“They could have stepped in, yeah.”
“Bet your ass, buckaroo,” said Cy. “Now let me tell you—clean the shit out of your ears, dim bulb, and listen up good—the Reverend’s got a plan.”
Virgil smiled dozily. “Is that so?”
“That’s a fact, jack. And all you got to do is exactly what he says. Figure you can manage that, or will following simple instructions make your fool brains squirt out your ears?”
“Aw, come on now, Cy…”
Virgil’s thoughts were swimmy and remote. It was as if his brain was trying to sprint away from him, away from Little Heaven and everything that was happening. But where could it go? It was trapped in his stupid skull, just like Virgil was trapped here.
“Can you help, Cy? I’d feel a lot better if you were helping. You always were the—”
“The brains of the operation. Yeah, Virg, I know. Lord knows I do. But not this time. You’re on your own.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t anymore.”
“Why?” Virgil repeated stupidly.
Cyril opened his mouth. Virgil took an instinctive step back. The inside of Cy’s mouth was all black, but things were moving in the pit of his throat. Bugs, it looked like. But it couldn’t be. Roaches scuttling over one another…
Virgil said, “Oh.”
Cyril shut his mouth. He had begun to drift away from the fence, back toward the woods. Virgil couldn’t see his feet moving. That was odd, wasn’t it?
I hid a gun in our bunkhouse, Cyril said… Actually, he didn’t say anything. His lips were shut. But Virgil could hear him just fine.
A long bladelike insect—a centipede?—slid out of Cyril’s nostril. It curled around the rim of his nose, its legs skiddle-skaddling and antennae twitching, crawled between his eyes and up his forehead to vanish into the tangled nest of his hair. Virgil did not scream, but if his throat hadn’t been so dry all of a sudden, he surely would have.
Look under the bed, Virg. Take the gun. You’ll need it.
Cy kept on floating back toward the trees. To be honest, Virgil couldn’t say he was all that sad to see him go. Cyril’s body knitted into the gloom of the woods. A few minutes later, the rain stopped entirely.
Virgil walked through the muddy slop to their bunkhouse. The gun—a Bulldog .38 revolver—and a box of ammunition were stashed under the cot in a hole dug under the clapboards, just like Cyril had said it would be. Good ole Cy, always looking out.
Virgil stuck the pistol into his waistband. Then he crossed the square to the chapel and knocked on the door. The Reverend answered. He didn’t look so hot. His hair fell over his forehead in greasy strings. He stunk like a polecat in July.
“Come in.” He smiled—a gruesome sight—his eyes flicking edgewise. “We have much work to do.”
Reluctantly, with the same dread a man might feel stepping into his own casket, Virgil Swicker went inside.
6
EBENEZER FLED the ruin of Grinder’s Switch and hit the interstate, gunning the Oldsmobile’s engine hard as he piled up the miles between himself and Little Heaven.
The big-bore engine sent a soothing vibration through the whole car. He flicked on the radio and caught the Sonics singing “The Witch” on KIOT 102.5—“Spinning platters without the chatter!”—out of Albuquerque.
The blood on his scalp and ear had coagulated and turned crusty. He stopped at a Texaco station and cleaned himself up in the bathroom—the gas jockey had looked like he was going to withhold the lavatory key, but something in Eb’s demeanor convinced him to hand it over. When Eb emerged, he looked somewhat presentable. He got on the road again and pulled into a roadside diner sometime later. A bubble of polished glass and steel made dull by the constantly blowing dust. He could see a few people inside at the counter or sitting in padded booths. A pie case revolved at the end of the counter—huge, three-inch-thick wedges peaked with meringue or whipped cream. He wiped the drool off his lips and considered his state. He was in no shape for public viewing, not without having to answer a lot of questions. What he needed was a motel room, a bath, and to sleep in a real bed for roughly fifteen years.
A pay phone stood near the diner’s entrance. He flipped open the car’s ashtray and found a crumpled dollar bill, plus a few dimes and nickels. His back was welded to the upholstery with sweat; he peeled off the seat like a giant Band-Aid and made his way to the phone.
“Truth or Consequences Police Department. Do you have a crime to report?”
Eb cleared his throat. “I do, yes.”
The line clicked. A series of buzzes, then a man picked up.
“Detective Rollins speaking. What’s the problem?”
The man sounded as if he was expecting an elderly woman to tell him that her cat, Mr. Buttons, was stuck up an elm tree.
“Er, yes…” Ebenezer was unsure how to proceed. He should have rehearsed. “I believe something’s happening in the woods and hills up past the town of Grinder’s Switch.”
“That so, buddy? What kinda something we talkin’ about?”
The detective sounded fat. Eb pictured him leaning back in a wooden chair while an electric fan stirred the squad room’s humid air around. He saw rolls of flab cascading down the back of Rollins’s neck to his too-tight collar, balls of sweat rolling down his forehead to dampen his caterpillar eyebrows above a pair of small, piggy eyes.
“I was hiking around that area and I came across—”
“Where you from, pardner? You don’t sound local.”
“I’m English, if that matters.”
Rollins’s voice grew hard. “What matters is what I say matters. We clear on that, pard?”
“Crystal.”
“Go on, tell your story. I don’t got all day.”
Ebenezer gazed through the dusty window into the diner. The waitress—an old battle-ax named Flo or Marge or Betsy, no doubt—was gawping out at him. The pie case spun enticingly at her elbow.
“I was hiking in the hills,” Eb said tightly. “Came across a camp. A survivalist setup. Little Heaven, I believe it’s called. Have you heard of it?”
“Nope.” The detective popped the p in a way that conveyed his total boredom.
“Yes, so, about thirty or forty of them. Living on their own in the woods.”
“That’s not a crime. Weird, but not a crime.”
“Right, well… I think some of them might have died.”
He heard a loud scriitch—the sound of Rollins pulling his chair closer to his desk, perhaps. His voice was suddenly bright with interest.
“Go on.”
“I don’t know how it happened, or what happened. All I know is that—”
“What did you see?” Rollins said.
“A body. Maybe more. Some dead bodies.”
“You sure? How close did you get to them bodies? You positive whoever it was wasn’t just sleeping or knocked out or—?”
“Sleeping? No. Dead.”
“Dead how?”
“I beg pardon?”
“How were these bodies dead? Bullet in the head? Knife? What?”
What use was it to tell this man the truth? That Charlie Fairweather and Otis Langtree and the big redheaded bull had been savagely dismembered by beasts beyond the Sheriff’s wildest imaginings—creatures that would wreck his tiny, suet-engirded mind?
Ebenezer sighed. “I… I don’t know. They’re just dead. Either you believe that or you don’t.” You shitkicking fathead, he thought.