"No!" Tim screamed.
"Reject Him," Wilder urged. "It's so easy. Join us. Accept the Prince of Darkness, the blood of the Believer. Let the Lord of Flies fill your life with all the pleasures you have but dreamed of."
"NO!"
Wilder hissed his outrage at this rejection, spittle from his mouth dripping on Tim's face. Again and again he urged Tim to blaspheme his God. The young man would not deny his God.
"Then you will die!" Wilder stood over him.
"Oh, my God—my Savior!" Tim cried out his pain. "Help me."
The others began laughing as they danced around the young man, their tongues spewing blasphemy. The sunlit day grew darker, gray clouds moving restlessly overhead.
"Where is your God, now?" Wilder laughed profanely. "You call on Him, but He does not hear you. Are you sure He even exists?"
"He hears me," Tim said, his faith growing as his body grew weaker. "He is real."
"Then where is He?"
"Everywhere," Tim spoke through his pain.
"Then perhaps He will hear you tonight," Wilder smiled. "When we cut out your heart. But you will suffer much before the knife ends it." Tim began screaming.
It was a Friday.
Four
Sam Balon, minister of the First Christian Church of Whitfield, woke from a deep and very troubled sleep. He no longer put out his hand to touch the far side of the bed. He knew his wife would not be there. She had not been there for months. She would be asleep in the bedroom on the far side of the parsonage, with heavy, black drapes pulled tightly shut, like shrouds, the bedroom door locked.
Once, weeks back, Sam had peeked into her bedroom when she had forgotten to lock the door. The heavy drapes were pulled tight. The room held a bad odor. Always a sun-lover, Michelle now avoided the sun, sleeping all day whenever she could. Sam had laid in his bed at night, many times, listening to his wife prowl the house in the darkness. Several times she had softly opened the door to his room, to stand looking at him, believing him asleep. Through slitted eyes, Sam had seen the medallion around her neck catch the light from the moon, winking at him. Once, he recalled, Michelle had hissed at him from the bedroom door.
She had not been a wife to him in months, domestically or sexually.
Once, several weeks back, when she had attempted to kiss him, Sam had jerked away from her. He still did not know why he had done that. His actions had enraged her.
On this early morning, in the summer of 1958, Sam had. as he had done so many times in the past several weeks, wakened soaked with sweat, his pajamas sticking uncomfortably to him. He had fought and struggled his way out of sleep—a sleep filled with nightmares of human sacrifice, devil worship, and orgies involving the most unspeakable of human deviations. And those creatures! Something straight out of a horror movie. But they were somehow familiar to Sam. He had seen or read about them, somewhere. But he could not pin it down.
Sam's restless sleep and troubled dreaming had tired him, leaving him feeling he had slept only a couple of hours, instead of eight. He had been experiencing these awful nightmares for weeks, and he could not understand why.
He had read no books nor seen any movies on devil worship or the supernatural—nothing to trigger such dreams. There had been no discussion of such things among his friends.
Friends? Sam's smile was bitter as he lay awake on the rumpled sheets. My once large circle of friends has certainly dwindled over the past weeks. Again . . . why?
He had read no books nor seen any movies on devil worship or the supernatural—nothing to trigger such dreams. There had been no discussion of such things among his friends. Friends? Sam's smile was bitter as he lay awake on the rumpled sheets. My once large circle of friends has certainly dwindled over the past weeks. Again . . . why?
But he did not consider his personal dreaming or his loss of a few fair-weather friends important enough to bother God with it in prayer. Yet.
But something was wrong in Whitfield.
He thought of Tim Bennett, the young archaeologist who had come to see him. He had been distraught that day, but had refused to say why. And he had not been back. When Sam had gone to the Dig site looking for him, he was told the young man had quit, gone back home, in the east.
Sam felt the man was lying to him. But why would he lie?
The preacher sat on the edge of the bed, in the dim light of predawn, and thought of his wife, probably sprawled in sleep in her black-draped room. Sam had not mentioned his dreams to her—why bother? The two of them had not shared a conversation of any substance in months. They had not shared anything in months.
Sam fought back the image of Jane Ann. Increasingly, she had the annoying habit of entering his thoughts at the most inopportune times and places. Alone in his bed. In the shower.
He had to smile. A preacher I may be, but I'm still a man, and Jane Ann is a very lovely woman.
He shook his head, clearing his thoughts of Jane Ann.
Sam had toyed with the idea that someone—God, perhaps—was trying to tell him something with these dreams. He had quickly rejected that idea.
Sam rose and padded softly to the kitchen. He poured a large glass of orange juice, drank it. then rubbed the cold glass against his forehead. He sat down at the table, weary from his hours of tossing and turning, fighting the dreams. He tried to think; his mind was a jumble of confusion.
Sam knew he and Michelle had been happy in their marriage. At first. At least he thought they had been. Childless, but content. But now, reviewing the past years, Sam could pick the marriage apart in retrospect. Their social life had never been very good; women seemed not to like or trust Michelle. And, he recalled, his mouth brassy with the knowledge, he knew she had been unfaithful to him many times. All the pieces fit in their proper places: the half-truths, the open lies he had caught her in, but never told her he knew.
And why, Sam reflected, would Michelle never see a doctor? Sam had gone, suspecting he was sterile. He was not. Michelle refused to go, becoming angry when he suggested it.
Sam thought back. He had known her . . . how long? Six years. And she had never been sick. Not once. She had never complained of cramps during her monthly time. Never had a cold. Never had a fever. Nothing. It was almost as if she were not . . . human.
And why had she been so insistent upon them coming here to Whitfield? He had other offers of more money, bigger churches. But no, she had thrown a temper tantrum when he suggested another church.
Why?
He had no answer.
Again, as he had many times before, Sam thought of the Catholic priest, Father Dubois. Dubois had never liked Michelle, nor she him. Sam sensed it. Did the priest know something Sam did not? If so, why didn't he tell him?
Again, the minister had no answer.
Sam could think of no logical explanation. None at all. None that would satisfy him. Sam wanted very much to be angry, but he could not direct his anger. Inward, perhaps? Is it all my fault; all my imagination?
No. No, it's neither my fault nor my imagination. I've done too much soul-searching. Whatever happened between us was not my doing, and there is something wrong here in Whitfield.
He shook his head in disgust, in anger, in frustration, in confusion. Rising, he placed the empty glass in the sink and made a pot of coffee. He moved quietly in the kitchen; a big man, in his mid-thirties.
He looked out the window while waiting for the coffee to make. Almost dawn over the town of Whitfield.
A strange dawn, Sam thought, standing by the sink. Birds should be singing, dogs should be barking, there should be movement of people. But there is nothing except the stillness of silence. Nothing at all.