James's smile faded ever so slightly. "I am not a man of God," he said dully.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong? Maybe I should go." She started to stand.
"No, no," Jack James said. He pressed her shoulder, coaxing her to sit back on the bed. "We're fine."
His sermon had touched her. He could see it in her eyes. He could always tell from their eyes. She sat perched on the bed, a bright-eyed, guileless child who would be more than willing to do anything for the leader of the Holy Assembly of God Church. Jack James excused himself to the trailer's small bathroom in order to change. When he returned a minute later he was stark naked. He held his hands behind his back.
"Oh, my goodness," the shocked girl said, eyeing the excitement of the preacher who was definitely not boring Episcopalian. "Oh, my God," she gasped when he brought his hands out from behind his back.
"Wicked child takes my name in vain," James said. "Wicked child must be punished."
Jack James held a mahogany cane-his rod of persuasion-high in the air. The girl screamed. She fell off the bed and scrambled for the door. Jack James spun around her, breathing her fear, savoring the pain.
James brought the cane down across her leg. The girl had been twisting the doorknob. With a shriek she let it go, falling to the floor.
"Wicked child tempts the flesh to sin," James sang.
A crack to the side of the head. Light blinding bright in her eyes, she tumbled under the small table in the trailer's kitchenette.
She was crying now. A gash bled from her temple. "Please." She tried to crawl to the door.
"Wicked child pleads for mercy," Jack James announced. He was sweating profusely now. Panting with excitement. "But mercy is God's to give. Today, God says-"
He brought the cane back one more time. Frothy white spittle sprayed from the corner of his mouth. Swing, crack.
The girl slumped face-first to the floor. "No," the almighty Jack James concluded.
His excitement spent, he left the dead girl on the floor and went in to take a shower. Later, under cover of darkness, he dumped the body in a shallow grave in some woods and rolled her car into a lake.
The story might have ended there for James had he not learned the identity of the young girl who had suffered the ultimate punishment of the wicked temptress. He saw it in the newspaper a few days after the incident. Front page, with accompanying picture.
It turned out that the young college girl was the only child of an Ohio senator who was part of the old Democratic machine. He had powerful friends on both sides of the law. The body had been found and the father was out for blood.
Jack James was not a fool. The day he saw the newspaper photo of that wicked, smiling temptress was the day he realized it was time to seek out sunnier pastures. Four days after the story broke, the Holy Assembly of God Church was renting a storefront in downtown San Francisco.
The move to California, though abrupt, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. In a state where tradition was yesterday and deeply held religious beliefs were last week, it seemed that everyone was looking to buy into the next fad. Church membership flourished. Over the course of the next eight years, James's church-eventually rechristened the People's Sanctum-enrolled tens of thousands of new members. The public face of the People's Sanctum was a church concerned with the plight of the poor. Food and clothing drives, free beds to indigents and church-sponsored soup kitchens were all part of the church's intensive antipoverty drive. Because of all his good works, Jack James was even appointed chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority.
The success of Jack James seemed divinely inspired.
His delusions had only grown more firmly entrenched over time. There were no lucid moments. James was now God on Earth. The one eternal, omniscient Deity, come to lead his sheep to his own version of eternal salvation.
And since he was omnipotent God, it came as a shock when everything he had built collapsed from beneath his feet.
He had dodged the charges for years. In the end it took only one betrayer.
A young woman who had barely survived a personal audience with James came forward. She had scars that were the kind that couldn't be seen and the other kind that could. She showed the latter on the evening news.
"Outrageous," said a church spokesman. "Unfounded," the same spokesman insisted when another woman told a newspaper an identical story. Soon more former cult members were coming forward. A trickle became a rising flood.
There were allegations of extortion, encouragement of sexual promiscuity and enforcement of discipline among church disciples through blackmail and beatings. One man who came forward knew where some of the bodies had been buried. Literally.
Fortunately for Jack James, he had been warned ahead of time by an acolyte in the media. There was nothing else he could do but flee.
America was no longer safe. Luckily he had purchased several hundred acres of land in the Mayanan jungle a few years earlier. He had hoped to put it to agricultural use-primarily for growing coca plants. The land became haven to Jack James and the six-hundred-odd People's Sanctum members who fled with him from California.
Life in Mayana proved difficult. There weren't the same creature comforts as back in America.
To discourage disloyalty among his remaining cult members, Jamestown-as the property became known-was cut off from the outside world. To break the spirits of his followers, James worked cult members fourteen or more hours a day. As punishment, food and water were often withheld.
There was no longer any need to hide his peccadilloes behind a socially acceptable mask. James roamed the fields of Jamestown administering beatings to men and women chosen completely at random.
Over the years he had let a few close acolytes in on the extralegal aspects of the church. There were twelve in all. In Mayana these apostles became his own private security force. They would serve his every whim and, when necessary, dispose of the bodies afterward.
Jack James might have ruled for the rest of his natural days in the hell that was Jamestown and died a forgotten old maniac in the jungles of Mayana if not for a lone man. He wasn't even very important in the grand scheme of things. Just a run-of-the-mill California congressman.
In November of 1978, word came of an impending visit by Congressman Lenny Rand. Some of his constituents who had relatives in Jamestown were demanding the congressman do something to get their loved ones home. The congressman had decided to plead the case for Jack James's extradition to authorities in New Briton. But first he wanted to take a fact-finding tour of Jamestown. The congressman would be there in less than a day.
James's paranoia reached critical mass. The visiting congressman was an agent of Satan. He was in league with the demons who had driven James from his comfortable home in California. He was cohort to the Ohio senator whose Bathsheba daughter had tempted the flesh of Jack James so many years ago. His world was coming apart. The forces of evil were aligning to destroy Jack James.
The almighty Jack James refused to let Satan win again.
He had no troops to speak of. Jamestown could not survive an attack by America. His security forces were few in number. The regular cult members were starving, emaciated shells. But God was nothing if not resourceful.
When Congressman Rand arrived in Jamestown, he and his party were greeted by the security farces of Jack James. They were slaughtered to a man. James himself beat the congressman's skull in with the rod of persuasion.