There was something about this hilltop tonight, he thought. Something different. He could feel something in the air—a gathering of…intention, he supposed. He didn’t feel alone. There was a charge like static electricity in the air, a heaviness like the forewarning approach of a storm.
He turned from the fire and looked out over the darkened forest. The sky was clear, the stars sharp and bright against the black sky. The smell of smoke mixed with the pungent odor of cedar and pine. If there was a storm coming, he thought, it wasn’t a physical one. What had the girls been doing here? Calling the mystery—that was what. To set him free. That was enough to cause a storm, Lewis thought.
The dull boom of Louie Fucceri’s explosion reached the summit where Lewis was standing and he looked skyward, thinking it was thunder. The sky was still clear. But then he made out the glow, far off in the woods where he knew Valenti’s house to be. He heard the chatter of gunfire. He could feel the anger that was unleashed when men took weapons to hand.
Lewis had always been open to the flow of the woods, to the mystery’s presence in the forest, to the way Tommy’s pipes called the mystery and the way the mystery answered. So he felt the emotions coming from Valenti’s house, but he felt stronger ones very close at hand. There was anger here, too. Fear as well.
He turned slowly, but he was still alone on the summit. When his gaze reached the old pine tree, he shivered, but he didn’t know why. He took a step toward the tree, then paused as he heard the sharp clatter of hooves on rock. He looked for the mystery, sensing his closeness, but couldn’t find him—not as a stag, not as a Green Man.
Mally, he thought. What have you woken here? And where are you now?
* * *
Mally had reached the slow-moving waters of Black Creek and was just starting to cross it by the stepping stones when she realized she was no longer alone. Something was out in the night with her. She paused on the New Wolding side of the creek and looked back the way she’d come, trying to pierce the gloom.
“Hornie?” she tried.
The willows rustled and the shadowy bulk of a boar stepped free of the slender trees, his tusks gleaming, his bristled hide swallowing the starlight where it touched him. Mally glided from the stones and knelt beside him, running her nails along his hide. The image of a burning fire slipped from his mind into hers and Mally nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “Ali was calling you. But something’s taken her and I think it was the Hunt. Will you help me find her?”
The tusker shook his head. Two images blossomed in Mally’s mind, one following the other in quick succession. The first showed the boar returning toward the fire of bones, the other Mally going on across the stream.
“Oh, no,” Mally told him. “I have to come with you.”
She looked the solemn beast in the eye, surprised at how much he had communicated with her already. The mystery didn’t concern himself overly much with the workings of the world. He simply went where he went, did what he did, amoral as a wind that is neither good nor evil, but simply is. And like a wind, the mystery could be channelled. By Tommy’s pipes. By the chasing of the Hunt. By a fire of bones. By the moonlight. By a thousand and one things.
Mally was afraid that if she left him to himself, the mystery would simply wander off after a time, forgetting Ali—not because he wasn’t intelligent, but because he had never given Mally any reason to suspect that he had much of a memory. Did the sun remember what it passed over during the day? Did the wind remember all its journeys?
She laid her hand on the boar’s shoulder, then stepped hastily back as he began to change. The bristled hide became a cloak of leaves. The boar’s head, a man’s head with ram’s horns tonight, rather than antlers.
He had a thousand and one shapes, Mally thought.
The mystery regarded her steadily and new images leapt from his mind to hers. She saw the fire of bones again, but it became two separate fires. In one she saw just Ali’s face, frightened and desperate. In the other was a view of Tony Valenti lying still on the grass, his life’s blood draining from his body. Ali’s mother stood over Valenti, confronting a man that Mally vaguely recognized from a few nights ago. This was the companion of the man she’d killed last night.
“What are you trying to tell me?” she asked the man in his cloak of leaves.
“Who needs you more?” the mystery replied. “The lost or the dying?”
Mally took a few quick steps back, stunned at the sound of his voice. She’d never heard him speak before. The voice was resonant and low and sent shivers up her spine.
“You…you can talk?” she said.
She suddenly understood the wonder that Ali must have felt the first time she’d seen Mally’s horns, the first time the stag had come to her, the first time her life had changed. Mally might have been less surprised if a tree had turned and spoken to her.
“No…no one needs me,” she said when she realized that the mystery wasn’t going to answer her.
“Every living thing needs a secret,” he said. “You must choose whose you will be tonight. I will go to the other.”
“I…”
Mally looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers. They were good for hitting and grabbing and “finding” and the like, but healing…? She had heard the explosion that had come from the lame man’s house. Right now, he lay hurt, dying. The mystery had shown her that. What could she do for him? Besides, she was responsible for Ali. But if Ali had been stolen away by the hounds, Mally knew she wasn’t strong enough herself to deal with them. She could run, oh, very quick, and was good with tricks and such, but to rescue Ali that wouldn’t be enough. Perhaps she should go to the lame man.
“Choose,” the mystery said.
“I don’t know!” Mally cried. “I’m just a secret—the riddle, not the answer. I’m not wise like you.”
The mystery looked at her for a long moment, then turned and disappeared among the willows.
“You can’t go!” Mally shouted after him. “I haven’t chosen yet!”
But she already had, she realized. The mystery had taken it from her mind, knowing her choice before she did herself.
“If I’d truly been wise,” she muttered, “I’d never have set any of tonight into motion.”
She thought about what the mystery had shown her. She’d just have to trust him to rescue Ali while she tried to help the other. Turning, she bolted across the stream, taking the stepping stones two at a time. There’d be time enough to wonder about it all—the mystery talking, wisdoms and those which weren’t so wise, who was free and who was not…. She’d puzzle it all out later. Now was a time for doing.
* * *
In the glade on the side of Wold Hill, watched over by the old stone, a man in a mantle of green leaves stepped from between the trees and out onto the grass. Gaffa whined and crawled forward on his belly, sniffing at the man’s feet, puzzled at the lack of a scent. For a moment the man studied the stone, his ram’s horns gleaming in the starlight, then he stepped toward it and disappeared inside.
Behind him, Tommy Duffin awoke to find himself standing with his face pressed against the cold rock, leaning there, his pipes half-held in a limp hand. All around him were green leaves, as fresh as though they’d just been pulled from their tree. They were thick around his feet and made a pillow of sorts for him as he sank slowly to the ground and sat in them.
Gaffa laid his head on Tommy’s knee and Tommy began to stroke his pet, wondering all the while at the strange dream he’d just had. He knew he hadn’t left the glade, but he felt as though he’d been walking, as though some part of him had come an immense distance and still had a long journey to complete before the sun rose.
Shaking his head slowly, he lifted his pipes to his lips and blew softly across them. Against his back, the old stone seemed to shiver in response.
9
“This is what you have worshipped, child,” the hooded figure said.
Ali heard his words through her pain, but t
hey didn’t immediately register. He held the crucifix against her brow and a white heat exploded from the contact, spreading through her nervous system like a brush fire. Incongruously, her thoughts went to the folk tales and fantasies she was so fond of reading. Elves feared iron and the symbols of Christianity. Did the hooded man’s crucifix burn her because she was one of them? Earlier she’d been imagining herself as fey. Maybe she really was, and now she was going to burn for it.
In the instant it took for those thoughts to rush through her, the pain faded. She went limp in her bonds, hanging from the tree like a rag doll, while a wave of imagery flooded her mind. The hooded man filled her with what he wanted her to see.
“Look upon its evil,” he said, “and repeat after me: ‘The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer.’”
“N-n-nuh…”
Ali tried to shake her head, but the crucifix kept her pinned against the tree, immobile, while the flood of images went through her.
The goatman strode through her mind, his face twisted with lust, eyes rimmed red, his phallus standing erect between his legs like a tree. He fondled it as he stared at Ali. A long forked tongue slipped from between his lips and moved sinuously to the rhythm of a music that was like the sound of Tommy’s pipes—that same kind of instrument was its source—but it was a discordant sound that came forth, a sound that raised her hackles and sent a shiver of repulsion through her. Her throat worked convulsively and she gagged.
“For this creature you forsook the Lord?” the hooded man demanded. “For this monstrosity?”
“N-nuh truh,” Ali managed. She tried to focus on the shadows inside the man’s hood, but the images he projected were too strong.
“Not true?” he shouted. “And what of this—is this not true as well?”
She saw a man in a field with a German shepherd. They were listening to the goatman’s music, and like the goatman, the man began to play with himself. She saw him again, in bed with a woman, entering her from the rear, howling like an animal. She saw him shoot the dog. She saw him attack her own mother, throwing her up against the hood of a car, tearing at her clothes. She saw him place the barrels of the shotgun that he’d used to kill the dog in his own mouth and pull the trigger. And all the while that hellish music sounded, like nails dragging across a blackboard, and the goatman was standing there behind the man, grinning, grinning…
“Nuh-nuh truh!” she cried.
But she knew it was. What the hooded man showed her now—this had all occurred. She could see the goatman laying his pipes aside, dipping his fingers into the man’s blood, the forked tongue licking the red liquid from the fingers with obvious relish….
All true.
“This is what Satan offers,” the hooded man said. “This and nothing else. Torment and hurt. ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.’ Believe in the Good Book, child. ‘God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.’ No room for such blasphemy against life.”
Now she saw the old stone in its glade, the villagers capering around in a circle to the music that an older version of Tommy Duffin played on his pipes. She recognized Lewis and Lily, both younger than she knew them to be now. A man stood by the stone, holding a long-bladed knife. Two other villagers brought out a bull.
The man cut the bull’s throat open and caught the gush of blood in a large metal bowl that he offered up to the stone, where the mystery stood again, but now he was an antlered man. His eyes still burned red. The nails on the ends of his fingers were long talons as he reached for the bowl. When he drank from it, streams of blood flowed around the edges of the bowl and dripped from his chin on to his cloak of leaves. And all the while the villagers danced and the piper piped his hellish tune.
True.
She saw a couple copulating in the forest, the goatman piping over them as they tore at each other in a frenzy. The lust in their eyes was just a pale glimmer of what she saw in the goatman’s eyes as he ejaculated onto the couple.
True.
“‘Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul,’” the hooded man quoted. “Is this the monster you aspire to, child? Is it your innocent body you would have the creature penetrate with its godless lechery?”
“N-nuh…”
They paraded through her mind, hateful image following hateful image, until Ali choked on them. Repulsion filled her throat with bile. She struggled against the ropes in a sudden frenzy, but there was no escape, either from her bonds or the images that the hooded man poured into her mind by way of his crucifix.
“The scriptures ask, ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’ and I answer you, Satan is. You look upon his works, child. Can you still embrace him? You sell your soul when you consort with him. Repeat after me: ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’”
Ali could barely hear him. The discordant music, the hellish images, were driving her further and further from sanity. You lied to me, she cried to the mystery, to Mally, to Lewis, as she plummeted into madness. You lied to me. You said he was good, but you liedliedliedlied….
“Evil is legion,” the hooded man cried. “There is but one Son of God. Child, accept Him as your Savior!”
A maelstrom of violent and lecherous images swirled around Ali as she fell from sanity. She clutched at the hooded man’s words, but when he named Christ by name, the image he gave her was of Jesus hanging on the Calvary Cross, His body wracked with pain, His eyes full of hurt, the crown of thorns piercing His brow.
There was no comfort to be found there. It was all the same. Violence and hurt. If Christ was a Savior and men had done that to Him, given Him so much torment, then what hope was there? They had done this to Him and done, as well, so much evil in His name. They had tortured and raped and killed, all for a man they had hung on a cross, a man they would nail to a cross again if He returned to them now.
Lewis had been right in that, she thought, as she started to let herself go. There was no more point in struggling. Better to just go away, to give up life, if this was all it offered. If behind each smiling facade men had only hate and hurting to give each other. I guess you told me one true thing, Lewis, she thought.
“If you would be saved,” the hooded man told her, “then accept the Lord. He is all that can stand between you and the monster that has you in its clutches. Accept the Lord, child! ‘His enemies shall lick the dust.’ Accept Christ as your Savior and you will be saved!”
But Ali wasn’t listening. She had caught hold of a thought and where nothing else had helped her, that thought did.
Lewis.
What Lewis had said about the mystery.
He has always been a reflection of what one brings to him.
So if you came to him with violence or lust in your heart, that was what was reflected back. But if you came to him with goodness, without evil… Nobody was perfect, but if you really tried to be good and approached him, then he’d be good for you, wouldn’t he? She pictured Jesus in her mind, not the hateful image of Him on His cross, but others she had seen, of a gentle man, a kind man…
A light began to blossom inside her, burning away the hooded man’s images. Her tormentor had shown her truths, yes, but not the whole truth.
The light continued to grow inside Ali and the hooded man stumbled over his words. He took a step back, startled, perhaps even frightened, by what he saw in his victim’s face. As the crucifix lifted from Ali’s skin her head cleared. A different fire, her own fire, burned away the confusion, the fear. She saw Christ’s face and smiled when she saw that He had the mystery’s eyes.
It was so simple that she could have wept. The mystery was only what you brought to him.
The light inside her began to flow out of her pores until she was like a fiery statue. The ropes burnt away. Pushing herself away from the tree, Ali staggered toward the monks. Were they what you brought to them as well? They had chased her down because she’d carried the scent of the otherworld on her when she’d returned from that place in elsewhere. But wh
en she’d confronted them, had it been her own fears and confusion that had put the words in the hooded man’s throat?”
“I don’t need to be saved,” she said softly.
The light burned from her. Where it struck the hooded figures, they smoked. Their cloaks hung loosely on them now, and then they were a milling pack of hounds, whining with uncertainty, cringing as she stepped toward them, finally fleeing.
That’s it? Ali wondered. That was all it took?
“Was it such an easy struggle?” a voice asked from behind her.
Ali turned to find the mystery standing under the pine tree, watching her. Ram’s horns curled from his brow and a mantle of green leaves fell from his shoulders.
“You came very close to not surviving at all,” he added.
Ali looked at him. The awe she’d felt the last time she’d seen him in that other place wasn’t present now. This being that stood so quietly under the tree seemed like an old friend.
“I called you,” she said, “but they came instead.”
He nodded. “They were something you had to confront. I came to help you, but you didn’t need my help after all.”
“But you did help me. I’d given up, until I remembered what Lewis said, that you were what we brought to you. That’s true, isn’t it?”
The horned man nodded.
“Do you want to be free?” Ali asked. “That’s what all this was about, you know. I had to know if you wanted to be free.”
“Whether I wanted to be free, or you?”
“I…I don’t know. I want to be free, sure. I just didn’t know that I wasn’t. What about you?”
“I can’t be free until mankind is no more. But I can’t be bound, either.”
“What are you?”
“A mystery.” He smiled. “As your friend Mally said, does everything need to be explained?”
“It’d help,” Ali said. “But I suppose that would make things too easy.”