The piano player took one look at what was happening and wisely grabbed his hat and darted out through the canvas flaps at the back of the stage.
The crowd continued shrieking, panicked but not sure whether to run or pray or just shout. Many pointed at Juliana. She felt glued to the spot where she stood, though she knew she ought to leave the stage. There was nothing she could do. The preacher would die, and it would be her fault.
The preacher’s assistant hurried over to the horribly infected preacher and knelt beside him. He took the man’s contorted, blistered face in both hands, showing no fear at all. He spoke quietly to the preacher, and though Juliana couldn’t hear his words over the frightened crowd, she could hear his tone—calm, measured, focused.
Then, incredibly, the demon plague was reversed. The preacher’s face and neck healed, and his hands returned to normal. In less than a minute, it looked like he’d never been infected at all, except for the splotches of blood and pus on his suit and tie.
The assistant helped the preacher stand. The preacher looked down at his hands, turning them back and forth, then held them up for the audience to see. “Healed! Healed, by the grace of God!” he shouted. The crowd shouted back with hallelujahs and amens.
Then the preacher turned to Juliana and scowled as he pointed one trembling finger at her.
“The devil is here today!” the preacher announced. “This is no girl. She’s a demoness, sent from Hell!”
The crowd roared and surged toward the stage, shouting all kinds of filthy names and curses at Juliana.
“I’m not!” Juliana said, though she doubted anyone could hear her over the din. “I can’t help it! I don’t want to hurt anyone, I came to be healed...” She realized she was crying. Why not? She’d been foolish, letting herself hope for too much. She turned toward the preacher’s assistant, giving him a desperate look. He was the one with the miraculous power, she now understood, and not the preacher. Maybe he could still help her.
“Devil!” someone shouted from below.
“Witch!” screamed someone else.
Men and women from the crowd clambered up onto the stage with fear glowing in their eyes.
“Destroy her!” the preacher shouted. “Drown the demon in the river! We’ll baptize it back to Hell!”
The crowd swarmed the stage, all of them closing in on Juliana, and she realized they would kill her, unless she killed them first.
“Stop! Get back!” she shouted. She raised her bare hands and let the demon plague appear all over her skin, even her face, mutating her appearance into something infernal.
The crowd slowed. Suddenly, nobody wanted to be the first to grab her.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Juliana said. “I’m here for healing...but I can kill you if I want. Please don’t make me.”
One person advanced toward her, the preacher’s assistant. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the back of the stage. She noticed that her boils and blisters vanished where he touched her, and she felt a warm glow there instead.
“I have the touch of God, as you have just seen,” the young man told the confused, edgy mob. “I will take care of the girl.” He tugged Juliana toward the canvas flaps that served as the backdrop of the stage.
“Don’t you take that witch out of this tent!” the preacher shouted. “She’ll use her devilry on you!”
The assistant gave Juliana a long look. The crowd, emboldened by the preacher’s words, advanced on her again.
“We ought to run,” the assistant whispered to her.
They dashed away through the canvas curtain into the dim area behind the stage, where a number of preachers and their supporting performers had crowded to escape the rain. The snake handlers were still there, kneeling on the dirt floor and praying, their snakes rattling and hissing inside the basket. They looked up as Juliana and the preacher’s assistant leaped over the stage’s back steps, landed in the muddy dirt, and ran out of the tent into the rainy night.
A few trucks and automobiles were parked behind the tent, as well as a number of wagons, their horses hitched under tent tops to keep them out of the rain.
He led her into the horse tent and drew a knife from his boot. He cut free one horse after another as they moved down the temporary hitching rail. The crowd burst out through the back flaps of the tent, shouting and looking for them.
“What are you doing?” Juliana asked, as he cut free yet another horse. “We have to run!”
“Then let’s run.” He climbed up onto a tall brown horse, then held out his hands. “Hurry!”
She hesitated. She couldn’t risk her legs touching the horse, or she would poison the poor creature.