The Church of Broken Pieces

by David Haynes

  He tried to force a smile, to laugh at the joke, but somehow he was leaning toward the speck on Shitler’s finger. Not only was he leaning toward it, he was poking his quivering tongue out to take the dried blood into his mouth.

  He heard Shitler laugh. “Just like communion.”

  And then it was in his mouth, only it was far larger than it had been on his finger, bigger and swollen. He wanted to retch, to bring it up, but he swallowed it, tasting Moody’s blood as it slipped down his throat.

  It was only when he was forced to look upward to find Shitler’s eyes that he realized he was in fact on his knees.

  *

  Shitler made him carry out the suit and deposit it in the Audi. He had been forced to roll it up and bundle it inside an old sports holdall before Shitler would permit it to go in the trunk. Cavendish didn’t care where it went, he actually didn’t care about much at all. He was still in denial about what had happened in the house, what he had been made to do.

  Was he ashamed or was he awestruck? As he pushed the holdall into the trunk, he couldn’t answer that question. He suspected it was both, in equal measure.

  Shitler put a hand on his shoulder, making him jump.

  “Shall we?” He gestured toward the house.

  Cavendish wasn’t sure whether he wanted to go back inside the house or not but he followed behind anyway, smelling the sourness of Shitler’s body odor.

  Once inside, the Reverend made coffee for them both. He didn’t ask whether the other man wanted any, but it was something to occupy him before he was forced to sit across the table from him. In addition, it might have been his imagination, but he was sure he could still detect the metallic tang of Phil Moody’s blubber in his mouth.

  “Did you enjoy it?” Shitler asked.

  Cavendish poured the coffee and without turning around answered, “Yes.”

  Shitler laughed again. “Thought so.”

  Cavendish picked up the cups but stared at the knife block on the counter. “Are you going to call the cops?” He hoped he had enough strength left to put a knife through Shitler’s throat if he said yes. He had a feeling he might have the strength to lift the knife but it wouldn’t be Shitler’s neck bleeding all over the linoleum, it would be his own.

  Shitler had power and not just in his role as the boss. There was a potency about him that Cavendish didn’t quite understand. The man hadn’t needed to hold a gun to his head or make threats to get him to do what he wanted, it just happened. There was nothing ambiguous about his strength, it was literally dripping off his skin in thick greasy globs.

  “Cops?” Shitler shook his head. “Why would I do that?” He tapped the table with his hand. “Come and sit down.”

  Cavendish looked at the knives again.

  “Ex-Marine or not, you wouldn’t get far with that.” He nodded at the knife block. “Besides, we’re only here to have a little chat. That’s all.” He smiled again. “Maybe we’ll have a little fun too. Who knows?”

  His face turned serious. “Now come and sit down. I want to hear about what you did to that slob. The media coverage was vague.”

  Cavendish walked over and placed the coffee on the table. Was the guy playing with him? Trying to get a confession out of him? It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Shitler had used the term ‘we’re’. We’re only here to have a little chat. Who was the we? The cops? Were they outside waiting for him to confess to what he’d done?

  He shook his head.

  “We’re waiting.” Shitler leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table. A fresh waft of astringent body odor drifted off him.

  “We?” Cavendish asked. “Who’s we?”

  Shitler laughed. “The Deliverers, of course. Your blessed congregation!” He opened his arms expansively.

  A low hum came from the hallway, and then one by one his congregation filed into the room. He recognized them all, every single moronic one of them. Humming as they always did in the patients’ rooms. The noise was supposed to be some sort of blessing chant – a ‘lightening of loads’ is how it had been described to him. Designed to ease their pain and passage to the next world. Except this time, all their eyes were on him and not some wretched terminal case that smelled of their own shit.

  They stood behind him as they did on the broadcasts. He could feel their eyes boring into the back of his skull, reaching in uninvited. He felt his cock stiffen and a ripple of something just short of orgasm pass through his body. He licked his lips.

  “I put the first nail through his cheek, the fleshy part. It went through like his skin was butter. The next one hit his jawbone and knocked two teeth out. Rotten dirty things they were, brown and stained. That was when he started to scream...”

  The droning hum coming from behind his back, from his congregation, drew the words from him like a doctor might draw the pus from a boil, precisely and delicately. They wanted it all, they wanted every single drop of blood from Phil Moody; every single scream, cut, hammer blow and nail. They wanted it all. And he wanted to give it to them. He wanted Adolf Shitler to hear everything. He could see how much it pleased him and that was more important than anything else. Shitler was his father now.

  The Deliverers didn’t belong to him. They weren’t his congregation, they never had been. He saw that now. They belonged to the Church of Broken Pieces, to Adolf Shitler. Were there others like him? Oh, he hoped so.

  As he spoke, as he delivered his sermon, he felt the buzz of killing Phil Moody all over again. He felt it tenfold as the sweet humming orgasm passed through his body over and over again.

  He would be one of those men. One day he would be just like Shitler. He wanted it. Nothing else existed in his life now.

  *

  He had no concept of how much time had passed since Shitler and The Deliverers arrived. He only knew it had been early afternoon when he sat down to talk. Weak, gray shafts of dirty sunlight had fallen over the table in ever-narrowing blocks until there were none and darkness arrived.

  Time ceased to exist because his wristwatch had been taken from him. As had his suit, shirt and the rest of his clothes. He was naked and in bed. The house was quiet and his body felt as it did after his first day on recruit training.

  He took several deep breaths and tried to establish where the pain was at its sharpest. It was impossible to say, he felt like he had been mauled. He winced, the pain was everywhere. He closed his eyes again, trying to recall what had happened. The sound of a kettle boiling and cups being clinked together stopped him short. He wasn’t alone.

  He eased himself off the bed and put the lamp on. His clothes were in an untidy heap on the floor. Other hands had removed them, he remembered that much. With great effort and several prolonged gasps of pain, he managed to dress himself and padded barefoot out of his bedroom to the kitchen. Putting socks on had proved one step too far. He was exhausted.

  The last three members of the congregation filed out of the room as he entered. None of them looked at him as they walked out, they just smiled, as always. Shitler was sitting on the sofa watching the television. Cavendish knew the channel well – Flesh 69.

  “Do you really watch this shit?” He patted the empty space next to him.

  Cavendish walked over and fell onto the old sofa. He instantly wished he had opted for the ‘Extra Comfort’ deal the salesman tried to sell him. Particularly on the seat area.

  “You’re out of shape, Reverend. What would your old drill instructor have to say about that?”

  “He’s dead,” Cavendish replied. “IED blew both his legs and half his torso across the desert.”

  Shitler nodded. “That so?”

  “I feel like shit. What happened to me? I can’t seem to...”

  Shitler turned his way. “Oh, it’ll come back to you, don’t worry about that. Maybe later on.” He winked. “I’d sleep with the light on if I were you.” He laughed but grew serious when he saw the Reverend’s expression.

  “Don’t look so serious, I’m joking.” He tilted his
head from side to side. “Kinda.”

  “Well, that makes me feel a lot better.” Cavendish looked away. A model was pretending to remove her bikini top. She stopped short, and a commercial for phone-sex lines started. It was obviously before ten.

  “What happened was far more... stimulating than any of that crap you watch on the box, anyway,” Shitler said, patting Cavendish’s knee.

  The contact made Cavendish feel uncomfortable but he didn’t pull away. The other man was almost magnetic.

  “This Moody character wasn’t your first rodeo, was it.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Cavendish didn’t answer.

  “But the town’s too small for another episode like that. You understand the truth of that, don’t you?”

  Cavendish nodded. “It won’t happen again,” he said.

  “Oh it will, many times over, just not here.”

  The Reverend’s heart rate jumped. Was he talking about the move to New York?

  Shitler’s odor had grown more complex. Something else had been added to the mix – semen. The smell of sex was everywhere. He cringed at the thought and shifted uneasily on the hard cushion.

  “But it’s not really the death of a drunk I’m interested in.”

  “Oh?” Cavendish looked away from the screen.

  “No, the powers that be… and it may surprise you to hear there are those who tell even me when I can take a leak… have raised concerns about the suicidal tendencies of some of our residents. Not good for business, Hal.”

  “Isolated cases, I’m sure.”

  “My Deliverers told me the same thing. Both patients presented as content the day before they tried to remove themselves. I don’t want any more instances. We’ve lost two and that’s two too many.” Shitler scratched his crotch.

  “One of them, the woman, didn’t succeed. Dr Hamilton and...” The image of Donovan in the church office flashed across his mind. “A couple of others stopped her.”

  “Doesn’t matter, she’s not in Hemlock Mill anymore, is she? We can’t deliver her now.” He scratched his crotch again. “You’ve not got anything, have you?”

  “What? What do you...” And then it hit him. Cavendish looked away from the other man quickly.

  Shitler play-punched him on the arm. “For fuck’s sake, Hal. Lighten up, would you?”

  Cavendish just felt sick. Fragments were coming back to him slowly. An uncomfortable, at least for Cavendish, silence fell on the room. The muted voice of an excited girl telling all and sundry to call her on the television couldn’t lighten the atmosphere.

  Shitler finally spoke. “When you’re in those rooms, helping those poor people with the congregation, what do you feel, Hal? Is it happiness, satisfaction, pleasure, guilt, what? What do you feel?”

  The question came out of nowhere. It took Cavendish a few seconds to think of an answer.

  “Nothing. I feel nothing.” It was an honest answer. Almost. “Actually I feel bored.” He turned to look at the other man’s reaction. There was no point in holding anything back. He had been laid bare in every sense.

  Shitler scratched his cheek, nodding. “Understandable. And when they start the prayer?”

  “Prayer? I don’t think...”

  Shitler waved his hand. “The chant, the humming.”

  “Oh, that,” he replied.

  It struck him as odd at first, but Shitler had told him it was a new-age chant to bring them peace, a modern day prayer more attuned to the needs of the Church of Broken Pieces and to the patients. Nobody ever complained

  As he opened his mouth to speak, he realized he could recall nothing about how he felt when they prayed. Literally nothing.

  He closed his mouth and shrugged like a schoolboy unable answer a simple math question.

  “You will. From now on you will see, feel and hear things that only those part of the Church of Broken Pieces are permitted to.”

  Cavendish opened his mouth again but a fat slug crawled across Shitler’s face. Creamy blisters oozed greasy fluid from pustules on its ribbed back and trailed a thread of glossy slime across his cheek. His stomach turned. The trail looked like semen. Shitler parted his lips and the slug crawled into his mouth.

  Cavendish put a hand over his mouth to stifle his grunt of revulsion.

  “You’ve had worse than that in your mouth, mister.” Shitler patted his knee again and stood up. “Tomorrow, Reverend, you will accompany The Deliverers to the hospice where you will lead a prayer to our beloved Frances Pace. I am led to believe she has been particularly difficult to reach and she is extremely important to us.”

  He looked up, pleased to see the slimy trail had disappeared from Shitler’s face. “She’s got Locked-in Syndrome or something like that. It’s a waste of time.”

  Shitler walked to the door where he waited for Cavendish. Presumably for it to be opened for him.

  “Quite the contrary. She’s waiting for you, she’s waiting to be delivered.” He smiled.

  Cavendish opened the door for him and they both stepped outside and onto the gravel path. The cold, wet stone sent an icy shock through the Reverend’s bare feet.

  They both looked toward the hospice. A wraparound of lights on the first floor indicated the number of patients.

  “It’s not full,” Shitler said. “But we can change that. I may call in for a while before I leave town.” He checked his watch. “Ah, but Dr Hamilton will have gone home by now.” He nudged Cavendish with his elbow.

  “A good-looking woman, huh? Now she might have enjoyed this afternoon too. Maybe next time?”

  He walked toward his car laughing. “Any of it coming back to you, yet?”

  Cavendish said nothing. He couldn’t.

  “I’ll be in touch.” He wagged his finger. “Behave yourself. I’ll be watching and if I need to be, I can be quite... brutal.” He scratched his balls again, laughing. Cavendish thought he saw a single slug antenna poking out from between his lips as he climbed inside the car.

  A moment later, the rear tires threw gravel into the Reverend’s shins as the Audi sped away. He watched it swerve to avoid a pedestrian crossing the bottom of the driveway. Whoever it was shouted something at the car as it sped up the hill.

  They better watch themselves, thought Cavendish. They don’t know who they’re messing with. But then again, he wasn’t entirely sure himself either.

  His already shattered and confused spirits dropped another notch when the pedestrian walked up the drive toward him.

  All he wanted to do was go to bed and sleep this afternoon off like some drunk. Even the thought of John Donovan rocking himself in the church didn’t interest him tonight.

  “Reverend!” a voice called. He couldn’t see who it was, the town’s streetlights didn’t reach that far.

  “Who is it?” he answered.

  The steps drew closer, crunching purposefully over the gravel.

  “It’s Frank Wilson.”

  Cavendish almost laughed.

  26

  The light from the open door kept just enough shadow on Cavendish to give him a particularly creepy silhouette. It made Wilson think of the shadow-puppets on the hospice wall.

  He was already in a bad mood after being with Sheriff Taylor all afternoon, and the driver of the car who just nearly wiped him out hadn’t helped. The jerk had given him the finger when he told him what he thought of his driving. It was reassuring to see Cavendish kept company as arrogant as he was.

  Cavendish called out to him. His tone was not the same cocky self-assured whine it usually was. He sounded vaguely confused.

  He shouted back, “It’s Frank Wilson.” It gave him a surprising amount of pleasure to see Cavendish looking unsure of himself.

  “What... what can I do for you, Mr Wilson?”

  Cavendish was barefoot and disheveled. It was the first time Wilson had seen him without a tie and looking anything but clothing-catalog model. He had a bad case of bed-hair too.

  “We came by earlier but ther
e was no answer. Looked like you had visitors,” said Wilson.

  Cavendish nodded and moved his weight to the other foot. It looked uncomfortable. “I was busy,” he replied. “We?”

  “The Sheriff and I. We’re looking for John, John Donovan, my colleague.”

  Cavendish shook his head. “Not seen him. Not sure I’d want to after he threatened to cut my tongue out either.”

  A little of his attitude had returned but it was obvious the man wasn’t up to full steam. He looked in pain too.

  “You okay, Reverend? You look a little...”

  “Fine, I’m fine. I haven’t seen your... your friend since yesterday. Now, I’ve got to get back to...” He turned away without finishing the sentence. A dark stripe ran down the middle of his back. It looked black in the half-light.

  “Are you sure?” He took a step closer. It looked like blood on his shirt – a stream of it running down the middle of his back. “Is that blood?”

  Cavendish turned around quickly. His face contorted with rage and pain. “It’s none of your concern, Mr Wilson. None... of... your... concern.” He spat the words through gritted teeth. If Wilson had been a step closer he would have been covered in the Reverend’s spittle.

  “Whoa!” Wilson held his hands up. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay, that was all. No need to lose your temper.”

  The two men stared at each other for a moment. Wilson didn’t care for what he saw in the Reverend’s eyes. He didn’t care for it at all. And then it was gone.

  Cavendish licked his lips. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, Mr Wilson.” He shook his head and looked at the gravel beneath his toes. “I’ve had a very difficult day. Managed to open up an old wound from my days in the Marines.” He looked ready to drop. “Iraq,” he added.

  Wilson frowned. Marines? Iraq? There was more to Cavendish than met the eye. A veteran deserved some respect even if he was an arrogant dick. If he was telling the truth. Reverend or not, there was something ambiguous about the man. Duplicitous maybe.

  “I’m sorry. As I said, I was only trying to help. Can I give you a hand back inside?”