No!
Someone ran into him. He screamed and shoved the assailant into a painted flat. The other fell ass-first through the canvas, clutching his throat, giggling like a lunatic.
“Trick or treat, Pastor Gary,” he croaked. “Smell my feet.”
“Quit clowning, Todd.” Gary offered his hand. “Are you high on something?”
Todd giggled maniacally. His glasses hung askew on his face, which was the ashy gray of soap scum, slimy with snot and tears. His hair was shot through white streaks, his eyes like puddles of mud. If it was makeup, Wenda had really outdone herself.
Jaws working, one hand clutched at his neck just under his ear and a gush of glistening red shadow came out his mouth. Then it was gone, just a trick of the light.
Half the time, the kid smelled like pot. Maybe he’d given Gary a “contact buzz.” Todd Chicoine was the haunt’s semi-official photographer. Never a member of the church, Todd lurked in the corridors and snapped flash photographs of patrons screaming, which generated a nice extra revenue stream.
“Todd, get your act together, we’re about to open.” He reached for the kid’s hand again, but Todd scooted backwards until he hit a solid wall. His movements had the spent, underwater quality of a marathon runner collapsing on the finish line. His camera snapped off a couple pictures, the flash stunning Gary.
“I can’t believe it… I’m not… I’m not really out, it wouldn’t just let me out…” He touched his neck, then looked at his hand. “You did it… Was it you? It wasn’t you… was it?”
“Where have you been, Todd?” He began to wonder if he hadn’t solved the mystery of today’s vandalism, in the bargain.
Todd stared at him like he’d never seen him before. “Why, right here, Pastor Gary. In the Black Chapel. I tried to leave, but it won’t let me. Where have you been?”
“Looking for you, Todd. And praying for you.”
A giggle like a seizure shook Todd. “Oh please, Pastor Gary, pray for me!” He pounded the floor with his fist. A blood vessel seemed to burst behind one eye like a shadow leaking out, as he coughed, “Looking for me… I… oh, God… I’ve been looking for you, too. And I found you, at the end…” He laughed harder, and then he was crying, clearly a candidate for the Burning Man room tonight.
Gary tried to lift Todd to his feet, but the kid screamed, “Get off me, God damn you!” Gary dropped him. For just a second, when they were pressed together, Todd felt wet, sticky, like he was covered in fake blood. Or the other kind…
“Stop talking like that, Todd.” He couldn’t stop wiping his hands off on his cape. “You don’t know the first god—the first thing about God or the Bible.”
Todd giggled. “I know all about that part where God and Satan are like, wrecking this guy’s life just to see if he’ll curse the Lord. Like a rich man making a bet with his chauffeur, about if a loyal dog will bite you, before you kick it to death?”
“That’s enough.”
“I have it straight from the horse’s mouth, it’s the only part of the Bible that’s true.”
“Shut up, Todd.”
“I’m just the message in this bottle, man. What did you build this place to show people? It wants to show you, Gary. Go look in the last room. You’ll see… You’ll see who wrote the message…” He laughed again, harder. Gary was barely reining in his temper when Todd went into convulsions, swallowing his own tongue. Gary tried to hold him down, shouting for someone to call 911.
It was too late. His eyes fixed on Gary’s hairline, he just stopped. Gary set the kid down. Picked up his camera and flicked the screen on the back to review the pictures he took, to find out what the heck happened.
He wanted to drop it. Smash it and stomp on it. There could be no doubt, unless they were both losing their minds.
Todd had indeed been to Hell, and come back with pictures.
They were blurry, lit only by fire, rendering the capering silhouettes into literal devils, demons, monsters and witches. Amid the flames they reveled in and worshiped, bodies hung like rotisserie chickens just above the heads of the crowd, dangling from the lamppost in the parking lot out front of the Devil’s Dungeon—
He dropped the camera. The floor squirmed underfoot and nearly missed him when he fell on his ass. He saw it watching him.
In the doorway of the Black Chapel. He saw a thing of black glass. Regal and rigid, a faceless pharaoh. Its skull opened like an orchid and a crown of mouths did say his name, and the sound of its wings was a voice like frigid mercury knives rasping between his teeth that did tell him the wicked would be winnowed away from the righteous, and he would be the instrument of their deliverance.
Nearly tearing his velvet-trimmed cape when he stood in his cloven-hoof boots, Gary unclipped the pepper spray off his belt and ran to the Black Chapel. He took no notice of the sound of a massive door slamming behind him, for he knew the Black Chapel, like every room in the haunt, had no door.
“Gary, do you still believe that Todd’s death was a sign from God?”
Gary blinked and resisted knuckling his eyes like a kindergartener at nap time. Lean back in the leather recliner, try not to make fart noises the microphone under your sweat-sticky shirt will pick up. “Nancy,” he said, then remembered to look at the host, “I’ve asked myself so many times… Look… What happened to Todd was between him and God, but every one of us can draw our own conclusions.”
It still rankled him that he had to answer these questions, but resisting the revisitation was all part of the act that had, in the twelve months since that fateful night, propelled him into the national spotlight.
Nancy dragged the bait back in front of him. “In your sermons, you still call him a casualty of war.”
Gary shrugged and tried out a disarming smile that looked better on almost anyone else. “I know I should go off foaming at the mouth and giving you the soundbytes you need to throw more gas on this fire without ever teaching or convincing anyone… but here goes.
“I’m not afraid to say it. We’re fighting a war against evil. And I still believe poor Todd Chicoine was struck down by a vision he had of the world to come, if we continue to lie to ourselves about the nature of evil, while we’re all marinating in it.”
The host simpered, “I think everybody’s onboard in the fight against evil… but why Halloween, Gary? It’s America’s second most favorite holiday. It’s about fun and fantasy, not Satanism.”
He pivoted to mad-dog the host’s eyeline, though she’d wandered off the set to refresh her drink. “People don’t need to cut up black cats or listen to Judas Priest backwards to worship Satan, Nancy. They just have to sit back and please themselves. Halloween is the second most lucrative holiday for retailers, so speaking out is a threat to America’s real religion. It mocks God and celebrates darkness and evil in the worst way possible, with a nod and a wink that says it’s all a big joke.”
Turn to look dead into the camera. “But it thrills the Devil to see folks who think they’ve outgrown faith wallowing in pagan idolatry, and giving in to their most self-destructive urges. It exalts him to see empty people playing at cartoon monsters while real monsters walk among us every day, because we all believe there’s no plan, no God watching, no reason to be good.”
Drink discreetly out of frame, Nancy cut him off and took Camera 2 for a tight close-up. “A lot of people are taking your message seriously, and they’re saying this Halloween, they’re not going to be silent. But a lot more people are pretty angry at you, Gary Horton.”