But I was interrupted again, several hours later. Muttering figures came with the setting of the sun, most in plain civilian clothing, jeans and jackets, creeping in before I was at full power and ready to race the wendigo hovering somewhere around the city. They came in a large group, combing my woods, one or two with flashlights. The fact that they all had crosses out and at the ready meant that this wasn’t an unrelated search for some lost kid. Someone had tattled.

I didn’t move. I heard no searchers on four legs sniffing around, and it didn’t seem that they had a way of zeroing in on me. If I stayed still I could go unnoticed, and after hearing them for many minutes I saw them blundering by left and right. I remained in my tree’s shadow with absolute silence, not even a breath to give me away. I thought that I might be able to turn a searcher who did chance upon the spot where I sat, dimming their vision or their memory or their will, hypnotizing them and shoving them along to report nothing unusual.

Then a man in white robes stomped out of the trees and pointed right at me. Shouts in French came, and the others followed, more flashlights clicking on and zeroing in.

Those white robes were a little painful, a little more than just clean white. I was reminded in some way of Deer Woman’s firefly aura, and guessed that this guardian wasn’t a human. The man was bearded and grey; his lips were grey; the eyes were milky grey, blind but able to see me easily. I noticed that there was a malnourished, bloodless look to his face and empty hands. In different clothing I would absolutely have thought him to be a vampire stepping out from a dozen films, but a Celtic cross was embroidered on his dazzling robes at his chest.

“I was hoping for two girls.”

My casual words gave everyone a stop. I listened hard, and I wasn’t just picking up sounds.

He’s not the one who buzzed the east and made the campus wards flutter …

Not strong enough, a dim light against that greater foul light …

But he hid here so close. How?

I collected more than these introductory sentences, taking and taking from the hesitant ring of men and women. I figured out how I had stayed hidden under their noses, and it was that old red Bible that had been close to my person this whole time. What happens when you put a positive charge next to a negative charge, and look at them both together at a distance? Looks like neutral nothingness. Thanks Marie.

“Anglais?” The robed, dead-looking man finally asked, breaking my psychic eavesdropping.

“Please.”

“You’ll get some quarter for letting the boys go.”

I still didn’t move. I sensed that this was the equivalent of being held at gunpoint, though the crosses held out were in lowered hands, unshaking hands. I guessed that this special guy in white gave them extra confidence.

“I’m gathering that you were worried that I was something much bigger and meaner.”

The man – the Old Christian, I suddenly knew to call him, taking his title from the others – strolled forward and then lowered himself on one knee, about three paces away from the shadow where I hid from the last of the day’s red light. That intricate weaving pattern stitched into his chest to make the Celtic cross was just bad enough to make me feel a little sunburned right now.

“You’re young. You don’t know what I am.” The Old Christian was smiling, showing teeth that had never been treated by a modern dentist.

“I’ve seen ghosts,” I replied. “You’re something else. You don’t have wings.”

There was a general sound from the group that could have been a suppressed chuckle.

“Not quite that good and pure. Do you believe in miracles?” He tried to intimidate me by using my full name, then giving the name of the United Church where I had been confirmed (quite against my will) at age thirteen. He asked if they had taught me properly there.

I kept my voice as calm as possible. “You’re still less surprising than Nanabozho. Are you a zombie?”

The crowd didn’t like that. But the Old Christian actually laughed.

“I thought I was, for a long time. I’m your opposite number in St. Peter’s Church, what I know the vampires in this land will call an ‘incorruptible’. When the Sun is high I’m nothing more than an index finger that will not rot, stored in a jar in a cupboard. I can come out at night, to meet the likes of you.”

“Do you make other appearances around your toes and skull, wherever they are?”

The Old Christian nodded, in absolute sincerity. “I got another finger down in Nova Scotia, actually. Most of the body parts said to be from old heroes in the Church aren’t all that, but it’s the thought that counts. There’s another of my kind in Europe who can manifest at the place that holds his skull – all three of them.”

I suddenly had to laugh. The Old Christian’s face remained relaxed and even gentle, but the voice grew some strength.

“You can shrug off or slice through the weak faith, the new faith, the cheap faith, the hypocritical faith, the Pharisee faith. That will trick you into thinking that you are above the touch of all faith. It is not so. St. George’s liturgy will not touch me, for I sang and drank and whored loudly in life, like the man these new Christians think they know. And I am not one of those sinister old virgins you can still strike down with human anger either.”

“Then I won’t try it.” And it was a true promise.

“Good.” Now the Old Christian straightened, getting to business. “Who is chasing you?”

I told him and the others about my brush past Sainte Clement, and the Trou du Diable, and my earlier warning from Marie about this being the land of the wendigo, and her particular dislike of this diamond ring on my finger.

“… ah.” The Old Christian knit his bloodless fingers together and bit an incorruptible knuckle. I sensed a ripple and shock and unhappiness spreading among the robed masses.

“You might want to switch out the crosses for dreamcatchers.” I was keeping my words light and cool, but it was an honest thought. The man leading this band seemed to command cooperation and honesty effortlessly.

“I’ll show you a better one.” The Old Christian got up and got one step closer to me. My eyes watered as that Celtic cross on his front seemed to be growing and flexing like living vines, and for a second I believed that it was changing, that the pattern was all one giant snake now coming to life, the primal snake that was more than just evil in the old faith, the deep faith. The snake gave knowledge of good and evil, of life and death. I had a terrific, awesome flash of insight – as if I had discovered that the largest pyramid in Egypt was itself just the top segment of a buried mega-pyramid, and whatever sculptures and carvings there were down there were not Egyptian or Sumerian or even Atlantean. We had forgotten so much, but what was down there had not forgotten us. Not at all.

“Remember this sign. I can draw only half of it.” Reaching to the earth the Old Christian’s cold finger drew a simple arc, and I was confused.

But my own reaching hand wasn’t. It moved on its own, steered perhaps by the ghosts of my grandparents and their parents and theirs back many ages, completing the second half, making the second arc to finish the sign of the fish, the ichthys, which is properly made by two people and not one in this fashion, the sign made when Christians met in secret as a tiny gang with dreams in the empire of Rome.

I will fear no evil, I will f

Silent white light filled the world. 

Chapter 24: N.D.E.