What the Hand: A Novel About the End of the World and Beyond

by Stockwell, Todd

  None of them said very much while they scarfed down the food I gave them. It was one of the sisters, Ida, who spoke first, and I don’t think she stopped talking for three days running. Ida told the stories of how they escaped their various towns and met on the road one at a time like characters in the Wizard of Oz.

  ***

  Except for Roger, they had come from the Christian faith in some manner before drifting away for various reasons. Ida and her sister Eva were raised as Methodists. Eva was hardcore until her divorce, and Ida went to church sporadically, until she was in her thirties and gave it up altogether. Ida, who never married, took in Eva after she left her husband.

  Eventually, they moved to Las Vegas where they worked at different casinos dealing blackjack. Vegas had been relatively easy to escape from, she said, because the Antichrist had less than a platoon of Minions stationed throughout the city.

  ***

  I read later that the Antichrist had purposely kept the pressure off Las Vegas so people could continue to gamble, drink gallons of alcohol, ingest all manner of drugs, frequent strip clubs, visit prostitutes, and on and on.

  ***

  After they left Vegas, the sisters headed to the ocean because they figured they could catch a boat to another country that wasn’t yet occupied by the NWO. They ran out of gas soon after they crossed into California. Since all open gas stations were manned by groups of Minions, the sisters were forced to proceed on foot.

  They lost about twenty pounds apiece before they reached the Salinas Valley, where they happened upon the scarecrow, Speckle, sitting in a pear orchard mumbling incoherently. Speckle wore black glasses with thick lenses that made his eyes bigger and more intense than they already were. He had what the soldiers who fought in World War II labeled the thousand-yard stare. This was the vacant, unfocused gaze of a soldier who had seen, too much, the horrors of war. They managed to gather that the skinny man had recently witnessed the rape and murder of his wife at the hands of some Minions outside a convenience store, where the two of them had gone to purchase goods for their escape. What a world it was. The sisters felt sorry for him and invited him on their trek. He couldn’t remember his name and the sisters often had to remind him to walk and eat.

  ***

  Three days later, after venturing off the road to look for water, they found Howard Frost camping a few hundred feet from the highway. A former phone repairman, Howard was over six feet tall, wide as an offensive lineman but gentle as all get out. Nonetheless, the thirty-eight-year-old “Cowardly Lion” of the bunch comforted the sisters, as they felt protected just having the big man around. He’d lived near the area and pointed them toward some caves he’d once ventured to as a Boy Scout, keeping them off the main roads during their long hike.

  Howard, a homosexual, wrestled constantly with his Christian faith. Feeling completely alone and utterly defeated by his mid-twenties, Howard decided to reject God completely, at least in his own mind. But God never rejected him, never left his side, never let him completely fall.

  What Howard didn’t understand was that he was just another human being and a sinner like everyone else. And that God didn’t expect him to be perfect, but only to accept His gift and His love.

  ***

  Sticking to the theme—all who were left to happen upon were a tin man, a little girl and her dog, and a wizard to take them home. The once heartless Billy Sanchez, a tattooed line cook and ex-con, would satisfy the former.

  Billy’s parents had abandoned him early on. His father, Hector Sanchez, raised more by Hispanic gangs than his own parents, was a lifer convicted of murdering a police officer who pulled him over for an expired registration. Hector thought the law had finally caught up to him for any one of his many crimes, so he shot the officer in the face as soon as the poor fellow reached his window. Billy’s Polish mother was already a heroin addict when she met Hector. By the time Billy was born, his father was in prison, and his mother’s habit was too debilitating to properly care for the baby, who was himself suffering the withdrawals of her appalling habit.

  So Billy grew up in several foster homes, one of which was run by a particularly nasty husband and wife duo fond of beating the boy with the end of a severed lamp cord and stuffing him in a linen closet for much of the day.

  Billy channeled his suffering into the anger that already festered in his genes, bullying and beating the crap out of any kid he could get his hands on. His violent exploits landed him in Juvenile Hall, where by age thirteen he began a series of institutional incarcerations that, at twenty-two, earned him a five-year stint in San Quentin for beating up an employee at a movie theater who had made the mistake of asking him for a ticket he didn’t have.

  Billy had reached the big time. But the former bully was just another pretty young conquest to the hardened and sex-starved animals prowling the penitentiary. Billy knew he was in trouble when two of these monsters cornered him on his way into the cellblock from the exercise yard. A passing guard interrupted the assault, but the message was clear: They were going to get him.

  That night, fretting in his cell, Billy did something he’d never done before. He asked God to help him. The very next morning, he was called into the cellblock Supervisor’s office. The Supervisor informed him he could be moved to minimum security, but he would have to take a job. There were two openings: the prison library and the Christian chapel. Either would keep him a safe distance from his new friends, but Billy knew the job meant for him.

  A year and a half later, Billy would be released for good behavior. Before that, a prison Bible scholar who also worked in the chapel mentored him. The scholar was serving a twenty-five year term for armed bank robbery. He had been a devout Christian for a dozen years before Billy walked into the chapel.

  His new mentor, worried about the instant fervor in the way Billy seemed to embrace Christianity, encouraged the boy but cautioned him over the excess zeal that might cause him to crash once the reality of Christian living set in. It wasn’t, he told Billy, a life full of constant miracles and daily enlightenment, but a hard road of self-discovery and inner change, often beset by difficult tests of faith, and most difficult of all, the tedium of devout living.

  But Billy, prone to extremes and addictions, ignored the advice, and upon his release ventured to the nearest corner to preach the Good News. But this was not a living, and it wasn’t a life for most Christians, let alone a relative newcomer. Just as his mentor had feared, Billy crashed and burned, slipping back into his old ways, until he was further from God than when he’d begun.

  ***

  This was something shaky Christians, those who “planted their seed on rocky soil,” often failed to consider. The faith might grow for a while, but it would eventually wither, and each time it dissipated or went away it became even more difficult to retrieve.

  ***

  Still, God did not forget the little beaten boy, stuffed in a closet. Three years later, his cellblock Bible study paid off in a big way when Billy began to recognize the signs he’d studied in Revelation and immediately saw the Antichrist for the slime-bag he was. He found some heart, grabbed his Bible and a backpack full of goods, and hit the road.

  ***

  Our Dorothy, a not-so-little girl, and her feeble-minded son lived in a tiny house on a hill in San Francisco. Danielle Knowles had never been to Kansas, but she was raised in the Midwest by strict Baptist parents who preached so little love and so much fire and brimstone that she felt she needed to escape the flames, and Iowa, when she was barely sixteen.

  Upon leaving her Iowan family, she hitchhiked to the west coast where she became the lead singer of a punk rock band called the Dirks. The name was derived from a combination of jerk and another word. The band never went anywhere except to lead her into a life of drugs and years of meandering. After a failed marriage and an abortion, she gave birth to her son Roger out of wedlock. Roger was both the joy and frustration of her troubled life.

  ***

  As an infant a
nd toddler, Roger seemed a perfect and even angelic child, but it soon became clear to Danny that something wasn’t quite right with the boy. He was too quiet and unresponsive much of the time. The doctors told her Roger was suffering from mild retardation. Devastated at first, she came to realize she loved Roger even more for his affliction, and they made a happy world together until he hit the fourth grade.

  At that point, Roger began to change drastically. Frustrated with learning, socializing, and the constant teasing from other kids, he began a long, slow rebellion of delinquency, ditching school, shoplifting, and vandalism, all culminating when at fourteen he attacked and choked a fellow student nearly unconscious after an argument in the cafeteria over a grilled cheese sandwich.

  Roger went through a year of therapy and seemed to settle down after that, but sometime during his first year of high school he picked up a book on Satanism, began wearing black and drawing endless pentagrams on his folders and notebooks. Danny was worried, but Roger’s counselor suggested it was a phase, and she let it slide. After all, she’d been a rebellious child herself and had moved past it.

  Soon after, Roger began hanging around a group of students known as Goths because of their dark clothing, music, hair, and eye-makeup. The Goths considered themselves outcasts and rebels, but none of them were fixated on Satanism like Roger. Still, his feeble brain surmised they were just like him, and besides, they were the only kids who would let him hang out with them. But it wasn’t because he looked Goth or otherwise fit in with them in any way. It was because one of the Goth girls who knew him from junior high school felt sorry for him and talked the other Goths into putting up with him. This wasn’t too hard because Roger didn’t know what his new friends were talking about much of the time and kept his mouth shut, so they never realized he had a handicap, or that he was a burgeoning psychopath with little or no moral compass.

  Another Goth girl, Sheila, who wasn’t all that bright herself, even took a shining to Roger, believing him to be the strong, silent type and not simply an imbecile. They were soon holding hands and playing boyfriend and girlfriend in their naïve way.

  ***

  The book on Satanism Roger found at the library was called the Satanic Bible. Anton LaVey, the crafty founder of the Church of Satan, wrote the vile book. LaVey preached a watered-down version of Satanism to the general public, but in secret he was a full-blown devil worshiper who conducted all sorts of wacky rituals to honor his dark deity. Coincidentally, he once lived and taught his unholy ways in an old Victorian house just a few blocks from Danny and Roger’s home in San Francisco.

  ***

  Roger couldn’t really understand and never even read much of the Satanic Bible. He picked it up at bookstore on his way home from school after he was drawn to the pentagram on the book’s cover. Roger did, however, focus on certain lines in LaVey’s book that appealed to his challenged mind. One of these quotes was, “Blessed are the destroyers of false hope, for they are the true Messiahs—Cursed are the god adorers, for they shall be shorn sheep!” He couldn’t understand the quote, and he had to look up the words “adorers” and “shorn,” but for some reason he loved the phrase, “Blessed are the destroyers” and the words “Cursed” and “god” in the same sentence.

  ***

  A deathbed witness to Anton LaVey’s last words said he cried out, “Oh God, oh God…there is something very wrong,” and proceeded to ask for forgiveness. I’m not sure what happened after that. I suppose I could look it up. I do know there was one quote of his I did agree with. Aton LaVey once said, “It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful.”

  ***

  One day after school, Roger and Sheila went out and bought a Ouija Board. The Ouija Board was manufactured and distributed by a company called Parker Brothers. Parker Brothers considered the Ouija Board to be to a family board game. Parker Brothers produced other family board games like Monopoly, where the object was to buy up as many properties as one could in order to bankrupt family and friends; and Risk, where the object was to build massive armies in order to rule the world by destroying the armies of family and friends.

  ***

  The first time Roger and Sheila played with the Ouija Board nothing much happened. They just asked a bunch of silly questions about their love life and their future together, either of them forcing the disk to answer the way they wanted. They soon grew tired and left the board to make out, play video games, or whatever else they did to amuse themselves. Weeks later, however, after Roger had been reading more of LaVey’s book, the game took an exciting turn for the young couple.

  ***

  Roger and Sheila were talking about Sheila’s stepfather, who used to beat her mercilessly with a drum stick before—drunk and stoned one night after a late show—he drove his rock band’s van off a cliff, killing everyone in the fiery crash.

  Roger said he hoped Bobby was in hell and asked Sheila, pointing to the Ouija board, if she wanted to find out. They pulled the game out of the box, placed their fingers lightly on the disk, and began asking questions:

  Shelia: We are looking for a piece of garbage named Bobby Norris. Can somebody help us find this loser?

  Nothing happened for a long time, and Roger and Sheila were ready to make out and play video games again when the disk seemed to move by itself.

  Ouija: YES

  Roger and Sheila looked at each other in amazement and pushed on:

  Sheila: Who are you?

  Again, the disc moved on its own.

  Ouija: A… F…R…I…E…N…D

  Sheila: Do you know Bobby?

  Ouija: E…V…E…R…Y…B…O…D…Y

  ***

  Most kids would have been scared out of their minds by this point, but Roger and Sheila couldn’t stop grinning at each other. They both believed this was the most exciting and wonderful thing that had ever happened to them.

  Sheila: Where is Bobby?

  Ouija: B…U…R…N

  Now they were freaking out with excitement.

  Sheila: In hell?

  Ouija: H…E…L…L

  ***

  After that, the Ouija board was all they could talk about. They spent hours conversing with the stranger about other dead people, black magic, the future, and on and on. Later, they brought the other Goths over to join in the fun, but it never worked the same with everyone around, so they usually ended up smoking marijuana, drinking Danny’s vodka, or snorting lines of methamphetamine and whatever else they could get their hands on.

  ***

  Roger and Sheila never made the connection, but things began to spiral out of control soon after they met the stranger on the Ouija board. Danny, working all day and attending night school, couldn’t be there to supervise much of the time. The pair began ditching school frequently to drink or take drugs, and to communicate with their new friend.

  But there was more. They were acting strangely irritated and angry. They fought with each other over stupid things that normally made them laugh. Eventually, they broke up, which devastated Roger, who sought comfort through the stranger on the board.

  ***

  Then, two months after their breakup, Sheila took one too many of her mom’s oxycodones, overdosed, and went into a coma. A few days later, she was dead.

  ***

  Distraught over Sheila’s death, Roger began speaking more frantically to the stranger. Eventually, he revealed himself to be a demon named Cresil. Although Cresil didn’t mention it to Roger, he was known in his own circles as the demon of laziness. This is because he preferred lying around the caverns of the underworld chewing on bugs and whatnot, waiting for humans to come to him, rather than actively seeking lost souls like the other demons. Cresil talked the dimwitted Roger into praying to his master Lucifer for guidance. The devil was happy to oblige and so began Roger’s slow decent into madness.

  ***

  Danny had her hands full with Roger, but the rest of her life had been steadily improving. Although she had been a waitress by day, mak
ing just enough to take care of the both of them and pay the rent, she managed to put herself through a court reporting course at night and had recently been hired by the state with a starting salary of $56,500, which was twice as much as she had ever made in any one year during her entire working life. Danny was ecstatic. She could finally afford to get Roger the help he needed. But then something happened. Two billion people mysteriously disappeared.

  ***

  Next door to Danny and Roger, there lived a sixty-six-year-old retired policeman named Joe Mellon and his wife Aubrey. The Mellons befriended Danny and Roger almost as soon as the pair moved into their neighborhood of thirty-nine years. Over time, they had grown quite close—Joe and Aubrey acting as surrogate parents to Danny and surrogate grandparents to the misguided Roger.

  It was Joe who had suggested court reporting for Danny, even bringing her to the courthouse to watch the breakneck typists in action. He loved Danny and Roger. The boy didn’t get along with many people, but he seemed to genuinely like the old man, and Joe was happy to mentor the lost Roger, much as it was an uphill battle, and as taken aback as he was by the boy’s satanic leanings. Besides, he couldn’t get enough of Danny, who reminded him of his own daughter Teresa. Teresa had been stabbed to death during a mugging in downtown San Francisco when she was just thirty-one.

  ***

  The murderer of Joe and Aubrey’s daughter was an illegal alien named Sergio Nunez. Sergio Nunez came across the Mexico border into the United States when he was nineteen. He traveled with a small group of hardworking immigrants intent on making a better life for themselves and their families.

  Sergio’s only intent was to continue with the criminal activity and mayhem he had enjoyed so much back in Mexico. And so, by the time Nunez stabbed Teresa five times outside her apartment one night as a bonus for stealing her purse, he had already been arrested four times for various crimes, including robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, battery, and rape.

  Although Nunez finally landed in prison for the murder of Joe’s daughter, he’d never spent more than a week in jail for any of the other crimes he committed in America. This was because San Francisco was a Sanctuary City, which meant if you were an American citizen and you stole a pack of chewing gum from a convenience store, you would be more likely to do jail time than an illegal immigrant like Nunez who had been arrested after beating and raping his young girlfriend.