Salvage

by Duncan Ralston

  The screen slammed shut. Everett scrambled back against the corner, shuddering in unholy terror. When it opened a moment later, a giant green-gray eye peered through, swimming with whorls of blue, every fleck and flaw visible as the pupil dilated to peer into the dim booth at Everett.

  FEE-FI-FO-FUM! I SMELL THE LIES OF A LITTLE CRUMB-BUM!

  Everett shrank back against the far wall.

  "Are you all right in there?" The priest. Speaking from another world. Another cosmos.

  ME MY, HO HUM, NEVER TELL ANOTHER ONE! Woodrow sang, his giant's eye squinting through the lattice at the boy, his breath rattling the thin walls. Everett moaned, a runner of drool spilling from the corner of his lips.

  "Son…? Son…?"

  The wood groaned and creaked. The giant eye twinkled in a dark smile. A tremendous, earth-shattering crack pierced the air, and the roof of the confessional tore off, Woodrow's massive, neatly manicured fingers tearing it away like the top of a toy box. Woodrow himself towered above the opening, peering down at the boy from the cathedral ceiling, the hairs in his nose the width of tree branches, each of his straight, yellow teeth as big as the boy's head.

  I SEEEEEE YOUUU…

  Everett's shaking grew more pronounced. Suddenly, he fell back against the seat, and his eyes fluttered back as he seized madly, violently. His head struck the wall just as the door flung open.

  "My God!" the priest said. "Somebody call an ambulance!"

  The priest rushed to the boy's side.

  GOD MAY FORGIVE YOU, BUT I DON'T FORGIVE, BOY, AND I'LL NEVER FORGET! YOU'RE MINE! YOU'LL ALWAYS BE MINE! …AND YOU'LL DIE BEFORE I LET YOU TELL!

  "What is it, Brother Woodrow?" an altar boy asked the priest, stepping up behind them.

  BROTHER WOODROW! Owen's mind cried out, as further twists and shudders ran through the boy's fragile body.

  "Everett Crouch is having a seizure," the priest said, his voice far-off now, and as the man peeled back Everett's eyelids, Crouch shook this memory from his head, finding himself behind the church in the harsh sunlight, on a day brisk enough to see his breath but not cold enough to require a jacket. Already the streets were flooding, the sidewalks turning to rivers, the holes where family homes had once been—good, God-fearing people, most of them—filling with brown water, with branches and leaves and splintered two-by-fours and sodden children's toys that looked like ugly little imps. That drunkard Selkie, who'd lost his job as a detective because of his love for the Devil's drink, sat in a rowboat in the middle of King Street.

  "In those days before the flood," Crouch muttered to himself, "they were eating and drinking right up to the day Noah went into the Ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and destroyed them all." He rubbed his hands against the chill as he made his way to the church.

  In the street, Howard's old pickup truck stood idling outside his office. Looking out through his father's eyes, Owen saw a young, blond boy he knew instinctively was himself at age five—and at such a young age, the family resemblance was nearly perfect. The boy heaved a duffel bag into the back, while Margaret stepped out of the office.

  She glanced up the street, and locked eyes with Everett Crouch. He shouted her name, approaching them at a fast pace. Young Owen smiled—until he saw the look on his father's face. Howard was nowhere in sight.

  "What is this?" Everett demanded. "Where do you think you're going?"

  Margaret stepped between Owen and his father, hiding him behind her. "We're leaving, Everett. This is madness, what you've got planned. I'll be no part of it."

  "You'll be no—? It's what God wants, Maggie! He spoke to me—"

  "Nobody spoke to you! Those voices, that damned monster Woodrow—they're all in your head! You're a sick man, Rett. You need help. You need to let those poor, deluded people go home."

  "We'll all be going home, if you take him away from us. Going home to be with the Lord."

  "Owen, get in the truck," his mother said.

  Everett pointed. "Don't you get in that truck, boy!"

  Owen hesitated, torn between his parents. Finally, the decision was made for him. Everett strode toward them, and pushed Margaret out of the way. She yelped as she stumbled to her knees, surprised by the blow, and dropped her purse on the sidewalk, its contents spilling out.

  Everett snatched Owen by the arm and dragged him away from the car. The boy yelled back, "Mom!" Margaret got to her feet and chased after them, hobbling on the broken heel of her left shoe. She stopped to remove both shoes, then splashed through the brown, shin-deep water in her stockings.

  Owen stumbled along behind Everett, reaching back to his mother while his father dragged him along toward the church. "Dad! Dad, please, let me go!"

  "No one is going anywhere," Everett said distractedly. "You're coming with me. God has a plan for the two of us."

  Margaret had fallen behind, and was looking up the hill at them in despair. She turned from them, and Owen cried out for her once more. But rather than look back, she headed toward the office, while Everett continued onward determinedly. They soon reached the big church doors, and Everett threw them open to discover the nave empty. He dragged Owen inside, and slammed the door shut.

  "Don't you think you're being a tad firm with the boy?" A lanky old man with sunken cheeks and leathery skin had emerged from the basement stairwell, his voice startling Crouch and the boy. In everyday life, Rusty "Red" Adams chewed straw and wore red suspenders to hold up his paint-stained slacks, but today he wore the same wispy white robe as the rest of the congregation.

  "'Whoever spares the rod hates his son,'" Crouch said absently, and looked down at Owen, who wept silently, standing a few steps away from his father. "Owen's been a terrible boy, and now he must make amends."

  "Fair enough," the old man said.

  Crouch looked around, still holding Owen by the arm. "Where are the others?"

  "Downstairs, as God commanded."

  Crouch nodded. "Good, good." His eyes were on the baptismal font. He looked away to question the old man. "And why aren't you with them?"

  Red looked disgruntled. "Forgot to leave my shoes," he said, and crossed to the altar. He sat with a pained groan, and removed them one by one, casting them alongside those that the rest of the flock had left behind.

  Crouch peered anxiously toward the big church doors. "Must you do that now?"

  "I do as the Lord asks." Red gave him a questioning look. "Unless, of course, He's changed His mind again."

  "No, no, do as you must," Crouch said with a sigh, his eye on the door. Finally, the old man grunted as he pushed himself up barefoot from the altar. His gnarled feet swished against the wood floor as he headed back toward the basement.

  "See you down there," he said.

  "We'll be down shortly," Crouch said hurriedly. He looked at Owen. "Stay there," he said. He went to the door himself and closed it gently. Then he came back to Owen and led him to the baptismal font. "Don't cry. Hush now, Owen. Everything will be all right. You'll be with your mother again, soon enough. We have to cleanse you, Owen, before you step into the presence of the Lord." He held his arms out. "Come up into Daddy's arms," he said. Owen shuffled over warily, and allowed himself to be picked up.

  Crouch groaned from Owen's weight. "You're getting big," he said, hoisting the boy onto his shoulder. Against his will, the boy found himself smiling through his tears.

  "Dad…?"

  "Yes, son." He hugged Owen to his chest.

  "Mom says you're sick. But you don't look sick."

  "No man is sick, who is full of God's love." He held Owen back from himself, regarding him. "It's too late. I know it's too late," he said.

  Owen reached out and brushed the tear from his father's eye. "What's too late?"

  Without another word, Crouch spun Owen around and thrust the boy's face into the holy water. Owen kicked his legs, his small fists thrashing in the water. "Let not your hearts be troubled," Crouch said over the splashing, turning his head from the sight. "Beli
eve in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself—"

  The heavy doors crashed open. Howard Lansall stood in the doorway, Owen's mother standing behind him. She cried out in terror when she saw what Crouch was doing.

  Startled, his grip slackened, and Owen rose from the font choking and gasping for air, his hair dripping holy water.

  "Let the boy go!" Howard said.

  "It's for his own good. Can't you see that?"

  "You're mad, Crouch. The Mad Preacher. Kill yourselves if you must, but the boy needs his mother."

  "No," Crouch said. He thrust Owen's face toward the font again. Owen screamed, and Howard stepped in through the vestibule.

  "Put him down!"

  "God demands it!" Crouch shouted back. "He was meant to drown, don't you see? I'm only doing what God asks!"

  "You're doing what Woodrow asks," Margaret said, stepping up beside Howard. "You can't seem to tell the two apart anymore."

  "No…"

  "Woodrow speaks, and you listen. Woodrow says jump, you say 'How high?'"

  Crouch shook his head.

  "What do you think God would have to say about that? 'Worship no one before Me, for I am the Lord thy God.'"

  Crouch's shoulders fell. He let go of Owen, who ran bawling to his mother and hugged her fiercely.

  "Come with us," Margaret said to Crouch. "It's not too late."

  "It is too late," he said, hanging his head. "Go. Go now. The flood will be at the doors any moment."

  Howard made to leave, but Margaret hung back. "He's made up his mind, Madge. We have to leave."

  Margaret nodded. She lifted Owen into her arms, and turned to leave. Looking over her shoulder, Owen watched his father slump down onto the altar. The man never once looked up.

  When the doors had closed behind his wife and son, Crouch stood and descended the stairs toward the basement shelter, comforted to know his congregation would follow him to Abaddon, if it came down to it. They were survivors. Together they would build a new Eden on the ruins of Peace Falls, once the Lord had washed away the sins of the past.

  Crouch stopped by the door and listened to his followers speaking in hushed voices inside the shelter. Their words were unclear. The tone seemed to signify worry. He pulled the big door open and stepped inside.

  The others were slipping out of their shoes. Already they wore their baptismal robes. There were close to ten of them left in all, but Crouch was afraid it wouldn't be enough. Without the children, the Lord would surely turn His gaze from them. Their prayers, however loud, however fervent, would go unheard.

  The others came over, barefoot in their robes of purest white. "Where's Margaret? Where's Owen?" Several of them spoke at once, overlapping as the voices sometimes did in his head. He couldn't tell them the Backstabbing Brit had run off with them. He couldn't say that Howard had been working on Margaret since the Purification. The snake Lansall had been whispering in her ear like a Devil on her shoulder.

  "They've left us," he said.

  Shocked eyes met his words. Gasps of fear.

  "Worry not," he assured them. "We don't need them. God spoke to me again, my brothers and sisters, but not from the water. This time, he addressed me through the fire."

  A sudden image flashed in Owen's mind: a pillar of fire standing in the middle of Everett's office. A deep monotone mumbling arose from it, the same sound Owen had heard on the tape of his father's sermon, the sound Crouch had addressed as Woodrow.

  When Crouch spoke again to the remaining members of the Blessed Trinity it was in a rush: "God said we're to stay in the basement and pray until the flood passes. He said He will spare us and our church, because we are true believers. We are Seekers of the Mystery. The water will pass over us, as the Lord passed over the first-born Hebrew sons in Egypt. But only if we pray."

  The congregation turned to each other, mumbling their concern, nodding aggressively to one another, psyching themselves up for the confrontation. Finally, Émile Tremblay—a man with slicked dark hair and a large mole on his cheek, and faded tattoos visible under his sleeves—spoke up in his heavy Quebecois accent. "If dis is what God wants, who are we to argue?"

  The others nodded in agreement. Jesus hung from his cross behind them, unable to intervene.

  "God will intervene," Glenda decided, nodding along with the rest. "We're His faithful."

  "We must kneel," Crouch said, moving to each of his flock one by one and laying his right hand on their foreheads. As he came around to them, they each knelt and closed their eyes. "Kneel and pray."

  A sound of trickling water startled him, and he turned to look at the door, where a black puddle had begun to gather, drawing closer. Crouch's brow furrowed, the sight troubling him.

  Velma Kampf, opened one eye, her hands clasped tight in prayer. "I thought you said this room vas vaterproof," the German immigrant said.

  The others opened their eyes to see what she had.

  "It is," Crouch said, flustered. "God is merely—uh—testing our faith." He was stammering, the same as Brother Woodrow.

  "That looks like a puddle to me," Red said, his mouth conspicuously empty of all but insinuation.

  "The shelter is waterproof," Crouch assured them. The congregation turned to look with scowls of concern. Crouch wiped a runner of drool from his lips, absently, with the back of his hand. Then he suddenly jabbed an accusing finger at his faithful. "You're unbelievers! All of you!"

  The congregation murmured amongst each other, becoming agitated and distrustful. Émile Tremblay rose cautiously onto one knee. "Everett!" Tremblay approached Crouch, hands held out in supplication. Crouch turned his dazed eyes toward the man. "You say God will protect us, but you don't tell us nothing. If God speaks to you now, why you don't tell us what he say?"

  Everett's eyes came alight abruptly. He nodded stupidly, a child finding an easy out in his lies. "Yes," he said, and addressed the congregation. "Yes, Émile is right. God is talking to me."

  "Everett, tell us God's word," Red Adams said.

  "Tell us!" the others chimed in.

  Crouch gathered his thoughts. Water trickled under the door in the silence. Some of the members of his flock gave it troubled glances, waiting for their leader to speak. Overhead, footsteps crossed from the front of the church to the back.

  Owen knew it was too late; the killers were on their way.

  Crouch flashed his followers a God-loves-us-all smile, and his arms rose with the corners of his lips until his hands faced the crowd, palm-out. "God has sent his righteous to spare our lives!" he cried. He went to each of them, taking their hands, ushering them into a rough circle.

  From above, a thunderous crash startled the entire ministry. They all looked up with terror-stricken eyes as plaster dust fell around them.

  Owen pictured the men upstairs dragging the massive crucifix across the floor. They aren't coming to save you, Everett, he thought, but it was like warning actors in a film. They mean to kill you.

  Crouch squinted up at the ceiling, eyes following the footsteps, the loud screeching of the crucifix being dragged across the wood floor. "They mean to kill me," he muttered, as if he'd heard Owen's warning. "They hate me, because of what I did. Because of what I did to my father."

  "Father Crouch, no," Glenda said, smiling through a haze of tears. "We love you."

  The others nodded. Still holding hands. Still faithful.

  "No," Everett said, anxious now. "They'll never forgive me. They'll never forgive me!" He jabbed a finger toward the ceiling, where the footsteps, the dragging, grew louder. "These people are not our friends. They've come to destroy us."

  "They're coming to save us," Émile said uncertainly. "God tell you this, you say so yourself."

  Everett broke the circle, grasping Glenda's plump-fingers in his own, looking her dead in the eyes. "We have to go," Evere
tt told her, told everyone. "We have to leave, right now."

  Glenda seemed to see the dread in his eyes and dragged old man Adams along by the hand. "Come on," she urged the others. Reluctantly, they followed Everett to the door. He twisted the handle. Outside, the footsteps and the dragging continued. Each drag was followed by a loud thump that shook the walls: they had reached the stairs.

  Everett and Glenda yanked on the door together. It came open with a groan, letting a gush of water in, ankle-deep and cold.

  Howard Lansall stood in the doorway, blocking their intended exodus. Behind him, Dink Deakins and Pete Jebson lugged the crucifix over their shoulders. Howard held the pocket watch, its loop of chain tucked into the breast pocket of his gray vest. He'd apparently been studying the time when the door opened, and he looked up with a cold grin, snatching the lid closed.

  "Time's up, Crouch," he said.

  "Oh, thank God," Everett said. "Howard, I've made a terrible mistake."

  "You're bloody well right, you have," Howard said, and with the grin still on his face, he slugged Everett in the stomach. The wind escaped Everett's diaphragm with a whistling gasp. The others moved in to protect their patriarch, but Howard tucked the watch into his pocket, and neat as a magic trick, he produced a snub-nosed revolver with steady hands.

  The congregation stepped back in fright. Everett, doubled-over and catching his breath, looked up to see the gun.

  The other two men finished lugging the crucifix down onto the concrete floor of the stairwell.

  "Let us out of here!" Velma shouted.

  "You're not going anywhere," said Jeb, peeling off his hat to wipe sweat from his forehead, the T of the cross draped over his shoulder.

  "It's over, Crouch," Howard said. "Madge and the boy have gone up the hill. They're with me, now." Everett shook his head meekly, veins standing out on his forehead. Howard nodded. "You lost."

  "Let us go, Lansall!" Émile Tremblay shouted. The others shouted similar sentiments.

  "You can't…" Everett took a breath. "…do this."

  "It's already done," Howard said with a bored sigh. "'What's done is done and gone,' isn't that what the Voice says? Well, Crouch, 'I will tell you what's to come, even before the events are brand-new.'" He grinned, pleased with himself. His words had the feel of a prepared speech, an oration worthy of Everett himself. "You and your pathetic flunkies are going to drown in this pit. And the rest of us will go on with our lives on the hill above your grave, as if the lot of you never existed."