Hallowed Ground

Chapter Thirty

The wagon came to a halt, the flatbed creaking heavily on its rear axle. Mariah, for the first time, sat up front beside Balthazar. She scanned the moonlit plain that rolled out around them. There were no signs of life, save for an odd glow in the distance. No insects, no animals, no birds. The only sounds she heard were made by the wind shivering through scrub brush. Just when she thought they were truly and utterly alone the mournful cry of an owl broke the silence. She felt rather than saw Balthazar flinch.

"What?"

"It’s nothing," he said, brushing her off with grunt. "Damn bird startled me."

It wasn’t a bird that plucked at his nerves. They both knew that. On any other night the old man was so precise, so particular. Misnaming the owl caused something – some sense – inside her to prickle. She turned to look at him properly, struggling to believe something could startle him. He had witnessed tentacles reaching up out of the dirt to drag a man down; he had taken her back to her own coffin. There was no way a simple barn owl could affect the man, not like that.

"I see lights," she said, pointing. It was a poor attempt to shift his attention. Still, he answered her:

"They’ll be brighter soon, I expect. There’s something of a shindig in progress."

Mariah waited for him to explain. She didn’t ask questions. She had learned to be patient. If he intended to tell her, he would tell her, but in his own time. She could ask all the questions she wanted, he might just as well answer with a riddle, a question of his own, or spin some other story that meant nothing to her and left her all the more confused, and with more questions. Then again he might say nothing and let silence fester between them. There was no way of knowing how he would respond. So she waited the silence out.

"I have been expecting this particular party for a long, long time," Balthazar said. "You might say it’s the final move in an elaborate game of checkers. Have you ever played?"

He turned to her, and she shook her head.

"It’s a simple but fascinating game," he said, leaning across conspiratorially. "I’ve never lost."

Mariah turned and stared out over the plains. The lights had brightened, and if she concentrated, she thought she could hear voices. There weren’t any coherent words. The harder she tried to pick out actual shapes and sounds the more sure she was that there were none to hear, only tones, rising and falling in an eerie cadence.

There was something wrong with the lights, she realized.

A campfire’s light would have flickered, throwing both light and shadow across the sky. It wouldn’t be so bright, and you’d see it dance. She knew that. A town was different. The light came from a number of sources and coalesced into a single canopy overhead. This wasn’t like that either. The closer they came, the more it resembled a ray of light – a cylinder shooting straight up from the desert floor all the way into the high banks of cloud.

Balthazar inclined his head slowly, like a dog listening to the cry of a distant animal. As Mariah watched, he licked his dry lips and seemed to mouth several words. He saw her looking at him and smiled.

"It sounds as though things are going well," he told her. "Perhaps one might venture so far as to say very well. With a little luck, and I am always lucky, my dear, our work may prove a little easier than I originally expected."

He slapped the reins to the horses’ backs, and the wagon lurched forward again. Mariah stared at the light intently as it grew brighter and more intense. She didn’t say a word. It wasn’t that she was listening to Balthazar, or even the curious ululating tones that weren’t quite voices, she was simply lost to the light. Every now and then she thought she saw something more defined, a shadowed shape whirling within that luminous ray. And occasionally, as those shadows writhed and twisted, they looked almost human.

She couldn’t tell if they were trying to get out, or if they were scrabbling desperately to find their way in.