The Influence

by Bentley Little

  Unconcern had changed into confusion, but at least his dad looked away from the television. “What?”

  “Me and Ray are going to have to quit school. It’s a Monday through Thursday job, and it starts next week.”

  “Not for you it don’t.” Their dad stood, and the look in his eye was mean.

  “But Dad—” Ray started to say.

  “Shut up, Ray. You two aren’t going, and that’s final.”

  Bill stood his ground. “Yes we are,” he said. “This is a real opportunity. It could be our big chance. A lot of famous musicians started out at Desperados—”

  “You’re not famous, and you’re not musicians, and you’re not going.”

  “Yes we are,” Bill repeated, his face getting hot.

  “Dad—” Ray began.

  “I told you to shut up, Ray! This is between me and your brother.”

  “He’s right,” Bill said. “It is between us, and I’m telling him that I’m making the decision that we are going to quit school and take that gig.”

  “Not as long as you live in this house!”

  “That’s the point. We’re not going to anymore.”

  His father glared at him. “Don’t get smart with me, young man. You’re not eighteen, and you need my permission, and I ain’t giving it. So just shut up and do as I say or you’re going to live to regret it.”

  “Fuck you!” Bill shouted. “We’re going!”

  It felt good to yell at his dad, and he wondered why he hadn’t done it before. What had that miserable old shit ever accomplished in his life? Who was he to tell Bill, or even Ray, what to do?

  Fists clenched, his dad advanced on him. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that! I won’t have that sort of language in this house!”

  “Yeah? Well, if you’re so good and pure, why did you shoot an angel? Huh? You think God hates me swearing more than he hates you killing his angels?”

  His dad hit him. Not a slap, not a tap, but a roundhouse to the jaw that sent him reeling back and brought tears to his eyes. Recovering quickly, Bill kicked the old fuck in the nuts, and was gratified to see his dad double over, clutching his crotch and letting out a weak, ineffectual moan.

  Ray was standing there, wide-eyed and shocked. “Go grab your stuff and pack,” Bill told him. “We’re getting out of here. Today.

  “And we’re taking the Jeep,” he informed his dad, still doubled over and holding his damaged genitals. “You can have the truck.”

  Bill waited until Ray was down the hall and out of sight, and then kicked his dad in the head as hard as he could, knocking him down. “Fucking hillbilly,”

  He walked down to his own room to pack his clothes, guitar and amplifier, feeling good.

  TWENTY ONE

  Wednesday night’s final confession wasn’t over until ten, and Father Ramos locked the church doors immediately after the last parishioner, Elena Martinez, stepped outside, making sure no one else could come in. He was bone tired, and he was tempted to just lay down in the pew next to him, close his eyes and go to sleep. Ever since the angel fell, not only had occasional churchgoers become regular, but all of his flock had started coming to confession, many of them daily. It took a lot out of a man to deal with so much sin, to forgive so many transgressions when he himself was not pure.

  He glanced back at the confessional, feeling uneasy. Hearing so many confessions had led him to notice a bizarre pattern that had emerged since the angel had fallen, a reversal of fortune among his parishioners that had to be connected to the event but that made no logical sense: people whose finances were in shambles had suddenly started doing well, while those who were well-off had suffered a run of financial misfortunes. A gorgeous young woman had been disfigured in an accident, while a frumpy matron had suddenly discovered beauty secrets that rendered her extraordinarily attractive. It was as though the polarities of luck had been flipped, and those who had been the beneficiaries of good fortune up until now had been cursed with bad luck, while the sad sacks who’d never had anything go right in their lives were suddenly having a run of spectacularly good luck.

  At least that’s the way it had started.

  But now things were becoming more complex, the patterns more subtle. Certain individuals seemed to be getting caught in competing cross-currents of changing luck. Charley McGill, for example, had always been poor but happily married—yet now his wife had suddenly died, leaving him a substantial life insurance settlement. Jack Judd was a failure as a husband but a very successful rancher—now he had reconciled with his wife but his cattle were dying. It was a strange and complicated amalgam of alternating good luck and bad that seemed to be playing out all over town.

  Father Ramos himself was caught in the middle. His fortunes had changed not at all.

  No, that was not true. His church was consistently full these days. The overflowing congregation he had always wished for had been delivered to him by the fallen angel.

  He kept thinking of the angel as “fallen” because it made him feel better, but that was not strictly true. The angel had not fallen. It had been shot down. The men of Magdalena had killed it in cold blood, and he was still awaiting the full consequences of that accidental murder.

  The full consequences.

  Because some consequences seemed to be occurring already. From what he had heard, and from what he had seen—

  the eggs

  —there were pockets of unexplainable events that could have no source other than the angel. He would include the veterinarian’s disappearance and the Ingram boy’s mysterious death among them. As well as the poltergeist that Ana and Miguelito Chavez claimed was haunting their trailer, and the influx of snakes that had taken over the Garcezes’ property.

  But as far as he could tell, there was nothing consistent about these incidents. Proximity to the body, involvement in the angel’s killing, none of these factors seemed to in any way determine to whom things would happen. The occurrences appeared to be completely random, and if there was a pattern to them, it was one that was known only to God.

  Except Father Ramos did not think God’s attention was on Magdalena yet. The Lord knew everything, so obviously He knew that the angel had been killed, but maybe He was busy elsewhere because the knowledge had not been acted upon. Once God focused the full force of His wrath on Magdalena, there wouldn’t be just crumbling marriages and missing children. There would be wholesale destruction. Vengeance from above.

  And that was what Father Ramos feared.

  The chapel needed to be swept, the pews polished, the confessional cleaned, but all that could wait until morning. He was beyond tired, and after he put out the candles and checked all of the doors, he intended to turn in immediately and let his worries be washed away by sleep. Yawning, he started up the aisle.

  “Hector.”

  Father Ramos had not heard the voice since that first night, though he had been dreading its return every second of every day, and he jumped at the sound of it. Once again, it came from everywhere and nowhere, was all around him, and with a cry of terror he fell to his knees, clasping his hands in prayer, closing his eyes tightly.

  The laughter came, that terrible sibilant laughter, mocking not only his actions but his very existence, and, wide awake now, he sent up an entreaty to God, begging that his life be spared though he knew the Lord did not condone cowardice such as his.

  As before, he heard the sound of shuffling, as though something large had entered the chapel and was lumbering up the aisle. Last time, he had turned to see what was coming, and there’d been nothing there. He opened his eyes, hoping for the same result.

  But this time there was something.

  A creature of dirt, a bastardization of God’s creation, not man but monster, fully eight feet high and as wide as two humans, had entered the chapel from the vestry and was shambling toward him. It had no arms or legs, only slightly delineated sections of its bulk that roughly corresponded to limbs, and it advanced in an almost waddling manner that did
not require the independent movement of feet. The head, however, was less rudimentary, and despite the fact that its features were formed by the placement of small rocks and indentations of mud, it looked less like the primitive face of a child’s snowman than that of a perfectly rendered classical sculpture. Its expression was one of sly malevolence.

  The cold had come again, not merely a change in air temperature but a complete transformation of the environment, as though the church had been dropped into a new and different atmosphere.

  “Hector.”

  The voice bounced around the chapel, echoing from wall to wall, from ceiling to floor. He did not think it came from the shambling monster, but the two were obviously connected, their strings pulled by the same puppeteer.

  The Lord God.

  “Forgive me,” Father Ramos babbled, his hands still clasped in prayer. He closed his eyes. If he was to die here and now, he wanted to do so in a state of forgiveness. “I am and always have been Your humble servant. I know I have done wrong and will accept Your judgment gratefully…” The words, spoken increasingly fast, flowed into each other. The creature, he was certain, had been dispatched to take his life, and he needed to unburden himself before he died.

  He continued praying, and he sensed the presence of the monster next to him…but nothing happened. He did not open his eyes, afraid to find out what was going on, but beneath the by-now-rote prayer, his brain was spinning. If the monster had not been sent to kill him, why was it here? It certainly had a purpose and a reason for being.

  For the first time, he thought that perhaps the angel had not been sent from God.

  No. That was blasphemy. God would punish him for doubting.

  It wasn’t blasphemy, though, was it? He knew that the creature they shot down was an angel, but maybe the only reason he was so certain was because the thought had been planted in his head. Maybe the blasphemy was believing that that grotesquerie was one of God’s servants.

  He closed his eyes more tightly, his head hurting. There was no possibility here that was good.

  “Hector.”

  He decided to answer the voice rather than try to hide from it. “Yes?” he said tentatively. “What do you want?”

  An image seared itself into his brain: the angel, dead and rotting in Cameron Holt’s smokehouse. Its decay and deterioration had been greatly accelerated, and its dark green skin, now almost black, seemed to have melted, looking like heavy chocolate syrup that had been poured over a deformed and twisted body. He understood instantly that he was meant to protect that form, that it was being resurrected, was in the process of becoming and was in a fragile state.

  Father Ramos opened his eyes, feeling as though his brain had been jolted with a shot of electricity. Before him, the creature collapsed in front of the altar, devolving into its base components: mud, dirt, sand, rocks.

  The chapel was silent.

  Whatever had been here was gone, and he stood shakily, staring at the mess in front of him, afraid to touch it, afraid to go near it.

  He understood now that the angel had to be protected…but he didn’t want to protect it. Someone had spoken to him, someone had put that image in his head, but he was less sure than ever that it was God, and he realized for the first time that it was not the possibility of God’s wrath that most frightened him but the angel itself. Whatever the angel might be, it was causing havoc, and he shuddered to think about what it might do once it was resurrected and became…the thing it was becoming.

  The impulse to flee Magdalena returned, but Father Ramos knew he would not do that. As terrified as he might be, it was his sacred duty to look after his flock, to see to both their safety and salvation. Besides, he was a part of this. He had been there that night and while he had not shot a gun, he had done nothing to stop those who had.

  Tired, scared, emotionally drained, he put out the remaining candles, walked past the pile of mud, giving it a wide berth, and locked himself into his quarters.

  Where he took off his collar and cassock, put on his pajamas and went immediately to sleep.

  And dreamed of a world where flying demons filled the sky.

  TWENTY TWO

  Ross decided not to go to the farmer’s market. It wasn’t as though he was needed. In fact, the ranch’s egg and honey stocks were both so low at the moment that it made little sense for Lita and Dave to sell there, though they wanted to keep up the routine and maintain contact with customers. But Jill wasn’t going this time. She hadn’t baked any cookies or pastries this week, so she had nothing to sell, and if she wasn’t going to be there, he didn’t want to be either.

  “Dick suck mushroom! Pickaninny pie!”

  There was that, too. The girl. Ross didn’t want to see her. Was afraid to see her, though he was not sure why.

  So while Lita and Dave drove off to town, Ross stayed behind to feed the chickens and see if there were eggs to collect. He did not find out whether any eggs had been laid, however, because when he went outside and peered through the wire fence, he saw, in the center of the yard, a gigantic chicken, a foot taller than any of the others surrounding it, walking in an erratic circle, squawking hoarsely, its head twisting strangely atop its unusually long neck. The sight made him shiver. And when the bird’s eye met his own, holding his gaze even as the scrawny neck rotated unnaturally beneath it, Ross turned away, heading back to the shack.

  He’d wait for Dave to come back before trying to feed any animals.

  He turned on the television to drown out the infernal squawking. On the Today show, there was a story about a new poll that had been conducted regarding religious beliefs. A majority of Americans reported that they believed in angels, and a significant number thought they were personally protected by a guardian angel.

  He changed the channel to CNN, where they were covering a shooting at a North Carolina high school, a subject more comfortingly normal.

  He could still hear the chicken outside, and turned up the volume. Did he actually believe that an angel had been shot out of the sky here in Magdalena? No. But something had certainly been shot down—and he was pretty sure he’d seen it himself Christmas night. But what was it and why was it here and how was it causing all of this weird shit to happen? He didn’t know. It was a problem unsolvable by his rational, unimaginative mind. And it scared the hell out of him.

  Maybe, he thought, it was time to move on. He had some money now, and a job (sort of). Maybe he should thank Lita and Dave for their hospitality and hightail it back to Phoenix.

  But he couldn’t just leave them like that.

  And what about Jill?

  For someone living out in the middle of nowhere in a shack on his cousin’s property, his life was definitely getting complicated.

  Ross was on his laptop, checking on the status of various resumes he’d posted on jobhunting sites, when he heard his name being called from outside. He jumped in his seat, startled, and for a brief fraction of a second thought: Chicken! But then he recognized Jill’s voice and hurried out to meet her.

  She was standing in front of the shack, drinking water from a plastic sports bottle.

  He looked around for her Econoline, but didn’t see it. “You walked here?” he asked incredulously.

  “Sure,” she said, pushing the cap down on her bottle.

  “It’s, like, five miles.”

  “So?”

  He shook his head. “You’re incredible.”

  “Would you care to join me? It’s nice weather for a walk,” she suggested.

  “You always think it’s nice weather for a walk.”

  “You don’t think it is?”

  “I guess,” he conceded.

  “So, do you want to come with me?”

  “Where?”

  “Around. Here and there. Hither and yon. It’s addicting, walking. If you give it a chance.”

  “You’re talking to someone who faked sick notes from his mother in order to get out of playing P.E.”

  “Nevertheless.”

>   “Sure,” he said. “Just let me lock up.” Heading back toward the shack, he turned around. “Do you need to use the bathroom or anything? Would you like something to eat?”

  She shook her head. “No. But you might want to get yourself a water bottle.”

  “It’s not that hot.”

  “But it’s dry. And I’m not sharing.”

  Ross went inside, turned off his laptop, got a can of Coke out of the refrigerator and locked the door behind him as he left.

  “Coke?” she said. “Really?”

  “You drink what you want; I’ll drink what I want.”

  He thought they’d be walking back toward town, but at the head of the driveway, she turned left instead of right, and he followed her lead as they strolled along the road, through the desert, toward some of the bigger ranches. He had to admit, it felt good to be outside in the open air. He was starting to get a taste for it, and though for his entire adult life, walking had merely been a way to get from room to car, from car to room, from room to room, he found that he was actually enjoying this little hike.

  At least until Jill brought up the angel.

  “I’ve been asking around,” she said. “After you told me…what you told me. It’s hard to get anyone to talk about it, but my friend Cissy did—she was there—and she said your story’s pretty much on the money.” Like Ross, Jill had stayed home on New Year’s Eve and, like Ross, she’d heard nothing about what had happened at the party.

  “Does she think it’s an angel?”

  “It seems like everyone does.”

  Ross stopped walking, turning toward her. “Maybe that’s what it wants them to think. Maybe it put that idea in their minds.”

  “It’s dead, isn’t it?”

  “But it’s supposed to have some kind of power anyway. At least that’s what people are saying. And with all of these deformed chickens and dead cattle and missing kids…”

  “I don’t think it’s an angel either,” she told him.

  “But what is it? It’s obviously something.”