Decoration Day

  Dedication

  This one is for the beta readers: Laura and Lauren.

  Sunday Afternoon

  David stood in front of the wrought-iron gates of a stone church building. He’d been driving down a narrow mountain road when it widened out and the church appeared out of the afternoon fog. Water dripped from tree limbs hanging over a stone and iron fence that encircled the structure. Cold droplets fell on David’s shoulder.

  Something from deep inside his soul tugged at him, like a feeling the building beckoned him. David’s life had been meaningless for such a long time. Now this place called him. David stepped back from the gates to take in the whole vista of the place.

  Just beyond the fence, tilted, lichen-covered gravestones stretched out across the churchyard all the way to the foundations of the building. A narrow path paved with flat rocks led to the church door, and it was the only area in the yard devoid of headstones. The church sat on high limestone foundations that looked as if they had been hand hewn. The building was made of smaller, similarly hewn blocks. The roof pitched sharply, and slate shingles lay askew on it. A metal steeple ascended into the air. A strange star topped the spire.

  David noticed the gates had a similar design worked into the metal—a ball with twisting arms radiating from it. He’d never seen anything like it on a church, and that fascinated him more. God told him this was the place for him to start his new flock. Never had the call to preach been so strong. He had to learn more about the building.

  David got back into his car and continued down the winding road. A town would be close. The church and its grounds were too well kept to be abandoned. No one would travel this secluded, off-the-main-drag road he was on without living nearby. David ventured on only because of the strange stirrings sent from God and sheer wanderlust, which had been the main thing driving him since the death of his beloved wife more than a year ago.

  Rain began to fall as he drove farther down the side of the mountain. The black pavement bore no painted lines. As the rain became steadier, David had a tougher time staying on his side of the road. That didn’t worry him much because he’d not met a single vehicle since starting down the mountain.

  He thought of the poem by Robert Frost. Oftentimes the best things lay at the end of the road less taken. The fog dissipated, but the relentlessness of the rain made it almost impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. David focused hard on the road. It was like driving down a waterfall. He tapped the brakes to slow his descent. The rear of the car swayed back and forth. He let off the brake and allowed the car to coast down the hill, giving it no gas and staying in the middle to keep from accidentally going over the side.

  Lightning flashed. David waited for the thunder but heard none. Another flash of lightning, and again no thunder. And then the next flash of lightning almost blinded him, and thunder like a train’s air horn deafened him.

  Suddenly, David realized a truck was racing toward him. He’d concentrated so hard on the road directly in front of him that he’d failed to notice he was about to be hit head-on. The air horn sounded again, and he swerved back to his side of the road. His car skidded and skimmed across flowing water. The tires sank into the soft earth on a very narrow shoulder that sloped into a ravine off the side of the mountain. David somehow was able to look over the edge at his impending doom and, at what seemed like at the same time, see the oncoming vehicle. An ancient truck, maybe fifty years old, pulling an old tanker trailer rumbled past.

  The wooded slope to the ravine glowed green despite the heavy rain. As if doing so on its own, David’s car avoided rolling to the bottom of the hollow and also avoided colliding with the tanker. As his foot hovered over the brake pedal, the road flattened out into a valley. The rain slacked off as he passed an old wooden sign, leaning and proclaiming in peeling letters, Welcome to Innsboro, Tennessee. Population: 375. A small town divided by a little creek lay not far down the road. Everything looked gray. David didn’t know if it was caused by the heavily overcast sky or if the town was really that dim.

  As he drove into the town, the streets became inlaid brick. The car bounced over the uneven surface. A few streets crisscrossed the main drag. David looked down one that crossed the creek. A service station sat on the opposite bank. He turned down that street. Steel girders that rose into the air, leveled off and went back down again framed the one-lane bridge. The pavement smoothed out as he drove across the bridge. The street became brick again on the other side of the creek.

  The town looked abandoned, as did the service station. David parked, blocking the gas pumps. He got out of his car, and a fine mist dampened him as he walked to the glass doors of the service station. He stepped inside.

  The air in the building smelled stale and a little bit like mold. A fluorescent lamp hummed overhead, casting its green light over the place. An old-fashioned vending machine sat in the corner. The formerly vibrant red of the Coca-Cola advertisement had seen better decades. A counter sat against the far wall, beside a swinging door that apparently led to the garage. Nothing sat on the counter, not even a cash register. The wire racks below it were empty except for a few wax-paper-wrapped tubes of Necco Wafers and three extra-long Tootsie Rolls. It was like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

  “Hello?” David called out.

  Something crashed behind the swinging door. It startled him. He hadn’t expected an answer.

  “Hello? I’ve got a question,” he said when no one came from the back.

  The door swung open, and a squat man with bulging eyes and pasty skin stepped through. He wore greasy, gray coveralls and held a ratchet in his hand. The attendant, whose name patch read “Thomas,” stared David up and down.

  “Maybe you could help me,” David said.

  The squat man shrugged his shoulders and curled his lip. “What?”

  The attendant even sounded like a toad when he croaked his answer. It took a minute for David to gather himself to make his inquiry. “I saw a church up the road just a bit, and I wondered if anyone still goes there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Frequently?”

  Thomas looked him up and down again. “Who wants to know?”

  David was glad the man could speak more than a few words. “I do. I’m a preacher or was a preacher. I feel that God has called me to preach there.”

  “Mr. Marsh,” Thomas said, turning to go back to the garage.

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean by that?”

  The squat man turned back to David. He huffed and rolled his watery eyes. “You need to talk to Mr. Marsh.”

  “Excellent. Where is he?”

  “Up the hill in the big house.”

  Thomas didn’t wait for anything else. He slunk into the garage, leaving the swinging door doing just that, and David standing rather confused. He shook his head and walked back to his car. The mist had let up, and a slip of sunshine came through the clouds. In the fresh light of the sun, the town looked grayer than it had in the rain.

  He drove back across the bridge and stayed on that street because it ran up the side of the mountain. A few stores lined the way. They all looked abandoned, but then the gas station had as well. David thought perhaps a few of them might still be in business. As he started up the hill, he passed a small café. There were people sitting at a table by the window. They all eyed him as he passed. He could feel them staring at him more than see them. The town must not get many visitors.

  Houses lined the street as it wound up the hill. Most were small cottages with wooden siding with peeled paint. At the top of the street, the land flattened out on a large, constructed terrace. To the side, a house towered between old, gnarled oak trees. A wrought-iron fence encompassed it like the one at the church. A gate allowed access from the stre
et. The house’s foundation looked like that of the church, but the rest was made of gray siding like the other houses. It stood three stories. A porch wrapped around the entire lower floor. French doors on the second story opened onto a small veranda that made up part of the porch’s ceiling. In its day, the house would have been a marvelous plantation home. A weathervane that looked like the symbol on the church’s steeple turned in the wind.

  David parked his car on the curb beside the house. He climbed out and walked to the gate. Water splattered him from the looming old oak trees. It felt like the rain hadn’t stopped. David felt a chill, which had nothing to do with the weather, shiver through him.

  The gate opened with little effort. David walked up to the house. The floorboards of the porch bowed from years of exposure to the humidity. He tripped over one as he walked to the door, but his shoulder hit the heavy oak frame before his face hit the ground. The impact caused the clapper in a bell hanging from the knocker to clang. David steadied himself. Before he could ring the bell again, the door creaked open.

  A short woman with a pronounced hump on her back looked up at him. She wore a light gray dress with a white apron. Her hair was under a gray cap, and her skin almost matched it in color. Her eyes bulged out at him, large and watery. She looked like a slightly feminine version of the gas station attendant.

  “What?” she croaked.

  “I was told that Mr. Marsh lives here. Is that true?”

  “Why?”

  David took a deep breath. “I wanted to talk to him about the church up the road.”

  “Thank you, Thomasine; that will be enough,” a deep, smooth voice said from the gloom of the house.

  The maid shrugged her shoulders and moved out of the way. A tall man wearing a deep red robe trimmed in black velvet stepped into the light. His face had sharp, angular features with a beaked nose. His jet-black hair hung midway down his neck. He had the bangs shoved behind his ears. His eyes pierced David to the core.

  “How can I help you?” he asked with his silky voice.

  “Are you Mr. Marsh?”

  “Indeed. And you are?”

  David stuck his hand out. “I’m Reverend David Stanley.”

  Marsh took his hand. Marsh’s felt chilled but firm. “Delighted to meet you, Reverend Stanley. Won’t you please come in?”

  David followed Marsh into the foyer. The door closed behind him. Its thud echoed through the house. The entranceway was tiled with slate like the shingles at the church. A large mirror in an ornate silver frame hung on the wall. It caught some of the sunlight filtering through the windows, casting a dim light over everything.

  “Please excuse my maid. We don’t get very many visitors.” Marsh pointed toward another room with a flourish of his hand. “Most people don’t even know we’re here.”

  David followed his host. “This certainly is off the beaten path. I just happened upon the road and wondered what was at the end.”

  “Isn’t that the way most great experiences occur?” Marsh said, stopping in a well-lighted sitting room.

  He sat in a high-backed chair cushioned in crimson velvet. Another flourish of his hand offered David a seat on the equally lush sofa.

  “I’ll get to the point, Mr. Marsh. I was wondering if that church just up the road has a minister.”

  Marsh reclined into the richness of his chair and interlocked his fingers. “You are interested in our little church house?”

  “Yes,” David replied as he remained perched on the edge of the couch. The cushions sank down a little more than he liked.

  “Why?”

  “I have been a reverend for thirty years. I left my congregation after my wife of nearly as long passed away. I felt listless and useless. I’ve been wandering around ever since.”

  “I know the sense of listlessness you experience upon the death of a wife. My dear Louisa has been dead many years,” Marsh said softly. “I haunted the halls of this house many months with no repose.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” David said.

  “And I yours. Wives should be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s enough to destroy your entire life when they are gone,” Marsh said. “Is that the experience you had?”

  “Until I saw that church, Mr. Marsh.”

  “Please, we are brothers in widowhood. Call me Alistair.”

  “Alistair, when I saw that church, God spoke to me. He said that I need to be the preacher there and bring his glory to it.”

  “Reverend Stanley.”

  “Please, call me David.”

  “Yes, David. Are you sure that it wasn’t your own conscience that told you that, instead of the Almighty?”

  David shook his head. “Have you ever had a calling from God?”

  Marsh made a steeple with his fingers and smiled, showing small, square teeth. “I cannot say that I have.”

  “I have twice before. This was exactly like those times. God wants me to preach there. He needs me to. I need to. I need meaning in my life, Alistair.”

  “We are currently without a minister.” Marsh leaned forward. “You have to understand that we are a small community and an equally small congregation. We cannot pay you much.”

  “I understand. I’ll work for enough to feed myself and pay rent, unless there is a parsonage.”

  “The last minister lived in the church. There is a small apartment in the back. Just a sitting area with a bed, small kitchen and bathroom. Nothing refined.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Marsh nodded. “I will need to talk to a few of the elders, but I think we can arrange something.” He stood. “Get a few of your belongings from your car. You will sleep here tonight, and tomorrow, if the elders agree, we will go to the church.”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you. I can stay at a motel.”

  Marsh laughed. It sounded like a hollow echo in a mountain cave. “We don’t have any inns or motels. Don’t let the name of the town fool you.”

  “I suppose I will impose myself on your kindness then,” David said.

  “No imposition at all. I’ll have Thomasine prepare a guest room for you.” Marsh turned to walk out of the room, stopped and said, “Let me give you some advice though. This is an old house. Don’t go poking around where you shouldn’t. You might not like what you find.”

  Monday

  An old-fashioned alarm clock ticked against the silence of the bedroom. The monotonous sound should have lulled him to sleep, but the noise the clock produced sounded less like the ticking of a metronome and more like the beating of heart. David put a pillow over his head to help muffle the ticking, but that only made the sound more like a heartbeat.

  Bedsprings poked him in the back through a thin mattress on the single bed frame. He rolled onto his side. One of the coiled metal devils poked him right in the ribs. David sat up, planting his feet on the oiled wooden floor. The clock beat on. Enough moonlight filtered in through the windows for him to see the time: three o’clock. Apparently, he’d slept some without realizing it, because he’d gone to bed sometime after supper, around eleven o’clock.

  Thomasine had left a crystal pitcher filled with water on the dresser across the room. David walked to it. The floorboards creaked as he did so. They moaned as if under extreme agony. He wondered how long it had been since someone slept in the room that was his for the night. Although the room was rather large, the bed was reminiscent of those he’d seen while touring a closed convent.

  He poured some water in a cut-glass goblet beside the pitcher on the tray. The lukewarm water didn’t refresh him, but it did quench his thirst. The dust and stuffy air of the room messed with his sinuses.

  I suppose Marsh doesn’t want me to be too comfortable.

  David left the light off but looked around the room. It was strange how much light seeped in. The moon must be full, and the sky clear, although he remembered it had started raining before he’d gone to bed. An old sofa sat against the wall under a window. It looked more comfortable than the be
d. David grabbed a quilt from the mattress and lay down on the plush sofa. His feet didn’t hang off the end. No springs poked him, and the cushions gave him just enough support.

  As he tried to ignore the ceaseless beating of the Baby Ben clock, he lifted the gauzy curtain to stare at the night sky. Rain pattered on the windowpane.

  “Where is the light coming from?” he wondered, lying back on the arm of the sofa.

  Purple light seeped from the cracks between the crown molding and the ceiling. David blinked hard and even rubbed his eyes, not believing what he saw. When he looked again, the light was there. That light—not the moon—lit the room. As the clock ticked, the light pulsed just enough to be visible. He blinked again, thinking that it was a trick of his eyes. But when he paid closer attention, he saw that the light indeed dimmed and brightened in sync with the clock.

  David got up again and went to the door. The old brass handle felt cool in his hand as he turned it. Although Marsh had told him not to wander around the house after bedtime, he had to know what was going on. He stepped into the hallway lighted by an ornate electric sconce. Nothing seemed out of place. Old paintings of seascapes and rocky beaches hung on the wall. An elaborate piece of furniture like a buffet stood between two doors opposite his. David assumed they too led to unused bedrooms. He looked at the ceiling. No purple light filtered down. He peeked back into his own room. The light still pulsated softly. Something was happening above his room.

  He walked down the hallway toward the staircase. A runner muffled his footfalls, but an occasional floorboard moaned as if tattle-telling on him. He thought about tiptoeing. The whole thing felt very childish—like he’d watched a scary movie that wouldn’t let him sleep. It felt like an Edgar Allen Poe story. He hoped that a raven didn’t accost him on the way to the third floor. David thought that a ghost might even cross his path.

  Before his wife died, he never would have thought such things. People died, and their spirits either went to the paradise of Abraham’s bosom or the everlasting torment of the pit. Nothing lingered between worlds. But after his beloved—Anna—suffered for so long despite his fervent prayers, he didn’t know what he believed. His uncertainty about things, especially spiritual, drove him away from the church on his long soul-searching trip, if there was a soul.