29 - Father Joan

Anya rose and took a few steps to pick up the nearest candle. She held it in her palms.

"You might think it strange," she began. "That there is no church in Dagon's Hollow. It isn't because the people here are irreligious. But for one reason or another, the churches established in town seldom last long, no matter the denomination. Perhaps that was what drew a certain preacher here...and that tale is one I will call

FATHER JOAN

The black cassock covered the whole tall, slim form. Onlookers at the train depot would see the wide-brimmed black hat, the clerical collar, the battered leather suitcase, and come to the normal conclusion: a priest. A Christian priest.

It was the exact impression Joan wished to convey.

A man's cassock suited Joan. She had a man's haircut, and tight bindings gave her a thin man's chest. With her glasses and her collar, and a surprisingly deep voice, she passed easily as a roving preacher. The illusion was convenient for her work, her true work—but let us not get ahead of ourselves.

Joan addressed everyone as "brother" or "sister," and introduced herself as "Father John." A few questions directed him to a young widow who had a room to let. The rest of that first day was spent walking the town. From Eastside to Westside, south to where Main Street, newly paved, gave way to unimproved roads. For a long time, "Father John" stood outside an empty storefront, opposite the bank.

A few questions answered what had happened. It had been a theater. Fallen on hard times by the introduction of moving pictures. A sordid ****—the owner had been caught by his wife with a pair of young men he had seduced with **** and coca cigarettes—had been the end of it. The next day, an interview with a lawyer, and Joan had the lease for the property.

Word spread quickly as carpenters and sign painters were engaged.

Dagon's Hollow was about to have a new Christian church.

"What denomination?" Jesse Winters, editor and owner of the Hollow Herald asked when Joan arrived to put an advertisement in the paper.

"Nondenominational," Joan said. "God loves all of his children, is it not so?"

Winters, an old man who had served as a printer's devil with Mark Twain in his boyhood, said nothing. Yet he set the type.

That Sunday, "Father John" opened the doors. A brand-new cross hung from the rafter behind the wooden altar on the stage. It was a curious congregation that crammed the walls. The young widow, Maggie Braithwaite, passed the basket for donations. A trinkle of quarters, the odd dollar bill. The sermon was odd too, having an oddly ritual cast, and highlighting portions of the gospel that few in that room had given much thought to: the Song of Solomon was discussed at great length, and the figure in the cassock on the stage let their voice boom and fill the room.

There was no rail, no sanctum. Not yet. "Father John" made signs over a silver cup, brimming with wine, and walked down to the aisles for those who wished to take communion. If anyone there could take the laudanum laced in the cheap red wine, they gave no sign.

It was a promising start.

That night, Joan returned to the darkened church. She smiled as stripped Maggie Braithwaite, **** with laudanum, and laid her naked form on the altar. A little work with the ropes, and the great cross inverted. Alone in the dark, above the naked widow, the priest sang the words of the Black Mass.

It was a song of promise. Of the defilements that Joan had planned for the men and women of this town. The vows she would break, the dark church she would spread, with the cloying odor of sanctity hiding the corruption that would fester here. The young men and women she would debauch, the old wives whose bellies would swell with bastards, the daughters that would spread their legs for their fathers, all in mockery of the institutions of the holy church.

Maggie stirred in her **** sleep as wafers of the Eucharist were stuffed between her labia. She did not see the ecstasy on Joan's face as she consumed the tainted host, downed the **** wine. Later, I found, she had attended a seminary in Missouri, had actually been ordained before her deception had been discovered. Hers was a darker faith, a deliberate corruption of the Christian rite in honor of Christ's opposite. What she hoped to do in Dagon's Hollow, I do not know. I know only that she was a true believer—

—but Dagon's Hollow had its own kind of faith. One that did not appreciate interlopers.

A slow clap from the balcony celebrated the performance. Joan would have looked up from the stage and seen a figure there, in the seats that had been set aside for the colored folk in the town. She would have seen a woman all in black, her face veiled, raise a hand.

The fire that consumed the new church woke the whole town. Bucket-lines were formed, and the brand new fire wagon hummed to life and hosed down the buildings on either side, containing the blaze to just the one building. Maggie Braithwaite slept through it all, in her own bed in her own house, having drunk too much of Father John's wine the night before. Of the preacher himself, no trace could be found, though he was widely believed to have died in the fire. Certain of the preacher's effects were noted to be missing from his room, notably his bible and another book he had brought with him, which Maggie said was bound in some kind of snakeskin.

Three years later, a figure was found staggering down Main Street, toward the depot. They were naked, and an umbilical cord dangled out from between their gore-stained legs. The eyes were wide and unseeing, and there were scars on her wrist and ankle as from heavy chains. Old Doc Grumman said she must have given birth mere hours before. Auntie, when she looked her over, said she'd given birth at least twice before, by the marks of her body.

She never uttered a word—the tongue had been cut out long ago—and maybe sanity and reason had left long before she collapsed on the railroad tracks, breathing out her last. Yet there were some who remembered Father John when he stepped off the train, three years agone, all smiles and confidence, and this one was almost enough alike to be his sister.

"That was the problem with Father Joan," Anya said softly, almost sadly. "A failure of imagination. She never imagined there could be anything more evil than Satan, any sin that was so far beyond what was written in her Bible and snakeskin book. Never asked what happened to all those others who had tried to get Christ to root in this soil, and found the native plants were firmly rooted, and the souls already claimed by jealous owners."

Anya blew out the candle. For just a moment, those who had been staring at the flame saw a dark shadow of it echo in their vision. Not the absence of the flame, but the very negative image of it. Then they blinked, and that too was gone into the night.