Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

He fixed his hair, setting it just so. He set his shoulders and straightened his spine, drawing himself up to his full height. A showman must always hold a sense of the moment.

He walked between the pews to the front doors. His hands gripped the brass knobs— L imprinted on the left, H on the right.

“Showtime.”

He threw the doors open. Then he signaled Virgil to ring the bell. It tolled steadily, rolling over the compound and into the inhospitable woods. He spread his arms.

“Come, my children,” he whispered. “Come back to me.”

He watched them stumble into the square. Single worshippers at first, but they were soon joined by entire families. They were fearful and bruised of spirit. Amos would salve them. It was his gift. His voice was their balm. His people stood before his chapel like frightened animals. Its beckoning light spilled over Amos’s shoulders. He saw that light reflected in the eyes of his flock.

“I stand penitent before you. I want to say that I am sorry,” he said. “Truly I am.”

NATE WAS WITH ELLENwhen the chapel bell began to toll. Each ring shivered the bunkhouse walls. Nate went to the window. The Reverend was standing at the chapel door with his arms outspread.

Ellen opened the bunkhouse door. She and Nate stepped onto the grass. The things in the woods hadn’t been heard from all day. But it was night now, and that was always when monsters came out.

People began to filter into the square. They look so lost , Nate thought. A lot of them wore timid, hopeful smiles. They walked with their heads tilted forward and their fingers pointing back. They looked cartoonish, like Porky Pig drifting toward a pie cooling on a windowsill: they all had that same dozy, dopey expression.

His father passed by. “You coming, Nate?”

Nate gave him a flat stare. “Maybe later.”

His dad shoved his hands in his pockets. He tried to smile, but his face wouldn’t cooperate. “Things will get better, buddy. You just watch. The Reverend will—”

Nate grabbed Ellen’s hand. His father saw it. He dropped his head and nodded once, a tiny bob of his head, then followed the others.

“You don’t want to go with him?” Ellen asked once he was gone.

Nate shook his head. “I don’t trust him.”

“The Reverend or your father?”

Neither of them , Nate thought.

“COME IN, COME,”Amos said. “Enter the house of the holy.”

Nell Conkwright—the leprous cunt , the scheming bitch the sea hag the whore —stopped at the chapel threshold. She licked her lips, as if physically hungry for everything that lay within. But she couldn’t quite force herself through. She eyeballed Amos coldly.

Amos waited. A bubble of tension formed. His heart rate quickened. Nell’s husband stepped forward, brushing past his wife, entering the forgiving warmth of the chapel. Nell reached for him—he shrugged her off with an inelegant, brusque move, as if swiping dandruff flakes off his sleeve. His eyes were focused inside the chapel, on Jesus up on His cross where He suffered eternally for the sins of mankind. Nell Conkwright gaped at Amos, that coldness giving way to a submissive helplessness. Amos smiled at her, mild as milk. Nell Conkwright dropped her head and followed her husband inside.

Amos knew right then that he had them. All of them, mind and soul. They were his to hold and hone, as they had always been. He tamped down a grin. His smile had begun to look manic lately.

They came. Some eagerly, some hesitantly, some even angrily, which was not wholly unexpected—but they all came. The spell had been cast. That old black magic. Amos stroked the odd shoulder as his worshippers filed in, laying hands on his people. He had to physically stop himself from squeezing too hard—if he did that, his hands might take on life of their own, tearing at fleshy spittle-wet lips and gouging at eyes filled with gaseous idiocy. Bastards and bitches, traitors and heretics, scum-scum-scum-scum… Most of them smiled at him gratefully, the way a whipped dog will still wag its tail when a cruel master pets it.

When they had all come inside, Amos stepped outside the doors. The woods pinched in from every angle. The generators sputtered; they were down to the last few gallons of gasoline by now. The spots dimmed and flickered.

Amos stared into the forest. He could not see anything, but he felt it—something watching. Something black and primitive, built of blood and old bones, breathing back at him. Encouraging him, oh yes. That something, whatever it was, wanted him to succeed and would aid his efforts to make that success a reality. His silent benefactor.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, to no one at all.

Amos shut the doors and ushered himself to the pulpit. He basked in the warm, approving gaze of his congregants. Whether it was approval of him or simply approval of this ritual—the chapel, the uncomfortable wooden pews under their asses once again, the biblical verses they would move their bloated lips to like cows chewing cud—mattered very little to Amos. Whatever the cause, he soaked up their abject need like a sponge.

“Brothers and Sisters,” he said, “the devil has come to Little Heaven.”

They made no noise at this. It was obvious, wasn’t it?

“I’ve been in deep palaver with our Lord these past hours and days,” he said. “It has taken me to the edge of sanity—sometimes, just for a moment, I felt it slip. Now, I’m going to be just as plain as I know how to tell you. I’ve never lied to you,” he lied. “I never have lied to you. An evil has come down on our heads. An evil blacker than anything you could possibly imagine. It’s out there in those woods. Now, I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking: Rev, wasn’t it you who led us here in the first place? And yes, it was. Perfect, or as perfect as we can expect in this fleshy realm. I tried to give that perfection to you.” His voice grew deeper and slightly wrathful. “I laid down my life for you. I’ve practically died every day to give you peace. And do you have that peace? Sister Conkwright, do you feel it?”

“I do not,” Nell Conkwright said, startled to have been called upon.

“And you blame me—no, no, don’t answer that. I know . His eye on the sparrow, Sister.” Amos set his finger below his eyelid and pulled down, exposing the bloodshot white. “Now, why and how did this evil descend upon us? We who are the chosen, our lives given to the pursuance of good and holy matters? But aaaah , the devil, he is sly. He hunts for apathy and sloth and dines out on it. He peers deep into our hearts and finds the evil lurking there. It is his sweetest nectar, oh yes.”

The chapel began to warm. Sweat collected on the upper lips and foreheads of the congregants. Their eyes had that dull sheen Amos knew well. They were enrapt. They were practically drooling. Amos smiled inwardly. He was going to make them pay for their disobedience. He’d make them squirm for what they had done to him. For scaring him and stripping his power away, even for a moment.

“I’m here to talk corruption , Brothers and Sisters! Corruption of the spirit. The insidious sort, the corruption that rusts you from the inside out. From the outside , oh yes! Once you let it in, aaaaah , ain’t it a devil to root out! And I’m here to tell you, corruption wormed its way into Little Heaven well before those things in the woods showed up. Oh yes ! They just followed the stink of rotten souls, drawn like flies to a trash heap. How did that corruption get here, you ask? It was smuggled in the only way it ever can be—in hearts and minds and in souls . Your soul, Brother!” He stabbed his finger at Reggie Longpre, who flinched. “And yours , Sister!” Stabbing that same finger at Nell Conkwright, relishing her agonized expression. “And yours! And yours! And yours!”