“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” William Shakespeare, The Tempest.

It started the night that members of the church board argued over whether or not to stage a Hell House for Halloween.

It was unseasonably hot for mid-September, and the meeting room was small, and having so many bodies in the space made it hotter still.

Nobody dared open a window for fear of the plague of mosquitoes outside, so instead all 13 board members sat and sweated and many wished they could just adjourn and go home, but Bathsheba Gibbs wouldn’t let anyone leave until she’d had her say.

Gibbs, vice principal of the town high school, wanted the Hell House. The first time she brought it up, earlier in the month, the reaction was lukewarm, but she had a surefire method for winning over converts: She kept bringing it up at every meeting, and everyone else knew that the only way to ever really and truly get her to stop talking about anything was to ultimately capitulate

Standing up in her seat now (even though everyone could hear her perfectly well sitting), Bathsheba assumed all of the authority of an Old Testament Noadiah or Miriam as she talked, each word a virtual pearl straight from the mouth of Moses.

“What I want to know,” she said, “is why so many of our board members—who are SUPPOSED to be dedicated to the spiritual well being of this town—are so eager to let our young people cavort in sin every 31st of October.

“The things that go on in public streets on Halloween night—we might as well be surrendering them all up as burnt offerings for as much as a bunch of backsliding pagans we all act like one night a year.”

When Bathsheba talked she tugged at the sleeve of her shirt while emphasizing certain words. The result was that almost every outfit she wore had one cuff practically in tatters, while the other one remained nearly immaculate.

She looked every single other board member in the face one by one. A few looked perceptive; others resigned. All looked sweaty.

The last person she addressed was Nathaniel Bradbury. Seated with a pitcher of water in front of himself, he maintained a practiced expression of neutrality. Bathsheba looked like she was trying to make him burst into flames with her stare, but Bradbury showed no outward signs of perturbation.

Once upon a time, Bradbury ha been the very pastor of the church. Five years ago he stepped down after Bathsheba led a campaign for his removal, on the grounds that he bought a lottery ticket at Drummond’s Grocery every weekend, and gambling was unbecoming of a community leader.

He’d refused to also give up his spot on the church board, which was independent of his duties as pastor. Town gossip had it he’d be out of there in six months’ time too, but on he’d stayed, sitting right across from Bathsheba at every meeting and seeming to dip her fiery words into the cooling pitcher of ice water at his elbow as he listened month after month and, eventually, posed his own equally cool responses.

Beads of moisture glistened on the side of that pitcher now as Bradbury rubbed his chin, barely raised his voice and said, “Now Vice Principal Gibbs, what’s so sinful about Halloween? It’s just a holiday.”

“I BEG your pardon?” said Bathsheba.

Several people in the room paused, expecting to hear a dramatically timed clap of thunder and lightning as she shot up in her seat again, but none came and they had to settle for the storminess of her opinions instead.

“The word holiday means ‘holy day,’ but there is nothing holy about Halloween,” Bathsheba said. “If this day is hallowed, whose service is it set apart for? The answer to that question is very easy: Satan’s!”

The name provoked a stir from almost everyone in the room. Heartened, she plowed on:

“Halloween is a time for the gathering of evil. I’ll tell you who doesn’t think Halloween is all fun and games: Satanists, witches, devil worshipers, pagans, and idolators! The lukewarm and the ignorant think Halloween is just harmless fun, but the vortexes of Hell are opened on our streets every year, and I for one don’t want our children and teenagers out there on a night when witchcraft is going on.”

And then she drew in a sharp breath, to indicate all the more things she could say but didn’t. Ex-Pastor Bradbury assumed the expression of a person who has just been kicked in the knee repeatedly but wants to remain polite about it for reasons unknown.

“Well I recall I always enjoyed Halloween as a child, and the children in town seem to enjoy it just as much today, and I don’t see that it hurts anyone,” he said.

And of course this was precisely what Bathsheba had been waiting for, because Bradbury endorsing Halloween was as good as a signed affidavit form the devil himself, as far as she was concerned.

They were not a very big church. They lived in not a very big town. But in their own way, everyone assembled tended to think of themselves as people burdened with resolving very big questions.

And questions like this demanded dynamic leadership and thoughtful interrogation. With this in mind, one woman raised a hand halfway up and said, “Well I don’t know about vortexes of evil or any of that. But what I want to know is what exactly is a ‘Hell House?'”

Every eye in the room rolled back to Bathsheba, but in this case Thomas Garrett—the town’s longtime district attorney, now retired, and the senior-most member of the church except for Ex-Pastor Bradbury and Bathsheba herself—sprang to answer instead. “Well it’s a very wholesome exercise,” he said.

Rather than stand, Garrett assumed a relaxed posture, leaning halfway back in his chair, dabbing the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, and steepling his fingers over his stomach as he spoke, a pose that he’d perfected over 37 years in the county courthouse.

“I was at a Hell House in Belle Glen six years ago, and I’ll testify it was extremely beneficial for the community, especially the youngsters. How best to describe it? I guess you could say it’s something like a haunted house—but one that’s done in the service of righteousness. 

”You get a place all fixed up to look gruesome and spooky like the pit of Hell, and you get some actors from the community theater or such costumed like all the devils and imps, and you charge $10 for fundraising purposes, and you take the kids through and show them all manner of eternal torments.”

The woman with her hand raised (it was still raised) looked suitably horrified. “Well how does THAT help anyone? Vice Principal Gibbs, I thought you just said you were against all of that kind of thing?”

”But you see when we do it—or like the folks out in Belle Glen did it with their church—it’s for the purposes of a moral lesson,” Garrett leapt to add. “The actors do skits about the sinful and immoral lifestyles that lead people to Hell and, you know, it scares the kids straight.”

”AND it keeps them somewhere safe on Halloween,” Bathsheba added. “Instead of gallivanting off dressed like Lucifer and collecting cyanide-laced candy from molesters.”

“Churches all over the country do this sort of thing now, and I daresay we’re behind the times not doing one ourselves,” Garrett added. “I’ve got a friend in Woodborrow who’s old hat at these and can be our creative director for a very modest fee. Honestly, there’s no reason not to do it. We’ve got to be realistic about the times we live in.”

Ex-Pastor Bradbury took a long time pouring himself a glass of water. Keeping his eye firmly on the pitcher the whole time, he said, “So what kind of ‘sinful and immoral lifestyles’ do you think we should be subjecting our kids to at this Hell House of yours?”

“Oh, the usual,” Garett said. “Abortion, promiscuity, homosexuality, premarital, uh, this and that. Drugs I imagine Drinking—underage drinking that is—and social media—”

“Gambling,” Gibbs added, loudly.

Everyone watched to see if Bradbury would spill his water. He didn’t.

Waving a hand, Garret added, “And other things I’m sure, you know: Hollywood, socialism, false religions, boys becoming girls. Maybe—”

“Witchcraft?”

The voice came from the corner. Everyone turned.

Alexandra Updike sat apart from everyone else, in an antique chair that lived in the meeting room and as far as anyone knew was as old as the church itself. She hadn’t said anything all night. She didn’t say anything most nights.

Even now, she maintained eye contact with the embroidery hoop in her lap, seemingly fixated on that rather than the meeting. Nevertheless, like always, when Alexandra talked, people paid attention.

She was 40 (everyone thought), a widow, and well known in the town. A member of almost every public body she could join, she was leader of none but noted for her quiet resolve, and while she wasn’t exactly well liked, by and large people in town respected her. More importantly, they listened to her.

Listening now, everyone leaned forward as words crossed her embroidery hoop on the way to their hears: “You said something before about witchcraft, Vice Principal Gibbs?”

For once, Bathsheba took a minute to reply. “Well yes, I did. You know there are over a million people practicing witchcraft in America today, and the government doesn’t stop them. And in the bigger cities—”

“What I meant is,” Alexandra said—and now she did look up, and suddenly more than one person decided that the hot, crowded little meeting room actually seemed unseasonably chilly tonight—”these things that will be going on in this Hell House of yours. Since you’re so concerned over it, I assumed you’d want something said about witchcraft too.” She paused. “To warn the children, of course.”

Bathsheba looked like she was weighing two different loads in a scale, but didn’t know what any of the numbers meant. Eventually she said, “Yes. Yes, I think that would be very appropriate, all things considered.”

And she nodded in a way that made her bangs bounce.

Nodding back, Alexandra said, “That being the case, I think Vice Principal Gibbs’ idea is a very good one. This town absolutely needs a Hell House. Halloween wouldn’t be complete without it.”

Again Bathsheba’s expression was one of wonder crossed with suspicion. But this gave way to triumph soon enough, as the muttering and stirring of all the others seemed to cross a meridian and come down now firmly on her side.

Alexandra said nothing more, taking up her embroidery again. Keeping it in her lap, nobody else saw what she was making on the cloth: hex marks, pentacles, warding signs, and some other sigils that had no names…

They took a vote. It was almost unanimous. The only one who hadn’t cast a vote yet was Ex-Pastor Bradbury. Every board vote had to be unanimous; nobody could go home until all 13 members voted the same way. Over the years, more than one person had just resigned as a way of breaking an impasse.

By this time the pitcher in front of Bradbury was empty. More than one person in the room imagined the former pastor’s bladder must be holding back something akin to Noah’s Flood, and wondered at his stamina.

Still saying nothing, Bradbury looked at every other person one by one with his cool blue eyes. Yes, he had stamina. But he also knew when to quit.

So with a shrug and a nod, he gave in. It wasn’t a verbal vote, but everyone decided it counted all the same: the Hell House was on.

The final minutes of the meeting dissolved into a general hubbub of planning, speculation, and collaboration, with all manner of suggestions flying about where to hold it, who to hire, how much to charge, and which sinful exuberances they should preach against most strongly to the kids who came.

In the midst of all the tumult, few people took any notice of one seemingly peculiar proviso: somehow, Alexandra convinced everyone that she should have sole creative control over the parts of the Hell House dealing with witchcraft, and that nobody else involved with the planning should have any oversight of her work.

By the time all the church members turned into their beds that night (the ones that did go home to their own beds, that is…), none of them really remembered Alexandra’s insistence on that point. In fact, none of them remembered her saying much of anything during the meeting at all.

But Alexandra remembered.

Arriving home just before midnight, she parked her car in the driveway of her undersized house that sat on an oversized lot (nearly overgrown with the ambitions of her garden), made her way up the winding front walk, and opened her front door, inciting a small flurry of excitable felines to come running. Alexandra was almost always fostering several new cats at once, though she almost never kept any of them in the end.

As soon as they were all mollified with sufficient feeding and attention, she retired to her den, the smallest room in the house, and also the most private, lacking any windows to the outside.

There, on the mantelpiece, was her altar. In the middle of it, surrounded by feathers, eagle stones, rings, amulets, censures, dried herbs, roots, phials of sulfur, salt, and spider silk, small brass bells, and animals’ teeth, sat her late husband’s skull, preserved as carefully and lovingly as she could manage, with the exception of the single word “Urian” burned into the brow bone with the red-hot tip of an iron.

Stripping naked, Alexandra stood in the middle of a circle on the floor. The room was dark, so she lit the candles—one of them sat on top of the skull itself—and then she set the censure burning too, inhaling the smoke of the incense and letting it buoy her thoughts to the places where they could accomplish the most.

Halloween was six weeks away. She had work to do.

xxxxx

Weeks passed. Alexandra was in the middle of a phone call the day she spotted Lily Rougemont lurking on her porch, peering through the windows before she rang the doorbell.

It was a sunny afternoon—still unseasonably warm in early October—and the sunlight glinted off the gold highlights in Lily’s red hair. Sitting at her kitchen table with phone in hand, Alexandra signaled for her to come in, but also to keep quiet as she did.

Lily eased the screen door open and slipped into another chair at the table. Alexandra put her phone down on the red and white checked tablecloth and, with a nod in Lily’s direction, switched the call over to speaker.

“Hello, Vice Principal Gibbs, are you still there?” Alexandra said, leaning into the phone. “I think we got cut off for a second.”

“Yes, I”m still here,” said the voice in the phone, sounding like a tinny squawk. “But you sound a million miles away all of a sudden.”

“Oh you can’t get rid of me that easily. I was just asking—since you know so much about it, and since I’m researching for the Hell House—just what is it that witches do at Halloween? For the—I think you call them ‘gatherings of evil?'”

Grinning, Lily had her pencil and reporter’s notebook in hand.

Bathsheba said, “You know, the usual things. Heathenry and wickedness.”

“Right, but more specifically? Again, for research purposes; I want to make sure the Hell House is VERY authentic. For the children’s sake.”

“Oh. Well, naturally they’re casting all sorts of spells and conjurations, and putting curses on unsuspecting people. They have orgies and the like, and sometimes they even have sex with real demons. Necromancy and blood sacrifices, of course. And they have to dedicate at least three people’s souls to Satan.”

Lily bit her pencil.

“And they put all kinds of curses on the Halloween candy,” Bathsheba continued. “Even the stuff you buy at the store, a lot of the time witches have prayed over it before it gets there. I won’t even buy candy at all during the Halloween season, it’s not safe. When you bring something cursed into your home it’s a covenant for all sorts of—”

“How very interesting,” Alexandra said. “And how do know all this?”

“Sad to say you learn terrible things working in a high school these days. Occultism is rampant in the student body, and I’ve personally counseled girls who became witches and boys who became warlocks and later wanted out. It all started with that Harry Potter business you know. I spent nine years trying to get that out of the school libraries.”

“Yes, I remember reading all about that in Lily Rougemont’s column. Well thank you for your help, Ms. Gibbs. I’m very much looking forward to Halloween.”

“You’re welcome, dear,” Bathsheba said. And then, seemingly as an afterthought, she said, “What exactly are you—”

Alexandra hung up. She and Lily looked at each other for a moment and then, unable to hold it any longer, they burst into laughter.

“Halloween witch orgies,” Lily said after a minute, “imagine that.”

“Well it’s not as if you’re completely innocent on that charge, is it?”

”We were all young once. Anyway, I guess this means I don’t really need to ask what I came over here for: When people told me you were working on this Hell House business I didn’t believe it, but now I walk right in on you in the middle of plotting the very deed.”

“Don’t tell me you’re putting this in the column?” Alexandra said. One of the foster cats jumped up on the table and she shushed it off, then compensated by scratching it behind the ears.

“A lot of people in town are very upset about it,” Lily said, also scratching the cat. “Pastor Bradbury—”

“Ex pastor.”

“All the same, he’s been—pardon the phrase—raising hell about it. He’s got half the town up in arms to boycott it, and he’s even arranging an interfaith prayer vigil on Halloween night to condemn all of you. And then he says he’s personally going to take all the kids in town trick or treating himself.”

“How’s he going to have an interfaith event in a town with only one church?”

”He’s got folks coming from as far away as Law’s Summit. It’s going to be quite a ruckus. But that’s not why I’m here, I’m asking why YOU of all people would go along with Bathsheba’s nonsense? It’s practically medieval.”

“I wasn’t around for the Middle Ages, so I suppose I’ll just have to take your word for it,” said Alexandra. “But if you need a quote for your column, just say that I’m very interested in the morally righteous upbringing of our town’s children, and I’m sure Vice Principal Gibbs and Mr. Garrett and Pastor Usher—they’ve got Pastor Usher going along with this too?—will do a wonderful job with this…let’s call it an ‘ecumenical exercise.’ And you can print that.”

“All the bullshit fit to print,” Lily said, still scribbling in her notepad. Then she closed it, put the pencil down, leaned back in the kitchen chair, and said, “All right then, suppose you tell me what you’re really up to, off the record?”

“Off the record, I’m putting razorblades in caramel apples for Halloween. It’s my way of correcting children’s diets.”

Lily gave her a long-suffering look. Alexandra shrugged in response.

She’d known Lily a long time; much longer than anybody in town had any reason to suspect. Whereas Alexandra survived by working very hard at not being noticed, Lily was always at the center of things.

But she was careful to never be an instigator of anything herself. An observer, a chronicler, even a gossip—but never an actor. It was a game she played well, and Alexandra respected it, even if it meant that sometimes Lily couldn’t be counted on for help when it counted the most, and other times that her help was almost as bad as anyone else’s opposition.

Still, she knew that there were certain confidences even Lilly wasn’t willing to break. Assuming a more serious expression, Alexandra said, “Do you want to know what I’m really doing? Off the record, like you said?”

”I wasn’t even here today,” Lily said, and put her pad in her jacket pocket.

“Oh if only that were true,” said Alexandra. Then, rising, she said, “Come with me.”

Without a word, Lily followed. They wet back to the den and the altar there. Lily had visited many times before, especially in the years after Van, Alexandra’s husband, had died, a time when Alexandra had needed more help than she’d ever been used to asking for, and a time when, in Lily’s opinion, she had become a very different person than she was when Van was alive, although she was always careful to keep this opinion to herself.

Lily was used to seeing the altar, but now things had changed; many new additions were here that she had never seen before, although most of them she recognized them by reputation.

She knew what they were all for—and what that meant.

“So you’re going to—?” she said.

Alexandra nodded.

Sighing, Lily shook her head. “I’m not usually one to talk, but do you think maybe you’re going just a little too far?”

Instead of answering, Alexandra started to disrobe. “Join me in the circle,” she said.

Silent again, Lily undressed, and both women sat face to face inside the circle, communing wordlessly for a moment as candles burned and the scent of incense filled the room.

Slowly, slowly, the outline of Alexandra’s ful plan become apparent to Lily, who allowed herself the luxury of being briefly shocked.

“Going too far?” Alexandra said after some time. “Oh no. I think the problem is that we’ve never gone far enough. This town—well, it’s had its ups and it’s had its downs, but sometimes things get so far down they need a little, what’s the word for it?”

”Correction?” Lily said.

“That’s right. We need a correction. If Van were here he’d never have let things get this far without doing something, I’m sure of that. Well, I can’t be Van, and I can’t make up for lost time. But I can certainly do something now.”

She sprinkled a pinch of something into the burning censure, turning the smoke from the fiery incense red.

“And what about you, Lily?” she said. “Can I count on you to do something?”

”That depends—what is something?”

“Just for you to say the right things to the right people. And let me know if anyone starts asking too many questions. …and protect me from my own bleeding heart, if need be.”

“Your heart hasn’t bled in 50 years at least,” said Lily.

Alexandra shrugged. “Well. We’ll just have to use someone else’s then.”

***

The warm spell didn’t last.

By the time Halloween came the town was, as the saying goes, cold as a witch’s tit, and many children wore extra layers underneath their costumes before they went banging out the door with plastic pumpkin buckets in hand that night.

The most effective tool for combatting the chill was excitement. The children were as happy about Halloween as ever, but this year adults felt an extra special frisson about the night as well. Nobody could quite put their finger on it, but the quiet consensus remained that there was something in the air, definite but elusive at the same time.

“Maybe it’s magic,” more than one person joked as the hallowed day approached. But the comment never seemed as funny once it was actually spoken out loud.

The silver sliver of a waxing crescent moon rose just before sundown Halloween night, a mute witness to the final stages of preparation on the Hell House.

Most of the structure had previously been Shilo Hutcheson’s disused barn, which he donated to the church—Shilo’s idea of a donation being to charge only half what he ordinarily would for use of his land, of course.

Finding contributions of timber and other building supplies from nearby towns at a surplus, church members created a temporary addition onto the structure. Mr. Fletcher, the high school’s English teacher, referred to this section as the “Ante-Hell,” and was disappointed when nobody else considered this a droll allusion.

The barn technically sat outside the town limits, since Ex-Pastor Bradbury had managed to use his leverage with the town council to get special permits denied on any property inside the town boundaries, one of his many efforts to block Bathsheba before the night came.

But once in the countryside the extent of his influence ended. Bradbury’s hope was that forcing the Hell House so far so far out would hurt attendance, but in reality the weeks of maneuvering over the topic ended up driving a train of free publicity (much of it delivered in breathless tones by Lily Rougemont’s daily column), and by Halloween night the community’s curiosity was at maximum pique.

Thomas Garrett did his part with an aggressive advertising campaign that bought up nearly a quarter of the billboards in the county, covering them with promotional art depicting the black and orange portrait of a leering, horned devil over the silhouette of a house engulfed in flames, with the words “HELL HOUSE: A HALLOWEEN ODYSSEY INTO DAMNATION” in huge letters, and, in much, much, much smaller letters beneath that, the words “Get Saved Today!™”

Bathsheba objected to the art design, calling it obscene. But Garrett mollified her with assurances that a little obscenity was okay for advertising purposes as long as it ultimately served a missionary end, and eventually she relented, particularly since they’d already paid a deposit on the billboards anyway.

Vice Principal Gibbs failed in her crusade to veto giving candy to kids and teenagers visiting the Hell House, but won on a compromise that every handout be accompanied by religious tracts.

She also attempted to force a rule that no child wearing a Halloween costume be admitted, but when the volume of sales of masks at Drummond’s Grocery made it clear this would leave her with essentially no audience remaining she instead recruited Pastor Usher to encourage religiously themed costumes for Halloween instead, a drive that was only partly successful.

The paints used on the barn’s exterior and interiors had also been donations, and the painters worked free of charge, composing scenes of hellfire and eternal torments based off of various classical works in a style guide also created by Mr. Fletcher. Their talents fell generally short of those of the great masters, but church members deemed the results sufficiently infernal all the same.

Most of the cast were drama students from the community college in James Falls. The promise of extra credit meant that the bulk of the volunteers came from those already most worried about whether they’d ultimately pass the class, but since they were all willing to pay for their own costumes and many seemed particularly cheerful about the prospect of frightening children, organizers ultimately judged their efforts sufficient too.

Ex-Pastor Bradbury and three other ministers from more forward-thinking churches in nearby towns were having a “love-in”—the phrase “protest” had been decided too confrontational—in Shilo Hutcheson’s field near the barn, with the promise of a hay ride back to town for trick or treating for any kids leaving the Hell House, and additional candy for kids who skipped the Hell House entirely.

Word of the Hell House spread for miles. As sundown approached, a virtual children’s crusade of curious youngsters was set to descend on the old barn, most of them ferried in caravans by parents and other older relatives who, though many would not admit it, were eager to gander at the house’s content themselves.

In the midst of all of this preparation, comparably few people paid attention to the small details, like the very unusual shopping list that Alexandra said she needed for the Hell House’s witchcraft sermon.

These included but were not limited to “a sash of lion’s skin three inches broad,” “perfumes from Cyprus, Crete, and Phoenicia” (this last one was crossed out and “Lebanon” written hastily in its place), “a sword, a kindling dish, oil to anoint the temples and the eyes,” and most important of all, a live snake at least three feet in length, preferably a black-headed python or children’s python.

Those tasked with procuring these did ask some questions of course, including whether a mountain lion’s skin would suffice for an African lion’s, and whether she meant cooking oil or engine oil.

With great patience, Alexandra explained things like the necessity of the two knives, one with a black hilt and the other with a white, “made on the day of Mercury”—a Wednesday, she said—and “tempered in the blood of a gosling and the juice of pimpernel,” and the quill pen dipped in the blood of a magpie and “herb of mercury”—spurges, in other words—and the cane of hazelwood that was “cut from the tree in a single stroke.”

There were questions about what some of these terms meant and where things might best be acquired. What nobody asked—or, oddly, even thought to ask— was what exactly what she needed with all of this anyway.

In the very last hour before opening, 11 members of the church board—Alexandra and Ex-Pastor Bradbury were the only one not present—gathered with Pastor Usher to make a final inspection of the Hell House and be the very first people led through it. The 12-strong assembly virtually buzzed with anticipation.

Outside, just off the main road, a junked car donated by the used car lot in Elk Lake was flipped onto its roof to simulate a fatal accident, and Deputy Harwood parked his patrol car with the red lights flashing next to it to compliment the illusion.

Lest anyone driving in for the Hell House mistake this for an actual car wreck, one of the drama students stood between the two vehicles, dressed in ominous black robes and a skull mask.

From there, a series of increasingly sinister looking scarecrows pointed the way to the house itself, each of them tied to one of Shilo’s fenceposts and appearing more and more elaborately like a sinner in torment, until the last was actually covered nearly head to toe in protruding bits of sharp metal and painful restraints.

Students at the high school art class had made these, and of course Vice Principal Gibbs was obligated to allow it despite disapproving of the aesthetics.

The main entrance of the Hell House was painted to look like the mouth of a huge devil opening to swallow visitors as they passed through a black curtain beyond. Inside, a teenage actor dressed like an angel—half of her costume white and the other half black—warned, “This journey will take you through twists and turns that will ultimately cause you to ponder the reality of life beyond the grave.”

And she stood amidst a makeshift cemetery of plywood tombstones and one or two vacant (but noticeably shallow) open graves, the atmosphere punctuated by the whirring engine of a fog machine. A few of the church members laughed.

The room after that was, seemingly, a funeral, complete with weeping mourners and two full-sized caskets (loaners from Beckett’s funeral home). Two bloodied girls stood next to the caskets, the victims of the “car accident” out on the road—one the driver, who had been drinking, and the other the passenger, who had not.

Taking the sober girl by the hand, the angel guide led her away to an exit filled with holy light. The young actress had a bit of trouble emoting rapturous bliss while also trying to shield her eyes from being blinded as she stepped through to “paradise,” but everyone thought she did a fair job all things considered.

The second girl also tried to follow, but with a grim expression the angel stood in her way. That was the cue for two drama students in devil masks to spring out of the caskets (a few of the board members yelped in surprise) and, as she protested, drag her towards the exit filled with billowing artificial fog and red lighting, through which everyone else was evidently expected to follow.

The church members murmured as the sound of the girl’s screams echoed. One said, “It’s very good, but won’t all of this be scary for the children?”

”That’s the point!” Garrett said, and winked.

More pageants like this played out in rooms beyond: In one, a girl did drugs at a college party and, suddenly out of her mind, committed suicide. Deputy Harwood stood behind a curtain and shot his service revolver into a watermelon to complete the effect.

In another scene, two women were married in a non-denominational ceremony, one of them apparently unable to see that her bride is actually the devil, complete with horns beneath the wedding veil. Afterwards the pair retire for a honeymoon in Hell.

The part that elicited the biggest reaction featured a blood-spattered abortion clinic, where the patient watched helplessly as a devil in a doctor’s coat dropped a “baby” (actually two hog’s hearts tied together with twine) into a blender despite her protests that she’d changed her mind.

There were sinners in torment, bloody scenes of devils and torture, and even the use of sizzling bacon fat to simulate the sound and smoke of the eternal hellfire. At one point Pastor Usher leaned over to Bathsheba Gibbs and whispered, “You’ve done a wonderful thing for our community here”—speaking over the sound of an atheist college professor being beaten with a ruler by a devil wearing a graduation gown.

In the dark, Bathsheba blushed. “Thank you, Pastor.”

”Wherever did you get the idea?”

”It came to me in a dream. I think it must have been divine inspiration.”

“A blessed hand truly guided this,” the pastor said—speaking a little louder to be heard over the whirling sounds of the blender in the next room.

The inaugural expedition took about 40 minutes, with a minor delay when one cast member accidentally kicked over a bucket full of blood during a scene about the combined dangers of social media and socialized medicine, and everyone had to stop to clean it up.

There were only two rooms left: the slam-bang finale at the Gates of Hell at the very end, and before that, Alexandra’s representation of the dangers of witchcraft.

No cast member led the way into this room; indeed, they’d all been given explicit instructions to stay away. The 12 board members and the pastor filed in, letting Shilo’s creaky old barn door slap shut behind them. It was unimaginably dark inside, so much that those with claustrophobia in the group immediately broke into a sweat.

When light finally came it was a red light, as fire burst into a full blaze in the center of the room, and over it sat a black cauldron, steaming with a ghoulish red haze that smelled of strange, unnameable things. The sudden heat from the fire made several people step back.

Over the cauldron stood Alexandra, although several of the church board didn’t recognize her at first. She wore a cloak all of red, with a deep red hood that covered her head, and all over it she had embroidered hex marks and warding signs—the same ones she’d begun working on the very night everyone voted on the Hell House.

Beneath that cloak she’d painted her body, her face, and even her hands the same shade of red (everyone was shocked to realize that she wore nothing beneath the cloak at all…), and with her hair tucked beneath the red hood the only break in the crimson facade were the whites of her eyes.

Someone screamed, and everyone turned at the same time as a snake nearly five feet long slipped between the legs of the frightened woman, glided across the barn’s dirt floor, and, as everyone watched, coiled around one of Alexandra’s bare legs and climbed her body like a tree.

Raising her voice, Alexandra recited:

“Dalmaley, lamekh, cadat, pancia, velous, merroe, lamideck, caldurech, anereton, mitraton. Impure angels, be the jailers of these instruments, for they are needed for many things.”

A log on the fire hissed, popped, and split in half. More of the board members jumped. A few simply stared, round-eyed and pale-faced, unsure what was about to happen..

Grasping the hazelwood staff (cut from the tree in a single stroke), Alexandra waved it over the mouth of the cauldron and recited again:

”Impure angels, may our work be accomplished through you: Zalay, Salmay, Dalmay, Angrecton, Ledrion, Amisor, Euchey. Come, that this creature may gain a shape, and by this let our work be accomplished.”

Pastor Usher found his voice first. Clearing his throat, he said, “Mrs—that is, Mrs. Updike, I don’t think the board members and I quite understand—”

“I conjure thee, oh form of the instrument, by the virtue of the elements, by the virtues of the stones and herbs, and of snow-storms, winds and thunder. Deign, oh lords, to sanctify this creature that it may be a remedy for the human race:

“Astrachios, Asach, Ascala, Abedumabal, Silat, Anabotas, Jesubilin, Scingin, Geneon, Domol.”

And she thrust the staff into the pastor’s hand. Bewildered, he accepted it and mumbled “Erm, thank you.”

The room was growing hot. Several people tried to open the door but found it locked, although they couldn’t see how. One man started to beat on it, calling for help, but nobody, it seemed, could hear them.

Whirling around and around the cauldron, her red cloak flying in every direction, Alexandra poured the phials of the sacred perfumes into the steaming mass, and all the while she chanted:

“Astaroth, Ador, Cameso, Valuerituf, Mareso, Lodir, Cadomir, Aluiel, Calniso, Tely, Plorim, Viordy, Cureviorbas, Cameron, Vesturiel, Vulnavij, Benez meus Calmiron, Noard, Nisa Chenibranbo Calevodium, Brazo Tabrasol.”

More people pulled at the door now, and even more beat on it, but nobody came. Alexandra’s voice grew louder still:

“Beelzebuth, Madilon, Solymo, Saroy, Theu, Ameclo, Sagrael, Praredun, Adricanorom, Martino, Timo, Cameron, Phorsy, Metosite, Prumosy, Dumaso, Elivisa, Alphrois, Fubentroty.”

Bathsheba seemed paralyzed with rage, white-faced, lips fixed in a snarl, fingers tied into knots; but for once in her life it seemed she had nothing at all to say.

Taking up the two knives, Alexandra cut herself, first with the white knife, then with the black. The wounds on the backs of her arms were shallow, but they bled enough so that the drops fell, hissing, into the steaming brew. And she intoned:

“Ouyar, Chameron, Aliseon, Mandousin, Premy, Oriet, Naydrus, Esmony, Eparinesont, Estiot, Dumosson, Danochar.

“I am Ank F N Khonsu, your prophet and your priest. Make all spirits subject unto me, on the Earth and under the Earth, on dry land and in the water, of whirling air and of rushing fire.

“I invoke you, the terrible and invisible god in the void. All of you hear me: This is the Lord of the Gods; this is the Lord of the Universe; this is He Whom the Winds Fear; this is He Who Having Made Voice By His Commandment Is Lord of All Things, king, ruler and helper, oh hear me now, for the Heart Girt With a Serpent is my name! Hear me!”

And round and round the fire she whirled seven times, faster and faster as she went, until she became a red whirlwind, and everyone stood, entranced with horror all of a sudden she took up a curbed sword, raised it high over her head and, with a shriek, brought it down with all of her might, splitting the side of the cauldron and releasing everything inside.

Instantly the spilled concoction burst into flames, and fire spread across the floor but, amazingly, flowed around the feet of all the assembled church members, seemingly trapping each of them where they stood but never coming close enough to burn them, nor did the dry timber of the old barn yield to the flames either.

The fire burned white hot, but at the same time it burned nothing at all, and the men and women of the church cried out at the heat but still were unharmed.

Trapped, they could only watch, helpless, as the great snake slithered among the flames, coming again to Alexandra’s feet. And then it rose, stretching its scaly body nearly all the way up to its full height, its head extended toward hers.

Alexandra bent down and kissed the serpent’s mouth. And all at once a change came over the creature: It grew taller, stretching out from nose to tail, and broader too, and its scales melted and smoothed over its figure, even as its face grew flat, and hair grew on its head, and arms and legs split off from the trunk of its body, and very soon a man stood in place of the snake.

No, not just a man—almost like an angel, everyone saw, beautiful and powerful. But strange too, thin and pale, and faintly androgynous, and his eyes were still the eyes of the serpent, cold and calculating as he stood amidst the white hot flames.

Kneeling, Alexandra held out the lion skin sash. The man/thing draped it across his body with reverence.

Then, even more horrified, they watched as she crawled on her hands and knees to his feet, clamored up the strange man’s legs, and opened her mouth to swallow his erect cock, which was curved in the same way as the sword Alexandra had used to split the cauldron.

Reaching up, she ran her palms down the front of the stranger’s body, feeling out the hard lines of his shoulder, chest, and stomach. The paint on her hands mixed with the fire sweat on his bare skin and left red streaks on his pale skin that stood out like bloody marks in the firelight.

Gripping the backs of the man’s thighs, Alexandra swiveled her head and mouth on his protruding cock, her red lips pursed around it, the sound of her sucking audible even over the crackle of the flames in the old barn. 

In one fast motion the stranger ripped the red cloak off of her and threw it away into the fire, fully displaying her naked body all at once.Through the haze of steam rising from the broken remains of the cauldron everyone could see her silhouette, the hard symmetry of her back, and the motions of her shoulders as she worked her head up and down.

Trapped, the 12 church members couldn’t look away from the unfolding scene. Their eyes began to water—not from the smoke, but because they couldn’t shut them, staring transfixed at what was happening instead. Alexandra threw her hands up against the strange man’s body again, and most of them recognized the gesture: supplication, prayer, divine ecstasy.

Her moans made them shiver and, unwittingly and unwillingly, members of the assembly felt their own passions flare. Hairs stood up, mouths went dry, skin broke into gooseflesh, and more than one church member felt an insistent throb deep down inside of themselves that filled with shame and horror but also, undeniably, with desire.

Taking the entirety of the stranger’s cock in her hand, Alexandra slid her palm from the tip of it all the way to the base, as if testing it for something. Then she licked it with the tip of her tongue, tasting the salt-sweat from his body. The room was hot, but this was cold, hard, and entirely unnatural—and yet, not in an unpleasant way.

When he began to dribble she opened her mouth again to catch the spill; it sparkled on her tongue and palate, a taste almost impossible to describe. Taking hold of him with both hands now, she fed him to herself, easing her mouth all the way down and letting the cold, hard certainty of this strange body into herself, bobbing her head and letting her tongue slither all along the underside.

As for the stranger, he seemed barely aware of what was happening, saying nothing and doing little, only watching her with a blank expression and reptilian eyes that never blinked. But the muscles of his sinewy arms stood out in the Hell-red light of the fire as he reached out and grabbed hold of her hair, holding her in place with steely strength as she licked and sucked the delicious length of his curved cock with her salacious mouth again an again.

When he came it happened all at once a gush that filled her mouth and dribbled from her lips. Where a few drops landed on her breasts and the rest of her naked body, chills went all the way through her. The room was so hot, but the stranger was cool, unyielding, unrelenting. The fire inside Alexandra’s herself grew hotter still.

Standing, she faced the assembly and ran her hands over her naked body, letting her fingers caress and accentuate the lines of her own naked legs and thighs, the plane of her belly, the heavy swell of her naked breasts, and the dappling of the spilled wetness from her mouth.

As they watched, she rubbed the tip of one finger up the length of her thigh and then stuck it into her mouth, pursing her lips and making the same sucking noise she had a moment ago. She looked every man and woman there in the eyes as she did it, and the heat of their own desires fed the flames around them. The fire couldn’t hurt Alexandra; it had come from inside of her, and if she laid down in it the flames would lick her naked body clean and send her out spotless and whole.

She let herself cry out as the stranger grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her back against himself. He had cum just a minute ago but was still as hard, ready, and unyielding as ever. She writhed against the unforgiving pillar of his body, again taking note of how the despite eyes of her audience gorged themselves on the way she displayed herself in front of everyone.

The he bent her over so hard and fast that she worried her figure might snap. When he put himself inside of her the sudden coldness of it made her scream, but almost immediately her own body grew heated again, and the wetness between her legs mixed with the juices she’d left on his shaft already before.

One of his strong arms encircled her throat and squeezed, choking her while she was fucked. Alexandra let her eyes roll back in her head and allowed most of her body to go weak, almost limp, leaving just enough of herself rigid to keep from collapsing but otherwise putting up no resistance, either to the stranger or to anything else.

Blocking out everything else as best she could, she tried hard just to feel. No sights, no sounds, no thoughts even, just the feeling of flesh against flesh, bodies and other bodies, compulsion and desire, hot skin and cold skin, one extreme after another, over and over.

After a while she couldn’t stand anymore and she let herself fall to the floor. The fire embraced her. There among the flames she lolled and writhed, and the man-thing crouched over her from behind, holding her own and dragging her back against itself, pressing deep inside of her once more as it began to cum again, filling her until overflowing.

She felt some of it dribble down the backs of her thighs, and when it spilled into the flames they hissed and, for a moment, went out. Seconds after it finished it was hard again—not just its cock but all of it, head to toe, always hard, always demanding, and never to be satisfied, because it was an inhuman thing, and its body was only a tool to express a hunger that was never over, without end. That was the real Hell: to indulge forever but never be satisfied with anything, even for a moment.

But her offering had been enough for now—enough to earn what happened next. Throwing up her hands again, Alexandra said, “Oh hear me now: I’ve praised your name, attended on you, given you rich gifts as befits custom and your station, made the offering of my own flesh, and fulfilled all obligations under the oldest covenants. Now I demand payment: These are my enemies. Rid me of them, oh great king, or hear your name despised.”

Silence for a moment. Then one of the church members said, “Alexandra, I know I parked in your reserved space twice over the summer, but the thing that’s really important to remember…”

“These are my enemies. Rid me of all of them, but especially…” then she turned and pointed, first at Pastor Usher, still holding the hazelwood staff.

“This one.”

Then at Garrett.

“This one.”

And finally at Bathsheba Gibbs, who still had not spoken.

“And most of all this one.”

Turning back to the man she said, “That’s my boon. My due. Will you honor it, or be known forevermore a traitor to your own rites?”

The naked man’s serpentine eyes were impossible to read as he looked first at Alexandra, then at the church members one by one. All of them flinched.

And then he seemed to grow, becoming taller and darker. He was dissolving into the smoke of the fire, they realized, and soon he WAS the fire, looming overhead, and the column of flames licked the ceiling of the barn, and suddenly the walls were ablaze too, and everything was alight on all sides.

Men and women screamed, fell over each other, fell into the fire and then rolled in the dirt in a vain effort to beat the fire out but found that it only spread, because soon there was no place anywhere around them that was not the fire already. The flames became everything, everywhere, spreading and consuming, fire on top of fire on top of everything else.

Until, in the end, the Hell House was an inferno.

xxxxx

Ex-Pastor Bradbury, keeping a watchful eye for the caravans of parents and children arriving for the opening of the Hell House, saw the fire first, right about one minute after sunset.

At first there was nothing, and then seemingly all at once the barn was a pillar of fire, belching black clouds of smoke like a dragon into the dusky sky like. Horrified, he could only stare for a minute and then, without even thinking to shout a warning to anyone else, he sprinted across the field in the direction of the flames.

There was already a crowd assembled to watch as the building burned, and Bradbury discovered that it was not just the families who came from town who were here, but also most of the cast of the Hell House itself.

They would later say that they did not remember exactly who gave them the warning to evacuate. Only that all of them found themselves leaving the building at the precise moment necessary to escape the fire, which they’d all barely been aware of until they were outside.

The only people not accounted for were the board members, and the pastor. But, even more amazing, as the the fire burned higher and hotter and the crowd backed away for fear that it would be spread, they began to appear one by one, figures from out of the smoky mass.

They were weary and haggard, their face and clothes dark with soot, and many of them were in shock. But although they’d walked right out of the center of the burning building, none of them were hurt in any way that anyone else could see. Only three people didn’t appear: Pastor Usher, Thomas Garrett, and Bathsheba Gibbs.

Sifting through the ashes later, no sign of any of them could be found. The fire burned all night, even after members of the volunteer fire department arrived to try to tamp down the flames, but it never spread, consuming the structure of the Hell House entirely and then burning itself out almost immediately after.

Officially, the word was that it was an electrical fire. None of the survivors said anything to contradict that conclusion—in fact, most of them said hardly anything at all. Lily Rougemont would write in awed tones about the “god-given miracle” that prevented any fatalities.

And the official story was indeed that nobody died that Halloween night.

If anybody had asked, they’d have been told that Raymond Usher II abruptly resigned from his ministry over questions about certain church funds that went unaccounted for earlier in the summer, and then immediately moved to another state the week after Halloween. Nobody seemed to remember quite which state, but all agreed it was far away.

Thomas Garrett retired from retirement and started practicing law in another county. Or maybe he finally acted on his lifelong ambition of moving to Alaska and taking up ice fishing year-round? The town gossip varied. His house sat unsold and abandoned for years.

As for Bathsheba Gibbs, the high school simply took out an ad for a new vice principal the first week of November, and nobody talked much about why the job was suddenly and mysteriously vacant.

The remaining members of the church board of directors all resigned the day after the fire. All except for Alexandra, who, in her new role as default board president, immediately reinstated Nathaniel Bradbury as pastor.

The two of them appointed a new board, and by Christmas hardly anyone in town thought to talk much about all of the changes. Ex-ex Pastor Bradbury hosted a Halloween party at the church the next year, and it was very well received. No one proposed a Hell House again.

Truth be known, the pastor’s affection for Halloween was somewhat muted compared to what it once had been. Every time that day of the year came around again, he couldn’t help but feel troubled by one more thing that happened the night of the fire. For some reason nobody seemed to notice it except for him, even though it happened plain as day in front of everyone.

The last person to leave the burning barn that night was Alexandra Updike; she emerged naked from the flames, her body immaculate and gleaming, and she carried two things with her.

She’d walked right past everyone else—and nobody else had so much as turned an eye in her direction—and straight to Bradbury himself. An then, after handing him everything she carried, without a word she’d walked off into the field.

The things she held that night: in her right hand, a staff of hazelwood, as burnt and blackened as she was not. And in her left hand, the shed skin of a snake, five feet long at least.

The staff Bradbury thrown away, driving it all the way out the county line and losing it in a forest. The burnt smell of it lingered in his car for so long that eventually he’d junked it and bought a new one.

The snakeskin he still had—somehow no place seemed safe enough to dispose of it. He kept it in a drawer in the church office, and made sure never to open that one.

More than once over the years—particularly when he drank, which he did more and more often and more and more by himself—he thought about confronting Alexandra about what really happened the night of the fire. He never did though.

From then on Halloween was a lively event in town every year, and before long most people seemed not to even remember the Hell House at all.