by Edward Lee
“Then the lake would empty?”
“That’s right, hon. The whole thing’d empty right down the rest’a the ridge. It’s no matter, we got other things ta worry about.” Annie glanced far down the other side of the lake. “I don’t seen ’em no where, Charity. I don’t know where they could be, an’ I hate ta ditch ’em but we really gotta git outa here.”
Charity supposed her aunt was right. “Maybe they’re in the abbey.”
“Hon, we just done checked the abbey—”
“I mean maybe there’s a basement or something.”
“Alls right,” Annie agreed. “We’ll go check one more time but then we leave.”
Charity nodded, turned and followed her aunt back along the moon-lit edge of the lake when—
They both jumped at the sudden white light and tumult. No heat lightning this time—it was real lightning, as though the sky were splitting open and shedding pieces. Charity grabbed her aunt’s arm at the start. The electric spear from the sky bolted down, exploding at the base of a tall tree on the other side of the lake. The tree shivered, then crackled, then fell—
“Storm’s comin’, hon!” Annie shouted over the crash. “We best run back to the abbey fer cover!”
But—
WAIT.
“Charity! Come on! What’choo standin’ there fer? We could get hit by lightnin’!”
Charity didn’t care. The lake was rippling, a sudden wind whipped her hair, billowed her sundress. She been told to wait, hadn’t she? I…will…wait…
But what was she waiting for?
Annie shrieked, pressed her hands over her ears. The thunderclap exploded—the sky lit up again. Ludicrously, the hair on both of their heads suddenly stood on end in a flux of static electricity, tiny hairs on their arms and necks too, when this second mammoth bolt of lightning tore out of the sky and touched down—
Charity, bathed in static, gazed out.
The lightning stuck the dam-plug just thirty or so yards away. Petrified stones flew off in explosive white light—
Then came a great gushing—
A great, mad siphoning sound—
And then, very quickly, the lake began to drain.
(V)
“Don’t be such a baby!” Jesus leaned over tauntingly. “What kind of a man are you?”
What a cosmic ripoff…
By now Alexander had come to grips with the very high order of probability that he was dying from a massive cranial trauma. He’d been a good priest, he’d tried very hard. Sure, he’d made some mistakes, he’d cast his share of sins, but—holy shit!—he’d done his job to the best of his ability. And now, as reward, he had this:
Jesus Christ, in a black Joy Division t-shirt, giving him enough shit to sink the Lusitania.
It’s just a dream, he realized, though that was hardly a consolation. The brain of a dying man dreaming its last dream.
And he’d dreamed of Jesus before, hadn’t he?
I’m dying, yeah. This is just a dream.
“You’re not dying, dickhead!” Jesus told him. “Christ, Tom, you’re not a quitter, you never have been. But you’re quitting on me now? Blow me, brother! I won’t have it!”
Alexander winced, still paralyzed. Yes, Jesus stood in the basement hall but, of course, neither of the two rednecks saw Him.
“You think you’re checking out?” Jesus continued to taunt. “What, because some cracker hit you in the head with a tire iron? Gimme a break! Your skull’s too thick for that, Tom. Listen to Me, will ya? You’re NOT dying!”
Not…dying, the priest thought.
Jesus calmed for a moment, reaching down for the pack of cigarettes on the floor. “Hey, man, can I bum a Lucky?”
Alexander shrugged. “Yes,” he said. After all, when Jesus Christ asked for a smoke, there was only one thing to say. Yes. But the priest said more than that. “Tell me, Lord, I beg your guidance. What should I do?”
“I gotta tell you everything?” Jesus seemed pissed again. “The first thing you gotta do is find a pair of balls. I mean, I know you got ’em ’cos I can see ’em. Look at you, man, you’re lying there on the floor with your dick out! Halford would laugh his wizened ass off. Oh, poor Tommy got hit in the head by big bad rednecks. Get up! This fucking fat walrus-looking punk is about to CUT YOUR DICK OFF and you’re not doing shit about it. And that other asshole? He’s raping that blond bimbo WHILE SHE’S DEAD! Do something!”
“Help me,” Alexander begged.
Jesus held His hands out, the Lucky in his mouth. “I can’t. You know how it is. I’m just here for occasional walking around. Believe me, brother, I’d like nothing more than to help you kick the living shit out of these two waste products, but it ain’t allowed. You gotta do it yourself.”
Alexander blinked. “So… I’m…not dying?”
“No, peabrain! I just got done telling you that! I’m Jesus, for Christ’s sake. Jesus doesn’t lie!”
The fat kid leaned forward, oblivious to the presence of the Son of Man. He’d already opened the knife, was lowering it—
“He’s gonna cut your pecker off!” Jesus rooted. “Don’t just lie there! Do something! Show him you got a brass set!”
When the fat kid leaned down closer, Alexander’s arm shot up, grabbed the back of the kid’s neck, and pulled. Before the knife could be put to any use, Alexander was biting Dicky Caudill’s nose, and he bit down hard. The fat kid was screaming, as the priest’s teeth sunk deep. Next thing Alexander knew he was spitting out the kid’s nose.
“Balls! Balls!” Dicky was shrieking like a terrified woman. A fat hand uselessly caressed his face, as if to stem the copious flow of blood. “The priest done bit off my nose!”
Tritt Conner’s frenetic sodomy ceased; he glanced over his shoulder, then up to the crying, screaming Dicky. He stood up, put his dick back in his pants, and then—
Aw, fuck, Alexander thought.
—from somewhere produced a revolver that could only be described as huge. “Yer such a pussy, Dicky. Looks like I’m gonna have ta take care’a the holy man myself.”
“Get ready,” Jesus warned. “This is serious bizz.”
Alexander leaned up, but only barely. His head rang with pain, and his limbs scarcely responded to his will.
Jesus, savoring the Lucky Strike filterless, went on, “Remember that disarm technique they taught you in the Marines.”
“I wasn’t in the Marines, I was an Army Ranger.”
Jesus rolled his eyes. “Marines, Army, who the fuck cares? Just remember what they taught you, ’cos, believe, man, you’re gonna need it in about two seconds.”
The disarm technique that the King of Kings was referring to was actually brutally simple and very effective.
Tritt Balls Conner approached, cocking what looked to be an antique Webley-Fosbery .455 automatic revolver, something the Brits had invented to take on drug-crazed natives in the Boer War, or some fucked up war like that.
“I’m’se gonna blow yer holy brain alls over this here floor, priest. Then I’m’se gonna finish havin’ my nut up blondie’s dead ass. What’choo gotta say ’bout that?”
“Blow me, that’s what I have to say,” and as Alexander said it, his hands shot upward, the right grabbing the revolver’s rear receiver, the left pushing out against the barrel. Less than a second was all it took, just like the drill sergeants at Benning had promised. A quick twist, then, and Alexander had wrenched the weapon out of Tritt Balls’ hand, without a single shot being discharged.
“Good fuckin’ job!” Jesus celebrated. “Hardcore, man! Outstanding! Shit, even I couldn’t have pulled that off!”
Thanks, Alexander thought. He rose to his feet as Balls and Dicky stepped back. Dicky, crying like an open tap, turned and fled down the hall. But Balls’ remained, knees shaking but still talking the bad mouth. “Go ahead, priest! You ain’t got the balls!”
“Don’t say that,” Alexander warned.
The grin bloomed within the satanic goatee. “Look at
you, man! You cain’t do it! You’re a priest! Priests ain’t allowed ta kill folks.”
“Don’t test me, asshole.” He had the heavy gun sighted now, one eye closed, the other focused down the clunky sights. But the kid was right, wasn’t he? I’m a priest. I’m not allowed to kill people, am I? Not even sick, twisted murderers like this?
“Lord,” Alexander asked of his King. “I beg your permission. Can I kill this guy?”
Jesus looked disconsolate, flicking the Lucky butt. “I’m sorry, man. It’s all about free will in the light of the Father. I can’t advise you.”
Shit!
“Fuck you!” the bearded redneck spat. Then he turned laughing, and walked toward the stairs.
Alexander clenched his teeth, watching the kid’s back disappear in the sights. Shit! he thought again. The kid was gone. Alexander uncocked the hammer and let it reset.
Then he turned, looked down at Jerrica with sudden tears in his eyes. She was dead, yes—stone dead. Alexander looked to Jesus for some answer. “Why, Lord? This is fucked up!”
“I know, man, but that’s the way the cards fall sometimes.”
“She didn’t deserved to die!”
Jesus jerked back at the exclamation. “Hey, bro, nobody does, but that’s just the way it is.”
“Is she…saved?” the priest dared ask next.
Jesus Christ gave a nonchalant shrug. “Don’t know off hand. Can’t tell you. But I can tell you this. You better get your shit square real fast, because you got a world of hurt comin’ right down your alley. Bigtime trouble, Tom. And all you got to fight it is that big piece of shit British revolver and the two nuts God gave ya.”
Alexander stared, uncomprehending.
“Get out of here,” Jesus said. “Get ready for some shit.”
The priest took His word for it—what else could he do? He turned to for the stairs, but then Christ briefly interrupted. “Hey, Tom, hold up a sec.”
“Yeah?” Alexander said.
Jesus had picked up the pack of Luckys off the floor. “You mind if I bum one more?”
“How many left in the pack?” Alexander dared to question Jesus Christ the Righteous.
“Two, man.”
“Take one, give me the other.”
“Right on.” Jesus stuck one cigarette in His own mouth, stuck the other in Alexander’s. Then He lit the lighter, fired up the priest’s.
Alexander stared at the incredulity. Jesus Christ just lit my cigarette for me…
Jesus smiled then, and winked. “Good luck, Tom,” He said.
(VI)
Annie was on her knees now in the shoreline mud, bellowing sobs. The lake drained and drained in rippling moonlight. It only took a few minutes before the slabs broke the surface.
Charity’s eyes felt peeled to the scene, the diminishing static letting her hair fall back down.
Something sat in the lake like angles of tall stones, a hundred yards around.
A temple…
A temple of slabs of stone, configured to a something semblant of a pentacle.
“I want answers, Aunt Annie,” she demanded. “You haven’t told me everything, but you know. I know you know! What is going on here! What are those stones in the lake!”
Annie wept on, hitching. “Yer right—God fergive me—yer right! I haven’t told ya ever-thing—I lied!”
“Lied about what? Tell me.”
Snot fell in strings from the old woman’s nose; her tears shellacked her cheeks. “That man that raped yer mama, right here where I’m kneelin’ right now! It weren’t no man!”
Much more calmly now, Charity deduced, “It came from that temple in the lake, you mean?”
“Yes!”
“What else?” Charity asked, certain there was more. “What else haven’t you told me?”
More weeping, more snot. “I’m so sorry, Charity!”
“WHAT!”
“I’se lied too ’bout somethin’ else! I told ya you were born a year before the rape—but that was a lie! Yer mama got raped by that thing that come out the lake, an’ nine months later gave birth ta the Bighead! But after the Bighead et its way out yer mama’s belly, I’se heard somethin’. I’se heard another baby cryin’ from inside, so’s I looked inta yer mama’s poor dead remains and I pulled you out!”
Charity’s features didn’t change at the revelation. Twins. Somehow, now, she already knew most of it.
“The Bighead’s father and my father are the same,” she said.
“Yes!” Annie squealed. “The Bighead was a monster, but you were perfect, a perfect little baby girl! But ya both come from the same womb, from the same loins’a the devilish thing that come out the lake thirty years ago and raped Sissy whiles I watched!”
More pieces fit, flying together. Charity’s mind felt plugged in to someone else’s know, and she had a good idea who that someone else was…
Even the full brunt of the truth came as no real surprise now:
My father was a demon…
But…
More.
And The Bighead…is my brother…
(VII)
Alexander raced up the steps, following the footfalls of the pieces of human shit who’d killed Jerrica. But Christ had warned him of something else…
He couldn’t imagine what that might be, yet his old Army LRRP instincts switched on. He was ready, in other words—or at least as ready as he could possibly be, considering.
The main hall upstairs had dimmed, the alcohol lamps running low on fuel. But at the far end, toward the entry, he could see Dicky and Balls scrambling to make their exit, Dicky still screaming at the rude insult Alexander’s teeth had paid to his nose. But then—
The entire abbey shuddered—
A titan CRACK! filled the hallway—
And so did throat-flaying screams.
The priest stopped in his tracks. Stared. His mouth open in bewilderment and horror—
Jesus was right. There’s a world of hurt coming right down my alley…
Because at that same moment, Alexander got a good, hard look at what had knocked down the door.
(VIII)
Dicky threw up when he saw it. A monster, yes sir, with a head big as a propane tank, an’ fucked up eyes, an’ a mouth like a hole fulla nails. He fell pukin’ ta the floor when the thing roared, brought both forearms down so hard on his back that alls his ribs along the back’a his spine broke lickety split. Then he felt his pants bein’ tored off, and then—
Dicky, a’corse, was too out of it now ta really know what were bein’ done, but what were bein’ done shorely weren’t good. The monster poked two big fingers right up his butt, then two more, then the thumb. Dicky were screamin’ holy hail, he were, knowin’ he was dyin’ but not carin’. He just screamed an’ screamed as the monster grabbed a hold’a the end’a his spine inside his butt, then pulled, and that were about it fer Dicky Caudill.
The monster, cackling like a rooster, pulled Dicky’s spine clear out his asshole. And, a’corse, what were connected ta the other end’a his spine was his head, an’ the monster pulled that out Dicky’s asshole too.
One hail of a job…
Then, the monster, The Bighead, turnt ta face Balls.
And you know what The Bighead done just then?
Shee-it.
He looked at Balls, thens he looked at the priest at the other end’a the hall.
And then—
The Bighead sniffed the air.
And walked back out the door.
(IX)
“God saved you,” Alexander said, sighting the pistol on Tritt Balls Conners’ face. “Why I don’t know, ’cos you are about the most worthless piece of shit to ever walk the earth. Give praise and thanks to God, for saving your sociopathic mother-fuckin’, trailer park ass.”
“Fuck you, priest,” Balls Conner had the audacity to spit back. “It weren’t yer fuckin’ God that done saved me. It were that thing. It were The Bighead.”
The Bighead, Alexan
der thought. Yes. Of course. What else could it be? He’d heard the stories, he’d seen the temple of upright stone dolmens in the lake, and now—he’d seen the monster itself.
The Bighead.
“Get thee behind me…”
“Shee-it, holy man. Ya smelt me out that fast? But I’se ain’t Satan, I’se just one’a his friends, made human on earth to walk amongst ya…” But as Tritt Balls Conner continued to speak, his voice descended to suboctaves that vibrated in Alexander’s diaphragm and guts. And he lost the redneck, white-trash drawl. “I am a myrmidon of the Morning Star. I am his vassal, his holy servant. There are many like me, Father. Too many for you to fight. Give up and admit your defeat. Throw your weapon down and join us…”
“I’d rather burn in hell forever,” Alexander said. But he was convinced. Demons. Devils. There were all kinds. They were everywhere. And sometimes…they were human.
I’ll just kill myself, get this over with, he reckoned. I don’t need this shit. I’ve been through too much as it is.
“Join us, priest, and live with us forever,” Balls bid in his new, majestic locution. The voice was timeless and pristine, articulate and strangely…honest.
“That thing which just left is as much my brethren as you are. Open thine eyes and behold the light of truth. Join us. Come with us, man of faith.”
“Eat my fuckin’ shit-stained shorts, you ass-motherfucking-hole,” Alexander spake after a bit of consideration. He cocked the Webley’s hammer, then dropped it—BAM!—and watched the imposture’s kneecap explode in blood. Balls fell, laughing.
“I believe in God,” Alexander said. “Sometimes I don’t really know why, but that’s tough. If I’m wrong, if I’m gonna burn in hell or rot in my grave with my entire life wasted…then I don’t really give a flying fuck. All I know is this, scumbag. I’m blowing your shit away.”
Balls’ familiar drawl returned posthaste, the real demon in him making an expeditious exit. “Fuck you! Ands fuck God’n Jesus’n the Holy Fuckin’ Ghost’n the Virgin Mary ta boot! I’ll’se cornhole all of ’em, I will, I’ll fuck ’em all so’s hard my dick’ll be stickin’ out their mouths! I’ll’se fist-fuck yer God, an’ pop yer Virgin Mary’s cherry, an’ I’ll’se make yer damn Jesus lick the shit off my stick. So’s help me, holy man, I’ll’se pop a wad’a my peckersnot right in yer God’s face, then I’ll’se piss up His ass!”