One day, they wandered through the doors of Amos Flesher’s church. Cyril thought they might steal a chalice or something and pawn it. Instead they met the supreme-o creepster himself, ole Reverend Flesher with his greasy muskrat-pelt hair. Flesher had bumbled out of the whatever-the-fuck-you-call-it, his dressing room where he put on his goofy church clothes. He saw them skulking around.
“You looking for something, fellas?”
He had an aw-shucks way about him. But Virgil could see that was a sham. This was a guy who could spot the angle in a circle.
“Gimme all your money,” Cyril said mock-jokingly, but with that ever-present flint in his eye.
The Rev cocked his head at them. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a flashy roll—a wad of cash. What was a man of God doing with a pimp roll? He peeled off a few twenties and handed them over.
“The Lord provides,” he told them. “Why don’t you come back later? I might have a job for you.”
The Rev saw something in them that he could use. And so it transpired that they came here to Little Heaven, to buttfuck nowhere, to nursemaid a bunch of religious freakos. It wasn’t too bad at first. The Reverend promised them plenty of dough. It was easy work. They would’ve been happy to keep the churchy fuckos in line, really crack the fuckin’ whip, but the Rev’s followers never fell out of line. So most of the time, he and Cy sat around with their thumbs up their asses, feeling antsy. They had plenty of ammo, so they shot their guns off in the woods. But after a while, there wasn’t much to shoot at.
Virgil hated it—nothing but trees and dirt clods and people mumbling prayers. Cyril was madder than a wet hen, too. Little Heaven messed with his brain waves, he said. They tried brewing hooch to stabilize Cyril’s bummed waves, but that plan went tits up.
Then things got weirder. Voices in the woods. Shapes, some even claimed. But nothing you could point a finger at and say: This here, this is messed up. Just a feeling. Everyone started acting hinky, especially the kids. It was sorta like that movie he’d watched at the Presidio a few years back after filching some coins out of a blind beggar’s cup—Invasion of the Body Snatchers. As if the whole damn camp had been taken over by pod people. Virgil half expected to find a bunch of oozing, cracked-open pods down in the kitchen cellar.
Then the outsiders showed up—Virgil hadn’t minded so much, because at least there was nothing much weird about them. They came from the world of streetlights and restaurants and roller-disco rinks, from the real world. But soon after, things got unreal when that kid Eli came back looking like something in the woods had sucked the life out of him… and then Cy went missing. Virgil was terrified that he’d run off home without telling him. Just took off in the dead of night. Hasta la vista, Virg, I’ll see you in the funny pages, ole buddy ole chum.
And then just this morning that fucking nigger cunt went and stole a motorcycle. When Virgil went to stop it, he got a goddamn wrench chucked at him. It hit him so hard that he tasted metal on his tongue and his skull rang like a church bell. Before he knew it, the rotten pig-fucker was beating the living daylights out of him! And not a damn one of these religious bumpkins stepped in to stop the long-haired spook. They just let the prick whale away. Go ahead, you thieving foreigner, beat the tar out of a goddamn honest American!
Virgil had woken up in Doc Lewis’s quarters. His forehead was so swollen he looked like a caveman. His eyes were puffed to slits. That wouldn’t have happened if Cy had been around. He would have shot that black bastard dead in his boots. But Cy wasn’t around anymore and it broke Virgil’s heart.
Presently he got out of his bed in Doc Lewis’s bunkhouse and went outside. His face hurt like hell. He walked the fence. Nobody was around. The long-haired English faggot had taken off on the motorbike, he figured. Virgil hoped he’d gotten ripped apart by the things in the woods, that they ate his stringy black ass like beef jerky. Serve him right.
Clouds gathered overhead. The rain started as a light drizzle and built to a torrent, fat drops drumming on the warehouse roofs. Virgil let the downpour soak him to the skin. As a young boy he used to stand at the edge of the desert on scorching summer days watching chain lightning skate over the hillsides, waiting for the rain to come. There was great relief when those swollen clouds finally split open above him.
He watched the forest. Maybe he should run, too. There was another motorbike, right? He ought to get the hell out of here before things got any worse and—
Something or someone was standing between the trees.
Virgil squinted through the sheeting rain. He was still woozy from the beating that jigaboo had laid on him. For an instant, he pictured a gaggle of witches—these old crones with sagging papery skin and cruel twists of mouths shuffling between the tall dark pines clung with eldritch skeins of moss… witches, or perhaps just creatures who dressed to look like witches, but who were in truth more ancient and evil than any witch—
But no. It was just one person. A figure standing motionless in the shadowy canopy of the woods.
“Who’s out there? Who—”
Whatever it was, it came forward fast—spooky fast. One moment it was fifty yards off and the next it was right there, a few feet from the fence. It was Cyril… looked like Cy, anyhow. Except the eyes were off. And the way he stood there kinda creaky-looking, like his bones were all busted under his skin.
He looks like somebody already dead. This was Virgil’s trembling thought. His old pal Cy was dead as a doornail, except that little nugget of information hadn’t sunk into his decayed head quite yet. Virgil figured it would have to come as a shock to his dear friend.
“Everything okay, Cy?”
Cyril smiled. His teeth were gray like the dead tooth in his grandma’s mouth with a copper wire around it. Except every one of Cy’s teeth was gray—you’d think he had painted them with lead or something.
“Fine and dandy, Virg.”
“Well, good.” Virgil swallowed. Rain washed down his throat. It tasted bad, like water a corpse had sat in for days. “Where you been?”
“Oh, out and about.”
That was another worrisome thing. Cy’s voice was funny, too. Wet and rattling as if stuff was coming loose inside of him.
“I thought… jeez, you’re going to call me a dummy, but I thought maybe you’d left, Cy. You couldn’t stand another minute and skedaddled.”
“Aw, hell.” Cy hawked back and spat. The oyster of congealed phlegm just kinda fell out of his mouth like a dead slug and dribbled down his boot, black as clotted oil. “You think I’d leave all this happy horseshit?”
“Sure. No.” Virgil tried to smile, but the muscles of his face didn’t feel like they were working so hot. “You bet.”
Right then, Virgil felt like running. Yep, turning tail and sprinting away from his old buddy Cy. His heart was bappity-bapping inside his chest, and there was a tightness in his crotch as if a hard little balloon were swelling up behind his bladder.
“They all ought to pay, don’t you think?”
“Who’s that, Cy?”
Cyril motioned at Little Heaven with his chin—the pitiful whole of it. “Everyone. All these fuckers. Pay for disobeying the Lord.”
Since when did Cy give two shits about the Lord? “Well now, I don’t really see how they’ve—”
“Shut up, squirrel head,” Cy said. Virgil zipped his lip. “Shouldn’t they pay for what they let happen to you? That fairy nig beating on your head like a bongo drum while they all stood around with their dicks in their hands?”
Virgil caught a smell coming off his compadre. He nearly gagged. It would be rude to puke on account of Cy reeking so bad. A strong sense of unreality washed over Virgil; he felt light-headed, like when he used to huff gasoline in Mission Dolores Park.