Lord, Nettie?'
'Finishing up the program, is all,' she answered, watching as his dark vulture eyes did their cursory crawl over her body.
He grinned his beaver grin that now seemed sinister instead of friendly. 'Fine, my child. Fine. Ought to have a big crowd this week. And next week, with Easter coming up. It's an important time for the Lord.'
Nettie wondered if the preacher knew that Easter had originally been a pagan fertility holiday. Thinking of fertility made her glad she was still taking birth control pills, even though she hadn't had a sex partner in over a year. In the heat of the moment, neither she nor Bill had mentioned condoms. Nor, heaven forbid, disease. She found herself blushing, thinking of rubbers in church.
'Your cheeks are pink, my child,' the preacher said, stepping close so that he was standing above her. 'What thought is in your head that brings the devil's shade?'
'Oh, just a minor sin, Preacher. Hardly worth feeling bad about, but when you're in the House of the Lord-'
The preacher raised a beneficent hand. 'I know, child. We humans are weak. We fall short of the perfection and glory of God.'
He touched her knee with a hot, moist hand. His breath smelled of copper and blood, a hunter's breath.
Bill’s love gave Nettie courage. She decided it was time to confront him. 'Preacher-'
He leaned closer. 'Tell me your sin, my pretty one.'
She arched back in her chair, trying to shrink away from his leering face.
'My sin is silence,' she said, her teeth clenched. 'I didn't speak against something I saw was wrong.”
'But the Bible says ‘Judge not, lest you be judged also,’' he said, lowering his voice. The rafters settled in the vast quiet of the empty church, as if the night was pressing heavily upon it.
She hesitated, wondering how to put her doubts into words. 'It's about the money, Preacher.'
'Money?' His eyes shifted like well-oiled ball bearings.
'The missing money. Only one person had access to it before I started working here. Only one person could have taken it.'
'I told you, child-'
'I'm not your child, either. I'm a child of God, and you're a far sight from God.'
'What are you talking about?' His face creased with confusion, breaking its practiced calm.
'It has to be you taking the money, Preacher. There are just too many discrepancies to laugh them off as honest mistakes. I've discovered ten thousand dollars that have fallen through the cracks just in the last year.'
'Oh, my child, my child, the devil has put lies in your sweet little head, cast visions in your bright eyes,' Armfield Blevins said in his smooth preacher voice.
She heard the slight sibilance of snakiness in his delivery. God, had she been blinded by this deceiver all along? Had they all?
'I've been hoping that I was wrong,” she said. “But I can't fool myself any longer. It's eating me up inside.”
She drew back as he smiled at her. Blevins’s hand clutched her knee as he loomed over her, his form somehow made larger by the way he seemed to soak the shadows from the corners of the vestry.
'Thou shalt not bear false witness,' he said without emotion.
'And thou shalt not suffer false prophets,' she answered. The church would be torn apart, but Nettie knew that God would heal the congregation and make them stronger through the trials and tribulations. And she would make certain that Mister Blevins had his trial. In the court of humankind, that is. God would pass the final judgment elsewhere.
'There's plenty for both of us, Nettie. It's part of His plan. Part of my plan.'
The preacher's right hand rubbed her knee and his other one began lifting the hem of her skirt. 'For both of us,' he repeated, voice husky. His breathing was harsh and shallow and fast.
'No.' She shrank away.
'Hush, my child,” The preacher’s raw breath was on her cheek. “Armfield forgives you. You know not what you do.'
'Preacher, what in the hell do you think you're doing?' She was cold inside, dead as stone.
'Why, saving you from Lucifer's fire, Nettie,' he whispered. 'You have gone astray, and I must bring you back into the fold. I'll show you the path of righteousness. But you must bow to my will. You must open up and let me inside.'
Now his hand was under her skirt, on her bare thigh. She twisted away and tried to stand. His face purpled with rage and he tightened a fist around her hair, pinning her to the chair. His eyes leered with cruel promises.
'Harlot.” He jammed his free hand under her skirt. 'I smell the devil on you. I've seen the devil in your eyes. I've seen you flaunt your temptations before me. You're an abomination in the eyes of God.'
Nettie strained to push him away, but his lean body was leveraged against her, his knees pinning her legs and trapping her arms between their bodies. He had the strength of a demon. He yanked her head over the back of the chair, forcing her lower and exposing her neck to his frantic lips and slathering tongue. She could only stare at the ceiling, her arms trapped against his chest as he lifted her skirt to her waist.
His face was above her, wrenched and distorted and beet red. Through her shock and horror, Nettie realized that if Satan walked the earth, this was the mask he would wear. A mask of cruelty and mockery, eyes aflame with rancid lust, his breath a foul, soul-stealing wind. As she struggled, she closed her eyes and prayed to God to deliver her from evil.
A low voice filled her ears. 'Uhmmmm…'
The preacher froze. At first Nettie thought he had moaned, calling out in a fit of possessed passion. Then the voice came again, from the interior of the church.
'Uhmmmmm… feeel…'
The preacher's taut-skinned head swiveled, eyes wide with fresh fear. His clawing hand slightly loosened in the tangles of her hair. She held her breath, waiting for a chance to break free, her heart hammering like a dove's.
The voice came again, louder, from the opening where the dais led into the vestry. 'Uhmm-feel…'
Nettie couldn't see who it was because her head was still trapped against the chair. But she could see the preacher's face turning ash gray as if he had seen a ghost. He released her.
The preacher backed away from Nettie and spun to face the door. His hands were out by his sides like a gunfighter in a showdown. His slacks dropped around his ankles from the loosening of his belt. Nettie lifted her head and doubted herself for a second time that night.
Because she didn't believe what her eyes were screaming at her.
Amanda Blevins moved across the room toward her faithless husband. But Amanda was only a small piece of whatever the thing was, as if random bits of her features had been pressed into a dismal green clay. It had Amanda's henna red hair, but the styling had wilted, leaving damp straws. Her sharp nose protruded from the face- God, can that be a FACE? Nettie thought-like a curving thorn.
Amanda's clothes were torn and hung from her body in rags, and her flesh was in damp tatters as well. Her skin looked like old meat that had aged in a basement and grown moldy. As she moved, finger-sized chunks of her slid to the ground, leaving a slick trail on the floor as she approached the preacher. One sagging, flaccid breast swung free from her ripped blouse and dangled like an overripe fruit. Nettie's stomach knotted in revulsion and she tried to vomit, but her stomach wouldn't obey.
Nettie didn't know what was worse, the thing’s mouth or its eyes. The eyes were glowing, deep green and translucent, as if rotten fires burned inside the watery skull. But the mouth — the mouth opened, gurgling and vapid, and sharp tendrils curled out like a nest of serpent's tongues from a pulpy den.
Then it spoke: 'Uhmmm… feel… Uhmfeel… kish…'
The mouth sprayed viscous lime-colored drops, and Nettie could smell Amanda now. It was the stench of corpses, of graveyard rot and bad mulch, of stagnant puddles and tainted melons. Nettie tried to rise, but her limbs were thick, limp noodles and all she could do was watch in helpless fascination.
'Kish… shu-shaaa… Uhmmfeel,' Amanda said.
The preacher backed away, his devil mask now turned white. Sweat glistened on his high forehead. His jaw locked open in horror as Amanda closed in on him. He staggered, his pants around his ankles tripping him, and he
