by Ninie Hammon
Goody.
After she said grace—eating unblessed food’ll give you the runs, she’d always said—Theresa produced a pot of chili that tasted even better than it smelled. Once they were all seated, Jack dragged it out, couldn’t help it. He’d been able to think of nothing else since he watched a boy with “Carpenter” written on the back of his shirt mount the steps of Twin Oaks Nursing Home carrying a can of gasoline.
“I know I’ve already talked to both of you about this…but videos don’t lie,” he said in a low voice full of pebbles. “I was there. I— "
“Them pictures don’t tell the truth of it,” Theresa said.
“Daniel, are you sure you don’t remember anything, any reason why…”
The helpless look on Daniel’s face was answer enough. “Sometimes things swirl out of the mist, but even then I can’t see them clearly,” Daniel said.
“Real truth’s in here,” Theresa said, patting her bosom quietly. “The things of the world’ll lie to you and confuse you, but your heart don’t lie. You know in your heart you couldn’t never have done such a thing,”
That was the trouble. Jack didn’t know that. Didn’t know that at all. But Daniel and Theresa would never understand. Jack wasn’t like them. There was a darkness in him he’d seen even as a boy. He’d always been on the outside with his nose pressed up against the glass, looking in at the others enjoying a…peace he could not fathom. And where he stood on the outside, there was darkness all around. Had he…joined forces with it?
But for now, Jack let it go and changed gears. He hadn’t told either one of them yet about Becca—who might remember everything.
“I have news,” he said.
“So do I,” Theresa said. “Is yours good news or bad news?”
“Good news.”
“Then we’d ought to hear mine first. Always like to end on a positive note.” She cleared her throat.
“You said last night in the emergency room that I didn’t have no motive to kill Miss Minnie and Mr. Gerald, and I said Chapman Whitworth would arrange one. Well, he did. That sweet old couple didn’t have a whole lot in this world—just that big old house they couldn’t look after, a car, personal things.”
She squared her shoulders.
“I got a call about an hour ago from Mr. Gerald’s lawyer. He was right upset. Said he got in this morning’s mail a ‘revised’ copy of Mr. Gerald’s will—mailed yesterday!—and everything’d been changed on it so their whole estate would come to me. It’d been signed by Mr. Gerald, but that lawyer let me know right quick he knew that wasn’t Mr. Gerald’s signature.”
“If the estate’s not worth beans, why would Whitworth think he could convince the police you’d commit two murders to get your hands on it?” Daniel asked.
“That’s the thing of it, see. Come to find out, they estate was worth lots of beans.”
“How many?” Jack asked.
“A couple of million.”
Daniel whistled.
“They had gub’mint bonds. Stacks of them, that lawyer said. I never knew about none of it, and I’m not completely sure they knew how much them bonds was worth. All’s I do know is they had a boatload of money, and it ’pears somebody changed their will so’s it’d all come to me when they died.”
“Yep, that’s a powerful motive for murder,” Jack said.
“Demons is smart and crafty. And this ’un has had a long time to come up with his game plan,” Theresa said.
“And we’ve been on the receiving end of it for less than twenty-four hours.” Daniel sighed. “A disgraced preacher, a rogue cop and…”
“And a fat, old black woman,” Theresa finished for him.
“What could the three of us possibly do to stop an efreet?” Daniel said.
“That’s been poured into Chapman Whitworth’s soul like cream into coffee,” Theresa said. “Ain’t no way to tell where one starts and the other one stops.”
“And what that means, boys and girls,” Jack said, his voice soft but firm, “is the only way we’re going to stop Chapman Whitworth from taking a seat on the Supreme Court”—he took a breath and plunged ahead—"is to kill him.”
Theresa gasped, but Daniel didn’t.
“We got to try everything we know to do ’fore we start talking ’bout killin’ people!” Theresa said.
“Everything we know to do is…what?” Daniel asked. “He’s already five steps ahead of us.”
Jack got up and went to the pot of chili on the stove and ladled a second massive portion into his bowl. “Anybody else want some?”
“I don’t know how you can eat,” Daniel said.
“Ranger training. Eat whenever there’s food because you never know when there won’t be. Homemade chili is waaay more gastronomically pleasing than carryout pizza or Chinese egg rolls. Besides, I’m the one with the good news, remember?” He paused for a beat. “I found Becca.”
That was a conversation stopper.
“How? Is she all right? Where?” Theresa and Daniel chattered at him so frantically that he couldn’t get out an answer.
“Really close by, as a matter of fact. Hendersonville, Indiana,” Jack said. “The rest of it…I don’t know. She was arrested last night for vagrancy. Now you know everything I know.”
“Vagrancy?” Daniel said.
It was clear he didn’t like what that charge said about the current state of Becca’s affairs.
“Do you think she remembers what happened that summer?” Jack asked Theresa.
“Oh, I ’spect she remembers a whole lot more’n she wants to remember about it. Some’m happened ’tween her and that efreet. Some’m went wrong. She…failed somehow—didn’t get it right—or else it couldn’t have come back. You boys’ minds wiped out the awful of that demon—or God did—but Becca…Becca was talkin’ to it.” Theresa sighed. “She never was right after that. Never got over it that I could see. You moved away; Becca stayed. But she was different.”
“Different how?” Jack asked.
“Just…different.” It was obvious that Theresa didn’t want to talk about it, at least not right now.
“So now there are four of us,” Daniel said. “Add to the disgraced preacher, the rogue cop and the…sweet-spirited old black woman…a vagrant who hasn’t been ‘right in the head’ in twenty-six years. That’s it? That’s our army?”
“Uh-huh.” Theresa smiled a little. “Remember how God reduced Gideon’s army so when they won the battle, it’d be clear it was God done it.”
Jack’s frustration slipped out then. He tried to keep it from Theresa and Daniel the best he could because he knew it upset them to know that spiritually—how was it Theresa had put it?—”you and God’s not on good terms.”
“Yeah, this is all part of the game God plays,” Jack said. “He won’t tell you what he wants you to do. He tells you some of it, a leading here, hints, clues—but you’re never really sure.”
“Does wonders for your prayer life,” Daniel said, and Jack couldn’t tell whether he was serious or being sarcastic.
“And he won’t even help you do what he’s told you to do. He waits until the very end, then shows up and gives you barely what you have to have to survive,” Jack struggled to keep the anger he felt from showing in his voice. “If whatever you’re facing is something you can do, he’ll diminish your resources—or increase the challenge—so you can only do it with his help.”
“You may see it as a game, but God don’t,” Theresa said.
“I spent four years in seminary,” Daniel said, “and I still can’t come up with a good answer when Andi wants to know why God didn’t save her mother.”
“Who’s to say he didn’t save her mother hundreds of times ’fore that demon come for her?” Theresa said. “That he hasn’t saved all of us? We oversleep maybe, and miss the bus that crashes. Or we can’t find our car keys so that drunk driver blows through a red light right before we hit the intersection. Thing is, we don’t see those times. We only see the times w
hen he don’t save us.”
“There’s no sense rehashing all this,” Daniel said. “The bottom line is we don’t get a say in any of it. Period. That’s how God rolls. We have to keep a demon from sitting on the Supreme Court. And other than killing Chapman Whitworth, I don’t know—”
“There is something else we could do,” Jack said.
“And that is?” Daniel asked.
“We could go to Senator LaHayne, the chairman of the committee investigating Whitworth.”
The senator had come out in staunch opposition to Whitworth’s nomination the day after the president’s announcement, though he’d never given any reason for his disapproval. Whitworth was as squeaky clean as a new rubber duckie.
“What can we say to him?” Daniel said. “Something like, ‘Senator LaHayne, the man you’re about to confirm as a justice on the United States Supreme Court is possessed by a demon.’ Right. That’ll work.”
“We don’t say Whitworth’s a demon. We say he’s a criminal—and that we can prove it.”
The other two said nothing.
“What if we told the senator that we know something damning about Whitworth’s background—we don’t have to tell the senator what it is—and Whitworth found out we knew and is out to get us. What If we had—and I know this is a tall order—proof that Chapman Whitworth framed Theresa for murder and Daniel for rape to keep you too busy to go after him, and dragged out that old video of me to destroy my credibility so nobody’d believe me if I opposed him? What if we outfox the fox, use what he’s done to us to bring him down?”
“How could we possibly prove to Senator LaHayne that Whitworth did all this?” Daniel said. “How will we even get the senator to talk to us?”
Theresa smiled beatifically. “Now don’t you be worrying about the small stuff,” she said. “God’s got this.”
That thought brought Jack no comfort whatsoever.
“But before we start planning our strategy, we got to have ourselves a sit-down with Becca,” she continued.
“I’ve already made arrangements to go tomorrow,” Jack said. “Who’s coming with me?”
“I’m in,” Theresa said.
Daniel shook his head.
“Sorry, Jack. I’m performing a wedding tomorrow morning.” He stopped for a moment. “But I think you need to take Andi with you.”
Andi. Jack hadn’t thought about that.
“You’re right,” he said, “Andi needs to meet Becca.”
“And I s’pect maybe Becca needs to meet Andi, too,” Theresa said.
CHAPTER 13
1985
Bishop figured he probably sounded like a herd of elephants crashing through the woods when he burst out of the trees onto the asphalt of the parking lot at the rest area called Melody Creek that the state’d put here to give folks access to the woods. This was a national forest, so they didn’t build nothing among the trees themselves, but there was three concrete picnic tables and benches and a fire pit in the grass beyond the parking lot and worn down hiking trails leading away from it on both ends. Bishop hadn’t been on no hiking trail. He’d grown up next to these woods and a lifetime spent here drew a map in his head that was more sure and true than any trail. He leaned over with his hands on his knees, panting, fear leaking into the sweat that soaked his shirt and ran in rivers down his face, giving it the peculiar stink like was all around you in a war.
Then he began searching the undergrowth just off the road, looking for—
Six bicycles, different sizes, was hidden in the brush under a tree just off the highway. You wouldn’t have seen them ’less you knew to look. He’d beat them here! At least partly relieved, he sank down on a guard rail post near the bikes to catch his breath.
How they figure to get Becca out of here when they only got six bikes?
But the bigger question, the more horrible question, the one that had been chewing at his guts like a hungry rat all the way down the mountainside was why they’d taken her in the first place. She could see that demon, sure, which it’d been Bishop’s experience shocked and unnerved a demon. But that wasn’t no reason to run off with her. And how’d that Stuart kid get the rest of them boys to go along with it? They was reasonable kids and had sense enough to understand this was kidnapping. How could they possibly think they could get away with such a thing? And why would they try?
A car pulled into the rest area parking lot on the opposite side from Bishop, and a family tumbled out, Mom and Dad, two little girls, a baby and a dog. Dad started unpacking the trunk of the car as Mom put a paper tablecloth on one of the concrete picnic tables, gesturing for the little girls to put rocks on the four corners to hold it down while she set up basic baby gear.
Bishop took in a big gulp of air and let it out slow to calm himself.
I know ain’t nothing that’s happenin’ here today escaped your notice, Lord. You ain’t surprised. But I sure am! Surprised and so scared I’m spittin’ cotton balls. And I know fear don’t come from you. It comes from the Father of Lies, and every time we give in to fear, we’s moving in his direction and not yours. I got all that. But I’m fresh out of courage, Lord. I need you to give me some—or at least strike that demon blind so he don’t see how scared I am.
Bishop heard voices coming from the trail that ran south from the pull-off. Here it was, then. He steeled himself for what he’d face when that demon realized he knew. Tried to prepare himself for what was about to happen. But wasn’t nothing in Bishop’s life, nothing he’d ever seen or done—not even Vietnam—that could have prepared him for what he seen when six boys come out of the woods with one terrified little girl.
It was the single most shocking, horrifying sight his eyes had ever beheld, a frozen frame image destined to populate his nightmares with monsters for the rest of his life. Wasn’t just one demon. They was a demon sucking the life out of every one of them boys! They was swarming on them, thicker than maggots on road kill. Bishop had never seen so many at once and couldn’t remember his mother or grandfather ever saying they’d faced more than one at a time—well, two. That time the white men come for his daddy in the night, wearing sheets to cover up they faces. They was two demons, then—one on the man who dragged Daddy out of the house, yelling that wasn’t no nigger gonna register to vote in this county long as there was a breath left in his body and one on the man who tied Daddy to a tree. And the flickerin’ lights of other demons whisperin’ in the ears of the other men who took turns punchin’ him til he hung limp from the ropes, his face looking like ground meat. Bishop and his mama clung to each other on the porch, feeling in their souls every punch that landed, watchin’ the demons who was so busy they didn’t notice that he and Mama knew.
These demons wasn’t in such a good mood. They wasn’t laughin’. They was arguing, yelling at each other. The raw ugliness and evil in their voices had a darkness of its own separate from the words. Each jagged black clot of sound hit his ear and tore through it into this brain with a savagery that left him breathless. Every time Bishop had ever heard a demon speak, he expected his ears to gush blood from the brutality of the attack.
The sheer force of their combined ugliness was overwhelming. One was made out of wasps, another looked like a horribly deformed gorilla. The demon on Cole Stuart, the ringleader, was a dragon with a scorpion’s tail, a lizard’s tongue in a mouth full of shark teeth, and bulging black eyeballs big as baseballs that moved separately, looking in different directions at the same time. The cold that flowed out ahead of them hit Bishop in an arctic blast, chilled his bones and frosted his breath. He sucked in a gasp from the cold. This was Hell, right here, right now, in a roadside picnic area in central Kentucky. How the real thing could possibly be worse than this—and he knew it was, indeed, infinitely worse—was beyond his wildest imaginings.
As soon as the boys emerged from the woods, the dog at the other end of the parking lot began to bark.
Then Becca saw Bishop. She was deathly pale and seemed somehow to have shrunk, was
much smaller than she’d been when he’d let her and the boys out on the logging road a lifetime ago. But her face lit now with a wonder and joy that stabbed right through Bishop’s heart and straight into his soul.
“Bishop!” she cried and started to rush toward him. One of the boys grabbed her by the arm and stopped her. The boys was looking at each other, confused, but the demons were all looking at Bishop, their ugliness multiplied by ten by the rage and loathing on their faces.
“It knows,” snarled the deformed gorilla demon. “You see us, don’t you, nigger pig?”
“I could say I don’t, but that’d be kinda stupid, wouldn’t it, since I heard the question.”
Cole Stuart said evenly, coldly. “Why hello, Coach Washington. What brings you out here”—he glanced at the lone vehicle at the other end of the lot, where a little girl was trying with no success to quiet the basset hound—"on foot, apparently?”
Bishop didn’t answer the question, didn’t want to say any more than he had to for fear the demons would hear the tremor that surely must be in his voice. Instead, he spoke to the boy holding Becca’s arm.
“You’ll want to let her go now, son.” In Bishop’s mind, his voice trembled like the warble of an old-lady soprano. But what come out his mouth carried a level of steely authority that was right impressive. The boy, Jacob Dumas, was taken aback by it; the demon on his shoulders only sneered. None of the other demons was cowed in any way by Bishop.
“Let’s eat it,” cried Jacob’s demon, a creature made of wasps. “I like dark meat. Let’s stick it and make it squeal.” All the demons cavorted around in glee except the dragon demon on Cole Stuart. It spoke through Cole.
“The little girl is going with us, Coach,” he said. His voice would have sounded pleasant to a passerby. “So you need to get out of our way.”
“And if I don’t? When I don’t?”