“Praise the Lord,” was all Hank could say.
“Oh, I believe it, I believe it,” Marshall answered.
It was John Coleman who first spotted them and let out a whoop. The others all turned their heads and were shocked and ecstatic. They came running up to Hank and Marshall like chickens to feed.
But they all made room for Mary, even gave her loving pushes forward as she ran by. The Lord was so good! Here was Hank’s dear Mary, weeping and hugging and kissing and whispering her love to him, and he could hardly believe it was really happening. He had never felt so separated from her before.
“Are you all right?” she kept asking him, and he kept telling her, “I’m just fine, just fine.”
“It’s a miracle,” said the others. “The Lord has answered our prayers. He got you out of prison just like Peter.”
Marshall understood when they virtually ignored him. This was Hank’s moment.
But what was going on over there? Through the heads, shoulders, and bodies Marshall noted Alf Brummel ducking quickly out the front door and into his car. He sped away. The creep. If I were him, I’d duck out too.
And here came … No! No, it couldn’t be! Marshall started easing his way through the crowd, craning his neck to see for sure if the passengers in this just arriving car were who they seemed to be. Yes! Bernice was even waving to him! And there was Weed, alive! That other gal, the one driving … she couldn’t be! But she had to be! Susan Jacobson, back from the dead, no less!
Marshall made his way through Hank’s admirers and broke into a very brisk, wide-grinned walk to where Susan was just parking the car. Wow! When these people pray, God listens!
Bernice burst from the car and threw her arms around him.
“Marshall, are you all right?” she said, almost crying.
“Are you all right?” he asked her back.
A voice behind them said, “Oh, Mrs. Hogan, I’ve really wanted to meet you.”
It was Hank. Marshall looked at the man of God, standing there all smiles, with his little wife by his side and God’s people all behind him, and he felt the hug go out of his arms.
Bernice slipped limply out of the embrace.
“Hank,” said Marshall with a broken kind of tone Bernice had never heard from him before, “this is not my wife. This is Bernice Krueger, my reporter.” Then Marshall looked at Bernice and said with great love and respect, “And a good one, too!”
Bernice knew immediately that something had happened to Marshall. It didn’t surprise her; something had been happening to her too, and she could see in Marshall’s face and detect in his voice that same inner brokenness she had been feeling in herself. Somehow she knew that this young man standing next to Marshall had something to do with it all.
“And who is your fellow jailbird here?” she asked.
“Bernice Krueger, meet Hank Busche, pastor of Ashton Community Church and a very recent, very good friend of mine.”
She shook his hand, shoving all her thoughts and emotions aside. Time was running out.
“Marshall, listen carefully. We have a sixty-second crash course to give you!”
Hank excused himself and returned to his excited flock.
When Bernice introduced Susan to Marshall, he thought he was extending his hand to nothing less than a miracle.
“I’d heard that you’d been killed, and Kevin too.”
“I’m looking forward to sharing the whole story with you,” Susan replied pleasantly, “but right now our time is very short and there’s a lot you need to know.”
Susan opened the trunk of her car and showed Marshall the contents of her battle-weary suitcase. Marshall loved every minute of it. It was all there, everything he thought he’d lost to sticky-fingered Carmen and these creeps, this “Society.”
“Kaseph is coming to Ashton today to close the deal with the college board of regents. At 2 o’clock, the papers will be signed and the Whitmore College campus will be quietly sold to Omni Corporation.”
“The Society, you mean,” said Marshall.
“Of course. It’s a key move. When the college goes, the town will ultimately go with it.”
Bernice burst in with her news about Mattily, Parker, and Lemley, not to mention Harvey Cole’s untangling of Baylor’s records.
“So when do they get here?” Marshall asked.
“Hopefully in time for that board meeting. I told them to meet us there.”
“I just might invite myself to the meeting. I know they’ll all be very happy to see me.”
Susan touched Marshall’s arm and said, “But you need to be warned that they’ve been working on your daughter Sandy.”
“Don’t I know that!”
“They might have her under their influence right now; it’s Kaseph’s style, believe me. If you try to make a move against him, it could endanger her.”
Bernice told Marshall about Pat, about the diary, about the mysterious friend named Thomas, and about that deceiving devil’s advocate, Shawn Ormsby.
Marshall looked at them for a moment, then called, “Hank, this is where you and your people come in!”
A SUMMER SUNDAY in Ashton is usually one of the happiest, carefree days of the week. The farmers jaw with each other; the storeclerks enjoy a leisurely pace; other business owners close up shop; moms, dads, and kids think of fun things to do and neat places to go. Many lawnchairs are occupied, the streets are a lot quieter, and families are usually together.
But this sunny, summer Sunday did not feel right to anyone: one farmer had a cow bloating on him while another had a tractor with a burned out magneto that no one seemed to have in stock; and though neither farmer was in any way responsible for the other’s problems, they still got into a fight about it. The storeclerks working today were having trouble counting change, and were getting into very uncomfortable discussions with the customers whose change they were trying to count. Every business owner had no desire but to get out of his or her business, because no matter what it was, it was doomed to fail sooner or later. Many wives were nervous and wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, they didn’t know where; their husbands would load the kids into all the station wagons, then the wives wouldn’t want to go anymore, then the kids would get into fights in the cars, then their parents would get into fights, and then the families would go nowhere while the station wagons remained parked in all those driveways with screams coming through their windows and their horns honking. The lawnchairs either ripped through under their owners’ bottoms or just plain couldn’t be found; the streets were hectic with frantic drivers driving with no destination in mind; the dogs, those ever vigilant dogs of Ashton, were barking and howling and whining again, this time with their fur bristling, their tails up, and their faces toward the east.
Faces toward the east? There were many. Here a college administrator, there a Post Office employee, over here a family of potters and weavers, over there an insurance salesman. All over the town, certain people who knew a certain destiny and a certain sympathetic spiritual vibration stood silently, as if worshiping, their faces toward the east.
And there was no small stir around the big dead tree. Rafar rose from his big branch, his gamemaster’s seat of power, and stood on the hill, looking out over the little town of Ashton with his leering yellow eyes as his hordes of attending spirits gathered around him. His muscular arms rippled, his expansive black wings rising behind him like a royal train, his jewels gleaming and glittering in the sun.
He too looked toward the east.
He waited until he saw it. Then his breath sucked in through his fangs like a gasp of surprise, but this was no surprise. It was the highest kind of thrill, a demonic exhilaration such as he felt only rarely, a precious and very ripe fruit to be enjoyed only after much labor and preparation.
His black-haired hand grabbed the golden handle of his sword and he pulled the blade from its sheath, making it sing and drone and shimmer with blood-red light. The attending demons all gasped and cheered as Rafar hel
d the sword high, bathing the whole gathering in its sinister red light. The huge wings suddenly disappeared into a blur and with a rush of wind and a blast of power they carried him into the air, out over the wide valley, out over the little town, out into the open where he could be seen from any part of the town or any hiding place near it.
He climbed to a lofty height, then hovered, his sword still in his hand. His head turned this way and that, his body slowly rotating, his eyes shifting about.
“Captain of the Hosts of Heaven!” he bellowed, and the echoes of his booming voice traveled back and forth across the valley like thunder. “Captain Tal, hear me!”
Tal could hear Rafar perfectly. He knew Rafar was about to make a speech, and he knew what the demon warlord was about to say. He too was watching the eastern horizon as he stood hidden in the forest, his chief warriors beside him.
Rafar continued to look everywhere for any sign of his adversary. “I who have never yet seen your face in this, our adventure, now show you mine! Behold it, you and your warriors! For today I place this face forever in your memory as the face of him who vanquished you!”
Tal, Guilo, Triskal, Krioni, Mota, Chimon, Nathan, Armoth, Signa—all were there together, gathered for this moment, gathered to listen to this long-awaited oration.
Rafar continued, “Today I place the name of Rafar, Prince of Babylon, forever in your memory as the name of him who remains bold and stands undefeated!” Rafar took a few more quick turns, looking all around him for any sign of his archenemy. “Tal, Captain of the Hosts of Heaven, will you dare to show your face to me? I think not! Will you even dare to assail me! I think not! Will you and your motley little band of highwaymen dare to stand in the path of the powers of the air?” Rafar threw in a derisive chuckle. “I think not!”
He paused for effect, and allowed himself a mocking grin. “I give you leave, dear Captain Tal, to withdraw yourself, to spare yourself the anguish awaiting you at my hand! I grant to you and to your warriors now the occasion to turn away, for I do pronounce that the battle’s decision is made already!” Rafar then pointed his sword toward the eastern horizon and said, “Look to the east, captain! There is the outcome clearly written!”
Tal and his chiefs were already looking toward the eastern horizon, their attention rapt and unswerving, even when a young messenger came soaring in with the news—“Hogan and Busche are free! They’ve—” He stopped in midsentence. His eyes followed every other gaze to the east, and he saw what so held their interest.
“Oh, no!” he said in a whisper. “No, no!”
At first the cloud had been only a distant fingertip of blackness poking up over the horizon; it could have been a raincloud, or factory smoke, or a distant, haze-darkened mountain appearing suddenly. But then, as it drew nearer, its borders expanded outward like the slowly emerging edge of a blunt arrowhead stretching slowly and surely across the horizon like a dark shroud, like a steadily rising tide of blackness blocking out the sky. At first, one direct glance could contain it all; in just a few minutes, the eyes had to sweep back and forth, from one end of the horizon to the other.
“Not since Babylon,” Guilo said quietly to Tal.
“They were there,” said Tal, “every one of them, and now they’re back. Look at the front ranks, flying multiple layers over, under, and within.”
“Yes,” said Guilo, observing. “Still the same style of assault.”
A new voice said, “Well, so far, Tal, your plan is working very well. They’ve all come out of hiding, and in countless numbers.”
It was the General. He was expected.
Tal answered, “And hopefully they are planning on a rout.”
“At least your old rival is, to hear him boast.”
Tal only smiled and said, “My General, Rafar boasts with or without reason.”
“What of the Strongman?”
“By the shape of the cloud, I would say he precedes it by just a few miles.”
“Having possessed Kaseph?”
“That would be my guess, sir.”
The General looked carefully at the approaching cloud, now a deep, inky black and spread like a canopy across the sky. The deep, rumbling drone of the wings was just becoming audible.
“How do we stand?” the General asked.
Tal answered, “Prepared.”
Then, as the sound of the wings grew louder and the shadow of the cloud began to fall across the fields and farmlands beyond Ashton, a reddish tint began to spread through the cloud as if it were burning from within.
“They’ve drawn their swords,” said Guilo.
WHY AM I so afraid? Sandy wondered.
Here she was, holding Shawn’s hand, going up the front steps of the Administration Building on campus, about to meet some people who had to be the real keys to her destiny, her stepping-stone to real spiritual fulfillment, to higher consciousness, maybe even to self-realization, and yet … all the talk could not remove a nagging fear she felt deep within her. Something just wasn’t right. Maybe it was just a normal nervousness such as one would feel before a wedding or any other very significant event, or maybe it was that last remaining shred of her old, discarded Christian heritage still holding her, pulling her back as if with a leash. Whatever it was, she tried to ignore it, overcome it with reason, even use relaxation techniques she had learned in her college yoga class.
Come on, Sandy … steady breaths now … focus, focus … realign your energies.
There, that’s better. I don’t want Shawn or Professor Langstrat or anyone to think I’m not ready to be initiated.
All the way up the elevator she talked and prattled and tried to laugh, and Shawn laughed along, and by the time they reached the third floor and the door numbered 326, she thought she was ready.
Shawn opened the door, saying, “You’ll love this,” and they went in.
She didn’t see them. To Sandy, this was only the staff lounge, a very pleasant room with soft carpet, leather-upholstered couches, and massive burl coffee tables.
But the room was occupied, very densely and hideously, and the yellow eyes glared and stared at her from all around, from every corner and chair and wall. They were waiting for her.
One hissed out asthmatically, “Hello there, child.”
Sandy extended her hand to Oliver Young. “Pastor Young, what a pleasant surprise,” she said.
Another let out a long, drooling snicker and said, “I’m very glad you could make it.”
Sandy gave Professor Juleen Langstrat an embrace.
She looked around the room and recognized many of the college faculty, some of her own professors, even some business people and blue-collar workers from around town. There, in the corner, stood the new owner of what used to be Joe’s Market. These thirty people looked like a cross section of Ashton’s best.
The spirits were all ready and waiting. Deception showed her off like a trophy. Madeline was there, smiling wickedly, and beside her, or it, was another demon accomplice, with loop after loop of heavy glistening chains draped over his bony hands.
IN THE CLOUD, the myriads of demons were haughty, wild, drunk with the anticipation of victory, of slaughter, of unprecedented power and glory. Below them, the town of Ashton was a mere toy, such a very small little hamlet in such a vast countryside. Layer upon layer of spirits droned steadily forward, and myriads of yellow eyes peered down at the prize. The town was quiet and unguarded. Ba-al Rafar had done his work well.
A series of harsh screeches came from the front ranks of the cloud—the generals were calling out orders. Immediately the demon commanders on the fringes of the cloud relayed the orders to the swarms behind each of them, and as the commanders flew out from the cloud and began to drop downward, followed by their countless squadrons, the edges of the cloud began to wilt and stretch toward the ground.
IN THE LARGE, formally furnished third-floor conference room, the regents began to gather. Eugene Baylor was there with a pile of financial records and reports, smoking a cigar a
nd feeling chipper. Dwight Brandon looked just a little somber, but he was conversational enough. Delores Pinckston was not feeling well at all, and only wanted to get the whole thing over with. Kaseph’s four lawyers, very professional, sharp-as-a-whip types, came in smirking. Adam Jarred strolled in and seemed more concerned with going fishing afterward than with the business they would be conducting. Every once in a while, someone would look at his watch or at the fancy clock on the wall. It would soon be 2 o’clock. Some were feeling just a little nervous.
The evil spirits that had come into the room with them were feeling nervous also—they realized they would soon be in the presence of the Strongman. This would be their very first time.
ALEXANDER M. KASEPH’S long, black, chauffeur-driven limousine entered the city limits and turned onto College Way. Kaseph sat in regal splendor in the back, cradling his briefcase in his lap and taking a lustful look out the tinted windows at the beautiful town passing by. He was making plans, envisioning changes, deciding what he would keep and what he would remove.
So was the Strongman, sitting inside him. The Strongman laughed his deep, gargling laugh, and Kaseph laughed the same way. The Strongman couldn’t remember when he had been so pleased and so proud.
THE CLOUD WAS drooping down at the edges as it continued to move forward, and Tal and his company kept watching from their hiding place.
“They’re lowering their perimeter,” said Guilo.
“Yes,” said Tal with fascination. “As usual, they intend to contain the town on all sides before actually descending into it.”
As they watched, the edges of the cloud dropped like black curtains that gradually wrapped around the town; demons were slipping into place like bricks in a wall. Every sword was drawn, every eye was wary.
This Present Darkness Page 47