The Underlings Read online

jewelry anyhow.

  Each night that week at the prophecy seminars the man showed up and stood beside the speaker. Once he had a hole where his eyes should have been, and once he had the face of a rotten old hag. He stood there as if he was king over his domain, tripping back and fourth across the stage, glaring gleefully at the crowd who listened intently to the preacher.

  “I have control over all of you!” he yelled at the crowd. He cursed them with swear words even Chet had never heard, and Chet prided himself on being slightly above any man at swearing, but the crowd acted as if nothing was said. Are these people blind and deaf?

  You don’t have control over me, sucker, the thought went through his mind.

  “Yes I do have control over you!” the man looked at him with a leer of disdain.

  The Eye Opener

  Saturday came around. The seminar had been declared a success, with six converts added to the church. They took Mr. Charles Reed to church with them again. For 20 years Fred had been up to the same thing, working the ongoing contest between him and Dr. Slavor, to always stay on top in the baptisms at the Sun Downer Seventh-day Adventist Church. In fact, he had been in contest with Jamal Slavor since they were both boys.

  But today his victory let him down, because today he saw something he did not expect to see. He saw Inez’s furtive glance at him as she slowly moved away from him. He saw and heard the shloking of water bottles, the whispering and the nudging, and he saw his life for what it was. He saw the man he had used to get even with Slavor, and he saw Inez as she rubbed her leg against the man. He saw Inez for what she was, and his stomach revolted at the cheap perfume emanating off her.

  Fred had never let on he knew when she slipped out of bed in the night and was gone that hour. He had never let on that he knew what she was doing in Mr. Reed’s room. The trouble with Fred was, he was beginning to see. As the preacher whom he had helped vote in droned on, another figure appeared and climbed the platform clacking his heels together with alacrity!

  Now where the hell did he come from?

  “Well now, you’re getting warm old son!” The voice seemed to be coming from his head and at the same time, from the man who had done the two-step onto the platform.

  Am I going insane?

  “Depends on what you consider insane, now don’t it? I have been here all the time,” said the voice inside his head and the voice from the man on the platform.

  “You’ve been too occupied with Slavor to notice, and I am beginning to resent it!” continued the voice, as the figure turned into a poor replica of a very sick Abraham Lincoln, complete with top hat and frock coat. He pranced and he danced as he waved his top hat at Fred and leered his forever evil leer, cursing words that went beyond cursing.

  The Getting Gone

 

  Chet sat there frozen as he watched the dark figure cavort upon the stage. He remembered when he was little and someone had taken him to Sunday school. He desperately teased to the front of his brain the remembrances of the prayer the teacher had taught the kids.

  Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

  “You! You quit saying that or I will kill you!” The man pointed his long bony finger at Chet. The man now looked like a weird Abraham Lincoln, with a frock coat and a top hat.

  How the hell did he do that?

  “Now yer talking, Chetley! Hell is exactly how I did it! I am beginning not to like you, but I am going to kill you with very little pain, not like that man you done in a few years back!”

  I think if you could do that you would have done it already, and he kept repeating the prayer, Our Father who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name, forgive us please.

  “Quit that!”

  The man started jumping up and down in a rage, he tore his frock coat off and stomped his hat, as Chet chanted the prayer to God for all he was worth…which wasn’t much.

  Then at length, the man began to lose parts of his body, until finally he disappeared altogether like cigar smoke on an East Texas wind.

  Chet, on a whim, leaned across Inez and whispered to Fred, “Fred buddy, lets get out of here!”

  “I’m with you boy! Don’t wait on me!” and Fred leaped right across Inez as he followed Chet out of the seats and out the door at a run, leaving a dazed Inez in her seat. Then she sped to the door in time to see the Pontiac’s rear tires claw at the gravel in the parking lot. The tires caught the road with a screech and disappeared around a corner.

  Fred had seen the man of many faces, and to this day, word comes back to Inez and her new boyfriend that Fred and Chet were seen in Omaha, or maybe St. Petersburg, but as far as anybody knows for certain, they may still be running. Some say they both got married, raised families, and started a Christian church in Nebraska, or was that Iowa?

  The end