“Who?”
“Never mind. Then again, neither is Liberace a Billy Creekmore. Come on, we’ll eat in the front room, it’s too dark in here.” He paused, because Billy wasn’t rising from the bench. Instead, the boy was fingering the keyboard again, picking at various notes as if he’d stumbled upon Captain Kidd’s treasure. “It’s probably not too hard to learn,” Mirakle said. “I never had the inclination, but there are a stack of old instruction books down in the basement. Are you interested?”
He struck a high note and listened to it sing. “Yes sir.”
“I’ll get them for you, then. They’re probably so mildewed you can’t read them, but…” Mirakle came over and set the tray down atop the piano. He saw the look of excitement in Billy’s eyes, and noticed also that his coloring had improved. It had been a great relief, in a way, to hear that Kenneth was resting far from the confines of this house. “You’ve been a great help to me,” Dr. Mirakle said. “I appreciate all the work you’ve done. I…don’t know what’s ahead for you, but I think I’ll be hearing from you again. At the very least, I hope you’ll write to let me know how you’re doing.”
“Yes sir, I will.”
“I have an idea you’re the kind of young man who means what he says. That’s rare enough in itself, in this day and age. In the morning I’ll take you to the bus station; I would offer you a sizeable increase in pay to join me on the carnival circuit next season, but…you’ve got better things to do, I think.” He smiled. The thought streaked through him that somehow he was losing a second son, and he touched Billy’s shoulder. “The soup’s getting cold. Come on, let’s eat.”
Mirakle took the tray into the front room; Billy paused at the keyboard a moment longer, then joined him. Young man, Mirakle thought, I wish you much luck. That is the very least of what you’ll need on your journey.
And it was possible—no, probable, Mirakle told himself—that sometime before winter’s cold set in he might drive the truck back up to Hawthorne, back to that little shack off from the road, and deliver a piano that might yet learn to sing again.
NINE
Revelations
42
BILLY HAD ASKED TO see his father. The simple granite gravestone read JOHN BLAINE CREEKMORE, 1925-1969. It stood up the hill from Link Patterson’s grave, and was sheltered by pine trees that would filter the sun and rain. The earth was still rough from the work of shovels, but soon the pine needles would fall and it would all be covered.
“He went to sleep,” Ramona said, long gray strands of her hair blowing from around her scarf. There were deep lines under her eyes and on each side of her nose, yet she refused to bend to the will of the years; she carried herself strong and straight, her chin uplifted. “I read the Bible to him that night, and we ate a good dinner of vegetables. He talked a lot about you, as he had for the few days before that, and he said he was trying very hard to understand…what we’re like. He said he knew you were going to be a great man, and he’d be proud of you. Then he said he was going to take a nap, and I washed the dishes. When I went in later to see about him, he…was as peaceful as a child. I pulled the covers over him, and then I went to get the doctor.”
Billy touched the granite marker. A chill breeze was sweeping down into their faces from the hills, and already winter was knocking at the door though it was hardly the middle of October. He’d come walking up the road yesterday, lugging his suitcase from the Greyhound bus stop at Coy Granger’s, and had seen his mother out in the field, gathering pecans in a bowl. His father wasn’t sitting on the front porch. The Oldsmobile was gone—sold for scrap, he’d later learned, to pay for his father’s casket. The house was the same, fixed up and painted with the money he’d sent home; but things had changed. He could see the passage of time in his mother’s face, and from what she’d told him his father had died near the time Billy had dreamed of him and his dad walking along the road to Hawthorne. Billy said, “You had to know. The aura. Didn’t you see it?”
“Yes, I did,” Ramona replied quietly. “I knew, and so did he. Your father had made his peace with the world…and especially with himself. He raised you with a good, strong hand and he worked very hard for us. He didn’t always agree with us or understand us, but that was never the point: at the end, he loved us just as much as he always had. He was ready.”
“Ready?” Billy shook his head disbelievingly. “Do you mean he just…wanted to die? No, I don’t believe that!”
She looked at him with a cool, level gaze. “He didn’t fight it. He didn’t want to. At the end he had the mind of a child, and as all children have faith, so did he.”
“But… I…should’ve been here! You should’ve written me! I…didn’t…get to say good-bye!…”
“What would that have changed?” She shook her head and put a hand on his arm. A tear streaked down his cheek, and he let it fall. “You’re here now,” she said. “And though he is not, you’ll always be John Creekmore’s son, and he’ll be in your child’s blood as well. So is he really gone?”
Billy felt the restless wind pulling at him, heard it whispering around the pungent pines. It was true that his father lived within him, he knew, but still…separation was so hard to take. It was so hard not to miss someone, not to cry for him and mourn him; easy to look at death from a distance, more difficult to stare into its face. He already felt a world away from the carnival with its riotous noises and flashing lights; here on this bluff, framed by hills covered with woodland and overshadowed by gray sky, he seemed to stand at the center of a great silence. He ran his hands over the rough gravestone and remembered how his father’s unshaven jaw had felt against his cheek. The world was spinning too fast! he thought; there were too many changes in the wind, and the summer of his childhood seemed lost in the past. For one thing he could be happy: before leaving Mobile yesterday morning, he’d called the hospital in Birmingham and had been told that Santha Tully was going to be all right.
“Winter’s on the way,” Ramona said. “It’s going to be a cold one, too, from the way these pines have grown thick.”
“I know.” He looked at his mother. “I don’t want to be like I am, Mom. I never asked for this. I don’t want to see ghosts and the black aura, I want to be like everybody else. It’s too hard this way; it’s too…strange.”
“Just as your father’s in your blood,” she replied, “so am I. No one ever said it would be easy…”
“But no one ever gave me a choice, either.”
“That’s true. Because there can be no choice. Oh, you can live as a hermit and shut out the world, as I tried to do after you were born, but sooner or later there comes a knock at your door.”
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and hunched over as a cold wind blew around him. Ramona put her arm around him. Her crying was done, but it almost broke her heart to see so much pain in her son. Still, she knew that pain sculpts the soul, molds the will, and would leave him standing stronger when he’d finally straightened up.
After another moment he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and said, “I’m all right. I didn’t mean to…act like a baby.”
“Let’s walk,” she told him, and together they went down the hill among the tombstones, heading toward the road. It was over two miles back to the house, but they were in no hurry.
“What do I do now?” Billy asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll see.” She was silent for a few minutes as they walked, and Billy knew that something important was on her mind. They came to a place where a stream spoke over flat stones, and Ramona suddenly motioned for him to stop. She said, “My legs aren’t what they used to be, I’ll tell you. When I was a girl I could run this distance without breathing hard, and now already I’m hiccuping like a frog.” She sat down on a rock that had people’s initials scraped on it. He lay on his stomach in the grass, watching the pattern of water as it swirled over the stones. “There are things you need to know now,” Ramona said. “I couldn’t have told you while your father was living, though he was w
ell aware of them too. I’m going to tell you, and then you’ll have to make up your own mind about what to do.”
“What things?”
She looked up, watching a squadron of crows fly across her field of vision. Off in the distance there was the faint reflection of sunlight off an airplane, climbing toward the clouds. “The world’s changing so fast,” she said, almost to herself. “People fighting in the streets, killing and hating each other, children trying to escape through God knows what kind of drugs; a war going on and on and on without clarity or point…these things are making me afraid, because evil’s walking without fear; and it changes its shape and voice to gain its own greedy end. It’s reaching out, wanting more and more. You saw it once before, a long time ago, in the smokehouse.”
“The shape changer,” Billy said.
“That’s right. It was testing you, probing at you. It tested you again, at the carnival, but you were stronger than it took you to be.”
“Have you ever seen it?”
“Oh yes. Several times.” She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “It always taunted me and tried to trick me, but I saw through its tricks. I wouldn’t let it get into my mind; I wouldn’t let it make me doubt myself, or my abilities. But now my work’s almost done, Billy. Now the shape changer sees no threat in me; it wants you, and it’ll do everything it can to destroy you.”
“But I’ll be all right, won’t I? As long as I don’t let it into my mind?”
She paused, listening to the sound of wind through the trees. “The shape changer never gives up, Billy,” she said quietly. “Never. It’s as old as time, and it knows the meaning of patience. It means to catch you unawares, in a weak moment. And I think it’s most dangerous when it’s feeding off the dead, like a beast gnawing on bones. It draws in a revenant’s energy to make itself stronger. I wish I could tell you that I know the limits of the shape changer’s powers, but I don’t. Oh, there’s so much you need to know, Billy!” She gazed at him for a moment. “But I can’t teach you. Life will.”
“Then I’ll learn,” he replied.
“You’ll have to.” Ramona sighed deeply. “This is what I have to tell you: you were not born into this world alone.”
Billy frowned. “What?”
“You were one of two,” she said, staring off at the trees. “You were born first, but behind you there was a second child. You were so close inside me that the doctor could only hear one heartbeat, and in those days the medical faculties weren’t very good. So: there were two children, born in a pickup truck on the way to the hospital on a cold night in November. Both of you were born with cauls, a sure sign of spiritual powers. Yours covered your face. His…had torn loose, and he was gripping it in his hands. Even so young, something within your brother made him want to escape his Mystery Walk. You weren’t identical twins, though; you had my coloring, while he looked more like his father.”
Her eyes were dark pools as she gazed solemnly at Billy. “You see, your father and I were very poor. We could hardly feed ourselves, much less two more mouths. We were expecting one, and we had to choose. That was the most terrible decision of my life, son. There’s…a man named Tillman, who buys and sells babies. He bought your brother from us, and he promised to find him a good home.” Her hands clenched into fists, and strain showed on her lined face. “It was…the only thing we could do, and we both agonized over it so long. Your father was never the same after we went through with it. We had to choose, and we chose you. Do you understand?”
“I…think so.” Billy recalled the woman at the tent revival, a long time ago, confessing the sin of selling her baby. God, how that moment must’ve pained his mother!
“For years I thought nothing would come of it,” she said. “Your father and I often wondered what had happened to him, but you were our son and we wanted to give you our full love and attention. But then… I saw him, and I knew from the first minute who he was. I knew that he might have a special power too, but that it might be different from yours…and I saw in his eyes that he was being used without knowing it. I saw him that summer night at the Falconer Crusade. He looks just like your father, but enough like Jimmy Jed Falconer to pass as his son.”
Billy sat frozen for a moment, shocked numb. “No,” he whispered. “No, not him…”
“You know it’s true. I’ve seen the way you look at each other. You’ve felt the same thing, probably, as him—maybe a kind of curiosity or attraction. I think…both of you need the other, without knowing it. You understand the meaning of your Mystery Walk, but Wayne is afraid and floundering in the dark.”
“Why?” he asked, rising to his feet. He was angry and confused and dazed, and he realized he had always felt a pull toward the young evangelist, but he’d fought against it. “If it was a secret for so long, why tell me now?”
“Because J. J. Falconer passed on this summer. He was all that stood between Wayne and the grinding gears of that Crusade machine he built. Wayne is a young businessman now, and his mind is sealed with Jimmy Jed Falconer’s thumbprint. He’ll follow his father’s path, but he doesn’t know what’s waiting for him at the end of it. He was taught at an early age how to use the power of fear and hatred and call it religion. His spirit is weak, Billy. The shape changer looks for weakness, and if it can use Wayne Falconer against you, it will—in a minute.”
Billy bent and picked up a rock, flinging it into the stream. A bird wheeled for the sky from its cover of brush. “Why does he hate us?”
“He may feel the same pull we do. He may mistake it for our trying to lure him away from what he thinks is the righteous path. He doesn’t understand us, and neither did his father.”
“Do you think he could…ever really heal?” Billy asked her.
“I don’t know. He’s charismatic, there’s no doubt. He can make a person believe they’ve been healed, even if maybe nothing’s wrong with them. Falconer had a hand in teaching him that. But if Wayne can heal, he has to find that power deep inside himself, just like you do when you take on the revenants. He has to hurt, just like you do. The Crusade demands that he heal time after time, with no stopping. I think he pretends to heal so he won’t have to feel that pain, if indeed he ever really felt it. Oh, he may be able to throw those people a spark or two—but if you throw off enough sparks, you don’t have enough left to start a fire when you really need it.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“He may crack under the weight of the Crusade, or he might find the strength to stand on his own two feet. For him, that might be turning away from the greed that’s all around him, and finding out he can learn more about his healing power and he doesn’t have to sell it every day on a stage.” She shook her head. “I don’t think he’ll leave the Crusade, though. It would be too much of a leap into the dark for him.”
Billy’s shoulders sagged. Ramona stood up, unsteadily. “We’d better be getting home before it gets dark,” she said wearily.
“No, not yet. I need to…be alone for a while, to think. All right?”
She nodded. “Take all the time you need.” She touched his cheek with a lingering hand, then started to walk away.
He asked, “Are you afraid of him?”
“Yes,” she said. “There’s something in him that wants to come home, but he doesn’t know the way.” She walked on, alongside the littered road, toward Hawthorne.
Billy watched her go, then crossed the stream to lose himself in the forest.
43
BENEATH THE SAME FORBIDDING October sky, a group of men in business suits were slowly walking the length of the county’s huge public swimming pool just outside Fayette. The pool was drained and in need of painting.
“I want it rebuilt,” Wayne Falconer was saying to O’Brien, the architect from Birmingham, “in the shape of a Cross. I want the church there.” He pointed to the concessions building. “I want it to be the biggest church this state has ever seen. And I want a fountain in the middle of the pool. One with colored lights. Ca
n you do that?”
O’Brien chewed on a toothpick and nodded thoughtfully. “I think so. Have to be careful with wiring. Don’t want to electrocute anybody. It would be some visual effect though, wouldn’t it?” He grinned. “Not electrocution… I mean the colors.”
Henry Bragg and George Hodges laughed. Bragg was still lean and boyish-looking, only a touch of gray in his stylishly cut sandy-brown hair; as a rule he wore blue blazers and gray slacks with razor-sharp creases. He’d moved his growing family to Fayette four years ago and had taken over the job of chief attorney for the Falconer Crusade, Inc.
George Hodges, by contrast, had not aged so gracefully. He was bald except for a fringe of brown hair, and his face had slowly collapsed into folds under the pull of gravity. He wore a rumpled brown suit, his breast pocket lined with pens.
“I want this to be the biggest baptismal pool in the world,” Wayne said. The Crusade had recently purchased the pool for a million and a half. “People will come here from everywhere, wanting to be baptized. Of course, there’ll be regular swimming here too—for Christian youth only—but the baptisms will be the big thing. It’ll be…like a Christian swim club, but there won’t be membership fees. There’ll be donations to the Falconer Memorial…” His voice trailed off. He was staring at the high-diving platform, the Tower. He remembered when he was almost ten, and he’d finally gotten the nerve to climb up there and try to jump. Poised on the edge, he felt his knees shaking—and then the older kids down in the pool had started yelling for him to jump, jump, Wayne, jump. It was just too high, and from way up there it looked like a sheet of blue glass that would cut him to pieces. Coming carefully down, he’d tripped and fallen and busted his lip and, crying, had run out to where the church bus was parked to get away from the laughter.
“I want that down,” Wayne said quietly. “The Tower. I want it down, first thing.”
“That’s been here for over twenty-five years, Wayne,” George Hodges said. “It’s sort of a symbol for the whole—”