Chapter 15 #2
Perhaps it’s easier for her, I thought, given that she ultimately failed.
“And it’s a beautiful spot,” Zeke went on. “At least a few of you have heard me tell you about when we first came up over the west hill and looked down at the valley, and how I was struck by the glory of God’s creation.”
I remembered him saying the same thing the night of Paul’s going-away party. My friends remembered too; I saw them nodding away, along with a scattering of others in the assembly. They didn’t hear the envy, the possession in his voice.
Or maybe they did, and they simply didn’t care.
Fear skittered across the back of my neck like a spider.
“Burrsville is a place I want to call home for the rest of my life. My family’s home.
When my son is old enough to get married and start his own family, I want it to be here.
I want generations of my family to live here and be neighbors with all your families.
I want our children to stay here, to be planted like seeds in this valley, to anchor it and make each other strong. ”
Some people were yawning in the heat, bored with these apparent niceties. Other people could sense the “but” coming, and Zeke paused, letting them wait for it. He held the pause, staring out over the congregants until the old farmers were shifting in their hard wooden seats.
“But there is darkness in this place,” he said finally. “Darkness has made its home here. And it will chase us out or bind us and devour us if we let it.”
A murmur went through the crowd, more people glancing between each other.
It felt like all I could see were eyes, Zeke’s shining with passion, David’s fixed on me.
Eyes everywhere, eyes flicking silent accusations, eyes showing their whites, eyes watering and bulging and popping like boils, a huge, lidless eye glaring from the circular window near the peak of the roof—
“I know you feel it!” he boomed suddenly, and the silence that followed was shocked, uncertain.
I pulled my shirt tighter around me despite the heat, afraid he would see my heart racing from across the room.
“You feel it when you go into town and see another business closed. You feel it when you have to go further and further away for a job. You feel it in every pothole and every broken sidewalk. The work of Satan is not so mysterious—it doesn’t always look like a horror movie.
Sometimes it looks like a town slowly crumbling under the weight of poverty and hopelessness, its businesses closing, its places of worship boarded up, its church bells silent. Then again…”
He reached beneath the pulpit, and I knew immediately what he had.
Once again, he took his time, drawing on the palpable anticipation of the room, letting the ice-cold dread in my heart ripple on and on.
People sat up tall, craning their necks to get a clear view; one woman was perched on the edge of her seat, her wrinkled hands clutched like talons on the pew in front of her, nails lacquered scarlet.
The belladonna caught hold of time again, and I felt as if I’d been there for a decade, watching this woman’s nails grow as we waited for the pastor to expose me.
I will never get out of here. The thought came from outside of me—it must have, because I had no thoughts inside of me, only liquid fear. I will never get out.
But it was only seconds later that the pastor held up a plastic baggie.
More glances darted between pews. Light glinted off beads of sweat.
Most of the elements of the hex bag meant nothing to these people, and the young squirrel skull was too small to make out clearly, but the blackthorn pentagram was recognizable for everyone.
“Taken separately, this is nothing much to speak of,” the pastor said. “A rodent skull, some bound twigs, some hair. But the devil often seeks to appear harmless.”
With that, he upended the baggie, dumping the contents onto the floor before the front pews. Everyone in the crowd jolted, taken by the drama of it all. Evelyn began to scream.
“It’s moving!” she cried. “Why is it moving?”
Everyone else jumped to their feet, murmurs of consternation filling the space. I didn’t know whether Evelyn’s reaction was genuine or if Zeke recruited her for this bit of theater, but Georgie—levelheaded, unflappable Georgie—was gray with terror.
“Don’t be afraid!” Zeke shouted, holding up his hands. “Don’t be afraid of it.”
Everyone quieted as he descended the stage, and in the silence I heard the crunch of the still-chittering squirrel skull beneath his foot. He went to Evelyn next, who was pale and shaking, and folded her hand in both of his. She sank back into the pew, and the rest of the crowd followed suit.
“I found this thing at my house,” he said. “It didn’t come to be there by accident. Someone doesn’t want me here. Someone intended to chase me and my family out of this town. Why do you think that is?”
Zeke released Evelyn and stalked the space in front of the pews, staring out over the crowd as if waiting for an answer.
For the first time since he began, he looked at me.
It was the briefest glance, the only acknowledgment a slight flaring of his nostrils.
I felt the pressure of hands around my throat, a knee on my chest. I waited for the accusation.
“Because I wield the power of God!” he thundered. He reached up to the pulpit, swiped his Bible from it, smacked it into the palm of his hand. “I am a warrior of Christ! I will not be chased from the place God has called me by a few witch’s trinkets!”
The thud of the Bible reverberated like a drumbeat in my skull. I was desperate to get out of this place, the muscles of my legs twitching uncontrollably, but I was too terrified to move.
Why didn’t he accuse me?
Because he doesn’t have to, hissed the voice, which I now recognized as my mother’s. It doesn’t matter whether he says it; what matters is that he could, and they would believe him. He holds all the cards.
“The darkness over this place is strong,” Zeke went on.
“I don’t exaggerate when I say you have been held in bondage.
To break that will not be easy. It will require work, it will require belief, and it will require boldness.
Coming here today is the first step, but there are many more to come.
Believe me when I say that God has plans for Burrsville.
” He nodded sagely, making sporadic eye contact again, and I saw heads bobbing in the crowd.
“God has plans for Burrsville. There may be times when you wonder if they’re really possible to achieve, times when you’ll think you’re not strong enough to raise this place up.
I’m here to help you shoulder that burden, to guide and direct and show you what is possible when you have faith. ”
On the wall behind the pulpit, the large projector screen lit up.
After a few seconds, an image flashed on it—a digital rendering of a massive white church.
Even without the scale markers at the bottom, I could tell the sanctuary and its steeple dwarfed the church I stood in now, to say nothing of the atriums and outbuildings that sprouted from it like tumors.
The parking lot would befit a mall; it was an endless stretch of black asphalt and harsh yellow lines broken by the occasional concrete island for trash cans and green blobs I assumed represented bushes.
Behind one of the outbuildings there was a huge playground, and to one side I saw the beginnings of a golf course.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Zeke said, ascending the two steps to the low stage once more.
“ ‘Why would we build a church so big when we can’t even fill this one?’ And that’s a sensible question, because this is the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve filled this church—first time we’ve needed more than the front two pews, actually. ”
He chuckled at this, and the crowd relaxed, laughing shyly along with him.
All around me I sensed relief that he’d forgiven their lack of attendance, while inside me every muscle and tendon and bone was twisting itself into a knot of dread.
Burrsville had collapsed into his grip even faster than I thought possible; I saw Broder in one pew, his arm around his wife, jowls shining with passionate sweat.
I saw Evelyn nodding along emphatically.
The whole room was in thrall to him, except for me.
He could’ve leveled the charge of witchcraft at me at any moment, and they would’ve set on me like dogs.