CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Mark MacDonald exhaled an unintentionally thunderous sigh of relief. Eli glanced his way for a second, sizing up what he probably thought was Mark’s reaction to the faux pas that had just stunned them all into silence. Then he returned his attention to the etiquette stand-off just outside the canned goods aisle. If Eli thought that Mark’s outburst was about the scene, so be it. It wasn’t true, but the others could be forgiven for thinking so.

Peter Mayberry had been escorting the distraught and nearly drowned stranger from the bathroom to the front of the store when Donna Gilliam, her baby son Theo clutched to her breast, had pinched her nose and turned her head in disgust.

“At least I don’t smell like shit,” she’d said out of the blue. Just like that. The stranger shrank back from her as if she’d been struck. She stood quivering in Peter’s arms, peeking over his shoulder at Donna and looking like she was afraid the young mother would unhinge her jaw and gobble her up whole.

Peter craned his neck around the woman and stared daggers at Donna as if he expected her to apologize. Donna glared back at them all defiantly. Mark was glad for the distraction. Her hateful outburst had removed all attentions—real or imagined—from Mark’s disappearing money trick at the cash register. All eyes were on the woman with the baby and the interloper cowering in Peter’s weirdly old-looking arms.

The piano player was in his late thirties, the best Mark could reckon (he’d never outright asked even though the two of them spent hours together at church once a week). It could be a trick of the light, but he looked considerably older than that. The thin lines of crow’s feet that mark the eyes of a man nearing his forties were instead deep pockets and oblong folds of flesh indicative of someone much older. The short sleeves of his untucked button-down shirt revealed sagging skin that drooped off Peter’s biceps like bedsheets heavy with wash water and hanging from a laundry line.

Sin ages you, they say. Sins like guilt and worry are particularly good at it. If Peter was any indication, the secret life of the church pianist must be even more stressful than what Mark’s financial burdens had written across his face.

Of course, Mark hadn’t looked in a mirror since he’d stashed his ill-gotten collection plate gains in that Phillies cigar box in his medicine cabinet that afternoon. His new life of rationalized crime might have already taken a toll. He just wasn’t aware of it.

Since he’d nicked the two bills from Kathy Beard’s cash register, he’d been awash in waves of prickling guilt followed by knee-buckling relief. The waves came in intervals of ten minutes or less, and they were exhausting. Hot gooseflesh drove the hairs on the back of his neck to attention whenever his imagination locked onto premonitions of the town constable, Billy Spears, cinching his wrists in handcuffs and hauling him before the justice of the peace.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a man of the Lord?” the judge would ask him.

“Yes, your honor,” he’d reply. “But I was weak.”

“Well, the Lord will forgive your weakness,” the wizened old man would intone as he peered over the top of his glasses mid-review of Billy’s police report. “But I’m afraid the State of Tennessee is going to need you to pay your debt.”

Mark would flinch when the gavel fell. He knew he would. He’d probably jump when his prison door slammed shut as well. Then where would he be? Alone with his thoughts for a year? Two? More?

The anxiety of possible outcomes scaled the back of his neck, washed down his face, and plummeted straight to his gut. His insides grumbled in protest at the intrusion, sending a horde of barbarians through the tunnels of his intestines in response. They repeatedly banged against the door of his sphincter, threatening him with a foul-smelling liquid exit if he couldn’t clench long enough for them to subside.

If he waited them out, all those horrible imaginings and sensations eventually waned. Like magic. Like a miracle. Without rationalization.

Mark did not attempt to lubricate the grinding gears of his squeaky brain with daydreamy scenarios of compassion and understanding on the part of the town or the law. The prickling and washing simply left him, like someone had stabbed an invisible soda straw in his ear canal and vacuumed all the bad stuff from his head. The back of his neck cooled to his touch. He unclenched his asshole without soiling himself.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was grieving. But for whom? Himself? His old self? He’d guided some of Lost Hollow’s widows through the process before, not the least of which was one Kathy Beard. She wasn’t a regular, but she graced the sanctuary doors from time to time.

When Jessie died, she’d shown up every Sunday in a row for six weeks or more with a toddler version of her son Jerry in tow. On some of those occasions, she’d been accepting of Jessie’s fate. At other times, she’d been inconsolable. Often, the two extremes clashed within one twenty-minute conversation, sometimes outside of the church sanctuary.

Mark had been grocery shopping one Monday when she just broke down right there in front of him. He’d lent a pastorally ear even though she wasn’t a member of his regular congregation, and her store certainly wasn’t a sanctuary. He’d hoped his consolations would help lure her into the flock. She’d never taken the bait, however. But then, he’d never been the most splendid fisher of men.

Were the undulations of uncontrollable emotions he was experiencing like what Kathy had been going through back then? Might he not then play on her sympathy if he had, indeed, been caught pilfering by the townsfolk in the store that night? He thought he might. It was comforting to believe that the woman whose livelihood he’d just violated could be the one person who would understand.

His eyes drifted back to Kathy, who was furiously referencing receipts and writing down numbers beside the cash register. Her mouth was twisted downward at the left corner. Her anxious, bloodshot eyes seemed on the verge of spilling over. The hot pang of guilt again accosted Mark.

Meanwhile, Peter had settled the newcomer into a chair that seemed a bit too close to the Gilliam woman, considering what had just happened between them. Within seconds of her rump hitting the wood, the new woman found herself surrounded by the men. Eli Wynn and Jerry Beard dashed to the young beauty with such hasty abandon that Mark half-expected to see scorch marks on the floor in their wake.

“Hello,” Jerry said hesitantly. “So, what do they call you?”

“Marilyn,” came the soft reply. After she said it, she smiled at them, grateful for the everyday interaction.

The boys gasped in unison. They locked eyes for an instant, then turned back to her. Eli shoved his hands in his pockets.

Jerry knelt on her right and rested his forearms on one knee, looking like he wanted to propose right then and there. “Where are you from?” he asked. A vibrating twinge of excitement permeated the words as they hit the air.

“Oh, here and there,” Marilyn said.

“Are...” Eli began. He swallowed audibly. “Are you her?”

She was pretty, Mark thought. That much was a given. Had he not been a couple of decades older than Jerry and the Wynn boy, he might’ve joined them in what was about to evolve into a friendly contest for her attention. Instead, he allowed himself to admire her with an older man’s dissociation: in his head and as if she was not capable of seeing him at all.

He was careful to keep his eyes on her face, however. No gazing downward at the pale smoothness of her neck. And he should certainly not be looking at the hint of bifurcation barely visible at the end of the V created by the collar in the men’s coveralls she was wearing when she leaned over in the chair and imitated Jerry, resting her elbows on her knees.

Mark jerked his head upwards and met her eyes. She propped her chin on both her fists and stared back at him, her crystal blue eyes sparkling with bemusement, her abounding lips pulled into the slightest of closed-mouth grins.

Hot blood flooded Mark’s cheeks and the tips of his ears. He tried to look away from her, but something out of his control seemed to have locked his head in place. A pair of unseen hands had clasped the sides to prevent him from moving it. Cold, invisible fingers pried his eyelids open with their phantom thumbs and forefingers. He tried to speak, to explain that he was not intentionally staring at her, but his jaw was suddenly locked in place as well.

Long strands of a strange red mist emerged from along the periphery of his vision. They appeared to connect his head to her hands. No, to her mouth just above her hands. She parted her lips to receive the strands, revealing long, pointed canines behind their magazine-perfect lines. From between the teeth, a thick green tongue corkscrewed impossibly out at him. At first, it resembled an enormous painted drill bit. At length, it looked more like a folded-up wad of dollar bills.

Her blue eyes rolled back in her head, revealing blank sockets replete with bright white sclera. They dried up and disintegrated into a wrinkled, yellowy parchment that exploded into an orange-red flame without a blink.

Greed, a voice crooned inside his head. Avarice! It sounded like the new woman’s voice but with a brutal and sinister growl around the edges. Mark’s mouth filled with the taste of warm biscuits: flaky and doughy yet tinged with sulfur and buttered with a mixture of phlegm and snot. His jaw unlocked. He opened his mouth to try to spit, gag, or vomit. Instead, a fresh stream of red mist shot out from him.

Marilyn lunged for it, lapping at it like a dog biting at water sprayed from the end of a garden hose. Now that it was flowing, Mark could not close his mouth again. His hands were frozen in his lap, his feet bolted to the floor in front of him.

Bizarrely, no one else in Beard’s General appeared to notice what was happening to him. He rotated his eyes toward Donna Gilliam. She sat with the infant in her lap, gently stroking the thin strands of hair at his forehead and cooing at him. The only evidence that anything bothered her was a gentle furrow in her brow.

Eli and Jerry remained at their same stations on either side of Marilyn. Eli had copied Jerry’s kneeling pose. They looked like two country squires bowing before their queen as they awaited knighthood from this angle. They seemed to be carrying on a one-sided conversation with her: goggling at her while they spoke and then waiting patiently for their next turn as if she was replying to whatever they’d just said instead of sucking Mark’s life-force from his body. Neither of them paid heed to the tendrils of red mist that floated over their heads and into her maw, nor the giant stream of it that directly connected his mouth to hers.

Peter stood over Marilyn’s left shoulder. He was not looking at her, the boys, or anyone else. His eyes were pointed toward the ceiling. They shifted in their sockets uncomfortably, as if he was aware of what was happening but choosing to ignore it.

Mark focused on him, tried to will him to make eye contact. He pleaded with the other man to see what was happening, to intervene. No luck. Without warning and without looking back at him, Peter simply turned and walked away. He dragged over a chair and sidled up behind Donna, out of Mark’s line of sight.

Mark rolled his eyes toward Kathy at the front of the store. She remained as she mainly had been since she’d discovered the cash drawer: poring over receipts and math. On the counter in front of her, the last ticket had come off the spike and lay face down on the pile. Kathy scratched absently at her forehead with the eraser end of her pencil. Something did not add up. Why would it?

A fresh wave of hot blood rose in his cheeks. A violent gush of the steam from his mouth and nostrils that sent his head reeling backward. He watched helplessly as Marilyn adjusted her position in the chair to capture the stuff at the end of its powerful new arc.

The last of whatever the horrible stuff was inside him exited his mouth and, apparently, all his head orifices. Marilyn vacuumed up the ends of it from between pursed lips like the slippery last strand on a plate of spaghetti. The invisible hands that had imprisoned him let go.

Mark slumped in his chair, exhausted. His eyes stung. A single hot tear crept from the corner of the left one and rolled down his cheek. His mouth and nostrils felt like they’d been stuffed with sand. The knots that had bound his stomach off and on ever since he’d taken the money from the offering plate loosened. The muscles in his neck and shoulders relaxed, as did those in his thighs and calves.

Relief washed over him. It was the kind of respite that comes from lying back on a cool mattress after ten hours of tossing hay bales under the hot sun and wet air of a Tennessee August. Not that he would know the intensity of tossing hay bales in August. He was a preacher, not a farmer. It was the first metaphor that sprang to mind. He had used it to some degree of success in his sermons to describe how it feels when baptism washes away your sins.

Yes! he thought. That’s it! It feels just like I’ve been washed in the blood again. I’ve been made pure.

He no longer felt guilty about the money he had stolen, neither from the church offering plate nor from Kathy Beard’s cash register. It wasn’t the same as the waves of remorse and justification he had been experiencing all day. Even when he’d reconciled and rationalized his deeds before, there had been a twinge of conscience nagging at the back of his mind.

He felt nothing at all. No guilt. No justification. No need to reconcile or rationalize. There was only acceptance that the deed had been done, and it was what it was. He simply did not care.

Behind the register, Kathy’s pursed lips curled into a snarl. Mark could hear her exhales, the rage building inside her and getting ready to explode out. She had double-checked her math. She had discovered the missing money.

Not pure, then, Mark thought. Not freshly washed.

The Nazarenes taught young pastors that forgiveness and salvation could come only after repentance. Repentance meant admitting your sinfulness, feeling remorse for the evil you have done, and making amends where necessary and possible. That meant acknowledging the wrongs you’ve done to others and asking for their forgiveness as well as the forgiveness of the Father and the Son.

There was some grace, of course. If the people you’ve wronged are unwilling to forgive you, even after you’ve admitted your sins and asked for it, you are still forgiven in the eyes of the Heavenly Father. But not until you’ve first endeavored to make earthly amends.

At this moment, Kathy was only aware that money was missing. Either a mistake had been made during the day’s transactions, or a crime had been committed right under her nose. She did not know which of those things had happened. If she alleged a crime, he thought it was unlikely that Nazarene Pastor Mark MacDonald would be her prime suspect. So, until Mark admitted his misdeed and asked for her forgiveness—more than that, until he confessed his sin to the congregation and begged for their forgiveness—he could not be truly forgiven.

The freedom he experienced after Marilyn had drained her meal of gunk out of him was false freedom. If scripture was truth (and after a lifetime in service of it, he had no reason to think it was not), this guiltless, sinless state of being he perceived could only be the work of a deceiver.

Mark sat up straight in his chair. Marilyn was not looking at him. Her attention was divided between the two young men at her feet, bouncing back and forth one to the other as they asked her questions and tried to impress her with a few mildly embellished truths about themselves and their daily adventures in the wilds of rural Tennessee. Peter sat still in his hiding place behind Donna, who remained preoccupied with the helpless bundle on her lap.

Mark mashed the palms of his hands into the tops of his knees and stood up. His chair scraped loudly against the floor as he did so, drawing the attention of Marilyn and all those around her. He drew in a deep breath, leveled the forefinger of his right hand at her, and screamed.

“DECEIVER!” he roared. “DEMON! DEVIL! APOSTATE FROM HELL!”