Victoria cast a worried look at her supervisor. “It seems like limited individuals can use these plants to pull off whatever trick is at hand. If it is the whole camp, I believe it is something else. These plants are probably toxic.”
Cooper gulped and stared at the two girls in their work.
“If that day ever comes, promise you will not fly,” Victoria said to the girls.
“We’re happy to fly,” Abigail said. “It’s the day all of us hope for. It’s the day when all the people who made us unseen will be left behind. We’ll get to live with the gods.”
“Nothing about these plants seems like they are related to someone moving 20 miles in a few seconds.” Victoria peered at the nearest plants. “If this false god and two other people are in the house, we stand a good chance of breeching for an arrest and interrogation.”
The phone rang with the metallic rattle of an ancient landline rotary set.
Cooper raised an eyebrow but went right to the device. He picked it up.
“The Enlightened One requests your presence,” an old man’s voice said as soon as the call was active. His throat was hoarse but carried a hint of authority.
“I’m a Reserve Deputy with Homeland Defense,” Cooper said. “Did you mean to speak to me or the girls?”
“Come at once, lawman,” the old man said. “The Enlightened One wills it.”
“Am I to assume you’re the one called High Voice, who speaks on behalf of your deity?” Cooper furrowed his brow.
“Yes,” High Voice said. “Do as the Enlightened One says or we’ll execute the prisoner. Your bald friend.”
A click signaled the end of the call.
“We’ve been summoned,” Cooper said. He readied his pistol and waited for Victoria to take position behind him as he left the building through the front door.
A short walkway with a pair of parked pickup trucks separated the farm house and the barn, but a dozen of the camp’s residents were present with walking sticks held upright as if bearing witness to an important moment.
“This feels like a trial,” Victoria said.
They pair walked before the row of residents and toward the run-down white farmhouse with chipped paint. A spacious porch was littered with old chairs and faded cardboard boxes. The suspect they were looking for came out the farmhouse door in his yellow jacket and stood next to a weathered lawn chair on the porch.
“All hail the Enlightened One, for he brings us life!” The thief stood tall and pounded his chest in affirmation of the claim.
The gathered residents copied the shout and gesture.
“Please lower your weapons,” Gift Bringer, the thief and suspect, said. “It’s pointless to think you’re in control.”
The two agents put away their firearms and continued toward the porch. They made it to within ten yards of the fence before a pair of men with hunting rifles moved in beside them. Their weapons were trained on the agents’ chests.
“That’s far enough,” Gift Bringer said. “We now welcome, for the first time to be seen for many of us, the Enlightened One himself.”
The farm house door opened and an old man in a black robe stepped through. His steps were calculated as a glistening tentacle of black flesh was wrapped around his neck and another around his waist.
The old man cleared the door and his lack of obstruction revealed a mass of rags and leather scraps that walked as if it was a massive ogre of a person buried in a ramshackle cloak. There were footsteps from the entity upon the wooden deck of the porch, and though they sounded like someone barefoot, the flesh sounded as if it was tougher and larger than a normal foot, but without bones to give the familiar hit of a heel and toes. The footfalls instead were individual sets of impacts, always in sets of nine. The entity cleared the door, which swung shut behind it, before it laid itself as a mass of coverings in the middle of the spacious porch.
High Voice and Gift Bringer both sat down in old chairs.
“Agents Joe and Vic, the Enlightened One hears all and sees all which is witnessed by all of us here,” High Voice said. “He knows of your plan to arrest Gift Bringer. This despite the Water Keepers testifying to you how he has helped the unseen of your malignant society.”
More residents arrived on foot with sticks at the ready. A third guard showed up with a shotgun and took position behind the agents.
A pickup truck drove up from the gate and through the field and parked near the other vehicles. The large woman in her bear pelts got out and four men in the truck payload unloaded a fifth man in a brown coat with a burlap sack over his head and his hands bound. The captured man was hauled beside the agents and his head covering removed as a fourth guard with a shotgun took position behind them.
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