Hallowed Ground by David Niall Wilson, Steven & Wilson Savile Page B

she might fall, or just lean there, letting the wagon support her weight as she drifted off into oblivion.
    From very far off, she heard a sound.   It was very faint, and she thought maybe it came from behind her, but then it shifted.   It came from the wagon…from the shadows.   It was the voice of a child, a newborn, crying.   It was the voice of regret, the voice of loneliness and pain.   She gripped the wagon so tightly her fingers grew white from the strain and lifted her leg so that her knee found the first step.   She saw this would not work, that the next step – the floor of the wagon – was too high, and with a groan of pain, she lifted her leg again and brought her foot up to the step, bending at the waist.   The crying redoubled, and she cried out.
    With a lunge that spent every bit of her remaining strength, she clawed her way up and over the lip of the wagon's rear door, spilling onto the floor.   There was almost no light, but it was enough.   Ahead, to her left, was a rough mattress, covered with dark blankets.   She crawled to it, scraping her knees and her hands on the rough plank floor, dragged herself onto the bedding, and closed her eyes.   The crying faded slowly, as if moving away from her.   She dropped into fitful dreams, chasing the sound and yearning for her child.
    Balthazar stood at the rear of the wagon, watched her just for a moment, silhouetted in the moonlight, and then gently closed the wagon door, cutting off the night.

Chapter Fourteen
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    Colleen Daisy Tranter woke in darkness.
    There were things that needed to be done, things, she was sure, that needed to be said, but she wasn’t in a mood for doing or saying.   She lay in the darkness and tried to get her bearings.   When she'd first come under the influence of Silas Boone, she'd been young, and pretty, a girl of only eight years.   She'd also been afraid of the dark.   Nothing about Silas Boone, or the life he'd given her, had provided a reason to let go of that fear.   Some fears were worth holding onto.   It didn’t matter that she was twenty-three, not eight, or that the years had stolen her beauty.   She hadn’t felt pretty for a long time.   The darkness had become a constant companion, fuelled by her imagination and full of horrors just beyond her sight.
    She lay still, listening and remembering; the world moved around her but she was removed from it.   The sounds of the darkness were far from comforting.   Still, she listened to the unfamiliar grunting and sighing of the Deacon’s flock as they moved about their labors.   There were those more comfortable working, and living, by night.   They worked to the sound of the lonely caws of the crows, a melancholy song if ever there was one, and to the distant ghosts of music and laughter far away on the other side of Rookwood.   She heard all of this, and she listened, but she captivated by the voices of the Deacon’s freaks.
    It wasn’t just the darkness, or the strange dislocated sensation she'd felt since awakening that frightened her now.   It was where she was and the knowledge of who she was with.   Her thoughts returned to The Deacon . . . she felt the ghost of his touch on her breast.   It was the least sexual of contacts she had ever experienced.   And yet . . . and yet it had gone deeper than physical contact.   He had had been inside of her, reached into her soul.   That was the only way she could think of it.   He had reached into her soul and he had healed it, somehow.   She didn’t understand, but on some instinctive level she knew understanding wasn't necessary.
    What was important was that she had answered the holy man’s call.   She remembered the incense and the smoke, and some of the words, the Deacon telling the congregation that she walked in the darkness – how right that had sounded to her - and most of all, the