The Eye of Moloch

Chapter 40

Her name was Esther, he’d been told, but under no circumstances was he to call her that to her face—not if he knew what was good for him.

After the boy had abandoned him at the corner, Hollis had kept his apprehension under control for the first few steps, but by the time he’d reached the entrance to the antiquated original section of the Merrick house, the long walk down the darkening, lamplit hall had begun to feel like the last mile to the gallows.

It was a trip back in time as well, those last twenty yards. The wood in the walls and the floor seemed to age and weather with every step onward. The clean, rustic look of the rest of the ranch was mirrored here but it had gradually changed its character, transforming from a quaint designer’s choice in country décor to the old-fashioned real McCoy.

Hollis took a deep breath and rapped three times on the heavy varnished door.

The voice that came from inside wasn’t at all what he’d anticipated. It was neither the screech of a winged harpy nor the weakened wheeze one might expect of a typical centenarian. It sounded spirited and sure and gracefully feminine, all that conveyed in only five little words.

“You come on in, now.”

He opened the door and stepped softly into the front room.

She was seated in a cane rocking chair near her stone hearth, warmly outlined in the amber glow before the low, crackling flames. A round Dutch oven hung from a hook in the top of the firebox, and whatever concoction of beef and herbed gravy and root vegetables was cooking in there, it smelled so good it nearly weakened his knees.

The place was like a lovingly preserved museum exhibit, the very essence of the American West at the turn of the twentieth century. Beneath the rafters to a vaulted ceiling the rough log walls were painstakingly planed and shaped with every joint hand-fitted. The frame and structure looked as though it had been built with little more than a hatchet, a wedge and a great deal of love and care.

The wide mantel was lined and hung with an array of archaic things: bear traps, powder flasks, articulated metal toys, nutcrackers, and cook’s helpers. There were implements of various shapes and sorts made of wrought iron, bronze, hammered copper, hardwoods, and thick tanned leather. These relics recalled the essential technologies of a time gone by, things on which life itself had once depended but whose practical functions were now mostly long forgotten.

She sat there, rocking gently with her sewing in her lap, a cup of hot tea by her side, and the handle of a fireplace poker in the grip of one bony hand.

“Well, my stars,” Esther said quietly, “if it ain’t Lucifer’s servant himself, Thom Hollis.”

“Ma’am, with all respect, I’m nobody’s servant, least of all—”

“Don’t you say one word to me, not until I give you my leave. The devil uses good people, too, once he sees they’ve lost their salt. Now find you a seat and pull it up here close. I need to see you good and clear and these eyes of mine aren’t all they used to be.”

There was an ottoman near the couch and he brought it over in front of her chair, and sat.

“The Good Lord has ways of herding lost sheep back into the fold,” Esther said. “You do need to listen, though, otherwise He’ll only speak His wisdom again, but louder and stronger the next time, in a voice that makes it harder to ignore. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she snapped, and it looked for a moment like she was about to swing the hook of that poker at the broad side of his skull. “You’re either about Satan’s work or you ain’t got the sense that God gave geese, and we don’t have much time to sit and ponder which it is.” She leaned forward with the tractor-beam glare that he’d seen before only from a safer distance. “Best that I can figure, you’re afraid, Thom Hollis, and fear in a man like you saps the will out of every blessed soul around you.”

“I’m not afraid. I’m only trying to protect Molly—”

“She’s protected already.”

“She’s not the woman she used to be, she’s blind—”

“We walk by faith, not by sight,” Esther said. “That girl’s got a calling, and she needs you next to her for one thing and one thing only: to help her do what she’s been called up to do. And some which way or t’other you’ve got the idea into your thick head that you know destiny better than He who shapes it, that you alone know what is and isn’t possible. You tell her and her people to surrender His fight when the battle’s hardly begun. And then you’ve got the crust to strut around here in high feather, like a tall dog in a meat house, like you think you’re still on the side of right. You come into my home, talking back and prideful while you sit there given in to cowardice and sloth, makin’ eyes at my granddaughter all the while. I saw you myself the other night in the billiard room, feet up in an easy chair like there wasn’t a worry in the world, and drunk as a peach-orchard boar. If my husband was alive today he’d haul you out back on general principles and beat you like a rented mule.”

“Ma’am, we’ve been through hell enough already—”

“Hell’s empty, Thom Hollis,” Esther said, “and all the devils are here. Even now their master sends them forth, at this moment they move against you, and even now the Lord whispers His will and gathers a fellowship set to come to your aid. But you don’t see His miracles. You’re afraid to be tested, you’re afraid to stand up and believe—you fear to walk out onto the threshing floor. You’re afraid if you try and are found wanting, you’ll fail her. But in that very act of choosing not to try she’s lost already. Do you see?”

He nodded slowly, and he really did see, though he didn’t want to.

“Take my hand,” Esther said.

He did. Her touch was electric, an immediate cleansing shock that passed through him head to toe and left him feeling thunderstruck and sober as a judge.

“The spirit has always dwelt among us,” she said, “since long before it had a name and a nation for its home. It’s burned in the hearts of millions in other lands who dreamed of its promise but never lived to reach these hallowed shores. It survived slavery and Civil War, depression, organized crime in the very halls of its government, and time and again it’s weathered the looting and corruption and schemes of a ruling class that pledges no allegiance to anything but its own dark designs.

“Now that spirit lies dormant and shunned and forgotten in all but a precious few of even our own sons and daughters. Its light dims but still it burns, it waits to be awakened so this one nation and the love of true liberty at its heart can be restored to her old glory. It demands much of those that hear the call, and the first hard thing it asks is courage.

“Now, then,” Esther said. “Are we dust, or diamonds? Will you be a slave to the creeping tyranny that’s stalked every try at moral government since time began? Or will you be a free man who stands beneath the shield of nature’s God, clad in His armor, sworn to protect and defend the founding bedrock of this wounded, blessed land? Are you only human after all, Thom Hollis? Or are you an American?”

• • •

After he’d left her, he stood outside under the darkened, cloudy sky, near enough to a lamppost to see the keepsake in his hand, the gift that Esther Merrick had passed to him as they parted. She’d given something of hers to all of them, she’d said, something they might have lost along the way.

“So am I to understand that you’re the trail cook for this lot?” she’d asked as she walked him to the door.

“Among other things,” he’d answered, “and in better times than these.”

What she’d given him then was a saltbox; that’s what the old-timers would have called this little round, hinged wooden case. Though it appeared to be solid when closed against the elements, there were many small compartments accessible with a twist or a press along its sides. These held within them a surprisingly wide variety of dried herbs, ground spices, aromatics, and cracked peppercorns. The deepest of the enclosures was reserved to keep an ample supply of fine white salt pure and dry and protected.

Such a thing might not seem essential to survival, if one’s goal were simply to live out one bland and tasteless day to the next. But that isn’t really living at all—while the flesh may be sustained by little more than shelter, dry bread and lukewarm water, the soul needs more.

There was a small handwritten note tucked into that last compartment, and this is what it said:

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hands of God.

He began to walk again, and then to run, and when he reached Molly’s room he knocked on the door but didn’t wait outside for her to answer. Her dog alerted and stood at the foot of the bed as Hollis burst into the room, but he didn’t bark or threaten, and Molly turned her face toward the noise.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

“It’s me, Molly.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That plan you were talking about the other day, the one I said was impossible and desperate and nothing but an elaborate attempt at suicide?”

She sat up. “Yes.”

“I was wrong,” Hollis said. “I’m in. By God, let’s do it.”