The Travelling Man (23 page)

“Grange did it,” Cassie stated rather than asked.

“I told you that she was always terrible at keeping secrets, but this one she managed to keep for a whole two days before she spilled it. She wouldn’t tell me everything, or at least not all at once, but the bottom line was that she considered Kane to be her guardian angel, quite literally.”

“Grange made her walk again.”

“That’s what she claimed. She said that he had come to her room after visiting hours and they had talked for some time. She claimed that he had saved her from her suicidal thoughts, which shook me, I don’t mind telling you, as I had no idea that she was that far down such a dark road. Over the next week or so she started training, only this time harder than ever. I tried to get her to be examined by the same doctors that had told her that recovery was impossible, but she wouldn’t entertain the idea. She told me that she had been saved by an angel and that she had an obligation to fulfill her destiny.”

“What happened to her, Matt?” Cassie asked, fearing the answer.

“She kept running and running and running,” he said quietly as a small tear leaked from his eye. “One morning, she just started and couldn’t stop. When she didn’t come home after a couple of hours I called the cops. They wouldn’t normally take an interest after someone was missing for only a few hours, but I had a friend on the force and he called out the cavalry. Eventually, she was found some 200 miles from home. Her body had shut down and she’d suffered massive internal organ failure; she couldn’t stop and she just ran herself to death.”

“I’m so sorry, Matt,” Cassie said, placing a hand lightly on his.

“After that, I started looking for Kane. And do you know what I found?”

“Let me guess, a whole lot of stories similar to your sister’s?”

“You bet. I started out in Pleasance and began to track him across the country. He’s always under the radar and is never too greedy in any one place. He only takes a few victims, sometimes only one in a whole town. He changes his name, his accent, and even his appearance. But he’s always smartly dressed and always has a battered leathery case with him, although you don’t always see it. I have a whole book of tales just like Cerys’; weird, unexplained deaths that left law enforcement scratching their heads, however much they didn’t want to admit it.”

“What did you do, Matt, I mean before this? Were you a cop of some sort?” she asked with interest.

“Journalist,” he smiled, “of the investigative kind. I have a whole cabinet full of his victims but for the past three years I have always been behind him, sometimes two steps, sometimes more. But this is the first time that I’ve actually found him still in town. Can I ask why you haven’t thrown me out of your house yet or called for the men in white coats?”

“I believe in two things, Matt. I believe in what I can see and what I can hear. I’m not in the habit of dismissing facts or evidence just because they don’t fit in with my preconceptions. I have dead bodies that make no sense, crime scenes that shouldn’t be there. I have a grave that someone dug their way out of and a woman’s exploding head. My town is in trouble, Matt, my people are in trouble and I’ll listen to anything that might help me help them.”

“But do you believe me?”

“I have some experience with liars, Matt,” Cassie said smiling. “And if you are lying, I’ll say this much: you don’t know that you are.”

“Fair enough.”

“But this is different, isn’t it? Granton is different. I mean you said that he normally flies under the radar, but here he’s ripping my town apart, literally. I mean, the quake - that was him, wasn’t it?”

“I think so. I mean, I don’t exactly know how he manages to do the things he does, but he does them. He made Cerys walk again and somehow he turned that into her running herself to death. But causing the quake, being so obvious, I get the feeling that he’s coming to an end somehow; one last great fire sale blowout before he goes out of business.”

“Leaving aside for a moment the unbelievable supernatural element to his abilities, that I can’t wrap my head around without seeing it with my own two eyes, why? What does he get out of all this?”

“If I had to guess,” Kravis sighed heavily and paused for a few moments. “I think that his stock and trade is good old-fashioned souls, Sheriff. I think he’s buying souls.”

CHAPTER 15

choosing sides

Kevin helped to hand out blankets at the Town Hall. The place was packed with those whose homes had been damaged and those seeking comfort in numbers. There was no power in town but the Town Hall had three large generators that offered light and heat, two very valuable commodities, to a scared town.

It had been six days now since the quake had ripped the town apart and he finally felt that they had started to regain a little control, or at least as much as could be expected under the circumstances.

For some peculiar reason, the town seemed to have been largely deserted when the quake had struck. He had found that there were multiple empty houses, along with driveways devoid of vehicles. Normally, Granton’s population was pretty much sedentary but he had discovered that a lot of them had left on their travels before the quake had marooned them from the rest of the world.

The Sheriff had tasked them with the immediate safety of the town. They had methodically searched every area and home, going house to house checking for residents. There had been significant damage to many areas of Granton and he shuddered to think of the insurance costs that were going to be involved in the rebuild. Out on Marlborough there had been a row of seven small one-storey homes that had been swallowed into the earth. There had been a huge opening that sank down into the darkness and Kevin had just been able to make out the sound of a weathervane rotating by some unseen subterranean wind.

There had still been no way to contact the outside world. The power and phone lines were down and cell reception was non-existent. The short wave radios emitted nothing but dry empty static. The strangest thing, though, was the large fissures that seemed almost strategically arranged to hem them in like a waterless moat. He had personally circled the town several times but couldn’t find a single place where he could pass, either on foot or in a vehicle. It was a deeply unsettling thought that he knew must be playing on the Sheriff’s mind as much as his.

She had led them effortlessly and they had followed, or at least some of them had. There were currently two groups of survivors both housed in separate areas of town. Those that were here seemed to be the more grounded members of the town. There was a mixture of anger and shock, guilt and resentment, but they were all essentially good people needing help and demanding answers.

The second group of survivors had congregated up at the church. The word was that Father Luther had gathered his flock unto him and they were devouring every word that he had to offer. Lita Bodie had originally been up to the church with her sister, Kathleen, but she had come to the Town Hall, scared of the sort of rhetoric on offer by Luther. According to her, the Father was preaching tales of fire and brimstone of the Old Testament variety, God’s wrath and rage and Granton’s sins that had brought down his fury. Kevin found this sort of religion particularly exploitative given the current vulnerability of the town. He had a real thing for bullies and the thought of Father Luther using this horrific situation for his own ends made him want to puke. His own father had been a bully, a man used to demanding his own way and using his fists to get it. Men like his father walked through life dominating those around them until they were met with superior force, a larger predator that made them roll onto their bellies and piss down their leg in submission.

He had told the Sheriff about Luther but she had told him that they were going to concentrate on the more immediate dangers at hand. He knew that she wasn’t quite taking his concerns about Father Luther seriously yet, but he also knew that he only really had the gnawing fear in his gut to go on. She was right that their priority was tending to the wounded, and reaching beyond the town borders for help, but something in him desperately wanted a closer look at the church.

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Ellie sat drawing at the back of the Town Hall. Her mom had moved her down to the Town Square building as she was spending so much of her time there. Ellie didn’t mind so much as it was nice to have company and there was definitely comfort to be found in numbers.

She still had trouble processing the devastation around Granton, as the whole place seemed to resemble a giant movie set. Buildings had either collapsed completely or were leaning precariously, stripped skeleton shells that stood in death poses frozen in time. She had watched an old documentary on the Second World War that had showed the destruction caused in Europe by long term bombardments. Whole towns that lay in shattered ruins with ghostly remains of what once stood proud. Her peaceful home town had been pushed to the ground by powerful hands like a toddler tantrum amidst a Lego construction.

She still couldn’t quite understand just why no one from the outside world had found them yet. She didn’t know the ins and outs of scientific technology, but surely an earthquake on this scale must have registered somewhere on a computer screen.

She looked down at her current drawing; charcoal black markings depicted the town lying crushed, where buildings were mounds of rubble with smoke wafting up from the wreckage. She leaned in closer and saw that she had drawn a soft colored fog shading the air above the town, a covering that felt like a kind of camouflage hiding them from the world.

One of her greatest abilities, she had learned, was that no one seemed to notice her. As such, she had been hanging around the edges of adult conversations, picking up little nuggets of information here and there, piecing together various events from the last week or so. She had a small nook at the back of the hall near the kitchen area where she started to flick back through her collection of drawings. She pieced together the snippets of stories from the townsfolk and found some of them seemed to correspond with her drawings: pictures of death and darkness drawn before the events, and it scared her. She tried to draw strength from her Amazonian mother and legendary grandfather; she knew that their blood ran through her veins.

She drew from their well and tried to think logically around the situation. If she had been sketching events before they happened, then maybe she could use that to their advantage now. Maybe she could produce a picture that would help them deal with the problem. She could see a shadowy blur in every drawing and she knew that this figure was watching, always watching. There was someone who had come to Granton, someone who had brought death and destruction with them. She knew that this man should scare her and, while he did, she also knew that she had a mom who dealt with monsters.

She needed to see more if she was going to be able help; she needed to see his face and where he was. She closed her eyes and let her mind wander blankly as she picked up the pencil and placed the graphite tip on the pad.

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Father Bruce Luther looked out across his congregation. Eager faces hungry for guidance and knowledge, knowledge that only he could provide for them. He felt the power of his words under the church’s roof and before the eyes of God.

His numbers were swelling as more and more people found their way to him. Grange had promised him a return to the church by those heathens that had lost their way in the foggy haze of modern life. He knew now that he had been as guilty as the rest of them. He had allowed his judgment to slide and his devotion to waver. He had failed Granton as much as Granton had failed him, but there was still time to save them, to save himself.

He took the podium and felt the rush of assurance as murmurings stopped the instant that he took the stage. His black cassock was freshly laundered from before the quake and he felt his chest broaden and shoulders widen under the garment and its implications.

“Sons and daughters of Granton, we have failed each other,” he began in a kind, sad voice. “When I look out upon this sea of believers, I can see just how far we have fallen. The modern world has eroded our faith and chipped away at the very foundations of this church. We have placed our belief in the intangible vagaries and soiled the very name of God himself with our avarice. Did we not think that he was watching? Did we really believe that he would not know our sins and judge us accordingly?” His voice rose in volume and intensity as he gripped the wooden plinth beneath whitening knuckles. “Were we really so blind and arrogant to think that there wouldn’t come a day when we would be called to account? Our lives were never ours to do with as we so wish. Each and every one of our very breaths is a gift from God AND SHOULD BE USED TO PRAISE HIM AND HIS GLORY!”

There was an ocean of nodding heads and guilty glances. His congregation were shamed by their guilt and desperate for forgiveness, and it felt wonderful to him.

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other,” he quoted. “This is our judgment and we have been found wanting, my children. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.”

This was met with a mumbled chorus of “Amen” and clasped hands.

“We must seek his forgiveness, we must throw ourselves on the mercy of God and offer unto him his tribute and pray that he is indeed a merciful God. This is punishment that we have surely brought down upon our own shoulders and deservedly so. But there is still time, my children. There is still time for us to atone for our sins. I have been given the word of God and he has told me just how we can win back his favor. Granton has no place for the unbelievers anymore, we have no place for the liars and false prophets who would seek to worship false gods of the modern world. We must cleanse our town of its sins and its sinful. We must take back our town from the fallen and we must pay our due to God and break the binds of evil by shedding blood in his name.”

He could feel their passion now as he rode the room’s desperate need for answers and retribution. These people wanted to know why this had happened to them and they wanted to place their anger onto other shoulders. There was a mob mentality growing and he knew that he had them, but it was a tenuous grip and he couldn’t stretch it too far too soon.

“The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”

The heads were nodding now as eyes were clamped shut in religious fervor.

“This is our rapture, my children; a judgment from God and our salvation is now in our own two hands. We must take up arms in his name and strike down those that would drag us down into the pits of hell. This church, these pews, this congregation is now our family. We are the chosen ones, anointed with the power and holy authority to do what must be done in his name. For our salvation and our ascension to heaven must be earned, my children; it must be earned in blood, sweat and tears.”

He stood in silence then as a chorus of “Advent Glory” erupted. Their faces were flushed bright red as they sang and the church rang out with the echoes of their passion. Father Bruce Luther closed his eyes and swam in the power of leading his army and thanked God for sending him Gilbert Grange.

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Cassie hammered the board against the window frame using the tool as an outlet for her frustration. The sound of boards being nailed to windows was loud and there were several people following her lead on the street. They were securing some of the few remaining standing homes and businesses. There had been some looting which she found made her angrier than anything. Just how some people could think that such a disaster was somehow an opportunity for petty thievery, especially given the fact that money meant very little right now, stunned her.

She had been organizing supply runs to some of the local supermarkets to try and salvage supplies. At first, she had insisted that they keep an accurate record of what they had taken for later recompense, but that admirable notion had soon proven a pointless endeavor.

The Town Hall held only part of their vastly reduced population and she had heard that many others were holed up at the church. She could see the attraction to God in such a situation as she wanted answers as much as the next man. Kevin had told of her of unsubstantiated rumors concerning the church’s residents, but she hoped that it was all just scaremongering. She hoped in her heart that the people of Granton were as good and as decent as she had always believed; that was where she placed her faith now. They needed to look out for each other; they needed to come together as a community until they found their way out of the darkness.

She still wore her uniform even though it was a little ripe and in need of a wash. Her house had been one of the few which had, while badly damaged, mercifully not been completely flattened by the quake, but she had moved her and Ellie into the Town Hall for appearances’ sake. It was important for her to wear a polished badge that carried authority and she wore her gun, fully loaded, on her hip.