Paul Johnston - Maps of Hell

So supreme was the Antichurch that it ran out of victims. That was the beginning of what was called the Great Trouble. For Jeremiah Dodds wasn’t satisfied with the substitute blood of moose and bear. That, he proclaimed, would please Lucifer only for a short time. The congregations had to look for human victims in towns and camps where traditional Christian beliefs still held sway. So blinded were the faithful by the seductive power of the antiGospel and the subtle guile of Dodds that they covered huge distances, even in winter, to bring back living sacrifices. They preferred women and children because they were easier to carry-and because they provided the men with what were known as “virtues of the flesh” in the hours before they met the knife. The “virtues” were enjoyed in public and the lash was not spared, the only stipulation laid down by the antigospel being that the offerings to Lucifer were to remain conscious throughout. For it was said that the road to Hell was too splendid for even a second of the journey to be missed. However, their eyes were put out as soon as they were dead; to see the glories of the underworld was a privilege reserved for Luciferians.

The inhabitants of other places, those who retained some decency, resisted the unseen menace that haunted the pine forests as best they could. Initially, the disappearance of wives and offspring-the Luciferians never took whores, seeing them as fellow spirits-was put down to wild beasts. But finally the stories of the few Luciferians who broke free and survived could be ignored no longer. Parties of heavily armed men set out to confront the raiders in their base. For, rumor had spread that the town of Jasper was a sinkhole of corruption, a modern-day Sodom where the filthiest of unholy ceremonies were practiced, with victims being sacrificed on upturned crosses. With wholly justifiable rage and a less commendable desire for revenge, the true believers fell upon the abomination that Jeremiah Dodds had created. The Luciferians disappeared without trace. Jasper was burned to the ground and its name expunged from the maps. The arch blasphemer and murderer Dodds was hanged from the tallest tree, his face beaten to a pulp and his innards loosed upon the ground before his spirit went to its foul master below the earth. As a final, ironic affront, Dodds’s eyes were torn out so that he wouldn’t be able to see Lucifer’s realm. For decades, people were reluctant to go within a hundred miles of where Jasper had been, lest a fearsome creature, its blinded face twisted and its feet tangled in its own entrails, should come upon them and drag them screaming to hell.

Such was the end of the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant, at least as far as the civic and religious authorities were concerned-in any case, they only heard the stories months after Dodds and his congregation had been eradicated by the mob. But the truth was that there were still people who enthused over the antiGospel. Despite strict repression of the text, it had remained in existence, circulated by subsequent generations of Luciferians with extreme caution-every copy accounted for, reproduction in any form forbidden on pain of death. Recently a Bangor man by the name of Regent, who had feigned devotion to the Antichurch, started to transcribe the text onto a Web site; he had never been seen again. He became the first human sacrifice in several years, his tongue and genitals sliced off while he was still conscious. His blood was drained and drunk by the faithful before the flesh and organs were stripped from his bones and burnt on the Antichurch’s altar, beneath the obligatory inverted cross.

The word of Jeremiah Dodds was still alive in the evergreen forests of northern Maine and it was spreading. There was even a small congregation in the town of Sparta, one attended by a recent recruit to the cause.

“What?” I gasped. “Your mother is one of them?”

Mary nodded, her face damp with sweat despite the cold in the pickup. “I found her diary.”

“But aren’t you in danger? Do these lunatics have any idea that you know about them?”

“I doubt it.” She glanced at me. “I’m not sure I’d be walking around in one piece if they did. I don’t think Mom knows, either.”

I thought back to the wrinkled old woman. She had alarmed me enough with her shotgun threats before I knew she was a member of the local satanist coven. Then I wondered about Mary. Was she more involved with the Antichurch than she’d admitted? Had she perhaps singled me out as a potential sacrifice? I twitched my head and tried to get a grip. She was driving me away from her mother. Then again, there might have been another altar in southern Maine. No, she would hardly have told me about the Antichurch if she were a member.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

She bit her lip. “Because I’m frightened, Matt. I needed to share the burden.”

I reckoned she was being straight with me. But there was something familiar about the story, something hovering on the margins of my memory…

“How many members of this Antichurch are there?” I asked.

“Around ten, I think.”

“Are there any other branches?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. They’re so paranoid about the antiGospel getting into the wrong hands that they prefer to limit their numbers.”

“And what about Jasper? Have you any idea where that was?”

Mary raised her shoulders. “The congregation doesn’t even know that. Mom wrote something about them asking their savior to direct them to what they call ‘the field of glory.’ I got the impression Lucifer hadn’t obliged.”

I thought about the camp I’d escaped from. Filming a man having his throat cut by a naked woman wasn’t much different from the rituals Mary had described, but I didn’t remember any devil worship per se.

I shook my head, wondering what I’d got myself into. Then I thought about the murders in Washington that I was supposed to have committed. Could they have some connection?

I was so caught up in my thoughts that I hardly noticed when we crossed the state line into New Hampshire. The minor road Mary had taken wasn’t even under scrutiny. We had evaded the state troopers, but I had a feeling that the reach of the people at the camp was a lot longer than that of the Maine authorities or the FBI.

Peter Sebastian, perfectly turned out in a dark blue suit and striped tie, eyed the detectives on the other side of the conference table.

“Well, gentlemen. Over eighteen hours have passed since the discovery of Abraham Singer’s body. What progress have you made?”

“We’d be making more if you hadn’t called this meeting,” Gerard Pinker said, shaking his head hopelessly.

“Nice,” Sebastian said, smiling icily. “Very nice. Perhaps I should call in Chief Owen.”

Clem Simmons gave his partner a long-suffering look and then caught Dana Maltravers’s eye. He reckoned she’d have smiled if she hadn’t been so in awe of her boss.

“That won’t be necessary,” Simmons said, flipping open his notebook. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Special Agent Maltravers attended the autopsy with me. The report’s not out yet, but the time of death isn’t going to be much different from Dr. Gilbert’s original estimate of between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. Cause of death, major brain trauma caused by the skewers driven into each eye. There’s no evidence of any other trauma, so it’s likely the killer inserted them while the victim was still conscious.”

“Meaning he knows what he’s doing,” Sebastian said.

Pinker gave a wry smile. “Kinda the impression we’d got from the first two murders.”

“Quite,” said the FBI man, holding his gaze on Simmons. “What about the significance of the M.O.?”