Under the Dome

Jackie was standing in the middle of Coggins’s bedroom. There was a plain wooden cross on one wall and a plaque on another. The plaque read HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW. The coverlet of the bed was turned back. There were traces of blood on the sheet beneath.

“And this,” Jackie said.

“Come around here.”

Reluctantly, Linda did. Lying on the polished wood floor between the bed and the wall was a knotted length of rope. The knots were bloody.

“Looks like somebody beat him,” Jackie said grimly. “Hard enough to knock him out, maybe. Then they laid him on the…” She looked at the other woman. “No?”

“I take it you didn’t grow up in a religious home,” Linda said.

“I did so. We worshipped the Holy Trinity: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. What about you?”

“Plain old tapwater Baptist, but I heard about things like this. I think he was flagellating himself.”

“Yug! People did that for sins, right?”

“Yes. And I don’t think it ever went entirely out of style.”

“Then this makes sense. Sort of. Go in the bathroom and look on the toilet tank.”

Linda made no move to do so. The knotted rope was bad enough, the feel of the house—too empty, somehow—was worse.

“Go on. It’s nothing that’ll bite you, and I’ll bet you a dollar to a dime that you’ve seen worse.”

Linda went into the bathroom. Two magazines were lying on top of the toilet tank. One was a devotional, The Upper Room. The other was called Young Oriental Slits. Linda doubted if that one was sold in many religious bookshops.

“So,” Jackie said. “Are we getting a picture here? He sits on the john, tosses the truffle—”

“Tosses the truffle?” Linda giggled in spite of her nerves. Or because of them.

“It’s what my mother used to call it,” Jackie said. “Anyway, after he’s done with that, he opens a medium-sized can of whoop-ass to expiate his sins, then goes to bed and has happy Asian dreams. This morning he gets up, refreshed and sin-free, does his morning devotionals, then rides into town on his bike. Make sense?”

It did. It just didn’t explain why the house felt so wrong to her. “Let’s check the radio station,” she said. “Then we’ll head into town ourselves and get coffee. I’m buying.”

“Good,” Jackie said. “I want mine black. Preferably in a hypo.”

7

The low-slung, mostly glass WCIK studio was also locked, but speakers mounted beneath the eaves were playing “Good Night, Sweet Jesus” as interpreted by that noted soul singer Perry Como. Behind the studio the broadcast tower loomed, the flashing red lights at the top barely visible in the strong morning light. Near the tower was a long barnlike structure which Linda assumed must hold the station’s generator and whatever other supplies it needed to keep beaming the miracle of God’s love to western Maine, eastern New Hampshire, and possibly the inner planets of the solar system.

Jackie knocked, then hammered.

“I don’t think anybody’s here,” Linda said… but this place seemed wrong, too. And the air had a funny smell, stale and sallow. It reminded her of the way her mother’s kitchen smelled, even after a good airing. Because her mother smoked like a chimney and believed the only things worth eating were those fried in a hot skillet greased with plenty of lard.

Jackie shook her head. “We heard someone, didn’t we?”

Linda had no answer for that, because it was true. They had been listening to the station on their drive from the parsonage, and had heard a smooth deejay announcing the next record as “Another message of God’s love in song.”

This time the hunt for the key was longer, but Jackie finally found it in an envelope taped beneath the mailbox. With it was a scrap of paper on which someone had scrawled 1 6 9 3.

The key was a dupe, and a little sticky, but after some chivvying, it worked. As soon as they were in, they heard the steady beep of the security system. The keypad was on the wall. When Jackie punched in the numbers, the beeping quit. Now there was only the music. Perry Como had given way to something instrumental; Linda thought it sounded suspiciously like the organ solo from “In-AGadda-Da-Vida.” The speakers in here were a thousand times better than the ones outside and the music was louder, almost like a living thing.

Did people work in this holier-than-thou racket? Linda wondered. Answer the phones? Do business? How could they?

There was something wrong in here, too. Linda was sure of it. The place felt more than creepy to her; it felt outright dangerous. When she saw that Jackie had unsnapped the strap on her service automatic, Linda did the same. The feel of the gun-butt under her hand was good. Thy rod and thy gun-butt, they comfort me, she thought.

“Hello?” Jackie called. “Reverend Coggins? Anybody?”