Blood Calls to Blood
By Ef Deal

Only fools believe roots run through the ground and blood runs through veins.

My search for my roots started as a simple question. My husband wouldn't give me children; I had to know my forebears. Once my roots got into my blood I wound up sacrificing everything. Every vacation, every leisure cent, even my husband.

"Blood calls to blood," I told him. "I need to know who I am, where I come from."

"They're dead," Bud answered. "They're not going anywhere. I'm here, now. But I won't be forever."

My search took me to libraries, historical societies, church cemeteries, the obligatory Mormon archives. Somewhere in there, Bud left. I truly was the last of my blood. Oddly, I felt only a stronger compulsion to learn why.

The Thieles, led by patriarch Jakob, had arrived in America in time for the Revolution, fleeing persecution of some vague nature. By the 1890s census, the Thieles with their extended family, brother by brother, cousin by cousin, filled two city blocks in Germantown, Philly, their own private burg. All the blood relatives in a tiny enclave. By 1910, they'd vanished, all but one line: my great-grandfather, Reverend Jakob Diele, a gaunt wraith in the archive photo of the Blakely Lutheran Church I'd secured from the Philly Historical Society. He stood in the church's graveyard ringed by a coterie of church ladies, five gross-maters clasping hands behind him, like shriveled leaves surrounding a faded flower. He stared back at me with my own eyes, my legacy across time.

I looked up from the 1905 photo to the stone church in front of me, now the Zion AME. Pastor Cromer folded his hands. His voice rolled with the cadence of a hooping preacher.

"They say once he left in '48, once he left, the church declined rapidly. Fell to pieces. Over four hundred members in 1944. All gone by 1954. A handful of women holding it together with prayer and fasting, prayer and fasting."

The mold-encrusted graystone crumbled in places. Planks supported the tilted roof. Steel grating protected the battered door and poorly repaired stained glass windows. Against such decay the adjacent cemetery glistened in sharp contrast: polished headstones on a groomed lawn, lush wild roses covering wrought-iron fencing and gate. I stood where my great-grandfather had posed for that photo a century earlier, his feet planted firmly at the edge of the cemetery lawn.

"The AME bought it in 1960, bought it when the last of the members died. We grew this place up to two hundred in Sunday School, three hundred twice on Sundays. But . . ."

"How many now?"

He laughed ruefully. "A handful of women. Prayer and fasting, prayer and fasting. I came last year hoping to change that, reclaim it for the Lord. Back in his time, it was typhoid, scarlet fever, influenza. Now it's AIDS, pneumonia, crack, crime. The devil's work."

Soft grass waved in the breeze, and blood-red roses nodded, tapping my shoulder. I felt my roots dig deep into the soil here. I felt my blood. . .

Hot in my veins, a surging river rushing, foaming, cascading down to a tranquil sea of crimson. Its cleansing tide feeding thirsty soil, washing clean the land, bringing life, bringing renewal, bringing something up from long-dead memory. Roots emerged from buried pods, unfurling, tendrils probing up through the soil. My blood, drawing blood from the ground through roots thrusting down through the soil to a crimson well of blood that tasted like my own.

I blinked and stepped back to the pavement. A quiet breeze hissed along the ground and brushed against headstones. The lurid vision vanished. I caught my breath, dizzied, wondering what I had just seen, whose thoughts had filled my head. Could it be that with so many of my ancestors buried here, their blood had called to me?

"Is there some way to know how they died?" My voice quavered.

Pastor Cromer seemed unaware of my state. "Come inside. Got the records."

Shaken, I followed.

Jakob Diele, his surname changed through the ignorance of census takers and anti-immigration sentiment, kept meticulous records, though cryptic. New members were baptized, or "welcomed into the fellowship of believers," within a week of his arrival to the pulpit. The death notices began soon after.

"I see what you mean." I traced the columns. "Scarlet fever outbreak here in 1918. A few TB deaths. What's this?"

Amid the mundane death notices were interspersed more formal, ritualistic records.

His blood to the glory of the Blood of our Lord.

Her blood to the glory of the Blood of our Lord.

I never understood the gruesome litany of Christians with their references to blood and sacrifice. Not my idea of a civilized God.

"Why are these different?" I wondered aloud. "No cause of death listed."

Cromer peered more closely. "Almost a pattern, isn't it?" he said. "July, August, October, November, every six weeks or so."

No "or so" about it. Every six weeks. Births, marriages, deaths by illness as irregular as they should be, but every six weeks, the same grisly consignation.

Blood to the glory of the Blood . . .

"Blood calls to blood," I murmured.

Cromer set down another dusty tome, its leather binding powdered with mildew. "Don't know why these weren't sent on to whatever synod. Found them in the steeple well a few weeks back. We get so many calls like yours, looking for lost roots, looking for a history."

He opened and turned a few pages of photographs until he found another of Jakob Diele. Not so gaunt. Not so pale.

"What's the date on those?"

"1918."

"Men would have been off to war by then."

"Yes."

I cross-referenced the records. No change in the pattern. Yet membership grew.

"Six weeks. Might be an incubation period of a slow infection." I checked name against name. Fear like a knot of ice froze my veins. "My God. These are my roots. Up through 1910, all blood relatives. A lot of Thieles, Dieles, Wilkinsons, Herzes. The last of them here, in '47." I marked the entry of the last family name. "No cause of death, just--" I shivered. "Unless there was some other blood line, attrition took them all."

"Looks like the old man didn't suffer from attrition." Cromer laughed. "Church suppers, you think?"

He pointed to another photo, 1930. The burly walrus was undoubtedly Jakob Diele, his feet firmly planted at the edge of the cemetery, the same piercing stare across time.

"Are you sure of the date?" I placed my own photo beside the record. Jakob Diele looked younger in 1930. How could that be? "Church life must've done him some good."

"Now isn't that strange. Strange, the cemetery, it hasn't grown from 1905." Cromer straightened. "Come to think of it, doesn't look much different now. So where did they bury them?"

"Family plots, probably, one atop the other. Pretty common."

I examined the next photo, '38. Old Jakob looked pretty good for a man of sixty, according to my research. All wrong, as if he'd lived his life backward. "You say he died in '48?"

"No, said he left."

"And no forwarding address, naturally."

"Was he moved? Perhaps the synod records. . ."

"I checked."

Dead-ended again. Heartsick, confounded, I shut the records, closing down another line of research. Yet the curious deaths left me with still more questions unanswered.

"What about your grandfather? He must have been born here, right?"

"Elsa Diele left Jakob right after William was born in 1906. She went south to Maryland, never remarried. William changed the spelling of the name again to D-E-A-L. He had one son, my father. And I'm the last of us."

Cromer pulled at his wiry, graying beard. Then he gingerly peeled the photos of Jakob Diele from the musty album. "If you're the last, you'll be the only one wanting these."

He placed them in my hands. I shook with a thrill. My heart began--

Pounding, pulsing, muffled. Beat against the breast, batter the ribs, constrained, constrained, driving, ever seeking, ever seeking, up through the earth, straining for blood . . . release! Release!

Again I gasped. I was released.

"Are you all right?" Cromer steadied me. "All the mold and mildew. It can get to you."

I didn't know how to answer. What were these strange visions? Not visions . . . sensations, fantasies. For a split second, my mind had not been my own. Not a voice, exactly, but more like a consciousness, an awareness.

My knees shook as we headed out of his office through the old church. I heard murmurs from the side chapel.

"My faithful women." Cromer chuckled. "Prayer and fasting."

I caught a glimpse of them as we passed. Five scarved heads bowed, ten gnarled brown hands clasped. The image stayed with me, nagging, as I stood once more at the edge of the old Blakely cemetery, where Jakob had once stood with his circle of women. The breeze had become a wind tugging at the photos in my hand. The sepia women stood firm, grim-faced and resolute, their prayers holding him fast.

"Feel free to look around some more," Cromer said. "I'll be in my office if you need anything else."

What I needed most was answers. What happened after 1948? How had Jakob vanished so completely? How could his women have let him go? And how could he have left this place, this church, this ground where so much of his life and so many of his blood relatives had been gathered? Perhaps he had died there, and the replacement pastor wasn't so meticulous keeping records. But surely some note would be made? A successful pastor, a growing church, all in a moment gone? All but the women and this cemetery.

Gone! Gone again. How long, O Lord? Return to us, O Lord. Come, Lord, come again. You alone, O Lord, can save us. You alone, O Lord, can feed your sheep. Shepherd your flock. Feed your lambs. Feed us! Give us this day our daily. . .

The voices, the cries, the images in my head of flowing blood sickened me even as they summoned me with ancient voices, with gnarled hands beckoning, demanding. I wanted to flee, but I couldn't move from that place. The answers I sought were here, in this cemetery, in these cries, in this blood, in the haunts that smothered me. The answers were here, if only I could master them.

Her blood, O Lord, to the blood. . .

It wasn't my imagination, not a psychological need to connect to my roots. My roots were real. They called me, they compelled me.

They needed my blood.

Her blood, O Lord!

The litany rose in pitch and pushed aside all other thought. A sudden tempest whipped the photographs away. Roses tossed frantically. I skirted them, but they strained toward me. Panicked, I imagined their actions were deliberate. Breath caught in my throat. My heart --

Pounding! So much blood for the glory! Come, Lord!

Pounding, yes, pounding as if to burst as my fear pressed my breast, crushing me. Thorned vines scratched my bare arms and caught in my thin pants. I pulled free, lost my balance, and stumbled. I nearly fell.

In that weak moment, vines spiraled up my legs like serpents, swiftly constricting. They hunted me! Stunned, I clawed at them. Rising terror made me inept and stupid. I clutched at my head, but I couldn't drive the phantasm from me. Nausea knotted my stomach. I convulsed. They seized my arms, binding me too tightly to struggle. It was impossible! Living, predatory vines! What could they be but the roots of my past reaching through time to seize -- what?

Her blood to the blood . . .

I toppled, striking my head against a gravestone. Pain blinded me. I kept falling, dropping into a dark abyss. Through the darkness, voices wailed.

Feed your lambs! Her blood to the blood of our Lord!

Roses slapped my cheek, my neck. Thorns dug into my throat and bit. The burning of the wounds wakened me. My eyes widened, bulging as I strained at the vines around my arms. Blood oozed and dropped to the ground. I managed to free one hand. Deep scratches smeared my arm red. Blood from a cut on my forehead streamed to the corner of my mouth. I coughed, spraying a headstone red. With one arm free, I hauled myself up the stone and stood again. I froze, my breath dying in an unformed scream.

Jakob Diele stood at the edge of the cemetery. Tall, skeletal, hardly corporeal. A drained wraith, he gazed with dead eyes, eyes that mirrored my own. Behind him, his circle of women joined hands. Their lips moved in prayer.

Risen Lord, you alone, O Lord!

Their voices whirled in my head. Jakob Diele set his hand to the wrought-iron fence and took up the rose vine. Thorns tore my throat. A warm rush soaked my neck, my chest. I couldn't catch breath enough to cry out.

Her blood to the blood of our risen Lord!

His gaze held mine. Blood flowed along the vines that held me fast as roots. The wild breeze made cold the sticky wetness slicking my blouse to me. Terror faded into icy shock. My hands numbed and slid along the stone. The weight of my body fell away.

Jakob Diele stood solid and real, each drop of my blood feeding him somehow, joining us to our very roots, my blood to his blood. I saw him across time, across eons of time.

Young, in his first youth, beyond the Old World mountains. Not even Jakob Thiele, but Yasov, a peasant boy, alone in the woods at night. Not 1770, not even the seventeenth century. A hundred generations ago. Hiding, shivering, crazed and babbling, huddled half inside a hollowed trunk as vines curl around his throat, his limbs. Bleeding from a score of cuts. Screaming as the vines drag him before a shadowy figure.

"Ei sfars^it! Sfars! I am the last!"

The shadow recoils. Beyond it stand the crones. Their talons knot to hem the shadow in. Their hawk beaks rattle together in cackled conference. They begin their chant.

Yasov screams. "I am the last! Uncle Vlas!"

The shadow advances to seize the boy. Blood pours to the ground. The creature shrinks, fades. But Yasov--Drained of blood, he rises. The crones shriek and fly into the night. Yasov makes his way through the forest, hungry, empty. At the edge of the village, there's a farm and a servant girl. Her blood is rich, but he doesn't drink her. His need runs deeper in the veins. First the seeds, then the roots, then the harvest.

Living to spawn, spawning to drink, their blood to his blood.

He had swallowed every one of his bloodlines, and I was the last. I was the last of his blood.

Jakob recoiled. As if my thoughts had struck him, he fell back a pace. In that single moment, a measure of life returned to my hands, breath to my lungs. Jakob blinked and swayed against his women. I seized the vines at my throat. They snapped easily. I lurched, breaking free of the bonds around my feet. Jakob howled with the voice of the wind. He spun and pitched forward across the fence. I staggered and caught the wrought-iron post. Our thoughts touched again.

"No more!" I screamed.

I clutched roses in my fists. A hundred generations shrieked their bloodied cries to heaven, denied. Peasants fell face down in sticky straw. Bodies sank into crimson morasses. Wounded on battlefields pleaded for their souls. Cousins, uncles, daughters, sons, their blood to the blood of their unholy sire. I held them all in these roots.

"No more! I'm your last!"

Jakob dropped over the low fence to the pavement beyond. He writhed, uprooted. Ten brown, gnarled hands unclasped, curling like sun-blasted grass. The wind tossed the women away like so much chaff. Drawing strength from a hundred generations in my hands, I stepped from the foul cemetery lawn and planted both feet on the pavement.

The wind ceased. The abrupt silence was broken only by Jakob's dying gasp. Roses brittled and crumbled in my clenched hands, and the vines shrank back, browned and sere. Behind me grass crackled and curled to pale stubble. Not a breath stirred Jakob's dust.

Cromer emerged from the church. The horror of my blood-soaked body twisted his features. "Great God!"

As he ran toward me, the crumbling tower trembled. I trembled. The planks supporting the roof shook loose and toppled. The first stone dropped. I swooned. Cromer caught me up, still running. In a thunderous roar, the church collapsed on itself. Billows of mold and decay buried the dust of Jakob Thiele.

I awoke days later in Jefferson hospital amid a tangle of tubes and wires tethering me to sacks of liquids and beeping machines. Someone held my bandaged hands. With effort, I turned my head.

Bud smiled at me, his eyes brimming with tears. "You lost almost every drop of blood in your body," he said. "I thought I'd lost you forever."

He covered my hand with kisses, then pressed his head to my bosom. "I'm so sorry I left! I swear, I'll make it up to you."

My pulse pounded in my breast. Familiar longings stirred in my womb. "Bud," I whispered. "Bud, please. I love you, but -- I want children. I need to have a child! Blood calls to blood, and I can't be the last of my blood!"

He nodded, still smiling. "I understand that now. And I'm ready."

He kissed me. Hunger roiled my belly. "Lots of children," I murmured. "And a garden. With roses."

The End

Story copyright Ef Deal, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com