Hallowed Ground

Chapter Fourteen

Colleen Daisy Tranter woke in darkness.

There were things that needed to be done, things, she was sure, that needed to be said, but she wasn’t in a mood for doing or saying. She lay in the darkness and tried to get her bearings. When she'd first come under the influence of Silas Boone, she'd been young, and pretty, a girl of only eight years. She'd also been afraid of the dark. Nothing about Silas Boone, or the life he'd given her, had provided a reason to let go of that fear. Some fears were worth holding onto. It didn’t matter that she was twenty-three, not eight, or that the years had stolen her beauty. She hadn’t felt pretty for a long time. The darkness had become a constant companion, fuelled by her imagination and full of horrors just beyond her sight.

She lay still, listening and remembering; the world moved around her but she was removed from it. The sounds of the darkness were far from comforting. Still, she listened to the unfamiliar grunting and sighing of the Deacon’s flock as they moved about their labors. There were those more comfortable working, and living, by night. They worked to the sound of the lonely caws of the crows, a melancholy song if ever there was one, and to the distant ghosts of music and laughter far away on the other side of Rookwood. She heard all of this, and she listened, but she captivated by the voices of the Deacon’s freaks.

It wasn’t just the darkness, or the strange dislocated sensation she'd felt since awakening that frightened her now. It was where she was and the knowledge of who she was with. Her thoughts returned to The Deacon . . . she felt the ghost of his touch on her breast. It was the least sexual of contacts she had ever experienced. And yet . . . and yet it had gone deeper than physical contact. He had had been inside of her, reached into her soul. That was the only way she could think of it. He had reached into her soul and he had healed it, somehow. She didn’t understand, but on some instinctive level she knew understanding wasn't necessary.

What was important was that she had answered the holy man’s call. She remembered the incense and the smoke, and some of the words, the Deacon telling the congregation that she walked in the darkness – how right that had sounded to her - and most of all, the overwhelming power of his voice. She'd felt a physical need to approach him, as though some part of her soul needed to be with him. That was the one undeniable truth. She had gone to him because she had to – something deep inside her had compelled her.

But she hadn’t been ill; the Doc had checked her out a dozen times in the last year as part of the service he offered Boone. She’d been given a clean bill of health every time, maybe accompanied by some unguent for the stinging in her private parts, and a stiff brandy to purge any lingering bacteria. The worst she'd had was a dose of the clap, hardly life threatening.

The memory of The Deacon's hand on her breast lingered. She recalled that tiny flare of light shared between the two of them as he touched her – how she'd stepped into that touch.

And out of the light, the serpent.

Had she been dying inside, slowly? Was that it? Had there been some sort of cancer eating away at her while she was oblivious to it? She didn't know what the serpent had been, but she felt its absence, and marvelled.

‡‡‡

Before long, the freaks found her.

It was as though thinking about The Deacon drew them to her.

There were three of them, sisters of grief, mourning and lament. Suffering was etched into each of their faces, the lines of their lives ground in hard. Their stories were inked in pain, and scored into their skin.

"The Deacon wants you," the tallest of the three said, "and he is not a man that likes to be kept waiting."

"Patience is not his virtue," the shortest echoed.

The middle one said nothing.

Colleen pushed herself up out of the blankets and tried to stand, but her legs were weak and they buckled beneath her. She would have sunk back down onto the bed but the sisters didn't let her. They swooped in, withered little arms slipping out from beneath the black folds of their mourning dresses to grasp her at elbow and thigh. Then with strength that belied their brittle bones, they hauled her up to her feet.

The chill of the night air hit her like a physical slap, stinging her back to awareness.

"Best not to keep him waiting," the tallest said, steering her by the elbow.

She followed, dragging her feet. She felt nauseous. Her head spun. She looked down at her feet as they swam in and out of focus.

"Head up, girl," the shortest sister told her, and with a bony finger under the chin lifted it. "And smile, he saved your life. Be thankful."

Still the middle sister said nothing. She walked, stern faced and forbidding, two steps behind, pushing Colleen forward every couple of steps when she faltered. The Deacon’s camp was a hive of concentrated activity, his misfits laboring with crates and baskets and hauling on guide ropes as they erected another canvas construction. It wasn’t a pavilion, though it was similar in size to the Deacon’s private tent. The sisters steered her through a line of wagons and lean-tos

At one a curious-looking dwarf in colourful patchwork of pants splashed paint over the side of a wagon. He might have been painting a rainbow or hiding a world away in the spiral of colors and she would never have been able to tell. Colleen stopped and smiled, earning another firm shove in the back. The dwarf inclined his head and assayed a paint-dripping bow. It brought a smile to her lips.

She tried to keep it in place. She really did.

As the tent flaps were drawn back and she stumbled into the Deacon’s private pavilion, she did her best to summon the same smile she used on the johns to lure them between her legs. That half-smile died on her lips. There was no lust in the man’s eyes as he looked up from nursing the baby in his arms.

"Ah, Colleen, I see the good sisters found you," the Deacon said, without rising. He put his finger between the child’s lips so that it might suckle. "Come in, join me. Sisters, you have done me a kindness but you are not needed now, the night is yours, go, play, have fun."

The notion of the three women being capable of fun was almost absurd. Colleen stifled an impolite chuckle.

She sat on the edge of the mattress, not quite beside him. There was something unnerving about the draw the man exerted. It went beyond the sexual. She had felt lust before. She knew what it meant to want to open herself to a man. It wasn’t like this. She wanted him inside her, yes, but not there, not like that. She struggled to put words on the thought. It was an almost spiritual yearning. It felt as though some part of her resided in him and called out to her to make it whole.

"How are you, my dear?"

How was she? It was a simple question but she couldn’t answer it. Not honestly.

"Well." She said. It was the best of lies, but then she always had been a good liar. He seemed to know she was lying. He smiled indulgently.

"It takes a little time, but you will feel whole again, I promise. The sickness is gone. Not merely the sickness of the flesh, but the taint that gripped your soul. You felt it, didn’t you? You felt all of that vileness purged from your being. Every touch from every grubby man desperate to drive into you, to own you, you felt the filth of each disgusting wretch drawn out of you. And now you are clean, Colleen Daisy Tranter. So, tell me; what will you do next? Have you thought about it?"

She shook her head slightly.

The Deacon nodded as though that were perfectly understandable under the circumstances. "You are more than welcome here. Family is more than blood in our world. I feel a certain responsibility for each of my flock, those I have healed, and those yet to feel the generosity of my touch. You don’t have to go back to being what you were. That doesn’t have to be the beginning and end of your story."

Had that been a deliberately sexual reference? She felt something inside her quicken at the thought, imagining the warmth of his hands on her. Again, she was drawn to him. She shuffled closer along the mattress and felt it shift beneath her weight. The echo of his touch brought a surge of heat, pumped through every vein and artery, and she remembered. It still wasn’t sexual.

She watched him toy with the pendant that hung around his neck. It was a curious thing. He saw her watching and smiled. She licked the dry edges of her lips. She had bitten them raw without realising it.

"It is my gift," he said, "nothing more. I was put here on this earth to heal; it is what I do. That is an aspect of my story. But it is neither the beginning nor the end. Indeed, no story truly begins, nor for that matter, ends. You might have been reborn in the revival tent, but you were there before, you walked into the hall, you rutted for money, ate, drank, slept and lived. You did all of that before I touched you, so can your story begin there? I think not. What about the moment when you came kicking and screaming out of the womb? Or does it begin on the day your father planted his seed between your mothers willing – or unwilling - thighs? Who is to say it doesn’t begin before, when they first met? For that matter, does it end when you die, or will your legacy live on? Will your life touch others? All of these things are for you to decide, and depend very much on how you chose to live your life. That, dear girl, is down to you and only you. In all of these possibilities there are no beginnings and no ends, not truly. We are linked now, you and I, our stories intertwined in this moment. You can feel it, can’t you?"

Colleen nodded. She could.

She had been aware of it from the moment she opened her eyes to the darkness. They shared a bond now that went beyond those few minutes up on his stage. "You healed me," she said.

"You answered the call, my dear. That is different. Do you remember what I told the congregation?"

"I walked in shadows."

"Yes, precisely that. Do you know the significance of shadows? The art of shadowmancy? No, of course you do not, and neither should you. No god-fearing girl ought to open herself up to life on the fringes of the dark. That is where evil lurks, in the shadows. You are not evil, are you, child?"

Colleen shook her head.

"I would know if you were." he said.

She watched him as he toyed subconsciously with the trinket that hung around his neck. The Deacon followed the direction of her eyes and stopped, suddenly self conscious. It was the first time she had seen him as anything other than sure, arrogant even. "How do you feel?" he asked.

She started to tell him but as she opened her mouth she realised that she didn’t know, not when it came to putting words to it.

"I see," he said, a slow almost lazy smile creeping across his face all the way up to his eyes. "So, Colleen Daisy Tranter, tell me, would you like to join us?"

Part of her translated the question to: wouldn’t you like to belong somewhere? Wouldn’t you like to fit in? Wouldn’t you like to be a part of something? And, almost as though he had put the thought there for her, wouldn’t you like to be loved instead of used?

"I think so," she said. What did she have waiting for her back in Rookwood? A life on her back? She couldn’t imagine anything as simple and pure as love.

Almost as though it sensed her sadness, the child in the Deacon’s arms stirred and let out a mewling cry. He hushed it tenderly. And that made it all the more painful for her to watch because she didn’t see love when she looked down at them; she saw what she couldn’t have. It was as simple and sad as that.

Boone had had her sterilized when she first bled – there was no sentiment in it, he had told her. She still remembered all too vividly the hateful look on his face as he explained: "It is business, child. No one will pay to lie with a pregnant sow." She hadn’t thought about that conversation in years, not consciously at least. She had dreamed it over and again while the consequences of it haunted the darkness when she could not sleep; there would be no children for Colleen. But she hadn’t thought about it.

"Then stay here, child. Stay as long as you like – as long as you need. Think about it. There is a home here - a purpose."

"I don’t know . . ."

"If you could have any one thing out of this life, what would it be?"

"I don’t know," she said again.

"Imagine, for a moment, that you could have anything. What would you choose?"

"I can’t have that one thing," Colleen said, "and to pretend otherwise is just a cruel game.

"Then imagine I have it in my power to give it to you, child. I have the gift of the Lord flowing through my veins, nothing is beyond me, so what would you have me give you?"

"Nothing. I don’t want anything," she lied.

‡‡‡

She awoke to the darkness for the second time that night.

This time she was not alone.

It took her a moment to realise what it was that had woken her – the wet phlegmy sound of a baby crying.

Colleen rolled over on the uncomfortable mattress. Beside her, wrapped in a bundle of rags lay the baby the Deacon had been comforting.

The old man stood silhouetted in the doorway. "What you were too frightened to ask for," he said, and left her, only this time she was not alone. He had offered her anything, and she had asked for nothing, yet in her heart of hearts Colleen Daisy Tranter yearned for that one thing she could never have – and with this boon the Deacon had bought her soul.

She had a child of her own to care for.