The Devil's Cat

by William W. Johnstone

  "Hey!" the helper called, running to the cab of the truck. He tried to pull the white-robed flock member from the cab. The man kicked the young helper in the face. Blood popped out of busted lips.

  Sister Estelle let out a whoop.

  "Get out of my truck!" the breadman hollered at her.

  "Filth!" Sister Estelle squalled. "Nasty movies here, Brother Lester!"

  Lester walked to the truck and looked at the box of skin flicks. "Purveyor of filth!" he said, looking at the bread man. "That's why you were so concerned about the store being closed, wasn't it?"

  "Huh?" the breadman said.

  "How many other stores do you service with this fleshy filth?" Brother Luther questioned.

  Breadman looked at milkman. "I'm leavin', man. You with me?"

  "Let's go."

  "Grab them!" Brother Lester yelled. "Take them to the field."

  The three men were seized, their hands tied behind their backs.

  "Destroy the store," Brother Lester ordered. He remembered Sam's warning. "Not with fire. With axes—and the trucks, too."

  While the store and the trucks were being beaten, broken, hacked, and axed, the three men were led off.

  "I think," the milkman's helper said, "that we are a in deep trouble."

  "Shut up!" Sister Helen told him. "We're doin' the Lord's work this day."

  "Not no Lord that I ever heard of," the milkman said accurately.

  With the sounds of axes and hammers and tire irons ringing off of metal and wood and shattered glass, the breadman asked, "What are you people going to do with us?"

  'You will confess your sins before a court of True Christians," Brother Lester told him. "And then your flesh will sear with the fires you love."

  "These people are nuts!" the milkman's helper summed up.

  19

  The police radios at the mansion and the clinic were filled with chatter, but none of it directed at the cops in Becancour. It was as if they did not exist.

  Sonny Passon said as much.

  "Maybe we don't no more," Jobert spoke softly.

  "What do you mean, Jobert?" Colter asked.

  "I don' know, for really, madame. It's jus' a feelin' I got. One that I can't hardly put into words."

  "Like we have been forsaken, Jobert?"

  "No. Not that. I don' think my God is gonna forsake me. But I kinda believe that He is leavin' the fight—this fight—up to us." He shook his head. "I ain' sayin' this rat."

  "You're thinking there will be no outside help; is that it, Jobert?"

  "Yeah. I don' think none of us could get out if we tried. And I don' think nobody else can get in. I din feel this way a short time ago. But now I do. An' I don know why. I jus' do."

  C. D. walked to the picture windows of the huge den and looked out. "I just wish they'd make their move. I just feel so … so helpless here. I'm confused, I'm scared, and … I don't understand it."

  Sam and the others returned. Sonny looked at Sam, unspoken questions in his eyes.

  "We got a few of them" Sam said. "Too few to suit me."

  'Tonight," Javotte said. "Tonight is when we'll face the real Hell."

  "I believe that, too," Sam said.

  "It's like a pressure cooker out there," Matt said. "Just building and building up steam. Something's got to set it off."

  "I think tonight," Jobert said. "I don' know why. But tonight it blows."

  Tess Nardana began silently weeping.

  Princess Xaviere stood at the window in her room and looked out over the hot, still town. An evil smile caressed her lips. Everything was just perfect. The violence, for the most part, had been kept to a minimum—not like it was back in New York State. And now the so-called Christians were at odds with each other. Not only here, but at nearly all levels of government around the nation. Narrow-minded, hypocritical, and thinly disguised intolerance of all beliefs other than what those in power believed in was coming to the fore.

  And that was good. Her Master had told her so. The Dark One had told her he had seen this take place many, many times, all over the world. The Prince of Flies had seen it many times over the centuries. Xaviere knew that whenever one group tries to suppress the rights, beliefs, or privileges of another group, that suppression only serves to heighten the desirability of that which the intolerant want to censor.

  Morality cannot be legislated, but the new Puritan wave that was stomping around the nation, like that fool Cliff Lester, was too blind and bigoted and ignorant to see that.

  Xaviere rubbed her hands in glee and laughed and laughed. The evil laughter floated around the filthy room.

  It was just too good to be true.

  But it was true.

  And she loved it!

  "You're all right," Bonnie said, stroking the head of the great black panther. "And so am I. We have both achieved our dreams, Jackson. We are immortal."

  The great cat licked Bonnie's hand with its rough tongue and purred.

  At Lula's Love-Inn, those who had slept the sleep of the exhausted were awakening. They stretched their arms and loosened sore and tightened muscles. The place reeked with the odor of dozens of unwashed bodies.

  "Tonight," Walt Davis heard the silent call from the smoking pits. "Tonight."

  "Tonight," the others repeated.

  Dave Porter stroked the flesh of the young girls who had serviced him the previous night. One of them responded and shifted positions. Her long unwashed hair fanned Dave's flesh.

  'Tonight, baby!" Dave groaned. "Tonight."

  "Tonight," Nydia said, looking at Little Sam. Her son nodded his head. Dog growled.

  A Beast tore a hissing cat apart and stuffed its mouth full. The Beast smacked its lips in satisfaction. It belched a foul odor and devoured the other half of the cat.

  The Beast did not know why it hated the little furry creatures … but it certainly did, and so did the other Beasts.

  Tonight, it managed to think, tonight the cats would be fair game. The Master had not signaled otherwise, and until he did … the hunt was on.

  Javotte looked at Sam. "Tonight," the priest said. Sam nodded his head in agreement.

  "Confess your sins!" Brother Lester shouted at the three men.

  The men had been stripped and tied to poles driven into the ground. Dry wood had been piled around them, knee-high, and then soaked with kerosene.

  "You're crazy!" The milkman screamed the words. 'What in the hell is the matter with you people?"

  "Confess!" Lester hollered, his face sweaty, his eyes shining with the light of a zealot. "Tell us of your sins."

  "What happens to us if we do?" the breadman asked.

  That confused Brother Lester. He thought for a moment and shook his head. "Confess!"

  The milkman sealed the fate of them all. "You goddamned sorry no good motherfuckers!" he yelled at Brother Lester's flock.

  "See! See!" Brother Lester shouted. "Listen to the filth rolling from his mouth. Burn, burn, burn!"

  Torches were lighted as some of the Brothers and Sisters got in the spirit and began prancing and talking and shouting nonsense.

  Brother Lester grabbed a torch from the hands of a man and tossed it into the kerosene-soaked wood piled around the milk man. "Scream your praise to Satan as the fires of the Lord sear your sinful flesh! Burn, burn, burn!"

  A few more of the Brothers and Sisters got into the spirit and began dancing around the screaming, burning man.

  Anguished screaming filled the heated air as the men's flesh began cooking and bubbling and peeling, exposing the raw meat of their bodies. The men's hair exploded as the flames reached higher. Brains and eyeballs began cooking and melting, the eyeballs running down the men's seared cheeks.

  Sister Bertha began tossing the X-rated films into the flames, her shrieks of uncontrolled Phariseeism almost overriding the now-fading screaming of the men being burned alive.

  "Rejoice, Brothers and Sisters!" Lester shouted. "We have begun ridding the world of sinners. Today Becancour
, tomorrow … the world!" he screamed, flinging his arms high over his head.

  The bonds holding the cooked meat that was once human parted as the flames reached them. The men toppled forward into the burning wood.

  "Burn, you heathens!" Lester shouted. "Burn!"

  Mary Claverie had slept, awakened, then slept a bit longer until the noonday heat became too fierce for her.

  It was then she remembered one of the reasons she came here.

  Her Brothers.

  It seemed like to Mary that someone was trying to tell her something in some almost inaudible voice in her head. It seemed to Mary that the voice was telling her to wait, don't go just yet.

  But Mary didn't want to wait. She loved the Dark One, loved all that he stood for, but this was important, too. She picked up her pistol and stepped out into the noonday heat. She remembered the way to her old home, and knew that Clarence lived in the old place. Clarence was the oldest, so it was only fitting that he be the first.

  No one attempted to stop Mary as she walked the hot streets. She paused once, sure she was hearing some sort of singing floating on the air—singing and screaming. But she mentally brushed that aside. Who would be singing now?

  Screaming, yes. Singing, no.

  It was not a long walk to Mary's childhood home. The place had not changed that much. Mary stood for a moment outside the home. She could sense the fear emanating from within. She smiled at that. Clarence had been appalled years back—Mary couldn't remember how many years—after her rape, when Mary began renouncing God and praising Satan. Her brother had begun shouting all sorts of religious junk and his minister had spoken from the Bible.

  She wondered what had happened to that old poot of a preacher?

  Mary walked up the sidewalk, her pistol in her hand.

  The fear smell grew stronger. Mary's own stinking body odors paled against the fear odor.

  The front door opened and there he stood. Dear Brother Clarence. His eyes widened as he recognized the ragged, wild-eyed woman standing before him.

  "I might have known you'd have something to do with … whatever is happening to this town," Clarence said.

  "Don't you know?" Mary asked, thinking: what a dope.

  "No," Clarence said, his voice dull.

  "Will and Jack with you?"

  That startled the man. "Will and Jack? Mary, they died years ago, within eighteen months of each other."

  Mary started laughing. That was even better.

  "You find it funny your brothers have died?"

  "Hysterical, Brother dear." She put the pistol back into her dirty purse. "Would you like to see our brothers?"

  "What?"

  "Are you deaf as well as stupid? You heard me, Clarence."

  "I should call the doctors at the hospital. But …" He looked puzzled for a few seconds. "I don't know the number," he said lamely.

  "You don't know a lot of things, Clarence. But tonight, for a very short time, I'll see if I can't clear them up for you."

  Clarence's wife—Mary forgot her name—joined him on the porch. She was as dull-looking as Clarence.

  "Where are your kids, Clarence?" Mary asked her brother.

  "All grown up, Mary. What's going to happen tonight?"

  She waved her hand at him, turned around, and walked away. She ignored his calling for her to turn around, talk to him.

  At the corner, she paused, trying to remember which way to the cemetery. It came to her.

  She walked to the outskirts of town and entered the cemetery. Chuckling, she located the caretaker's building and broke the lock off the door. She stepped into the building and located a shovel. She was whistling a dirgelike tune as she walked the grounds. She had absolutely no idea where her brothers were buried.

  Shovel in hand, Mary prowled the cemetery like a ghoul—ragged and dirty and stinking, her eyes inspecting each headstone for names. She knew a lot of the names, and spit on several of the graves.

  Then she found the family plot. She dropped the shovel and clapped her hands in glee. Good ol' Jack and Will. Oh, she thought, what a surprise was waiting for them.

  She began digging.

  20

  The sun beat down on Becancour with a merciless intensity, sending the temperature soaring upward. The heat did nothing to alleviate the sickly-sweet odor of burned flesh that wafted over the town, floating on the almost breezeless air.

  The grunting sounds of men and women joined in all varieties of sexual positions mingled with the smell of burned flesh and the odor of many unwashed bodies.

  No one walked the streets, no one drove the streets. The clerks in those stores that were open did nothing except sit and stare dully out the windows. There were no customers to buy their wares, no one just browsed through the aisles.

  At the clinic and at the Dorgenois house, those gathered tried to rest, to conserve and build strength for the night that would all too soon be upon them. But real rest, for most, was very elusive. For they sensed, felt, knew, this night and the following dawn and day would bring a horror that none among them had ever before experienced. None, except Sam Balon and Nydia.

  And all marveled at how Sam and Nydia and Little Sam and even Dog could sleep so soundly.

  Mary Claverie continued her digging. The heat did not bother her at all. On and on through the hot afternoon she dug; first at one grave, then at the other, so she could time the rebirth, and claim two more souls for the Dark One. She sometimes laughed as she worked.

  Ex-City Patrolman Louis Black made the mistake of going to the home of Old Mrs. Wheeler. He stood out on the front yard, close to the front porch, and began taunting the old woman. He heaped verbal filth upon her, the profanity rolling from his mouth in stinking waves.

  Mrs. Wheeler, with a sigh, rose from her chair and opened the screen door.

  She shot him with the shotgun, the buckshot striking him in the legs, knocking him sprawling. Screaming in pain, Louis managed to crawl off, out of range. As he crawled, his blood stained the grass beneath him. He crawled on, until he came to a house he thought was deserted. Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself up onto the |porch. He moaned as hands found him and pulled him inside. He looked up into the eyes of Art Authement. Art bent his head and kissed the man, his lips moving over the lips and down to his neck.

  And Brother Cliff Lester was having another of his semifamous visions.

  "World power," the soothing voice whispered to Brother Lester. "Fame and riches. Sound good?"

  Lester agreed that, yes, it shore did.

  "Your own television show, carried coast to coast, border to border."

  "Oh, my, yes!" Brother Lester whispered to the voice.

  "People flinging themselves at your feet, begging for forgiveness—from you. Like that, old friend?"

  Shore did, for a fact. Hallelujah.

  "What you have done today was good, a start, but only a small start. There are many more in this town who must be punished. Do you agree?"

  "Shore do."

  "You must do exactly as I say. For I speak only the truth."

  "Right, right! Lay it on me." As Brother Lester moaned and jerked and spake in tongues, his flock were working themselves up into a murderous frenzy. Their joyful noisemaking was muted in Lester's feverish brain as the voice spoke.

  The voice gave Brother Lester instructions, and Brother Lester loved it.

  His moaning and jerking ceased. He opened his eyes and sat up. "Lo," he shouted. "I have spoken with an angel."

  Not exactly an angel.

  "I know now what we must do!"

  His flock waited.

  Lester told them.

  They gasped.

  "What angel told you this?" a daring flock member asked.

  "Do you dare question me!" Brother Lester shouted.

  The questioner lowered his head.

  "That's better," Lester said. "Cleanse yourselves, mentally and physically. For we must hurry."

  And Mary pried open the lid to Will's casket. She
grabbed his rotting head and kissed his cold lips.

  Will opened his eyes.

  "Hi, Brother!" Mary cried. "Welcome back!"

  21

  Sam visited the clinic and spoke softly with his wife and son, in private.

  "You've seen a small taste of Hell, Son," he told Little Sam. "But in a few hours, Satan is going to unleash everything at his power. You've been a brave boy, now I must ask you to be braver."

  "I will, Father. I promise."

  "You've spotted the devil's child?"

  "When she walked in with Guy, Father."

  "She won't be as easy as poor little Guy."

  "I know. But Dog will help me."

  Sam patted the big head of the animal. He lifted his eyes to Nydia. "You're going to be very busy tonight, love."

  "I know."

  Sam kissed his son and his wife. He stood up. "I'll see you all tomorrow."

  Sam spoke briefly with the remainder of the adults at the clinic. "Hang in there," he said.

  They all watched the husky young man leave the building. Sam stood outside for a moment, in the almost unbearable heat of mid-afternoon. The odor of evil was almost as intolerable as the intense heat.

  He walked to the borrowed pickup truck and got behind the wheel, wincing as his hands touched the hot steering wheel.

  With a long expelling of breath, Sam started the pickup and rolled out, heading for the main drag of town. He saw nothing and nobody. He didn't even see a cat.

  But he felt the evil all around him, slithering about like some dangerous snake, the forked tongue sliding rapidly in and out past the eternal smile of the serpent.

  He drove the main street, stopping at the sight of the nearly destroyed convenience store. Parking, Sam got out and inspected the milk truck and the bread truck. And that odd smell he'd been smelling for several hours was stronger.

  He knew what it was.

  He drove toward the stronger odor, stopping about a block from Cliff Lester's church on a side street. There, out in the field, he saw the three charred poles.

  With a sigh, Sam backed up and turned around. He didn't have to go inspect the poles; he could smell what remained of cooked human flesh.

  "The damned fool," Sam muttered. "Why can't people be Christians without being fanatics?"