IN A WIDE DARK ROOM, TWELVE ROBED FIGURES LIT only by red candles stood around an altar covered in eldritch carvings and ancient runes. A silver tray lay in the middle of the altar with five black triangular hosts arranged in the shape of an inverted pentagram. A robed priest at the head of the altar held up a host he plucked from a nearby bowl, which was also covered in a fearsome scrawl and glyphs of birds with what looked like pig heads. Plus, a kitten sticker someone’s kid had put on it that they’d never been able to completely scrape off.
“Hear me, O Caleximus, thundering archfiend, master of the sky throne, creator and destroyer. Accept this offering of the flesh of your chosen beast. A gift to you from us, your unworthy followers.”
The priest was dressed in a robe so dark that it looked like his head and hands were floating in the blackness.
“Give us your ear, dire Caleximus. We have such tidings to share with you.”
He placed the host on his tongue and swallowed. Or tried to. At first he just coughed. Then he made a gagging sound like he was trying to gargle a porcupine. The priest collapsed to his knees before the altar. A low cry went up around the room. He was down on all fours. Everyone froze, wondering what he’d done wrong to piss off their cantankerous netherworld deity. Some people began edging toward the exit.
Finally, the priest coughed the host onto the floor. He got to his feet slowly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked around at the other robed figures.
He said, “Jerry? Were you in charge of putting together the offerings?”
The room was silent.
“Jerry?”
“Yes?” said someone quietly.
“Were you in charge of the offerings?”
“Yes.”
The priest walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Are these the fried flesh of a black boar sacrificed with the eagle-headed blade on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm?”
Jerry shook his head.
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly? What are they, then?”
“Blue corn chips.”
An angry murmur went around the room.
“Corn chips. That’s not really even in the same ballpark, is it?”
Jerry shrugged.
“What kind of chips were they?”
“What?”
“What brand of chips?”
“Monsieur Crunchero.”
“Don’t you mean Señor Crunchero?”
“No. Monsieur. They’re Canadian.”
“Because when we think of Mexican food we think of Saskatchewan,” said the priest.
Jerry pushed the hood of his robe back, revealing a young man’s face, pockmarked and with an overly optimistic slash of red hair on his upper lip.
“They were the only ones left in the store.”
The priest sighed.
“That’s not really the point, Jerry. What happened to the black boar?”
“It ran away.”
“It ran away?”
“You try holding a full-grown boar in a thunderstorm. Everything is wet and slippery. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. I cut myself with the damned knife. It just happened. I’m sorry.”
A grumbling went through the group. A couple of people muttered “Dipshit” and “Clueless.” The priest sighed.
“I don’t know what to do here. You buy some off-brand potato chip . . .”
“Blue corn chips . . . so they’d be the right color.”
“Points for you, Jerry. You try to slip corn chips past us like maybe Caleximus, who’s a goddamned god, wouldn’t notice. And now you say you lost our boar. Do you know how much boars cost these days?”
Jerry shook his head.
“No.”
“A lot,” someone shouted.
The priest said, “A boar would be the equivalent of a metric ass-ton of corn chips. Did you buy a metric ass-ton of corn chips?”
“No. Just the one bag.”
“Here we are, sending up smoke signals to Caleximus to give him good news, and now there’s none to give him.”
Jerry looked around the room at the other robed figures.
“I’m really sorry.”
Steve, the priest, pushed back his hood. Like the boy’s, his hair was red, but he was older, his face lined and creased. “I don’t know what to do here, son. It’s like you don’t even take the Apocalypse seriously.”
“But I do.”
“Do you want those Abaddonian shitbags in Burbank to invoke their false god and set off their Apocalypse first?”
“No, sir,” said Jerry. “I hate those pricks.”
“Good boy. Because our Apocalypse is the only real Apocalypse and no one gets to offer up the Earth and its nonbelievers but us. Right?”
“Fuck the Abaddonians,” shouted a woman from the back of the room.
The group nodded and mumbled. “Fuck the Abaddonians.”
“All right. Quiet,” said Steve. “The old-folks’ home has a spaghetti dinner going next door. No need to ruin the codgers’ appetites.”
People laughed. Steve Sallis, the priest, turned back to the boy and shook his head.
“Okay, Jerry. You’ve got a lot to make up for.”
“I know.”
Steve looked out at the other worshippers. “For those of you who got here late and missed it, the good news is this: we think we’ve got a line on the Vessel of Invocation, meaning we can finally bring Caleximus to Earth—right here, right now—to us.”
Another murmur, a happier one this time.
“It’ll be a dangerous task to retrieve it, though. I’m looking for volunteers,” said Steve.
Someone shouted, “I volunteer Jerry.”
Jerry looked around.
“Fuck you, Tommy.”
But Steve was looking at the boy.
“What do you say, Jerry? Are you ready to make up for this Crunchero fiasco?”
“I guess,” he said sullenly.
“Damn right you guess.”
Steve pointed at the group.
“The boy can’t do it alone. Any other volunteers?”
Not a single hand went up.
“Nice, everybody. Really nice. Caleximus is very proud of each and every one of you pussies, pardon my French. That’s it, then. Everybody goes. Got it?”
Whispers of “Oh man” and “You pay for the damned sitter” could be heard.
Steve unzipped his robe. On the back was a sequined lightning bolt and eagle with a boar’s head. Susie had made it for him on their third wedding anniversary.
“I think we can officially call the invocation over for the night. Someone hit the lights.”
Fluorescents flickered on in the double-wide trailer parked on a construction site in Glendale. The desks and filing cabinets had been pushed back against the walls to make room for the ceremony.
As Steve folded his robe he said, “Jerry.”
“Yes, Dad?”
Steve upended a couple of hard hats and poured in the rest of the chips. “I swear to Caleximus that if you bought chips and you didn’t get guacamole and salsa, I’ll skin you alive myself and we’ll eat you at the next meeting.”
From the look in the man’s eye, the kid wasn’t so sure if he was kidding.
“They’re in the car,” he said.
“Go get them.”
Steve looked around until he saw his wife. “Susie, darlin’, break out the Bud. That’s it for now, people. Can somebody take down the candles? The Apocalypse can hold on for a couple of days. As long as we’re ready by the new moon we’ll be fine.”
The others started disrobing, too. From across the room, Jorge—Steve’s partner in the small construction firm—called, “So, where’s the Vessel of Invocation?”
“In an office downtown. We’re going to break in and take it.”
“How are we going to do that?”
Tommy, who’d heckled Jerry earlier, said, “My brother-in-law is a janitor there. He can get us in.”
Steve raised his arms to the ceiling. “To Caleximus and the destruction of mankind.”
“To Caleximus and destruction!” shouted the rest of the group.
Steve smiled. “These suckers aren’t going to know what hit them.”
“And they’re not going to know it for very long!” said Jorge.
Everybody laughed happily as they moved the furniture back into place.
Susie came over with the beer and ruffled Steve’s hair. “Don’t be too hard on the boy, dear. He tries his best.”
“I know. It’s just that sometimes he doesn’t have the sense of a sack full of squirrels.”
“I know.”
Steve took a long gulp of his beer.
“Remember not to drink too much tonight,” said Susie. “You promised to help me with my pie for the bake sale.”
Steve took a breath. “Yeah. About that. Do you still want to go through with it? I mean, there isn’t a store in town that will let us sell outside. They all say the Apocalypse is bad for business.”
Susie sipped her beer. “I know, but I want an excuse to make one more apple pie. I’m not going to the fiery depths of the underworld without showing up that bitch Randi Huston and her damned lemon squares.”
Steve put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Okay, honey. One more sale.”
Susie gave Steve a loving peck on the cheek, then wiped off the lipstick with her thumb. “Hail Caleximus,” she said.