by Ray Garton
“Oh-ho yes,” she said with a cold and heavy laugh, as if he’d made an understatement.
Marvin said, “I read an article that mentioned you recently, and it said—”
“Oh, that,” she sighed, rolling her eyes.
“Did they misquote you?”
“No.”
“Then why the reaction?”
“That article just… well, it stirred up some trouble for me. That’s all.”
“What kind of trouble.”
“With the Alliance. They didn’t like what I said, needless to say, and Hester sent a few of her drones out to see me. It wasn’t a social visit, either.”
“They came here?”
“No, I didn’t have this place then. I was back in Wheatland trying to figure out what to do with my life. The reporters came, asked me what I thought of Hester Thorne and the Alliance, so I told them. I said I thought the New Age in general, and the Alliance in particular, were among Satan’s slickest and most attractive deceptions and being lured in by them was like being romanced and finally seduced by someone who is actually a bloodsucking vampire, except that the Alliance doesn’t suck blood, it sucks souls. Something like that. Anyway, Hester wasn’t flattered, and a few days after the magazine came out, three guys showed up at my house and broke a few things to show me just how much she wasn’t flattered.”
“You mean they damaged your property?” Marvin was appalled and, at the same time, pleased because this information was a real find.
Lizzie looked troubled; she fidgeted in her chair and ran her tongue around in her cheek. “Yes. They … damaged some furniture, broke a few, um, knick-knacks and, um … they, um … killed my dog.”
“I’m … terribly sorry to hear that,” Marvin said. He was stunned; these people were clearly not afraid of getting into trouble, not if they didn’t hesitate to put on such an ugly show. “How long ago was this?”
“Five … maybe six years.”
“And nothing was done?”
“What was to be done? Surely you know enough about the Alliance to know it would have been useless to tell the police.”
“It would?”
“Sure.”
“You’re saying all the police are involved?” His voice sounded heavy with disappointment; it looked like Lizzie Dayton was another nut after all.
“Of course not. I’m saying the Alliance covers its behind better than anybody since the U.S. government.”
“Ah, I see,” he nodded, feeling a tad better.
“They would’ve made me look like a fool. No one would’ve believed me. If I’d done that, I wouldn’t have been able to get an insurance salesman to talk to me after the Alliance was done running me through a ringer.”
“So what did you do?”
“I came here and went about my business. Never forgot it, though. Somehow, I knew it would come up again, would be important. Like right now. Just like I knew I would confront Hester sooner or later. I’ve had so many dreams about those men and … my poor little dog. About Hester and the vision she—uh, well, I haven’t gotten to that yet. But I never dwelled on those things. The chapel keeps me busy. And happy.” She was quiet a long time, thoughtful, then: “Why don’t I back up and start at the beginning.”
“Fine.”
“You promise you’re not going to laugh at me or give me that look you probably give people you think are insane?”
He shrugged, smiled. “I don’t want to promise anything until I’ve heard what you have to say.”
“Good for you,” she said, patting the table for emphasis. “That way you won’t make a liar of yourself. The only reason I ask is, um … some of this is going to sound a little crazy. But you do want to hear everything I can tell you about Hester Thorne, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, then …”
After a few swallows of her cola, Lizzie began, speaking carefully, self-consciously at first, and being very choosy with her words as she told Marvin what it had been like to go to school with Hester Thorne. She told him of Hester’s blind popularity among students and faculty alike, of her smiling cruelty and the way it seemed to spread like contagion among her little followers. She told him of Hester’s hurtful pranks, of the things Hester had said and done to Lizzie and the horrible things she’d seen Hester do to small animals. And then Lizzie recounted for Marvin that day on the school playground when her anger got the best of her and she pushed Hester from the swing and Hester showed Lizzie a vision that had been vividly branded on her memory ever since.
As she described what she’d seen in detail, Marvin felt himself tense up and realized his palms were slick with perspiration. Although he wanted very much to dismiss her account as some sort of religious delusion inspired by the apocalyptic book of Revelations—no matter how hard he tried to dismiss it—he could not. She spoke with eloquence—not the eloquence that came with rehearsal, but that came with the vivid memory of a traumatic event. Rather than telling Marvin of the experience, she was reliving it for him in her mind and pulling Marvin into the experience with her words.
Her story gave him a heavy, ominous feeling; he found himself thinking of Jordan and Lauren in Grover, hoping they were okay.
When Lizzie was done, Marvin cleared his throat again and asked, “Why do you think that happened, Lizzie?”
She shrugged. “There are several possible reasons. To frighten me. To make me feel hopelessly insignificant. To show me what was coming and make me feel helpless. Or maybe it knew we would meet again and it wanted to plant in my mind early on the seed of failure, to convince me decades in advance that I would be defeated in any conflict.”
“It? What do you mean, it! Are you referring to Orrin? You think she’s been involved with Orrin since she was a child?”
“Of course. That was what spoke to me through her on that playground.”
“Orrin.”
“If you want to call it that.”
The next question stuck in his throat because he was pretty sure what her answer would be: “And what, uh … what would you … call it?”
She smiled. “Satan.”
He looked at her smile for a long time, sipped his coffee and tried not to show his disappointment as he muttered, “Mmmm. Satan, huh? Is that the part you thought would make me look at you like you’re insane?”
“Oh, no. I figured the vision would do that. But you obviously don’t believe in Satan.”
“I’m not a very religious person, Lizzie. No, I don’t really believe in Satan.”
“That’s okay. Satan, as they say, believes in you.”
He chuckled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Satan is strictly a Christian belief. What connection would he have to a non-Christian belief like the Alliance?”
“Do you agree that the Alliance can be categorized as spiritualism?”
“Sure.”
“Well, they borrow extensively from everything—Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, just about every religion. Even Satanism, believe it or not; the idea that the only judge you have to answer to is yourself is big with Anton LaVey. So it appeals to everyone. It claims that you can worship god and Christ and still communicate with aliens and dead people. Of course, that idea has no biblical backing whatsoever. And it’s certainly not new. Spiritualism has always been around. King Solomon consulted a medium, according to the bible. Others did the same.
“And, as far as I can tell, the American spiritualist movement goes back to 1848 in Hydesville, New York. The family of a peppermint farmer, the Foxes, began hearing strange poundings and knockings on their walls at night. After several nights, the youngest of the two daughters, Kate, communicated with the source of the knocking by snapping her fingers and asking it to answer. It did. The family worked out a code—silence meant no and one knock meant yes—and found that the source was—o
r claimed to be—a salesman who had been killed in the house years before. Everyone in town came to talk with this spirit. They asked it questions about the afterlife, about the future, about their own problems and desires.
“Someone wrote a little book about it. News of the Hydesville Rappings, as they were known, spread fast and finally reached Leah Fox Fish, one of the Foxes’ older daughters whose husband had left her and her little girl. Leah saw dollar signs and rushed to Hydesville to her parents’ house and asked her little sisters, Kate and Maggie, exactly how they were making the sounds because she didn’t believe the dead salesman story for a second. They told her they’d tied an apple to a string that led to their bed and pulled on it at night, knocking the apple against the wall. It was intended as a joke, is all, but it got out of hand, and when people started coming around talking to the ghost, they had to devise more sophisticated methods. And their methods worked because the folks were lining up to talk with this spirit. Well, Leah knew a good scam when she saw one and ended up taking her little sisters all over the country to give lectures, conduct séances and communicate with the dead. Everybody wanted to talk with spirits, ask for advice, learn from their wisdom. The Fox sisters met their need as they traveled. They also made a lot of money.”
“Okay, but I don’t see what this has to do with Satan,” Marvin said. “They were fakes.”
“Yes, they were fakes, but five years after the Hydesville Rappings, do you know how many professional and amateur mediums there were in America? About thirty thousand. The movement literally exploded. People all over the place were consulting the dead, seeking their advice. They’ve been doing it ever since. Human beings seem to crave magic, mysticism and, of course, answers. So, obtaining answers in a mystical way from spirits has always been very popular. Like I said, there’s really nothing new about the so called New Age.”
“Fakes. They’re all fakes. You’re talking about a con man’s playground. I don’t see the connection to your Satan.”
“First of all, he’s not mine. Secondly, if you were Satan, Marvin, if you wanted to foil god, your archenemy, if you wanted to confuse His children and turn them away from Him, how would you do it?”
“Please, Lizzie, I really don’t have a lot of time and I just wanted to ask you a few—”
“No, please, give me a second. What would you do? Would you possess little girls and make them curse and growl, make their heads spin around and send pea soup shooting out of their mouths? You think that would win anybody over? Or would you appear in a gentler way? As something like, say, a spirit? How’s this sound: a spirit that has nothing but good news about the afterlife and reassures people that their dead loved ones are happy … when actually the bible says, in Ecclesiastes 9:5, that ‘the dead know not anything.’ A spirit that tells people they’ve lived before and will live again and again in other bodies … when the bible says the dead sleep … a spirit that tells people they are completely self-contained, when god said, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ … a spirit that tells people what they want to hear, that makes them happy, makes them feel good … isn’t that what you’d do?”
“Yeah, I-I … yeah, I suppose something like that would work.”
“It does work. He’s the greatest con man in the universe. Always has been. Coming off as a monster, like he does in the movies, would defeat his purpose. He uses beauty and twists the truth and people line up around the world.”
“But you’re assuming I believe in the bible, which I don’t. Well, not anymore … I was raised in a Christian family, but that was a long time ago. And you’re assuming these mediums are all real when you just told me yourself about this apple on a string trick. I may not like frauds like the Fox sisters and Hester Thorne, but I certainly don’t think they’re satanic. They’re just making a buck off of the gullible and are, for the most part, harmless.”
“Ah, but if you were Satan, isn’t that what you’d want some people to think? If the ones who are on the look-out for you think you’re a fraud, then they won’t take you seriously and you can go about the business of sucking up all the people who do.”
He sighed, rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “What are you getting at?”
“Just because a few of them are frauds doesn’t mean they all are. Look at my own belief. It’s riddled with frauds. Look at all the televangelists who’ve been caught with their pants down or their hands in the offering plate. But does that mean all Christian ministers should be dismissed as crooks? No, not any more than a few cleverly deceptive mediums and channels mean that all of them should be dismissed as frauds. Hester Thorne is not a fraud. I knew that long before I ever found out exactly what she is. I believe her to be completely genuine and evil, but I’m apparently the only one who combines the two. Those who believe she’s not genuine think she’s harmless and those who think she is genuine think she holds the wisdom of the ages and will be a savior to all mankind. So that leaves me looking rather silly. Except I’m right. I know I’m right.”
As she spoke, Marvin thought of the Alliance seminar he and Jordan had gone to just a few weeks before. The bad feeling he’d had then began to come back. He remembered the look on Hester Thorne’s face, the lights that shattered and sent sparks raining down, and the icy wind that had swept through the room. “Are you okay?” Lizzie asked.
Marvin blinked, pulling himself from his thoughts. “Hm?”
“You looked troubled.”
“Oh. I was, uh … just remembering something.”
“Want to talk about it?”
He decided against it at first, then, with a what-the-hell shrug, he told her about what he and Jordan had witnessed at the seminar.
Lizzie’s face darkened. “And you still think she’s a fraud?” she asked quietly, almost as if her feelings were hurt. “After seeing that? What did you think, she had a wind machine hidden under her dress?”
“Everything happened very quickly. It started, then it was over and we were out of there. I was never really quite sure what I saw and I’m still not. I just told you what I think I saw.”
“Who was this woman who burst into the place?”
“Uh, sort of a client of ours.”
“A client of you and your friend. You’re private investigators?”
“Sort of.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s a private investigator, I’m in another part of that business, and sometimes we work together. We’ve been hired to look into the Alliance, that’s all.”
“This woman who was shouting about her husband … she’s hired you to find him?”
“I’m not at liberty to give out that information.”
“I see. Have you discovered anything interesting about Hester?”
“Just doing research, really. I tried to talk with the Thornes earlier today, but … I was, um, unsuccessful.”
“I can believe that.”
“My friend is in Grover. I don’t know what he’s learned.”
“Why don’t we go see.” She stood.
“Wait a second. Like I said before, I didn’t come here to get you. I’m working now, I can’t just pick people up and—”
“I can tell you the rest of my story in the car, and if you’d like, we can stop by Wheatland on our way and you can talk with the Thornes. I know them.”
He stopped and thought about that a moment; it was tempting. Then: “I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to come to Grover and get involved in—”
“Look, I’m coming whether I’m with you or not. If you leave here without me, I’ll be right behind you. I told you I’ve been prepared for this for a while now. Marvin, you need me.”
That made him a little angry and he stood. “What do you mean, I need you? Why the hell do I—”
“Because you’re getting involved with something you don’t even believe in. It’s something very
big and very dangerous. And I not only believe in it … I know how to fight it.”
3.
As they headed north on Interstate 5, Marvin still could not believe he’d allowed Lizzie to talk him into it and still wasn’t sure how she’d managed. Jordan probably wasn’t going to like it; they’d already taken on one extra person and when he learned they’d taken on another, he wouldn’t be pleased.
It had taken them a little while to get away from the chapel, because on their way out, Lizzie had been approached by a stick-thin little man with an oversized head and no teeth. He was bald on top with long dark hair all around, had no eyebrows and grinned at her ceaselessly. His dirty, tattered clothes possessed an odor that was impossible to ignore, but Lizzie didn’t seem to notice. She met him with a grin.
“Well, Teddy, you’re back,” she said very loudly, leaning toward his right ear. “How’s it going?”
“The thame, Lithie, the thame.” He nearly shouted his words.
She opened her arms and gave him a hug. “I think it’s time to wash those clothes of yours, Teddy. Why don’t you go in the back and talk to Bev.”
“Yeah? Okay, okay. You gotta plathe for me to thtay, Lithie?”
“We’ve always got a place for you, you know that.”
They talked for a while, then a round old woman approached and struck up a conversation with Lizzie. Then a younger woman dressed in filthy rags and flanked by two small children. Lizzie accepted each of them unflinchingly and spoke to them no differently than she’d spoken to Marvin.
At first, Marvin was annoyed that they were being delayed, but after watching Lizzie for a while with the weary travelers and the transients, he was touched.
Once they were on the road, Lizzie talked about the Thornes.
“They kept to themselves,” she said. “No one in town knew much about them. I knew them from church. They showed up every week. They weren’t rich, of course, and I think that made them very self-conscious. They struggled financially but seemed to provide well for Hester. Everyone seemed to think that Hester was their pride and joy, to the point of being spoiled. But I always wondered about that. Sometimes I got the impression they didn’t spoil her so much as they appeased her. I told you what a temper she had. I’m sure the playground wasn’t the only place that came out. And after the experience I had with her, I wondered how much her parents knew about her. Maybe they were afraid of her. I know if I had a little girl like that … who could do what she did to me … I’d be afraid of doing the wrong thing, making her angry, setting her off. Yes, I have a feeling there was very little discipline handed out in that house.”