Free Ancient Eyes by David Niall Wilson Page A

shaking palsied grip he kept on his Bible, which he brought no closer to the vines or flowers of the graveyard than he had to the stone of the church itself. Something in the moment kept him quiet. Maybe it was the grim, solemn faces of the men who carried the casket. Maybe it was the dark, shawled and hooded silence of the women, or the whisper of the wind mocking them from the tree branches and filling in words where all of them disdained speech.
    Reverend Forbes didn't belong.   He knew it, they knew it, and whoever's idea it had been to invite him into their church, and their lives, regretted it. He couldn't wait to remove himself from the graveyard. He was ready to rush back to his own congregation with tales of the barbarians in the hills, the ancient evils that permeated their stone church, and the passing into darkness of all that was not born of his own mind.
    Abraham had heard stories when he'd grown older.   They were a different sort up in Friendly, California.   They had ceremonies and beliefs that were born of different blood.   Not younger or less deeply rooted, but very different. There were very few on the mountain with contact or kin in Friendly.   Many of their number had filtered down toward San Valencez, or further over the mountains into Nevada, or Arizona, but in those hills and mountains the roads separating one folk from another might as well have been on different planets.
    They laid his father in the grave gently, lowering him one slow inch at a time by ropes knotted firmly into eyelets at each corner of the crude coffin.   As they worked, they sang in very low tones, more a rumble of sound than a hymn. If they fell silent, there were echoes of their voices in the deep thunder of falling stones, or the soft brush of wind through trees. They sang in the tongue of the mountain, and it was over this that Reverend Forbes spoke the final words Abraham remembered.
    "Ashes to ashes, dust…"
    That pronouncement had been all Abraham could stand. Without a word he'd bolted from the graveyard, smashing one knee on the iron gate in passing. He cried out, and for a moment the Reverend Forbes had been silenced.
    Abraham hadn't seen what came next, but he knew the ritual. He knew the exquisitely slow process of returning the dead to the earth. He knew the words that would be spoken, both those that Reverend Forbes would use, and those that the family would speak. He knew what would be sprinkled into the dirt, and what would be buried with the dead.
    None of it made it any more real. He had seen the box, but he could not equate it with his father.   He heard the words and the moaning, keening song echo in his mind, but none of it was familiar. None of it rang true. None of it would make the slightest difference in the long run, because it could not bring back his father.
     
    Abe grew silent as the memory faded. There was more, but he couldn't force the memories into words that would make sense. Somehow, while he spoke, Kat had found a way to slip up under his arm and lay her head on his shoulder.   She'd listened quietly, not interrupting, or even moving, as far as he remembered.
    "What happened to the church?" she asked after a long, shared silence. "I mean, when your father died, who took over?"
    "No one, as far as I know," Abe shrugged.   "There were a few elders, but none of them was an educated man, and they all had families and responsibilities. Somehow, when one keeper passed on, there had always been another ready to take over.   It wasn't a ministry in the same sense as you'd find here."
    He drifted off again, just for a second.   In his mind he saw the old church as he'd last seen it. He saw the stems of dried, forgotten flowers, and he knew that his mother had been there often, to the church, and to his father's grave.   No one else went there. They all remembered—there was no way they could forget—but after Jonathan Carlson's death, and the flight of his son into the world beyond the