Columbia is the story of Theodore Lomax, a nineteen-year-old Union solider in the American Civil War, who is as committed as any to the ideal of human freedom. After being assigned to the army of William Tecumseh Sherman, shortly after the general’s infamous March to the Sea, he willingly participates in the destruction of civilian property in Columbia, South Carolina, believing his acts are justified by Southern resistance to the Northern cause of emancipation. But when the destruction escalates into violence against the civilians themselves, he becomes disillusioned, and feels compelled to strike out in opposition to his own countrymen.
The novel is told from Lomax’s point of view, but there are ten other supporting characters, each with a story of his or her own. There was a time when I thought these stories, or these “Reflections in Broken Glass,” should alternate with the chapters in Columbia, presenting a richer but perhaps more tangled tapestry of the lives that painfully converge in the novel’s climactic scenes. But Columbia is clearly a more coherent narrative without them. Still, they were valuable to me as an author, and so I’ve decided to share them here.
“Lynch,” centers on the character of Archibald Lynch, and describes the formative experience of his life that gives him both his calling and his strength.
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
When Archibald Lynch was twelve years old one of his chores was to help his father chop wood for the wood burning stoves that cooked their meals and kept their house warm through the winter. One day he was using an old axe that had been repaired several times and probably should have been abandoned. The axe head struck the log at an irregular angle, broke off from the handle, bounced back off the stump, and struck Lynch square in the face, knocking him unconscious and opening up a deep cut. Lynch felt no pain, neither from the cut nor from the blow he took to the back of the head as he fell and conked it against some additional logs waiting to be split. From Lynch’s perspective, the universe suddenly exploded with blinding light, and he was transported to a place where no one that had previously been part of his world could reach him. But he was not there alone. There was someone else in this place, wherever this new place was, someone whose presence was so overpowering Lynch was unable to see anything else except this being and the brilliant and iridescent light which emanated directly from its body.
It was the archangel Michael. There was a fraction of a second in which Lynch did not know that, and then, suddenly, the knowledge was instantly apparent to him. Lynch knew it was the archangel Michael, and Michael knew that he knew, and Lynch knew that Michael knew he knew, their minds, one mortal and the other divine, linked in some unfathomable way. It was the archangel Michael, with his flowing locks of golden hair, his shimmering gown of radiant gauze hung loosely on his androgynous frame, and his mighty flaming sword of truth and power, the one he had used to drive the original sinners out of paradise, held out before him and before Lynch’s smaller form.
Archibald, the angel’s mellifluous voice called out, soothing and powerful in the same instant, resonating in Lynch’s own head rather than in the air between them. Michael’s lips did not move, Lynch was certain of that, but his eyes blazed with the inner fire of the angel’s immortality, and as he continued to speak it was as if his eyes were doing the talking, sending the words directly into Lynch’s brain on ribbons of fire.
Archibald Lynch. You have been chosen. I have come to mark you so all will know you speak for the Lord.
In the eternity it took the archangel to deliver his message Lynch was paralyzed, not in fear, but simply under the force of the delivery. Bypassing his auditory canals completely and interfacing directly with the electrochemical circuits in his brain, the tremendous energy the words contained shorted out the motor controls for his entire body, leaving Lynch physically little more than a quivering vegetable.
But Lynch was not afraid. Even as his bladder let loose and he soaked himself with its contents, heated practically to the boiling point by the force of the angel’s presence within him, twelve-year-old Archibald Lynch was not afraid. For the moment Lynch and Michael had become one, and Lynch knew everything the angel did, which was everything there was to know, save the last remaining secret that God kept hidden from all his creations and which, in the end, made him God. And on top of all these truths, truths that would take his fellow man millennia to discover and truths he would never understand, there was one that sheltered him, that kept him safe from both fear and insanity. He had been chosen. Chosen by God to fight on His side in the epic contest between good and evil.
And Michael, God’s greatest and most powerful servant, had come to mark him. Mark him so that all who saw him would know he spoke for the Lord.
Michael held his flaming sword out towards Lynch, the tip hovering directly over the boy’s nose and the intensity of its light blotting out all other visual reference points. As Lynch’s vision popped and expanded into an infinite plain of white nothingness, his consciousness did, too, growing out beyond the confines of his own flesh and expanding out evenly across the entire universe. Like Michael and the unknowable entity that created him -- created Lynch and the angel both -- Lynch felt as though he was everywhere at once, felt as though time and distance no longer had any meaning for him and that he was spread so thinly upon the gossamer filaments that held all matter together he had lost all trace of the individual existence that had just moments before been all he had ever known. He was so absorbed in his new reality and the way he was able to feel the texture of every wrinkle made by every other life form in the fabric of the universe, he did not feel or was even aware of Michael’s sword cutting into the flesh of his face, the lightest possible touch opening a deep and bloodless gash from his forehead, down over his left eye and into his cheek.
Do not fear, Lynch heard Michael’s voice say as he passed peacefully into an unconsciousness he had also never known before, his life force dissipating as though it could no longer sustain itself. Do not fear, Archibald. You have been chosen and you will do great things in the name of the Lord.
And then Lynch slept, not just for the rest of the day or through the following night, but for seven straight months, his mind and body rejecting all attempts to be woken, attempts made not just by his parents but also by some of the best doctors in the United States. He slept like a dead man, not tossing, not turning, not dreaming, not aware of anything, least of all the passage of time. He slept for seven months and three days, and then woke as if it was morning and there were unfinished chores to be done from the day before.
His mother was in the room when he opened his eyes, folding laundry with her back to him. His mother was a large woman, with broad shoulders and a wide back. She had married a much smaller man and had given birth to nine children, all of whom lived and all of whom resembled their mother in their sizes and shapes.
“Mother,” Lynch called to her, his voice croaking like a frog from lack of use.
Lynch’s mother was clearly startled by the unexpected sound, turning to face her child with one hand held flat against her bosom as if to keep her heart from pushing out.
“Ach, Archie!” she cried, more in relief than in fear. “Praise His holy name. Are you awake now?”
“Yes,” Lynch responded and tried to sit up but found himself too weak to do so. “How long have I been sleeping?”
“Seven months, Archie,” his mother said. “Seven long months. We were beginning to worry you would never wake up. Praise His holy name.”
Seven months. At first the words were meaningless to Lynch, his mind struggling to connect the odd sounds to something significant in one of its dusty crevices. He knew he had been asleep for a longer-than-normal period of time, but he had no internal sense of how long it had been, and until his mind found and attached the appropriate meaning to his mother’s words, he was liable to believe any period of time anyone was willing to tell him. Seven months, seven years, seven decades. Would he really be able to tell the difference?
Seven months? he silently asked automatically, knowing Michael would be there to answer the question. Have I really been asleep for that long?
Yes, Archibald, Michael’s powerful voice responded, the angel not visibly present but present nonetheless. It took that long to fully prepare you for your journey ahead. It is all part of God’s great plan.
Lynch nodded his head and looked back to his mother. “I am awake now,” he said slowly, his tone sounding more like a question than a statement.
“Yes,” his mother said hurriedly. “Yes, you are. Can you not hear me, Archie?”
Lynch continued to slowly nod his head. “I can hear you, mother,” he said, trying to sit up again and again being too weak to accomplish it. “Can you bring me something to eat? I’m starving.”
And so began Lynch’s rapid recovery after seven long months of silence and inactivity. His mother brought him some soup and spoon-fed it to him herself, cupping the back of his head in one of her powerful hands like a newborn infant. He ate the entire bowl, and by the time he had finished he had recovered enough of his strength to sit upright in bed. In another hour he was up and standing, and for supper that night he was able to join the family at the table and he ate two great helpings of his mother’s scalloped potatoes.
“Does it still hurt, Archie?” his younger brother Waldo asked him just as Lynch had spooned a steaming pile of potatoes into his mouth.
The sounds that normally accompanied the family of eleven around their supper table, the clinking of glasses and the scraping of spoons, slowly tapered off as both Waldo and the rest of the clan waited for Lynch to offer his response. For a moment, Lynch remained frozen, the spoon jutting out of his mouth and the cheese and potatoes lying unmasticated on his tongue. He was trying to make sense out of the question he had just been asked. He remembered his encounter with the archangel Michael very clearly. In fact, he had been waiting for the right moment at that night’s supper to share with his family the good news about his selection by the angel and the angel’s master. But although these thoughts were foremost on his mind, the fact he had been marked, and the manner in which that marking had been perpetrated, had temporarily slipped his mind. It was, in fact, the archangel Michael, whose presence still abided within Lynch, who reminded him of what he had done with his flaming sword of power.
The scar, Archibald. Michael said. He’s talking about the mark you have been given.
There weren’t many mirrors in the house, and Lynch had not been by one since waking from his coma. Under the expectant gazes of his family members, Lynch pulled the spoon from his mouth, pressing his lips tightly together to remove as much of the cheese sauce as he could. Holding the spoon up to the light and judging it still too obscured, he returned it to his mouth after hastily chewing and swallowing its former contents and gave it a good polishing with his tongue. The second time did the trick, and now he was able to get a murky view of himself on the spoon’s convex surface.
The scar was horrendous, made all the worse by the irregular shape of the reflective plane, stretching across his face like a gigantic canyon in the earth. The center of it was still blood red, a jagged and cruel line that began on his forehead, skipped over his brow, eye socket, and bridge of his nose, and ended far down his opposite cheek. The flesh around it was puffy and white, stretched tight and creating a series of radial lines that covered most of the rest of his face. Turning his head from side to side, Lynch examined the injury with an unusual and detached sense of curiosity. There was no fear or horror in him. He accepted God’s marking like the gift it was, and he did not shrink from the cracked visage presenting itself in his supper spoon. It was clearly his face, and just as clearly his scar, and although he knew he had not had it before, seeing it now did not take him by surprise, almost as if it had always been there below the surface, hidden from others but not from his vision of himself.
This is what God has given me? he asked. This is the mark that will proclaim to all who see it that I fight on the side of the Lord?
Yes, Michael said reassuringly. It is part of God’s great plan.
Lynch lowered his spoon solemnly to the table. “It never hurt,” he said in response to his younger brother’s question. “Not when the cut was first made and not at any point since then. It is a mark God has given me and I wear it now and for the rest of my life in praise of His holy name.”
The announcement that followed -- that the archangel Michael had appeared to him at the directive of God the Father, and had cut Lynch across his face with his flaming sword in order to mark Lynch as someone who would speak for the Lord, as a warning to evil and righteous men alike -- was not universally accepted by the members of his family. It was nearly so. His mother accepted it immediately and enthusiastically, saying she had been praying for just such a thing to happen to one or more of her children, having borne them for no other purpose but to have them serve God and to carry out His mission while here on Earth. Most of her children followed her lead, much as they had been doing their entire lives, but the two oldest -- a sister named Sarah and a brother named Thomas -- had their doubts. They did not voice them, they would not dare voice them in such a setting, with their mother compelling them all to join hands and leading them in a prayer of thanks to the Almighty Creator, but they had them nonetheless. They were their mother’s children, and shared her fervent belief in God the Father and his holy Son who had died for all their sins, but they were also of their father, a small and quiet man who sat opposite their domineering mother at the supper table, and who, like them, remembered clearly the axe head breaking off and striking their younger brother in the face.
It was very much in this manner that life reached a new plateau for Lynch and his family. His accident while chopping wood, for those who could even remember it, becoming the great unspeakable topic of their household, no one daring to mention it in either Lynch’s or his mother’s presence. That Sunday Lynch returned to church, his pastor and most of the congregation already briefed on the miracle God had bestowed on him, and the special role he would evidently play in God’s on-going crusade against sin and evil. For seven months they had all been praying for Lynch’s recovery every Sunday morning, all convinced as his family had been that the sleep had been brought on by the blow to the head the axe had given him. To hear that the hand of God had been at work in the incident, that the wound had come not from an old axe head but from Michael’s mighty sword -- it renewed the faith of many and helped them see how such a recovery could occur so quickly after such a long sleep. And while there were a silent few in his family who wondered what a twelve-year-old boy could do to save the souls of those who surrounded him in adoration, there were none who pondered similar thoughts in the congregation. That first Sunday, their pastor even asked Lynch to come speak to them from the pulpit, to tell them what he could about his encounter with Michael and the path God had illuminated for him. As Lynch stood there in a shaft of morning sunlight, repeating for his followers what he had already told his family, there were many among them who would have sworn the scar across Lynch’s face had begun to pulsate and glow, the red line shining with a light all its own while he spoke.
But for both his family and his congregation, there was actually very little Lynch could say about God’s purpose in marking him. It had been done, Michael had appeared to him and had marked him as God the Father had commanded, and the marking had been done so that all who saw Lynch would know he spoke for the Lord. But beyond that, Lynch was just as clueless as everyone he told. He spoke for the Lord, but what was he to say? He fought on the side of the Lord, but who was he fighting against? Michael was strangely silent on these questions when Lynch tried to probe the part of the archangel that still resided within him, but sometimes he would appear to Lynch in his dreams, the shimmering form with the blazing sword come to stand over him much as he had on that momentous day seven months previous. On all of these subsequent visits, Michael remained absolutely quiet as he stood over the young boy as if waiting for some miracle to happen, something wondrous foretold, but not specific in either its detail or its timing. Lynch was always vibrantly aware of Michael’s enhanced presence during these dreams, the dream-Lynch rising to stand before the archangel while the dreamer lay paralyzed, his eyeballs rolling unsettled beneath his heavy lids and the perspiration standing out on his forehead. On these occasions Lynch and Michael would stand facing each other, their eyes locked in parallel with their minds, both wondering what God the Father had in store for young Lynch and when it would begin to manifest itself.
The answer came in the spring. Lynch had turned thirteen during his seven-month slumber and then fourteen early in the following year and, despite the reverence he felt for his marking and the mission God had yet to reveal to him, he had begun to notice girls in a way he hadn’t before. Whereas the year before Lynch’s friends had spent most of their Sunday afternoons playing ball and fishing and running wild, this year a change had come over them and they were much more interested in activities that would bring them closer to their female school mates. The announcement that one of their older sisters was having a coming out party, for example, would send them all into a tizzy, and, young as they were, they would begin looking for any excuse to garner an invitation. Lynch, by and large, followed suit, outwardly reluctant to engage in such earthly pursuits but maintaining an appropriate concern for the welfare of the souls of his friends. Inwardly, he felt conflicted, besieged as he was by emotions and feelings that had not been present the year before and which were largely unfamiliar but not altogether unwanted. And Lynch, with so many older brothers and sisters, became exceedingly popular in these circumstances, as he could be relied upon to have a connection through one of them to every debutante in the county.
On one such Sunday that spring just such a circumstance occurred. The best friend of his older sister Sarah, a skinny and freckled only child named Eustacia Beauregard, would be launched like an admiral’s yacht out onto the stormy seas of Columbia’s social scene, gussied up and powdered to within an inch of her life and surrounded by all the young men and ladies in the county. As Eustacia’s best friend, Sarah Lynch had a hand in organizing the event, much as an older sister would have had Eustacia had any, and it was this connection young Archibald and his more roguish companions saw as their ticket to the festivities.
The Beauregards lived on the largest plantation in the county, the manor house standing a full two miles from the road to Columbia, and there would be by necessity a lot of horses and carriages ferrying the assorted guests to the celebration at the appointed time. Lynch and his friends would organize a livery stable for them all, grooming the horses during the party and marshalling the carriages at the appropriate time for the eventual departure. They’d do their share of work, especially for those horses and carriages driven by party guests instead one of their slaves, as was frequently done on such occasions, but they would be positioned to see every guest arrive and to help every young lady dressed in her Sunday best down from the height of her carriage. This, they knew -- this opportunity to touch every hand and see every corseted waist and every elevated bosom -- this was clearly worth the work of grooming a few dozen horses.
The morning of the big day, Lynch took Sarah over to the Beauregard place in their father’s buckboard, the two of them given a rare exemption from that Sunday’s church service so that Sarah could assist Eustacia with her elaborate preparations and so Lynch could deliver her and return with the buckboard for more appropriate use later in the day. Sarah was eighteen and had had her debutante ball two years before and, although an old hand at these things, was still excited for Eustacia and the adventures that awaited as both men and boys would begin the serious business of courting her.
“It’s going to be such a glorious day,” Sarah said serenely, looking out at the sun just beginning to rise over the tobacco fields. “I’m so happy for Eustacia. She is going to have several offers made to her before that sun sets this evening, and from the wealthiest and handsomest men in the county. Isn’t it glorious, Archie?”
Lynch grunted in unwilling assent, not seeing how proposals being made to Eustacia Beauregard had any impact on what kind of day it was going to be. Hot. That’s what Lynch thought it was going to be. Unusually hot for this early in the spring. It’d been that way for the last several days.
Sarah grunted back at Lynch, mocking his form of communication in a dismissive fashion. “Oh, Archie,” she said. “How silly this must all seem to you. But take my word for it, there’s no bigger day in a young woman’s life. Not even the day she gets married.”
Lynch grunted again, uncertain how much his sister really knew about such things, but not wanting to get into an argument with her. He remembered Sarah’s debutante ball -- although he had come to discover it was sometimes hard for him to remember things that had happened before his encounter with Michael. There had been only one marriage proposal that day, and that from an overweight, fifty-year-old businessman from Charleston, who had been attending as the guest of someone else, and whose offer their parents thought it would be best to politely refuse. Now, two years later, no other serious suitors had made themselves visible.
“Is that all you can do?” Sarah asked him, teasingly. “Grunt?”
Lynch grunted again, this time clearly in an affirmative style, and Sarah laughed, her warm, generous voice filling the air around them. Lynch liked his sister Sarah, liked all his brothers and sisters really, but Sarah was something special. She hadn’t let the way her own boat had sunk either get her down or get in the way of enjoying the expected launch of Eustacia’s. That’s just the kind of person she was. Always happy for someone else and never sorry for herself.
When Lynch dropped her off at the Beauregard’s, Sarah gave him a little peck on the cheek and thanked him both for the ride and for agreeing to help out later in the day with his friends. Pressing his hand warmly and looking him deep in the eyes she told him she was proud of the good and honest man he was growing into.
Lynch looked away, sheepish and embarrassed both by the praise she offered and his own warm feelings for his sister. It wasn’t the first time she had said something like this, but it was less the things she said and more the way she looked at him when she said them that made Lynch’s own emotions rise to the surface. Since being chosen by God, and the acquisition of the scar that had been left as visible evidence of that choosing, Lynch was acutely aware of how few people really looked at him when they addressed him. His friends, his teachers, even members of his own family -- it was as if they all couldn’t stand the sight of his damaged face and invariably looked away and off to the side when they spoke to him. They were the same people whose eyes stared when Lynch wasn’t looking, who were both sickened and titillated by the partially-healed gash that ran down his face, and whose heads would suddenly jerk away whenever he caught them doing it. It made Lynch suspect they didn’t fully accept him and his scar as evidence of God’s influence in his life, didn’t fully accept Lynch’s new status as a modern prophet of the Almighty. Or perhaps they all feared what Lynch’s choosing meant for their own relationships with God, sinners as they all were. That’s what Michael told him, anyway. Regardless, everyone was both drawn to and repulsed by his marking, anxious to steal surreptitious glances in an attempt to understand it, but unwilling to examine it and its meaning closely when the opportunity presented itself.
Everyone, that is, but Sarah. For Sarah it was as though she had wholly accepted her brother’s scar and its hidden meaning as a fully integrated part of not only his being but as a facet of their relationship to one another. Lynch knew this was true. He could see the unclouded acceptance in Sarah’s eyes when she looked at him. And for this Lynch loved his sister perhaps more than he had before.
Lynch looked back at Sarah, still sheepish, but wanting to see that look in her eyes, that look which helped him confirm what he already knew to be true. But Sarah was strangely not looking past the scar and into his soul the way she usually did. This time she was staring intently at the scar itself.
“It’s healing nicely,” she said, her eyes obviously running up and down its length and comparing its condition to the mental picture she carried of how it had looked in the past. “I remember when you first got it. I wasn’t sure you were going to recover.”
Lynch was a little disoriented by her words, not remembering a time when Sarah had ever directly referred to his scar before. When she reached out a hand to brush his hair away from his forehead, Lynch instinctively pulled back as if she meant to strike him.
“My life was never in danger,” Lynch said cautiously. “God the Father would not have allowed me to be killed in the process of giving me His mark.”
“Hmmm,’ Sarah said noncommittally. If she was alarmed by Lynch’s cautious reaction she did not show it. “How much do you remember of the day you received it?”
“Like it was yesterday,” Lynch said confidently.
Sarah nodded. “What did mother make for breakfast that morning?”
“Pancakes,” Lynch said immediately, not seeing the trap he was about to fall into. “Pancakes with apple butter and cranberries.”
“And was our whole family there that morning?”
“No,” Lynch said. “That was the day Thomas was expected back from Wilmington.”
“That’s right,” Sarah said casually. “Do you remember what time he returned that day?”
“Of course,” Lynch said. “It was… It was…”
Lynch could not remember. Looking back over his memories from that day, he unexpectedly realized there were major portions missing. It was as if someone had plucked the individual pieces of knowledge out of his brain.
Suddenly Sarah was grasping Lynch’s hand, the warmth of her flesh palpable against the cool morning air. “Archie,” she said fervently, her gaze shifting from the scar on the surface of his being back to his eyes and into the depth of his core. “Archie, do you remember chopping wood with Father that morning?”
He did. Lynch did remember chopping wood with his father that morning. For a moment, at least, he did remember. He remembered the way their breath hung in the air before them and the way the well-worn axe handle felt in his hands and the way the pancakes he had eaten for breakfast rolled and gurgled in the pit of his stomach, especially each time he or his father brought the axe blade down on a log to split it with a solid and crunching thump. But very quickly, an enveloping cloud moved through his mind and obscured those memories and he no longer remembered, no longer even believed that they happened.
Michael? Lynch found himself asking silently. What was it? What happened? Something bad happened to me, didn’t it? I can feel it, but I don’t know what it is.
But this time Michael did not answer him, the angel’s presence within him still detectable, but weaker than it had ever been before.
“It was an accident,” Sarah was saying, her words as distant as the sounds of Eustacia Beauregard and her mother descending the manor steps behind them and beginning to make their way towards the buckboard. “You remember, don’t you, Archie? The axe with the cracked handle. The one Father should have thrown away years ago.”
Lynch looked at his sister with a stupefied expression on his face. He recognized all the words she was using, but was having a hard time making sense out of them. Her words also made him remember something -- a bright flash of light and an instant of terrible pain -- but that hadn’t been any accident. That had been Michael marking him by the will of God.
And then Eustacia and her mother were upon them and Sarah had to go. She leaned over and gave Lynch another peck on the cheek, whispering a hurried “Try to remember,” into his ear, and then was down and off the buckboard, marching up towards the Beauregard house with its resident women.
It took Lynch some time to recover from his sister’s entreaty. It took him long enough just to flick the reins and get the horse and buckboard moving again, and he spent a lot of time thinking about it as the wheels slowly spun him towards home.
Try to remember, she had asked him just before she left. Try to remember what? Chopping wood with his father the morning of the day Michael had first appeared to him? Why should he remember that? What significance could such a routine event have? It was a chore, a chore he had done hundreds of times, sometimes with his father and sometimes without. He remembered it all right. He had a hard time forgetting it he had done it so many times. But he had no recollection of doing it on that particular day. Like any menial chore done on a consistent basis, there was nothing about each individual time to make it stand out in his memory. It was rote. It was mechanical. You cut down a tree, drag it to the stump, saw it into a series of logs, split them into wedge-shaped quarters with your axe, and then pile the split wood in the bin adjacent to the barn. He knew it so well he could do it in his sleep if he had to. But he wasn’t able to remember anything special about the time he had done it prior to Michael’s appearance. Should he? Sarah seemed to think so.
What did she mean, Michael? Lynch thought, trying the angel again, knowing he often did not speak when there were others around, but had plenty of wisdom to share when Lynch was alone. Why does she want me to remember chopping wood with Father?
She is trying to confuse you, came Michael’s immediate reply. The Devil is working through her to distract you from the path God has chosen.
Lynch paused for a moment to consider Michael’s words and, for the first time since his marking, he found himself struggling to believe them. You’re mistaken, he thought carefully. Sarah is not working with the Devil.
No, Michael confirmed. She is not working with the Devil. The Devil is working through her. She is likely unaware of his dark influence on her actions, but it shows the tactics the Evil One will now start to employ against you.
Why? Lynch asked.
Because you have been marked by God, Michael said. Your face is a testament to God’s power for all who see it, and a direct threat to Satan’s desired dominion over this world and the next. He will stop at nothing to sidetrack you and keep you from fulfilling God’s purpose.
Of course. It made sense, and Lynch immediately regretted having doubted Michael’s words, which he saw again were filled with the wisdom he needed to navigate the trials that clearly lay ahead. If Satan could infiltrate a relationship as special and sacred to him as the one with his sister and make him doubt the purpose God had given him -- for that’s what had happened, hadn’t it? -- he would really have to stay on his guard. His mother had always warned him that Satan stood around every corner, waiting to tempt him to do evil, and avoiding him had been hard enough as a normal twelve-year-old boy. But now he had been selected as one of God’s chosen few, and the Devil would start coming around that corner and meeting Lynch head on.
It was only after Lynch had reached this conclusion that he noticed the tent. It must have been there on the ride to the Beauregard plantation. Big as it was, it was inconceivable that it could have been set up in the time since Lynch had last passed its location. But neither he nor Sarah had noticed it on the way out, even though the sun had been up high enough to see it clearly if either of them had happened to look in its direction.
A circus. That’s what Lynch first thought it was, a big circus tent someone had pitched out in the field the O’Sullivans had decided to leave fallow this year. But no, it wasn’t likely to be the circus. The circus came to the fairgrounds every year, and usually in the height of summer. And besides, neither he nor any of his friends had seen any advertisements or heard any talk of a circus coming to the O’Sullivan plantation this spring. What kind of circus was it that didn’t announce its arrival to all the school kids in the county?
So what was it? As Lynch brought the buckboard to a stop and the rattle of its boards and brackets fell silent, he thought he could hear the sound of singing voices drifting towards him on the wind.
His curiosity aroused, Lynch jumped down from the wooden seat, wrapped the reins of his horse around the nearest fence post, swung his legs over the stile, and began walking briskly across the denuded field towards the mysterious edifice. It was definitely singing. Each step he took made that plainer, and not just any old singing, but church singing, a whole multitude of voices, raised in a chorus unfamiliar to him, but unmistakable in its worshipful intent.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-r-my.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-r-my.
But this singing was not like any singing he had heard or practiced in the church he and his family attended. There, the hymns were all so serious, sung slowly with reverence and humility. This song, this hymn if Lynch could get away with calling it that, was fast, fast and upbeat in a way Lynch had been told church songs were not to be, the voices that sang it filled not with humility but exuberant passion and excitement.
I got my war clothes on in the army of the Lord;
I got my war clothes on in the ar-r-my.
I got my war clothes on in the army of the Lord;
I got my war clothes on in the ar-r-my.
Lynch thought there must have been hundreds of people inside that tent, all singing this song at the top of their registers and clapping along in unison to maintain the accelerated rhythm. Maybe even a thousand. The tent was certainly big enough. As he walked up to it he saw how large it was, and recognized it for what he first assumed it to be, a circus tent. The peaked top, the pennants twisting in the breeze, the wide flaps peeled back to allow the entrance of elephants if necessary -- it was all there. And now that he was close enough he could see the people inside, indeed hundreds of them, wrapped around the interior perimeter of the tent, all standing on a curving band of bench-like bleachers and facing the center ring, stamping their feet, clapping their hands, and singing.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-r-my.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-r-my.
Who were they? These people inside this tent singing as if God Himself was there to take them all to glory? Who were they? Despite himself, Lynch had to look back out through the tent flap, across the O’Sullivan’s field, and out to the road and his old buckboard and horse to make sure he had not been transported with them to some heavenly clime. Their appearance was that strange, plopped down practically unnoticed in this field as if from the clouds. Turning back, Lynch allowed his eye to scan the crowd, freezing momentarily on one rapturous face after another, seeking and failing to find any that were familiar to him.
I believe I’ll die in the army of the Lord;
I believe I’ll die in the ar-r-my.
I believe I’ll die in the army of the Lord;
I believe I’ll die in the ar-r-my.
It was only after his eye had moved over a full three-quarters arc of the circular crowd that the diversity of their racial characters became obvious to Lynch. He had been so surprised by the scene they had presented he hadn’t thought to notice, as he otherwise surely would have been unable to miss, that more than half their number were black, most obviously slaves, but some dressed as if they were well-to-do white people. And scattered throughout those dark singing faces and clapping hands were a near-equal number of actual white folks, ranging in dress like their black companions from the threadbare coats of the farm laborer to the fine silk of the businessman. Pulling his gaze back to take them all in at a glance, Lynch was shocked to see here, as he had never seen before, an integrated mix of all races and classes, all clapping in perfect syncopation with their voices raised in song.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-rmy.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-r-my.
And then, at the moment when Lynch thought the shocks could not get any greater, he saw someone he knew. In this gallery of total strangers, hundreds strong, curving around the interior wall of their fabric cathedral, Lynch suddenly caught sight of a face he recognized. Sitting directly opposite him, on the lowest of the dozen wooden benches that made up the bleachers, sat the silent and unmoving figure of sixteen-year-old Rachel O’Sullivan.
I’ve got my breastplate on in the army of the Lord;
I’ve got my breastplate on in the ar-r-my.
I’ve got my breastplate on in the army of the Lord;
I’ve got my breastplate on in the ar-r-my.
Rachel was the O’Sullivan’s youngest daughter, just two years ahead of Lynch in school, and arguably the weirdest of the bunch. The O’Sullivans had six surviving children, all of them girls, and Rachel was the youngest, easily five or six years younger than her nearest sister. Mrs. O’Sullivan had actually given birth to four more children, all boys, but none of those children had lived long enough to see their first birthday. Two had died almost immediately after birth, another died after a few weeks, never really learning how to suckle as a baby should, and the fourth actually made it to three months before succumbing to what the O’Sullivans called a brain fever. None of Rachel’s sisters had been brought out into society the way Eustacia Beauregard would be later that day, and it was clear Rachel also would not be. It was not usually discussed openly, but the O’Sullivans had actually arranged the marriages of all six of their daughters, some from the very earliest of ages. There was no need to announce the social availability of a young woman in the traditional way if such availability had never been granted to her. Lynch did not know the name of the suitor her parents had selected for Rachel, nor was he likely to know who it was even if he did know the name. It was not something the O’Sullivans ever discussed with their neighbors, probably fearing the ostracism that could swiftly come for so openly clinging to what had been deemed archaic and backwards in these forward-looking times. But if Rachel’s intended was anything like those of her sisters, he was more than likely a man of the cloth and more than thirty years her senior.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-r-my.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-r-my.
Unlike the rapturous host that surrounded her, Rachel sat silent and unmoving amidst all the tumult and frenzy. Her face, her hair, her shoulders, they were all bowed down as if in some desperate prayer, but her eyes, bulging and yellow in the muted light of day soaking through the tent fabric, were rolled up towards the uppermost peak of the tent pole, as if trying to escape both her head and the structure. Her father stood on one side of her and a man Lynch had never seen before stood on the other, a thin man in a starched white shirt with a sunken face, both singing but both with one hand clamped down firmly on Rachel’s shoulders, as if trying to keep her from flying away.
I’m going to fight until I die in the army of the Lord;
I’m going to fight until I die in the ar-r-my.
I’m going to fight until I die in the army of the Lord;
I’m going to fight until I die in the ar-r-my.
Lynch took several steps forward. He was not aware he was doing it. Something inside him compelled him, and he walked forward until he stood even with the lowest row of benches. One more step and he would have moved out into the empty center circle of the tent, with the rows of singers and stompers curving up and around him like the walls of a well. Lynch did not know what moved him forward and he did not know what stopped him. But there he stood, waiting for something to happen, all previous thoughts of the day erased from his mind, and staring at the troubled and tormented form of Rachel O’Sullivan.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the ar-r-my.
I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord;
I’m a so-ol-dier in the a-r-my.
The hymn’s last verse brought a thunderous applause from the congregation, the rhythmic hand clapping that had accompanied the song jumping suddenly in both octave and frequency, sounding more like a rainstorm on a tin roof and only partially masking the shrieks of joy and excitement that many in the group could not contain within themselves.
“Praise God!” a voice suddenly yelled, booming above all the other racket as if spoken by the Almighty himself.
Lynch hadn’t been looking anywhere else but was surprised to see down in the center circle the form of the thin man who had been standing with Rachel’s father, pacing around it like a caged lion with voracious strides of his long, skinny legs.
“I SAID PRAISE GOD!” the man yelled even louder, his voice rumbling with a power Lynch had never heard before -- not screeching, not cracking, but deep and resonant, and punching a hole through Lynch’s chest like a pistol shot.
The congregation must have felt its power, too, for much as they had during their hymn, they cried out in a paroxysm of both pain and pleasure. “Praise God!” many of them shouted back, but many others just cried out, unable to form the words in their rapture.
“I can feel the Holy Ghost here with us this morning!” the strange, thin man shouted, his own legs spasming and causing him to hop awkwardly around the edge of the empty circle.
“I SAID I can feel the HOLY GHOST with us this MORNING!” he shouted again, this time stopping as the waves of sound came down from the crowd and pinned him in place, on the far side of the circle from where he started and in a direct line between Lynch and Rachel O’Sullivan.
“Can you FEEL the HOLY GHOST with us this MORNING?!” he shouted to the congregation, his form stooped over and twisted. This time instead of the wild and random cacophony of sound, there was more of a rumbling murmur, punctuated with a loud and forceful “YES!” as three hundred voices came together in unison.
It startled Lynch, the crowd around him speaking as if it was a single entity, but it only emboldened the thin, old man in the tight white shirt.
“Who’s here with us this morning?” he shouted back at the crowd, straightening up to his full height and putting a hand to his ear as if he was having trouble hearing them.
“HOLY GHOST!” the congregation thundered back.
“WHO’S here with us this morning?” he asked again.
“HOLY GHOST!” was the immediate reply.
“WHO’S here to show us the POWER?”
“HOLY GHOST!”
“WHO’S here to show us the power of ALMIGHTY GOD?”
“HOLY GHOST!”
Lynch stood in mute disbelief as this strangest of strange church services took place before his very eyes. The minister -- for that is what Lynch realized the man in the white shirt had to be, some kind of minister -- shouted a series of questions to his adoring flock, a series of questions all with the same answer, and the congregation shouted that answer back again and again, louder and louder each time until it seemed to tear at the tent fabric like a hurricane wind.
“WHO has the POWER of ALMIGHTY GOD?” the minister cried, his voice humming and growling while he spoke and his legs pacing the dirt floor like a giant bestriding the earth.
“HOLY GHOST!”
“Who has the POWER to work miracles?”
“HOLY GHOST!”
“Who has the POWER to work miracles upon this land?”
“HOLY GHOST!”
“Who has the POWER to work miracles upon this land, turning night into day?”
“HOLY GHOST!”
“Who has the POWER to work miracles upon this land, turning night into day and lambs into lions?”
“HOLY GHOST!”
“Who has the POWER to work miracles upon this land, turning night into day, lambs into lions, and SIN INTO SALVATION?”
“HOLY GHOST!”
“Praise God!”
“PRAISE GOD!” the congregation shouted back, switching easily and without hesitation into a new chorus.
“I said, PRAISE GOD!” the minister shouted, his arms reaching out to those who surrounded him.
“PRAISE GOD!” they all cried back.
All except Lynch. He kept his lips sealed, never having seen anything like this before and not certain if he belonged here. It appeared no one had noticed him yet, standing sheltered by the rise of one edge of the wooden bleachers. He would not participate, but neither would he leave. There was a power here, a power he had never felt before but now could feel clearly in his bones. It was enticing, hypnotic, and altogether indescribable. Lynch was so taken in by it he did not even have the presence of mind to ask Michael what it was.
“Praise GOD for the POWER of the HOLY GHOST!” the minister cried, his words partially echoing those that had just passed through Lynch’s mind.
“PRAISE GOD!”
“Praise GOD for the Holy Ghost POWER he is going to work among us TODAY!”
“PRAISE GOD!”
“Praise GOD for the Holy Ghost POWER he is going to work through me TODAY!”
“PRAISE GOD!”
“Praise God,” the minister said, suddenly quiet, but not so quiet his words could not be heard throughout the tent. “Praise God,” he said again, this time almost to himself as he shook and bowed his head, pacing around in a small circle at the center of the ring. As he did Lynch was surprised to see the congregation abandon its chorus-like intonations and begin to shout and cry out as individual members, some continuing to praise God and others offering words of encouragement to the minister.
“Bless you, Pastor,” Lynch heard one white woman shout out, her voice slicing through the din of all the other voices to reach his ears. “You’ve got the Holy Ghost power!” said another parishioner, and oddly, Lynch thought, “Prepare for battle, Satan!” shouted a third.
And then, as if on cue, Mr. O’Sullivan stood at his place in the bleachers opposite Lynch, pulling his obviously reluctant daughter Rachel up by the arm, and made his way down into the center circle with the sixteen-year-old girl in tow. The minister did not appear to notice the O’Sullivans’ entry into his domain, still pacing as he was in a tight circle and muttering to himself, but the congregation clearly did, reacting in a series of boos, catcalls, and vituperations, all directed at the young Rachel O’Sullivan.
Rachel was clearly not herself. Lynch had not seen her for some time. His long sleep had obviously interfered with a lot of his associations, but even after he had returned to school, Rachel had not been there as she had been before. There were rumors her parents had sent her off to some strict religious school or that she had contracted some horrible disease and could no longer be allowed to intermingle with the other school children. But Lynch saw now that neither of these rumors could be true. For here was Rachel O’Sullivan, here in the center of this odd tent in the middle of her father’s fallow field, here and not locked up in some convent back in the Appalachian Mountains, and although she did not appear to be herself, she was clearly robust and in some picture of health. She pulled back against her father’s movement, shrinking away as much as she could from the thin minister in the starched white shirt. Her eyes darted about like those of a captured animal and her bare feet and legs dug as deep as they could into the earthen floor in a desperate attempt to retard the forward momentum imparted to her by her father’s determination. The dress she wore was simple and stained, nothing like the immaculate outfits Lynch had remembered her wearing to school the previous year, and her hair, twisted and dirty, encircled her head like an angry cloud.
“Come, child,” the minister said. “Come, bring the child to me.”
His words ennobled the congregation, many of them rising to their feet and continuing to call out their exhortations of support and faith. But they had the opposite effect on Rachel, who began fighting back against her father’s hold more violently, twisting and kicking in an attempt to get free. As she struggled, she began to cry out, first in a series of incoherent wails, but then in a low and guttural voice, wholly unlike the one Lynch was familiar with, and savage in its use of blasphemy and profanity.
“No! No!” Rachel bellowed. “This whore is mine! This bleeding cunt is mine!”
“She is a child of God!” the minister suddenly railed at Rachel, addressing her as if he was speaking to someone else. “She is a child of God and she will reject you!”
“She’s a whore!” Rachel shouted back, her father pulling her forward until she stood between him and the minister. “She’s a dirty whore and she’s mine! She’s mine!”
The entire congregation was on their feet now, but they had all gone silent, watching the drama unfold beneath them. Lynch was watching, too, something unrealized inside him compelling him a few steps forward until he stood completely clear of the bleachers and in the open circle of earth itself. From his vantage point he could see all three figures clearly -- the hard, angular profile of the minister, the writhing of Rachel’s burgeoning form beneath her torn and soiled dress, and the tears and perspiration that stood out on the face of her father. And in that moment, for a fraction of a second, Lynch’s confused and Rachel’s wild eyes locked, and suddenly it was as if a fire had exploded within Lynch’s head, a fire without heat or smoke, but with an intensity of light that radiated out and blinded him to all the world around him.
“No!” Rachel suddenly screamed, in a voice still not entirely, but much more like her own, a shrill and girlish cry, like those heard on playgrounds when boys are chasing them. “No! Stay away! Stay away from me!”
The minister closed ranks and let his large and bony hands fall heavily on Rachel’s shoulders. “Out!” he shouted at her, practically in her face. “Out and be gone! The Holy Ghost is here with me and he commands you!”
“No!” Rachel cried again. “No, please! Keep him away!”
The light no longer blinded Lynch. It was still there, covering everything that surrounded him in a way he had not seen light behave before, lying thickly over objects and in the air like iridescent syrup. There was no pain, but there was a loud humming in his ears and sweat began to trickle down his neck and forehead as if the top of his head was overheating. It made him dizzy, and in his bewilderment Lynch realized the scene before him had changed. The minister, Rachel, and her father were all still there, all still in the relative positions he had last observed them, but Rachel looked markedly different. Her skin was different. On her face and throat, on her exposed arms and legs, everywhere Lynch could see, her skin was inflamed and puffy, as if some massive infection had taken hold of her and was ravaging its way through her system.
What is it? Lynch asked Michael. What’s wrong with her?
Step closer, Archibald. Step closer and you will see.
“No! No, please!” Rachel cried again, this time almost pleading with the minister. “Keep him away! Keep him away from me!”
The words were clearly English in Lynch’s ears, but down deep in his brain, down deep where the light began, they sounded like another language, one he had never heard spoken aloud but which he nevertheless understood.
“Out!” the minister continued to shout, shaking Rachel violently, but his words fading into whispers in Lynch’s ears, and no such resonance sounding in his mind. “Be gone from this innocent child!”
Lynch walked a few paces closer and watched as Rachel reacted even more violently, pushing back against her father and desperately trying to break free of his grasp. It’s me, Lynch suddenly realized. It’s not the minister she’s afraid of. It’s me. And with that realization came a closer scrutiny of Rachel’s form. The flesh of her body was not just discolored, it was also pulsating, a myriad of small bumps rolling up and down all over her form, exactly as if she was nothing more than a sack full of freshly-caught fish, twisting and jumping as they asphyxiated.
What is it? Lynch asked Michael again. Is there something trapped inside of her?
Inside of her, yes, Michael said. But not trapped. Not trapped.
Lynch took another purposeful step forward and Rachel recoiled again, pushing back against her father and finally breaking his hold over her. Rachel’s father fell to the ground and Rachel continued to step back, pulling the minister along with her.
Now some in the congregation began noticing Lynch. His eyes remained locked on Rachel’s swollen form and his ears remained clouded by the rising mass of words and strange vocalizations emanating from the center of his mind, but he could feel their attention turn towards him, feel their eyes focusing and sense the thoughts of both wonder and confusion that began to possess them. And strangely, with their attention came understanding, understanding of what was happening here and what Rachel had become.
Azra-el, Michael whispered in Lynch’s ear. His name is Azra-el. Before the fall, he was one of the loveliest of all.
“Return, Azra-el,” Lynch said heavily, speaking in the language only Michael, Azra-ell, and now he understood. “Return to the dark depths to which you have been banished.”
Lynch was not sure where he had found these words. In many ways it felt as if someone else was speaking them though him, but at the same time he knew they were his words, and they had been waiting unused inside him for a long time. The effect they had on Rachel, on the creature inhabiting Rachel’s innocent form, was dramatic and immediate. Tortured and frightened, it became suddenly angry, tossed the elderly minister aside as if he was made of straw, and rushed forward to confront Lynch.
“You do not command me, human!” Azra-el screamed derisively at him, the words sounding wholly unfamiliar to Lynch’s ears but perfectly understood to his expanding brain. “I have the power to bind you on the lake of fire!”
Lynch did not flinch or turn away. Now that Rachel stood directly before him, Lynch could see what looked like dozens of small human faces, twisted into expressions of sorrow and agony, rolling beneath her reddened flesh, pushing it outward as if trying to break through a stretchable membrane. With a good measure of disgust but no fear, Lynch seized one of her wrists with his hand and turned it until Rachel dropped to her knees before him.
“The Holy Spirit is within me, Azra-el, and it is the Holy Spirit that commands you!” Lynch spoke pointedly as the fallen angel within Rachel began to scream in pain and fright. “Now return to your hoary plane before I burn your coveted immortality into ash!”
The light that had initially blinded Lynch now began to burn, burn both him and Rachel, and Azra-el’s screams filled the entire tent with their intensity. Somewhere within himself, Lynch was still there, looking out through his eyes and hearing through his ears, but there was also a power within him that was not his at all, that seemed to belong to someone else and to be at another’s control. And yet this power was his. It was part of him. He could feel it surging through his veins and dancing across his nerve endings. It may not be Lynch controlling it, but the power was his and he would one day learn to master it. As the thunder rolled from his brain to the world around him Lynch knew that just as certainly as he knew how to speak Azra-el’s native tongue.
There was sudden shift and a blur of motion, like the tent and everyone in it had fallen a thousand feet through the air, and then the power was gone and Lynch found himself crouching over the shivering form of Rachel O’Sullivan, his own body drenched in sweat and his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his back. Azra-el was gone, and Rachel’s form had returned to its natural state. The soft whimpers of her crying and Michael’s gentle reassurance that this was all part of God’s great plan were the last thing Lynch heard before losing consciousness.
+ + +
When Lynch awoke it was very much like emerging from another coma. He was disoriented, with little memory of what had happened and little understanding of where he was now. The room was white and not his own, with a high ceiling and a tremendous bay window through which a warm breeze was blowing, lifting the long lace curtains and floating them aloft in slow and graceful waves. Had another seven months passed? Seven years? Like the last time, there had been a blinding light, a pain in his head, and Michael had been there. But this time was different from the last. This time… This time…
The door opened and a woman entered the room. She was not his mother, but was familiar to Lynch. She stayed only long enough to see that Lynch had regained consciousness and then left the room, returning a few moments later with two men, both also unknown but familiar. The men came over to stand beside Lynch’s bed while the woman hovered near the room’s entrance, seemingly unwilling to commit to one course of action or the other.
“How are you, son?” one of the men asked him.
Uncertain as to the true answer to that question, Lynch only nodded.
“Do you know where you are?” the man asked.
The truth of that one was more evident. He didn’t know. He was obviously in someone’s bedroom, in their bed, with its white sheets and quilts pulled up to his neck. But whose bedroom it was, and how he had gotten there, that all remained a mystery. But still he did not speak, shaking his head slowly from side to side.
“Well,” the man said, “my name is Matthew O’Sullivan and this is my home.”
And that’s when it all started to come back to Lynch. This was Matthew -- Mister -- O’Sullivan, and the woman at the door was his wife, Missus O’Sullivan, and the man next to him, the thin one in the tight white shirt and the ornery mop of gray hair, he was the minister. The minister in the tent, the one who had tried to… tried to…
“How did you get that scar, son?”
It was the minister who now spoke to him, edging himself forward and displacing Mr. O’Sullivan from the center of Lynch’s attention. He spoke to Lynch with his minister’s voice. Unlike Mr. O’Sullivan, who had used a soft and compassionate tone, the minister spoke to him as if speaking from the pulpit, with force and power and not a trace of doubt or fear. And it was more than just the change in tone that took Lynch by surprise and kept him off balance. It was the question itself. There was still a small part of Lynch that did not remember having a scar.
“The scar,” the minister said again, exactly as if quoting scripture to the boys in the back pew. “The scar on your face. How did you get it?”
The scar? Lynch asked himself, and then another voice, still within his head but much more assured. Yes, the scar. The one on your face. The one given you by the archangel Michael. The one he gave to mark you as one of God’s chosen few. Praise His holy name.
Lynch sat up purposefully, allowing the sheet to fall off his naked chest and gather at his waist. “It’s my mark,” he said with the confidence of that inner voice. “Given to me by God as a warning to all who see it. I speak for the Lord.”
What might have struck others as an unbelievable claim did not faze the minister. The older man only nodded his head as if he understood, both what Lynch was saying and the truths his words contained, but also something that had so far eluded Lynch. “When you faced the evil spirit that had possession of Rachel O’Sullivan, your scar burned with a blinding light. Even now it glows under your skin. Has that ever happened before?”
The evil spirit, Lynch thought distantly.
Yes, Michael whispered softly. The one named Azra-el.
The minister reached down and closed a cold and vice-like hand around Lynch’s arm. “Has that ever happened before?”
“No,” Lynch said distantly, realizing with some self-consciousness he was nude beneath the sheet that now only partially covered him.
The minister released Lynch’s arm and stepped slightly away from the bed. Mr. O’Sullivan backed away with him and the two of them conferred in a hushed conversation that Lynch did not overhear. He might have been able to if he wasn’t so distracted by the memories conjured up in his brain. The evil spirit. Azra-el. The thing he had seen within Rachel O’Sullivan, living beneath her flesh and distorting it as it came up to the surface and confronted him. On her face, her throat, her arms -- small human faces crying out in sorrow and agony. Shivering at the memory, Lynch pulled the sheet and quilt up in an attempt to warm himself.
“Archibald,” Mr. O’Sullivan said in his gentle tone of voice, stepping forward again with the minister to stand beside Lynch’s bed. “Archibald, this man is a prophet,” he said, gesturing towards the minister. “But since you saw our service this morning you probably already know that. His name is Jeremiah Jackson.”
“Hello, Archibald,” Jackson said, stepping forward as he had before to put himself in the center of Lynch’s attention and speaking in a tone of voice wholly different from the one he had used before. The previous tone had been the fire and brimstone he must have used to startle sleepy parishioners. Now it was all sugar and sweetness.
Lynch pulled the sheet up closer to his face. There was something about this prophet Jackson that raised red flags within Lynch’s brain. Seeking Michael’s advice, he was surprised by the response.
Be open to this experience, Archibald, the archangel said. This one has much to teach you.
He does? Lynch asked.
He does, Michael confirmed. It is all part of God’s great plan.
Despite Michael’s assurances, Lynch was still suspicious. “How do you know my name?” he asked the minister. “And where are my clothes?”
“Young Rachel told us your name,” Jackson said easily, his hands open and thrust forward as if to show he had nothing to hide. “She recognized you from school.”
“Rachel?” Lynch said, not allowing Jackson to answer his second question, if the minister even intended to. At the mention of the girl’s name, Lynch’s mind filled with images of faces, red and swollen, screaming in pain and sorrow. “Oh, yes. Rachel. Is she all right?”
Jackson nodded. “She is now, thanks to you. She was in a very bad situation this morning. But you know that, don’t you? You know what was wrong with her, and what you did to help her. Don’t you, Archibald?”
Yes, of course he knew. But did they? Who was this person, this Jeremiah Jackson who stood over him now and tried to beguile him? Michael told Lynch to trust him, but Lynch was not convinced. And who were these people, the O’Sullivans and the others who had been in the tent, worshipping in a way Lynch had never seen before? What did they believe? What did they think was going on here?
“Why don’t you tell me what you think I did?” Lynch answered cryptically.
Jackson smiled as if he, more than anything else, had been waiting for just such an opportunity. And although Lynch would not have called it this at the time, what Jackson essentially did for the next hour was share his worldview with the young man, a worldview he firmly believed and which all the people who had been singing together in the tent that morning also believed. In its basic constructs, it was a worldview not all that different from the one Lynch had been taught and the one in which Lynch would have previously professed belief. It was a worldview in which God the Father sat on his throne in heaven, a worldview in which Satan had introduced sin and death into the perfect world God the Father had created, a worldview in which everyone now lived in that fallen world -- a world in which evil could triumph over good, in which sin was a stain all were born with, in which there were believers and unbelievers -- and a worldview in which God the Father had sent his only son Jesus Christ to absolve the sins of mankind and defeat the specter of death so all of God’s children could be saved from Satan’s treachery and live for eternity in the paradise God the Father had intended.
All of this was familiar to Lynch and he accepted it as easily from Jackson as he had accepted it from his parents, pastors, and Sunday School teachers for the first thirteen years of his life. But there was more to the worldview, more that Lynch had not been told of before, and which Jackson now relayed to him. In the world Lynch had previously been exposed to, it appeared the battle had already been fought and won, sin and death had already been conquered, and although evil still existed in the world, all one had to do was steer clear of it, believe in the power of Christ to save you, and your place in paradise was assured. But in the world Jackson described, in many ways the battle was still raging, and the battleground was not just the earth and the affairs of men, but the bodies and minds of believers and unbelievers alike.
That’s true, isn’t it, Michael? That’s why I was marked, right? To do battle?
Listen, Michael said reassuringly. This one has been sent to help show you the way. It is part of God’s plan for you.
Rachel O’Sullivan had been possessed. Possessed by a demon, by one of the angels who had rebelled against God and had fallen out of Heaven before Man had been created and placed in the Garden of Eden. In the world Lynch had known before his marking, such a thing was possible, all the facts that allowed it existing there, although highly irregular and never really seriously considered. But in the world Jackson described, the world Lynch was prepared to believe was closer to the truth, such occurrences were common, because in this world the battle was still raging, and people like Jeremiah Jackson -- and, evidently, Archibald Lynch -- were soldiers on the front line.
“Azra-el,” Lynch said after Jackson first shared the truth of Rachel’s condition.
“What?” Jackson said suddenly. Mr. and Mrs. O’Sullivan had by this time left the room to give the two warriors some privacy and Jackson had sat down on a chair pulled up beside Lynch’s bed. “What did you say?”
“Azra-el,” Lynch said again. “The demon that possessed her. His name was Azra-el.”
Jackson eyed Lynch suspiciously but continued to describe the events that had led up to his own encounter with the spirit inhabiting Rachel’s young form. Years ago another demon had possessed his younger sister when he was a seminary student in England and his headmaster, a vicar of imposing bulk and fortitude name Colchester -- who also bore a scar on his face he claimed was a mark given to him by Almighty God -- came to their family’s home and drove the demon out by wielding the power of the Holy Ghost. Shortly thereafter Jackson had joined Colchester on a missionary journey to America, to South Carolina, which was then still a colony of Great Britain, to see to the spiritual needs of those living on the very edge of the frontier. They had found a place where Satan and his legions had run amok, and they had dedicated themselves to the battle against him and began winning souls for Christ.
“Satan had possession of hundreds when we first arrived,” Jackson said, “some in the manner of Rachel O’Sullivan, but most just in the way they led their lives, selfishly, and in open spite of the wishes of their Creator. And with Colchester I battled them all, driving out the spirits of those fallen angels and driving the others towards lives modeled by Christ. Every time that scar on his face burned like fire just as yours did this morning. And those who saw it, angel and mortal alike, knew the judgment of Holy God had arrived, and that nothing and no one could stand against it.”
Lynch was very interested in this Colchester and his scar that burned the way Lynch’s evidently had when confronting evil. In all the years Jackson knew Colchester, the vicar never spoke openly about the circumstances that had given him the scar, but he had referred to it consistently as the mark of the Lord, given to him so that all who saw him would know he stood with the Almighty.
Was he chosen, too? Lynch thought almost feverishly to Michael. This Colchester. Long ago, were you sent to mark him in the manner you have marked me?
Michael did not answer Lynch’s question directly, but offered some solace to Lynch’s curiosity. Many are chosen, Archibald. As part of God’s great plan, many have been chosen before you, and many more will be chosen in the future.
Eventually the time came for Colchester to return to England, but Jackson decided to stay in America and continue the battle against the forces of evil in the wilderness. He became an itinerant preacher, moving from place to place with his Bible in his hand and his crucifix around his neck, bringing the good news of salvation to all who hadn’t yet heard it or who had been closed off from it through unrepentant sin.
Over the years these travels had taken him through all thirteen of the colonies and many of the wilderness areas of the continent. He witnessed to Europeans of all persuasions, as well as vast numbers of African slaves and native savages. During the war for independence he kept himself close to the soldiers, knowing their experiences would test their faith and allow ample opportunity for Satan to worm his way into their lives. After the war, he wandered more widely, visiting all thirteen states again, and expanding outward as the nation did, wilderness becoming territories and then states.
Throughout his travels word of Jackson and his confrontational approach to combating evil began to spread more and more widely. In finding evil and rooting it out in place after place he visited, people began to speak of him as a real force for good and as someone to call on to help individuals in trouble. There weren’t possessions everywhere he went, but there were several he found, and he always confronted the fallen angel with the same force of faith that Colchester had, even though Jackson had no mark on him the possessor would recognize as having been sent by God.
It was this reputation that had eventually brought him back to South Carolina and to the assistance of young Rachel O’Sullivan. Her parents were aware of him and his deeds, and when their daughter began exhibiting signs of possession, they were able to make contact with him through a network of like-minded believers and bring him here.
Jackson had been expecting a difficult battle with the entity possessing the young O’Sullivan girl. All the signs of a powerful possession were there, and Jackson had come close to losing his own life in similar confrontations in the past. But Lynch’s appearance had really surprised him and had taken most of the danger out of the situation. In many ways it was like having his old headmaster back, especially with the way the demon had reacted to the sight of Lynch approaching.
“You believe I have been marked by God?” Lynch asked, having as of yet not encountered enough who accepted his claim so readily to not look on the reaction as a novelty.
“I do,” Jackson said. “Like my former headmaster, I believe that scar has been given to you by God as a symbol for others to observe. It proclaims for all to see that He abides with you.”
“And the others?” Lynch asked. “The O’Sullivans and the others in the tent? They will all believe it, too?”
Jackson smiled at him again, like he had when he first began to relate his tale, a sly and self-satisfied thing, curling up under his nose and tweaking it to one side. “They already do,” he said. “Like those who witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, they have all seen the power of God with their own eyes and they will not forget it. And like Moses, they will accept you as God’s agent on earth, and will follow you for forty years in the wilderness if you choose to lead them there.”
Lynch pondered it. There was still some small part of him that found this all unbelievable, that had continued to doubt he could really have been chosen by God the Father, even as His most powerful archangel continued to silently guide him. But he had seen things today he could not explain in any other way, by anything he had previously been taught or understood. He had seen that creature, that thing with the thousand faces who had appeared to him beneath Rachel’s flesh, he had seen its tormented form and its reaction to him. And there were things he had done which he also could not explain, things he had done without even realizing it, without even thinking about it, like confronting Rachel and her inner monster without fear and driving it out. And those words he had used, that language both he and the creature spoke, echoing in their brains and passing out through their lips, understood with clarity at the time and now all but forgotten. And there was the light, the heat, the power that had emanated from the core of his mind and radiated out through his scar, both blinding and revealing things to him. What had any of these things been? Was there anything in his previous experience, the knowledge he gained from his parents, his school, or his church that could explain what these things were?
No, of course there wasn’t. But Jeremiah Jackson could explain them. Jeremiah Jackson had a complete worldview figured out. A worldview that accounted for every strange phenomenon Lynch had been exposed to since waking from his coma, even the strange and inexplicable ones he had experienced today. And what was most amazing was this worldview, this way of looking at things, this understanding of the connections and relationships upon which the foundation of reality was set, was constructed out of the exact same pieces that had made up Lynch’s previous worldview, the one provided to him by his parents, his school, and his church, the one that couldn’t explain anything that had happened to him. The pieces were all the same. It was just as if no one had ever put them together in the combination that Jeremiah Jackson had.
Despite his cryptic warnings, Lynch was ready to accept Michael as being right in one very important regard. As someone who had lived his entire adult life on God’s true battle front, Jeremiah Jackson did indeed have a lot to teach Archibald Lynch.
It is part of God’s great plan.
Lynch did not join his friends to help marshal horses at the Beauregard plantation that day. He did not see any of the young women of the county decked out in their tight corsets and low-scalloped gowns. Such attractions had suddenly lost their allure, passing from his thoughts as quickly as they had arrived that spring. As morning slipped into afternoon and Lynch continued to listen to the world Jackson lived in, he became more and more convinced it was the world he lived in, too. Jackson’s explanation was the only one he knew that made any sense, but more than that, it sat so well with not only his understanding of what was happening to him, but more secretly, with his desires for what might be going on.
It surprised him a little, but as he continued to listen to Jackson and as he continued to accept the things he was saying, the truth of his own desire was undeniable. He wanted to believe this. He wanted the world to work this way. He wanted the battle to still be raging, and he wanted to be marked by God and fight on His side. If things were really going to be this way, after all, was there any better position to be in?
Around one o’clock, Mrs. O’Sullivan came meekly back into the room, begged Jackson’s pardon, and asked if the two of them would like to stay for dinner.
Jackson looked almost deferentially at Lynch. “What do you think, Brother Archibald? Battling Satan always gives me a powerful hunger.”
It was the first time Jackson had used that appellation in addressing Lynch. And just like that Lynch realized he was famished, that he had not eaten since before sunrise that morning, and then not even a full breakfast.
“Yes,” Lynch said easily, looking at Jackson and then to Mrs. O’Sullivan. “Yes, thank you. I feel like I could eat a horse.”
Mrs. O’Sullivan nodded her head and backed out of the room. “Get dressed and wash up,” she said, departing. “We’ll be serving in ten minutes.”
With Mrs. O’Sullivan’s words Lynch realized he was still nude, sitting upright in what he had since discovered was Rachel O’Sullivan’s bed, the sheet and quilt bunched up around his waist. “Brother Jeremiah,” he said, experimenting with the term for the first time. “Where are my clothes?”
Lynch half expected Jackson to tell him they had been burned, destroyed with the sinful life he had led before being chosen by God, and that now he was to wear the robes of a holy man, but instead Jackson merely indicated the neatly folded pile of his garments on the dresser behind him.
“We weren’t sure what had happened to you when you lost consciousness,” Jackson explained in an almost clinical fashion. “After you were brought here I had you stripped so your body could be examined for any markings or other indications of what had befallen you.”
Lynch thought that was a little odd but he did not question it. He waited momentarily for Jackson to get up and leave the room in order to give Lynch the privacy he would have preferred before exposing himself in rising from Rachel’s bed and getting dressed. When it became clear Jackson intended to wait for him, Lynch asked him to turn his head and, reluctantly, Jackson complied.
While Lynch was pulling his undershorts up over his bare bottom Jackson spoke to him.
“How old are you, Brother Archibald?”
Lynch turned to look at Jackson and saw the minister had turned back to face him. “Fourteen,” Lynch said as he fumbled his way into his trousers, wondering how long Jackson had been looking at him.
“Are you nearly fifteen?” Jackson asked.
“No,” Lynch said. “I just turned fourteen a few weeks ago.”
“Huh,” Jackson said, expressing both surprise and curiosity in the single syllable. “You’re big for your age, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Lynch said, pulling his shirt on and beginning to button it as quickly as he could. “Everyone in my family is. We take after our mother.”
+ + +
Mrs. O’Sullivan set a hefty table, even though with all but one of her daughters married off, there weren’t many to partake in the feast. There were, in fact, just the five of them. Mr. and Mrs. O’Sullivan, their daughter Rachel, Jackson, and Lynch. Rachel was already seated when Jackson and Lynch came downstairs, her face freshly scrubbed and bowed over her plate, her hair still damp and falling down over her ears on either side. Mrs. O’Sullivan hustled them all into their chairs before anyone had a chance to say anything, her and her husband sitting on one side of the table with Jackson and Lynch in the chairs opposite, and leaving Rachel at one end opposite an empty place setting. Head still bowed, she sat on Lynch’s immediate right.
Suddenly Jackson was grasping Lynch’s left hand in his. Looking up, Lynch saw his new teacher reach across the table with his other hand to hold Mr. O’Sullivan’s, who in turn held that of his wife, who in turn held that of her daughter. Still without raising her head, Rachel’s free hand crept out and found Lynch’s right, completing the circle.
“Heavenly Father,” Jackson said softly, his head also bowed, “thank You for the repast we are about to enjoy and for the company in which we now abide. Thanks also for Your strength and the strength of Your Holy Spirit in freeing young Rachel from her prison of sin and deceit. May the enemies of Your holy name always be similarly vanquished. Amen.”
“Amen,” a chorus of O’Sullivan voices said around the table, Lynch remaining silent as the memory of Rachel’s previous appearance juxtaposed with the warmth of her hand momentarily distracted him from the prayer.
As heads popped up around the table and hands began the process of serving and passing the platters of food, Lynch stole a look to his right to see if there was any sign of the creature he had seen within Rachel’s form. He was inwardly sure there would be, but there wasn’t, the girl’s face scrubbed clean of the dirt that had once obscured it and her skin a bright and healthy tone. Before he realized it Rachel was smiling at him, his furtive look clearly lasting long enough to be noticed.
“Thank you, Brother Archibald,” Rachel said softly to him, her voice sweet and serene as if just waking from a pleasant dream. “Thank you for your help today. Brother Jeremiah says you are more responsible than he for driving away my demon.”
Lynch hadn’t felt squeamish when Jackson had called him Brother Archibald, but now he did hearing the name on Rachel’s lips. He did his best not to show it. He had been marked by God, after all, and it seemed like a reasonable thing for believers to call him.
“You’re welcome,” Lynch said bashfully, unable to bring himself to maintain eye contact with the pretty young girl. She was two years older than him, and well along in her transformation from girl to young woman. “I’m glad I could help.”
“It was the power of the Holy Spirit working through you,” Mr. O’Sullivan said suddenly, speaking around a mouthful of food as if the information he had to impart was too important to pause and observe the proper table manners.
“What?” Lynch said.
Mr. O’Sullivan nodded his head and renewed chewing in an attempt to quickly clear the obstruction. “It wasn’t you that helped Rachel,” he said after a hasty swallow. “It was the power of the Holy Spirit working through you.”
Lynch felt an inner struggle as he tried to rectify Mr. O’Sullivan’s statement with his own memories of what had happened. It was true that when confronting the demon, he had felt something like another entity manipulating the power he commanded. But the power itself had been his. He felt sure of that. He just needed to learn how to control it. He looked for guidance from Jackson.
“Brother Matthew is correct,” Jackson said quickly, almost too quickly, Lynch thought, as if he was trying to bring the conversation to a close. “We are but vessels through which the power of the Holy Ghost flows. All that we do, it is done only because God the Father allows it. The accolades and the thanks, they all belong to Him. It is important to never forget that, Brother Archibald.”
Jackson gave Lynch a severe look at the end of his speech, Lynch already attuned enough to his teacher’s mannerisms and intentions to know he had better not press him on this point, at least not here in front of the O’Sullivans. He turned his eyes down and away from Jackson in deference to the lesson he had offered and the meal resumed quietly around the table. At one point shortly thereafter, Lynch felt the outside of Rachel’s thigh brush up against his knee and, looking up into her face, he saw her offer him the same self-satisfied look of gratitude and happiness.
The afternoon was spent at the O’Sullivan place, greeting and visiting with the people who had filled the tent that morning and who had witnessed the Holy Spirit working through Lynch to free Rachel. They came individually and in small groups, bit by bit and steadily throughout the afternoon, all wanting to meet the young man who had appeared out of nowhere and who had conquered -- as a conduit for God’s power of course -- the fallen angel who had bested both the O’Sullivans and Jeremiah Jackson.
Lynch received them all in the O’Sullivan’s front parlor, Jackson and Mr. O’Sullivan flanking him in two Queen Anne chairs and Mrs. O’Sullivan buzzing about, directing the kitchen help to serve everyone tea whether they asked for it or not. Freeman and slave alike they came, their hats in their hands and sometimes their arms around a bonneted woman or hanging down to keep unruly children corralled. They all thanked him, or blessed him, or both -- and through it all Lynch sat placidly on the O’Sullivan’s settee and nodded at them, saying very little and appearing wise beyond his years.
Or so he thought. By the time the fifth or sixth group of people came in to see him, Lynch was already at a loss for words and clueless as to what these people wanted from him. His nodding and lack of speech was less an attempt to appear wise and more a result of him having no idea what to say. One man even got down on his knees before Lynch and kissed his hand. That made him feel strange, a grown man like that kissing his hand as if he was some kind of deacon, and he looked over at Jackson as he felt the man’s moist lips press against his fingers. But Jackson only gave Lynch one of his knowing looks, a look as if they shared some joyous and wonderful thing, but that also gave no real clue as to what that thing was.
+ + +
That evening the O’Sullivans hosted a Bible study for several of the people who had been in the tent that morning and who had come to pay their respects to Lynch that afternoon. The man who had kissed Lynch’s hand was there -- whose name Lynch later learned was MacPherson -- as was a slave from the O’Sullivan’s own plantation -- a dark mountain of a man named Arthur -- and another white man Lynch had never met before, named Saunders, who brought with him his twin daughters, girls about Rachel’s age, Annabel and Mary Elizabeth, who were conjoined at the breastbone and hip, only able to half turn away from each other. The O’Sullivan family and Jeremiah Jackson rounded out the company with which Lynch spent the rest of the evening.
Jackson led the study, choosing a verse from Isaiah as the principal text. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,” Jackson read solemnly at the beginning, shortly after offering a prayer for enlightenment and wisdom, “neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Lynch did the best he could to focus on the lesson and not to stare at Annabel and Mary Elizabeth, but he had never seen anyone like them before. Everyone else accepted them without comment or discomfort, the two girls sitting among them as if their bodies were not fused, a single Bible held between them and their faces turned down and away from each other into its pages. Even when he was able to focus momentarily on the analysis and discussion surrounding the selected passage, it seemed as if everyone was subtly calling Lynch’s attention to the presence of the conjoined twins.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” their father said at one point, his hand in the air and his eyes cast up towards heaven. “That’s what this verse means to me. It’s not our place to understand the Creator’s design for us. It’s simply our role to fulfill the destiny He has set.”
“The judgments of the Lord are righteous and just altogether,” Mr. O’Sullivan said at another point. “Only He has the ability to judge the actions of our fellow man, since only He can see how we all fit into His great plan.”
Jackson did his best to encourage this interpretation, coaxing more comments about the inscrutability of God’s design from all the participants, even the taciturn Arthur. And as everyone made their comments, although no one mentioned them by name, Lynch could not help but feel they were all talking about the twins, all thinking that the twins represented a prime physical manifestation of God’s secret plan for the beings that populated His world. Who on earth could see the benefit in their strange affliction? Who but God, who knows the beginning and end of the universe, would allow such a birth to take place, who would have a purpose that could only be fulfilled by two people joined at the breastbone and sharing the same heart?
Lynch found himself wishing for the ability to read the twins’s thoughts, to know what was going on in their heads, to know what the world, their situation, and most of all this Bible verse looked like from their perspective. They were strangely quiet through the whole discussion, never volunteering any thoughts of their own, but studying their Bible and the faces of all the other speakers with rapt intensity. Their faces looked normal to Lynch. Other than the way they were joined, they did not appear to be deficient or deformed in any other way. They acted like normal, healthy girls, pretty in their own way and comfortable with who and what they were. But they did not speak. Lynch wondered if perhaps they were mute.
“God has a plan for each and every one of us,” Jackson was saying. “And not just for us, but for the vegetation that grows upon the ground, the beasts that roam the earth, and the birds that fly in the sky. He has a plan for the entire universe and we will only understand it after we join Him in heaven and He gives us the wisdom equal to the task. Until then we are to follow His instructions to the letter. Not knowing what the end result is meant to be, we would be foolish to attempt anything else, unaware as we would be of what effect it will have in eternity.”
“Amen, Brother,” several voices said in unison, striking Lynch as vaguely reminiscent of the chorus-like chanting he had witnessed in the tent earlier that day. “Praise God.”
“What do you think, Sister Annabel?”
The ambient noise in the room dropped to nothing after Lynch asked this question. He had also not done much talking during the Bible study, and now his voice echoed through the room like a thunderclap. The silence that followed lasted a long time, as Annabel lifted her eyes from the pages of her Bible and stared at Lynch with a sad and expressive face.
What? Lynch tried to ask her with his own eyes, trying to send his thoughts directly into her brain, as she appeared to be trying to do with him. What is it? You think something, don’t you? Something different than what everyone else is saying. I can see that you do. What is it?
But as much as he thought Annabel was trying to send him her thoughts, Lynch was unable to pick any of them up, and Annabel remained silent, her gaze still focused intently on Lynch’s face. When the silence was finally broken, it was not by Annabel’s voice but by that of her sister.
“She doesn’t know what to think,” Mary Elizabeth said, a soft tone of practiced superiority in her voice. “She’s having trouble with the whole concept, a God who doesn’t think like we do but still tries to communicate with us through our language.”
“Mary Elizabeth,” her father said testily. “Don’t go starting anything.”
“It’s not me, Father,” Mary Elizabeth said innocently. “I’m ready and willing to do God’s bidding. It’s her. It’s Annabel. She has doubts.”
Throughout this dialogue Annabel continued to stare at Lynch, nothing in her expression indicating she had not heard or disagreed with the things Mary Elizabeth was saying.
“Annabel does not have doubts,” Mr. Saunders said emphatically, “and you know she doesn’t. Now quit trying to cause trouble.”
“It isn’t me, Father,” Mary Elizabeth protested. “It’s Annabel. Just now as Brother Jeremiah was speaking, she was thinking the most blasphemous things. She was wondering why, if God does not give us the wisdom to understand His grand plan until after we have died, and expects us to follow His instructions for our lives to the letter until then, why does He make it so hard to understand what these instructions are?”
“That’s enough, Mary Elizabeth,” her father said. “I mean it.”
“Wait a minute,” Lynch said. “Sister Mary Elizabeth, are you saying you can hear your sister’s thoughts?”
“No, of course she can’t,” Mr. Saunders answered for her. “This is just a game she plays, all too often I’m afraid. Now, Mary Elizabeth, stop it.”
“Yes, I can, Brother Archibald,” Mary Elizabeth said earnestly, ignoring the commandments of her father. “Annabel can’t speak, but I can hear her thoughts. Because of our connection. It seems odd, I know, but---”
“Enough!” Mr. Saunders exclaimed, rising to his feet, exactly as if standing to sing a hymn in church. “Mary Elizabeth Saunders, I will not tolerate this blasphemy.” He turned suddenly to Lynch. “Forgive her, Brother Archibald,” he said in a subdued tone of voice. “It has been explained to her, but I fear she still does not realize the gravity of the situation. To her, it is just a childish game.”
“It is not a game!” Mary Elizabeth cried, her voice just as exasperated as her father’s. “It’s real! Annabel speaks to me through our bond!”
Throughout this exchange, Annabel sat quietly beside her sister, her eyes continually locked on Lynch and filled with the same sadness and intensity that had been there before. Lynch found it impossible to believe the sisters could be in silent communication with one another as Mary Elizabeth had claimed, but then again, he had never seen two people joined in the way they were. Who knew what was possible in such a circumstance?
Is it true, Michael? Is it true? Can Mary Elizabeth hear the thoughts within her sister’s head?
Yes, came the archangel’s reply, the strength of his presence within Lynch as palpable as ever. Yes, she can. It is all part of God’s great plan.
“That’s it,” Mr. Saunders said. “Mary Elizabeth, Annabel -- stand up. We’re going.”
“No!” Mary Elizabeth screamed. “We don’t want to go!”
Mr. Saunders grabbed Mary Elizabeth by the arm, upsetting her grip on the Bible and causing it to tumble to the floor. For the first time since he had spoken to her, Lynch saw Annabel’s eyes drift away from him, following the book on its trajectory towards the floor.
“We’re going!” Mr. Saunders hollered, pulling up on Mary Elizabeth’s arm and beginning to drag the twins off the loveseat they occupied.
“Brother Peter,” Lynch said gently to Mr. Saunders, but with a power rolling within him. “Brother Peter, please. Let them remain. God has spoken to me about their condition.”
That stopped all the commotion in the room. Everyone -- all but Annabel -- turned toward him with the same question poised on their lips, but only Jackson had the presence of mind to ask it.
“He’s spoken to you now? While you’ve been among us?”
“Yes,” Lynch said joyfully. “Yes, Brother Jeremiah, God is here among us, just as He has always promised to be. He abides in this community and smiles on it.”
Although they all knew it, all saw evidence of it every day, the news took them all by surprise. Some of them, in fact, acted stupefied by it, as if it was the last thing they had ever suspected.
They’re not that focused, are they, Michael? They stray at the least little provocation.
Yes, they are weak and constantly under siege by sin. That is in part why God has commanded me to mark you.
Quietly, and without being asked, Mr. Saunders released his daughter and less than gracefully took his seat.
Lynch smiled at him. “You needn’t fear, Brother Peter. Your daughters were formed in their mother’s womb before the sin of the world could taint them. They are the way they are because that is how God intended them to be. Their joining is something to celebrate, not be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed,” Mr. Saunders said quickly and defensively. “I’m just… I’m just…”
Lynch gave the older man a stern look that caused him to both lose his train of thought and realize the falsity of what he had been saying. Confronted with the truth, a truth he had run from since the day his wife had died giving life to his twin girls, he buried his face in his hands and wept openly.
Why can’t they see these things? Why can’t they see what’s so clear?
It’s clear only because of the sight you have been given, Archibald Lynch. Use it. Use it as you have begun to. Use it to help them see.
Is that it? Lynch thought suddenly. Is that God’s great plan for me?
Yes, Michael said. It is all part of God’s great plan.
Seeing their father in such distress, Mary Elizabeth and Annabel rose from their seats and scurried in their odd way across the room to embrace him. As they did, Annabel looked up and caught Lynch’s eye again, a broad smile creasing her face in a way Lynch had not seen before.
+ + +
Lynch spent the night at the O’Sullivan house, sharing a spare room at the top of the stairs with Jackson. The minister would be moving on the next morning, going to the adjoining county to tend to another group of souls and Lynch had decided to make the journey with him. A message would be sent to his family to let them know what had happened to him, but they would not worry. Quite the reverse, Lynch knew his mother especially would be proud of him, and her prayers would give him strength as he began his mission here on earth. And Sarah? Well, someday he would return and see Sarah again.
As they were preparing their bunks, Rachel O’Sullivan appeared in the doorway with a stack of clean towels in her hands. “Mother thought you might want to wash up before bed,” she said.
“That was very thoughtful of her,” Jackson said. “I would very much like to wash my hands and face before retiring.”
Rachel came in and set the towels down on the foot of Lynch’s bed. “She’s warming up a basin of water on the stove downstairs. I may need some help bringing it upstairs without spilling it.”
“I’ll help you,” Jackson said before Lynch could even register that Rachel had asked for any.
While the two of them were gone, Lynch knelt by the side of his bed and prayed fervently to God. Prayed in a way he had never prayed before, because now he knew what his part in God’s great plan was to be. Prior to this day, Lynch’s prayers had been largely selfish and self-centered. Please God, give me this. Please God, give me that. But now for the first time, Lynch’s prayers were about others. Please God, please let me help them. Please let me find them in time and help them. You’ve shown me how to find them and how to guide them out of their misery and sin. Now help me get to them in time. They’re out there and I can save them all if you only help me find them in time.
Lynch had just finished praying when Jackson and Rachel returned with the basin of warmed water. Without discussion, they brought it to the space between the two beds and placed it on the hardwood floor.
“Brother Archibald,” Rachel said, moving to stand uncomfortably close to Lynch. “Would you please sit down?”
Lynch looked awkwardly between Jackson and Rachel. “Sit down? Why?”
Rachel placed her hands on Lynch’s shoulders and gently applied pressure.
“Just sit, Brother Archibald,” Jackson said knowingly.
Michael? Lynch thought, looking for guidance, but he sat down on the edge of the bed without waiting for the response, which, in any event, did not come.
Rachel knelt down at Lynch’s feet and began unlacing his shoes.
“What are you doing?” Lynch asked.
Rachel did not respond, removing both of his shoes, setting them aside, and beginning to roll down his socks.
“Sister Rachel,” Lynch tried again. “Are you looking for something?”
Rachel still did not respond, her head bowed down over Lynch’s bare feet. Jackson still stood by her side and Lynch looked up at him to see if he would answer his question.
“She’s going to wash your feet, Brother Archibald,” Jackson said.
“Wash my feet?” Lynch said, not understanding.
“Yes,” Jackson said patiently. “It’s a traditional ritual of servitude. She wants to repay you for your role in freeing her from Lucifer’s hold.”
Rachel slid the basin under Lynch’s feet and began pouring water over them with a small cup that had been submerged there.
“My role in freeing her?” Lynch said. “I thought you said the power was God’s. All the accolades and thanks, they all belong to Him.”
Jackson lost some of his patience. “Brother Archibald,” he said testily. “Just let her wash your feet.”
And so Lynch did. He sat silently on the edge of the bed and let the pretty and unattainable Rachel O’Sullivan wash his cramped and tired feet. Producing a small bar of soap wrapped in a washcloth from beneath her arm, she dipped her hands into the basin of water and worked the bar into a rich lather, and then, dropping the soap into the basin, she touched his feet with her soapy hands, one foot at a time, both of her long-fingered hands rubbing, scrubbing, and massaging his feet, from the top of his ankles to the tips of his toes. Slipping and sliding over his flesh, her fingers dug achingly into the soles of his feet and tickled the spaces between his toes.
It felt good. Despite the discomfort he felt at exposing his feet in front of this attractive young woman -- and the way Jackson continued to stand over them both, observing the procedure and Lynch’s reaction to it like a master watching his apprentice attempt a difficult procedure for the first time -- Lynch could not deny the attention Rachel was giving his feet felt really good. When she looked up and smiled at him, the same dreamy and self-satisfied smile she had given him at the dinner table, Lynch began to have another kind of reaction. Something not wholly unfamiliar to him, but something he knew was inappropriate, and something that would cause him a great deal of embarrassment if either Rachel or Jackson would realize what was happening.
“How old are you now, Brother Archibald?” Rachel asked him.
“Ummm…” Lynch said clumsily, trying without success to cross his legs to hide what he was sure was obvious to all. “Fourteen.”
“Fourteen,” Rachel repeated softly, her voice echoing seductively in Lynch’s brain. “You’re big for your age, aren’t you?”
“Uh, I guess so,” Lynch said, now pulling his foot out of Rachel’s sensuous hands and hopping up off the bed. “Thank you,” he said hurriedly, his heart racing and his face flushing a bright shade of red. “Thank you for washing my feet. I think I should go to bed now.”
Rachel and Jackson both looked at him, surprise on the girl’s face and frustration on the minister’s.
“But I haven’t rinsed or dried them yet,” Rachel said, her voice again that of an awkward teenage girl instead of a temptress. “You’re getting soap all over the floor.”
Lynch looked down at his feet, lifting them one by one off the floor to get a better look at each. “Ummm, that’s okay. I’ll dry them myself. Why don’t I go do that right now?”
And without another word Lynch turned and fled from the room. He ran down the hall, slipping on his wet feet and almost falling, and hid himself in one of the other darkened bedrooms that the O’Sullivans no longer used.
What am I doing? he asked himself. What an idiot! He couldn’t believe what he had just done, but at the same time he couldn’t imagine going back in there and resuming where Rachel had left off. He thought about asking Michael for guidance, but decided against it, not wanting to present the fact of his erection to God’s mightiest archangel. Instead, he crept back to the door of the unused bedroom, closed it to the tiniest of cracks, and stood there in the darkness watching for signs of movement within the room he had just left farther down the hall.
He could only see obliquely into the room, but he saw shadows moving on a small portion of the wall, as if Jackson and Rachel were moving around inside. He also heard them speaking softly to one another. He could not make out what they were saying, but they were discussing something. In a few moments the movement stopped but the hushed voices continued for a few minutes more. Then there was neither movement nor voices, nothing but silence that lasted an uncomfortable amount of time. Lynch was preparing himself to creep back down the hall to peek into the room itself and see what was going on within, when suddenly Rachel’s form appeared emerging from the room. She stood momentarily in the hallway, looking furtively up and down its length, and then hurried on down the stairs and into the lower level of the O’Sullivan house.
Lynch didn’t know what to do next. Should he go back to the room with Jackson? What would he say to him? After fleeing like that? Lynch remembered the minister’s face when he had abruptly interrupted the foot washing. Jackson had clearly been disappointed in him. And what if Rachel returned? What if she had only gone to fetch something and would return shortly? What would he say to her? Torn by indecision, Lynch stood on his wet feet in the darkness, his eye peering anxiously through the crack in the door, waiting for any sign that Rachel was returning -- a rattle of some unknown something from the lower level of the house, or the steady tread of her unwashed feet mounting the stairs again.
Heart still racing, sweat beginning to stand out on his brow, Lynch stood there for what felt like a hour, flinching at every creak and errant sound the house made as it settled itself into slumber. Just when he was ready to conclude Rachel was not coming back, the light in the room he was to share with Jackson was extinguished and the silence in the house deepened still further.
She’s not coming back, Lynch realized. Jeremiah has gone to bed and she’s not coming back. It’s safe now. It’s safe to return.
Slowly, tiptoeing like a cat burglar trying not to wake a guard dog, Lynch made his way back down the corridor, avoiding the puddles he had left on his previous journey to prevent himself from slipping and waking up one of the house’s occupants, upstairs or downstairs. By the time he arrived at the doorway his eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, and he saw Jackson’s unmoving shape in one of the beds, his face turned away from Lynch and towards the wall. Deciding not to wake him, Lynch carefully made his way into the room, stripped off as much of his clothes as he thought practical and, as quietly as he could, eased himself beneath the blankets of the other bed.
Forgive me, Michael, Lynch sighed silently to himself. I don’t know why I reacted that way.
You are young, Michael replied immediately. It is understandable.
Thank you, Lynch thought. He had been afraid to reach out to the archangel, but was now relieved Michael was still there.
You must, however, rid yourself of these thoughts, Archibald. They are sinful and will only serve the enemies of God the Father.
I know, Lynch thought shamefully. I’m sorry.
Pray to Him, Archibald, Michael urged. Remember, all strength comes from Him.
I will, Lynch promised, immediately setting his mind to the task.
Praise His holy name.
And then Lynch prayed with even more intensity than he had earlier that evening. Before he had been anxious, now he was downright desperate, praying that God would still allow him to serve His will and participate in the destiny chosen for him in His great plan. He prayed until his thoughts began to wander and drift, as the exhaustion of the day overtook him and he felt himself slipping off into sleep.
“You did a lot of good work today,” Jackson said to him in the darkness, startling Lynch just as he was nodding off.
“What?” Lynch said. “What did you say, Brother Jeremiah?” His eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark, but now, whether he flipped them open or closed them, there was no difference in the blackness that swam before him.
“Exorcizing the demon that possessed Rachel O’Sullivan,” Jackson said by way of explanation, “and exposing those that plagued Peter Saunders and his daughters. You did a lot of good work today.”
Lynch paused only for a moment before responding. “It’s God who did the work, Brother Jeremiah,” he said automatically, still more asleep than awake. “I am but the vessel for His will.”
“Yes,” Jackson said softly, his voice sounding a little distant in the darkened room. “Yes, of course, Brother Archibald. That is what I meant to say.”
Silence followed, and for Lynch sleep quickly thereafter. He had no idea what time it was when he was suddenly awakened by the noise of someone moving about in their room. It startled him a little, but not enough to betray his return to consciousness to whomever the intruder was. Slowly opening his eyes he could see the moon had risen at some point during the night and its silvery light now shone through one of the unmasked windows, bathing the room’s interior in a soft and ethereal glow.
Lynch wasn’t afraid. Maybe he was disoriented and still half asleep, but even without Michael’s presence within him he was not afraid of the prospect of a stranger lurking about in their room while they slept. Thinking it was most likely one of the O’Sullivan family come to retrieve something they needed from a room that did not ordinarily have guests, Lynch slowly let his eyes track across the room and towards the sound of the person moving, which sounded, oddly, like someone bouncing on Jackson’s bed.
What he saw was in many ways the worst thing he had seen that night, worse than the Saunders sisters joined at the breastbone, and worse than the thousand-headed demon that lurked beneath the flesh of Rachel O’Sullivan. There wasn’t anyone bouncing up and down on Jackson’s bed. There were, however, two people in the bed, the blankets pulled up high to cover most of them, and they were rocking quietly back and forth, making both the mattress squeak and the headboard rattle against the wall. One person was Jackson, his head lying peacefully on the pillow, a playful and satisfied smile spread across his face as if experiencing a particularly pleasant dream, and the other, her head hovering inches above Jackson’s face, her lips quivering and brushing haphazardly across his nose and cheek and the blanket slipping off her bare shoulder as she rode him slow and steady like a plow horse, was Rachel O’Sullivan.
“God loves you, my child,” Jackson suddenly said softly, his whisper obviously not intended to wake anyone sleeping nearby. “God loves you.”
Lynch had a difficult time not watching. He was already on his side, facing the secret lovers as they continued to work calmly and almost serenely towards a climax. He could not roll over without alerting them to his state of consciousness, and although he did keep his eyes closed for extended periods of time, a morbid fascination kept compelling him to peer across at the two of them, rutting, as it were, in the moonlight like a pair of animals in the forest.
Why? That was the only question his confused mind could come up with. Why, Michael? Why are they doing that?
But the angel was not there, and Lynch was not sure he would have much of an answer if he had been. Try as he might, Lynch had a difficult time seeing how this was part of God’s great plan.
Lynch felt trapped. They were clearly going about their lovemaking in a way meant not to wake him, but he was awake, and to reveal that to them in their moment of passion and sin was somehow a greater travesty than the one they were engaged in. Jackson was almost oblivious to his surroundings, but Rachel looked around from time to time, evidently unable to lose herself totally in the moment, and one time she caught Lynch with his eyes open. Lynch still did not turn away, his feeling of entrapment now turning to paralysis as they shared a moment of conscious understanding, both aware of the subterfuge the other was perpetuating, both uncomfortable with it, but both willing to let the other continue as long as the silent and mutual secret was not betrayed. With a devilish smile on her face, Rachel turned away from Lynch’s empty gaze and closed her eyes, focusing her being more directly on the sensations rolling through her body.
After that Lynch kept his eyes closed until they were finished. He heard their tempo slowly quicken and their breathing intensify. He heard Jackson speak to Rachel in muffled tones and Rachel moan in response, trying to acknowledge the things he said, but more and more unable to do so. When their climax came it was garbled and restrained, air exhaling rapidly out of their bodies, and muffled gasps escaping through clenched teeth and pursed lips. The temptation to open his eyes and look on them in this moment of infinite abandon was almost too great for Lynch to resist, but resist it he did, not out of any unusual strength the archangel Michael had given him, but in actuality out of fear for what he might see in that moment, what he might see and never understand.
The intensity of their passion drained quickly out of Jackson and Rachel, and out of the room like a fog being blown away by a cool breeze. Lynch could feel the release almost as clearly, and shortly the only sound remaining in the room was the deep and even breathing of the two lovers. After several minutes, certain the two of them had fallen asleep, Lynch cracked his eye open and peered across the room. They lay together, sprawled in the moonlight, the blanket bunched down around their waists and their naked torsos pressed together, Jackson’s long and thin arms wrapped around Rachel and her cheek lying heavily on his grizzled chest.
The decision came on Lynch suddenly but his movements were not hurried or frantic. Setting the blankets aside, he swung his feet out over the side of the bed and rose, exactly as if the sun was shining and it was time to begin another long and productive day. He even took a moment to stretch his muscles, which had cramped and stiffened from his laying too long in the same position. He did not make a great deal of noise, but neither did he attempt to silence his movements, and through it all neither Jackson nor Rachel moved, their pale skin glowing in the moonlight and their bodies rising and falling with their slow and steady breaths.
Lynch looked for a long time, or at least for what felt like a long time, as he stood with his bare feet on the cold, hard floor and tried without the benefit of Michael’s vision to detect some sign of the demon that had possessed Rachel still swimming and twisting beneath the surface of her skin. To his inexperienced mind it would have explained a lot, would have probably explained it all, especially how such a thing could have happened. There was a place where Jackson’s arm draped across the young girl’s naked back where the shadows were darkest and where he thought he might have seen some semblance of what he had seen before, but he could not be sure and he was not willing to step forward for a closer examination. It was only an afterthought that suggested to Lynch that perhaps the fallen angel who was responsible for this sacrilege resided not within Rachel O’Sullivan but rather within Jeremiah Jackson and men like him.
Lynch calmly turned away from the lovers and walked towards the room’s exit, opening, passing through, and closing the door behind him, taking no unusual precautions to mask the sound of his movements or the click of the door’s latch catching in its socket. Padding down the darkened stairs in his bare feet he purposefully made his way through the O’Sullivan’s house, out their front door, and started out across their muddy field, the same one that had earlier that day been the site of their revival meeting. The tent was now gone and so were all the people who had filled it with both their bodies and their voices, but Lynch remembered the words of the song they had been singing. Looking up at the lights in the night sky, the mud squelching up between his freshly washed toes, he set himself off on a journey focused less on a single destination and more on the desire to put as much spiritual distance as possible between himself and the individuals inhabiting the O’Sullivan house.
+ + +
“Lynch” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
Image Source
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/shermans-march
No comments:
Post a Comment