“What else could there be?” Pastor Edward asked.
“This couple, the new couple in town, they’re mixed, Pastor. The husband is white, but that woman is not. That black witch cursed me! I can’t work, I can’t think. I still feel her touch on my skin, in my head. Cursed. She cursed me, Pastor.”
Edward stood up and walked back behind the pulpit. This was a busier Sunday than usual. But what to do? His flock was small, and did not usually require much shepherding. But now, he had a woman kneeling at his altar, crying, speaking of mixed couples and supernatural activity.
“Rafferty, would you do me a favor?” Edward asked. “I’ve got a coffeemaker in my office. Will you go start us a fresh pot? I think we need it.”
Rafferty nodded and left the sanctuary through the side door.
Edward rocked, from his heels to the balls of his feet, trying to come up with the right words to say. He wanted to be comforting to the woman, but it was more important to be in line and correct with Scripture. There wasn’t a question about the truthfulness of Penny’s statements. If one of your flock tells you something, and they’ve not shown any sign of mental illness before, you believe them. You have to.
Besides, religion was all about the supernatural. Edward had devoted his life to believing in resurrection, transubstantiation and an immaculate conception, things which sounded crazy on the surface. If Penny said the black woman in town was a witch, then how could he not believe her? It would go against the nature of his thought processes.
The more he thought about it, the more the whole thing made sense. Not that he wanted it to, by any stretch, but if one went by Scripture, there was precedence.
Oh, God, what do you want me to do? Please tell me what you want me to do.
The answer came almost as soon the prayer had dissipated from his thoughts. It felt as though his brain were being sucked backwards through his skull. The skin on his face was tight, like he was in a centrifuge, taking on G-forces. He grasped onto the sides of his pulpit, trying to hang on. Edward could hear voices whispering on each side of his head, different things in both ears at the same time. His brain swam in befuddlement and he tilted his face towards the heavens. He could hear – no, feel – drums, the rhythm pounding on his brain stem like Morse code. Information seemed to pour into his consciousness like a hot green rain. It was all he could do to keep from screaming.
Edward had read about visitations before, and been envious. Saints and martyrs, madmen and prophets, all claiming to have had a personal experience with God, who gave them private information or sacred insight. Bright lights, reverie and, yes, a hint of madness, but more than that: contact. Proof. A reason to keep believing. A touch from the Hand.
Now, Edward finally got his. He was one of the Chosen. And as his Father in heaven spoke into one ear and the angels murmured into the other, Edward listened with an open heart to the plans being laid out before him and gasped with their simplicity and effectiveness.
As soon as the Heavenly Beings had descended, they returned to the heights. Edward fell to his knees, gripping his ears, eyes shut, mouth open in a silent scream. Is this how John the Revelator had felt? Perhaps Mary, at the time of the angelic announcement of her pregnancy? Did it still count as a vision if he didn’t actually see anything?
Maybe none of that mattered. His face was hot, and he sensed it was radiating a form of light. Shekinah. That was the word for it, and Edward briefly remembered Charlton Heston, all bronzer and white hair, coming down off Mount Sinai in that movie about the Ten Commandments they showed on TV every Easter. Edward hoped his hair had changed color, too. It would be the perfect way to cap off this revelation.
Rafferty re-entered the sanctuary with three cups of coffee in his calloused hands. Penny was on the floor, prostrate in front of the altar, weeping. Edward was barely standing, holding on to the pulpit like a walker, shaking his head. What did I miss? Rafferty wondered.
He placed the coffee cups on the altar, taking a second to ask forgiveness for profaning the Lord’s Table with something as lowly as coffee. It was hot, though. His hands were burning. Rafferty took one mug by the handle and approached Pastor Edward with caution.
Before he could say anything, Pastor Edward whipped his head around and stared at Rafferty, fixing the man in his tracks. Edward shuffled his feet towards the pulpit, straightening himself out. Rafferty could hear the bones in Edward’s back popping.
When he was standing, full and tall, the Pastor took the coffee mug from Rafferty’s hand. He smiled a crooked, bewildered half grin, and told Rafferty to be seated.
He did so, but not before handing Penny Renfro her drink. She arose from her area of mourning, silently thanked Rafferty for the coffee, and he helped her to the front pew. Rafferty himself sat in the pew behind Penny, so as not to give even the slightest indication of impropriety.
The tiny congregation waited for Pastor Edward to begin speaking. The events of the morning had created an air of anticipation and excitement. Penny found herself tapping her foot against the wooden floor. Rafferty cracked his knuckles and looked around, as if he expected to see a crowd of people behind him.
Pastor Edward cleared his throat and began to speak.
***
“I have had a vision,” Pastor Edward said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “The Lord came down and spoke to me. Just now, right here, behind this holy pulpit. Me! The least deserving of His servants.” He shook his head, clearing the cobwebs, running that final psychological diagnostic check. Was he crazy? Had he lost his mind?
It was scientifically possible, his brain concluded, that he was a raging nutball.
But his faith overrode that option, and Edward began to speak in earnest, his voice growing in power and swelling in volume.
“The Lord and His angels spoke to me, while I was waiting for Brother Rafferty to bring me coffee, and the words they said were beautiful.”
Penny’s hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide. Rafferty simply nodded, as if this was precisely what he expected this Sunday morning.
“He has heard your cries, Sister Penny,” Edward said, leveling his gaze at her watering eyes. “And He is greatly saddened by the sin He sees festering in Elders Keep. It pains Him, for he is righteous and pure. He cannot be near sin. He cannot abide its presence.”
Rafferty was rocking back and forth in his seat, eyes closed. “Yes, Lord,” he mumbled.
“For, you see, Sister Penny has found favor in the eyes of the Lord by bringing these sins before His holy church! She did not turn a blind eye to iniquity, but has exposed it to the bright and shining light of God, and He is pleased to use His people as His holy instruments to make things right again, amen!”
“Yes, Lord,” said Rafferty. His voice was settling into a deeper register, where mantras normally reside.
Edward was pacing across the stage, only standing behind the pulpit to wipe the sweat from his brow and rest for a moment. The Holy Spirit was filling him and he was simply the vessel of the Lord. He was no longer aware of what he was saying. It was God, speaking through him.
“For we have in front of us two sins, you see, two mortal sins, you see, and these sins are why the Lord is displeased, you see.” He was hitting his stride now, the hypnotic cadence rolling out of his mouth as if he were Jesus’ own drill instructor. “And we know from Sister Penny, whom the Lord hath chosen as His own sentinel, that we now have an interracial marriage in Elders Keep, and it is a sad, sad day indeed.”
“Yes, Lord,” said Rafferty.
“For we know from the Holy Scriptures, you see, that the Lord, Our God, looks down upon the combining of the races in marriage. He disdains! The mixing of the bloodlines. He abhors! The things that cause uncleanness. He despises! Those who break His holy law in order to chase after their own fleshly desires. Do you hear me, people?”
“Yes, Pastor!” Rafferty and Penny cried. Penny was blushing, pleased at all the attention she was receiving. Her name spoken from the pulpit, her existence
validated by God himself. Pastor Edward said she was a sentinel. A sentinel! She didn’t even know what that was, but it sounded like a magnificent bird, like a giant eagle with soft white feathers.
“What does the Word say about this?” Edward asked. “What! Does! The! Irrefutable Word of Our Lord Jesus Christ say about this? Well, His word is simple! His Word is simple and easy to understand, people, and it is always true. Straight from the Book of Nehemiah, you see. The thirteenth chapter! Starting with verse twenty-six, in which we find this.
‘Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin by doing these things? Yet among many nations, there was no king like him, who was beloved of his God, and God made him King over all Israel: nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin.’”
Edward paused to wipe the sweat away. He looked at his paltry congregation of two, and they were enraptured. Edward had never received this kind of attention from his flock before. They had never been so attentive, and the Power of God had never filled the air of the sanctuary as it had at that very moment.
“Do you hear the Lord through His Holy Scripture?” Edward asked. “Do you understand the Word as it is given to you? Solomon! The wisest man ever to live! Even he was led astray by foreign women. And the commentaries tell us that by “foreign,” the writer means women from African nations. With their false gods. With their strange rituals. We see it here! In Scripture! The Negress and her inherent desire to destroy the chosen men of God, the Caucasian race.”
“Yes, Lord,” Rafferty moaned. “Hear the word of the Lord.”
“And yet the Word of the Lord continues, and it stands forever, amen, thank you, Jesus. And in Verse twenty-seven, He continues to bless us with wisdom, for the Lord is good and His glory endures forever, amen, you know it’s true.”
Penny and Rafferty nodded.
“Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives?”
Edward took an audibly deep breath before continuing.
“The woman is the heart of the home. The woman is meant to be submissive to the man. The woman is subservient to the man and that is how God designed the household to operate! If the woman rises up and takes the place of the man, then it is a transgression against the Most High! This is a sin. Their whole marriage is an incredible sin in the eyes of the Lord. People, it must not stand.”
“Hear the Word of the Lord,” Rafferty said, and Penny clapped and stamped her feet.
“For you see what is going on here, people,” Edward said. “Do you see? I can see. I see it so clearly, thanks to the insight given to me in this very temple, thank you, Jesus!”
There was spontaneous applause from the congregation.
“Remember what you said, Penny?” Edward left the podium and knelt before Penny, his gaze impossible to escape. “About how you felt when the woman touched you?”
“I felt… odd,” Penny stammered, struggling to remember now that she was on the spot. “I wanted to kiss her.”
“You wanted to kiss her,” Edward echoed.
“I wanted to touch her!”
“You wanted to touch her.”
“I wanted to make love to her! And I don’t even know how to make love to a woman!”
“You wanted to have carnal relations with that woman.”
Penny nodded. “Yes! Jesus forgive me, I did!”
Edward’s breath stank of coffee and adrenaline. “Sister Penny, have you ever had sexual feelings towards a woman before?”
“Oh, no,” Penny said, shaking her head. “No, never. I don’t even look at catalogs!”
Edward lowered his eyes to the floor, patted Penny on the leg and stood up.
“There’s only one kind of person who could engender feelings such as that into a sanctified daughter of Christ,” Edward said. “A witch.”
Penny tried to scoot further back into her pew to get away from the horrible truth. Rafferty buried his face in hands and started praying in tongues.
“She tried to place a curse on you, Sister Penny, oh, yes, she did. She wanted to drag you down to her level, make you perform unnatural acts and get you to believe in something you know in your heart is wrong! That is the modus operandi of a witch! It is a battle plan conceived in the very depths of hell.”
The pastor’s eyes seemed to blaze with a holy fire as he begin to spin and dance, a crazy stumbling jig, all the while screaming, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” Rafferty and Penny howled in their seats, wailing their thanks and prayers to God for deliverance. The building echoed with the screams of the righteous.
To anyone who had passed by, it would have sounded like Hell.
“But there is good news, people, for deliverance is at hand,” Pastor Edward said. He stopped dancing, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose, and stood with his arms outspread, Bible clutched in his right hand like a grand weapon.
He smiled, the love of God pouring out of his very being, and said, “The Lord has given me a plan.”
***
When citizens of the Keep laughed and referred to the sub-division called Vanishing Pointe as “The Blasted Lands,” it was only partly a joke. Before the land had been bought up and surveyed out, it had been an unofficial shooting range for local gun owners. It was just cans and bottles, at first, but that progressed to larger objects, like broken home electronics and disabled vehicles. Shooting the windows out of an old van was a satisfying activity. The sound of windshields and windows shattering made it illicitly delicious. It was a sad day for firearms enthusiasts in the Keep when the place went from public to private, and all the old bullet-hole ridden junk was hauled away.
Even after the houses were built, with red and orange flags waving gaily from the entrance and a model home opened for viewing seven days a week, the place was still deserted. Nobody wanted to buy a home in a place where a collection of shell casings still poked up through the cracked grassless earth like tiny tombstones.
Forty-eight houses had been built in Vanishing Pointe. There had been three homes sold, including the one to the Pendletons. Two of the residents had already moved out.
It wasn’t a difficult task for Rafferty to make his way into the subdivision. He had spent a lot of time exploring the woods that surrounded the Keep, and Vanishing Pointe butted right up against them. Rafferty found it simple to live in the great outdoors. It was like being back in the military.
Rafferty believed that God gave all of His children specific gifts, even if the reason for them was unclear. Rafferty had two gifts bestowed upon him. One of them was stealth. He understood how to blend in with the shadows, become one with the ground. Sniper school in the Army had helped that, but he excelled in that capacity because he had been blessed.
That was Rafferty’s second gift.
Killing.
The Pendleton’s house was the only one with any light emanating from it, making it easy to find in the dark. Flickering blue light in the giant front window let him know they were watching television. Rafferty had dressed all in black for this mission. Since the Pendletons had neglected to turn on their front porch light, Rafferty was able to walk right up into their front yard without attracting any attention.
He was aching to toss the brick in his gloved hand, to hear the sweet tinkling of broken glass and smell their weak tinny sweat as the illusion of safety crashed all around. Instead, he boldly stepped directly onto their front porch, a few inches away from the window, and watched.
They had made a tent in the living room, like children, out of two kitchen chairs and a sheet. They were naked, gauzily illuminated by the light of the television. The woman was nuzzling the man, lazily stroking his thigh. Her stomach was flat and taut and her smile was lascivious. Penny was right. This woman was a seductress.
Rafferty felt himself stirring, his pants tightening, a sensation he had only experienced in the mornings when he had to pee. He had laid his sexual nature to rest long ago, after his f
irst stint in prison. It had gotten him in trouble then; the Lord had since shown him how to quell his desires. It would take sorcery for those feelings to come back in such full force. Even without being aware of it, the woman was sending out evil, just as sure as she was breathing, trying to capture Rafferty as well. A fervent silent prayer, and the urge faded, much to Rafferty’s relief.
For a moment, he allowed himself to feel pity for the man, trapped by forces he wasn’t prepared to understand, in the demon woman’s thrall. Was it possible the man could be reached? Made to see the error of his ways? Perhaps if he could just talk to Pastor Edward, if he would open his heart and accept the Word of the Lord into his heart and his soul, then maybe he could be redeemed. But as he watched the man’s hand moving, ever so slightly, between the woman’s legs, Rafferty knew he was a lost cause. The man was caught in the woman’s web of trickery and deceit, lost forever to the goodness of God, a slave to witchcraft and foreign ideas.
Strange wives, Rafferty thought.
She had moved closer to him, and the movement of the man’s hand had increased its tempo. The witch’s breathing had increased. Rafferty could see her head leaning back, neck stretching, mouth widening. He began to count.
Five.
She had brought her hand to her mouth and was biting her knuckles.
Four.
He straightened his back, changing his angle, increasing the pressure.
Three.
She wrapped his arm around his neck and clutched his shoulder, digging her nails into his skin.
Two.
The man stopped moving his hand for a moment. She let go of his shoulder, splaying her fingers outward. Then he started again, homing in, ready to deliver the coup dé grace. She began to shudder and quake beneath the sheet, under the man’s sure and practiced fingers.
One.
Rafferty reared back and let the brick fly through the window, enjoying the sudden explosion of sound and flying bits of glass, relishing how the window held its shape for a split-second before collapsing in on itself, like a summer day soap bubble. All this in the blink of an eye, then he ran into the welcoming shadows, as far as the empty house next door.
Hunting Witches Page 12
