“Could’a been worse,” Opal replied, at last, “He could’a made us go out and pick up trash along the highway or something.”
Agate stood up and tried to brush the wrinkles out of the jumpsuit she was wearing. It was much too large for her, made of a thin nylon meant to be disposable, exactly the sort of thing professional painters wear and throw away at the end of each day.
“Well, whatever,” she said then paused as she reconsidered, “But, did you hear the way he said that...‘you must atone for your errors’?”
She put her hands on her hips and the plastic suit made a faint crackling sound.
“I mean who in the hell does he think is?”
Opal stood up beside her, a plastic bag in one hand. She fished around inside it then brought out a piece of folded cardboard.
“He’s our leader, Agate. And he’s right. I got too rambunctious for my own good. Both of us did.”
She unfolded the cardboard then bent down to stand it upright among the remains at their feet.
They both looked down at the words neatly painted on the makeshift sign, neither of them saying anything more.
At some silent signal, the two sultry women turned away then walked back to the barn and followed the dirt road leading away for a short distance.
Together, like mirror images or extraordinarily talented pantomime artists, they stripped off their jumpsuits, the rubber gloves on their hands, and the plastic booties from their feet.
They set it all in a small pile, then Agate squirted the entire contents of a small can of lighter fluid over everything.
One of them struck a match, then both women stepped to the side as black smoke rose into an otherwise bright, blue sky.
“Could’a been worse,” Opal repeated.
Agate nodded, then said brightly, “Hey Ope, what say we go for a nice run?”
“Sounds like a plan,” said the light skinned woman.
Then, like a cool summer breeze, two wolves, one light, the other dark, slipped into the forest. They made no sound as they ran and if anyone had been there to see them, they could have well imagined that the wolves were no more than a trick of shadow and light, no more substantial than the half-remembered echo of a dream of ghosts cloaked in the skins of animals.
A crow fluttered down from the clear sky to perch upon a bare tree branch. Then another descended to take a place beside the first. It did not take long for a third to join them as their glittering black eyes peered down at the old, abandoned well.
In front of it, body parts had been carefully placed to form the general shape of a man. A completely deconstructed man; a thick, leather belt coiled beside him.
And while the crows themselves could not read the words upon the cardboard sign, someone else would arrive eventually who could and this is what they would see:
Here lies a very bad man.
He got what he deserved, tho.
A thick odor wafted from the old well. It was strong enough that when they were done reading that sign, someone was bound to look down inside.
What they would find then would be all the proof they needed to know that the sign maker was right.
~~~
Clement shifted. The corner of the raised tomb was not very comfortable. Whoever made it had never intended that anyone sit on it. The truth being that sitting there like that was disrespectful.
Clement did not care, though. Not anymore.
A crowbar leaned against a second tomb in front of him. Its heavy lid had been pried slightly to one side, just enough to allow a man’s hand and arm to reach within.
The grey eyed man sighed. It was turning out to be more difficult than he had imagined.
At last, he stood up just as a heavy hand settled upon his shoulder.
Clement startled, then he was spinning round at the same time as his own hand flew to his side, to a sword he no longer wore.
The Nephilim looked down at him, then shook its head.
“Are you certain of this, human?”
The man flexed his empty fist, then looked back down at the opened tomb.
“It seems about as good as anywhere else to put it,” he said.
A corner of the giant’s mouth lifted slightly in what might have been the beginnings of a smile.
“And you accuse me of being circuitous with my words.”
Clement only shrugged, then said, “Let’s just say I might have picked that up from you.”
The two of them fell silent then, both looking down at the ground. There, like a forgotten thing, a sword forged by an angel lay upon the gravel at the man’s feet.
The Nephilim eased his way beside Clement and the two of them sat down.
“And if I said that I regret it, human. Or, that I shall never do such a thing again...what then?”
Its voice was already deep, but the tone had grown heavier with undisguised remorse.