Page 81 of The Devil Knows Her Name

The wind came with us, whipping my hair around my face and the gown around my legs. On this night, Main Street would usually play host to the harvest festival, and there should’ve been lanterns throwing ghoulish shadows up and down the block, pumpkins stacked in front of the businesses, carnival games and caramel apples. Instead, the street was empty, but I could hear the faint sound of singing.

Curious, we followed the sound, and it didn’t take long to find where it was coming from. The Pentecostal church was lit up like a beacon, golden light pouring from the windows and illuminating the sea of faces crammed into the building. The strains of “Jesus, Savior, We Implore Thee” were so loud I could barely hear the out-of-tune piano playing accompaniment. The vinyl sign outside, its new red letters slick as viscera, read, Prayer Vigil for Pastor Zeke.

The devil grinned at me with Zeke’s mouth, an expression far too wicked for a pastor’s face. “This is better than I ever could have imagined,” he said, and he seized the double doors and threw them open.

The music swelled into the night, but several people at the back of the church turned at the sound of the doors and fell into startled silence. Their neighbors in the pews ahead of them sensed the disturbance and looked back, and one by one the voices died as the devil passed by them. They sank into their seats like slow-moving rows of dominoes until, even from my place outside in the dark, I could see Rachel at the front of the church bent over her hymnbook, Evelyn’s arm wrapped around her narrow shoulders, David standing straight and tall as a sentinel beside them.

The music faded further, and I realized the devil was singing along in Zeke’s slightly flat baritone. The pianist—Max, I saw—caught sight of him moving up the aisle and stopped playing, the final note a sharp tink that cut off the rest of the singers. Everyone at the front of the church silently followed Max’s gaze, and the devil was left to finish the hymn’s line on his own:

“In our weakness, Lord, befriend us; from the tempter’s power, defend us.”

There was a long beat of silence, and while everyone else’s faces went rapt with awe, I watched the horror dawn in Rachel’s eyes as she stared at the thing that used to be her husband. The nails and threads were hidden, the blue bloat of the pond gone, but she could see the devil in him, just like I could.

“Dad?” David asked.

“It’s a miracle,” Evelyn breathed. Someone repeated it, then someone else, and suddenly it was a shouted, jubilant chorus. Chief Broder, who clearly thought his time was better spent praying than out beating the bushes, suddenly stumbled into the aisle, having climbed over the rest of the people in the pew. The reflection of the pendant lights glistened on his bald head, and he leaped forward as if he would embrace the pastor. The devil brushed him aside like a fly and opened his arms to Rachel.

“My wife,” he said. “Your prayers have brought me home.”

The church fell silent again. I saw immediately that she wanted to shrink back. She knew the thing walking toward her was not her husband; she could see the depth of the madness and hunger in its eyes. She rocked back on her heels almost imperceptibly, and for a moment I thought she would run.

But the interest of the gathered crowd held her like a cage. Almost everyone in Burrsville had come to pray her husband home, and now they were gazing in awe, watching this supposed reunion with bated breath. She had always been a pastor’s wife; she had made obedience her crowning virtue, always following her husband’s lead but especially in public. She’d worn that pattern so deep that she couldn’t escape it even now, when she knew she was being hunted by a monster.

In that long-held breath, Evelyn—Evelyn, who always thought she was helping—put her hand on the small of the woman’s back and gave her a gentle push into the devil’s waiting arms. He wrapped her up so tightly that her expression of utter terror was hidden by his shoulder.

The congregants broke into cheers, and I heard “miracle” repeated again and again. I caught sight of Georgie, just on the other side of David, clapping wildly. Christine was perched at the edge of the stage as if she’d been moral support for Max’s piano playing, and she stood with her eyes closed, hands clasped over her heart.

The pastor’s corpse released his wife, clasped a brief hand to his son’s shoulder, and ascended the steps to the pulpit. I saw his brief hesitation as he moved to grasp it, as though he thought it might burn him, and the gleam of his grin when it didn’t.

“Something is happening tonight!” he bellowed. “Can you feel it?”

There was a long, assenting noise, almost a moan, from the crowd.

“I have returned, just as Jesus did from his forty days in the desert. You have brought me here. The spirit moves through you!”

Another answering sound from the congregation. They were starting to move, rocking from foot to foot, arms rising and reaching, heads swaying on their necks like charmed snakes. “Hallelujah,” someone called, and the rest of them took up the cry. Rachel was frozen in the front pew, her arms wrapped around her hymnal, and I saw her glance toward her son.

“The spirit moves through you!” the devil repeated, and pointed directly at Evelyn, who stood between Rachel and David.

I couldn’t see Evelyn’s face from where I stood, but her entire body seized suddenly—shoulders lifting toward her ears, fingers splayed and trembling. She began to chant, at first too softly to be heard over the other voices, but then louder and louder until everyone’s attention was focused on her. I thought it was a song, but the rhythm was unsteady and off balance, and I realized the words were complete gibberish.

Georgie moved toward Evelyn, concern creasing her brow, but the devil waved her away. “She has been anointed by the spirit! Let it move you! Let it move you!”

The rocking and swaying and nodding of the mass intensified. The floor groaned under stomping feet, and the pendant lights rattled at the end of their chains. Evelyn’s chant was infectious; one person picked it up, and then another and then another, repeating the same meaningless sounds. People stammered and shrieked, and the stamping became jumping and spinning and thrashing. The pews groaned as people hauled on them, tread on them, and more than once I saw someone fall, unheeded, between them. Broder collapsed in front of the altar, his heels stuttering against the floor as if in a fit. The worshippers overflowed the pews, the pounding rhythm of their dance shaking the entire church, and a foot landed hard, pushing Broder’s teeth through the back of his throat. Perhaps they never noticed, or perhaps they simply had no choice but to dance, but moments later the police chief’s head was nothing but a pile of brain and broken skull on the ground.

Through the reveling throng, the devil’s eyes found mine.

I waded into the crowd, weaving my way through the outside aisle until I reached the front pew. David was pressed against the wall, his chest heaving in terror, an ecstatic clump of congregants separating him from his mother. I reached out to seize his hand. His fingers were so wet with sweat that they nearly slipped through mine.

“Come on,” I said roughly. “We’re getting you out of here.”

He came, docile with fright. I folded his hand more firmly in mine and led him away. If anyone saw us go, they would not remember it.

Chapter

26

When we were halfway up the hill, the pastor’s boy turned around, his hand pulling free of mine. “Wait,” he said uncertainly. For a long moment he stared down into the valley, the glow of the church visible even from here, the stamping and clamor of the crowd a distant hum. The wind hissed through the grass around us; soon it would carry the last toll of the church’s bell.