Brandon
brought the car to a stop in a sandy wash out on the side of the road
between a set of bending trees, their limbs drooping towards the
ground as though tired from carrying the weight of the sky. Running
his tongue over his teeth while Kent smoked out the window, they
listened to engine ticking in the darkness. The cold metal of the .32
digging dug into his back, and, though nothing had happened yet -
though nothing would happen if they stuck to the plan - he still felt
his heart beating staccato against the ribs. Between the trees, the
moon winked out at them, vicious and taunting.
Cool
air slipped in beneath Kent's smoke and settled beneath the sweat on
Brandon's face. He wiped away the chill and eyed Preacher Ferland’s
house. The house was a squat, small mid-century farmhouse, sitting
atop the crown of a low brown hill, alone on either side for a half
mile or more. “That’s it,” he said softly.
They
watched the house and the road and
the emptiness of everything in this small out of the way place in
silence. Neither said anything, but Brandon was certain that Kent was
feeling the same thing he felt. A sense of fear. As though the place
had somehow been irradiated by the man who lived inside. On the
dashboard, the clock slid later and later. The edge of the coke dying
inside him, Brandon turned to Kent. “You ready?”
Kent
checked the chamber of his Glock and placed it in the front pocket of
his hoodie. “Let’s go.”
They
moved together, black hoods pulled up over their skulls, breath
hanging fractal in front of their faces like wisping smoke. Above
them, stars, ageless and innumerable, lay scattered across the sky,
and the winking moon hung high and
hysterical. Frosted ground crunched underneath their boots and the
smell of cold and rot and dead crop filled their noses as they moved
over the withered field, towards the Preacher’s house and the copse
of trees that lay behind it.
The
night hummed in stillness. No dogs. No cars. No signs of life other
than their own footfalls and a porch light that hung next to the
front door, gleaming dully in the night and illuminating the dead
grass of the hill. Silently, they moved to the edge of the light,
then circled the house before consulting briefly in the bones of the
trees.
“What
do you think?” Kent asked.
"I
dunno, man," Brandon said. The cold was all the way in him now,
and though movement had numbed his fear to a dull ache, it was still
there. But so was the anxiousness of what Kent would think. "I
guess I'm okay."
“Yeah.
The light being on. Gotta be a mistake. Something he forgot to turn
off. He’s gone. I know for sure.”
“Okay,”
Brandon said, hyping himself up. Pushing the fear away. “Okay.
Yeah. Fuck it, let’s go.”
Brandon
took the lead. He kept low and moved quickly. Taking the short back
steps in a single stride, he pressed himself against the back door of
the Preacher’s house. His ears buzzed with blood. His tongue slid
over his teeth, tracing the gaps. His hands were shaking.
He
counted to five. Willed his hands to be still. He tried the door.
Locked.
Kent
rose beside him, hefted the Glock by the barrel, and swung it into
the window of the door. Glass shattered and fell into the dark of the
house.
Brandon
rose, reached in and flipped the lock. The door swung open. Together,
they went inside.
The
kitchen was small and empty of furniture. Shards of glass covered the
yellowed laminate floor, tossing moonlight. The floors were dirty,
the cupboards an off-white, and the smell of dull smoke hung in the
place, the ghosts of a previous resident.
“Where
you think it is?” Kent asked, gesturing around with the gun.
Brandon
shrugged. “Could be under the
goddamn mattress for all I know.”
“Mattress?
Man, you made it sound like this guy sleeps in a fuckin’ coffin.”
“Let’s
find it and go.”
They
moved into the front room, half-blind except for narrow slats of
moonlight sliding through a gap in the curtains.
Somewhere
in the back of the house, a board moaned, low and soft.
“Jesus,”
Brandon said, spinning around, the barrel of his gun sweeping the
dark. His feet backed up, reflexively, and he was almost halfway
through the kitchen towards the back door when he felt Kent grab him
softly in the dark.
“Stay
cool, man. The place is empty. If he was as scary as you tell, He
would have been out here already. Would have heard the glass break.”
He winked in the dark. "It's just us and the ghosts out here
now."
“Don’t
say that, man. Fuck.” Brandon shivered. “I feel like I’m
robbing the Devil. I mean, fucking snakes, man?”
The
Preacher had come at the end of summer heat, blight and infection hot
on its winds. He’d stood outside
of town and promised forgiveness and deliverance, and the people had
come. He handled snakes, they whispered, serpent’s that God
protected him from. They claimed he’d cured the sick and offered
salvation, not just to the damned, but to the town and the land
itself, the vipers in his hands the whole time he spoke.
Brandon
had heard the rumors - of Ferland’s
Godly powers, of his command over the Holy Ghost, and that, despite
the peoples’ interest, the Preacher stayed a mysterious figure,
rarely seen by anyone outside his white revival tent on Sundays and
Wednesdays. His interest grew with each new outrageous story he’d
heard, until he felt compelled to see it for himself.
In
the heat of the tent, Brandon had seen the snakes. But worse, he’d
seen people he’d known his entire life overtaken by something he
could not name, Prophecies of the End Times on their lips, their eyes
shining in ways that made his arms burst in gooseflesh.
“They
do that shit down south,” Kent said, trying to sound calm and
worldly, though Brandon knew the furthest south he'd ever been was to
Missouri to buy legal weed and fireworks.
He
tried to shake the memory, but the white tent had bound itself to
him, and even then the memory of the place and the humidity inside
scared him, made the skin around his balls draw up tight and the hair
on the back of his neck electric.
Kent
started moving, deeper into the house. “Thing
I don't get is, why would anyone in Nebraska sign up for that. We're
not the south. We do things our own way here. And how does it work?
Is God in the snake? What if it bites? That mean God hates the snake
handler, or someone in the crowd?”
Brandon
thought again of Ferland on his rickety stage, his face whittled into
a grin. He thought of how he paced
back and forth, rattlesnakes in each hand, the serpents flicking
forked tongues and widening their jaws to strike. He remembered how
he'd watched and wondered, slack-jawed, the question of what drove a
man to do such a thing burning behind his eyes. He pushed the thought
away. Focused instead on a different memory, the image of the wicker
donation plate overflowing with cash, the Preacher blessing and
raising it over his head at the end of every service.
“It's
all bullshit,” he said, but even as he spoke he could hear the own
rattle in his voice. Could feel the bone in the back of his throat.
“None of it works. It just is.
Let’s just find the money
and get the fuck out.”
They
began to walk again, moving deeper into the dark room off the
kitchen, floorboards creaking underneath.
From
somewhere in the shadows, they heard rattling.
They
stopped, trading looks, fear written across their faces. Brandon
reached behind him, grabbed the grip of the .32 for comfort.
Breathing deep, he reached around the doorframe, found the
light-switch, and flipped it on.
Dull,
yellow light filled the room, barely pushing back the dark. The room
was small. Unkempt.
A bookshelf along the far
wall filled with religious tracts, books on demonology, screeds
against The Pope, and the “Left Behind” novels. A small desk
pressed back against the far wall. Next to the desk, on top of an old
nightstand, sat a red wooden box covered by a piece of warped
plywood, cement bricks resting on either end. Muted rattling came
from inside.
Brandon
stared at the box, his eyes like cotton, dry and itching. It was the
same box he’d seen the Preacher
reach his hands into, rattlesnakes wrapped around his wrists as he
pulled them back out, their hisses and rattles accompanying his
apocalyptic witnessing.
Brandon
took a step back. “Oh fuck, man,” he said. His bones had fallen
loose inside his skin. Droplets of sweat broke out on his face. He
imagined one of the snakes sliding past his teeth and down his
throat, it’s tongue flicking the blood from his hammering heart.“I
didn’t know he kept them here.”
“I
didn’t either,” Kent said. “I thought they stayed at the tent.”
The
rattling slowed to a dull drone and then stopped.
Brandon
reached out and touched Kent's arm. "I’m not sure I want to do
this, man. It was my idea, yeah, but, man, I don't want to be here. I
don’t want to rob this dude. A normal preacher or priest of
whatever would be bad enough, but this guy is another fucking level.
This shit freaks me out too bad.”
Kent
looked at him with cold eyes, yellow and slit in under the rooms
lonely light. "You know why we wanted to do this, Brandon. Get
it the fuck together."
Brandon
need cut through his gut, swirling with fear. He thought of the
nosebleeds, spilling down into his mouth. Of his gums, too dull to
feel themselves giving up the root. He thought of Kent on the ratty
bean bag, finally passed out after three days. Of how they always
needed more to last them. Of how he’d finally figured a way to get
out of the middle of fucking Nebraska and to a place where there was
something. Better
drugs, better women, better jobs. Something more than a tiny town off
the highway that offered only a more bitter, angrier God, shit coke,
and the same jobs at the silos. And now he wanted to throw it all
away.
Because
of the Preacher. Because of Ferland. Not because of the things he'd
seen him do, but because of the glow he'd held in his eyes as he'd
done them.
Brandon
shook his head. “No. Dude. Seriously. I’m gonna wait outside.”
He gestured around the room with his hand. “Fuck all of this. You
wanna do it? Fine. Don’t even need my split. There are other ways
we can get right. Other ways we can start over."
"You
always were a pussy," Kent said. "But you better wait at
the car. Cause I'm gonna find it.” He turned, walking across the
small room toward the small hallway, the kitchen, and the rest of the
creaking black house beyond.
Brandon
looked away, shame and fear and
need all twisting in him now, ringing him out until the sweat slid
from his pores and the snakes smelled it and began beating themselves
against the slivered wood of the container.
Behind
Brandon, just a few steps in to the hall, Kent’s footsteps stopped.
And then a scream rose up.
Brandon
turned turned, a question forming
on his tongue. From the room, he saw Kent raising his hand, the small
black Glock swinging up in front of him.
The
back half of Kent blew outwards, blood and muscle and bone, the
gunshot thundering against the thin wood.
Gore
painted the wall next to Brandon.
Iron
in his mouth. Smoke burning in his nostrils. His ears went numb. Felt
his heart beat through his empty gums. A scream spilled from his
throat as he watched Kent’s body
tumble forewards, his guts suddenly unzipped, and land face down on
the wooded floor of the study, but it died between his teeth.
Brandon
fell against the wall, stumbling and sliding on his friend’s blood
until he ended on his knees, his eyes searching the dark where Kent
had pointed.
The
Preacher stood hunched in the dark of the kitchen, a shotgun leveled,
a black outline against the dark of the broken back door. The man’s
eyes haunted the darkness, reflecting the hoary light of the moon.
Slowly,
the shotgun leading him, the Preacher walked into the room.
Brandon’s
spine wracked. Fire burned through his brain, screaming for him to
reach to the back of his jeans, to the pistol cold against his
sweating skin, but he was frozen in place, his veins leeched of heat
and blood. Behind him, the snakes in the box hissed furiously and
thumped their rattles against the wood.
The
Preacher stepped over Kent’s
body, avoiding the spreading pool of blood, the shotgun sweeping
around Brandon. "Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will
exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are
cut off," Preacher Ferland said, his voice softer than the
rickety accented ever-rising Drone Brandon had heard in the tent. He
slipped a foot under Kent's shoulder and kicked the body over on it's
back.
Kent’s
eyes, stuck open, stared at the bottom row of the bookshelf, a look
of surprise and pain knit into his face.
In
a terrible moment, Brandon realized that his friend’s twisted body,
insides spilling over the wooden floor, looked like a burst snake in
the middle of birth, and he fought the urge to vomit. Sweat ran from
his brow. Mixed with blood. Stung his eyes. Fear, a deeper fear than
he'd ever experienced, spread across the top of his skin and pounded
in his skull. And below that, the urge for coke screamed.
He
ran his tongue over the gaps of teeth to fight the urge. “It was a
mistake,” he said, finally able to slide words from his mouth. “A
mistake.”
Ferland
stared in silence. Their eyes locked, and Brandon felt something,
like the Preacher was probing his
soul.
The
snakes slowed their mad writhing, and the room became so still and
silent Brandon was convinced the Preacher could hear his heart
beating, and that, at the sound of it, the man’s
tongue had become wet.
“Just
let me go!” he screamed.
No
answer. The Preacher’s body
stood so still it seemed he were carved of stone.
He’d
seen the Preacher speak in tongues and exorcise demons and boom to
his flock - his voice always loud, musical, trembling with power -
that in the very land they worked lived the Devil. But, Brandon
realized, he’d never seen the man be still or silent, and in the
pale of the room, the Charismatic’s quiet unnerved him even more.
Then,
almost imperceptibly, the Preacher began to hum, airy and light, a
hymn, like something sung joyously by a choir.
“Just
let me go,” Brandon said again, his voice breaking now. He wanted
to weep. Pray. Wondered if he would be able to pull out and empty the
.32 before the Preacher fired on him. Knew it would be impossible.
Crashed his thoughts in to one another, trying to decide if it'd be
worth it anyway.
The
Preacher stopped humming then. “Amen,”
he said aloud, and Brandon realized the humming had been a prayer - a
paean, maybe, for forgiveness. He watched as Ferland lowered the
shotgun and came to him, his hand out, offering to help him up. “I’m
sorry for your friend,” Ferland said. “But he was about to shoot
me. I just hope he was right with the Lord. Now,” the Preacher
paused, taking in all of Brandon, his ratty jeans, his worm boots,
the sweat rolling across his forehead, his twisted and failing teeth,
“You need to tell me why you’ve come here.”
“No,”
Brandon said. “You killed Kent.”
The
man’s eyes took on a determined
set, the skin beneath them smooth and tanned. He stepped forward, the
shotgun lowered, his hand out.
Brandon
looked down and saw Ferland’s
feet, slick with Kent’s blood from the spreading pool. “Just let
me go,” he begged. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”
“Robbery,
am I right?” the Preacher said, ignoring the request. “Because of
drugs? Or is it a woman you’re stealing for? Either way, a whore
has your soul.”
Shame
soaked through him, mingling with the pulse inside that begged for a
hit. Brandon nodded. “Drugs,”
he said, then he reached up and took the Preacher’s hand, warm and
somehow clammy at the same time, and brought himself to standing.
A
dark humor settled into Ferland’s
face. “But you don’t know where the donations even are, do you?”
Brandon
shook his head, the bones in his neck grinding on each other.
“Please, he begged, “don’t
kill me.”
“What
do you think of me?” The Preacher stepped backwards, as though he
were offended at the thought. “That I judge you as evil for your
addiction? Because you have fallen under evil’s spell? No. No, not
at all. I believe in forgiveness,” the Preacher’s face grew
softer, his voice calming, “I am not meant to kill you,” he said.
“I am meant to teach you how to live.”
Ferland
paused, then reached out and took Brandon’s
hand in his own as though he were a child, the blood on their palms
mixing. “In you,” he continued, “I see one of God’s children
who has lost his way. That your way to Glory has been blocked by
something else. And I believe — I have to believe — that you have
been brought to me, delivered to me, so that I can guide you back to
righteousness.”
Preacher
Ferland leading, they moved across the room together, stepping over
Kent’s blood, already gathering
the smell of rot. Calmly, the Preacher led Brandon to the red wooden
box on the old nightstand.
“It’s
in there,” he said. “And you’re going to take it. A sign of
God's love. Not blasphemous Serendipity, but something older. A
perfect order. I can look at you and know, through His wisdom. That
you are a fearful man. But tonight, you shake the fear off.”
Hissing
leaked from the box as the snakes came alive again.
Brandon
bent at the waist, retching up bile. The Preacher’s
hand calmly rubbed his back. “Jesus Christ,” he gasped.
“Exactly!”
Ferland clapped him on the back, then raised him back to standing
before taking a step away.
“Go
on,” he said. “It’s waiting for you.”
Brandon
tried to stall, to grab something in his mind that would spare him,
but everything slipped under the weight of his need. Of
his shame. His fear. The anxiousness he could never seem to shake.
“You,” he tried. “You were supposed to be gone.”
Disappointment
clouded the Preacher’s face. “No
man will know my coming and going. Don’t you recognize that? You? A
thief in the night?”
He
felt Ferland reach into the back of his jeans and pull the .32 from
his waist. His temples hammering in fear, Brandon stepped to the box.
With hands quaking, he removed the bricks from the corners, then slid
the piece of plywood off, inch by inch.
The
inside of the box was dark and still, the scales of the rattlesnakes
cooly reflecting the overhead light. One of the things knocked its
rattle against the wooden side then fell quiet while the other tasted
blood in the air with its forked tongue. Their eyes beat black and
cold. His legs tingled as if to lead him away, but he could not bring
himself to move. A tail slid across the top of an old metal cashbox
nestled between the vipers, filling the box with a tinny echo.
“You
see it,” the Preacher said, taking a step back. “You just have to
believe now. God brought you here for this. Put your faith in Him and
you will not be harmed.” He gestured again at the box, an air of
weariness flushing across his skin. “But those who don’t believe
are punished.” Ferland raised the pistol. Pressed it, softly,
against the back of Brandon’s skull.
Brandon
stood, staring at the snakes, his vision blurring with darkness at
the edges. He tried not to think of the gun at the back of his head.
Tried not to think of Kent and all the nights they’d
spent on back roads, passing the pipe or the powder between them, how
badly he needed it now. Tried not to think of the insides of his
friend’s body, now exposed and twisted and leaking on the floor.
His
tongue worked the gaps of his teeth.
He
thought of getting clean, how he might actually be able to do it now
that Kent was gone. He thought of Preacher Ferland’s
God, full of wrath and retribution and mercy for those like him,
those who had fallen into the dark. He felt the Preacher standing
behind him, as though he’d been placed there by God himself, and
how he’d seen seen the man plunge his hands into the box, before
pulling the serpents out, always unharmed, his face calm, serene, at
one with the Maker.
Brandon
swallowed. He tried to summon a calmness or faith.
Tried to find a way forward without his own fear.
An
electricity entered the room, soft but insistent, just over the
surface of his skin.
“God
is here with us now,” Ferland said, pushing Brandon forward. “You
can feel it. Don’t let Him leave you now.”
Brandon
raised his right arm and placed it over the top, a half-forgotten
Psalm on his lips.
The
rattlesnakes began to writhe, their bodies turning and twisting in
the shadow of his hand, the ends of their tails rattling, beating
against the cheap wood. Forked tongues flicked rapidly, the serpent’s
eyes shining sick and wet in the shadows.
He
closed his eyes. Tried to picture God and his Kingdom. The peace of
it. The bravery. The Power and the
Glory and the Joy.
Slowly,
Brandon lowered his hand into the red wooden container, prayers
flowing from his lips. Behind him, Preacher Ferland joined in, his
voice loud and commanding.
The
hissing and rattling of the vipers grew louder as he lowered his hand
deeper, the tails of the rattlesnakes thumping against the insides of
the box. Brandon raised his voice to match the Preacher’s,
his eyes clenched shut as his hand descended into the whirling mass
of scales and teeth, and amidst the electricity and their voices and
the shaking of the snakes tails, the room became filled with a
strange uneven melody, like a man speaking in tongues.
Paul J. Garth has been published in Thuglit, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Plots with Guns, Crime Factory, Tough, and several other anthologies and web magazines. He lives and writes in Nebraska, where he lives with his family. An editor at Shotgun Honey, he is at work on his first novel, and can be found online by following @pauljgarth on Twitter.