Warning: self-harm
The footsteps were descending now. I could hear the stair treads crack and pop as they were met with the weight.
Jake stood mumbling. “Out of here,” he said and threw himself out the first-floor window where his limp body whacked into the weeds.
I stayed inside. In fact, I walked as calm as I could into the foyer that the grand staircase accordioned into.
She was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs.
It was Sharon.
“You’ve read your parents’ note,” she smiled and wiped away what must’ve been tears of joy. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
I shivered and said nothing.
“You want to know if it’s true, don’t you?”
“I don’t care, you’re just another one of those creeps.”
“But you do, Sam. How could any person with a hint of curiosity in their bones not want to know?” We were both silent for a moment before she spoke. “I know where they are.”
“The creatures that raised me?”
She nodded. “They’re just people Sam. Your people. All of us are. You are the one with the chance to become something more.”
“Unluckily for you, I never want to see those people again.”
“They very much want to see you,” she stepped forward and extended a small leather notebook. “This will tell you how to get there.”
She wiggled it and finally I snatched it out of her hand. “Good, Sam. Go get some rest. It’s half a day’s drive.”
She started walking to the front door and I shouted after her. “Hey, wait!” She stopped. “So, all that stuff you said in the meeting about coming back here and filing police reports, it was all a lie?”
“You have to excuse the townspeople,” she smiled. “You see, they’re all very excited for your return.” And with that she left.
I stood in the foyer for a minute and leafed through the leather notebook. The directions stopped at the entrance to an old logging road in the forests of western South Dakota. The Black Hills. The land of Mount Rushmore and motorcycles and now, at least in my mind, satanic cults.
Fun.
I stuffed the book in my pocket and went back to the window Jake had dove from. He wasn’t lying in the weeds below. “Jake!” I called out to the fields and stayed silent for a response. When none came, I jumped down.
I thought Jake had probably tried to make a break for the car but got lost in the dark. I called his name as I walked and listened for the sound of snores, but all I could hear were crickets.
He had the keys anyway, and I was sure he would wake in the morning after having bed down for the night somewhere in the soybeans.
I walked back to town and the moment my face hit the cold sheets of my motel bed, I slept.
____
As soon as I woke, I threw everything I had left in the motel room together and walked to Jake’s.
His car was outside which surprised me, and I frowned as I knocked on the door. There was no response, but it was unlocked, and I went inside.
The house was little more than 1,000 square feet and it didn’t take long to figure out his gigantic ass wasn’t there. I packed up my things and called a cab from Cedar Rapids to pick me up and bring me back there. I was going to rent a car. I was going, against all my better judgement, to the Black Hills.
The cab would take more than an hour to arrive and I sat waiting on Jake’s porch. Both for the cab, and for any sight of him.
I had been nodding off with my head on a porch beam when I heard brakes squeak as a car stopped.
It was the Sheriff.
He got out of the car alone and hiked up his utility belt as he walked over.
“Hey, Sam.”
“Hey.” I stood and looked both ways down the block. A few curtains flashed in the neighbor’s houses. How long had they been watching me?
“I know you were at your old place last night.”
“Who told you that?”
“Well, the Coroner says you called him. He says you knew about the writings your folks left. Not a lot of people know that.”
“Maybe someone told me. Maybe I wasn’t there.”
“Well,” the Sheriff sighed. “I went by there this morning and found a big old bottle of liquor smashed in the basement that wasn’t there the last time I was. I stopped at the liquor store and asked that Clerk Cody if he’d sold any handles of Sailor Jerry’s recently. And that’s not to mention all that cistern mud still caked on your sneakers,” he pointed at my feet. “You boys aren’t as smooth as you think.”
I crossed my arms. “Why didn’t you tell me about the writings?”
“Sam, isn’t it obvious?” He took a step towards me. “Let’s not play this game. When I met you at the airport you were drunk. When you came to the meeting you were drunk. Every time you opened that motel room door do you think the deputy couldn’t see the bottles behind you? We’re worried about you kid. And this case, your situation? You want my honest take?”
I said nothing.
“It’s fucking insane. One bite at a time, that’s how we were going to break it to you. What’s the point of telling you about that satanic nonsense if we didn’t even know who wrote it?”
I felt the doubt subdue my paranoia. “I’m sorry. But Officer Cooper…”
“What about him?”
“When I was in the house last night he left, as if he wanted me to find the truth.”
“Oh, come on. It’s Coop. He was probably going to get more cigarettes. Sam, we’re here to serve you.”
My head snapped up and I took a step back. “What?”
“We’re here for you.”
“To serve me?”
“Huh? Sam, it says it on the squad car,” he pointed to the cursive “protect and serve” decal.
Just then I saw my cab turn onto the block and I hurried past him to meet it. The cab came to a stop and the trunk latch popped. The sheriff never asked me where I was going, and I didn’t plan to tell him. I threw my duffle in the trunk and opened the back door.
“You’ll understand Sam,” I paused and looked at the Sheriff over my shoulder and he smiled. “I promise son, this will all be ok.”
____
I got to Cedar Rapids just after noon and wasted no time getting a rental. By 1pm I was driving west across the length of Iowa. My phone said I’d arrive at a lake, the closest landmark to the entrance of the logging road mentioned in the directions, just after 11pm.
I was an hour from reaching Sioux City when I realized someone was following me. A brown pickup had been in my rearview for far too long and I stopped to top off my tank even though it hardly needed it.
The truck sped past when I pulled into the gas station, but I couldn’t get a good look at the driver. When I got back on the empty highway there was no sign of the pickup, but after 20 more minutes on the road, I saw it in my rearview, only further away this time, trying to be more hidden. It must’ve been waiting down a county road for me to pass.
I was going to confront whoever it was, but as I began to slow, I saw another car start to overtake the pick-up in the opposite lane. It was almost too far away for me to understand what I saw. The car swerved violently into the pickup, sending it spinning into the ditch and disappearing in the cornfield.
“Fuck!” I slammed on the brakes and turned the rental around.
By the time I got to where the collision had happened the other car was long gone. I saw nothing but a slight shimmer of sun on its glass as it raced away.
There were no other cars around and I left mine running in the road while I got out and walked to the wreckage.
The corn stalks were combed to the earth where the truck had rolled over them and 40 feet from the ditch the pickup sat upside-down, one of its wheels still spinning as smoke rose from the engine.
I crept cautiously towards the cab. It was an old truck, a 70’s square body with no crumble zones, and the metal was twisted horribly. I bent down while still several feet away, the thick scent of leaking diesel deterred me from getting any closer.
I froze. Inside the cab was the contorted corpse of the Sheriff. His dead eyes stared back at me.
I stood and looked around. Wind whistled in the corn stalks and played with the smoke. There was no one else around. It would take a half hour for first responders to even get here and then what?
Even though I knew the car that took him off the road was gone I still felt like I was being watched.
I walked back to my car and got in.
Was the Sheriff really trying to help me? And who ran him off the road, Sharon? After all, I thought as I started the car, who else could it be?
____
I didn’t stop for nearly 400 miles. I was little more than an hour away when I had to get gas again and by then it was nearly dark. While standing at the pump, I looked at the rich shadow of the Black Hills poke up from the desolate prairie in the distance. Somewhere in there were the people who promised my parents my soul was Satan’s.
As I hung the nozzle, I noticed a car had pulled to the shoulder about a quarter mile down the interstate.
I had been watching my rearview mirror closely after witnessing the accident and there were a couple times that I thought I was being followed again, but it didn’t much matter. If it was Sharon, she knew where I was headed anyway.
Soon, I was ascending the hills, weaving through dark roads lined with Ponderosa pines. My heartbeat steadily rising along with the slight altitude. Why had I agreed to come here? For all I knew I was the last piece of their puzzle to sacrifice.
I passed the black shadow of the lake and jumped as Siri said, “Arrived.”
I kept my eyes peeled for the logging road. The little leather book said it was the first right after the lake and far too soon I was there. I rolled to a stop and sat in the car in the dark. I thought about turning around but the moment I did, towards the end of the road I saw the soft orange glow of flames.
The road proved to be too rugged for my rental and I pulled to the side and continued on foot. The lights were further ahead than they first appeared but after a few hundred feet I could see what they illuminated.
5 nooses hung from the branch of a pine. The torches that lit the scene where not Tiki but crudely made of iron. As I got closer, I still couldn’t see anyone. There were just the nooses gently swaying in the wind.
“Hello?” I called and two young women in white dresses stepped from behind the pine.
My stepsisters of a sort. They didn’t look at me immediately. They took turns holding each other’s hands as they stepped on to a stone that acted as a stool. Then they fixed two of the nooses around their necks.
“What are you doing?” I spoke but it came out as a horrified whisper.
“Welcome home, Samuel!” They shouted in tandem and jumped off the short stone.
The fall wasn’t far enough to break their necks. At the height they’d hopped from they’d just slowly suffocate. I started running to them. “What are you doing! No!”
I raced to them, stumbling towards the tree, but when I got close, I saw their white dresses were both blotched red. I stared at them in horror as I heard blood trickle from their toes in thick streams.
There were razors in the ropes.
They were both smiling at me, their mouths black with blood. The life quickly leaving their eyes.
“No,” I whispered.
“Sam.” The voice came from my left, but I didn’t need to look to know who it was.
“You,” I turned and there they were, the people that raised me. The people that tricked my parents into killing themselves. “You demented fucks.”
“Anger is natural now.” The man stepped forward. He was little changed from the last time I saw him. He had the same high forehead and soulless eyes only with a little more wrinkles.
“We’re here to tell you everything,” the woman chimed in and smiled. “We’re here to give you the world.”
“Do tell.”
“Please,” the man gestured at my feet. “Don’t stand there.”
I looked down. I was standing in a shallow stone trough beneath the nooses that was quickly filling with blood. I took a few steps backwards into the grass.
“Sharon told us you read the note your parents left you,” he pointed into the dark and I realized at the edge of the firelight stood Sharon. I immediately looked down the road I had come in from and frowned.
The thing I once thought of as my mother began to speak.
“You are a very special boy. On the night you were born the star of Lucifer fell. Did you know it falls just once in a human lifetime?” She looked at me expectantly as if this information alone would change my entire perspective.
“Well, no matter. But that star fell on you. Our lord had died the very day of your birth, but his soul wastes no time to return to earth.”
“Are you fucking whackos saying I’m Satan?”
“No, not yet. All you have to do is spill the blood of the one you loved, and then we shall baptize you.” They were smiling at their daughters proudly and I began to feel sick.
“I pitied them,” I looked at the hanging sisters, their faces already cold and dead but their smiles just as wide. “I did not love those girls.”
“Of course not, but the blood from one girl doesn’t make for a good baptism.” Sharon started stepping forward and I noticed there was someone halfway hidden behind her.
My heart leaped. Liz. It was my girlfriend, bound and gagged. Sharon hurled her forward where she fell on the grass lifelessly.
“Don’t worry, she’s just drugged. It’ll make it easier for you.”
I took a lunging step towards Sharon and raised my fist, but suddenly, I felt immensely weak and I stumbled instead.
“This brings us to the second part,” said the man. “We had hoped you wouldn’t end up so… normal. This entire thing is much easier when you welcome him into your heart from the very beginning. But do you feel that?”
I dropped to my knees.
“That’s your life fading. The second those girls’ blood entered the baptism bowl he could feel how close he is to entering this world again, and now there’s no going back. You can kill the woman you love and be given power and life so great and so eternal your sorrow will be forgotten in an instant. If you don’t, your life will simply drain until you’re dead.”
I groaned and fell on my side. A pulsing pain was running out from each of my ribs.
“I know what you’re thinking. You think there’s no way you would kill this girl you love. No way you’d let this evil enter this earth. But the choice you have is only an illusion. It is not just death you face, but eternity.”
I frowned and looked into the man’s eyes. “If you deny him life, he will take you with him into the void for time ad infinitum. You will wander alone, and in the darkness, you will know madness previously unknown to man. Do you think there’s a difference between one and ten billion years of blackness? You’d have to have to let us know.”
I turned away from him. Could this all be true? I tried to think if I could’ve been poisoned. I hadn’t eaten all day. I bought a single bottle of water from a gas station and drank the whole thing just after opening it. And the way I felt, it was unholy.
“You will kill the girl,” the man said with certainty. “We will help you raise her into her noose, then we will don our own. You see,” he stepped towards me. You would be the first fool to choose eternity.”
“Did they know,” I winced in pain. “Did the town know?”
“They were promised a great reward for keeping you safe.”
“Everyone knew?”
“Everyone, Sam. Even the children were told in song. And they shall all be your servants.”
Suddenly we both frowned as an engine roared in the near distance. I rolled so I could see the road. Coming out of the dark was the black shadow of a car with its lights off. It was violently pitching over the ruts and in just a few seconds it was only 50 feet from us.
I had never seen the people I’d previously known as my parents express much emotion. There were many things I could never picture them doing and running was at the top of the list. They stood motionless like deer in the headlights as the car barreled into them, their bodies slammed into the hood before slipping under and bouncing as they were hit again by the tires.
Sharon and my girlfriend and I had only been missed by a few feet. The car slid to a stop and the door flung open and to my disbelief I saw all 6’10 of Jake pounding across the grass and ducking under pine branches toward us.
Sharon stepped in front of him but before she could say a word, in one fluid motion Jake drew his arm back as far as he could, formed a fist, and hurdled it into her head.
Jake had always been a gentle giant, and I was always morbidly curious as to what kind of damage those enormous fists could do. There was crack like a branch breaking and Sharon slapped to the earth motionless.
“Fuck!” said Jake. He paused and put his hands in his hair and stared at the girls drenched in blood, dangling from their nooses. “Fuck!”
I had already moved to undue Liz’s bindings. Once they were off, I positioned her so she lay on her side. Her breathing was slight, but steady.
I looked up at Jake uncertainly.
“I’m sorry.” He ran his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I never told you and I’m sorry. They threatened me Sam. They said we’d all be rich when you came back.”
He settled himself and breathed for a moment. “I knew you weren’t the devil, but more importantly I knew there was no way you’d ever want to be one if it were offered. Sheriff Cain,” he put his hands on his knees and breathed. “I watched you and him at my house. He was getting impatient. He was going to make sure you followed through here. Tonight.”
“That was you?” Despite the strangeness, I managed to smile. “You PIT maneuvered the Sheriff?”
“Did you fucking see it!” Jake suddenly grew excited. “I fucking obliterated him!”
It hurt to keep smiling and I looked down at Liz. Her eyes were wide open. “Liz are you there?” I said. “We have to get her to a hospital.” I looked at the man and woman, they were lifeless in the grass.
“Sam.” Jake’s tone brought me back to earth. I followed his gaze. He was staring at the trough where the stones were now glowing; a scarlet light seeped from the earth. Some evil beneath growing more restless.
“Tell me none of it is true,” I said breathlessly, but Jake didn’t say anything. “Tell me they’re all just a crazy cult and this is bullshit. Jake?”
He looked at me helplessly and I closed my eyes to keep from crying. Even as I said it, I knew. I could feel it and then I saw it: Eternity
My mind’s eye started playing a picture as clear as a movie. Wandering the darkness forever with the devil I had forsaken from entering this world.
But I realized with horror I could still hang Liz.
After all, I’d been neglect of love my entire life. Lied to. Tricked. I barely had an ounce of happiness in my life and now I didn’t just face death but unending suffering.
I saw my life as Satan stretched out in front of me. I would be powerful. I would be alive, and whoever that thing was that would occupy my body would commit evil the likes of which the world had never seen.
But it was all just a fleeting thought. I loved Liz and as cold to me as it was, I still loved the world. It was the bastards that worshipped this thing who had made my life so horrible in the first place.
“Jake,” I said and he looked at me. “Don’t regret keeping this from me. Don’t beat yourself up. You made the right decision in the end. And that’s what matters. Doesn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he started tearing up. “You’re the best friend I ever had, man.”
“It’s okay,” I spoke quietly and laid next to Liz.
I guess I’m going to be the first fool because in Liz’s pupils, I saw the black pit of eternity.
And I knew that into it I must walk.