[Macey Wuesthoff]

Okay, here's the prologue:


This is the story of how the town of Grimshaw sold its soul to the
Devil.



What happened in Grimshaw could have happened—and still could
happen—in virtually any small American town. Yet it happened in
Grimshaw perhaps because the town was enduring extreme hardship at
the time, which naturally causes weakness in man.


* * *

1973

A deep recession was sweeping the United States. That recession
especially devastated small towns like Grimshaw, which offered its
peoples few industries and sources of income. The majority of the
sparse sources of income in Grimshaw—factories, warehouses,
restaurants, cafés, and various mom-and-pop businesses—closed their
doors forever, leaving most of Grimshaw unemployed.


A rural town in the Deep South, Grimshaw was able to fall back on
farming—until a drought followed the recession. Grimshaw, the
smallest town in the affected region, the town with the fewest
businesses open, the town that relied most heavily on farming, suffered the most. Day after day, farmers lugged buckets of water to their thirsty fields, only to have their crops mock them by withering and browning into premature deaths.



Weeks extended into months. The drought and recession went
on…and on…and on…

With no end in sight to the tribulations, with money and even food
scarce, Grimshaw’s population began to die out along with the
economy and crops. Some who lived through it moved, a few
abandoning their homes and property. Others couldn’t leave due to lack of education, finances, personal strength, or various other inhibitors. Thus, they were stuck in Grimshaw to suffer and await the end of the drought, the recession, or themselves.


The hearts of those remaining overflowed with dark, bitter pain.
They were starving. They were thirsty. They were weary. They were
angry. Most of all, they were desperate.


The most desperate of all was a farmer named John Weekly. Nine years
before, when John and his high school sweetheart Gay were seventeen,
they had dropped out of school to get married. Over the next seven
years, they had three children. Together, the family lived a life that was humble yet full of love and happiness. That love and happiness ended during the latter part of John and Gay’s eighth year of marriage, when Gay died due to complications in childbirth.


Gay had given birth to twin boys. That left John the widowed father
of five at only twenty-five years of age. Just weeks after Gay’s death came the recession, followed by the drought. The factory where John worked closed, and the crops on his farm began to die. As a single parent, he found it harder and harder to care physically and financially for his children. He had no living relatives to help, and his friends and neighbors had too many troubles of their own to offer aid. Like his own old tractor, worn and rusted from too much weather and use, John Weekly’s spirit simply “broke down”—broke down worse than the spirit of anyone else in Grimshaw.


That is probably why he was chosen.


It happened on a Friday night, when John was in the modestly
furnished bedroom he had shared with Gay. It was late, so John wore
his usual sleepwear of a sleeveless undershirt and boxers. He looked at his reflection in the dusty, cracked mirror of the bureau and shook his head. His skin was pale and his body gaunt from lack of nourishment, for he had been eating a little less so his children could have a little more. The hard times that year had marked him with worry lines and patches of premature gray in his thinning, brown hair. Appalled by his reflection, he switched on his bedside lamp and switched off his overhead light, trying not to face the shell of a man he had become.


John slumped onto the bed. On the nightstand lay a folded piece of
paper and a framed photo of Gay, smiling and beautiful, taken just
before she died. John picked up her photo and longingly poured over it. God, how he missed her, how he needed her now! In a way, though, he was glad she wasn’t around to suffer through these hard times, to see how they had left him unable to support his family. He dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief to stop the tears that threatened to seep through his lids.


That was it. Looking at Gay’s photo and thinking about her hurt too
much. John put down the picture, picked up the paper, and unfolded it.
Printed across the top were the words, “Mortgage Foreclosure, Final
Notice.” He shook his head again. So now he’d not only lost his wife, his job, and his crops, he was going to lose his home and land, too. Where would that leave his family?


“Daddy?”


John raised his eyes from the mortgage notice. His oldest daughter,
eight-year-old Sarah, stood gazing at him from outside the open
doorway. She was the only of the five children who had her late
mother’s blonde hair and blue eyes, but her facial features were almost identical to John’s. He had once been quite proud of his daughter’s face being so like his own. Now, seeing that similarity hurt him, for Sarah’s countenance had recently taken on the pale, sickly color that he’d just observed in himself.


John asked, “What’re you doing up, hon?”


“I’m hungry,” Sarah replied. “Everybody is. The twins are crying
and pointing at their tummies and saying ‘hun-ry, hun-ry.’ And
Gaylette and John Jr. are in my room, saying they can’t sleep ’cause
their tummies are growling.”


“Oh,” John said distractedly, returning his attention to the mortgage notice. “There’s a loaf of bread in the breadbox.”


“Nuh-uh. That’s gone.”


“Gone?”


“Yeah. We ate it all at dinner.”


“Any crackers in the cabinet? Fruit in the fridge? Canned soup or
vegetables in the pantry?”


Sarah answered each question with a shake of her head. “There’s
nothing in the house to eat.” Her features brightened with an idea. “Hey, let’s get some vegetables out of the garden!”


“There ain’t none. The drought’s killed the whole push of them.”


“Oh.”


An awkward silence followed. Sarah lowered her eyes in the same
defeated expression that John had also observed on his own face a
minute before. It pained his soul. He tried to say something comforting.
“I’ll go into town tomorrow and get a few things. For now, why don’t
you have a glass of water, and get one for your brothers and sister, too?
It’ll make y’all feel full.”


His statement had the opposite effect. Sarah contorted her features
and said resentfully, “I already did. We’re still hungry!” Scowling, she
pivoted and disappeared from the doorway.


John maintained his composure long enough to put the mortgage
notice on the nightstand, crawl under the covers, and switch off the
lamp. But once he flipped onto his side, facing away from the door and
the extinguished light, he allowed his tears to flow. He cried for his
land, for his children, for his late wife. Mostly, though, he cried for
himself.


“John.”


At first, his name was spoken so faintly, so unexpectedly, that he
assumed he had imagined it and kept crying.


“John,” it repeated, low and gravelly, with a hissing undertone.


The third time the voice sounded, John knew for sure it was real,
because he heard it speak an entire sentence: “I can make it all better,
John.”


John’s lids flew open. He bolted upright in bed. “Who’s there?” he
called, groping for the switch to his bedside lamp.


The voice came again, now angry. “Don’t turn on that light!”


John dropped his hand but demanded, “Who are you?”




Prologue to be continued in the next post