“Guess I’ll have to try again.”
“Guess you will.”
Harold closed his eyes. His fingers drifted through Eden’s black hair, knotting at last into a fist as he pulled her closer. Eden was glad they were alone, glad Daddy wasn’t in the next room listening at the heat register, glad Mama wasn’t peeking through the pillbox window. This was the way she wanted Harold, all to herself. Just the two of them. No interruptions. No distractions-
The question flashed in her mind quite suddenly. “Where’s the Chihuahua?”
Harold sighed. “I couldn’t get the mutt to eat anything. Your daddy took it out to the chapel. Said he had some herbs or something that would give it an appetite.”
Eden trembled. Kneeling before her lover, staring straight at him-
“The snake,” she said.
From the distance it was just a tumbledown shack abandoned by a silver miner who had shuffled off into eternity many moons ago. But if you got a little closer you noticed the crudely fashioned sign that hung between two bleached-white steer skulls just above the weather-beaten door. Letters made of rattlesnake hide seemed to writhe on a background of black enamel that had blistered in the desert sun:
HELL’S HALF ACRE CHURCH OF SATAN
DEKE LYNCH, PASTOR AND PROPHET
AND THE DEVIL’S LEFT HAND
Inside the chapel. Daddy Deke stood before the altar, dressed in his old frock coat and the top hat with the snakeskin band. Trickles of heat slashed cracks and knotholes in the three wooden walls, offset by a cool breath of air rising from the abandoned mine shaft that pitted the dirt wall at the rear of the structure.
Cool air, but Daddy Deke knew that there was fire down below. He had seen it in a strychnine vision, and his strychnine visions always proved true. The mine shaft led straight to hell. Daddy had walked those tunnels in his dreams. He’d seen the black river flowing. . Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the gates. . the whole nine yards.
Deke knew that his vision of hell was a tough one to swallow. Men, by their very natures, were a skeptical lot. But so was Deke Lynch. He had trouble believing in some things until he saw them for himself. Like demons, for instance. He was skeptical about them right up until the moment he summoned one for himself. Summoned it from the black pit that yawned behind him and watched it stalk off into the desert night leaving nothing in its wake but the sour stink of sulfur.
Of course, some folks said that a man who handled rattlesnakes and drank strychnine was liable to see all sorts of things. Deke figured it this way: if a man couldn’t believe his own eyes, what in hell
Once Deke saw something, he believed it. But there were still a few things he had to see about.
Like this Chihuahua being worth half a million bucks, for instance. Deke had a real problem with that one. And he figured he was going to keep on having a problem with it until someone showed him all that money.
One thing Deke was sure of-if the Chihuahua died, he would never see that money at all. He couldn’t let that happen, because he sure could use that cash. Score a half a million and he could do a whole lot. Maybe start spreading Satan’s word again. Get hisself a television ministry, do it that way. Nobody had made much of a splash with Satanism since that Diabolos Whistler fellow had died down in Mexico a couple of years ago. The country was ripe for a fresh dose of the Devil. Deke could feel it in his bones.
Wheezing miserably, the Chihuahua looked up at Deke from its place on the altar. A full bowl of Alpo rested untouched before the little critter.
Deke closed his copy of
“Maybe you should try it again,” Mama suggested. She knelt before the altar, taking little sips of strychnine from a silver chalice. “Or maybe it wasn’t written to work on a dog. Maybe you gotta change it around a little.”
“No,” Deke said. “I don’t believe that would work. Mama. And even if it would, I ain’t got no idea how to say
Mama’s dark skin gleamed like a freshly polished cowboy boot, the way it always did when she drank poison. She had been drinking strychnine for thirty-two years, and she hadn’t been sick a single day. Plus she’d been snakebit forty-six times. Mama never got sick from that, either. She trusted in Satan, and Satan looked out for her. Her faith had always been strong.
Until now. She took the daintiest little sip of strychnine and said, “Maybe we should go ahead and take the little bastard to a vet.”
“Don’t blaspheme, woman.”
“Well, ain’t you the sanctimonious one all of a sudden? All I’m sayin’ is-”
“Still thy tongue, bitch!”
Mama did as Daddy ordered. But only because it was Daddy. Another man talked to her like that, she’d cut off his balls with a straight razor and feed them to him.
The desert heat cut through those cracks in the walls and set Daddy’s blood to boiling. It was too damn hot today, even for a Satanist. He lifted his silver cup and drained it of strychnine, but the poison did nothing to cool his unease.
His blue eyes burned beneath the sharp ledge of his brow as he scanned the chapel for an answer.
His gaze fell upon the inverted cross on the far wall. . bones bleached of flesh, and those that were not. . the old leather-bound books heaped upon a leaning bookshelf. . the potions and balms that were useless to him now.
Daddy Deke threw the silver goblet across the room and it banged against the weather-beaten door. The answers he required were beyond his reach.
Before he could find them, he needed to get right with Satan.
He needed to feel the dark one’s unholy power in his very grasp.
He needed to handle Cthulhu.
Eden ran through the bunker.
How could Harold do it? How could he give the Chihuahua to Daddy? How could he be so blind?
Harold just didn’t understand. She couldn’t blame him for that. He hadn’t grown up around Daddy and the snakes. He’d never seen Daddy try to heal the sick-
Eden had seen that. Mostly, Daddy’s spells worked. But sometimes-
And if this was one of those times. If it was already too late. If the dog had been bitten-
No. . no. .
If the ransom money slipped through their fingers. If they lost half a million dollars to a rattlesnake’s venom-
No!
Eden banged through the door and into the heat.
Oh, please, no. .
Illnesses were demons. This Daddy Deke knew. And Satan held sway over every demon. His power could pluck the little pissants from a body as easily as Eve had plucked the apple from that tree in the Garden. If a man truly believed, he could channel that power. He could master demons. He could hold sway on earth, just as Satan did in hell.
Daddy steeled himself to the notion. The door to Satan’s power covered a black box beneath his altar. With his right hand, he bent low and brought forth the box. It was hinged with gold and bore a knob of clear crystal.
Like Pandora of old, Daddy Deke feared not to open the box. He did this with his left hand, the hand he had given to Satan many years ago.
The dark one’s will would be done. Daddy Deke reached into the box with long bony fingers, giving himself
