Stimp, the Prophet Man

Vengeance: Skin Stealer

Pastor Rob

This is episode 9 in a storytelling experiment. Read each episode as a standalone chapter, or start at the beginning.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

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-Recap-

Stimp couldn’t save Lindy. The woman dissolved into ashes as soon as she left the shelter. It turns out Pastor Rob is more than a mere human, but Stimp isn’t alone. The showdown between good and evil happens tonight, and Stimp is God’s mouthpiece, his hands on earth, his Prophet.

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Vengeance

The arched doors to the church were open, an orange glow in the storm darkened night. Stimp could barely breathe by the time he reached it, the cramp in his side so bad that he was numb with pain. Fire breathed up and down every muscle, from knee to sternum. 

Candles lined the sides, some in old glass lanterns, others, tall and raised on golden candleholders. The effect was a strange, flickering glow. The church was ordinary in every way. Old wooden pews lined and adoring the pale, crucified Christ on the cross. 

The figure was at the very back of the sanctuary, lifted twenty or more feet in the air, arms stretched out, black blood dripping at the seam where a spear had pierced his side. Just below him, a round stage, a half circle decorated with candles around the edge and leading up the burgundy, carpeted stairs. On either side of the cross hung two heavy, red velvet curtains, heavily rippled. 

Stimp looked up and watched the evil shadows that shimmered across the domed ceiling, long ago painted in the style of the Sistine Chapel. He stared, blinked, waited for his eyes to clear, change what he could not be seeing. The images betrayed something ghastly. Instead of cherubs, there were horned, fat creatures. In place of angels, there were images of Hell, strange beasts that tore at human flesh, feasts of red meat dripping in blood, disguised by the airy pastels and heavenly light painted there. 

As he stared, he walked, until his knee hit a pew, his hand holding his ribs on his bad side. On the stage, dead center, was an old oak podium, the wood worn at the edges by dozens of preacher’s hands that had come before Pastor Rob. He crossed the front of the church, like so many before him had for communion and salvation prayers, and headed to the stairs. Each step had a single candle, placed deliberately at the edge so as not to be knocked over. 

More candles filled the stage area, crowding together to form a rugged path to the center, where the eyes of Christ could peel away from the sky—Elohim, Elohim—and stare down at the sinners congregated below. In a round clearing just under the cross was a box.

It was a great dark chest, ornate and carved of iron. The latch was black.

A coffer.

From this angle, Stimp could see great round handles on either side, as if it had been carried. A stream of images flashed in his mind’s eye. He saw it in the streets of Jerusalem, heavy, arranged on the floor of the Temple when Jesus overthrew the tables as the money changers laughed and stuffed coins from the poor into its great metal mouth. Then marched down remote village roads in Europe as priests asked for money from the poor, for the poor. Then on a great ship, crossing to the New World to convert the heathen Indians that lived and worshipped there, filled with the blood gold of their attempted eradication.

And now, in this place. An uneasiness gripped him, the same alarm bells that had saved him from shootings and alleyway brawls. He stopped, waited for God to speak, and when nothing came, he went to it. He kneeled down on his good knee, his heart beating hard as he reached to open the lid. 

He had just lifted the heavy metal latch when the sanctuary door banged open, hitting the stone wall hard enough to crack. In the arched doorway stood Pastor Rob, his mouth stained black with ash, his chin dripping, the liquid sticky and dark like molasses. He seemed taller now, the skin on him stretched thin. 

He stepped forward and Stimp heard a crackling like dead leaves underfoot. The skin on his neck was lifting away, exposing red muscle beneath. 

“I needed her.”

His voice was unrecognizable, more growl than human. He was moving towards him, taking small painful steps forward. Something was wrong with him, his eyes black and wild, a wounded animal. Stimp backed away. 

Open it. 

God’s whisper came with a gentle wind that threatened to blow out the candles, leave him stranded there in utter darkness. He turned towards the chest—

“Don’t touch it!” 

—and opened the lid. Inside, scraps of clothing and shoelaces. A lipstick tube, dark purple smeared and waxy on the black plastic. Stimp reached, hesitated, then pulled out a baby doll. An eye had been removed, the black empty hole stuffed with human hair. It was auburn. The reddish brown strands draped across the pale cheek of the plastic doll face, the good eye rocking shut as the doll laid flat in Stimp’s grasp.   

Beneath that, a strange array of dolls. Barbies, babies, G.I. Joes. Some only heads without bodies. Eyes removed. Strange symbols drawn in permanent marker on the plastic. And names. Stimp recognized them from the pastor’s office. He picked up a tan, dollar-store Barbie, the plastic hair cut jagged, made stranger by soft, curled wisps of real hair that had been flimsily glued to the head. Human hair. He pulled his fingers away, and a few strands stuck to him. On the naked breasts, a name: Nancy, 1999. The girl from the photo.

Stimp dropped the doll back into the box and rubbed his hands together, disgusted. He turned back. The pastor was hunched, leaning heavily on the pews.

“What is this?” Stimp’s voice caught. A drop of water hit his hand. He moved a palm to his face and felt tears. He was crying.

Pastor Rob chuckled, the laugh liquid and garbled. 

“Don’t you get it? They’re mine. Like children, only they owe me something.”

“What do you mean?”

His head hung, and he turned it towards Stimp, the light casting strange shadows on his face, the darkness around his eyes like empty sockets in a skull.

“I give them what they want, what you all want.”

He snapped his fingers, and a brown bag appeared on the podium. The same one that he had carried away from Three’s place on the day of the accident. 

“It’s not—”

“It is,” the pastor sneered. “It’s exactly what you’ve been looking for. The reason you ran down that hall. Why you saved all those yummy little pills, though I’ve got to admit,” he straightened, and another flap of skin pulled and snapped away from his collar bone, “I’ve never been one for crystal myself. It’s a nasty habit Stimp.”

He took another step forward, and the pale, hanging skin of his neck flapped against exposed muscle. 

“I know why you’re doing this. Why you agreed.” He held out a palm, a little pile of opaque crystals in his hand. 

Stimp’s mouth filled with warm saliva. He licked his lips, the salt from his tears stinging the cracked skin, and took a step forward. 

“They make it out to be so bad. Lindy, in the closet. I know, I know what it looks like,” his hands were at his chest, his mouth a frown of understanding, “but that’s not the whole picture. I’ve been taking care of her for years. And what thanks do I get!”

The bag of goods was on the podium. Stimp’s limbs felt electric, almost stinging with want. 

“Your God is a God of suffering,” the pastor said, and nodded his head towards the cross. “Haven’t you had enough of that?”

“Yes,” Stimp whispered, and took another step towards the podium. 

“Yes, yes. Then let me help you. I’ll give you what you want, as much as you want. Bags and bags of it Stimp. And when the time comes, you give me yourself.”

The pastor was near the stairs now. Stimp was at the podium, the bag within arm’s reach. 

“I promissse,” his words hissed out, snakelike, “when the time comes, it won’t hurt.”

Stimp grabbed the bag, the paper crinkling in his grasp. Pastor Rob smiled and sighed. The air around Stimp warmed, and the candles along the walls and the edge of the stage flickered. Pastor Rob stared for a minute, and Stimp smiled back. 

He took a step back towards the chest and opened the bag. Inside were rocks upon rocks, more meth than he had ever held in his life. His own sacred treasure chest.

Check your pocket. 

Stimp patted his right pant leg, felt something hard and squared. He reached in, and recognized that cool metal against his skin. The lighter. He pulled it out, and something drifted to the floor. It was the picture. Juniper looked up at him, her name written below the photograph in the pastor’s blue ink scribble. Stimp looked up, his mouth suddenly dry. 

“Stimp—”

He turned, and in one motion flicked the lighter to life, and set the brown bag on fire. 

“Drop it,” God said, and he did, letting the flaming blue ball fall into the chest of dolls. 

Pastor Rob screamed and dropped to all fours, crawling towards the flaming box. Black smoke rose from it, and the faces of dolls, glassy eyed and bodiless, melted. The scent of burning hair and flesh overtook Stimp, and he covered his mouth and backed away from the chest. 

The red curtains that fell to either side of the crucified Christ caught fire, and for a moment, Stimp could see the wrath of God in those eyes. He turned and ran down the stairs, coughing and gagging at the new smell—sulfur—that filled his nostrils. 

He turned when he reached the door. Pastor Rob was wailing on his knees, grabbing at the burning doll heads and screaming. He was changing too. A great, white pillar of smoke rose from his head. The last thing that Stimp saw was his long arms stretched out, his head turned up to heaven. The skin there was dripping like candle wax, revealing a starving, grotesque creature beneath.

It writhed in pain, caught fire as the chest in front of it burned impossibly. Stimp turned and wretched, then stumbled out into the cool black night. A line of people, dots of wrinkled faces with sallow eyes, poured out of the shelter, the refuse of the world made holy in the light of the burning church across the street. 

Some held back in the entryway and watched the others, waited for them to turn to ash. When they didn’t, they stepped through the naked door frames gingerly, careful not to catch ankles or feet on the broken glass. One by one, they came to him, a line forming to watch the place burn, like fireworks on the Fourth of July. 

The wind picked up and fanned the flames. Black smoke wicked up and away from the crowd just before blue orange flame licked up the sides of the stone building. Stimp sat down where he was and grimaced. His face was covered in the ashes of his crystal offering. He hurt, but the ache that drove him to Three’s place in the weeks before was gone, in its place something like peace. 

“Stimp?”

He turned and saw her, all legs from this angle, lanky and alive despite the photo. Juniper. He made to stand up, but she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck from behind. He hugged her back for the first time. She stood and stared at the church, the shimmer in her eyes reflecting the fire that engulfed the stone building she had ventured into years before looking for help. She had put her offering in that coffer, a tube of lipstick from her purse. 

“Is he—”

“Gone. Yes.”

She laughed relief and shook her head.

“You know I put your stuff in there too?”

Stimp looked at her. 

“I grabbed your things after the accident. I brought them here. To him.” She looked away from him and down at the ground. 

“Why would you do that?”

“I thought you were going to die! I gave him something of yours. That’s all he needs to start.”

“Start what?”

She turned to him with hopeless eyes. 

“The transformation.”

Stimp stared at her, not understanding.

“Inhabitation?”

He shook his head, and she leaned in and whispered.

“Possession.”

Stimp scrambled to his feet and backed away from her. 

“Stay the fuck away from me Junie.”

She smiled up at him. “You can’t beat him. He’s been around for sooo looong,” the words stretched out, and her mouth hung open at the end of them.

Stimp thought of the whispers. The wind of God. The maniacal laughter that had led him down the dark hallways, to the office where Lindy was trapped. The stretched skin of Pastor Rob, as it popped away like seams in a shirt. The creature that was Pastor Rob, and its final fall into the flames, not a fall at all. It had thrown itself.

Stimp’s eyes were wild, crazed things. Juniper didn’t move from where she sat, just looked at him. 

“You’re fucking crazy,” he said, and turned to run. 

It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true.

His final mantra as he felt a warm rippling beneath his skin.

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On another day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him.

And the LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."

Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason."

"Skin for skin!" Satan replied. "A man will give all he has for his own life.

But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face."

The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life."

-Job 2:1-4 (emphasis mine)

Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.

A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

-Mark 5:9-13