Harold kissed Eden long and deep. “How does it feel to almost be rich, sugar?”
“It feels good,” she whispered, “to be in love.”
They stood next to the bed in Eden’s room. Over Harold’s shoulder, through the pillbox window’s open lead shutters, Eden watched heat waves undulating off the belly of the desert. Outside it was hot, even for the Mojave. A real scorcher.
And it was a scorcher inside, too, in this cool room lined with thick cement walls.
Eden’s fingers drifted over the tattooed SS lightning bolts on Harold’s neck, across his hairless chest, down his white belly. A thick purple scar puckered low on his left side, a permanent reminder of the bullet Harold had taken for his friend while they were in prison.
Eden knelt and kissed the scar tenderly. When they had the ransom money and things cooled down, Harold was going to introduce her to Tony Katt. She couldn’t wait to meet him. Not because he was heavyweight champion, but because he was the person Harold cared about most in the world.
Next to Eden, of course.
Her tongue darted between her lips, and she teased the rough purple circle on Harold’s side with a slow lick as her long black hair brushed his thigh.
“Oh, baby,” Harold said, and more than once.
Eden smiled up at him. “Looks like I didn’t wear you out, after all.”
“Uh-uh.”
“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. “The snake.”
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 could he believe?
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 The Necronomicon and scratched his head. The incantation hadn’t worked.
“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 Chihuahua in Latin.”
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 over to the power of the Lord of Flies.
“Hail Satan!” Mama shouted.
Daddy stroked the rattlesnake. Corpse-cool flesh came alive beneath his fingers. Keeled scales rippled along the serpent’s thick body as it stirred, forked tongue flicking the hot air, yellow eyes alive with evil, slit pupils identical to those of serpents that had crawled the earth long before man trod upon it.
“Hail Lucifer!” Mama screamed.
Daddy drew the serpent from the black box. Nearly six feet in length and thick as a truck driver’s wrist, it was completely white save for those yellow slits that slashed its eyes.
A herpetologist would identify the serpent as Crotalus atrox, or an Albino Western Diamondback Rattlesnake. Daddy called it Cthulhu.
“The dark one is king!” Mama shed tears. “The dark one reigns omnipotent!”
On the altar, the Chihuahua began to whine. Fright shone in its brown eyes. It tried to rise on weak legs.
“Mama! Hold this beast!”
Mama placed her hands on the little dog and held it still. Cthulhu’s great tail encircled Daddy’s forearm. The snake’s enormous head writhed and twisted, facing Daddy, a white diamond made of flesh. Spike’s whine cut the silence, but Daddy ignored it. He stared into the serpent’s eyes, and he began to fall, and tumble, and spin. .
Mama cried, “Satan! Lucifer! Beelzebub! All one! All eternal!”
. . descending into yellow slits in eyes unblinking. And the heat of hell poured through those slits the same way the desert heat slashed through the cracks in the chapel walls, and Daddy was scorched by hellfire, and he burned in the pit, and when he began to rise anew the power was burning in his blood, blistering his flesh, because his eyes were yellow. . he knew they were. . he could feel it. His eyes were yellow slits and Satan was a comin’. .
SATAN WAS A COMIN’. .
SATAN WAS A COMIN'. .
. . AND SOON!
. . AND SOON!
Eden threw open the door. Mama screamed. The dog squirmed in her grasp. The great snake’s head hovered over it.
“Daddy,” Eden said. “No!”
Her father’s eyelids fluttered. He looked at his daughter as if she were a ghost. His blue eyes were glazed with ecstasy or fear. . and Eden didn’t know what to say, and for a millisecond all was silent.
Then came the dry cadence of Cthulhu’s rattle. The snake sprang, jaws spread wide, fangs glistening as they ripped Daddy’s cheek.
“No!” Mama screamed as she tore the serpent from Daddy’s face and flung it into the mine shaft.
Daddy collapsed on the floor and the Chihuahua scrambled away, escaping between Eden’s legs.
The dog scrambled past Harold, too. He gave chase, naked and pink under the hot Mojave sun.
Eden wore a robe. Nothing else. She ran to her father’s side. He studied her with that same strange expression on his face, as if he were looking at a ghost whose presence stirred anguish and fear and love. And then a great spasm rocked him, and his eyelids fluttered closed, and he sank into Mama’s arms like a sickly child.
“If he dies. I’ll kill you,” Mama said. “I’ll burn you down. I’ll rip your heart out.”
“Mama. . I’m sorry-”
“You’re always sorry!”
Eden started to cry.
“Don’t you dare do that in here!” Mama spit the words. “Don’t you dare shed tears in your daddy’s church!”
Eden couldn’t help it.
“You’re so weak!” Mama’s voice was ice. “You can’t be no daughter of mine!”
Shaking with unrestrained fury, Mama cradled Daddy Deke in her arms. “I never wanted you. But your daddy said it was prophetized that we have three babies. He said it was Satan’s will.”
Eden stumbled back as if shot. Unable to speak, she could only listen.
“If I had it to do over again I’d rip you from my belly with a coat hanger. That’s what I’d do. By Satan, I would.”
Eden turned to flee but it was much too late. Her foot tangled in the rib cage of a tramp Daddy had sacrificed three winters past. She couldn’t move a lick, but she had to. She had to escape before Mama could say another word.
She smashed the bones with her free foot and kicked the rib cage into a comer. Twisting toward the light, she nearly stumbled but righted herself at the last moment and pitched through the open door.
Into the desert.
She ran.
Harold was dressed now. Night had fallen.
“She still out there?” he asked.
“Yes.” Eden stared at Daddy’s chapel, absently stroking the Chihuahua’s head.
“This is fucked,” Harold said. “I don’t want to leave you here alone. But I gotta go out. I gotta call Angel Gemignani. I gotta do it from a pay phone. Otherwise they’ll trace the call. And I can’t take you with me, because the dog is sick and someone has to take care of it.” Harold punched the air. “This is fucked."
Eden said, “Yes, it is.”
“Here.” Harold held out his.357. “I want you to have this. Just in case.”
Eden took the gun. She wanted to cry. She knew she couldn’t.
Harold said, “Don’t let anyone touch the dog.”
Eden nodded.
“I mean it, Eden. Really. Don’t fuck this up. You understand? I mean it."
“Yes,” she said.
She watched him go.
He was leaving her. Alone. With them.
Don’t fuck this up. You understand? I mean it.
And he had never spoken to her. . like that.