Conversion by J.D. Strunk

Conversion by J.D. Strunk

As he so often did, my friend Vance had the inside scoop: A satanic cult had set up camp in the woods at the edge of town, not far from the abandoned quarry we used to swim in as children, up until the nuclear power plant filled it with 50 tons of toxic sludge, and the fish began to glow.

“They’re cannibals,” said Vance of the so-called cult, his voice filled with disgust. “They call themselves the Dark Priests, and they’re absolute freaks, James. We need to run them out of Clement!”

Vance was a boy of unusually strong convictions, so when he said these words, I knew trouble lay ahead. My suspicions were confirmed when he told me to meet him outside his house on my bike at 10pm that Saturday evening. Gut instinct told me to ignore the invitation, but there was no doubt in my mind that Vance was headed out to the camp regardless of my attendance. And while he remained a bit intense for my taste, he was still a friend.

By 10:30, the pair of us were cruising down the shoulder of State Highway 219, our bike lights glowing and fading with each rotation of our pedals. Vance was wearing a bulging backpack, but what the backpack contained, he would not say.

After ten minutes of biking, we passed the vacant county fairgrounds. It was around this time that my heart began to beat harder—and not from the biking. In the distance, a fire glowed between the trees marking the edge of Kumbrabow State Forest. I pedaled harder, catching up with Vince, who was leading the way.

“Why haven’t the cops pushed them out?” I asked, pulling up beside him. “Lighting fires in the forest can’t be a good idea. Or legal.”

“Don’t you know anything?” said Vance with an air of exasperation. He straightened out the white Mountaineers ballcap that somehow still looked pristine despite his wearing it nearly constantly for five years. “They are all in cahoots—the vagrants, the cultists, the police, the government.”
“To what end?” I asked.

“To shove their godlessness down our throats, of course.”

It had been a while since I’d seen Vance so worked up—the past few years he’d developed an obsession with Major League Baseball, which had seemed to moderate some of his fundamentalist tendencies. But the arrival of the Dark Priests—or whoever they were—had clearly reignited an innate thirst for propriety.

Perhaps, at this point, it would be useful to know that Vance was the son of our town’s Baptist preacher. Following a childhood of strict piety, Vance’s worldview left no room for vice. As a freshman, he’d even tattled on Nate Sherman, captain of the Clement Varsity Football team, upon witnessing Nate and Sherri Pelton rounding second base in the empty school auditorium. When Nate confronted Vance about it later, Vance had stood his ground. “A disgusting display,” he’d called it, right to Nate’s face. Was it anyone but Vance, they’d have likely lost a tooth or two. But Nate Sherman was no fool, and dared not hit a pastor’s son, even if he did deserve it.

About a quarter-mile from the fire, we slowed our bikes. After hiding the bikes in a drainage ditch, we slunk into the forest on foot by the light of our phones. As we made our way toward the blazing trees, we realized it was not one fire illuminating the night, but several. Coming to a rest behind a mammoth oak, Vance and I took in the camp. Around each of three fires sat between ten and fifteen people—a motley assortment of men, women and children. The group was clad in dirty clothes, and the earthy aroma of body odor reached us on the wind. The lot of them were grilling some sort of meat over the flames.

“Look, they really are cannibals!” Vance whispered in my ear. “That could be Jimmy Rawlins!”

Jimmy Rawlins was a boy in our class who had disappeared from our high school six months prior. Conspiracies had run wild throughout the school at his sudden disappearance, though it was pretty clear to me that he had gone to live with his father, over in Tennessee. But Vance, like many others in our gullible town, was convinced he’d been kidnapped, perhaps right off the street, perhaps on his way to school.

“Looks like chicken, to me,” I whispered back. “It’s breaded, for Christ’s sake.”

“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, James,” scolded Vance. “And you could just as easily bread a human, sure as sin.”

I grimaced at the thought.

Following another few minutes spent observing the camp, Vance unzipped his backpack, revealing a hodgepodge of fireworks; everything from sparklers to a few M80s—the latter big enough to put a small hole in the ground.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said, alarmed at the sight.

“I told you I was gonna run them out of town. These people are heathens, James. They can’t be allowed to stay.”

“Are you crazy? There’s fifty of them! They’ll bum rush us and slit our throats!”

“Wow, James, if you’re that afraid, you can just go back. Never thought I’d see the day.”

I’ll admit it—I was afraid. And on that night, to my great embarrassment, my fear overpowered my loyalty. I was already pulling my bike from the ditch when I heard the first of the fireworks go off. But even then, I did not return to the forest. I feared dearly for the wellbeing of my friend. But I had no plans to join him in an early death.

& & &

The next morning, following a fitful sleep, I biked over to Vance’s house. With a heavy heart, I threw two pebbles at his window, several seconds apart. Dread flooded over me as I waited. It was as my arm was cocked back—a tear on my cheek and a third pebble in my hand—that Vance’s window opened, and his head popped out.

“What are you waking me up for?” said Vance, leaning out the window and rubbing his eyes. “It’s not even seven.”

Relief flooded over me.

“I thought they killed you!” I said. “What the hell happened?”

“Don’t swear, James. And nothing happened. I set off the fireworks, and they all went crazy over them, hooting and laughing. Thought they were just the neatest thing. They invited me to join their circle, and we had some chicken. It was chicken, by the way—you were right on that score.”

My momentary feelings of relief began to ebb at Vance’s description of the evening.

“You’re not, like, joining their cult, are you?” I asked with a nervous laugh.

Vance rolled his eyes. “C’mon, James, I would never join a cult. I need you to believe me on that.”

I nodded. “Well, then, I guess that concludes it all, right? If they are decent people, we don’t need to bother them anymore? Don’t need to run them out of town?”

“Certainly not. In fact, I’m going to run them out some more fireworks, later today.”

“You’re going back?”

“You can relax, James. They aren’t crazy. They’re just misunderstood.”

There was a tone in Vance’s voice that told me the conversation was at an end. And while part of me wanted to hear more about Vance’s evening, the full effect of a terrible night’s sleep was washing over me. I biked home, and headed back to bed.

& & &

For the next week, I couldn’t get a hold of Vance, which proved quite a shock, after ten years of hearing from the kid literally every day. Even when my family had taken a cruise to Mexico, the summer before, I’d received an email from Vance in my inbox every morning, updating me on the previous day’s happenings in Clement. At first, I’ll admit, I didn’t exactly mind the time alone. But by the end of the week, I was beginning to realize that, despite his idiosyncrasies, I did enjoy having Vance in my life. What more, I missed the kid.

Even if he wasn’t answering his phone, or responding to the pebbles I occasionally threw at his darkened window, I still knew where he lived, and I still feared for his safety. Following an evening of reconnaissance, I watched as Vance got on his bike and headed back down State Route 219 toward the camp. From a safe distance, I followed.

About halfway to the camp, Vance slowed his bike. At first I couldn’t tell why, given we were halfway between nowhere and nothing, but then, in the light of the setting sun, I spotted a small brown pile at his feet. Vance was lingering over the crushed body of a raccoon, I realized. To my horror, Vance began to peel the dead animal off the road with his bare hands! He then removed a plastic grocery bag from his pocket, and deposited the carcass inside. Vance proceeded to take off down the road, dead raccoon hanging from his handlebars. As for me, I was too repulsed to continue biking. In fact, I had to sit on the side of the road until my nausea passed. In the meantime, Vance grew smaller in the distance, until he disappeared at a bend in the road.

The next day, I entered Vance’s house without invitation, successfully avoiding his parents in the living room, before climbing the stairs and confronting Vance in his bedroom.

“You’re overreacting, James,” said Vance matter-of-factly, lying casually on his bed. “Do you know how much perfectly good food we waste in this country? Besides, it’s only our culture that tells us eating pigs is normal but eating raccoons is bad.”

“But isn’t there a risk of, like, I dunno, disease?” I said, thoroughly unconvinced by his argument.

“The Dark Priests can tell if it’s good or bad, by the smell,” said Vance. “So believe me, it’s safe. I mean, look at me—do I seem sick to you?”

A loaded question, if there ever was one. The thought that the boy I’d sat beside in church since we were five was now eating roadkill in the woods with an itinerant cult was simply too much for me to bear, and I had turned to leave when a terrible thought suddenly occurred to me.

I turned back around, faced Vance.

“Hey, what happens when…” I couldn’t even get the words out.

“What happens when what?” prodded Vance.

“What happens when… one of them… you know, dies?”

“What do you mean, what happens?”

“Do they…”

“Eat them?” finished Vance.

I nodded.

“Jesus H. Christ, James. Grow the fuck up. I would never, never eat a person. I need you to believe me on that.”

Upon retrospection, the question had been a ridiculous one. And so I let it drop. Part of me still thought about asking Vance if he wanted to do something that afternoon; fishing, or maybe a movie. But to be honest—and despite missing him not even an hour before—I now preferred to spend the day alone.

& & &

The following week, Vance stopped coming to school—missed a week straight. His parents told Mr. Thorne, the principal, that he was leaving home on time every morning, and coming home every afternoon. That’s when Mr. Thorne called me down to his office. He knew I was friends with Vance, and wanted to know what I knew about his skipping class. I was being honest when I told him that I barely saw Vance anymore, and that I had essentially given up on the friendship. But I still didn’t give him up. I wasn’t a narc.

It wasn’t until I was walking back to class that I felt a sudden surge of guilt. Had I given up on Vance? The thought hit me unexpectedly hard. Because what had I really done to save him, except confront him one time? Was that all his friendship meant to me? A single intervention?

That evening, after my parents went to bed, I stole out of the garage and cruised down State Route 219. As I passed the fairgrounds, I could see the distant lights in the forest, just as I remembered them, some weeks before. Like before, I stashed my bike in the drainage ditch, and proceeded into the trees on foot.

The last time, the Dark Priests had been relatively quiet, but tonight, the noise in the woods was deafening. It seemed that the cult was having a party. I had never drunk alcohol myself, but I’d been to house parties where it was served, and I could smell the turpentine scent of liquor on the evening air. In the distance, around one of the fires, I spotted Vance. He held a piece of charred meat in one hand, and a bottle of brown liquid in the other. His formerly pristine white ballcap was now stained a dirty rust red, from grease and sweat and Lord knows what else.

“Oh Vance,” I said aloud, to no one but the trees.

Even as I watched the bacchanalian, the wind shifted, bringing with it the putrid scent of decay. I looked toward the ground, and quickly found its source: a wicker basket, not ten feet away, covered with a white towel. The center of the towel was red, presumably with blood. Flies buzzed around a basket, and the smell was strong, but my curiosity was stronger. Shifting from tree to tree, I moved between shadows until I was directly beside the basket. After a deep breath, I removed the towel. Immediately, I stumbled backwards, blanching in horror. Inside the basket was the severed head of Jimmy Rawlins.

Vomit entered my mouth as I backed away from the basket. So strong was my disgust that I didn’t even notice I had walked straight into the circle of drunken vagrants.

“J-james!?” exclaimed Vance upon seeing me. He turned to the nearest cultist. “Goddamnit, Rocky, it’s my buddy James!”

Too overwhelmed to speak, it was all I could do to point at the basket containing Jimmy’s decapitated head.

“Why, yes, James, w-we are eating Jimmy Rawlins,” slurred Vance, swaying drunkenly in the light of the fire. “But I would n-n-ever, never eat a friend like you. I n-n-eed you to believe me on that.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright J.D. Strunk 2025

Image Courtesy: astaroth343 from Pixabay