The Seary Line (15 page)

“Here she goes,” he said, pushing the first slide through the slot at the front of the Magic Lantern. “For better or worse.”

Collective air was pulled in as colour washed over the wooden wall, a brilliant scene of children swimming, a striped boat and a swan, a nude baby splashing in a puddle.

“Wouldn't that be a grand day,” someone called out.

A winter scene next, snowballs flying, red and blue coats, ornate sleigh and a pair of horses, blanket of bells across their back.

“That's not so bad either, nar blizzard in sight.” Someone chuckled.

Mr. Moore pushed in another slide, a squirrel seated at a
wooden desk, feather pen poised in its paw. A duck playing the piano with bright orange webbed feet. Two lovebirds, dressed in party attire, standing in the glow of a fire.

“What they don't do when we's not looking.”

More chuckling.

The following slide showed the image of a young boy, fancily dressed in high collar and knickers, sneaking one of his father's cigars. In the next image, he lay back in a grand chair, legs crossed, puffing away. Final frame, and a sour-faced girl glares righteously at the boy who is doubled-over in pain, face pinched, the cigar having worked its magic.

There was light laughter echoing in the church.

“Sick as a dog, he is.”

“Serves the beggar right. Stealing from his father.”

“These ones got to be slid over themselves,” Mr. Moore said. “Bear with me.”

The subsequent cluster displayed various types of naughtiness. One depicted a child hanging over a barrel of sugar, an angry shopkeeper paddling him. Next, an apple orchard, high pink brick wall, a boy dangling by the seat of his pants, apples spilling from the inside of his shirt. A man taunting a bull, then a frenzied chase. Children screeching because their drunken daddy won't be coming home.

“No shortage of trouble in this world.” Tut-tutting.

“There's a series here,” Mr. Moore said. “Ah, I'll give that a go.”

One woman gasped when an ominous image flashed across the wall. An enormous beetle, black with a flat shiny shell, clinging to the edge of a sleeping man's bunk.

“Cuddle in, ladies,” someone hollered.

In the absence of the slide, the light drove out the shadows, and Amos watched as Nettie Rose pressed in closer to Gus. The church was suddenly warm, and Amos
unbuttoned his collar, tugged at his scarf.

“Let's try a different one,” Mr. Moore said. “My cousin said this one's quite popular.”

As he slid the slide through the Magic Lantern, onlookers saw a ghastly progression. A man was dozing, jaw opening and closing with reliable frequency. Along the floor boards a black rat crept closer and closer, growing larger and larger with each shifting slide. The image covered the entire wall, surrounding them.

“Lard. I reckons it idn't safe for a man to take a nap.”

“That's utter filth,” Mrs. Hickey said. “Borders on profanity if you asks me.”

“With all due respect, that's what they considers art nowadays.”

“'Tis all in good fun.”

As Mr. Moore continued to feed the slide through, the rat crawled up over the side of the bed, the man's jaw opened wide, and in one mammoth gulp, the rat was gone.

“Talk about your free meal.”

“Pure vulgarity. Crowd over there got nothing better to think of?”

“Well, I hopes it idn't a sign of things to come.”

“Yes, now. We better get fed better than that.”

“Don't count on it.”

Mr. Moore pulled the slide from the Magic Lantern, shook his head. “We could go back to the first ones again?”

In the white light, Amos clearly saw Nettie Rose. Her face was turned and pressed into the thick arm of Gus, tam fallen back on her shoulder. He felt sick, sweaty, bolted upright, wooden pew sighing with relief. Through clenched teeth, he said, “C'mon, Stella. Let's get out of here.”

“The once? What about Dad?”

“Someone'll see him home. You needn't worry.”

Outside, the snow was falling heavily now, fat flakes driven. Amos thought the air had changed, the perfume of joviality had waned, pungent haste its replacement. But the air was still bright, even though it was nighttime. And when Amos looked straight up at the snowflakes, he imagined for a moment that he was moving through them. Moving away from Bended Knee. He could almost hear them brushing past him, like a thousand whispers. For an instant, he thought about their journey, the speed at which they could travel.

“You ready for tomorrow. Everything packed?”

“Oh, yeah,” Amos replied, as he put a lit cigarette to his mouth, pinched it in his teeth. “My grand wardrobe. 'Twas a tough time poking it all in.”

Amos struck a match on a hinge of the church door, inhaled deeply. Walking up the road, he locked his arm through Stella's. “What do you say, we goes over to the Devil's Hole? Haven't been there since I was a kid.”

“I don't like that, Amos,” Stella said. “Calling it the Devil's Hole. Why can't everyone just call it God's Mouth? Like 'twas meant to be.”

Late one night, shortly before either of them was born, a colossal explosion woke the entire community. People came bounding out of their homes, some barefoot, hair ruffled, nightshirts and long gowns flailing in the wind. They rushed down over the bluffs to the beach, crept along the stones until they found the source of the noise. As they peered up at the rock face, the women held hands with their neighbours, while the men simply swayed in place. There in the rock was a perfect hole, a dark cave that had never been there before. While they were sleeping, a five-foot diameter chunk of rock had popped out from the face of a cliff, plunked down to the rocks below, seated there
like a miniature table.

Stories abounded as to the force behind the creation. Each claim rooted in the events of the previous day. For one, the beloved Reverend Coates had been laid to rest, tucked inside a pine casket underneath a mound of gravelly dirt. The entire community was there, every face dampened with drizzle and tears. In life, the Reverend spoke often to his congregation of God's music.
God is everywhere
, he said,
playing for us, singing to us. Only we don't know how to listen proper
. But the crowd was listening now. When blustery gales passed over the gap, a whistle spun out into the night air. Someone said it sounded like angel song. About half agreed. And so, that group took to calling the cave God's mouth. Its formation was a divine act, a gift sent down by the Reverend as a permanent reminder of His holy presence.

Many others claimed dark forces were behind it. The whistling was evil, tempting and hypnotic. What had happened that very evening? The man who owned the general store, grandfather of young Alistair Fuller, had been killed. Nefarious circumstances. How else could he have been poked with a jagged-bladed hunting knife? When Elizabeth Crowley came upon the scene, she found him dead, head jammed into a half-filled flour sack, fabric bunched around his neck. His blood had tumbled out of the wound in his stomach, but was contained by a circle of flour sprinkled neatly on the floor, congealed into a thick reddish paste. Oddly enough, his few dollars were still there, his list outlining the credit he'd extended was unaltered. The only items stolen were cards and cards of buttons, silver ones, wooden ones, glass, and tortoiseshell. Two empty boxes crushed on the floor.

No one knew who the perpetrator was, but a story
linking the crime and the hole soon evolved. They said the devil must have come up from below to fetch whoever did it. Likely the bloke had escaped his grasp earlier in the day, landed in the cove by terrible chance. The devil chased the beggar as he bounded up and down the beach. Angered by the fellow's slipperiness, the devil slammed his fist into the cliff, a hunk of rock tumbling when he pulled his iron hand away. This is where the devil hid, they said, until the murderer, unaware of the alteration in the landscape, darted past for the last time. And so, it was labelled the Devil's Hole.

One fellow, by the name of Herber Mercer, said that although the fanatical theorizing was amusing, he was confident the fissure was a natural phenomenon. There must have been an air pocket in the rock, he explained, formed eons ago, and with the curious weather of the past summer, blazing heat one day, practically freezing the next, the gas just got cantankerous. Wanted to get out. No matter if that chunk of rock was in the way. He never came up with any sort of name, and people dismissed his ideas outright.

“How do you know if 'tis one or the other?” Amos asked.

“Because that devil story is utter foolishness if I ever heard the likes. And because it's a perfect circle. Almost perfect. The devil don't make things perfect.”

“And why don't he?”

Stella ignored him. “Plus there's last summer. Little piss-a-beds growed in there, right out of the rock. Not a pinch of soil that I ever seen. And the devil don't grow flowers out of rock.”

“Yes, then in the fall, I's betting those piss-a-beds rotted.”

“Miracle they was there in the first place. That's the point. Nothing can live forever, Amos.”

He fell silent for a moment, sighed and dropped his cigarette butt in the snow. “God's Mouth it is, then.”

They ambled up the laneway, passing their house. “Wait here,” Amos said, and he turned back, jaunted to the shed, plucked the lantern from the nail. Glow of light between them, they took the trail between Jenkins' and Smith's farms. Along the sides of the path, stubborn blades of grass that had been sticking up through the snow were beginning to bend now, giving up. As he walked, Amos turned to look behind him. He slumped inside his coat when he noticed that his footsteps were already disappearing.

Even though the snow continued to stumble from the sky, the beach was clean. Whenever a flake would settle, salt water would lick over every crevice and claim it. Amos and Stella picked their way over the polished stones until they came to the stone table. Across the top of it, there was a deep split, and when Amos held the lantern up, they could see the items children had poked down into it: marbles, a miniature cornhusk doll, a whittled piece of wood. Once prized possessions, now just beyond the reach of little fingers.

“Do you remember when we was little, and some of your friends weren't allowed to come out here? No picnics on the table?”

“Yes,” Stella replied. “I remembers Lizzy Bugden's mom said it'd be like breaking bread with the devil hisself.”

“I reckons if that were true, you'd have no trouble making a bit of toast.” Amos smiled, nudged Stella.

“Nothing wrong with that.”

Stella climbed up first, Amos beneath her, pushing up on her rump, until she was able to lean her torso over, slide herself into the hole. He clambered up next, jammed his feet into the cracks in the cliff face, perfectly placed.

“Like steps,” she said. “Almost as if someone put them there.”

He placed the lantern between them, then lay back, feet dangling over the edge. On the curved roof of the cave, going from its lip all the way back, someone had used the smoke from a flame to carefully write,
The hole is more worthy than the patch
.

“What do you suppose that means, Stell? Do you think they's talking about this here hole?”

“Maybe. In a sense. This is more fun that just a plain old flat cliff. Though they could be talking about a pair of trousers too.”

“Yeah.”

“Takes work to make a hole. Patching it up is easy.”

“I don't believe that.”

“Why do you say that for?” Stella glanced at her brother.

“Sometimes 'tis right easy to make a hole. A few cross words, and you've got a trench dug right through someone. Patching it up is the hardest thing of all.”

“Never thought of it like that. But I doubts that's what they meant.”

“Don't you think the patch is way more precious than the hole?”

Stella lay back next to Amos. Several minutes before she spoke. “I thinks there's some holes that don't never get patched. Can you imagine going around the rest of your days with a hole?”

“I reckons everyone got a hole, Stell. Whether 'tis a pinhole or a canyon is anyone's guess.”

She leaned her head, stared at him. “Really? What size one do you got?”

Eyes focused on the roof of the cave, he replied firmly, “Never thought about it. And I idn't about to start now.”

“Yeah, you're right. It's a dumb thing to even think about. Holes.”

“I didn't say it was dumb. 'Tis something good to mind. But don't go getting undone about it.”

“Yeah.”

“I figures 'tis best to patch your holes before they grows too big.”

“Or before it gets too late.”

“Yeah. Too late.”

Amos sighed, put his elbows up, gloves beneath his head. “I thinks I'll be back soon. Do you think?”

“Of course, Amos.”

“Yeah. You best keep my supper warm.” Stella giggled. “All right. If 'tis going to be that swift.”

“Yeah.”

“What will you do after the war?”

“After the war. Few dollars in my pocket. Enough to make a go of something.” Pinching his glove in his teeth, he yanked his hand free, scratched his forehead underneath the woolen band of his hat. It was surprisingly warm in the little space, both of them close together. He could smell his sister's breath, and it smelled sweet and milky, like innocent custard. “Though, to be honest, it don't got nothing to do with the money. No way. I just can't turn my back, Stell. I thought about it. I'd be a liar if I said I didn't. But I got to go.”

“I knows.”

“Got to stand up if you believes in something.”

“If I weren't a girl, I'd be going too.”

“Well, I's sure as hell happy you is a girl.”

“Amos! The cussing.”