Chapter 4: Blood on the Prairie Road

His words sent a cold shiver through me. The others stared, half in awe, half in suspicion, like I was some kind of omen.

Then they divided up the flesh among themselves. Before they left, they bowed and said preachers ought to be merciful, and asked me to help with the bodies.

I felt my body stiffen, but then it moved on its own—expert, practiced. We stripped the meat from the corpses and tossed the remains to the wild dogs along the roadside. Hearts, livers, lungs, and kidneys went into the river. The clean white bones were ground to powder and buried beneath the statue of Christ in a church. I found myself reciting, “Hallelujah.”

The words tasted like ash in my mouth. I swallowed hard, a wave of nausea washing over me. Each ritual felt both familiar and alien, like I was trapped in a nightmare I’d only half-remembered.

Afterward, a ray of light shot down from the sky, filling my body. To Father Ambrose, it was a sign of merit. To me, it was blood-red and chilling, echoing with the cries of the wronged.

I screamed inwardly, “What’s happening to me?”

But Father Ambrose never answered, and the journey west continued.

The silence between us was a locked door. Every unspoken question weighed heavy on my chest.

5.

After three months on the road, we finally reached a place I remembered—Five Pines Hill. Except there was no hill, just endless grassland. The white horse carried us west, stopping at a ruined little church. Inside, an old preacher sat hunched, more skeleton than man.

The sun hung low, throwing long shadows over the prairie. The church’s roof had caved in, wildflowers poked up through the broken floorboards. The old preacher’s eyes glittered in the dim light—sharp, hungry, almost feral.

He looked up at me, mouth working but no words coming—he hadn’t spoken in so long he’d forgotten how. He rose, knelt before the cross, and scooped a ladle from a barrel. It looked like water, but I saw it was bright red blood.

The metallic tang filled my nostrils, and I had to fight down a wave of nausea. The old preacher’s hands shook as he drank, desperate and ashamed all at once.

Suddenly, his body convulsed, his breastbone jutting through his skin, blood soaking his robe. His bones thickened, his mouth let out a guttural growl, and then the bones encased his body. When the fit ended, he pulled a choir robe from a bundle. When he turned, he looked like a young preacher—face smooth as marble, eyes clear.

He pressed his hands together. “Hallelujah.”

His voice rang out, bright and pure, echoing through the ruins like Sunday morning bells.

I mimicked him, feeling a strange compulsion.