Lightwood

by Steph Post

  Judah squeezed his hands into fists.

  “I can’t just leave it alone. I can’t.”

  “I know. But what’s the plan? We just ride up in there, guns blazing, maybe launch a grenade or two and take down who we can?”

  Judah ignored Ramey’s tone and grin. He looked past her out the kitchen window, into the orange streetlight glow.

  “I need to know more before I can make a decision. Before I can make a call.”

  Ramey shook her head.

  “I don’t know who else we can go to.”

  “We go to them.”

  He turned back to Ramey.

  “If they’re gonna set a trap for us, we need to trap them right back.”

  Ramey narrowed her eyes, questioning, but before she could speak Judah’s cellphone vibrated again. They both glanced down at it. It buzzed twice and Ramey reached for it. Before she could snap it open, though, Judah grabbed her hand.

  “I got it.”

  He took a deep breath and answered the phone. It was Sherwood and he wasted no time.

  “Where the hell you been, boy?”

  Judah raised his eyebrows at Ramey and then twisted around in his seat. He rested his elbow on the edge of the table and let his eyes wander to the warped linoleum floor.

  “Around.”

  “I been calling you all day.”

  “I misplaced my phone. I’ve been laying low like you said to.”

  Sherwood made a sound that was somewhere between a phlegmy cough and a growl. Judah wasn’t sure if Sherwood bought it or not, but he continued.

  “But you got me now, so what’d you want? You want to meet me in another parking lot so you can get Levi to crack another rib? Or maybe you want to take a swing at me yourself, for old times’ sake?”

  Ramey touched Judah’s arm, but he pulled away from her. Sherwood just laughed.

  “No, I think we’re all done with that. Any word on Benji?”

  “Why, you still ain’t been by the hospital to see him? Too much trouble to drive all the way out there?”

  Sherwood’s tone was edgy. Dangerous.

  “You are walking a narrow line with me, son.”

  No one spoke for a moment and then Judah conceded.

  “Ramey called up there earlier. Still the same. Multiple fractures, brain swelling, massive abrasions. They got him in some kinda induced coma or something.”

  “So he’ll make it?”

  Judah gritted his teeth.

  “They still don’t know. That all you called about?”

  “I called to make sure you’d taken last night’s conversation to heart.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sherwood didn’t seem convinced.

  “I mean it. We’ll handle it, Judah. In good time. Without making the situation any worse than it already is. So you just keep laying low, keep playing house with Ramey or whatever it is you’re doing right now, and I’ll let you know if we need you when we make a move.”

  “If you need me?”

  Sherwood wheezed.

  “You been gone awhile, son. You did okay Saturday night, but right now this ain’t your game. Take some time, get your head straight. Figure out your priorities. Talk to that girl of yours, for Christ’s sake. She’s wild, but maybe she can convince you to do the right thing.”

  Judah tried to make his voice resigned.

  “Which is to let you handle it.”

  “Yes. Let me handle it.”

  “All right.”

  “I mean it, Judah.”

  “Me too.”

  There was a long pause and then the line went dead. Judah looked down at the phone in his hands, then snapped it shut and tossed it on the table. He turned back to Ramey and managed a slight grin.

  “I hope he bought that.”

  Ramey smiled. She picked up her beer and raised it to her lips.

  “So, we were talking about a trap?”

  They knew it was a different kind of night. Wednesday nights usually lacked some of the energy and theatrics of Sunday, as most of the congregation arrived after working long hours, and some children, who still couldn’t be pulled from the secular public school system, were permitted to stay home and sleep. Although Wednesday nights were not the endurance marathons of Sunday, the services didn’t start until nine and could go on long past midnight.

  An odd weight settled on the church members as they found their seats on the long wooden benches and joined in with the rhythmic clapping. The usual opening songs were sung as minivans and pickup trucks pulled into the parking lot and a few testimonials were shouted as the air grew warmer and warmer with the press of bodies still smelling of cooking grease, cleaning products and dried sweat. When Sister Tulah finally emerged from the door at the back of the sanctuary and ascended the low stage they understood the change in the air. The sharp points of Sister Tulah’s mouth were turned down and her pale, milky eyes appeared hooded and shadowed. She held her arms out stiff in front of her with her hands formed into fists, as if she were flexing an invisible switch between them. There would be no holy laughter tonight, no laying on of hands to heal the sick and sad, no running and falling in the aisles. The Holy Spirit would be walking amongst them tonight, but only in Sister Tulah’s shoes.

  Felton had been greeting members as they filtered through the front doors, but once Tulah assumed the stage, he scanned the parking lot for headlights and then closed the doors and locked them. He stood with his back leaning against the far wall of the room and he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets when the clapping ceased. Felton, better than most, knew what the strange tension in Sister Tulah’s shoulders and forearms meant. He tapped his foot nervously on the floorboards and held his breath with the others until Sister Tulah decided to speak. When she finally did, her voice came out like the crack of a whip, each word slow and biting, with the burning sting of the lash.

  “Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the Lord your God. Does anyone know what book of the Bible that’s from?”

  Most everyone in the congregation knew, but no would be foolish enough to speak. Several women nodded their heads, but the rest of the church kept their necks stiff and their gazes trained like beams of light on Sister Tulah’s face. Their eyes followed her as she began to stomp across the stage, but their heads did not move.

  “It’s from Leviticus, chapter eighteen. And if you didn’t know that, then you’d better go home tonight and spend the next twenty-four hours praying on your knees with your Bible held over your head asking God to forgive your ignorance. I will say it again, Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances: I am the Lord your God. Did you get it that time?”

  Sister Tulah raised her fist in the air.

  “God didn’t say maybe. He didn’t say consider, He didn’t say think about it a little while. He said do! He is telling you right there, plain as day, plain as breathing, what you need to do. You need to obey. Let me say that again. Obey.”

  Felton shifted uncomfortably against the wall, snagging the shoulder of his dress shirt against the rough plaster. Sister Tulah’s pale eyes were roving among the congregation, but Felton didn’t need Tulah’s glare to feel her words stamping themselves deep into his chest.

  “God didn’t say to obey Him because it’s fun. God didn’t say to obey Him because you have nothing better to do. God didn’t say to obey Him because it’s what you want to do.”

  Sister Tulah banged her right fist down into her left hand.

  “God said to obey Him because I am the Lord your God! Let me repeat, I am the Lord your God!”

  Sister Tulah scanned the rows of followers. Her gaze lingered on a few, probing for weakness, searching for even the minutest lapse in attention. She slowly ambled her way around the stage to stand behind the pulpit. Her severe pauses could be even more commanding than her words and she was well aware of this. No sound, no movement, was uncalculated by Tulah.

  “God tells you to do something and you do it. God says
to repent and you repent. God says tithe and you tithe.”

  Tulah picked up the mason jar of clear liquid balanced on the edge of the pulpit and held it aloft.

  “God says you drink poison and let me tell you, you’re going to drink poison.”

  A few muffled affirmations rose from the crowd, but Sister Tulah’s cutting gaze quickly silenced them.

  “Let me tell you something else it says in Leviticus. If you read chapter twenty, God says Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them; that the land whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. Do you hear that? Do you know what that means?”

  Felton’s hands were trembling inside his pockets. He clenched his fingers into thick balls and pressed his fists against his legs. Sister Tulah seemed to be sucking all of the air inside the church into her lungs and Felton was finding it difficult to breathe. His eyes darted around the church and he could tell that while their faces did not reflect it, many of the members’ chests were beginning to heave with the same struggle.

  “You!”

  Sister Tulah pointed to an awkward boy, all legs and scraped elbows, who was folded up like an accordion between his sweating parents.

  “Do you know what that means?”

  The boy’s rapt face didn’t change, but his small hand edged its way into his mother’s. Sister Tulah jabbed her finger toward the row behind the boy.

  “Do you? Do any of you? Well, spew means to cast out. It means to vomit. God is telling you right there what is going to happen to you if you even think about disobeying him. If it even crosses your mind for a second. He is going to vomit you out away from him and straight into the waiting arms of the devil. Straight into the gnashing teeth of Satan’s army.”

  Sister Tulah raised her chin and in the shadowy light, her eyes found Felton’s and stayed for a moment.

  “Do you?”

  Sister Tulah smashed her fist down on the wooden pulpit and the clear liquid in the Mason jar sloshed against the glass sides.

  “Is that what you want? You want to be disobedient and dance with the devil? You want to think for yourself and feel those scorching flames licking up the sides of your body for the rest of eternity? You want to not listen to God, you want to ignore his orders, you want to do things your own way and think you can get away with it? Well, let me tell you, when you die your children are going to wake in their sleep from nightmares, because they are going to be able to hear your screams all the way from Hell.”

  Sister Tulah walked to the very edge of the stage, the toes of her white Reeboks hitting the wooden lip of trim. To Felton, her pupils seemed like two tiny points of pure darkness peering through the globes of white. He wanted to look away but, like the people seated on the rows before him, he knew that was impossible. His fingernails were cutting into the soft, doughy flesh of his palms, but he couldn’t unmake his fists. He suddenly had a burning need to urinate, but moving was not only impossible, it was unimaginable. If a warm stream began to trickle down the inside of his pants’ leg, so be it. It had happened before. Sister Tulah’s voice sank dangerously low.

  “And let me tell you what happens before you even get to Hell. You might be thinking right now that you don’t have to worry until you die. Oh, no. God tells us exactly what He’s going do to you in Deuteronomy. What He’s going do to you right here on earth. He says, If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”

  Sister Tulah’s face reddened and she screamed out at her congregation. The piercing sound seemed to suck all the air, all the light, all the essence of humanness from the room and left it in an empty, dark void.

  “They are burned!”

  JACK O’ LANTERN was awoken by a great whooshing sound, followed by shouts and the sound of doors banging and boots pounding on the floor. He immediately rolled off the twin bed in one of the back bedrooms and was on his feet, careening in his boxer shorts down the narrow hallway to the main room of the clubhouse. He raced around the corner and slammed into Legs, whose eyes were wide with fear. He had his pants in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other; he seemed unsure which item was more essential to the situation. Jack ripped the pants from Legs’ grasp and pushed him forward with the extinguisher. Legs bolted out the open front door and joined the shouts and curses. Jack O’ Lantern followed him, but stopped short when he beheld the chaos before him.

  His men were running to and fro like addled lemmings, unsure of which cliff to run off first. Tiny hobbled past him, dragging both his leg and a shovel. Ratface and Toadie were untangling the garden hose from the side of the building and Legs was trying unsuccessfully to pull the pin out of the extinguisher. He had it clamped between his knees as he yanked and cursed in frustration. Slim Jim, who had been standing still with his hands on his hips, caught Jack O Lantern’s eye and slowly walked over to the steps. He looked up at Jack and crossed his arms. They watched it together.

  A ring of fire had been lit around the clubhouse. Jack could tell from where he was standing that it was in the shape of a perfect circle, completely encompassing the building. The flames rose almost to the men’s shoulders and the air around them was laced with a toxic smell. Oily black smoke wafted upwards in the still night and with the absence of any wind the wall of fire remained vertical, burning straight upwards. The ring stood about ten feet from the doorway and Jack could feel the wave of heat assaulting his skin. Any closer and the fire would have taken the clubhouse. As it was, it stood no chance of catching anything else ablaze as long as the summer air remained still and the Scorpions didn’t do something stupid to fan the flames in the wrong direction. The fire was a warning, a threat, not a failed attempt to burn them out. Jack O’ Lantern raised his hands to his face and stared wide-eyed through his fingers. It was Wednesday night. He had expected a phone call, maybe another snake in a box. He had not expected this.

  Jack O’ Lantern whispered between his hands.

  “Holy mother of God.”

  Slim Jim nodded.

  “Exactly.”

  “THEY ARE burned, brothers and sisters! They are burned, my fellow saints! They are not chided, they are not scolded. They are burnt and the skin is scorched from their bodies and the flesh on their bones is cooked and their very bones are blackened.”

  Tears had begun to roll down the faces of the few children in the congregation, but they did not dare close their eyes or look away or wipe their runny noses on their sleeves. Felton watched Tulah pace back and forth across the stage as her voice cracked and strained and he knew that something terrible was happening tonight. Not there, not in the church, and whatever it was, it wasn’t going to involve him. But he recognized the flushed tinge to Sister Tulah’s cheeks and the curl of her thin lips. Someone, somewhere, was getting what Tulah thought they deserved. And she was loving every moment of it.

  “How can He do that, you ask? He can do that, because He is the Lord your God.”

  Sister Tulah’s yellow teeth were revealed behind her grotesque smile. She grinned down at her followers while pointing in the air above her.

  “He says, I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God! Do you hear me? Brothers and sisters, do you hear me? I’m not up here tonight for my own benefit. I know my place is next to our Lord. I know where I’m going to be standing when God spews you out. When He starts that fire. When He casts the backslidden, disobedient filth into the flames. I’ll be standing right next to Him, secure in my place. I’ll be standing right next to Jesus Christ himself, shaking my head in sorrow, but comforted by the fact that I’ve done everything I could to save those poor burning souls.”

  Sister Tulah’s eyes were glazed over, but not from tears. Felton knew. He had seen the same sheen in her eyes the night the brakes went out on Melville Sheppard’s Cadillac and he almost sank along with his new car to the bottom of Lake Rowell. The night Luanne Bradshaw found her mother cold and lifeless in the Longflowers N
ursing Home with the cord to her ventilator unplugged and kicked under the bed. The night Mayor Clifton’s daughter turned up missing and was found only after a sizable check was made out to Sister Tulah to pray for the girl’s safe return. Tulah was not lost in sorrow. She was lost in ecstasy. Felton finally tore his eyes away from her livid face, but he couldn’t block out her screeching voice.

  “Let me tell you, my dear brothers and sisters. The Lord God is a just God. The Lord God is a merciful God. But the Lord God is not stupid. He knows when your obedience to Him wavers for even the blink of an eye and during the Latter Days, He will remember. He will seek you out and He will not be forgiving. So I am warning you now. You must obey Him. You must cleave to Him. You must fear Him.”

  Felton stared down hard at the scuffed leather of his loafers. He wished he was alone in his camper. He wished he was with his snakes and his turtles. He wished he was far, far away and yet, there was a small sliver of him that wished he was closer. Sister Tulah was his flesh and blood. She was his only family. If she possessed such uncontested power, before the eyes of man and before the eyes of God, why couldn’t he have just the tiniest glimmer of that power inside of him, too?

  “Think on these words, my saints. God says to you, Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse. A blessing and a curse. Which will you be the recipient of? Will you stand shoulder to shoulder with myself and Jesus Christ as we look down from the safety of Heaven and survey the carnage inflicted on the wicked during the end times, or will you be kneeling in the rivers of blood and wailing your lament, asking yourself why, oh why, did you not heed Sister Tulah’s warnings? For the righteous and the obedient will be reclining in the land that flows with milk and honey and the headstrong and disobedient will be as branches, gathered and cast into the fire.”

  Felton raised his head and stared into the bottomless eyes of Sister Tulah. Over the tops of the church members’ heads her gaze held him alone. He dug his nails into his bleeding palms and straightened his shoulders. He looked back at her without flinching. Sister Tulah raised both of her arms above her head and closed her eyes. The congregation bowed their heads and followed suit.