The Influence

by Bentley Little

  “Shaman,” she said. “Let’s face it, religion’s a lot better equipped to deal with something like this than science is. For the simple reason that it acknowledges the existence of the mystical.

  “In fact, I’m going to talk to Father Ramos, too,” she said. “The Catholic religion has cleansing rituals, rites meant to drive out evil spirits and repel demons.”

  “Father Ramos thinks it’s an angel,” Ross pointed out.

  “I’m going to talk to him. You should come with me and tell him what you’ve seen.”

  “Okay,” Ross said. He was a rationalist. He didn’t believe in ghosties and ghoulies and gods and monsters. At the same time, he followed facts and evidence, and if the facts led him to some sort of paranormal explanation for everything that was going on, he wasn’t so closed-minded that he would automatically reject that conclusion.

  And right now the evidence pointed toward that body in the shed being one powerful supernatural entity.

  He certainly didn’t think Jill’s shaman was going to solve all of their problems.

  But it couldn’t hurt.

  TWENTY THREE

  Vern Hastings glanced around at the six women and four men gathered in his living room. He was the lay preacher of this congregation, and though several others had tried to join his church in the past two weeks, he knew that they did so purely out of fear. The true believers were the ones who had been with him from the beginning, and it was only these worshippers he allowed into his house to celebrate the seventh day.

  Rose had placed a pitcher of water on the table, along with a stack of Dixie cups. As always, they had each been fasting for the past twenty-four hours, and the fast would continue until suppertime this evening, though in the interim they were allowed to partake of the cleansing purity of water. None of them did, each wanting to show their strength of will to the others, and Vern was glad. He was proud of his congregation. He had taught them well.

  The grandfather clock in the hall chimed ten, and Vern began his sermon, which today was about children and the Lord’s admonitions to them. He quoted Deuteronomy: “And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.” He said this specifically for the sake of Tessa Collins. She was a glutton, and so was her son Wade, and if Vern had his druthers, they would both be taken to the edge of the city and stoned to death.

  He liked Tessa’s husband Andy, however, and he figured Andy might pick up on the hint and get his woman and his boy in shape before it was too late.

  Vern continued talking about children, going over God’s laws against disobedience, harlotry and girls’ wearing of clothing associated with men. Though he and Rose had no children of their own—the Lord had not seen fit to bless them with offspring—there was no doubt in his mind that the two of them would have been far better parents than everyone else in this congregation. Not to mention the idolaters and heathens who populated the town and lands around them.

  After he was finished speaking, they each prayed, then sang a song unto the Lord. There was a pause, and then Vern cleared his throat before addressing the most important subject before them: the angel. As he had for the last several Sundays, he recounted the events of New Year’s Eve.

  “There are no accidents,” he continued. “There is nothing that happens that God does not know about or plan. He knew we would shoot down His angel in our drunken revelry. He wanted us to do so. But now He is waiting for our response. Yet again, He has sacrificed one of His own for us, a blood sacrifice, and now it is up to us to do the same, to offer up to Him a blood sacrifice of our own.”

  This was the moment he had been waiting for, and he opened the closet door behind him and pulled out the small cage that he used to house the jackrabbits he sometimes caught. In it was a baby he had taken from an Indian woman on Thursday. He placed the cage down on the carpet next to the coffeetable and stood there proudly as everyone looked at it.

  He had seen the Indian woman standing next to one of the pumps at the gas station, holding her baby, obviously looking for a ride, and the idea came to him. He had no doubt that it was divinely inspired—there was no way he could have come up with such a plan on his own—and as smoothly as though he had rehearsed for days, he rolled down the window of his car and said easily, “Would you like a ride?”

  She was suspicious for a moment, but she got in, and Vern drove at first in the direction she told him, until they were out of town, then he ignored her directions and took off down a dirt road that led into the desert toward the ruins of the old Peralta ranch. She was quiet, almost as though she knew what was coming, and she did not fight him as he stopped the car next to Wailing Woman Wash, got out, walked around to the passenger door, opened it and took the baby from her. He motioned for her to get out, and when she did, he placed the infant on her seat. She’d said nothing since getting into the car, and he knew that was the Lord’s doing, because he was weak and would probably not have been able to go through with it had she pleaded for mercy or begged him to stop.

  Grabbing her arm, he pulled her to the side of the road and threw her into the wash. He wasn’t sure what he would have done at that point—stone her? strangle her?—but it didn’t matter because she hit her head on a large rock when she fell and was immediately still. Blood, an astonishing amount, flowed out from the side of her head onto the sand.

  Instantly, as though it was part of a plan—and it was: God’s plan—a wild one-eyed dog came running out from between some brittlebush and began desperately chewing on the woman’s exposed ankle. Several crows flew down from the branches of a nearby palo verde, and from high in the sky two turkey buzzards dropped down and landed on her back. None of the animals paid any attention to the others, and all tore into her flesh, feasting. He had no doubt that in several hours there would be nothing left but bone.

  As he turned away, back toward the car, a coyote crossed the road, heading toward the woman in the wash.

  Vern had taken the baby home with him, told Rose of his plan, and put the infant in the cage, in the closet, feeding it only water. It had remained there until now, until needed. Opening the wire gate, Vern withdrew the baby and placed it atop the table, where it lay on its back, unmoving. Too weak to cry, the infant made low mewling noises.

  Rose handed him a knife—her curved filleting knife from the kitchen—and he held it up. “Who would like to do the honors?”

  He knew none of them would be brave enough to carry out the Lord’s will and was merely trying to shame them, to make them uncomfortably aware of their own cowardice, but to his surprise old Etta Rawls raised her hand. “I will,” she announced.

  He was proud of her—as was the Lord—but he smiled, shaking his head. “I thank you, Etta, but on second thought, I believe it would be better if I did the deed myself.”

  For a brief moment, looking down at the brown-skinned infant, Vern thought that maybe God would not consider this a real sacrifice because it was not someone who mattered. It was just some papoose he had stolen. For the sacrifice to count, it should be one of them, a white person, someone important. But then he remembered that he was doing this for the entire Magdalena community and not just for his congregation. This baby was a member of that community, so in the end it did count.

  Besides, the angel they’d killed could not have been a very important one. If it had been, God would already have taken His wrath out on them. The fact that He was waiting, that He was offering them a chance of forgiveness and redemption, meant that this was the right thing to do.

  He held the knife aloft, offering a prayer. “Dear Lord, we are sorry for what we have done. Forgive us our sins, forgive us our pride, and let this sacrifice pay our debt to You so that we may once again bask in the glory of Your goodness. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”

  Vern brought the knife down, feeling an odd satisfaction as the blade overcame a qu
ick spongy resistance and pierced the skin, sinking easily into the flesh. Pain made the baby find its strength, and it cried out as the knife sliced into its midsection, but the cry was cut off almost before it could start as the child started to choke. Blood was everywhere, not spurting but flowing, running over the sides of the small body onto the table and streaming onto the rug. He pushed down harder, through organ, through bone, and within seconds the infant was dead, pinned to the table like a lab specimen.

  Blood continued to pour out of the body. Rose was trying to move the Dixie cups out of the way, but Vern stopped her. Improvising, he picked up one of the cups and put it under the red waterfall cascading over the side of the table. “Drink!” he ordered, and took a small sip before passing it to Rose next to him. She did the same, then passed it on, until everyone had partaken and the cup was back in his hands. He felt like vomiting—he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to wash that putrid taste out of his mouth—but he remained stoic, and said, “We will now give this child a proper Christian burial and hope the Lord hears our pleas.”

  Rose ran off to the kitchen to get something to clean up the mess, and Vern withdrew the knife, putting it down on the table before picking up the small body and placing it back in the cage. He’d take the cage outside and bury the baby in the yard. They would all help him.

  And, if they were lucky, the Lord would take back His angel and all would be forgiven.

  ****

  Jeri Noblit delivered the mail in town, and, after lunch, went out as she usually did to deliver to the scattered homes on the ranch route. For Christmas, Don had gotten a satellite radio installed it in her car, and she was beyond grateful. Reception had always been hit and miss out here—mostly miss—and it was nice to be able to hear continuous music as she drove. She was especially partial to the Outlaw Country station, and it definitely made the long drives between the various ranches more palatable. Not to mention the initial trip out to the highway to collect the mail from the postal delivery truck.

  She actually enjoyed her job now.

  The red flag was up on Dave and Lita’s mailbox—bills to be sent out, most likely—and she pulled next to the box, pushed the flag down, removed outgoing mail and replaced it with incoming: a couple of ads and what looked like an official envelope with a Las Vegas postmark (something to do with Dave’s parents, no doubt). The next stop was Mose Holiman’s trailer, and it was so far out that she considered skipping it today. But though there was only one piece of mail for Mose, it was from the government, so it was probably important, and as inconvenient as it was, Jeri drove the ten miles out to his place. After all, it was her job.

  On the way back, she intended to swing by Cameron Holt’s ranch and drop off his mail. The past few times she’d been by, there’d been no problem, but last week Cameron had been standing by his mailbox with a shotgun, waiting for her, and when she’d rolled down the window to hand him his mail, he’d pointed the shotgun at her and told her to get the hell off his land. She’d been tempted to just throw his mail on the ground and take off, but she was honestly afraid that he might shoot at her as she was driving away. There was something off about him, something crazed, and she’d reacted instinctively, pretending she didn’t hear him, putting his mail in the box and driving calmly off as though nothing was amiss.

  She hadn’t told Don what had happened—he just would’ve gotten himself worked up and that wouldn’t have done anybody any good—but now every time she came by, she worried that Cameron was going to be out there again.

  She’d always hated that man, and now she was afraid of him, too.

  As impossible as it might seem today, she knew that at one time Cameron Holt had been someone’s baby, someone’s cute little boy. He’d probably watched cartoons and played with toys, and maybe when he’d had a nightmare, his mommy had gone into his bedroom to reassure him. “I started out as a child,” Bill Cosby had said on one of her mom’s old records that Jeri had listened to as a kid, and that was the truth of it. Everyone started out as a child, and it was only on the way to adulthood that paths diverged, that some turned out to be saints, some turned out to be assholes and the vast majority of people ended up somewhere in-between.

  She navigated by landmark and knew she had reached the eastern end of Cameron’s vast holdings when she saw the familiar water tank and adjacent rusted tractor. But there was something new here today, and she slowed down, peering through the windshield.

  What the hell was that?

  She stopped the car. Scarecrows had been put up in Cameron Holt’s field.

  Even at a casual glance, there seemed something disturbing about them. That field had been fallow for as long as she could remember—Cameron was a rancher not a farmer—and the figures were not spaced throughout the pasture but were lined up in a row along the edge of the fence, facing the highway. They were not uniform, but were of different shapes and sizes, wearing different types of clothes.

  They looked real.

  Jeri didn’t want to think about that.

  She rolled the car forward slowly, until she was even with the first of the figures.

  She remembered, years ago, when she was in high school, renting a video with a couple of her friends, a horror movie about a deranged farmer who killed people and installed their bodies in his cornfield as scarecrows.

  Why was that even in her head? That obviously wasn’t what was going on here.

  Was it?

  The scarecrows, she could see now, were made of clay or mud. She looked out the window at the one nearest her. This close, the detail of the face was clearly visible, so meticulously wrought that it resembled an actual person. The hands, too, she noticed, were realistically shaped from the mud, like a sculpture. She got out of the car for a closer look. She could even see an expression on the brown grainy face: anger.

  How could mud be posted on a pole? Jeri wondered. The figures couldn’t be nailed there, and she saw no ropes or twine. What was holding them up?

  She stepped up to the fence, staring over it at the raised figure. She still didn’t understand the purpose of these scarecrows. There weren’t any crops to protect, and there weren’t even many birds to scare away. What was the point? Why had Cameron put them up? She glanced down the row, and a chill passed through her.

  Had the second one been facing straight ahead a moment ago, looking toward the road?

  Because its head was now turned in her direction.

  They were all turned toward her, she noticed, and, heart pounding, she backed slowly toward the car, keeping her eyes on the row of scarecrows, alert for any sign of movement. Her rear bumped against the car door, and she quickly fumbled for the handle, opening the door, hurrying inside and locking it.

  She knew about the thing in Cameron’s smokehouse, the angel, as everyone called it, and she wondered if it was in any way connected with these eerie effigies. People told her that the angel had great power, even though it was dead, and several individuals on her route had been the victims of mysterious circumstance. It hadn’t affected her or Don, but then again she was afraid to look at things too closely. It was said that the angel turned good luck bad and bad luck good, and it was true that weird things along those lines had been happening since New Year’s eve. Roscoe Evanrude’s celebrated mineral spring had run dry overnight, while Jackass McDaniels’ ridiculous mine had yielded gold. Dave and Lita’s hens had stopped laying, while Mary Mitchum’s long-dead apple tree was suddenly full of blossoms.

  Jeri started the car, put it into gear. Ahead, a man was walking toward her down the road, a man holding a large bunch of balloons that were sagging above his head, half-deflated. An odd sight at any time, it was downright creepy under the circumstances. Where had he come from? she wondered.

  The man, she saw as she approached, was Paul Coburn, that rich nerd with the bimbo wife who’d decided to slum it in Magdalena for some strange reason. He was filthy, wearing torn raggedly clothes, but he was smiling at her. On the satellite radio, Johnny C
ash was singing about “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Jeri maneuvered around the balloon man, not making eye contact, speeding up as soon as she passed him.

  Glancing in her rearview mirror, she saw a gap in the line of scarecrows.

  One of them had come off its pole.

  She floored the gas pedal, fishtailing for a second before the tires caught, and sped away, topping seventy on the narrow dirt road as she hauled ass toward town. She flew past Cameron’s drive and the dented mailbox at its head without stopping.

  New rule, she decided. She was no longer going to deliver the ranch route. If Cameron and the other ranchers wanted to pick up their mail, they could come to her house. She’d set up afternoon hours for them. If the postal service didn’t like it, they could find someone else to do her job. But she was not driving out here again.

  She did not look any more in her rearview mirror, and she did not slow down until she reached Margo Hynde’s place at the edge of town.

  ****

  The setting sun was already half-hidden behind a hill, and Tax Stuart glanced nervously toward the east. He still had another forty minutes until the landfill closed, and by that time it would be dark.

  He didn’t like working here when it was dark.

  He turned up the CD player in the weigh-station booth. Long shadows were forming between the piles of refuse and in the pit, and while the brush pile had been burned and the fire was out, smoke still hung heavy over that section of the dump, making the area even gloomier.

  He was thinking of changing the landfill’s hours so he wouldn’t have to be here when the sun went down. He knew it was childish and irrational, but though this fear had only started recently, it had become a growing concern, and for the past week he’d dreaded coming to work each morning, knowing what awaited him at the end of the day. If he could afford to do so, he’d hire another worker, have him close up, but unless the population around here drastically increased, that wasn’t going to happen.