Ancient Eyes Read Online Free

up at the recessed alcove above the rear door.   Then he turned back toward the altar and the curtains beyond. The entire exchange happened so quickly that Silas could not tell if it had happened at all. His parents gave no sign that they had noticed the Reverend's attention, and the man already stood beyond his wooden podium, searching the doors and the assemblage for any stragglers foolish enough to enter the church beyond the appointed time.
    Silas shook his head, blinked back a sudden rush of tears, and lowered his head. All around him families shuffled their feet, Sunday dresses rustled and men cleared their throats nervously while trying to remain as silent and still as stone. No one wanted to be the one to catch Reverend Kotz's attention.   No one wanted their lives, or their deeds dragged into the sermon, or a blemish on the marker they would ante up for the salvation of their soul. No one wanted to face the pool. You could hear the water, if everyone was silent.   It sloshed a little against the edges of the tank. You could hear other things too. The baptismal pool was not the only thing behind that curtain, and they all knew it. While they were frightened, they were also expectant. The longer Reverend Kotz stared out over them, the deeper that expectation became. The nervous drumming of hands and feet ceased. Their breathing slowed, and lips parted, tongues licked at the dry, cotton-flavored fear that coated their lips and choked their throats. Sweat beaded on their skin and ran in dark rivulets down the men's starched white collars.
    Silas glanced at his mother and saw her eyes upturned to the altar, her chin jutted out slightly. Her hands were clasped on top of her purse, white-gloved and dainty, but gripping one another with such pressure that Silas cringed. She didn't even know he was there. None of them saw one another, but only that man in the front of the church, glaring at them with the wrath of God himself sparking in his eyes.
    Silas had seen something similar one other time, and he drifted into the memory—anything to keep him from glancing up at the altar. He had seen the faces of those who spent too much time meeting Reverend Kotz's eyes, and he had seen those who went to the pool. Those who were cleansed would never meet his eyes fully, and when he spoke to them, even the children, they lowered their gaze and hurried off as if he might learn a secret they didn't want him to have—or see something they were too ashamed of to share.
    On the night he was thinking of, his father had taken him down the road to the Cooper's barn at dusk.   His mother hadn't wanted him to go, but Silas' father was not a man to let his woman make decisions for him. The men had gathered and were drinking. A circle had been dug in the center of the barn's floor.   It dropped off about three feet from the ground level, and the men were gathered around it, laughing and talking excitedly.
    It was a cockfight, the first and last Silas had ever seen. The birds were penned on opposite sides of the pit. Silas' father found room for the two of them to the left of a great white rooster with flecks of brown and gold peppering his feathers. The animal was beautiful at first, but when you got too close you saw its eyes. They were shining, solid marbles of glittering darkness, fierce and angry beyond measure. The bird was fitted with fighting spurs—wickedly curved metal blades that enhanced its already dangerous legs.
    The birds were bad, but the worst was the men. The closer they came to the moment of the contest, the thicker, hotter, and more difficult to breathe the air became. Everything slowed to a surreal blur, bright white bulging eyes glared and stared and droplets of sweat were flung with every motion. Silas' father was no exception, and though it frightened him, Silas himself was slowly drawn into the dark web of their excitement.
    They slid the pens to the edge of the pit, and the men jeered at the handlers as the birds