Or witchcraft potions.
Sasha’s mother nodded to her daughter and then turned to the altar. She set the cup on the table and slowly got to her knees like an old woman. She was deceptive—slow and heavy one moment, fast and strong the next.
“Now, dear lover,” Sasha said, “It’s time for the real sacrifice.”
She came at him with the knife before her, blade wet with his blood.
5
Anthony double-parked outside of the First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered. The cops were too busy with drug dealers and gang violence to care about an illegally parked vehicle on Broadway. Newburgh could be a scary place at night, and particularly bad for a white guy who happened to get lost in the wrong area. This is what God wants.
Anthony got out of the car with the rip-claw hammer. It’s black leather grip clung to his skin and its 20oz weight felt good—solid and powerful. The straight claw on the back was ideal for reaching into tight spaces or driving into people’s skulls.
Only if necessary.
The closed beauty shop next door—Nailed Nails—held a new irony that made Anthony laugh. It sounded like the cackle of someone who wasn’t all there.
Light emanated from behind two large posters of Jesus on the cross bordering the door in the giant glass windows. The glass door had been blacked out. Anthony knocked. The metal grate rattled above him with each knock. These people were awfully trusting to stay open after sunset.
A police siren’s warble echoed from somewhere.
The door opened slightly. A woman with curly brown hair and heavy eyeliner peered out from the crack.
“Yes?” she said.
He hadn’t known what he was going to say to gain entrance—figured he might just hold up the hammer and tell whoever opened the door to back off—but words came to him suddenly and with total clarity.
“In today’s day and age when every organized religion is claiming the rightful path, it can be confusing to know which direction is correct. In fact, it can be disheartening. It can be easy to lose faith.”
The woman’s brow scrunched. “Excuse me?”
“But Jesus doesn’t care if you follow this faith or that faith,” Anthony continued. “Jesus wants you to be empowered, to feel His grace and bask in His glory. He scarified Himself for all humanity as proof of heavenly empowerment.”
The woman turned behind her, called for help.
“With Jesus as our teacher, we can learn how to tackle our problems and choose the right path to glory. And, most importantly, we can be empowered with God’s love. No matter the pain from which you suffer …”
The woman turned back to him, realization dawning. “You’re Mr. Williams, aren’t you?”
Anthony didn’t let this stop him. The words were flowing from somewhere in his brain where the flier Ellis and Dwayne had given him so long ago permanently lived. “ … the difficulties against which you struggle …”
“Ellis!” she called again, more frantically.
“… Jesus wants to help. At The First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered, we seek the fulfillment of God’s will through an honest acceptance of our faults and a faithful inquiry into the magical workings of Jesus.” He waited for her to say something but she simply stared, wide-eyed and shit-scared. She had no idea what “scared” meant. Not yet. “Are you ready for the magical workings of Jesus?”
Anthony raised the hammer.
She screamed, more of a startled shout than a scream of fear, but it was enough to take this moment to Step Two. He shoved hard against the door and the woman fell back, stepping several feet before her legs tangled and she smacked the tile floor on her hip. She started to yell for Ellis again but there wasn’t any need. Ellis stood in the middle of the room.
“Anthony,” he said, “I was expecting a call.”
He had taken off his suit jacket but still wore the black pants, white dress shirt, and black tie, though he had loosened the knot and undone the top button. His hair was poofed as if he had run his hand through it several times. The king without his diadem, Anthony thought, thinking of some Emily Dickinson poem he’d read years ago.
Anthony walked toward him in slow, deliberate steps. He patted the head of the hammer in his palm with each step. Three or four other people stood against the walls, eyes wide, mouths agape. The other worshippers were probably in The Temple, bowing before a giant fake god. Anthony would love to barge into that room and smash the Giant Jesus to pieces. It would feel so wonderful to destroy that thing. That statue could have been his salvation; instead, it dragged him deeper into Hell. The hammer grew lighter. This is what the Devil wants.
“I was going to call,” Anthony said in an equally slow and methodical voice, “but it suddenly occurred to me that you had single-handedly destroyed my life.”
Ellis was shaking his head. “No, no, no. We have done nothing but try to help you. God is mysterious and His ways cannot be questioned. We only sought to help you, empower you.”
Anthony held up the hammer. “I’m empowered now.”
Ellis started to back up. “What are you going to do? Kill me? Beat me to death? You’ll never get away with it.”
Anthony paused. “Why would I want to get away with it? I’ve already killed a man today, what does it matter if I kill another?”
None of the people against the walls moved. So much for empowerment. Ellis began to back-pedal quickly, heading for The Temple.
“I told you what you had to do. You can still have a beautiful life with Brendan.”
“Don’t you dare say his name!” Anthony launched into a sprint and collided into Ellis before the man could even turn to run.
They crashed onto the floor. Ellis’s hands groped Anthony’s face and arms in spastic bursts, rapidly moving from one part of his body to another in search of the best angle of attack. He shouted for help but the people along the walls remained still, fixated. If anyone was in The Temple, they’d be out any second. Anthony was enjoying this, watching Ellis writhe beneath him. Ellis’s hand found Anthony’s throat and squeezed. Ellis gritted his teeth, air pushing from his nose like he were a bull and stared Anthony dead-on with eyes that dared him to do something.
Anthony brought the hammer down into the floor an inch from Ellis’s head. The reverberations of the hit spiraled up Anthony’s arm as pieces of tile pelted his face. Ellis’s hand relaxed.
“Next time,” Anthony said, “it’s your skull.”
Ellis dropped his hand. The woman who had opened the door gasped a desperate “No!”
“What do you want?”
Anthony smiled. Have I gone crazy? “Where’s my son?”
6
Dwayne drove them to Trailer Trash Town where Sasha Karras lived. Instead of the big black car in which they had taken Brendan during Delaney’s wake, they were in a grey two-door hatchback. “Easier for people to miss,” Dwayne had said. The car smelled of cigarette smoke and ash speckled the dashboard. They parked before Sasha’s neighbor’s driveway. The neighbor’s house was dark except for one light in an upstairs window. Sasha’s house was similarly dark, save for a flickering red light in the downstairs windows.
Dwayne used his cellphone to make a call. He waited through several rings and then said, “Yes, I’m calling from Information Securities. Is the head of the house available?” A second later, he closed the phone, dropped it in his pocket, smiled.
“That’s the basement,” Dwayne said, pointing. “That’s the key to this whole thing, and the front door, of course. There’s a sliding glass door in the basement that leads to the outside. There’s no sure way to blockade that door, so you need to be sure that the most gas gets pooled there.”