"Based on what I saw before I came to your village . . . it could be hours. Or a couple of days." His hands tightly gripped the back of the pew, whitening his knuckles. "I suspect that the holy water you used to rinse out the wound may slow the progression somewhat, but there's really no way to know."
I placed my hand on his. "We'll deal with it when the time comes. If it comes. Maybe the holy water will stop it."
"It's my fault," he said in a small voice. "I picked where we were going."
"No," I said. "It's no one's fault. It's just . . ." I struggled to find the right words, to articulate the helplessness that we all felt in the face of this tragedy. "It's just Gelassenheit. God's will."
He shook his head. "No. I don't believe that." His hand curled into a fist beneath mine. "No loving God would want this. For any of us."
I slipped away from his fury, walked up the aisle to Ginger. I knelt beside her.
"I'm never . . . never going to see Dan or the kids," Ginger said. Her voice was rough with crying.
I put my arm around her. "You will see them again. In heaven."
A choked sound emanated from her throat. "I wonder if they are already there. It's been . . . years since Dan took communion. My daughter is a practicing Catholic, but my son gave it up when he was a teenager."
"There is no way to know if they will precede you in heaven," I said. "But God would not allow you to be separated."
What I told her was the opposite of what the Amish Ordnung said. We believed that unless one was baptized in the Amish church, one wouldn't reach heaven and be reunited with one's loved ones. I hoped that God would not be cruel to those of us who meant well.
Ginger stood suddenly, wiping at her face, disentangling herself from my arms. She walked with purpose to a small closet in the back of the church. She closed the door behind her. I heard a latch scrape on the inside and Ginger's soft voice, whispering.
"What's she doing?" I asked Alex.
"Confessing her sins." He gestured to the little cabinet. "A priest sits on one side of a screen, and the penitent on the other. The penitent confesses in anonymity and the priest grants absolution, assigns a task to carry out to make things right. Usually a bunch of Hail Marys, from what I understand."
I stared at the strange carved box. It seemed scarcely larger than a coffin. Again, a human intercessionary standing between earth and God. But there was no one there. I wondered if Ginger imagined a priest on the other side, if that was some comfort.
The whispers eventually died away, but Ginger did not come out. I waited, sitting in the last pew. I waited for a long time, until fear grew in me. I strained to hear any sound.
I stood and knocked on the door. "Ginger? Are you all right?"
"You're going to leave me here," she said. I heard the fear in her voice. "You should."
I sucked in my breath. I imagined it for a moment: locking her in the confessional as she began to change into a vampire. Alone. It was a cruel abandonment. Like being buried alive. I imagined the squeak of her fingernails on the wood, her cries to the priest who wasn't there. I wondered if she would be able to escape the holy box, if its power would erode under the onslaught of the evil that gestated within it. I wondered if it would hold and she would starve within it.
I shivered. It disturbed me that I could even think of it.
"No," I said. "We won't leave you here." I reached for the door and wrested it open. A small hook and eye closure inside the frame splintered and gave way.
Ginger sat on a little bench inside, deep in shadow. The ornate cutout pattern of the confessional screen obscured most of her face.
"I don't . . . I don't want to become like them." Her glass blue eyes fixed on me. Whether they were fevered with conviction or infection, I couldn't tell. She reached out, her cold fingers knotting in mine. "Don't let me become like them."
I sucked in a breath, let it out.
"I won't," I said. "I promise."
And that promise hung as heavy on me as stones.
***
We left at dawn, when the dark sisters had retreated to their grottoes. The sun shone brilliantly as we emerged from the shadow of the church.
I had a bit of hope. Hope that the holy water and that our prayers might have helped Ginger, as they had helped me at Pastor Gene's church. But that hope dwindled as I saw her in the growing light of morning. Ginger had grown pale. Dark circles settled beneath her eyes. She refused to eat more than a bite or two of some crab apples I found and turned away from the potato chips from the convenience store.
the day wore on, we wandered through golden, unharvested fields of wheat. I thought I saw a suspicious ripple of movement in the tall stalks. I glanced at Alex.
He nodded. He'd seen it too.
I squinted. There was the flash of a gray tail.
"I think we're being followed," he said.
long as it wasn't by vampires, that was all that mattered.
Exhaustion hit Ginger by noon. We'd put her on the horse, but she was nodding asleep over Horace's neck. Alex called a stop so we could rest. We stomped down the stalks of wheat in a broad circle to provide rough bedding.
Ginger and I lay in the golden field, staring up at the shapes that the clouds made in the blue sky. I rested while Alex kept watch, feeling the sun warm on my face and Ginger turning fitfully beside me.
It almost reminded me of home. Of a normal life, feeling earth at my back and sky above me. I remembered sneaking a few naps like this in my father's fields when I was a girl, when my chores were done. I'd wake and look up at the clouds, picking out the shapes of beasts and men, daydreaming about the future. My dogs would doze with me, moving their legs and whimpering as they dreamed of chasing rabbits.
Now I watched Ginger twitch beside me. Her eyes were closed, but a thin gloss of sweat covered her face. Angry red tendrils from the wound at her shoulder had crawled up her neck. A sign of infection. She moaned in her sleep. I wondered what she was dreaming. I wondered if it hurt.
A couple of hours before sunset, we roused ourselves to continue moving. Ginger opened her eyes and blinked at the sunlight. I noticed that there was a small fleck of red in the glass blue of her iris. I took her pulse and laid my hand across her forehead. She had a bit of fever, and her heartbeat was rapid.