To Us May Grace Be Given

6.

Everything was foggy, though it wasn't the time for fog. My hand was throbbing sore and my neck ached. I got to my feet but I couldn't see the barn doors, and then I saw them, only they kept swaying. I managed to walk to them by looking through them, at the space between them, which was glowing with a bright orange light.

I stepped out into a world on fire. Everywhere was shimmering with heat and flame; the smoke covered the stars. There was screaming, close and far off all at once, from everywhere and nowhere. I looked behind me and the barn was licked with flame, the hills sparking red.

It was hell. We had called the devil down and I had let her loose and she had brought us all to hell.

I made my heavy legs walk. The smoke caught in my throat, setting me to coughing. The goat pen stood open and empty. There were shapes in the far corner, small and still. I looked at them and I knew they were gone, yet I kept hearing them bleating like Isaac had bleated, all mixed up with the shouts and screams of the men and the echoing gunshots and a woman crying or laughing or both—

Mam.

There was no more house; there was only fire, curling around the beams and the chimney Da had laid stone by stone. I opened my mouth to call to Mam but started coughing. A hand caught me by the arm and spun me around. Before me stood a man, sooty and wild-eyed. He shook me hard over and over.

"I got the kid!" he hollered.

My head was snapping against my neck; my teeth flew up and bit my tongue hard. Blood filled my mouth. He swung me one way and another, peering into the smoke and flame.

"Bill!" he hollered again. "Bill, I got the kid! Bill—"

Something bright shot across his throat and it opened up and it was full of blood. My mouth was full of blood. He tried to speak and instead he fell over, his hand still gripping my arm, his tongue sticking out like Isaac's. I started screaming then, I screamed as I never had before. The devil swung the sickle up and down into his chest. She was covered in blood. Blood sprayed out of the man as she wrenched the sickle up and brought it down again. Cold air ran over my belly and I looked down at the red cut in my nightshirt. Someone was screaming and screaming and it was me, I was turning inside out with screaming. I tore more at my shirt but I wasn't cut, the sickle had only caught the fabric.

"Addy." The devil's voice was huge and echoing in the night. She bent and reached into the blood, her hand disappeared in the blood, and when she pulled it out with a grunt there was something round and wet in her palm. She held it out to me. "See? That's all a man is inside. No evil, no divinity, not even your god-damn balance. Just flesh. That's why your Da and his people failed: because they could never bring themselves to believe this. This is all there is."

Seizing my cut hand, she pressed the organ into it, still warm, and my voice broke then from screaming. I dropped it and covered my eyes, waiting to feel her hands on me. But there was nothing. I peeked through my fingers, then lowered my hands.

The devil was gone.

The man at my feet looked different. With his kerchief twisted I could see how frightened he was and how young, as young as me. Everywhere now I saw the bodies of men: men in pieces, men with heads staved in and throats cut, men sprawled and men lying so peaceful they might have been asleep.

There was no more howling now, but I heard the crying laughter again and walked towards it.

The yard was another world. Everything was gusting smoke and ash. I wiped my face and my hand came away smeared with blood and ash. The cut on my hand throbbed and my neck too. Somewhere far away a man screamed and began pleading, and I turned one way and another but the wind carried him away. Only the crying laughter seemed fixed.