Forever Never Ends (27 page)

She went to check on Reggie, to make sure he had made his eleven o'clock curfew. Surely he understood how important this weekend was to her. She almost wished his father hadn't died, but he'd been deadweight anyway, holding her career back. The only thing he'd ever done right was giving her Reggie.

She could see from the dark crack under Reggie's door that his lights were off. She knocked lightly. He was old enough to have his privacy respected. He didn't answer. He must have already been asleep.

"Sleep well, my angel," she whispered, and then headed for her own bed.

***

Nettie hummed "Amazing Grace" at her desk in the church vestry. She felt as if she were glowing, like the Madonna in those Renaissance paintings. She hadn't felt so wonderfully alive since she had gotten saved at age fourteen. Now she had been saved again, this time from loneliness and unrequited attraction.

Maybe it’s even . . . yeah, you can say it: LOVE.

The day with Bill had been wonderful, her wildest fantasies come true. He had touched her, held her, taken her. His smell clung to her skin, a strong and masculine odor of sawdust and clean sweat. She tingled under her dress as she thought back on their tumble in the clover.

She was having a hard time concentrating on the computer layout she was doing for Sunday's church program. She'd push her mouse to drop in a clip-art Jesus and then her mind would take off and Jesus would end up over in the birthday announcements. And when she typed "Windshake Baptist Welcomes Blossomfest Visitors," the event came out as "Bosomfest" and then "Blosomfset." She would be here all night if she wasn't careful, and she didn't plan on being here all night. Because Bill was coming to her place later, before he started his volunteer shift providing security for the Blossomfest arrangements.

She was high, brushing God's clouds with her mind. She thanked the Lord a thousand times for bringing Bill into her life and heart. She was afraid that Bill would feel guilty afterwards, that he would think she was some kind of wicked woman out to sap his strength and turn him from God. But when their eyes had finally opened after that searing hot explosion, they had looked at each other for a full minute without speaking. Then Bill said "I love you" in his deep, honest voice, and she could tell he meant it.

She replayed the words like a reel-to-reel tape, over and over. And she was still hearing them when Preacher Blevins’s feet crept across the floor. She spun in her swivel chair to face him. She wasn't going to let him sneak up and put his hand on her shoulder again.

He looked down on her, his lightbulb head brightened by his beatific smile. "Burning the midnight oil for the Lord, Nettie?"

"Finishing up the program, is all," she answered, watching as his dark vulture eyes did their cursory crawl over her body.

He grinned his beaver grin that now seemed sinister instead of friendly. "Fine, my child. Fine. Ought to have a big crowd this week. And next week, with Easter coming up. It's an important time for the Lord."

Nettie wondered if the preacher knew that Easter had originally been a pagan fertility holiday. Thinking of fertility made her glad she was still taking birth control pills, even though she hadn't had a sex partner in over a year. In the heat of the moment, neither she nor Bill had mentioned condoms. Nor, heaven forbid, disease. She found herself blushing, thinking of rubbers in church.

"Your cheeks are pink, my child," the preacher said, stepping close so that he was standing above her. "What thought is in your head that brings the devil's shade?"

"Oh, just a minor sin, Preacher. Hardly worth feeling bad about, but when you're in the House of the Lord—"

The preacher raised a beneficent hand. "I know, child. We humans are weak. We fall short of the perfection and glory of God."

He touched her knee with a hot, moist hand. His breath smelled of copper and blood, a hunter's breath.

Bill’s love gave Nettie courage. She decided it was time to confront him. "Preacher—"

He leaned closer. "Tell me your sin, my pretty one."

She arched back in her chair, trying to shrink away from his leering face.

"My sin is silence," she said, her teeth clenched. "I didn't speak against something I saw was wrong.”

"But the Bible says ‘Judge not, lest you be judged also,’" he said, lowering his voice. The rafters settled in the vast quiet of the empty church, as if the night was pressing heavily upon it.

She hesitated, wondering how to put her doubts into words. "It's about the money, Preacher."

"Money?" His eyes shifted like well-oiled ball bearings.

"The missing money. Only one person had access to it before I started working here. Only one person could have taken it."

"I told you, child—"

"I'm not your child, either. I'm a child of God, and you're a far sight from God."

"What are you talking about?" His face creased with confusion, breaking its practiced calm.

"It has to be
you
taking the money, Preacher. There are just too many discrepancies to laugh them off as honest mistakes. I've discovered ten thousand dollars that have fallen through the cracks just in the last year."

"Oh, my child, my child, the devil has put lies in your sweet little head, cast visions in your bright eyes," Armfield Blevins said in his smooth preacher voice.

She heard the slight sibilance of snakiness in his delivery. God, had she been blinded by this deceiver all along? Had they all?

"I've been hoping that I was wrong,” she said. “But I can't fool myself any longer. It's eating me up inside.”

She drew back as he smiled at her. Blevins’s hand clutched her knee as he loomed over her, his form somehow made larger by the way he seemed to soak the shadows from the corners of the vestry.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness," he said without emotion.

"And thou shalt not suffer false prophets," she answered. The church would be torn apart, but Nettie knew that God would heal the congregation and make them stronger through the trials and tribulations. And she would make certain that Mister Blevins had his trial. In the court of humankind, that is. God would pass the final judgment elsewhere.

"There's plenty for both of us, Nettie. It's part of His plan. Part of my plan."

The preacher's right hand rubbed her knee and his other one began lifting the hem of her skirt. "For both of us," he repeated, voice husky. His breathing was harsh and shallow and fast.

"No." She shrank away.

"Hush, my child,” The preacher’s raw breath was on her cheek. “Armfield forgives you. You know not what you do."

"Preacher, what in the hell do you think you're doing?" She was cold inside, dead as stone.

"Why, saving you from Lucifer's fire, Nettie," he whispered. "You have gone astray, and I must bring you back into the fold. I'll show you the path of righteousness. But you must bow to my will. You must open up and let me inside."

Now his hand was under her skirt, on her bare thigh. She twisted away and tried to stand. His face purpled with rage and he tightened a fist around her hair, pinning her to the chair. His eyes leered with cruel promises.

"Harlot.” He jammed his free hand under her skirt. "I smell the devil on you. I've seen the devil in your eyes. I've seen you flaunt your temptations before me. You're an abomination in the eyes of God."

Nettie strained to push him away, but his lean body was leveraged against her, his knees pinning her legs and trapping her arms between their bodies. He had the strength of a demon. He yanked her head over the back of the chair, forcing her lower and exposing her neck to his frantic lips and slathering tongue. She could only stare at the ceiling, her arms trapped against his chest as he lifted her skirt to her waist.

His face was above her, wrenched and distorted and beet red. Through her shock and horror, Nettie realized that if Satan walked the earth, this was the mask he would wear. A mask of cruelty and mockery, eyes aflame with rancid lust, his breath a foul, soul-stealing wind. As she struggled, she closed her eyes and prayed to God to deliver her from evil.

A low voice filled her ears. "Uhmmmm . . ."

The preacher froze. At first Nettie thought he had moaned, calling out in a fit of possessed passion. Then the voice came again, from the interior of the church.

"Uhmmmmm . . . feeel . . ."

The preacher's taut-skinned head swiveled, eyes wide with fresh fear. His clawing hand slightly loosened in the tangles of her hair. She held her breath, waiting for a chance to break free, her heart hammering like a dove's.

The voice came again, louder, from the opening where the dais led into the vestry. "Uhmm-feel . . ."

Nettie couldn't see who it was because her head was still trapped against the chair. But she could see the preacher's face turning ash gray as if he had seen a ghost. He released her.

The preacher backed away from Nettie and spun to face the door. His hands were out by his sides like a gunfighter in a showdown. His slacks dropped around his ankles from the loosening of his belt. Nettie lifted her head and doubted herself for a second time that night.

Because she didn't believe what her eyes were screaming at her.

Amanda Blevins moved across the room toward her faithless husband. But Amanda was only a small piece of whatever the thing was, as if random bits of her features had been pressed into a dismal green clay. It had Amanda's henna red hair, but the styling had wilted, leaving damp straws. Her sharp nose protruded from the face—
God, can that be a FACE?
Nettie thought—like a curving thorn.

Amanda's clothes were torn and hung from her body in rags, and her flesh was in damp tatters as well. Her skin looked like old meat that had aged in a basement and grown moldy. As she moved, finger-sized chunks of her slid to the ground, leaving a slick trail on the floor as she approached the preacher. One sagging, flaccid breast swung free from her ripped blouse and dangled like an overripe fruit. Nettie's stomach knotted in revulsion and she tried to vomit, but her stomach wouldn't obey.

Nettie didn't know what was worse, the thing’s mouth or its eyes. The eyes were glowing, deep green and translucent, as if rotten fires burned inside the watery skull. But the
mouth
—the mouth opened, gurgling and vapid, and sharp tendrils curled out like a nest of serpent's tongues from a pulpy den.

Then it spoke: "Uhmmm . . . feel . . . Uhmfeel . . . kish . . ."

The mouth sprayed viscous lime-colored drops, and Nettie could smell Amanda now. It was the stench of corpses, of graveyard rot and bad mulch, of stagnant puddles and tainted melons. Nettie tried to rise, but her limbs were thick, limp noodles and all she could do was watch in helpless fascination.

"Kish . . . shu-shaaa . . .Uhmmfeel," Amanda said.

The preacher backed away, his devil mask now turned white. Sweat glistened on his high forehead. His jaw locked open in horror as Amanda closed in on him. He staggered, his pants around his ankles tripping him, and he fell against the wall.

Then the thing that had once been Amanda was upon him, sliding down onto the preacher with a mushy, wet sound. Her liquid flesh flowed over him and the inhuman mouth bent to his face. Nettie heard his muffled cries as he joined his wife in unholy union.

Then Nettie's muscles stirred to life and she pulled herself from her chair. She bolted across the floor, her shoes slipping on the slimy trail that Amanda had left. As she reached the vestry door, the preacher's voice clearly pierced the air in a final litany.

"It burns . . . it burns," he whimpered.

Amanda had tilted her soggy head to the ceiling, swamp suds dribbling from her vacuous mouth. "
Shu-shaaahhhh
," the monster sprayed to the heavens before dropping its face once again to the preacher's.

Nettie ran into the unlit sanctuary, banging her knee against the pipe organ. She prayed to the Lord to shine on her from the darkness, this darkness that ruled the earth, that rose in thick fogs around the edges of her mind and threatened to swallow her into the belly of madness.

Because hell had unleashed its demons, the Apocalypse had arrived, and she wondered if she had the faith to stand. For the first time since she had been saved, she wondered if faith alone would be enough.

***

Robert turned off the television. He couldn't concentrate on the basketball game. He'd put the kids to bed and tucked them in with lies, hoping he'd done a good job of hiding his worry. He walked into the kitchen and stared at the telephone, silently begging it to ring, debating another call to the cops. He looked at the owl clock they’d received as a wedding present, its hands as dusty as their marriage.

It was nearly midnight. He balled his fists and wrestled the urge to punch the refrigerator. He longed to feel the pain flare up his arm and to pull his bloody knuckles from the dented metal, to hammer the idiotic appliance for standing there slick and mute while his wife was missing. He wished he could break himself in half as punishment for driving her away, because he knew it was his fault.

Suppose she’d had enough and couldn’t face another of his temper tantrums? Robert couldn't really blame her. All because his guilt was chewing his intestines from the ass-end up. All because he should have been there for her, should have talked and confessed and opened his heart and asked for the forgiveness he knew she would have granted.

What if the unthinkable happened? That dream of hers, the one she’d tried to tell him about. He’d only half listened while she related it. Something about the mountain eating them all. Maybe it was some kind of prescient view of an accident, maybe she’d driven off the road or fallen in a river or been suffocated or murdered or . . .

Don't even think about it. But her goddamned Gloomies—

Forget that clairvoyant crap. Well, if Tamara could see the future, why had she married such a worthless piece of rat baggage?

But she’d been right about her father. And when Kevin broke his hip. If she is dead, and you never got a chance to say you were sorry, then how are you ever going to live with yourself?

He was reconsidering battering the stupid refrigerator because he couldn't reach inside and rip his even stupider heart out, couldn't hold it to the light over the sink as it dripped its cheating blood, couldn't watch it take its last undeserved beats. He couldn't, because of the kids.