Embracing Darkness (81 page)

Jessie thought she’d withdraw from the privilege of being the solitary witness to the demise of her rapist, but she didn’t. Moreover, she assumed her terror should be replaced by ecstasy; the ecstasy that one feels when wrong has been made right, when fear has ultimately turned to hope, when out of the shadow of uncertainty comes clarity. She waited for some fleeting redemption of bottled up emotion to steal her away from the harsh reality with which she was now afflicted. Her rapist was now dying before her, and yet her relief and satisfaction were nowhere in her to be found.

She stood like a Greek statue and watched with as much anticipation and emotion as a man at the races who hasn’t bet so much as a cent on his horse. She only breathed deeply, inhaling the overpowering fumes of the burning tree and rectory into her lungs and not reacting to it in the least. All this as Zachary Black struggled with the extreme pain of being burned alive, no doubt praying for his end to be near.

As she began to wonder just how much longer justice would continue to be served, Jessie heard a hoarse voice, burdened with anger and hatred coming from the convulsing lump of human kindling. She could have sworn that she even heard a brief and disjointed series of cackles, malevolent and menacing in its delivery.

“YOU LIVE! BITCH!
SO THEN LIVE! AND NEVER
FORGET! NEVER!”

And as the flames penetrated his ocular sockets and melted the soft gooey organic matter that was his eyeballs, she heard him begin to choke on the gurgling phlegm that now boiled in his throat. The beast’s brain cooked and then scorched and finally with one last jolt of his body that quickly slowed to nothing more than a fading twitch before coming to a complete halt, the monster’s agony arrived at its end, as did he.

At the same moment the rectory’s roof collapsed, and the church’s burning steeple set fire to the Hartley house. Jessie ran from the hill, believing that all she had known—Father Poole, the rectory, St. Andrew’s, the maple—were now lost to her forever.

While all of Holly watched the Catholic enclave on the hill crumble to the ground, not one person offered to help. The fire companies of Holly, Exeter, and Stratham, small as they were, came to the rescue but only after irrevocable damage had been done. By the time the inferno was extinguished, nothing remained but a pile of charred wood. The Hartley house was equally devastated. As for the maple, she was now a standing skeleton.

“What’ll happen to the tree?” one of the firemen asked his chief.

“She’ll make good firewood,” he replied.

Jessie was given a blanket and a cup of hot water with lemon as she sat in the police station waiting for any word from the hill. That evening she finally lay down on the bench she’d come to know so well that day. She slept, surprisingly, for about ten hours, during which time she dreamed of the burning maple, of Father Poole coming to her with a big gash in his head, and of Zachary Black chasing her while on fire. None of these dreams, however, caused her to awaken.

By the next morning there was still no information for her. Jessie was truly alone now. She hadn’t seen any of us boys since we’d made off down the hill, and somehow Jessie knew she wouldn’t see most of us again.

About 3:00 in the afternoon, on the day after the fire, a Sergeant Billingsly approached her. He sat on the bench and attempted a smile, but he knew there was nothing to smile about. “We found three bodies in the rubble and one in the grass,” he reported.

“Three in the rubble?” she asked. “How three?”

“I’m sorry?” replied Billingsly.

“Zachary Black, the one who attacked me, died outside the rectory. He’s the one you found in the grass, but only Father Poole and Mrs. Keats were
inside
the rectory.”

“We suspect that one of them is Captain Ransom, who’s been missing since he left word that he was going up the hill yesterday morning. We’d been planning to send a few men up there to inquire about him yesterday shortly before the fire.”

“Suspect?” Jessie said, fearful that it might have been Mr. Hartley or, worse, one of her brothers. “Don’t you know? Can’t you be sure?”

Sergeant Billingsly shook his head. “No, miss. All the remains were charred beyond recognition. The fire burned for so long, you see. But we don’t believe any of the remains to be those of a child, if that helps at all.”

“Thank goodness for that, at least.” she replied.

“We’ll take it from here, miss,” said the officer. “The first thing we need to do, young lady, is to find out whether there’s anyone who can claim you.”

“What about my brothers?”

“Brothers?”

“The boys who lived with Father Poole in the rectory, the abused and abandoned boys Father Poole took in.”

“I don’t know what happened to them. They probably ran off or went back to their own families.”

Jessie was offered a place to stay by Dwight Mason, who’d taken immeasurable pity on the poor girl and given her sanctuary in his home above the General Store, much to the annoyance of his wife. Jessie helped out with customers and around the Mason’s apartment. She did anything to keep her mind off the tragedy, but she would always be reminded of it when the people of Holly, always looking for something to talk about, asked her how she was.

“Oh, you
poor
little dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Kelly, pinching Jessie’s cheek. “My, my, but you
are
a pretty little thing! You know that if you ever need anything you can come to me or to Mrs. O’Day. We were great friends of Father’s and Sister’s, and we’ll be more than happy to take care of you.”

“Yes, indeed!” cried Mrs. O’Day, pinching Jessie’s other cheek. “Great friends of theirs!”

The next day Jessie walked outside. Turning to Holly Hill in the distance, she viewed the burnt remains of the maple. She’d avoided looking at it for too long. Initially hoping it would give her the strength to go on, or a sense of thankfulness for having survived, she felt emptier and more alone than she had in her entire life.

Jessie shuffled morosely back and forth inside the store as the days passed and noticed the calendar behind the counter. The month of October was slowly drawing to a close. At night she’d sit in bed and read the article from the
Biloxi
Daily
Times
about the man who had fooled them all and, in so doing, taken away the souls of so many people whom she loved with all her heart.

On the morning of October 27, while she was on the stepladder reaching for the top shelf to put away the new stock of baking soda, Dwight Mason told Jessie that there was a letter for her.

“A letter?” she asked, almost falling off the ladder. “For
me
?”

He read the envelope, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Yeah. It says, ‘To: Miss Jessica Benson.’ I guess by now everyone knows you’re here. This letter’s postmarked from out of town.”

This time Jessie did fall off the ladder but was luckily caught by Dwight. She anxiously broke from his arms and took the letter with her into the back room, hoping it was from Sister Ignatius.

“Thought you should know,” began Dwight. “that they’re planning on cutting down the rest of that tree tomorrow morning.”

Jessie heard him, but didn’t react. Her only objective at that moment was the mysterious letter. The envelope didn’t indicate the sender’s identity, so she heaved a sigh and opened it with quivering hands. She read:

October 23, 1942

Dear Jessie,

I hope you are sitting while reading this because I have a feeling you may faint as you continue on. Prepare yourself, dear child. This is Father Fin. As you can see, this letter is dated after the fire on the hill, so you know I am alright.

Let me explain. I awoke in my office as the smoke grew more intense. I leaped to my feet, jumped out the office window, and ran down the hill, figuring you’d already escaped. I went immediately into Exeter, afraid (ashamed as I am to admit it) to show my face around Holly in order to find you. I made it to St. Luke’s, my former church, and collapsed at the door of a good friend of mine, Father Brian Leonard. Injured and exhausted, he nursed me while I remained unconscious for an entire day. When I came to, he told me what he’d read in the paper about what had happened to you and Zachary Black in the tree, and that I was presumed dead. I don’t know what body they had mistaken for mine, but I see this as divine intervention.

Jessie’s mind went back to the three bodies found in the rubble of the rectory.
If
Father
Poole
is
still
alive,
who
was
the
third
person?
she wondered. Then it came to her. She remembered the man in the greasy overalls whom General Lee had killed and whom Jonas and Billy had buried years before. The bones that General Lee had dug up in the crawlspace were the third body found at the site. She returned to the letter.

I need you to know that with everything that has happened I have to disappear and Sister with me. With all I have been responsible for, I surely would have been excommunicated from the Church and perhaps face an even worse fate at the hands of the law.

Still, I firmly believe it is by the will of God I am being given a second chance. I only hope I can redeem myself before the Lord calls me home.

One last thing, dear child. I feel utterly responsible for the tragedy that has happened to you. Your innocence was taken from you, and I can’t help but think I played a crucial role in that travesty. I beg your forgiveness, dearest Jessica. Every day since we went out to the shed I’ve had a hard time living with my indirect complicity. I only ask that as time goes on you can forgive me, as I have long to live yet, before I can find it possible to forgive myself.

I’ll leave you with that thought. More pressing at the moment is that you find happiness now. I leave you in the hands of Dwight Mason. He is a good man, and I have a feeling that you will remain welcome in his home. Furthermore, you have the support of the entire town. It sounds as though Holly has adopted you in their hearts. Despite the selfishness of which I had always accused them, they have an enormous capacity to do good. I know you will be fine, better off than you would be with me. I have hurt you and too many other people to deserve a second chance. Therefore, I bequeath you to your adopted town. It is in Holly that you will find the happiness that should never have been taken from you in the first place. God bless you.

My love to you always,

Father Phineas Poole

Jessie quickly bent down and grabbed the envelope she’d dropped on the ground. Dwight had said that it was postmarked from out of town, but when she examined it more closely the postmark indicated Epping October 23, 1942. Remembering what Father Fin had said in the letter about leaving with Sister Ignatius, she also realized the letter had been written four days before. There would be no use in searching Exeter. Father Poole would surely be gone from St. Luke’s, and Sister from the Exeter Orphanage.

Some
happiness.
she thought.
I’m
so
alone
.

Jessica sank to the floor and began crying. She truly felt like giving up all will to live, for there was nothing now but a lonely existence and the persistent memories of loved ones now gone forever.

As she got to her feet, putting the letter carefully back into the envelope, she heard Mrs. Mason yell at her husband, “When are we going to be eating? You still haven’t cleaned up the store, and I’m starved!”

“E-pping! Jessie exclaimed, connecting the town’s name with the word ‘
eating
’ that Mrs. Mason had just hollered. “Where the hell is
E-pping
?”

That night, Jessie lay in her bed, her mind swimming with so many thoughts that sleep would never find her. Staring into the blackness, she reflected back on Father Poole’s letter, which she had read over and over the entire afternoon. She thought about the initial shock she’d gotten when reading that he hadn’t died in the fire, and felt an all-too-familiar ache in her heart when she remembered what he’d said about giving her up forever.

Suddenly Zachary Black’s face came into Jessie’s mind again, and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut until it faded away. Somehow she knew that it would probably be years before she could forget him for all time.

If
Sister
had
only
not
been
so
sick
, she thought,
She’d
have
seen
right
through
that
Mr.
White.
Why
did
she
have
to
leave
me?

A tear escaped the corner of Jessie’s eye and dripped down into her ear. She could remember the last time she saw Sister Ignatius. She’d been taken from the Benson house, wheeled out to the Ford that Mr. Hartley had borrowed and…

Jessie stopped and sat up in bed, her heart beginning to race as the thought sent a shiver through her body and down into her toes.
Sister
and
Father
Fin
went
behind
the
maple!
She
carved
something
into
the
maple!
I
know
it!

Then Dwight’s voice came into her head.
Thought
you
should
know,
they’re
planning
on
cutting
down
the
rest
of
that
tree
tomorrow
morning
.