Embracing Darkness (78 page)

“No,” Father Poole whispered. “I don’t want her to know I’m asking. She
can’t
know, but
I
would like to know, and I am asking you as a man of God. I beseech you.”

He turned away toward the fireplace as a distant memory spilled back into his brain. He put his hands upon the mantle and leaned his face closer to the roaring fire. “How many female babies were brought here in 1892?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’d have to check. That I
can
tell you, Father, without any hesitation, once I find the appropriate files, that is.”

“She told me she’d come here as an infant,” he said under his breath, so low, in fact, that Mrs. Moorhead strained to hear him. “And she and I were born in the same year. We have the same birthday.” He whacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “God almighty! Why didn’t I see it before now?” Then he thought to himself,
She’s
my
twin
sister!

Mrs. Moorhead approached the priest and touched his back. “Father, would you like some tea while I find the answer to your query?”

He turned slowly toward her and shook his head. “No, thank you, Mrs. Moorhead. It’s not necessary. I seem to have discovered it on my own.”

By 11:30 a scream awakened Father Poole, who had fallen asleep on one of the living-room chairs. It was Sister Ignatius launching into her usual late-evening diatribe, screaming in pain, crying in confusion, and using profane words. The high-pitched screaming frightened the orphans.

Father Poole ran into her room with some morphine powder diluted in water. “Easy now, Ellen,” he said, running to the side of her bed. “I’m here.”

As he gave the potion to her, it occurred to the priest that this was the very first time he was seeing her while knowing that the two of them were related by blood. It made him sick to think that he actually had had sexual intercourse with his own sister. A knot developed in his stomach. For a second he thought he was going to vomit.

She began to drink the morphine offered to her, spilling a good deal of it on her chin and robe. “That’s it,” whispered Father Poole. “Drink it all up.”

She finished and dropped the cup indifferently, sinking back into her pillow. Father Poole picked up the cup from the side of her arm and placed it gently on the nightstand. He then took her hand and massaged it tenderly. “Ellen, everyone on the hill sends their love.”

She scoffed and turned away from Phineas. “I’m sure. That’s why no one’s come to see me.”

“Ellie, we’ve been through this a hundred times. You told me you didn’t want anyone seeing you like this.”

The illness was taking its toll on her short-term memory. Father Poole had to remind her time and time again of her previously expressed wishes.

“I’m sure that boy doesn’t miss me. Of that I’m sure!”

“Zachary?” Father Poole said.

“Yes, Zachary Black! Just to think that you took him back after all he’d stolen from us!”

Father Poole’s reasons for unconditionally accepting Jack White into the St. Andrew’s family, at first anyway, stemmed from an insatiable need to make up for Zachary. And Jack resembled Zachary Black in so many ways for Father Poole, not physically but in all other aspects. At times it had been downright impossible to separate the two in his mind, but over time Phineas, a much more intelligent man than he ever let on, realized that it had been Zachary Black all along.

“He wants to be forgiven,” said Father Poole sadly. “That’s why he’s come back to me. He loves me as I do him.”

“He’s lying to you, Phineas, lying about who he is! And now he’s come back rearing his ugly face because he knows no one else will have him, the no good son of a bitch!”

“But he doesn’t know that I know he’s Zachary Black. And remember, as I told you before, we know him as Jack White now. So when Jessie comes here, don’t mention the name of Zacha… .”

With a sudden burst of energy she didn’t know she still had, Sister Ignatius sat up so fast and leaned over so far in Father Poole’s direction that he pulled his head back, thinking they were about to butt heads.

“No one’s coming here, Phineas!” she exclaimed, now lucid enough to remember that she was too embarrassed to have the children see her. “Don’t you even think of bringing Jessie here!” She began to cry and put her hands to her face. “I’d rather die than have her see me this way!”

“Ellen,” Phineas began. “There’s something you don’t know about Jessie, actually a few things. Since you left I’ve neglected to tell you something that happened a few months back and something that happened today. I have a feeling after I tell you this that you’ll want to see her.”

That same morning Zachary Black had come outside at about 7:30 to do his calisthenics. He was dressed in his Nazi breeches, tall black boots, and a tight T-shirt from which his bulging pectoral muscles protruded. He removed the shirt as soon as he reached the lawn beyond the rectory stairs, sat down on the grass, and began his sit-ups. As he completed sixty, he noticed someone walking up “The Path to Salvation.” He didn’t care who it was and continued what he was doing.

It was Captain Ransom, and he was there to see Father Poole. He approached Zachary Black slowly and tried a few times to catch his eye, but the stranger ignored him. “Good morning,” said Ransom pleasantly. “You’re the new groundskeeper, right?”

“Seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three.”

“My name is Ransom. I believe you know who I am by now. I’m looking for Father Poole.”

Zachary kept his eyes fixed in front of him. “Seventy-seven, seventy-eight. He’s not here.”

“Oh, I see. Listen, I’m glad I caught you because I wanted to ask you a few questions as well, if I may.” While Zachary kept going with his sit-ups, Ransom continued, “The Hartley girl who was murdered up here last week… .”

To Ransom’s surprise Zachary stopped counting out loud and interrupted him. “What about her?” he said indifferently.

“At her funeral you said something that puzzled me and made me feel a bit uneasy.”

“What was that?”

Zachary’s sit-ups were gaining speed, so much so that he lost count and started again from seventy.

“You said that you probably knew the Hartley girl better than anyone,” replied Captain Ransom.

Once Zachary had reached his hundredth sit-up, he stood up and faced the officer. “What’s it to ya?” said Zachary Black, almost menacingly. “She was a whore. As young as she was, she was banging every male up on this hill.”

“Even you?” asked Ransom coolly.

Zachary ignored the question. “So you think I did it?” he responded.

“I didn’t say that, Mr. White.”

“The truth is that anyone could have done it. Hell, did you ask the priest where
he
was at the time?”

The word
time
left Zachary’s lips with a heavy Southern inflection.

“Are you a Southerner, Mr. White?” Black said nothing. “Where exactly is home for you, sir?” Ransom persisted.

“None of your damn business.” Zachary snapped, sounding more annoyed than before. “I got work to do.”

“I’m here to get to the bottom of things, true enough, but my main concern right now is the Benson girl. I’m worried about her being the sole female up here. Her attacker may come back—that is, unless he’s already here.”

Zachary Black stared deep into Ransom’s eyes. Ransom could see the anger and hatred in the man’s expression.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with Jessica,” said Zachary, “other than she needs to be put in her place when sassing me, as though I were one of her brothers.”

“Sassing you?” asked Ransom.

“She done pulled a gun on me not too long ago. Told me to stay away from her and the boys.”

“Why would she do that?”

“’Cause she probably thinks what you think.”

“And what do I think, Mr. White?”

“That I raped her and her friend.”

“Raped?” asked Ransom, pretending to be more surprised than he really was. “So Sue Ellen
was
raped? And Jessie? What happened to Jessie?”

Zachary Black suddenly understood that Ransom may only have been aware until then that Sue Ellen Hartley had been attacked and only suspected that it could have gone as far as rape. The truth was that Ransom knew in his heart that Sue Ellen had been sexually assaulted and that Jessie probably was too.

“Look,” Zachary said uneasily. “I don’t know what the hell happened to her. All I do know is that these people are crazy. They always look at me as though I’m the devil. They don’t like me, and I don’t like them. I’m here to do a job. That’s it.”

“
Why
don’t they like you, Mr. White?” inquired Ransom as he narrowed his eyes at Zachary Black. “Do you make them feel uneasy, as uneasy as you made everyone feel at the Hartley girl’s burial?”

Zachary Black picked up his shirt and then smiled at the policeman. Ransom observed how Zachary Black was dressed.

“That really is some get-up,” said Ransom. “I’ll bet it makes you feel powerful and important.”

“If there’s nothing else, sir,” said Zachary politely, “I’ll be getting back to my exercises. I always like to finish them before I start my workday.”

“Ah, yes!” Ransom said, sounding triumphant. “I understand Father Poole employed you to replace Argyle Hobbs. Until yesterday morning, I’d had no idea how long you’d been working up here. The Benson girl told me you’d arrived not long before Sue Ellen was attacked. Now that sounds like a hell of a coincidence to me, Mr. White.”

Again, Zachary was at a loss for words, so instead turned his back on Ransom, who quickly noticed the scars on Zachary’s back. Ransom suddenly remembered the comment he’d made to one of his officers while descending the hill on the day of the attack: “I don’t know how you have sex, Lupin, but when a girl scratches a boy so bad during sex that she gets his skin and blood under her nails, it ain’t from his scalp.”

Ransom drew his gun from his holster and pointed it at the back of Zachary Black’s head. “YOU’RE UNDER ARREST FOR THE ASSAULT AND MURDER OF SUE ELLEN HARTLEY!”

No sooner had Ransom finished these words than Zachary Black froze in place. He slowly reached into his pocket, pulled out and opened his switchblade, swung around toward Ransom, and hurled the knife into the policeman’s throat.

Ransom dropped his revolver and collapsed to the ground. Walking over to his hemorrhaging victim, Zachary bent down, stepped on Ransom’s face, and twisted the blade until the gurgling within the Captain’s throat ceased. Then with a jerk of his arm Zachary pulled the knife out, took from his pocket a handkerchief with the initials FPP, and stained the lily-white lace with crimson as he cleaned the blood off the blade.

With Ransom now dead, Zachary Black knew that it was just a matter of time before the hill would be crawling with police. His temporary asylum there was coming to an end, but before he left the place in chaos, as he always did anywhere he’d ever been, he wanted to leave something for Father Poole so that he’d never forget Zachary Black. He would leave the dead body of Jessica Benson.

With not much time to spare, Zachary threw Ransom’s limp body into the hole that led into the crawlspace under the rectory. He then ran inside, passing Lou and Gabe in the foyer. The stranger was headed toward Father Poole’s office to steal anything he could that would be of value to him.

A short while before, Charlie and I were coming out of our room when we noticed Jack White’s door wide open. The only time any of us had ever seen it so was when he would be either going in or coming out. I approached the room and Charlie followed, although he was tugging at my arm and pleading with me in a raspy whisper not to enter. I paid him no mind and poked my head inside. No one was there. As I began to turn my head, something on White’s bed caught my eye. It was a soiled bag. Without any regard for what I was about to undertake, I entered the bedroom of a man who would have killed me had he known I was in there.

I took the bag in one hand and with the other, pulled out the first thing I had grabbed, which was a journal. I began to thumb through the handwritten pages, not really reading more than a word here and there. “He’s a writer too.” I said out loud to Charlie who was still cowering in the hallway, watching me.

“Get out of there!” cried Charlie. “He’ll kill you if he finds you in there.”

I told Charlie to keep his mouth shut and his eyes and ears open for Jack White. The journal began around mid 1937, but according to the journal entries there were dates that corresponded as far back as 1929. I thought I had struck gold, for as much as we all despised Jack White, who were we to say his stories wouldn’t make for good reading up in the maple? As fortunate as I was to get my hands on what appeared to be the stranger’s life story, I failed to realize that if I took it, he’d know it was missing.

I shoved the book into my shorts and quickly exited the room. Charlie and I then made our way downstairs to Father Fin’s office. I was feeling lucky now, figuring that the priest’s quarters might engender some other treasure.

There was no malice that came along with our snooping through Father Poole’s things, a shameful act of which all of us were guilty, and which only transpired when the priest was not on the hill. We were simply looking for things of interest to play with because the usual pastimes of baseball, marbles, and tree-climbing were becoming somewhat monotonous. We peeked into a drawer where Father Poole kept his money. Charlie saw a dollar bill and snatched it up for himself. I opened a lower drawer and found the magnifying glass I’d taken from the desk months before, the same one that Jessie had appropriated from Ziggy. It was lying under a Bible. I put it into my pocket, excited to have a fun activity to do that afternoon—roasting bugs.

As I fished further into the clutter, I noticed a notebook with pages and pages of writing. Immediately I was reminded of the book I’d taken from Jack White’s room and instantly became cognizant of its presence in my bloomers as I felt it pressed up against my buttocks. I took Father Poole’s notebook too, tucking it under my arm, just as the man we’d known as Jack White burst into the room and stared at us angrily. We screamed like two little girls. He stood by the door, breathing heavily, and tilted his head slightly to one side. My first thought was that he’d found out that we’d been in his room.