Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

I know that, woken up just for this purpose. I creep close to the ground and quiet as a cat to the campfire. Three men lie sleeping around it, with four more sitting up, their backs hunched down, facing the fire. A soft-singing voice hums quiet, and it takes me a minute to know the song, but I do. It’s a hymn.

The voice is one I know too, from real life and from nightmares. It’s the Preacher.

“Right fearful night,” says one of the other men. “Could be all sorts of bandits afoot.”

The Preacher stops singing.

“Worse things in these woods than mere bandits,” he says. He chuckles to himself. “No, I’d reckon bandits are the least of our fears.”

“What you getting at, Preacher?” says the other man. “It’s just kids we’re chasing.”

“Kids, yes, from first look. Kids just like any other. Could be your very own children, your nieces and nephews. Evil loves to take a form of innocence, of beauty. Even a child.”

“You saying these kids is under the grip of the Evil One?” says the other man.

“Inside them lie dark and malign forces, set against us,” says the Preacher. He speaks slowly, softly, like he’s reciting. “The girl has a forked tongue. Her words are venom, a false gospel, rot to your ears. She will enchant you. Same as she enchanted the boy. She bent him, twisted him fiendish, made him crooked and as wretched as herself. He’s lost to us.”

The smoke from the fire is a black curtain toward the woods that I can’t see past. It’s as if the fire itself is talking. When it wafts away I see the Preacher sitting up on a log, his back stooped, his silhouette a giant black crow.

“How’d she get like that? I mean, how did a devil come to this girl we’re hunting?” says the third man.

“Her mother,” says the Preacher. “Her mother was a witch. One of the first we cleansed, back in Templeton, in the early days of our revival, when the Lord first gave me the words with which to heal this land. A spirit of witchcraft may enter a child many different ways, by blood, by ritual. Sometimes the spirit even passes into a child through the bottoms of her feet, the tenderest place, while the babe is still in her mother’s womb. Such a child is doomed before she is born. So it is with the girl we’re chasing. She is her mother’s daughter, through and through, from the white hair to the gold of her eyes. Every bit her mother.”

I hate when the Preacher talks about Momma. I hate that his words can touch her, can call her face up in my mind, can put her face over mine. That’s not his right. I creep around the edge of the campsite, so I can see them better. The Preacher spits into the fire. His hands twist a long blade of grass around his finger, twirling and untwirling it, tight then loose, in a spiral. He is working his magic over them, casting his enchantment with words. When he speaks it’s like I can see the words dangle and twirl in the air, dancing through the night and smoke and fire, bewitching the men, holding sway over their hearts and minds.

“What do you know about evil?” says the Preacher. “From whence does evil come?”

“You mean how folks go wrong?” says the other man.

“I mean how evil begins. It starts small, tiny and quick as a notion, a pinch on bare skin, a stray spark in the cold darkness, that’s what evil is. But it isn’t content to be a spark, a pinch, a notion. A notion begets an idea, a plan. Just as a pinch begets a touch, flesh on flesh, a caress. And a spark always begets a flame.”

The Preacher stretches his hands over the fire, spreads his fingers wide, the gangling spindly talons of them. The fire glows his hands red, glimmers his teeth. His scar shines like a seam, a stitching place healed over wrong.

“It’s an ancient story, the very first one in all the Book. The Great Garden at the Beginning of the World. Perfection was a trial and man failed it. But the problem wasn’t man. It is the nature of man to fail such a test, creature that he is, lit alive by desire. Dangle the wicked fruit before a man and every time he will pluck it. The problem isn’t us. The problem is the fruit—tender, red-rotten, the tempting fruit. The garden is vast, and the trees are many. As the Book says, ‘Find the tree which beareth the tempting fruit. Uproot it and let it burn. Lest the evil sow its seed, lest the evil cause itself to spread, lest the garden be overwhelmed.’

“You remember how it was in Templeton, even just a couple years ago,” says the Preacher. He spreads his arms wide and his shadow casts a cross, crooked and long, his fingers stretched into the darkness. His words wild dancing things that swirl through the air, bedeviling the men. “Bars and gambling, murder and crime, the disease. Homes wrecked and ruined. The woods of bandits on the left-hand side, a cursed forest on the right, our good and faithful town of Templeton stuck right in the midst of them. Every nightfall brought a new terror, did it not? You remember how afraid you were. Isn’t it better now?”

The Preacher claps his hands together. His white hair wild, his hat wide-brimmed, his face ghastly and firelit, like a devil conjured up just for this meeting, this purpose and this reckoning. The smoke from the fire trembles away from him, as if it were afraid.

“You’re right about that, Preacher,” says the other man. “Templeton ain’t even the same town anymore. Folks are safe now. My wife don’t worry about a thing. Only thing my kids are afraid of is snakes. Ain’t a bit like it used to be.”

“And you, Bolivar Greencoats,” says the Preacher, and