Page 68 of The Burning

“Nice of you to come out and tell me that.” I start to turn, but she stops me.

“Katie. Wait.” Her face is a mosaic of conflict, of warring emotions, and a loyalty she cannot betray.

Because I understand, because I’ve felt all of those things myself when I was Amish, I wait.

“There are whispers,” the woman says quietly. “About a group of men. Former Amish mostly. Mennonite and Hutterite, too, maybe. Anabaptists, you know.”

“What about them?”

“These men … Katie, I don’t know if you can understand. The things they do … it goes against everything we know. Everything we believe. It goes against God’s will.” She struggles for a moment, then stiffens her spine. “These men … their souls are dark. They know that when they die, they will not be going to heaven. They live with that knowledge. They accept it. Somehow, they see the ungodliness of that as the freedom they need to do the things that a godly man cannot.”

I stare at her, perplexed, and yet at the same time I feel a distant memory scratch at the back of my brain. A story or rumors that I’d heard in my youth but were lost over the years.

“What does this group have to do with what happened to Milan Swanz?” I ask.

“These men have given their souls to da deivel,” she tells me. The devil. “They do bad things—very bad things—but for a greater good. If that’s even possible. Things that a good Amisch cannot and will not do.”

“Are you telling me these men, this group, had something to do with the murder?”

“I couldn’t say.” She shrugs. “I always thought it was a rumor. A shtoahri.” A story. She lowers her voice. “Now, after all of this, I’m not so sure. I think there may be some truth to it.”

I almost can’t believe what I’m hearing. Not from the bishop’s wife. The notion that such a group exists is so crazy I can’t get my head around it. “Freda, how do you even know about these men?”

“I don’t. But I’ll tell you what I do know.” She pauses as if searching her memory. “I have relatives in Shipshewana. I spent many a happy time there with my cousins when I was little. Spent a whole summer there once when my niece was born. Anyway, an Amish man was killed that last summer I was there. A druvvel-machah by the name of Marvin Lengacher.” Troublemaker. “Awful thing. Hanged himself in the barn. Or so everyone believed.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Turned out someone did that to him. Tied him up and hung him up by his neck. I was thirteen years old that summer. Scared me and my little cousins half to death.”

“Who did it?” I ask.

“Everyone was talking about the Schwertlers. Even the elders were whispering about it, saying they’re the ones came for Marvin and done him like that. And it never got told to the police.”

I scribble the name in my notebook. “Who are the Schwertlers?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Freda, what year was that?”

“Well, I’m eighty-six this fall. My goodness, happened over seventy years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“Do you have any names?”

“No one knows their names.”

“How many people in this group?”

“No one knows that, either, Katie.” She makes the statement with impatience, as if I should already know the answer.

I look down at my notes. “Freda, if that happened over seventy years ago, whoever belonged to that group would be elderly now. Most would be gone.”

“Unless there’s new blood for every generation. There are a lot of fallen men out there, ready to step up to do what they need to do.”

“Are you telling me this group of men still exists and they’re in Painters Mill?”

“They’re everywhere,” she whispers.

“How do I find them?”