The church was standing room only by the time Mrs. Fanning arranged herself primly on the pipe organ bench and struck up the opening chords to "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." After the weekly notices and the prayers of the people, Clay strode forward, his black robe loose on his gaunt frame. He moved into position behind the pulpit and looked around at the congregation, a humorless, fiercely determined expression on his face.
"Some people," he began, "might think that a minister's job is to comfort people. Make them feel good. I am not here today to make anyone feel good. It is not my mission, or my calling, to blind with consoling platitudes, or soothing half-truths. I'm a plain-speaking man, and what I'm going to say will make some people uncomfortable. Thou hast showed thy people hard things."
He looked about again, then bowed his head and said a short prayer. After a moment of silence, he turned to his Bible and opened it to the text of his sermon.
"And the fifth angel sounded," he began in a strong, vibrant voice,
". . . And I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon. The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the streets. But the rest of the men repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship idols of gold, and silver."
Clay raised his head and slowly closed the book. "Revelation, chapter nine," he said, and let an uncomfortable silence grow.
Then he began more quietly. "A few weeks ago, a large company came here to begin yet another doomed effort to recover the Ragged Island treasure. You have all heard the dynamite, the engines running night and day, the sirens, and the helicopters. You have seen the island lit up in the dark like an oil platform. Some of you are working for the company, have rented rooms to its employees, or benefited financially from the treasure hunt." His eyes roved the room, stopping momentarily on Bud. The grocer shifted in his seat and glanced toward the door.
"Those of you who are environmentally concerned might be wondering what effect all the pumping, the muddy water, the gas and oil, the explosions, and the unceasing activity is having on the ecology of the bay. And those fishermen and lobstermen among you might wonder if all this has anything to do with the lobster catch being off twenty percent recently, and the mackerel run down almost as much."
The minister paused. Bud knew that the catch had been steadily dropping over the last two decades, dig or no dig. But this did not stop the considerable number of fishermen in the room from shifting restlessly in their seats.
"But my concern today is not simply with the noise, the pollution, the ruination of the catch, or the despoliation of the bay. These worldly matters are the proper domain of the mayor, if he would only take them up." Clay let a pointed glance fall upon the mayor. Bud watched as Fitzgerald smiled uncomfortably, a hand flying up to smooth one of his magnificent mustaches.
"My concern is the spiritual effect of this treasure hunt." Clay stepped back from the pulpit. "The Bible is very clear on this matter. Love of gold is the root of all evil. And only the poor go to heaven. There's no ambiguity, no arguing over interpretation. That's a hard thing to hear, but there it is. And when a wealthy man wanted to follow Jesus, He said give away all your riches first. But the man couldn't do it. Remember Lazarus, the beggar who died at the rich man's gates and went to the bosom of Abraham? The rich man who lived behind the gates went to hell, and begged for a drop of water to cool his parched tongue. But he did not receive it. Jesus couldn't have said it more clearly: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
He paused to look around. "Maybe this always seemed like someone else's problem to you. After all, most people in this town are not rich by any standard. But this treasure hunt has changed everything. Have you, any of you, stopped to think what will happen to our town if they succeed? Let me give you an idea. Stormhaven will become the biggest tourist attraction since Disneyland. It will make Bar Harbor and Freeport look like ghost towns. If you think the fishing is bad now, wait until you see the hundreds of tourist boats that will ply these waters, the hotels and the summer cottages that will spring up along the shore. The traffic. Think about the countless venture capitalists and gold seekers who will come, digging here, digging there, onshore and off, plundering and littering, until the land is destroyed and the fishing beds obliterated. Sure, some in this room will make money. But will your fate be any different than that of the rich man in the parable of Lazarus? And the poorest among you—those who make their living from the sea—will be out of luck. There will be only two choices: public assistance or a one-way bus ticket to Boston." At this mention of the two most despised things in Stormhaven— welfare and Boston—there was an unhappy murmur.
Suddenly Clay leaned back, gripping the pulpit. "They will unleash the beast whose name is Abaddon. Abaddon, king of the Pit. Abaddon, which in Hebrew means the Destroyer."
He scanned the rows sternly. "Let me show you something." Stepping away from the pulpit, he reached for the linen-covered shape on the small table. Bud leaned forward as an expectant hush filled the room.
Clay paused a moment, then plucked the sheet away. Beneath was a flat, black stone, perhaps twelve by eighteen inches, its edges badly worn and chipped. It was propped against an old box of dark wood. Carved into the face of the stone were three faint lines of letters, crudely highlighted in yellow chalk.
Clay stepped up to the pulpit and in a loud, trembling voice repeated the inscription:
"First will ye Lie
Curst shall ye Crye
Worst must ye Die
"It's no coincidence this stone was found when the Pit was first discovered, and that its removal triggered the Water Pit's first death. The prophecy on this evil stone has held true ever since. All of you who would seek idols of gold and silver— whether it be directly, by digging, or indirectly, by profiting from the diggers—should remember the progression it describes. First will ye lie: The greed for riches will pervert your nobler instincts."
He drew himself up. "At the lobster festival, Malin Hatch himself told me the treasure was worth a couple of million dollars. Not an inconsiderable sum, even for a man from Boston. But I later learned the real estimate was closer to two billion. Two billion. Why would Dr. Hatch deceive me like that? I can tell you only this: The idols of gold are a seductive force. First will ye Lie."
His voice dropped. "Then there's the next line: Curst shall ye Crye. The gold brings with it the curse of sorrow. If you doubt that, talk to the man who lost his legs. And what is the last line of the curse? Worst must ye Die."
His hollow eyes parsed the audience. "Today, many of you want to lift the stone, so to speak, to get the gold idol underneath. The same thing Simon Rutter wanted, two hundred years ago. Well, remember what happened to Rutter."
He returned to the pulpit. "The other day, a man was killed in the Pit. I spoke to that man not one week ago. He offered no excuses for his own lust for gold. In fact, he was brazen about it. 'I'm no Mother Teresa,' he told me. Now, that man has died. Died in the worst way, the very life crushed out of him by a great stone. Worst must ye Die. 'Verily, I tell you, he hath his reward.'"