Helltown (2 page)

When the nun finished urinating, the sub-deacon retrieved the font and held it before the high priest, who dipped a phallus-shaped aspergillum into the fluid. He turned to the four cardinal compass points, shaking the aspergillum three times at each. “In the name of Satan, we bless thee with this, the symbol of the seed of life. In the name of Lucifer, we bless thee with this, the symbol of the seed of life. In the name of Belial, we bless thee with this, the symbol of the seed of life. In the name of Leviathan, we bless thee with this, the symbol of the seed of life.” He raised the phallic aspergillum breast-high in an attitude of offering to the Baphomet, kissed it, and placed it back on the altar. Then he uttered the purported last words of Jesus Christ upon the cross: “
Shemhamforash!
”

“Hail Satan!” the assemblage replied.

Darla stopped on the other side of the bedroom door. She could hear a woman’s voice purring, the words punctuated with throaty laughter. She wanted to turn around, leave, pretend this wasn’t happening, but she couldn’t do that. Steeling herself, she opened the door—and everything inside her collapsed at once. Her lungs, so it was hard to breathe. Her nervous system, so she became numb. Her heart, slit in half, emptied, hollow.

Mark lay on his back on the queen bed, his well-toned body naked except for a pair of blue briefs. A tanned peroxide blonde straddled him, groin on groin. She wore nothing but a black frilly thong. In one hand she held a pink feather duster, in the other, a red candle, which she was using to drip scolding wax onto Mark’s chest.

Mark turned his head toward Darla, as if sensing her presence. Seeing her, he threw the woman off him and sat bolt upright. “Jesus!” he said, and for a moment he appeared furious, as if outraged that Darla would have the gall to walk in on him while he was getting it on. Very quickly, however, he adopted a suitably ashamed and worried countenance.

“Wha…?” The woman turned and saw Darla. Her eyes widened in surprise.

“Get out,” Darla told her evenly, venomously.

“Hey, sorry, we should have gone somewhere else—”

“Get out!” she screamed.

“Okay, okay, like chill out.” Her casual tone was infuriating. She would walk away today and likely gossip about what happened with her friends. It wasn’t her life abruptly in shambles.

Darla marched over and grabbed the slut by the blow-dried hair and yanked her off the bed. The woman yelped.

“Hey, Dar, hold on,” Mark said. “Take it easy. Let’s talk.”

Ignoring him, Darla dragged the woman—bent over, shrieking, bare breasts flopping—across the room, shoved her into the hallway, slammed the door shut.

Then she whirled on Mark. She wanted to hurl every curse word she knew at him. But she could articulate nothing. She bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

“Listen, Dar,” he said, scratching the back of his head, “it’s not what you—”

“Don’t give me that! Don’t you
dare
give me that!”

He closed his mouth and seemed at a loss for what to say next.

“How long?” she said.

He got off the bed, pulled on his acid-wash jeans.

“How long?” she demanded.

Banging at the door. “Mark! I need my clothes.”

Mark started toward Darla, thought better of it, kept his distance. “A few weeks,” he said.

“Who is she?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“
Who is she?
”

He shrugged. “Someone from the ski resort.”

“Hey!” the woman persisted. “I’ll go. I just need my clothes.”

“Let me send her off,” he said, “and we’ll talk.”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out of this house.”

“Dar, you’re not thinking straight. Let me get rid of her—”

“Get the hell out of this house, Mark, or I swear to God I’m going to hit you.”

“Dar—”

“Go!”

He frowned, angry again, undecided. Then he scooped up his yellow Polo shirt with the embroidered logo of his auto repair business, a black bra, and a red tartan dress. He left his socks, inside out, on the floor. On his way to the door he stopped in front of Darla and tried to touch her on the shoulder. She slapped him across the cheek. He recoiled in shock. More anger, then weary resignation. He left the bedroom.

“Hey, thanks,” the blonde said, taking her dress. “And sorry about this—”

“Not now,” Mark snapped.

Darla remained where she was, arms folded across her chest, beginning to shake. The front door opened and closed. A car start started. Then another. Moments later the sound of the engines faded, and she was alone.

The high priest removed the black veil that covered the chalice and paten. He lifted the latter in both hands, on which rested a wafer of turnip, and said, “Blessed be the bread and wine of death. Blessed a thousand times more than the flesh and blood of life, for you have not been harvested by human hands nor did any human creature mill and grind you. It was our Lord Satan who took you to the mill of the grave, so that you should thus become the bread and blood of revelation and revulsion.” His voice became harsher, more guttural. “I spit upon you, I cast you down, because you preach punishment and shame to those who would emancipate themselves and repudiate the slavery of the church!” He inserted the host into the woman’s labia, removed it, and raised it to the Baphomet. “Vanish into nothingness, thou fool of fools, thou vile and abhorred pretender to the majesty of Satan, the true god of gods! Vanish into the void of thy empty Heaven, for thou wert never, nor shalt thou ever be!” He dropped the host into a small bowl and pulverized it with a pestle. He mixed what remained with charcoal and incense and set it aflame with a white candle. While it burned he picked up the Chalice of Ecstasy, which was filled not with blood or semen but his drink of choice, Kentucky bourbon. He raised it to the Baphomet and drank deeply. He replaced the chalice on the altar, covered it and the paten with the veil, then bowed and gave the blessing of Satan, extending his left hand in the Sign of the Horns: the two outermost fingers, representing the goat, pointing upward in defiance of Heaven, the two innermost pointing down in denial of the Holy Trinity. “
Shemhamforash!
”

“Hail, Satan!”

Darla returned to the Golf with her unpacked suitcase and drove. She couldn’t stand to be in the house any longer. Every room reminded her of Mark. The kitchen where they’d spent so many mornings in their housecoats making each other breakfast, the den where they’d snuggled up on the sofa together in the evenings to watch TV. Certainly not the bedroom. God, the tramp had been in her
bed
. How could Mark have allowed that? How could he violate the sanctity of the place where they’d conceived the baby that was growing inside her?

With this acid in her head, Darla tooled aimlessly around Boston Mills. She felt lost, confused, as if half her identity had been torn away from her—and in a sense she suppose it had. She’d been with Mark for ten years, ever since he’d asked her to their high school prom. He’d been the only stable fixture in her adult life.

Despair filled her. The house was Mark’s. He’d paid the down-deposit with his savings, and the bank loan was in his name. So she couldn’t stay there. She was homeless. Not only that, she had less than a hundred dollars in her bank account, no job, and a baby on the way. There had been a couple of jobs at the career fair she’d thought she might do okay at, but even if she was hired for one tomorrow, she likely wouldn’t start for a few weeks, and she wouldn’t be paid for another few weeks after that.

Family, she thought. She still had family. Her parents had moved to Florida several years before, and her older brother was teaching English in Japan or South Korea or China—somewhere too distant to think about. But her sister, Leanne, was only forty minutes away in Cleveland. Darla could crash there for a bit, maybe even look for work in Cleveland.

Then again, that meant Darla would have to deal with Leanne’s husband, Ray. He was a smug white-collar bank manager who’d always thought of Darla and Mark as uneducated country bumpkins. No, she couldn’t show up on his doorstep pregnant and single and broke. It would be humiliating.

Darla began running through a mental list of her friends—and realized she didn’t even know who her friends were anymore. They would have to take sides, wouldn’t they? How many would choose her over Mark? Likely not many. It didn’t matter that Mark was a cheating slime ball. He’d been the extrovert in their relationship, she the introvert. He had an easy way with people she didn’t. He’d come out of this scandal unscathed, while she would end up ostracized, an outcast in the very town where she had grown up.

Suzy, she thought. Yes, Suzy. She was single, had just been through a brutal divorce herself. She would sympathize with Darla’s predicament. She’d make some strong coffee, they’d sit down, she’d listen to Darla bawl, she wouldn’t judge or take sides.

Suzy lived ten minutes away in Sagamore Hills. It would be fastest to travel north on Riverview Road, then east along West Highland. But Darla decided to detour through Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It would give her a bit more time to get herself together.

She crossed over the Cuyahoga River, then turned left onto Stanford Road. Soon the trees of the national park closed around her—oak, ash, maple, walnut, hickory—and she began to feel calmer. Nature had a way of doing that to her, as she suppose it did for most people. Also, she enjoyed the isolation the park offered, the idea of being on her own. She felt free.
And now I
am
free
, she thought defiantly.
Mark’s gone, out of my life. And maybe that’s for the best. Better to find out about his cheating ways now than later on. I’m still young, only twenty-six. I’ll meet someone new, start over again…

Darla had been so preoccupied with her new-life fantasy she didn’t realize it was nearly dark. That was the thing with October in Ohio: you had day, and you had night, and you had about ten minutes of dusk in between.

She clicked on her headlights—and in the rearview mirror noticed a car behind her do the same. She’d had no idea anyone had even been there.

The car seemed to be accelerating toward her. Darla watched it approach, waiting for it to overtake her. It didn’t. Instead it came right up behind her and sat on her tail.

What was the idiot thinking?

Darla was about to pull over to the shoulder, to give the car more room to pass her on the narrow two-lane road, when it rammed her back bumper. She cried out in surprise. The car rammed her again, harder. The steering wheel jerked dangerously in her hands.

The lunatic was trying to run her off the road!

Was he drunk? On drugs?

Heart racing, Darla stomped on the gas, pushing the speedometer needle past fifty, past sixty. The car stuck behind her as the road angled upward steeply. Then the car rammed her once more. This time it remained glued to her ass,
pushing
her. She had to fight the steering wheel to keep it straight, and just as she thought she was going to lose control, the vehicle fell back.