Knight for the Covenant of Everlasting

David’s First Mission

by E. J. Ruek

Sipping coffee, the cafe’s complementary paper beside his plate, David calculated. What the job paid would get him on his feet again, even if he only worked it for a couple of months. His eye traveled down the columns looking for other options, but kept straying back to that particular ad.

$1000/delivery, 1 delivery/wk guaranteed. Need working car, driver’s license, clean record. Apply in person, 3227 Kingsley Avenue.

A car, a driver’s license and a clean record–he had those. So did just about everybody else. He folded the paper and shoved it back where he’d gotten it from the corner of the counter. Draining his cup, he stood and left enough cash beside his plate for the bill and a small tip.

Outside, the fog had burned off. The day was bright, a paradox of sunshine and ice-cold breeze. Heading for his ’94 Subaru, he dug for his keys. With the keys came his change, the sound of coins dropping, rolling, one with a particular telling richness, stopping him dead in his tracks. Quarters, dimes and the rest, including his lucky gold piece, skittered and bounced away, many rolling beneath nearby vehicles. “Damn it.”

Stooping down, David picked up most, but had to lay almost flat beneath various cars to get the rest. His lucky piece, the heaviest, was missing, though. His eye searched carefully, methodically, until he spied it. It had rolled behind him, coming to rest beneath the front tire of a Lexus parked beside the cafe’s entrance. Relieved, he stepped over to the curb and snapped it up to shove it back down, deep inside his jean’s front pocket. As he did, his eye caught on the paper box that held the daily with the ad. “What the hell,” he muttered, and, fishing out two quarters, careful that the gold piece didn’t come, too, he bought himself a copy. It wouldn’t hurt to try.

At the next gas station, he bought a map of the city. On it, he located Kingsley and drove out to the advertised address. What David expected to find was a business; what he found, instead, was a church. Letting the engine die, he sat and stared.

It was an old church, and big, reminiscent of a time when ornamentation and stained glass were standard architecture. The building was a rich, dark red, its brick stained by years of weather. Moss grew down the gutters–stone gutters. Big trees fronted the building inside a tall, wrought iron, ivy-covered fence, a fence that surrounded the entire structure and its grounds. There was a cemetery to one side that stretched as far as he could see, the whole of it well-kept with old headstones, some big and ornately carved. Many were noticeably tipped by time and the roots of trees–huge trees that dotted the rolling green. Elms, maples and giant oaks lined cobbled paths that wove between the headstones. They hemmed the boundary.

David was immediately uncomfortable. Churches and he didn’t get along very well.

Turning the key in the ignition, the car coughed over just short of stalling. He was just sliding it in gear when a shadow crossed his vision and, simultaneously, there came a tapping on his window. He jerked his head around in time to see the knuckles of a hand knock once more, the arm and body behind that hand encased in black. Then a face leaned down to smile at him.

It was a kindly face. Again the knuckles rapped insistently, and David rolled the window down. “Yes?”

“You came in answer to my classified?” The voice was deep and resonant, with a touch of the gravel of age.

Reluctantly, David nodded. “A mistake,” he said.

“Oh, surely not,” the man said. “There are no mistakes.”

Flushing with embarrassment, David shook his head. “I’m not the church-going–”

“You don’t need to be,” the man said briskly. Warm brown eyes looked steadily into David’s, the lines around them crinkling merrily. “You only need a car, a license, and a clean record. That’s all. Do come in.”

David’s car door opened, the priest or pastor, or whatever he was, sweeping wide a welcoming hand. “It really is best that you aren’t a parishioner,” he said. “It makes you much less vulnerable.”

Turning off the sputtering engine, David pulled the key as he reset the brake. Slowly, he got out.

“Come,” the man said, and, meekly, David followed. He felt at once shy and wary, yet strangely compelled to obey.

Inside the church, the man led him through to a largish office, then offered him his choice of chairs, one red, one green, both leather upholstered. The chairs sat angled before a large wooden desk. The man took a seat behind it, urging David to likewise sit. David took the green chair.

“Your name?” the man asked, picking up an expensive-looking pen–black with gold embellishments.

“Ah…David Knight,” he answered, not meaning to.

“All right, David. Here is your first assignment,” the man said, scratching something on a pad. “It’s on Willow Street, the Widow Farley’s house. 7845 is the address, and you’ll find the key inside the pot to the right of the doorway. It’s beneath the ceramic frog.”

“Ah….”

“Here is the necessary paperwork should someone challenge your right to enter.”

The man handed across the slip of paper with the address and a folded piece of parchment. David found his hand accepting it without realizing that he’d even reached.

“And here is the church phone number and my cell number in case you need them.”

Again David’s hand accepted.

“My name is Lawrence Colter, and this envelope–” The man held up an embossed, white linen envelope, his long, elegant fingers deftly opening the gold-lined flap to slide in a swath of bills. David saw the number one-hundred on the corner of the foremost. “…Holds your first stipend, which you may collect when you return with Mrs. Farley.”

Colter slipped the envelope between a book and a green marble bookend, the whiteness of the paper stark in contrast. The gilt embossing of a crest and a name, Church of the Covenant of Everlasting, burned itself into David’s memory.

David became aware that he was sitting up…leaning forward. He came cognizant, as if waking to a splash of ice cold water on his face. “Return with…,” he said, his voice a strange echo in his ears. A chill ran down his back–mice feet.

“Yes.” The man smiled. “Return with the Widow Farley,” Colter said. “That is your job.”

Lawrence Colter rose and extended his hand. “Good luck,” he said as David watched his own hand reach to shake the other’s as if to seal agreement. Colter’s other hand held out what looked to be a small, black leather book wrapped with a silver chain. “And you’ll need this,” he said.

Obediently, David took it.

* * *

Located on The Heights, Willow Street was a quiet, curving, well-paved avenue that was lined with elms, not willows. David parked in front of an ivy-clad wall where a brass plaque read 7845. His mind was confused. His eyes stared at the black leather book beside him on the passenger seat, its silver chain glinting in the sunlight that angled through the windshield. A small talisman hung off one side that David hadn’t seen when he’d laid the book there. The talisman was a peace sign from the ’60s.

David didn’t remember driving, though he did remember leaving the church, Lawrence Colter standing in the doorway, framed by the glow of the church interior. The man’s confidence in him had been palpable. That confidence was still a comfortable warmth inside his chest. Yet David felt a stranger to himself, to his car, to the moment. He sat as if lost, wondering how and why he came to be working for a man he didn’t know, who ran an institution that he’d never trusted.

A car drove past startling David from his reverie. Guiltily, he looked around, then, sucking up his nerve, he mentally shook himself and turned the key. The car purred to life, the engine turning over smoothly, instantly, no cough or threat of stalling. Putting it in gear, he nudged the gas and turned in the drive, steering slowly up the smooth, black curve of asphalt between beds of sleeping roses and azaleas. When he reached the house itself, he parked by a dry fountain, then cautiously got out. He left the keys in the ignition, something completely against his habits. He took the book and folded piece of parchment.

The two-story Victorian-era house was large, white, and decorated all around with modest gingerbread. A broad sweep of stairs climbed the foundation to a white-columned porch. All around stood tall, gracious elms and oaks, the grounds well-kept despite the fact that last fall’s leaves had never been raked up. Whoever lived here cared for the place.

Tapping on the door, he waited for someone to answer. When no one came, he stepped back, taking in the curtained windows, the dusty scatter of debris upon the porch, the silence. No one lived here. Lawrence Colter had given him the wrong address.

He was halfway turned, his foot descending to the first step when, from the corner of his eye, he caught movement. The curtains shifted.

He looked, his head darting, eyes riveted to the swaying drift of sheers. “Hello?” he called. “I’m here to collect Mrs. Farley?”

No one answered.

He waited, but no one came.

Frowning, David again stepped up to the door and knocked. “Hello? I’m here to see Mrs. Farley? Mr. Colter sent me from the Covenant of Everlasting…the church?”

A breeze stirred leaves down on the lawn, swirling them around in a miniature whirlwind. The trees soughed. More mice feet crawled down David’s back. His eye caught sight of a solitary clay flower pot, painted white, sitting three feet to the right of the door. In it, a laughing frog propped up a dead, dried-up geranium. He stepped toward it, his hand reaching out, lifting the frog, grasping the key that lay beneath. He put the key inside the lock and turned it. The door creaked.

* * *

The whole house was draped in drop cloths that were yellowed by time and sun. The windows were filmed as if they had not been washed in several years. In the living room, there were cobwebs strung between the wall and mantle, and dust was everywhere. David’s shoes left guilty footprints as he moved from one room to the next. He tried the faucet in the kitchen, the sink’s mortar cracked and thirsty, but there wasn’t even hissing air. The light switch didn’t work.

Back in the entry hall, he was about to quit the place when he heard a creaking. It came from the balcony above. Looking upward, his hand upon the baluster, David felt more than saw a movement flick across, like the shadow of an unseen bird momentarily blotting out a bit of sunlight. “Hello? Mrs. Farley?” Tentatively, he placed his foot upon the first stair.

“What do you want?!”

David spun around, his hand swinging out as if to strike, almost letting fly the book he held. Its silver chain and talisman rattled.

He felt his throat constrict. His breath stopped. A dark-haired woman stood framed in the doorway–beautiful–her blue eyes steely, penetrating.

“What do you want?” she repeated, stepping nearer.

“I–I’m looking for Mrs. Farley,” David stammered, his voice catching, dry and dusty, in his chest.

“She’s not here. She died.”

David just stood, at first not fathoming her words, then not believing them, yet knowing somehow deep inside that the woman wasn’t lying.

“I’m her daughter,” the woman said, “and now the legal owner of this house. How did you get the key?”

David felt his face go hot. “I was told Mrs. Farley would be here,” he said.

“By whom?”

“The priest. Lawrence Colter.” Tentatively, David held out the slip of parchment. It rattled softly in his shaking hand.

The woman laughed, the sound giddy. “Oh, him,” she said, waving off his parchment offering.

Again, a flitting shadow brushed by, just overhead, and David glanced to catch it. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the faintest glimpse of someone tall and thin standing on the upper balcony. He turned to look. It was just a shadow, formed by sunlight streaming through some upper story window he couldn’t see.

“You need to go,” the woman said. “And tell Lawrence Colter to leave us be.”

Audibly, David heard a whimper behind him. He felt a breeze, cool and soft, and, with it, came the faintest smell of lavender. Then he felt what he could swear was someone’s hand slip lightly around his arm just above the elbow. He felt his hair stand up–on his head and on his neck; on his arms, his legs, his back.

Whether it was his imagination or just a fluke of fear, David didn’t care to know. He just knew he wanted gone. He stepped down the stair, then toward the door, sidling past the daughter, the soft touch on his arm gently holding on, traveling with him, pace by pace.

The daughter watched him go, her eyes hard but hollow, her body twisting as if to follow, though she never moved till he was out the door and down the steps. Behind him, he heard her step out on the porch, then pull the door shut, keys jiggling as she turned the lock.

Driven by an urge he didn’t understand, David opened up the passenger-side door, then held it wide. He felt the hand slip clear from its hold upon his elbow. He saw the upholstery sink…just faintly. Slipping the book in, he saw it settle on end beside whatever sat there as he closed the door. He walked around, getting in the driver’s side just as the daughter reached the bottom of the steps. Scared, he looked not right nor left, just straight ahead, his eyes unseeing as he slid into the driver’s seat. He turned the key in the ignition and was overjoyed when the engine roared to life.

David caught one last image in his rearview mirror as he drove away – the daughter standing in the drive, her stony face turned to watch him go. Simultaneously, in his peripheral vision, he saw the faintest silhouette of something vague – a thin glow of vapor, tall and willowy, that faded into something just a bit more tangible where the shadow from the dashboard blocked the sunlight. The gentle smell of lavender….

The talisman upon the chain dinged once as he turned the curve, and, between imagination’s ears, he heard a woman’s voice say, “Thank you.”

THE END