Horror Story: Theological Breakdown

Clyde picked up his girlfriend Sarah one night for a date, he said they were going to a party over in the next town. Walking out her front door, Sarah's long blonde hair looked incredible, he complimented her and they started driving. He took her down a shortcut, a long winding dirt road. But they had only gone about twenty miles when Clyde's car broke down - it croaked with white smoke gushing out of the fizzing radiator, so he pulled over about a block away from an old white church.

He cursed and got out and played around under the hood for awhile. Sarah didn't know how terrible Clyde was with cars or that he couldn't cope with anything mechanical. She didn't know they would never make it to the party on time. After thirty minutes of trying to fix the problem, he quit and used Sarah's cell-phone to call his friend Hank and asked him to come rescue them. Hank said it would take about an hour for him to get there. So Clyde got in the car and cuddled up with Sarah and they stared at the doorless windowless abandoned white church and it reminded Clyde of a story, which he decided to tell to pass the time.

"My uncle Luther had a friend who used to preach to empty seats," Clyde began. "The man's name was Lonnie, and he lived above an abandoned movie theater. Before getting religious, Lonnie had made a living playing the piano in bars. But then he had a series of strokes and became terrified of dying. So he got saved, built a crude pulpit, placed it in front of the theater seats, then preached fire and brimstone to no one at all for six days out of the week.

"My uncle used to visit Lonnie often. And when he would walk to Lonnie's apartment he could hear him yelling and pounding on things from a block away. But still my uncle loved to go there and admire all of Lonnie's unique possessions -- he had ancient wooden ukuleles, rare pocket watches, strange guitars that he'd modified himself, antique vases, a Stradivarius violin worth quite a bit of money, strange paintings he'd collected from outsider artists, along with other cheaper things that he'd pilfered from alleyways and the city dump.

"So my uncle told me that after years of preaching to empty seats, Lonnie became a little bored and dissatisfied with the whole thing, so he took to visiting two local preachers -- Pastor Domenick and Pastor Leto; they were real preachers, unlike Lonnie -- and he would pester them for hours. He had bothered them for handouts since he stopped playing the piano in bars, but now he would regularly stay and talk to the preachers for a long time, advising them on the proper way to conduct their churches and how to preach their sermons. Lonnie would visit Pastor Domenick and Pastor Leto every day, telling them what to do. Staying longer and longer, getting more erratic in his personal behavior, until finally one of the preachers called the authorities on him. I don't know the specific details but they took Lonnie to a mental facility and no one ever saw him again. Except for my uncle.

"Then strange things began happening to the preachers that Lonnie had been visiting. One Sunday, Pastor Domenick finished his sermon and the piano player began playing one of the normal hymns. Everyone sang along as usual. But when the hymn was over, Pastor Domenick went to the piano, sat down, and played a bawdy honky-tonk song for everyone. Just like the ones Lonnie used to play in the beer joints. The entire congregation was shocked. They all thought it was wildly inappropriate behavior, of course. No one could figure out what prompted the preacher to do this. After playing the song he snapped out of it and acted like nothing had happened.

"My uncle saw the whole spectacle though and he immediately thought of Lonnie in the mental institution.

"Then a bizarre thing happened to Pastor Leto. Remember that the main reason my uncle used to visit Lonnie was to see all the rare things he had accumulated over the years and to make trades with him?

"Well, one Sunday everyone noticed Pastor Leto had a few objects on display in his church, things that didn't belong there. He had bottles of pills and medicine and perfume sitting up on the pulpit. Before the sermon started one man asked Pastor Leto about the bottles, but he just ignored him. Then later that night for the evening sermon, Pastor Leto carried in a weird lamp with belly dancers on the lamp shade. He'd also set a giant ashtray on a stand beside his pulpit and smoked cigars as he preached. Gradually the members of the congregation noticed more objects in various places scattered around the church: nunchukas, pocket knives, watches, binoculars, large bowie knives, ukeleles, peace pipes, carved ducks, homemade canes with women's faces on them, primitive bows and arrows, ... When my uncle Luther heard about this, he immediately thought of Lonnie again.

"Everyone in town started gossiping about the preachers' bizarre behavior and no one could figure out the cause."

"Then the eeriest situation of all occurred. But first you need more information about Lonnie to understand it. My uncle said before Lonnie had been committed, he had fallen in love with a bank teller. At least three times a week he would find an excuse to go into the bank and drool over this nice, delicate, red-headed woman. He fell in love with her while he was in his religious phase, so he would go into the bank, stare at her for several minutes, then begin praying loudly for God to give him this woman.

'Please let me have her, Lord!' he would scream frantically. "This is all I will ever ask of you! Oh God, please give me this woman! Let her be mine!'

The bank teller almost quit several times she was so embarrassed from Lonnie's behavior. Her husband got really upset about it too. Occasionally he would go into the bank and wait around for Lonnie to show up. Of course if Lonnie saw the husband around he would act polite and not go into hysterics asking God to give him the woman. And the next day Lonnie would just go to the bank to see her at a different time. He did this for about two months until the bank refused to provide him service. And he was sent off to the loony bin shortly afterward...

"Well, back to the preacher. Pastor Domenick was giving his sermon one Sunday when he noticed an incredibly beautiful woman in the audience. Blonde, fair-skinned, voluptuous. She had been attending church for a few weeks at that point, but for some reason the preacher acted as if he had just then realized how lovely she was. So in the middle of his sermon, Pastor Domenick stopped cold and stared directly at her. Then he began petitioning for the Lord to give him this woman as he walked toward her staring into her eyes.

'Let this woman be my wife, Lord!' he yelled. He raised his arms and shouted up to Heaven, 'Please Lord, give me this woman! I will do anything if you let me have her!' Pastor Domenick's voice was extremely high-pitched and deranged-sounding.

"The whole congregation was disturbed and outraged. Some shifted in their seats and others got up and walked out. Pastor Domenick was acting just as Lonnie did when he would go into the bank to see the red-headed bank teller.

"And the woman's husband sitting next to her -- the one in church -- he became livid from the preacher's appeals for his wife. His face turned so red it was like he'd been scalded with grease. And after enduring the preacher's shouting for several minutes, the husband jumped out of his seat and stalked toward the preacher. Several men rose and restrained him before he became violent, then he turned and grabbed his wife by the arm and they walked out.

"Also, around the time the two preachers were acting so strangely the police were still receiving calls from the pastors reporting that Lonnie was still hanging around their churches bothering them. The cops knew this wasn't true. They would just call the mental institution and confirm that Lonnie was still a patient there. And when the preacher's continued complaining about Lonnie, the police decided to send some of the faculty from the mental hospital out to evaluate them.

"Pastor Domenick and Pastor Leto were both found to be delusional.

"And they ended up being commited to the same mental institution as Lonnie.

"The town fell into a chaotic uproar with the unfolding of these bizarre events. And my uncle Luther upon hearing these stories decided to pay Lonnie a visit in the mental facility. Before my uncle saw Lonnie the doctors told him his condition had greatly improved as soon as the pastors had arrived: Lonnie would walk around all day smiling continuously.

"My uncle never told me everything Lonnie conveyed to him on that visit, but he did mention that Lonnie was studying Christian Mysticism and Voodoo in his spare time -- the floor of Lonnie's room was covered with books and he asked my uncle if he could bring him more tomes by Jakob Bohme and a few other mystics.

"So it was pretty obvious that Lonnie had been working some kind of magick on the pastors to get them committed to the same mental institution. The preachers continued their uncanny behavior, getting crazier and crazier, the staff pumping them full of more and more psychotic drugs, until one day they both just disappeared completely. Vanished. Nobody could find any trace of them whatsoever."

Sarah was lying in Clyde's arms. He leaned his head forward to look at her face. For a second he thought she might have fallen asleep. But then he saw her eyes wide open and her face emotionless. "So what do you think of the story?" he asked.

Sarah squinted skeptically. "Is it true? Was this guy Lonnie really from our town?"

Clyde smoothed her blonde hair. "Yeah, he really was. My uncle really knew him."

"How did he make those preachers disappear?"

"Nobody knows."

"Did Lonnie kill them?"

"Probably."

Sarah flinched as someone suddenly sprang out of the grass next to the car. A tall figure jumped out and ran toward the church. The person was wearing a long black robe and Sarah watched them turn around and dart into some tall weeds.

"Clyde! Who the hell is that?"

"I don't know. I didn't get a good look!"

"Get out of the car and check!"

Clyde started to open the door but then the robed man walked out of the tall grass slowly and Sarah screamed for a long time. A large hood concealed most of the man's face and he was holding a Bible in one hand. He raised his other arm and brushed back his hood, revealing a face covered by a white featureless mask. Sarah screamed again and started flailing her arms.

Clyde didn't move. The masked robed man walked toward them and Sarah watched as he pulled a large pistol from the pocket of his robe. He raised it overhead and waved it in the air. He stalked toward them, raising the Bible and shaking it back and forth. Clyde grabbed Sarah and held her as she kicked and screamed and flailed her arms. The robed man stopped a foot from their car and pointed the pistol directly at them. Then he raised it until it barely cleared the roof and fired four times. Sarah ducked and tried to reach the handle of the car to get out, but Clyde was holding her too tightly.

"It's Lonnie, the insane preacher!" Sarah yelled. "Let me go!"

Then the robed man lifted his mask and walked toward the car.

Sarah saw that it was Hank, Clyde's friend who had been called earlier to pick them up.

Hank walked over to Sarah's window and propped his arm up on the roof. Leaning down he said, "Hey, do you all need a ride, or what?"

-end-

Jason Earls is the author of the books Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover's books, Neometropolis, Wretched & Violent, Mathworld, Chiaroscuro, Switchblade, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG's Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Werewolf, Recreational and Educational Computing, Thirteen, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Prime Curios, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Swallow's Tail, and other publications. He currently resides in Texas with his wife, Christine.