"Back off!" he ordered. "Back off and get the fuck out of here! Bar's closed!"
A red-haired woman laughed. Frank noticed with shock that her skirt was off--she was wearing only a blouse and panties. As his gaze moved from one person to another, he saw that many of the men and women had clothing that was ripped or missing.
"He is here!" someone yelled.
"Wine!" a woman cried. "We need more wine!"
"The bar's closed!" Frank repeated, shifting the shotgun.
The red-haired woman laughed again.
And Frank blew her face off.
He didn't mean to. Or at least he didn't think he meant to. It happened so fast. She was laughing at him and he was pointing the gun at her and his gaze went from her black panties to the look of black hatred on her slutty face and he hated that look and he wanted her to shut up and before he could even think about it he was pulling the trigger and when he could see again she was down and her face had been blown off.
And the others rushed him.
He had no time to reload, no time to do anything. Ted was in front, and he leaped the bar and yanked the shotgun from his hand, and then others were hopping over the counter. He saw breasts and fists, pubic hair and penises. He went down, punched and poked, scratched and kicked, and he heard bottles being smashed, chairs being thrown. There was laughing and whooping, the smell of newly opened alcohol. Wine spilled onto his face.
Above him, Ted grasped the shotgun like a golf club and lifted it over his shoulder, crying, "Fore!"
Frank did not even have time to scream before the butt of the shotgun smashed in the side of his head.
Pastor Robens cowered in his office, his back to the locked door, listening to what was going on in his church but afraid to confront it and put a stop to it, afraid even to look at the blasphemies that were being perfo under his roof.
Under His roof.
That was the most horrifying thing of all, the utter lackl of respect for God Almighty and His Son Jesus Christ.
They had been there already when he'd returned fromi his nightly visit to the AIDS hospice. They'd broken intoj the church, had smashed one of the side windows to gets in, and they were dancing in the aisles, ten or fifteen of-j them, teenagers and young adults, some sort of horrible rap music blasting from a boombox that had been set up on the dais. There were wine bottles on the carpet, wine bottles in the hands of the dancers, and he'd stormed into, the church filled with rage and righteous indignation, screaming at them to leave immediately. He'd charged to the front of the church, turned off the boombox, whirled to face the revelers And he'd seen the statue.
The statue of Christ, his statue of Christ, the one he had received from the Reverend Morris in Atlanta. It was lying on its side on the front pew, and it had been desecrated, a garish clown's smile painted on the face with lipstick, an enormous clay phallus appended to the crotch.
Standing on the pew next to the statue was a young woman with blond-and-black streaked hair. She was wearing a black see-through bra and a short black skirt, but the skirt was hiked up, and she had on no underwear. She was fingering herself, her hips swiveling in a slow, sensual motion.
There was a topless girl in the midst of the now motionless dancers, a boy with an erection emerging from his open zipper. Two young men, fully clothed, were lying on the floor underneath the broken window, embracing.
The lecture he'd intended to deliver died on his lips. He saw now that there was something hard and corrupt and vaguely threatening in the faces of these drunken teens, a knowing belligerence he had not noticed at first.
His anger faded as he faced the trespassers, replaced by a growing fear.
No one spoke.
Smirking, the young woman on the pew moved to the left, straddled the desecrated statue.
She spread open the lips of her vulva and peed.
There were giggles and chuckles that echoed in the silent church, titters that turned into guffaws. The young people were all still staring at him, but in their faces was not the shame at being caught that he'd expected to see, not the guilty acknowledgment of their wrongdoing that he would have thought they'd exhibit, but condescension and a smug, intimidating contempt.
A ponytailed boy swaggered up to the dais, held a bottle out. "Hey, dude, have some."
Pastor Robens wanted to smack the bottle out of the boy's hand, wanted to grab him by the collar and shake some sense into him, but he stood meekly aside as the boy took a swig of the wine and turned on the boombox.
The other youngsters started dancing again, passing around their bottles, whooping and hollering. The two young men on the floor were now partially undressed. Against the back wall a girl screamed as a boy began beating her breasts with his fists.
Pastor Robens hurried into his office, shut the door, locked it.
He heard a chorus of laughter from the partyers on the other side.
The ironic thing was that he did want a drink. He had never wanted a drink more in his life. He was trembling, his heart pounding with fear.
He had never encountered anything like this before. He had counseled troubled teens, had even worked for a while in a gang-counseling center in downtown San Francisco. But nothing he had ever experienced had prepared him for this. Emotionally troubled youth and violent fledgling criminals, those he could deal with. Those kids had specific recognizable problems. But that group out there ... Something smashed against the door of this office, and he leaned against it, closing his eyes, offering a quick prayer to God that they wouldn't get in.
There was something wrong with them, something deep and fundamental that went beyond the surface problems caused by family or society or even mental instability, something that he sensed but could not see, something that he only partially understood.
Evil.
Yes, that was it exactly. Evil. These kids were evil. Evil not for what they were doing, not for what they were saying, but for what they were.
He had intended to come in here and call the police, but as he pressed his back against the door, as he heard the revelry going on in his chapel, he realized that he was afraid to do so.
There was a furious knocking on the door behind him, a powerful pounding he could feel in his bones.
"I got a big prick for you, preacher!"
He bit his lip, said nothing.
He had been in here now for over two hours. He'd heard screams of pain, cries of pleasure, drunken laughter. There'd been things knocked over, items smashed, windows broken. And through it all, the music, that horribly repetitive rap music, blaring from the front of the church, covering the softer sounds, obscuring the louder ones, making everything chaotic and unintelligible and even more frightening.
And then, all of a sudden ... he heard them leave. The music stopped, the laughter faded, the cries died down, and they were walking, running, staggering, crawling outside. He heard the big doors open, heard the slurred conversations retreating. He wanted to peek through the curtains, through the window, to make sure that what he was hearing was actually occurring, to make sure that they were really leaving, but he was afraid to check, afraid even to move, and it was over an hour later when he finally got up the courage to open his office door and peek into his chapel to see the damage.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Penelope stood in the center of the meadow, screaming at her mothers as they bent over Dipn, smearing him with blood and fat from the gutted bodies of the policemen. Her mothers were obviously very drunk, but the intoxication seemed to flow in waves: they were crazy, frenzied and chaotically wild, one moment; sober, organized, and intensely serious the next. It seemed almost as though they were possessed.
Possessed.