J. Gonzalez - They

Mike and Frank nodded. Frank said, “Yeah, I can buy that. Keep going.”

Vince was on a roll. “Okay, let’s pretend they convince my mother that I really am the Anti-Christ. The key word is they convince her. Maybe they brainwashed her into believing that she really fucked the devil or something. Maybe they were all tripping the night she got knocked up and they used this to their advantage. I don’t know. What’s important is this: they need their Anti-Christ in order to feed on their own religious hysteria and support their theology. They need this… this figurehead to legitimize their creed. The Christian side of them knows this, but they aren’t aware of me. They may know that the devil side of the sect has, quote unquote, conjured up the Anti-Christ, but they don’t know who he is or where he’s living. Remember, this is a war for them, even though they’re really fighting for the same thing. They’re still playing it out as if one side or the other is going to win. So they convince my mother I’m it, I’m the son of the devil, I’m the one that’s going to lead them to victory and glory and they’re going to rule the world. They bring me to a bunch of rituals and pray to the devil and all that other happy horseshit that I’m now starting to remember. And they brought Frank and some of the other kids to the ceremonies, too, simply because they were still too stupid and too caught up in the drug scene to know any better.”

Mike was listening to the narrative with interest. Frank was nodding along, his features impassive as Vince took him down memory lane.

“So things proceed along as fine as can be. Oh, they need to spread a little mayhem every now and then. Perform some satanic rituals, kidnap and sacrifice a few runaway kids, that sort of thing. They’re Satanists, remember, and even though we think they’re completely bugfuck, they believe this horseshit. They really believe they’re performing some divine rituals when they do this stuff. So the years pass, and we move into this nice suburban home, and my mom and who I think is my dad try to protect me and shield me from the world as any good normal parent would do. Mom is pretty much zoned out because maybe her husband keeps her that way. But she wises up somehow. She gets off the drugs, and within a year or two she begins to wise up even more. She begins to think that maybe this crap she’s been led to believe is nothing but crap. Maybe she begins to look at me in a different light. After all, I’m just a normal, eight or nine-year-old boy. I don’t have horns growing out of my head, I don’t have a tail, I don’t smell like brimstone or have fangs. My mother has inspected every inch of my body from the time I was a baby and she knows I don’t bear the mark of the beast.” He sniggered. “And forget about that shit about the numbers being on my head. I was as bald as Telly Savalas when I was born. She would have been able to see it.

“The point is that she wises up. She sees them for what they are. Religious fanatics. And during her brief period of rationality, she plans her escape and makes good on it. She takes me in the dead of night, when dad is out of town, and whisks me away. I have vague memories of traveling with her through Arizona, New Mexico, maybe Texas. We were on the road for a long time. Next thing I know, we’re in New York. We move to Buffalo. Mom finds us a small motel room and a few days later she tells me we’re changing our names. She asks me what I want to be called. I’d always hated my name so it was no wonder I almost forgotten about it until you called me that day. I picked Vince as my new name. So my mom had our names changed. I’m guessing that she got us genuine fake identifications, with new birth certificates. Whatever it was she did, it worked for twenty-five years. We lived under our new names, moved to Toronto, mom got really religious, and that was all I knew from then on. We came to Lititz in 1983, when I was sixteen turning seventeen. By then I’d almost forgotten about my early life.

“The point is this.” Vince hunkered down, sitting in a chair. “During this time the group, the Children, they were freaking out. They probably embarked on this huge search for me, but mom was so good at changing our identities, she eluded them for twenty-five years.”

“One would think that if there really were a devil, he never would have allowed you or anybody else to escape the cult,” Frank said. “I can dig what you’re saying. They’re religious nuts. They’re not working with reality. They may be great at skip tracing and eventually tracking people down and getting rid of them, but they never would have been able to anticipate you and your mom’s defection.”

“Exactly! They’re just people. They’re not supernatural bogeymen. But regardless, they’re as fanatical about the devil as Jerry Falwell is about God. They’re also as fanatical as this other group is. This group I’m alluding to, the one that tried killing us this morning and tried to kill me Sunday afternoon. Sometime during the period The Children of the Night was looking for me, this other group found out about me. It is this group, which I am using fictitiously now, which is trying to kill me. Maybe they started off as a genuine church group. Maybe they were already comprised of fringe members of the Christian far right. Who knows? What matters is they somehow found out about not only me, but also The Children of the Night. Maybe it was an ex-member.”

Mike spoke up. “It could be possible. There have been defectors, although most of them usually die in so-called accidents, or disappear.”

Frank rubbed his chin. “Let’s suppose somebody does defect though. It’s possible they could have remained hidden very much the way Maggie did. Maybe they started this other church and their sole purpose was finding you,” he nodded at Vince, “and, once finding you, killing you.”

“See?” Vince exclaimed. “How many times do I have to spell things out before you start believing me?”

“Granted, it’s a good theory,” Mike said. Now Mike was pacing the room. He went to the window and peeked out between the blinds. He was silent for a moment. “It’s possible. The more I think about it, the more plausible it sounds.”

Frank appeared to be accepting the theory more, too. “Whoever this group is, they wouldn’t have to be very big. It could be as little as half a dozen members.”

“And they wouldn’t necessarily have to have been together for very long,” Vince said. “Just long enough for whoever knew enough about The Children to preach Children theology to his new congregation, and come up with some kind of tactical plan in finding me.”

“Do you think it’s possible that if this is true, that this renegade member might be a member of both sides?” Frank asked Mike. “You know, a member of The Children of the Night and a secret member of this other group?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said, shaking his head. “I find that hard to believe, but anything’s possible.”

They were silent for a moment, Mike returning to the other bed. Frank remained reclining against his bed, Vince in his chair. Finally, Mike broke the silence. “Let’s see what the news says.” He reached for the television remote control and turned it on.

He flipped through the channels. It was closing in on ten p.m., and they had to endure another ten minutes of Law and Order before the local news came on. When the broadcast started, the shoot-out in Lititz was one of the top stories.

They watched spell-bounded as the facts were revealed. There were four dead, with another—Reverend Powell—listed in critical condition. Only one of the dead had been positively identified—Lititz Borough patrolman Tom Hoffman. Vince felt a stab of guilt as he learned this, then quickly fought to push the emotion down. Dozens of people had witnessed the gunfight, which erupted shortly before the lunchtime rush. Three of the gunmen had gotten away and were being sought. Police sketches came across the screen and Vince fought the urge to laugh. Frank did laugh. “What a joke! How the fuck do they expect to find people with sketches like that?”