Jax Book Nook

After a halftime break for the Super Bowl, we are back to the history of my fantasy world of Pandemonium.

***

Any survey of religion before the Revolution would be incomplete without talking about the Fieldhands and their quest to found their own church despite their unfortunate condition. Practitioners of the peculiar institution throughout the American South attempted to carefully control religious ceremonies on their estates, where pastors would preach the virtue of obedience.  However, despite their best efforts, American blacks would often hold their own religious services where African spirituality mixed with Christian concepts, a practice that southern society attempted to limit.  Pandemonium, however, was a very different town from other places in the American South. When Jacob Freeman, a freeman who had participated in these illicit religious ceremonies while on a plantation on the mainland, came to Pandemonium and preached the Christian faith to the Fieldhands in the first time, the Witch establishment could not care less.  The Witch religion centered on Earthly power, which the Witches wanted the Fieldhands to have no part of, so the Witches never tried to convert the Fieldhands to their own faith.  Furthermore, the Satanic High Priest at that time, Cornelius Blackroot, found the Christian religion to teach a “slave morality,” using that term 150 years before Friedrich Nietzsche, which would be most useful in preventing any revolt, and encouraged Witches to allow the Fieldhands to be evangelized.  Jacob Freeman began the Fieldhand religious tradition without even the benefit of a church building, gathering his congregation together on Sunday mornings in the tobacco fields.      

            After the Revolution, the Bargain was amended again to remove any restrictions for either side to move across the line.  This legal change had little practical impact, as the law was rarely enforced, but it did open up the possibility of the Strangers sending missionaries to the Witches, as legal restrictions of freedom of religion were going out of style.  However, evangelizing and just talking about religion in public was going out of style as well, so custom now forbade what the law now allowed just as custom allowed what the law previously forbade. 

            The most significant events in Pandemonium between the Revolution and the end of the Civil War are the revolt of Calvin Johnson in 1831, which led to the death of 250 people, and the destruction of the First Satanic Temple in 1857, which led to the deaths of 496 people.  As a local historian, the Author writes for the purpose of promoting civic pride.  I acknowledge both of these unfortunate events and wish they had not happened. However, dwelling on the past does not help our community move forward. That was a different time and those events do not represent the town we are now.  Other books have been written on this topic that go into further detail if the reader is interested.[1]

            The Civil War changed Pandemonium just as it changed the rest of America.  Residents of Pandemonium served on both sides of the Civil War, none more prominent than CSA Col. Robert Davis, who served under General Robert E. Lee himself at the battle of Gettysburg.  The Witches supported the confederacy throughout the conflict, as their agricultural economy depended on the existence of the South’s current labor force.  The Pro-Union Strangers, on the other hand, rioted when the Confederacy attempted to impose a draft on the area.  A Stranger militia conducted the Revolt of 1865, hoping to aid the Union by creating an enclave behind enemy lines.  This foolish attempt to imitate the mountaineers of West Virginia was quickly crushed by Col. Davis’s own troops.

After the War of Between the States, the Witch community made the collective decision to establish a sense of Victorian respectability.  The Witches completed the Second Satanic Temple[2] in 1882.  Rather than the underground pit built more than a century earlier, the Second Satanic Temple was a white, rectangular building with Roman columns and a slanted roof with a steeple on top and stained-glass windows.  Any passerby could mistake it for a Baptist Church.  The liturgy changed as well, substituting the sacrifice of a rabbit for the sacrifice of a goat.  America is a great country, and even those outsiders at the furthest reaches want to assimilate.  Unlike a great number in the South, the Witches put up scant resistance to military occupation or Reconstruction, though they were glad to see both come to an end.

            The Fieldhands, it goes without saying, had greatly improved social standing following the war.  The Fieldhands gathered in the Southwest side of the island where Beauregard Davis’s western plantation was and the Witches remained on the Southeast side of the island.  For the first time, the Church of the Tobacco Fields benefitted from having a church building with a roof and four walls, located over the very spot in the tobacco fields where Jacob Freeman began his ministry more than a century before. During Reconstruction, one Fieldhand, Marvin Jackson, served two terms in the South Carolina legislature.

            But by far, the most significant event in Pandemonium to occur in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century was the coming of the Ze’ev.  A fringe Jewish sect from what is now the Czech Republic, the Ze’ev fled persecution in their home country and came to America to make a new life for themselves.  Today, few could imagine our town without the Ze’ev who have produced so many doctors, lawyers, judges, bankers, businessmen, philanthropists, rabbis, professors, and others who have enriched this community so much.  We have learned to tolerate their oddities.  However, when the first members of the Ze’ev arrived on the Northeastern side of the Island on August 12, 1892, the Strangers valued tolerance less than they do now.  Natives of the island looked askance at the haggard refugees wearing rags, carrying all they owned in a sack.  The Ze’ev knew little English, and their religious customs unnerved the Strangers, who had tolerated Witches for more than two and a half centuries and were unlikely to relish the possibility of more unbelievers on the island.  Pastor Todd Whitfield tried to calm down his congregation, concentrating on the Good Book’s passages concerning love and forgiveness.  He told those men that those who live by the sword die by the sword, and if they lived by the sword, they would die by it too.  However, Christianity is a philosophy many identify with but few practice, so the Strangers ignored their Pastor’s pleas to think reasonably and formed a lynch mob of fifty people to go to the Ze’ev one night on a full moon.

            Five of the lynch mob came back alive, covered in large gaping wounds, bleeding profusely from every seam of the body imaginable.  Pastor Whitfield was at a loss for words.  He had hoped that his previous warning would strike a prophetic tone, but in the Christian context prophecy does not equal divination.  However, the Rabbi Eliyahu came to visit a visibly shaken Pastor Whitfield the following morning in order to explain what had happened.  The Rabbi told the Pastor that his people suffered from a blessing and a curse (“For what blessing from the Lord is not also a curse, and what curse from the Lord is not also a blessing?”) that the Lord had bestowed upon them in the old country as a protection from their enemies.  This blessing and curse would come upon all members of the Ze’ev 18 or older who was born to a Ze’ev mother.  Upon every full moon, they would transform into a beast no person would trifle with.  The Ze’ev had immigrated to Pandemonium thinking that the inhabitants would be used to this kind of thing, having lived next to the Witches all these years.

            “It is unfortunate that your men attacked on the full moon,” continued Rabbi Eliyahu. “On any other night they would have taken us defenseless and they would not have died.  But the Lord does protect his chosen people.”

            “I need a stiff drink,” responded Pastor Whitfield.

            You must understand that as far back as the 18^th century, the Witches made no claim to perform magic anymore.  Their faith was in seeking Earthly power, both in that they hoped to exercise it on Earth and that the power was native to Earth.  The Strangers were not “used to this kind of thing” and no group of Strangers had such rude awakening since the original Strangers witnessed the first sacrifice aboard the Charon.  However, Pastor Whitfield could not prevent the Ze’ev from settling on Pandemonium, nor could anyone else.  The council met and discussed the matter the following month, and the decision was made that because the Witches and the Fieldhands already lived on the South side of the island, the Strangers would share the North side of the island with the Ze’ev. [3] The Strangers quickly moved out of the Northeastern side of the island until the Ze’ev had that quadrant of the island all to themselves.

            As Pandemonium moved into the Twentieth Century, its economy changed from a port city dependent on tobacco and fishing to a truly diversified economy, fueled by innovation.  Smokestacks and kilns replaced tobacco fields and shipyards, as the Ze’ev started Kosher butcher shops and tailors.  In the Fieldhand part of town, the famous Cleopatra night club was founded, a mecca for jazz performers in the first half of the century. Gradually, residents of the State of South Carolina became aware of the town’s oddities, and the religious practices of the Witches soon transformed from a well-kept secret to a poorly kept one. The State of South Carolina remembered the Witches’ service during the Civil War, and the white community at least had become accustomed to them.  A well-placed donation from the wealthy elites of Witch society didn’t hurt the Witches’ gradual acceptance either. Over fifty citizens of Pandemonium served during World War I, and another hundred served in World War II, which saw Bunim Greenblatt win the Congressional Medal of Honor after dispatching an entire German company during a full moon in Southern France.[4]  The Great Depression brought out the best in Pandemonians, who gave more to charity on average than any city in South Carolina, founding soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and, of course, missions.  Intermarriage between Strangers and Witches, once unheard of, became common, as were double ceremonies.[5]  When a Stranger boy brought home a Witch girl, or vice versa, his parents would increasingly say he had made a fine choice.  The Pastor of the Strangers actually encouraged this trend, as whenever a mixed marriage came to be, normally the parties would convert to his church and not to the temple.

             After World War II, the Witches increasingly came to believe that they belonged in America as much as anyone else did, so why hide their identities?  In 1953, the Satanic High Priest, Blaise Jackson, proposed to his congregation that they reveal their identities to the state government of South Carolina and to the wider world.  The congregation agreed.  Jackson met with his counterpart of the Strangers, Pastor Peter Whitfield (grandson of Todd Whitfield) and proposed that the Bargain be changed to allow the Witches to “come out” as it were.  Pastor Whitfield agreed, and at the next meeting, the council amended the Bargain and Jackson called the media. 

            The reaction of the world disappointed the Witch community.  American was in the middle of a religious revival in the mid-1950s, in response to the atheistic tyranny of communism.  All across the United States, people expressed shock and outrage as they learned of a town where Satan was worshipped as regularly as God was.  The residents of South Carolina pretended they had never heard of such a thing, fearing the world would condemn them right along with the Witches.  Televangelists would pray for the island to be eaten up by the sea.  The National Council of Churches voted to denounce the Bargain, as well, a Faustian bargain.  Large crowds of Christian believers arrived in front of the Second Satanic Temple with signs hoping to shut the place down.  Jackson dispersed the crowd by threatening to cast a curse upon them. 

            Of course, when the Pope takes notice, then you know you’ve made it.  Upon hearing the full story of Pandemonium in L’Osservatore Romano, Pope Pius XII dictated a letter to the bishop for the Diocese of Charleston, asking him why he had made no attempt to confront this evil in his own land.  When one receives a letter from the pope, one better look busy, so the bishop instructed that a church be built on the Witch side of the line.[6]  This church would be staffed by a pastor and given whatever resources needed to stay open.  When the bishop’s assistant explained to him that there were no Catholics in Pandemonium, the bishop repeated his instructions and demanded they be carried out to the letter.  For the last sixty years, St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church has stood in the town square, just on the Witches’ side, while other churches in the diocese have been closed for lack of funds or due to a shortage of priests, aid to parochial schools has had to be cut, and mission trips have been canceled.  The Diocese has always found a way to keep it open, if only to prove a point.[7]

            The Witches, shocked by this response, decided another liturgical reform would satiate the modern world. Starting in 1963, the Satanic ceremonies would no longer require the sacrifice of a rabbit.  The crushing of a large bug would suffice.  The Strangers reciprocated with their own liturgical reform, removing the ceremony whereby the congregation would drink the princess’s ashes with water and placing the Bloody Book in the crypt.  The bones from which the ashes were produced have been kept away from the public eye since the mid-1960s.

Over time it became apparent, however, that the Christian world’s disgust ultimately lay not on the Witches but on the Strangers and how at home they appeared to be with their diabolic neighbors.  In 1967, Pastor Whitfield attended an ecumenical meeting of Christian pastors from all across America only to find he would become the main attraction.  Priests and preachers of every stripe demanded how he could tolerate the danger to his congregation’s souls presented by his lackadaisical attitude toward the Devil.  Council meetings, intermarriage, and, more recently, some Strangers had even started attending Cramner University.[8]  Whitfield calmly explained that the Witches’ beliefs had no influence on their day to day behavior.  Blaise Jackson was a gentleman, even if he had some retrograde beliefs concerning segregation, and Whitfield found him to be a reasonable and even thoughtful man over the many conversations they had during Whitfield’s years as Pastor.  Jackson, in fact, had admitted to Whitfield in private that he had no faith in witchcraft or the existence of Satan, but instead thought of himself as a curator of a museum containing the history of his community.  The comment resonated with Whitfield, who often doubted his own God’s existence in the small hours of the night, and similarly thought of himself more as a caretaker than an evangelist.[9]

            Whitfield ended the conversation with a bon mot. As a Lutheran pastor pressed him on the issue, Whitfield asked if his particular sect of Lutheranism still considered the pope to be the anti-Christ.  The Lutheran affirmed that it did, but asked how this was relevant.  “As we are discussing people tolerating ultimate evil, I wonder whether we are really discussing the Witches in my community or the Roman Catholics in yours.”[10]

            Jackson, now in failing health, held his own Ecumenical Council in 1969, when he received a visit from Anton LaVey in June of that year.  While LaVey thought his visit would be enlightening, or at least entertaining, the two men soon found they had little in common.  LaVey found Jackson’s conservative demeanor boring.  Jackson considered LaVey to be merely a provocateur.  When LaVey offered to succeed Jackson, Jackson refused him.  “My church is a museum.  Yours is a circus.  One does not belong in the other.”

            A museum to what we might ask? Jackson would pass away in January 1970, to be succeeded by a new Satanic High Priest, Alastair Grimsley.  Grimsley became the first High Priest to endorse integration, and announced that both the Satanic Temple and the town of Pandemonium would have to undergo changes in order thrive in the coming century.  Pastor Whitfield met with Grimsley for lunch one Sunday afternoon to discuss a proposal to amend the Bargain yet again.  The proposal presented to the council would allow for a renovated meeting hall with three doors: one for the Strangers, one for the Witches, and one for the Fieldhands, in recognition of the Fieldhands’ contributions to the history of Pandemonium.  The community made two objections to these plans.  The Fieldhands complained that the very idea of forcing them to go through a different was just Jim Crow under a different name.  The Ze’ev objection was essentially “What are we dog food?  Why don’t we get our own door?”[11]  Whitfield and Grimsley argued that nobody was required to go through any particular door, and that the doors were meant to honor the founding sects of Pandemonium.  Furthermore, if the Ze’ev insisted, a fourth door could be added.  In the end, the meeting hall would be renovated to have four doors, one of each side, unlabeled so as to avoid any association with segregation.  That being said, today, each of the four sects had chosen a door to call its own, and members of the community rarely deviate from custom when entering the hall. The initiative would be Whitfield’s last public accomplishment before his death in 1975.  The Bargain has been amended only once more since then, to create a unitary executive in the 2004. 

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[1] See Footnote 14.

[2] Now on the National Register for Historic Places.

[3] In the event that any tourist feels deterred from visiting Pandemonium because of these facts, the Author can assure them that the Ze’ev in their transformed state are normally very docile and only become hostile when provoked unnecessarily. While writing a portion of this brief history, the Author sat on his front porch one warm night in June and observed two transformed Ze’ev roaming his lawn without fear, for the animals barely noticed him.  Normally, they are pinned up on transformation nights.  The Ze’ev are, if nothing else, considerate and thoughtful neighbors.

[4] Greenblatt’s superiors did not understand how this could have occurred, but merely found Greenblatt standing naked one morning in a German camp surrounded by dead bodies.  Giving him the Medal of Honor was the best way to accept the victory without having to explain it to anyone.

[5] Undoubtedly this led to interesting debates as to how the children were to be raised, but those debates have been largely contained to bed chambers and kitchen tables.

[6] This being the part of the town that God was supposedly not allowed on.

[7] This is not speculation.  When the Author asked the current bishop as to why a church with no parishioners has remained open for six decades, the bishop responded “To prove a damn point!”

[8] “It has one Hell of a law school,” Whitfield explained, perhaps not understanding the irony of this statement.

[9] Thanks to the Stranger Church, who for the purposes of this brief history, have given the Author access to Pastor Whitfield’s personal journals as well as other invaluable documents.

[10] I consider this a bon mot, but some visitors to Pandemonium consider this to be an unsettling remark.

[11] The words of the Rabbi Maharam at the time.

I have decided to take a break from posting parts of Pandemonium’s history to cover the most watched event: the Superbowl Commercials.

I missed the first five minutes of the “game” which means that I probably missed the first commercial break. Damn my responsibilities as a father putting my son to bed!

My review therefore begins with the Indiana Jones Trailer, which genuinely feels like Harrison Ford’s desicated corpse is being drug out the back of a train. This is followed by the E-Trade baby commercial, which is another example of an American Icon, past its prime, being trotted out for another trip to the well. Then, I think there was this thing with Serena Williams giving a half-time speech to a group of people for…something.

Second Break: T-Mobile commercial with Bradley Cooper and his mother. They advertised this ahead of time. It reminds me of that commercial where they had a bunch of people just jack around on camera for two minutes and admitted they blew millions of dollars. “What are you going to do with your money?”

Alicia Silverstone still exists, apparently. Bass Pro Shop commercial is boring, but effective. Ben Stiller talks to us about reality and then drinks a Pepsi, says we have to try it to see if he was acting. We’ve all had a Pepsi, Ben. We know you can act.

Third Break: Clothing commercial. There’s an app for clothing now. Do we need an app for that? I guess we have an app for everything. Paramount ad with Sly Stallone. Don’t think that is new. Caddyshack parody for Michelob Ultra, which is also not new. What is this that they are playing old material already.

Flash Trailer: Worth it just to see Michael Keaton and hear him say those words. Movie looks like a video game. Christian ad is cute. That’s it. Squarespace commercial: just no impact. Animal Control commercial–I didn’t download access to Fox in any form until tonight and I did it just to watch the game. I don’t have cable anymore as a millennial. What’s the point? There was also this 10-second cooking show commercial. Too short to bother with.

Fifth Break: Now they are doing this “real” thing with Steve Martin. We know he can act. You don’t have to pretend to like Pepsi to prove that point. New glucose monitor with a Jonas brother. Too obvious. He’s a diabetes icon. Obviously. I guess it is plausible at this point that Netflix would give a series to golf. Wait…It’s real? Electric Vehicle commercial for a car company other than Tesla. You know the thing about these other electric cars? You hear about them once a year and never see them. Like Santa Clause.

Sixth Break: “Diddy don’t do jingles!” Snicker…snort…guffah. At last, a commercial that makes me laugh. Nice one, Diddy. See you at the next Budweiser commercial shoot.

America manufactures more goods in terms of economic value then it did 50 years ago, by a very large multiplier. When they say our manufacturing has declined, they mean as a percentage of our population employed in that industry when compared to other countries. In terms of the amount of goods, measured by economic value, we are still second to only China. American labor is comparatively expensive, but the work is generally high quality. That’s why America is the place you manufacture things like passenger jets and solar panels, but not plastic action figures you see at the store. It’s a trade-off, like everything else in economics. If you want quality work, you have to pay for it. And you generally don’t need quality work to make stupid nick-nacks. There are lots of factories in America guys.

Is the dancing idiot the tax expert? Then the answer is no, Turbotax, no.

Seventh Break: Iphone commercial where they take people out of the picture. I’ve heard some people theorize that capitalism has gotten so efficient that it might actually achieve the desired results of communism, but I don’t think this is what they were talking about. Maya commercial-Okay, that was funny. They kept us on a string on that one. Really had a lot of people in the media seriously reporting that they were ditching the M&M’s. Sure, they would. Downy McBride-ehh, that was okay. This was probably the best commercial break.

Eighth Break-Dancing animals on a safari. Might be effective if they were advertising speakers, but I don’t see how the car is making the animals dance. Oh, it’s another electric car commercial. Figures. Hamm and Brie–Ehh, play on names. Pringles commercial–this is actually a fun premise, because who hasn’t had this happen to them. Heineken commercial–this is another old commercial. They pre-aired a bunch of these.

Ninth Break–Doritos commercial with the triangle–all I have to say that I had heard the British economy was in trouble, but man, the pound is replaced by a grade school instrument. That’s tough. Miller Time v. Coors–ends in Blue Moon–actually a good beer commercial. At least AmBev is making fun of itself. Now get Budweiser in there. Maybe do a pod people sketch. Cute dog commercial-can’t remember what it was about.

Tenth Break-USFL Commercial–I wonder how many people remember why the old league died. Trump convinced them to move to the fall and compete against the NFL. Didn’t work out well for them. If they stuck with spring football, it could have worked. Big New Yorker Commercial-I had a teacher in high school from NYC who loved those. Never saw the attraction. Don’t know why you would want one the size of a basketball court. Tax commercial-getting to be a lot of those. These are really quick. I’m having problems keeping up. Fox keeps promoting itself a lot. Could they not find outside advertisers?

Eleventh Break: Another ad for a Fox show. This is for Farmer’s Wife. Then there’s Animal Control again. The Daytona 500, which is on Fox. Gutfeld’s show on Fox News. Is that a separate company now or not? I think Disney bought the Fox network, but not the News Channel.

Twelfth Break: Trojan Horse Commercial-actually not bad for a company that’s probably a scam. An actual trojan horse metaphor for an anti-virus commercial. Creed III–I’ve only seen two of the Rockies.

Halftime-I’ve got to say, I’ve been disappointed so far. These commercials have been duds. Fox keeps advertising itself. Pepsi’s campaign is a dud because it doesn’t answer the basic question: why aren’t you Coke? The one beer commercial I’ve seen was fun, but it didn’t really measure up to the glory years of the Budweiser-Miller rivalry where Budweiser made up for their generic piss water with whip smart commercials. Now that they are the same company, I feel like the commercial space has lost something invaluable: the image of the Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. Someone bring back the smartass lizards.

Edit: Okay, catching up on the commercials I missed. The Pop Corners commercial was pretty fun, I have to admit, but I don’t think getting the Breaking Bad crew back together is quite the accomplishment people think it is. Seems like these people will get back together for anything. I don’t get the praise for Ben Affleck’s Dunkin Donuts commercial though. If someone at Dunkin Donuts tried to argue without you about your order, would you think he was being friendly or rude?

Thirteenth Break: Flag Football Ad-NFL congratulates itself for being progressive while veterans with CTE shoot themselves in the chest so their brains can be studied.

Fourteenth Break: Big Bunny drags people out of their seats and kicks them down a whole covered with screens-ad for Tubi-like we don’t have enough screen in our lives. Meta ad–everything about Meta proves that Mark Zuckerman is a space alien. Medicine ad. Enough said. Petsmart and Purina-any pet commercials during the Superbowl are going to remind us all of Pets.com. Do you really want to do that? Cruise commercial. Enough said. Daytona shows up again.

Fifteenth Break: Trailer for Air: I guess its interesting that these people at Nike could see Michael Jordan was special but Portland couldn’t, but I never get the suspense surrounding movies concerning a business strategy, even if it is innovative. Same way I felt about MoneyBall. DoorDash ad I can’t remember. Now they are repeating ads. Doesn’t Gordon Ramsay have enough shows. Fanduel ad where Gronkowski tries to kick a field goal–were you supposed to bet against him?

Sixteenth Break: Pop Corners ad. Again, not bad. Bud Light Ad where the husband dances to the waiting tone. I feel like AmBev has actually accepted what they are: we are the holding music of beer. That’s who we are. I guess you should own up to it. Everything else is a repeat. These guys didn’t get as many ad buys as I remember.

Seventeenth Break: Kia Commercial about forgetting the binkie: (Best Robot Chicken Nerd Impression) This situation is not humorous! It is painful and humiliating as anyone who has been through it can tell you! Crown Royal promotes itself by reminding you it comes from Canada, so it must be boring. Mr. Peanut’s roast–if you have to give me a QR code, you failed. I’m not going on the internet to watch the rest of an ad. Also, thanks for reminding me where M&Ms got that idea.

Eighteenth Break: Another NFL self-promo, followed by a Fox self-promotion. Are these people having problems selling ad space? Old Taylor Swift commercial. They can’t even fill up the game with new commercials. What made the people who make Oikos yogurt say to themselves: “Deion Sanders. That’s our target demographic!” Ring commercial. Eh. Another Animal Control promotion.

Nineteenth Break: Another commercial. Another cute dog. Who tears up the house. And they get another house. Gosh, that was the cutest commercial for the biggest soulless corporation I can remember. Old rockstars come together to help promote new workplace HR system or something. There is this pattern in American life where things go from threatening to tolerated to accepted to tame to practically conservative. In the 1950s, rock and roll was a menace to society. Now, I’ve seen it used to advertise baby shampoo and now, HR systems.

Twentieth Break: Disney commercial–Nostalgia. More nostalgia. Yes, Disney, you exist, and you are big. Premature electrification–actually one of the better commercials, yet it’s showing in the fourth quarter. Subtle. You didn’t know it was a car commercial until the end. Kind of snook in there.

Twenty-First Break-The Busch Guide-that made me snicker a little. Poking fun at Sarah MacLachlan is fun, though a little random. Poker Face promotion–still not really interested in this show. Booking.com-musical number-pretty forgettable. Accused–the most eye-catching thing about that was a Swastika in a barn. On Fox, explosions are both expected and boring.

Twenty-Second Break-Black and white photos of people yelling at each other in 2020. Jesus gets us. Really? How do those photos show us that? Wouldn’t we have to get Jesus’s reaction to all this? Another Animal Control promo. They really believe in this show!

Twenty-Third Break: T-Mobile commercial with John Travolta-this is another old ad. Sketchers add with Snoop-Dog-it’s funny seeing Tony Romo getting tackled by eight-year-olds and launching a receiver in the air. He might be able to win a playoff game in this league. More Fox promos.

Superbowl Commercials Over: I would give this year a D. Even the better moments were either a little weak or unintentional. This is truly a letdown compared to years past. Mean Joe Greene. 1984. The Magic Fridge. Now we settle for M&Ms redoing jokes that Mr. Peanut did years ago, and they weren’t that great then. This is sad. What have we come to America?

P.S. By the way, there was this game playing in the background. It was apparently pretty good. “Down to the wire” some are saying. Jesus, why can’t we get our priorities right?

I hope you all enjoyed part I of my faux history of Pandemonium–the town at the center of my work-in-progress Christmas in Pandemonium. Here we go with Part II.

Benjamin Franklin, one of our country’s illustrious founders, is known to have said “We shall all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.” The sentiment did not originate with him, but with anyone in a similar desperate situation, which the Witches and the Strangers now found themselves in.  In this moment, Miller forgot his newly discovered piety and turned to Cramner, who was apparently thinking the same thing.  As enemies, they were outnumbered and likely to die, but as allies they stood a chance.  Miller spoke first, stating that his earlier words concerning the passage “thou shall not allow a witch to live” may have been overly hasty.  Cramner apologized for the sacrifice on the Charon, chalking it up to too much enthusiasm in his congregation to begin their new lives in America.  Cramner offered to let the Strangers remain in Pandemonium, provided they assisted with the defense of the island.  Miller found that offer most attractive as both he and his crew were wanted by the law elsewhere, but insisted that Cramner would have to agree to cease and desist any more acts of human sacrifice.  Cramner did not like the condition, but did not see an alternative.  Recognizing their common plight, the Old Heretic and the Drunkard “shook on it” a second time, and proceeded to form an alliance for their own survival. Captain Miller had within the last 24 hours founded a religion and then made a bargain with the Devil.

            Working together, the Strangers and the Witches successfully rebuffed the Stono attack, and then pursued the Stono to the mainland where the chief and the remainder of his forces were slaughtered.  The settlers then moved onto the Indian village on the mainland and proceeded to do unto the Stono as the Stono had threatened to do unto them.  Having killed all the men (including all boys over the age of 10), the Strangers and Witches carried off the women and burned the village to the ground.[1]  Back at Pandemonium, Cramner agreed that because the Strangers, unlike the Witches, had not brought women with them on the journey, the Stono women would be given to the Strangers as wives.[2]

            It is one thing to make a deal in haste, quite another to fully negotiate the terms from a position of relative ease.  Two months after the alliance was made, the Old Heretic and the Drunkard “shook on it” a third time, but this time they had the foresight to write the terms of the deal down in greater detail.  First, the island would be bisected in two by a line agreed to by both parties with the Strangers receiving the North end of the island and the Witches receiving the south end. Both the Witches and the Strangers agreed to stay on their side of the line. That being said, if they were to live together like this, they would have to form a common government, or at least a place to meet in order to deal with future issues.  A common meeting hall was established on the exact center of the island with two entrances, one on the Stranger side of the line and the other on the Witch side of the line. A council of six people would be elected, three from each side, and the town would be governed by two different mayors, each one responsible for governing the town on their respective side of the line.  The Strangers promised not to report the Witches to any Christian Kingdom or Empire, and the Witches in return agreed reluctantly to give up any practice of human sacrifice.[3] The Strangers also wanted it written down that not only were the Witches not allowed on the Stranger part of the island, but neither was Satan himself allowed.  Cranmer, a fallen Anglican priest who had been educated in theology, was amused by this request and stated that perhaps the Witches should ask that God be disallowed from coming onto the Witches’ side of the island.  The Strangers discussed it among themselves and to Cranmer’s amazement responded that they found those terms acceptable.  Those famous provisions were incorporated into the Bargain of Pandemonium, and though it has been amended over time, that charter remains the basis of our town’s government.[4]

            Both parties took this social contract seriously and held up their end of it.  When the Crown established the royal colony of South Carolina a few years later, the Strangers did not go running to the local governor to turn the Witches in.  This might partly be to do with the price on their own heads, as Miller and his crew had been wanted on smuggling charges for several years.  Covered in fog, the island of Pandemonium often went unnoticed by English settlers.  When it was necessary to do business with the royal governor, the governing council would vote to appoint a representative who would represent both communities, swearing to reveal none of the secrets about the religious practices in Pandemonium or its founding. 

            The Witches voluntarily gave up the practice of human sacrifice.  Cramner began a religious reform movement within the cult whereby the sacrifice of a human being was replaced by the ritual sacrifice of a goat.  Many Witches voiced their concern that without a truly diabolic sacrifice of human life, that their connection to the Evil One would fade, and with it their powers.[5]  However, this reform was necessary to protect the deal in place making the town a possibility, and the prohibition on human sacrifice has been honored by Witches to this day, with one notable exception. [6]

            The Strangers had their own religious reforms to attend to, as a church can rarely survive with a liturgy depending on a single verse read by a barely literate seaman with no theological training heavily influenced by alcohol.  The Strangers disassembled the Charon and used the hull to build their original church on the very ground where they had killed the Stono princess.  The Stranger Church[7] also had a stone crypt underneath it, where the bones of the Stono princess were kept.  Guilt marked the church’s foundation from the beginning.  Miller placed the Bloody Book at the back of the Church’s nave, where it remains today, now under glass.  The Drunkard appointed himself as both pastor and mayor, the concept of separation of church and state and that time just developing, and proceeded to start leading a service made up mostly of songs and sermons centered on how disgusting and devious the Witches were, despite just having made a permanent alliance with them.  Far from repenting, Miller carved the verse “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” on the arch above the church’s entrance.  However, Miller also warned the Strangers to keep the peace, a point he made in a ceremony whereby he took the as ashes of the Stono princess’s cremated body and forced his congregation to drink said ashes with water “so the sin would remain with them.”[8]  This contradiction lies at the heart of the Strangers’ faith, and like most mysteries at the heart of religion, the question is not so much unanswered but answered a thousand times over in a way that is unsatisfactory to all involved.

            After the Drunkard’s death in the 1656, the Strangers decided they needed an actual pastor, someone who knew what the Christian faith was, and this required an education in the Christian faith.  The Witches, much like other religious minorities seeking shelter in America, had founded Cramner University[9] in memory of their founder after his death, but a school run by Witches would not serve to educate a Christian pastor.  Also, it was located on the other side of the line, and crossing the line was an offense punishable by execution.  However, an inquisitive young man named Robert Winthrop, the son of one of the original Strangers and a 13-year old Stono Indian, having learned to read at the age of six at a rate faster than the Drunkard himself, so impressed the community that they charged him with leaving Pandemonium and returning upon having educated himself in Christian theology.

            Winthrop soon found there was no “Christian faith” in the same sense that there was no such thing as “language” or “government.” There were Christian faiths.  Winthrop attended Anglican Churches in Virginia, Catholic Churches in Maryland, Quaker Meetings in Pennsylvania, Puritan Churches in Massachusetts, and held a very lively conversation with an Arminian as both of them were being chased out of Boston by an angry crowd wielding torches and pitchforks. We know from his journal that Winthrop came to the conclusion that none of these churches actually had an accurate picture of God, and he decided not to look for one.  Winthrop instead decided to create his own faith based on the needs of his community.  Winthrop rejected the Catholic faith outright because of the overwhelming hostility it faced in the English colonies, hostility that the Strangers would like to avoid when interacting with the local government.  On the other hand, if the Catholic faith caused hostility, the Anglican faith would tempt the Strangers to assimilate too far into South Carolinian society, and may lead them to break the Bargain, which could cause the Witches to retaliate.  Stranger worship would be decidedly low-church, so Winthrop adopted Reform methods of worship but adopt the Quakers’ belief in religious liberty, as would be necessary for any Christian society working hand to hand with Satanists. Winthrop agonized over whether to adopt the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination or the Arminian objection to it.  Theoretically, if the Witches were damned to Hell before they were even born, the Strangers would not be tempted to proselytize them as they would be if their souls could be saved, and this would keep the peace. However, Winthrop’s personal experience with straight Calvinism was an angry Puritan mob while his conversation with the Arminian left Winthrop with the impression that even if the doctrine were not logical, it at least created a logical man.  As was usual with Winthrop, his experience triumphed over any search for a theoretical truth existing in a vacuum.[10]

            Winthrop returned to Pandemonium having formed the doctrines of his new church and announced to the community that he would take over the position of pastor, leading the community in worship for the first time the first Sunday of January 1665.  Winthrop built a pulpit similar to the ones he had seen in Boston, and in a sermon delivered on that pulpit expounded the doctrines of the “Christian faith” he had put together in his journal while traveling back from Massachusetts. Unlike other religions in America founded by a charismatic figure, the Strangers today do not maintain that Winthrop was some kind of messianic prophet.  Winthrop borrowed liturgy and doctrines from other religions and adopted them based on the needs of his congregation.  He never claimed to find a secret code in the Bible or to discover sacred plates in the forest.  Winthrop’s attitude toward faith was practical.  Religion existed to serve the community, not to represent some metaphysical reality.  Winthrop may not have been a prophet, but to use a phrase the Strangers had adopted “he did us proud.”  When Winthrop died in 1711, the Strangers decided to memorialize him by founding their own university.[11] 

            Of course, there is more to life than religion and government.  In America, commerce dominates a large part of our existence, and Pandemonium soon became a thriving port due to the industriousness of its inhabitants.  When drawing the line dividing the island, Cramner made sure the Witches received the south end of the island, where all the arable farm land was, and the Strangers received the north end of the island, mostly forests.  Once they realized this, the Strangers determined it had been for the best.  They were sailors after all, and with access to the forests on the north side of the island the Strangers soon had a thriving shipbuilding industry which in turn begat fishing and trade. 

            The Witches found the south side of the island to be exceedingly fertile, good for growing tobacco, which would become the island’s main cash crop.  However, much like the rest of colonial America, they suffered a labor shortage.  As luck would have it,[12] a Spanish ship blown off the coast of Florida drifted into Pandemonium harbor in the year 1640, bringing with it the “Migration or Importation of such Persons”[13] that would be a great help to harvesting of tobacco. The passengers on that boat would never have guessed that their descendants would form the third great spiritual community of Pandemonium, the Fieldhands. 

            Witch tobacco had to be carried on Stranger ships, requiring cooperation between the two disparate groups, as capitalism often does.  This led to a softening of certain restrictions in the 1700s.  While crossing the line was still technically forbidden, soon housewives from one community to the other were crossing the line for no other reason than to borrow a cup of flower. An informal rule developed that as long as neither side was attempting to convert the other, presence on the other side of town would be tolerated.  Winthrop had warned the Strangers against trying to convert the Witches and stressed keeping the peace.  His prudence may have saved this young community.

            On the other hand, the Witches and the Strangers rarely met an issue they could not disagree on, a good example being the building of the First Satanic Temple in 1752.  As South Carolina grew in population and Pandemonium’s economy grew in size, the town, though remote, was getting more and more visitors and the Witches’ great secret became more difficult to hide.  The Strangers had hoped that this might cause the Witches to convert, but the Witches had their own preferred solution.  The Witches proposed that rather than perform their ceremonies out in the open as they had done previously, they would build a Satanic Temple underground, connected with a series of tunnels which would attach to each home on the Witches’ side of the line.  If all that was what they wanted to do, the Strangers would have been fine with it, but the Witches also wanted to use tax money, collected from both sides of the community to pay for it.  The Strangers would have none of it.  The idea of tax dollars paying for Satanic ceremony was outrageous.  Also, many Strangers believed that the entire idea of placing the temple underground was designed to allow the Witches to start conducting human sacrifice again without the supervision of the Strangers.[14]  The Witches felt this attitude to be hypocritical.  After all, in those days the Strangers’ pastor was paid a salary with tax dollars.  However, after a long session of yelling, screaming, threatening to beat each other, and questioning each other’s parentage, the Strangers and Witches came together as only they could.  The Satanic Temple would be built without tax dollars, the Strangers’ pastor would be shorn of his salary, and the Bargain would be amended to prohibit tax dollars from going to any religious institution.[15]  Democracy had done what it does best: create an outcome everyone could live with but no one was happy about. 

            The Churches of the Hatfields and the McCoys, as they would later come to be known, would soon find themselves opposed on every issue facing America as it became a country, starting with Independence.  Namely, the Witches were fer’ it and the Strangers agin’ it.  The Witches believed that on balance they were more likely to be accepted by an independent America than a British Empire that was formally Protestant, and the Strangers believed anything the Witches wanted must be bad.  Many a Witch marched with the minutemen, while Stranger names filled the rolls of loyalist militias.  When America won its independence, the Witches considered themselves one up on the Strangers, though the pro-Union Strangers would even the score against the pro-Confederacy Witches during Reconstruction.  These same dynamics would play out during Prohibition, where the bootlegging Witches would dodge the prohibitionist Strangers using a combination of finely tuned cars and well concealed speakeasies, and the Civil Rights Era, where U.S. District Judge Robert Mapplethorpe, born to two Stranger parents, would strike down and frustrate every Witch attempt to maintain Separate but Equal.

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[1] Stories such as these offend modern sensibilities, but they are common in the founding of America, and it would be difficult to tell the story of Pandemonium without them. Captain Miller justified this massacre much like he did his first one, by quoting scripture, namely Numbers 31:17.

[2] The Stranger’s church has a museum of their history which contains several portraits of these marriages based on the famous portrait of the Marriage of Pocahontas.  Nothing could be further from the truth as the Strangers’ wives were carried back to Pandemonium tied and bound.  The Strangers’ wedding nights would often leave the bride weeping and rolled into a ball attempting to stop their new husband’s advances.

[3] Cramner initially attempted to move Miller on this issue, promising never to use the Strangers as sacrificial victims and appealing to “freedom of conscience.”  The Strangers insisted on abolishing the practice, however, as it offended their newfound piety.  The fact that they had just finished fighting off an invasion that was provoked by Cranmer’s need for a victim may also have been a factor.

[4] The exact terms of the Bargain state: “the fallen angel shall have no hold of the island north of the line” and that “the Christian God’s dominion does not extend south of the line.”

[5] The Author of this book remains skeptical of such powers, but the Witches at that time truly believed Satan had granted them the ability to manipulate the natural world through the invocation of demons. This much is clear from the documents they left behind.    

[6]For more information on this subject, be sure to buy The Crimes of Beauregard Davis, written by Jonathon Coleridge and available at the Pandemonium History Center for $19.99. 

[7] Now on the National Register of Historic Places.

[8] Exodus 32:20

[9] Go fighting Red Devils!

[10] While being a Witch himself, the Author must admit a certain admiration for Winthrop’s pragmatism, based in his concern for the genuine good of his community, a sentiment sadly lacking in this day and age.

[11] Winthrop University is most famous for having lost 34-28 to Cramner University in last year’s Blood Bowl, though other might disagree. 

[12] I should note before certain readers become offended that the luck was entirely on the part of the Witches.

[13] Art. I Sec. 9, Cl. 1 U.S. Const. 

[14] The great irony here is that only a few generations beforehand, the Old Heretic mourned the loss of the old sacrifice, whereas his successor, Tiberius Johnson, was indignant at the very suggestion he would lead such a ceremony, calling it a “calumny” against the Witch community to even suggest they would commit human sacrifice.

[15] The Pastor of the Stranger Church, as one might imagine, was not happy with this outcome.

I stated earlier in these parts that I would be posting my first attempts at exploring the world of Pandemonium, my long agonized over work in progress-Christmas in Pandemonium. I got interrupted by good luck when one of my short stories got published online with Tale Tell TV. Thank you if you listened to that. Now, I’m ready to post one-fourth of my first bit of creative writing. It’s 12,000 words of exposition, and it even has sarcastic footnotes, but I’m still fond of it. Have I enticed you? The 3,000 words is posted below.

A Brief History of the Island and Town of Pandemonium

By Acton Ravenwood

            It is a common, and overly broad, statement that America was founded by religious fanatics with guns.  This pithy quotation, of dubious lineage, oversimplifies a rather large philosophical debate over when a nation comes into existence. America has been founded and re-founded multiple times, sometimes by men of God, other times by men of fortune, then by traitors against Crown, and again by abolitionists.  However, there is some truth to the idea that we are a nation of heretics of one stripe or another, as the British colonies were often founded for the purpose of providing a haven for those with unusual beliefs.

            Our own illustrious community began 400 years ago for very similar reasons, when a sea captain met a prospective passenger in Amsterdam.  That passenger, Fr. Richard Cramner, arranged a meeting with Captain John Miller in a local tavern on April 9, 1620 to discuss passage for himself and 65 others to the southern coast of North America.  Fr. Cramner, an Anglican priest who had been excommunicated for unorthodox religious sentiments, desired a discrete voyage, for unlike certain other travelers to the New World, he did not have a royal charter.  Fr. Cramner planned to settle far south of the Jamestown colony, so as to avoid prying eyes.  Captain Miller agreed he could find a place both remote and fertile for Fr. Cramner’s congregation, for the right price.  This right price turned out to be very high, as Captain Miller boasted that he alone had the skill to avoid royal entanglements which he had earned over a life time of smuggling, narrowly escaping the clutches of English, Dutch, Spanish, and French authorities, to say nothing of the odd privateer.  Furthermore, Captain Miller continued, he had been to the New World several times, and knew the East Coast of North America so well that already he could select five or six excellent spots from memory.  Fr. Cramner did not believe a word of the sea captain’s puffery, but Captain Miller had a reputation that spoke for itself.   Captain Miller’s reputation said he was an avaricious and impious man, deeply in debt, who would not likely go to the authorities given the large price on his head across all of Christendom regardless of what he had witnessed.  As with that, the Old Heretic and the Drunkard (the affectionate sobriquets we have given our illustrious founders here in Pandemonium) “shook on it” and the voyage was set. 

            Fr. Cramner’s congregation boarded Captain Miller’s ship, the Charon, the following month after they had bought the supplies and prepared themselves for the long journey. Captain Miller’s crew were 35 in number, plus one prostitute from Aberdeen.  The Captain had taken her aboard after she had been chased out of her village, on the charge of witchcraft (the irony of this situation is notable, but not particularly relevant to our tale).  In an attempt to avoid offending the piety of the staid passengers, the Captain presented the whore as his wife.  In a biblical[1] sense, she was his wife, and everyone else’s.  Fr. Cramner’s followers could guess that they were among impious people, and they had accepted the crew’s company for the time being.  As one of those adventurous settlers wrote at the time, “They were Strangers to the faith, and to any faith.”[2]  The term “Strangers” has stuck with these people to the present day. 

            Before setting sail, Miller’s first mate saw fit to mention to his captain that everyone in the crew noticed that one of the passengers was carried aboard, bound and gagged as if the other passengers were afraid he would attempt an escape.  Miller, desperate for cash and unscrupulous in his morality, told the crew to ignore whatever oddities these people displayed.  They were considered heretics by wider society for a reason.

            Miller regretted this policy almost immediately.  The first night after setting sail for America under cover of night, Miller asked Fr. Cramner what deviation from the Church of England made it necessary to put so many miles between himself and James I. Cramner, seeing that they were already out of port and that Miller had been paid half, as per the agreement, decided there was no danger in telling him.  The Old Heretic explained to the Drunkard that he and his followers worshiped the Devil.  “Aye” Miller is said to respond “but do ye worship the Devil in Rome, or the Devil in Wittenberg, or the Devil in Geneva?” Cramner elaborated “Worship we the devil in Hell.”

            Cramner would soon prove himself true to his word.  That night, Cramner and his congregation, dressed in black robes, drug out the prisoner they had brought with them and tied him to a stake built in the middle of the ship.  In full view of Miller’s crew, the black robed cultists began a strange ceremony those old mariners had never seen before[3] invoking the lord of darkness and denouncing the Christian savior.  Cramner, standing before the hostage, gave his sermon preaching that in this New World they would create the Kingdom of Hell on Earth, a place where money and passion were prized above virtue, power held more sacred than truth, and pride found greater than love. Then, Cramner withdrew a knife from his robes and plunged it deep into the sacrificial victim’s stomach.  As the poor soul screamed in pain underneath the gag in his mouth, Cramner set to work disemboweling him while an assistant gathered the blood and organs that poured out of the sacrificial victim’s body into a silver bowl with ancient runes engraved on its exterior.  That night, the cultists commandeered the kitchen on board the Charon, cooking the blood and organs of their poor victim, until every cultist was able to partake in the meat.  Other parts of the body, namely the muscles, would be salted so as to preserve them for the remainder of the voyage.

            As all this occurred, Miller’s crew fled the top deck.  These men were not known to be candidates for canonization, but while they had seen war, piracy, rape, murder, and the other ordinary every day sins of their day, not one of them had witnessed an outright act of human sacrifice.  As the seamen huddled together in the lower decks, all eyes turned to the captain, the one who had signed them up for this.  While the crew whispered mutiny, Miller cried that he had no idea that these unassuming and seemingly pious Englishmen were servants of Old Nick.  All that he knew was that Cramner needed to get his Congregation to North America without anyone knowing about it and that he was willing to pay a rather handsome amount to achieve that end.

            At the moment Miller pled that he knew nothing about Cramner’s theology, Cramner, much as the Devil is wont to do, appeared, having descended from the top deck, announcing that his Black Mass was complete.  Cramner, still wearing his robes, calmly explained to Miller’s crew that they were in no danger.  The ceremony he and his fellow occultist had just performed would not be reenacted while they were aboard, as communion was not taken regularly in those days. Cramner committed the sacrifice so that their Dark Lord Below would bless the journey, and repeating the ceremony would be unnecessary until they landed.

            To this day, the more elderly Strangers still tell stories as to what happened on the Charon for the remainder of that trip.  The author of this brief history has a passion for oral history and has collected tales of the Devil himself appearing at the wheel of the ship, of children levitating and speaking in tongues, and shadows of wolf-like creatures prowling the lower decks.  Of course, this may be less evidence of the magical power that our forefathers had and more the product of the ignorant and superstitious imaginations of an illiterate and uncultured batch of sailors from early modernity.  No one can doubt they were competent at the task set before them, though, as within two months of departing, Captain Miller and his crew reached the eastern shore of what is today South Carolina and quickly began searching for a place to offload their diabolic passengers.[4] Cramner knew damned[5] well that Miller had never been to North America and knew of no hiding places, but legend has it that Cramner had communed with the Dark Lord in private and was told that a place had been prepared for them, both on Earth and in Hell.  Whether this part of the founding myth contains any truth on either a literal or metaphorical level or is merely hogwash, it appears providence did have a place for the Charon to land, or at least wreck.  While searching the coast of South Carolina in early August, a freak storm struck the Charon, breaking it against a before unseen island off the coast, shrouded by an impenetrable mist. The cultists had found Pandemonium, and Miller’s crew had found themselves without a way back home, as the Charon was no longer seaworthy. 

            On the island, Cramner thanked Miller for finding this place, and handed Miller the remainder of his payment in the form of gold.  Miller responded that he and his crew were now marooned in the middle of nowhere thousands of miles from any white man not dedicated to pure evil, and gold could just as well be lead for all the good it did him. Cramner threw his hands in the air and said he could not solve the problems of others while he had a settlement to build.  Jamestown was to the North and Florida to the South, so if Miller’s crew wanted to be either Anglicans or Catholics he had best start walking, but only Witches would stay on this island. Miller’s crew would be allowed to live among them for two months for the sake of gathering their things, but were then expected to leave. 

            The Witches set about building their new home from the supplies taken aboard the Charon and the resources available to them on the island, whereas the Strangers stayed aboard the wrecked decks of the Charon and made plans.  Making the long trek to Jamestown through territory controlled by Indians would be dangerous.  Most of the supplies on the ship were lost in the storm, and few of them knew how to scavenge for food on this strange continent.  Cramner announced that in order to commemorate the voyage, they would sacrifice yet another virgin in order to thank Satan for a safe passage and begin their colony on unhallowed ground.  The Old Heretic set a date for the ritual in mid-September.  The Witches rejoiced at the news, and the Strangers began to pack quicker.

            The Captain’s “wife” has heretofore not been a large part of our story.  Formerly considered just a whore, she felt that she had been given a promotion and was content to keep quiet.  During the long voyage from Amsterdam, the Witches performed several minor rituals in addition to their initial human sacrifice, one of which involved the desecration of the newly published King James Bible. The cultists sprinkled their victim’s blood on the scriptures and tossed them below deck.  The whore picked up the discarded holy book and laid it out to dry.  As a child she had once been part of a family of pious peasants before a famine led her to a life of ruin, and she could remember her mother telling her that if a woman wanted to know God she should go to her husband.  After the good book had recovered from its befoulment, the whore brought it to her “husband” and asked that he teach her the Gospel.  The Drunkard rolled his eyes and shouted a few holy sounding phrases before telling her lay down again. 

            The night before the planned satanic ritual, the fallen woman tried again, but this time something took hold of the old sea captain.  Miller actually knew how to read bits and pieces because it was occasionally useful in his line of work, though it took him much effort to get through a sentence.  Heavily under the influence of terror and ale, Miller fumbled through the pages of the desecrated tome looking for some guidance as to where he went wrong and where he should go from here.  There are any number of passages he could have stumbled upon from “the rain shall fall upon the just and the unjust alike” to “thou shalt not kill” all the way up to passages concerning talking donkeys.  But for some reason fate led him to a passage in Exodus that said “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” and with that the Drunkard set upon a course of action.  Miller put on his finest vestments[6] and dressed his “wife” up in the only form of dress she had that did not designate her publicly as a prostitute and proceeded to hold “church” in the crew quarters.  This was the first worship service in the history of the Strangers’ Church, a religious community that exists to this very day. 

             The Strangers initially thought their captain had too much to drink and that the whore was a bad influence on him.  We should have left the bitch in Aberdeen, the first mate would later write, she definitely gave Captain Miller some strange ideas. However, the first mate soon found himself in the minority as Miller’s passionate preaching reached the hearts of his men much as it had found its way into his.[7]  Having been to a church only once or twice in his life, both times in the process of looting it, Miller made up his service as he went along.  His sermon centered on the text in Exodus, and the “plain reading” method which was so popular at the time meant they all knew what to do.

            After their leader’s rousing speech, the Strangers, fueled in equal parts by alcohol and terror, appointed themselves holy warriors and raced to the building containing the Witches’ sacrificial victim, torches in hand. The witches had only posted one guard, who fled when he saw Miller’s “congregation” coming for him.  The Strangers then picked up the poor woman who was to be the sacrificial victim and carried her back to the ship.  There would be no sacrificial rite, as the intended victim would not be disemboweled as an animal for the purpose of an unholy ritual, but burned as a witch for the purpose of divine justice.  Different explanation, same result.   The Strangers tied their prize to a wooden stake and proceeded to roast her.  Screams of pain and pleas of mercy echoed throughout the night without effect.  The victim spoke strange words in a strange tongue the Strangers had never heard before.  Assuming she was calling out to her dark master, the Strangers stoked the flames higher, hoping to kill the witch before she could work her magic.

            The next day, as expected, the Old Heretic came to have a word with Miller about the events of the previous evening.  Miller was unrepentant, though somewhat hung over.  He explained to Cramner that he and his men had a spiritual revelation the night before and would no longer tolerate a Witch to live. Cramner then informed Miller that there might not be any Witches left on this island soon, nor any white man of any kind as the Strangers had not burned a Witch last night but had instead burned a Stono Indian Princess.  Cramner explained that the cult’s sacrificial victims were never cult members, both because they were few in number and because the entire point of worshipping Satan was to gain his favor in this life, the act of sacrificing oneself being counterproductive.  The sacrificial victim on the ship had been a brigand who attempted to rob Cramner in Holland. The witches had randomly kidnapped an Indian woman on the shore of the mainland, not knowing she was local royalty.  The chief of the local village arrived earlier that morning demanding the return of his daughter, with 100 Stono warriors backing him up.[8]  Cramner, for his part, would have been glad to choose another sacrificial victim at this point, but unfortunately his deed had been set in stone by the Strangers.

            Miller ran to the burnt stake from the night before, and no longer under the influence of alcohol and misguided piety, realized upon examining the charred corpse that the woman they had murdered last night was not European in complexion.  Miller then remembered the dark ceremony[9] they had performed last night in a new light. Upon further reflection, the woman spoke in a strange tongue because she had never heard English in her life.   Cramner drug Miller back to the chief to explain that his daughter was dead for reasons so stupid, that other related tribes (for the Stono are now extinct) would forever roll their eyes when the white man claimed that he came to the New World to bring “civilization.”  The chief told both white men, whom he could not distinguish and did not care to at this point, that the next day he would return, kill all of them, carry off their women, and then burn the newly built village to the ground.

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[1] John 4:18

[2] Translated from the English of its time of course.

[3] Though admittedly, some of them had never been to any religious ceremony of any kind.

[4] No one can claim that the crew of the Charon were not good at their jobs as they actually reached their destination unlike certain others ships at the time bound for Virginia which ended up as far north as Massachusetts.   Though admittedly, they may have had extra motivation.

[5] Excuse the play on words.

[6] There was one coat he had never vomited on.

[7] The Strangers had determined they could not carry the beer they had on board with them to Jamestown and so they were determined to finish the remainder of what they had that evening.

[8] Cramner and the chief were able to communicate through an interpreter who knew Spanish from his dealings with the colonial government in Georgia.  Cramner spoke several languages, being an educated man who had traveled extensively.  

[9] Dark enough that no one was able to tell the night before that their Witch looked nothing like a white settler.

Good News! One of my short stories “The Unexamined Life” will be read this Monday on Tall Tale TV! The link is here: Home – Tall Tale TV- Short Story Audiobook Blog. I’m taking a break from querying to promote it a bit over this weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s reaction.

I’ve decided to send out another round of queries for Christmas in Pandemonium. That’s my work-in-progress. You can see my prior post about it. It’s been nearly six months since the last round, and I’ve made significant changes. I’m also open to beta readers, if anyone is interested.

In other Pandemonium related news, I think I will start posting a bit of the Pandemonium lore on my blog. You see, I began writing Pandemonium before I knew what I was doing, so the first chapter of my book was 14,000 words of pure exposition. Yeah, not how you want to start, but my worst piece of writing does do a pretty good job of explaining the idea.

Pandemonium is a town founded by Satanists in the year 1620 on the coast of South Carolina. The opening chapter was a long excerpt from a book called “A Brief History of the Island and Town of Pandemonium” written by the current Satanic High Priest, Acton Ravenwood, a ham if there ever was one. Over this “brief history” Ravenwood explains how the town was founded, the people who live there, and how it exists in the present day.

It’s bad, no good, rotten exposition, but I still love it. It’s my first dive into real writing, so I’m going to put it on my blog. Can’t get it published, so I might as well post it.

I want to thank everyone who came to my book signing on Sunday. Sorry for getting this out late, but I’ve been dealing with a sick kid and a sick wife. We recovered from COVID to go right into Strep. Now we only need to get the flu and we’ll have the cycle.

I will be available for a book signing at the Board Room in South Charleston, West Virginia, this Sunday afternoon. I’ll be there with copies of my book for $10. You can get my signature and chat with me about the book. If you prefer an electronic copy, that can be found here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5  

As you may recall from my last post, I have once again caught the bug which is the cause of so much of our season of discontent, though admittedly there are other causes. It was also the cause of my decision to take up writing. I’m still trying to get that book published, and I recently did a bit of editing on it, waiting to get feedback from a beta reader.

So, I thought I would go into the idea that got me to start writing. I assume no one will steal this idea that I am openly posting online. Here you go.

Pandemonium is a city on an island on the coast of South Carolina. It was founded in the year 1620, same year as Plymouth. The difference is that Pandemonium is founded by Satan-worshipping witches. They are carried there by a group of drunken pirates turned religious fanatics, called the Strangers, who mistakenly burn an Indian princess at the stake, thinking she is one of the witches. The two groups join forces to prevent the chief from killing them all and then found a town. Throw in some enslaved persons from a Portuguese ship (the Fieldhands) and a group of Jewish immigrants in the 1890s who turn into massive beasts on the full moon (the Ze’ev), and you have a complete town.

Turn to the present day, the Witches have become the most lackadaisical Satanists the world has ever seen, replacing human sacrifice with the crushing of a bug. Meanwhile, the Strangers have sold their historic church to sleazy prosperity gospel preacher, Miles Simon. However, when Simon finds out that the Strangers keep a vampire, Theo, in their crypt, Simon tries to make a deal with Theo whereby he would hypnotize people into giving them money. Theo turns Simon down, but after Simon finds out that Theo’s vampiric rival, Scratch, lies in the crypt with Theo, the crooked televangelist sets his mind on resurrecting Scratch.

Alas, Scratch is not a good business partner, being a theocratic vampire who sucks women and children dry believing he has God’s blessing. With the bloody puritan on the loose, the locals have to band together and put him down.

And that’s the idea. It’s a regular American town, founded by Satanists, now in the present day. The above-described plot would be Book One, and I would precede with a new villain for each book until around Book Five. I have six books planned, but I could do more. Right now, I’m trying to sell Book One. I’ve been going the literary agent route. I think it’s a good enough idea to work for one of the big five publishers.

That being said, I do have another book I am currently selling, available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5  

I’ve caught the bug. Yet again. This is my second time to get it. Both times after being vaccinated with a booster shot. Not a vaccine skeptic, just a little impressed by our modern-day plague. It doesn’t give up, now does it?

My wife tested positive first, and then I tested positive two days later. Now I’m quarantined for the week. As an attorney, it’s a good time to get document review done, I guess. It wouldn’t be so bad were it not that my wife and I now have to take care of a very hyperactive little boy while being weighed down with another round of everyone’s favorite lung-scarring coronavirus.

It takes me back to 2020 when this whole thing got started. March 2020 was a crazy month. The world shut down, I paid off the last of my student loans, my wife got pregnant with our first son, Joseph (we are now working on little Tony, due in May), and I started writing. It all happened in one month. Talk about a life-changing event.

Yes, I got started writing with the lockdowns. I think a lot of people did. Kept indoors, away from work, and the gym, and the bar. Stuck in my apartment with my wife, and it was a small apartment. I had an idea for a book I had been kicking around for a while. Still haven’t sold it, but I fell in love with the idea enough that I took up writing as a hobby. Beer Run, which you can buy here, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5, is actually something I wrote for a writer’s credit to promote that book. I may be querying later, as I haven’t given up on trying to get a major publisher on this. I may start explaining the idea on my blog in later posts.

But for now, I’m stuck at home. Again. Maybe I’ll do some writing on that book over the weekend. God hates a quitter.