by Jessa Archer
“And that’s the video he posted last week?” I asked.
“Yep. Davenport claims it was the ninth time he’s been bitten since they launched the YouTube channel back in March. And it appears to be true, because there’s a separate video of each incident, including a date stamp on the video.”
When I’d arrived at Wren’s house about twenty minutes earlier, she was already dressed and had pulled up the site for the Church of Divine Signs to get directions to the revival. In addition, she’d downloaded several of their videos to her tablet. That way we could do a little research on the drive to Pender’s Gap. The road to the church twisted through the foothills, so odds were good that cell coverage would be spotty for most of the drive.
“Out of curiosity, where was Davenport bitten in that last video?”
“I’m not sure,” Wren said. “I sort of flinched at that point. Hold on. I’ll try to keep my eyes open this time.” She rewound the video. “Watching this stuff is going to give me nightmares, Ruth.”
“Me, too.” I was, in fact, quite certain about that because even there in the Jeep, wide awake with Wren on the passenger side, every little brush of my jeans against my boots had me thinking there was a snake on the floorboard.
Davenport’s voice rose up from Wren’s iPad. I heard the word hallelujah, but the rest of what he was saying was barely audible over the blaring music. A second later, there was a gasp from the audience, and I saw Wren shudder from the corner of my eye.
“It bit his hand,” she said. “His—”
“Left hand. Just below his pinky finger, right?”
“Yeah,” Wren said slowly. “He had that one wrapped up today, didn’t he?”
“He did, indeed. I noticed it when he was holding the stack of comics. So the question I have is why he’s so cavalier about being bitten? I’m not buying that it’s because his faith is strong. He struck me as being more of a showman than a true believer. Do you think he keeps a supply of antivenom on hand?”
“Not unless he’s rich,” Wren said. “That stuff is expensive. Snakebites don’t actually kill that many people, though. Only a few people die of them each year in the US. Way more than that are bitten, but a lot of them are dry bites, and others get to the hospital on time. So it seems more likely he’s just keeping them hungry and playing the odds. A hungry snake isn’t likely to waste venom on a human. It would save it for something small enough to eat.”
“Tessa told her mom that Davenport was a fraud, though. That she’d stopped going to the church because of that. If he was simply playing the odds, gambling that he wouldn’t die even if he got bitten repeatedly, that wouldn’t exactly be fraudulent, would it?”
“No,” she admitted. “Stupid, but not fraudulent. Still, maybe she didn’t mean it literally. Or she felt it was cheating to use snakes that weren’t well-fed? And she was still in high school, so…”
“She was a very thorough researcher. I should have hired her to work at the Star.” I handed her my phone. “Glance through the pictures I took in Tessa’s room and see if anything jumps out at you.”
Wren was quiet for several minutes as she scrolled through. “Wow. That’s a lot of books. On a lot of different subjects.”
“Her mom and friends all said Tessa could be a little…obsessive. And also a little fickle when something new grabbed her attention.”
Just before we turned off River Road, a police cruiser zipped past. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the word SHERIFF along the back bumper. Blevins tapped his brakes, and I was certain he was going to turn around and come after us. Not that he’d have had any reason to. I was at least a few miles under the speed limit. But then his taillights continued on toward town.
“You think he’s actually going to arrest Ed and the rest of the search party?” Wren asked.
I snorted. “I think Ed is kind of hoping he does. That would be the end of Steve Blevins’s career as sheriff. He’s already going to have an uphill battle in the election from dragging his feet this long.”
Google Maps informed me that I needed to take a left on Archer Hollow Road. I followed the directive, and we began winding our way up through the foothills. As we drove, Wren continued scrolling through the pictures I’d taken in Tessa’s room. “Seems like she was mostly a nonfiction girl,” she said. “I only see one novel here. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It’s a good one, though. I did a college paper on it, actually, for a pharmacology class, looking at the effects of different poisons on the body.”
“You’re kidding. The book is about poison?”
She nodded. “Why?”
“The snake-handling part was so odd that I’d kind of forgotten the other thing Ed mentioned. He said the other reason he tried to shut down Davenport’s church was that they encouraged members to drink poison as a test of their faith.”
“Sounds more like a test of their intelligence,” she said. “Do you think it’s really poison? Or do they just tell them it is?”
“I’m guessing it’s real. I mean, those snakes look pretty darn real. Why would they take half measures with the poison?”
“Good point,” she said. “And that might explain one of the other videos. There’s one without snakes. The people in the congregation were just passing around this silver pitcher. I thought it was a communion sort of thing, but…maybe not.”
She turned up the audio, and raucous music filled the Jeep. It didn’t really sound like any church music I’d ever heard. Better in some ways, because it was upbeat, but also kind of discordant and jarring. And then Davenport’s voice rang out. “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
When the video ended and the car was again silent, I asked if she could get a cell signal.
“I’ve got one bar,” she said. “But it’s flickering in and out. Did you need to call someone?”
“No. I was going to get you to look up something for me. Although…it might be something you’d know as a mortician, I guess.”
I described the condition of Tessa’s body when I found her. Wren went quiet for a moment. “Strychnine could do that. And…that’s really weird, Ruth. The pharmacology paper I told you about, the one based on that Shirley Jackson book, was looking at the difference between arsenic and strychnine. In the book, she says the poisoner used arsenic, but that didn’t fit with her description of the deaths. Arsenic takes a while to build up in the body, and the victim dies slowly. It also has a strong taste, and you need a lot of it to kill someone. Strychnine is really bitter, but it’s quicker acting, and you need less of it. In small quantities, it’s a performance-enhancing drug. Athletes used to take it because it increases the signals to your muscles. But in larger quantities…yeah. It causes the muscles to contract, and that could definitely result in the back arching the way you described. And…it could easily be added to another drug. There have been cases in the past where it was mixed with LSD.”
“Which brings us to that religion and psychedelics book Tessa had,” I said. “Cassie also told me that was something Tessa had asked her about. She was wondering whether that type of drug might open her mind so she could find out if there was anything after this life.”
“Hmph,” Wren said. “Seems more likely that sort of drug would make you think you’d seen or heard things when there was actually nothing there. Although a number of religions do use psychedelics as part of their services.”
“I’m wondering if Davenport’s church isn’t one of them,” I said.
“So you think his followers are high on something when they decide to pick up the snakes? Maybe there’s something other than poison in that jug they’re passing around?”
“I definitely think that’s possible,” I told her. “But…people do odd things in the name of religion. They could also simply be caught up in the fervor of the moment.”
Wren looked back down at the video on her tablet and shook her head in annoy
ance. “Even if the practice is limited to adults, and even if every single one of them is in full possession of his or her faculties, this isn’t right. There are kids in these videos. Watching their every move. If they see their parents and people they respect drinking poison and dancing around with snakes, they’re going to think it’s safe. And can you imagine the trauma they suffer on the occasions when one of them is killed? I scanned through the number of fatal snake bites in this country, and most of them occur in these congregations. Why isn’t this type of thing illegal?”
“Technically, it is illegal,” I told her. “Ed says he threatened to shut the place down if they didn’t stop back when he was sheriff, but he was pretty sure they kept up the practice in secret. And it’s hard to fight against something people consider a part of their religion.”
“True,” Wren said. “I guess the courts might side with them on First Amendment grounds. I know there are Native American religious groups that have an exemption allowing them to use psychedelic drugs.”
“Personally,” I said, “I’d love to see the place shut down. It makes me crazy to think about one of those little kids in the video being outside, stumbling upon a snake in the wild, and deciding to imitate what their mom and dad do in services. But Reverend Davenport must be pretty confident that Blevins isn’t going to arrest him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be advertising this event so widely and trying to drum up media interest. I don’t know if he’s actually got a documentary team out here or if this is just an attempt to make it seem like he’s a big enough deal for one of those reality show producers to take a look at. But either way, we need to keep as low a profile as we can tonight. Our focus needs to be on learning more about Elijah. I’m almost certain he killed Tessa Martin, but I still don’t know why.”
“Maybe because she broke up with him?” Wren said. “He got pretty upset when that stupid toy was missing. And yeah, I know he’d probably stashed something inside of it. But he still seems like the type of guy who wouldn’t take kindly to rejection.”
✰ Chapter Sixteen ✰
We heard the Church of Divine Signs long before we saw it. Or maybe I should say we felt it, because it was more that the bassline echoed in the pit of my stomach, even with the windows rolled up. Wren noticed it, too. When she cranked down her window, we could also pick up fragments of melody.
“Well, Davenport wasn’t lying when he claimed they’d move the mountain,” Wren said. “If they get any louder, they’re likely to trigger a rockslide.”
A few seconds later, we spotted a bright patch shining through a tree-lined trail up ahead. Google Maps had ceased to be any help at all about two miles back, when we’d officially reached the “census designated place” known as Pender’s Gap. After several iterations of the voice saying recalculating, I’d had Wren turn the darn thing off, and we just followed the instructions printed off from the church’s website.
As we turned onto the path, my headlights caught a reflection just inside the trees. A car. The light didn’t just bounce back—it also cast a tiny glimmer of blue and red onto the trees behind the vehicle.
“Well, it can’t be Blevins,” Wren said. “There’s only one road leading here, and he certainly didn’t pass us. So…should we stop and let Deputy Thorpe know what we’re up to?”
“I’m not entirely sure what we’re up to,” I told her. “This is just an information gathering expedition. And anyway, it might be the part-time deputy instead of Billy.”
Joe Mason, who Woodward County employs twenty hours a week due to a job-share agreement with the even smaller county to the north of us, seemed like a nice enough guy, according to Billy. But he’d only been with the department for the past six months, and neither Ed nor Billy was entirely sure how much to trust the guy. Plus, it didn’t really seem fair to risk getting him in trouble with his boss so early on.
“What is a deputy doing out here, anyway?” Wren asked.
“Probably just security like they do for school events,” I said, even though that didn’t really explain why the cruiser was hiding in the woods. That was usually more a tactic they used to catch speeders or drunk drivers, neither of which seemed likely at a revival high on a narrow mountain road.
Up ahead, the trees parted to reveal a large clearing. I’d expected to see a tiny church with one of those temporary tents set up in the field next to it for the revival. There was a tiny church, but also a rather large barn further down the path. That was the building that was currently lit up and surrounded by rows of cars.
“Wow,” Wren said. “Abel’s salesmanship seems to have worked.”
She was right. There were at least fifty vehicles on the grounds surrounding the barn, maybe more. In addition, parked between the wooden chapel and the log-frame house next to it, there were two trucks—the slightly newer model that Abel had driven to the yard sale and the old beater that Elijah had been driving when he returned for the alien toy.
“Well, that suggests Elijah’s here,” Wren said.
“I’m not surprised,” I said as I maneuvered the Jeep in a space between two cars in the back row. “Even if Eli didn’t seem like his dad’s biggest fan, this is the family business. And Ed seems to think that this whole thing is, at least in part, Abel’s plan for paying Eli’s legal bills. Maybe also to provide him with something to live on afterward if he ends up doing time. It’s hard enough for people without a record to get a job around here.”
“True, but if he was actually selling drugs to high school students, I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy,” Wren said.
“Ditto.”
Even at nearly nine o’clock at night, and even this far up the mountain, it was still hot when we got out of the Jeep. I instantly regretted my decision to wear jeans—and yes, boots—in deference to my snake phobia.
“Are you sure this event is casual dress?” Wren asked.
“You’re fine,” I told her. She was in linen pants and a sleeveless blouse—definitely not her Sunday best, but still far from casual. “The poster said come as you are, so you’re probably overdressed.”
“Well, I need to look professional. We’re walking into a group of snakehandlers. Odds seem good that I’ll be burying some of these people in the near future.”
She had a point.
We grabbed our purses and began walking through the cars toward the barn. A group of young people were hanging out a few rows up, silhouetted against the light from the barn behind them. One of the guys had his arm around the waist of a girl who was swaying to the beat. Judging from their attire, Wren’s worries about a dress code seemed to be unfounded.
“We should have brought an umbrella,” she said, sniffing the air. “It’s definitely going to rain tonight. Can’t you smell it?”
I followed her lead and sniffed. “All I smell is baked dirt and dead grass. And one of those kids over there is either vaping or chewing some nasty-smelling strawberry bubblegum.”
“It’s going to rain tonight,” Wren said. “Mark my words.”
She’d been saying this on and off for the past two weeks. A quick glimpse up at the sky showed nothing but stars and a sliver of moon. But I didn’t argue with her. Sooner or later, she had to be right, and I was more than ready for anything that would break up this heat. Although…
“Let’s hope it holds off until morning,” I told her, having to raise my voice to be heard above the music, which someone had just cranked up to eleven. “Otherwise it’s going to complicate the search Ed organized.”
“Assuming Blevins hasn’t carted all of them off to jail already. Who’s going to post Ed’s bail if we’re out here and he can’t reach you?”
“Sherry, hopefully. But we’re pretty high up. We might have coverage.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check. Four bars. I felt a wave of relief. Even though there were at least a hundred people here, and there was a deputy parked in the woods, it was still kind of nice to know that Cassie and Ed could reach me if they needed me, and vice versa. I flipped the se
ttings to vibrate and stuck the phone back in my pocket. It would be hard enough to hear the ringtone out here, let alone once we got inside.
As we neared the barn, I noticed a silver SUV with Georgia tags. “Wren,” I said, pulling her back. “That’s the car I saw parked across the street this morning. The guy with the camera who swiped your cookies.”
She laughed. “I baked those cookies for the yard sale, so he didn’t really swipe them.”
“Yeah, but they were supposed to be for customers only, right? He didn’t even look at your stuff, so in my book that makes him a cookie thief. Him and Derrick Blevins…both…” I trailed off, as I realized that a burgundy Dodge Charger was parked a few cars down in the next row.
Wren followed my gaze. “Well, speak of the son of the devil. I can’t say I’d have pictured Derrick Blevins as the type to be in search of religion.”
“Me, either,” I said. “Ed didn’t seem to think Elijah and Derrick were friends, but given their spat earlier at your yard sale and the fact that he’s here tonight, I’m kind of wondering if that’s true.” I felt something tickle the back of my brain. Some attempt at a connection that didn’t quite happen. “If not actual friends, then maybe frenemies.”
“Maybe,” Wren said. “But there could be another reason for Baby Blevins to be here tonight. You said Davenport told Patsy’s mom that there’s the possibility of this thing ending up on TV. That kid seems almost as vain as his daddy, so I can definitely imagine him popping in, just on the off chance that they’ll showcase his pretty face.”
We opened the door and stepped into the barn. Huge exhaust fans were positioned in the loft, and in two of the lower level windows as well, but it was instantly clear that they were useless. Every pore on my body sprang a leak before the door even closed behind us.
Rows of wooden chairs were arranged in two columns with a wide aisle between them. Most of the uncomfortable-looking seats were full, their occupants fanning themselves in time to the music with printed programs and pieces of cardboard. Wren and I glanced around to see if there were any more flyers, but they had apparently all been distributed, so we just sat watching enviously as the makeshift fans waved dust motes through the hot, thick air.
