Sweet Things Dying - Chapter XXIX

In which Rev. Bloom delivers a shocking sermon....

XXIX

The chalked words on the placard ran with milky tears under the cold drizzle:

Friday Evening Sermon:

“On the Death of the Innocents”

Rev B.B. Bloom

7 pm

Cole stood at the top of the church path, reading the smeared words over and over. Then he turned and gazed down the pathway, past the fallen leaves and the patches of frost, to the group of policemen huddled beneath the glare of the streetlamp. The police van and a hired four-wheeler stood alongside the curb. Streaks of rain and crawling mist circled the lamplight.

Quinn stood amongst the policemen, one hand on the shoulder of Henrietta Bloom beside him. Her face was downturned, buried in a handkerchief; even from where Cole stood, he could see her body tremble, not with cold but with fear and grief. He could not hear, could only guess, what Quinn muttered into her ear.

Small fingers took Cole’s hand. From his side, Milly looked up. Her cheeks were flushed and her long, golden braids glistened with damp.

“Are we to stand in the rain all night, Mr. Cole?”

“You wish to go inside?” he asked. “I thought you might like to await your mother.”

“I’ve waited long enough,” she said. “Besides, it would seem when I act, she is soon persuaded to follow.”

Cole smiled. “You have been brave, Milly.”

“As have you. You had no reason to listen to me, to go against my father, but your persistence has brought me some peace.”

“I perceived there was more than you were telling – I had to keep going. For you and for Heather.”

“And for my mother,” she added.

            “You feel comfortable with her?” he asked.

            “I do. More than ever. Shouldn’t I?”

There was nothing in her expression to suggest she knew anything more – nothing to hint that she even suspected her mother may have been the one to put Heather out of her misery. Cole decided he would say nothing. He was certain, after all, that if Henrietta Bloom had in fact done it, she’d only done it as a final desperate act of love. Just as turning the police on to her husband – knowing that he was now sinking his perverse claws into Milly – was yet another act of love for the one girl she had yet to fail.

“Yes, Milly,” he said. “You should. I trust your instincts.”

She wrapped her arms around him, squeezed her face into his chest. He patted her head.

“How wonderful, Mr. Cole. You have just praised me like I am a little dog.”

“I have trouble seeing children as anything better.”

She sighed. “Let’s just go inside.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It is near half-past seven. My father is surely wondering why we are not present. And I wish to see him before….”

Cole nodded and opened the door. “After you.”

The vestibule was close and warm. Cole removed his hat, turned down his collar. From beyond the heavy curtain Reverend Bloom’s words rushed like a storm-swollen river. Milly paused and listened. Her eyes were wide and staring, but looked inward. Cole removed the damp cape from her shoulders but she didn’t notice.

Then he swept back the curtain.

Bloom was on the pulpit. Hundreds of candles flared and fluttered around him, casting him in an orange glow and throwing his huge, spectral shadow on to the walls and ceiling behind the altar. His body swivelled with his great head, his eyes sweeping the audience as his arms rose and fell with each vibrant word that poured from his lips. His voice was thunder within the cavern of the nave. Even from across the church the sweat on his brow and the fire in his cheeks shimmered.

Cole and Milly stepped into the shadowed recesses of the nave, near the back row of pews. Bloom didn’t notice them right away. He was too lost in his passionate admonishment over the modern loss of traditional values.

Milly whispered: “His words are so true, but they no longer hold any truth coming from him.”

“Just a girl,” Cole remarked, “but already you notice what most adults fail to.”

He looked around. The pews were very nearly full. Many of Bloom’s flock wore black armbands as Bloom did, to show their sympathies to a man who did not deserve them. All were attuned to his every word, heads bobbing in agreement to each phrase, and lips punctuating, “Amen!” with every sentence Bloom spat from his lips.

“Our morals have eroded,” the reverend stated. “We all too easily give into the pleasures of personal temptation to the sacrifice of God’s glory.”

“Amen!” called a haggard woman.

“Amen,” agreed a roughened man.

“We do indeed,” muttered Cole. He started down the centre aisle. Milly waited by the entryway.

A pause. Yes! Bloom had stopped, arms frozen mid-flail. Candlelight flared off his spectacles, hiding the fire that flared behind them as his gaze settled on the centre aisle – on the lone man who approached the pulpit.

Bloom licked his lips. A croak escaped from between them.

Confused, his flock began to look about. What had caught the reverend’s attention, thrown him off? Who was the late comer who so rudely disrupted the sermon?

Then Bloom swivelled and flailed and bellowed once more, like a carnival automaton who’d just been fed a penny to continue with its clockwork machinations. He didn’t lose a beat. More fervour came into his words, though as he spoke and his head turned, those blazing spectacles stayed fixed on one point.

Movement came from the front pew on Cole’s right. Jasper Pearson stood, adjusted his waistcoat and armband and marched into the centre aisle. The toes of his boots met with Cole’s.