Jacob remembered his father’s sermons, and he remembered Stauford’s scorn. He’s one of those crazy holy rollers. They ran his father out of town. He’s one of them.
In the eyes of Stauford’s families, he’d always been one of them. And after years of following his father’s footsteps, he finally heard the voice he’d yearned for. The voice didn’t come from the clouds, the stars, or the heavens beyond; no, the voice came from below, soothing the wounds in his fractured soul.
The burning steeple of First Baptist caved in upon itself, and in a rush of flames, vanished from view. The mob’s joyous cries filled the air.
Jacob Masters smiled. Their temple was burning. So shall they all.
3
Breaking glass and laughter woke Skippy from his slumber. He opened his eyes, confused to find he wasn’t in his room at Stauford Assisted Living, but in an alleyway downtown. A group of pale-faced children surrounded him, staring down with curious glee.
Skippy sat up and grimaced. His body ached from sleeping against a mound of trash bags. Memories of the night trickled into frame. He’d gone for one of his late-night walks in town and fallen asleep. He’d walked too far for too long, and he’d grown tired.
One of the kids whispered into the ear of another. They both looked at him and snickered.
He didn’t recognize them; the children he’d befriended years ago were all grown up, and he’d since been asked politely by the principal of the elementary school not to visit the playground anymore. Besides, there was something wrong with them. Their eyes were all funny and blue, and they were crying tears like black oil.
“Hi,” he said, hoping not to scare them away. He was going to ask if they wanted to play Kick the Can when a little girl with blonde pigtails and blood smeared on her face chucked a pebble at his face. Skippy cried out, cradling his head. “That hurt!”
The children giggled. “He’s different from the others.”
Skippy touched his forehead. Blood smeared his fingertips, the wound throbbing with a pronounced ache. He blinked tears and looked at the children, confused.
“What’d you do that for? I didn’t do nothin’ to you.”
A young boy in stained bib overalls picked up a chunk of asphalt. He threw it and struck Skippy on the cheek.
“He still bleeds,” the little boy said. “He can still suffer for God.”
There’s somethin’ wrong with ‘em, Skippy thought, wincing. He scrambled to his feet, crying out as his knees popped and sang with arthritis, and pressed himself against the brick wall, hoping his fear would make them leave him alone.
A tall girl in torn jeans and a stained Slayer T-shirt reached out and touched his cheek, sliding her fingers through the curly gray streaks of his beard. She pursed her lips, squelching worms between her teeth.
“God says I can fuck an older man if I want.” She ran her hand down the front of his shirt, picking the buttons free. “Do you want me? You can have me if you’ll suffer for it. You could take me right here.”
Skippy Dawson closed his eyes. He didn’t want to be here, wished he was still back at the nursing home, wished he hadn’t listened to that voice calling him into the night. A voice calling from the earth, beneath the streets, chanting He Lives, He’s Risen, He’s Returned.
Black veins beneath the girl’s eyes deepened into cracks, her skin shifting and separating like tectonic plates, revealing the dark folds of sinew beneath. When she opened her mouth again, he saw fingers in there. Dark fingers coated in the same oily substance, writhing and twitching, reaching forward into open air to take hold of the world. To take hold of him.
Skippy screamed, shoved himself off the wall and past the gang of children. As he neared the corner, the sound of a parade filled his ears. There was singing and cheering, the smell of smoke in the air, sirens and alarms and breaking glass. Confused, he looked over his shoulder expecting to see the children giving chase, but they were where he’d left them. They smiled at him, eyes aglow in the alley shadows.
When Skippy turned the corner, he saw men and women dressed in bed sheets and drapes, their children clad in tattered clothing, all drenched in the same black goo. They walked with purpose, singing an old church hymn while they deposited their Bibles in a massive pile at the corner of 1st and Main. Smoke slithered from the shattered windows of Whitacre Bank, its alarms blaring while police officers danced in circles on the sidewalk.
“Gary Dawson. I dreamed of you in the grave, child. Let me have a look at you.”
Skippy turned, startled by the sound of his real name, startled by the voice he’d heard so often in his dreams. The dead reverend had haunted him for years after the church burned, after Skippy’s motorcycle accident nearly killed him.
“The grave never loses touch with its own,” Jacob Masters said. “We might as well be brothers, you and I. And in the eyes of my lord, we are.”
“I dreamed you,” Skippy whispered. “You ain’t real. You’re dead.”
“I am. Ain’t I, brothers and sisters?”
“Hallelujah, Reverend!” A woman in a Tiffany blue bathrobe flicked a lighter and set the mound of Bibles on fire. They went up in a rush of orange flames. Skippy shielded his face from the sudden heat and blinked away tears.
“What’s wrong with everybody? What’d you do to ‘em?”
“I showed them the ways of my lord,” Jacob said. “I showed them the Old Ways. It’s my will. They are one.” He held out his hand. “Would you join us, Gary? My lord answers prayers. My lord will heal your mind, heal the pains of your failing body.”
Hesitant, Skippy considered the reverend’s gesture. “What do I have to do?” Reverend Masters smiled and stepped back, allowing a young man to approach from the crowd. Skippy lit up with a smile. “Mr. Gravy! Why ain’t you at the Gas ‘n Go?”
David Garvey returned the smile, revealing blackened teeth and a squirming shape wriggling out of sight beneath his lower lip. “I quit my job, Skip. I have a new one now.”
“What’s that?”
David pulled a dark tendril from his nose, curled it around his finger and shoved it into Skippy’s mouth before the old man could protest. “I make others suffer for the lord.”
Reverend Jacob smiled with approval and strolled on down the street toward the bonfire. He joined his children as they linked hands and swayed in a circle around the blossoming flames, singing the hymns of their lord. Even on that humid September afternoon, the warmth was exquisite.
4
The mob was already there when Cindy Farris parked in front of the radio station. Her lungs deflated at the sight of them. There were at least twenty by her count, men and women and a few kids, all draped in weird shrouds. They’d formed a half-circle in front of the building, holding hands while they sang a church hymn.
So this is how it goes down, she thought, fishing through her purse for her phone. They’ve finally snapped. I warned Steph this would happen. Ryan warned her, too.
She’d imagined militant rednecks would show up at the front door of the station someday, shotguns and Bibles in hand, demanding they stop playing the devil’s music—except, these people weren’t rednecks, they didn’t appear to be carrying firearms or religious materials.
One of the men in the chain of religious nuts looked over his shoulder and smiled. Cindy’s heart sank.
“Ryan?” She rolled down her window and leaned out. “Ryan, what are you doing? What is this?”
Ryan broke away from the mob, holding out his hands to welcome her as he approached her car. “It’s the greatest thing, Cindy. A true revelation. A god that doesn’t judge me for my sexuality. All I had to do was suffer.”
A stench of rotting compost permeated the air, sweeping a wave of nausea over her. She wrinkled her nose and fought her gag reflex.
“Victor didn’t believe me, so I helped him understand.”
A dark stain painted the front of Ryan’s shirt, wet and shining in the afternoon sun. Thick globules of viscous sludge bubbled from
his nostrils, and when he smiled, Cindy glimpsed something moving beyond his tongue.
Oh God, I’m going to be sick. She found her phone beneath a can of pepper spray. The screen lit up, showing a full charge but no signal. “Fuck.” She held up the phone to the car’s ceiling. “Come on, goddammit.”
Ryan remained in front of her car, sizing her up like an animal. “There’s a purge of blood and fire comin’ to Stauford, Cindy. It’s already begun. Can’t you hear the music in the wind?”
She could. The whole damn town seemed to be screaming with alarms, gunshots, and a weird chanting in the breeze. Something about old-time religion. Something about a god from within and old lies above. A song about heretics and the many ways they burn.
Cindy rolled up the window, muffling the outside world. The phone signal was nonexistent, dead since this morning. If she could make her way inside the station, maybe somehow lock herself in, she could broadcast for help.
The mob of fanatics turned toward her, staring with strange eyes. Ryan tapped his knuckles on the hood of her car.
“The lord has a plan for you, Cindy. Has a plan for us all. And you can be a part of that plan. All you need to do is suffer, girl.”
“No thanks,” Cindy whispered. She put her foot on the brake and started the car. Judas Priest sprang from the speakers, a concussive beat spurring Cindy on as she dropped the car into reverse. “I should’ve left this dump months ago.”
A hand shot through her window, shards of shattered glass spraying her face and the car’s interior. Its fingers gripped a handful of her hair and yanked her toward the opening. Cindy shrieked, scratching at the fingers holding her, trying to pry away their grip. She felt her hair ripping free of her scalp, and in a moment of blind desperation, reached into her purse for the can of pepper spray. A jet of orange liquid shot from the can.
Her attacker recoiled, his glowing eyes burned and swollen from the spray. Grinning, he snatched the can from Cindy’s hands and returned the favor, blanketing her eyes.
Cindy screamed, slamming on the gas pedal. The car shot backward across the parking lot, squealing tires as it jumped the curb and careened over the embankment.
Shrieking in agony and blind terror, Cindy jerked the wheel to correct her course, but momentum held her in its grip. The car turned, tipped onto its side, and rolled down the kudzu-covered hillside where it collided with a copse of walnut trees. Cindy lay crushed beneath her seat, struggling to breathe through the burning in her swollen throat. Consciousness left her with the slow seeping of blood from a wound on the side of her head.
Minutes later, the corrupted wandered down the hill, led by Ryan. Her suffering was just beginning.
5
While the residents of Stauford followed the whims of their new god, one silent figure made her way through the chaos unnoticed.
To the corrupted, she looked no different, indiscernible from the other lambs frolicking through the streets. Her good eye possessed the same sickly glow. Her clothes—stolen from a wash line on the north side of town, less than a mile from Layne Camp Cemetery—were a size too big and bore the telltale stains of fluid leaking from her nose, her eyes, her ears. A thin sheet of dirt and dust hid her pale complexion, and if it weren’t for the silver hair tied back behind her head, anyone paying her notice might’ve mistaken her for a young lady no older than fifty.
She clutched a folded sheet of paper in her hand. A piece of thread was looped through a small tear at one end of the page; the other side was tied to her left index finger, a reminder of what she had left to finish and a promise to do so. She was pleased her final wishes were followed to the letter.
Little had changed in the weeks since her death, except for the smell in the air. The living would only recognize it as the stench of sour earth and compost, of rot and slow decay. To her, it was the scent of the grave. Stauford reeked of it, even if its people didn’t know it yet. But they would. By the look of things, oh yes, they would know it soon enough.
She watched from the summit of Gordon Hill while the fires in lower Stauford spread north. She saw the steeple of First Baptist collapse upon itself, heard the horrible clang of the bell as it fell from its tower. Somewhere down there in the chaos, her adversary was rejoicing, believing he’d won.
You lack the conviction, he’d once told her. After being a member of the Lord’s Church for more than a decade, leaving her family behind was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She’d lost her daughter because of it, almost lost her grandson because of it, and in the quiet spaces of the nights since, she’d wondered what she might’ve done differently if only she’d gathered the courage sooner.
None of that mattered now. She had a job to do. Jacob was down there somewhere, and while he counted the spoils of his temporary victory, she would slip past quietly. She would make her way back to where this nightmare began and seal the rift for good.
Before turning away from the town and resuming her pilgrimage, Imogene Tremly looked toward the horizon in the direction of her home. Be safe, Jackie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1
Jackie wasn’t safe. The mob was nearly at his doorstep, marching hand-in-hand up the long driveway toward his childhood home. They sang about their religion, about the glory of their god; they sang about the purity of suffering and honoring the Old Ways. Their voices filled him with an overwhelming sense of dread he’d not felt in the waking world since he was a child living at Devil’s Creek.
“Get inside,” Jack told his siblings. Stephanie and Riley stood beside Bobby’s Acura, staring in horror at the approaching crowd. Chuck remained at Jack’s side, watching down the hill. Jack turned to him. “You too, Chuck.”
“This is ridiculous,” Chuck whispered, staring at the mob, noting their choice of clothing, the song they sang. “This can’t be happening.”
Jack clutched Chuck’s shoulders, gave him a good shake. “Wake up, man. I need you, okay? If we’re going to get out of this together—”
“Jackie Tremly,” a voice cried out. He turned toward the crowd. There were at least thirty, maybe even forty people standing before them draped in improvised robes, their faces caked in black sludge. An elderly man emerged from their center, his eyes aglow, his back bent like a snapped candy cane. Half his face was masked in scar tissue, a wax dummy held too close to a flame, the result of ancient skin grafts from an unsophisticated time.
Jack didn’t recognize him. Not at first. Not until he spoke again, clearly, amid the silence of the day.
“Last I saw you, boy, you were about yea high.” The elderly fellow raised his hand to his hip. “Course, you were hidin’ behind your grandma, then.”
Can’t be, Jack thought, recalling the night the Klan showed up at their door. They were all wearing white robes and those idiotic white hoods, but he remembered their voices. He remembered the man who caught fire, remembered his voice shrieking into the night, This ain’t over, witch. More than thirty years had passed, but as soon as the disfigured old man opened his mouth, Jack knew him.
“Get off my property. All of you.” He caught Stephanie’s eye, cocked his head toward the house. She pulled Riley back, marching the boy across the yard toward the porch. “I don’t know you, mister, but take your people and go.”
“You do know me, boy. You know this face.” The old Klansman traced his fingers over the waxen patch of skin covering his cheek. “You know what your old bitch of a grandma did to me.” He took a step forward, and then another. Jack sucked in his breath and stood his ground. “You got any pagan magic to protect you this time, boy? Can you throw fire like your grandma?” The Klansman held out his hand, and the crowd presented a brown bottle. A dirty rag hung limp from the neck. “Because I can.”
Jack held up his hands, eyes wide, unsure what to do. Should he make a move for the bottle? Stop this idiot from setting his house on fire? Or should he retreat? His mind circled back to that night the Klan arrived on their doorstep, back to the blue light filling the house,
the porch. Back to the image of Mamaw Genie wielding fire like a comic book hero.
The idol, he thought. Until this weekend, he thought what he saw was the workings of an overactive imagination, the wind had stirred the fire—but not now. The idol had something to do with it. She’d channeled it somehow, used its power to control the elements. The idol was an effigy of the dark thing beneath Devil’s Creek. She’d channeled it to protect them, channeled it to complete her ritual—
“Jack, get back!”
A gunshot ripped through the air and struck the Klansman in the shoulder. Stunned, his ears ringing from the report, Jack turned around, wildly seeking the source of the bullet. He found it in Chuck’s shaking hands. His brother stood beside the BMW’s open passenger door, his arms braced on the car’s roof, a handgun pointed at the crowd. The Klansman staggered backward, grunted, and regained his composure. Blue light leaked from the old man’s eyes, and his whole face glowed as he struck the lighter in his hand.
“Chuck, don’t—”
“Get in the fucking house, Jack!” Chuck fired off another round, more a warning shot than anything else, but the mob wasn’t fazed.
Jack backed away just in time. Chuck’s next round struck true, shattering the bottle in the Klansman’s hand, lighting up the old bastard like a match. Jack shielded his face from the rush of heat, retreating up the porch steps.
The Klansman collapsed, his flesh sizzling as it cooked, but he wasn’t screaming. Something sprouted from his face, something long and tendril-like, licking the air along with the flames. A living shadow in the shape of a slender arm with fingers at its ends.
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