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Devourer of Souls Four
FOURWe made it back to church just as the final hymn rose into full swing. We ditched our empty soda bottles in the dumpster out back. Then we snuck around front, through the front doors, through the foyer and up the balcony stairs. Everything was going according to plan, until we peeked around the corner into the balcony and saw a man sitting in the front row who hadn’t been there when we’d left.Even sitting, he looked tall and imposing. His wide shoulders stretched his impossibly bright yellow suit jacket. Leaning just a bit farther around the corner, I caught the sunny flash of his pant leg and realized his whole suit was a blazing, almost nauseatingly bright yellow. He was leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, chin perched on folded hands. He gazed down upon the congregation with a hungry, intense scrutiny. Like a predatory bird, I thought, stalking its unsuspecting prey.And then, slowly . . . he smiled.Tapping his nose with his index finger, on which glittered a ri
Devourer of Souls Five
FIVEBobby and I parted that night with very little to say, though at the time I’d thought that was because of the congregation’s rush to the parking lot after the service. Bobby got caught up with his family, me with Dad. Looking back, however, I realize that something had already started worming its way between us, which, of course, I didn’t know at the time.I tried not to think about those dead dogs and that weird altar thing as Dad silently drove home. Like anyone faced with something they didn’t understand, I wrapped it up in a little box and shoved it deep down inside me.We were always hearing about weird stuff like that, anyway. A few years before, folks had found dead skinned cats next to the railroad tracks behind the high school. Most kids thought the abandoned barn sitting in an old cornfield on the edge of town was haunted. A ghost girl supposedly haunted Bassler Road on the way to Clifton Heights.Every small town has its creepy stories. Even though our town was smal
Devourer of Souls Six
SIXWhen Dad came to my room that night, I was doing as always before bed: strumming a few unplugged chords on my fender. The feel of strings vibrating under my fingers always helped me relax. Plus, it was my daily ritual. I was going to be a star someday, a shredder the likes of Slash or Mick Mars or Nikki Six.Of course, I didn’t have much talent. Very little separated me from thousands of other young metal heads across the country. Best I ever managed on the guitar was adequate. The biggest venue I ever played was in a Motley Crue cover band named Dr. Feelgood in the Utica bars a few years later. But still, every kid has his dream. Big-time lead guitarist of a platinum-album rock band was mine.Anyway, that night I was strumming a classic Eagles tune—“Hotel California” —when Dad nudged my bedroom door open, leaned back against the door jamb and asked quietly, “What’d you think of Reverend Alistair’s message tonight? We’re awful blessed to have someone of his stature preaching for
Devourer of Souls Seven
SEVENI had my first nightmare that night, of me kneeling at the feet of the good Reverend Alistair McIlvian in that clearing while he reached to the heavens and prayed in a booming voice . . . .BOW DOWN BEFORE HIM, YE FALLEN ONES, SEEK SUPPLICATION AT THE DREAD FEET OF HE WHOSE CEASELESS ROARING ALWAYS AND FOREVER FILLS THE VOID BEYOND THE GATE, FILLS THE TIMELESS SKIES! HIS MIGHT TEARETH THE FOREST AND CRUSHETH THE CITIES, hear THEN HIS VOICE IN THE DARKNESS, ANSWER HIS CALL WITH THINE WHOLE HEART, OPEN YE HEARTS TO BE MADE OVER INTO HIS IMAGE, THE YELLOW KING OF YELLOW SKIES . . .I thought afterward it was just because I was dreaming, but occasionally his words became garbled, voice grating with guttural consonants that didn’t sound English . . . or even human, at all.And the flies.Buzzing and humming beneath McIlvian’s chant, a droning undertone that seemed to rise and fall in cadence with his voice. The curious thing?The flies were yellow.They weren’t bees or hornets
Devourer of Souls Eight
EIGHTI woke, swallowing a sharp cry, sweating. I reached out, flicked on the bedside lamp and sat up. Sickly yellow light spilled onto the floor, throwing the room into a dim glow.Nothing.Empty. No one except me, shivering and sweating in my rumpled bed, as it should be.I blew out a noisy breath, covered my face with my hands, kneading my forehead with my fingertips. Already the nightmare had faded away, leaving me with nothing but a vague foreboding. I recalled scraps of images: those dead dogs in the woods, weird yellow flies buzzing all over them, and that strange altar in the middle of clearing. Something about Reverend McIlvian, also?The nightmare’s dread fingers finally faded. I turned off the lamp and settled back down to sleep. As I drifted off, however, two thoughts bubbled to the surface. One: I thought I’d finally identified the markings carved on the altar. They were, insanely enough, like the yellow sign on the onyx stone set in McIlvian’s ring.Two?Bobby Simm
Devourer of Souls Nine
NINEIn the morning I made sure to get up and out of the house early so I could avoid Dad. The eerie figments left over from the nightmare proved motivation enough to avoid any more talk about VBS and the good Reverend McIlvian.Reverend McIlvian’s a healer.Luckily, I was successful. I’d dressed, eaten and hopped into Bobby’s old 1975 AMC Matador before Dad had even finished showering.It was a pleasant July morning, warm without much humidity. Bobby and I decided to hit one of the few sources of entertainment in Tahawus, our lame little mini-golf course. Done up in an Alice in Wonderland theme, it sported plaster statues of all the main characters: the Mad Hatter, Tweedle Dee and Dum, the Cheshire cat, the White Rabbit, the Queen, and Alice herself. Believe it or not, for such a dinky little golf course, the statues were actually decently done. They bore more than a passing resemblance to the characters from the Disney movie.We were in the middle of our second half-assed game w
Devourer of Souls Ten
TENMy little rant ruined the mood for a good thirty minutes or so. We wandered silently up and down Main Street, looking for somewhere to blow an hour or two. Nothing really caught our interest until we hit The General Store.Yep. It really was named that. It pretty much had everything you needed for just about any occasion: hardware, housewares, linen, toys and books. After wandering our way through the store, using our mutual silence to heal the sores my little outburst had opened, we eventually made our way to its bookstore out back.See, I may love rock’n roll and heavy metal, but I’m not stupid. I love to read, even now. It’s one of the few pleasures I have left. Anyway, I was making straight for the non-fiction section, searching for a Paul McCartney biography I’d wanted, when we came across them: loud and proud, in a screaming yellow cardboard display at the end of the Philosophy/Religion rack.They were hardcover and blazing yellow. The faced-out copies displayed Reverend
Devourer of Souls Eleven
ELEVENI don’t remember much about the ride home. Bobby and I barely spoke as he drove wordlessly, staring down the road, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his copy of The King Wears Yellow.And me?To be honest, I can’t exactly remember, to this day. I think . . . I believe . . . I must’ve spent the ride flipping through my copy of the book. Even that is still a mystery to me. How I could’ve been walking aimlessly through the bookstore one moment, scorning Reverend McIlvian and his healing powers, and the next unconsciously buying his book, of all things.In a way, I suppose it makes some sort of sense. All my life I’d gone to great lengths to convince myself that I was “okay” with my handicap. Turns out I was a pretty decent liar. However, even though it pissed me off that folks—Dad included—had fallen for this shyster’s shit, deep down inside? I suppose a part of me wanted that healing, too. Or at least, a part of me was curious, wanted to see if there was anything to
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Devourer of Souls Coda
CODAThe welcome sign for Tahawus is up ahead on the right. A glance at the dashboard clock on my JEEP shows that, indeed, it is only about forty minutes away from Clifton Heights. I find that hard to believe. It feels like we’ve been driving for hours. Of course, I’ve learned in my few years in the Adirondacks that the back roads feel endless, surrounded on both sides by thick, seemingly impenetrable stands of Adirondack pine. A thirty minute drive to Old Forge feels like an hour and half, most days.As I slow for the turn-off, I glance at Father Ward in the passenger seat. He sits with Nate Slocum’s journal in his lap, staring out the window. He’s been quiet for most the trip. I don’t blame him. His encounter with Stuart Michael Evans sounded harrowing. Of course, he’s now telling himself that clicking sound from Stuart fleeing the confessional booth must’ve been his walker, and not . . . something else. That Stuart had suffered some sort of hysterical break instead of . . .Chang
Devourer of Souls Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREENowFortunately not everyone in town was at church that night. A scattered few—those devoted non-attendees our faithful little town tolerated—had of course been at home. Some of them were volunteer firemen. They were the ones who found me in the basement the next morning.“Somehow I didn’t break my neck falling down those stairs. The heat and the smoke of course rose and enough of the floor held and didn’t collapse on me. I ended up spending only a week over at Clifton Heights General for mild injuries and smoke inhalation. I did, however, suffer ligament damage in my knees and ankles from the fall, exacerbated because of my CP. For several weeks I got around first in a wheel chair, then with a walker.”I sat back in the confessional booth, speechless, deeply concerned for the poor man’s soul, wondering about his sanity . . .Except.I distinctly remembered the burning of Tahawus Methodist Church, the summer after my senior year in high school. My father had helped o
Devourer of Souls Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWOEver see the movie Backdraft, Father? By the summer of my senior year, everyone including me had. A good enough movie, it was mostly forgettable, except there’s this scene in which one of the fireman characters mistakenly opens a door without checking the knob for heat first. When he opens the door, his ass gets fried by a huge gout of flame. A backdraft, caused by the sudden rush of oxygen.Now, I’m not exactly sure if that’s what I was trying to accomplish. Point in fact, I didn’t end up causing a backdraft. For that you need a smoldering fire that’s used up all the oxygen in a room. But hey—I wasn’t a firefighter or arsonist. I was a scared and pissed off (but mostly scared) eighteen year old trapped in a room with no way out. The door was guarded and it didn’t matterby whom, because I wasn’t gonna be waltzing by them any time soon.That chanting was getting louder. Weirder. The words all jumbled and mixed together, like from my nightmare of what I’d seen in that clear
Devourer of Souls Twenty-One
TWENTY-ONEThroughout his entire talk with me, the muffled sound of hymns had drifted from the sanctuary through the storeroom door. When he left, the hymns rose into a crescendo, exploding into a chanting the likes of which I’d never heard before. His voice boomed in that strange language I remembered from my dreams. I imagined him striding up onto the stage, arms spread high into the air, yellow suit blazing with unnatural light, the flesh on his face hanging loose as the thing that hid behind it got closer to finally coming out.I hauled myself to my feet, gasping at the pain exploding in my ankles and knees, gritting my teeth against a sudden surge of bile. Somehow I managed not to puke, leaning back against the shelf, gasping for air, trying to gather my resources for one last final . . .What?What could I possibly do? The man in yellow had covered all the angles. Had obviously planned this whole thing out long before he’d come here. Hell, he’d done it before, apparently, in
Devourer of Souls Twenty
TWENTYWhen I awoke I found myself lying face first on a thinly carpeted floor. My head pounded, feeling about twice its normal size, throbbing behind my eyes. I licked dry, cracked lips and felt my stomach heave.I felt enormously tired. Fuck it all, right? I didn’t understand any of this. Didn’t understand why it was happening. How it could happen so fast. How apparently a quaint little Adirondack hamlet had turned into a compound full of crazed cult members in just several days . . .Of course, you’re assuming it didn’t start quietly, long ago.. . . I barely understood what was really going on beneath the surface of things . . .We’re going to be over into His Unknowable image.. . . and I wasn’t sure I cared much, anymore. My best friend or what remained of him was good as gone. My preacher Dad had not only gone full-on religious-nut-loony, he’d apparently set Bobby and me up as targets or even (fucking unbelievable) sacrifices to invite the man yellow into our town. If the
Devourer of Souls Nineteen
NINETEENBobby’s front door slammed shut in the wake of my frenzied escape, a sharp crack disrupting that quiet July morning. Not caring if anyone saw me, I stumbled to a stop on the front walk, covered my face with my hands and breathed in deeply, trying to quiet the pounding in my head.What the hell had I just seen?In all respects, I’m thankful that to this day only distorted, fragmentary half-images remain of what I saw flopping in that water-filled bathtub. Those fingers, fish-belly white and slimy, had sprouted from a hand and arm of the same color. It had reached up from a body the same as it. Huge, bulging and reptilian-fish eyes had glared unblinkingly from beneath the water, and . . . and . . .Gills.Several rows of them, slits on either side of that . . . thing’s neck, from its ears to its collarbone. Gills, puckering in white skin, pink around the edges, fluttering open and shut in rhythmic pulses, bubbling . . . breathing underwater.Thankfully I remembered no more
Devourer of Souls Eighteen
EIGHTEENIt didn’t take long to figure out why Dad hadn’t heard me scream, if indeed I had. The house was empty. Six-thirty in the morning—way too early for VBS to start, but the house was empty. I had no idea where Dad was. I assumed the church. Where else would the pastor of the town’s only church be during VBS? He’d left no note, however, and I had no idea when he’d left. For all I knew, he could’ve gone two hours ago, thirty minutes ago, or maybe he’d even snuck out last night after I’d fallen asleep. He always made his bed in the morning, so that didn’t offer much in the way of evidence.All these things tumbled through my head as I sat at the den table, staring into nothing. I didn’t know what to think or feel. Three days ago, Bobby and I had skipped the opening Sunday night services of our annual VBS to get snacks from the gas station and to chill. On the way back to the church we stumbled across those two dead dogs and that weird alter with the symbol carved into it. Both of
Devourer of Souls Seventeen
SEVENTEENAmazingly, Dad didn’t wake when I screamed. In fact, I’m not sure whether or not I did scream aloud. All I really remember is jerking upright, heart banging, head pounding, sweating bullets and what sounded like a scream fading in my head.After about fifteen minutes—during which my heart hammered like I’d just finished a marathon—no sounds came from Dad’s room next door. No stirring of bedsprings, no creaking of floor boards, nothing.Eventually, my heart slowed down and my hyperventilating faded. I managed a shaking breath and ran a hand through my sweat-damp hair. I tried to piece together my second nightmare that week. Like last time, only blurred fragments remained. I’d been on the path in the woods heading toward that clearing, from which had come a strange and unsettling but also arousing medley of growling moans, grunting, hissing and yowling . . .The man in yellow.He’d been there. His face had looked different, however. Like a loose-fitting rubber mask. I reme
Devourer of Souls Sixteen
SIXTEENIn the dream I was walking down the path again, this time at night. I shouldn’t have been able to see much, but the moon above seemed strangely large and bright. It cast an odd luminescence that filtered through the trees, bathing everything in an eerie yellow glow. The path seemed different. Alien. As if I didn’t belong there. It looked like the path running through the woods from the gas station to the church, but it also looked like it led elsewhere, somewhere different . . .Somewhere beyond.Up ahead on my left, I recognized the break in undergrowth leading to the clearing where Bobby and I discovered those two dead dogs and that weird altar. As I quickened my pace, compelled toward that clearing, I felt myself moving along the path smoothly, quickly, with purpose, strength and ease. I was walking with a rhythmic, even gait. I felt no pain in my extremities or my lower back at all.I didn’t look down at my legs, however, just marveled at how fluidly I was moving down t
