Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

Next: hysterical shouts. Names hollered over and over.

“Elsa! Elsa!”

“Billy! Elton!”

“Oh God! Oh God, it’s happened again!”

“ ELLLLLLSAAAAAA! ”

Next: rapping on his door.

“Reverend!”

He opened the door only to be confronted with the agonized faces of several worshippers. Maude and Terry Redhill, the Rasmussens, a few more.

“She’s gone!” Anna Rasmussen screamed. “Our baby girl!”

Worshippers were streaming into the square by then, their faces bloated with sleep. The Reverend’s mind whirled as he processed the situation, calculating the new configuration of things and finding his own angle within it.

“Calm down,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”

“She’s gone!” Anna Rasmussen screamed, harpyishly. “Our daughter! Her bed was empty this morning!”

“And Billy and Elton’s, too,” said Terry Redhill.

Amos’s mind clicked and ratcheted. “You’re telling me—”

“Reverend! They’re gone !” Maude Redhill spat. “They’ve been taken just like Eli Rathbone got took!”

Everyone watched the Reverend. Amos was struck by how sick they all looked: their bodies withered, their postures sunken. Their weakness made him ill. His gaze twigged on Reggie Longpre and his son. There was something in their faces he couldn’t intuit and didn’t entirely care for.

“Have the grounds been searched?” he said. “Every nook, every cranny?”

Nobody spoke. The Reverend sensed their collective uncertainty and needled through that gap.

“Search the compound!” he said. “Everyone, now! They could be hiding somewhere. A game to them.”

“It’s not a game!” shouted Anna. “They’re gone! Taken into the woods! Gone just like Eli and Eli’s parents!”

“We don’t know that, Sister Rasmussen. I understand that you’re—”

“We should have left—all of us! As soon as Eli went missing and then came back… came back…”

His worshippers’ faces reflected a vaporous panic—now laced with a hint of resentment directed toward Amos himself. He must step nimbly here.

“Search the grounds,” he said emphatically. “I must confer with the Lord our God, seeking His guidance.”

The worshippers reluctantly dispersed. Anna Rasmussen glanced over her shoulder at him—a poisonous, hateful glare. Amos pictured his hands closing around her throat and tightening until her eyes filled with blood…

“Cyril’s gone, too.”

Amos turned to find Virgil Swicker standing beside him.

“What?”

“Cy.” Virgil looked spooked. “Can’t find him anywhere.”

The Reverend’s mouth filled with bitter saliva. He could barely contain the nervous energy building inside of him; he wanted to scream to let it free.

“If he’s not there, then who is watching the boy?”

Off Virgil’s stunned silence, Amos started across the square at a fast clip. He had to restrain himself from breaking into a run. Virgil tagged along on his heels. He reached the bunkhouse where Eli Rathbone was being held. Cyril’s chair was empty. Amos took a deep breath and unfastened the padlock.

The bunkhouse was empty. Only the fetid stink of the boy’s now absent body remained. Amos closed and locked the door again.

“You keep your mouth shut,” he said to Virgil, who nodded in docile assent.

Amos needed a plan. Quickly. He sized up his options.

One, they could abandon Little Heaven. But if the children really were missing, nobody would agree to that with the little bastards still lost in the woods…

Two, they could accuse someone of taking all four children. A scapegoat, or scapegoats. By Amos’s count, there were two possibilities. He cocked his head, as if to catch the strident bleating of the goats best suited to his purposes—those whose necks could be most easily slit.

“Go to the outsiders’ quarters,” he said. “Do not let them leave.”

A FRANTIC SEARCH ENSUED.The compound was scoured. The children were not found. By the time the worshippers returned to the square, Amos was ready.

“I held palaver with the Lord,” he said. “And I heard His Voice, clear and unfiltered.”

The faces of the worshippers changed: they went from fearful, perhaps even slightly mistrustful, to enrapt—even that bitch Anna Rasmussen, with her hopeful red-rimmed eyes. They wanted answers. Which was all people like them ever wanted. Any answer at all, so they didn’t have to think on their own.

“The evil comes from outside,” he said. “From those not pure of heart or spirit. We opened our door to them, as good and God-fearing folk must, and they have repaid our kindness with malice of the deepest and most hateful nature.”

He pointed at the bunkhouse shared by the English faggot and the burn-faced woman.

“ Them. They are the evil that has come as a plague upon us.”

This was the smart bet, and the shrewdest move Amos could make under the circumstances. His flock was already suspicious of the outsiders—Cyril and Virgil had overheard their whispers, and filtered them back to him. It would be an easy pill to swallow; they wanted to swallow it. He watched their faces. Sweat trickled down his neck and soaked his collar. He had worked hard, so hard, for years to put these people under his yoke. They trusted him… or they had until just lately.

One by one their faces began to reflect this. They began to believe. Yes. Of course. The evil lurked, as it always did, in the hearts of men. And the four outsiders had come from far away, bringing a terrible curse with them. They were the devil’s Trojan horse. Little Heaven had accepted and sheltered them, only to be poisoned by them. The Reverend’s people needed a target to channel their rage and fear into. All Amos had to do was provide one.

“Get them,” he said.

EBENEZER OBSERVEDthe morning’s proceedings with a gathering sense of doom.

He’d leapt out of bed when those agonized screams shattered the calm. He landed on both feet. His ankle was quite a bit better. He could put almost his full weight on it. He and Ellen watched people gather in front of the Reverend’s place. He opened the door and listened. Ellen was at his elbow.

“Oh God,” she whispered when they overheard the Little Heavenites tell the Reverend about the new missing kids. But her nephew was safe. Eb saw the boy standing beside his stoop-shouldered loaf of a father.

Ellen told Eb that she wanted to help with the search of the compound.

“You should, if only to show your empathy,” he said. “But I can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“My ankle.”

“You’re fine,” Ellen said. “You’re walking on it now.”

“Yes, but I don’t want them to know that.”

“Why not?”

Ebenezer thought about quoting Sun Tzu but thought better of it. Ellen said, “Fine, do whatever you want,” and began to pull her boots on. But then Virgil—the more moronic of the Reverend’s two lapdogs—showed up.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he announced.

“Why not?” said Ellen.

“Reverend’s orders.”

After that, the compound was searched. The kids were not found. Worshippers rounded back into the square. Ebenezer listened at the shut door, trying to catch what the Reverend was saying.

“I believe this stands to end poorly for us,” he said to Ellen.

They watched out the bunkhouse window. The Reverend pointed in their direction. A group of supplicants began to stalk toward them. Next, the door swung open and the denizens of Little Heaven poured in.

A red-faced man rushed Eb. He kicked the man in the knee. The man screamed and twisted aside, but another man steamed in behind him and clocked Ebenezer spang in the face. Jesus! Wasn’t very Christian, was it? Ebenezer reeled to see Ellen crushed under a weight of bodies. She was being dragged outside. The man who’d slugged Ebenezer came at him again—big, with a baleful glare in his eyes. The father of the missing girl, Eb was pretty sure. He pinned Ebenezer’s arms to his sides; Eb brought a knee up into his gut. Eb felt slightly bad doing so, the man’s agonies being what they were. Undeterred, the menfolk of Little Heaven hurled themselves at him. Ebenezer tagged a few others with solid shots as they rushed him, but ultimately they got him down, hit him until he could taste his own blood, and hauled him into the harsh morning sunshine.