The Wolves of Midwinter Page 25

“He’s real, isn’t he, Mr. Golding?” asked Susie. She swallowed and the tears came up in her eyes, and suddenly there was a listlessness in her face as if she’d lost the thread.

  Reuben took her by her shoulders. “Yes, he’s real, darling,” he said. “I saw him and so did a lot of other people, downstairs in the big room. Many people have seen the Man Wolf. He’s real all right. You don’t ever have to doubt your senses.”

  “They don’t believe anything I say,” she said in a small voice.

  “They believe about the bad man who took you, don’t they?” he asked.

  “Yes, they do,” said Pastor George. “His DNA was all over the trailer. They’ve connected him to other disappearances, too. The Man Wolf saved Susie’s life, that’s perfectly obvious. That man killed two other little girls.” She stopped suddenly and glanced at Susie with concern. “But you see, when her parents didn’t believe her about the Man Wolf, and others didn’t—. Well, she doesn’t want to talk anymore about any of it, not any of it at all.”

  “He did save me, Mr. Golding,” said Susie.

  “I know that he did,” said Reuben. “I mean I believe every single word you’re saying. Let me tell you something, Susie. Lots of people don’t believe in the Man Wolf. They don’t believe me. They don’t believe the people who were with me here, the other people who saw him. We have to live with that, that they don’t believe us. But we have to tell what we saw. We can’t let the secrets fester inside us. Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes, I know what it means,” said Pastor George. “But you see, we don’t want to trumpet it to the media either. We don’t want people hunting him down, killing him.”

  “No,” said Susie. “And they will. They’ll get him and kill him.”

  “Well, listen, honey,” Reuben said. “I know you’re telling the truth, both of you. And don’t you ever forget that I saw him too. Look, Susie, I wish you were old enough for e-mail. I wish—.”

  “I am old enough,” said Susie. “I can use my mom’s computer. I can write down my e-mail address for you right now.”

  Pastor George took a pen out of her pocket. There was a writing pad already on the table.

  Quickly Susie began to carve out the letters of her e-mail, her teeth biting into her lower lip as she wrote. Reuben watched, quickly entering the e-mail into his iPhone.

  “I’m e-mailing you now, Susie,” he said, his thumbs working. “I won’t say anything that anybody else would understand.”

  “It’s okay. My mom doesn’t know my e-mail address,” said Susie. “Only you do and Pastor George.”

  Pastor George wrote out her e-mail and gave it to Reuben. At once he recorded it and fired an e-mail off to her address.

  “Okay. We’re gonna e-mail, you and me. And any time you have to talk about what you saw, you e-mail me—and look.” He took the pen. “This is my phone number, the number of this phone here. I’ll e-mail this to you too. You call me. You understand? And you, too, Pastor George.” He tore off the sheet of paper and gave it to the woman. “Those of us who’ve seen these things have to stick together.”

  “Thank you so much,” Susie said. “I told the priest in Confession and he didn’t believe me either. He said maybe I imagined it.”

  Pastor George shook her head. “She just doesn’t want to talk anymore about any of it now, you see, and that’s no good. That’s just no good.”

  “Really. Well, I know a priest who’ll believe you,” said Reuben. He was still holding his iPhone in his left hand. Quickly, he texted Jim. “My bedroom upstairs now, Confession.” But what if Jim couldn’t hear his phone over the music downstairs? What if his phone was shut off? He was four hours away from his parish. He might have shut it off.

  “She needs to be believed,” said Pastor George. “I can live with people’s skepticism. The last thing I want is the press on my doorstep anyway. But she does need to talk about all of what happened to her, and a lot—and that’s going to be true for a long time.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “And when you’re Catholic, you want to talk to your priest about the things that matter most to you. Well, some of us do.”

  Pastor George gave a little shrug and an offhand gesture of acceptance.

  There was a knock at the door. It couldn’t be Jim, he thought, not this quickly.

  But when he opened the door, Jim was there all right, and behind him Elthram stood leaning against the wall of the corridor.

  “They said you wanted to see me,” said Jim.

  Reuben gave a grateful nod to Elthram and let Jim into the room.

  “This little girl needs to talk to you. Can this woman stay with her while she goes to Confession?”

  “If this little girl wants the woman to stay, certainly,” said Jim. He focused intently on the little girl, and then nodded to the woman with a soft formal smile. He seemed so gentle, so capable, so effortlessly reassuring.

  Susie stood up out of respect for Jim. “Thank you, Father,” she said.

  “Susie, you can tell Father Jim Golding anything,” said Reuben. “And I promise you, he will believe you. And he’ll keep your secrets too, and you can talk to him anytime you want, just as you can talk to me.”

  Jim took the chair opposite her, gesturing for Susie to sit down.

  “I’m going to leave you now,” said Reuben. “And Susie, you e-mail me any time you want, honey, or you call me. If it goes to voice mail, I promise, I’ll get back to you.”

  “I knew you’d believe me,” said Susie. “I knew you would.”

  “And you can talk to Father Jim about all of it, Susie, whatever happened out there in the woods with that bad man. And anything about the Man Wolf. Honey, you can trust him. He’s a priest and he’s a good priest. I know because he’s my big brother.”

  She beamed at Reuben. What a beautiful and radiant creature she was. And when he thought of her crying in that trailer that night, when he thought of her small dirt-streaked face as she’d cried and begged him not to leave her, he was silently overcome.

  She turned and looked eagerly and innocently at Jim.

  And Reuben said, without thinking,

  “I love you, darling dear.”

  Susie’s head turned as if jerked by a chain. Pastor George turned too. They were both staring at him.

  And it came back to him, that moment in the forest outside the church, when he’d left Susie with Pastor George and he had said in that very same tone of voice, “I love you, darling dear.”

  His face reddened. He stood there silently looking at Susie. Her face seemed ageless suddenly, like the face of a spirit, stamped with something profound and at the same time simple. She was gazing at him, without shock or confusion or recognition.

  “Good-bye, honey,” he said and he went out closing the door behind him.

  At the foot of the stairs, Reuben’s editor, Billie, accosted him. Wasn’t that Susie Blakely? Had he gotten an exclusive with Susie Blakely? Did Reuben realize what that meant? No reporter had been able to talk to that little girl since she’d been returned to her parents. This was huge.

  “No, Billie, and no, and no,” Reuben said lowering his voice to soften his outrage. “She’s a guest in this house, and I do not have any right or any intention of interviewing that child. Now, listen, I want to get back to the pavilion and hear some of the music before the party’s over. Come with me, come on.”

  They plunged into the thick of the crowd in the dining room and mercifully he could no longer hear Billie or anyone else. Billie drifted away. He shook hands here, nodded to thanks there, but steadily moved towards the music coming through the front door. Only now did he think about Jim hating so much to be around children, hating to see them, but surely he’d had to call Jim for Susie. Jim would understand. Jim was a priest first and foremost, no matter what personal pain he might feel.

  The pavilion was no less crowded. But it was easier to make his way through the tables, exchanging greetings, acknowledging thanks, merely nodding at those
he didn’t know, and who didn’t know him, until he came near to the solemn artfully lighted crèche.

  The chain of medieval mummers was passing through, handing out their golden commemorative coins. Waitresses and waiters everywhere were replenishing plates or collecting them, offering fresh glasses of wine, or cups of coffee. But all of this faded as he moved into the soft dreamy light of the manger. This had been his destination all along. He smelled the wax of candles; the voices of the choir were blended and heartbreaking yet faintly shrill.

  He lost track of time as he stood there, the music close and beautiful and engulfing. The boys’ choir began a mournful hymn now to the accompaniment of the whole orchestra:

  In the bleak mid-winter

  Frosty wind made moan,

  Earth stood hard as iron,

  Water like a stone.

  Reuben closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them he looked down on the smiling face of the Christ Child, and he prayed. “Please show me how to be good,” he whispered. “Please, no matter what I am, show me how to be good.”

  A sadness overwhelmed him, a terrible discouragement—a fear of all the challenges that lay ahead. He loved Susie Blakely. He loved her. And he wanted only all that was good for her forever and always. He wanted good for every single person he’d ever known. And he could not think now of the cruelty he’d visited on those whom he’d judged as evil, those whom he’d taken out of this world with a beast’s thoughtless cruelty. Silently with his eyes closed he repeated the prayer in a profound and wordless way.

  The inner silence, the engulfing song, seemed to go on forever, and gradually he felt a quiet peace.

  All around him people seemed rapt in the music. Nearby to his left, Shelby stood with her son, Clifford, and her father. They were singing, as they gazed at the choir. And others crowded in whom he didn’t know.

  The choir went on with the soft, beautiful hymn.

  Enough for Him, whom cherubim

  Worship night and day,

  A breastful of milk

  And a mangerful of hay;

  Enough for Him, whom angels

  Fall down before,

  The ox and ass and camel

  Which adore.

  At some point he heard a tenor voice, a familiar voice, singing beside him, and when he opened his eyes, he saw it was Jim. Jim was with Susie, standing in front of him, Jim’s hands on her shoulders and beside Jim was Pastor Corrie George. It seemed an age had passed since he left them. Now they were all singing the hymn together, and Reuben sang along with them, too.

  What can I give Him,

  Poor as I am?

  If I were a shepherd

  I would bring a lamb,

  If I were a wise man

  I would do my part,

  Yet what I can I give Him,

  Give my heart.

  Gathered all round them were the volunteers from Jim’s parish soup kitchen whom Reuben knew from past meals there when he’d worked with them as he had last Christmas and the Christmas before. Jim stood still merely looking down at the white-marble Christ Child in the manger of real hay with a curious wondering expression on his face, one eyebrow raised, and an overall sadness pervading him—so like what Reuben felt.

  Reuben didn’t talk. He caught a glass of sparkling water from a passing tray and sipped it quietly, and the choir started up again. “What child is this who laid to rest in Mary’s arms is sleeping …”

  One of the volunteer women was crying softly, and two others were singing along with the choir. Susie sang clearly and loudly, and so did Pastor George. People came and went around them, as if paying visits to the altar. Jim remained, and Susie and Pastor George remained, and then slowly Jim’s eyes moved up over the serene face of the angel on the pediment of the stable and over the trees massed behind it.

  He turned and saw Reuben as if shaken out of a dream. He smiled and put his arm around Reuben and kissed Reuben’s forehead.

  The tears sprang to Reuben’s eyes.

  “I’m happy for you,” said Jim in an intimate voice under the sound of the choir. “I’m happy your son is coming. I’m happy you’re with your remarkable friends here. Maybe your new friends know things I don’t know. Maybe they know more things than I ever dreamed it was possible to know.”

  “Jim, whatever happens,” said Reuben in a low confidential voice, “these are our years, our years to be brothers.” His voice broke and he couldn’t continue. He didn’t know what more to say anyway. “And about the little girl, I mean I know what you said about it being painful, painful to be around children, but I had to—.”

  “Nonsense, not another word,” said Jim with a smile. “Understood.”

  They both turned, allowing others to step between them and the crèche. Pastor George led Susie to a vacant pair of chairs at one of the tables, and Susie waved at Jim and at Reuben and, of course, they both smiled.

  They stood together facing the huge pavilion. To their right the orchestra played the old “Greensleeves” melody beautifully and the voice of the choir was one voice. “The King of Kings salvation brings; Let loving hearts enthrone Him.”

  “They’re all so happy,” said Jim as he looked at the crowded little tables, at the waiters and waitresses weaving in and out with their trays of drinks. “All so happy.”

  “Are you happy, Jim?” Reuben asked.

  Jim suddenly broke into a smile. “When have I ever been happy, Reuben?” He laughed, and this was maybe the first time he’d laughed this way, in his old way, with Reuben since Reuben’s life had changed forever. “Look, there’s Dad. I think that man talking to him has him trapped. Time for a rescue.”

  Did the man have Phil trapped? Reuben hadn’t seen this man before. He was tall with long full white hair down to his shoulders, much like Margon’s hair, something of a lion’s mane, and he was dressed in a worn belted suede jacket with dark leather patches on the elbows. He was nodding as Phil talked, and his dark eyes were coolly regarding Reuben. Beside him sat a lovely but rather muscular blond woman with slightly upturned eyes and severe cheekbones. Her straw-colored hair was free like that of the man, a small torrent, falling to her shoulders. She too was looking at Reuben. Her eyes appeared colorless.

  “This is a world traveler, this man,” said Phil, after presenting his two sons. “He’s been regaling me with stories of Midwinter customs the world over—of ancient times and human sacrifice!” Reuben heard the man say his name, Hockan Crost, in a mellow deep voice, an arresting voice, but he heard the word Morphenkind.

  “Helena,” said the woman extending her hand. “Such a lovely party.” Obvious Slavic accent, and the smile very sweet, but there was something faintly grotesque about her, about her strong proportions, and the very large bones of her beautifully painted face, and her long throat and firm shoulders. Her sleeveless dress was crusted with sequins and beads. It looked heavy, like a carapace.

  Morphenkinder, both of them.

  Maybe there was a scent to his own kind, male and female, that his body recognized even when his mind didn’t acknowledge it. The man regarded Jim and Reuben almost coldly from beneath heavy black eyebrows. He had a hard-cut face but it wasn’t ugly. He looked weathered, with colorless lips and massive shoulders.

  He and the lady rose, bowed, slipped away.

  “Some fascinating people here tonight,” said Phil. “And why they keep introducing themselves to me I have no idea. I sat here to listen to the music. But this is a lot of fun, Reuben. I have to hand it to your friends, and the food is spectacular. That Crost is a remarkable man. Not many people claim to sympathetically understand Midwinter human sacrifice.” Phil laughed. “He’s quite a philosopher.”

  Dessert service began, and people were heading for the big dining room once more, the air filled with aroma of coffee and the freshly baked mince and pumpkin pies. The waiters brought trays of plum pudding, “humble pie,” and mince pies in the shape of the Christmas crib to those who remained in the pavilion. Phil loved t
he pecan pie with the real whipping cream. Reuben had never had “humble pie” and he loved it.

  At the next table little Susie was eating ice cream and Pastor George gave Reuben a secretive reassuring nod and smile.

  More and more people were slipping away. Felix came through the tables urging everyone please to wait for the closing music. Some clearly could not. There was talk of the long drive to here and to there, and how it had been worth it. People flashed the commemorative gold coins with thanks, saying they’d be saving them. People so loved “this house.”

  The caterers were now giving out small white candles, each cradled in a little paper holder, and directing everyone to the pavilion for the “closing music.”

  What was happening? The “closing music”? Reuben had no idea.

  The pavilion was suddenly packed. People in the main room of the house were crowded against the open windows looking into the pavilion, and the double doors to the conservatory were wide open with many crowded there as well.

  The overhead floods were being turned off, reducing the light throughout to a beautiful gloom. Candles were being lighted everywhere, with people offering their candles to one another. Soon Reuben’s small candle was lighted and he was shielding it with his hand.

  He rose and pressed towards the orchestra again, and finally found a comfortable place opposite against the stone wall of the house itself just below the far-right front-room window. Susie and Pastor George moved closer to the crèche and orchestra, too.

  Felix was at a microphone to one side of the crèche, and in a soft rolling genial voice he said that the orchestra and the adult choir and the boys’ choir would now be singing “the most loved Christmas carols in our tradition” and everybody was most welcome to join in.

  Reuben understood. There had been many lovely old hymns and songs heard up until now, and some grand church music, but not the great lusty heavy hitters. And when the orchestra and the choirs burst forth with “Joy to the World” in high vigor, he was thrilled.

  Everywhere around him, people were singing, even the most unlikely people, like Celeste, and even his dad. In fact, he could hardly believe that Phil was standing there with a small lighted candle singing in a loud clear voice, and so was Grace. His mother was actually singing. Even his uncle Tim was singing, along with his wife Helen, and Shelby and Clifford. And Aunt Josie in her wheelchair was singing. Of course Susie was singing, and so was Pastor George. And so were Thibault and all the Distinguished Gentlemen whom he could see. Even Stuart was singing, along with his friends.