Little Heaven

by Nick Cutter

  “Fine and dandy, Virg.”

  “Well, good.” Virgil swallowed. Rain washed down his throat. It tasted bad, like water a corpse had sat in for days. “Where you been?”

  “Oh, out and about.”

  That was another worrisome thing. Cy’s voice was funny, too. Wet and rattling as if stuff was coming loose inside of him.

  “I thought . . . jeez, you’re going to call me a dummy, but I thought maybe you’d left, Cy. You couldn’t stand another minute and skedaddled.”

  “Aw, hell.” Cy hawked back and spat. The oyster of congealed phlegm just kinda fell out of his mouth like a dead slug and dribbled down his boot, black as clotted oil. “You think I’d leave all this happy horseshit?”

  “Sure. No.” Virgil tried to smile, but the muscles of his face didn’t feel like they were working so hot. “You bet.”

  Right then, Virgil felt like running. Yep, turning tail and sprinting away from his old buddy Cy. His heart was bappity-bapping inside his chest, and there was a tightness in his crotch as if a hard little balloon were swelling up behind his bladder.

  “They all ought to pay, don’t you think?”

  “Who’s that, Cy?”

  Cyril motioned at Little Heaven with his chin—the pitiful whole of it. “Everyone. All these fuckers. Pay for disobeying the Lord.”

  Since when did Cy give two shits about the Lord? “Well now, I don’t really see how they’ve—”

  “Shut up, squirrel head,” Cy said. Virgil zipped his lip. “Shouldn’t they pay for what they let happen to you? That fairy nig beating on your head like a bongo drum while they all stood around with their dicks in their hands?”

  Virgil caught a smell coming off his compadre. He nearly gagged. It would be rude to puke on account of Cy reeking so bad. A strong sense of unreality washed over Virgil; he felt light-headed, like when he used to huff gasoline in Mission Dolores Park.

  “They could have stepped in, yeah.”

  “Bet your ass, buckaroo,” said Cy. “Now let me tell you—clean the shit out of your ears, dim bulb, and listen up good—the Reverend’s got a plan.”

  Virgil smiled dozily. “Is that so?”

  “That’s a fact, jack. And all you got to do is exactly what he says. Figure you can manage that, or will following simple instructions make your fool brains squirt out your ears?”

  “Aw, come on now, Cy . . .”

  Virgil’s thoughts were swimmy and remote. It was as if his brain was trying to sprint away from him, away from Little Heaven and everything that was happening. But where could it go? It was trapped in his stupid skull, just like Virgil was trapped here.

  “Can you help, Cy? I’d feel a lot better if you were helping. You always were the—”

  “The brains of the operation. Yeah, Virg, I know. Lord knows I do. But not this time. You’re on your own.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t anymore.”

  “Why?” Virgil repeated stupidly.

  Cyril opened his mouth. Virgil took an instinctive step back. The inside of Cy’s mouth was all black, but things were moving in the pit of his throat. Bugs, it looked like. But it couldn’t be. Roaches scuttling over one another . . .

  Virgil said, “Oh.”

  Cyril shut his mouth. He had begun to drift away from the fence, back toward the woods. Virgil couldn’t see his feet moving. That was odd, wasn’t it?

  I hid a gun in our bunkhouse, Cyril said . . . Actually, he didn’t say anything. His lips were shut. But Virgil could hear him just fine.

  A long bladelike insect—a centipede?—slid out of Cyril’s nostril. It curled around the rim of his nose, its legs skiddle-skaddling and antennae twitching, crawled between his eyes and up his forehead to vanish into the tangled nest of his hair. Virgil did not scream, but if his throat hadn’t been so dry all of a sudden, he surely would have.

  Look under the bed, Virg. Take the gun. You’ll need it.

  Cy kept on floating back toward the trees. To be honest, Virgil couldn’t say he was all that sad to see him go. Cyril’s body knitted into the gloom of the woods. A few minutes later, the rain stopped entirely.

  Virgil walked through the muddy slop to their bunkhouse. The gun—a Bulldog .38 revolver—and a box of ammunition were stashed under the cot in a hole dug under the clapboards, just like Cyril had said it would be. Good ole Cy, always looking out.

  Virgil stuck the pistol into his waistband. Then he crossed the square to the chapel and knocked on the door. The Reverend answered. He didn’t look so hot. His hair fell over his forehead in greasy strings. He stunk like a polecat in July.

  “Come in.” He smiled—a gruesome sight—his eyes flicking edgewise. “We have much work to do.”

  Reluctantly, with the same dread a man might feel stepping into his own casket, Virgil Swicker went inside.

  6

  EBENEZER FLED the ruin of Grinder’s Switch and hit the interstate, gunning the Oldsmobile’s engine hard as he piled up the miles between himself and Little Heaven.

  The big-bore engine sent a soothing vibration through the whole car. He flicked on the radio and caught the Sonics singing “The Witch” on KIOT 102.5—“Spinning platters without the chatter!”—out of Albuquerque.

  The blood on his scalp and ear had coagulated and turned crusty. He stopped at a Texaco station and cleaned himself up in the bathroom—the gas jockey had looked like he was going to withhold the lavatory key, but something in Eb’s demeanor convinced him to hand it over. When Eb emerged, he looked somewhat presentable. He got on the road again and pulled into a roadside diner sometime later. A bubble of polished glass and steel made dull by the constantly blowing dust. He could see a few people inside at the counter or sitting in padded booths. A pie case revolved at the end of the counter—huge, three-inch-thick wedges peaked with meringue or whipped cream. He wiped the drool off his lips and considered his state. He was in no shape for public viewing, not without having to answer a lot of questions. What he needed was a motel room, a bath, and to sleep in a real bed for roughly fifteen years.

  A pay phone stood near the diner’s entrance. He flipped open the car’s ashtray and found a crumpled dollar bill, plus a few dimes and nickels. His back was welded to the upholstery with sweat; he peeled off the seat like a giant Band-Aid and made his way to the phone.

  “Truth or Consequences Police Department. Do you have a crime to report?”

  Eb cleared his throat. “I do, yes.”

  The line clicked. A series of buzzes, then a man picked up.

  “Detective Rollins speaking. What’s the problem?”

  The man sounded as if he was expecting an elderly woman to tell him that her cat, Mr. Buttons, was stuck up an elm tree.

  “Er, yes . . .” Ebenezer was unsure how to proceed. He should have rehearsed. “I believe something’s happening in the woods and hills up past the town of Grinder’s Switch.”

  “That so, buddy? What kinda something we talkin’ about?”

  The detective sounded fat. Eb pictured him leaning back in a wooden chair while an electric fan stirred the squad room’s humid air around. He saw rolls of flab cascading down the back of Rollins’s neck to his too-tight collar, balls of sweat rolling down his forehead to dampen his caterpillar eyebrows above a pair of small, piggy eyes.

  “I was hiking around that area and I came across—”

  “Where you from, pardner? You don’t sound local.”

  “I’m English, if that matters.”

  Rollins’s voice grew hard. “What matters is what I say matters. We clear on that, pard?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Go on, tell your story. I don’t got all day.”

  Ebenezer gazed through the dusty window into the diner. The waitress—an old battle-ax named Flo or Marge or Betsy, no doubt—was gawping out at him. The pie case spun enticingly at her elbow.

  “I was hiking in the hills,” Eb said tightly. “Came across a camp. A survivalist setup. Little Heaven, I believe it�
��s called. Have you heard of it?”

  “Nope.” The detective popped the p in a way that conveyed his total boredom.

  “Yes, so, about thirty or forty of them. Living on their own in the woods.”

  “That’s not a crime. Weird, but not a crime.”

  “Right, well . . . I think some of them might have died.”

  He heard a loud scriitch—the sound of Rollins pulling his chair closer to his desk, perhaps. His voice was suddenly bright with interest.

  “Go on.”

  “I don’t know how it happened, or what happened. All I know is that—”

  “What did you see?” Rollins said.

  “A body. Maybe more. Some dead bodies.”

  “You sure? How close did you get to them bodies? You positive whoever it was wasn’t just sleeping or knocked out or—?”

  “Sleeping? No. Dead.”

  “Dead how?”

  “I beg pardon?”

  “How were these bodies dead? Bullet in the head? Knife? What?”

  What use was it to tell this man the truth? That Charlie Fairweather and Otis Langtree and the big redheaded bull had been savagely dismembered by beasts beyond the Sheriff’s wildest imaginings—creatures that would wreck his tiny, suet-engirded mind?

  Ebenezer sighed. “I . . . I don’t know. They’re just dead. Either you believe that or you don’t.” You shitkicking fathead, he thought.

  A grumbling exhale from Rollins’s end. The chair squeaked as his body settled back into what Ebenezer assumed to be its original uninterested posture.

  “You know it’s a federal offense to transmit wrongful information to a law enforcement officer, don’tcha?”

  Ebenezer shut his eyes and rested his head against the phone booth. He should have practiced his story.

  “I’m not lying, Officer.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Julius.”

  “Uh-huh. Julius who?”

  “Julius Thriftwhistle.”

  “Well then, Mr. Thriftwhistle, why don’t you haul your ass down to the station and fill out a report for us? Then we can get to work sorting your story out.”

  Ebenezer wasn’t going to any police station. Not in his state—not at all. They would ask for his ID. They might even run his fingerprints, and that would be very bad indeed. Ebenezer and the authorities were on less-than-jolly terms with each other.

  “Or why not tell me where you are and I come to you? Pretty sure I heard a big truck blast by a minute ago on your end, so I’d guess you’re at a pay phone along the interst—”

  Eb hung up. Bloody hell. That had gone poorly. He gazed into the diner. Pure undiluted Americana: bright linoleum and shiny chrome and the smell of delicious starches fried in oil. After a momentary debate, he pushed through the door. A bell tinkled. A father and mother and their young daughter sat in one booth. A traveling-salesman type occupied the counter. Pearl was dishing up them vittles.

  He sat on a padded counter stool. He flipped through the miniature jukebox mounted beside his elbow. He slid a nickel in and punched B6. “Stand By Me,” by Ben E. King. Eb was surprised to find a black man’s song on the jukebox. The waitress approached with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

  “You okay, Mister?” Pronounced it as misser.

  Eb smiled winningly. It probably didn’t help. “Tip-top, my dear. Thank you for inquiring.”

  She set her order pad down and watched him carefully, the way you’d watch a small but vicious dog that had slipped its leash.

  “What kinds of pie do you serve?”

  “Sweet potato, blueberry, lemon, shoofly pie—”

  “Shoofly?”

  “It’s a northern thing,” she said. “Molasses pie. Our baker came down from Pennsylvania Dutch country. He brung the recipe with him.”

  “Molasses, mmm? Sounds like treacle pudding. I ate that as a child in England.”

  Flo clearly did not give a tin shit what Eb had done back in Merry Ole. She tapped her pencil on the order pad, wanting him to eat, pay up, and leave.

  “How much?”

  “Forty cents.”

  “Sold! And a cup of coffee you can stand a spoon up in, if’n you please.”

  “We don’t make that kind of coffee.”

  His smile widened. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

  Eb closed his eyes and dropped his skull to the countertop. The ceramic was cool on his forehead. Lovely, such small pleasures. He ruminated. What were his options? He could keep going. That was good, and it suited his temperament. He’d promised them he’d call the police. Well, he had. That shitkicking detective gave him the gears, all because Eb had a funny way of talking. He wasn’t going to the police station; he’d wind up in a cell. What more did he owe, for Christ’s sake?

  You’re scared, Ebenezer.

  It was his aunt’s voice in his head. His aunt Hazel, dead nearly two decades now. But Hazel practically raised him. Eb’s father did what plenty of rot-ass fathers did—went out for a bottle of milk and a pack of Mayfair cigarettes one fine afternoon and never showed his face again. Not even to bring that tossing milk home. His mother was a sensitive type, prone to bouts of the nerves, as they were known in those days; as such, his rearing fell mainly to her older sister, Eb’s aunt, Hazel Coggins. Hazel was unmarried—“Men are as useful as a chocolate teapot,” she was fond of saying—and worked at the local butcher shop. A big, handsome woman, and a dab hand with a cleaver: she could draw and quarter a hog faster and cleaner than anyone. Hazel was a hard woman: eyes, body, outlook. Life was eat or be eaten, according to her, and better to be hunter than prey.

  But as a primary school student, Ebenezer had too often been prey. The first-form boys would surround him in the sandlot after school—eight or ten boys, all of them white—to throw insults and, soon enough, fists. When Ebenezer returned home bloody-nosed on a third consecutive day, his aunt took action.

  She was still wearing her butcher’s apron, wet at the hem with hog’s blood. She took it off, wadded it up, and—while Eb struggled—pressed it over his mouth and nose.

  “Smell it!” She shoved it into his face as he choked on the sodden fabric. “Are you a hog, boy? Are you meat?”

  She let him loose. He sucked in a great breath and stared at her warily, suspecting she’d spring on him again.

  “Or are you made of sterner stuff, Ebenezer?” she asked. “You have to be, or you’ll never make it through this life.”

  “What do I do?” he asked her.

  “Tomorrow, you fight back. Until you can’t stand, if that’s how it must be.” She took his face in her callused palms. “If you bend to them now—if you let them cow you—then you’ll get used to the feel of the yoke around your neck.”

  The next day when his tormentors assembled in the sandlot, Ebenezer said: “Well and good, lads. Let’s tussle.” He had nobody on his side; his teachers must have known of this abuse by now, but none of them stepped in. If nothing else, this solidified in Ebenezer the fact that his lot in life was to be a man alone—and if his isolation was to be an ever-present part of existence, he’d better learn how to function within that cold circle.

  The first boy who rushed at him was a fat and beery-faced son of the local banker. Ebenezer curled his hand into a fist and struck back—and he was shocked to discover he was quicker and much more powerful than his antagonist. The boy’s fist struck him with the sting of a mosquito bite; meanwhile, his own fist hammered into that porky, satisfied face with a meaty smack. The boy reeled away with a strangled cry. Ebenezer pressed his advantage, throwing venomous punches at the boys ringing him—even the boys who had never struck him, who had only thronged him for the sport of it. You trifle with the bull, you get the horns, he’d thought, swinging vicious roundhouses at the wide-eyed white faces flocked around him. In time, the boys began to hit back—he was hammered hard, repeatedly, but this time, instead of turning tail, he’d hit back, again and again, giving almost as good as he got and relying on his abi
lity to continue sucking up punishment while his adversaries lost their gumption, one by one, and fled.

  That night he’d staggered home. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose broken, several knuckles crushed. He did not go to school for days. His aunt nursed him back to health. Even she seemed amazed at the punishment he’d taken. But when he returned to school, the torments ceased.

  “You will never be scared again,” Aunt Hazel said proudly. “You’ll never be the hog.”

  And he hadn’t been. From that day forward, he’d been the butcher. That had persisted until the night, only days ago, when he’d seen the boy with the slug-gray eyes all covered in roaches. Then—for the first time in over twenty years—he’d felt the blade on his neck. He was the hog again, his heart filled with that quailing, weak-kneed fear he’d fought so hard to push from his soul.

  You were scared, Ebenezer, his aunt spoke inside his head. Come clean.

  Of course, this was true. As scared as he’d ever been in his life.

  That stuck in his craw. He realized it now, many miles from the seat of that fear. He did not like being made to feel scared. More to the point, he was disgusted to find that flaw still dwelling within him—one he’d fought so hard to dispel. But that fear had returned.

  Surely it was natural, considering what he had experienced.

  Still. Still.

  He could not live with it. Nor with the abandonment of his compatriots, which left an unaccountably large hole in him—Minerva and Shughrue and the woman and the boy were not his obligation, were they? Lord no! Yet he felt now as if they had been a part of something together, however awful, and he . . . he couldn’t believe he had come around to this way of thinking.

  But by God, he owed.

  Bigger than that, though, was the fear. He had been chased off by it. He had allowed himself to be cowed by whatever lurked in the woods surrounding Little Heaven.

  And that . . . that simply would not do—

  The pie plate clattered next to Ebenezer’s ear, breaking his reverie. A fork clanged down beside it. A mug of coffee touched down next, hot droplets sloshing over the rim and burning his scalp.