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Something slid off of the roof and landed in a heavy thud behind them. Heather cut the wheel sharply to turn around face the direction they had just come from.
Her father screamed as he tried to quickly assess what was happening. He hadn’t yet been introduced to the impending madness and Heather sympathized him for his demonic virginity. She knew the truth was hard to swallow and she hoped he’d be able to handle it.
“What are you doing?” he screamed over the sound of the revving engine.
Heather pointed a shaky fi nger at the body lying on the street in front of them. It was obvious by the shape and size that it was a man. His clothes were black and his long jacket must have fl oated upwards during his fall. It had landed directly over his face and it masked his identity.
Heather suddenly thought of Curtis Knight dressed up like a vampire.
“Who’s that?” her father asked in a shaky whisper.
Heather ignored him. She didn’t want to speak for fear her voice would bring the monster back to life. She knew that it was her stalker laying there in the road and she seriously doubted he had any injuries.
Heather aimed her car at the still fi gure and they both watched in terror as the man’s arm slowly lifted upwards.
The jacket that covered his face pulled away slowly, until his features began to expose themselves one by one.
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Heather’s hands shook on the wheel and she tried hard to focus her mind on her son’s faces. Her boys had always provided her with strength and their images was all she had at the moment.
The stalker sat up slowly as a smile spread gradually across his face. He stared at them through the windshield.
“What the Hell?” her father mumbled.
The scraggly man went from a sitting position to a tall stand in one fl uid jump. His smile stayed glued on his face and there was amusement in his eyes. He motioned for Heather to come toward him. He was taunting her.
Heather got the message. She couldn’t hurt him with her car or a gun or even a missile. As much as she wanted to mow him over and watch his blood spatter, she thought better of it. She threw her car into reverse and headed for the only destination that made sense.
“You have to hide!” her father screamed as they peeled away.
“We can’t hide, dad. He keeps fi nding me!’
“Where’s your sister?” David demanded.
“She’s at Erin’s,” Heather said fl atly. She was driving at an unacceptable speed and she slowed down at the thought of her little sister. She wondered if she had done the right thing by keeping Jade away.
“I don’t know, Dad,” Heather cried. “I’m just trying to protect her and the baby.”
“Why didn’t this wacko ever shoot you from a car or blew up your house?” David asked.
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Heather shook her head to drive out the bad thought but it didn’t work.
“I don’t understand,” she said in a low voice.
“I’m talking about your stalker, sweetie. Why didn’t he just kill you? It would have been the easiest thing to do if he wanted you out of the way, wouldn’t it?” he asked.
Heather’s heart seized and her mind tried to force out the thought of being blown up. Jade invaded her thoughts and Heather felt a cold chill. Something was wrong.
She pulled out her cell phone so fast that it dropped to the fl oor and the battery fell out. She bent over to pick it up and it started ringing.
Heather met her father’s eyes in a mutual awareness and stood like a watchdog while he listened to her phone call.
The telephone rang four times when Heather heard the click that told a caller they were successful. “Hello?”
Erin asked breathless.
“Is something wrong?” Heather asked slowly. She didn’t want to hear the answer but there was no way to escape it.
“Heather!’ yelled Erin.
Heather could only understand every few words because of her loud sobs.
“Where is Jade?” she asked, stretching out each syllable.
“She’s gone! He just took her!’
Heather skipped all the usual warning signs of pending grief and she cried. The fear washed over her 285
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and she felt entombed by a numb depression. She looked at her father and his tears mirrored the rush of liquid spewing from her own eyes.
Erin told her that a man had come to the door identifying himself as a cop. He told them that Heather was in trouble and needed their help so they opened the door. She needn’t have described the intruder. Heather knew exactly what he looked like. She envisioned her sister somewhere, alone with him and scared for her unborn baby.
Erin kept interrupting herself to catch her breath and Heather was forced to coax her along
“She went into labor!”
Her friend fi nally spoke the words that Heather had feared.
“She started breathing heavy and when I tried to help her, he hit me and I fell. I’m so sorry,” Erin cried. Her words ran together but Heather understood enough.
“I fell to the fl oor hard and when I looked up, I saw Jade holding her stomach,” Erin continued. “She had this look of pain on her face, Heather. I’m so sorry.”
She paused again. There was more to the story and their friend was having a diffi cult time getting it all out.
“He picked her up and he was laughing! I couldn’t stop him. He turned around and there was this look in his eyes.” Heather could almost hear her shiver through the receiver.
“What did he say, Erin?” Heather asked. She was trying to ignore her own chills as they threatened to overtake her skin.
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“He said to tell you something,” Erin said, an eerie note taking her voice to another place.
Heather waited for the message but her friend was silent.
“Erin! What did he say?” she practically screamed.
“It doesn’t make sense, Heather!’ Erin yelled back.
“He said to tell you that all is fi nally well.”
Heather pushed the end button and faced her father.
Her features were frozen into place and she couldn’t move.
“It’s Jade, Dad. He took her!’ She screamed the ugly words into the universe. “We have to go to the church!
The only person that makes sense in this whole mess is Pastor Eric and I’m not leaving that place until he gives me some answers!”
Heather and her father headed to the church without a word. The only sounds that could be heard were the occasional whimpers that escaped them and the droning hum of the engine. There was nothing to say. Nothing mattered until they had Jade back safely.
By the time they reached the church, the front lot had become a fi eld of mud. The sky lit up behind the church and they covered their heads with their hands as they ran through it. They reached the foyer and Heather pulled at the door that was always open to sinners looking for repentance but the chapel was locked.
“Pastor Eric never locks the chapel, Dad. Ever. I was just here.”
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She looked to the right and then to the left. She rattled the doorknob and kicked sacrilegiously at the wooden door.
“Something’s not right, Dad,” Heather added. Her voice had become grave.
“I know,” he whispered.
David pried open a side door and squeezed his body through it. He reached in, grabbed her hand and pulled them both inside. They walked through a small dark room and into the large waiting chapel. As they entered the bright, glowing church a shot rang out and David fell to the fl oor beside her. Heather looked toward the pulpit where the shot originated from and saw Pastor Eric standing at the altar with a huge smile on his face.
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Chapter 23
Sister Christian
The minister who had consoled her through her worst moments stood before her, the man who just shot her father. It was diffi cult for Heather to turn the face of a friend into one of an enemy on such short notice.
Remembering the warmth they had shared in the past, she wanted to take his hand and ask him to pray with her.
Pastor Eric shook his head back and forth so fast that she couldn’t make out his features anymore. He stopped suddenly and when he looked up, no longer wore the face of the gentle pastor who had baptized her as an infant. He was the stalker who had tormented her.
Burning, prickly fi re felt as though it were shooting through her veins. The heat worked its way up her neck and spread into a large mass at the back of her brain.
When the pastor started shouting his words, Heather’s heart began to pound too fast for a human to withstand.
“Surprised?” he asked happily.
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His smile was so smug. He looked as though he’d just fi nished a huge meal and the thought brought forth a new horror. Heather started to run circles around the chapel in search of her sister.
“Isaiah 11:11!’ Pastor Eric screamed.
His tone was loud and deep and it trilled out the words in a strange pattern she couldn’t understand.
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people!”
Heather didn’t understand. She continued to run as his words penetrated her eardrums. She rushed in and out of a small closet at the front of the church and screamed when she found nothing. Heather’s terror was abundant but it didn’t even come close to the thought of losing her sister.
“Where is she, you son of a bitch?” she screamed.
Without stopping to wait for an answer, she raced toward him, past the pews and toward the pulpit.
He positioned himself behind the podium as though preparing for a speech. Each time he spoke, Heather watched his features morph from one face into another.
Starting at his nose, the change spread gradually to his cheeks and created another person entirely. Two simple feature changes and her pastor was a different man.
An eerie, high-pitched noise came from his mouth as it morphed into the lips of another man. The sound was both a laugh and a terrible sob at the same time. His thin-lipped grin went from one side of his face to the other and 290
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the sight made her think of their last jack-o’-lantern. Just like their dissected pumpkin, a jagged smile was painted beneath the pastor’s lost, hollow eyes. He looked at her with disgust and it only contorted his features more.
Her minister appeared to be a caricature of what was previously human but just as quickly, morphed back into his own familiar face.
Heather didn’t want to speak for fear her voice would be an invitation to attack. She had no intention of providing the bastard a welcome mat for her murder. He looked up at the ceiling and spit tobacco into the air. It squirted in an upwards stream before disappearing and the pastor smiled with pride at his own bizarre magic display. He looked pleased enough to hug himself.
Jade’s voice called her from a back room and Heather’s fear was gone. It disappeared as quickly as the tobacco had and Heather took off running. She followed her sister’s voice and forced her legs to move with each step.
Heather ran through the choir section and past the organ. She caught her foot on the guitar that had been propped against a wall and her foot got caught in its strap.
Heather put her hands out quickly to prevent a fall. The piano began playing a tune and Heather knew it was her pastor conducting the invisible pianist.
She heard him laughing behind her but didn’t allow it to stall her mission. Jade called out again and Heather followed her voice to a small back closet. Her sister was tied to a chair and the sight of her captivity fueled Heather with an energy that could only come from rage. With 291
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frayed nerves, she channeled the rage to help her untie the ropes and shot darting glances in every direction.
Jade was crying and Heather knew where the sea of tears came from. Her sister was worried about her baby and she held her stomach protectively.
“Are you in labor?” Heather needed both confi rmation and information and wasn’t sure what Jade had learned, if anything.
A puddle of water at the foot of the chair answered the question before her sister did. She worried in triplicate.
Her father, her sister and her nephew needed her but Heather still had no idea what was happening.
The sisters heard the pastor humming right outside their door. He didn’t show himself but he let them know he was close by. Heather noticed a hammer on a nearby shelf and she picked it up. It would be diffi cult for her to use any weapon but this one was especially signifi cant.
It was the same hammer that the Sunday school teachers had used to display their projects and drawings.
Heather stood protectively in front of Jade. She used her right hand to keep the hammer in a fi rm grasp and her left one worked as a beacon. She used it to motion to Jade when she thought it was safe to move. She whispered to stay close behind her and held the hammer high in the air, ready to pound it into anything or anyone that got in her way.
Heather led the way out and headed back toward the altar. She couldn’t leave her father there for the monster to ravage and she couldn’t chance hiding Jade. She knew 292
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the pastor would still fi nd her. If Heather wanted to save her family, her only chance was by leading them back into the lion’s den.
Pastor Eric was back at the pulpit. He held his Bible high and he screamed like a southern preacher.
“Romans 11:11! Again I ask, “Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious!’
The sisters listened as he called out the eleventh chapter and the eleventh verse of every book in the Bible and then stopped abruptly to stare at Jade. He looked her up and down, starting at her eyes and ending on her swollen belly. He smiled and addressed her politely.
“Despite all of your insanity, all of your hatred and all of your sins, He still loves you,” the pastor said sincerely.
He began laughing and then spoke again. “He thinks He can save you with this.”
Pastor Eric moved toward Jade and her sister took two steps backwards. He fi lled the space between them with another step and gently placed his hand on her stomach.
Jade’s face contorted into an expression of disgust and she smacked him away as another wave of pain hit her. She groaned through the contraction and then it was gone.
Heather knew the baby would have to be delivered right there. If they tried to run, the child would be lost for sure.
She looked at her father and her stomach clenched again when she saw him still lying still at the front door.
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Tears spilled out over her cheeks as an ice pick chipped away at her last nerve. Repressed memories pushed their way into her mind as Heather remembered herself as a little girl wearing ponytails and a terry cloth outfi t. Her small hand fi t snuggly into her father’s much larger one as they walked home from the penny candy store.
Heather began to understand. Judge Oliva’s voice came back to her and she knew what the woman’s fl ippant comment meant. Heather had never really comprehend the value of loyalty.
She tried to ignore the pastor’s heavy presence and turned her attention to Jade. Heather made a birthing bed out of one of the pews and helped Jade lie on it. She held her little sister’s hand tightly as another contraction hit.
Jade groaned in pain and Pastor Eric started to chuckle.
“Don’t worry. It gets much worse than this, ladies,”
he sai
d, amused.
Heather hated him with every fi ber of her soul and saving her nephew suddenly became her most important need. His fragile life was already at stake from the worst adversary there ever was and Heather felt severely under-
qualifi ed for a battle with Satan, or whoever the Hell her pastor really was.
“Why me?” Heather screamed.
“Numbers 11:11!’ he called out in immediate response.
“And Moses said unto the LORD, Wherefore hast thou affl icted thy servant? And wherefore have I not found favor in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all these people upon me?”
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He ended the tirade with a dramatic pout and he mocked her question. Pastor Eric tilted his head with feigned sympathy. For a moment, Heather wished she had been crazy after all. She didn’t understand half of what was unraveling before her but knew instinctively that she was destined to save more than just her family. She would have preferred the life of a delusional schizophrenic than the life of the woman who let the world die.
“You want to know why you were chosen?” he fi nally asked. “You really don’t know yet?”
He asked the question with sincerity and Heather thought about the locked doors inside of her mind.
Something behind them begged to come out and her resistance was getting too low to fi ght it.
“It’s taking you longer this time. You get more absorbed every time,” he said gently.
She wondered why he was hesitant to answer and decided he was having fun. He enjoyed hanging the truth over while all of their lives dangled from the end.
He half walked, half fl oated to a nearby chair and sat down in one swift movement. Heather’s defenses remained helpless when the minister fl oated to them and hovered close to their faces. When he stuck out his tongue, it just kept coming out. The fl eshy and muscular organ boasted a spiky, reptilian texture. Without warning, the pastor wrapped it around Heather’s neck and positioned its spikes to puncture and attack her jugular vein.
She froze and at the same moment that Jade screamed.
His spikes withdrew themselves and became just a tongue 295
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again. He used it to lick her neck slowly and the sensation drove a chill down her arms, threatening to turn moderate shakes into a seizure.