Susan Prewitt sensed his desperation and met his terrified stare but didn’t dare say anything. Instead, her eyes spoke for her: Accept this. What else can we do?
Jack searched her placid face for answers he knew weren’t there, as his heart thudded in his chest. He looked to the other robed children. Chuck, Stephanie, Bobby, and Zeke appeared as calm as Susan was, but he saw the same terror in their eyes as he felt in his heart.
In the weeks before, as the weight of reality slowly pressed against them, Jack dared to question his mother on what she called “matters of the church.” That he would question her at all was a sin in her eyes, a trespass which would be judged by their new lord, and his punishment was swift. He still bore the marks from the small tree branch she’d used to beat him, and he hadn’t been able to sleep on his back for a week.
“That pain you’re feelin’ ain’t nothin’ but your sins, Jackie. You remember that when it’s your turn at the altar.”
Thinking about that day made the striped scars across his backside sting. He longed for the days when they lived in town, when he went to school, when church only happened on Sundays. That was before Pastor Jacob had his “awakening,” when God spoke directly to him, ordering him to gather his flock.
Jack remembered the sermon and the way his mother flung herself upon the floor, writhing in agony, babbling words he didn’t understand. That was the day Jack experienced an awakening of his own, but for the wrong reasons. Mommy isn’t Mommy anymore. Those words raced through his mind as Laura Tremly pulled him forward with her up the side of Calvary Hill.
“No, Mommy, no—”
The world exploded before him as Laura’s hand struck his cheek, knocking the words from his throat. His eyes watered and his face stung, but when he looked up at her through a glassy lens of sorrow, Jack told himself not to cry. Not this time.
“Our God hates a whiner, child. You are part of something so much greater. Why can’t you see that?”
Jack fought the urge to scream and run. He turned and surveyed the hillside. To where could he run, anyway? The forest went on for miles, and without a lamp to light his way, he would surely be lost. Jacob would find him wandering in the woods, and then there truly would be a reckoning.
Laura yanked the hood back over Jack’s head and wiped a tear from his cheek.
“Be the son I should’ve had,” she whispered. “Go to God with dignity.”
She took hold of his wrist and dragged him up the hill. Behind them, the chanting grew louder as the congregation followed.
4
The Lord’s Church of Holy Voices was a one-room shrine to the ways of Jacob’s heritage, when God was still up above in a heaven none of them would see. Pastor Thurmond Masters preached fire and damnation from the pulpit back in those days, working himself up to the brink of a stroke while one of the ladies of the congregation led a discordant rendition of “Old Rugged Cross” on the church’s upright piano.
Ah, the old days, before Jacob heard the voice of their new lord coming not from above, but from within. After his father passed, Jacob took up the mantle to lead their flock toward salvation, steering the church toward the Promised Land, only to find their humble meeting place was planted above their lord all along. Their new lord’s voice came from within, filling him with a vibrating hum that rattled his teeth and shook his bones.
God from within, he thought, watching the congregation fill the church to its brim, their lantern light illuminating the open wound in the earth before them. Lies above, love below.
He welcomed them into the room that would be their salvation. For it was here he’d first heard their lord, whispering to him from below, a hollow cavern deep down like the empty chambers in his heart.
Jacob raised his arms to his flock. “Welcome, brothers and sisters. Welcome all. Before we begin this joyous occasion, would Sister Tremly lead us in prayer?”
Shouts of “Amen” erupted from the throng of men and women in the room. Sister Laura Tremly bowed her head, and shadows slipped down her face from the hood of her robe. Jacob whispered the words which filled her throat, and together they spoke as one.
“Bless us, oh Lord, on this momentous occasion, when we pay tribute in blood, so we may cleanse our filthy spirits. Bless us as we commit our flesh to You below, so that You may free us from this earthly hell and plant the seeds of paradise. May the Old Ways guide our hands, let us see the lies above, and know our love below. Amen.”
“Amen,” Jacob continued. “Thank you, Sister Tremly, for that lovely benediction.” He tiptoed forward from the lectern and circled the torn hole in the floor. The congregation followed his every step, swaying in unison like a slow-motion wave, ready to crash against the pews. A suffocating heat filled the church, hanging above their heads in a thick cloud that leeched the moisture from their pores. Beads of sweat slicked their foreheads and cheeks.
Jacob Masters waited at the precipice of the gaping wound in the floor. He sensed his flock’s yearning for his words, could feel the ache in their souls, and the sensation made him smile. My cup runneth over, he mused, and raised his hand in the air.
“I’ve a confession to make, brothers and sisters.” He placed his hand upon his heart and lowered his chin. “I have sinned. I am a sinner. My sins run through me like the precious blood of old, and with each beat of my heart, so goes another sin like the first. For years I was lost, teaching the ways of my father and his father before him—but then I heard the truth.”
“Hallelujah!”
“Thank you, Brother Adams. Hallelujah. For years, I was taught there’s a god above, using a proxy of flesh and bone to judge us. A god of silence. An absent god. A lazy god. And in my moment of need, when I questioned my faith in that god of liars, all I heard was the stillness of the air and the beating of sin in my heart. The god of my father wasn’t listening, brothers and sisters. He never was, and he never will.”
“Amen,” hissed the congregation, swaying to the sound of his voice. Jacob smiled. They’re yours, his lord told him. They always were.
“And I fell to my knees in this very house, a house built by my father, a house built in the name of their god! Every beam, every timber, was put here in His name. Did this false god speak to me, brothers and sisters? No, he did not. A child of His own flock, a messenger of His faith, wasn’t worthy.” Jacob pointed to the dark hole in the earth. “But it was then, my lambs, I heard the voice of another god. The one true god. And I discovered I’d been praying in the wrong direction. Our new lord was not silent, brothers and sisters. No, this god listens—”
He took a step into the hole, but he did not fall. Jacob walked across the air, hovering inches above the mouth of the pit, eliciting cries of praise and awe from his flock.
“This god listens, and this god rewards. Yes, brothers and sisters, the one true god spoke to me, as plain as I speak to you here and now, and told me I would build a new kingdom from this very hill, a kingdom from which a new world would spread. Our new lord told me of the Old Ways upon which our very beliefs are founded—and that, my brethren, is why we are gathered here tonight. We will fertilize the earth with the blood of the chosen, so a new kingdom may take root.”
He pointed first to the ceiling and then to the hole beneath his hovering feet. “New lies above, and old love below. Can I get a hallelujah, brothers and sisters?”
The congregation erupted in jubilant cheers, a din of holy voices crying out in praise not to the heavens above, but the earth below. Jacob closed his eyes and drank in their praise. The taste of their sweat and subservience was divine. This, he realized, is what Jesus must’ve felt like.
Jacob smirked. The sweet knowledge of quiet domination, watching a throng of followers give themselves to him. Let this cup pass from his lips? Never. That proxy of flesh, birthed by his father’s false god, was an absolute fool.
He held out his arms to mock the old cross hanging above the entrance, waiting a moment longer before looking down at the cheering faces before
him.
“I share your glee, brothers and sisters. Tonight, we will birth a new world together. Tonight, we will pluck the fruit from the forbidden tree and watch it rot in the earth.” He turned toward the row of red-robed women. “Sister Tremly, Sister Prewitt, Sister Tiptree, Sister Green, Sister Billings, and Sister Tate. My darlings. You six were chosen because of your faith and fertility. I’ve lain with you and planted the seeds of our reckoning, and today, we shall pluck the fruit of your wombs in offering of our new lord.”
The six mothers spoke together: “Your will and the Old Ways are one, Father Jacob.”
“Will you give your lambs to me?”
“Yes, Father Jacob.”
“So be it,” he said, twisting in the air to the men near the door. “Deacon Jones, Deacon Croner, would you be so kind as to lower the ladder for the lambs?”
A path parted through the congregation as the two doe-eyed men approached with an old rusted ladder. They nodded to Jacob in reverence before lowering the ladder into the pit.
“Thank you, my brothers.”
Satisfied, Jacob willed the air to part beneath his feet. He sank into the pit like so many angels, held aloft by the wings of something far greater than himself. The boy at the edge of the pit—Laura’s lamb, little Jackie—looked down and locked eyes with him, and for a moment, Jacob felt something stir within. A screaming voice echoing from the dark chambers of his heart, a shrill cry that gave him pause—
—except the scream was happening above him, somewhere beyond the confines of the church. The scream became several, and as the footsteps clamored above him, a gunshot erupted beyond his sight.
The heretics, his lord rasped. Jacob Masters wasted no time. He reached out, gripped the foot of Laura’s son, and yanked the child down into the darkness with him.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Henry Prewitt’s shotgun split the night, erupting in a hail of buckshot over the heads of their former friends. The sound startled Imogene and she almost dropped her revolver in the brush. They’d come upon Calvary Hill unannounced, their trek through the woods without incident. They had no need for their flashlights in the fading sunlight. The chants of their former brothers and sisters guided their way through the wilderness.
Standing at the tree line, where undergrowth met the weeds of the unkempt path leading up the knoll, Imogene watched their heads turn in shock. She raised her weapon and cocked the hammer but hesitated when she saw the gaunt face of someone at the edge of the congregation. He was young, barely eighteen by her estimation, and she didn’t know him. There were so many converts now, the old white church could barely contain their numbers.
Her daddy spoke up in her head. Remember, Genie, they ain’t your brothers and sisters anymore. He’s done things to ‘em, and their souls are so filthy there ain’t no comin’ back from it.
Henry racked another round in his shotgun as Maggie fired off a warning shot. Imogene watched as the others winced from the report, and she resisted the urge to dig her finger into her ear. The ringing of tinnitus would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“Y’all need to clear out right now,” Maggie screamed. “You let our grandbabies go!”
“Fuck you and your blasphemous ways, whore.”
Deacon Croner marched through the open doorway with a finger raised in accusation. Imogene shot a look at Gage, who caught her glance and frowned. Robby Croner used to be a heavy-set man, two meals away from a heart attack, with a gut so enormous the poor fellow could barely bend over. But in the weeks since their exile, he’d lost at least two hundred pounds. The scrawny thing marching down the hillside toward them was barely a man at all, reduced to a skeleton dipped in flesh and obscured in robes. A large fold of skin hung limp from his neck like moss from a dying maple.
“That’s far enough, Robby.” Gage raised his hunting rifle. “We don’t want no trouble from you and your kin. We just want the kids.”
Robby Croner spat at their feet. “Y’all ain’t welcome here. Father Jacob cast you out for good reason. We ain’t got time to be dealin’ with no non-believers.”
“You tell ‘em, Deacon!”
Imogene glanced up the hill. One of the new parishioners, an obese woman she didn’t recognize, heckled them from the safety of the church entrance. “That’s right, sinner! We ain’t scared a’you!”
Jerry Tate stepped out of the brush with a hand held out to their former friend. “Look, Robby, we want our grandkids. You send them out here to us, and we’ll be on our way. No one has to get hurt here.”
Deacon Croner grinned, his eyes filled with an ethereal shade of blue. Whatever that mad man unearthed in the knoll ate away at not just their bodies but their minds. This wasn’t their old friend Robby; this was a husk of what he used to be, a puppet made to dance the dance of its master, and he was keeping perfect time.
Robby turned to face each of them, sizing them up. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jerry. You may have turned away from the good lord’s teachings, but that don’t mean they ain’t true. Someone does have to get hurt. We can’t have our new kingdom without the spilling of blood.”
“Christ, Robby, listen to yourself.” Roger Billings stepped from the woods and lowered his rifle. He pleaded to his old fishing buddy. “Jacob’s filled your head with lies. He’s dangerous, man. Can’t you see that?” Roger lifted his gaze to the crowd outside the church. “Can’t any of you see that?”
“We see what the good lord wants us to see, and what I see’s nothin’ but lies from blasphemers and whores. All I see’s lies from a false god.” Deacon Croner reached into the sleeve of his robe. “His will and the Old Ways are one.”
The congregation chanted together in agreement. “His will and the Old Ways are one.”
Jerry was too distracted by the ominous chants to see the blade hidden in Croner’s sleeve. Even Imogene looked away, her skin crawling from their discordant voices, her heart stumbling beneath the tension in the air. In later days, and for the rest of her life, Imogene Tremly would replay that night in her mind, questioning if any of them were prepared for what was about to happen.
Deacon Croner revealed the knife to them. Maggie cried out, and both Jerry and Roger raised their hands in protest. Henry and Gage lowered their weapons, stunned to silence by what they witnessed.
Deacon Robby Croner, once a prominent member of Stauford’s Chamber of Commerce and a good God-fearing Christian, raised the serrated blade to his own throat. Carrion-black ichor seeped from his nose and ears, and thin trickles spilled from the corners of his eyes. He smiled at them all, and for a moment, Imogene thought she saw a glimmer of the man she once knew hidden behind the contorted mask he now wore for a face.
“By your will, my lord.”
“Wait—” Gage began, but he was silenced by Maggie’s screams.
Robby Croner buried the blade into his gullet, engulfing his hand in a torrent of blood. He cut as far as his Adam’s apple before he collapsed. The world stopped around them, the air still and the sounds of crickets silenced as blackened gore oozed from their dead friend’s open wound.
A scream worked its way into Imogene’s mouth and would’ve found voice if not for what followed. One by one, the congregants of The Lord’s Church of Holy Voices followed the path of Deacon Croner. One by one, they extracted blades from their robes, and within moments were sawing through their own throats.
The scream of a child carried over the collapsing bodies of the congregation and down the hillside. Imogene’s heart lodged in her throat. Jackie! Oh, dear God, please, not Jackie!
She broke free of her fear and raced up the hill toward the church. Her friends cried out for her to stop, but she refused to listen. Jackie was in there—so were all their grandchildren—and she had to stop that madman from hurting them.
As she stepped over the bloodstained bodies of her former friends, Imogene prayed she was not too late.
2
Jack struggled to adjust to the gloom. A veil o
f light fell from the hole above them, but all around were shadows, and somewhere beyond them was Father Jacob. Motes of dust danced in the light, and he followed them down to the floor where he saw fragments of what looked like old pottery. Jack tried to move for a better look, but his left arm throbbed something fierce every time he tried to move it. So sharp was the pain that he cried out into the dark, but his voice seemed lessened in the void, dampened somehow by the suffocating emptiness.
“No one can hear you here, Jackie. You’re here with us. With your new god.”
A blue spark lit up the emptiness, revealing Father Jacob mere feet away from him. The boy watched the old pastor light a pair of candles with his finger. No matches, no lighters—just his finger. The realization made Jack’s blood run cold.
Magic, he thought.
No magic, child. Only power. The power of blood and sacrifice. The power of our lord manifested in my flesh.
Father Jacob’s words filled his head like black static. Jack winced, shaking his head to rid himself of the awful noise, but Jacob remained inside his mind, chipping away at his will, his spirit, his soul. More and more, Jack felt himself slipping away, a prisoner in his own body as something else took his place. Something shapeless, formless, something infinite. A shadow, he thought.
Jack turned away from the old man before him, struggling to tear his mind free of Jacob’s influence. He glimpsed impossible things in the shifting candlelight. There were drawings on the walls, old inscriptions etched into stone, written with letters he’d never seen in school. Every surface was covered in dust and grime, untouched by man for what seemed like years. Maybe hundreds. Older than the dinosaurs, maybe. The sheer age of something like this eclipsed his scope of understanding, and the longer he focused on the markings, the more his head hurt.
The old pastor stood behind a stone slab, his face illuminated in a swirling mixture of light and dark, the shadows dripping down the contours of his face. When he spotted Jack staring at him, Jacob smiled. Shadows dripped from his mouth, too. The sight of the dark ooze made Jack’s stomach churn.
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