Hance couldn’t use his real name or Social Security number to find a legitimate job and began to manufacture methamphetamine in a backyard shed. A friend had taught him the process, and immediately Hance believed it was God’s will, giving him the knowledge and means he needed to support McCool and the children. He installed a large beaker and enlisted Timothy to help line the walls with plastic sheets. With Timothy as his assistant, Hance made two pounds at a time and gave it to a dealer friend, earning $2,000 for every ounce sold.
People started gathering regularly at the house. “We were almost never alone,” Timothy says immediately. “Passing a mirror covered in meth was ordinary.” Unlike Hance, McCool didn’t snort meth, but she sprinkled some in a glass of cola and sipped it, making it last all day long. She called it her “perky Pepsi.” She knew their visitors came for Hance’s drugs. He believed they were “lost” and that God had led them to their door.
One night Hance related an incident that occurred when McCool happened to be out. Two friends stopped by the house on their way to dinner, and Hance offered to lend one his gold crucifix to complement her dress. As soon as she lowered it around her neck, her skin raised up and twisted into dark knots that sizzled under the heat of the metal.
Hance raised a hand and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast you out of her!”
She thrashed and spat and screamed, “I fucked Jesus up the ass!”
Hance and the other friend struggled to restrain her. When she finally settled, she blinked her eyes and asked, “What happened?”
When these “healings” became more frequent, Hance grew suspicious of McCool; why was she missing every time the devil appeared? Was she somehow behind these demonic possessions?
“Do you think it’s possible,” McCool asked him, “that they’re just putting on a show for you? So that you’ll believe in your own power and give them more drugs?”
All Spreads: Hance and the couple’s friends demonstrated techniques for its illustrations.Courtesy of Gayle McCool.
Courtesy of Gayle McCool.
Courtesy of Gayle McCool.
Courtesy of Gayle McCool.
Sometimes, there seemed to be a reset in his mind, a brief return to rational thinking. “What’s happening to me?” he’d ask McCool in those moments, and she’d tell him, “You need to stop doing the drugs so you can get back to your basic self.” Only later did she realize that Hance was likely suffering from schizophrenia, a condition that ran in his family. Even when he became suspicious and irrational and erratic, she never feared him—she feared for him. He had often said that she should prioritize their relationship; the kids would one day grow up and leave her, but he would always be there, till death do they part. She needed to stay and see the experience through, she decided, no matter how it might end.
VII. “You’d Better Make Sure I’m Dead”
Timothy had grown terrified of Hance. He’d heard more stories from Hance’s past, including various murders for hire. Tara, at age 18, moved out and got her own apartment, but Timothy felt a duty to protect his mother. “It was a rotten thing to do,” McCool says immediately. “I didn’t realize at the time that he felt responsible, but looking back, I can see it was an awfully big responsibility on his shoulders.”
He tried to be a normal teenager, going to school every day and keeping his homelife secret from his classmates. One day, two local deputies visited his class to talk about law enforcement. “I sat at my desk biting my tongue, daydreaming about telling the officers that I was living with a wanted man who had been involved in murders and drugs,” he recalls. “I reasoned that they wouldn’t take it seriously, so I said nothing.”
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