Chapter Twenty

Reverend Milton sat in his own dressing room, seperate from the green room the rest of the preachers were hanging out in. Apparently they were worried that “demonic haunting” was catching, and didn’t want to spend too much time around Reverend Milton or Nubbins. So, the two of them sat, alone, until it was time for Reverend Milton to go on.

The crowd that night was easily twice the size of the last, disastrous revival. Apparently word had gotten out about Reverend Milton’s pet demon, and everybody wanted a look.

Nubbins had not agreed to help in any way with Reverend Milton’s sermon. Cyrus had hoped he might be able to “banish” the demon, or get him to hide off stage and help out with some miraculous healings.

The demon would not go along with his plan, however. Nubbins woudn’t even promise to stand quietly off stage and let Reverend Milton do his thing as though the previous revival had just been a fluke. He could have said the whole thing was an adversity he overcame with the Lord’s help.

Nope. He was going to have to contend with a disagreeable demon following him around on stage.
Eventually it was time for Reverend Milton to preach. The stage manager came and knocked on his door, called “sixty seconds!” through the door, and ran off.

Nubbins got up from the couch he had been laying on, walked over to the dressing room door, opened it, and said, “After you, buttercup.”

Reverend Milton got up from his chair, checked his hair and suit in the mirror, and stomped out of the room ahead of Nubbins. Nubbins followed closely behind him, chuckling in a menacing sort of way every few seconds. Reverend Milton tried to ignore this, and hoped he’d be able to get through the sermon without the crowd fleeing again.

They passed through the green room on the way to the stage, where the other preachers did their level best to avoid making eye contact with either of them.

“Thanks for the compassion and understanding, fellas,” Reverend Milton said as he left the room again. He grabbed a bottle of water to bring onstage with him.

Reverend Milton and Nubbins stood just offstage until it was time to go on. The preacher currently wrapping up his sermon, a balding man with a red face and black horn rimmed glasses, gave Reverend Milton a worried glance before he finished his sermon and introduced him.

As they waited, Nubbins rocked back and forth on his feet, humming a tuneless song. When Reverend Milton looked down at him, Nubbins gave him an exaggerated, sarcastic wink.

The preacher onstage introduced Reverend Milton, who walked on to no applause, or noise of any sort. Every one in the hall was silent. They simply watched him.

“Good evening bro...” was as far as Reverend Milton got in his greeting before Nubbins let loose a great, terrifying wail and leapt from where he stood offstage to the Reverend’s shoulders. He landed hard, nearly knocking Reverend Milton over.

The audience gasped.

Nubbins peered out at the crowd, then gave them his most wicked grin (which was quite wicked indeed. He’d had thousands of years to practice, after all), and began vigorously humping the back of Reverend Milton’s head. The crowd gasped, and a few of the women in the congregation screamed.

Reverend Milton dropped his microphone and yelled, “What the hell are you doing?” He then tried to catch Nubbins and get the little demon off of his shoulders, without success.

“Oh yeah! Fight back, baby, that’s what I like!” Nubbins exclaimed.

This crowd, who had been expecting to see a demon, did not flee. In fact, some of the burlier men in attendance stood up and rushed to the stage. They climbed from the floor of the hall up to the elevated stage, and hustled over to Reverend Milton. Two of them grabbed Nubbins.

If Nubbins had been paying better attention, this would have turned out very poorly indeed for the two suckers who grabbed him. However, he hadn’t expected any of the people in the building that night to actually try to attack him.

So instead of being destroyed in an artistic and disturbing orgy of violence and gore, the two faithful men were able to wrestled Nubbins off of Reverend Milton’s head and pin him to the floor. Several of the other church goers joined them in laying their hands on the little demon, praying for him to leave Reverend Milton and return to Hell.

Nubbins was surprised enough by their actions that he wasn’t precisely sure how best to respond. There was, of course, the old “explosion of entrails and blood” bit, which was always a crowd-pleaser. He could, instead, posess one of them and make him hump the Reverend’s head, which would be a lot of fun and put the fear back into these assholes.

Then he had a brilliant idea, and simply disappeared. The men who had been holding him found their hands empty, and those who had been laying their hands upon the little demon discovered they were no longer touching anything at all. They looked at their empty hands in confusion, then stood and cheered.

The audience cheered with them, celebrating the triumph over evil which had occurred right in front of them.

Reverend Milton looked around, completely bewildered. He wasn’t hopeful enough to think they’d actually gotten rid of the little demon. That would have just been foolish. He picked up his microphone again, and spent a moment looking around at the crowd.

He was searching for Nubbins, and didn’t see him anywhere.

“Brothers and sisters, we have witnessed a miracle tonight,” he began, and continued, eventually weaving his way back to his usual sermon. Nubbins, to Reverend Milton’s great relief, did not appear again for the rest of the sermon that night.

That night they took in nearly sixty thousand dollars in donations and merchandise sales.

After he was done preaching, he walked off stage and into the green room, where the other preachers were waiting to shake his hand and congratulate him.
Reverend Milton was unable to resist, and said “Do you expect me to accept congratulations from a bunch of holy jerks who did their best to avoid a brother in need? Get out of my sight.”

The other preachers looked at the floor, guilty, as Reverend Milton strode out of the green room into the hallway and back towards his dressing room. Once he had his back to the other preachers, he broke into a huge grin, and had to suppress a laugh. Even if he was damned, it sure was fun to be holier than the holiest of thou.

He continued down the hall, and turned to open the door and enter his dressing room.

Nubbins was back on the couch, smoking a cigarette and thumbing through an old copy of Newsweek.

“Hey fuckhead,” Nubbins said by way of greeting.

“Hey,” Reverend Milton said. He sat down in an easy chair, and loosened his tie. He started to take off his shoes when Grace barged in to the room.

“I heard about the miracle, is he really gone?” she asked, then saw Nubbins and said, “Oh.”

“No, he certainly isn’t gone,” Reverend Milton said. “Sorry to get your hopes up.”

“Aw, I feel all unloved over here,” Nubbins said. “It’s like you weren’t happy to see me in here. Did you really want those sweaty goons to banish me back to Hell? Think of all the fun you and I will have in the future! We can’t have any of that fun if I’m in Hell. At least, not until you get to Hell too. And it just won’t be the same then.”

“No, I imagine not,” Reverend Milton said, and pursed his lips. Cyrus, for one, could do without Nubbins’s brand of fun, whether it was in this plane of existence or the next. He hadn’t completely accepted the fact of his damnation, and it would be a lot easier to deal with without the fucking demon harassing him all day every day.

Also, if the demon wasn’t around, he could probably redeem himself, somehow. Maybe start going to church, do some volunteer work or something. But Nubbins kept him from even being particularly nice to anyone. The other day Reverend Milton had tried to hold the door open for a woman carrying two bags. At the last possible second, Nubbins had wrenched the door out of Reverend Milton’s hand and slammed it in the woman’s face.

Needless to say, the woman did not graciously accept Reverend Milton’s apology. In fact, he narrowly avoided getting a demonstration of the kicking power of the Ciderville High School soccer star’s right foot as applied to his nuts.
When she was out of ear shot, he angrily turned to the little demon and said, “That was just rude and uncalled for.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have expected her to kick you either.” Nubbins said.

“I meant slamming the door in her face,” Reverend Milton said, “and you know it.”

Nubbins looked at Reverend Milton for a moment, then said, “I’m a demon. I’m not nice. It’s contrary to my nature. And you know this.”

“Besides,” the demon continued, “You being nice to people isn’t going to save your soul. Ebenezer Scrooge? Had he been a real person, and had be been visited by the three ghosts of Christmas - as if - and had he entirely changed his ways and done good for the rest of his days - which he wouldn’t have because that’s not how you fucking people work - until he passed away, mourned by all who knew him, and a tower was erected to memorialize everything great he’d done for the world, he’d still have gone to Hell because he was a fucking filthy sinner just like you.”

“You’re just saying that because you want me to give up, And you said yourself you’re here to make sure I don’t save my soul,” Reverend Milton said.

“Right. But holding doors open for some lady, some lady who’s been fucking around on her husband and given him the clap, by the way, isn’t going to save your soul.”

“Maybe not, but being polite never hurt anyone,” Reverend Milton said.

“Tell that to the millons of polite people who spent their lives being walked over by less polite people,” Nubbins said, and lit a cigarette.