Antitheus

Antitheus

By

G. A. Minton

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

World Castle Publishing, LLC

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © G. A. Minton 2017

Smashwords Edition

Hardback ISBN: 9781629897646

Paperback ISBN: 9781629897622

eBook ISBN: 9781629897639

First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, October 16, 2017

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

Smashwords Licensing Notes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

Editor: Maxine Bringenberg

Dedication

To Jeanne, Amy, Scott, Shirley, Rod, and Cheryl, who always gave me encouragement and support throughout this fiendish endeavor.

In Loving Memory of my Mother, Shirley, and my Father, Garland.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 1

Zeke Reinhart, the elderly proprietor of The Goldmine Lodge, leisurely climbed the short flight of stairs to the second floor and then turned left. He slowly shuffled his feet over the worn maroon carpet that stretched the length of the dimly lit hallway until he came upon room 22. Gently tapping three times on the closed door before him, the old man uttered, Good morning, Mr. Loomis, it’s past nine o’clock and breakfast is ready…the others are all downstairs waiting for you.

The graying innkeeper waited patiently for a response from the guest inside—an ordained preacher by the name of Stan Loomis—but heard nothing. Zeke lingered for a few additional moments outside the door, and then knocked again, this time more forcefully. Mr. Loomis, it’s Zeke Reinhart, he remarked loudly. Did you hear what I said?

There was no rejoinder made to his query, only a hushed stillness emanating from within the walls of the clergyman’s room. Zeke cocked his head to one side and moved his left ear closer to the pair of aligned, black number twos attached to the surface of the wooden door. He vigilantly listened for any sounds, but again heard nothing. It was quiet…just too quiet to suit the hotelkeeper. Silence didn’t bother Zeke at all; he had grown accustomed to it ever since his wife, Greta, succumbed to colon cancer three years ago, leaving him alone to run The Goldmine Lodge all by himself. But this silence was disturbingly different. It was unnatural…eerie. Zeke couldn’t explain it, but he had a haunting premonition that something was terribly wrong inside of the preacher’s room.

Mr. Loomis…Mr. Stan Loomis! he shouted, while rapping the knuckles of his right hand on the door repetitively. Please answer me! Are you all right…is everything okay in there? Again, there was no answer to his loud queries.

Zeke was fairly certain that Stan Loomis was still in his room, because he hadn’t passed the minister on the stairs, and all of the other guests were down in the dining hall, eating their breakfast. The concerned lodge owner tried to open the door, but it was tightly locked. A chill surged down the back of Zeke’s neck and spine as he reached into the front pocket of his trousers and withdrew a metal ring of attached keys. That same little voice inside his head was warning him again that something terrible—something evil—had befallen the occupant of room 22. The innkeeper nervously fingered through the set of clanking keys and found the silver master that would allow him to unlock the door. Zeke hurriedly inserted the shiny passkey into the lock and turned it clockwise, while simultaneously twisting the old metal doorknob. I’m coming in now, Mr. Loomis! he announced. When the proprietor pushed open the door, its hinges delivered an unnerving screaking sound that resonated throughout the upstairs hallway.

As the wooden entrance swung inward, the horrific vision that Zeke encountered induced such a profound shock to his mind that his entire body instantaneously froze in place. The old innkeeper stood at the entryway, petrified by the ghastly sight that lay before him. Within seconds, the unmistakable stench of rotting flesh entered Zeke’s nose, unmercifully assaulting his sense of smell. Unable to move or speak, the hotelkeeper was abruptly jolted from his hypnotic state of terror when the door banged against the wall, sending his set of attached keys into a fit of high-pitched jingles. A few seconds after his brain processed what his eyes had just seen, Zeke cried out, What in the holy name of God has happened here?

Attempting to soothe his traumatized nerves and regain some semblance of composure, the trembling proprietor took in a long, deep breath and muttered to himself, Just stay calm, Zeke…it’ll be okay…just stay calm. He pulled out a white handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped away the tiny beads of sweat that had accumulated on his wrinkled forehead. Then, the stunned hotel owner focused both of his unbelieving eyes back on the gruesome image that he had discovered in room 22.

Stan Loomis was lying supine on top of the gore-drenched covers of the bed, wearing only a pair of baggy boxer shorts. He was a large man…over six feet tall, and weighing around 250 pounds. His head faced forward, propped up by a pair of bloodstained pillows that were neatly positioned behind the back of his neck. There was a hideous expression on the preacher’s face, reflecting the unimaginable horror that he must have encountered just before his death. The cleric’s terror-filled brown eyes were frozen wide-open, staring straight ahead into nothingness, and his jaws were stretched grotesquely apart, as if he were trying to scream. It was an inhuman countenance that the innkeeper had never seen before, and it frightened him to no end…a horrifying vision of death that he would never forget.

Stan Loomis had been dead for several hours, thereby allowing a malodorous funk from his body’s decomposition to permeate through the air of room 22. Zeke took his sweaty handkerchief and pressed it firmly over his nose, hoping to lessen the burning sensation he felt inside his nostrils. Despite the front door of the room being wide open, the putrid smell still continued to overwhelm him. The disgusting stench reminded Zeke of the time he was sprayed by a skunk one summer, when he came face-to-face with the animal while crawling under the floorboards of The Goldmine Lodge. Even though the offensive perfume from the skunk smelled horrible, the innkeeper had never inhaled anything as chokingly rank as the dead body smell he was exposed to now.

Zeke continued to observe the dead man, noting that virtually all of the evangelist’s body was cloaked in a layer of thick blood, eerily transforming his skin into a devilish, dark crimson color. A huge, cavernous wound loomed ominously in the center of the preacher’s hairy chest, indicating that a large chunk of skin, muscle, and underlying bone was missing. Squadrons of buzzing black flies spastically hovered above the deceased man’s body, periodically dive-bombing into the bloody opening as if they were miniature kamikaze pilots.

As the lodge owner slowly edged closer to the cleric’s corpse, he was able to visualize the full extent of the horrendous injury. A grapefruit-sized mass of tissue, chest muscle, and ribcage had been physically removed, leaving several jagged edges of broken bone exposed. The opening into the chest cavity was substantially deep, with virtually no pooling of blood visible within the boundaries of the wound. A squiggling army of baby maggots could be seen inching their way over the area of destruction, periodically stopping on their journey in order to feast on the delicacy of human flesh. Peering into the depths of the crater-like chest defect, the shocked proprietor discovered that the poor man’s heart was missing as well. It was as if someone or something had brutally ripped the life-sustaining organ right out of the preacher’s body.

Whoever or whatever committed this murderous atrocity would need to possess massive superhuman strength in order to cause such extensive damage to a big, strong man like this. Stan Loomis was a starting linebacker for his college football team a couple of decades ago, and continued to exercise regularly, thus keeping himself in good physical condition. So, even though the preacher was a middle-aged man now, he still would have been a formidable opponent for anyone daring to attack him. From the looks of the crime scene, though, it appeared as if the man had no chance at all against his killer. Hopefully he was dead before his heart was torn out, thought Zeke. No one deserves to die like that!

Emotionally shaken, the lodge owner diverted his eyes from the clergyman’s deceased body and scanned them upwards. On the wall above the head of the bed he saw the following words, written in blood: THEY ALL LOSE HEART. Each sanguine letter was capitalized and perfectly constructed, with no smears, smudges, or drips of blood perceptible to the naked eye. It was as if the writer used a fine-bristled paintbrush, taking great care and time to fastidiously apply each gory stroke. Other than the obvious reference to the man’s missing heart, Zeke wasn’t sure if there were any hidden meanings in the message; he only knew that it was some type of a bizarre communication from the deranged psychopath who’d killed poor Stan Loomis.

In his sixty-seven years of existence on God’s green earth, Zeke Reinhart had never witnessed anything as monstrous as this before. As the nervous hotelkeeper stood over the grisly murder scene inhaling the pungent stink of death, an unwelcome wave of nausea flooded through him. His stomach and esophagus erupted into a series of spasms, violently regurgitating the chewed up ham and scrambled eggs that he’d eaten for breakfast only an hour earlier. The elderly man was able to catch most of the vomit in his handkerchief, but some of the barf splashed onto the floor. Feeling like he was going to retch again, Zeke slapped his hand over his mouth and quickly turned away from the preacher’s desecrated body.

The proprietor rushed over to the sink located across from the foot of the bed, and twisted on one of the pearl handles to the faucet. Catching a steady stream of cold water in both cupped hands, the queasy innkeeper doused his face and neck with repeated splashes of liquid refreshment. Only after taking in a deep breath, swallowing down gulps of water, and shifting his thoughts to mundane subjects was Zeke able to avert another spell of vomiting. He toweled off his wet face and then used it to clean up his puddle of puke, purposely steering his vision away from the horrifying corpse that lay on the nearby bed. The only other time Zeke felt that nauseous was when he had to witness the slow death of his wife, Greta, who had valiantly fought colon cancer for over two years before finally succumbing to the disease.

Zeke put the soiled towel in the sink, and then placed the palms of his hands on the sink countertop. Horrified by the mutilation of the preacher’s body, Zeke lowered his head and closed his eyes, allowing his mind to slowly drift off to another time and place. He was born in Stuttgart, Germany, the first and only child of Hans and Bruna Reinhart. After Hans was tragically killed in a car accident, Bruna left the homeland and moved to America with three-year-old Zeke. They eventually settled in San Francisco, California, where Bruna took a job working as a maid in a local hotel. Even though Zeke grew up speaking English, he was still familiar with much of the German language he had learned as a toddler in Stuttgart.

Zeke and Greta met in high school, where they instantly fell in love with each other. She was also of German descent, so they had much in common. Greta was the complement to Zeke—her yin to his yang. She was beautiful, smart, witty, and Zeke adored her dearly. Greta was diagnosed with the malignancy at the age of fifty-eight, when she noticed a dark color to her stools. The MRI scan confirmed what Zeke had feared…an inoperable, stage four adenocarcinoma of the colon, which delivered less than a fifteen percent, five-year survival rate. Greta never smoked cigarettes or drank alcohol, and her diet was always healthy. It was just the luck of the draw—an inherited, genetic predisposition to acquire the malignant disease—finally rearing its ugly head at the wrong time. Unfortunately for her, Greta would have to play with the cards she was dealt. After undergoing two different rounds of chemotherapy that utilized a myriad of toxic agents, the doomed woman eventually lost the battle to cancer and ended up on her deathbed.

Zeke was the ideal husband, catering to Greta’s every wish and need, both in sickness and in health. Now, he had the terrible misfortune of having to watch his darling wife die. Holding Greta in his arms, he kissed her lips one last time before she slowly exhaled her final gasp of air. Losing Greta was so devastating to Zeke that he himself became physically ill, leaving him constantly nauseous and unable to keep most foods down. Emotionally, Zeke could never get over the tragedy, but physically, the nausea and vomiting finally dissipated, thereby allowing him to regain his appetite.

Zeke suddenly opened his eyes and blinked several times, forcing him to come out of his dreamlike state and enter back into reality. Realizing where he was and what had happened, he lifted up his head and said loudly, Okay, Zeke…snap out of it. It’s time to get your shit together!

The innkeeper splashed some more water on his face, and then combed back his locks of gray hair with both hands. Zeke had watched enough murder mysteries and police shows on television to know that he should not touch anything else in the room; it would most likely be cordoned off and treated as a crime scene. He would leave everything exactly as he found it, lock the door when he left, and then use the phone in his office to call Scott Parker, the sheriff of Sierra County. In addition, positively no one would be allowed to enter the murdered man’s room until the proper authorities arrived.

Having witnessed enough gore to last him a lifetime, Zeke slowly stepped across the dark hardwood floor until he reached the room’s open doorway. He paused for a moment, and then turned back and gave the dead preacher’s body one last fleeting glance. The distressed innkeeper’s saddened eyes gazed upward as he whispered, May God receive your soul into Heaven with open arms. Rest in peace, Mr. Loomis…rest in peace. Zeke locked the door to room 22, and then hurried back down the dimly lit hallway that would lead him to his private office.

The hotel owner scrambled into his personal cubbyhole and quickly closed the door behind him. He nervously sat down in his leather-cushioned armchair and looked through his big office window, seeing that it was beginning to snow outside. Zeke’s reflection from the glass pane revealed a nice-looking, older man with a rugged face…tanned skin, distinctive blue eyes, dark, bushy eyebrows, a prominent nose, wide lips, and a strong chin. The proprietor’s thick, gray hair was neatly cut, and his face was clean-shaven.

Zeke lifted the black phone receiver off its base and punched in the number to the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office. After the third rhythmic ring, a woman with a low monotone voice answered the call. Sheriff’s office, Cheryl Lynn speaking.

Hi, this is Zeke Reinhart calling from The Goldmine Lodge. This is an emergency. I need to speak to Sheriff Parker!

Hold, please.

While he was waiting on the phone, Zeke peered outside his office window and began counting the falling flakes of snow that were slowly parachuting by. Originally, nice weather was predicted for the weekend, but according to the forecaster on the radio that morning, a storm system unexpectedly changed directions, and was now heading their way. The temperature had dropped precipitously, and the once blue sky was now filled with an assortment of thick, billowy clouds. After enumerating thirty-seven of the plummeting white shavings of icy precipitation, the lodge owner heard a gravelly male voice over the phone. Sheriff Scott Parker here…what can I do for you?

The innkeeper’s mind was momentarily mesmerized by the falling snowflakes, so it took him a few seconds to gather his thoughts together. "Oh…um…hi, Sheriff. This is Zeke Reinhart, from The Goldmine Lodge. I’m calling to report a…uh…to report a murder!"

A murder, you say? asked the lawman. What happened?

Well, about fifteen minutes ago, I went up to one of the sleeping rooms here at the inn…room 22…to check on a guest…a man by the name of Stan Loomis…he’s a preacher. Mr. Loomis was part of a small group of clergy that came in on the bus yesterday for a religious retreat. They’re all members of an organization called The Shepherds of God, and they reserved The Goldmine Lodge this weekend for their meeting. Anyway, when he didn’t show up for breakfast, the others had me go look for him. When Mr. Loomis failed to answer his door after repeated attempts to contact him, I opened it up with my passkey and found him dead on his bed. He had been brutally murdered!

Do you know how he was killed? queried the sheriff. Was he shot, stabbed…beaten to death?

I’m not a doctor, said Zeke, but the man’s got a hole in his chest bigger than your fist. And his heart is missing too!

"What do you mean, his heart is missing?" asked Sheriff Parker.

I mean that his heart is gone…stolen…someone ripped it right out of his chest! exclaimed Zeke, in a shaky voice. And then the sick son-of-a-bitch used the man’s blood to write a message on the wall!

On the wall! exclaimed the lawman. What did the message say?

I’ll never forget it for as long as I live, Sheriff. It said, ‘They all lose heart.’

They all lose heart, you say?

Yep.

Well, I’ll be dammed! said the peacekeeper. I just hope this isn’t one of those weird cult murders, committed by a group of lunatics that you read about in the tabloids.

Me too, said Zeke. "You know, Sheriff, in all the years that Greta and I ran this lodge, we’ve never had anything like this happen before. No one has ever died here, much less gotten murdered, with their heart torn out!"

I’m just as surprised about this as you are, Zeke. I honestly don’t know what the hell this world is coming to.

What do you suggest I do now, Sheriff?

Listen, there’s a big snowstorm heading your way, so I’m leaving for your place right now and should arrive in about an hour, depending on the weather. The first thing you need to do is to lock the dead man’s room, and don’t let anyone in until I get there.

I’ve already locked the door to room 22, Sheriff, so no one’s going inside until you get here.

Good deal, replied the lawman. "And don’t tell the other guests, or anyone for that matter, about the message on the wall, or how he was murdered; one of them could be the killer. Sit tight for now, Zeke…we’ll talk more when I get there."

Thanks, Sheriff. Drive carefully. As you know, the roads up here can be treacherous when it snows.

I will, Zeke. Bye, now.

See ya, Sheriff.

Zeke hung up the receiver and leaned back in his easy chair, deep in thought. He stretched both arms above his head, and then placed his hands behind his neck, interlocking his fingers together. The innkeeper dreaded going back downstairs, because he knew that everyone would ask him the whereabouts of Stan Loomis. Zeke didn’t want to alarm the group of religious guests at this time, so he decided to tell them that he’d found Mr. Loomis dead in his room. He wouldn’t mention anything about the man being slaughtered, or the message written in blood on the wall. After the sheriff arrived though, it would only be a matter of time before they would find out the truth…that the preacher was violently murdered, probably the evening before, given that there were baby maggots already present on the body. As members of the clergy, The Shepherds of God were all very familiar with death and dying, so the news of Stan Loomis’s demise shouldn’t be that shocking to them. It was the vile way in which he was killed that would bother everyone the most.

The seven members of The Shepherds of God were the only registered guests staying at