J. Gonzalez - They

Could this be the reason they’d left California so abruptly? Had his mother angered a cult of hippies?

He reflected on the images written in blood on the bedroom walls of his mother’s house… strangely occult-like in design. He thought of the dreams.

He thought about the attempt on his own life.

Vince turned over on his back, staring at the ceiling. These questions and hundreds of others gnawed at him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he did some investigating of his own and found out exactly why he and his mother had pulled up stakes so suddenly and moved out of California. And the only way to do that was to try to contact the people he only had a faint memory of. But without last names he was sunk.

When he finally drifted to sleep he went down deep and he had no dreams.

June 29, 1999, 11:30 p.m.

REVEREND HANK POWELL was afraid.

Very afraid.

Night had cast its dark pall over the vast Pennsylvanian sky, and Reverend Powell closed the curtains of his living room window, which he’d been gazing out for the better part of the last thirty minutes. He made sure the window was double-latched, then went to the front door and made sure it was locked and bolted. He swallowed a dry lump and stood in the silence of his house. The living room lights and the light over the stove in the kitchen were on. Other than that, the house was dark.

Feeling better that the windows and doors were locked, Reverend Powell retreated to the bedroom. He turned on the light and went straight to the closet.

He began rummaging along the top shelf, past old shoe boxes and books until he found what he was looking for.

The Cavalry Model Colt he’d purchased two years ago was an authentic reproduction of the 1873 Hartford Model. It had a 7-inch barrel. He took the Colt down along with the extra cylinder and a box of .45 shells that he’d bought with it. He opened the cylinder, made sure it wasn’t loaded and that there wasn’t a shell in the chamber, then returned to the living room with the gun and the shells.

He sat at the kitchen table and laid the gun and the box of shells on the counter top. He cleaned the cylinder with a white rag as his mind turned over the events of the last week. If it wasn’t for the promise Maggie Walters made Lillian Withers swear to, he supposed he wouldn’t be so nervous. As it was, the fact that he’d felt Maggie Walters was telling the truth about the buried box in her backyard for Lillian to easily dig up was what scared him.

The fact that he’d finally found it and taken a look at what was in it scared him even more.

He couldn’t think about what was in the box now. Instead, his mind flashed over the gruesome images of the past week; Maggie’s butchered body sprawled across the bed in her home; those hideous symbols smeared in her blood on the wall; the reappearance of Vince Walters after God knew how long of an absence; and then Lillian’s sudden death five days ago.

Reverend Powell finished cleaning the Colt and began to load it. He did it slowly, inserting one bullet at a time in the cylinder. When the cylinder was loaded, he snapped it in place and spun it, just like Clint Eastwood did in those Dirty Harry movies. He raised the Colt to the side door that led to his garage and closed his left eye, feigning a sharp shooter. Blam! I got you Satan. Get thee behind me .

He shivered at the thought that what he’d preached against, what he’d warned his brethren time and time again in his services, in his ministering to the unsaved, was not only a real force but that it had touched down upon Lititz. As a man of the Lord, Reverend Powell knew the love of God and knew of His greatness. He had felt God’s presence in times of prayer. Heard His voice. Been inspired by His teachings. Believed in Him and loved Him with all his heart, soul, and mind.

But if there was good there was most definitely evil, and it walked the earth in human form now. He knew this to be the truth. Maggie Walters had told him that much; she had been in the presence of it a long time ago, and she knew of the Prince of Darkness’ plans. She’d told Hank that the Devil’s Imp was a man nobody would ever imagine, and that when his time came he would gather his followers with his mighty power and the world would fall under his spell so fast that even the followers of Christ would be astounded. He would work like a thief in the night. Reverend Powell had felt the sincerity of Maggie’s revelations come off her, pure and with steadfast conviction, and as he prayed for her a part of himself wondered what Maggie had been involved with before she and Vince moved out of California and became saved.

What… evil had they been exposed to?

Whatever it was, it had caught up with her. That much, Hank was positive of. When Maggie made her confession/revelation to him eight years ago, Hank had tucked it into the back of his mind, ministering to her spiritual needs and turning what she said over in his mind. He knew there was a devil, but like most Christians he put that icon of all that was evil and unholy in the back of his mind. Why dwell upon the negative side when there was so much to celebrate in the positive? But not dwelling on it was a symbolic way of sweeping the nasty under the rug. If it’s swept away where it won’t be seen it won’t exist. I’ll never have to see it or deal with it .

Now he was dealing with it. And it wasn’t just because of what Maggie had confided in him eight years ago.

It was what he felt .

Dr. Adam Walsh over at the county coroner’s office attributed Lillian Withers’ death to a heart attack. A perfectly natural death , Dr. Walsh had said. Hank didn’t think it was natural. Lillian was one of the healthiest people he’d known. Two months ago she’d gone for her annual physical and she’d been given a clean bill of health. Doc says I got one healthy ticker , he remembered her telling him after church the Sunday after her appointment. He said with a heart like mine he doesn’t see any reason why I can’t last another hundred years !

With such a clean bill of health how could she have died of a massive heart attack?

And then there was the foremost question of Maggie’s murder.

Chief Tom Hoffman attributed Maggie’s death to murder at the hands of a burglar she’d surprised. Hank could tell Tom was lying when he told him his theory, but Hank hadn’t pressed it. The police had their job to do, praise God, and if they had to downplay the facts so they could go ahead with their job, so be it. But Hank had caught the strong whiff of fear from Tom as they talked the day after Maggie’s body was discovered. Hank had only heard about the condition of the body and the room from John Van Zant, who’d found her, and that had been enough to be worried about. Feeling the vibe emanate off of Tom Hoffman as the Chief told him that the murder was probably the work of “some doped up kid robbing the place” was enough to convince Hank that Tom didn’t believe that one bit. He thought it was the work of something much worse. But whether he knew what it was, Hank couldn’t tell.

And then there were the symbols…

John said the symbols were satanic. Hank was of the type to never take anything for granted. If other brothers and sisters in the Lord claimed that Proctor and Gamble was a satanic organization because of their company logo, then he would go the other way and accuse those brothers and sisters of bearing false witness. He’d seen examples of this time and time again, from the endless crusade so many of his fellow Christians heaped against popular culture; rock and roll, movies, books, certain ethnic groups, other religions and Christian denominations. It all defeated the purpose of the Gospel. When a heavy metal artist like Marilyn Manson declares himself an Anti-Christ Superstar on an album, it was for shock value. Hank Powell didn’t endorse it, didn’t approve of it, but he didn’t see it as part of some Satanic conspiracy. He believed artists like that were lost, true. The secular world didn’t see the symbolism for what it was; they were ignorant of the powers of darkness, but that didn’t make them evil. They were lost sheep. Likewise, when Jerry Falwell gets up on his pulpit and tells his followers that homosexuals deserved everything they had coming to them including discrimination, AIDS, and the violence of gay bashing, Hank Powell had to attribute the Reverend Falwell’s misguidedness to the Prince of Darkness again. The Lord may work in mysterious ways, but Satan had his fingers on everything and was a master of deception. To turn scripture around to make it sound hateful and bigoted was the devil’s way of snaring those who were destined to reign in the Kingdom of God.