“Is that what he said?” Harper asked.
Nick nodded solemnly.
“Okay,” Harper said. “But try no be disappointed if he no wake tonight. This will be long slow get well time.”
“He’ll be ready,” Nick said. “What about you?”
18
In an unexpected turn of events, Father Storey—completely recovered and wearing an immaculate surplice—told Harper to go unto the old school bus, at the gates of Camp Wyndham, and keep a watch on the road. He even used the word unto, like someone quoting verse from the Bible. He issued this command from a throne of bleak white rock, at the center of the Memorial Circle, while his flock emerged from the vast red doors of the chapel behind him. The people of Camp Wyndham were in gay spirits, laughing and chattering animatedly, while some of the children sang “Burning Down the House” in their high piping voices. Harper was troubled to observe some of the adults lugging big red cans of gasoline.
“What’s going on?”
“It was foretold we should have a cookout,” Father Storey informed her. “For we expect friends to come upon us tonight, bearing happy tidings. I say unto you, arise and go along the road and keep your watch. We will prepare the cookfire, and roast s’mores in the name of the Bright.” He winked at her. “Don’t take too long and I’ll save you one.”
She wanted to ask who had done all the foretelling, but time skipped before she could find out, and then she was walking along the road, beneath a dark and starless sky. In the distance, she could hear the congregation roaring the Talking Heads, bellowing about the sweet release of burning it all down. She hurried. She didn’t want to miss s’mores. She wondered who had brought them chocolate and marshmallows. Probably the same person who had been foretelling things.
She was in such a hurry she almost stumbled over the man in the road. She took a wild lurch into high, wet grass to avoid stepping on him. She had not yet reached the bus, which was farther down the hill.
Nelson Heinrich lifted his head and looked up at her. She knew it was Nelson by his ugly Christmas sweater, even though half his face had been flayed off, to show the red bunching muscles beneath. His foggy, good-humored eyes peered out from that glistening crimson mask. He looked almost exactly like the anatomical bust that had once been on the counter in the infirmary.
“I told you I’d get here!” Nelson said. “I hope there are enough s’mores for everyone! I brought friends!”
The Freightliner rumbled at the bottom of the hill, filthy smoke coming unstrung from the exhaust pipe behind the cab.
Nelson pulled himself another half a foot, arm over arm. His guts—long ropes of intestine—dragged in the dirt behind him. “Come on, guys!” he shouted. “I told you I could show you where to find them! Let’s go get something sweet! A spoonful of sugar for everyone!”
Harper fled. She didn’t flee as well as she used to. At eight months pregnant, she ran with all the agility and grace of a woman carrying a large stuffed chair.
But she was still faster than Nelson, and the Freightliner wasn’t moving just yet, and she crested the hill ahead of both of them and came into the light of the great fire. An enormous bonfire blazed, a mountain of coals as big as a cottage, great tongues of flame lapping at the overcast night. Instead of stars, the night was filled with whirling constellations of dying sparks. Harper opened her mouth to scream but there was no one to hear, no one standing around the fire with marshmallows on sticks, no knots of adults drinking cider, no children chasing one another and singing. They had not gathered to enjoy the fire; they were the fire. It was a great sagging hill of black corpses, flames squirting through the eye sockets of charred skulls, the heat whistling through baked rib cages. The fire made a quite cheerful sound, knots popping, bodies seething. Nick sat on the very top of the bonfire. She could tell it was Nick, because even though he was a cooked and withered corpse, he was staring back at her with his burning eyes, gesturing frantically with his hands: Behind you behind you behind you.
She whirled just as Jakob pulled the air horn of the Freightliner in a shrill, heartrending blast. The truck idled, headlights off, twenty feet away, her ex-husband no more than a dark figure behind the steering wheel.
“Here I am, darlin’!” he shouted. “You and me, babe! How ’bout it?”
And there was a great crash as he threw the big orange truck into gear and the headlights snapped on, so much light, so much—
19
—light shining into her face. She blinked and sat up, one hand lifted to shield her eyes from the glare. Bile stewed in her throat.
She peered past the beam of the flashlight. Nick stood behind it, his eyes wide in his small, handsome face, his hair a delightful mess. He lifted one finger to his mouth—shh—and then pointed to Father Storey.
Whose eyes were open and who was smiling at her, showing her his old, soft, kindly, Dumbledore smile. His gaze was perfectly clear and alert.
Harper sat up and turned to face him, hanging her legs off the side of her cot. A candle guttered in a shallow dish at his bedside.
In a quiet, fragile voice, Father Storey said, “From time to time my friend John Rookwood has teased me by saying the study of theology is as pointless as a hole in the head. I understand from Nick you saved my life with a quarter-inch drill bit through the back of my skull. I think that puts me one up on John. We’ll have to let him know.” His eyes glittered. “He also liked to tell me that religious people are closed-minded. Who has the open mind now, eh?”
“Do you remember who I am, Father?” she said to him.
“I do! The nurse. I’m quite confident we were friends, although I’m afraid I’m having trouble recalling your name just now. You cut your hair, and I think that’s throwing me off. Is it . . . Juliet Andrews? No. That’s . . . that’s wrong.”
“Harper,” she said.
“Ah!” he said. “Yes! Harper . . .” He frowned. “Harper Gallows?”
“Close! Willowes.” She touched his wrist, took his pulse. It was strong, steady, slow. “How’s your head?”
“Not as bad as my left foot,” he said.
“What’s wrong with your left foot?”
“It feels ant-bit.”
She went to the end of his cot and looked at the foot. In between the big toe and the second toe was an infected lump, where it did indeed look like he might’ve been bitten by a spider. There were other, older red marks where he had been bitten other times, and all of it was encircled by a yellowing bruise.
“Mhm,” she said. “Something got you. Sorry about that. I was probably preoccupied with looking after that hole in your coconut. You suffered a serious subdural hematoma. You nearly died.”
“How long have I been out?” he asked.
“A little over two months. You’ve been in and out of consciousness the last few days. After your head injury, there were . . . serious complications. You suffered at least two seizures, several weeks apart. At one time I doubted you’d recover.”
“Strokes?”
She sat on the edge of his bed. In sign language, she asked Nick to get her “heart-ear-listen-to-him thing” and he went to the counter to find her stethoscope.
“Are you talking to my grandson in sign language?” Father Storey asked.
“Nick is a good teacher.”
He smiled at that. Then his brow furrowed in thought. “If I had a stroke, how come my speech isn’t slurred?”
“That doesn’t always happen. Likewise, partial paralysis. But you have feeling in both hands, your feet? Your face isn’t numb?”
He stroked his beard, pinched his nose. “No.”
“That’s good,” she said in a slow voice, thinking it over. Seeing in her mind the swollen red spider bite between his toes, then dismissing it.
Nick brought her the stethoscope. She listened to Father Sto rey’s heart (strong) and lungs (clear). She tested his vision, asking him to follow the head of a Q-tip with his gaze, moving it in toward his nose and then out.
“Will I slip back into coma?” he asked.