Stimp, the Prophet Man

Victim: The locked door

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

This is episode 7 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-

The lights are out at the homeless shelter, the power knocked out by a storm. Stimp eats his dinner in the fading light, and gets his first long look at Pastor Rob. There’s something in his eyes, the strange smile, the jovial sarcasm. The way he treats the delusional woman beside him. Something isn’t right. The shelter regulars seem on edge around him, scooting away when he comes to talk, and Stimp sees something else he recognizes behind his eyes: hunger.

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Victim

They split off when it was time to sleep, men in one part of the building, women and children in the other. The line was quiet as they moved, balancing long, white candles that had been passed out by five volunteers working the shelter that night. They stepped slowly to avoid tripping as they walked down the hall following Phil’s bouncing flashlight. There were no windows here, and with no electricity, it would be impossible to see in the middle of the night.

The small group was tired and restless, a suffocating claustrophobia overtaking their minds as they walked. A man behind Stimp was breathing heavy. He turned and saw his face, ghoulish and pale in the wavering flame. His eyes were shifty, bouncing from wall to wall.

“You okay man?” Stimp whispered, but in the soundless hallway, it echoed. “Don’t worry about the dark.”

They shuffled forward, seconds turning to minutes. The weight of Stimp’s backpack pulled against his bruised and torn muscles in an awful way that made it hard to breathe without pain.

“It’s not that,” the man finally answered.

The hallway was growing cooler, cavelike. Stimp remembered long weekends in the woods of his boyhood, rocks wet with summer rain, moss growing wild in impossible places. His dad could never find him there.

The sound of keys jingling startled them, the line of men stopping as Phil searched for the right one. He was leaning only inches away, muttering—not this, that’s for the sanctuary—they all looked the same as he pulled each one apart from the group, examined, classified, then put it back with the rest. Not this, that’s Pastor Rob’s office—Stimp only caught a glimpse of it for a second, but it was easy to tell apart. Large and black in the light of the flashlight: a skeleton key.

“Ah,” he finally said, “Here’s the one.” With that he unlocked the door, holding it open like a butler welcoming guests. After you, and after you, his outstretched hand said. Beyond the door, utter darkness. Stimp held his candle further away from him, moving it slowly to try and make out the place. The room was large, an indoor tennis court by the look of it, with beds assembled in lines.

“Pick anywhere you want,” Phil said, and Stimp made his way to the one closest to the wall. He couldn’t bear standing anymore, the pain radiating through bone and muscle growing by the second.

The man behind him followed and set his stuff down on the bed just beside him. Stimp sighed, a mixture of relief and agony, then reached for his meds.

“You okay?” his new companion asked.

“Yeah,” Stimp said, shaking out two pills into his hand. “Just got out of the hospital.”

“For what?”

“Accident. Someone hit me,” he managed to get out before popping the white pills into his mouth.

“Ah, so you’re the guy.”

Stimp turned. “What do you mean?”

The man didn’t have time to answer. Phil was at the door his flashlight shining from face to face.

“Lights out in ten everyone. Bathrooms are over there,” he pointed the yellow beam to two doors with no signs. “Be careful wandering around. It’s easy to get lost in this building at night.”

Stimp eased back into the bed, a small, white pillow propped behind him. His pain was already subsiding. Sleep would come easy. He closed his eyes.

“She took it you know.” The man’s voice pulled him out of the beginning of dream thoughts.

“What?” Stimp tried to open his eyes, but the lids felt weighted.

“Juniper. She found your stuff. After the accident.”

“How do you know that?”

“She brought it here.”

He was drifting, Juniper’s face floating oddly in a black lake. Then, he was asleep.

When he awoke, it was to pitch black and crackling thunder. His lips stuck together, his tongue like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth. His hands went to his sides, patting, feeling for his surroundings.

Then memories floated back. A dull pounding ache in his ribs, the accident, the voice. The pastor. He turned, feeling for his bag. It wasn’t next to him, was nowhere on the bed. He rolled over onto his stomach, his hand on the floor searching frantically for the backpack. It was nowhere.

He sat up, blinking to no avail in the black. Thunder shook the roof above but no one moved, too tired and used to chaos to wake up, even in this storm. He stood up and felt his way carefully along the edge of the bed, then moved towards his bed mate. That guy had been eager to stick close. Who else would have seen him slip those pills in the dim candlelight?

He felt gently at first, hand moving along the edge of the bed sheet, crisp and taut against the mattress. There was no ruffle, no hilly rise of body under covers. He clenched his hands into fists and pounded. The bastard had his stuff.

He moved along the wall then, back towards the door Phil had led them through. When he felt the heavy wood flat against his palms—there it was, the door—he pushed out. The thing heaved open, and he struggled to move forward with the pain in his side. He was in the hall, could feel the disarming empty space dark around him. He closed the door gently.

His hand was against cool wall, the divots in the brick forming lines that led him forward, into the void. He moved that way carefully, searching with his feet to prevent a fall in the dark. A breath pushed out, not his own, and Stimp stopped, waiting to hear another human noise, a sound of life. Nothing.

“Hello?” he asked.

Instead of a voice, the lights flickered, and for a second in that instant of yellow light, Stimp saw a body in the middle of the hallway. A black hooded sweatshirt hid their face, but the outline of his backpack was there, before the lights went out again.

“Hey!” he yelled, and stepped forward quickly, moving towards the phantom lights that blinked in the cave darkness, the aura of the man following wherever his eyes moved. He felt dizzy and stopped. A breath came again, this time hot against his neck, and he jumped away, grabbing at air.

“You stole my shit!” he screamed into the hall, the sound of his voice echoing along with the footsteps and laughter of the man as he ran away. Something small clattered to the floor and hit his shoe.

Rage filled him, pulsed blood heavy into his limbs. He couldn’t feel his injuries anymore. He knelt down and felt for the thing, recognized the cool rectangle of metal beneath his fingertips immediately. A lighter.

The sound of sneakers squeaking against tile had stopped, and Stimp flicked the lighter on to see where the man had gone to. It didn’t do much in the way of light, but he could move faster now, a hand covering the flame to keep it from blowing out.

There were posters on the wall here, different than what he had seen when Phil led him to the sleeping area. He must have turned somewhere without realizing it. An angel with its wings spread, guarding two children, a reddened sky beyond and threatening. Jesus on the cross, whites of his eyes showing as he looked to God for help. “Elohim, Elohim,” the title spelled at the bottom. Stimp stopped and looked at it for a second. Something dull and sharp rose in his throat.

“This is what you do to the people who follow you?” his face transformed, disgusted, and he spit on the ground, a wad of white foam landing square below the crucified Christ.

A small, snapping sound, like a twig in the forest, and then the whites of the eyes disappeared, and the deep brown eyes of the painted Jesus were on him, searching his face. He sucked in air and backed up quickly, slamming into the wall behind him. The lighter flew from his hand, plunging the hall into pitch black again, and for a moment all he could hear was his own hyperventilating breath. Then, a whimpering sound.

He closed his eyes, focused on his heartbeat, then breathed in slowly to tame it. When he opened them again, he could see a sliver of orange light, the outline of a door. The whimpering was louder now, someone crying behind that light. Stimp made his way there slowly.

The door was wide, and when he touched it, heavy wood. He felt for the handle. It was small in his fist, some type of ornate carving decorated the metal, the rivets pushing into his skin. He tried to turn it, but it was locked. The whimpering stopped. He stepped back, waiting for the inevitable swing, the burst of light into the hallway. Instead, the glow behind the door went out.

A warm wind started to blow, encircling Stimp in the hallway. It moved around his body, lifted his shirt, dried the gathering sweat on his face. Then, a voice like ocean waves, God’s voice, spoke to him.

“Open it.”

“I can’t. It’s locked.” Stimp moved back.

“Did you knock?”

Stimp swallowed. To the one who knocks, the door will be opened. He stepped forward, and felt the door again. His hands came back sticky.

“Knock.”

He rapped against the door three times, and on the third, a great wind shook the door loose, and it opened.

“Now open your hand,” God said, and Stimp, in awe of the moment, opened his right hand.

A beam of white light shone forth, dust particles swimming in the glow of it. He looked into the room. A window, small and too high to reach, had been boarded up. A large desk sat in the corner, piles of papers and books there. In the corner, a closet, the door strangely narrow and made of old, splintering wood. Stimp went to it and turned the handle.

It was locked too. The handle was black, old and made of iron, and the lock was the same, framed in black metal just below. He knelt down and looked at it, remembering the key Phil had pulled out earlier in the night.

Pastor Rob’s office.

This was his office. Stimp stood and moved to the desk. The papers were strewn across it, the image of a madman at work. He looked at one, a letter asking for prayer for their sick mother. Stimp moved it from the pile and set it down, and caught the square white border of a polaroid, blue pen scribbled at the bottom of the image.

Nancy, 1999.

Stimp picked up the picture carefully, examined the eyes there. She didn’t smile, the young girl. Her brown hair fell in tangled curls around her shoulder, her back pressed to a brick wall behind. He looked back at the desk and saw a pile among the loose sheets of white paper and bent paperbacks.

Rebekah, 2001. Cheryl, 2001. Whitney, 2003.

More were carelessly thrown across the desk, hidden beneath crumpled writings and unopened mail. Some were children. A boy, maybe ten, with black curly hair and a sad expression.

Geralt, 2007.

When he pulled that one close to his face to examine it, another photo, peeled off the back of Geralt’s, and floated down to the floor. Even from a distance he recognized that face. He picked it up and looked at the smudged ink.

Juniper.

No date, but it must have been a few years at least. Her face was plump, younger then. She looked healthy, with white teeth. Before the crystal had taken its toll. He put her picture in his pocket and picked up another pile.

“What are you doing here?”

Stimp jumped, the photos in his hand falling with sudden weight to the floor. The pastor eyed him in wonder, his eyes moving from Stimp’s face to the light radiating from his hand. He stepped towards him.

“How are you—,” he started to ask, then shook his head and tried again, “how did you get in here?”

Stimp breathed in, the air shaky and gulping as it passed into his lungs.

“I knocked.”

The pastor took another step, and smiled.

“You’re not supposed to be in here. Come on. I’ll take you back to bed.”

“What the fuck are these?” Stimp asked, making no motion to the desk, the photos. He didn’t need to. The pastor knew what he was talking about.

He smiled bigger. “Just photos of my people. I use them as prayer reminders. Tokens that help me focus my energy on them and their needs.”

“That’s bullshit.”

The black doorknob wiggled, shaking the shoddy wood of the closet, and Pastor Rob’s eyes turned prey-like, darting to the door, then to Stimp.

“Who’s in there?” Stimp asked. The pastor jolted forward and grabbed for him.

“Pastor Rob?” a man’s voice spoke up in the hall behind them, and he whirled around to find Phil there, staring with bewildered eyes.

His voice was soft when he asked, “Phil, what are you doing up?”

“I heard a noise.”

“We’re fine. Just doing a bit of counseling,” he turned away from Phil, and his eyes glared black in the light, studying Stimp’s face.

Phil stood on tiptoes and craned his neck, trying to see the source of the light beam hidden by the pastor’s wide back. The closet shook again.

“Wha—,” Phil started to say.

Pastor Rob and Stimp both lunged this time, the pastor moving to throw his body against the door, arms outstretched to block him. But Stimp was closer, and his fist reached the splintered wood first. He knocked, and the warm wind came again, shaking the door loose from the frame.

“His hands! His hands—” Phil was saying, eyes wide and staring at Stimp. The white light had turned golden, strange white flecks like snowflakes floating in it.

The pastor stood unmoving, held against the wall by an invisible force, hands flung out against the brick in the shape of the cross. Stimp looked into the closet and saw the woman from the cafeteria, her blond hair slicked back, a trickle of blood on her forehead. She was crying and rocking, doe eyes staring up at him.

Stimp looked at her, then to the photos.

“How did you—,” Pastor Rob started to ask.

“God has a message for you.”

The pastor’s awe switched suddenly, his mouth moving into a cocky smile.

“I’m sure he does,” he said, chuckling a little, his arms sliding down to his sides. “And he picked you to be what? His prophet? Well tell me then, prophet,” he spit, “what did God have to say?”

Stimp backed away a step and looked at his face, the rabid speckles of white foam at the corners of his mouth.

“He wants you to let His people go.”

The smile turned down into a grimace, and the pastor bared his teeth. His eyes blackened and flickered, a low dog growl rolling in the back of his throat, guttural and threatening.

Run.

The wind was gone, the voice of God a whisper now. Stimp reached into the closet and pulled the woman up by the arm.

Run!

The voice came stronger. Stimp reached for the desk, snatching a fistful of photos and papers in one hand.

“Leave those!” Pastor Rob said.

Stimp threw them at him and the papers whirred around, caught in an invisible wind like a dust-devil. He pushed past Phil and into the hallway.

“She can’t leave!” he heard the pastor screaming, his voice changing, dropping an octave, then two. “She can’t leave!”

The woman was crying. Stimp pulled her along the long black hallways, running. The sound of heavy footfalls followed. Thunder roared above them and wind shook the building. He had to get out.