“I’ll talk to your mother and father and make sure it’s okay.” The pastor gave his shoulder a squeeze, and turned his million-watt smile back on. “Now, we’d better get into the sanctuary. It wouldn’t look good if I was late to deliver my own sermon.”
Bobby found his family and took a seat on the pew next to his father, already starting to relax. Brother Peavey was a grownup, which meant he would know exactly what to do. He thumbed through the concordance to his Bible during the announcements and choir, looking for verses about demons and possession. There was a cool story about Jesus and a bunch of demons called Legion, where He cast them out of a man and into a herd of pigs, and they ran off a cliff into the sea. Awesome. Maybe he should go back to the Barlowe house sometime and try that with Norman. The thought simultaneously appealed to and terrified him. He hoped Brother Peavey wouldn’t suggest it as an option.
The choir finished their songs and several men from the congregation lined up across the front of the sanctuary to serve the Lord’s Supper. Bobby liked the little cups of Welch’s grape juice and nibbles of cracker—it was sort of like getting a snack right in the middle of church, a special one, only meant for special people—but the thought of what it represented still weirded him out. He understood the part about forgiveness and sacrifice, but eat my flesh, drink my blood sounded more like something out of a horror movie than a commandment from the son of God. Maybe he would understand when he was older. Either way, it was better than what the Catholics believed. Brother Peavey said they thought the wafer and juice actually turned into Jesus’s flesh and blood. Gross. No wonder they were going to hell.
At the end of communion, the men passed collection baskets to gather offerings while the organist played Awesome God. When the basket came to Bobby, he dutifully dropped the dollar his father had given him in among all the folded checks, bills, and coins. Afterward, the men stacked all the baskets on a table at the back of the sanctuary and returned to their seats as Brother Peavey sprang from his.
“Good morning, brothers and sisters!” he bellowed, charging up the steps of the dais, tugging at the knot of his tie to loosen it. “Our God truly is an awesome God, isn’t he?”
He was answered by raucous cries of hallelujah and amen. Bobby settled against his father’s arm to listen to the sermon. It was high time he started paying more attention. Sure, he was a Christian because he’d accepted Jesus Christ as his savior, but what had he done since then but come to church two or three times a week with his parents just to stare at the floor, bored out of his mind, or doodle in his Sunday School workbook while the services went on around him? Brother Peavey always said that faith without works was dead. Maybe if he’d been more well-versed in the ways of the Lord, he’d have known what to do when Norman cornered him, like command the demonic presence out of the man the way Jesus had done with Legion. A true believer was supposed to be able to do it, too. Jesus said so.
“The writer of the thirty-third Psalm tells us that the Lord God spoke the heavens and the earth into being,” the preacher continued. “That right there was the big bang, not the claptrap all these so-called scientists try to fill the heads of our young people with! You didn’t evolve from a monkey—you came from our awesome God.”
“Amen,” someone off to Bobby’s left cried. Everyone seemed a lot more spirited today, he thought. Maybe it was the unseasonably warm weather.
“Our God delivered His chosen people out of bondage, destroying the Egyptians, and He has protected those who belong to Him through the ages. Today, that means you and me!”
Bobby liked the thought of God destroying the enemies of Christians. Maybe when He was finished delivering some holy vengeance onto Norman and his demons, they could talk about Joey Garraty. If anyone needed a little wrath of God, it was him.
Brother Peavey went on, working himself into a righteous lather. Despite his best efforts, Bobby found his mind wandering. Now that he was doing something about his problem, he was free to focus on other things. Like the fact that Amy Carmichael was only five rows ahead of him. Very distracting.
She sat with her head bowed—probably working on next week’s Sunday School lesson, he thought—the blue ribbon she’d used to pull her hair into a ponytail draped over her delicate neck. Would the skin there smell of her shampoo? Flushing at the thought of being close enough to find out, Bobby bowed his own head. It wasn’t right to think about girls in the house of God.
But she’s so pretty.
Brother Peavey opened his Bible and thumbed through it. “In all these things we have full victory through God and his love for us. That’s from Paul’s letter to the Romans. What things?”—here he consulted the worn book and counted items off on the fingers of his free hand—“Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruling spirits, nothing in the present and nothing in the future, nothing above us or below us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, my friends.”
Bobby wondered if Amy Carmichael could ever like a dork like him. She was friendly at school, always saying hello and asking him if he’d finished all his homework, and when she smiled at him earlier, in Sunday School, hadn’t it been just a little wider and longer than the smiles she gave all the other kids? He thought it had. How awesome would it be if she actually did like him... or even better, would be willing to do something like go steady with him? Fresh heat blossomed in his cheeks, and he covered his mouth with his hand to hide the dopey grin that had appeared without warning.
Brother Peavey slammed his Bible on the podium and Bobby jumped. “All our awesome God wants is for us to love Him back,” he cried. “And we can start that by loving one another, as He commanded us to. Be kind. Exhibit the fruits of the Spirit. Give him the tithe he commanded, and he’ll reward you without measure in heaven.”
He looked out over the congregation through rheumy yellowed eyes.
“But if you give me a dollar, I’ll suck your dick. Let you come in my mouth and swallow every drop!”
The words struck Bobby like a physical blow. Brother Peavey gripped the sides of the podium and leered out at the worshipers. He looked pleased with what he saw. Bobby looked up at his father, who stared at the preacher with a rapt expression, blissfully unaware. For that matter, everyone seemed nonplussed. It was like they hadn’t noticed what Brother Peavey said. Or they don’t care. A ribbon of fear as fine as the one binding Amy Carmichael’s hair unfurled in his belly.
Brother Peavey fixed his ancient eyes on Bobby, and said, “Give me two and I’ll lick your asshole, because there ain’t a goddamn thing like a good rim job, is there, Bobby?”
He strode across the dais and leaped nimbly to the floor, never looking away. Bobby wanted to scream, wanted to shake his father so that he’d snap out of his hypnotic state and see what was happening, but he was held in place by that terrible blasted gaze. Brother Peavey jumped up onto the front pew and rested one foot on the back, like Washington crossing the Delaware. His hair had grayed and now stood up in ragged clumps, Bobby saw, and fresh sores covered his lips.
“Got something to show you, Bobby,” he said, his voice thick and clotted. He smiled, revealing dead black teeth, and he ran his tongue lovingly over them. “I know you’re gonna like it.”
The minister stepped all the way onto the back of the back on the pew, balancing with the ease of a cat, then hopped to the back of the next pew. His nose broke loose and slid down his face in a smear of blood and snot, leaving behind an oozing crater between the ancient eyes. It dropped to the floor with a gelid plopping sound. A thin mewl slipped between Bobby’s lips.
“I think you’ll want to kiss it all... night... LONG!” Brother Norman began to run across the pews in great bounding leaps as he spoke, his voice growing more and more gravelly. The festering crater that had been his nose whistled with each breath, and his scabrous lips peeled back from his rotted teeth in a feral grimace. Blackflies whirled around him like a living tornado, their hum filling the sanctuary. He unbuckled his belt and yanked it through the lo
ops of his slacks, flinging it to one side. The heavy steel buckle hit an elderly man in the face, peeling his cheek open, and clattered to the pew beside him. Freshets of blood poured down the man’s face in sheets, but he sat unfazed, looking up toward the pulpit.
The force holding Bobby released him and he could move again. He grabbed his father’s arm and shook it, trying to get a reaction. Anything. The sound of Brother Norman’s dress shoes against the bare wood thundered through the sanctuary. Bobby stood to run but Norman—Brother Peavey was completely gone now, wasn’t he?—was suddenly right there on the pew in front of him. The hobo seized him by the neck with a scabby rough hand, jerking him off his feet.
“Coming for you, Bobby!” he roared in a blast of fetid heat, reaching into the front of his pants with his other hand. Bobby shrieked and fought to get away as flies began to land on him and deliver tiny stinging bites—
And found himself slumped to the side in the pew, looking up into his father’s shocked face. Just beyond, his mother stared at him through wide eyes, her brow furrowed with concern. The same look as the day before in Penn’s, he realized. Even Dana seemed stunned into an uncharacteristic stillness, the Darth Vader figurine next to her forgotten. Somewhere nearby, a baby started to wail. Bobby slowly sat up, his face burning. People all around craned their necks for a look, alarmed. The old man whose cheek had been flayed open squinted back at him, a dour expression on his wrinkled but otherwise unmarked face. Even Amy Carmichael gaped over her shoulder.
They hadn’t seen the hobo. Hadn’t heard him, hadn’t smelled him.
Hadn’t anything.
“Is everything okay?” Brother Peavey asked from the pulpit, peering out with one hand over his eyes to shield the light shining down on him.
He was completely normal.
Bobby’s father laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it.
“I had a nightmare,” Bobby whispered, and saw the expression on his father’s face transform from concern into angry embarrassment in an instant.
“Everything’s fine, Brother Peavey,” his father called in a tight voice, and gave Bobby a pat on the back that seemed just a little too hard. “Looks like someone didn’t get enough sleep last night and just had himself a bad dream.”
A titter rippled through the congregation. Brother Peavey smiled warmly. “Are you telling me I’m long-winded, Bobby?”
“No, sir,” Bobby managed. Tears stung his eyes. Norman was coming for him, and no one knew it. Even if he said something, they’d just think he was crazy. “I guess I stayed up too late watching TV.”
“Well, most here probably think you did them a favor.” Another smattering of laughter ran through the congregation, and the minister chuckled. “I guess I’ve gone on long enough,”
He nodded at the organist, who began to play “Just As I Am” while he offered the invitation for people to come forward and accept the invitation of Jesus to be saved. Bobby slumped against his father, dejected. There was no way he could go to the preacher’s house now. What if Norman came back while they were alone? If he were trapped in the minister’s study with the hobo, he doubted he’d be as lucky escaping as he had been the day before. It felt like something out of one of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies—one of the scary ones, nothing at all like his adventures with the Three Investigators. Norman was coming for him, and he had nowhere to turn for help.
A hot tear streaked down his cheek and he wiped it away furiously before anyone saw it.
7
Bobby didn’t know what to do.
When the final prayer ended the service he’d made a beeline out of the sanctuary, intent on sneaking past Brother Peavey to the car lest they come face-to-face and the minister transform into Norman again, because if he did it was apparent that no one would notice. Halfway across the lobby Bobby remembered Brother Peavey planned to talk to his parents about him coming over for the afternoon, and that, brothers and sisters, was one thing that was most definitely not happening. Now Bobby stood in the lobby, watching the preacher through the glass exit doors as he made the rounds just outside, shaking hands and smiling and laughing.
Like nothing was wrong at all.
If he spoke with Brother Peavey to tell him he wasn’t coming—a forgotten paper due Tuesday morning would make a serviceable excuse, he thought, hoping that the lie wouldn’t condemn him to an eternity of torment—the preacher might transform into Norman again, might grab him right there in the sunshine in front of everyone and do something awful (let you come in my mouth and swallow every drop) to him while the parishioners smiled and nodded and went about their business of leaving. But if he did nothing, Brother Peavey was sure to catch his parents on the way out, and then one of two things would happen: he’d either have to go to the preacher’s house because they’d make him, under the pretext of keeping his word, or he’d have to explain to them why he’d wanted to talk to Brother Peavey in the first place. Why had he ever had such a stupid idea?
A hand touched his arm and Bobby spun, startled, to find himself face to face with Amy Carmichael. She stood holding her Bible in front of her with both hands, a tentative smile on her face. She wore a blue checked dress with a white belt and collar and she looked so beautiful that for a moment he forgot to breathe.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Sure, I’m fine,” he said, trying to return her smile. Except there’s this hobo named Norman who said he’s coming for me, Amy, and you know what? I’m starting to believe him.
“What was your dream about?”
For a long, frightening moment Bobby thought she was talking about his dream from the night before, where she’d kissed him again and again as they lay together on a bed of rich green grass under a warm summer sun, and felt his palms go sweaty. Then he realized she was referring to his outburst during the sermon and stammered, “I dreamed Brother Peavey was trying to kill me,” before he could stop himself.
She looked past him, through the glass doors, where the preacher stood chatting with a young well-scrubbed family. “That must have been scary.”
If you only knew. “It was.”
“How?”
“Pretty scary,” he said, thinking of the minister bounding from pew to pew, transforming into a living nightmare as he came.
She giggled, but there was no malice in it. “No, how was he trying to kill you?”
“Oh.” Bobby flushed. Idiot! “He turned into a monster.”
Coming for me.
Amy shivered. “That is scary. What kind of monster? Like a werewolf or something?”
“No, not like that,” he said, then shrugged. In his mind’s eye he saw the glistening flyblown hole where Brother Peavey’s nose had been, the terrible scabs and dead teeth. “More like a leper, like in the Bible. Or a mummy, maybe, but without the bandages.”
“Gross!”
“Yeah. I couldn’t get away from him.”
“At least you woke up.”
He grinned, for real this time. “I think I woke everybody up.”
They laughed, and for the moment Bobby forgot about everything except the pretty girl standing before him. That, and the way his stomach felt full of butterflies again, just like at the Barlowe house.
He found it wasn’t bad at all now.
“Well,” Amy said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I’d better go before my dad comes looking for me.”
I’ll be coming for you, Bobby. The voice in his head was faint. Distant.
She started to go, then turned back. “Do you like carnivals?”
Bobby thought that for her he would like just about anything—even crawling back under the Barlowe house with Norman the psycho child molesting hobo, if need be—but in this instance he wasn’t lying when he replied, “Sure I do.”
“Me too. Especially the scary rides.” She paused and stared at the ground between them for a moment like she wasn’t sure what to say next. “There’s a carnival set up in the parking lot at the Gateway Shopping Center. We
passed it on the way to church this morning. My mom said she’d take me tomorrow at noon since there’s no school. If you wanted to meet me there.”
Bobby thought there was a very real chance his heart was going to explode in his chest.
“That’d be awesome,” he said. His voice sounded to him like it was coming to him down a long tunnel. One lined with rainbows and daisies and puppies.
“It’s a date, then,” she said, smiling shyly. Blush colored her cheeks. “See you tomorrow.”
He watched her cross the parking lot, blonde ponytail swinging from side to side, his mind in a faraway place where monsters didn’t exist. When he lost her among the cars he returned to the matter at hand: dealing with Brother Peavey. The story about a report due Tuesday would have to do. Even if God sent him to hell for lying, as long as it didn’t happen until after his date with Amy, Bobby thought he could live with that.
After my date with Amy. Didn’t those words have such a fine ring to them?
He pushed through the door and walked into the morning sun, squinting. It took him a second to spot Brother Peavey, and when he did his heart fell. The minister was talking to his father and mother, and they were all looking right at him. His father beckoned him over. Bobby crossed the lot slowly, praying that Brother Peavey stayed Brother Peavey. He wished he were somewhere else.
Kissing Amy Carmichael in a field, perhaps.
Bobby squeezed between his parents and Dad draped an arm over his shoulder, pulling him close. “Brother Peavey tells us you’d like to have lunch at his house today.”
“No!” Bobby snapped. Too quick. “I mean, I wanted to, but then I remembered I have a book report due Tuesday and I haven’t even started reading the book yet.”
Even though he knew God wasn’t going to strike him dead right then and there—if Tanner and Joey were still around after all the things they did and said, he didn’t think one little lie would invoke wrath from the heavens—he hated doing it. But what choice did he have?
Brother Peavey reached for him and Bobby flinched, but the minister only tousled his hair. “That’s alright, son. I remember many a Sunday afternoon spent doing schoolwork I’d put off until the last minute.”
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