When the family reached the altar, the baby began to cry. He wriggled in his mother’s arms, and she tried to soothe him while straightening his christening gown. He pedaled his legs in protest, kicking her in the chest until one of his white socks came loose and fluttered to the crimson carpet.
Una stared at the sock. It looked like a giant’s tooth. One of Goliath’s, perhaps, knocked out by David’s stone.
Una imagined thethwapof David’s slingshot as his stones rocketed through the air, catching the giant in the nose, the eye, the cheek. She could almost hear the crunch of bone and the sonic boom of the giant’s body as it crashed to the ground.
He probably hadn’t died right away. He’d probably lain there in the dust, his mouth open in anguish, his broken teeth floating over his tongue until a stream of blood deposited them on the ground by his shattered face.
In the front of the sanctuary, the baby wailed. He was in the minister’s arms now, enduring the shock of water on his forehead. Congregants tittered in amusement as the water fanned out over his skull, darkening his hair and soaking the collar of his gown.
“Robert Phillip Peterson,” intoned the minister. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
When the rites were completed and the boy was returned to his mother, red-faced and squalling, the organist struck up the opening chords of “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”
As the family returned to the back of the sanctuary with as much speed and dignity as possible, Una looked at the words in her hymnal.
“All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.”
As the second stanza began, Una’s gaze strayed to the stained-glass window to her right. It was a portrait of a robed man with a shepherd’s crook. The Good Shepherd, surrounded by his sheep, had stopped under the shelter of a tree to pray. The shepherd’s hands were clasped in front of his chest. His chin was lifted to the heavens, and his eyes were fixed on a point somewhere above the tree branches. Behind his head was a disc of light. Una thought it was meant to be a halo, but to her, it looked like a setting sun. Below the disc was a body of water made of graduating blues.
The shepherd wore dull colors, so it was the golden disc and the striations of blue that captivated the viewer. The lightest blue was closest to the shore. The deep, dark blue was right below the sun. The wavy pieces of glass gave the impression of a current, and the longer Una stared at the swath of midnight blue, the more she wondered if something was in the water, watching the shepherd. Waiting to take him unawares.
Next to her, Kristofer sang the chorus in his rich baritone.
“All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.”
Why, Lord?Una thought as she turned the page of her hymnal. The music notes bobbed across the creamy paper like black jellyfish.Why did you make monsters?
After Svana was lost to the ocean, Una’s mother found comfort in scripture. Una preferred Amma’s stories. In her worlds, Svana’s bones weren’t stuck in the sand, down in a cold, lightless place. She was with the fairies, dancing on rainbows and making flower crowns.
Una’s gaze shifted to the window showing a crucified Jesus. His face was mournful. A crown of thorns dug into his flesh.
Mrs. Smith’s yard is full of thorns.
Una had to do something to keep the children away from that house. The woman in the photograph, the woman with the black eyes, had left her mark on that place. It was cursed. It was full of shadows. And the woman inside was one of those shadows.
Una had never seen this woman, but she’d felt her dark presence for years. Now, after all this time, Mrs. Smith was interacting with the people around her. She wanted to hire the Scott children. She wanted to attend Charles’s party.
Monsters could wear human faces, Una knew. She needed to look at Mrs. Smith. She needed to see her eyes. She had to do this for the children.
She turned back to the window of the Good Shepherd, and this time, when she took a long, hard look at the sheep, she saw that their eyes were black with fear. Their shepherd wasn’t paying attention, and they were in danger.
Whatever was in the water was coming for them, and by the time the shepherd realized what was happening, it would be too late to save them all.
12
Jill
Jill didn’t want to go to the regatta.
Ever since she and her friends had snuck into a showing ofJawslast summer, her fear of being on asailboat had intensified.
