She looked at Nick, who sat at the table and regarded her solemnly with his good eye through the haze of Ralph Brentner's cigarette smoke.
"I knew when I saw you," she said. "It's you, Nick. God has put His finger on your heart. But he has more fingers than one, and there's others out there, still comin on, praise God, and He's got a finger on them, too. I dream of him, how he's lookin for us even now, and God forgive my sick spirit, I curse him in my heart." She began to weep and got up to have a drink of water and a splash. Her tears were the human part of her, weak and flagging.
When she turned back, Nick was writing. At last he ripped the page off his pad and handed it to Ralph.
"I don't know about the God part, but I know something is working here. Everyone we've met has been moving north. As if you had the answer. Have you dreamed about any of the others? Dick? June or Olivia? Maybe the little girl?"
"Not any of these others. A man who doesn't talk much. A woman who is with child. A man of about your age who comes to me with a guitar of his own. And you, Nick."
"And you think going to Boulder is the right thing?"
Mother Abagail said, "It's what we're meant to do."
Nick doodled aimlessly on his pad for a moment and then wrote, "How much do you know about the dark man? Do you know who he is?"
"I know what he's about but not who he is. He's the purest evil left in the world. The rest of the bad is little evil. Shoplifters and sexfiends and people who like to use their fists. But he'll call them. He's started already. He's getting them together a lot faster than we are. Before he's ready to make his move, I guess he'll have a lot more. Not just the evil ones that are like him, but the weak ones... the lonely ones... and the ones that have left God out of their hearts."
"Maybe he's not real," Nick wrote. "Maybe he's just..." He had to nibble at the top of his pen and think. At last he added: "... the scared, bad part of all of us. Maybe we are dreaming of the things we're afraid we might do."
Ralph frowned over this as he read it aloud, but Abby grasped what Nick meant right off. It wasn't much different from the talk of the new preachers who had got on the land in the last twenty years or so. There wasn't really any Satan, that was their gospel. There was evil, and it probably came from original sin, but it was in all of us and getting it out was as impossible as getting an egg out of its shell without cracking it. According to the way these new preachers had it, Satan was like a jigsaw puzzle - and every man, woman, and child on earth added his or her little piece to make up the whole. Yes, all that had a good modern sound to it; the trouble with it was that it wasn't true. And if Nick was allowed to go on thinking that, the dark man would eat him for dinner.
She said: "You dreamed of me. Ain't I real?"
Nick nodded.
"And I dreamed you. Ain't you real? Praise God, you're sittin right over there with a pad o paper on your knee. This other man, Nick, he's as real as you are." Yes, he was real. She thought of the weasels, and of the red eye opening in the darkness. And when she spoke up again, her voice was husky. "He ain't Satan," she said, "but he and Satan know of each other and have kept their councils together of old.
"The Bible, it don't say what happened to Noah and his family after the flood went down. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was some awful tussle for the souls of those few people - for their souls, their bodies, their way of thinking. And I wouldn't be surprised if that was what was on for us.
"He's west of the Rockies now. Sooner or later he'll come east. Maybe not this year, no, but when he's ready. And it's our lot to deal with him."
Nick was shaking his head, disturbed.
"Yes," she said quietly. "You'll see. There's bitter days ahead. Death and terror, betrayal and tears. And not all of us will be alive to see how it ends."
"I don't like any of this," Ralph muttered. "Aren't things hard enough without this guy you and Nick are talkin about? Ain't we got enough problems, with no doctors or electricity or nothing? Why did we have to get stuck with this damn doorprize?"
"I don't know. It's God's way. He don't explain to the likes of Abby Freemantle."
"If this is His way," Ralph said, "why, I wish He'd retire and let somebody younger take over."
"If the dark man is west," Nick wrote, "maybe we ought to pick up stakes and move east."
She shook her head patiently. "Nick, all things serve the Lord. Don't you think this black man serves Him, too? He does, no matter how mysterious His purpose may be. The black man will follow you no matter where you run, because he serves the purpose of God, and God wants you to treat with him. It don't do no good to run from the will of the Lord God of Hosts. A man or woman who tries that only ends up in the belly of the beast."
Nick wrote briefly. Ralph studied the note, rubbed the side of his nose, and wished he didn't have to read it. Old ladies like this didn't cotton to stuff like what Nick had just written. She'd likely call it a blasphemy, and shout it loud enough to wake everyone in the place, too.