Jack Yeovil: Route 666

He let the torch drop and straightened, urging the horse to plough through an irrigation flue. His steed reared up, hooves kicking, and the water-bearing structure – adapted from abandoned mining apparatus – collapsed all around them.

The human din was incredible. The party screeched like creatures of Hell and rode at the houses of New Canaan like a stampeding herd.

A blinking Gentile emerged from the nearest building, slipping suspenders up over his shoulders, hair awry from recent sleep. Brother Carey side-swiped the man as he rode past, pitching him back at his doorway. As the Gentile's head cracked against his lintel, Carey yelled triumph and wheeled around, coming back for another pass.

Hendrik saw the pistol in Carey's hand kicking before he heard the shots. Bloody wounds burst out of the Gentile's chest.

The United States provisionally ceded tracts of stony land to the Brethren of Joseph, but the persecutions did not cease. In the East and Southeast, Josephites were branded as sacrificers of small children and hounded out of towns. In the South, Josephites were barred from owning slaves. Congressmen railed against the Brethren as Devil-spawn. Gentile parsons preached abomination from pulpits.

Hendrik, seeing the bloody footprints the elect left in their wake, came to understand sacrifice. The Ute led them on and remained at the settlements while Hendrik returned to shepherd the next pilgrims. In the West, the Brethren discovered the savage force of their new faith.

The blood sacrifices began. Hendrik, trying to rid himself of his dreams, offered up his own blood many times. When he had to fight for the Brethren, he did so without compunction.

He fought with a greater conviction than ever before. Indians lay in the wake of the wagon trains, mutilated so their ghosts could never enter the spirit lands. Outlaws were hanged from trees or left where they fell, rotting warnings for their kind.

Don't tangle with the Josephites, people said, whispering. Many of the malicious stories Hendrik had heard, he made true. If a Gentile stood in the path of Joseph, it was no sin to shift him with a bullet or a stone or the razor.

In his own sermons, begun hesitantly but with growing fervour, Hendrik preached that Gentiles were no better than beasts. He spoke of the fire and the rope, and the debt that could only be paid in blood. For every drop of Josephite purple, a quart of Gentile blood must be spilled.

As he preached, Hendrik would open his palms with a razor. Many of his congregations followed his example.

Among the Josephites, an elite arose who carried razors about their persons, always ready for a blood sacrifice.

Few turned aside from the path. Most of them returned eventually. Apostates were scourged righteously.

The blood rose around Hendrik.

Finally, he fell away from the path. The dreams were not blotted out by blood. The Ute's smile seemed to have become a deathly grin. Hendrik was weighted down by the sacrifices. He fled East and ran into an old friend.

Baltimore, 1849

Hendrik was afraid the Brethren had despatched their agents, human and otherwise, for him. He could not see a black hat on the street without running for cover. He kept his razor open in his pocket.

The Ute must have decreed that he be returned to the fold. To the elect, the word of the Ute was as the word of Joseph himself The brother of the founder could not be allowed to turn apostate. Hendrik was determined to be killed rather than be taken back to the settlement. One last blood sacrifice.

He considered his options. If he made his way to New York, he could find passage on a ship for Europe. The Ute's influence did not yet extend to the Old World. He would make a life for himself in England or Holland. He would die before the Word of Joseph reached Europe.

But he was being followed.

The streets were full. Elections were a few days away and corner-speakers campaigned furiously despite the strong winds and soaking rain. Hendrik sensed rather than saw the black hats.

He ducked into Gunner's Hall, a thronged tavern, and there, at the bar, haunted and alone, was Eddy Poe, coughing over drink. The poet saw Hendrik coming and flinched, but was too drained to run. Hendrik understood how he must feel.

It was strange; here was the only other man living, so far as he knew, who might understand his plight.

Eddy, hollow-cheeked and poorly dressed, seemed twenty years older. He wore a moustache now. Hendrik thought his pale face might be powdered. He was living in Richmond, travelling North to deliver lectures on "The Poetic Principle", reciting his own modestly famous verses.

Over the years, Hendrik had sought out Eddy's work, imagining in the fever dreams and horrors paraded across the page what the poet must have seen through the spectacles. His tales were crammed with the unquiet and unforgiving dead, with vast and malignant cosmic entities, with plague and premature burial. He had to admit Eddy hardly seemed the cheeriest of souls in the pieces published before that encounter in Samuel's Tavern.

Eddy, for his part, had followed the careers of the Brothers Shatner. Several times, he admitted, he had felt the impulse to light out for the Josephite Settlement.

Again, Hendrik asked Eddy what it was he saw.

The poet shrugged.

"I believed I beheld the face of the worm. Or the mechanicals of the cosmos. I cannot be sure. The lasting impression is philosophical, not visual. I have come to think we were subject to some trickery of the light, some distortion of the glass, but that a deeper truth was poured into our souls. Not one day has passed but that I have not shuddered at the memory of that accursed night."

Hendrik confessed to a similar affliction.

Eddy was struck with a fit of coughing. Hendrik realised the poet was sorely ill.

"It tore the heart out of me," Eddy managed to say. "Since then I have walked with the dead. I cannot look upon the face of a loved one without seeing the worms burrowing beneath the skin."

Hendrik surveyed the well-lit room. There were several black hats, bobbing behind the sea of faces. The noise of people was oppressive, and the heat, contrasting with the chill of outdoors, hard to stand. The revellers' coats steamed.

"They are here," Eddy said, blankly. "The conquerors."

Faces flowed into one another. The crowd grew thicker. Steam spotted the ceiling. The noise increased. Hendrik tried to stand away from the bar but the press was impossible. More and more people, many in black, poured into Gunner's Hall like sand. He was wedged tight. Smoky yellow light flooded the room. Hendrik blinked, water in his eyes.

He still struggled and listened. The noise was a babble; no matter how he tried, he could not focus on any one voice, or discern any actual words. The sound was human and yet not language, an alien hubbub akin to the rhubarbing of minor stage players called upon to simulate background noise. But this was not background, this was deafening.

Eddy tried to speak, but his words were lost, drowned. Hendrik's ears hurt and his body was pressed against the rail of the bar. Looking into the mirror behind the bar, he saw the crowd had coalesced into one mass, clothed in a vast patchwork of materials. The morass was dotted with distorted heads topped by familiar hats. The crowd, one creature, flowed all around, washing against the corners of the room like water, climbing the walls. Bodies stretched like rubber and merged like melting wax. The level was above the waist already.

Blood trickled from one of Hendrik's ears. Eddy was being sucked under, a checkered tide slipping around him. The noise, a painful yammering, smote Hendrik like a cudgel. He could not fill his lungs. His mouth was full of the taste of sickness. His ribs strained and threatened to stave in.