Gary sipped water from a coffee cup, noticing he had white curds of foam in the corners of his mouth. These cable hosts were easier to work than a pro wrestling referee. Gary smiled, and said what he always said. “I’m not even the messenger, killing me won’t stop what’s coming. I’m just an envelope, containing the message. It’s up to you folks out there to take it in, or stamp it RETURN TO SENDER.”
It’s never stopped feeling like a miracle, he thought as the segment cut to commercial, and the kids watching in the break room burst into wild applause. He shut off the TV, told them to get back to work and went to check the crowds.
If he didn’t believe before that the Lord had a plan for him, then the last eleven months had made him a knower. Without setting his foot on the path, some force had not so much guided as pushed and prodded him up out of obscurity. Presidential and congressional candidates wanted photos with him, and knitted their brows seriously as they endorsed his crusade. Many authoritative voices on the national stage agreed that the seeds of this “innocent” children’s holiday had blossomed into pernicious weeds of adult lawlessness and violence, and statistics showed ever-escalating acts of hostility towards the church and anyone who opposed vice and blasphemy, that would only worsen with every return of that cancer on the calendar.
With Todd’s death, the Devil’s Dungeon was shut down by the Sheriff last Halloween night, but the notoriety of the hell house that scared a man to death, fueled by the video of Gary railing at the deputies who dispersed the rowdy crowd, went viral. Most folks laughed at the wild-eyed hick ranting about the Devil in his cheap Devil costume, but god-fearing folks from all over reached out, telling him they felt his message, they saw the same signs he did, and they wanted to help.
Within three months, he bought the old Wal Mart and made the Devil’s Dungeon into a radical new youth church. Their numbers were still small, but his web-sermons racked up a couple million views every week, tax-free donations rolled in, and people started to take notice. Within nine months, he had the mayor and town council on his side.
This year in the town of Shafter, celebrating Halloween was against the law.
And he was just getting warmed up.
Something like this would never fly in Sacramento, but his congressman had tried to force a floor vote on the Save America’s Soul Act, which included, among other things, a national ban on children trick-or-treating, and restrictions on going masked or wearing lewd, provocative or blasphemous costumes in public.
But would it be enough, on the day of the vision that stopped Todd’s heart?
Gary knew he should welcome their anger at his work, but weathering it took its toll. He had to flush them out in the open, had to make the good people see what was coming for them before it was too late.
Whenever he came away exhausted and angry from a TV appearance, he went straight to the mail pile and read letters until he felt grounded again.
Dear Pastor Gary, My son was killed by a drunk driver last Halloween night—Every year, they egg and TP my house, but THIS year—Our daughter overdosed on one of those club drugs at a Halloween party—Pentagrams and pentacles and “666” gouged into the front doors of our church—Said if I didn’t “shut up and fork over the candy,” I could move away or someone might burn my house down—Sometimes I see behind their faces, the sin that rots, the demons that possess—They don’t put on masks at Halloween, they take them off—Where will it end? Who will stand up?
Who?
Facts were important. And the fact remained that the local authorities could find no evidence to discredit Gary Horton’s account of what happened last Halloween night.
He told them he saw someone lurking in the haunt when he discovered Todd, but they escaped. He didn’t tell them what he saw. He insisted it was one of the vandals who’d defaced the haunt, and let them conclude that they somehow caused Todd’s death. The inquest concluded the cause of death was heart failure caused by an acute shock. The only evidence of trauma was mild abrasions and bruising around the photographer’s throat and traces of skin under his fingernails, which proved to be his own.
It was just enough to set the public imagination on fire. The Devil’s Dungeon was the only working haunt in America with an actual body count. Attention focused on Gary Horton and his hell house, opening only on Halloween night in the town that banned it, on the anniversary of Todd’s death.
And it would be the only attraction in town tonight.
Outdated laws forbidding masks or facial coverings dating back to the days of bank-robbers on horseback were trotted out, and public nuisance laws were beefed up to cover the rest. No public events could represent or allude to Halloween unless they were affiliated with a church. The only other attraction in the whole county was a corn maze just outside town limits, which was supposedly attracting a big crowd with nowhere else to go.
A lot of people were out front of the Devil’s Dungeon, though not many seemed to be on God’s side. The crowd spilled out of the serpentine roped area into the parking lot, where a wall of angry protest signs chopped up the orange light from the street into a fitful, fiery glare. They looked defiant, rowdy, drunk and hateful, those who were recognizably human at all.
Leah came over and took him by the arm. “We’re not going to open while there’s people out there wearing masks, are we? Isn’t it against the law now?”
Gary looked out where she was staring. “Nobody out there is wearing a mask, sister.”
She grabbed Gary’s arm and leaned on him. “C’mon hon, let’s get you into makeup.”
In the dressing room, he looked at himself in the mirror, and saw not his blunt, balding pate or lopsided mustache framing lipless mouth clenched between musclebound jaws, or the fire engine red greasepaint and goatee and rubber skullcap with droopy horns devised to make him a cartoon.
Instead, he saw the Real Thing, looking back at him, as it had in the Black Chapel.
He averted his eyes, feeling his blood turn to salt. First, he thought it must be a prank. How could he not? He knew not how, but nothing was impossible when smartass boys set out to make a fool of you.
The cold returned, a blade of frozen nitrogen stropping his brain and lightning frying his temporal lobes and his agony squealed, brain tumor.
If it was cancer, then let it be cancer… for this was what he prayed for, this was the divine hand touching his soul as it did the prophets in the gospels. If it was just an epileptic fit that struck down Saul and turned him to Paul on the road to Damascus, then strike me down, too, Lord, shake me, make me your instrument—Let me show them the Way, let me change them—
But answer there came none.
If he was slipping, it was long overdue. Seven years of year-round work on the Devil’s Dungeon had finally broken him, and it would surprise nobody. He had already chalked it all up to a pending nervous breakdown and prayed for serenity, when he turned and witnessed a pulsating mound of flyblown entrails and offal whimpering at him to say if he liked how he looked or not.
Jolted by sheer terror, Gary laid hands upon the abomination, only to find it was Wenda, wailing at his feet. Wenda the haunt’s den mother, the jovial spinster. Wenda the gossip. Wenda the glutton, the bloated husk of thwarted lust…
Worst of all was the look she gave when he apologized, the leer that turned to pus encrusting her doughy face as he stormed out of the dressing room.