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It’s pouring rain outside. Droplets snap at the windows in darkness broken by the lightning. A tacky pink bar sign of a cross hangs above me. I’m sitting here cold and wet, loading a rickety shotgun with a box of shells. The cardboard package is pulp and I’m praying the powder isn’t soaked as well.
It’s funny, I didn’t even believe in God.
Everything started when I rolled into town a day ago. I’ve been homeless for a few years, train hopping west to stay out of the cold. The meth I was shooting up in Utah had me at an all-time low. I don’t want to say what I did for that last hit but I finally drew the line after and got out of Dodge. No family, no friends. Soiling myself under a bridge and puking in the gutter, shakes making me wish for death.
Three days and I could finally see straight. My dope sickness now settled to a minor ache in the back of my brain. You always want the stuff but at least it was no longer a need. I crawled out of that hole I was staying in and found a bus stop with a gas station and a bus to town. I used the last of my change to get me a grey hound ticket to Oregon and hitchhiked my way to California.
I stepped out of a big rig on the I-5. My exit was on the edge of town as he couldn’t have me in the truck when he reached the weigh station. I thanked him for the ride and watched as he headed down the road. My hoodie and flannel jacket were enough to keep the cold out in the day. Night was coming soon, however, and I didn't think I’d make it into town by then. I couldn’t stay on the road either unless I wanted to be wrapped around an axle at three in the morning. Only option left was to head in the woods and hope for the best.
My course had been a few miles off the beaten path. Wading through dead leaves and dry branches. The autumn air cut into my skin and the overcast gave a dire warning for anyone who’s been out in the cold. Rain. The subtle ache in my knees and pressure in my sinuses agreed I’d have to find something soon. An hour later in the tree-line I found a stroke of luck.
Five log cabins lined in a row complete with tables beckoned me to safety. A gazebo for the rain, even a podium stood center stage before an outstretch of open land. It must have been a campground for the summer. Strange as I knew the lake was on the other side of the mountain. Despite thinking something like this would be more appropriate closer to the water, I wasn't asking any questions. I checked the locks on one of the campsites and sure enough it opened. The cabin was warm and clean, with thick beige logs without a speck of mold and the concrete floors swept clean. All at once my exhaustion from weeks on the road hit me as I saw the best part. A bed, an actual bed. A meager camping cot with a pad for a mattress, but it was a bed. I fell face first into the thing and slept.
I awoke as panic stirred within me. The sound of an engine was coming up the road. Multiple if I listened closely. I didn’t need to have the cops called on me. Half asleep I snuck into the cold overcast outside, skulking in the tree-line for a place to hide. I should have left. I should have gone right there, been thankful for the nap and been on my way. But I wanted that bed. If there was a chance it was just a passerby or someone there to clean the grounds, I was going to get that bed back. It’s funny how small things like a warm place to sleep will make you desperate.
Those who arrived were no grounds keepers. A parade of trucks pulled up surrounding a handful of black SUVs. Middle class men and roughnecks opened the door to those who must have been The Who’s who of the town nearby. The sun was setting and everyone prepared for what I thought must have been some form of celebration. Canvas tents were raised next to the wooden cabins. A large wooden platform now stood in the middle of everything. The podium watched over the display, making the whole camp into a theatre for whatever would occur on that wooden stand.
Hours passed and as the sun set the preparations were finished. The men entered the canvas tents to change. The majority worked as stagehands, with more affluent in suits making small talk and smoking amidst the festivities. Stranger still, when these men were approached, the underlings did so with strange gestures. Some even bowed before speaking. The suits would nod and give commands and the others would do as bid. Watching this beneath the trees I hadn’t made a sound. It all felt in that moment like walking in on a great secret. At this point I was afraid moving would get me caught so I deemed it necessary to stay.
Night fell and the ceremony began. Every one one of them had left the canvas tents in white robes and red hoods. A symbol in Arabic was painted in red upon their chests and each held a torch alight despite the misting rain. The procession would end before the platform as the wealthy men in suits were now in robes of green. They sat at the podium surrounding the most important looking in a robe of gold and black. The standing men saluted with praises in a strange tongue, the torches raised high above.
Finally, the master of that ceremony, robes of black with hood unveiled strode to the podium like an emperor, hands high to speak before the crowd.
“Brothers! We are gathered here today for the rites by which we abide. The laws beyond all law and rites above all rights.”
The crowd answered as one. “We are sworn to silence and the blood is on our hands.”
I watched in horror, assuming I stumbled across some twisted clan meeting. The rain dripped down my nose on the fallen leaves yet any rustle or broken branch would have set them upon me. I had to stay, waiting for them to go inside and leave before they bound me here or worse. Then I learned it was far worse than drunken racists playing in the woods.
The man raised a hand against the crowd. “Not all! Some among you are uninitiated, yet that ends here today.” With a wave of his hand, I saw a chosen few pull some poor girl out of the trunk of a car. The crowd moaned in a tone both musical and ominous as the girl stumbled, prodded towards the stand.
“Some of you have not met our master. Yet we are not some paltry sermon calling on you for faith. We serve a god of action, and by him we will reign!” The master of this ceremony pointed towards the stand as candles set alight, the crowd cheering on in praise.
The men in green stepped down to descend upon the girl, lying her across the wooden stand. As she lay in a drugged stupor they spread her arms and legs, each of these high priests holding down a limb. Her sleepy mumbling broke into a scream as she awoke with a jolt of pain. A large wooden hammer slammed a rusty nail through each of her hands and feet. Each pound of the mallet wringing from her a cry of anguish. I choked down a sob of terror as I watched them carry on, her torment just beginning. With a dagger they tore her stomach open while she was still alive. The crowd’s moaning growing ever louder drowning out her screams. Then those in robes of green pulled out her intestines with bloody hands, hammering them into grotesque symbols all around. The organs writhing as her screams faltered into a gasping moan of agony and exhaustion.
“Quickly now. If she dies well have to start again!” The man in black scolded as the servants worked in earnest. But the preparations were complete. The woman still alive to suffer. The initiates lined up before her dying body as the man in black prayed in evil tongues. That strange symbol was painted on their robes, the blood from her body tipped the brushes for their mark.
Her cries grew quieter still, until you could only see her chest heave from the exhaustion. The human body is a marvel in how much it can take. I vomited in the brush as I watched them carry on. I had seen men die in the midst of my addiction. But this, this was sick beyond it all.
The Master had declared she’d had enough. Time to end their little game. He stood above her with a man’s skull. Lines of bone cancer writhed along its brow to the point where growths mounded on its forehead. Those lumps made horns from bristles of calcified rot. He dipped the skull like a goblet into the blood of her open abdomen, holding it high for the crowd to see. The intestines writhing all around as he stood above the dying woman, muttering incantations as the crowd around them sang in ominous moan.
He drank deep from the cup and the crowd cut to silence. The woman died with a final sob and her organs moved no more. I would have thought it over yet as the man in black pulled the cup away, I noticed he had changed. His eyes were mans no more. They glowed in the dark a sickly yellow. Power emanating from him as the falling rain boiled to a mist as soon as it fell upon him. A suffocating smell of sulfur permeated the air as he cackled in the night, lighting crashing all around. The rain turned to a torrent to applaud their heinous act. His voice was his no more. A guttural echo sounded as he applauded his audience.
“You have served me well this day.” The crowd cheered as their ritual found success. This evil borne its fruit in earnest. There was not a doubt in my mind that a demon walked the earth before me.
“You chosen few are bound no more by the frail chains of moral virtue. There is but one law and one god you serve. One choice for you to make. Do you serve a corpse, or do you reign with me?”
“We reign! We reign!” His followers cried the louder.
Sitting there in the wet and mud I watched as the monster in human form waved a hand above his constituents. They rolled and shuddered as the sulfur smell punched my nose ever stronger. These people. These evil people. They knew there was good and evil. They were not ignorant of the light, following some superstition to break the monotony of their lives. They knew of darkness in this world, and chose it all the more.
Unable to stomach anymore I turned to leave when the man in black snapped his head toward me. He smiled in a twisted grin, pulling back his face to the point you could see the sinews of his jaw. It looked unbelievably painful, if there was someone left in there to feel the pain at all.
“My children, we have a guest.” Bring him to me and we’ll play a little longer.” He laughed as he pointed towards me in the dark.
The men in robes began to run. With a burst of fear, I tore away from the hellish creature and his denizens behind me. I did not want to die here. I ran, blisters in my boots. Water soaking my jacket. The men in robes tearing after me, some even galloping on all fours as they broke through branch and brush.
I turned to find a steep hill side and threw myself upon it. I rolled in the mud as leaves caked my face and twigs broke in my beard. My head was cut on a rock and my body slammed against a tree trunk to break my fall. The concussion had me seeing double yet still it didn’t matter. When I opened my blurring eyes, I saw in a flash of lightning the hill did little to slow them down. Half of them leaped to the trees like monkeys as others slid from rock to rock. I nearly killed myself to get a lead, and yet the gap was closing.
I stumbled to gain my footing. Resisting the nausea bubbling in my chest I kept on. The slick mud caked on my jeans, soaking through leg and crotch alike, I shuddered from the beginnings of hypothermia.
Running in the dark, I came across a place to hide. An old abandoned church in the middle of the woods. Ancient and rickety, built of rotted splintered planks long oxidized of any paint or color. Only boarded pulp to hold up a shingled roof covered in holes. I threw myself inside falling face first onto the floor. Still wet, yet dryer than outside. I gained my footing to lock the door behind me. I gathered my surroundings to see the place was tiny. Even in its heyday the parishioners must have been at most a couple dozen. Rain sputtered through the roof and half the windows lay shattered from vandals. I tried the lights and while none of the bulbs worked a lone neon cross flickered behind the pulpit. I looked in the janitors closet for something, anything with which to defend myself and there behind a mop and broom I found it. An old break action shotgun, rusted and well past its prime. But if there was any mercy in this life it would work.
I found a wet cardboard box full of 20 gauge birdshot. Hardly enough for killing pigeons yet it would have to do. So there I was, bloody, covered in mud, and cold. Back against my only source of light, shaky hands loaded that single round in the chamber.
The cult found me. Their heads flashed in the window covered by their hoods. They cackled with curses, eager to tell me all the ways they would make me suffer. The front door shook from their attack, trying to force their way inside.
Bang.
I prayed to whatever God could hear me. I don’t know what I believed anymore but I didn’t care. I knew evil when I saw it.
Bang.
My shaky hands readied aim against the doorway until the third had struck.
Bang.
The doors split open, pouring in rain and thunder and so I opened fire. A flash of the muzzle and kick against my shoulder, I peppered a man square in that sick little target he drew in some dead woman’s blood. He dropped like a sack of bricks. If it wasn't for the rain, you could have heard a pin drop. Cultists stood there shocked that one of their own had died. The idea that pain could happen to them was unthinkable. A group of children shocked when the animals they abused bit them back. In their confusion I loaded another, using the moment to weigh my odds. Did I shoot them yet again or turn for it and run. A fire escape lay behind me and I wasn't sure if they surrounded me or not.
To my horror I watched the man I shot. With a slow, patient determination he sat up. Blood covering his shirt where I holed him with my round. He didn’t look to have felt an ounce of it. In that moment I could see a glimmer in his eyes, and behind that hood I even saw a smile.
I turned away and ran, hurling myself into the fire escape behind me. One of those cultists leaped upon me the second I opened the door. I had no time for games. I shoved that barrel beneath his jaw and opened fire, brain and bone showering like a firework from his skull. He dropped in a pile beside me and if he got back up again, I didn’t care. A hand shoved me forward trying to grab me and I stumbled dropping the gun. It was stupid yet I had no time to stop. I ran onward in the dark and pouring rain.
I still heard them upon me. Their calls and taunts as they chased me ever on yet I did not hear the crash of all their footsteps. Then I heard a crack like thunder and felt the white hot pain of birdshot tearing my left arm to ribbons.
I screamed falling face first into the leaves. What adrenaline there was within me shielded me from shock. Getting shot feels like hot needles going in you. The sick smell of your own skin. Flesh and hair burning as every nerve in your shoulder screams that you’re the one whose cooking. When you reach a certain threshold of agony there’s nothing left to measure. All that goes through your mind is fear and hurt.
The impact sent me tumbling yet somehow they had missed any organs. A half inch over, my back would have been hamburger and I would be left for dead. But now there was only the searing pain of a freshly obliterated shoulder, rain and detritus shoving its way in with every second.
I was going to die here.
I was sure of it.
With all I had left I stumbled a little more. I fell through a clearing and found the highway. I cowered like a shaking dog covered in blood to find the only thing that could have given me a ray of hope, headlights.
Blind from the high beams I did the only thing I could. I raised my thumb and hoped for the best. The trucker stopped and opened his door. He opened his mouth to ask me what had happened yet a gunshot answered him. It peppered the side of his rig and I didn’t bother to ask if I could ride. I climbed into his passenger seat and screamed with all that was left within me, “Drive!”
Drive he did. He tore down the road at breakneck speed and kept on going. It wasn‘t until three towns over that he stopped to get some gas. Man even gave me some food and let me ride to Chico. He even bought me a Walmart phone, left me some money and food. Anything he could spare.
Now I’m in a hospital bed, shoulder bandaged and typing this to you.