Decoration Day Read online

  “Let me show you into the parson’s apartment,” Marsh said. He pushed a recessed wooden panel. It swung open to reveal a cramped vault room.

  A wooden stove sat in the corner. A cot-like bed was on the opposite wall. Under a small, round window sat a table that probably doubled as a desk. A short bookshelf hid behind the door. A door near the bed had a crescent moon cut out of it. He assumed this was the bathroom.

  “So I live in the church?”

  “Most holy men like to be cloistered near their workplaces,” Horace said.

  “A parsonage is just a larger version,” Dmitri said.

  “Is there electricity?”

  Marsh flipped a switch. A single bulb hanging from the middle of the sloped ceiling chased away only a small amount of the gloom. David noticed there wasn’t a refrigerator in the room—only a small pie safe.

  “How about food storage?” he asked.

  “We will get you an icebox,” Nahum said. “The last minister stole the one from here.”

  “Stole?”

  “He wasn’t well suited for us,” Ebenezer said. “I am sure you will do better. You already seem more enthusiastic than he was.”

  “We will leave you here,” Marsh said. “I think that you will want to familiarize yourself with the building and grounds. I will send a basket of food to you later. Tomorrow I will send the car to bring you to my house. We will discuss the preparations for Sunday.”

  Before David could say anything, the elders left him in his small cell. They never looked back as they left the church.

  David walked back into the sanctuary. The vat called the pit worried him. He wondered if that was where the congregation kept their snakes. Enough light came into the church that he could see into the vat for a ways. Nothing slithered. He hoped that the altar boy wasn’t responsible for stocking the thing. David fished a penny out of his pocket and tossed it over the side of the pit. It never clattered on the bottom or if it did, the pit was so deep that it muffled the sound. David felt as if the walls of the building were closing in, and everything seemed very heavy.

  He decided to go back to his apartment and look over the books on the shelf. Maybe they would explain something about the town’s religious practices. He was still examining things when Thomas delivered a large meal about three in the afternoon and departed without a word.

  As night fell, David discovered the sermon diary of the last minister at the church. He sat in a straight chair at the desk and opened the book. A sermon outline would certainly aid him in ministering to the people of Innsboro. The first sermon in the book was dated one year ago on the upcoming Sunday. The header read Decoration Day, with a heavy pencil line under those words. The sermon outline followed that. The previous minister had chosen to preach about the exodus of the Israelites to the Promised Land. The former minister framed it as their homecoming.

  David liked the outline, so he wanted to see what further musings he might find for his own use. He flipped the page. It was blank. All the rest were the same. Apparently the former minister had taken his other sermon outlines with him like he supposedly had the refrigerator.

  Tuesday

  Anna stood at the foot of David’s bed. She smiled at him like she always had. He hadn’t dreamed about her in a very long time. Only then, it was when his mind was troubled. Perhaps she could provide him some guidance on what he should preach for his first sermon in Innsboro.

  “Why are you here?” he asked her.

  She opened her arms wide and flourished her hands. He waited for an answer, but all she did was repeat the same movements with her hands, over and over.

  “I don’t understand. Can’t you speak?”

  Anna put her finger to her lips, the universal sign to be quiet. She pointed at the door to the church. David got out of bed. He walked to his dream wife and reached out to touch her. His fingers felt her skin, cold and clammy. He tried to grasp her. She pulled away and waggled her finger at him, shaking her head.

  “Is this a dream?”

  She made that sweeping motion with her hand toward the door. Now he noticed it. The same violet light that had seeped into his room at Marsh’s mansion filtered in around the church door. It pulsed from a dim light to a brighter one, something like a flickering neon sign. He stepped toward it. Anna grabbed his arm and pulled him to her. She shook her head again.

  “I dreamed about that light at Marsh’s house last night,” he said to her. “I want to see what it is.”

  Her fingernails dug into his arm. David felt it, even in his dream state. He couldn’t remember feeling anything during a dream. Thinking he would awaken from this dream, David realized that was not the case—nothing happened. He pulled away from his wife and walked to the door. The doorknob felt warm and vibrated with energy when he touched it. Anna touched his shoulder and tried to pull him back, but he moved away.

  As he walked into the church, the purple light filled the whole place. Everything glowed with it. He stepped deeper inside his church.

  “No,” Anna said.

  David turned to look at his wife. She charged after him. Anna crossed the threshold between the apartment and the church, and as David reached out to her, she disintegrated into a million misty particles. The light began to blink in and out. The room went dark. The violet light flared. It blinded him. When the room darkened again, his vision carried with it the afterglow. Everything looked as if it were under a black light. Any light color, like his white T-shirt that peeked from last button of his shirt, glowed. He started to the steps into the sanctuary. The pit caught his attention.

  Waves of energy seemed to rise from it. His changed vision helped him see it. They were small and barely visible. He even thought they made a slight humming noise. A burst of purple light erupted from the pit. It shot straight into the air and appeared to pass through the ceiling.

  He heard the sound of rain on the roof. David hurried up the steps to the sanctuary and peered out of the window. Drops of violet light hit the ground and streaked the old glass. The streaking color ran together and began to form words. He had never seen anything like it.

  His vision blurred as if he needed reading glasses. The words on the glass were illegible. They hadn’t made sense before that anyway. He stepped closer to the windows to try to clear his vision. Instead he saw outside into the churchyard.

  Things lurched toward the building. The purple, glowing rain both illuminated and distorted them. They looked neither human nor animal. Their hunched forms moved like slow cavemen except their nude bodies were devoid of hair. Their arms seemed extra long and discolored, even in the weird light.

  David wanted to run back to his bedroom, hide under the covers, and wake up from his dream, but the pulsing and humming from the pit seemed to push him closer to the window. He pressed his face against the glass and felt the raindrops roll down his cheeks as if he’d been pushed through the glass.

  The creatures kept coming toward him. They just seemed to appear out of the rain. One popped up before his face. Its eyes bulged wetly out of its skull. The lips seemed overly full. It opened its mouth and croaked with the sound of a thousand toads.

  David startled awake. He fell between the pew he lay on and the one in front of him. Morning light filtered through the windows. The brightness shocked him. The creatures and the purple rain were the last things he remembered.

  A loud banging sounded on the door. He jumped up from the floor and hurried to open it. Thomas stood on the other side. His toad-like stature gave David another startle. It was like his nightmare stood before him.

  “Mr. Marsh has sent for you,” Thomas eyed him. “I’d suggest you not leave him waiting.”

  “Just let me get a sweater. Your town is awful damp,” David said and realized that all his clothes were still in his car at Marsh’s house. “Never mind; my stuff is there.”

  He followed the chauffeur and was whisked away to Marsh’s old plantation home. Thomas drove a different route than the one that had brought Dav
id to the church. They passed by a small park that perched on what looked like a man-made terrace. A wrought-iron fence surrounded it. A statue holding a Civil War era rifle stood on top of a pedestal that looked like a high oak stump. A cannon sat before the statue. David couldn’t get a good look at it, but it didn’t look like the cannons he’d seen. He tapped on the window separating the two compartments. The driver pushed the window open but didn’t say anything.

  “What is that park back there?” David asked.

  “Memorial,” Thomas answered.

  The car turned onto a familiar street. The downward sloping, oak-lined street led to the Marsh home. David saw the top of the house peeking over a magnolia.

  “To what?” he asked.

  “The battle.”

  Before he could ask what battle, Thomas closed the window and turned in to the short driveway that led to the back of the Marsh estate. David knew the driver was a man of few words, but he’d expected just a little more. He tapped on the glass again, but the driver stopped the car and got out. The door opposite him opened. David saw Marsh holding it open. He had a welcoming smile on his face.

  “Good morning,” Marsh said as David climbed out of the Lincoln.

  “Good morning.” David pressed on his hair, thinking that it must look mussed from being awakened right before leaving to come here.

  “Did you sleep well?” Marsh closed the car door.

  “Now that you mention it, not particularly. I had nightmares again and apparently some more sleepwalking. I woke up on a pew. I nearly broke my arm when Thomas’s knocking startled me awake.”

  David walked toward the kitchen door. He intended to beat Marsh there and open it for his host. It would be the friendliest thing he could do. The other man took him by the arm and led him away from the house.

  “I am sorry you have been having such fitful sleep. Perhaps you can tell me the nightmare as we stroll through my garden. I would like to hear about it. Maybe I could even shed some light on it,” Marsh said.

  “I don’t know how. It was a bizarre one.”

  “I have some experience with dream interpretation. I’ve read all of Freud’s work on the subject, even the obscure stuff that few people know about.”

  They walked down a brick sidewalk toward a stone wall. An arched gap allowed them into a flower garden. The sun peeked through the clouds. The light drew out the brilliant color from the plants growing along the side of the path. The spring had been good to Marsh’s plants. Most of the flowers bloomed purple. A few red blossoms sprinkled diversity here and there. A whole patch of yellow flowers dazzled in the sun. David didn’t recognize a single bloom, which he found odd because flowers had always been his wife’s passion.

  Marsh rested on a large wooden swing hanging from a low oak limb. He offered David the seat beside him. The wood and chain creaked as he sat down. It gave just a little with his weight. The swing began to sway back and forth as if blown by a breeze, but it was Marsh’s movements that caused the action.

  “I love sitting out here in the morning and at sundown,” Marsh said. “The flowers make me feel young and vibrant.”

  “You’re not old.”

  “Aren’t I? I feel it. There is a great strain on the man responsible for an entire town. When my Louisa was alive, I shared some of the burden with her, but now I bear it alone.”

  “Are you the mayor too?”

  Marsh shook his head. “We don’t have any elected officials. You inherit the responsibility of running the town.”

  “Like a king? That doesn’t seem very American.”

  “It’s been our way since we settled in this country. The outside world doesn’t care about what we do. We keep to ourselves and our ways. It is for the best.” He waved toward the gate. Thomasine stood there holding a tray with a pitcher of tea on it. “Our refreshments. I know that you didn’t enjoy your breakfast yesterday, so I opted to have Thomasine bring us some tea while we chat, and then prepare a midmorning lunch.”

  The maid stopped before them. Marsh took the pitcher and poured a glass. He gave it to David and then poured himself one. Thomasine walked away as David sipped his drink. The flavor of the tea popped in his mouth. He couldn’t remember ever drinking such good sweet tea. A smile crossed his lips.

  “I see that you enjoy this.” Marsh tipped his glass, then drank.

  “Very much. I was expecting unsweetened.”

  “Don’t let that breakfast fool you. I am very much Southern. We’re having good old-fashioned chicken and dumplings. Now, tell me about your dream.”

  David took another drink. He didn’t want to relive the nightmare. It bothered him just thinking about it, but he replayed it for Marsh in its entirety, not leaving out a single thing. If his host could help him dispel some anxiety, he welcomed it.

  Marsh nodded with interest as he listened. At times, he even smiled as if having a mini-epiphany. When David finished, he took a long drink from his tea.

  “Dreams sometimes help us deal with stress,” Marsh said. “According to Freud, they express our innermost secret desires. That is the reason your deceased wife appeared in the dream. You wish that she were with you to be a helpmeet. As you know, the Scriptures say God created woman for such a thing.”

  “I thought I was the preacher,” David said.

  “Yes, but I thought that needed to be mentioned.” Marsh drank from his tea. “Dreams also can do something Freud never mentioned.”

  “What is that?”

  “There are times and places where the veil between the living world and the world of the dead are thin and even torn. Sometimes dreams allow the two to cross over.”

  “I was dreaming about ghosts?” David almost laughed.

  “Yes. There are things that you and I cannot completely understand. Ancient mysteries exist that even the greatest philosophical minds cannot grasp. Creatures exist that would madden most men if they knew about them.”

  “Ghosts seem a little extreme.”

  “What of your Holy Spirit?”

  “Our Holy Spirit,” David corrected. “That’s a little different.”

  “What about the souls of men? Are those not energies absent of the body? Could they not manifest themselves? Physics explains that energy cannot be destroyed, only changed.”

  “But ghosts haunting my dreams? What about the light?”

  “I told you that I would enlighten you on our faith and our history. Now is the time.” Marsh eased back into the swing. It continued its slight sway. “This town was established well before Tennessee ever became a state. My ancestors were run out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the late 1600s. We roamed around looking for a place that we could be free from any restrictions of the government. We were led to this valley. The way in was arduous, which was perfect for our needs.”

  “Why were your ancestors driven from the colony?” David asked.

  “Cotton Mather accused my ancestors of witchcraft. The church elders came to hang them all without trial. My ancestors slipped away in the night, risking Indian attack, but dying on their feet fighting was better than dying at the hands of zealots.”

  “Were they witches?”

  “Of course not. They were accused of this because our religion was different from that of the Puritans. We worship things far more ancient than their books. Things before Adam and Eve.”

  “Do you mean Lilith?” David knew a little of the night demon from seminary.

  “No. She is just a myth. I mean things old and divine in their own ways.”

  David knew that God was older than Adam and Eve. Some people even worshipped angels. The Bible mentioned this. It didn’t seem so extreme today, but he imagined that, in the uneducated times of Marsh’s ancestors’ migration, it would have been very odd.

  “They built our town here. My house has been remade several times. The current look comes from times before the War. It took all we could do to keep our town from being reduced to ashes.”

  “What do you mean?” David ask
ed.

  “Just because we never owned slaves doesn’t mean that the War didn’t affect us. This town isn’t far from Chattanooga. The Yankee soldiers came to our town and harassed us for a long time. One day we saw that they intended to attack. We had heard news from other parts of the state about looting and burning. Our town and its people had been persecuted enough. We took a stand.”

  “The town fought the Union army?”

  “Not the whole thing, but a few platoons. We had enough guns to arm every man in town. We even had a cannon. It was mostly for celebratory activities and was very ornate, but it still fired.”

  “Is it in the memorial park?”

  “Thomas brought you around that way just as I asked. How good of him. He isn’t always the most obedient servant. The battle occurred all over the hills, but the fiercest of the action was located at the church. Many people lost their lives, but we beat the bluecoats back.”

  “How?”

  “When your way of life is in danger, you will do anything. Our ancestors helped us as they still do today. That is why we have a homecoming every third Sunday of this month. That was the day of the battle and our victory.”

  “Do you think it is strange that I suggested having a decoration day on the exact same day?” David asked. That had been bothering him since yesterday.

  “Not particularly. I probably mentioned something about it the night you arrived. I believe the dream you had last night was a memory of the battle. Great traumas leave scars not only on the skin but also on the energy of the world. I believe that our church is one of those places where the veil is very thin, if not torn. I also believe that one of the great ancient mysteries watches over the place.”

  “I would have never guessed the place had been the focal point of a battle. There isn’t any sign. Is it the original building?”

  Marsh nodded. “That is the building our forefathers built when they settled this valley. If you examine the exterior walls well, you will find pockmarks from bullets. I can even show you a hole in the wall surrounding the grounds caused by a cannonball.”