She tilted her head to one side a little. “I just told him that if his mother could see him hitting a defenseless woman like that, she would die of shame,” Meredith said. “I told him Nicki might be his sister. I said, ‘How would you like it if someone treated your sister like that?’”
Jim laughed too. “How did you know he even had a sister?” She shrugged. “He knew what a sister is,” she said. “That’s the point.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He didn’t say anything!” Nicki said, practically giggling with glee. “He just finally sort of threw her aside and slunk out of the cell, grumbling.”
I shook my head. “That’s amazing. That’s an amazing story.”
“It is,” Jim agreed.
“It was even more amazing to be there,” said Nicki.
We all fell quiet for a minute. I could see the scene in my mind: Nicki lying on the dungeon floor . . . the guard looming over her . . . Meredith wagging her finger in the guard’s face, ignoring his gun, lecturing him about his sister as if he were five years old . . .
“So why aren’t you afraid, Meredith?” I asked. I looked at her. The red light from the heater played over her pale, still features. She turned aside a little, kind of rolling her eyes and smiling to herself, as if I’d said something ridiculous.
“No, really,” said Nicki. “I want to know too. Why aren’t you?”
“Stop it, you guys,” Meredith said. “You’re talking total nonsense.”
“No, actually, they’re not,” said Jim, like a teacher correcting a mistake. “We can all see that you’re not. We saw it from the beginning in the cantina.”
“The rest of us are all terrified all the time,” I said. “Maybe we’re trying to be brave, or to act brave, or do what we think is right or whatever. But we’re all afraid all the time. I know I am.”
“So am I,” Jim said.
“You know I am,” said Nicki.
“But you,” I said to Meredith, “it’s like it makes no difference to you how things turn out. It’s like you’re . . .” I hesitated a moment because I remembered the word that Palmer had used when we were in that old temple, when he was whispering to her in the dark. I didn’t want her to know that I’d been awake, that I’d been eavesdropping on them. But there was no other word to describe her. So I said, “Fearless. You’re fearless.”
I stopped there. We all stopped. We all waited, watching Meredith.
And Meredith—she just sort of gazed off into the flickering shadows, her features still, her eyes set on something far away we couldn’t see.
Finally, not turning to us, not even talking to us it seemed, but just talking into the darkness around us, she said quietly, “I had a sister. Her name was Anne. She was five years older than me. I think she was . . . the single sweetest, gentlest, kindest person I’ve ever met in my life. I never saw her get angry. I never heard her say an unkind word. Really. I’m not just, you know, exaggerating or something. She really wasn’t like other people. She was better.
“And, of course, I worshipped her. You know, little-sister style. She was nine, I was four. She was twelve, I was seven. She was sixteen and I was eleven. And I just wanted to do whatever she did, follow her around everywhere she went. And nine out of ten times, she let me. She let me tag along—to the mall, to get pizza, to the movies—even when it annoyed her friends, which was, like, always. She would tell them, ‘Oh, let her come, she won’t bother anyone.’ Which almost certainly wasn’t true. I must’ve been a terrible pain in the neck to her, but she never let it show. Really. Never once.”
I saw the light gleam red on Meredith’s cheek and I felt my throat get tight as I realized that she had started crying. It was a strange kind of crying. Her expression didn’t change at all, the way it does with most people when they cry. Her features remained still, distant, sort of serene. Even the calm tone of her voice remained the same. The tears just streamed steadily down her cheeks as she talked. Now and then she moved her hand to wipe them away or she sniffed a little.
“When I was really little?” she said. “I used to think sometimes that she was secretly an angel. I really did. She would come into my room at night, when it was time for me to say my prayers. And she would tell me, ‘Kneel down, and put your hands together, and point your soul toward the light of God.’ And I would sort of steal glances at her while we were praying and she’d have her face lifted up, and her expression would be so still and peaceful, I would think: She’s going off to the angel place. You know? Silly. I must’ve been three or four. You know the way little kids think.”
The tears kept streaming down her face in the heaterlight. But her voice continued quiet and unshaken.
“I was fourteen when she got sick. She had to come home from college. She’d been gone a year, and in that time I’d become this sort of . . . awful teenager. Always grim and complaining about everything. Nothing was any good. Everything was a ‘bore’ or a ‘disaster’ or a ‘waste of time.’”
I had a hard time picturing Meredith ever being like that, but if she said she was, I guess she was.
“Whenever I could, I’d go online and chat with Anne about . . . you know, whatever was upsetting me that day. She was busy with school and her new life, her new friends, studying and all that, but she’d still make time for me. She was the only one who knew how to make me feel better. In fact, when she got ill and came home from school, I was, like, ‘Oh good, now I’ll have her around again until she gets better.’ I didn’t realize how bad it was. I didn’t realize she wasn’t going to get better, not ever.”
She drew her sleeve across her face, drying her tears, wiping her nose.
“But she knew. Anne knew. And she never changed. The whole time the sickness ate away at her, she was the same as she always was. They had to give her chemo. She lost her hair—her beautiful, beautiful red hair. She got so thin . . . so thin and gray . . . but the way she was—that never changed. She was still Anne the whole time. Still my same sweet Anne.”
Meredith turned and looked at us in the red glow of the heater. The light shone on her wet cheeks.
“That’s what she said to me at the hospital, in fact . . . She had to go into the hospital at the end. And the very last time I visited her there, she said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid. Nothing has changed. I’m still who I am.’ A few hours after that, she was dead.”
Meredith shook her head as if to clear the old images from her mind.
“You think it makes no difference to me how things work out for us?” she asked. “That’s not true. It makes a big difference to me. I don’t want to die in this horrible place. I want to go home just like the rest of you. I want to see my mom and dad again. I want to meet my husband and get married and live in a big rambling house in the middle of nowhere and have more children than you’d think anyone would. That’s what my sister wanted too. I just know that . . . the things you want don’t always happen . . . sometimes terrible things happen instead . . . I’ve seen that with my own eyes . . . And you’re right: since Anne died, I’m somehow not afraid of it anymore. I don’t know exactly why. I can’t explain it really . . .”
Her voice trailed off. She leaned back against the wall and looked off into the surrounding dark again.
“I don’t get it,” said Jim after a moment. “I mean, when you see something like that happen . . . like what happened to your sister . . . shouldn’t that make you more afraid?”
“Maybe . . . ,” Meredith said. “Maybe it should. But it didn’t. I’m just telling you how it is.”
Jim leaned forward over his own crossed legs, like a student asking a teacher a question. “Is it because you’ve seen the worst that can happen and it’s not so bad?”
Meredith shook her head. “No. No, it’s not that. It was bad. Losing Anne broke my heart. It still breaks my heart.”
“Is it because she’s in heaven?” Nicki asked. “I mean, are you not afraid because you know, if you die, you’ll see Anne again in heaven?”
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Meredith took another swipe at her damp cheeks. “Well . . . I do know that. But no—no, that’s not it exactly either . . . Like I said, I want to live a full life before I die just like anyone.”
“Well then, I don’t get it,” said Jim again. “I don’t understand why seeing your sister die would make you fearless.”
But I did. I didn’t say anything, but I understood. I thought back to those terrible seconds when we were being taken out to face the firing squad. I remembered how I had looked at Meredith—and at Nicki—and at Jim—and even at the gunmen who were going to kill us—and I had thought how beautiful they all were, how beautiful they were all meant to be. Maybe not the rebel who was going to pull the trigger and snuff out an innocent life, but the man inside him who wanted to fight for justice and be a hero to his people. Maybe not the Jim who thought that fancy ideas and good intentions were the same as true goodness, but the Jim who wanted to think great thoughts and make the world better with them. Maybe not the Nicki who was vain and silly and weak, but the woman inside her who was so full of kindness and practically exploding with the joy of being pretty and alive. Those were the beautiful parts of them.
Their souls, I mean. I think in those moments, when I was so close to death, I was seeing their souls, the souls God had given them. And their souls were beautiful. And what Meredith knew, what Meredith had learned when her sister died, what her sister had taught her when she was dying, was that good things might happen to you in life or bad things might happen, sometimes terrible things, but no matter what happens, your soul is your own. It’s in your power to point your soul toward the light of God, and no one and nothing— not even a man with a gun, not even death, not even the devil from hell himself—can stop you.
That’s why Meredith was fearless. Because as long as she remembered what her sister had shown her, nothing that happened could ever hurt the most important part of her, nothing that happened outside herself could ever make her less than what God had meant for her to be.
I was about to try to tell the others this, to try to explain what I was thinking. But just then I sensed something nearby us in the darkness. And I turned and saw Palmer.
I’m not sure how long he had been standing there. Awhile, I think. He was just at the end of the corridor, at the edge of the little room we were in, at the edge of the brighter light from the heater. He was standing half hidden in the shadows. And he was gazing at Meredith.
Gazing is the right word. He seemed to be completely lost in the sight of her. I don’t think I’d ever seen a man look at a woman like that, not even in the movies. In fact, it wasn’t anything like the way men look at women in the movies. It was deeper, more serious than that somehow. His wry smile was gone, the mocking laughter in his eyes was gone. He stood and gazed at her and I could almost feel the heat of his sadness and his longing. He looked as if he wanted to somehow reach down into his own depths and draw out the very substance of himself and offer it to her in his two hands. He looked like he wanted to join his heart to hers forever.
Then the moment was over. He seemed to blink and shake off his trance. He stepped out of the shadows, stepped into the room, into the red light. The others noticed he was there for the first time and when they turned to him, they saw the Palmer they knew: relaxed and indomitable, the wry smile back on his lips, the mocking look back in his eyes.
Jim and Nicki watched him, waiting to hear what he would say. And out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Meredith quickly and secretly swipe at her cheeks one last time to make sure all the tears had been dried.
“All right,” Palmer said. “The soldiers have come and gone. Father Miguel is a little guy, but he’s tough as nails and he faced them down.” He moved his eyes over each of us in turn, hesitating only slightly when he looked at Meredith. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “Get some rest,” he said. “We’re gonna wait for the rains to pass.”
“Then what?” asked Jim.
“Then,” said Palmer, “we make a run for the border.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
We all arranged the sleeping bags around the heater and got into them. It felt so good to be warm and dry and relatively safe that after about a minute, I fell into a deep sleep.
The next thing I knew, I heard a noise—a sort of shifting sound. My eyes came open. I had been so soundly asleep that, for a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was. Then I looked around and saw the others still snoring in their bags on the floor beside me and I remembered we were in the catacombs. The light from the heater was bright, and while it threw a red glow over our little area, it seemed to cast the corridors beyond into even deeper darkness.
I remembered that a noise had awakened me. I sat up in my sleeping bag and listened. The sound came again: something shifting, moving. I worried that the soldiers had come back—had maybe found the tomb with the secret passage and come down here to search the catacombs.
I didn’t want to wake the others, but I thought I’d better check it out. I got out of my bag. Listened again. The sound was coming from the corridor to my right. I moved away from the heater, into the shadows at the corridor’s entryway. I stood and listened. The shifting sound grew louder. Something was moving—moving toward me.
I stood there and peered into the dark. And my mouth fell open: I couldn’t believe what I saw.
The skeletons. The skeletons from the catacomb graves. Amazingly, they had risen up from their resting places. They had joined their bones back together. They were slouching toward me out of the corridor shadows, a whole army of them, moving with the slow, limping, relentless tread of zombies. Their teeth were set in dead men’s grins. Their empty eye sockets stared as they came to get me . . .
I woke in my sleeping bag with a gasp. Well, it was a dream, of course. And good thing. The living people in this country were dangerous enough. I didn’t need the dead ones coming after me too.
I sat up. My heart was hammering in my chest so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. I looked around me. I saw the others still sleeping in their bags, just as in my dream. The light from the heater made the corridors dark—also as in my dream.
And then—exactly as in my dream—I heard that same shifting noise. Something moving in the corridor shadows.
I thought my heart was beating hard before—I thought it was hard to breathe before—but now the fear went through me like a steady electric shock. Was I still asleep? Still dreaming? No. I couldn’t be. I was awake this time. I was sure of it.
I listened, hoping I had imagined the sound. But no, there it was again. Something really was moving in one of the corridors.
I had this bizarre sense that I was living through my dream, that I was helpless to stop it from unfolding just the way it had before. I would get up. I would go to the corridor. I would see the oncoming skeletons . . . And there was nothing I could do about it.
And I did get up. What else could I do? Just as in the dream, I had to make sure the noise wasn’t the soldiers searching the catacombs. I listened. I heard the sound in the corridor to my right. Just as in the dream. I moved into the corridor shadows. I stood there—just as in the dream—and peered into them.
No skeletons. Well, that was a positive development, anyway. But I did see a little glow down there in the dark— a small, flickering yellow glow. Candlelight—that’s what it looked like anyway. I stared at it—and as I did, a shadow passed across it and it grew dim.
Someone was there.
I had to check it out. If it was a rebel gunman, looking for us, I had to find him before he found us. I had to raise the alarm and give the others a chance to get away.
I began edging slowly into the corridor, into the dark. As I traveled farther away from the heater, the dank atmosphere of the catacombs closed around me and I couldn’t help but think of the skeletons I had seen lying in their alcoves—and the skeletons I had seen coming toward me in my dream. I listened—but the shifting sound didn’t come again. Which only made me more afraid. Bad enough to
know someone was there in the dark—even worse not to be able to see him or hear him. Because if I couldn’t tell where he was—who knew?—while I was creeping up on him, he might be creeping up on me.
I had walked—I don’t know—maybe thirty yards into the corridor when the shadows shifted. Someone moving. I held my breath. The dim yellow candle-glow shone clear again as if a person had moved out of its way. I saw that the light was coming through a narrow archway off to the right. There seemed to be some kind of little room or alcove in there.
I forgot I was holding my breath and now I had to let it out. I tried to keep it as quiet as I could, but I felt like my pulse was pounding so loudly that it would give me away in any case. I inched as silently as I could toward the archway. I pressed close to the wall . . . wound my head around the edge . . . peeked through.
What I saw was not as amazing as walking skeletons, I’ll admit. But it was pretty startling all the same.
The little room beyond the archway was a chapel— maybe left there from the old days when they used to bury people down here. It was just a little closet of a place with smooth walls made of great blocks of stone. On the wall to my left, there was a cross with a small rickety wooden table beneath it. There was a big book lying open on the table—a Bible, I’m pretty sure. The candle stood next to the Bible, casting its glow up over the cross.
But that wasn’t what was so startling. What really surprised me was that Palmer was there. He was standing very still, half turned away from me. His thumbs were hooked in his belt. His face was lifted to the cross. His expression was quiet and serious and intense, sort of the way it had been when he was watching Meredith earlier: the same expression of sadness and longing.
I stood there a moment, somehow riveted by the sight of him. Then it came to me what I was doing—kind of spying on him, you know. I felt my face get hot. I wanted to hurry back to my sleeping bag before Palmer realized I was there.
I turned away . . .
And I let out a high-pitched shout as a lightning flash of terror went through me—because there, right in front of me, was some small, weird, gnarled creature who had risen up out of the depths of this underground world, his eyes burning at me from the darkness.