“So what?” Pitch said. “You’re not worried are you, Teddy? You bring Coca Cola to town, the hospital, hell, they’ll trot you up and down the streets on their shoulders.”
“I don’t know,” Doc Fletcher said. “I’ve talked to quite a few people. The preacher’s got ‘em all worked up. Wouldn’t surprise me if he actually won the election.”
“And then put his good buddy Marty Donlan on the town council and run things his way,” Evie said.
Fletcher, grimacing at the sound of Donlan’s name, said, “That son of a bitch”, shaking his head as a look of sheer disgust twisted his face into a hate-filled scowl.
“What?” Pitch smiled, apparently amused by Fletcher’s sudden outburst. “What’s this guy done to you?”
“He won’t sell me that goddamn furniture store of his.”
“What?”
Fletcher made a fist and shook it in the air. “I’ve done everything except get down on my hands and knees and blow that cocksucker.”
Pitch, grinning, looked around the room. “Would somebody please tell me what the hell he’s talking about?”
“Donlan owns the furniture store next door to Doc,” Croft said. “Doc wants to buy the place and turn it into a pharmacy, but Donlan won’t sell.”
Pitch looked up, accepting the drink Abbot offered him, gave Harold his empty glass and turned his attention back to the young physician. “Lucky for you, that son of a bitch is teamed up with the preacher. Lucky for you, you’re on my team.”
To Levay, he said, “Don’t worry, Teddy. You’re the mayor, and you’re going to be the mayor until I say different.”
Teddy smiled nervously… Until I say different.
Pitch grinned, apparently happy with Levay’s discomfort as well. He took a drink of whiskey, stood up and said, “Gather ‘round, children. Father has an early Christmas present for you.”
Levay, following twelve eager disciples across the room, stopped in front of the desk as Pitch took a seat behind it, opened a drawer and pulled out two thick bundles of crisp new bills and set them on the desktop. “Stan, Robert,” he said, motioning the brothers to take a seat in two wooden chairs directly in front of him, sliding the bundled money across the desk as the brothers sat down.
Pitch smiled, and his eyes lit up, the dark blue of them seeming to flicker, to glow, and then grow larger. Teddy thought his face was actually shimmering, rippling, as if being viewed through a searing wave of mid-August heat.
Teddy blinked his eyes, shaking his head as Pitch gazed thoughtfully at the brothers, who sat quietly mesmerized by their benefactor, until the two of them finally slumped in their chairs, wilting under the blazing blue eyes of William Pitch, who stared as if the two brothers were a sheet of glass he was looking through, his lilting voice casting soft and soothing words that seemed to echo and swirl around the room, and then float down from the ceiling, until a single refrain could be heard:
“Well, now that I have your undivided attention, listen very carefully to what I have to say.”
Chapter Nineteen
Missy Thomas stood in the kitchen, nibbling on a piece of leftover chicken. She tossed the half-eaten drumstick in the garbage and stepped over to the sink, looked out the window and saw herself reflected in the glass windowpane. Constantly denying herself food to hide the pregnancy was taking a toll. Her face was thin, drawn. Most days she felt light-headed and weak, listless. But it was working. It had been well over eight weeks since her last period, and she still wasn’t showing. She pulled back her housecoat and laid a hand across her belly, and thought of Elmer.
Maybe he was right. Maybe she should call Myra tomorrow, gather up the boys and go to him while Jason was away. They could get out of town before he even knew she had left.
Missy closed her eyes and pictured her arm around Elmer’s waist, standing in front of a little country cottage surrounded by a white picket fence, butterflies floating by while Tony and Jason Jr. played leapfrog on a thick carpet of neatly-trimmed grass.
She opened her eyes and sighed. Something had to be done before her belly gave her away. God only knew how much time she had before that happened.
Missy yawned. Making love with Elmer had been wonderful. But the stress of sneaking around was draining. And coming back to this house, never knowing if Jason would burst through the door in a murderous rage over having found them out, was exhausting. Or maybe he did know about them, but didn’t even care.
She wanted to call Elmer, just to hear his voice, because she knew it would make her feel better. But she knew he didn’t have a telephone in his little farmhouse.
Missy looked at the clock hanging over the stove. It was eleven o’clock. Jason might be on his way up the mountain right now, could be pulling into their yard at any moment. Or maybe he wasn’t coming home at all tonight. Early in their marriage she would often wonder where he was and what he was doing, why he left her alone at night—sometimes for days at a time. But that seemed like such a long time ago. Now when he stayed away, that was just one less night she and the children had to put up with his abuse. She wished he would never come home, that he would drop dead in town, or drive off the mountainside in a drunken stupor.
An engine rumbled in the distance and she knew it was him. Her heart fluttered and her body trembled. Her hands began to shake. She went into the living room to unlock the front door, because she knew the smallest thing could set him off, and fumbling around for the door key could send him into a rage. On her way across the room she looked over her shoulder at a framed photograph hanging on the wall, which showed a much younger Missy and Jason beaming at the camera. She wondered if she had been happy back then, but the memory had faded away, buried under all the heartache.
Headlights swept the porch as the car pulled up outside. A door slammed shut and Jason cussed. Footsteps thudded across the porch as she closed her robe and tied it shut with its terrycloth belt. Then a familiar shadow appeared in the doorway.
“Goddamn door better not be locked.”
Missy said a silent prayer: God keep us safe.
The doorknob turned and she felt like she just might vomit.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jason said, as the door opened and he stepped over the threshold, his clothes rumpled, lipstick smeared on his shirt, smelling of liquor and stale perfume, cigarettes and sex.
Missy giggled. She clamped a hand over her mouth, but that didn’t keep her from laughing again.
“The hell’re you laughin’ at?” Jason said, grinning, as if he wanted to be let in on the joke, so that he could enjoy it, too.
“You smell like a dead fish,” Missy said. She couldn’t believe she was laughing, but it was too late now, so she just kept right on doing it.
Jason smiled, nodded his head, as if to say ‘Good one! You got me!’ What he did say was, “That’s not fish, it just smells like it.” He took a step forward, the smile shriveling into a sneering scowl. “That’s pussy with a capital P! Somethin’ I ain’t been gettin’ around here lately!”
“Quiet, Jason,” Missy said. “Please. You’ll wake the children.”
“Fuck the goddamn children!” he yelled, lunging as Missy jumped back and he grabbed a fistful of robe, pulled the robe open and tore the silk nightgown away from her breasts.
“Stop it, Jason!” she yelled. “You can’t treat me like this no more!”
“You back on that shit again?” Jason said, smiling, shaking his head like he just couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He grabbed a nipple, squeezing it hard between his thumb and forefinger as Missy cried out and let her body go limp, wrenching her nipple free as her legs folded beneath her, and Jason pulled on the robe until she was back on her feet.
“Stop it!” she cried out. “I ain’t takin’ this anymore!”
“You ain’t, huh?” Jason said, flinging her against the wall, glass shattering as Missy’s head struck the old family portrait, and the wooden frame jumped off the walnut paneling. Blood trickled from her scalp, d
own her forehead as Jason pulled a pint of Wild Turkey out of his pocket, twisted the cap off and dropped it to the floor, put the bottle to his lips and guzzled a mouthful.
He shouted and laughed, shook his head and gulped down some more, sat the bottle on the coffee table and slipped out of his jacket, and tossed it to the floor as well. Then, using both hands, he grabbed his shirt and yanked it apart, buttons popping and sailing through the air when he ripped off his shirt and threw it over his shoulder.
Missy tried to run but her legs betrayed her, tried to move but she couldn’t. She leaned against the wall, whimpering as her bare-chested husband stepped out of his shoes, unfastened his trousers and dropped them to his ankles. Then he stepped out of his pants, screaming and cursing while his bloodshot eyes bulged, and he stomped across the floor, where he grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her over to the couch, stripped off her robe and forced her onto the cushions. Then he lifted the nightgown up past her breasts, spitting on her when she pleaded for him to stop and clawed at his face, but never even came close to it.
“Jason!” she cried out.
“Don’t do it!” she shrieked, her pleas falling on deaf ears as Jason grabbed her by the throat and pressed his belly against her. One hand squeezing her neck, the other guiding himself, he sneered, “Don’t do what? This?”, and then rammed his cock deep inside her.
Missy tried freeing herself, but she was pinned beneath him, screamed and his hand tightened on her throat, clawed at his hand and he laughed. Her face turned red, then purple. Then her arms stopped thrashing, and she fell limp, her right arm dangling over the side of the couch while Jason tensed and his bloodshot eyes rolled back into his head, and Missy, her eyes nothing but slits now, looked up at a spider crawling slowly across the ceiling as her eyes closed, and consciousness slipped from her.
When she opened her eyes, the spider was gone, and so was Jason.
But she could hear him humming Rock of Ages in the kitchen. She groaned and tried to speak, but could only manage a rasping croak. Her body ached, her insides throbbed painfully. The thought of Jason’s sticky mess oozing out of her made her stomach flip. She touched between her legs, flinching at the sudden jolt of pain there, raised her hand and saw a bloody smear on it. A tear rolled down her cheek, then another, as she tugged her nightgown back into place. Swinging her legs over the edge of the couch, she looked up at the ceiling to see if the spider had come back, and wondered why she would ever care about such a thing.
It hurt when Missy struggled to her feet and crossed the room to pick up the broken picture frame, but for some reason she felt like it needed to be done. She positioned it on the mantle and walked barefoot across the broken glass, through the living room, down the hallway to the kitchen, where Jason sat hunched over a plate of food.
He smiled when he saw her, and asked if she was okay.
“Yes, Jason,” she said, and then stepped over to the sink and plugged a rubber stopper into the drain, tossed in some soap powder and turned on the hot water.
“You gonna quit holdin’ out on me now, ain’t ya?”
“Yes, Jason,” she said, as she put a stack of plates in the sink, and some dirty glasses. She picked up the skillet she had fried the chicken in, and Jason leaned back in his chair, naked, except for the black socks on his feet, as he rubbed a hand across his hairy chest.
“Goddamn right,” he sneered, and Missy stepped over to the table and bashed him in the head with the skillet.
“Yes, Jason,” she said, as the chair rocked sideways and Jason crashed to the floor, his arms splayed awkwardly beneath him when he landed.
Missy walked over, put a foot in his back and shook him. Still as a beached whale, Missy thought, as she went back to the sink, set the skillet on the counter, and turned the water off. Then she walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway, humming Rock of Ages as she went. Her children were upstairs, and she went up to their room to make sure they were sleeping peacefully, tears welling in her eyes as she stood in their doorway. They didn’t deserve this. None of them did. And she finally decided she’d had enough. She would go to Elmer, and they would come back and get Tony and Little Jason. And they would be happy together.
In her bedroom, she traded her torn and bloody nightgown for the summer dress she had worn to Elmer’s earlier in the day. She pressed it to her face, smiling because she could still smell him in the fabric. After slipping into the dress, she put on her shoes and grabbed her purse off the dresser. Looking into the mirror, she didn’t notice her disheveled hair, the thin line of red trickling from her scalp or the bloody streak her face had smeared onto the dress—she didn’t notice much of anything at all.
She went down the stairs and through the front door, onto the porch and out into the night, where she limped down the gravel road under the nearly full moon, thinking about Elmer and the life they would soon have together. She didn’t care that it would take her half the night to cross Seeker’s Mountain, because she knew when she got to Weaver’s Creek, Elmer would take her into his arms, and all her troubles would melt away.
Chapter Twenty
Teddy was called forward last. And now, in the amber glow of the torch-lit basement, he could not even remember what Pitch had said to him. He did remember stuffing fifty thousand dollars into his pockets, and the resultant bulge in his jacket felt mighty good.
They followed Pitch and his thug companion like eager children on their way to a much-anticipated birthday party, down to the kitchen into a large walk-in pantry, where their benefactor revealed an entryway hidden behind a false section of wall. All of Teddy’s nervous apprehension seemed to have been left behind in Pitch’s study as they filed down cold stone steps lit by a single naked bulb at the top of the landing. The stairway, curving downward along a solid stone wall, reminded Teddy of a photograph he had once seen of steps leading into a medieval dungeon. When he touched the wall, it felt moist and smooth, slick as the stone walls of caves he had explored in his youth. Halfway down the stairway, the light at the top of the landing faded into a distant glow, and after what seemed like forever, they stepped into a basement so huge and cavernous, it felt like they had stepped into the outer edges of Hell itself.
Teddy looked out across the floor.
Darkness loomed straight ahead and to the left of him. To the right, a series of burning torches stood far in the distance, spread out ten or so yards away from a giant stone slab, their dancing flames casting eerie, unearthly shadows upon the walls. High above the flickering glow, the shadows seemed to become dark forms that swirled and undulated into a vacuous black void.
While Pitch and his young gangster moved toward the torches, Teddy and the rest of the group headed into the darkness as if they knew exactly where they were going—even though Teddy was quite sure none of them had ever been down there before. On the far side of the vast chamber, thirteen dark brown robes hung on the wall, and they donned those garments and walked to the torches, lining up in front of James Hastie, who stared straight ahead at Pitch, who stood on the slab beside a raised altar, a gleaming silver chalice on the ground by his feet. A child lay on the unholy shrine, wearing nothing but a soiled pair of underpants, eyes wide with fright as he strained against the ropes that bound him to the elevated structure. Behind Pitch stood a gigantic statue of a demon, its feet the cloven hooves of a goat, its thick muscular legs set in a warrior’s stance. Powerful arms extended, its clenched fists threatened all who stood before it. The scowl etched onto its granite face scared Teddy, and the eyes, which looked remarkably like Pitch’s, seemed to be staring right at the frightened mayor.
Though Pitch’s lips were moving, Teddy heard nothing but the crackle of torches, and his own restless breathing. Eyes closed, head tilted back, arms spread out and raised up, Pitch seemed to be calling out to the depraved idol. And then he danced across the stage, his blue eyes glowering, babbling and speaking in tongues, calling out horrible-sounding names Teddy had never heard before—Baal and Mammon, Belial and M
oloch.
Pitch ordered them to bow down, and Teddy’s legs folded beneath him.
Everyone was on their knees… except Hastie.
He commanded them to accept the Dark Master, and Teddy shouted, “My soul to Satan I do give!”
Teddy felt a disturbance in the atmosphere, something soft and cold and clammy brushing his forehead as a bone-chilling wind that couldn’t possibly have been there swept through the cavernous hall. The air became thick, heavy, and Teddy felt it push, and then press against his shoulders, almost as if a hand were touching him. Teddy looked beside him, at Arleta Briscomb, who had Frannie Mitchell’s naked breast cupped in her hand, while her other hand stroked her son’s crotch. She raised the breast to her mouth, biting down on its hard nipple while Frannie shuddered, her eyes rolling up in her head as James Hastie bolted for the stairway and Pitch fell to his knees, arms held high above him, swaying and chanting and calling out to the Lord of the mountain.
“Praise him!” he shouted, and pointed at the kneeling sycophants.
“Glory to the Master!” Teddy screamed, Frannie’s breast falling from Arleta’s mouth as the hillbilly hag praised the Unholy One, and Pitch flung his hands high into the black night—fingers reaching and wriggling, he cried out, “Come to me!” His body shaking as if jolted by an electric current, his blue eyes now as red as a bat’s, he threw back his head and howled, and in one quick motion he was on his feet, scrabbling to the altar, smiling and stroking a hand across the struggling child’s chest.
There came an astonished gasp as a demonic howl that had not come from Pitch echoed out across the crowd. Someone cried out, “Yes!”, and Teddy realized it was his own voice he had heard.
Pitch’s hand dipped beneath the altar, and came up clutching a curved dagger, its bejeweled handle gleaming in the flickering torchlight as it passed before the frightened child’s eyes, and Jack Colbert stood up, taking off his robe and flinging it to the ground, while Pitch stroked a hand across the screaming child’s forehead, and raised the knife high above his head.
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