فصل 25

CHAPTER 25

“My name is Jedidiah,” the man said. His lips were yellow and malformed, twisted to one side. He had a strange lisp, and there was a … tonelessness to his voice. “But my followers call me Jed. You will call me Jed, because I can see that you’ve been mistreated and you are now my friends. Is this understood?” Mark nodded, but all Alec did was grunt something unintelligible. Defiant to the end, the old soldier had sat up when their attackers had ordered the two of them to lie on their backs. But the men who’d been beating them just moments earlier were all kneeling as if in prayer. Mark sat up, too, hoping there would be no consequence. If anything, Jed looked pleased.

“Very good,” the man said. “It looks like we’re finally making some kind of peace.” He walked over and sat down between them and the fire, the flames at his back. Their flickering light made the outline of his head appear wet and glistening, almost as if it were melting all over again. Melting. That was what Mark had concluded had happened to the poor guy.

“Did the sun flares do that to you?” he asked.

Jed chuckled for a few seconds, but there was nothing pleasant or cheerful about the sound. More like disturbing. “It always tickles my funny bone when someone refers to the demon plague that way. When it occurred, yes, I thought it was merely a celestial event that happened to take place in Earth’s path. Coincidence. Misfortune. Bad luck. Those are words that went through my head at the time.” “And now you think it was big bad demons raining from the sky?” Alec asked, his tone making it clear what a crackpot idea he thought it was. Mark shot him a glance and felt awful. Blood covered the man’s face, and welts and bruises had already appeared from the brutal beating he’d been given.

“It’s happened twice now,” Jed replied, showing no sign that he’d noticed Alec’s sarcasm. “Both times it came from the heavens—once from the sun, once from the ships. We think they may visit annually, to punish us for becoming lax and to remind us of what we need to become.” “Twice … sun and ships,” Mark repeated. “So the sun flares and then the darts from the Berg?”

Jed’s head snapped right and left, then focused on Mark again. What in the world?

“Yes, twice,” the man said as if what he’d just done was totally normal. “And again, it both saddens and humors me that you don’t see the importance of the events. It means your mind hasn’t evolved yet to be able to see them for what they really are.” “Demons,” Mark said, almost rolling his eyes before he stopped himself just in time.

“Demons. Yes, demons. They burned my face, melted it into what you see today. That way I can never forget my calling. And then came the little arrows from the ships, filled with their hatred. It’s been two months now, and we still mourn those who lost their lives that day. It’s why we build the fires and sing the songs and dance the dance. And we fear those from our village who decided not to join us. They work with the demons, undoubtedly.” “Wait, two months?” Alec asked. “What do you mean, two months?”

“Yes,” Jed replied slowly, as if talking to a confused child. “We count the days solemnly, every one. It’s been two months and three days.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mark said. “It couldn’t have been that long. It happened to us just a few days ago.”

“I don’t like it … when people doubt my words,” Jed said, his tone changing drastically in the middle of his sentence. It suddenly turned threatening. “How can you sit there and accuse me of lying? Why would I lie about such a thing? I’ve tried to make peace with you, give you a second chance in this life, and this is how you repay me?” His voice had risen in volume with every passing word until he was shouting, his body trembling. “It … it makes my head hurt.” Mark could tell Alec was about to explode, so he quickly reached over and squeezed his arm. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Just don’t.” Then he returned his attention to Jed. “No, listen, please. It’s not like that. We just want to understand. Our village had the … arrows from the ships rain down on us less than a week ago. So we assumed the same about you. And … you said that people died the day it happened. We saw bodies of people who seemed to have died more recently. Just help us understand.” Mark had the feeling that there was some important information to be learned from these people. He didn’t think the man was lying about the time frame. There was something here.

Jed had raised his hands to place them where his ears should’ve been on his head and was slowly swaying from side to side. “People died right away. Then others later. More suffering as time passed. More dying. Our village split into factions. All the demons’ work.” He started moaning, almost chanting.

“We believe you,” Mark said. “We just want to understand. Please just talk to us, tell us what happened, step by step.” He tried to keep the frustration out of his voice, but he couldn’t. How was he supposed to do this?

“You’ve made the pain come back,” Jed said tightly, still swaying. His arms were rigid, his elbows sticking straight out as he continued to hold his head in his hands. It looked as if he were trying to crush his own skull. “It hurts so much. I can’t … I have to … You must be from the demons. It’s the only explanation.” Mark knew his time was running out. “We’re not, I swear. We’re here because we want to learn from you. Maybe your head is hurting because … you have knowledge that you’re supposed to share with us.” Alec dropped his head forward.

“They came two months ago,” Jed said, his voice distant somehow. “And then the death has come in waves. Taking longer each time. Two days. Five days. Two weeks. A month. And we have people from our own village—people we once called friends—trying to kill us. We don’t understand what the demons want. We don’t understand. We … don’t … understand. We dance, we sing, we make sacrifices.…” He fell to his knees, then collapsed to the ground, still pressing his hands against his head. He let out a long, pain-filled moan.

Mark had reached the end of his patience. This was complete lunacy as far as he was concerned, and there was no way to deal with it rationally. He looked over at Alec, and he could tell by the fire in the man’s eyes that he was ready to take another shot at escape. Their captors were still kneeling, faces lowered in some kind of sick worship of the man writhing in pain. It was now or never.

Mark was just about to consider his next move, trying to focus over the moans and groans coming from Jed, when new sounds arose in the woods behind them. People yelling and screaming, laughing. Making birdcalls and other animal noises. Accompanied by the crunch of footsteps on the dry undergrowth of the forest, the creepy sounds continued, getting louder as the people got closer. Then, more alarmingly, the noises spread in a circle around the clearing of the bonfire until it was completely surrounded by a chorus of caws and cuckoos and roars and hysterical laughter. There had to be several dozen people making the noises.

“What now?” Alec said with clear disgust.

“We warned you about them,” the woman said from where she knelt. “They used to be our friends, our family. Now the demons have taken them and all they want is to torment us, to kill us.” Jed suddenly reared up on his knees again, screaming at the top of his lungs. Violently, he jerked his head down, then left and right, as if he were trying to knock something loose from his skull. Mark couldn’t help but scoot backward, crab-walking until the rope around his neck grew taut. The other end was still in the hands of one of the kneeling men.

Jed let out a piercing, horrific sound that cut off all the new ones coming from the forest around them.

“They’ve killed me!” he yelled, the words ripping from his throat. “The demons … finally … killed me!”

His body went rigid, his arms stiff at his sides, and he fell over, a last breath rushing from his mouth. His body stilled, and blood began to seep from his nose and mouth.