Something Blue

Chapter 5

Katherine

The church smelled as it always smelled-- damp and musty, with the acrid overtone of incense that burned her nose and made her eyes water. She sat in her usual pew, up at the front of the congregation. As a girl, she had loved sitting there. It made her feel important and favored in the eyes of God, proud of her own propriety as she sat with hands neatly clasped and legs tucked primly up beneath her, gazing with adoring eyes at her father as he preached the Sunday sermon.

After marrying Jacob, she felt less like a favored child of God and more like a sinner in the deepest dungeon of Hell, on a stage of Satan's making, ogled and mocked by the amassed souls that inhabited the dankest corners of damnation. All the sinners and demons, delighting in this chance to turn their judgment outward.

She couldn't tell which version of herself she was now-- prize or refuse. Maybe neither, because she was no longer sitting in the front pew. She sat in the back. No, she wasn't sitting. She was on her knees on the cold, hard ground. The pew before her rose up, up, up to the dark and vaulted ceiling, the cross beams shaped like the straining, slender branches of the pines. She stared up at the ceiling and thought she could see stars through the slats in the wood.

Heat seared her cheeks, and she looked down as horror choked the scream that fought its way up her aching throat. The ground beneath her was crumbling, hardwood burning to cinder by the fire that raged below. She reached for the pew before her to clamber to her feet, but her hands were clasped together as if sewn, locked in the prayer position. Her knees were rooted to the ground as if they had melted into the varnish on the wood.

And then she looked up and all the noise and clamour of the collapsing earth fell silent. Jacob strode down the aisle between the pews, his eyes shadowed, his ivory skin glowing white as if the moon were shining on him. She looked up and, indeed, there was the moon-- full and bright, casting its splendor on the worst of God's creeping, crawling creatures.

Isobel sat in the crook of Jacob's right elbow, her arms looped around his neck. She rested her head on his shoulder, her own eyes as shadowed and fathomless as his.

Katherine's knees were locked to the floor, her hands melted together, her lips sewn shut. All she could do was kneel and weep silent, bloody tears as Jacob drew to a halt beside her.

"Why, Katherine?" he spoke, his voice echoing, so loud her head screamed from the pressure as it battered the inside of her skull. "Why do you reject God's will?"

You are not God's will!

She wanted to scream the words at him until the fire that burned her from below snatched him into its embrace. But she could not damn him, not while he held her daughter in his arms.

She fought to wrench her mouth open, her lips tearing at the seam that bound them shut, sharp pricks of pain stabbing the ravaged skin. When she spoke, it was not with defiance or vigor. It was a muffled, pitiful plea.

"Please," she whimpered, reaching for her daughter with clasped hands. "Please..."

Jacob's face split into an evil grin and he plucked Isobel away from his body, holding her by the back of her dress as he dangled her over the yawning chasm that had opened down the center of the church. The hell below coughed out a blistering belch of fire and darkness.

"Ma!" Isobel cried, grasping for her as her body swayed over the flames and darkness below. The earth trembled and groaned until Katherine could barely stay upright.

"Izzy," Katherine moaned, each syllable a monumental struggle against the vice that squeezed around her aching middle. "Izzy, no. No!"

"You've chosen this, Katherine," Jacob said, his glinting eyes meeting hers across the distance. "You've chosen sin. You've chosen darkness. You've chosen to watch her fall."