a seer or a gypsy fortune teller or the neighborhood witch, but he had a real ugly feeling in his guts and he could not seem to shake it. When they got to Wanda’s, she was still awake despite the late hour, candles burning and incense stinking. The Zirblanski twins were sleeping in a back bedroom. “Don’t you worry about waking me, Mitch Barron,” she had said. “The old sleep poorly and such is a fact of life.”

Thing was, once again, she knew why they had come.

“Yer thinking that your young miss is in danger, eh? That crazy old Mother Sepperly is a few plates short of a picnic and has the bats in her belfry? Well, right on both counts. Right as rain. Sometimes I know and sometimes I
think
I know. And sometimes I’m just too damn old to know the difference.”

She went on that way for some time while she gathered her pans of water, her chicken, those spices and what not. By candlelight she spoke of age and error and things gone amiss. And the whole while, Mitch sat there smoking, practically coming out of his skin. He was breathing deeply, trying to calm himself, hearing Wanda and watching the banks of fluttering candles, shadows crawling through his soul and dread growing in him like river grass. He felt so utterly helpless at the whim and witchery of this woman, for she could not be rushed and he knew it and all the while that dread set its teeth into him and showed him the pain of not just losing Lily, but losing Chrissy. Flesh and blood or not, she was
his
daughter and he felt that he was losing her. It was an awful feeling, simply awful. Like being towed out to sea by some monstrous wave and watching the shore getting farther and farther away. No matter how hard you kicked and paddled, it only diminished in the distance. That’s what it was like. Chrissy

and his hope of getting to her

was fading with each passing second and it made him feel powerless, impotent.

“Where is she?” Mitch finally said, his nerves filled with an electricity that he was certain would fry him. “Where the hell is she?”

Wanda put those brilliant blue eyes on him. “That,” she said, “is what I’m trying to find out.”

She dipped the chicken carcass into one of the pans of water and held it up by its twined legs. She just held it there, studying the water that dripped from it. Her eyes had gone funny, misty like moonlight seen through a veil of clouds. It was bright and powerful, that moonlight, but something had darkened it, obscured it. But Wanda kept at it, feeding the coals into the hearth inside her, stirring up sparks and flames, getting a blaze to rise. She dipped the chicken back in, left it there a few moments.

“Do you know what they come to me for, Mitch Barron?” she asked. “Do you know what that gaggle of ladies, young and old, come to me for? What is asked and what is wanted? And do you know why it is always the women and not the men? Why it has always been the women and not the men that come to the village wise-woman or the witch on the hilltop?”

“No,” he said, not really caring.

Wanda smiled and he was almost certain that she knew what he was thinking. “What’s that, Mitch? Gaggle of old hens? Is that what you call my customers? Oh, you nasty shit of a man! Old hens! And me…what’s that? The Old Witch of Kneale Street? Mitch Barron, there should be shame in your heart! Shame!”

Wanda was laughing her ass off now.

Tommy was just shaking his head. “Yeah, what kind of fucking neighbor are you, Mitch?”

Wanda stopped laughing, caught her breath. “Oh, ho, ho, ha, ha! You kill me, Mitch! Sure you do!” She studied her chicken and then looked at him again. “Listen to me, Mitch Barron, it is not the bollocks and cock that wield the whip and it never has been! The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world! It has always been so and will always be! Never the rooster, but the hen! The hen! These women come because they have a spirituality men can never know of nor feel, for it comes with the carrying of child, the birthing of child, with need for unity and continuance of heart. The women come looking for my hand to guide them and my eyes to see what lies ahead. For that path, son, is set with potholes and reaching tree roots that would trip you up, you and those you love. And the women know this, Mitch Barron, neighbor of mine! Men are dull of mind and short-sighted, but women must plan in their hearts, they need to know of future happiness and despair, of love and children unborn and tragedy waiting to swallow their brood whole!”

Tommy looked over at Mitch. “Isn’t that what I’ve said a hundred times?”

“Sometimes you’re funny, Tommy,” Mitch told him. “But this isn’t one of those times.”

Wanda shook her wet chicken at Tommy. “And you have nothing to speak of, Tommy Kastle! I know you think I’m the neighborhood witch and have said as much to Mitch! Why, you said it just after you left my house today, didn’t you? Sure enough! But Mitch…Mitch told you that you had yet to meet the real witch of Kneale Street! Yes, Miriam Blake!”

Tommy just grunted. “Crazy bitch took a shot at us.”

Wanda stared into her pan of water, the droplets that fell from her chicken. “Oh yes, I know that. Don’t I have ears and eyes and a soul that wanders, picking wool and lint from other’s lives? But neither of you boys should be too quick to condemn Miriam. No, her views are extreme and her tongue is sharp, but only because she tries to keep alive the spirit of her husband. Do you honestly think that poor woman likes being some gun-toting, brainwashed hag? She does not! She carries on as she does, keeping her husband’s misguided beliefs and ignorances at full flower. Roger Blake was a fool, not worth two pinches of dogshit in a brown paper bag on a good day…but he was the only thing Miriam ever had to call her own. So she keeps him alive in spirit! But inside? Oh, she is tired and bitter and lonely. Don’t be too quick to judge her, that’s all I say.”

Mitch didn’t really give a shit about any of that and couldn’t honestly make himself care. Miriam Blake was a nutty old bag, end of story.

“So we have to find your girl, Mitch, yes we do,” Wanda said, soaking the chicken again. “But how to capture a girl in mind and spirit? How to read the ripples she leaves in her wake? Should we look for prophecy and prediction in tea leaves and coffee grounds? Should we divine by egg yolks or dropped sticks? By wind and water, wax on a mirror or straw burned in pyre? Should we call up haunts and cast the runes and study the bones of suicides or the menses of young girls? Or should we read moles and fingernail clippings like my Grandmammy Helda? Study the cauls of babies and birth cords as she was known to do?” Wanda just shook her head. “No, we’ll not do that! We’ll read the flesh and the entrails, the skin and gut and bone and hair! For as above, so below, as within, so without!”

Mitch and Tommy just sat there, dumbfounded as usual. Was she on the level or was she just senile? Mitch couldn’t help but feel ridiculous as Wanda studied her chicken carcass for revelation.

“What does this flesh tell you, Tommy Kastle?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Not much.”

“But you see the bumps on the skin?”

“Sure, all chickens have bumpy skin.”

Mitch just nodded. Chickens were bumpy. Once you plucked the feathers away, their flesh was yellow and oddly reptilian to the eye and to the touch.

“Sure, bumps!” Wanda said. “But if you look closely and you know what to see, those bumps form patterns that you can read! Yes they do…”

Her chicken was obviously not from a store. It was headless and plucked, but it still had its guts. Wanda produced a knife and slit it open. Then expertly she slit free gizzard and loops of bowel, examining them carefully. Holding the heart and liver in her palm, squeezing pockets of yellow fat in her fingertips. When she had cleaned out the cavity, she sorted through the cold meat and dropped organs into pans of water, watching the grease settle and coagulate.

“Hocus pocus, you think, Mitch?” she said. “Worse than reading egg yolks? Maybe, maybe. But divination is age-old and trusted. In the Bible, did not the Witch of Endor call up the ghost of dead Samuel via necromancy for Saul? And did not the dreams of Jacob serve the Pharaoh? And did not Jesus himself foresee his own crucifixion and resurrection? And what of the prophets of Israel and their grave warnings? The Greek oracles? King Oedipus and Delphi, the plagues of Thebes? Cicero and Plato and Plutarch? To divine is to be of God and it is as old as the bones of all men.”

Mitch didn’t know what she was talking about exactly.

He hadn’t picked up a Bible since Sunday School and the Greek philosophers just weren’t his thing and never had been. But he listened and accepted, knowing that time and age meant very little to this woman, for she was blessed with something timeless and ageless. She dipped her hands into the greasy, gutty water, balancing intestines in her hands, but not speaking. You could almost sense spirits congregating around her, deathless shades tearing through webs of mold and slipping from ancient tombs to be at her side. There was a vitality and an energy around her and inside her, it kissed that sallow old skin with a blush of pink and her eyes sparkled like sapphires. There was a smell of cold meat in the air, spices and herbs, flaking cerements and blood dried to sand. There was a sweetness and a bitterness, and just beneath it, a foulness as of riven crypts.

The spit in Mitch’s mouth had dried to a film now, for he was smelling things and sensing things, feeling things unseen rustling around him. And then he saw something that he would never have believed if somebody had told him about it.

Tommy saw it, too, said simply, “Shit…”

It was like the other incident where Wanda read those egg yolks, only worse. She had stiffened up, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. She trembled and made a moaning sound deep in her throat. There was a faint hissing sound as of steam and the air stirred around her, her hair blowing about, her dress flapping. And that’s when they saw it…white gossamer filaments coming from her fingertips and mouth and eyes. They grew and curled in the air, knotted and bunched, seeking each other out and joining in a wiry cage that encircled her head. The filaments looked physical, had substance like maybe you could hold them in your hands. But at the same time they seemed ethereal and appeared slightly transparent as if they were made of mist or cigarette smoke. They moved and pulsed, swimming and sliding like cobras in water.

Ectoplasm,
Mitch heard a voice in his head say.
That’s ectoplasm, ghost-threads.

And then as soon as they had appeared, they faded and were gone.

Wanda’s eyes focused and she looked at Mitch and Tommy. Those eyes were blazing and filled with a weird cerulean light. “No, not shit, Tommy Kastle. But the all and the everything. The talent and the gift that has come down my bloodline to me. The ability is in my blood and in my soul. I was taught by my mother as she was taught by hers down countless generations of women. That is how I know as we’ve always known, how I can see when you are blind…”

Wanda went off on another monologue about good luck and bad, about signs and portents and what was written on the wind and carried by the ashes of hearths. She told them that the caw of a raven brings death and disease and two crows circling a house means marriage and birth. Pigeons clustered on a roof are waiting to capture the soul of someone who will soon die and the whippoorwill calling in the dead of night is an indication that malign forces are gathering. The gentle hum of July bees brings good tidings, but the buzz of August wasps and hornets bring evil to the listener. Spiders are sacred to the memory of Athene and must never be killed, chortling frogs foretell passion, just as a gathering of vermin indicate pestilence and cattle sickening in the spring always foreshadow abnormal births or malignant growths to those who own them.