Little Heaven

by Nick Cutter

  Micah drank his beer.

  “So anyway, Reggie’s the new guy. Sherri gave up dating badasses. Total one-eighty. She and Reggie started dating after Leroy; it lasted a few years, and Nate was the fruit of it. I met Reggie once, at Nate’s christening. A prissy bald-headed guy with spectacles, his back all stooped from delivering the weekly Pennysaver.”

  “Only the one time?”

  She started. “Pardon?”

  “Only the one time you met him?”

  She nodded. “I haven’t seen Nate since he was a tot, either.” Ellen probably expected Micah to ask why. When he didn’t, she told him anyway. “I had some issues of my own during those years. Sherri took the straight and narrow. I strayed, then came back to heel. Then Sherri went off the reservation entirely.”

  “So your nephew . . .”

  “Is at Little Heaven. With Reggie. Living with a bunch of snake handlers, for all I know.” She dipped her chin. “You a religious sort?”

  Micah shook his head.

  “Me neither. I mean, okay, Unitarian, Methodist, those vanilla faiths—fill your boots. But some camp in the forest, people dressed in robes praying eight hours a day . . .”

  She threw her arms up in evident frustration. Micah noted the burn scar carried down her left arm and peeked from the sleeve of her T-shirt.

  “Sorry. I’m probably boring the piss out of you.”

  “My piss remains in my bladder,” he told her. “I find this interesting.”

  That was not one hundred percent true. Micah had heard stories like this a dozen times. But those stories had not been told by Ms. Ellen Bellhaven, from Parts Unknown.

  He said, “You try the cops at all?”

  “Sherri barked up that tree already. Like I said, custody of Nate fell to Reggie after my sister went to jail. He’s a mailman, for Christ’s sake. Police hear that—stable job, money in the bank—okay, they figure the kid’s fine.”

  Could be he is fine, Micah thought. Sure, he is getting a bellyful of scripture, but there are worse things. He is with his father, not huffing diesel fuel out of a jam jar.

  “What is your stake in it?”

  Ellen looked at him funny. The sunlight fell through the oak leaves and settled on her arresting face.

  “You said you hardly even know your nephew,” Micah went on.

  “And that matters?”

  Micah squinted at the sky. He felt itchy all over. Ah, fuck it. “Beer?”

  He punched holes in a can and left it on the tailgate. Ellen came closer to pick it up. She ran the cold can across her forehead. She took the gum out of her mouth and stuck it on the top and took a sip.

  “Thanks.”

  She pulled a dollar bill from her pocket and dropped it into the grocery sack. Micah took it out and put it into his pocket.

  “My sister said you would do it for money.”

  “You got much?”

  “Our father was pretty good at making money.”

  “Why not go on your own?”

  She said, “I thought about it. The truth? It freaks me out. The place where they are, this Little Heaven? Really isolated. A bunch of Bible bashers stewing out in the middle of the woods. Hell, I might turn into a pillar of salt.”

  “They are harmless, I am sure. Why not hire a wilderness guide?”

  She drank deeply. The muscles of her throat flexed. She did not answer his question. But Micah knew that if the boy was in a rough spot, she would want him removed. Any guides would be out of their depth in that circumstance.

  “I’d go if you go,” she said.

  “You cannot walk out with the kid.”

  She set her jaw. “I’ll pay you to try. No, forget I said that—just to get me there, okay? I want to see the place. Peace of mind, yeah?”

  Micah shut his eye. The sun warmed the eyelid not covered by the patch.

  “No.”

  “No, you can’t do it?”

  “Cannot is not so much part of it.”

  Ellen Bellhaven put the can down. She unwrapped another stick of gum and folded it into her mouth. “Why not?”

  Micah got up and shut the tailgate. Ellen took a few steps back. He opened the door and slung his body behind the wheel.

  “Hey,” she said. “Hey.”

  He started the truck and set it in gear.

  “I’m staying at the Budget Inn,” she called as he drove away. “Just think about it, for Christ’s sake!”

  4

  MICAH HAD NO INTENTION of thinking about it. But he did.

  Which is to say, he thought about Ellen Bellhaven. Which forced him to think about her offer.

  My sister said you would do it for money.

  Which was true. Micah had done much more ignoble things for the coin of the realm. He wasn’t picky, as a rule. But the idea of shepherding a woman into the woods so she could check up on her nephew struck him as a chapter ripped out of a Hardy Boys book. The Legend of Little Heaven’s Gold.

  But then, considering he did do pretty much anything for money, and providing Ms. Bellhaven had the means to pay . . .

  He was trying to talk himself into it. Idiotically, he found that he wanted to spend more time with Ellen. Still, wasn’t it easy money? Guide her to this Little Heaven and let her get a peek at the kid. So long as the boy’s arms weren’t covered in fang bites from handling cobras and he didn’t have a crucifix branded on his forehead . . . well, they could just toddle off again, right? How hard could it be?

  Micah dwelled on it for a day. Then he brought it up with the other two. He shouldn’t need them on this job. But there was that old chestnut: Better to bring a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have one.

  “So what—this guy and his kid are shacked up with a bunch of Freedomites?” Minerva said once Micah had outlined the situation.

  “Something like that,” said Micah.

  Ebenezer spanked his hands together and high-kneed around in a little circle. “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna-Krishna-Hare-Hare!”

  “How much we talking?” Minerva said.

  Micah said, “I am given to understand her family has money.”

  Minerva said, “So why not just rob her?”

  Micah frowned. “It will only take a few days.”

  “We can have a wienie roast,” said Eb, warming to the idea. “And tell spook stories. Isn’t that what you Yanks do on campouts?”

  The two of them were game. Micah left it at that. Ellen Bellhaven had probably left by now, anyway. Packed up and returned to wherever she had come from.

  She was gone. Micah was sure of it.

  5

  MICAH PULLED into the graveled lot of the Budget Inn. One car was parked in the lot. He noted its out-of-state plates.

  He was heading inside to check with the clerk when he heard his name.

  “Micah! Hey, Micah!”

  Ellen stood on the second-floor balcony. Dressed in the same Carhartts but a different shirt. The sun glossed her hair and made it shine like a mirror—which was a stupid, dainty detail to take note of. Micah chided himself for it.

  He said, “How much to take you?”

  She gave him a number. It was quite a high one, with more than two zeroes.

  Wouldn’t anything be high enough? an arch voice whispered in his head. Wouldn’t her giving you the time of day be enough?

  “We leave tomorrow. My partners will come.”

  She slapped the balcony railing and hooted. “Goddamn it, Micah. I was just about to give up on you.”

  You are making a fool of yourself, said that arch voice.

  Well. Maybe so. He liked to think he never made the same mistake twice. He didn’t have much experience with women—one mistake was within his rights, wasn’t it?

  6

  IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT. Little Heaven lay in darkness.

  The Reverend Amos Flesher slept with a purple-headed erection.

  Someone was touching him in his dream. Small, soft fingers running up and down the shaft of hi
s penis. Unsexed fingers, not identifiably male or female, boy or girl. But they were very knowing, those fingers. Oh yes. Playing over the crown so teasingly, coaxing him toward climax—oh please, pretty pretty please!—only to slow their rhythm the instant before release.

  Next the fingernails dug into the sensitive tip, pinching the slit where some semen was just starting to leak out—

  Amos shrieked up out of his slumber. My Lord! He was clasping his cock in a vise grip. The tip was speckled with angry dots: blood vessels that had burst from the throttling pressure.

  You have been thinking impure thoughts, boy.

  Amos’s chest was clammy with sweat. His pajamas were stuck to him. Three oscillating fans wired to an outdoor generator stirred the room’s muggy air around.

  He sat up in bed. A king-sized mattress—everyone else at Little Heaven slept on cots, but Amos needed his sleep. It was when he communed with God and received His guidance.

  But God had not come to him tonight. Only those knowing fingers.

  Dirty stick. That’s what Sister Muriel, one of the nuns at the San Francisco Catholic Orphanage, used to call the male penis. She always made that distinction—the male penis, as if it was necessary.

  Don’t fiddle with it! she would say, adding emphasis with a hard lash of her pointer. That’s what the devil wants—for you to put your hands all over your dirty sticks. Do you want your fingers to rot off, boys? They will. You can count on it.

  Amos Flesher went to the window. His compound sprawled out before him. The mess hall, the study hall, the square, and the supply shacks. The hum of gas generators. Security lamps shining around the perimeter.

  Little Heaven. His own small slice of perfection.

  His gaze fell on the chapel, topped with an enormous crucifix. He’d had it shipped here in pieces and nailed together. The three points of the cross were glossed by the moon—seeing this, he felt a deep tranquility settle within him. It was soon broken.

  You were milking your dirty stick, weren’t you? Milking it in your sleep.

  Amos tried to ignore Sister Muriel’s voice. His eyes wandered past the cross to the high fence ringing Little Heaven. The woods fanned out in every direction, thick and impenetrable. They offered solitude and isolation, which were necessary for his ambitions. No telephones, no mailing address. The civilized world was full of degradations that forever sought to lead a pious man into licentiousness and vice.

  It was here, so far from the machinations of man, that Amos could hear God’s voice clearly. He had awoken one day to hear Him calling—the true, unquestioned voice.

  Come to me, my lamb.

  These were the only words at first.

  Amos had left his ministry in San Francisco to follow that voice. By car, by bus, on foot. He traveled many miles. The voice grew stronger. He did not eat and scarcely slept. The pull of the voice obliterated those needs. There were times during his pilgrimage when he thought he’d go mad or collapse. But the voice guided him through despair.

  Come to me, my lamb.

  Amos followed the voice to this spot—it was easy, like scanning a radio dial until you tuned in to a powerful frequency. He was exhausted by the time he arrived, his sandals nearly disintegrated from the thirteen-mile hike through the woods. At some point, everything went black. A fugue state. And when the darkness cleared, he was where he was meant to be.

  Nothing about the spot screamed out, Behold, the seat of the Divine! Just trees and scrub. Had he been a bit more aware, Amos might have noticed how the sounds of nature had bled into a relative silence the closer he drew to the site. The chirping of the birds died away, as did the rustle of animals in the underbrush.

  But the voice overpowered all of that. Once he had tuned in to this unearthly transmission, a direct conduit to the Lord, Amos beckoned his flock. They came, as he had known they would—they would follow their prophet. They helped build Little Heaven to Amos’s exact specifications.

  Not all of them had come. He had ministered to some two hundred souls in San Francisco. Only a quarter of them made the trek into the wilds of New Mexico. Still, Amos was satisfied. Most importantly, they were families. Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. They were so much better than fifty directionless souls who could lose faith at any moment. Families stayed together. Bloodlines ran thick, oh yes.

  They had been here nearly six months. Things were not perfect, but then, things never were. A few outbuildings had collapsed in a freak windstorm. Two worshippers were bitten by snakes. Greta Hughes, the children’s teacher, had broken her leg in a construction mishap. The limb had become gangrenous. Neither the ministrations of Colby Lewis, a onetime medic in the Vietnam War, or the flock’s upbeat prayers had much effect. The Hughes woman wept wretchedly as she was shipped back to the devil’s den of society.

  God must test the pure of heart in order to cull the wicked and slothful from their number, Amos had counseled his flock at that evening’s sermon.

  There had been one or two other . . . events. Isolated incidents. Nothing worth dwelling on. A few of the elect had claimed to see things. Shapes in the woods at night. Sounds that could not be accounted for by natural means. Amos had dealt with those complaints harshly. Such hysterics had no place at Little Heaven.

  The children, too. Some of them were having trouble adjusting. Their behavior was perhaps a little off from time to time. But that, too, was to be expected. Everyone had to adjust. The poisonous teat of civilization, with its televisions and pinball machines and McDonald’s hamburgers: you had to wean yourself from that vile nipple. The children struggled with this more than the rest of Amos’s worshippers, but—

  You were fiddling with yourself, weren’t you? Milking your dirty stick so it would spurt. It is what syphilitic perverts do to themselves. It stains the soul, boy—and yours is stained already, isn’t it?

  “Hush’m, hush’m, hush’m!”

  Amos spoke in a reedy singsong, the tone of voice you might use to head off an argument. It was a tone his worshippers would find quite different from the rich baritone that issued from his chest during sermons.

  Smutty little fiddler fiddling with his dirty filthy stick—

  Amos ground his teeth. It sounded like cement blocks rubbing together inside his head. He stared over the trees at the rock formation looming against the sky. It was darker than the night, as though carved out of a different kind of blackness altogether.

  The Devil’s Rock. That was its name, according to some mountaineering guide Brother Fairweather had showed him. No matter. It was not for mankind to name the works of the Creator. We must humble ourselves before Him.

  Big Heaven. Not the Devil’s Rock. That was Amos’s self-given name for the skyscraping formation that rose pillar-like from the forest floor. He had built Little Heaven, which stood in the shadow of Big Heaven, which itself stood in the shadow of God Himself. He pictured Big Heaven as a massive antenna broadcasting the Lord’s voice to his ears alone . . .

  . . . although he had to admit that sometimes the voice did not sound as though it belonged to God. Just the odd blip where . . . Well, it was like when you were on a road trip and you lost the radio signal. That was the only analogy Amos could come up with—the sort of obvious comparison he worked into his sermons so that the more squirrel-headed members of his flock could grasp it. When you were driving and lost one radio station but started to pull in another at almost the same time. That brief span where the frequencies got crossed.

  This was how it felt. God’s voice—the calm, uplifting one—would bleed away the tiniest bit and another voice would interfere for just a moment. And this other voice was different.

  It wasn’t even a voice, precisely. Amos could call it that only insofar as it spoke to him, though not so much in words. Amos Flesher envisioned an immense dark space teeming with flies, their wings and legs producing a hum that rose and fell in sonorous waves to fill the void with the sound of their mindless industry.

  Flies, and something else. A silk
y constriction that pinged on a fainter sonic register—a rhythmic coiling and tightening that called to mind a sightless worm of endless length braiding over and around itself in knots of terrifying complexity. The rub of its flesh produced a delicate hiss that was somehow staticky, like the sound on a vinyl record between songs.

  This voice—was it a voice?—this presence would occasionally intrude upon the voice of God. Amos would flinch from it, shaking his head to fling it out of his mind.

  Just a blip. Then it was gone again.

  Amos Flesher stared over his fiefdom, shrouded in midnight dark. He heard no voice now. He heard nothing at all. Only the jumpy beat of his own heart.

  7

  THE ROAD RIBBONED EASTWARD, flat and gray in the morning sunlight. They had been driving for hours: Micah, Minerva, and Ellen in Ellen’s ’57 Oldsmobile. Ebenezer followed on a Honda CB77 motorcycle he had bought from a pawn agent in Albuquerque. Evidently he wasn’t entirely sold on the idea and wanted to be able to skedaddle if things went hinky.

  They had stopped in Albuquerque for the motorcycle, gasoline, and camping gear. They bought backpacks, boots, tents, and sleeping bags. Lost hikers—that would be their angle. They would hike it to Little Heaven. Ellen knew its whereabouts; her sister had demanded that Reggie tell her, going so far as to make him draw a map and mail it to her in jail. If they needed a closer look, they would claim to be lost and appeal upon the Little Heavenites’ Christian decency for a night’s sanctuary. Once they knew the boy was well cared for, they would thank the Bible bashers for their hospitality and leave them to their woodland rites.

  According to Ellen, the settlement nearest to Little Heaven was Grinder’s Switch. A village of less than three hundred souls situated in a valley, with the wilderness unfolding to the north and east. They drove down a single-lane blacktop banded by vast sweeps of sorghum. They passed the odd billboard for Dash laundry soap or Lestoil or Winston Super Kings, but most of the billboards were of a religious nature.

  Satan tries to limit your prayers, one billboard proclaimed, because he knows your prayers will limit him!