Page 8 of Of Faith and Fangs

She didn’t look up from the page. “I learned new songs.” She traced a line along the spine of the skeleton. “Did you know the Witch of Endor brought the ghost of Samuel back from the dead to talk to Saul? The Bible says so.”

“I know the story,” I said. “But that was a sin. Saul was punished for it.”

“Maybe he was just curious,” Mercy said, so softly I almost missed it. “Maybe he wanted closure. Maybe God punishes people for wanting too much.”

The silence between us grew thick, clotted with the sounds of the sanatorium: a distant cough, a footstep in the corridor, the faint clink of keys.

“Do you ever pray?” I asked.

Mercy laughed again, this time with genuine amusement. “Only when I want something I can’t have.”

I wished I could argue. But I’d prayed so many times for my mother’s suffering to end, and each time the only answer was more pain. My own faith felt like a wound that had healed over, leaving a numb scar behind.

Mercy’s head drooped, her breathing shallow. I watched her for a long time, afraid that if I blinked she’d vanish, or worse. When she finally drifted into sleep, I crossed to her bed and tucked the blanket around her. Her body was so light I thought it might float away if not for the weight of the disease inside her. On her nightstand, she’d placed a small bouquet of dried flowers—lavender, thistle, and something else I didn’t recognize. The stems were bound with a strip of cloth torn from her gown. I wondered if it was another spell, or just a memory of a world with color in it.

I returned to my bed, knelt, and prayed again. I prayed for Mercy, for her brother Edwin, for all the broken girls locked away in this blasted place. I prayed with everything I had left, which wasn’t much, but had to be enough.

“Lord,” I whispered, “make me a vessel of your mercy. Let me bring light to this darkness. Let me be more than I am.”

The room did not answer. The crucifix above my bed stared down with the same carved agony as ever. Outside, the wind moaned. The air inside grew heavy with the smell of blood and old flowers. I lay in bed fully clothed, too cold and too afraid to do otherwise. I lay awake for a long time, listening to Mercy breathe. Now and then she muttered words I could not understand, sometimes in English, sometimes not. I wondered if she was speaking to the dead, or if the dead were speaking through her. Sleep came at last, but it was no comfort. It came on as a fever—waves of heat and cold, shivering fits, the taste of rust at the back of my throat. I dreamed of black rivers and burning fields, of voices chanting in a language I did not know but half-recognized. Sometimes I heard my mother, sometimes Mercy, sometimes my own voice echoing back at me in a tone I did not trust.

At some hour deep in the night, I awoke with a start.

It was well into the night, and I was shivering in my sheets, trying to sleep through the moaning and screaming of the other patients. I must have been sleeping, because I jolted awake when Mercy stood beside my bed. “Sorry,” she whispered, her voice raspy. “Just trying to figure out how you manage to sleep through all this ruckus.”

I rolled my eyes, then reached to my ears and pulled out two wads of cotton.

Mercy smirked. “I have to say, that’s pretty smart.”

“Doesn’t work that well,” I said. “But it muffles the noise enough that I can sleep… a little…”

She looked at me, a girl only a year or two older than me, and asked, “Aren’t you afraid to die?” Her eyes, in the dim light, seemed to hold a flicker of recognition, but it was quickly lost in the haze of her illness.

“What’s there to be afraid of?” I asked.

“You know, death. It’s so… final.”

“I have my faith,” I said. “Don’t you believe?”

“I have my beliefs,” Mercy replied.

“Then why are you afraid?” I asked.

She shrugged through her shivers. “I mean, you can have faith. That’s all well and good. But how can you be certain of it—absolutely certain? Isn’t there any doubt at all?”

“Everyone has doubts,” I said. “But why dwell on the part of you that doubts? If I’m going to die, I’d rather die believing.”

“But what if your faith is wrong? What if your belief is misplaced?” Mercy asked.

I smiled. “Then at least I didn’t spend my last days in the world miserable and terrified.”

Mercy huffed. “Maybe that’s all I have left,” she said. “Maybe it’s my fear of dying that keeps me fighting, that keeps me alive.”

“You think fear will keep you alive? How many people die with fear?”

“Most people, I suppose.” She scratched the back of her head, a few loose hairs caught in her fingers.

I nodded. “I don’t need fear to fight for my life. Why do you?”

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