Chapter 1
Author Warren pulled up across the street in his sporty red 2005 Pontiac Sunfire and shut the engine down. He sighed. Atop the hill was an old, abandoned evangelical church. His research and sources led him to drive through three states to get here. Despite his doctor’s request to get more exercise into his daily routine, he dreaded the arduous walk-up. He swore under his breath and promised this would be his last job. He would retire to somewhere tropical and chase women half his age. Maybe stop sleeping in his car or some seedy motel. Instead of driving through America, he secured objects his clients wanted but didn’t need.
Author scanned the vicinity as he snuffed his cigarette into the overfilled car ashtray. Before vacating his only residence and source of commute. Teenagers playing basketball screamed in the vacant street. Above them, the incline led to an abandoned church that had seen better days. He exited his metal beast and barged through the teens to begin the garbage-cluttered trek uphill to the old building. Reaching behind one of the street kids, he snatched the ball from the little bastard and continued onward. The smell of his sweat, cigarettes, and cheap cologne made them recoil and scowl at his intrusion.
One adolescent puffed himself up and said, “Yo, dickhead!” “That’s our ball.”
He turned and smiled at the teens with his coffee- and nicotine-stained lips. “S’up, little shitheads? Say, isn’t this where Stephen Seditious had his recording studio?” He thumbed over his shoulder.
“Who wants to know?” One of the smaller kids snapped, then stood back a step.
Next to the smaller kid, an irritated teen jabbed him in the ribs and then addressed the stinky white dude, saying, “Nothing but trouble comes from going there.”
Author slid a fiver to the kid to offer, “Just asking, for now.”
The billet disappeared in a blur. The fast kid was the one who answered. “Yeah, but there’s nothing up there but trouble.”
Another teen added in. “And it’s full of ghosts.”
“Ghosts, huh?” Author slipped out a metal cigarette holder and placed a brand new cigarette between his chapped lips. He scratched the back of his neck, adjusted his straw fedora, and passed to the tallest kid a few crumpled bucks from his pants pocket. I’ve got ghosts of my own.” He turned away, coughed, hacked his phlegm, and spat before heading up the hill. “Now, you make sure no one touches my car while I’m up there. You get me?”
Author trudged uphill toward the dilapidated church. The walls of the church looked broken in or boarded up with vulgar graffiti. On closer inspection, someone had taken to decorating the yawning back entrance of the wall with human feces. Before it rained, he adjusted his hat to protect his glasses. Noting the bell tower was absent. It was now a haven for bats and birds. He surmised that all the faithful folks from around these parts assembled at this secluded end of town to hear the church bell ring every Sunday morning. All dressed up to impress their Lord and Savior. To sit in obedience as the ordained minister foamed at the mouth and preached against sin. From personal experience, He knew the services they held every glorious Sunday morning. A church that escorted parishioners as they trembled in glossolalia before their Lord. Collapsing to the floor and withering in rapture. Only this church was open for business some thirty or forty years ago. The urban sprawl, like cancer, had eaten up all the green farm pastures and vacant land surrounding it. Around the old church on the hill were an abandoned shopping mall, a one-stop confectionery, an aged gas station, and row upon row of shanty houses. Irritated landlords owned them, allowing each place to go without repairs or upkeep. Author snorted at how far the community had fallen while he used the side of his ratty old Oxford shoe to extinguish his cigarette.
“What a glorious little shithole!” He pressed his foot on the worn-out wooded stairs to see if they could take his weight and withdrew a small black metal flashlight from his trench coat jacket. In the dark, he uncovered a burned-up entrance without a door.
Scanning the decrepit interior with his flashlight, he heard rodents scurrying into the crevices and shadows. An occasional squeak of the moldy wooden floorboards underfoot. The faint, breezy rustle of old newspapers and half-charred wood beams above his head. Confirming the place was a disaster site. Just waiting to fall in on itself. He glanced apathetically at the immature markings of vulgar graffiti. Disgusted by the smear of feces on a nearby wall.
Author knew the history of this place. How the evangelist Mitch Vincent Chandler exploited his parishioners for his sick amusement His more private sermons with wives and teens eventually ended. At least after police investigated allegations of his accumulation of self-made pornography. It was ironic that Stephen Seditious had bought the house of God. Even though its history did not offend him. Then converted it into his personal recording studio. Eventually, he declared it would be a private place for his infernal worshippers. Author concluded that “Stef” had done so more for tax reasons than religious ones. Stephen was obsessed with Satanism. His international rock star status did nothing to diminish his popularity.
Hesitant about the condition of the dreary old place, Author continued to delve deeper. He had recalled seeing pictures of the church when it was a studio. He stood right where the large, painted pentagram would have been. Since many Christian evangelists’ eyes regarded rock and roll as the Devil’s music, heavy metal artist Stephen Seditious was the practicing Magus of Satanism and a Black Heavy Metal guru. Author snorted in amusement at the absurd hero worship and people’s gullibility toward celebrities. Both were just scumbags. One is an evangelist, the other a musician. Both had resorted to such extensive lengths to perform elaborate posturing and showmanship. This is to gain affluence from their susceptible and gullible followers. Both profited from something they believed in. They just sold it to those willing to follow.
“Hey, Mister!” A teen yelled at Author, startling him.
“Fuck, kid!” Author held a hand to his chest. “You scared the bejesus out of me.”
“Someone’s over your car, and I think he’s trying to steal your hubcaps.”
Author went from startled to outright furious. “Shit!” He rushed over to the back exit of the church. He came around to the front, and he stopped before a group of older teens dressed in Hip-Hop fashion. All set to kick some asses.
“What are you doing here, dawg?” One adolescent with the bandana tied to the front reached up to Author with his fists balled up, ready for fisticuffs. He then came up and pressed his index finger hard into Author’s wrinkled forehead. “You’re trespassing on our turf, dawg.”
“I didn’t come here for trouble. I just…” Author felt a fist to the stomach and buckled over. One of the gang member’s biggest badasses had smacked him in the gut with the top of a baseball bat. As he was bent over, coughing for air. A smaller gangsta in the group ran up and kicked him in the ribcage. As Author hit the ground, the rest rushed in to stomp his ass.
Meanwhile, Author thought about his car. If he couldn’t escape, he’d be going nowhere except the hospital or the morgue.
Kicks and shouts ceased as suddenly as they started. For Author, it felt like an eternity. After a considerable amount of time, he removed his hands from his face. He looked around, still all blurry-eyed. His nose bled, he wore a shiner, and the rest of his body felt bruised from being punched and kicked. He groaned as he brushed himself off and pushed himself off the ground. “Yeah, you better run. You goddamn bastards!”
With the back of his hand, he wiped the blood from his nose. He noticed a leggy young chickadee an arm’s length away from him. A petite, skinny redhead, wearing a frayed pair of jean shorts and a bra-less black tank top, read Swank across it. With her hair pulled back, she had a complexion that did not require a hint of makeup to accent her features.
The visible parts of her body had some interesting tattoos on them. Not your average bullshit art like unicorns, anime characters, or moronic life quotes, but purgatory art from the Bible. She had shiny black nails and piercings through her ears, nose, and lips. Her footwear was Doc Martin. Yeah, she was a goth girl. The author sniffed up the rest of his blood from his nose, scooped up his pack of cigarettes, and moved one up to his puffy lips. The damaged cigarette he salvaged dangled from his mouth as he bent forward to realize what she had produced.
“Those things will kill you,” she said.
“I keep hearing that.” He blew the smoke from his lungs upward, then took a long drag. “Friends of yours?” He let the smoke drift out before blowing the rest upward.
She made a face, waved off his suggestion, and shook her head. “They’re just kids blowing off steam.”
“Maybe they should pursue a different hobby.” He took a long drag, mulling over where he had seen her before. “Have we met?”
She turned to the sound.
Below the hilltop echoed the distinct sound of glass smashing and the shrill blare of a car alarm.
“Oh, that better not be my car!” He hurried past her as he came around the corner. From his vantage point. The neighborhood teenagers who had been hanging around his vehicle scattered. They all laughed and joked with enthusiasm. Author skidded and stumbled down the hill until he came upon his car and cursed. “Those little bastards. I wasn’t even that long!”
In the middle of the car windshield, a tire wrench stuck out of it like an Excalibur sword. One unbroken window on the passenger side had a crude drawing in a red marker of a penis with hairy testicles on it. Someone had even stabbed all of his white-rim tires flat and removed the hubcaps.
Author walked around the car, gauging the extent of the damage done to it. “Shit, this’ll cost me a bundle in repairs. If there’s anything left to fix,” He said over his shoulder to the little goth girl. “Children can be such little monsters.”
“Well, these kids certainly are.” She bent down to whisper in his ear. “You know, leave here before they regroup; they know a mark when they see one.”
“I could ask why you’re not afraid, but... I suspect you know them or set this whole thing up as some twisted joke.” Author cursed as she attempted to unlock the trunk. He sighed as he pulled out a leather bag. Luckily, these bastards were so busy ransacking my car that they forgot to check the trunk.
“I had nothing to do with this,” she shrugged. “But you are on their turf.”
“Stephen Seditious worked out here? When are the neighborhood kids this bad?” Author unlocked the driver’s side to salvage what he could before calling the police.
“That’s easy.” She smirked and waved him off. “He had plenty of devoted followers. Many will get their hands dirty. You’d be surprised what lengths fans will go to for those they idolize.”
“Sounds more like a cult to me.” He squinted and tilted his head in thought. “Wait, a second. You’re not related to Marcy Seditious, are you?” He turned his attention back to his car’s glove compartment, pulled out a few legal papers, and stuffed them into his bag. “Because there’s no way in Hell you’re her. She died right after that accident in the church.”
“Suspected suicide, incidentally,” the woman said as she drew closer. “The coroner said that the crime scene was quite picturesque.”
“There’s nothing picturesque about some chick slitting her wrists.” Author stood up and arched his back in pain. “They found her body bathing in her own blood. In an enormous bathtub filled with a bunch of rose petals. It’s rather dramatic, considering the monster she dated.”
“Still,” the woman said, standing behind him. “Not a bad way to go, on your terms, and it sure beats aging away in a senior’s home, dying alone and forgotten.”
The Author kept his attention on his bag’s contents. Out of all the people I met on a crazy trip, I happened across a diehard fan of the crazy Dark Seditious Cult. He closed the car door and locked it. “Well then, since you know everything, Maybe you know something about the rumored recording Seditious made before he became a charred briquette?”
“What an odd question. You’re not a fan of his, are you?” She followed Author as he started walking down the street, searching for a pay phone. Which had disappeared during the little meet-and-greet uphill.
“Oh, it’s not for me. If I had it my way, Author noticed a commotion behind them and groaned in exasperation. From an alleyway, teens erupted in violence and headed towards them. Equipped with both blunt and sharp weapons, and many had even brought chains along. “Crap,” Author muttered, it looks like the bloody welcoming committee has returned.”
“Don’t worry,” she shrugged. “They can’t hurt me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure as hell not interested in seeing how friendly they’ll get with me. I need my pecker to piss with.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” She shooed him off.
“Don’t be stupid. Get your ass in gear if you ever want to cross your legs again.”
He hurried around the street. The Goth chick beside him pointed to what looked like an old house in a junkyard, imprisoned behind a black metal fence covered in graffiti and barbwire. “I know the guy that lives there, and maybe he can help you locate Stephen Seditious’ infamous recording.”
Author hurried down the street. “What makes you say that?” He paused, panting against a lamppost, trying to catch his breath and checking to see if the young gangstas were keeping up. “You didn’t answer my question, lady. How…” He stood to find that he was alone. “Hello?”
