Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

And so, the field had to be razed. In a way, what was about to happen would be the best thing for them all.

He gripped the pulpit. “What are you without me?”

He needed to hear them say it.

“Nothing,” said Reggie Longpre, his voice clear as a bell.

“Nothing,” went the echo.

Amos said, “Without me, what meaning would your lives have?”

“None at all,” spoke the people of Little Heaven.

“That’s right. I’m the best thing you’ll ever have.”

Wild applause. Nell Conkwright shouted, “Thank you for everything, prophet! You are the only. The only . I am sorry for my trespasses.”

“Sit down and be quiet,” he told them all coldly. They sat at once, like some sentient organism of wretched servility.

Amos signaled to Virgil, who wheeled in a cart from the vestry. On it sat a stack of plastic cups and two jugs of liquid, one red and the other purple.

VIRGIL HAD USEDa lot of sugar. An entire bag, holy jeez. The Reverend said it needed to be real sweet.

Why so goddamn sugary? Virgil wondered. He didn’t ask. Followers did as they were told. Virgil had followed Cyril for years, and when Cy up and vanished, well, the Reverend was right there to fill the gap. And the good Rev—who was used to telling his followers what to do—never bothered to tell Virgil what he’d mixed into the Kool-Aid after Virgil had made it.

Virgil used to drink the stuff as a kid. It was all his mother could afford. She mixed it so weak that it didn’t quite cover the sulfur taste of the well water. Redneck lemonade , she called it. Virgil and his brothers and sisters would sit on the porch, guzzling watery cherry Kool-Aid until the skin above their top lips was stained pink.

He’d dumped in double the amount of sugar the recipe called for. The Reverend gave it a taste and said, “More.” Eventually it stopped dissolving—no matter how much Virgil stirred, the sugar crystals just sat at the bottom of the jugs like beach sand. The Reverend took the jug into the vestry and closed the door. When he came out, it looked the same, but there was a slight chemical odor to the Kool-Aid.

“Don’t touch it,” the Rev had told him. “It’s for the children.”

Virgil wouldn’t drink that shit on a dare. Just thinking about it made his teeth ache.

“Now do the same with the wine,” the Reverend told him.

“You want me to sugar up the wine, too?”

The Reverend sneered. “Did I stutter?”

Virgil dumped a sack of Domino sugar into the sacramental wine. The stuff was pretty much unsweetened grape juice, not a drop of booze in it—if so, Virgil and Cy would’ve necked it long ago. He tested it. He just about got diabetes from a single sip. The Rev disappeared with the wine for a couple of minutes. When he returned, it also had a chemical tang—but different from the Kool Aid.

Now, on the Rev’s cue, Virgil wheeled in the cart with the jugs sitting on it. The people in the chapel seemed happy. The Reverend had trotted out the old dog and pony, put on a real whizbang of a show. Now they all wore the goony grins of lobotomy victims.

“We will fight this abomination,” the Rev was saying. “We will save the children. We will restore Little Heaven to what it was—the home of the chosen people!”

“Hallelujah!” the crowd yelped.

“We will beat back the scourge!”

“Hallelujah!”

“I alone can do this.”

“Praise you, Father!”

They linked hands and swayed in the pews like hypnotized cobras.

“Come forward, all of you, and accept your offering,” said the Reverend. “Wine for adults and juice for the children, as always.”

Virgil poured wine and Kool-Aid into the cups: only a few mouthfuls in each, just as the Reverend had instructed earlier. The worshippers stumbled up with those dozy grins pasted on their faces. They looked like moths flying into a bug zapper. They each took a cup and sat down. If they had children, they took cups of juice for them. The Reverend watched closely. Virgil noticed the bead of sweat on his nose and the way his fingers trembled.

As Virgil poured, his gaze drifted to the window. Cyril was standing outside in the dark. His face was white as lard. He was grinning, but it wasn’t dopey, like those of the worshippers. More of a leer. Cyril pressed his face to the window. It went flatter than skin ought to—

Virgil kept pouring, managing to not spill a drop. Cy’s lips were moving like he was speaking, but it didn’t look like talking so much as chewing. Then poor Cyril’s left eye burst and a thick black runner leaked down his cheek and—

Virgil closed his eyes, hoping Cy would be gone when he opened them. But he was still there a few seconds later. Was Virgil the only one who could see him? The black goo running down Cy’s face started to curl upward—it was then that Virgil realized his eye hadn’t burst at all. His eye was already gone and a centipede had been coiled up inside the empty socket; the insect scurried down under Cy’s jaw, then up around his ear before tucking itself back inside his socket, neat as a pin.

Groovy trick, huh? Cy’s voice chimed in Virgil’s head.

Sure thing, Cy , Virgil thought queasily. A real screamer.

Soon the drinks were poured and everyone was sitting again. Their eyes had that docile glaze. The eyes of ritual junkies.

The Reverend said, “We shall drink the purifying tonic of the Lord. The children first, then the adults. In that order. This is as He wishes. As your prophet wishes.”

The children raised the cups to their lips. Some of them coughed a little on account of the sweetness. But none of them spat it out. Watching them, Virgil understood. If Cyril asked him to drink that Kool-Aid, Virgil would have done it in a New York minute. That was what followers did, after all. No questions asked. Who would dare question the Lord? Why question fate?

The Reverend leaned forward. A smile touched the edges of his lips.

“Now you, my older children. Drink. To the very last… drop.”

EBENEZER REACHED GRINDER’S SWITCHas the sun was setting. He wheeled the Olds into the sundry store where they’d stocked up a week ago.

The bell tinkled when he kicked the screen door open. The sick-looking shopkeep who had told them how to get to Little Heaven stood behind the counter. Eb snatched a bottle of Yoo-hoo from the cooler. He drank it and dropped the bottle on the floor. He burped loudly, grabbed another one, and started to drink it, too.

“You think I’m running a food bank here?” the man said peevishly.

Ebenezer held one finger up— Hold on, I’ll get to you —tipped the bottle to his lips and drained it. He dropped it and grabbed a box of Goobers off the candy rack. He ripped the top off and walked toward the counter, tossing chocolate-covered peanuts in the air and catching them in his mouth.

“Remember me, my fine fellow?”

The man squinted. “You figure I should?”

“Oh, who knows? I’m sure you meet a lot of sophisticated people.”

The man was reaching for something under the counter. “You got some kind of mental problem, boy?”

Eb dropped the box of candy and grabbed the man’s wrist before it could clear the counter. He lifted the man’s arm up and brought it down sharply on the ledge. The gun fell out of the man’s hand—a .25-caliber popgun with hockey tape wrapped around the butt. Ebenezer brought the man’s bony wrist up and down on the counter again and again until something went snap . The man shrieked and fell, hitting his head on a box of Manila Blunts cigars on a shelf behind the counter.

“You knew,” Eb said while the man mewled and clutched his broken wrist. “It was death up there and you let us go anyway.”