Page 17 of Of Faith and Fangs

My father hovered in the periphery, always just out of reach. He made tea and brought it to me, the cup rattling gently in its saucer. I sipped it because he expected me to, not because I wanted it. He asked how I slept. I lied. He asked if I’d like to talk. I shook my head, or pretended not to hear. He waited for a sign—some clue that his daughter was still somewhere beneath the mask—but I couldn’t give him that comfort.

I spent the morning in the kitchen, but my mind was still in the graveyard. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the heart burning in the bowl, the ash swirling in water, the way Edwin’s lips had smudged the rim of the glass. I heard Mercy’s scream echoing off stone and frozen dirt. I saw her face, first alive, then dead, then something else altogether.

By noon, I was sure I would never speak again. It was like the feeling I’d had after I saw the man bite Mercy, but compounded a hundred times. Maybe I had gone mute, like Nathanael Forsyth, a nice young man from the church who’d returned home after serving in the U.S. Army. He’d been in what they called the Wounded Knee Massacre. Physically, Nathanael came back in one piece. But he left his soul on the battlefield. As the story went, they’d slaughtered over three hundred Indians that day. It changed the poor boy. He’d never be the same again—and he hadn’t said more than a few words since his return.

I knew now a little what that must’ve been like. To see something so terrible that it sends your soul into hibernation, if not into hell. I wasn’t much more than a walking, cleaning corpse. Not unlike that monster Mercy used to be—for a few nights, anyway.

Though I suspected she wasn’t scrubbing dishes or sweeping floors.

My father would not be denied.

He found me at the table, elbows propped on the wood, hands covering my face.

“Alice,” he said, his tone gentler than I remembered him ever being, “you haven’t touched your breakfast.”

I looked down at the plate. The eggs had gone cold and congealed, yellow pooling at the edges like the fat on cooling broth.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. My voice sounded strange in the room, as if it belonged to someone else.

He sat across from me, folding his hands in front of him like he did when counseling parishioners in distress. “I realize last night was… difficult,” he began, choosing his words with the caution of a man laying powder near an open flame. “But you did well, Alice. You did as the Lord commands. You brought comfort to the dying, and peace to the living.”

I felt a wave of nausea, sharp and sour. “Did I?” I asked. “Did I bring peace? Or did I just watch a girl get torn to pieces and then help her brother drink what was left?”

His face pinched at the memory, but he did not look away. “It was necessary. You saw what she had become. You saw what was at stake.”

I laughed, thin and brittle. “Did I, father? Because from where I stood, it looked like a room full of grown men taking orders from a witch and then pretending it was God’s work.”

He flushed, color rising in two sharp spots on his cheeks. “Do not blaspheme, Alice.”

“I’m not blaspheming,” I said, my voice trembling with something like anger, maybe, or just exhaustion. “I’m just trying to understand. You tell me witchcraft is evil, but when there’s no other hope, we run to it like a dog to its vomit. You say we trust in God’s plan, but the minute things get ugly, we grab our shovels and our knives and do whatever it takes to save ourselves. What’s the difference? Is it only witchcraft if someone else is doing it?”

He sat back, folding his arms. The lines around his mouth deepened. “You have every right to feel what you feel. No one should have to see what you saw last night. But you need to understand: desperation drives men to do things they otherwise would not. Mr. Brown has lost his wife, his daughter—he was not about to lose his son as well. Would you have let the boy die?”

I thought of Edwin, his face as pale as milk.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe that would have been kinder.”

He looked at me for a long time. “God is good and gracious, Alice. He forgives those who repent. Even when we act out of fear.”

I stared at the table, tracing the wood grain with my thumbnail. “Do you think Mercy wanted forgiveness? Do you think she wanted anything from us at all?”

He exhaled, slow and deliberate. “I think she was lost. Lost to her pain, lost to her grief. I think you tried to help, and that’s all anyone could have asked of you.”

I shook my head, unable to agree. “You don’t know what that witch was really up to. You really expect she did what she did to help a man who belongs to an order that wants her dead?”

He frowned, but didn’t answer right away. “You’re right to be suspicious. Moll is dangerous, and not to be trusted. But sometimes God uses the wicked to accomplish His purposes. We see it in scripture—Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, the Roman centurions.”

“And you think God is using Moll Dwyer?” I asked. “Or are we just too weak to admit we’ve lost control?”

He didn’t answer that, either. Instead, he reached across the table and took my hand. His was warm and rough, the skin callused.

“I’m proud of you,” he said softly. “Even if you don’t see it.”

I wanted to pull my hand away, but I let it rest in his.

“Sometimes,” he said, “God calls us to walk through fire. But He does not leave us there.”

I thought of the grave, the ash, the scream. I did not feel delivered. I felt scorched to the bone.

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