Those Who Follow

by Garza, Michelle

  “How do you know you ain’t already in Hell, Reverend?” Byron asked.

  He sat on a newly constructed wooden pew, a woman in his lap, her eyes wide with knowing the horrors of his hands. The scattered corpses of the men who had succumbed to the heat, and a few with bullets in the back of their heads from attempting to escape, were beginning to stink. Byron wasn’t concerned with drawing predators in the desert on the other side, the shadows were bothersome, but nothing the young killer couldn’t handle. He reigned there supremely as the Lord and the Devil—all in the same skin.

  The church was finished. Its hasty construction had taken a few weeks and had claimed the lives of nearly every passenger on the bus. Those left in existence were nailing together wooden benches to be placed inside.

  The steeple was already weak. They didn’t have the proper equipment or the dedication to make it something to be proud of. It stood a loathsome thing, a carcass of what a true house of worship should be, but it suited Byron nicely. To him, it mirrored himself, made by man yet too distorted and disfigured to be a representation of the image of God.

  The workers, chained and staked to the desert ground, teetered on their blistered feet, hoping they would find release, even if that meant a bullet in their brains. The women got the worst of it. Not only were they beaten, but they were also used to fulfill Byron’s most deranged sexual fantasies… tear-stained angels that would only find peace in death. The only article of clothing they were allowed to wear was their underwear, leaving their delicate exposed skin to blister beneath the sun.

  Byron ran his hand up one young woman’s thigh. Her trembling sent a thrill through him. The reverend looked to Byron as his bloodstained hand rested on the girl’s panties, his eyes weary. Unspoken truth was shared between them in their gaze. “Please. Leave Patricia alone.”

  “No,” Byron said.

  “We built your sanctuary. What more do you want?” The old preacher asked though he knew the answer.

  “What good is a church if I don’t have anyone to attend?” Byron answered, running his hand beneath the young woman’s bloodstained underwear.

  “You intend to keep us?”

  “Not all of you,” Byron answered, lifting a pistol to Patricia’s temple.

  Reverend Larson didn’t move, just watched as a blast sent fragments of her brain and skull out in a haze of red against blinding sun above. He wept, but her soul was free. Patricia’s corpse slumped as silence settled over those chained to the burning desert soil. Jim looked to each of them, their faces also begged for the embrace of God. Prayers of death passed through their exhausted minds.

  “Get back to work.” Byron ordered.

  “I want this finished before nightfall… your baptism is tonight.”

  ****

  2014

  Byron could still remember their cries as he had doused them in gasoline and struck matches over them. His throat had burned with the heat of the corpses consumed with flames and the taste of their exhausted flesh being charred to unrecognizable black piles of soot. He had retrieved a few of the larger bones, and secured them to the rafters of the church. Reverend Jim was reserved for last. He was made to watch the handful of survivors being burnt alive before the young man with the Devil in his eyes came for him.

  “I got somethin’ special in mind for you, old man,” Byron said.

  The young man wielded a pistol at all times to keep the group in control, but when it was just him and reverend Larson, he had tucked it away in the back of his pants. He had then knocked the withered old man to the ground with a blow to the nose. Blood had run from Jim’s nose. He had lifted his shaking hand, trembling with fear and weakness. His eyes had grown glassy as acceptance had washed over him; he could hear his soul being called home.

  Memories of the reverend’s thin skin, the age spots on the backs of his hands, made Byron look down at his own once more. He was now the age of that old preacher. No matter if he was born with the gift, it would not stop him from dying like any other man. As much as he fancied himself a god, he was still mortal and wouldn’t escape the end.

  He shook the thoughts away as he rummaged through the suitcases to locate a few items worth hauling back to the other side. A golden necklace adorned with a small crucifix and a ring that matched were hidden in a dusty jewelry box. Byron remembered taking them off the corpse of Patricia after he blew her brains out. There were times he wished he had kept her around for a while longer… the over eagerness of youth.

  He held them up to the sun through the broken bus window. They still glittered even after being locked away in that sweltering, grimy, old bus. He yanked open a purse in the seat to his left. It had an abundance of other items he had confiscated, and he chose two men’s watches to accompany the jewelry.

  He felt satisfied with his haul.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DOORWAYS

  Byron climbed into the driver’s seat of his black beast and drove back up to the top of the hill. In the rear view, the yellow bus looked new again as his mind recalled dragging two heavy pieces of wood around the side of it then nailing them together while the preacher was still laying in the dirt.

  “Drag it inside.”

  Byron remembered how his voice was filled with the hasty need for violence, the kind young killers are plagued with, premature gratification. It was powerfully supreme, but he had learned over the years to delay his need to kill. It made it so much more memorable.

  If he had it all to do over again, Byron would have recreated the gory hill of Golgotha, crucifying them all instead of giving them a gasoline fire baptismal. The reverend had understood Byron’s intention and had no longer fought his fate. Instead, he had prayed as he dragged the makeshift cross behind him. He had stumbled up the church steps while his executioner cackled like a jackal, Byron’s voice becoming that of the scavenger birds perched atop the crucified corpses teetering beneath the eyes of the sun.

  Byron’s mind now only replayed the soundtrack of agony as he had driven nails into the preacher’s palms and through his feet. How reckless he had been then, unaware that the nails would not bear the weight of Reverend Larson for long… only until his flesh was split and he was spilled out onto the church floor.

  The screams had reverberated through the endless desert around them, riddled with more anguish than Byron had ever heard since. His most precious memories buried themselves deeply once more as Byron had the old preacher man, half alive and still praying faintly as each shovel-load of dirt had fallen into his face.

  Byron drove down the hillside towards the wash, he was content knowing those recollections would never leave him as long as his lungs drew breath. He would savor them until his heart ceased from beating.

  ****

  The hound stood guard beside of the church door, baring its teeth each time Allan dared to look at it. He turned his attention to the women, feeling the hands of time pulling at his gut… the shadows would feel them here. His eyes rested on Celia who sat in a pew away from the other women who cowered and stared over at the new stranger.

  “He’s never kept a man here long,” Sixty-eight spoke.

  “How come?” Allan asked as she pointed to the ceiling of the church.

  He didn’t need an answer after seeing all the weathered pictures, identification cards and random bones.

  “Usually eats them,” she said. “No one gets outta here alive.”

  “How’d you end up here?” Allan directed his question at Celia.

  “The old bastard drug me in here, same as you. I was hitchhiking out on the highway and wandered up on this church, a Hell separate from the real world. He attacked me and chained me up to the floor.”

  “You don’t know how true those words are,” he said.

  The battered women looked to Allan. Even Celia cast her cold eyes over to him. Their foreheads were scarred, numbers left in their skin by the knife the old man carried.

  “I’ve been here a long time, longer than you’ve been born, I
suspect. If you know a way out, just say it,” Sixty-eight spoke.

  “Don’t beat around the bush. If you got anything important to say, get on with it,” Eighty-two said.

  “She can get you out,” he pointed to Celia.

  Sixty-eight nodded, “We knew there’s something different about her. Are you different too?”

  “Yes.” Allan answered.

  “Those things only come when one of you are around after sundown. They came for her… they’ll come for you too,” Eighty-two said.

  “It’ll be dark before you ever get out of these chains,” said Sixty-eight.

  ****

  Casey leaned against the window fast asleep, the warning Javier’s grandmother had whispered to him was not forgotten. She’d had a glimpse into Casey’s mind while she traveled and the old woman had seen death racing across the desert. It was the first time since his recovery that he had seen the old woman so concerned. She usually kept a solemn energy as if she already knew what would happen. That energy always comforted him but he had felt it slip when they were tending to Casey; it rose his hackles.

  Javier knew the way to southern Arizona. He’d passed through a few times on his way to Mexico to visit family. One trip had never left him, during a time when death shrouded around him, its hands clinging tightly to his soul seeking to claim it. Casey reminded Javier so much of himself at that time… exhausted from fighting things he didn’t understand… feeling like dying might be better than continuing. He had spent so many nights wandering the city, feeling power radiating from complete strangers. His paranoid mind had turned them into frightening beings of darkness hidden among the normal people around him. He had shut it all out by pumping poison into his veins and blinding the third eye in his mind, the seer of things beyond flesh and bone.

  ****

  May, 1992

  Javier awoke to a shrunken shadow blocking out the morning sun that felt determined to burn holes through his eyelids. It was comforting for a moment, but his nagging conscience told him that his time had come. How he wished that it would only stay silent forever.

  Before he even opened his bloodshot eyes, he knew the shadow was his grandmother. He could feel her. His clouded mind was so frightened by her presence. She had always frightened him as a child. She looked at him as if he were always guilty.

  Javier opened his dry eyes and looked to the old woman, the stern matron of his family. Worry was there, knitted in her brow. It frightened him more than the thoughts of her anger. She leaned over him to wipe the film of vomit from his chin and, from her mind to his, she spoke.

  She was taking him home before the one seeking his spirit could steal it away like a hungry dog from his tattered corpse. His grandmother knew death was coming for him, but she wouldn’t allow it—not as long as she lived.

  He got to his feet and stumbled along the trash-littered street behind her. He knew better than to try to run this time. He was far too weak and it would only make his punishment worse. He could still remember the feeling of her leather belt as it bit into his backside from many years before. She was old, and becoming frail, but she was far stronger than him, especially since he was now a junkie.

  Her station wagon was parked crookedly beside the sidewalk. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything other than what she had come for—her grandson.

  He didn’t say a word as he climbed inside. There was a suitcase resting in the backseat, a sign that he wouldn’t be returning to his home among the squatters of the side streets of the city.

  Javier paused and looked around before shutting the car door. His shady companions were all gone. He smiled and shook his head. His grandmother had dealt with them before awakening him. Her silence, coupled with the knowledge that she more than likely had threatened to beat his friends to death, confirmed that his intervention had come. His soul screamed. The demons hidden there refused to give up easily… but they had no idea how strong the force they were dealing with was.

  ****

  The trip to the village that the old woman had grown up in nearly killed him. He experienced such withdrawals that he felt as if, at any moment, his heart would cease from beating all together. He vomited out the car window. The world outside moved and lived on as it passed him by, unconcerned if the junkie inside the beat-up car lived or died. His spirit was in limbo then, unwilling to continue in the land of the living, yet too cowardly to die and face its judgement… un alma perdido… a lost soul. When the car came to a stop, he was literally forced to crawl up the side of a hill and down the other side in order to seek his grandmother’s brother, the shaman.

  ****

  The old man wore a white shirt, black pants, a pair of leather sandals and a straw cowboy hat, around which an elaborately woven hatband rested. He looked to be much older than Javier’s grandmother, but he stood proud and strong, just as she always did. He came to greet them but the meeting was solemn. He embraced his sister and kept his eyes on her grandson. Javier fidgeted under the elderly man’s gaze, expecting him to reach out and slap him at any moment.

  She whispered into her brother’s ear and he nodded. Turning, he motioned to Javier to follow him into the small settlement on the edge of a dense tropical forest. At its center was a great fire ring around which were small huts like the ones Javier had seen in television documentaries about indigenous tribes.

  Javier was no stranger to Mexico, but he had never been outside the major cities and towns. This was something he wasn’t prepared for. The demons of addiction whispered to him that he needed to make it back to civilization where he would find what he needed to appease them.

  He scratched the skin on the back of his neck and opened his mouth to speak. Before he got a sentence out the old man turned and eyed him again, silently watching him, before coming close to Javier and grabbing him by the arm. The old man placed his other hand against Javier’s chest, just over his heart. He spoke to Javier in the same unnerving way the old woman did, through his mind. He asked Javier if he wanted to become a corpse, to rot in the sun. If he wanted his flesh picked off his bones by carrion birds and hungry dogs. The old man told him that if he truly wanted to die then he needed to leave that moment, but if he wanted to live, he needed to suffer.

  Javier was confused until the old man explained that sometimes living was worse than dying, but in the end, it was worth it. This was a message that had never left Javier, prompting him to choose his profession as a caregiver and to help guide souls back to the world of the living.

  His first experience with the spirit vine produced nothing to his clouded mind. Severe nausea followed as if his body was purging itself of the darkness he had filled it with. He vomited for three straight days. All the while, the voice of addiction, like a wailing banshee, assaulted his every waking moment.

  The shaman sat over him, wafting the smoke of smoldering herbs over his face. The old man challenged the demons holding him hostage to combat. The winner would claim the body and soul of the withered junkie. The shaman took on an ethereal glow, so intense that Javier had to clench his eyes shut. The heroin addiction in him was no match for the old man. She screamed as she retreated from Javier who was lying in a pool of sweat, praying in his own mind that the old man would be triumphant.

  He awoke days later, feeling lighter, his head aching and burning. Placing the tip of her finger between his eyes, His grandmother bid him to awaken. He had no idea what she meant but, in his mind, he felt an immense power flooding him.

  The second time, his heart was drawn to the ayahuasca. He was called to the great fire ring where the shaman handed him a cup, and after partaking of the foul drink he sat before the dancing flames. His body felt buffeted by cold winds. A light electrical current pulsed in his brain.

  Beyond the fire light, he could see the banished spirit of addiction. Like a starving beggar woman, she paced, with sunken eyes and protruding ribs. A hunger that could never be satisfied, endlessly seeking to devour and ravage. The shaman approached the spirit and she
shrieked and hissed at him, but refused to challenge the old man. She disappeared into the darkness of the jungle crying out in a ragged the ragged voice of defeat.

  The shaman, walked over to Javier and sat before him. He took Javier’s hand in his, then placed his free hand once more over Javier’s heart. The young man could feel an ebbing wave of energy being passed to him—new strength to face any darkness that wished to claim him.

  He lifted Javier’s arm up before the campfire, in its orange glow Javier had watched as his skin began to writhe. It had frightened him until the shaman spoke in calming tones, reassuring that they were banishing the filth from inside of him. Javier could see the serpents in his veins… how they writhed beneath his skin, striking his heart and soul with their venomous fangs… how they would slowly kill him.

  His grandmother had joined them, and both she and her shaman brother had used their energy to draw the parasites out from his flesh. One by one, they tossed them into the fire. The shaman was pleased that Javier—who had the old man’s blood running in his veins—had done so admirably, for he had seen many men die at the hands of the hungry woman. He asked a favor then—one that Javier promised to fulfill.

  Javier still didn’t know how he had lived through it all but he was certain that the strength of his grandmother had something to do with it. She had stood beside him, unwavering each time he had begged to return home. Her small hands were calloused and strong. Many times, they caught him by his hair and dragged him back onto the path to life.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SHADOW HUNTERS

  Casey’s fight was different; it was not chemically induced, but born into her. She had a double soul, a twin who shared the womb, holding her as she developed. Their separation had been something that had torn their souls apart.