I’d only been to church when the time called for it. I don’t mean at Christmas and Easter only. I mean when others called upon me to attend. Take my childhood. Every summer, between first and fifth grade, I sang and danced along at the local Baptist church’s VBS program. My mother, I suspect, felt guilty that we didn’t attend every Sunday, so VBS would do well enough. In college, I fell in with a crowd who, by chance, were churchgoers, so I became one as well to conform. That lasted for two, maybe two and a half years.
So, when I stumbled upon Enoch at Gold’s Gym during that Easter season some time ago, I was hesitant to reject his church invitation, though I really had no interest in going. Enoch was an elderly man of…hell, I think he was ninety-nine, he said…who’d just finished a set of feeble half-reps on a lat pulldown machine when I met his shiny blue eyes.
“Were you finished, sir?” I asked, taking out one earbud and gesturing to the machine as he was about to get off it.
“Oh yes, yes!” Enoch said quickly, stepping back. “All yours!”
He then gave a smile and a wave and started to shuffle away. I made to adjust the weight on the machine. Once satisfied, I moved to reinsert my earbud, but before I could do so, I sensed someone staring at me from behind, and looking over my shoulder, I saw that the old man hadn’t left me after all.
“Sorry to bother you, son,” he said. “The name’s Enoch.”
I took out my other earbud. It wasn’t going to be a short talk. That I could tell. “Oh no, sir, you’re fine,” I said. “Did you forget something, or—?”
The old man gave a wheezy laugh. I scrutinized him, noting his all-black workout clothes, his gloves with the fingers pulled off, his balding head, his hooked nose, his disproportionate frame—an admittedly sturdy upper body sitting atop wasted legs, giving the impression of a vulture or some other such bird.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Enoch explained, still laughing. “See, the Spirit moved me to turn back to ya the second I turned away.” The old man wagged his finger for emphasis. “And when the Spirit leads ya somewhere, ya listen. It’s just common sense, ya know.”
“…Right.”
Enoch moved closer. “Lemme tell ya somethin’, son,” he said, moving his arms animatedly with every word he spoke, “I used to be an atheist all my life. Got saved not ten years ago. I had a miserable life. My mother left me. My father beat me senseless on a daily basis growing up. And I didn’t have the strength to forgive him, not until ‘bout ten years ago when I came to know the Lord.”
I didn’t say anything. Enoch didn’t wait for me to.
“Say,” the old man said, pointing right at my chest. “If you were to walk out this gym right now and get hit by a truck, where do you think you’d end up?”
I immediately thought to say, “Under the wheels of that truck,” but decided it was best not to. Enoch kept talking, though, preventing me from answering his question.
“That’s the question I started asking myself not ten years ago, right after I lost my father. Ya see, I began thinking of hell, and if he’d gone there. And then I wondered if God had forgiven him for his sins. And then, I started thinking: Well sir, let’s say God did forgive him. I wasn’t there when he died. I don’t know if he repented. But say he did. Say God did forgive him. If God can forgive him, then maybe I could too. And maybe if I started forgivin’ and lovin’ others a little more, well, sir, maybe I’d be up in heaven if a truck hit me when I walked out this gym. And maybe Daddy would be there too.”
“Oh!” was all I could say to that. I nodded rapidly. “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I see what you’re saying.”
“How ‘bout this,” Enoch proposed boldly. “How’d ya like to join me at church tomorrow. Best to get there early. Parking’s a nightmare.” He produced a smartphone. “Do you have an iPhone?” he asked.
“Android,” I answered.
A look of worry crossed his face. “Oh,” he said, “then you wouldn’t be able to get texts from me then, huh?”
“Oh, no I would be able to,” I informed him unthinkingly.
“Great!” he said, beaming. “I never know how it works. Let’s see then.” He started moving through his phone, taking a long time because he seemed unsure of where to tap and swipe on the screen to get to his contacts. I looked over my shoulder. The machine I’d planned to use was now taken. I looked back at Enoch, more dismayed than annoyed. It was hard to refuse an old person, especially one who’d been abused as a kid.
“Ah! Here we go!” Enoch said triumphantly. He’d apparently found his contacts. He asked for my number, and, feeling I had little or no choice, I gave it to him. He told me he’d shoot me a text with the address to his church, and warned me, once again, that I’d better arrive early because the parking was terrible. The service started at 9:00 AM sharp, he told me, and then he smiled at me warmly and said he’d see me there.
The next day, Easter Sunday, I found myself driving to Enoch’s church. I would be early, but only by ten or so minutes, according to the GPS. I was a bit surprised to find that I was going in the direction of a busy strip mall I knew fairly well, and sure enough, that was my destination. Cruising through the vast parking lot, I found many if not most of the businesses were closed. I kept driving until I came to a spot where a ton of cars were parked. Enoch was right. The parking was terrible.
After finally finding a parking spot, I exited my car and looked around for some sort of sign. The church’s name was “Harrow Hall Assembly of God,” but there wasn’t any sign anywhere around announcing that name. As such, I followed my gut and decided that one section of the strip that seemed like available retail space was where the church was housed, and it was there that I went.
The door to what seemed to be the church was several yards from where I parked. I moved toward it with unsure steps. Upon reaching the door, I was hesitant to open it. What if I’d gotten the wrong place? Peering through the glass I saw a dim, empty room: a concrete floor and a maze of columns, with cardboard boxes and other detritus thrown here and there. The sort of sight that would tell any passerby not to enter. But I did anyway.
I stepped through the door, and it immediately closed shut behind me. I stared at what lay before me. It seemed like the remnants of some store that had once called the strip mall home before being gutted to be replaced seemingly by nothing. I made to turn around and leave, but then I heard fast, echoing footsteps.
“My stars, son!” a voice cried, and in a moment, there appeared the voice’s owner. It was a middle-aged man, mustached and bespectacled. “We were just about to get started! Here for the Easter service, I take it?”
“Oh!” I said. “Um, yeah. I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“No need to fret!” the man said with a jolly voice, and then he took hold of my arm and started dragging me along. “That parking lot sure can fill up fast, now can’t she? Well, sir, better get a move on! The service has nearly begun!”
The man—I never learned his name, but I nicknamed him “Flanders” because of his resemblance to The Simpsons character—took me to a dark back corner of the room and swung open a door. From there we entered a dim, winding hallway with red carpet and peeling, stained walls that seemed to be leading us downward.
The hallway emptied into a cavernous sanctuary that was well-lighted and admittedly beautiful, with sunshine streaming in from stained glass windows depicting scenes from Jesus’s passion. The sound of piano music filled the room, something slow and meticulous like a funeral march.
“Feel free to take a seat anywhere,” Flanders told me, gesturing to the rows of pews. “There’s still a few preparations to be made, but we’ll be starting soon!”
I chose one of the few bare pews, one near the back. In front of me were a pair of elderly women in straw hats adorned with flowers who didn’t notice me when I sat down.
“Oh, Joanna, don’t make such a fuss! It’s not like there aren’t any other churches that put on somethin’ like this.”
“Well, don’t ya think I know that, Susanna? It just gets me jumpy, this sort of thing. We don’t have this kind of service often.”
“You’re probably just excited. Here, take one of my nerve pills.”
The women’s conversation made me frown. I searched around. The sanctuary was at once familiar and strange—like any other I’d ever sat in but with an odd energy about it. The congregation all seemed calm, all patiently waiting, all dressed immaculately in their Sunday best. Some sat stiffly, still as statues. Others relaxed, practically reclining in their pews. The din of light chatter filled the air, mixing with the eerie sound of the piano.
I noted the stage that stood before us. It could only be accessed by either of two ramps placed on both sides of it. A black podium with a little door on its front was set on one side of the stage, and placed just behind it was an American flag curled around a pole that was topped with a glinting spearhead. At the stage’s center stood a large wooden cross that looked rough and raw, like it had only recently been built from a tree cut down from the woods behind the strip mall. But that wasn’t too unusual. What was unusual was that one section of the floor of the stage, at the foot of the cross, was made of tile. It was almost like the floor of a public shower, with a drain and everything. Some water feature built in for baptisms? Or perhaps something left over from before a church was built in this space? I couldn’t really say.
Then, my eyes caught sight of something truly strange indeed. Just below the stage, on either side, sat two dogs, roaming freely and being petted by groups of small children, the boys in blue polos and khakis, the girls in pink dresses with their hair held back with ribbons. I couldn’t exactly tell the breed of the dogs, but I pegged one of them as having mostly German Shepherd and the other as having mostly Pitbull. Not the sort of dogs I personally would have expected to be service dogs, which is what I initially thought they were. But they wore no vests, nor gave any other indication that they were there for anything other than the children’s amusement. The most striking thing about the dogs was that they were noticeably thin, with their ribs on full display. It wouldn’t be a terrible stretch to say they were starved, in fact. They licked the children’s faces while they giggled and while the piano music continued to play, until, eventually, it stopped.
The entire congregation fell deathly silent and sat at attention, watching as a well-dressed, heavyset man approached the podium on the stage. He was in his fifties, maybe, with curly auburn hair, a clean-shaven face, and rosy cheeks—a hearty cherub of a man.
“Pastor Warden looks so good. Do you think he’s lost weight?” Susanna whispered to Joanna. Joanna replied by jabbing her in the ribs with her elbow.
“Welcome, friends,” Pastor Warden greeted the congregation, speaking into a microphone. “It is a special day indeed.”
The room was perfectly still—tense. Not a soul moved. No one breathed. Even the dogs were sitting politely without even one wave of their tails, watching Pastor Warden as intently as everyone else.
The jolly man took the microphone from its stand and sauntered over to the cross, looking up at it admiringly; it seemed to glow in the sunshine streaming in from the windows. “This Easter, we commemorate Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection…”
In the corner of my eye, I saw two men walking up the ramp on the other side of the stage to join Pastor Warden. I recognized that one of the men was Enoch, wearing nothing but his underwear. I couldn’t help but gasp, which earned me nasty looks from Joanna and Susanna. No one else in the congregation reacted. The children gazed up at the old man in awe. I realized that the other man was Flanders. He was leading Enoch along by the arm, looking proud and like he might cry, as though he were escorting his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.
“Ah, yes,” said Pastor Warden, greeting Enoch with a friendly wave. He waved back. He and Flanders stopped on one side of the cross while Pastor Warden stood opposite them, looking upon them fondly. He then turned to face the congregation. “As you all know, when someone in the Harrow Hall family reaches a certain age, we crucify them with Christ, that they may be with him and endure the pain of this world no more.”
Enoch straightened up, suddenly becoming very serious. “I receive the due reward for my deeds; but this man…” he croaked out, in a deep voice. He paused; he raised his head, apparently to meet the eyes of a crucified Christ in a stained glass window before him. “…but this man hath done nothing amiss.”
I knew what was coming next. Some sort of devotional mock crucifixion. A passion play of sorts. Not the craziest of church activities. But this one felt off.
Suddenly, Flanders’s whole demeanor changed. He was now harshly manhandling Enoch, pushing him toward the cross with a scowl on his face. Enoch fell, prompting Flanders to deliver him a hard, forceful kick. “Up!” he bellowed. “Get up, you scum!”
I looked around, expecting others besides me to be concerned, but everyone remained perfectly still and calm. Every face in the room was impassive. Spellbound, I watched as Enoch struggled to lift himself as Flanders piled more verbal abuse upon him. Pastor Warden, his smile now completely vanished, opened the door on the front of his podium, and reaching inside, he produced a Home Depot rubber mallet and three large iron nails from an Amazon box.
They were for show, I told myself quickly. They had to be. Pastor Warden was going to lift the instruments of torture in the air, display them to his audience, and explain Christ’s suffering on the cross and how they were merely reenacting it. Then, they’d get some rope and tie Enoch onto the cross. Yes. Tie him.
But that’s not what happened. No, Enoch flung himself upon the cross, almost as if he were wrapping an old chum in a warm hug. He started laughing madly.
“Shut up!” Flanders thundered hatefully, and he flipped Enoch over and stretched his arms across the cross’s horizontal beam. Enoch’s eyes bulged. He didn’t blink. His breathing was rapid, his chest heaving. His mouth hung open in a huge, half-toothless smile.
“Daddy!” he cried. “Daddy! Daddy, I’m coming!”
Pastor Warden wordlessly put the first nail into position. And as if smashing a junkyard car, he gave his mallet a mighty swing.
“AAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!”
Enoch wailed in agony. The congregants simply watched, not reacting at all, seeming almost indifferent as blood flowed from out of Enoch’s hand and into the drain below him. The dogs stirred. They stood, panting as they witnessed the crucifixion, their tails wagging eagerly. They were the only ones in the audience showing any sort of emotion.
Next, Pastor Warden got to work nailing down Enoch’s other hand. The mallet came down with a hard blow upon the nail. Then another, then another. This time, Enoch only whimpered. He was no longer smiling.
“You’re nothing but filth, you know that?” sneered Flanders to the suffering old man. “Nothing but scum. You’re a dirty sinner, just like everyone in here.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, referencing the whole congregation, and for one horrible moment, his wild eyes seemed to lock with mine. “Nothing’ll save you now, you useless old fuck. Nothing but the grace of God!”
Enoch raised his head with what little strength he had. “Oh Lord,” he sputtered, now beginning to sob, “I repent of my sins!”
Pastor Warden was delivering more blows with the mallet, this time affixing Enoch’s feet to the wood of the cross. Enoch cried convulsively. Blood and tears left him in torrents. “Daddy!” he cried to heaven. “Daddy, I’m coming home!”
And then, it was finished. Warden and Flanders stepped back and gazed upon Enoch, now bloodied and hanging pathetically from the cross. He looked out at us. It seemed he was staring at me. He didn’t say a thing. His face was frozen with what I can only call shock.
“Today…” the old man wheezed, “I will be with you…in paradise…”
He then bowed his head and shut his eyes. Everything was still and soundless. The dogs ceased wagging their tails.
Then, after a moment, Pastor Warden took hold of the flagpole behind him, and with a fierce yell, he stabbed the limp body of Enoch with a powerful thrust.
He was dead.
Breathing heavily, Warden pulled the flagpole out of the old man and cast it to the ground. The dogs began to bark. They jumped, clawing at the stage, baring their teeth, and growling. Warden gave them a look that was almost sad. He then nodded to Flanders, who now looked rather ashamed, and together, the two men worked to remove the body from the cross. They used the mallet to strike upon the points of the nails at the back of the cross, forcing out the nails from Enoch’s hands and feet. The corpse then fell in a crumpled heap with a damp thud to the tile floor directly below.
The dogs raced up either ramp to the stage and pounced upon the body. They began tearing at it eagerly, utterly devouring it until absolutely no scrap of it was left.