Micah had been thinking about it lately. Souls ascending. It wasn’t Little Heaven that turned his thoughts in that direction; the Reverend’s compound seemed about as divine as the Preston School. No, just the feeling a man gets when he senses the chain of his own life drawing tight around his throat. Micah felt the links of that chain cutting into his neck. And he wondered, idly but with as much feeling as he could summon, how thin a cut it was between a man like Augustus Preston and the man he himself had been at some earlier, rottener time in his existence.
He had killed men for money, and less than money. There were times when an evil had invaded his soul. He felt it drop over him, black and suffocating. That same mantle seemed to hang over the Reverend’s shoulders, too—Micah sensed it to a certainty. And so the question was: If you let a man like that indulge his nature and didn’t do anything about it, are you any better than him? A crazy dog bites, that being its nature. But if you let that dog go on biting, servicing its own ill-bred temperament—knowingly, and with an agency to stop it—then are you not whelps from the same litter? No, you are worse even. That dog cannot help but bite. You know better. Your inaction encouraged that evil to flourish. The blood was on your hands.
Micah thought about things like that. All the time he thought.
29
CY… OOOHHH, Cy baby, I need you…
Cyril Neeps started up from his sleep. He was kicked back in his chair against the side of the bunkhouse that housed Eli Rathbone. He snapped forward, the front feet of the chair stabbing into the dirt.
Jesus. He’d fallen asleep with his head touching the wall of the bunkhouse with that thing shambling around inside. That fucking—
—abomination—
Yeah, okay, fucking-A right, that was the word. A bigger word than Cy was used to throwing around, but sure. A fucking abomination. Those curdled gray eyes and the grubs twisting around in his cored-out armpit. The bugs. Hard as he tried, Cy couldn’t drive that image out of his mind. The boy was just covered in bugs right up to his chest, the little fuckers scuttling all over while the boy stroked that dead fucking pigeon with his disgusting melted hand—Kee-rist, all the liquor in the world couldn’t wash that picture out of a man’s head.
Not that Cy wouldn’t give that a go. Hey! The good ole college try. But the Reverend, the slant-heeled killjoy prick, ran a dry compound. Hell, he and Virg had even tried whipping up a batch of home brew out of spud peels, a bag of sugar, and a few weird-smelling herbs Virg hunted out of the woods—the same woods they had steered clear of lately. But the finished batch smelled of grim death, and when Virg took the tiniest sip, his tongue turned toad green. They agreed it would probably drive them both blind, and then they’d never find their way out of Little Heaven—and their departure was fixing to be sooner rather than later, if anyone wanted the God’s honest truth. Time to blow this pop stand, was Cy’s professional opinion.
And the Reverend—that rat-assed, greasy snake oil salesman! Cyril kinda hated him. He couldn’t understand why all these bozos followed him out here, hanging off his every goddamn word—that was, until he’d seen him in action behind the pulpit. Oh, he changed then. Grew two feet taller, that big voice rumbling out of his pudgy body like a rainbow arching out of a dung pile. Cyril wasn’t a churchgoing man, but he could appreciate the power the Reverend had, and so far as Cy could tell, he’d earned it. The fucker paid good, too. He vacuumed every nickel out of his cow-eyed worshippers’ pockets and gave some of it to him and Virg.
But in Cy’s not-so-humble opinion, no amount of cashola was enough for this. Nope. No way, no how. What good was money when you couldn’t buy the finest things in life: liquor off the top shelf, a pack of Colts wine-tipped cigarillos, and, after a drink and a smoke, maybe a nice slice of pussy? In fact, it didn’t have to be that nice a slice. Just willing. Or, if not willing, at least present. All the women around here had a broomstick up their asses, or else rode one. And they had prick-shot husbands and kids, too, and everyone knew that once a woman had a kid, her cooze flapped like a wind sock at the airport. Cy liked a tight fit. This one clam-faced bitch he’d nailed had told Cy that no fit would be tight enough for his Phillips-head screwdriver of a dick unless he took to fucking electrical sockets—but she had only said that once.
Cy-by… where’s my handsome Cyyyyy-by…
Cyril’s head snapped toward the voice. A blast from the past. An honest-to-Christ mind melter.
“Carlene…?”
Jesus, didn’t that name feel weird in his mouth? Carlene Herlihy from Carbine, Alabama—the glue-trap town Cy had grown up in. Couldn’t be her, of course. But there it was, her voice calling from the heart of the woods just as sugary sweet as he remembered.
My baby, my handsome honey-bunny…
Carlene. Juicy Carlene. A box as sweet as canned peaches. Only you had to wrench the damned lid off her jar. Women! They learned or they got taught, and either way worked fine by Cy. Hell, the fight was half the fun.
Honey-bunny, though? Carlene had never called him that. She wasn’t one for gooey phrasings—as a cashier at the Carbine Pinch N Save, she could scarcely be bothered to make eye contact, and had a way of snapping her gum that made a man feel about an inch tall. Christ, she had no clue Cy even existed until he made his move—which it must be said was a bit… what’s the shit-eatin’ word? Forward.
He was twenty-five. Carlene, eighteen. Body tight as a snare drum. Dewy was the word to race through Cy’s mind looking at her. Just as slick and wet as the earth after a rainstorm. He wasn’t on her radar, so he made damn good and sure to put himself there.
He’d been ready to roll out of town at the time, no forwarding address. But before he left, he had matters to attend to. He caught up with Carlene one night at a bush party. He shouldn’t have been there—he was too old, and with that jittery look he used to get when he was up to something. His eyes were hard these days, no matter what he was doing. He almost missed that old feeling.
Anyway, Cy let Carlene know he’d come into some acid. That bug-fuck weirdo Leary had hipped him to it, Cy said. As if one soul in that scratch-ass town really had acid. But Carlene went with him, bold as a bull. He took her into the woods. She was pissed to the gills; he figured she wouldn’t be able to bat so much as a butterfly off her arm. But she had fight in her. Ooo-eee, what a hellion! Scratching and biting, all but clawing Cyril’s eyes out. She wore fake nails or some shit, took a nice chunk out of his cheek. But when she gave over to him, it was with a sigh. Her legs could have been oiled, the way they spread. Wide open, smooth as creamery butter—
Cy… Cyril… Come over here, Cyril…
Cyril was up off his chair without really thinking—as if he’d grown a second brain in his ass that was controlling his legs. Hey, ass brain, hold your horses! He almost laughed at how fucking silly it was… except the spit had gone sour in his mouth. He took a few hesitant steps away from his post by the bunkhouse door. Sweat trickled down his spine to soak his underwear. His rear end was clammy, and it itched in a place he was helpless to scratch.
The fence shielding Little Heaven from the woods was twenty yards off. He lurched toward it.