“No, it won’t,” Nydia muttered softly.
Wilder knew that, although Balon was not without sin, he was close to God. Balon was a warrior, and God liked His warriors. No, Balon would not be easy, for God could and would protect him—for a time.
The old French priest, Dubois, would be easy because of his advanced age. The Methodist, Lucas Monroe, would be easy, too. He was very old, and already dying. Haskell, of the Episcopal Church was, like Balon, young. But he was not nearly as tough as Balon. He could be dealt with easily enough.
But Balon . . .
“He can be handled,” Nydia said. “When it is time.”
Wilder ignored her.
There were others, of course, Wilder mused, but he was not alarmed. Those he would have hunted down by the Beasts or the Undead when it was time. Those who chose to resist his Master’s will would die—very unpleasantly. All of them. Then, with that done, his Master would have a home here on earth. By day, Whitfield would appear normal by this earth’s standards and time. Just another sleepy little town. Visitors would be discouraged. New growth could be held to a minimum, and any new people could easily be swayed into accepting the Master.
Wilder smiled briefly. Mortals were such fools! Offer them what they cannot have, or what their religion forbids them, and ninety percent of them come scrambling to reach what is denied them by their God. Falling prey like rabbits to a trap.
Wilder’s smile faded as he sighed in remembrance. How many times in the past centuries had he tried to set this up? Dozens? Hundreds? He had succeeded but a few times. Long by earth standards, but a mere blinking of the Master’s eye.
Damn You, God! Wilder silently cursed. Damn You! This time, though, I believe I’ll win, for You waited too long to act. You put too much faith in Your human subjects. I believe You forgot how weak they really are. Yes, this time, I’ll beat You.
But he was weary of the game; tired of it all. Perhaps it was time for a younger man. Wilder did not know how old he was. As old as time; certainly as old as sin. His memory spanned centuries and more. The Flood. Sodom and Gomorrah. So much. So long. And he was tired.
Wilder, dressed in a dark robe, ceased his ruminations and picked up a huge black book. No mortal being could have held its weight, for the book contained the names of every human being who had adopted the Godless teachings of Satan and his followers. From the beginnings of time.
One by one, the new applicants to the Coven laid hands on the book, each one repeating after Wilder, “I promise to use all my power to induce others into the worshipping, praising, and revering of the only true Master and his Church of the Fifteen. I am now his slave. Do with me as you will.”
The new members of the Coven then defiled themselves with words of filth and profanity, calling out to the Coven, describing in the most disgusting of detail what they would permit upon their persons and their minds. Stripped naked, they allowed the members of the Coven to physically possess their bodies, without regard to male or female gender, while the Beasts—the lowest in the order of Satan’s disciples—howled and snarled, dancing around the couplings, the sodomy, the sucking, and the degradation.
Slim Wesson whoaed his horse and cocked an ear, listening to the sounds from just over the sand hills. This was Little River Range, only a fence separating it from Karl Sorenson’s K/S spread. K/S or L-R, Slim had never heard anything like this droning sound—never in his life. Whatever in the hell it was—and he could not know how apt his choice of adjective—it wasn’t supposed to be on this range.
“Bunch of damned beatniks!” he mumbled. “Havin’ a party. Dope fiends, I bet. I told Herman something was wrong around these parts.”
Herman had agreed with Slim, that something was wrong, but he didn’t know what it was. Slim wished Herman were here, now, for he suddenly felt uneasy, like when he was a little boy, walking past a graveyard. He could whistle then, but something warned him he’d better not whistle now.
Slim dismounted, ground-reined his horse, and slipped quietly up the hill. He’d been riding fence all day, repairing it when broken, and he was tired. He’d missed evening grub because his horse had tossed a shoe, and fixing that had taken some time. But more than tired, Slim was still pissed-off at the attitude of most of the guys he worked with at L-R. He was thinking of handing in his notice and walking. Loading up his pickup and maybe heading north, up into Wyoming. He’d heard there were good jobs up there for cowboys who still gave a day’s work for a day’s pay. Yep, that’s what he’d do, by God, he’d drift up north.
The guys at L-R, he couldn’t figure them out. They kept tryin’ to get him to join some kind of club. Diable, or something like that. Well, piss on them! Ole Slim wasn’t about to join no damn club that meant the devil. He wasn’t no fool! Some kind of silly college-boy club, more than likely. Now his friends wouldn’t even speak to him. They were crowding him out; laughing at him behind his back. Well, okay, but he’d still do his job and then draw this pay. Then he’d drift up north.
Slim climbed the fence to K/S range, trudging up another hill, the noise growing louder. He was tired, but all weariness left him as he gazed upon the sight in front of him, illuminated by torchlight.
“Good God Almighty!” he whispered, dropping to his hands and knees, crawling to the crest of the hill. “Look at all them naked people!”
Slim had never seen an orgy before—which was what he presumed this to be—nothing more. But he’d read of them. After his eyes became adjusted to the small, torchlit valley, he soon realized this was far more than an orgy.
He picked up the shape of Sheriff Addison, buggering the mayor, Carl Warner. “Queers!” Slim whispered hoarsely. “I got friends who voted for that bastard, too. Wait’ll I tell them!”
Squinting his eyes, he found the naked shape of that psalm-singin’ do-gooder, Dalton Revere. “My God! That’s the preacher’s wife. Oh, no!” he watched Michelle Balon pull a naked woman to her. Locked in each other’s embrace, the two women and the man slid to the ground, mouths and fingers busy.
Slim wanted to puke.
He also had a slight hard-on.
Soon, the participants lay recovering and defiled on the ground. Slim wanted to run, wanted very much to leave this place, but he felt frozen to the ground.
Coven women went among the sprawled members just beginning their initiation with the Devil. They cut off a piece of each woman’s hair, giving that to the Devil’s agent, Black Wilder. He placed a few strands of hair in the huge book, beside each name.
Just as I have done for so many hundreds of years, he reminisced. Beginning with the people who lived in the caves.
At midnight, Wilder waved his hand and all became silent. The Beasts stood placidly, jaws lolling saliva, red eyes unblinking, the torches glittering from them.
Slim almost shit his pants when he saw the Beasts up close to the light. If he was not frozen to the earth before, he was now—with fear.
A young girl, in her teens, was led to the altar by her stepparents. She was naked, and offered no resistance. She had been inspected and found to be a true virgin. She was placed on the altar, a crude stone structure. The girl had been beaten into submission, her young body carrying the marks of the whip. She was spread-eagled on the stone, arms and legs tied down. A hugh wooden cross, driven upside down into the earth, stood starkly behind the altar. The crowd began to hum as Wilder, now naked, his manhood huge, crawled upon the stone, between the legs of the girl.
The men and women of the Coven began to dance while the Beasts howled and whined and slobbered. Their dancing was a grotesque, obscene hunching, a filthy expression of perversion of body and soul. As they danced, they chanted, “Prince of Darkness! King of the Night! Monarch of all that is Evil! Lord of the Flies and Beasts! Take this unworthy one!”
And Nydia said, “She could not be convinced to join us. She refused to accept the pleasure of the Master. Take her!”
The young girl screamed as Wilder lunged, his erection driving inside her,
impaling her, splitting her. “It’s cold—it’s cold!” she shrieked
Other young people stood off to one side, away from the adults of the Coven. They watched, waiting for the signal that would officially begin their night’s orgy. Some of them held torches, the flickering flames brightening the site of the altar and the defiling—just begun—of Annie Brown. They smiled. They hummed. They awaited their pleasure, for the only true Master had promised them all the fleshy pleasures of this earth and the next world for them. They had only to serve him. Such a small price to pay for eternal debauchery.
The adults droned their chant, dancing about the altar as Wilder hunched on the teenager, each lunge bringing screams of pain from her throat. He shuddered his finish, and withdrew, as a woman rushed forward to catch his semen in a bowl.
Wilder stepped from the altar, his grotesque maleness swinging between his thighs. He urinated in the bowl, then slipped into his dark robe.
While the mixture was being stirred, the young girl was removed from the altar and a crown of thorns jammed brutally upon her head, the barbs ripping her flesh. She was carried, screaming, to the huge cross, and crucified, spikes driven into her hands, sides, and feet. She was left there, hanging upside down, wailing out her pain. Her blood-filled eyes watched in horror as the Devil’s Ceremony continued.
Each new teenager and adult to be introduced into the Coven was brought forward for the final pledge. A tiny portion of the evil mixture from the bowl was smeared on their lips. They knelt, en masse, naked, in front of Wilder.
While Annie’s screaming filled the small torchlit valley, Wilder asked each new member, beginning with the children, “Do you renounce your parents, all blood relations, all friends not of this unholy Coven, God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the Saints, and the Holy Cross?”
“Yes,” the children said.
“Do you wish to serve Satan with all the growing blackness in your hearts?”
“Yes,” they replied in unison, conviction growing stronger in them. They had been introduced to all the sexual perversion known to humankind, and they were anxious to experience more.
“Do you know who I am?” Wilder asked.
“Yes. And we are your servants.”
“You are firm in your renunciation of all the weakness of God and Christian religion?”
“Yes!” the children shouted.
“And while I am here on this earth,” Wilder’s eyes flashed evil, “I am?”
“Our God!” they screamed.
Wilder opened his robe, holding his penis, as the young people rose from their prostration to kiss the icy member. Wilder turned, and they kissed his red buttocks.
He repeated the pledge to the adults, and they agreed, doing as the children had done. The woman lingering at Wilder’s maleness, loving it.
Wilder nodded to the beautiful witch standing by the upside-down cross, a knife in her hand, the curved blade gleaming in the light from the torches.
“Nydia,” he said. “Let it begin.”
The woman with the hair the hue of night smiled as she stood by the tortured young girl, hanging upside down on the cross. Slowly, very methodically, savoring the girl’s wailing, Nydia began cutting her flesh. She cut obscene tracings on Annie’s skin, until the girl was nothing but a bloody rag, screaming out unbearable pain. Nydia chanted as she worked, calling upon all the forces of darkness, of evil, of filth. The ancient rite, as old as humankind, as old as evil, took a long time to conclude. Finally, Nydia cut out Annie’s heart, still pumping, and the awful screaming ceased its echoing around the valley of The Digging.
The members of the Coven, hundreds, strong now, old and new, droned their chant in a tongue formulated in the depths of Hell. They danced around the blood-drenched cross. Dropping their robes, they pranced naked, one by one falling to the ground, to couple as animals; women with women; men with men; adults with children, engaging in every deviant sex act known to exist.
The disgusting, macabre celebration continued for hours, the lustful calling, screaming, grunting filling the night air. The howling of the Beasts, jaws leaking drool, the moaning of the Servants of Satan, all mingled with the glare of the torches jammed into the earth, casting leaping shadows about the valley of the circle, the valley of the tablet, the valley of The Digging.
At predawn, just as first light faintly tinted the eastern sky, the faraway sound of a cock crowing brought the night’s abomination to an abrupt close. Black Wilder and Nydia looked about them, fear on their faces. The Beasts huddled together in fright. The devil lives for darkness, afraid of the light, and the devil and his servants are filled with dread at the sound of a crowing cock. Satan can do only quiet, unobtrusive evil in the light of God’s sun. It is only in the darkness that the unholiness is nurtured, where it thrives and grows, where the evil is the personification of all that is vile and wicked.
A large owl, perched for hours during the night, beat its wings and hooted, suddenly flying away, its eyes unblinking and evil. It vanished in the dim light, its tiny brain receiving a message from its Master.
As roaches do when the light is clicked on, the members of the Coven scurried away in the dimness of predawn, the evil on their faces mixed with fear, for they know it is God’s sun.
The altar had been washed clean. The cross removed and hidden. The body of Annie Brown was not to be seen. The Beasts were disappointed that she could not be used as a breeder, but they knew some things were beyond their grasp, so they accepted without question.
After selected older members of the Coven, those who, although they did not at this time know it, were well on their way to becoming the Undead, had sucked their portion of blood from Annie’s still-warm body, the Beasts ate her. Growling, they stripped the flesh from her, snapping the bones to suck the marrow, as they had done with Tim Bennett, weeks back. As the full glory of God’s day filled the valley of The Digging, the Beasts slipped into holes in the earth, making their way back to the caves at Tyson’s Lake, past the chosen Sentinel.
Slim Wesson, the cowboy, who, until this moment, believed he had seen everything God meant for him to see, lay on the cool ground of the hill overlooking the valley, and wept unashamedly and openly, something he had not done since childhood. He felt soiled and threatened by what he had witnessed.
After a time, he rose to his feet and staggered down the hill to his horse, still waiting for him. Mounting, he rode off, speaking to the animal. “Bullet, I think we’ll get the hell out of this state—pronto!”
The owl soared high above him, watching, waiting.
Slim rode carefully, recalling what he’d seen during the night of sickness. Slim was no prude, but he was physically ill in his recall. He had seen his foreman, Lou Parker. He had seen the owner of Little River, Ray Zagone. He had watched the two men fondle each other, love each other, and then mate with the other’s wife.
Slim shook his head. Sick, sick, sick!
And that awful crucifixion of the young girl. God! they cut out her heart.
Slim drew up, dismounted, and vomited on the ground. He did not see the owl swooping down toward him, long talons poised. The owl’s charge knocked him down, blood pouring from Slim’s ripped forehead. The owl arched in the sky, then made another pass, the talons ripping out Slim’s eyes. The cowboy screamed in his sudden red-darkness of pain, falling back against his horse. The animal panicked at the smell of blood and the fear of man, kicking out with steel-shod hooves, catching Slim in the hip, breaking the big bone. He fell heavily to the ground. The owl dipped down, quickly sinking its talons into Slim’s throat, ripping the flesh. The blood spurted.
The cowboy quickly bled to death. His horse throtted away, fear rolling its eyes white. It stepped on its reins, annoying the animal. The leather finally broke, and the animal trotted away. Late that afternoon, the horse would wander back to the ranch corral. The men there would look at each other, smile, and remove the saddle. They would rub the animal down, feed it, and stable it.
No one wou
ld mention Slim Wesson.
Herman Alario, Slim’s best friend, was not present when the horse wandered back. When he asked about Slim, he was told Slim had drawn his pay, sold his horse to Little River, and pulled out. But Herman did not believe that. Slim wouldn’t cut out without telling him goodbye. But he kept his suspicions to himself.
The next day, cowboys would ride out, find Slim’s body, and take it to the Beasts.
The Beasts would feast.
Sam had driven slowly home after leaving Chester’s. The streets were deserted. He did not see a dog or a cat. But he did feel the evil hanging over the town. His fingers touched the cross hanging around his neck.
He was thankful the parsonage was empty. He had some things he wanted to do, and he could not do them with Michelle there.
Turning on all the lights in the house, leaving each room blazing with light, Sam went up to the attic. A half-remembered phrase had come to his mind during the drive home; something from his days at the seminary. THE KISS OF LIFE AND DEATH. What was the rest of it? He had to find that old textbook. Yes, now he remembered. ONCE TOUCHED, FOREVER HIS. That was it! That secret sect of the devil. Unproven. Not mentioned in the Bible, so professors tended to scoff at it.
Sam prowled the attic, in the dim light from the one bulb hanging from its cord. He searched through the boxes, ripping open the tops with his powerful hands until he found the textbook he sought. A slim volume on Ancient Witchcraft and Devil Worship. He had not looked at this book in years, but he had never really forgotten it, such was its impact on him.
Sam looked at the dusty volume. “Do you hold the secret to this mystery?”
The dust and the cobwebs of the attic clung to him; the attic boards creaked under his weight. A chill fell on him as summer winds blew against the frame house. Sam shivered.
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