Saturday, September 17, 1960
Pastor Aken dragged the limp
teenager out of the passenger seat of his blood-red Chevy Corvair. She didn’t
make a sound. Her smoky eyes fluttered, but she kept quiet.
It was after midnight. He’d kept Bishop Lundby waiting for
over two hours. The girl had been difficult to snatch. Not because she’d
struggled. She’d stayed with her boyfriend in Braxton Park longer than her
parents might’ve wanted, had they known of her whereabouts. But that didn’t
matter. The pastor had considered interrupting their tryst and slitting the
boyfriend’s throat (he despised his oily hair and faded motorcycle jacket) but
didn’t. They’d need someone to blame for her disappearance.
The early-morning sliver of moon glimmered as he traveled
with her across the empty parking lot. He glanced at a toppled oak tree. Several
thick branches rested against the roof of the church, peeling away the weathered
shingles. Muddy leaves tap-danced against the siding in the cool breeze. There
were a dozen broken windows, and the gutters had partially dislodged. The
remnants of Hurricane Donna.
Pastor Aken hated the bishop. Despised his entire
congregation and Mount Olive Church. Would burn each and every member alive if
he didn’t have to follow protocol. He’d spent the entire ride to Chasm County
digging his fingernails into the steering wheel and talking himself out of
driving back to Crow Creek. He could’ve finished the job in the root cellar
under First Baptist. No one ever went down there. The place was dark and musty.
Put a lock on the door, and they’d have no idea. He could’ve been fast asleep
by now and dreaming of his own family, not satisfying someone else’s needs.
He had his sights on Pattie Lynn Briggs, Jake Riddle’s wife.
She was just fine. Flowing red hair. Crystal blue eyes. Skin as fair as fresh
snow. His chiseled Native American jawline and her Yorkshire complexion would
produce bold, handsome progeny. And if her firefighter husband somehow died in
the line of duty, all the better for the pastor and Crow Creek. Folks needed a
little prodding now and again.
The languid girl winced. He’d yanked
on her blonde hair without realizing, curling the locks into his fist.
“Just a while longer,” he told her.
She sighed but seemed comforted. He was confident she and
her boyfriend had consumed enough Old Fitzgerald to put all of Holt County to
sleep. Her father managed the flat yard in Queensboro for Southern Railways and
probably had no idea she’d been nipping his supply. The freight companies knew
how to grease their engineers, especially with Southern bourbon, and the softer
taste of Old Fitzgerald had the local teenagers scrounging to imbibe. The
pastor understood. Sneak off with a bottle of sour mash from your old man’s
liquor cabinet, pocket a pack of Lucky Strikes from the corner store at Ninth
and Mill—what juvenile could resist such carnal paradise? Partly why he loved his own church as much as
he did. Something about the company of sinners.
He wrenched her up the short set of wooden steps at the rear
of the church. The doorway was unlit. Not surprising. Bishop Lundby dwelled in
darkness. Pastor Aken preferred the spotlight. The perfect metaphor for their
contrast. With any luck, this fourth and final girl would complete the bishop’s
cycle, and the pastor would earn the right to sire his own flock and never
return to Winter again. He’d serviced the state elders for more than a century,
biding his time. His devotion had even included a murder of the Cavalli (an ancient order of knights)
during World War II. While presiding over the Baptist church at Fort Bragg, he hunted the high-ranking officers
until he’d located the right one. Flat-topped bastard never saw him coming. Drove
the penknife squarely into his temple while he slept in his barracks. Didn’t
spill a drop of blood.
Pastor Aken knocked. The door rattled on its hinges and
squeaked open. A business of flies hovered about the musty sanctuary. The
pastor swatted at them with his free hand.
The man slouching in the shadows wasn’t Bishop Lundby.
“McCrory?” the pastor shouted. “What the fuck are you doing
here?”
The hunched furniture salesman licked his lips and pushed
wire-rimmed glasses up the slope of his greasy nose. The pastor heard the
crooked man sucking on candy. The scent of peppermint wafted in the humid air
between them.
“Lundby told me you’d be coming.” His eyes widened. “With a
girl.”
Pastor Aken stepped in front of the subdued teenager and
shoved McCrory inside the church. He released the blonde’s hair and grabbed her
wrists as he hurried inside with her and closed the door.
The church was almost too dark. Too quiet. Pastor Aken kept
his eyes on McCrory. He knew the runt wouldn’t hesitate to snatch the girl if
the pastor dropped his guard even for a moment. Not because he would ever take
a meal from the bishop. That was out of the question. He’d do things that were
worse. Dirty things.
“She’s special,” McCrory hissed. “I can smell her from
here.”
Pastor Aken puffed his chest. “Where’s Lundby?”
“Can I have her for a moment?” McCrory slid into a wooden
pew and raised both palms, wheezing softly in the darkness and ignoring the
pastor’s question. “I just wanna take off her shoes and sniff her feet. That’s
all. I promise. Nothing more.”
The massive oak tree slapped the outside of the church,
knocking loose a few window slivers. Pastor Aken jumped and narrowed his eyes.
“I’ll only ask you this one more time, McCrory. Where’s the
bishop?”
McCrory dropped his shoulders.
“William Blount Air Force Base.”
The pastor scratched his pointy chin and waved slender
fingertips at a fly buzzing his ear. “Near the coast?”
McCrory nodded. His eyes never left the slumping girl.
“Yes, Ethan. Bishop Lundby phoned my father’s shop yesterday
and asked if I’d come wait for you. Keep an eye on your delivery till Monday. What
was I supposed to say?”
Pastor Aken flickered, his skin melting. Thick black scales
flashed. For a moment, he felt his wings pull at his shoulder blades,
threatening to erupt.
“He expects me to leave her with you all weekend? After all
the work I did collecting her?”
McCrory’s response was more of a grunt than anything else.
Pastor Aken grabbed him by the throat. The hunched man
squealed.
“I owe your father, McCrory. He helped me with my first
feed. He’s the only reason I don’t kill you right now. But, someday, after your
father’s long gone, I’ll run Crow Creek. Then I’ll have you. You’ll slip up,
and you’ll be mine. Mark my words.”
The pastor withdrew, tossing McCrory to the hardwood floor
in front of the rotting pew. The slimy man scrambled on his knees toward the
feeble girl.
“Her toes,” he begged. “Let me kiss them. Just once. Please!
You have no idea how much I need—”
Pastor Aken kicked McCrory as hard as he could across the
jaw, slicing open his translucent skin with the sharp edge of a polished
Italian loafer. The wretched creature bounced off the back of the wooden pew
and collapsed to the worn floorboards in a puddle of his own drool.
“As much as I’m sure you’d love that opportunity,” Pastor
Aken shouted, twirling on his heels, “I have other plans for her now.”
And with that, he stormed toward the altar, towing the girl by
his side. He thought she might’ve giggled but no longer cared. He would be
finished with her directly. He was through playing second fiddle to the bishop.
And to McCrory’s father. And to anyone else ignorant enough to get in his way. Crow
Creek would be his now. And if the bishop wasn’t careful, so would Winter. The people needed him. Loved him. Wanted his
leadership and spiritual guidance, especially at the start of a decade that
promised to be as turbulent as any in recent memory.
He thought about the black hitchhiker who’d been lynched
(misdirecting blame was easier with colored folks) on Route 119 after the last
girl he’d collected for the bishop. Out near the new subdivision beside Braxton
Lake. Since Martin Luther King’s appearance on the cover of TIME magazine, radical white Southerners
jumped at every chance to hunt, innocent or not. A recipe for disaster. The
pastor imagined the horrors that would define the nation by the end
of the 1960s and smiled.
As he approached the altar, he scooped the girl in his arms
and plopped her hard on top of the communion table. She stopped giggling and
arched her back, dividing her pouty lips. Before she could speak, Pastor Aken
drove his fingernails into her neck and tore open her throat. Blood sprayed the
clean satin tablecloth. The girl tried to scream but only gurgled. She kicked
her feet and tossed her arms, but the pastor snapped her neck with a quick flip
of his wrists. She lay motionless. He ripped the lavender little-nothing dress
away from her chest and opened his mouth, gnashing his teeth as he dipped into
her ivory flesh.
