Authors: John Skipp Cody Goodfellow
His smile almost bit Eddie’s nose off. “I don’t ask twice.”
Eddie backed off. Christian dragged Jasper one-handed into the bathroom. Gray took out his keys and locked the door behind them.
Christian let go of his dead friend’s wrist and looked hopelessly around the flickering bathroom, nursing his fucked-up hand, which was painfully twitching in time with his galloping heartbeat.
He never—almost never, anyway—cried in front of Jasper. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to cry
on
him, if it wasn’t going to fix anything.
He was doing fine, running water in the sink to sluice off the blood and trying to make sense of his right fist, which felt like a beanbag filled with hamburger and smashed breadsticks; if not for the jolt of transcendent agony when he prodded or tried to move it, he would not believe it was a real hand at all, but a cheap prosthetic from a joke shop.
All right, fuck it, he’d cry.
The door was a stout one, the walls solid enough that nothing the Wrong Reverend Connaway did in here would upset the help. You’d never have to turn on the sink to cover the sound of your clinkers hitting the bowl in here, for sure.
Alive, alone with his best friend’s corpse, Christian let himself come a little unzipped. He cried, but he’d be damned if he’d kneel down and pray.
Christian didn’t need to believe in God. He wasn’t one of those burned-out Bible-humpers or recovering Catholics who, deep down, were really just
mad
at God, and trying to get his attention by ignoring him.
For Christian, this life—such as it was—was still chock-full of miracles, both authorless and by human hands. In those moments when, for instance, he sank a triple-bank shot and shut down a pool shark with the whole bar watching and three pitchers under his belt—or when he rode behind a motorcycle with a guy, and pressed against his back until he felt his heartbeat, and breathed in the emerging scent of his skin and hair, and knew that tomorrow he’d be making his infamous Clamato omelets for two—he knew there was no other life behind this one, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
And when the realization was driven home by a death in his circle of friends or even on the side of the highway, he did not get sucked down into despair, or entertain thoughts of committing to putting only one Jewish carpenter’s body and blood in his mouth for the rest of his life.
Christian fumbled half the contents of the medicine cabinet into the sink, but nothing stronger than Advil turned up. There was nothing useful among the skin cleansers and rejuvenating scrubs, Grecian Formula and Old Spice (seriously? What the fuck?), to fix up a mangled hand.
Okay
, he relented, breathless with agony.
Maybe one little prayer, just in case.
His grandmother was the only person of faith he never found utterly ridiculous, and she told him it was stupid at best, prideful at worst, to ask God to do something, or ask for something. You could only ask for strength and guidance, and pledge not to get upset if neither ever arrived.
Okay, God, guide me through this. Why is there eternal life, but only for him?
Oh, and some of that strength would be swell…
Amen
.
Jake came into the studio as if trying to ride out gales of thunderous applause. Eddie and Gray followed. Eddie tried to hook Esther’s eyes with his, but she seemed to have drifted into shock. The others stood right where they were. Waiting for direction.
Jake crossed the room to snap up a remote and turn on the huge flat-screen TV. Flicked through channels, until he found the local news.
“…a massacre at the Alta Vista Funeral Home in Joshua Tree, leaving four dead, and one body missing…”
“Woo-hoo!” Jake popped like a champagne cork. “They’re playin’ our song!”
Gray did not seem nearly as delighted, but he never blinked. Lighting a cigarette off his tarnished brass Zippo lighter and holding the smoke in, he looked like he’d just drunk boiling water on a dare.
“…Funeral services for popular local cable televangelist Jacob Connaway, whose shocking murder last weekend provoked controversy when he was found in the desert outside Riverside County…”
Jake leaned in, fascinated. Finally, recognition! This was better than a mirror, bigger than his own show. Everyone else watched, too, as crime scene footage
from both the desert and the funeral home took turns across the screen.
On the TV, a grizzled, fiftyish, hard-assed cop made the most of his close-up. The text crawl labeled him as
SHERIFF BILL LeGRANGE
underneath.
Gray wheeled and aimed at the screen. “God, I hate that piece of shit…”
Jake cut him off. “Shhh!”
“This is the second batch of murders in the last three days. And the theft of Pastor Connaway’s remains…well, let’s just say that there’s harsh justice to be dealt. We will find them, believe me.”
Gray flicked his cigarette at the screen. “You know damned well who he’s lookin’ for…”
“Ssssh!”
Both Esther and Evangeline were sneaking glances at the sliding glass door behind them. Emmy’s gaze was riveted on Jake and the screen. Mathias was looking all over the place, and taking comfort in none of it.
“A $10,000 reward has already been offered for information leading to the return of Connaway’s body…”
“Who did
that?
” Esther wanted to know.
Emmy looked, if anything, more horrified than before. “I swear to God, I didn’t…”
Gray’s gun chopped their conversation off. Just the little click of his thumb on the safety was enough.
“Meanwhile, some local residents blame the church itself for this wave of terror, citing the pastor’s history of apocalyptic statements…”
“Come on,” Jake bellowed. “Say it…”
“…and his repeated claim that he would demonstrate the truth of the Christian resurrection, by returning to life himself…”
“YES!” Jake howled, jumping up and down. “Do you see? Do you see why I have to make a broadcast to night? I HAVE TO! They are waiting on this shit!”
Everyone stared, a home-invasion version of the Last Supper, and none were more poleaxed than Gray.
“I AM THE PROOF!” Jake roared, throwing out his arms and thrusting his chest out as if something in it still beat and pumped blood. “I am the Truth, and the Light! And everything I’ve done has just set it all up! Bang! Bang! Bang! Like a string of cherry bombs! I AM THE LIVING SHIT, PEOPLE! Just TRY to argue with that!”
Nobody tried to argue with that. And what ever the newscaster said next was lost behind it. The TV cut to video of a funeral in Iraq with thousands of irate mourners in black robes, and then rock-’em–sock-’em footage of marines laying siege to a mosque in a wartorn city somewhere still a few shades healthier than here.
Only Gray was anxious to break the spell of the moment. “So what do you want me to do now?”
Jake looked at the women. Incredibly smug, now. If formaldehyde could bring a penis fully erect, than it was doing its distillers proud.
“Put them in the holding cell.”
“They’ll scream.”
“Let ’em scream all they want. I’ll get around to ’em when I’m good and ready.”
Then he turned to Eddie and Mathias. “You two stay with me.”
“Okay, sweethearts.” Gray peeled Esther and Evangeline off the herd with a flick of his gun barrel. The look in his eye might have given them a yeast infection. “Let’s skedaddle.”
Gray herded the women out the sliding glass door and into the backyard. A huge, gnarled oak tree spread its bare branches out over the whole expanse of lawn, between the house and the swimming pool. The branches thrashed in the wind that roved out of the desert to beat down on the house.
Evangeline stared dourly at the padlocked gate on their right, the spiked steel fence blocking the path to the parking lot, the malformed tree looming before them, the bars on the window to the holding cell attached to the garage before them.
Evangeline’s heart sank into the bubbling bile in her gut. Of all the awful surprises of the night, this was the worst yet, somehow, because it was not a surprise at all.
She feigned stumbling into Esther, tried to grab at her arms, but they remained pinned at her sides.
Esther wouldn’t meet Evangeline’s eyes, but she caught a glimpse of what was about to come leaking out of them, and she finally knew.
She wanted to crow,
You knew what he was, and you let him do it to you, because you thought you were the only one. Thought it was normal, thought it was love. Thought you could hold him.
She wanted to slap Esther, turn on Emmy behind her and knock their heads together.
You thought you were special…
And what did she think
she
was? She had fallen for his bullshit more often and awfully than anyone here. But now she didn’t feel so alone.
He had fooled them all, used them all.
Even God.
Christian’s jacket was from a vintage 1970s crushed velvet tuxedo. He liked to joke that it was haunted by the ghost of John Belushi, and sometimes by Cat Stevens, which was always good for a funny bar argument.
The shoulder seam was ripped out where Jake had whipped him around like he’d caught a fish not worth hauling into the boat. Jasper’s tacky blood plastered the sleeves to his arms, and he couldn’t get it off without resetting all the bones in his right hand. He almost hadn’t worn the damned thing, because it looked like rain. He almost hadn’t come here at all.
Bummer, dude…and how’s your hand?
It continued to pioneer new frontiers of hurting. The Advil or two he hadn’t upchucked hadn’t found his hand, and no wonder. His nerves were tied in a knot. His fist was studded with blisters, swelling up and turning purple, hogging a lot of the blood he needed to think straight, but none of the pain-feeling stuff.
Come on, is this supposed to be shock? What a rip-off.
In another of his many awesome coats, Christian was pretty sure he had a foil bindle with two and a half Vicodin in it. Probably the red sharkskin blazer…
God, he wasn’t even drunk anymore.
I sure hope
my
wake doesn’t suck like this…
He didn’t think about the outcome when he swung at Jake, but he’d do it again, maybe faster, and with a pickax
or a Stinger missile. But he’d definitely do it again, first chance he got.
Wait, that was useful—
Cradling his right hand against his chest, he knelt down and threw open the cabinet doors under the sink. Hair spray, cologne, insecticide, and precious little else.
Then it hit him. The vintage tuxedo jacket wasn’t, technically, strictly authentic vintage, since he had his tailor put in a pocket above the hip on the inside left panel, for his cell phone.
It was easy to slap his forehead, but harder to get the phone out of the pocket with the wrong hand. Setting it on the counter, he pinned it with the back of his broken hand and tried to steady it to punch in 911.
Oops. He’d turned the damned thing off before they went in to the wake. He turned it on, wincing at the retarded corporate jingle noises it made to announce to all and sundry that Christian was about to spoil the movie for the whole theater.
Come on baby
, Christian silently urged, as the chirpy phone searched for service.
Give me someone real to pray to…
The awkward silence in the studio stretched out and flexed its claws, as Eddie and Mathias waited for Jake to make his move.
The man of the house sauntered around the studio, tweaking knobs and fiddling with the cameras, restless. He stopped before the oversized cross, head bowed in silent contemplation, for a long minute.
Finally, he threw a cruel smile at Eddie.
“So you’re fucking my wife. How
is
that? Cuz my experience is, you really have to work her hard. But once she gets going, she just never wants to stop. You know what I’m sayin’?”
Eddie glared at him, trying hard to hold it in. He couldn’t hide his fear, but he wouldn’t look away.
“Maybe you wanna throw a punch, now, too?”
In spite of everything he’d seen, he wanted to, very much. He would have, knowing what would happen, if it meant a chance for Esther to escape.
Not now. He didn’t know this part of the house, but if he could stay upright, the chance would come. Jake might walk and talk, but Eddie would bet his left nut that this was not God’s work.
That was the only hope he could hang their survival on: that sooner or later, the Devil always breaks his promises.
The storage room behind the garage was dank and reeked of paint thinner and mildew, in spite of the arid bite of the desert air. A terrible place to store anything you might someday want to use.
It was, however, a great place to store people.
The tiny, terrifying room had one door and one window, both barred, and a bare bulb light, long since burned out. All the old paint cans and ancient school desks that once filled this room had gone to the dump when Jake moved in.
The room was left barren, except for a mattress and some shackles. Even the playpen stuff was gone now.
But the big Yale lock on the outside of the door still worked.
The three crying women filed in without a fuss, but Gray ripped Esther’s handbag out of her white-fisted grip as she minced into the cell.
“Oh, please!” she bawled. “Please! Let me keep my flask!”
Gray dumped out her bag, held up the sterling silver hip flask with a flowery, unreadable inscription. She licked her pretty lips, shaky and sick with thirst.
“Sure.” Gray unscrewed the lid and took a deep, satisfying swig. True to form, the package might be fancy, but it still tasted like a case of the clap.
Gray toasted Esther with her flask.
Spat in it.
Then handed it back.
“Live it up. Get your little party started. Can’t wait to see who wins.”