I wish I could say that finding out that Pastor Dean liked to fuck little girls was the worst thing that happened. But lots of things happen to kids around here.
I’d started by helping film the shows. It was a summer job that my church had found for me, filming his sermons and helping out backstage. It was the day that he saw me singing with my guitar that he evidently saw something in me. I’d just been trying to impress some of the girls, but he saw enough showmanship that he took an interest.
He let me know that he saw big things for me. That the lord had told him I would be a big part of the church. And he convinced me to work full-time for them, rather than going back to my mom and dad.
He then had me working as one of his personal assistants. This meant bringing the items people weren’t meant to know about from venue to venue - the wheelchairs and canes, which we’d convince people to use to give the illusion that they were sicker than they were, before they were dramatically hurled aside.
It also meant making sure nobody was around when he was with the girls, who he’d take back to his private sanctum under the story that he was providing a personal healing. I’d stay outside, and officially, I didn’t know what was happening, although the other assistants talked. He preferred them younger, and he explained to me why one night when he was drunk.
“They don’t tell anyone, Nicky,” he said. “Kids like that, they’re brought up to do what they’re told. The younger you get them, the more scared they are of what will happen to them, the better they behave.”
Lilly Wilson was eight years old. Just the right age for the pastor. The right age to do what she was told and still be able to be scared of talking.
He’d done this plenty. All over the country.
This time though, after a while, he came out.
He asked “Do you love the lord and love me?”
I said yes.
He opened the door and brought me in.
Lilly Wilson was lying dead on the floor, her eyes looking upwards. Her skirt was hiked up and her ripped underwear was lying next to her. There were thick red marks around her neck.
I don’t know why I reacted so calmly, but I did. “What do you need me to do, Pastor Dean?” I asked.
He put his hand on my shoulder from behind. “The lord has sent you to help me,” he said. “Thank you for being the lord’s servant.”
A week later, he involved me on stage for the first time. Holding his props and reading bible verses for him. When I finished that night, he walked me into his private room, which was richly decorated.
He pointed to the marble table. There was an envelope with my name on it.
"What's this?" I asked.
"Your cut for tonight," Pastor Dean said, pouring a glass of bourbon. "You've earned it, son."
There was more money than I had ever seen before. Most of it in fives and ones, but there were twenties and fifties there. Even hundreds.
Pastor Dean smiled, sipping his drink. "It's something, ain't it?"
"I just..." I stumbled over my words. "I had no idea."
"Doesn't get taxed either," he said, putting the glass back down and settling back into his chair. "We're a religious institution. God bless the separation of church and state."
"But you have to declare it?" I said. "Even just the administration of it all..."
He laughed. "Only as much as we want and only if we want. The money's ours. You do as well as I think you can do, boy, you'll be a millionaire before you're 25. I’ll teach you to do as I do."
I looked at the notes. Not for the first time, I thought about the people who had given it. The desperate. The needy. The ill. They dying.
"You ever..." I kept looking at the money. "You ever feel bad about this?"
He got up and walked across to me, looking directly at me until I couldn't bear it anymore and looked back. "What do we have to feel bad about, Nicky?" He asked.
"Well, there's - I mean, there's... you know, people giving the last of their money and all." I struggled to keep his gaze, but I did.
"And what does that money buy them?"
It buys them a subscription to begging letters and occasional trinkets, I thought, but didn't say. "It - it buys them..."
"It buys them hope, son. It buys them faith. It buys them a belief in God. When we go out there and we tell our little stories to make them believe in us, they believe in the lord more."
I nodded. "I understand." I clutched the envelope.
He sighed and put his hand on my shoulder. "We have been given a burden, son. We've been asked to perform these little stories, but we don't do them for personal gain. I could never be a liar, and God knows that. But I can tell stories. I can make people believe more.”
I nodded and I thought about the week before.
We’d wrapped Lilly’s body in an altar cloth and carried her to the back of my car.
We took the spare tire out of the trunk and laid her down, still wrapped in the cloth.
And then I drove with the Pastor in the passenger seat, directing me.
We came to the crematorium where he directed me round to the back of the building.
There were high walls on all sides, and the only other car looked like it had been there for a long time.
Then we went into the main entrance, where the Pastor spoke to the funeral director, who brought us into the back, where the caskets were kept before the incineration, so he could pray over them.
After a little further discussion, the director pointed towards a particular casket, which was on the trolley.
It was a closed casket, due to the injuries sustained in the car accident. There was no way that anybody wanted to look at the remains of what had been a drunk driver once he'd gone through the glass that tore his face to shreds and been propelled into the side of the truck. There was just too much of his face and chest missing.
The director left us alone to pray for a few minutes.
"The lord has sent this man for us." Pastor Dean said. "I'll take the funeral director aside for a while, to go through the funeral arrangements."
I looked at the casket, which seemed to take up the whole of my vision for a moment, before blinking and looking back at him. "And what do you want me to do?"
His eyes lit with irritation. "What the fuck do you think I want you to do, boy? Get the child and put her into the casket. Then close it again."
My stomach churned. "What?"
"The car is round the back, and you can come in here through that –“
He pointed to the small door behind me. "—door there, while I keep the director busy."
I looked at the door and didn't say anything, although I wondered how well he knew what to do.
"The lord be with you," he said as he left to talk to the director.
I stood there. Briefly, and for the only time in my life, I thought about running. About calling the police. But I thought of the lord.
And I opened the casket.
The man inside was a mess. Half of the skin on the left side of his face was missing and a large section of his skull was caved in. His eye was missing, and in the years since that night, that's been the image that my brain has retained.
I then opened the door and went to the car. I opened the trunk of the car. She was still there. Of course she was.
Gently, I lifted her out of the trunk. She was lighter than I expected. I held her close to me as I rushed back into the crematorium. I could feel some of the cold skin of her face against my neck.
I was frightened by the time I was back at the casket, but managed not to panic as I removed the altar cloth.
I shifted her weight and looked at the casket, working out where I could lay her. Lifting her into it was difficult, and I worried about knocking over the casket. But I was careful and I managed to do it.
I laid her across him, her head against his shoulder. Her body against his, her arms slumping down at his sides. An embrace.
That morning, when the cremation took place,
I watched the casket move slowly into the covered area. I didn’t see the flames reducing them to ash, but I imagined it. I imagined her glassy eyes as the flames came closer.
As I write this, the bottle of liquor is half empty.
I tried to sleep, but I saw her again. Memory is the real burden.
I have more helpers now than Pastor Dean ever did. They go out for me during the start of the show and talk to people. The thousands of people that come to the shows every week that get added to the mailing lists.
We don’t use email. Letters work so much better. The old-fashioned approach. The personal touch. The little gifts we put in with them that cost us dollars, and then the envelopes we include requesting them to send money back.
They fall over themselves to do it.
And when my helpers go out and talk to people, they can’t wait to tell them everything about what’s wrong with them, so when I go out later, I just call on them and tell them all that information right back, and they believe the lord did it.
The burden I take on to help them believe. The stories I weave and the lies I tell.
And the secrets I keep.
Months later, I sat in the church while Lilly Wilson’s parents looked at us with hurt in their eyes—that hurt pushing outwards with stinging redness.
"We just want to know what happened, Pastor. Want you to ask God, ask Jesus for us. What happened to our girl?"
The tears ran down her father's face as he asked. I wanted so much to be able to make him feel better. To tell him that God loved him, even if I couldn't tell him anything else.
I leaned forward and took his hand. "I'll pray for you," I said.
"Don't give them false hope," Pastor Dean said. "I abhor giving people false hope."
I let go of her father's hand, and looked at him, surprised.
"Michael, I..." he sat down next to me, his voice soft, "I'm sorry, but I spoke to the lord last night for you, I spoke to the lord Jesus, and I asked him already for you. I couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't, but what the lord Jesus told me, I'm sorry."
He'd started using the same manner and style of speech that he used when he was performing on stage.
"I couldn't see that little girl... that beautiful little girl... go missing and not try to do whatever I could, use whatever ability Jesus gave me, to try to find her for you, Michael.
Her mother hugged her father, who wept into her shoulder.
"So I spoke to the lord for you, Michael and Janet. I spoke to the lord. And I asked him what had happened to your beautiful girl. And he told me - and I wish I didn't have to tell you this, I really do, but I made a promise to the lord - that... that..."
As on stage, that moment of hesitation. The reminder that he was just a man, trying to do God's work.
"...that God took her away to punish you. To punish you for your wicked ways, and I won't tell either of you what God told me about the other, but you both know that you've done wicked things over the years."
They both looked at him, the grief and anger palpable. He continued.
"You haven't prayed enough. You haven't given enough when we've been collecting, you haven't believed in your hearts enough. And the lord took her away to make an example out of you."
"You can't say that," her mother said in a low growl.
"I'm not saying it, Janet. The lord is saying it, and you know in your hearts that it's true."
"We loved her!" she shouted. The silence hung in the air. I had no idea what to say.
"Well, now, that's the problem, isn't it?" the Pastor said. "You loved her, but it should have been God that you loved first. It should have been the lord that you loved most, because he loved her, and he took her back. She's in heaven at the lord's side."
"She... she's dead?" her father said. He gripped his wife. "The lord told you she's dead?"
He ignored the question and raised his voice as he talked. "You putting your needs ahead of God's needs, your love ahead of God's love, your wants ahead of God's wants?"
"We never - " her mother said, the upset catching in her throat.
"That is Satan's work!" the pastor cried. "Satan's work, that had your child taken away from you! Satan that drove you to have less faith than you needed! Satan and the devils that drove the wickedness in your hearts that led you to this!"
"Please," her father said, letting go of his wife and falling to his knees. "Help us. Help us love God and get our daughter back."
"I cannot help you," he said grandly, standing up. "Go back home and pray. The lord is angry with you. That is why this has happened. Go back home and pray and beg for forgiveness. It's too late for me to help you now. You should have come to me sooner, instead of going to the police. You were arrogant and you were foolish and you were evil. Go back home and pray."
"Please," her father said again, clutching at his wife and trying to pull her to her knees next to him. "I know we've been wicked. I know we've been out of God's favor. But please, just help us pray to the lord now, if nothing else."
He looked down at both of them, the father kneeling and the mother sitting. "I cannot do that, Michael. It would make a liar of me to beg the lord to do differently than he has done, and I cannot condone that request." He pointed to the door. "You should leave my church now, the two of you. Leave and do not come back. This is a house of the lord."
There were more tears, and more upset, but there were no more words. The father left, pulling the mother with him. She had more fight in her, more anger in her, but the bruises on her wrist said that she was used to punishment.
The pastor looked silently at the door for a while.
"What do you think they'll do?" I asked.
"The lord will guide them," he said. "They won't make any trouble."
He was wrong, but only just. There was a little more trouble. The Wilsons died that night, after the father strangled the mother and then hanged himself.
I don't know what happened between them, but I have a pretty good guess. My reckoning is that she threatened to go to the police again, and he killed her. Then, filled with grief through the loss of his wife and daughter, he killed himself.
When I told the pastor was told that the police had decided Lilly’s father had probably killed her too, he chuckled. "I told you, Nicky," he said. "The lord provides."
That was forty years ago now, and Pastor Dean is long dead. He died peacefully, surrounded by the luxury that the lord’s work had afforded him.
And I have grown rich through my ministry. Through my healing. And through the lord’s good will.
While I see her face sometimes, in my mind, it doesn’t matter. Not in the big scheme of things.
Secrets stay kept in Louisiana.
15
ECCE HOMO by Joel Amat Güell
“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”
- Mark Twain
* * *
Los Angeles – 7/14/1997
When Detective Zamora walked inside of her office, she found that Detective Brett Hunt was already there. The room smelled different than usual. And Hunt looked different, too. His cheekbones seemed more prominent than ever and his eyes were bloodshot.
The table was full of dossiers of old cases they had worked on in the past.
-What are you doing here? I’m always the first to get here. –she said.
He did not answer and, instead, rubbed his eyes.
-Wait, did you sleep here? –she asked.
-Technically I stayed here. I haven’t been able to sleep a wink. –he said, his voice rough.
-I think you need a break. A vacation would be good for you. –Zamora suggested.
-What makes you be you? –Hunt asked her, ignoring the last comment.
-What?
-Is it your face? Is it your voice? –he said. She had no idea what was going on.
–No. It’s the memories. Without them, you’re nothing. A hollow entity. The sum of all your experiences, that’s what makes you who you are.
-Do you believe in ghosts? –Hunt said.
-Ghosts? As in poltergeists? Like a girl wearing white on the side of the road? No, I don’t.
-No, I mean like real ghosts. Memories that will come back to haunt you. –He stopped and took a deep breath.
– I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night seeing her. I don’t want her telling me that she was innocent and feeling responsible for her death, because I didn’t do enough. I’ve been checking old cases ‘cause I was afraid that we could have sent an innocent person to the gas chamber...
Zamora didn’t know what to say. She had never seen him like this.
-What happened to you? What’s all this about?
Hunt hesitated.
-I visited her. -he said.
-When?
-Yesterday.
* * *
Los Angeles – 7/13/1997
* * *
Detective Hunt had been waiting in the visitation area of a women’s prison somewhere near a California desert. He was standing in front of a glass window, awaiting her appearance.
A girl walked in and sat on the other side of the glass. She was wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Hunt picked up the phone, and so did she.
-Hi, Audrey. How have you been? –Hunt said.
-Fine, I guess. –she answered.
-Sorry I haven’t been here in some time. I’ve done my best but I haven’t found anything new.
-I’ve got three months. –Audrey said, cold. –My execution date is the eleventh of September.
Hunt did not respond.
-I’ve been reading a lot lately, you know? –She said- I followed your recommendations, actually.
-And what have you been reading?
-Nietzsche, Sate.
-Sartre. –he corrected her.
-Yes Sartre. And some more. The other day I came across a sentence… It’s been stuck in my head. “Some men are born posthumously.” –she said.
Walk Hand IN Hand Into Extinction : Stories Inspired By True Detective Page 12