“The Final Victim”, from Hellfire & Damnation III Excerpt

“The Final Victim”, from Hellfire & Damnation III Excerpt

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Reverend Jeremiah Jones lived in the dilapidated trailer court across from the high school. It was a seedy, run-down place. The road in and out was so rutted,  filled with such deep potholes, that you were best advised to park your car at the gate in the combined Laundromat Seven-Eleven parking lot, and walk in. The Reverend kept a dog on a chain outside his trailer. The Reverend told Lee the dog tethered outside was “for protection.”

When Lee asked Reverend Jones, “Why do you need protection? What do you need protection from? And how would a dog help?” the Reverend gave him a sideways glance, smiled an enigmatic half-smile, and said, “Why, protection from God, of course.”

“Why do you need protection from God? And why use a dog?” asked Lee, genuinely puzzled.

Jeremiah said, “You’ve read about or heard of Cerberus, the three-headed Hound of Hell, haven’t you?”

Lee didn’t want to admit that he couldn’t read. He had dropped out of his special

education classes in eighth grade. He did remember that the smart kids in Mrs. Watson’s

class were reading a Myths and Legends unit, using the large, brown book most students

in her eighth grade classroom used.

Lee was not issued one of those books. He had a green book, instead. But Lee could

hear the students who were issued the brown literature book reading some of the stories in

it aloud and discussing them.

Lee was assigned the green book for junior high school students who were two grade levels or more behind: Open Highways, it was called. The other students were reading from a completely different series, Great Literature of the World.  Lee could only listen as the others around him discussed the myths of Persephone and Narcissus and Hercules and Cerberus and other long words describing gods and goddesses—names with many syllables that Lee would never have been able to pronounce or remember, even if he could read.

Mrs. Watson had summoned reading experts from the teaching university, Western Illinois University, in Macomb, Illinois, to try to help Lee learn to read. That didn’t happen until all other avenues were exhausted. The subjects, themselves (Lee and his teacher), were exhausted.

She worked with Lee, one-on-one, many nights after school as he tried his best to make sense of the words. But the letters were always all mixed up. Sometimes, the letters were backwards. If there was a picture on the page, sometimes Lee could guess at the meaning of the word, but the letters, themselves, were as useless in conveying meaning to Lee and as mysterious  as the marauding birds on his lawn. Often, he’d have trouble concentrating, because the voices in his head would become too loud.

    I’m not going to tell a smart guy like Jeremiah Jones that I can’t read good, Lee thought. I’ll just nod my head. Pretend I know what he’s talking about.

The Reverend eyed the much-younger man with cool curiosity. Jeremiah had the flat stare of a cat looking at its master while ignoring his master, as usual.

It was about that time that the Reverend Jones took Lee into the attached lean-to next to his trailer and showed Lee the knives and other weapons.  A crudely-drawn pentagram dominated the small room. It appeared to have been drawn in red paint on the floor of the hastily-constructed lean-to structure. (Only later did Lee learn what the true composition of the pentagram  paint was.)

“This is where it happens,” the Reverend Jones said to Lee, solemnly indicating the seedy shack.

“Where what happens?” Lee asked. He was almost afraid to hear the answer.

“The sacrifices.”

“Sacrifices? Sacrifices for what? What do you sacrifice? And why?”

“The sacrifices are to keep Lucifer happy. He is powerful, you know. As powerful as God. I sacrifice small things to Him. Lucifer was the most powerful angel in heaven, until He fell from favor. Why, His very name means ‘light bringing’ or ‘the morning star.’ See that planet over there?”

Jones pointed to a bright constantly glittering globe giving off a steady light visible in the night sky.

“Yeah. So what?” asked Lee.

“That’s Venus, Lucifer’s special planet. Trust me, Lucifer was—IS—just as important as God ever was. These sacrifices will help Lucifer regain his position and His power. But  I have to follow His instructions and do as he commands, sacrificing whatever he requires. I must make that happen. You have to help me. I can’t do it alone.”

Jones spat a brown stream of chewing tobacco at the small dog on the chain tethered outside his ramshackle trailer. The dog looked grateful for the attention. It yipped a few times.  Any attention—even negative attention—was preferable to being completely invisible.  Lee could attest to that.

“He ASKS you to do this?” Lee stammered.

“Yes. Of course. You hear voices, too, don’t you?”

Lee looked closely at the Reverend.

     How does he know? Did I tell him I heard voices in my head when I  was drunk? How does Reverend Jones know that I hear voices telling me to do things? That I’ve BEEN hearing them  for a very long time?

But Lee  resisted the voices. He hadn’t sacrificed Rose’s dog, Honey, like the voices

told him to. He’d fought back, telling himself that he was a good person.

Good people don’t go around murdering their neighbor’s dog, even if the dog is annoying. Good people don’t hear voices that tell them to do bad things.  Melanie thinks I’m a good person. I’m going to try to be a good person for her.

But now the Reverend Jeremiah Jones was staring at Lee. He was giving him an odd look. It was a look that said, I know who you are. You are my disciple. You WILL do my bidding.

Eventually, in fact, the Reverend Jones uttered that very thought aloud. He told Lee  that he, Lee Elliot must help the Reverend in his mission. And the Reverend’s mission was to aid Lucifer in regaining his power. The Reverend wanted to help Lucifer once again rule the world.

“There’s also money in it for you, Lee—if you do it right, and don’t get caught,” Jeremiah said.

“Do what right?”

Lee was more than a little afraid of the creepy look, the somber demeanor, the sepulchral tone in the Reverend’s voice. Even though it was daylight outside, inside the tiny little hut where they were standing, the shed guarded by Jeremiah’s dog, it was pitch black. There were no windows. The walls had been soundproofed—no doubt to keep the neighbors from hearing the dying screams of the sacrificial animals Jeremiah said he always sacrificed on this very spot. There was a  musty, unpleasant odor in the closed room. Lee just wanted to get out of there. The sooner, the better.

“We need a bigger sacrifice,” Jeremiah continued. The biggest one yet. A man. This sacrifice will make us both rich and enhance us in the eyes of Lucifer.” Jeremiah’s eyes were glittering madly as he began to recite George Meredith: “On a starred night Prince Lucifer arose, Tired of his dark dominion, swung the fiend above the rolling ball in cloud part screened.”

“What are you talking about?” Lee asked, backing away.

“You know about Lucifer from reading your Bible, don’t you, Lee?” Jeremiah asked.

Once again, Lee felt inferior. Dumb. Illiterate. But he wasn’t going to answer the question and let the Reverend know his secret. The Reverend had always treated Lee as an equal. That was something Lee had not been accustomed to in school.

Lee had always been looked down upon as a member of “the dumb group,” the seven ones (7-1) or seven twos (7-2). The smart kids were in the seven fives (7-5). The average kids were in the seven threes (7-3) and seven fours (7-4). Lee was labeled dysfunctional. Special education. He was treated as such by association with the other students in his class of seven ones, a school section designation. His I.Q. was determined to be 70—well below the normal average of 100.

At twenty-five, over ten years out of school,  Lee just wanted to appear normal. He wanted to be like all the rest of his classmates.  He wanted to be accepted. Get a job. Find a wife. Have some kids. But Lee constantly ran into brick walls. His inability to read dogged him. His failure to go past eighth grade and graduate from either junior high school or high school marked him as someone who would never hold more than a menial job. Which was what he had now: a job as a janitor in the Woolworth’s store on the corner downtown, right next to the library. He swept up and made minimum wage. He had found a good woman in Melanie, but they didn’t have enough money to get married or have kids. They only had the house because it had been Melanie’s parents. She inherited it in their will when they died in a car accident. It was all they could do to pay the taxes on the ramshackle dwelling.

Peering intently into Lee’s eyes, the Reverend articulated his plan for world dominion. Lucifer would help them both. Lee would be the Reverend’s second-in-command. The riches they would reap would be put to good use and benefit both of them and the fallen angel.

Lee backed out of the smelly, dark room. The close coppery smell reminded of blood and

entrails. He was skeptical. Lee objected, again, aloud, “I need a sign. I need some sort of

sign. I need to know that you’re not just making all this stuff up.”

“You’ll have your sign. The heavens will give you a sign,” Jeremiah had said, smiling in a smug, self-satisfied way. “When you have it, you must act.”

That had been yesterday, before the birds came.

To be continued on March 31st at Pinky’s Favorite Reads

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About Connie Corcoran Wilson:

Award winning author, Connie (Corcoran) Wilson (MS + 30) graduated from the University of Iowa and Western Illinois University, with additional study at Northern Illinois, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago. She taught writing at six Iowa/Illinois colleges and has written for five newspapers and seven blogs, including Yahoo, which named her its 2008 Content Producer of the Year.

She is a member of ITW (International Thriller Writers), where she is a writer for their online newsletter, and a member of IWPA (Illinois Women’s Press Association, Chicago chapter), which awarded her its Silver Feather Award in 2012 and 2014, MWA (Midwest Writers Association), AWP (American Writing Program) and MWC (Midwest Writing Center), which named her its Writer of the Year in 2010. She has won numerous E-Lit awards, a NABE Pinnacle award, an ALMA (American Literary Merit Award),  Lucky Cinda competition and two IWPA Silver Feather Awards (2012, 2014).

Connie’s third book in “The Color of Evil” series, ‘Khaki=Killer’ was just named a Page-turner of the Year 2014 by “Shelf Unbound” and Writer’s Digest magazine in its December/January 2014-2015 issue!

Her stories and interviews with writers like David Morrell, Joe Hill, Kurt Vonnegut, Frederik Pohl, William F. Nolan,  Anne Perry, r. Barri Flowers, Valerie Plame, Allen Zadoff and Jon Land have appeared online and in numerous journals.

Her work has won prizes from “Whim’s Place Flash Fiction,” “Writer’s Digest” (Screenplay) and she has 25 published works. Connie reviewed film and books for the Quad City Times (Davenport, Iowa) for 12 years, wrote humor columns and conducted interviews for the (Moline, Illinois)  Dispatch and maintains her own blog, www.WeeklyWilson.com, while also twittering (@Connie_C_Wilson), Connie Wilson Author.

Connie was a presenter at the Spellbinders Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii over Labor Day (2012) and at Love Is Murder in Chicago (February, 2014) and will be a presenter at Writers for New Orleans December 19-21st.  She has three ongoing series: THE COLOR OF EVIL, HELLFIRE & DAMNATION (short stories organized around the crimes or sins punished at each of the levels of Hell in Dante’s Inferno) and THE CHRISTMAS CATS, which she writes for her granddaughters. (www.TheColorOfEvil.com; www.RedIsforRage.com; www.KhakiEqualsKiller.com; www.HellfireAndDamnationTheBook.com; www.TheXmasCats.com)

Connie lives in East Moline, Illinois with husband Craig and cat Lucy, and in Chicago, Illinois, where her son, Scott and daughter-in-law Jessica and their five-year-old twins Elise and Ava reside. Her daughter, Stacey,  graduated from Belmont University in Nashville, and is currently a Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant.

Connie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConnieCWilson
Connie on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Connie-Corcoran-Wilson/275020829241869
Connie on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/conniecwilson/

With a book called Hellfire & Damnation III, how could you pass up reading it?