The boy held up a leather-bound book. “This be the Word of the Lord! The Gospel of the Brethren!”
Someone threw a tomato. It broke apart on the preacher’s face and slid down, staining his suit with pulp. Everyone laughed. The preacher wiped his face clean with a handkerchief without stopping his fiery sermon. But the boy stared daggers at the tomato thrower, and something in his gaze stopped the man’s laugh cold.
“Evie?” Will asked, for she’d fallen quiet.
“Yes. I’m here,” Evie answered. “It’s changing. I see wagons by a river. It’s cold. The preacher’s breath comes out in white puffs. They’re praying….”
In her mind, she saw Reverend Algoode raising his hands to heaven as he addressed his small congregation. “You are the chosen, the faithful, the Brethren….”
“The angel of the Lord appeared to me in the heavens as a streak of fire and bid me to part ways with the corruption of the old world and build a new Godly body of heaven in this country….” Evie echoed. “The Blood of the Lamb runs in our veins, and in blood will we vanquish our enemies and bring forth God’s true mission on earth.”
The connection became uncertain for a moment, and then Evie was falling again. She concentrated with all her might and saw the boy’s feet as he ran through leaves, heard the huff-huff-huff of his breathing. He lay upon the riverbank and watched lazy clouds overhead, and for a moment Evie felt his loneliness and doubt. A deer ventured out of the trees, sniffing for food. It raised its head, and the boy threw a rock, laughing as the deer startled and broke for the woods.
“Evie, where are you?”
“Inside the church, I think,” she answered slowly as the image in her mind shifted again.
The boy with the blue eyes had been stripped to the waist and strapped to a chair. The faithful surrounded him. He squirmed in the chair, his eyes on the preacher as he turned a brand in the coals of the stove. There were twelve brands in all—a pentacle, and one for each of the eleven offerings.
“Your flesh must be strong. The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen,” the preacher said. He drew the red-hot brand from the fire and approached the boy, who screamed and screamed.
“Oh, god,” Evie said. She was not aware that tears streamed down her face.
“Will, make her stop,” Jericho cautioned.
“I’m with Frederick the Giant,” Sam chimed in.
Will hesitated. “Just another moment. We’re close.”
Sam didn’t wait. “Hey, doll? Time to come up for air. Can you hear me?”
“I said just a moment!” Will snapped.
Evie’s mind reeled away from the boy’s fear. For a moment, she tumbled madly through a fast stream of pictures. She willed herself to breathe and stay calm, not to run away. Soon, the pictures settled in her mind again.
“I’m fine,” she said in a calm voice. “I’m fine.”
The boy sat by the river with the Book of the Brethren turned to the last page. Evie’s heartbeat quickened as she tried to see it.
“The missing page. I’ve got it,” she said, and Will rushed to grab a pen. “ ‘Into this vessel, I bind your spirit. Into the fire, I commend your spirit. Into the darkness, I cast you, Beast, nevermore to rise.’ ”
Young John Hobbes ripped the page from the book, tearing it into tiny pieces and floating them on the river.
“We’ve got it, Evie. You can stop now,” Will said.
Evie had never gone quite so deep before. She was only vaguely aware of their voices, like a conversation heard in another room when falling asleep. It was almost like a drug, this feeling, and she wasn’t ready to stop.
“I’m somewhere else now,” Evie said dreamily.
She found herself walking through thick, sodden leaves in a blue-gray wood toward an encampment. Somber-faced men and women in plain clothes left their modest log cabins and walked with their children toward a white clapboard barn painted with the same sigils John Hobbes had scribbled along the bottom of all his notes. And there across the door was the five-pointed-star-and-snake emblem.
“The Pentacle of the Beast,” she murmured.
“Evie, I’m going to clap my hands now,” Will said. He did, and Evie pressed harder. She was beyond his reach now.
In her trance, she followed the others into the church. The women sat on one side in simple chairs, the children at their feet, while the men sat on the other side. His face grim, Pastor Algoode stood at the front with his son by his side. “The time has come. I have heard it in the town that even now the authorities ride to Brethren to take us down. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Yes, the time has come for the chosen one to begin his journey!”
