A stiff and aggravating wind blew through the town of Hinkley, Texas. It was a wind filled with coarse grit that tasted of alkali. It was the taste of failed dreams, defaulted mortgages and lost fortunes. The wind never stopped here; it scoured every surface it touched. Houses that had once been brightly painted became the nothing color of the desert within the space of only a few months.
Although Hinkley was dead, it could not really have said to be alive before the plague either. The streets were paved only with dirt and lined with shabby houses badly in need of repair. A screen door continuously opened and slammed shut in the wind, the only sound in a failed town. It looked not that much different from the ghost towns of old, relics and remnants of an age that had long since passed into antiquity.
But here the abrasive grit-filled winds made houses that were only a few years old appear to be those ancient relics of an old civilization.
Ten years ago the Centerfield Mining Conglomerate opened up the King Solomon copper mine just outside of town. It was found by accident while test drilling for oils - a spectacularly pure and rich vein of copper. At the behest of the CMC, the town of Hinkley sprung up around the new mine nearly overnight. The displaced and the unemployed from all around came to Hinkley to build lives for themselves. The company happily rented them housing and gave them menial and backbreaking jobs in the King Solomon mine in return for a meager paycheck and unfair health benefits.
Still, things went well, for a time. The city flourished and prospered in the early years of the mine. The CMC made a fortune as the price of copper had increased exponentially during the last decade. Many of its residents too, through long and hard work had built a middle-class lifestyle for themselves here in Hinkley. Plans were big to pave all of the streets and divert a highway to make it easier to travel to and from the town.
But then everything went bust. The vein of pure copper in the King Solomon mine turned out to be pitifully small. Only a few years after the mine had opened, the copper dwindled and then disappeared completely. Repeated tests all around the area suggested that the mine was nothing more than a lucky fluke; the copper was completely gone and the mine was gone with it. Only years after it had first appeared, the Centerfield Mining Conglomerate pulled out of Hinkley leaving it nothing but a desolate husk of a town filled with unemployed residents lured here by a failed dream.
When the flu came, the residents of Hinkley met it with the same meek submission that they met the end of their livelihoods a few years before. And unlike many places, the Hinkley after the flu didn't really look any different than Hinkley before it.
Besides the wind and the slamming door, only a single sound was coming form anywhere in town. It was a loud and carrying voice coming from the edge of town. Coming from with the Hinkley Community Church.
The doors were wide open, allowing the wind to blow its grit into the sanctuary. But if the sole living person inside noticed, he didn't care.
The people of Hinkley needed God.
The pews were filled with people, the many residents that had come to the church for a last effort to ask the Lord to spare them, or maybe their children from death by the Superflu. Now some were on the floors, some were on the pews, some were sitting, and some were lying down. All of them were dead.
All of them except the man at the pulpit, the dark priest.
Wearing all black, he looked like a stern and puritanical preacher of old. He looked like the kind of man that would beat a child within an inch of his life and tell him that it was for disobeying God. He was a man that over the years had found himself skipping from church to church all over the country. Each of them were churches in towns that had fallen into a bad streak of luck. All of them the Dark Priest would eventually depart from amidst rumors of suspicion, distrust and sexual perversion.
All of these towns found themselves in worse shape when the priest left than they were when he arrived.
Nobody knew where the Dark Priest originally came from. He certainly wasn't forthcoming and it was entirely possible that he was the only person in the world that knew who he was and where he had come from. For the Dark Priest, who in this city was known as Paul Lindsey, kept his real identity a secret that was closely guarded unto death. Nobody knew who he really was, nobody COULD know who he really was.
"And I tell you, friends." He shouted. "The time of the LORD has come! He has come to carry away the evils of this world and to set up his kingdom in its place! The whore of Babylon has been carried away to the PIT of FIRE, and the wicked and sinful have been taken away by the Lord's angels to HELL!"
He held his hands up, to silence the hushed murmurs from the congregation that were heard only in his mind. The congregation itself had not muttered so much as an "amen". They all were, however, a very willing audience.
The madman raised his hands to the heavens. His fingers spasmed with awe and fervor, God was obviously about to rain down his blessings upon him. Why wouldn't he? Why else would have still be alive if not to do the work of the Lord here in the final days of Earth?
"Jesus! Look down on your humble servant. You have destroyed the wicked and the sinful so that the righteous and Godly may rise up and take their places to do your good work." he beseeched.
His hands shook, his feet shook, his entire body shook.
"I say thank'ya Jesus! I say thank'ya Jesus! I say tha..."
His words tapered off. There was a presence there in the room and he could feel it. The Lord was ready to tell him what he needed him to do, how he was going to serve him. This was going to be the most important moment in the entire life of the Dark Priest.
"I can feel you here Lord" the priest shouted to the rafters of the weathered and wind-beaten church. "I feel your holy presence in this place Lord! I beg you Lord, give my YOUR WORD!"
Outside the wind had picked up, it had picked up a banshee howl. Had anyone else in Hinkley been alive, they would have been fearful right now at the least; it was as though a hurricane was tearing through the center of town. What was midday only a few minutes ago was now as dark as night with a wind powerful enough to shred houses off of their foundations.
The Priest dropped to his knees; his hands still upraised in submission to his God.
"'Well done, good and faithful servant, you were faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things."
The Priest's hands dropped and his eyes snapped open in shock, his mouth a wide "O" of awe. He was here in this room, speaking to him.
"Lord!" he finally choked out. "Is that really you?"
What was open air only a moment ago was now inhabited by a man wearing jeans and a denim jacket. It was a man that anyone who was sane could never have associated with the Son of God. Whereas the Dark Priest's presence was unwholesome and dirty, this man's presence was one of pure evil. He was perpetually wearing a grin - it was the kind of grin that might make you laugh, but not a good laugh; it was the laugh that you make when you are trying not to scream in terror. The man's name was Randall Flagg.
"You called..." Flagg said. "And I have come, Herbert Payne."
Herbert's looked up and saw a white robed man wearing a crown of thorns upon his head. Denim had become white silk, cowboy boots had become a pair of humble sandals. The Dark Priest could even see droplets of blood flow down from twin nail holes in the palms of the man's hands. He immediately planted his face back to the wooden floorboards of the church, striking them so hard the blood flowed out of his nose, dying the wood bright red.
"Lord, I haven't heard anyone call me that in so long. I'm so sorry, Jesus. I have asked for forgiveness so many times, I didn't mean to kill those girls, Lord." he blubbered.
Herbert, The Dark Priest, rocked himself forward and back. His tears fell in a torrent, mixing with his blood as it fell to the floor.
"Why did you forsake me Lord?" he sobbed. "Why didn't you give me the willpower to keep myself from killing them? Why did you make me the way I am, Lord? I never wanted this, I never wanted any of..."
"Shhh Herbert." Flagg told him as he kneeled down to pat the weeping man on the shoulder. "All is forgiven, you have proven your faith many times over. You have been running from your past for too long. You have been trying to forget who you are for too long, it is time for you to do the good works that I have planned for you."
Herbert Payne looked up at Jesus Christ. It filled him with wonder and awe that he could be forgiven and still find work that he could do in God's kingdom. It had never seemed possible that he could really do the Lord's work in any way other than by being a travelling preacher living under an assumed name to protect him from being brought back to stand trial for those horrible crimes almost a decade before.
"I will do anything you ask of me, Lord." Herbert whispered.
The Lord opened the palm of his hand and there, right over the eternally bleeding wound where he was nailed to the cross was a stone. It was an ugly thing, black and polished with a red flaw running through it the color of the blood pooling in the hand around it. To anyone else it would look as far from Christ-like as they could imagine.
And even to Herbert, he had a moment's doubt. He looked up at his Lord and Savior for a moment and instead of Christ was a denim-wearing madman. He looked like the kind of man that would bring together a cult and induce them all to drink poison in the name of God rather than someone who would die for the sins of man.
But then it was Jesus again, and internally Herbert belittled himself for his lack of faith even when faced with the object of his religion. He took the stone from the (grinning madman) Lord and began crying in earnest.
"Bless you, Herbert Payne." the imposter told him. "Now this is what I require of you. Do this and you will find the kingdom of Heaven close at hand."
And then the man bent down to Herbert's ear.
"I want you to listen to me very carefully."