FH&CEXCERPT

Faith, Hope, and Charity chapter one

The orchard behind Wilson's Boarding House hummed with sound. The chirping of crickets, the occasional hoot of an owl, the steady rustle of wind through the thickly blossomed apple trees, and the sporadic thump of apples falling hitting the thick carpet of grass came together in a harmony of sound that was like the slow beating heart of a sleeping giant.

I took a deep breath and enjoyed the smell of apples and flowers. The rain that had fallen the day before was still in the air. The heat of August had shown no signs of lessening for the approaching month of September. Rain had been scarce most of the summer, and the single shower from yesterday had made a valiant attempt to wet the ground, but it only added humidity and made the heat sticky on the skin.

I breathed deep and tried to sort through the many scents on the air besides the apples, grass, and rain. I thought I could smell wild flowers in the late summer potpourri, and of course I could smell the soap that my Other, Mark Wilson, liked to shower in.

I sensed the kiss coming, even with my eyes closed. His lips were soft and warm against mine, offering love and demanding nothing in return. I could smell cinnamon candy on his breath, and I liked it.

"Let's lie down and wait for George and Penelope," Mark said. I nodded in agreement and we lay back in the still moist grass. There was a break in the trees above us. Only a few of the brightest stars managed to shine through the dome of artificial light that covered the small town of Coalton.

"I wish we could see the stars," I commented.

"I should take you up to Hammer Hill sometime," Mark said.

"Hammer Hill?"

"It's about seven miles outside town limits. There's no artificial lights so it's easy to see the stars on a clear night."

"I'd like that."

I wasn't really in the mood to talk. Our nights were usually occupied not by restful sleep but by Witnessing the Specters of Coalton. We saw the truth of their murders rather than the rising of the moon in the sky. We felt their pain, we shared their grief, and we released them to the other side so that they could find peace. Moments of solitude in the dark were rare for Mark and me, so we intended to enjoy it.

As usual, when Mark and I had time to be alone, his hand found its way to my belly. He laid his palm flat on my tummy, just below my navel and stared intently at the back of his hand. Mark's hand was pale like ivory against the dark brown of my belly. I'd worried, at first, that his grandmother and friends would take issue with me having a white father and black mother, but my fears had been in vain. Beverly, Bobby, and Leigh had accepted me with open arms.

Mark's brow arched with vividly expressed wonder. The way he touched me was very specific and very sensual.

"Why do you like to touch my belly like that?" I asked.

"It's strange. I can feel something under your skin. Here, you try it."

He removed his hand and placed mine where it had been. I felt nothing out of the ordinary. I shrugged. "I don't feel anything besides my belly."

"I feel you when I do it," said Mark. I could sense his frustration. He hadn't communicated to me what he really meant. "I mean, not your belly but you. I feel you when I touch you there. In the same way we can feel the Specters, but better. Here."

He'd turned on his side to touch me, but now he lay flat on his back again. I propped myself up on my left elbow and watched Mark pull his shirt up. His belly was flat but ridged with well-toned muscle. He had wonderful tone even without regular exercise. We'd both grown stronger than normal people, physically, as we'd grown stronger spiritually as Soul Shepherds.

I mimicked his actions earlier by placing my hand flat on his belly, just below his navel. As soon as I did I gasped in delight.

"Oh my God!"

I knew at once what Mark had meant by feeling me. When I touched Mark's belly I could feel his soul. It was an incredibly intimate act. It was easily the most intimate thing Mark and I had ever done.

"Here," I said. I placed Mark's hand on my belly while keeping my hand in place. The feeling of being in close contact with his soul intensified by ten. It was almost like we were melting together and becoming one person, one soul.

"Wow... This is incredible," we said in unison.

"Mark, Maya, are you ready to -- Oh! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to interrupt."

Our mentor Carsan had arrived, but upon seeing us she hastily turned from us. Mark and I instinctively pulled our hands away as though we'd been caught doing something indecent, when all we'd been doing was touching one another on the belly. Carsan's embarrassment was obvious, and an awkward moment lingered between the three of us.

"I'll come back later," she said, finally breaking the uneasy silence.

"Why?" I asked. "Did we do something wrong?"

Carsan turned back and looked upon our confusion with something akin to pity. Her cheeks were flushed.

"No, of course not!" she said. "I just came to let you know that George and Penelope have been drafted by Pete and Juliette to get rid of a Hellbound Specter. Virgil and I will act as your Guardians tonight while you Witness. Here, take an extra dose of Shepherds Milk. You'll need it."

"Why the extra Milk?" Mark asked.

"It helps keep your strength up after you've been... you know... "

Mark and I frowned at her, genuinely clueless about what she was talking about.

"What?" I asked.

I'd never seen Carsan look so embarrassed. I pitied her. She'd always been so confident, so strong. Now she looked strangely young and awkward. "After you've been plexing."

"What's taking so long?"

Virgil walked into the orchard with Pete, annoyance on his face and his arms laden with apples that he'd picked from the ground with Beverly's permission.

"We'll be along shortly, Virgil," Carsan snapped.

"Plexing? What's that?" I asked, intrigued. It obviously had something to do with what Mark and I had been doing when she came upon us. Pete broke out in laughter and Virgil looked even more annoyed.

"You caught them plexing? It's about damn time. I wondered how long it would take you two to figure it out," he said.

"Pete--"

"Figure what out?" Mark looked as annoyed as Carsan did now. I couldn't blame him. Whatever we'd been doing was taboo in Carsan's opinion, and she refused to answer our questions.

"You're doing it, and you still don't know what it is? Oh, man, you two are like a couple of retarded puppies who can't figure out how to suck the teat!"

"Pete!"

Normally Pete's bluntness didn't offend me, but this time he pissed me off, especially with the raucous laughter that followed his insult.

"Will one of you just tell us what the hell plexing is?" Mark snapped.

"Carsan's your mentor. She should have told you about that already."

"I was going to, when they're older," Carsan hedged.

Pete looked properly disgusted. "Come on, Carsan. They're eighteen for God's sake. Quit being so Victorian about sex."

"We weren't having sex!" I said quickly. My face burned with embarrassment.

"No, but it was foreplay. Shepherd foreplay," Pete said. "I'm a doctor. I can tell you all about it--"

"No need, Pete. I'll council them some other time. Right now we need to get tonight's Witnessing done."

"Are you sure?" Pete pressed. He had a definite look of mischief in his eyes.

Carsan pointed in the direction he'd come. "Take your apples and go."

Still laughing, Pete accepted the apples from Virgil, turned, and sauntered away. I wanted to pick an apple from one of the nearby trees and hurl it at the back of his head as hard as I could, but I didn't. Violence didn't become a Shepherd. We were supposed to be peaceful by nature, but that man really got under my skin.

"All right," Carsan said, turning to us. The feeling of awkwardness was still very thick in the air around us, like a cloud of stink. "Let's get to work. You've been Witnessing without my assistance for some time now, but they've all been run-of-the-mill single Specters. You'll Witness a pair of Shepherds tonight, Mary and Cassandra. Needless to say this is more difficult than Witnessing a single Specter."

"Twice as hard because there's two, right?" Mark said. I could tell he was as distracted as I was. We both wanted to understand more about plexing, but Carsan wasn't going to go into detail about it any time soon.

"The energy required to Witness two Specters is about four times as hard. You've grown strong enough to do it when you haven't been... plexing... Anyway, the extra Milk will make up for the energy you've spent tonight."

Carsan and Virgil stood by and waited for us to get into position and begin our next Witnessing. I was more than excited -- I was also nervous. I'd never Witnessed two Specters at once before. I didn't quite know what to expect.

Mark took my hands in his and we closed our eyes, clearing our minds of all unnecessary thought. This got easier to do over time, though Mark had always been a natural at it. Female Shepherds had more chaotic -- and creative -- thought processes. It was this aspect of our psyche that made the visions so vivid, but it also made it difficult for us to shut down to allow the actual process to begin.

"Mary... Cassandra... come to me," Mark said, Summoning Mary and Cassandra to the orchard. After years of suffering the pain of their deaths they were finally going to be Released. They didn't hesitate to answer Mark's Summons.

We felt their arrival and opened our eyes. Normally, when Nomags acted as our Guardians, they had to look for threats on the surface of a weapon called the Dagger of the Centurion. This blade gave non-Shepherds the ability to see Specters and other supernatural creatures that were normally invisible -- or cleverly hidden -- to their eyes. Since Carsan was a fellow Shepherd, she didn't have that handicap. She could see them with her eyes.

Mark said, "Come inside the circle. It's time for you to go home."

They passed into the narrow space between Mark and me. Mary faced Mark, Cassandra faced me.

"His name is Mark, I'm Maya. We're Shepherd's, and we've come to set you free," I said. Then, in unison, Mark and I said, "Show us the truth of how you came to be."

The orchard and Carsan vanished, replaced by a stiflingly humid bedroom. Mary, alive and well, sat on her bed with a calendar in her lap and a pencil in her hand. The date she marked off was July 26^th, 1949. She smiled at the calendar and then lifted a floorboard by the bed and placed it inside. She was still crouching on the floor when the bedroom door banged open.

Mark and I jumped. Despite knowing we were only there to Witness a recreation of a person's murder, the surroundings were so vivid there was literally no difference between the vision and reality. Sweat slicked our skin. We could smell the rosemary and honeysuckle that hung near every window to freshen the room.

A skinny man with thinning hair entered the room. He took a swig of whiskey from a bottle only half-full. The amber liquor ran down his weak chin and over his neck. Mary looked immediately frightened. She was tall, but even a slight man such as this one was strong over the average woman.

"Hey, Manny," she said nervously and got up.

"What ya lookin' for?"

"An earring. Can't find it anywhere. You hungry, honey? I can fix you--"

"You're looking at that calendar. The one you're markin' the days off on till you up and leave me for that fuckin' butcher, ain't it?"

Mary swallowed hard, and then jumped when Manny threw the bottle at her. It glanced off her arm, splattering her with brown fluid.

"Manny, I ain't got nothin' goin' on with Larry, I swear it. I never did!"

"Liar! Fuckin' whore! You spread your legs for that meat cutter more than you ever did me!"

"I never did! I ain't no whore! Whore's are what you go to ev'ry weekend before you come crawlin' back in bed with me, stinkin' of sex and whiskey! You're goddamn right I'm leavin' you, Manny! You think I don't see how you been lookin' at Cassie? I ain't gonna let you do to my little girl what my daddy used to do to me."

"Oh, God..." I whispered.

Manny screamed in rage and ran at Mary. She scooped the bottle off the floor and swung it as hard as she could. It connected with a very satisfying clunk against the side of his head, sending him falling hard against the bed. He slid off, his head split open and bleeding.

"Yes!" I shouted. For once a victim was fighting back before their death.

Then the strangest thing happened. Mary, who was running past me as I shouted, stopped in surprise and turned toward me. For just a split second I was sure our eyes met, that she could see me as well as I could see her, which was impossible. She blinked and shook her head, brushing off whatever it was she'd seen.

"Maya? What just happened?"

"I don't know. It's like she saw me," I said. We couldn't stop, though. We had one shot at setting them free, so we forced the Witnessing to continue. If we stopped, Mary and Cassandra would be trapped in the Gray until they became Unredeemables. I would be able to Witness them through their bite, then, but that would take years of suffering for them, and I wasn't about to let that happen to them.

The scene suddenly shifted. We went from the bedroom to the hallway. Mark and I ran behind Mary, following her into a child's empty bedroom. Mary grabbed a bag and began stuffing random clothes from Cassandra's dresser into it.

"Run," I thought, encouraging her to get out of the house rather than trying to pack. This was the late forties, though. Women of this era didn't have the benefit of decades of movies featuring abused women making such a mistake as trying to pack before leaving an abusive partner. They didn't have true crime books and TV shows that taught against remaining in a house with a man like Mary's husband.

Manny came into the room and aimed a gun at Mary. She froze in place, the bag slipped from her fingers, and she stared at her husband.

"You're makin' a mistake, Manny. Everybody knows you got a bad temper. They'll put you in prison for this. Put the gun down and just let me leave with Cassie. I know you like bein' single. You never wanted to get married. Your daddy made you do it when you knocked me up. I'll leave, I'll give you a divorce, and you can be free."

Manny's hand was shaking. The gun trembled in his sweaty grip. For just a moment it looked like he would let Mary leave.

The moment passed, however. He came up to her, his head caked with blood where Mary had struck him. He put the gun to the side of her head.

"I ain't gonna have no divorce, Mary. I ain't gonna be the first man in my family line who couldn't keep his woman. You shamed me. Ev'ry body knows 'bout you and Larry... I'd rather rot in prison than let you leave me and take my kid."

"Please, Manny--"

Mary didn't get to finish her plea. The gun went off. She was dead when she hit the floor.

*****

At once the scene changed perspective. Mark and I watched Manny standing over Mary, panting as though he'd run a long distance. A shrill scream, the kind only little girls were capable of, pierced my ears. I spun around and saw Cassandra standing in the doorway, staring at her mother's body.

There was a moment when Manny and Cassandra stared at one another in horrified silence. I stared into Manny's eyes and watched him make another terrible decision. I knew what he would do next even before he did it. He lunged at Cassandra, his fingers reaching for the front of her flower print dress. He missed by a hair. Cassandra was young and fast, and even though I knew she wouldn't escape I still hoped she would manage to get away.

Her mother dead, her mother's killer chasing her with evil intent, Cassandra didn't stand a chance. She stumbled on the last step before the landing and sprawled face first. Manny grabbed her by the back of her head and mercilessly hauled her to her feet. In an effort to keep out of his grip, Cassandra's fingernails dug into the wood floor leaving ugly gouges that literally ripped some of the nails from her fingers. Unlike with Mary, Manny didn't rant and rail at Cassandra. He merely dragged her upstairs and into the bathroom.

Despite having spent the past couple of months Witnessing the Specters of Coalton, I still had a hard time watching their deaths, especially when they were young. Every single time Mark and I started the process I thought of my first Witnessing. Poor Ray Woodson's innocent promises to be good, even though he'd done nothing bad, still echoed through my mind. Now I watched the demise of another child, and I could do nothing to save her.

Unlike Ray, Cassandra didn't beg or plead for mercy. She knew her father well enough to know he wasn't capable of it. She struggled hard against him. The house was eerily silent around the sounds of Cassandra's strained grunts to free herself from her father's grip. Mark and I watched him start a bath of cold water.

Manny put in just enough to submerge Cassandra's face underwater and, without shutting the faucet off, picked her up and shoved her face first into the tub. She flailed, she kicked and bucked and clawed at his hands with her remaining fingernails, but it was pointless. She was an eight-year-old girl, and he was a man in his thirties.

Cassandra's fight came to an end as she drowned at her father's hand. The stuffiness of the house was suddenly gone, replaced by the orchard behind Wilson's Boarding House. Mary and Cassandra glowed before me. Mark and I did our job of releasing them to the other side, bringing them peace after decades of misery. I felt a little lighter when they were gone, but the heaviness of what I'd Witnessed added a little to the burden of the other Specters I'd seen die under brutal circumstances, usually at the hands of people who were supposed to love and care for them.

My eyes met Mark's, and he gave me a weak smile.

"It doesn't seem so hot out here tonight now, does it?" he asked.

He was right. Compared to the hell we'd just left, the orchard felt a lot cooler. I breathed deep of the damp night air and leaned against my Other.

"Well done, you two," Carsan said.

"Thanks, Carsan," I said.

She and Virgil left quietly while Mark held me. Our work was done so they left us some much needed time to be alone.

"Do you think I'm cut out to be a Shepherd?" I asked.

"Yeah. Why do you ask?"

I shrugged. "I hate what we do."

He gently tilted my face up and kissed me. It was soft and sweet and helped to calm me. I didn't even consider Carsan, who stood silently by, watching us.

"We're supposed to hate it. We're supposed to feel their pain deep inside. Otherwise, we wouldn't be much use to them."

"That's enough Witnessing for tonight," Carsan told us. "You saved two Specters. Go on, now. Get some rest."

I didn't argue. I leaned against Mark and let him lead me back to the boarding house he called home. Some of the windows glowed with golden light and, not for the first time, I wished I could call it home, too.