Paul Johnston - Maps of Hell

And that was the problem. I had plenty of doubts about pointing my gun at an innocent law enforcement officer. For a start, what happened if he tried to pull his own weapon? Would I shoot him? The answer had to be no. I wasn’t interested in injuring or killing people unless they harbored similar intentions toward me. Besides, firing a shot would get us noticed, even in the back of beyond.

Then I realized that my thoughts had run away with me-the impact of the wheel on my forehead was obviously still having an effect. Mary was already talking to the trooper.

“…my great-aunt Lucy Heaton. She’s taken a turn for the worse and we’re going to help her out.”

The man was in his late forties, his cheeks and belly bloated. If it came to a foot race, I had the edge.

“Ah, right,” he said, smiling back at Mary. “Got elderly folks in my family, too. You go ahead. Say, you haven’t seen a green ’98 Toyota Tercel, have you?”

Mary shrugged.

I leaned across. “As a matter of fact,” I said, putting on what I hoped was a convincing American accent, “I did notice one of those. A man and woman inside?”

He nodded, his eyes wide. “That’s right, sir.”

“Now, where was it?” I said, prompting Mary. I didn’t have a clue about the local place names.

“Oh, I remember,” she said. “We passed them the other side of Rumford. Didn’t look like they knew where they were going. They finally took the 108 toward Canton.”

“Is that right?” The trooper stepped back. “Thanking you, ma’am,” he said, turning toward the patrol car.

I watched as he got on the radio. “Nicely done,” I said. “But I suppose there’s a risk.”

Mary glanced at me. “Why?”

“If our friend’s bosses ask him for a description of us as witnesses, we may be shafted. Not all state troopers will be concentrating only on what people are driving.” I thought about that. “On the other hand, we’ve both got injuries on our foreheads. He’d be justified in assuming they would have been mentioned.” I looked over at the trooper. He was talking animatedly into the handset. “Get moving. He hasn’t got our names and, if we’re lucky, he won’t take note of the plates.”

Mary took us slowly through the small town. There were only a few people around so early in the morning.

“Lucy Heaton?” I said, smiling.

She laughed. “Came up with it on the spur of the moment.”

“What if he was the kind of cop who knows everyone?”

“Oh, I guess I’d have said she was staying with friends. If he’d asked me their names, I’d have lied again.” She turned toward me. “And if that hadn’t satisfied him, I suppose I’d have hit the gas.”

There was a look in her eyes that was alarming. I remembered what her mother had said. It wouldn’t do to get too close to Mary Upson. On the other hand, the more I knew about her, the better prepared I’d be.

“I wish I knew why you’re helping me,” I said, realizing I was still gripping the pistol. I put it on the floor beside my seat. “I mean, you’re putting yourself at risk.”

“Am I? You’ve been holding a gun on me since we left Sparta.”

“Good story. It’ll probably stick if you hold your nerve.” I looked at the line of her face. She was determined enough, I could see that. “This is some kind of thrill for you, isn’t it? Pretending we’re Bonnie and Clyde, lying to cops-a lot more exciting than being a small-town schoolteacher.”

Her cheeks reddened. “Screw you, Matt,” she said angrily. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Men are dumb,” I said, holding my gaze on her as she swerved past a truck and accelerated hard.

“Yeah, you got that right.”

I sensed that she needed to unburden herself. That could be tricky, especially if it created an intimacy between us, but I needed to find out more. I still had a suspicion that her presence was too good to be true. On the other hand, she’d already showed with the cop that she was a good liar. Would I be able to tell if she spouted a stream of bullshit?

I decided I’d give it a try. “Let me put it another way. Most men are dumb, but I’m not most men.”

“You sure aren’t, Matt Wells.” She smiled sadly and drew her sleeve across her eyes.

“What is it, Mary?” I asked, resisting the temptation to touch her. She suddenly looked inconsolable.

Shaking her head, she didn’t speak for some time. Her damp eyes were fixed on the road ahead.

“I’m sorry,” I said, after she seemed to have calmed down. “This is getting to you, Mary. Stop the car, go back to your mother.”

“No!” Her voice was shrill. “I’m not a child. I don’t need my mother. I don’t want my mother…” She hit the brake and turned without warning into a turnoff.

An eighteen-wheeler loaded with logs roared past from behind, the same logo with the open newspaper on the cab door as the one from yesterday. I started gathering up my gear. At least there was traffic on the road and hitching would be feasible.

“No!” she screamed again. “No, Matt. I don’t want you to go. I want…I want to help you.” She slumped forward, sobbing.

This time I did touch her, my arm going round her shoulders. “Listen, Mary, whatever’s troubling you, I’m just making it worse.”

“No…no, you’re not.” She tried to get her breathing under control. “You’re…you’re the best thing that’s happened to me for a long time.”

That was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. Now it seemed that Mary wasn’t helping me out of a sense of injustice. I’d engaged her emotions, which was flattering but dangerous. The blonde woman whose name still escaped memory rose up before me. I loved her and she loved me-of that much, I was certain. Which meant that by leading Mary on in any way, I was exploiting her. That made me feel slimier than a worm.

She sat up and turned her red eyes and damp face to me, but she was smiling. “It’s all right, Matt,” she said, looking in the mirror and putting the car back in gear. “I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise never to tell anyone else, okay?”

I looked at her as we moved back onto the road and picked up speed. “Okay,” I said, wondering what I was getting myself into.

“I mean it, Matt,” she said, her voice even. “The last person who talked had his tongue cut out.”

My stomach did a somersault. Then I was taken on a walk through hell.

The Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant was established in the town of Jasper, Maine, in 1846 by a logger named Jeremiah Dodds. Jasper was in the far north of the state, deep in the forest. Back then, there was no shortage of extreme religious sects, but the overwhelming majority were Christian. Jeremiah Dodds had no truck with Christianity, having been abused by a minister when he was a boy and savagely beaten by his father when he spoke about it. As a young man, he had consoled himself with the strong drink and the slack-jawed women ever present in logging camps. But, as he got older, those pleasures failed to divert him. One of the advantages of his enforced attendance at the church school was that he had learned to read and write. The only book that was readily available in the wilderness was the Bible and Jeremiah Dodds started to study it again in his thirties, but with a zeal possessed only by the true contrarian. The result was the antiGospel of Lucifer, a savage perversion of its New Testament prototype that set out a new faith based on violence and devotion to Satan. While Christians worshipped the blood of the Lamb that had been spilled for humanity, Luciferians saw holiness in terms of spilling human blood.

The Antichurch flourished in the great wilderness of the Maine forests, where the daily struggle to stay alive drained what little good there was in the loggers-they viewed themselves as nothing more than the timber barons’ slaves. That mentality made them easy converts to Jeremiah Dodds’s preaching. Anyone who objected was whipped from the settlements where he prevailed and hunted through the woods, ending up as a source of blood for the congregation’s monthly rites. Soon there was no opposition and Dodds reigned supreme in Jasper and its neighboring towns.