The rain was still falling. It was the last day here at the lake house. I completed my work that first night. My wife's spirits are up, but I find myself remembering lessons from almost twenty years ago.
"The second evolution came nine months later," Prelate Opaki said. "From the depths of holes like Kola in Russia, Well of Barhout in Yemen, Cerro de la Muerte, Kondoa-Irangi Cave in Tanzania, and Krubera Cave, climbed a revised evolution of demons."
Across the classroom screen flitted a dozen images of boreholes, caves, and mines. From those places of darkness came clones of Earth's creatures.
Prelate Opaki's silver sword sang as it moved through the air to point at a Prospect Arbiter two rows to my left. The whoosh of the sword and snap of his vestments quieted the room.
"What was particularly important about this new evolution of Demon?" Prelate Opaki asked. "Complete answer if you please."
Julian, a man who was shorter yet carried more mass than I, stood up and clasped his hands in front of himself. "Prelate Opaki," Julian said, "The second incursion was differentiated from the first in two key aspects. First, the Demons were not wearing the seeming of humanity's dead; second, the forms they copied were of Earth's native species—snakes, rats, and vermin in general."
Opaki towers over everyone I've ever known. His face is stern and unforgiving. It wears a perpetual frown to go with its many scars. Opaki's lips tightened, and he sucked on them. The noise was distinctive, and everyone in the class understood what it meant. He used the stump of his left arm to gesture for Julian to return to his seat.
"Textbook answer Prospect Julian," Prelate Opaki said. His stump finds its way to me, as it usually did when he wanted a deeper explanation.
I stood, hands finding their place in front of me. "Prelate Opaki," I said. "It was not limited to vermin; there were more complex beasts as there has been since. What separated the first and second Demon seemings from each other was their enhanced use of the seven deadly sins."
At Prelate's nodded head, I continued, "Mount Laojun in China, the Taoist temple fell because of the sins. It is because of this temple, its lost sect of followers, and their efforts to document the phenomenon that we know how the Demons work. Once the Demons touch a human body, they invade the mind and can produce the 'whisper' effect, as documented by the temple guardians as they fell one by one. The Demons lie; it is all they do. They told the lies so thoroughly that one by one, the monks died."
***
"Are we ready?" My wife asked. "I wish we could stay."
"Would you like to paint?" I asked. "A few hours will not hurt our timeline. I've n’t put your supplies in the car."
"Would you mind?" she asked me with that soft, crooked smile of hers.
The rest, the views, the art, had brought color and life back to her over the weekend. There was a bill, a bill that I knew would come due. I'd said I would pay for it. I'd left my former life as an Arbiter of Faith when we married and my mundane job when she got sick. We've scraped by ever since. We've only survived because of the generosity of family and friends made a long time past. I had no more favors that I might call upon. Now, more than ever before, I needed work.
I prepared her gear, setting her in a chair with plenty of blankets. She peered out the windows and into the drizzle beyond. What she saw I never knew, but each painting she made had a soul.
I stepped into the kitchen and picked up the phone resting on the wall. It was an antiquated piece of equipment with a cord. I fished out a slip of blue paper that I'd torn off a Chinese takeout menu.
I breathed deeply and steeled my nerves; after all, it was only thirteen digits. My thumb presses zero, one, one. I had a slight pause, but my memory kicked in, and I pressed three and nine. I start with the zero-six area code before glancing at my torn bit of menu.
There were four short beeps and one ring before an aged voice answered, "Did you have a good respite?"
"I, we, did. My work is finished. My wife is finishing a painting, and then we will be returning to Seattle," I said.
There is a long, cloying silence as I try to summon the will to ask.
"Thank you for the service," the deep voice of former Prelate Opaki said.
"I need work," I blurted out. "I need a job. We have bills, we have nothing," I pleaded. I knew it was a weakness, a plaintive emotional outburst, but I was desperate.
Opaki sucked on his lips, and the noise was audible 6,000 miles away. It was a gesture he usually did when one of the students got an answer blatantly wrong.
"You cannot come back, child," Opaki said. "You knew that. She is not Catholic. The rules of our Order," Opaki dithered with an audible "Hmmn," and it gave me nearly as much hope as my wife's clean bill of health.
"To say that I am desperate, well, that is an understatement," I replied.
"Wait there," Opaki said. "I will call back."
So I waited as my wife painted. They were not big paintings but small postcard-sized images of rain, lights, and drops working in concert to reflect images of the lake off the glass.
These small paintings had the kind of fine detail she'd not been able to achieve in many years. I sat at the counter and stared at one of the cards as it dried, my sandwich long since eaten. My wife had nibbled on hers; at least her appetite was returning. The sound of the phone startled us both.
"You have a vehicle?" Opaki asked.
"A rental, I am scheduled to return it in the morning," I replied.
"Extend it," Opaki said with no explanation. "St. Patrick Catholic Church, Father Bernard, Rexburg, Idaho," Opaki said in his flat, dry way. "A contemporary of his thinks he's got a problem. You'll need to make arrangements for payment and lodgings yourself."
"What is the nature of the problem?" I asked.
"A serpent whisperer," Opaki said. "I cannot offer you supplies or aid, and we have no other work to offer you...for now. This, my friend, is me paying my debt in full."
"You never owed me," I replied. "And Thank you."
***
"Do we have the money for this trip?" My wife asked as she watched the last of the lake disappear behind us.
"It will be close," I said. "Back in Seattle, I've got no prospects, and we've got nowhere to return to. I was three weeks late on rent. This, at least, I know how to do."
She turned to me, and her smile was lighter but no less remarkable, a match to the first one she gave me in her flat at the top of the artist commune.
"I'll see what I can do," She whispered, and her left hand reached out for mine. "I feel better, and doing something will help me recover."
We didn't have the cash to stop or waste fuel sightseeing. We ate sandwiches for dinner and drove through the day and into the dark of midnight. I'd spoken to Father Bernard while on the drive; he'd set aside a room for us in the mission for the night. The following morning, he'd introduce me to the Pastor of Grace Baptist.
***
"Pastor Ron," Father Bernard said, "This is our, well, the former Arbiter of Faith I told you about."
I extended my hand and nodded in Pastor Ron's direction. "My wife," I said, gesturing to our rental vehicle. "She's recovering from cancer; it's part of the reason I am a former Arbiter of Faith."
"I see," Pastor Ron said, eyes darting between Father Bernard and me. "He is capable?" He asked.
I took no offense at the slight. In general, people don't leave our Order except in two ways: insanity or death. To be a pariah of sorts is unheard of. Most of the other Faiths lack the bureaucratic structure to keep an Order like ours on staff. When they needed a man such as I, one classicly trained, they go straight to the Order and broker a deal.
"He is," Father Bernard explained. "Magnus Opaki, the next inline to be Pater Prelatus of the Order, gave me his name."
That, I suppose, is the other thing: when my side of the Order takes our vows of service, we lose our given name. To have one such as Magnus Opaki utter a name is to provide weight that he knew me personally and long enough to know my given name. The impetus battalion suffers no such fate; their deeds are marked by their very identity. Ours are protected by the knowledge we bear.
Pastor Ron's mouth dropped open a small amount, and he turned back to me. "I don't know if we can afford him. Our congregation isn't large," Pastor Ron said.
"I've no other work," I said. "A place to sleep, cook, and clean up, enough funds to cover my bills for a short time, and supplies, if needed, are all that my wife and I ask." I watched the Pastor seemingly waiver between declining and accepting the offer. "I'm told you think it might be a Serpent Whisperer? What gives you that impression?"
The Pastor firmed his lips and kicked at the ground between us. "A child, a young teenager really, has been acting odd. They moved near and joined our church. Their new home became infested with snakes."
"That's not uncommon in the high desert like this," I mused, hoping for a bit more detail.
"The girl began to know things and secrets and utilized that knowledge against the other children in her school," Ron said. "It became an issue a month or so back. The parents moved homes, but," his eyes flit to Father Bernard, "early last week, their new home became overrun with snakes again."
There is a sort of private by-play between the two priests; a half dozen glances back and forth before Pastor Ron delivers a nod.
Father Benard departed wordlessly for his vehicle, and Pastor Ron turned to me. "Follow me. We have cottages as part of our marriage retreat courses," Pastor Ron said. "It's not much—a hot plate, a bathroom, and a bed. You'll need to do your linens and keep the place tidy, but it should do. "
Thus began my second career, this time as a freelance Arbiter of Faith. Over the next eleven weeks, I worked for nine congregations around Rexburg. Most jobs were small, enough to make headway on my bills. Pastor Ron allowed us the extended use of the cabin in exchange for fortifying the blessing bindings on the church's structures.
Our time in Rexburg didn't put us further behind in debt; in fact, it allowed us to avoid the cost of a rental in favor of a solid, used station wagon. It did one other thing that I deemed insignificant at the time. It gave my wife a new purpose.
She joined me in my work. With her easel, paints, watercolors, and chalks, she set about incorporating the soul of my efforts into a codex. I gifted Pastor Ron with the first copy, even though it was limited to a scant few pages.
With a new goal and a fresh lead for work, we set out, this time to Connecticut, where a mortuary was having a problem with its graveyard.