The sun was down, and the Hall had cooled to a more bearable temperature. The single bulb above the stage looked like the last star in a dying universe. It swayed as the ceiling fans spun, kissing their skin with cool air.
“I want you both to spend the night here. I’m gonna pray on this, and more importantly, I’m going to listen to what the Lord has to say. I’m very proud of the both of you.”
Pastor Wilson walked down the narrow space between the two clusters of folding chairs.
“There are cots and blankets and pillows in the closet. Say your prayers and get some sleep.”
Bill sat on the edge of his cot, belching up the half-digested sandwich that sat in his stomach like a brick. The stuff that came up tasted like peanut butter and pennies. He spent the next half hour chugging water and resisting the urge to vomit.
Julia was lying on her cot, facing away from Bill. She had curves like the rolling hills of Illinois, and her breath was soft and shallow. Bill could see her shoulders rise and fall with each silent capture and release of air.
The only sounds were the creaking ceiling fans above them. They whirled and spun, and Bill found himself examining the rotating blades, certain that one would come unscrewed from its bracket and come careening toward him. The spinning motion made his stomach turn, and he belched, gagged, and chugged water.
“You okay?” Julia said.
Bill caught his breath. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Do you feel any different? Do you feel absolved?” Bill asked.
She chortled. “Don’t feel much of anything, if I’m being honest. It’s all too surreal—like it’s not really happening to me.”
“I can relate. This doesn’t make me a cannibal, does it?”
She laughed and turned to face him.
“That’s not how I’d describe you, but I guess that depends on who you ask. Most people don’t understand desperation. Most people don’t need to make the kinds of decisions we made tonight. I guess some people would call you a cannibal—but you’re not. You’re just desperate.”
Bill was touched—and a little surprised by her eloquence.
His stomach grumbled, and a small pocket of air escaped from his backside with a squeal. His face turned bright red.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, it’s okay,” Julia said.
His stomach rumbled again. Another pocket of air threatened. He clenched, but it was no use. It escaped him and echoed off the paneled walls like a silver trumpet with a leaky spit valve.
They didn’t laugh all at once. It came slowly, Julia trying her best to hold it in—but succeeding about as well as Bill did holding in his air. It was too much, and they finally broke up. Their laughter filled the Hall, brightening the dark spaces where the single naked bulb couldn’t reach. It felt good to laugh, especially at something as innocent as a squealing fart.
Bill felt lighter—and not just from the expelled gas. He felt at peace, like his sins really had been forgiven. Did it work like that? That fast? He didn’t know, but he refused to argue with this feeling of levity, refused to overthink it and somehow ruin the pleasure he now felt.
Maybe it’ll be alright—
There was a crash.
Bill and Julia’s heads snapped to the door. It swung open and slammed against the back wall. Pastor Wilson stood with his palms on the jamb, and bright light flooded in from the hallway behind him. The whites of his eyes were stained red, and his hair looked like a mess of spiderwebs.
“Everything okay?” Bill said.
Pastor Wilson shook his head—and began to fall.
They rushed to him, and Bill caught him before he hit the floor. They got the pastor to his feet and helped him over to the cots.
“Get him a glass of water,” Bill said, and Julia went for the doors.
“Bourbon,” Pastor Wilson called after her. The gravel in his voice was gone, replaced with something closer to a soft breeze running through dry reeds.
Julia went, and Pastor Wilson grabbed Bill by the collar.
“I was wrong about the blood, Bill. It wasn’t enough.”
Bill’s heart sank. It smashed through his chest and into his stomach. He knew what it meant—knew what Pastor Wilson was thinking but avoided saying. How would it be done? Raw or cooked? Grilled or seared? His stomach churned at the thought.
He took a few steps back, as if the pastor were set to explode. Julia came back with an empty glass and a bottle of bourbon.
“What do you mean?” Bill said.
“I didn’t know how much you wanted,” Julia said and unscrewed the cap. “Tell me when.”
Pastor Wilson snatched the bottle from her hands. In a few fast gulps, half the liquid was gone. He relaxed and looked at them with wet eyes.
“I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“What do you mean, you were wrong?” Bill said.
“I spoke to the Lord, and He was good enough to answer my prayers. Come, sit with me,” Pastor Wilson said and waved Bill over.
He didn’t budge. The anger was coming back, the room fading like a distant memory. Pastor Wilson sighed and spoke to Julia.
“I spoke to the Lord, and He answered and said that your blood was not enough.”
Bill swooned, and the Hall suddenly twisted and blurred. The paneled walls melted like wax, and the playful carpet turned into flames.
Too good to be true, he said to himself, over and over. Too good to be true.
The world went away, and all that remained was Bill and Pastor Wilson. Silence, darkness, shadow and light—all became one. Smoke blotted out Julia’s face. The anger rose like the tide and drowned out all life on the shore.
He tackled the pastor, and they both hit the floor.
Bill’s fists came down like a storm of stones crashing into Pastor Wilson’s face. His head twisted in the direction of each blow. Blood spurted and gushed from the pastor’s mouth and nose.
Julia screamed, but Bill didn’t hear. He grunted with each jab. Finally, he slammed his open hands onto the floor on either side of the pastor’s head, and the world came back—Julia, gasping in panic; the pastor, breathing hard and moaning.
To Bill’s astonishment, Pastor Wilson wrapped his arms around his waist and hugged him.
“You are not yet lost, Brother Bill.” His voice was a faint whisper, and Bill looked down at him, shaking his head. “It’s the only way. Otherwise, you’re doomed. Both of you.”
Bill’s heart was pounding, and for a moment he thought he was going to lose his mind—thought the world would melt away again and never return. And maybe that would be all right. Maybe that was his punishment—insanity.
He broke the pastor’s embrace and looked down at him. Those feelings of insecurity, of anxiety and panic, vanished like smoke up a chimney, and the world steadied itself in Bill’s mind.
“This is the only way,” the pastor said again.
Bill nodded.
He looked at Julia.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
***
The hallway shook as Bill and Pastor Wilson dragged Julia to the basement. She screamed and kicked and groped at the walls. Crucifixes fell to the floor with a clatter. She knocked down a picture of Peter, his face shrouded in his hands, and the plastic frame cracked. Pastor Wilson opened the door and stood at the top of the staircase. The smell of must crept up into the rest of the house.
The basement was dark, and every surface was covered in dust and slime. Julia screamed as they threw her onto the bed. She screamed when Pastor Wilson handed Bill the rope, and kicked until Bill finally gave up in frustration.
“Hit her,” Pastor Wilson said, and Bill did. Once. Twice. The third time did it. Her body went limp, and Bill fastened the rope to her arms and legs.
The mattress sat on top of a crooked box spring, which rested on a metal frame with a headboard made of vertical bars like a jail cell.
Bill tightened the rope around her arms and legs and tied off the ends so that she looked like an X on the bed. Pastor Wilson sat next to her, and the mattress creaked under his weight. He took a big swig from the bottle of bourbon and forced air through his teeth.
“Now that she’s calm, we can begin. Bill.”
He tossed Bill the switchblade and held Julia’s leg slightly up off the mattress.
Julia’s eyes fluttered, and she came to. She saw Bill with the knife and began to thrash.
“Please, Bill. Oh God, please—”
“This is for both of us,” Bill said. “Don’t you see? It’s the only way.”
He closed his eyes and sliced off a piece of her calf. Her screams echoed off the walls and bit at Bill and Pastor Wilson like a February wind. He held the piece of flesh up to the bulb over his head. Blood fell down the sides, and there were little flakes of fat in the meat. He sniffed it, not knowing what to expect.
“Go on, Bill. For both your sakes,” the pastor said. “Go on.”
Bill slid the slice of flesh into his mouth and chewed. Julia was still screaming. Blood poured from her leg, and she was trying to kick her way out of the ropes. Bill saw, from the corner of his eye, how much blood was spreading on the bed.
He swallowed.
There was a bright flash. Bill shielded his eyes, and Pastor Wilson leapt off the bed and cowered in the corner. The house began to shake, and a torrent of wind filled the room. Julia’s shirt rose and fell in violent whips. The stone walls began to expel fine dust into the air. Pastor Wilson got to his feet and went to Bill.
“It is the Lord!” he said. “He has come! He has come!”
And then the silhouette of a man appeared in the empty space of the room. Bill looked over at Julia. He thought she would be happy—rejoicing in the love of the Lord—but her eyes were glazed over. She looked like a porcelain doll in a psychopathic child’s bedroom.
He looked at her leg. There was a long red line that began just under her knee and zigzagged all the way to a rounded gash the size of a golf ball in her thigh.
“Bill! Bill!” Pastor Wilson said. He was tugging at Bill’s shirt, screaming over the loud, whipping wind. Bill tore himself away from Julia and looked at the figure, squinting his eyes against the dusty wind. When He spoke, Bill and Pastor Wilson fell to their knees and wept.
There was an electrical sound, like an old-fashioned TV set turning off, and the silhouette was gone. The wind stopped, and the dust slowly settled to the floor. It took a minute for Bill’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, and when they did, he went to Julia. He stuck two fingers on her neck and felt for a pulse.
Nothing.
“She’s dead. I—I don’t know how, but she’s dead,” Bill said.
He looked at the gash in her thigh, and as he did, he saw—like a memory—how he slid the knife up her leg. He remembered that she’d issued a weak grunt when he punctured the meaty space in her thigh.
Why? You liked Julia, he asked himself.
You loved Lana, a voice answered back.
He turned away from her and looked for Pastor Wilson, but he was gone. He realized he was still holding the bloody knife and dropped it to the floor. He went to the bed, closed Julia’s eyes, and walked up the stairs.
***
The door opened up into the living room with its solitary chair and worn-out Bible. The floorboards creaked as Bill closed the basement door and called out for Pastor Wilson. The house had somehow changed—shifted—as if everything had been moved a quarter of an inch to the left. Long shadows painted the walls, and the creaking floorboards sounded like screams.
He went into the kitchen. There were dried maroon dots on the linoleum where Julia had cut her hand. He walked through the hallway, passing the prints of Jesus, Mother Mary, and the Disciples. He heard laughter—faint, but there.
He opened the door to the Hall and saw row after row after row of empty folding chairs. There were thousands of them, a sea of gray folding chairs. He searched the room, searched for the stage, the altar, for Pastor Wilson. All he saw in the sea of chairs was one shining bulb swaying in the distance.
There was a sound—something akin to a groan, but higher in pitch. The room suddenly shrunk. Thousands of chairs slammed into themselves like nesting dolls. Then the Hall was back to normal.
Pastor Wilson was lying on the stage, writhing around like an eel and muttering something to himself that Bill couldn’t make out. He rushed over and saw that the pastor’s wrists were slashed from just below the hand to the crook of the elbow. A jagged piece of glass, matte red, stuck out beneath his chin. Blood fell from his throat and pooled around his head. Bill found the pastor’s shirt wadded up on the carpet. He snatched it and tore it at the seams. He tied the pieces around the pastor’s wrists and throat, then took his own shirt and used it to wipe the blood from the pastor’s face.
“What did you do?” Bill said.
The Hall shook. The walls clattered and rumbled, and a horrible noise filled the room. Low, guttural, grinding.
Pastor Wilson suddenly rose from the stage—floated above it like a feather caught in a high wind—laughing.
Bill’s vision narrowed, his strength drained like water through sand. He stood and backed away from the stage. Pastor Wilson’s laugh filled the room, and his body rose higher. Then he turned in midair, his feet toward the floor. His face contorted—twisted—and lightning struck the altar.
Bill shielded his eyes from the bright light, and when he looked back, he saw Lana, floating above the smoking altar.
Then she dropped to the stage with a thud.
The room began to spin, melt, vanish, and reappear. He was suddenly standing over Lana’s bloodied face—but it was really Julia’s. She was lying in the alley and tied up in the bed at the same time, the two pictures melding into one.
Then the scene swirled and was reborn. He was back in the bar, watching himself pummel Dave/Derron. He looked at the bruised and twisted face on the floor and saw that it was Pastor Wilson’s. A Pastor Wilson twenty years younger than the man he knew today—but Pastor Wilson nonetheless.
Unreality washed over him, and he fell backward and banged his head on a barstool. The pain was immediate and sharp.
The Bill who was beating the younger Pastor Wilson looked up. Hatred burned in his eyes like melted glass.
He tried to yell, tried to make it all stop, tried to force himself back to the present—away from this bar.
The picture changed again. He was back in the basement with Pastor Wilson and Julia. The Bill in front of him was dragging the blade up Julia’s leg, twisting it around her knee and planting it into her thigh. She screamed. His eyes were vacant, and his mouth hung open.
Then the flash of light came, and the wind blew, and the silhouette appeared. Bill stood opposite his other self and saw the face of the silhouette.
Everything went black.
His eyes opened slowly, and Bill saw an orange sky. Black clouds hung above, scattered like burnt cotton balls, and there were twinkling stars that seemed very far away. He tried lifting his head and found that he couldn’t move. He began to panic, felt claustrophobic, he—
That smell! he thought.
It burned his nose and throat, and he gagged. Laughter rose from somewhere behind him. He tried to look but still couldn’t move. Then a smoky figure floated above him. It grew and thinned out, and a face appeared—and it was laughing. More balls of smoke appeared and changed before him.
The realization hit him like a cancer diagnosis.
One of the figures sent out a wisp of smoke that formed itself into a tail and lingered just above him, waiting as if to savor the moment.
And then it sliced him from sternum to groin, and the smoky demons began to feast.
Bill screamed and cried and begged for help, but only their laughter answered him back. He thrashed his legs, but they didn’t move. He tried to turn his head and found that if he concentrated, he could actually do it. His neck cracked like bent fingers and turned a quarter inch at a time. The pain rose like a hungry flame, hot and searing.
He could see his entrails dangling from smoky mouths and spilling blood onto the stone table.
Bill screamed, and when he finally turned his head enough to see the hellish landscape around him, the world blurred and melted and spun. The pain grew to sickening heights and suddenly vanished—and he felt hollow.
Now everything was black, and the events of the last forty-eight hours, of the last two years, danced in his mind like lunatic ballerinas. Lana, Julia, Pastor Wilson, Dave/Derron.
He twisted in the darkness, that empty space inside filling up with fear and hate and sadness and want.
The words finally came to him—that heavenly dove in the storm:
Serenity through passion. Passion through forgiveness. Forgiveness through strength.
Now he felt like he was falling—falling into a void—and the pastor’s words were gone, replaced with only two:
Sin eater.
Lana and Julia and the pastor, Dave/Derron, Bill himself—they were gone from his mind. He had forgotten everything: who he was, what he did, and what was to come. He spun in the blackness and felt like he was falling.
Yes, falling—straight from that hellish place down to—down to what?
He found that he was turning around and saw that he was falling toward an ocean, brilliant and blue. And there was a ship. An impossible ship, with an impossibly long bowsprit and an illogically tall mast—but a ship nonetheless.
It heaved on white-tipped waves, swaying until its sails were dampened by the water. It grew larger as he fell, like he was being pulled into it, like it was eating him.
And the words repeated:
Sin eater. Sin eater. Sin eater.
Sin.
Stone.
Smoke.
Blood.
The images flashed over and over in what remained of his mind like a crudely drawn flipbook.
He crashed into the ocean—landed just beside the impossible ship. The water settled, and a voice called out from the deck:
“It’s a position of honor. Of great respect. You should feel special that you were chosen,” Pastor Wilson said, and the images were torn from Bill’s mind.
