The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish Read Online Free Page A

Wertz turned to the youngsters. “What would you kids say to a tour?” The boys were in heaven.
    Their first port of call was the portable generator and trailer-truck at the rear. The truck was bright enough for a carnival caravan, covered in colourful curlicues, squiggles, and capital letters. “She’s quite the beast, eh?” Mr. Wertz enthused. “Everything you see — tent, poles, generator, the whole shebang — folds up and fits inside.”
    “Are those the eyes of God?” Timmy asked, pointing at the trailer wall. Circling the command P REPARE TO M EET T HY G OD were a dozen gigantic bloodshot eyes, more scary, all-seeing, and all-knowing than even the eyes of his Aunt Grace, who claimed to have an extra set in the back of her head.
    “Sure thing,” said Mr. Wertz. He gave them a knowing wink: “So what do you want to see next?”
    “Blood, blood!” Timmy squealed.
    Mr. Wertz tousled the little ghoul’s hair and threw him in the air. “You got it.” He trooped his charges up front, lifted the tent flap, and hustled them into the sanctuary of horrors. Ahead stretched a wide centre aisle, flanked by twenty rows of benches and chairs, which led to a platform with a pulpit on its left and a piano on its right. Above the stage, shards of light entered where brains had once been blasted out.
    Timmy was beside himself. He imagined naked people running back and forth, dodging bullets like mechanical ducks in a penny arcade. Bang! Bang! AAAH!!! Bang! Bang! AAAH!!!
    What he loved most were the gore stains radiating from each hole. Ten years of rain and sun had failed to wash, weather, or bleach them away, as if God had decreed the tent’s taints would never fade, but remain an eternal warning to sinners. (Brother Floyd prized this effect, which made worthwhile his periodic efforts with slaughterhouse guts and a paintbrush.)
    Outside, Mrs. Wertz and the women were calling the menfolk to supper. Timmy made a beeline for the food lineup, appetite whetted no end. What a spread! The fairground tables bowed under a weight of roast and boiled meats, fresh vegetables, salads, sandwiches, and pies of every description.
    Timmy was a prize piglet, even gobbling a scoop of his aunt’s potato salad, except for the olive bits. These he stored in his pants pockets, where he hoped they’d dry into ammunition for his peashooter.
    “You’re like a little oinker fattening up for slaughter,” Mr. Wertz said, laughing. How he’d regret those words, wish to gobble them back as surely as Timmy did butter tarts. For if the Wichita kid was as stuffed as a mounted deer head, within two hours he’d be as dead.

God’s Judgment
    E yewitness reports of the tragedy were as varied as the Gospels. Nonbelievers, outside the tent, focused on the explosion of the generator, and the sight of the eyes of God, ripped from the side of the trailer, whirling in a metallic ring of fire into the heavens. Believers within recounted visitations by the beasts of Revelation, and of electrical wires transformed to the snake of Eden spitting fire as they whipped and darted in demonic pursuit of sinners.
    Most famous within this apocalyptic tradition was the account of Mr. Bud Smith, featured in the Stratford Beacon Herald. Mr. Smith declared that the Pit of Hell had opened up to the right of his lawn chair, releasing a Satanic legion of armed skeletons that he’d single-handedly dispatched with the aid of his cane. The Herald declined to report that old age had been bringing the grizzled ancient similar visions on a more or less weekly basis.
    Most widely circulated, however, was the version of Mrs. Betty Wertz, written for King Features Syndicate by then cub reporter K.O. Doyle.
I SAW TIMMY BEEFORD DIE
    by Mrs. Betty Wertz
    As told to Mr. K.O. Doyle
    It was a terrible night, the night Timmy Beeford died. Died, dead, in the Tent of the Holy Redemption!
    Under the big top, the air was so hot you could bake muffins. And so high you’d swear the Bennett