The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (5 page)

She could see how, in betraying their friends, he was turning so much of the hate on himself.

“I don’t even know why he wants me to do it. It’s not as if he even listens to what I have to tell him. It’s just our stuff, the little things that are personal to us. That just makes it all the more awful. I want it to stop. But I’d go on doing it forever if I could go on hanging about with Kate and at the same time keep Grimstone off my back.”

While Mark headed into the sea to join Alan and Kate, Mo stayed on the shore and watched him, fearful and tense, observing that he had been stupid enough to take the phone with him.

She heard Kate’s voice raised in outrage. “How many times have I told you not to take pictures of me in my bikini!”

Mo heard Alan and Mark’s voices raised in argument. Alan was defending Kate, and Mark, as usual, was trying to make a joke out of it. She heard the idiot tell Kate that he had been having Conan the Barbarian dreams about her. The arguing got worse. Mark was laughing, full of self-mockery. “How could I compete with a fellow
whose name is an anagram of dual naval?” Then Mark was splashing out toward the shore with Alan chasing him. They faced each other off at the edge of the surf.

“Oh, come on!” Mark shouted. “You’re telling me, Alan, that you haven’t been having Conan dreams about Kate?”

“You’re asking for it!”

They tussled and fell over in the middle of a breaking wave. Mark was struggling to escape, trying to save his precious phone. But Alan didn’t care about the phone. He grabbed Mark again and they rolled over and over in the surf. Alan got an arm free and he punched Mark in the nose. They separated, Alan jumping to his feet while Mark sat in the tide with his phone held against his face, blood trickling through his fingers.

“Enough!” cried Kate. “Stop it this instant!”

Alan suddenly looked sheepish. He extended his hand to Mark, to help him up. “Hey, I’m sorry—right? It just got out of hand.”

Mark took his hand but he followed with his head, butting Alan in the center of the face, so it was Alan’s turn to end up sitting in the surf with a bloody nose.

Alan pushed away Kate’s consoling hand. “Okay—if that’s how he wants it. He’s such a jerk, I’ve had it with him.”

Mo burst into tears. There was such a look of mortification on her face that Kate ran to her and hugged her. “Take no notice of those idiots. It’ll be alright. Honestly, it will. I know that Alan doesn’t really mean it.”

Alan stormed off down the beach while Mark sat down in the sand, drying off the cell phone with a towel and making sure it still worked.

Kate muttered to Mo, “What’s his problem with that stupid phone?”

Mo’s trembling turned into a fit of uncontrollable shaking. Her teeth chattered.

“Ah, sure, come on now, Mo. It was just a few stupid photographs.”

Then Mo said something strange. Her voice was a guttural croak, each individual syllable forced out, as if she were struggling to speak through a throat that was shackled with iron.

“Guh-Guh-Guh . . . Guh-Grimstone—wuh-wuh-wuh . . . !”

“Grimstone will what?” Kate helped her down, so they were sitting together on the soft wet sand by the water’s edge. Kate called to Mark, who was about ten feet away. “Mo’s really upset. Will you please tell me what’s going on, Mark?”

But Mark wasn’t listening. His blue eyes were staring out to sea.

Old Power

Mark hardly slept that night, too shocked at how close he had come to being found out. And Grimstone added to it, as if he sensed that something was wrong, becoming more sarcastic than usual when he made them stand in front of him in the sacristy and provide the daily summary. He warned them both that their days of tomfoolery were close to an end. Then, when they arrived at the den the next morning, the situation got a whole lot worse. Padraig was waiting with Kate and Alan, all three sitting on the hummock of grass under the old pear tree in the warming light.

The old man’s eyes seemed to blaze clearer and bluer than ever as he fixed on them with his wide-open gaze. “Now then, young Mark and Mo! We know
that something is not altogether right in this situation. I’ve been hearing one or two disturbing things. But I want to hear it from you in person. Will you tell me what ails you?”

Mark felt his throat tighten, and he couldn’t hide his panic. “Nothing, Sir! There’s nothing wrong.”

“Ah, now—Sir, is it?”

Mark tried to bluff it out but there was no escaping those eyes.

“Your father would do something if you stopped coming here? Meaning it was Grimstone himself that put you up to it?”

“Muh-muh-muh . . . !”

Mark put a restraining hand on Mo’s shoulder, to try to shut her up. “Mr. O’Brien—!”

But Mo shook his hand off. “If yuh-yuh-you won’t tell him, I wuh-wuh-wuh-will.”

Mark shook his head violently at Mo, his eyes pleading for her to stop.

Alan confronted Mark eye-to-eye, clearly still rattled from yesterday, in spite of the handshake. “I don’t know what’s going on. But one thing I know for sure is we’ve got to be honest with each other.”

Mark didn’t care what Alan thought. He wasn’t going to explain just to please Alan. He tried to steer Mo away. But Mo wriggled free. Stuttering painfully, she began to explain. She told them the truth about the so-called Reverend Grimstone, and they listened to her in a shocked silence.

Kate got up off the grass and put her arm round Mo’s shoulders. “Oh for goodness’ sake—I simply can’t believe it. Is this true, Mark?”

Mark shrugged. “Mo and I, we grew up being told that our biological fathers were drunkards and druggies.”

“He cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-calls us wicked nuh-nuh-nuh . . . nuh-nuh-names.”

“Such as what?”

“Mo is half-aboriginal. Grimstone says that she only has to look in the mirror to see the face of her ‘savage whore mother.’”

Kate gave Mo a huge hug. “You’re mother was nothing of the sort. If you look anything like your mother, she must have been gorgeous.”

Mo’s face fell, her fingers writhing in a heap. “Muh-Muh-Muh-Mark and I . . . we—we wuh-wuh-wuh—!”

“What she’s trying to say,” Mark added quietly, “is we were abandoned. Tossed away like pieces of rubbish on Sir’s doorstep—me at about eighteen months old and Mo less than a year old.”

“Sure and that’s awful.”

“You don’t know the half of it! You really want to know what he would say to Mo when he felt like hurting her?” Mark smiled, but there was no humor in his smile. “He’d say, ‘Now why do you think your mother couldn’t stand the sight of you the very moment you were born?’ He’d tell Mo that everybody hated her, even when she was a baby, because she didn’t look like a Christian child. ‘Anyone can see that at a glance,’ he’d say, pinching her cheek so hard his nails would
leave a mark. ‘Go to the mirror,’ he’d say. ‘Go take a good long look at your gypsy whore face.’”

Kate just hugged Mo tighter.

Alan was outraged. “Who the hell is this guy?”

“The Reverend R. Silas—familiarly known as Arseless—Grimstone. Our adoptive father!”

“Your mother . . . your adoptive mother . . . couldn’t she stop it?”

“What? Dear sweet Bethal—the werewolf?”

Padraig shook his head. “That blackguard sounds worse than a Puritan.”

“What he really is . . . there’s a better name for it,” Mark hissed between his clenched teeth. “And ‘Reverend’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

Kate said quietly, “He must be mad.”

Mo’s face fell. “Cuh-cuh-clever—clever and wuh-wuh-wuh-wicked more than muh-muh-mad!”

Mark added, “Recently he’s been getting worse. It’s something to do with the reason he came to Clonmel. But we don’t really know why he came here.”

Kate held Mo at arm’s length. “Why he came here? Here to Clonmel?”

“To spy on you.”

Padraig barked a laugh. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“He thinks that you, Mr. O’Brien, are some kind of druid.”

“And what does he mean by that?”

“A pagan . . . or something like that!”

“Well now, isn’t that quite an accusation? What then is a pagan? Is a pagan someone who believes in ghosts? Or a child who discovers the meaning of magic? The druids were more than priests. These days they would be regarded as great thinkers . . . a mixture of priest and philosopher.”

“So you’re not a pagan?”

“What were the old religions but an attempt at understanding . . . maybe at understanding things that might better have been left alone.”

“Grimstone talked about power. Old power.”

“What old power?”

“Don’t ask me. I know how weird it all sounds. But it’s the way his mind works. He appears to be an old-type preacher but he doesn’t really mention Jesus, only the old hellfire and brimstone stuff. All he seems to care about is controlling people. He sets up some new branch of his church somewhere, converting gullible people. He goes looking for scapegoats. Somebody to attack. It brings him publicity and frightens still more into joining him.”

“And that monster, he’s here and up to something like that?”

Mark’s head dropped.

Padraig stiffened. “I sensed there was something about you both, but I never imagined such nonsense in my wildest dreams.” He was silent for several seconds. “But then, maybe we can turn the tables on him. Mo, will you show me your
book again? Sit yourself down here on the grass while I take another look at some of your beautiful pictures.”

The four friends sat on the hummock while Padraig leafed through the pages of Mo’s green-covered notebook. Mo watched the old man’s face, his features half-hidden in the shadows and the long hawk-like nose almost touching the paper. She jumped when he pounced on one drawing. He dropped to one knee to point it out to her.

“There!” he exclaimed. “This is what caught my eye when I first looked through it.”

Mo glanced fearfully at the drawing. Fear made her stammer worse. “It’s thuh-thuh-thuh—it’s the suh-suh-suh . . .”

Mark spoke for her. “It’s the sigil. On Grimstone’s black cross.”

“Sigil? D’you mean some kind of symbol?”

“It’s part of the cross. Where the figure of Jesus would be, but this is definitely not Jesus. It’s silvery in color instead of black, like the rest of it.”

“Like suh-suh-suh-something very . . . vuh-vuh-very old.”

“That’s right. The cross is made out of a black, twisted kind of metal. Like iron, but I’m not sure it’s really iron.”

“Will you tell me everything you recall of it, Mark?”

“It’s . . . well, it’s kind of gnarly, just like Mo has drawn it, only a lot bigger . . . and heavier.” Mark held out his hands, to give an idea of the dimensions.

“Cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-creepy!”

“The worst thing, the most repulsive thing about it, is the sigil in the middle.”

“It guh-guh-guh-glows!”

Mark nodded. “Honestly—it’s true. The sigil really glows, so you can see it shining in the dark. When Grimstone is talking to it.”

Alan interrupted, “This guy talks to it?”

“He calls it his Lord—his Master.”

“No way!”

“Muh-Muh-Muh-Mark and I . . . wuh-wuh-wuh-we think . . . we think he kuh-kuh . . . kuh-kuh-killed . . .”

Mark took up what Mo was trying to explain. “We don’t know for certain, but from the way he talks about it sometimes, we think, maybe, he might have killed some old man for it. The old man claimed that it came from a barrow grave.”

“Which would hardly be Christian, since barrow graves are far older than Christianity.”

“He suh-suh-suh-says he had a buh-buh-blackout.”

Kate murmured, “It gets worse and worse!”

“We think Grimstone was a thief when he was younger. He stole stuff for the old man, who was an antiquarian. But when he saw the cross with the sigil embossed on it, it—well, it took some kind of possession of him. He says he had a blackout. But we think he killed the old man to get the cross.”

Padraig looked deeply worried. “It came from a barrow, you say?”

Alan turned to his grandfather. “What’s wrong?”

Padraig placed his hands on Mark’s and Mo’s shoulders, as if hardly able to believe what he was hearing.

Alan snorted. “Hey—the guy’s loopy!”

Kate looked at Alan with a frown. “But you heard what they said. They’ve seen how this thing glows when he talks to it.”

“Silver can look like that.”

“Nuh-nuh-nuh-no! It buh-buh-burns.”

“Burns?”

Mark agreed with Mo. “When Grimstone holds the sigil to his brow. When he’s calling it Master, it burns his skin. You can hear it sizzle—you can smell it.”

Alan shook his head. “Mo? Is this true?”

Mo nodded.

Mark added, “Grimstone won’t allow anyone else to touch it. Or even to go near it.”

“Grandad, have you any idea what’s going on here?”

“I’m not altogether sure. I know a little about such things. I wish I knew more.”

“But what are you thinking?”

“Well, I’m thinking we need to grasp what’s really going on here. We have the four of you coming together here, with what appears to be important aspects of your lives in common. Happen it’s fate.”

Alan scoffed. “Hey—come on!”

“Don’t you be telling me you haven’t wondered for yourselves?”

Mark objected. “That’s as crazy as Grimstone.”

“There must be something happening to you—all of you. Are you having any unusual thoughts? Or unusual dreams?”

Kate blurted, “Mo and I, we’ve been sharing the same dreams.”

“What dreams?”

“We keep seeing a mountain. But it’s not one we recognize. It towers up, like a great pillar of rock, with a figure on the top of it.”

“You’re sure you don’t recognize it?” There was a light in Padraig’s eyes, now examining Kate’s expression.

“No. It’s nowhere I remotely recognize.”

“What about you lads?”

Mark shook his head.

But Alan looked thoughtful. “If it’s dreams about places you guys want, the only place I ever dream about is the River Suir. I dream about the river a lot.”

Padraig was thoughtful. “Mountains and rivers! It certainly seems as if something is building up around you. Something—or someone—is trying to communicate with you, perhaps.”

Mark lifted his eyebrows. “I suppose I’d better go check my e-mails.”

Kate thumped him. “Don’t you dare mock this, Mark Grimstone!”

Padraig cleared his throat, as if making up his mind about something. “Well now, isn’t it time we all were a little more honest with each other? And that goes for you too, Mr. Tricky-the-loop.” He tapped Mark’s shoulder.

Mark exchanged glances with Mo. “There was something Grimstone said. He was talking about some kind of old power that was a threat to him. Stuff about the town being old but the power was older.”

“Ancient power?”

“Suh-suh-something about a puh-people from before the Cuh-Cuh-Celts.”

“I’m trying to remember how he put it. Like an old power, almost buried and forgotten, yet still lingering.”

“Huh-huh-huh-he talked about the ruh-ruh-rivers too.”

“Ancient power to do with rivers?”

Mark said, “I’ll give you his exact words, Mr. O’Brien. ‘It is my Lord himself, my sacred Master, who senses the threat—the threat is to Him . . . here in this town—in the old power that still lingers here.’”

“What manner of threat?”

Mo spoke softly. “Thuh-thuh-three ruh-ruh-ruh-rivers!”

Everybody looked at Mo, astonished. Then Mark nodded. “Something about a heathen trinity. Its grip long vanquished, yet such is its hold on the very landscape, it has endured.”

Alan looked at his grandfather in bewilderment. “Is this guy insane, or what?”

Padraig’s brow was deeply furrowed. “I’m not so sure. . . .”

Kate cut in, “So how do we find out more about this . . . this power?”

“I think you won’t have to look very far before the power finds you!”

She sighed. “What on earth does that mean?”

His face reddening with embarrassment, Alan said, “Grandad sees fate in everything that’s happening.”

“Maybe he’s right, Alan.”

Alan snorted. “We’re just like the butterflies and birds, following our instincts! That’s what you think. Isn’t it, Grandad?”

“Four orphans! And you kid yourself it’s merely happenstance?”

Kate countered, “Two orphans—and two adoptees!”

Padraig stared at her, then glanced with a gentle sympathy at Mark and Mo. “Kate, both you and Alan assume that your parents were the victims of accidents, or deliberate killings by wicked people. But what if it was you yourselves who were the targets?”

“But that . . . oh, for goodness’ sake—it’s ridiculous!”

“Kate, were you not with your parents when they died? And Alan too! Weren’t you meant to be in the helicopter when it crashed?”

Alan couldn’t help raising his voice in protest. “So how come we’re still here, then, Grandad?”

“Maybe there were other forces protecting you?”

“Aw, c’mon!”

Mark shook his head. “I don’t know anything about what Mr. O’Brien is saying. But I can tell you that when Grimstone talks about our biological parents, he uses the past tense.”

“You mean he knows they’re dead?”

Mo was shaking her head violently.

“I’m sorry, Mo, but he doesn’t say that your mother
is
a whore. He says she
was
a whore. Always the past tense.”

Alan shook his head. “How—I mean, what . . . Aw, heck. I don’t rightly know what to think any more.”

Mark shrugged. He looked at Padraig. “This force, I think you’re suggesting it’s got something to do with us? If so, can you tell us what we ought to do?”

“Maybe it’s fitting to caution you that you’re standing in a wood where you can’t see the wood for the trees. If I were to advise you, and I’m not sure I even want to advise you, I would suggest you get above it.”