Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,87

clumsy pirouette, flapping his scorched hand in the air. “Jeeeeee-zus!”

“What is it, what happened?” Earl asked, reaching for the handle next.

“Don’t touch that!” Cleavon said, slapping Earl’s hand clear. “It’s hot!”

“Why the hell’s it hot?” Jesse said.

Cleavon kicked the door hard with his right foot. It didn’t budge.

“It’s stuck?” Weasel said, kicking the door himself to no avail.

“Mr. Pratt?” Jesse called. “Hey-o! Mr. Pratt!”

There was no answer.

Understanding dawned on Cleavon, and a body-wide coldness slipped beneath his skin. “The motherfucker!” he mumbled.

“Who?” Jesse asked, staring at him with eyes expecting the worst.

Cleavon, however, barely heard him. He was numbed. His goddamn bastard of a brother had double-crossed them all! No wonder he hadn’t given a damn about finding the bitch who’d gotten away. She’d never seen him.

“Cleave?” Earl said, worried. “What’s happening, Cleave? Cleave?”

“Bust them down, Earl!” Cleavon told him, pointing at the doors. “Bust them hard as you can!”

Earl shoved Weasel aside and raised his massive boot and slammed it into the crack where the doors met. The doors shook but held.

“Again!” Cleavon shouted.

Earl kicked a second time, and a third, and a fourth.

“It ain’t working, Cleave!” he cried. “They’re too strong!”

Cleavon’s shock and anger was quickly giving way to blistering fear.

They were trapped.

They were going to roast alive.

Spencer wouldn’t have attempted something like this had he not been convinced it would work.

My brother! he thought, his mind reeling. My own fucking brother!

Then again, was he really surprised Spencer could orchestrate something so heartless? Two years ago he would have been, back before Spencer showed up at the house with that Mary woman, both of them bloodied and smashed up. Because before then Spencer might still have been a holier-than-thou asshole, but that had been all. After that night, however—that’s when Cleavon began to see his older brother in an entirely new light. It wasn’t the revelation that Spencer was okay with killing. Hell, as it turned out, the whole merry lot of them were okay with killing. Life was a spiteful whore, and you had to do what you had to do sometimes to make yourself happy. So it wasn’t that Spencer was okay with the killing; it was that he actually enjoyed it. Jesse and Weasel, Earl and Floyd, himself too, they were in this devil worship stuff for the sex. That first woman, that Mary, she got them hooked on the black masses like junkies on heroin. This was not so much the case with Spencer, who always seemed more interested when he was looking in the women’s eyes in those last few seconds before they died, as if he were seeing something there no one else could see.

So, no, maybe Cleavon wasn’t surprised to discover Spencer had it in him to murder his own brothers. Maybe he wasn’t surprised at all.

Cleavon directed the flashlight beam around the church’s sanctuary. Three stained-glass windows lined the east wall, three the west wall, each a dozen feet tall, two feet in diameter, tapering to pointed tips. Earl could boost him up to one, but it would do not good. They were all secured with steel mesh on the outside to protect against vandals and the elements.

“Well don’t just stand there looking pretty, boys!” he quipped. “Get looking for another way out!”

They searched every dark corner of the church. The only other set of doors they found turned out to be locked as tightly as those at the front.

Think, Cleave! he told himself, turning in a circle, panicking. Think!

But how could he? The scene was chaos. Earl wailing like a little kid. Floyd holding his ears and making that retarded deaf sound he made. Weasel and Jesse both shouting for instructions.

“Shut up!” he exploded, wiping sweat from his brow. It was as hot as hell in summer. “The lot of you! Earl! Shut the fuck up!”

They went quiet.

Cleavon’s eyes fell on the dead blonde. A great sadness welled inside him. Not for her. For himself. Because shortly he was going to be dead too. Dead and crisped so black the sheriff will be identifying him by his teeth.

And I just unloaded two hundred bills on a new carburetor for the Mustang in the garage, and I ain’t even gonna get a chance to install it. Ain’t that a bitch, ain’t that just a goddamn, motherfucking bitch.

His eyes drifted to the pew the blonde was lying on, then the pew’s clawed wooden feet.

They weren’t bolted into the floor.

An idea forming in his mind, Cleavon rushed to the pew, shoved the