Jenny Plague-Bringer

Chapter Five



Juliana waited on the low, narrow wooden stage, separated from the small dirt-floor audience pit by a wooden rail and a ragged curtain, which hadn’t yet opened for the evening. Out in the tent, customers who’d paid a few pennies could see Alejandro the sword-swallower, Zsoka the tattooed lady, some creepy marionette puppets, a knife-throwing act, and Punchy Pete, the dancing, juggling dwarf. For a few pennies more, they could step past the back curtain to view the star attraction of the freak show: Juliana Blight, The World’s Most Diseased Woman.

She only thought of herself as “Juliana” now. Her given name was Greek, and she’d been born in a squalid, crowded tenement in New York. Because of her diseased nature, she was rejected by everyone except a crazed aunt, who repeatedly bathed her with lye and called her “daughter of Hell.” She’d run away when she was seven years old and spent much of her life scrounging and stealing, protected from everyone by the demon plague within her. Here and there, she’d left men dead in the gutter when they’d tried assaulting her.

She was nineteen now, and she’d been with the carnival five years.

“Right this way, right this way, come see the most jaw-dropping female on Earth, the most diseased woman in the world! Don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen, she’s not contagious...unless you touch her! You, sir, would you care to see this princess of pestilence unveiled, laid bare for your education? I thought so, sir, I can see you are man with a healthy interest in science!”

The curtain opened. Radu, the sideshow talker responsible for herding the customers, led in the first group of nine or ten gawkers, the usual mix of red-faced farmers and drooling, wide-eyed children. Men and kids seemed most attracted to her show. Missouri was no different from anywhere else.

Juliana stood, still wrapped in the quilt she wore between shows, and approached the wooden rail at the front of her stage. Dirty upturned faces blinked at her in the low light.

“Juliana Blight,” Radu continued. “Bitten by a swarm of rare giant African mosquitoes, Juliana carries all forms of disease within her flesh...from Egyptian mummy pox to Arabian leprosy, and the mysterious Chinese worm virus...stay back from the railing, sir, or you risk infection!”

“She don’t look too sick to me,” one man said, leaning on the railing.

“Prepare to be dazzled and horrified, sir!” the barker replied. “By the wonders of medical science.”

Juliana shrugged off the quilt and let it fall to the stage. Underneath, she wore only white cotton underpants and a silk scarf, which hung loose around her neck to conceal her breasts. The crowd was free to inspect the rest of her body.

She held out her arms. Dark, bloody sores ripped open along them, from her shoulders all the way to her fingertips. The crowd gasped and drew back—the man who’d leaned on the rail nearly tripped over his shoes in his hurry to get away from her. A small, freckled boy screamed until his slightly older sister slapped and hushed him.

Juliana turned slowly, letting the crowd gasp and whisper at the sight of boils erupting up her back, blisters blooming along her thighs and calves. When she faced them again, a rash of bloody abscesses, cysts, and tumors broke open in a wave from her ankles to her hips, then across her stomach and chest. Her face became a horror-show mask, and her eyes darkened with diseased blood the color of bile.

As usual, the little crowd screamed and ran away through the curtain. Radu winked at her—he loved that “first scare” of the night, the one that was sure to draw plenty of curious lookers with coins to spend.

She wrapped herself in the quilt and sat down in the plain wooden chair at the back of her stage, reading a dime novel about pirates, and Radu left to round up the next audience.

She usually held back, but tonight she was really letting the plague out, giving them an extra-gory display. The others at the carnival didn’t know it yet, but this would be her last night as the World’s Most Diseased Woman, if things turned out as she hoped.

The next little group was ushered in, much quieter than the first, eager to see whatever had sent the first group running in terror.

She gave them a good show.


The next day was a Sunday, and local officials had made it clear that the carnival had to stay closed, lest it distract people from church. Many of the carnies had prepared for the day off with heavy drinking the night before, so the dusty midway was cold and silent in the morning as she left her tent and walked the dirt avenue between the booths. The smell of traveling carnival still hung in the air: popcorn, fried chicken, cotton candy, horse shit from the Wild West show.

The midway looked sad by day. No colored lights, no steam-powered calliope music from the carousel. The morning sun washed out the giant paintings of clowns, gorillas, and dragons—instead of weaving a fantasy world, they simply looked like drab, flat cartoons, painted onto wooden booths with all the games, toys, and other flash packed away inside. Without the mystery of the night beyond the lights of the midway, even the Ferris wheel looked small and pathetic. Spooky Manor, the haunted house, just looked silly, with its yarn spiderwebs and the skeleton peeping out the front window, though it could look convincingly scary at night with the proper lighting and sound effects.

Most of the carnival was devoted to crafting illusion, making a pretend world of color and magic to open up wallets and purses. Even the rides were meant to inspire a false feeling of danger, the games rigged to conjure a false sense that the mark might win big.

Juliana wasn’t a trick or a scam. Everyone in the carnival assumed she was, of course, that she’d mastered a kind of theatrical illusion using some combination of makeup and lighting. Probably most or all of the customers believed that, too, once they had time to think it over and wrap the memory into a familiar packaging. They might even tell each other how obvious the fakery had been, later, when they were well away from the sideshow tent.

Juliana walked off the fairgrounds and followed the dirt road into town, which wasn’t much more than two strips of brick and wood buildings, a well, and a corral. The largest building was the train depot.

She drew odd looks and whispers from the crowd of townspeople gathered in the street. She’d dressed as plainly as she could, in her brown dress with a few flower designs sewn here and there, a scarf to help shield her head from human contact, a white straw hat for the hot sunlight. Of course, she had to wear the black gloves unrolled all the way along her forearms, something very out of place in the Missouri summer. Everyone knew she wasn’t local, and so they would correctly assume she was with the carnival camped outside town.

Along the street were multiple wagons with people piling in, ready to ride to the next town, just as she’d hoped. A man in a tie, possibly the town preacher, was yelling at them not to go, telling them they’d be damned, that they should instead attend a proper church, such as his own, for example.

Juliana approached a woman sitting in the back of the wagon with three small children, one of whom was a boy, five or six years old, with a badly shriveled leg. It looked like polio.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Juliana whispered to the woman, who wore a dress that had once been fine but was now patched many times over. “Is this wagon going to the revival?”

“We are,” the woman said. “You must be from the circus.”

“Yes ma’am,” Juliana said, trying to sound a little Southern. “Might I ride with you? I could pay you a penny or two for it.”

“Not on the Lord’s day, you don’t!” the woman snapped. She might have been in her late twenties or early thirties, but her sun-wrinkled skin made it hard to tell. She turned toward the bearded man in the big brown hat who sat on the driver’s bench, holding the reins of the two horses. “Henry, we can take this circus girl to see the preachers, can’t we?”

“Don’t see why not.” Henry puffed his pipe, not even looking back at his new passenger.

“Let me help you up.” The woman reached down a hand.

“No!” Juliana jumped back, not wanting to infect her with the demon plague. “I can manage, thank you.”

She climbed up into the straw-littered wagon and sank into a back corner, as far from the family as possible. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

The three children stared at her. The crippled boy seemed the youngest, but his brother and sister couldn’t have been older than nine or ten years.

“Are you in the circus?” asked the boy with the bad leg.

“Yes,” she told him.

“Are you a clown?” the older boy asked.

“Or an acrobat?” the girl asked, hopping to her filthy bare feet. “I can do flips. Want to see?”

“I’ll burn your hide if you step down from this wagon, Izzy May!” the woman snapped. “Sit back like you were.”

Izzy May quickly sat down beside her brothers, next to a trunk roped into place. The mother sat on another large trunk. It looked like they planned to be away from home overnight.

“I’m nothing special,” Juliana said. “I work a sugar shack.”

“What does that mean?” the girl asked.

“I make cotton candy,” she told them, and the kids looked very impressed.

“Do you have some?” asked the boy with the bad leg.

“Sorry, I don’t,” she said, and the kids immediately lost interest. Juliana turned to their mother. “The next town isn’t a very long way, is it? You’re returning tonight, aren’t you?”

“These can last for days,” the woman replied. “We won’t be back until the Lord sends us.”

“I have to be back for my show tomorrow.”

“Oh, honey,” the woman replied. “If the Lord wants you back here, He will find a way.”

Juliana couldn’t argue with that.

The wagon finally started to move. A train of half a dozen crowded wagons rolled out of town, kicking up a cloud of brown dust from the dry dirt road. Juliana tilted her hat forward to keep it out of her eyes, but the rest of her was soon covered in earth. Her sweat under the hot sun slowly converted it to a thin sheen of mud.

During the long, slow ride, the children peppered Juliana with endless questions about the carnival. She described how cakes were fried and cotton candy was spun, detailed each of the games on the midway from the ring-toss to the rifle-shoot to the test-your-strength. She explained that she did not have her own elephant or giraffe. She told them about each of the characters in the sideshow, except for the attraction behind the final curtain, Juliana Blight. She explained how they jumped from town to town by rail.

In time, they reached the tent of the revival, almost as big as a circus tent, pitched on a grassy pasture by the wide, slow Mississippi River.

People had flocked in from all around, judging by the wagons and tents jammed in on either side of the road. There were even a few automobiles and trucks. The center of the action was the single large tent, from which she could hear pained shouting, music, and stomping. It sounded louder than a tavern on a Saturday night.

Juliana thanked the family for the ride and quickly scurried out of the wagon. She didn’t want the kids following her around, asking more questions about candy, magic tricks, and carnival games, because then she would have to make an effort not to kill them.

She drew her arms in tight around her as she walked toward the revival tent, trying to avoid any contact with the ever-thicker crowd, where people didn’t mind doing a little elbowing and jostling. She hoped her gloves, dress, and headwear were enough to protect them from her.

The revival traveled the same general railroad circuit as the carnival, so they often saw each other’s posters in the towns they visited, though they’d never pitched tent in the same town at the same time. There wouldn’t have been enough money for either group.

Juliana had heard of miraculous healings at this particular revival. Naturally, she’d first assumed that the performances were trickery, either making people feel momentarily better using dramatic stage techniques, or else the healed people were just shills in cahoots with the preacher.

However, she’d heard repeated stories from town to town. An old blind man who could now see, a World War I veteran who’d regrown an ear he’d lost in combat. A woman who’d been coughing up blood, dying of consumption and too weak to walk, who was now well and could take care of her children and work around the farm.

After hearing one miraculous story after another about locals in one town after another, Juliana had begun to believe something magical might actually be happening at that revival. She’d become determined to visit it the next time it passed close to the carnival. With the carnival shut down by local authorities for Sunday worship, it was the perfect time for Juliana to sneak off and see the revival for herself.

The front flaps of the tent wall were tied open, and nobody collected an admission fee. People were free to walk in and out of the tent, if the thick crowd allowed it.

She eased her way inside. The tent was packed full, everybody cramming in to stand under the shade and listen to a preacher on the stage at the far end of the tent from the entrance. He was a white-haired, pudgy man in a gray suit, dabbing his sweaty double chin with a handkerchief, his eyes bugging as he shouted at the audience, who responded with shouts and cries of their own.

“The devil is not some character in a radio program or a child’s picture book!” the preacher shouted, and a number of audience members shouted back, agreeing. “The devil is real, brothers and sisters. The devil walks among us, wearing masks! He can come in any form at all! But when he does, you’ll know him! You’ll know him because he tempts you with gold! With fornication! With sin and worldly pleasures...but those pleasures are false! Yes, they are! And those tempting, earthly pleasures will fall away, and you’ll see they come drawing hellfire behind them! Yes, sir! The Lord is great...abh ah loch tay moota howklo tarris be hock bot a mok nay hapa tah...” His eyes closed and he raised one shaking arm, clutching the handkerchief in his fist.

Juliana didn’t understand what the preacher was saying, but lots of people in the crowd started making similar nonsense words. Some waved their hands high and closed their eyes, while others went into convulsions, crashing into those around them and finally flopping on the dirt like dying fish. Many of them simply screamed or howled. She didn’t know what to think as the crowd seemed to turn rabid.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” A hand seized Juliana’s arm, and she gasped. It was the woman from the wagon, with kids and husband in tow. The husband carried the boy with the crippled leg. With the heavy crowd, Juliana hadn’t penetrated far into the tent, and now the family had caught up with her.

Juliana looked down at where the woman clutched her—fortunately, her sleeve protected the woman from a rapid, painful death, but Juliana didn’t feel comfortable about it.

“Is this the preacher does the healing?” the husband asked. He bounced the little boy in his arms, and the boy cried out in glee.

“Is he?” the woman asked Juliana.

“I don’t know,” Juliana answered. “I hope so.”

The preacher went on and on, getting louder, stomping the stage, sending the crowd into hysterics. The kids from the wagon joined the rest of the audience in screaming, howling, and flopping around, except for the smallest boy, who just watched from his father’s shoulder, unable to join the fun.

Juliana couldn’t believe how long the preacher continued. The sound of rain battered the tent top, and people drenched from the downpour pushed their way into the packed tent. Soon the crowd was twice as large, and the air in the tent turned steamy and foul with the odor of so many bodies.

After a long, long time, and much more speaking in tongues, the first preacher finally staggered offstage, exhausted, while the audience cried and clapped.

A tall, gaunt man carried a woven basket onstage, followed by three other men. From their look and their ragged clothes, Juliana thought they might be mountain people. The gaunt man addressed the audience while the other three lingered behind him.

“The Lord says, if we have faith, we may take up serpents without fear,” the man told the crowd. “For even the sting of the serpent is nothing next to the power of God.”

The audience chattered excitedly.

“We have come to show the power of faith as a testimony.” He lifted the lid from the woven basket, and the crowd pushed forward to see. “For the tempter comes in the form of a serpent, hissing lies into our ears...But we show him that only the Lord is our master!”

From the basket, he lifted out a pair of thick, long rattlesnakes, one in each hand, both of them shaking out a warning with their tails. Screams erupted from the audience, and a number of people near the front tried to push their way back, by they were trapped in place by the rest of the crowd.

The gaunt man stalked slowly across the front lip of the stage, holding out his arms while the deadly rattlers coiled around him. The crowd gasped and shrieked.

Behind him, his three cohorts approached the basket one by one, each taking one or two rattlesnakes and letting them wrap around their arms and necks.

Juliana’s heartbeat raced as she watched, waiting for one of them to suffer a fatal bite. In the carnival, the show would have been a fraud—the snakes would be a harmless species that only looked dangerous, most likely, or their venom would have been removed—but she’d heard that the snake-handling preachers used fully lethal wild snakes.

The children stopped playing at flopping and fainting, and they watched quietly, eyes wide open. The whole tent had gone from boisterous to silent. In the silence, the gaunt preacher’s voice seemed to echo back from the canvas walls.

“Faith is not some small thing we do once a week,” he said. “We must hold faith inside of us all times. With faith, there is no danger, for there is no door through which Satan can enter. Close your hearts against evil, and open them to the Lord!”

Voices whispered throughout the crowd as the largest rattlesnake nosed its way up the preacher’s neck and cheek, its forked tongue tasting his ear.

“We have no need to fear,” he continued. “God has already vanquished the devil, and He will do it again, and there will be a final Judgment. If the Lord chooses to take us today, or ten years from now, or a hundred years from now, it’s all the same...we’re all going to face Him, we’re all going to answer for our sins...and there will be a reckoning!” He thrust a fist into the air to make his point, startling the rattlesnake, which drew back and opened its jaw, poised to bite his face.

The preacher fell still and quiet, looking right back into the snake’s eyes.

“Go ahead,” he said in a loud stage whisper. “Go ahead and try, Satan. God is with me. I’m filled with the Spirit and the light.”

The entire audience stayed silent. After a minute, the rattlesnake relaxed and turned away, crawling back down his arm. The preacher resumed his sermon, while his three acolytes walked to different areas of the stage, letting the audience see the snakes in their hands.

He spoke on and on, like the previous preacher. As he wrapped up, the three men returned their snakes to the basket and picked up buckets on long rods. They held these out to the audience, collecting coins and cash from the stunned crowd.

The next preacher was a different sort. He wore an odd pastel-colored suit, and his dark, curly head of hair looked like a wig to Juliana, because it didn’t quite match his handlebar mustache. He was followed by a chorus of three young women wearing high-neck dresses and no makeup, who stood together at one corner of the stage. Behind him, a black man in a green snap-brim hat and matching suit took over the piano.

The preacher walked to stage center, looking around, apprising the crowd, with the automatic bright smile of an experienced showman.

“I hope this is him,” the woman from the wagon said. “I’m exhausted.” Night had fallen, and the rain hadn’t let up, so the tent remained crowded and humid. Everyone was sweating. Juliana worried that her sweat might fall on somebody, like one of the two children who insisted on staying close to their pet carnival girl. She didn’t know whether her sweat could harm anyone, and she certainly didn’t want to find out the hard way.

“He don’t look no healer to me,” commented the woman’s husband, Henry.

“I’m sleepy,” their little girl complained.

“I want to play with snakes!” the older boy announced.

“Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, let us pray,” the preacher finally said. Nobody was going to argue with that, so everyone lowered their heads and closed their eyes, and many grasped the hands of the people around them. The little girl, Izzy May, grasped Juliana’s gloved hand and wouldn’t let go, which made Juliana edgy and nervous.

“...as Your wonders are limitless, oh Lord, we beseech you to bless this humble house of worship with Your grace today. As Your Son healed the blind and the sick, we ask that You pour Your love upon our brothers and sisters here, those who are in need, those are ill, those who live in pain...”

Juliana opened her eyes and looked up. Maybe this was the healing preacher, after all. If so, he didn’t inspire much confidence.

“Amen,” the preacher eventually said, and many people echoed him. “Children of the Lord, we have been called together for a great purpose today,” he began. “And that purpose is to recognize the Lord’s place in our lives...” As he spoke, the piano player went to work, providing a backdrop of fast, punchy notes that helped rouse the crowd as the preacher continued. Soon the preacher was keyed up, racing around the stage. “...and when trouble arrives, what do we say? We say oh, precious Lord, take my hand!”

This was the cue for the three women to sing the hymn ‘Oh, Precious Lord, Take My Hand,’ a hymn which a lot of the crowd seemed to know, because they sang along. The piano player immediately switched from his jazzy melody to a deeper gospel sound.

When the song ended, the preacher resumed strutting up and down the stage, talking up the healing powers of God and recalling the stories about Jesus and the lepers. He grew more and more animated, slapping his hands together and stomping his foot for emphasis.

“Hallelujah! I feel the Spirit!” cried out one of his chorus girls. She closed her eyes as if in ecstasy and brushed her hands from her bosom down to her hips. “It’s in me!” She moaned and toppled backwards. The audience gasped as the two other girls scrambled to catch her. It looked like a rehearsed move to Juliana, but she supposed most of the crowd hadn’t seen five years’ worth of midway tricks.

This inspired people in the crowd to scream and squirm in response. The punchy piano music accelerated, and the writhing and screaming spread through the tent.

Juliana frowned. She doubted this man was anything but a big talker who knew how to sway a crowd. She was beginning to feel stupid for coming to the revival, like just another mark who couldn’t see the game.

“I know why many of you are here tonight,” the preacher said. “Word gets around, don’t it, about the wonders of the Lord that unfold right here, in this very tent? I’ve heard people say I can cure the blind, heal the sick, chase out the demons of illness.” Many of the crowd shouted excitedly. “They say I can take a crippled man and make him walk, that I can cast out all manner of pox and measles.” The crowd grew more excited, and many began trying to push their way to the front.

Juliana tensed. This was it, the alleged healing part of the show.

“Those folks are plain wrong!” the preacher shouted. “I’m just a simple country preacher. It’s the Lord that heals! It’s the Spirit that heals the sick and the suffering little children, and the lepers and all of ‘em! I am just a humble vessel of the Lord, that’s all!”

The crowd roared their enthusiastic response.

The preacher’s assistant brought up a man with his arm in a sling. The preacher prayed, danced around, and laid his hands on the broken arm. The man took off the sling and waved the bandaged arm at the crowd, grinning, and the crowd shouted things like “Hallelujah!” and “Praise the Lord!” There was no way to tell whether he was a shill or not.

The family with the polio-stricken boy was trying to push their way to the stage, but the thick crowd wasn’t budging. Juliana decided to let the little boy’s leg be her test of whether the healing was real. She jumped in front of the family.

“Crippled boy, coming through!” she shouted. “Let us through, he’s crippled! Please!” She did her best to look sad, pulling out every carnival trick she knew. A few people eased aside, but they didn’t get far, so she raised the stakes. “Dying boy! Look out, this boy’s going to die right now! Help this dying boy reach the stage!”

More people took an interest now, and some even helped out, passing the word along and urging others to step aside. She kept repeating her plea as she advanced, opening a narrow path for the family, who followed right behind her.

She kept up her patter until they reached the very edge of the stage, where the father was able to pass the little boy to the preacher’s assistant, who carried him over to the preacher. His parents watched, the father hard-eyed and skeptical, the mother full of hope.

Juliana crossed her arms and waited to see whether a miracle would happen.

“Oh, yes, this boy’s been stricken, all right,” the preacher said. “Sick leg, does everyone see that? The boy cannot walk!” The preacher’s assistant held the boy out for the crowd to see, then turned him toward the preacher, who said, “But the Lord is merciful, and offers us hope. Tell me, boy, do you love the Lord?”

“Yes,” the boy answered, in a small voice.

“And the Lord loves you, too. And we can ask Him for the great gift of healing, we can ask for His blessing...” The preacher danced around the stage a little, then shouted, “Demon of affliction, I cast thee out! Go back to the fires of damnation from which you rose!” He slapped the boy’s leg, hard enough that Juliana jumped in surprise and the boy’s mother cried out.

The assistant turned the boy to face the audience again and held him up high. Beneath his overalls, which were cut off at the knees, everyone could see that both his legs appeared perfectly healthy. The crowd gasped.

The assistant lowered the boy to his feet. He looked off-balance for a moment, then finally took a chance and put his weight on his newly healed leg. A smile burst across his face, and his mother cried out again.

“Healed, praise the Lord!” the preacher said. “God is in this tent with us today, ain’t He?”

The crowd roared that yes, He was, while the assistant carried the boy back to the side of the stage and handed him back to his shocked father and weeping mother. Juliana immediately stepped forward and grabbed the assistant’s sleeve.

“Me next,” Juliana told him.

The assistant looked at her. She hadn’t paid much attention to him before, focusing on the preacher like everyone else. The assistant wasn’t much older than her, and he was handsome despite his scratchy, fuzzy attempt at growing a beard. His intense blue eyes took her in, and something fluttered in her stomach.

“Do I need to carry you, too?” he asked, with an amused smile.

“I can manage on my own, thanks.”

“I don’t think you’ll make it to the stairs.” He tilted his head to the far end of the stage. Dozens of people, crammed tightly together, blocked her path. “It’s my way or no way.”

“Then be a gentleman about it.” She held up her arms and let him grab her around the waist and lift her to the stage. For a moment, her body was pressed against his, and the sensation of his strong, firm chest through her clothes made her flush red. He set her on her feet.

They waited while the preacher finished healing a man who’d lost a finger harvesting grain—it grew back, to the great delight of the crowd, who shouted lots of “Hallelujah!” So did the chorus of three women. The piano player kept the tempo moving fast.

“Who else comes for the Lord’s healing?” the preacher asked, scratching his head through his odd-colored curly hair.

“You’re on,” the assistant whispered in Juliana’s ear. He steered her toward the smiling preacher. As he did it, he pushed back her sleeve and laid his fingers on her bare arm, before she realized what he was doing.

She gasped and tried to pull away, but he held tight. Incredibly, his fingers did not boil and blister where they touched her, and he did not cry out and leap back in pain. The boy’s touch was warm and gentle, and caused no unpleasantness for either of them.

Her eyes widened in awe. This was truly a place of miracles, because no one had ever been able to touch her without suffering infection. She understood now that God truly was in this tent, and now He could cast the demon plague out of her forever. She would no longer be a freak, and she would be free to touch anyone she liked. She was more than happy to start with the preacher’s young assistant, whose hand lingered on her arm even as she faced the preacher.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Lord has brought us another sweet lamb,” the preacher said, eying her up and down. He smelled like sweaty armpits and chemical hair dye. “And what is your name, little angel?”

“Petra,” she said, giving her old, long-abandoned birth name.

“Petra, Petra. Will you let me lay my hands upon you, Petra? Will you open yourself to receiving the Lord’s blessing?”

“Yes...” she replied uncertainly.

“And what is your affliction, dear lamb?”

“I have...all kinds of diseases and plagues,” she told him.

“Afflicted!” the preacher shouted to the audience. “Afflicted by many diseases, many plagues, ladies and gentlemen? And do you know who afflicts with many diseases at once...a legion of plagues?”

Some in the audience shouted back their opinion that “Satan” or “the Devil” might be responsible.

“I said, do you know who causes such affliction?” he shouted, his face turning red.

“Satan!” more of the audience shouted back.

“Satan, Satan, Satan!” the preacher howled. “That’s right! And do you know who drives out Satan? Can you say His name? Can you, say, Oh, Lord, cast out these demons?”

The crowd shouted it back. The preacher and crowd shouted back and forth several times, the preacher giving them an “Oh, Lord, cast out these demons!” The crowd repeated it back to him each time: “Oh, Lord, cast out these demons!”

Emboldened by the power and energy of the crowd, and the little boy’s healed leg, Juliana slipped off both her gloves and held her bare hands high.

When the crowd was at a fever pitch, the preacher turned, seized both of her hands, then closed his eyes and shouted one final “Oh, Lord, cast out these demons!”

Juliana clutched his hands, closed her eyes, and threw back her head, waiting for God to finally break her evil curse.

A wave of quiet rolled over the room, displacing the shouting, singing, and loud praying that had accompanied all the other healings. She didn’t feel any different. She opened her eyes.

The preacher stood in front of her, squeezing her hands, his jaw hanging open. Diseased sores had opened all over his face, and dark blood drooled from his lips. His face and jaw swelled and change shape, as if tumors were sprouting all over his skull. His hands, still gripping tight to hers, had turned rotten and leprous.

Juliana gasped and released him, realizing too late that the preacher didn’t have any power over the demon plague, after all. It was eating him up. The preacher staggered toward the front of the stage, groaning and raising his decayed hands. He fell to his knees, and the audience screamed and drew back. The chorus girls grabbed each other and screamed.

The piano player took one look at what was happening and wisely grabbed his hat and darted out through the canvas flaps at the back of the stage.

The crowd continued shrieking, panicked but not sure whether to run or pray or just shout. Many pointed at Juliana. She felt glued to the spot where she stood, though she knew she ought to leave the stage. There was nothing she could do. The preacher would die, and it would be her fault.

The preacher’s assistant hurried over to the horribly infected preacher and knelt beside him. He took the man’s contorted, blistered face in both hands, showing no fear at all. He spoke quietly to the preacher, and though Juliana couldn’t hear his words over the frightened crowd, she could hear his tone—calm, measured, focused.

Then, incredibly, the demon plague was reversed. The preacher’s face and neck healed, and his hands returned to normal. In less than a minute, it looked like he’d never been infected at all, except for the splotches of blood and pus on his suit and tie.

The assistant helped the preacher stand. The preacher looked down at his hands, turning them back and forth, then held them up for the audience to see. “Healed! Healed, by the grace of God!” he shouted. The crowd shouted back with hallelujahs and amens.

Then the preacher turned to Juliana and scowled as he pointed one trembling finger at her.

“The devil is here today!” the preacher announced. “This is no girl. She’s a demoness, sent from Hell!”

The crowd roared and surged toward the stage, shouting all kinds of filthy names and curses at Juliana.

“I’m not!” Juliana said, though she doubted anyone could hear her over the din. “I can’t help it! I don’t want to hurt anyone, I came to be healed...” She realized she was crying. Why not? She’d been foolish, letting herself hope for too much. She turned toward the preacher’s assistant, giving him a desperate look. He was the one with the miraculous power, she now understood, and not the preacher. Maybe he could still help her.

“Devil!” someone shouted from below.

“Witch!” screamed someone else.

Men and women from the crowd clambered up onto the stage with fear glowing in their eyes.

“Destroy her!” the preacher shouted. “Drown the demon in the river! We’ll baptize it back to Hell!”

The crowd swarmed the stage, all of them closing in on Juliana, and she realized they would kill her, unless she killed them first.

“Stop! Get back!” she shouted. She raised her bare hands and let the demon plague appear all over her skin, even her face, mutating her appearance into something infernal.

The crowd slowed. Suddenly, nobody wanted to be the first to grab her.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Juliana said. “I’m here for healing...but I can kill you if I want. Please don’t make me.”

One person advanced toward her, the preacher’s assistant. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the back of the stage. She noticed that her boils and blisters vanished where he touched her, and she felt a warm glow there instead.

“I have the touch of God, as you have just seen,” the young man told the confused, edgy mob. “I will take care of the girl.” He tugged Juliana toward the canvas flaps that served as the backdrop of the stage.

“Don’t you take that witch out of this tent!” the preacher shouted. “She’ll use her devilry on you!”

The assistant gave Juliana a long look. The crowd, emboldened by the preacher’s words, advanced on her again.

“We ought to run,” the assistant whispered to her.

They dashed away through the canvas curtain into the dim area behind the stage, where a number of preachers and their supporting performers had crowded to escape the rain. The snake handlers were still there, kneeling on the dirt floor and praying, their snakes rattling and hissing inside the basket. They looked up as Juliana and the preacher’s assistant leaped over the stage’s back steps, landed in the muddy dirt, and ran out of the tent into the rainy night.

A few trucks and automobiles were parked behind the tent, as well as a number of wagons, their horses hitched under tent tops to keep them out of the rain.

He led her into the horse tent and drew a knife from his boot. He cut free one horse after another as they moved down the temporary hitching rail. The crowd burst out through the back flaps of the tent, shouting and looking for them.

“What are you doing?” Juliana asked, as he cut free yet another horse. “We have to run!”

“Then let’s run.” He climbed up onto a tall brown horse, then held out his hands. “Hurry!”

She hesitated. She couldn’t risk her legs touching the horse, or she would poison the poor creature.

The mob shouted and ran towards them.

“Now!” the young man said. “Or they’ll kill us both.”

“Give me that knife!” Juliana didn’t wait, but snatched it from the sheath in his boot. While the mob approached, she sliced the bottom hem of her dress at the front and back, and then she ripped the dress all the way up to her waist.

“Now, what are you doing?” he asked.

“Protecting the horse.” She sheathed the knife, took pins from her hair, and fixed the torn sides of her dress around her legs like breeches. Then, finally, she let him grab her hands and haul her up, and she slid into the saddle behind him.

“Take those reins,” he said, pointing at a horse to her left. She grabbed the horse’s reins, knowing there was no time to ask why.

They rode off, flanked by an extra horse on either side. The preacher’s assistant held the reins of the horse on their right. He yelled at the other horses, trying to get them to follow, and a couple of confused-looking horses actually did trot after them.

She looked back over her shoulder as they rode out of the horse tent. The loose, wandering horses were slowing the crowd’s pursuit.

They turned onto the muddy road, riding north along the Mississippi River, toward St. Louis. The two extra horses they’d captured galloped alongside them, making annoyed sounds at being woken and forced to run in the rain. Two additional horses followed at a distance, not eager to run but apparently not wanting to miss the party, either.

She heard the sounds of engines cranking.

“Maybe we should have taken one of those cars instead!” Juliana shouted to be heard over the pounding rain and the commotion behind them.

“Those can’t go anywhere but roads. We wouldn’t be able to escape. Drop those reins!”

Juliana released her captured horse, and so did he. He shouted “Yah!” at them a few times, and then turned and rode off along what looked like a muddy deer path into the woods. No truck or car could follow them here.

He slowed a little when they were out of sight of the road. “Any luck, they’ll follow those other horses down the road before they figure out they’ve lost us.”

“Where does this trail go?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t know, we’re just passing through town.”

“Where are you from? Do you have a name?”

“I do.” He leaned forward and shouted, “Yah!” The horse picked up speed, galloping away from the trouble behind them.

Juliana held tight to the boy’s waist. Her fingers wanted to trace the shape of the muscle under his shirt, and she let them explore as much as she dared.

As they rode through the rain, under the bright harvest moon, she couldn’t help noticing how she felt bounding against him again and again with each stride of the horse’s leg, with only her rain-soaked underpants separating her from his scratchy woolen trousers.

She snuggled her arms tighter around him and rested her cheek on his strong back. Despite the rain, she hoped the ride would never end.