The Hollow Ones(72)

“This is arson,” said Solomon, but there was nothing to fight the fire with. The smell was overpowering in the small space.

Solomon got out fast. Blackwood was behind him. Solomon was figuring out what to do. Call in the volunteer fire department first. Question Pastor Eppert, but away from the tensions outside. Arrest Hugo Blackwood. How was he going to keep this situation from exploding into violence?

He exited the sacristy, back into the main part of the church, just as the pastor, with his silver blaze in the middle of his black hair, returned inside. “What are you doing back there?” his voice boomed. “What is the meaning of this?”

Solomon pointed at the pastor accusatorily, his own voice rising to match. “Confess what you’ve done!”

The pastor stopped in his tracks before the altar. “I am the one people confess to,” he said.

“Confess and go quietly or else I swear I will throw you to the mob out there.”

Pastor Eppert looked at Hugo Blackwood stepping up beside Solomon. “Who is this man with you? Get out of my church. This is a house of worship, and you will leave immediately. Call the sheriff, Mother!”

Only then did Solomon realize that the organ music had stopped. But nothing could stop Solomon, his anger rising, walking toward this man of God.

“Vernon Jamus was the best Sunday school student, you said. He was ‘the best of us,’ you said.”

Pastor Eppert stared back at Solomon, never before having been confronted in such a way in his own church. “And he was.”

“You said you sensed evil,” said Solomon. “You said you saw ‘the devil’s hand in this.’ Well, now, so do I.”

The smell of smoke and rotting eggs reached the pastor’s nose. “What is that?” he said, sniffing. “My God, what have you done?”

“What have you done?” said Solomon, gripping the pastor by his collar.

But Pastor Eppert was defiant. “I tried to help him!”

Blackwood was at Solomon’s side. He said, “The corruption of an innocent, of something pure. He was used as a conduit, a conductor. You needed him to serve as a circuit through which vengeance could be enacted…conducting the spirits of the slaves whose blood and sweat founded this church. You used Vernon Jamus as an instrument in this dark rite. Just as you are being used now.”

Blackwood reached out to Pastor Eppert, his hand near his face, palm open, fingers curled in a beckoning motion.

Solomon looked back and forth between the men, not understanding.

Blackwood uttered a few words in Latin, a chant, his voice dropping an octave as he did.

Pastor Eppert’s eyelids fluttered. His pupils dilated and rolled back into his head. He went limp, sinking to the floor, held up only by Solomon’s hands on his shirt. Solomon caught him and laid him down beside the pews.

“What in the hell…?” Solomon straightened next to Blackwood. “What did you do?”

Blackwood was looking up at the rear balcony. In most churches the organist sits with his or her back to the congregation and the organ faces the altar. This organ, with pipes of graduating height, faced the other way, obscuring the musician playing it.

The organist appeared, descending the staircase to the left. She seemed to float down the stairs, which were divided into two half-flights switching direction halfway to the bottom. Her hair was silver to her shoulders, but with a natural-looking stripe of silky black in the front: the reverse of Pastor Eppert. “Mother,” as he called her, was his wife, a few years older than he was, if any. She wore a choir robe that was maroon and knee-length, of a completely different cut from the white robe found in the backward, back room altar.

The rotten egg smell permeated the church now, not the smoke so much, but ashes. Swirling around the church like glowing blackflies. The pastor’s wife moved with incredible stillness, as though pulled forward by invisible hands. Her chin rested on her chest as though she were asleep.

Blackwood had removed a leather kit from his jacket pocket. Solomon was only vaguely aware that he had unfurled it on a pew.

Mother reached the rear center of the church, in the aisle between the two rearmost pews. Her arms hung limp, her feet arched, balancing perfectly on the tips of her toes as though supported by ballet shoes, not sandals.

Blackwood moved into the center of the aisle, facing her across a distance of fewer than ten feet.

He turned his head a fraction toward Solomon behind him, saying over his shoulder, “Do not look into her eyes.”

Solomon looked at Mother as her chin lifted off her chest. Her eyes were open and pure white. Solomon was transfixed and could not look away. If the woman was blind, she must have adopted a mystic sixth sense, because she faced Blackwood directly. She opened her mouth to speak, but Blackwood spoke first.

“Non butto la cenere…”

I do not throw the ashes…

“Ma butto il corpo e l’anima Abdiel…”

But I throw the body and soul of Abdiel…

“Che non n’abbia più pace…”

That he may no more have peace or happiness…

As he continued his incantation, Blackwood reached into the pouch he had pulled from his leather kit. He sprinkled a fine powder before him like a farmer sowing seeds. The powder drifted toward Mother, who stood fast, as though compelled to do so by Blackwood’s voice.