The Lost Village(94)

“It’s over now,” she says, and she sounds on the verge of tears. “It’s over. The time for the resurrection has come.”

I stare at the water. At the faint rings on the surface rolling out toward us.

I don’t know what it is she intends to do with us, but the deepest, most primal parts of me know that she doesn’t plan to leave here with us. Whatever purpose it might serve in those rusted, meandering pathways of her brain, her intention is to kill us.

Aina fixes her eyes on me.

“He promised,” she says, equal parts hopeful and aggressive. “The pastor promised he’d come back if I waited. He said it wouldn’t be long. I didn’t want to stay up there, but he told me to. He told me to.”

She shakes her head and then mutters, despairing, to herself:

“I waited, like he told me. But it wasn’t enough.”

She puts the kerosene lamp down on the floor, lighting the tunnel from below. The light throws her into razor-sharp contrast against the wall of the mine.

I have to keep her talking; so long as she keeps talking, she won’t use the knife squeezed so tightly in her hands.

“You want the others to come back to you,” I repeat, cautiously, trying to keep up with her mutterings. My brain is working feverishly. Thoughts are trying to drag their way out of the thumping bustle that is my mind, but the blow has left it feeling swollen and foggy, and I’m finding it hard to focus.

“Yes!” she gasps. Her face seems to melt into the glare from below her. “They went underground to complete the sacrifice. We were going to be able to live in God’s grace. He said I didn’t need to see it. He said … he said…” She breaks off, and her face contorts into a grimace.

“That’s why they didn’t come back,” she whispers, a sudden vulnerability to her face, a naked anxiety. “We all had to be there to witness the sacrifice, but I wasn’t with them. It was going to be a new testament; we were going to be the new nation. All of the testaments must be sealed in blood, like Christ’s blood on the cross. It was going to purify our sins, you see. But I wasn’t there, so we weren’t all present.” Her thin, wrinkled bottom lip trembles.

I fight to try to find the words.

“It wasn’t your fault, Aina,” I say.

It’s flat and empty, a cliché. But her eyes light up. She shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “It wasn’t my fault. It was her fault. The witch’s.”

I see her grip on the knife harden.

“I tried to repay the debt,” she says, nodding to herself. “I tried to get rid of it, the devil’s spawn. I let them take it away. But it wasn’t enough.” The last part is said almost conspiratorially, like a whispered confidence to a good friend.

Aina puts her other hand back on Tone’s neck and nods to herself.

“The witch brought the rock down on our church. But she couldn’t silence us. Oh no, that much she couldn’t do,” she says, running her gawky fingers and bitten-down nails along Tone’s neck.

“I know what I must do. I must wash the sin away with blood.”

I hold my breath. Her hand works its way, almost tenderly, up into Tone’s hair.

“I said the rites over the other two,” she says. “That redhead girl and the blond boy. They didn’t understand the magnitude of giving oneself to God, but I showed them. They fought it, but I was patient—I didn’t judge them for their ignorance. I said the rites over them so that their sacrifices would count, too. It would have been better down here underground, of course, but God sees us all. He saw my offerings. Life by life.”

The light of the kerosene lamp flickers against the dripping walls.

“I liked her eyes, you know,” she says to me. “The redhead’s. That’s why I left them open. They reminded me a little of the pastor’s eyes.”

She stares at me for a few seconds, then the rest happens very quickly. Her hand turns into a claw, and she grabs Tone’s hair and shoves her down to her knees by the water.

I scream “NO!” but it’s drowned out by the wordless bellow of the walls and the drone of Aina’s voice as she puts the knife to Tone’s neck and pulls her head back:

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—”

I’m shoved into the wall by something storming past me. Robert throws himself at Aina, his bound hands raised. He slams into her forcefully, throwing her off-balance and sending her headfirst into the water.

“Robert!” I shout, and I have no time to think, no time to see anything, because then she’s back above the surface again, hissing and spluttering, thigh-deep in the water.

Robert, however, is struggling to get up on the slippery bedrock; he slips and falls with his bound hands in front of him, and I see him land heavily. Aina lets go of Tone’s matted hair and shoves her toward the other wall. She takes two long strides toward Robert, her teeth bared like an animal.

“You took him,” she says, “you took him from me,” then she shoves him underwater with one knee to his back and holds him there. I see her take his head in both hands and pound it down onto the floor beneath the surface, see the muscles in her withered arms tense and the tendons in her neck tauten, and I throw myself into the water and try to tear her away, grab hold of her arms, but her slight body is stronger than what should be possible, and she claws at my face until my blood starts to run, and when I reach for my cheek in shock she throws me off her.