by John Russo
Punching in 9-1-1 on her phone, she pivoted sharply and started to head out of the yard.
But Darius jumped in front of her and blocked the gate.
“You insolent little punk!” she yelled. “Get out of my way! Let me pass!”
Arms folded, Darius eyed her smugly, not budging an inch.
Now Margaret was even more scared than before. Her eyes darted from one kid to another, and she backed away from them.
She suddenly believed, with absolute conviction in the tenets of her religion, that they were indeed children of Satan.
She recoiled when Tricia called out to her.
“Mrs. Stein . . . look at me. Look at me, Mrs. Stein.”
She turned and gasped. Tricia was staring fixedly at her. And the young girl’s incisors were now fangs.
Kathy bared her fangs, too, and they were glistening with saliva.
Darius came up on Margaret from behind, and when she turned to run, she bumped right into him and found herself locked in his tight embrace. He bit into her neck as Kathy and Tricia emitted demonic laughter. Then the girls closed in too, and Margaret sank to the earth still in Darius’s powerful predatory embrace. The girls bit into Margaret’s arms and legs as Darius continued to suck blood from her neck.
When Darius had drunk his fill, he pulled out his smartphone and shot video of the girls satiating themselves on Margaret’s blood. He got an erotic thrill out of watching them do their thing on the tiny screen. He was glad that now they were ready to wholeheartedly satisfy their craving, which had to wait until puberty to become fully manifested. Long before that, he had made his followers join Reverend Carnes’s youth group because he knew that Carnes and his congregation would actively seek dead bodies to be spiked or burned. And he believed that he might be able to take some of those bodies for his own purposes, instead of spiking them. He needed as many dead ones as he could get, so he could make them into zombies with a mindless craving for human flesh. By sowing terror and disruption, and by building an army of undead slaves, he and his kind, with their more delicate craving for blood instead of raw flesh, would more easily take over the town, the nation, and ultimately, the entire world.
CHAPTER 44
A large group of boys was gathered around a campfire, being led in a religious song by Margaret’s husband, Attorney Bennett Stein. Darius and his fellow band members didn’t bother to sing, and Mr. Stein grimaced at them, but they didn’t care. They merely stared at him insolently and moved away from the campfire. By moonlight they worked their way deeper into the woods.
As they got farther from the campfire, they observed ghostly figures who appeared to be staring at them from the dark foliage. Unperturbed, they watched these strange beings but did not remark upon them or pay them any special attention.
Hank said, “Are we almost there, Darius?”
“Shut up and keep moving.”
Doug said, “Right on. Darius knows where the goodies are.”
They kept going on a weed-grown path, and when they came to a pile of brush at the foot of a large gnarled tree, they grinned at one another, looking pleased and excited. “Uncover it,” Darius said, and the three other boys pulled aside some of the leaves and branches. Margaret Stein’s corpse stared up at them, her skin ghastly white, her body caked with dried blood from the punctures of many fangs.
Hank said, “That’s so cool, Darius! Is she ready to join the others?”
As if in answer to Hank’s question, Margaret began to stir. Her arms and legs twitched a little, and she made her first efforts to sit up.
“The morphine is wearing off now,” Darius said. “She’s already undead, and she’s going to get really, really hungry.”
“What a trip!” Ben said.
Hank and Doug could not stifle an outburst of laughter.
“Let’s get outta here,” Darius said. “Let the fun and games begin!”
He led his three followers back toward the campfire, leaving the corpse lying there, writhing around in her first struggles to come back to life. As the boys trudged along the path, eyeing the glow of the fire in the distance, Bennett Stein barged out at them and yelled, “You four boys! What do you mean by sneaking off like this?”
Darius and his friends snickered and stared defiantly at Stein.
Stein stomped toward them and indignantly grabbed Doug and Hank, spinning them around till they were facing him, and barking at Darius, “This is all your fault! You used to be a role model for the younger boys, but now you’re just a bad influence!”
Darius laughed, and his laugh was frighteningly sinister.
The ghoulish figures, who previously were staring at the boys from back in the foliage as they headed toward Margaret’s corpse, now came forward openly, as if Darius’s evil laugh had summoned them.
Doug yelled, “Turn us loose, fat man!”
And Hank jeered, “You don’t know who you’re messin’ with!”
Ben suddenly punched Stein in his soft belly, and he sank to his knees, groaning, with the wind knocked out of him. Then, out of the shadows, his dead wife stepped toward him, and he recoiled in absolute terror. She was undead now, and so were her ghoulish companions. In varying stages of decay, and with various wounds and deformities having to do with their deaths, they rasped and drooled hungrily as they encircled Bennett Stein, letting his dead wife take the lead.
Stein cowered, mumbling, “Margaret? Oh, no . . . oh God! It’s happening . . . it’s actually happening . . . the way the reverend said . . .”
Darius, Ben, and Hank returned to the campfire without Doug, who had been given a special assignment by Darius, and joined the other boys in singing a traditional hymn, “The Church in the Wildwood,” as if nothing untoward was going on. They raised their voices and sang as loudly as they could to cover the sounds of Bennett Stein being ripped apart.
After they sang the final notes of the song, Darius announced to the rest of the kids that Mr. Stein had gotten a late call from his legal secretary and had left for his law office to fill out papers for a client of his who needed to be bailed out of jail. The kids whispered and giggled and bought the story. In the meantime, on Darius’s instructions Doug was driving Mr. Stein’s Cadillac to the Steins’ home so he could park it in their driveway.
CHAPTER 45
Watching anxiously from behind a heavy curtain pulled aside slightly, Lauren Curtis saw Reverend Carnes pulling up and parking, then getting out of a rusty black Chevy pickup with the windows wound down. It was a stifling hot day, and Lauren realized the truck probably didn’t have air-conditioning, or else the system wasn’t functioning. She knew from the recent sermons she had heard him preach that he considered self-deprivation a virtue and a form of self-imposed punishment for his sins. She hoped against hope that he could do what he had to do before Bill came home from work and caught them at it. She also hoped that somehow Jodie wouldn’t tell on her. And at the same time, she thought that if Jodie got well, it would all be worth it, even at the risk of alienating Bill.
She came out onto the front porch to greet Carnes so she could have a few words with him before he came into the house, where Jodie could easily overhear. She knew she looked a mess, and it embarrassed her. She was wearing faded jeans, a green sweater, and brown leather sandals with no socks. No makeup on her face either. The red paint on her fingernails was chipped and the nails needed trimmed. When her daughter’s well-being was at issue, she tended to let herself go. She was sweaty from hurry-up housework, and hadn’t dared take the time to shower for fear that Jodie would have some sort of crisis, call out to her, and with the water running she wouldn’t be able to hear. She thought that Carnes, who always had four o’clock shadow, even in the morning, was better groomed right now than she was, though he was wearing the same worn-out black suit and yellowed Roman collar that he always wore, and his black shoes were dull and scuffed.
Confronting him on the porch steps, Lauren said, “I’m sorry you came all the way over here, Reverend Carnes. I�
��m not sure I should be going through with this.”
“That’s what you said on the phone. I came prepared anyway. I have a crucifix and a bottle of holy water in my truck.”
“Again, I’m sorry to put you through so much trouble. I may back out.”
While Lauren and Carnes conversed on the front porch, Kathy Traeger got out of the red Mustang convertible that her mother had bought her for her sixteenth birthday. She had followed Reverend Carnes to the Curtises’ home and had parked a short distance down the street. At first she had no special reason for doing this; she was simply out for mischief. But now she realized what the reverend must be up to. He must have suspected that Jodie was in the clutches of something evil, and he had the nerve to think he could thwart it. Fat chance! Smiling at the joke she was about to play on him, Kathy sneaked over to his truck, reached in, and grabbed his little bottle of holy water. She didn’t believe it was in any way special or holy. It was just distilled water mixed with a couple drops of olive oil. No way could it stop the inner forces that were taking over the body and mind of Jodie Curtis. Nevertheless, Kathy decided to have some fun with it. She knew that Jodie’s blisters were going to clear up on their own, because that was how the process worked, but it would be a kick to let the reverend think that his prayers were the thing that did the trick. The gullible old fool!
Kathy looked all around, and when she noticed a birdbath in the front lawn next door, she went over to it, uncapped the little bottle, poured the so-called holy water onto the ground, and refilled the bottle with water from the birdbath. Then she put the bottle back on the passenger seat of the reverend’s truck, got into her Mustang, and drove away.
On the porch of the Curtis home, Reverend Carnes was still trying to convince Lauren to go ahead with what in essence would be an exorcism. “If you back out now, Satan will be mightily pleased. You’ll be playing right into the devil’s hands.”
“I thought I was ready for this, but now I’m having second thoughts,” Lauren said, highly worried. “If my daughter tells my husband, he’ll flip out. I’m not sure Jodie will help me keep it secret, no matter how it turns out. She’s a daddy’s girl, and she knows full well that her dad doesn’t believe in prayers and miracles.”
“But unbelievers can be your downfall. It’s time for you to think about what you want. Don’t you want Jodie’s soul to be washed clean?”
“Bill would scoff at that. He’d call me a superstitious fool.”
“He’s a good man,” said Carnes, “but he’ll burn in hell if he doesn’t change his ways. If it makes you feel better, I can assure you that your daughter will emerge with little or no memory of how she was cleansed.”
“If that’s true, it’d be a comfort,” said Lauren. “I wouldn’t have to tell Bill about my part in this, and even if he found out he’d be thrilled that Jodie is healed.”
“Healed not only physically but spiritually,” Carnes promised adamantly.
“She’s going to fight me tooth and nail,” Lauren said. “We might not even be able to hold her down.”
“Did you give her the codeine?”
“Yes, a heavy dose of cough syrup. Plus I crushed two Xanax and mixed the powder into her orange juice.”
“She’ll likely be sound asleep by now,” said Carnes. “If she’s awake, we don’t have to go forward if you don’t want to.”
Lauren bit her lip and said, “All right, come on in.”
“I’ll get the holy water and the crucifix,” said Carnes. “It healed Brenda Kallen when she got sick at my church camp. Holy water and prayer. It will save your daughter too, Mrs. Curtis. You won’t regret this.”
* * *
Kathy Traeger was on her phone with Tricia Lopez as she motored along Main Street in her red Mustang with the top down, loving the feel of the breeze in her long dark hair. “So I filled the bottle with water from the birdbath!” she boasted with a mischievous laugh.
“Love it, babe!” Tricia said.
They both erupted in giggles.
“Maybe Carnes will drive a stake in Jodie’s heart,” Kathy said giddily.
“Or her head,” Tricia chirped, going along with the joke.
“I hope not,” Kathy said soberly. “I like her. So does Darius.”
“I know. He has the screaming hots for her.”
“She’s soon going to be ready to lose her virginity.”
“Thanks to us,” said Tricia.
“We have more fun than anybody!” Kathy said.
“Right on! Everybody in the world should be like us!”
“Maybe more people soon will be,” said Kathy, and she hit the gas harder as she turned onto the highway that would take her home.
* * *
The living room was lit with candles, and Jodie’s limp body was lying in the middle of the carpet as Reverend Carnes and Lauren knelt over her. Now that the exorcism was in progress, she couldn’t believe it was actually happening. She was profoundly wavering, and she hoped the reverend couldn’t tell, because if he knew, he would mock her backslide, her lapse of faith.
All the crises she and Bill had been through with Jodie—from her near-strangulation with the umbilical cord to her near-death experiences with life-threatening allergies, then the plummet into PTSD—tumbled through Lauren’s mind, producing a bitter anger over the unfairness of her life and the many losses she had suffered. She wished she could accept it all as God’s will, and that was what was beckoning her back to religion, but she was still failing to get herself permanently in that frame of mind. In other words, in Carnes’s judgment, she was refusing to give herself fully to Jesus. She was still a doubting Thomas, no matter how hard she tried to surrender to a Greater Power.
The reverend began whispering a prayer, and Lauren knew he was whispering because he didn’t want to take the chance of waking Jodie out of her drug-induced sleep. The whispering seemed less impressive than the booming voices of the evangelical preachers on TV, who always spoke at the top of their lungs, as if God’s people and God Himself were hard of hearing.
“Oh, unclean spirit,” Carnes said, “I command you to leave the body of this innocent child! Return to the fiery bowels of hell! Go back into the arms of Satan, your unholy master!”
Lauren knew that if Bill walked through the door right now and caught her at this, it might end their marriage. He was kind, he was considerate, he was loving. But he couldn’t abide what he thought of as ignorance. Ignorant groveling before God and demons. He had nothing but contempt for it. But she, more than he, was willing to try anything.
Reverend Carnes soaked his white handkerchief with water from his little bottle and began to gently swab Jodie’s purplish blisters. Then he handed the bottle and cloth to Lauren, wordlessly urging her to continue swabbing.
“By the power of the Holy Spirit,” he whispered, “I ask that this child be made pure! Let sanctifying grace purify and protect her immortal soul!”
When Lauren wiped Jodie’s blistered lips, she moaned feverishly, as if the touch of wetness might wake her up. Then suddenly she began writhing in obvious agony. She let out a horrible scream.
But to Lauren’s amazement, the reverend kept on praying, seemingly unperturbed.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name . . .”
Lauren joined him in the Lord’s Prayer.
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .”
Lauren was surprised how easily the words came back to her, now that she hadn’t really belonged to any church for a long time. It was Bill who had gotten her away from her Catholic religion. And the Catholic clergy taught that giving in to the beliefs of any other kind of church was heresy—one of the worst sins anyone could ever commit.
Lauren was being torn in so many directions that she didn’t know who or what to believe anymore. Sh
e only hoped that somehow she was doing the right thing for her daughter, even if her marriage did not survive.
CHAPTER 46
On a bright Saturday morning in mid-June, Jodie Curtis was jubilant! Her ugly blisters were gone, and she was going mall hopping with her BFFs! She couldn’t stop looking at her glowing complexion in the bathroom mirror, and as a result she wasn’t quite ready when Kathy honked the horn. She peered out of her parents’ front bedroom window and saw the red Mustang with its top down, dashed back into her own bedroom, hurried up and fastened her bra and put on a Metallica T-shirt, then kissed her mother’s cheek, ran out the door, and piled into the back seat, between Brenda and Tricia.
Immediately she blurted, “Look at me! My blisters are gone!”
“We told you so,” Kathy said, smiling back at her from behind the wheel.
“I wanna hit the Gap,” Tricia said. “They’re having a summer sale.”
“I wanna hit a lot of stores!” Brenda chimed in.
“Cool!” said Jodie. “My blisters are gone! My blisters are gone! My blisters are gone!”
“So good for you,” said Kathy, peeling out.
“So shaddup about it already!” said Brenda.
Jodie clammed up, but she wished her friends would be happier for her than they sounded. They were so incredibly blasé, in her opinion.
Later, at Banana Republic, as the four girls gleefully browsed among dresses, skirts, blouses, and sweaters, Tricia eyed Jodie over one of the racks of jeans on plastic hangers and said, “Didn’t we tell you those blisters would go away, Jodie? You were acting like such a dweeb over it! Such a scaredy-cat! And there was never really anything to worry about.”
Jodie said, “My mother told me that Reverend Carnes came and cured me with prayers and holy water, but I don’t remember a thing about it. She made me promise not to tell my dad. But she’s making me go to church now. She didn’t used to care much about religion, but now it’s like she’s trying to be some kind of saint or something.”
