The Vengeance Quilt
By DeAnna Knippling
Copyright © 2011 by DeAnna Knippling
Published by Wonderland Press at Smashwords
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
If you received this story for free and you liked it, please consider making a donation at WonderlandPress.com.
***
Table of Contents:
***
A sequel story to Chance Damnation, but can be read in any order.
God’s work weighs on Sebastian, a new priest, harder than most. But dealing with demons is his penance, and God never makes a burden harder than you can carry. Or so he believes when the rivalry between two of his parishioners spirals into the supernatural. A Weird West tale.
In his own head, he wasn’t Father Vincent Paul; he was Sebastian Jennings, a murderer. He hadn’t meant to become a violent man. He grimaced at himself in the mirror: now there was a face that would inspire his parishioners to love God. He checked his teeth, smoothed down his hair, and smiled. Even worse.
It was an August Saturday evening in the year of our Lord 1960, so he said Mass in his green vestments. He used to take more pride in his robes than any woman over designer dresses; now it was one more sign of his falseness under the glory of God.
He stepped out of the changing room. His older sister, Peggy, was waiting outside the door. “Sebastian? There’s a problem downstairs.” She wore an apron and twisted a wet towel in her hands. One side of her stylish dress was black from coffee or dishwater.
“What is it?”
“Claire and Eileen are fighting over the quilt for the harvest festival.”
“You should have interrupted me.” He rushed down the basement stairs.
Claire, a small woman with mousey hair, shouted, “That quilt doesn’t belong to you!”
Eileen, a much larger woman dressed in a tent, shouted back, “I paid for it!”
Claire Christiansen was married to Frank Christiansen, one of Don Hart’s hired hands. Eileen Hart was his wife. The two women stood in the kitchen with the service window shut, as if that would make them less audible to the people drinking coffee or the kids gaping from their catechism class doors. Sebastian held up one hand to keep Peggy from trying to smooth things over; he wanted to hear what the fight was about.
“You said the money was a donation!” Claire shrieked.
Frank Christiansen came toward the kitchen door, but Sebastian held him back, on hand on his chest.
“I hired you to make me a quilt!”
“You are the most selfish—I’m not going to say! I’ll give you back the money after we auction it off.”
“It’s my quilt!”
“Then just take it, you cow!”
“I’ll have your husband fired!”
“I just told you that you could have that damned quilt!”
Eileen noticed the others outside the kitchen door. Her blue eyes creased up at the corners. “You heard that, Father!”
“That’s enough, ladies,” he said. “You’re scaring the children.”
Claire turned around. She had a coffee cup and a towel in her hands; she put them down and walked toward him, her heels clicking precisely on the linoleum.
She glared at him with eyes so dark as to seem black. “There’s a commandment about those who bear false witness.” She went in the ladies’ room, slammed the door, locked it, then turned on the faucet, high-blast.
Eileen leaned back on a counter with a grin on her face.
Sebastian said, “I understood the quilt was a donation as well.”
Eileen said, “It’s my quilt. I paid for it.”
“Just for the materials?” Sebastian said. “Or for the time she spent on it as well?”
Eileen frowned. “That ain’t worth nothing. She owes me for lots of things. Milk.”
“I’d like to see an agreement for payment for her work, typed up and signed by both of you. And it would be very disappointing if I heard that Frank was fired over a disagreement between a couple of ladies.”
Eileen turned up her nose and lumbered out of the kitchen. She climbed the stairs slowly, dragging on the rail. “He could get fired for lots of reasons,” she shot over her shoulder, just as she turned the corner and went out of sight.
“Where’s Don?” Sebastian asked Peggy.
“Outside, smoking his pipe,” she said as Frank went back to his table, shaking his head. “I tried to get him to come in, but you know men. They don’t want to get involved.”
The corner of Sebastian’s mouth twitched.
Peggy shook her auburn curls. “Sorry, Father Vincent Paul. Ever since you started wearing black, I don’t know what to think of you.”
“Me, either,” he said.
Sunday went fine, and Monday he slept in late. When he woke up, he couldn’t remember whether he had enough hosts to last the next month, so he decided to check. He was out of coffee in the house, anyway. He wasn’t about to try to prepare for Bible study without coffee. Those ladies were sharp. Claire, especially, reminded him of himself in seminary; she chased down technicalities like a dog after a rabbit.
He unlocked the back door of the basement and flicked on the lights. He made it about three steps before he stopped. Nobody should have to face this before coffee.
The basement was blue with mold, except for a few steps of the green carpet on the stairs, including the lights and ceiling tiles. The smell made him sneeze and his eyes water. He cursed, made a mental note to confess his cursing later, and backed up the stairs. He put out the lights and locked the door behind him.
First he took off his shoes, dropped them in a bucket, and filled it with bleach water, which probably wasn’t good for the leather. Then he called Jim Blackthorn, his deacon. His daughter had had tonsillitis and been up to the hospital for the last few days.
Jim picked up the phone. “Hello? James Blackthorn speaking.”
“Don’t go into the Gray Hill church, Jim. The basement is covered with mold. Just covered. I’ll call the extension office in a minute. How’s Celeste Marie doing?”
“She’s sore, but she’ll be all right. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
“Good to hear,” Sebastian said. “I’d come and visit, but I don’t want to make her sick.”
The County Extension Office promised to send someone out. Sebastian told them where he kept the spare key, in case he got called out. Then he remembered Claire and Peggy were supposed to clean the church that afternoon. He warned Peggy first. When he called the little Christiansen house, nobody answered, so he crossed his fingers and called the Harts.
A man answered, which was odd; it was August, and he should have been out harvesting wheat. “Hello? Hart Ranch.”
“Father Vincent Paul. I’m trying to reach Claire and tell her not to come to the church.”
“Father,” the man croaked. “Come right away. It’s Eileen. She’s doing poorly.”
“Certainly,” he said. “But will you pass on my message to Claire? The church is full of mold, and I don’t want anyone getting into it.”
“Mold,” the man agreed. “There’s mold all over the damned place.” He hung up.
When someone was doing poorly, you drove them to the hospital; you didn’t call the priest. Unless it was too bad not to bother with. Sebastian fetched his last rites bag. Then he raised the carpet in the closet, removed a section of flooring, and pulled out a lock box, unlocking it with a key he wore with a medal of St. Jude. Inside was a simple traveler’s Bible. He riffled through the pages with one thumb. The ink, swirls of brown symbols, was still intact. He added the book to the bag.
He drove over the hill and gasped; Hart Ranch shimmered blue in the late-summer sun. The shelter belt dangled with blue streamers. Haystacks rose blue out of blue drifts. Fields of blue wheat scattered blue fog. He stopped at the edge of the mold; part of him knew he’d already come too far, but he had a hard time forcing himself to drive forward anyhow.
He knocked on the door of the big farmhouse. Don Hart, tall and skinny and a good deal older than Eileen, opened the door. “Sorry, Father. Would you mind taking your shoes off?”
Sebastian slipped off his shoes and washed his hands in the sink.
The living room was full of a quilt frame stretched with the most colorful, delicately-pieced quilt he’d ever seen. Claire was stitching the top and bottom of the quilt together with a fine pattern of flowers. She had a foul look on her face.
Don passed by her without looking and went into his bedroom.
Eileen was lying in bed with her mouth open. Only two days had passed since he’d seen her last. Her gray skin had slid off her cheeks and into her neck; the blankets covered a good deal less flesh than they would have on Saturday.
“Has she been to the doctor?” Sebastian asked.
“Won’t go,” Don said.
Eileen’s breath rattled as she struggled to suck air past something in her throat.
“She was supposed to bury me,” Don said.
Sebastian pulled up a chair. “Eileen, Can you hear me? It’s Father Vincent Paul. You need to go to the hospital.”
Another rattle. Eileen’s head rolled back and forth. No.
“This mold is going to kill you,” he said.
No.
Sebastian sighed. “Do you want to make your last confession?”
Yes.
He chased Don out, started the rites, and asked her whether she had anything to confess.
She whispered, “That bitch is killing me.”
Sebastian leaned back. “You can’t mean that, Eileen.”
The fingers on her left hand curled toward him. He leaned toward her.
“Deal with the devil,” she hissed.
If anyone would use last rites to accuse someone of murder, it was Eileen; nevertheless, he was shocked. Sebastian placed the host, which was the kind that fell apart and could be swallowed without chewing, on her dry tongue. He touched the chalice of watered wine to her lips.
He finished the rites and made the sign of the cross over her. Then he backed out of the room, closed the door, and said to Don, leaning on the wall, “May I use your phone? I’ll be just a minute, and then I’d like to sit with her again.”