October skies

If he could see them, then surely they could see the frantic activity going on here. Ben was surprised they had been left alone to build a stronghold in plain sight. He wondered if Preston was simply being very shrewd — watching them pull apart their shelters so all he had to do was wait. By tomorrow morning they’d be nothing more than two dozen frozen statues inside their hastily erected barricade, exposed, as they now were, to the elements. Once the sun went down, they would suffer the bitter, freezing night unprotected.

As he watched, the prayer meeting finally began to dissolve as people got to their feet and groups, families, meandered back to their shelters for warmth. Many of their faces — from this distance, no more than pale ovals framed by tightly wrapped shawls, dark beards or bundled scarves — peered furtively their way. He could feel their suspicion and anger wafting over the icy no-man’s-land towards them like a toxic cloud.

He wondered what Preston’s words throughout the morning had turned them into. A vengeful crowd? A lynch mob?

Behind him, leaning against their frail, waist-high barricade of stacked branches and lumber, he heard Keats frantically barking orders to the others as they — men, women and even the youngest children — worked industriously to finish shoring up their defences.

‘What do you see, Lambert?’

Keats had entrusted the watching of Preston’s people to Ben, whom he considered to be the keenest pair of eyes in their group.

‘The meeting’s broken up and they’re dispersing… for now.’

Preston’s people filtered away into their various shelters, leaving a few clusters of men brandishing guns and staring back at them. He scanned the men for sight of Preston. Even now, he wondered whether a last-minute dash across the empty ground between them and a plea at his feet for common sense and mercy to prevail would sway the man and allow them all to weather this ordeal together.

Of course not.

His eyes finally picked out the tall, slender figure of Preston. As the others clambered back inside for warmth and shelter, he pushed his way through knee-deep drifts towards the edge of the clearing, walking beneath the big cedar tree from which Vander had been dangling this morning and stepped up the incline. His head was lowered, abstracted in thought and prayer or perhaps internal debate; Ben could visualise the bloodshot and dilated eyes, the numerous little tics in his face, and skin slick with sweat… very much his last close-up recollection of the man. He climbed the gentle slope and without a moment’s hesitation or any apparent fear for what might be out there in the woods, he disappeared amidst the thick tree line of snow-laden spruces.

‘Where are you going?’ Ben whispered to himself.

Ben looked down at his journal and for the first time realised how much the cold seeping into his aching hand affected his writing; or perhaps it was fear of what was to come. The jagged lines struggled illegibly across the page in a slant descending towards the bottom, the diluted ink spreading and blotting, making his words look uncontrolled like the scrawl of a child. Undeterred, he continued, his pen scratching dryly across the page, guided by fingers numb and struggling to hold the pen.

I believe I’m right in thinking now that it was Preston who killed the Dreytons. I had harboured a suspicion for a while that it might have been Vander. But clearly the butcher’s blade was not held by him. Preston, I suspect, is the kind of man who can kill with brutal efficiency, and bury awful deeds behind the most compelling facade. He is a powerful man, powerful in his hold over those who follow him. That kind of man is dangerous. But what makes him a magnitude more terrifying is that he is also afraid. A man like that will do anything.

Did Emily see this man carve her brother and mother to pieces, like a shop butcher?

Ben looked down at his journal, at the childish marks his stiff hand was making. He suspected the scribbled lines would make sense to no one else. At the end of the last line, the pen’s nib running dry had scratched a groove into the paper, the last few words etched rather than written. He shakily dipped his nib one last time in the diluted dregs of the inkpot — now no more than a ring of dirty blue water that settled in the rim at the bottom of the pot.

Keats is right. Tonight they will come for us. But I believe he’s wrong to think we stand a chance.

The pen scratched dry on the paper again. He shook the pen to dislodge the last droplet held in the nib.

There’s ink for no more. That’s it. If none of us survive this night, let it be known it was no demon in a spiritual sense that did for us… just the madman William Preston. I am sure of it.