It’s the same with every killing, I think from my front yard perch: its work done, the beast impales the head on a pole in the victim’s front yard. Two nights ago, it was my friend Bob Nod, whose head grinned ghoulishly at me and whose open eyes screamed at me as I drove by the Nod’s little cottage on my way to the college yesterday morning. I’ll miss Bob, a regular at church council meetings.

I had become used to the ritual of killings by the time Bob Nod was knocked off When the sun set last night and suffocating darkness fell, I stayed awake, pulse racing, listening to dogs howl, waiting for the great flapping bat-beast to claim another victim, thinking about Bob Nod’s eyes. Generally, the beast kills three nights in a row, disappears for ten days, and returns for another three-night kill.

Last night, the darkness was thick as glue, a tangible black mass. Sweat and humidity formed a sticky coat inches from my skin. Sick at heart, feeling the flames of hell lapping at my feet, I spent hours leaning against the second story window, looking at my neighbors’ houses just down the hill, feeling abandoned by Amy and the kids, feeling like a man marked by God.

Near midnight the wind howled. Lightening struck in the east and west, and I looked to the distant mountains for the Son of Man. My response can be traced to some Biblical prophecy I had read long ago about the return of Christ. I peered through the darkness, certain something was there. Whatever it was, I knew it wasn’t Jesus. After fifteen or twenty minutes, I made out an object sailing in the sky towards Roseburg and, as it grew closer, I was reminded of a creature from my recurring nightmare: a winged serpent swimming through Hell’s dark waters. Closer still, it hovered over Buck’s house.

Buck had a shady one-story just down the hill and, I am sure, had been asleep in his big living room chair when the explosive roof-landing of the bat-thing woke him. I could feel the landing from across the street. From my window, I watched the beast land, the sky lit by lightening, watched it rip and dig with its claws through Buck’s shingles and then drop through the hole in the roof, like a feather, into the room below. Buck’s screams must have lasted an hour. I waited, finished another beer, wondering if I should run for my own life or call a Priest. The next morning, when I went outside to get the paper, I looked up at Buck’s house. There, in his front yard, impaled on a pole, was Buck’s head, eyes open; Buck was smiling obscenely. I swear Buck’s eyes were screaming at me. I was to unsettled to do anything but go back into the house.

That morning, over coffee, bacon, and eggs, I told Amy what I had seen the night before and mentioned that Buck had probably been terrified when the thing came exploding through his ceiling, sending plaster fragments flying everywhere. I had seen the whole thing in a dream, I asserted. I didn’t tell her about the head in the yard.

"Huh. Some dream," Amy muttered, sipping coffee and running her eyes over the obituaries in the news paper.

"Must have scared the shit outa big Buck," I chortled, munching toast and gulping my orange juice.

"No doubt," murmured Amy, never at her best in the morning. Her eyes burrowed into the obituary section.

"Chomp, chomp, chomp," I said, thinking of the beast taking bites out of Buck. "Buck musta been one tasty pie."

"Jesus. Chomp, chomp, chomp. What a fuckin’ dream. Jesus Christ, you’re hopeless," she said, glancing up at me, then returning to her reading.

I smiled. I knew Amy was disgusted, but I couldn’t help myself. I like to think the thing seized Buck instantly, shattering his bones like a stack of twigs and biting off his head, geysers of blood spraying the walls. I wondered if Buck’s wife or his mother Billy Jo, who had lived with Buck for twenty years, had seen the spectacle and, if so, what they had thought of it. The police showed up, two days later, after Buck had failed to phone into the office. His wife and mother, seated on the couch in front of the TV, were dead, their bodies drained of blood.

The very next evening, Bradley Crane bit the dust. An offensive man, Bradley had taught at the local college; we had even shared an office until Bradley spread the rumor that I was behaving inappropriately with my students. An obese, balding man whose tiny wire-rimmed spectacles made me think of a fat white rat, Bradley generally stayed up until two am. I remember the night of his demise, assured even then that the beast would not come after me because, following the example of the children of Israel during the very first Passover, I had smeared the areas above and to the side of the front door with blood of doves. (I couldn’t find any sheep in the area.)

From my second story window, I watched Bradley’s house just down the street, almost as if I sensed death’s coming, and suddenly heard the overhead whoosh: flying through a darkness as palpable as soup, the thing landed on Bradley’s roof, rested for a moment, and then used both taloned fists to break away the tiles to get at its victim.

I almost cheered for Bradley, as he came crashing through his front window and bolted toward my house, screaming "Steele! Steele! For Christ’s sake, let me in! let me in! let me in!" He yelled all the way down the street, and I couldn’t help wonder what the neighbors thought. When he was just outside my front door, I yelled at him from the window, "Can’t do it, old man! Can’t fuckin’ do it! We lock the doors at ten. Sorry." I smiled to myself and watched as the huge bat-thing came exploding through the broken window, caught up to its victim, grabbed head and neck in its talons, tore my colleague limb from limb right in my front yard, and spent the next hour or so having Bradley for snacks.

To give him credit, Bradley put up a fight, at one point grabbing the thing around the neck; as he struggled, I could hear him shouting "Oh, help me, someone! Oh, sweet Jesus, help me, help me, help me." When I heard his pleas, it occurred to me that Bradley might be religious, and I considered praying for him. The next morning, as I drove past his house to work, I saw Bradley’s head impaled on a pole in his front yard, eyes open, grinning from ear to ear. I could swear the eyes were screaming at me. On the way home, I stopped, took a picture of Bradley-on-the-stake, and shared it with Amy and the kids over dinner.

But I get ahead of myself. Something needs saying about Jenny’s parents. When they moved to Roseburg from Boise, Jenny’s father Ted landed a job with a top real estate firm in the region and her mother Gracie won a couple million from a lottery. In a short time, Ted and Gracie were nearly running Roseburg. Naturally, I resented them. I think we all did.

When Jenny was born four years after Ted and Gracie moved here, Pastor Ray—black/blind preacher of the eternal gospel of our Lord---proclaimed during Jenny’s baptism that he could see the Spirit of the Lord resting upon the child. I thought to myself, my hair literally standing on end: Jesus, this Sunday morning service is something right out of the Gospels! It was John the Baptist baptizing Jesus again.

The congregation became hushed as Ray immersed little Jenny in water and then held the child over his head for everyone in the church to see. Now came the blessing or curse, something the Pastor always felt moved to issue following baptism. "Anyone who injures Jenny Curtis," Pastor warned our congregation, many of whom had already committed abominable sins, "on him will the Lord take vengeance seven times." That day, fourteen years ago, when Ray uttered the curse in his booming Mt. Sinai voice, a shudder went through the congregation, some of whom years later agreed that Jenny should die for all. I froze. My heart stopped beating for at least a minute. What many took as an expression of Pentecostal paranoia later revealed itself as gospel-inspired prophecy. I should have listened to Ray.

Word of Jake’s supposed decision spread like a cancer in this small town, but no one took it seriously at first. They knew Jake, a muddle-head from birth. Jake had spent the afternoon of the announcement getting sloshed with me at Stoney’s Tavern, located just behind the K-Mart on Fourth Street and right next to the fire station. Rumor had it that the proclamation had issued from Jake’s table located in the back of the tavern and next to the women’s restroom, that Jake had claimed being visited the night before by a dark spirit who had demanded the head and soul of Jenny Curtis. Of course, it was I who had put the notion of the demonic visitation in Jake’s generally pickled brain.

"A dark spirit, sir?" I asked, looking Mullins in the eyes. Jake’s head was slowly nodding as it does after he’s had too many.

"That’s right, Steele," the dunce slurred. "A dark spirit. Maybe a dark angel. Maybe the Devil. That’s what you said, isn’t it?" More powerful and respected than I, Jake had nonetheless always been dumb as a bag of rocks.

"That’s wonderful," I said. "And, truth be known, sir," I added, "I have seen more than one dark spirit in my time."

"You, Steele? You? And what’d you do?"

"Sir, as the saying goes, ‘don’t piss of the spirits.’ I did whatever they told me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And if the thing tells you to disembowel and impale little Jenny Curtis, then I, sir, would not hesitate to do it." Jenny’s father, by the way, was heading a drive to get me fired at the college for indecent behavior.

"But Jenny," the mayor droned, "is such a pretty girl."

"All the better." Jake had narrowly defeated Jenny’s father for his position. I thought that making an example of little Jenny would solidify Jake’s power base and make my position in the community more secure.

"But we’ve known the Curtis family since they moved here from Boise. Nice folks," Jake whined.

Oh, for fuck’s sakes, I thought to myself, calling silently upon the darker powers to persuade this man.

"Ted and Gracie, sir?" I asked. "Boise, Idaho? Those left-wing liberals? They’re straight outa Berkeley. Fuckin’ liberal atheists. They wanna destroy Preacher Ray. Not people you can rely on." After his parents had died years ago, Jake had been raised by Preacher Ray.

"Huh. Damned atheists," slurred the mayor. "Didn’t know that."

"Satanists, sir," I added.

Jake looked at me with his sad puppy-dog eyes.

"Besides, sir, Curtis’d take your job and fry your ass in a minute," I asserted. "He’s tryin’ to take my job, isn’t he?"

"Maybe you’re right," mumbled Jake.

"Of course I’m right. And Jenny works topless in a bar just outa town, sir. She’s a disgrace. I hear she’s a witch." This much was true, by the way. I had seen Jenny dance naked many times.

"A witch that strips?" Jake mumbled, his eyes suddenly fixed on me. I’d hit a nerve. I knew that Jake loved two things in life: the Bible and strippers. Strippers could be Baptist or Pentecostal, but they couldn’t be devil-worshipers.

"Worst kind of witch, sir."

Jake paused, grumbled, stared into his glass of beer.

"Sir," I added, "let me remind you that public executions are now legal in our state." This was also true. In a radical move, last session our state had not only brought back the death-penalty, but had done so with a popular vengeance: criminals could be executed in public. I knew I had Jake.

I made sure that word quickly spread: the mayor wanted Jenny’s head. Of course, as I said, at first no one took seriously the rumor that Jenny Curtis was going to die for the community. No one, that is, except for black/blind preacher Ray. A monument to the town’s once steadfast faith, Ray seemed ageless and had been pounding the pulpit of Precious Blood Pentecostal Church for longer than I or anyone else in the community could remember. When word of the mayor’s proclamation reached him, Ray took note. Predictably, the next few Sundays, Preacher Ray reviled Jake from the pulpit, branding him a puppet of Satan and then turning on me, to whom he referred as "evil" and "demonic." Jake sat in the second row; I sat in the back, getting angrier by the second. After all, this was the preacher who had told me, years ago after my parents had died in a trailer fire, that the good Lord had taken my parents from me for a reason. This is the preacher who had caused me to revile God, to turn away from him, to begin plotting day and night against the called elect who had been blessed with health and prosperity.

Ray’s preaching went on for weeks, day and night, in the tradition of Old Testament prophets. I listened, gnashing my teeth in silence, realizing that this was something that I had to stop. Finally, one Saturday night, six months later, my distant cousin Troy Merchant and his two half-wit sons broke into Ray’s house, killed Ray, his wife, and his dog, and set the house on fire. It was a glorious fire, and everyone in the town turned out to watch the one hundred year old Victorian mansion that Ray and his family inhabited consumed in flame. I wondered what the preacher’s last thoughts were before he burned. He probably thought he was going to Hell. I hope so.

Six months later, the state’s economy having bottomed out, the community having reached a consensus that something needed to be to restore our fortunes, Jenny Curtis was dragged naked and screaming from her house to the village square. Her parents stood by in mute wonder. It was a Thursday night, Jenny and her parents sitting at home, watching TV or playing monopoly or doing whatever they did on the nights Jenny wasn’t dancing. When the doorbell rang at seven and Jenny’s dad opened the door, the callers ran into the house. After knocking her father to the floor, we forcibly seized Jenny, ripped the clothes off the screaming girl, and carried her out of the house towards the middle of the town.

Jenny’s parents were amazed that neighbors with whom they had dined and slept and gone to movies would go so far as to believe that the Sacrifice of Innocence would bring health, wealth, and prosperity to Roseburg. The parents watched and followed in sickened disbelief, I am sure, as they saw their beloved Jenny carried down Main Street, tied to the great wooden block in the middle of the square that sat across Main street from K-mart. Like visitors allowed into Hell’s inner circle, they howled when they saw the legs of their screaming, crying daughter separated and bound by rope, watched the village males mount and enter her usually one by one, sometimes two at a time.

I was near the last, and when I climbed up on the block, looking down upon Jenny, ready to penetrate, looking into the eyes of a now frightened animal, I smiled and blew her a kiss.

"You’re mine now, you little tramp," I uttered, getting ready to slip my plug into her socket.

She stopped briefly, looked at me, glanced down, and spat. "Take your best shot, little man," she gasped, hateful and defiant. My manhood shriveling, I climbed down off the block, zipped up and just watched.

Gradually exhausted by the ordeal, Jenny lay on the block, panting like a dying animal. The ordeal finished, I looked down at her, saw her open her eyes, saw the look of defiance, still there. I slowly backed away.

Then, after we had unbound her, Buck Tomlinson and I ran a long pole between her legs and inside her. Jenny screamed like a pig as the pole entered her, and the crowd screamed with her. Yet, aware of the horrible thing happening, Jenny actually tensed all her muscles to stop further penetration, and as Bradley Crane and I lifted the pole, we watched the little tramp die struggling as finally she slid down the pole.

The only unwilling citizen, Jake watched. He had, in his lifetime, seen only one impaling and had hoped never to repeat the experience. "Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord, have I too done this thing?" I remember he loudly wailed, arms outstretched, face gazing upward. Aware that sacrilege was being committed, wondering if the Creator would be angry, he dropped to his knees, looked to the starry night sky, wept deeply, prayed for forgiveness, cried out to the Son of man as Jenny died on the pole. Jenny’s body was left in the square for three days and then, at my direction, her head was severed from her body, which was subsequently tossed into the sea. Jenny’s head was stuck on a post in the front yard of her parents’ house for all to see.

I remember the day we sent Jenny’s body to its rest in the sea. Here the story takes a really grim twist. It was warm, in the low 80’s. Children sang and played in the streets and parks. As soon as Jenny’s body was deposited in the ocean at mid-day, the sky grew black, the sun disappeared, and death descended like a dark cloak upon our community. Standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean, wrapped in darkness, I felt the chill and knew that I had transgressed. I felt the searing, burning separation from God that I had thought was only Biblical fiction. That very morning, Amy had told me that she and the kids would be moving back to Montana to live with her parents.

Always an intelligent man, I was not at my wit’s end. Remembering the Bible from the childhood days I had sat in on Preacher Ray’s Sunday school classes, I spent the following weeks frantically roaming the woods around the village morning, noon, and night, and killing doves, carefully smearing their blood over my door every Sunday evening, saying prayers with my wife and our two children three times a day, and simply waiting for the huge dark thing that, even before Jenny and Ray’s deaths, had hovered just beyond my worst nightmares, in the dimension separating the Living from the Dead. I had seen the thing enter my dreams several times.

One pane was open, permitting a breeze that neither cooled nor relaxed. Peering into the darkness, I heard the distant rustling of wings, then the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, as the thing descended upon and passed over the village, over my house, whose front door frame I had smeared with dove’s blood. Thinking that once again my house had been passed over, I relaxed, took a long drink from my bottle of beer, and began to close the window pane when I heard it: an explosive thud on my roof, like a small earthquake, rocking my house to the foundations. Listening, I heard silence, then hissing, then scraping as the beast dragged itself over my tiled roof. It moved just above me. I heard another thud, this one shaking the house to the core, and I knew that the beast was clawing and pounding its way through the roof to get to me. The noise was a slow-motion jackhammer: bam, bam, bam, bam.

The plaster on my ceiling falling in, the beast ready to begin its descent, I dropped to my knees in a last-ditch effort to save my hide. I tried to pray, bowed my head, closed my eyes tight, felt the horrible swirl of darkness, uttered the words of the Lord’s prayer, asked forgiveness. I shook like a leaf; I could no longer feel. I figured that if Amy and the kids had stayed, I would have been spared.

"Oh Sweet Jesu," I thought another prayer, mimicking the language of medieval mystics, "what wouldst thou of me? What wouldst thou? Thy humble servant, acknowledging multitudinous sin, begs thee forgiveness. Let thy grace touch thy filthy wounded servant." I paused, seeking God’s response, my eyes closed, my soul leaden as a church bell.

Kneeling, kneeling, kneeling, my eyes closed tightly, I awaited my execution. The smell of blood and grease permeated the air as I sensed the beast circle me again and again and again, and yet I prayed that God spare my life and my soul. I became one with my prayer until I was too exhausted to think.

And now I know. It’s plain as day. I am my head, impaled on a post, stuck into the grass of my front yard. I can move nothing but my eyes, so with my eyes, as Jake Mullins drives by, I scream for help. I scream and scream and scream. Of course, Jake can’t hear me. He doesn’t even look. I wait, and when Jenny Curtis’ parents drive by in their suburban, I again scream with my eyes, but they don’t hear me. Within the next hour or so, ten cars drive by my house, some drivers giving me a horrified look, others smiling, and I cry with my eyes to all of them. My eyes speak; they say, "Please help me." (I’m relatively confident that, if I wait long enough, Amy will probably return. I really can’t abide the thought, however, of the kids seeing me like this.)

I glance to stony heaven, beg forgiveness, seek God in the gray clouds. Lightening flashes later this day, temperatures fall, and the ocean pounds the rocks. Clearly, I have been given an eternity, or until my head rots off the pole, to think about what I have done. "I swear by all that is holy," I think, "that I shall never commit another sin." This is my repentance.