Reign in Hell

by William Diehl

  “Best go inside, missy.”

  “I can pray just as easy out here in the rain.”

  She took the preacher’s hand. His eyelids fluttered and closed. Mordachai could feel the heat rising from his fevered body. The raindrops pelting him almost sizzled when they fell on his flesh. His lips barely moved and words sputtered out, run-together words, garbled words, like the possessed ones speaking in tongues inside the tent. “Cachungcachungcachungcachung…”

  “What’s that? What’re you tryin’ to say, T?”

  “Cachungcachungcachungcachung…”

  He was trapped inside his own nightmares. An observer, watching his own past. He sees a highway flashing in and out through a snowstorm. A sign: Crikside, five miles, and a few moments later another leading up a Kentucky mountainside. And then a chopper coming from nowhere, hovering over him in the raging snowstorm.

  The preacher squeezed Penny’s hand, still jabbering, the words tumbling over each other. She couldn’t make sense of the babble.

  “… camefromnowhere… almosthomealmosttherethenthere’s this… thischopperright… overthecar… Vail… hadtobeVailthat… goddamnjunkyarddogneverletsgo… chopperinthisblizzard…”

  The car skids off the muddy mountain road, and he runs through the woods to the mine shaft. Number Five. And suddenly there’s Vail, pointing a gun at him and he’s walking away because he knows, he knows, no way Vail will shoot him in the back. And then the platform beneath him starts to give way. Old rotting timbers hide under the snow. Below them the shaft goes straight down, 1,500 feet. He’s terrified. He remembers his eighth birthday and the total fear he felt when he stared down from the elevator, down into that black hole. His father taking him down in that creaking elevator, descending into that bottomless pit, 1,500 feet straight down. Why? Because all the men in Crikside go into the mines when they’re eight years old. Now boarded up for years, the timbers are rotting underfoot and he’s walking faster, and it’s rotting out and falling away under each step until the cover collapses. He drops six feet and lands on the rotted elevator under it. And it, too, begins to creak under his weight and fall apart. He drags himself across the floor as it tilts, the rotten wood shredding as his fingers dig in. Splinters rip under his nails, piercing the quick. As the floor falls away under him, he rolls frantically onto the platform that serves it. He leans against the platform wall, eyes closed, gasping for breath, waiting, waiting for the debris to hit bottom. He stares up through the hole in the snow, still shaking with fright.

  And he hears it.

  Cachungcachungcachungcachung.

  And then he sees it. Sees the chopper as it passes over the hole.

  “Made it,” the preacher said, quite clearly.

  “Do you understand him?” Penny asked.

  “Just talking crazy,” Mordachai answered.

  “He said something about a veil.”

  “Didn’t make any sense t’me.”

  ***

  He walks five miles over the mountain to Crikside.

  The town is deserted. Beleaguered by snow, it is at a standstill. Darkness falls early in the deep valley, particularly here, where the trees blot out the last of the sunlight. He sits among trees on a ridge overlooking the town and little details begin to rush back. Even after eight years he remembers details about everything. The white sign at the edge of town, POPULATION: 212. The narrow valley with a single street half a mile long. On one side, Morgan’s Creek and the railroad tracks leading up one side of the mountain to the mines. On the other, the steep walls of the valley trap the town. Company stores and company housing—seventy narrow, two-story frame houses, alike except for paint and trim—line both sides of the street for a half a mile or so, then it curves and rises out of the valley. Everything here belongs to the company, except Rebecca’s house. The people own nothing. Their vision is defined by bad weather, poverty, geography, and fear of the outside. Simple people, ferociously patriotic, Godfearing, loyal, their faith fanatically rooted in the fundamentalist church, their fervor rooted in the flag, their loyalty rooted in a company that would exploit them to their graves.

  Stupid people.

  So much for Crikside.

  Rebecca’s cabin is just below him, on the opposite side of the roaring stream from town. It sits back in a bay of pine trees, a small A-frame structure with a large window overlooking the creek. A narrow wooden bridge leads to it.

  He considers his luck. To the world, he is dead. It will be weeks before they even look for his body, if indeed they bother. He has to get some clothes and food and do it without leaving a trace. He needs a new identity. ;4s soon as this storm is over and the weather clears, the police will come to the house. Snooping, looking for bits and pieces, filling in the blanks of the Aaron and Rebecca story. He has two, maybe three days to get out of there.

  As darkness falls he goes down to the cabin. The key is where she always leaves it, in a magnetic box stuck under the aluminum drip pan near the back door. Had to be careful. He talks in whispers to himself. “Can’t leave a trace, can’t tip ’em off I was ever here.”

  The windows are boarded up. It is completely dark except for two or three narrow beams of light streaking through cracks in the boards. He stands inside the door, picturing the layout of the small house. A sleeping loft over the kitchen in the rear of the peaked great room. A bath and closet upstairs, a lavatory downstairs. Bookcases on the right, stereo across the room.

  He must be careful not to disturb anything, not even the cobwebs.

  He removes his wet shoes and socks and walks barefoot on the cold wooden floor to the kitchen, where he puts them in the sink. He feels his way up to the sleeping loft and checks the closet, finds a down quilt to sleep under. He retrieves an old radio, its batteries long dead, and a flashlight, also dead. And some candles. He lights one. Books are jammed into shelves that line one wall. There are several stacks of records, some antique 78 rpm’s. The room is remarkably free of dust. Things seem to be left exactly where she had used them last—three years earlier.

  He goes to the bookcase, recognizes a title and picks up the book, opens it, finds a phrase that he had underlined in pencil many years before, a Chinese proverb: “There are only two perfect men—one dead, the other unborn.” He carefully moves some books from a shelf and pulls out a loose board.

  He reaches in the dark space and feels the metal money box. Their getaway money, now just his. He takes out the cash and replaces the board and books. He goes upstairs to the bed and counts it in candlelight.

  Eight thousand, two hundred dollars.

  Thank you, darlin’. Thank you, darlin’ Rebecca.

  He makes a list of basic necessities.

  He sits in front of one of the boarded-up windows, staring through a narrow slit, watching the small hamlet.

  He waits until after midnight before he leaves. He takes Rebecca’s rucksack with him. He lurks in the darkness between two houses. He is next to Charlie Koswalski’s clinic. Doctor, undertaker, optometrist. He stares in the window at the waiting room. Then he sees something. He tries the window. It doesn’t move. He checks the lock—nobody ever locks their windows in Crikside. Open. He taps the window jamb, knocks frozen snow loose, and slides the window open. He enters the waiting room and squats down in front of a display on the counter.

  Sunglasses. Oh yeah.

  They’ll never look for a blind man.

  ***

  The hardware store is across the street, a long, squat building with a tin roof and a dim interior with an array of pickaxes, oil lamps, harnesses, work clothes, boots, flannel shirts, the like. Then there’s Walenski’s drugstore and the city hall, and then Clyde Boise’s rambling old grocery store. Farther up the street is Miranda’s Emporium, which sells mostly women’s and children’s Sunday clothes, and across the street from that is Early Simpson’s cafe, bar, and a liquor store. The frame house next door is boarded up although the sign is still out front: Avery Daggett Legal Advice and Office Supplies.

&n
bsp; The street is empty. He darts from the shadows to the opposite side of the road. The back door of the hardware store is unlocked. He takes batteries for the flashlight and radio. He carefully packs the rucksack, taking the clothing from the back of the shelf: two sets of long johns, a pair of heavy walking boots, gloves, two flannel shirts, two pair of work pants, a heavy jacket, a box of paper clips. Then he moves down to the grocery store. Once again he takes items from the back of the shelves where they won’t be missed: canned goods he can eat cold, tuna, deviled ham, fruit, soda crackers, peanut butter, strawberry jam, a bottle of apple juice, aspirin. The rucksack is full. He is back in the cabin in less than an hour.

  He goes in the bathroom, lights several candles, closes the door. He spreads paper towels on the floor, makes himself a snack, and tunes in the radio. An announcer is recounting the story of Rebecca and Aaron:

  “This is not a legend, not a glamorized myth like the story of Bonnie and Clyde. This is a modern day horror story about two mass murderers that started ten years ago in the little town of Crikside, Kentucky. Now Rebecca, a psychotic schoolteacher, lies in the Cook County morgue, and her pupil and lover, Aaron Stampler, is dead in the bottom of the very coal mine he feared as a young boy.…”

  Stampler smiles. It has a nice biblical ring to it.

  He lies back on the bed, remembering Rebecca. He remembers the two-room schoolhouse where she taught eight grades in one room. And he remembers her wearing a denim jacket over a flowered shirt, an ankle-length skirt, and black boots. He remembers her thick, flaming red hair streaked with gray and pulled back in a tight ponytail. No jewelry or makeup, she was beautiful without it. He sat in the corner of the room, longing for her, getting hard thinking about her. He was thirteen at the time.

  She teaches him everything, encourages him to read, and when he is fourteen, she opens the world to him.

  She is sitting cross-legged on the floor and he is reading to her. She knows it is coming, has been coming for a long time.

  “Kin I touch you?” he says in a trembling voice.

  “Don’t say ‘kin,’say ‘can.’”

  “Can. Can, can, can…”he says.

  She unbuttons her blouse slowly.

  He lies on the bed, adrenalized, his heart throbbing, his mouth dry, remembering how he reached out to her, his fingertips barely touching her skin, spreading the shirt open, gazing in awe at her breasts, his hands an inch away from her nipples.

  “It’s all right,” she says in a whisper, and she takes his hands in hers and places them on her, and he feels her nipples harden under his palms.

  The only way out is the milk truck, if the milk truck from Somerset still comes every morning. The first night passes and no milk truck. But it is still snowing. Maybe tomorrow. He catnaps during the day, fearful of every sound. The second night he wraps his shoes and socks in paper towels and packs them in the rucksack, dresses warmly, cleans up all traces of his presence. He takes only her walking stick. He will be ready if the truck does show up. He goes out into the dark night and hides in the shadows near the grocery store. And waits.

  An hour before dawn he hears it, chains grinding up the ice and snow on the road. It parks in front of the grocery store and the driver starts unloading the milk crates, taking them around to the back of the store. He makes a run for it, hides among the stacks of crates in the refrigerated truck. He hears the footsteps of the driver crunching through the snow, hunches down deep inside the truck, hears the door slam shut.

  The driver stops at a truck stop for coffee near the toll entrance to the Cumberland Parkway. He slips out of the truck, taps his way into the restaurant. It is crowded and he waits by the door. A couple is seated nearby. The man leans across the table, nods toward Stampler, and then approaches him.

  “Excuse me, brother, the place is crowded but my wife and me has room at our booth. Be pleased if you’d join with us.”

  So far so good.

  His name is Isiah Shackleford and he is a fundamentalist preacher. He and his wife Lee Ann are on their way to a small church outside a little Tennessee town called Bybee, where they will spend the winter preaching. They can give him a ride into Manchester, where he can catch a bus to Chattanooga and on down to Atlanta. He tells them his name is Travis. Along the way, Stampler and Isiah get into a Bible-quoting match. “Say, brother, you do know your scripture.”

  “All my ma would read to me until I was in my teens,” he lies.

  He wonders about the wooden box covered with a blanket beside him on the floor of the backseat. Then he hears the chattering.

  “Whatcha got back here making that racket?”

  Isiah pauses for a few moments before he answers.

  “Snakes, Brother Travis. Hope you’re not skittish. They’re locked up safe and sound.”

  “They your pets?”

  “We take up snakes, Brother Travis. Church of Jesus Christ Wandering. Take a little strychnine occasionally, too.”

  “Mark Fifteen,” he answers. “And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak…”

  The Shacklefords join him.

  “…with new tongues; and they shall take up serpents.”

  “Why don’t you come into Bybee for the night? I’m sure one of the congregation’ll put you up,” Isiah suggests.

  “Good home-cooking,” Lee Ann promises.

  Why indeed. Perfect.

  He stays for two months. Isiah preaches every night to thirty-six parishoners. Within a week he is giving witness. By the second week he is delivering sermons. He sleeps in the spare room of a family named Fortside.

  Over dinner one night he hears the name Enigma for the first time. Their preacher has just died of a snake bite.

  The first night he sees Isiah dancing this crazy dance with three rattlers and a moccasin around his neck and one in each hand. The man is in ecstasy, in another world.

  Stampler is drawn to the snakes, as a sinner is drawn to the Devil.

  Everything is going along fine until the wife comes to his bed one night. She is ravenous in her lovemaking. It is his first sex in almost four years.

  The next night their fifteen-year-old daughter drops in for a visit.

  Time to move on.

  He is on his way to freedom. He remembers the name.

  “Enigma,” he says aloud.

  He was breathing harder, his mouth gulping for the raindrops. Suddenly he opened his milky eyes and said, quite clearly, “Enigma.”

  “What’s enigma?” Penny asked.

  “Little town down South. Where he got his start. His first church. I was there the night he first came, just went up there and took up those two rattlers, held ’em up and started preaching like I never heard before. Didn’t even have a place t’stay. I took him home with me, fixed his dinner. Been taking care of him ever since.”

  He remembers Enigma. Every detail. Getting off the bus. Cup of coffee in the bus stop. Practicing the blind thing. Feeling the edge of the cup and guiding the cream to the cup. Asking the waitress, “Could you tell me where the Church of the Lord is?”

  “Wouldn’t go down there, mister. They’re crazy. Let rattlesnakes and copperheads run around in there while they’re praying.”

  “Snakes don’t bite blind people.”

  Waitress, unsure, “Aw c’mon. That ain’t true. Is that true?”

  “Well, I never been bit by one.”

  Laughter.

  Crumbled up macadam on the side of the road. An old hardware store. Handmade pews. Paintings of Christ in faux wood plastic frames. Men in white shirts buttoned to the top without ties. Galluses attached to belted pants. Work shoes. Women in cotton dresses, some buttoned to the chin. Flat shoes. No makeup. Unadorned hair. Hardship chiseled in the lines of all their faces. A man and woman on the platform playing guitars. The almost-words of the tongue-speakers, eyes closed, hands raised to the Almighty. “Abbada ba soshashashe…” And the singing. “O Lord, show me the liiight… O Lo
rd show me the liiight…” Tap-tap-tapping through the small crowd to the platform, and the preacher jigging, then stopping. Staring down at this blind man in the cheap black suit, stumbling as he steps up on the platform. The children, rattling in their handcrafted, varnished boxes with brass hinges, rattling with the music, leading him to them. He drops the cane, feels for the lid of one of the boxes, and opens it. Two six-footers the color of sand, quivering tails, black eyes, red tongues feeling the air.

  He reaches in, grabs one of the diamondbacks a foot from its head, lifts it out. Strokes it. He does the jig. Lift one foot. Hop two beats on the other. Switch feet. Hop, hop. Switch. Hop, hop. Switch. Open the box again. The other child begins to coil. His heart batters his ribs. His mouth is dry and his throat is tightening. Hop, hop. Switch. Hop, hop. Switch. Going to the light. Going to the light. They wrap around his forearms, tails rattling in front of his face. Muscles swelling and contracting in his hands. What a rush!

  I am God. I am God and the Devil and all the saints and all the sinners. The power of nature is in the palms of my hands.

  Euphoria.

  Brother T moved his arm, reached out as if he were trying to touch something.

  “M-M-Mordie?” he stammered.

  “It’s Penny,” she said.

  “Are you an angel?” he asked. “Come to lead me to heaven?”

  “No s-s-sir, just Penny.”

  “You led me through the tunnel of darkness,” he said. “I saw you in my madness.”

  He raised himself on his elbows, and as he struggled to sit up she put an arm around his back and took his hand.

  “Are you safe now?” she asked, her voice accented with fear.

  “It’ll pass.”

  “I thought you were going to die.”

  “God had other plans. God blessed me tonight. I am sanctified.”