The Holy Man

        A strange, deep growl started in the darkest corner of the basement. Jedidiah Lloyd heard it and jolted awake. The young man of sixteen realized he was cuffed at the ankle to a wrought-iron bedstead. All around him was near-complete blackness, with differing degrees of gloom where unknown objects sat. He could distinguish nothing, but he was sure he had heard…something.
        What happened to me? The question thundered through his mind, and he thought back: yes, he had gone to the house of the esteemed reverend and television preacher, Pastor Bob Patrickson. To talk to him about- his head was filled with fog and raw cotton- about the twins. And about the questions, the questions that the new girl Kellan was asking, the questions he felt like asking, too. And…about his sister.
      It had started with Kellan Rosenthal, whose Democrat father moved their family out to Jed’s town mid-summer for his work. Kellan, who was the first pagan that Jed had ever met. Her family were Jews, the town’s only Jews ever, but they’d gone to church with the rest of the town, the first Sunday they were there, to show willing. Kellan, who did not approve of the Bible in general, had sat next to Jed and listened with a gently perplexed look. “It just doesn’t seem quite right,” she remarked to him after the service. “I mean, there he is, lecturing us about tradition and a literal interpretation of the Bible, and yet he’s wearing a designer suit, and we’re all in modern clothes, and there’s a teleprompter for the hymns and we’re driving here in cars and everything. That’s not very traditional, and you can bet nothing in the Bible says it’s okay to use teleprompters and stuff.” The “he” was Pastor Bob. Jed only nodded, realizing silently that he agreed, that in fact he had always thought so.
        The night that Pastor Bob had gone down to Albany to tape a special episode of his telecast (although his car had not left, and someone was in his house; but it could be the help, people said), the Greeley twins had disappeared. Both five-year-old boys had snuck out just after bedtime, and neither came back home. Jed and Kellan had been out too, walking through the woods, while Kellan showed Jed how she collected her “spellcasting” supplies (herbs, wildflowers, and interesting-looking rocks- Kellan was a Wiccan on a budget). Jed had managed to find her a ‘Herkimer diamond’ by the blue glow of that witch’s delight, the full moon.
        But then- a crashing in the underbrush- and he had remembered, and pulled her back out of the trees, onto his porch...
        “What was that?” she demanded as soon as they had caught their breath.
        “A coydog,” he said. It was the same answer she would get from anyone in the town; sometimes, Jed could believe it was true.
      “Bullshit! We had coydogs back in Albany. That thing was no fucking coydog. Why are you not freaking out about this? What’s your problem?” She peered into his face. “Wait- have you seen it before?”
      And he had, but so had everyone in town. All their children saw, at some point, the hulking, hairy shape loping through the woods or wetlands, or silhouetted on a field against the moon. Parents said not to worry; it was there, but it wasn’t…anything to think about. It only carried off bad girls and boys; you would be safe as long as you obeyed the Lord…as long as you listened to Pastor Bob Patrickson.
      They found out not long after that night that Jed’s sister was pregnant. Jed couldn’t understand it. She had worn a purity ring since the age of twelve, she still lived with their parents, she wore high-collared blouses to church. Jed’s parents didn’t say much about it, probably out of mingled shame and loyalty. But people talked, and the talking outside the Lloyd house filled up the safe silence within it. This is why, they said, It’s a mistake to send girls to college, to give them a career (lots of women in town had jobs, of course, but Jed’s sister was Patrickson’s personal executive assistant. It was going someplace, it didn’t allow time for domesticity; it was a career, not a job). Jed’s sister talked to him, just once, one dark night, about driving her down to Albany to get an abortion.
        Patrickson stepped in. He proposed to Jed’s sister, then went and sat in the kitchen with Jed’s father, and they talked for a long time. The wedding would take place in early September, when the leaves were turning but it wasn’t yet cold. Jed’s sister seemed happier about it than he would have thought. People said it was a kind, Christian thing for Patrickson to do.
      “Goddess!” Kellan had gasped when he told her. “He’s the father!”

      “We don’t know that,” Jed had replied without feeling, knowing that he meant, We can’t prove that.

      He heard about Kellan’s arrest from his father. She had been seen sneaking around in Patrickson’s yard, having apparently climbed his fence, and was peering in his windows. She had a charge of trespassing against her, but she probably wouldn’t get much except a fine. “Those liberals,” Mr. Lloyd opined. “Don’t give their kids any discipline. Especially the girls. Girls have got to have a short leash.” Jed wondered if he was thinking of his own daughter.
      Maybe Kellan sensed the Lloyds’ feelings for her, because she didn’t come by the house again. Instead, she caught up with Jed after his shift at the town McDonald’s. “Did you hear about the thing at Patrickson’s mansion?”
      “I heard you got arrested.”
      “So? My mom got arrested tons of times at rent strikes, when she was younger. Besides, I didn’t break into his house or anything.” Her cheerfulness deflated. “I have to tell you what I saw.”
      “I’m not sure I want to know that, Kellan.”
      “Please, Jed.” He was surprised to hear her swallow a sob. “My parents are pissed at me. They won’t listen.”
      He sighed. “What do you think you saw?”
      “I don’t know. One of the rooms on the first floor…” She ran her fingers through her red flyaway hair. “All the furniture was torn. Chewed. Like an animal did it. There were these metal grilles over the windows. And…there was a pentagram on the wall.”
      “So? You’re wearing one of those right now.”
      She held up the cheap pewter pentacle on her necklace. “This is a right-side-up pentagram. It originally symbolized the goddess Venus. See: the fifth point of the star is pointing up. It’s pagan- it stands for nature and the Divine Feminine and stuff. The one on his wall was inverted,
pointing down. That’s a Satanic thing. I mean, Satanism’s pretty legit now, and most Satanists are fairly normal people, but still…”
      “Are you sure?”
      “Pretty damn. And the basement- there was blood all over the floor.” She took a deep breath. “I mean, it was dark, but you could see all these dark stains…and this awful smell…it had to be blood.”
            She asked him if people here knew what Patrickson was, and he was honest- more honest than he had ever allowed himself to be before: Yes, they suspected. “What has he got with this place, that they would ever allow this?”
      And he could give her explanations about jobs, and spiritual leadership, and conservative values, and stability. But they weren’t reasons- they were only excuses.
      He went to Patrickson’s house- legally, he even rang the doorbell- because he needed to ask the questions. He needed to ask why a Christian needed an inverted pentagram. He needed to ask about the Greeley twins, and about the blood on the floor. He needed to ask about the full moon. He needed to ask about his beautiful sister, who had once stood tall and proud and happy, with blond hair just like Jed’s.
        He needed to ask Patrickson what his sister was really carrying inside her, and what it would do to her to bear it, and what it would be when it was born.
      He was escorted into Patrickson’s house by the new assistant, and given some food…which had tasted strange.
                  Summoning all his faith, and all his courage, he began to whisper, “Our Father, who art in Heaven”- as the Beast that was Pastor Bob Patrickson howled, and lunged.