The Hole (33 page)

* * *
 

“Jesus,” Elliot said, letting the journal fall.

“It’s us, isn’t it?” Evajean said. “That’s what Melvin said. The writer has is wrong. It’s not the
One
Mighty and Strong, but the
Ones
. You and me.”

Elliot nodded. “We were meant to find this. Everything, all your hunches, all those times when what we did just felt right, it was all to lead us to this.”

“The glasses!” Evajean said. She jumped up. “Where are they? The ones you found in the house.”

Elliot reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled them out. The two large lenses, one gray and the other blue, caught the moonlight from the hotel room’s window.

“That’s them,” Evajean said, excited. She leaned forward, taking the glasses from his hand. “The Urim and-whatever the other one was.”

“Thummim.”

“Give me that,” Evajean said, pointing toward the folded sheet of paper. Elliot picked it up and handed it to her. She put the glasses on, the huge lenses bulging out from her eyes, and held up the sheet. She studied it for a moment, turned it around, then turned it back. “I don’t see anything,” she said.

“Nothing?”

“I can’t see through these things,” she said and took the glasses off.

“Here,” Elliot said, and took them from her, along with the paper. He set the sheet in his lap and was lifting the glasses to his face when he stopped.

“What?” Evajean asked.

Elliot was silent. He leaned down, the glasses still in his fist. “I can read it,” he said.

I am not a bad person. Raised poor, uneducated, and an occasional charlatan, yes, but I am not a bad person. The insects that eat at my corners try to tell me otherwise, but I don’t listen. I am not a bad person.

When God speaks, you have no choice but to listen. I know. I’ve seen his face and felt the heat it radiates. I have believed.

Kill him. That is what you were made to do. The One Mighty and Strong is eternal weapon against the darkness. Moroni cannot stand against it.

I remain ignorant of the weapon’s genesis. I do no know who created you. But I perceive your purpose. And, because I am not a bad person and because I recognize the horrors I have helped to advance in this world, I today set in motion events I hope will lead to Moroni’s destruction at your hand.

A small group of my followers have been informed of the truth. They have been taught the secrets. They and their descendants will harbor and protect those who might become the One Mighty and Strong. Moroni will do everything in his power to stop them, but he will fail. I have enough faith left to know that.

Only you can read this. Only you can use my seeing stones. You are Mighty and you are Strong.

I tremble as I write this. I feel Moroni’s forces gathering. He is coming for me. I fear I have little time left.

Kill him.

Your humble servant,

Joseph Smith, Jr.

* * *
 

Elliot finished reading. They both sat, silent and terrified.

After some time, Evajean said, “How did you come to Charlottesville, Elliot?”

He looked at her, confused.

“Just tell me,” she said.

Elliot shrugged. “My wife. It was Clarine’s idea. She wanted to move and we did.” He shook his head. “But we talked about this already.”

“Yeah,” Evajean said. “But it was Henry who suggested Charlottesville for me. He’s the one who said we should move there and he’s the one who picked out that house. I didn’t even like it very much but Henry insisted. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“No.”

“Who told you to buy that house on that street?”

Elliot thought about it. “I guess it was Clarine.”

“Right,” Evajean said. “Of course it was. Don’t you see, Elliot? Smith said there’d be people who’d protected the Mighty and Strong and that’s us. We know that. It’s us and, for it to work, we have to be together. We couldn’t fight Moroni if we never found each other. You think it’s just coincidence we ended up living right across the street? I sure don’t.”

“I don’t-”

“Think about it. We have to be together, we have to meet. And we live totally apart, in different states. Out of now where, my husband says we have to move to Charlottesville. I mean, who’s ever heard of Charlottesville? And your wife does exactly the same thing. She tells you to pack up, that the family’s moving to Virgina? That’s not the kind of thing that normally happens. Henry and Clarine were in on it. They were part of Joseph Smith’s little secret.”

Elliot was quiet. He knew she was right but he hated believing it. Clarine was his wife. She’d given him Callie. She wasn’t some secret agent, damn it, wasn’t a religious lunatic. But it all made sense. She’d come to him, after all. She’d asked him out.

Evajean was pacing. “And that explains Melvin and Cassandra, too. How far does it reach?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the journal told us it’s not just Moroni, but Yahweh, too. And Yahweh’s the name of God for Jews and Christians, right? How many people are Jews and Christians, Elliot? How much of the population?”

“A lot.”

“Yeah. Almost all. And that means almost everyone in the government, too.”

“The Hole…”

“Right.” She sat down on the bed. “What if the government, the people in it, somehow knew what was happening. What if they knew Moroni’s army was coming back, that it was taking people over. Then they’d try to stop that from happening. Because they’re Christian and Jewish, after all. Not Mormon. How many Mormons are there in the government?”

“I don’t know.”

“But there’s way more Christians and Jews.”

“I’m sure.”

Evajean stopped. “But hold on, that doesn’t make sense. They were taking the bodies to the Hole, the people who were already dead. So why even bother? It’s not like dead people are a threat.”

“Those dead people weren’t Mormons,” Elliot said. “The journal told us Moroni started the religion to make his faithful open to the arrival of the army. My guess is that means the only people these Nephites could possess would be Mormons-”

“Yahweh!” Evajean said. “What if the people who died were on Yahweh’s side? What if they were possessed by the other ones, the-”

“Lamanites.”

“Them. And, here, think of it like this: Sure they’re dead, but that could just be the bodies. The Lamanites might still be in there, trapped or something. They could get out. So Moroni’s people took them to the Hole to be destroyed.”

“You’re saying the whole thing was engineered by his people? That the collection of bodies and transporting them was a big plot?”

She nodded. “It has to be, Elliot. What other explanation is there?”

Elliot shook his head. “It’s an awful lot to buy. And it leaves open the question of the crazies.”

“They’re- We’ll, there’s some who tried to help us, but other ones, like the lady in Wal-Mart, tried to kill us.”

“Are they the ones who survived the possession?” Elliot said.

“Yeah, maybe. You think some of the crazies are Lamanites, on Yahweh’s side, and some are Nephites on Moroni’s side?”

“Could be.” Elliot stood up. “But regardless of any of that, we have to decide what we do now.”

Evajean looked at him. “Are you serious, Elliot? We know exactly what we have to do.”

He stared at her.

“We have to kill Moroni,” Evajean said.

Moroni was here, in this world. Both of them knew it as soon as they’d been made aware of the true nature of their quest-the true nature, in fact, of their very purpose. Furthermore, he was in Salt Lake City. That was why the barrier they’d passed through had been erected and why the crazies had migrated here. The Mad King had established his earthly kingdom and Elliot and Evajean were on its outskirts.

“He could be at the temple,” Evajean said. They were standing in the hotel lobby, looking out at the dark and empty street. “The big one you see in pictures.”

Elliot thought about this. Back in the hotel room, they’d quickly come to the conclusion that gathering weapons for some sort of assault would be meaningless against an enemy such as Moroni. Instead, the two of them would have to rely on prophecy, taking as truth what they’d read in each of the Smiths’ writings. They were meant to destroy Moroni and everything they’d done until now lead them to that confrontation. Guns wouldn’t matter, neither would strategy or tactics. If they had within themselves the power to defeat this otherworldly being, then they would defeat him. But if he and Evajean were not the Ones Mighty and Strong, then no amount of preparation would make any difference.

“I don’t think that’s where he’ll be,” Elliot said. “When the Mormons came here, when they built this city, they were coming to something.”

“The salt lake.”

“There could be something special about it.”

“The Hole,” Evajean said.

“What about it?”

“In the earth. The great salt lake is what, Elliot? An enormous hole in the earth.”

That sounded right. Again, “right” was a product of a deep feeling, a sense of what was and always had been proper, like being drawn to water when you’re thirsty. “That’s where we have to go,” he said.

“Yeah,” Evajean said and her voice sounded both excited and small.

They left the hotel and with it the journals, which remained behind on the bed in the room. Neither noticed their absence but, if they had, they would’ve known that those messages from the past had fulfilled their purpose. Now the only purpose left to see completion was the one that had driven the lives of Elliot Bishop and Evajean Rhodes.

“Is it far, do you think?” Evajean said after they’d walked west for several minutes.

“It probably is.”

“Will we make it by morning?”

“Yes.”

The city was empty. They neither heard nor saw any sign of the crazies and, the further they walked, the more convinced Elliot became of Evajean’s theory about the Hole. That’s where the crazies had gone and that was where they’d find Moroni.

They stopped after a couple of hours to rest. Evajean pulled her jacket tight in the night chill. “Are you scared, Elliot?” she asked, looking not at him but out across the city and in the direction of the lake.

“Yes,” he said.

“I am, too. I keep thinking how insane this all is, everything that’s happened. I don’t want to believe it. I want to think that I can just turn around and go home and Henry will be waiting for me-and that we can bring a bottle of wine over to a barbecue in the evening at your place, with Clarine and your daughter there. You’ll cook some of those steaks and maybe I’ll have a drink, but not as much as before. I think how wonderful that would be, and it makes me scared and sad.”

Elliot didn’t respond. His stomach had twisted as she spoke. He turned his face away from her.

“It was all so beautiful then,” Evajean continued. “Before. But I know that if all this is true, if everything we read isn’t just stories made up, and if we really are the Ones Mighty and Strong, then that beauty was false all along. Because no matter how good things were, there was still Moroni and there was still Yahweh. And all of this was going to happen no matter what we did.”

“Except stop believing,” Elliot said. He turned to face her and she did the same. “It’s belief they needed to do this. If we’d stopped believing…”

“Stopped believing in what, Elliot? They were there. They were real. You can’t stop believing in something if it’s really right there in front of you.”

“That’s not what people believed in,” Elliot said. “They didn’t go to church worship Moroni and Yahweh, the demons from outer space. They went because they believed in God. That’s what the demons used-that faith. They needed it to keep people’s minds open so they could make the crazies when the time came. If we’d rejected that belief…”

“I just want things back the way they were. I really do.”

“Yeah,” Elliot said.

“But I don’t hate them.”

“Who?”

“Any of them. Any of the people who believed and, I guess, kind of caused this to happen. I can’t hate them. They believed what they did for love.”

“A lot of people have believed a lot of things for love,” Elliot said. “That doesn’t make any of it right.”

Evajean nodded. “But it makes it more okay,” she said.

Elliot shook his head. He didn’t know how to respond and he didn’t want to. What mattered now was just the road in front of them, the last miles until the water-and whatever they might find there. “We have to see this through,” he said, standing up. “Come on, let’s go.”

She followed him, and kept any further thoughts on the matter to herself.

Some time later-Elliot had lost track of the hours, and distance was impossible to judge in this unfamiliar city-they saw the first of the crazies. It was a young girl, and she stumbled down the middle of the same street they were on, in the same direction toward the lake. Elliot noticed her when they came around the side of a van abandoned across the road. They’d emerged out of the city proper and were following a two lane highway that arced in the direction of the salt lake. Elliot had broken the glass door of a gas station and found a map of the city. It showed this road taking them right up to the shore and then along it.

Elliot grabbed Evajean and pulled her down to the curb. Startled, she called out, but he pressed a hand to her mouth. “There,” he said, pointing.

She looked. The girl was perhaps ten or twelve years old, in a green dress torn up the back. Her hair was dirty and matted. As they watched her, she was joined by two more, an elderly couple, who came out of a row of office buildings off to left. Then three male crazies in jeans and novelty t-shirts climbed out of the cab of an overturned semi. None appeared to notice Elliot and Evajean.

“Where are they going?” Evajean whispered.

“The lake?” He lifted himself part way up from the gravel. “But why haven’t they seen us?” He crawled forward.

One of the men who’d come out of the cab, a fat, middle aged guy, fell down from the top of the truck and hit the road with his shoulder. Elliot heard the bone break. The guy pushed up with his other hand and got to his feet, stumbling after the others. But, as he’d fallen, his face had been pointed directly in Elliot and Evajean’s direction and Elliot was sure he’d seen them. Still, the crazy gave no sign of noticing.