The Sadist's Bible (10 page)

sounded like witches.

“He’s a secret Muslim,” one of the older men (a chubby, bald fellow) said. “At least,

that’s what I think. Maybe he’s not, but I think that explains
everything
.”

“Why, yes, of course he’s a secret Muslim,” the shar pei woman said. “I can’t see

how people don’t see through that. I think he’s doing things to control the weather. Then he’s blaming it on coal, because he doesn’t like Kentucky. He knows Kentucky will

never vote for him, because we’re good Christian people and not Muslims.” There was

another idea the shar pei woman was trying to verbalize. She stammered to get it out.

There was some urgency in the matter. She shook her shar pei jowls again, as though

trying to
shake out
the word she was looking for. ”S-s-so he’s trying to put coal out of business. And he’s messin’ up the weather...with some sorta weather machine...to do it. I guess what I mean to say is that he’s...well...you know...
framing
coal for this global warming thing.”

Ellie didn’t have an opinion, one way or another, about the president. Like everyone

else in the church, Jesse had put up a yard sign for Romney. He’d gotten very excited

about it. He loathed Obama. But he never once referred to the president as a “secret

Muslim”. And even he would have thought it sheer lunacy to accuse the president of

harnessing the power of the weather against his own people, simply to avenge an

electoral slight. But one day, forty or fifty years in the future – if he lived that long –

Jesse would probably be spouting nonsense every bit as...well...as
deranged
as that.

About some future president, Republican or Democrat.
Deranged
...that was the right word, wasn’t it? Yes, deranged.

The brain was just a part of the body – like any other. It, too, could be eroded away

by the wash of decades. She thought about the forest of gnarled appendages at the nearby table. If something as hard as bone could be gradually warped by time and disease, then

what hope was there for the brain? It was, after all, only soft tissue.

And at that point Ellie felt a shudder.
I’ll be exactly like those old people, too,

someday
, she thought.

As we grow very old, our
mind
breaks down.

She heard a loud whirring. A grimy plastic mannequin hand set a plate of scrambled

eggs and biscuits in front of her, and a bowl of grits to the side.

It was René again: the plastic/mechanical arm, the massive sinkhole in his skull, the

mouth without a bottom lip. The unintelligible mumbling. It was impossible, of course,

that he was waiting tables at two different places so far apart from each other. And yet, there he was.

He placed his cold plastic hand over Ellie’s cold flesh hand and gently patted it.

Then, with some force, he moved her hand off of
He Wants Us Broken
. Picked it up.

Made pleasant, approving moans. Brought the tract up to his still-intact upper lip. Planted something akin to a kiss on it and returned it to the table. Then he crossed himself with his mechanical hand and said three words. “Haweh. Haweh. Haweh.”

And this time, Ellie thought she understood what he meant. Could it be he was

saying “Holy, Holy, Holy”?

Before she could be sure, he returned the tract to her hands. He placed his whirring,

filthy plastic hand on her chin and tilted it up so that her eyes met his. There was power in his touch. Not sexual power, but rather
absolute
power. It was as though she’d been touched by the hand of royalty.

He muttered some more unintelligible words. Something, she intuited,
about her
.

Then he giggled and limped off to the kitchen.

Her eggs were damp and under-cooked. Her grits were – as advertised – gritty. Her

biscuits dry, possibly stale. She had half a mind to complain, but complaining about René suddenly seemed like a gross breach of etiquette.
If God wanted us broken
, she thought,
then René possessed God’s favor. He’s the most broken person I’ve ever seen
. Moreover, he validated her gospel tract. Validated not only that it was real – that she hadn’t been hallucinating – but validated that it should be treated with reverence.

She nibbled slightly at her meal. Read and re-read and re-re-read the tract. How

could she waste time on something as simple as eating when she might be face-to-face

with a miracle? It was during her third re-reading of the tract that she felt a presence hovering over her again. She prayed to God:
please let it still be René, please let it still be
René
.

A filthy, plastic whirring hand dropped two pieces of paper next to her plate. She

turned around. “Hey, René.”

He didn’t answer.

She called out louder. Louder than shar pei lady. Louder than the blooping and

bleeping of the cash register. Louder than the small crowd stirring beyond the border of the restaurant proper – in the waiting area and gift shop.

“Hey, René!”

The waiter turned around. It was Ronnie again, not René. “Beg pardon, ma’am?” he

said.

“Oh,” Ellie said. “Nothing. I thought you were someone else.”

The waiter raised his eyebrows. Coughed. Went back into the kitchen.

Ellie briefly glanced at a check informing her that breakfast had cost a little over nine bucks. She pushed it aside and looked at the second piece of paper – a note (scrawled in a barely-legible hand).

YOU DID NOT OBEY & TURN BACK.

THEREFORE, GOD’S PLANS MUST INTERRUPT YOUR PLANS.

YOU SHALL BE DAMNED WITH BLESSINGS.

IT IS THE ONLY WAY.

THE WORLDLY AUTHORITIES ARE AWARE OF YOUR SCHEME WITH LORI

AND ARE NOW,

AT THIS VERY MOMENT, ATTEMPTING TO TRACK YOU DOWN.

IF THEY FIND YOU, YOU SHALL BE LOCKED AWAY.

YOU ARE FAR TOO INTERESTING TO BE LOCKED AWAY.

YOU HAVE FAR TOO MANY SIGNS OF DEVOTION,

TOO GREAT A CAPACITY FOR BROKENNESS.

THEY WILL BE LOOKING FOR YOUR CAR.

LEAVE IT HERE IN THIS PARKING LOT.

I WILL BE OUT THERE, WAITING FOR YOU.

I WILL DRIVE YOU WHERE YOU NEED TO GO.

I WILL TAKE YOU TO LORI.

I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN TAKE YOU TO LORI.

THE ARC OF THE UNIVERSE IS LONG,

BUT BENDS TOWARDS DEGENERACY.

Ellie held the note in her hand. Clutched it to her chest, fearful that it – like its

predecessor – would be transformed into a worthless napkin. But the gospel tract

remained with her. It had not been transformed into a napkin. So maybe this wouldn’t

either, if she had enough faith. That must be the answer: the first note had faded from

reality because she’d not looked on it with sufficient faith. She’d assumed René was

insane. She’d been ungrateful for the message, so it was taken from her. She hadn’t

deserved it.

She wouldn’t make the same mistake this time. She flung a twenty on the table and

jogged out to the parking lot.

She did not see René outside, and this made her want to kick the rocking chairs

assembled near the restaurant’s front. Even worse, there was a police car right next to the Scion. Its engine was running. The officer in the driver’s seat seemed to be sticking his head out the window and glancing back at her. Had he come to take her back to

subdivision-sanity? Back to a world antiseptically devoid of passion and miracles?

Then she heard the familiar voice and the familiar words: “Haweh, haweh, haweh.”

Holy, holy, holy. (Or, could it be “Hurry, hurry, hurry”?) She didn’t question it. She

just followed the trail of the voice. Followed it, even though it led straight to the police car.

Her faith was rewarded. René sat there, smartly adorned in the uniform of a

Kentucky State Police trooper. He giggled and jerked his head to the side. She scurried to the passenger side and opened the door.

“I need to get my bags.”

René shook his head then coughed up another word. “Obuh,” he said (with a snort

appended to the last syllable).

Obey.

She was tempted to ignore this statement. (This request? This command?) She’d

ignored God’s commandments before, after all. But she’d never before encountered a

being like René – not God, but closer to God than she was. That made a difference. Also, she’d never before heard such commandments spoken to her in a voice she could
literally
hear
. That made a
huge
difference. It made disobeying sound more real, more like a mistake.

And besides, René knew about Lori. He’d even referred to her by name, in the note.

Said he could take Ellie to see her. Said Ellie was in danger of being caught and locked away. Ellie didn’t want to be locked away.

She got in.

Revelations

In the time since filing the Amber Alert, Trooper Connelly had learned far more than

he’d wanted to know about Lori Morris. For years, she’d been a puzzle he couldn’t quite

figure out. Not that he’d spent that much time
trying
to figure her out. His only job had been to cart her off to the hospital. He hadn’t been
meant
to understand her. He hadn’t
cared
about understanding her.

But when the detectives got a hold of her computer, they had answers. Who

would’ve guessed she was a lesbo (or, at least, a part-time carpet muncher)? Who

would’ve guessed that she’d been planning this for so long? That she’d long-wanted to

kill herself and the baby? Scuttlebutt around the station was that she was a Satanist,

because the stuff on her computer indicated that she was doing all this so that she
would
get sent to Hell. Hell was what she wanted, more than anything. Separation from God.

She hated God for what
she thought
God had done to her. But God was good. She

was misunderstanding it all, blaming
God
for the acts of
Satan
. She’d fallen on her knees to Satan when she should’ve been on her knees before God.

Then again, maybe she didn’t misunderstand things. Maybe she was consciously

trying to defame the Lord’s name by falsely accusing Him of rape. Maybe she wasn’t

crazy. Maybe she was evil. Maybe, instead of getting sent off to the hospital, she

should’ve gotten sent off to a good pastor for an exorcism.

But Connelly couldn’t keep thinking about that. He had a job to do. The tech fellas

had sorted out the contact information for the woman from Indiana and Connelly was

supposed to call her husband. Yeah, that was a piece of shit assignment if there ever was one. How would he even broach the subject? (“‘Scuse me, mister, but did you know your

wife hated her life with you so much she was fixin’ to go off and bump uglies with

another woman and then off herself? You didn’t? Why, you had no clue? Are you sure?

Think real hard about things, because – and here’s something else you’re just gonna love

– there’s a baby’s life at stake. And not just any baby, a baby born with its little hunk of brain showin’ for everyone to see.”)

That’s not the way he handled it, of course. He wouldn’t have lasted long as a

trooper if he didn’t have manners. For starters, he introduced himself. “Hello, is this Mr.

Blake?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Trooper Connelly from the Virginia State Police, I’m afraid I need a

moment of your time.”

“You must have pushed in the wrong area code. This is Indiana, not Virginia.”

“I’m afraid this is about official business, sir. Do you know the whereabouts of your

wife?”

Silence. Then heavy breathing. “What’s wrong? Has there been an accident? Is she

okay?”

Damn, it would’ve been easier if the husband had been an asshole. He sounded like a

decent guy. It didn’t make any sense, really, that he should turn out to be a good guy who was worried about the woman’s safety. But he was. “Sir, I know you have some

questions and I’ll share what I’m allowed to share with you after I ask
my
questions. Do you know where she is?”

“She should be in
West
Virginia, unless I heard her wrong. A business trip. What happened? Did she have a wreck? I knew she shouldn’t have driven out that night.”

This was the part where he had to break it to him. “Sir, we have reason to believe she

was, in fact, not on a business trip. We have reason to believe she may have been trying to harm herself.”

“My...stars. How do you know that? Did she ram the car into a tree? Is she hurt? Is

she dead?”

“It’s not any of those things. Not as far as we know. But, honestly, sir there’s a lot

here we need to sort out. We have her cell phone number. We’ve been calling it, but

something seems to be wrong with the phone.”

“It’s going to voicemail? She’ll let it do that, sometimes, if she’s in a bad mood.”

“No, not exactly like that. When I call the number, the line seems to go dead. There’s

no ringing, no message. Nothing. I figured there might be something going on with my

phone, so I thought I’d ask you to try.”

“I’ll call her right now – or, at least, as soon as I get off the phone. But let me ask

you – what makes you think she wants to hurt herself?”

“We’ve uncovered social networking communications between her and another

woman, a Virginia resident. There’s some indication that they wanted to do it together –

kill themselves, that is.”

“Oh...oh, Lord, save her. Oh...Oh God. Oh.”

The husband had sounded so strong up until that moment. He’d fought so hard to

maintain some sense of normality about it all. He’d scratched and clawed after normality the way a man about to fall off a cliff scratches and claws at land.

Now he sounded weak, the resolve leaking out of him each moment like air out of a