“The same with Son of Sam?” Vince asked.
Mike nodded. “Berkowitz admits to belonging to a satanic cult in New York, but crime experts have denounced that as the ramblings of a man trying to cop an insanity plea. Berkowitz maintains this story to this day, especially after having converted to Christianity in prison. He claims he was a member of a satanic cult when he committed the murders, and that the purpose of the murders was the spread of chaos. Again, in full accordance with the beliefs of The Children of the Night.”
“And all these murders,” Reverend Powell said, his fingers drumming along the bar. “They were committed for the same reason?”
“Some,” Mike said. He finished his beer. “Others, like the murder of Arlis Perry, were committed because the victim knew too much. Berkowitz apparently had inside knowledge of the Perry murder.”
Vince thought about all this, his mind whirling with the craziness of it. “What did mom tell you when I left home?” he asked Reverend Powell. “I…I always thought she had become a real…religious fanatic in the last ten years and…she used to tell me I was…the spawn of hell. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she thought I was the Anti-Christ himself.”
“Your mother always feared for you, Vincent,” Reverend Powell said, his features grave. “She always prayed for you. In all the years I knew her, I never knew her to reveal much about her past, although I used to guess that she was involved with some sinful people in California. She always seemed…as if she were running away from that past.”
“Do you think that’s it?” Vince said, turning to Mike. “Do you think this devil group Mom was involved with thought I was their Anti-Christ? Do you think that’s why they’re trying to kill me?”
“If they thought you were the Anti-Christ, why would they want to kill you?” Mike asked.
“Somebody wants me dead.”
“It couldn’t be them,” Mike said. “And it couldn’t be the original group, The End Times. Besides, I think you’re letting your emotions get a little carried away. They’re obviously trying to get to you for something—perhaps to bring you back into the fold—but they’re not trying to kill you.”
Vince was livid. His blood was boiling in his veins. “Look at the facts! My mom joins this group in 1965 shortly before learning about the two opposing sides of the cults’ beliefs—darkness and light. She chooses darkness. They take her to Iraq, do this soul-cracking thing on her or whatever it’s called, I’m conceived there and am born there. If I were a paranoid, fanatical zealot with an Armageddon complex, I’d sure think I was the Anti-Christ. Fuck!”
The room grew quiet as Vince seethed. Reverend Powell appeared to visibly flinch at the sudden expletive, but remained silent. Vince took a long drink from his beer and set the empty bottle down on the bar with a thud that almost cracked the bottle. Reverend Powell opened a fresh one for him. Vince took it and downed half of it.
Mike shook his head. “I…I don’t think that…”
“You don’t think these psychos think I’m the Anti-Christ?” Vince shouted. “Use your head, Mike, c’mon! Mom joins an apocalyptic satanic cult that believes the end times are a good thing. And hell, why not? It’s all according to God’s big plan for us, right? And everything that comes from God is good, right? Even a little destruction and doom and pestilence. In fact, why not help God along? Why don’t we just call up ’ol Scratch himself during a satanic ritual, get him to impregnate some impressionable teenager and bam! You have your Anti-Christ. Me!” Vince slapped his chest and took a pull from his beer. He felt high but he wasn’t drunk. He was scared and angry.
“Vince,” Mike said, his voice low and calm. “I think you’re rushing to conclusions. We don’t know why they’re—”
“Cut the bullshit, Mike!” Vince said, loudly. “He’s probably thinking the same goddamned thing!” He gestured to Reverend Powell. “Why else would mom suddenly pull stakes and leave California without saying a word? Why else would she become such a religious lunatic and believe the devil was hiding behind every corner? Why else would she curse me for walking my own path? Why else would she say I was spawned from hell and that—”
“Vince, I agree that your mother had some very extreme views but—”
“—she never wanted to have anything to do with me!” Vince was almost screaming now. His face felt hot and flushed with anger. “She told me time and time again, ‘I won’t have anything to do with that which isn’t Godly,’ and goddamnit, the minute I told her I was leaving for college she began to not have anything to do with me. She told me that I was turning my back on God, that I was walking down the path of darkness, that—”
“Vince,” Reverend Powell began.
“—if I left her I’d be damned to hell. And it only got worse after I married Laura.” Vince paused briefly, heaving with exertion. He could feel his emotions rising and he felt his throat constrict. “Why else,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice from cracking. “…would some…psycho come along over twenty-five years later and kill mom like that and…leave all that shit at the crime scene? Why else would somebody try to kill me?”
Mike laid a fatherly hand on Vince’s shoulder. “I don’t know, Vince,” he said softly. “I honestly don’t know. But that’s what we’re here to find out.”
And then, unable to control himself now because the pain of it all was so great, Vince Walters collapsed into Mike Peterson’s arms and broke down in heart-wrenching sobs.
THE DESK CLERK at the Ephrata library had a smile on her face when she looked up as Frank approached but the minute she looked at him, the corners of her mouth turned down in a frown. Frank ignored the look—he was used to it to some degree—and cut to the chase. “I was wondering if you could help me with something,” Frank said, launching into his rehearsed spiel immediately. The minute he entered the library he’d headed straight for the speculative fiction racks and searched for his titles. He found his latest novel in hardcover, and with the knowledge that he was being read by Ephrata’s finest, he sauntered over to the reference desk. “I’m an author, and I’m setting my next novel here in Ephrata and I was wondering if I could have access to the microfilm of the local newspapers.”
“An author?” The woman still looked suspicious.
“Yes.” Frank smiled and held up the title he’d pulled off the shelves. “You guys even carry my books. See?”
He handed the book to her and she looked it over, then turned to the back cover, which bore an author photograph. She looked from the back jacket to Frank. In the author photo he was leaning against a graffiti-stained wall in North Hollywood looking the same as he always did—black leather jacket, mirror shades, badass biker pose.
The librarian’s smile returned and her demeanor changed. “Well, I surely wasn’t expecting a literary celebrity to be visiting us so soon,” she said. “What can I help you with?”
A few minutes later Frank was seated in the corner of the reference area, a microfilm machine in front of him and spools of fiche from the past three years in a metal tray on his right. The librarian had been helpful from then on, ferreting microfilm at Frank’s command. Frank spooled through the paper, his eyes peeled for anything that might catch his fancy. The librarian—Nancy Koja—had turned out to be a nice lady once Frank started talking books with her. She’d even agreed to help him out on his project, and was currently at her desk on the telephone with an editor at the Lancaster Intelligencer asking for the information he was seeking. Hopefully the two of them would come up with something fairly quick.
When Frank told her what he was looking for she didn’t seem particularly disturbed. Maybe it was because she trusted him—after all, he was a ‘celebrity author’ visiting this little hamlet deep in the Amish Country. “Sounds like your next book is going to be a thriller,” Nancy said, jotting down notes. “I just love thrillers!”
So far Frank hadn’t found a thing. He started scanning headlines beginning in late January of this year, a few weeks before February 2, the d
ay of Candlemas, which was an important day in most magical circles. The next important days were the Spring Equinox and Walpurgisnacht—April 30. He was now scanning headlines for the week of March 15, one week before the Equinox, and so far he hadn’t come across anything resembling what he was looking for.
Nancy Koja returned to Frank’s side. “I think there might be something in the Lititz paper for the date of April 30,” she said. She approached a file tray, opened it, and began rummaging through. “We just had these converted to microfilm, too. We only keep area newspapers for a month.”
Frank stopped and turned to her. “What did you find?”
Nancy found the box of film she was looking for and handed it to Frank. “My friend at the Intelligencer told me to call the Lititz Record. He’d heard about a crime involving dead animals that this friend of his in Lititz reported. Isn’t that what you’re looking for? Dead animal cases?”
“Yes,” Frank nodded, slipping the microfilm in the spools and fast-forwarding to April 30. “Specifically dogs.”
Nancy leaned forward, peering into the screen as Frank scanned through the April 30 issue slowly. Finally, he found what he was looking for.
It was a very brief article:
DEAD DOGS FOUND IN FIELD BELIEVED TO BE FOUL PLAY
By Richard Harsh, Lititz Record Staff Writer
Two adult male dogs, one a Doberman Pinscher, another a German Shepard, were found yesterday morning in a field bordering Mill Lane.
The discovery was made by Greta Jones, 73, of 87 Mill Lane, a semi-detached home that sits on the corner of Mill Lane and Meadow Lane. Ms. Jones had just ventured outside to water her plants in a flowerbed when she noticed a flurry of activity in the field across the road. “A bunch of crows,” she said, flocking about and picking at something. It’s not unusual to see them eating road kill, but there was an awful lot of them in that field and I caught a glimpse of something that looked a lot bigger than a gopher, so I went inside and called Alan Pierson to take a look.”
When Pierson, who owns the land, investigated, he discovered the two dogs, who had been skinned of their pelts.
Lancaster County Animal Control officials agree that somebody with knowledge of canine anatomy killed the animals. They report that both animals were skinned alive and then killed with precise cuts to the throat and dumped in the field.
Lititz Police are investigating the matter and are urging anybody with information to come forward.
Frank read the article twice, then hit the COPY button. “Thanks,” he said. “Did your contact at the paper mention if there were any other similar cases since?”
“None,” Nancy Koja said, looking pleased. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“None right now,” Frank said, glancing at his watch. He had an hour and a half left to spend at the library before heading back to the motel. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to look through the rest of this microfilm. Where do you keep the hard copies of the paper you were mentioning?”
“In the periodical room,” Nancy said, motioning to a room on the other side of the building. “Local newspapers are along the north wall. Feel free to help yourself.”
“Thanks.”
Frank read through the rest of the microfilm and followed up his research in the periodical room. And despite a careful analysis of the local newspapers, he didn’t find anything else, save the local reporting of Maggie Walter’s murder.
Chapter Thirteen
IT WAS ONLY eight-thirty in the evening, and even though it was still sunset it felt like night had fallen fast.
Hank Powell, Mike Peterson, Vince Walters, and Frank Black were gathered in Reverend Powell’s basement. Hank had set up a card table and some chairs in the den, and the four men sat around the table eating take-out pizza that Frank and Mike had brought back from Caruso’s. Vince had called Frank as he was walking back to the motel from the library and told him the latest plan: they were joining forces with Reverend Powell and would be spending the rest of their time at his home. Frank expressed concern at first, but Vince assured him that Mike had made the call. Vince was still reeling from the emotional turmoil of the past few hours and had come to rely more on Mike’s judgment. “We talked about it upstairs out of Hank’s earshot,” he’d told Frank over the phone. “Mike did some checking on him before you even contacted me. He came out clean. He has no prior contact with any cult member except for my mother, and he’s expressing all the classic symptoms of shock at what he’s hearing. Mike’s checked the house out, and once Hank found out the extreme nature of this group, he even pitched in to help. The guy’s an ex-cop and knows quite a lot about surveillance. He says he would have known if somebody had been following him, so he’s just as paranoid as you two are.”
“I guess that’s good to know,” Frank said.
Mike had driven over to the motel to pick Frank up and gather their things. As a precaution, he hadn’t checked them out of the room. They’d picked up two large pizzas at Caruso’s after Hank phoned the order in, and now they were gathered around the card table, a half-eaten pizza and empty beer bottles on the table. Frank had gone through two cans of Coke already. They’d brought Hank Powell up to speed on everything that happened since Maggie’s murder—including the murder attempt on Vince and Tracy—and Frank’s own background. Hank had nodded solemnly, casting a sympathetic glance at Frank. “You’ve been through a lot, my friend. Thank God you lived through it.”
“There’s a well-known quote by the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche,” Frank said. He was sprawled comfortably in one of the fold-up lawn chairs Reverend Powell had set up around the table. “‘That which does not kill me makes me stronger’ That’s how I look at what I went through.”
Hank Powell looked at his guests and sighed. Vince had watched the man pound down no less than a six-pack of beer and numerous shots of Jack Daniels and the guy wasn’t even the least bit wobbly. Perhaps it was true about ex-cops and preachers—they could hold their liquor. “Well, I’m with you on this,” he said. “As Maggie and Lillian’s friend and minister, and as a soldier for the Lord, I feel compelled to work with you to fight Satan. I know that’s who we’re up against and I thank God for your courage.” He nodded at each of them, his nod lingering longer on Frank. “Especially you, Frank, after finding out what you’ve gone through.” He nodded at Vince. “And you, Vince. As an unbeliever, I know this is hard for you to accept. But I also know you loved your mother, even though the two of you had problems. Despite what you may feel, I refuse to accept that this group feels that you are the Anti-Christ. They want you for something else. Satan hates to lose, and it’s obvious that he feels he lost two great souls when your mother took you and hightailed it out of that den of iniquity. He’s trying to get you back. And he will fight hard for you.”
“So you don’t think I’m the Anti-Christ?” Vince asked. He asked this half-jokingly. He really felt no different physically since coming to these wild conclusions. He imagined that if he were some sort of supernatural being he would have been aware of it long before now.
“No, Vince,” Hank Powell said. “You’re not the Anti-Christ. Confused and scared maybe, but not the devil’s imp.”
Frank chuckled. “You weren’t bad luck to people whom you’ve known the last twenty-five years, were you?”
“No.”
“And you haven’t noticed any unusual marks, right? No six-six-six tattoos or markings on your scalp?”
“No, but then I’ve never looked, either. I could shave my head and we can solve this all right now.”
“That’s unnecessary,” Mike said, bringing the seriousness back to the tone of conversation. “Vince, you’re not the Anti-Christ, so stop thinking such nonsense.”
“Why else would they be after me?”
“It’s like I suggested,” Reverend Powell said, rubbing his jaw. “Satan hates to lose. He wants you back.”
“If that’s the case, why do you claim it’s outlandish that they mi
ght think I’m the Anti-Christ?”
“Vince!” Mike’s tone sharpened.
Vince turned to Mike. “Hank believes the devil is pissed off about losing me and Mom. He’s placing this belief in a supernatural entity. If you believe Hank, why can’t you believe they see me as the Anti-Christ?”
Mike fidgeted. He cast a glance at Frank, who remained stoical. Finally, Frank said, “I don’t believe you’re the Anti-Christ, and to tell you the truth, I don’t believe in the devil either.”
“What do you believe in, son?” Reverend Powell asked.
“I believe we’re dealing with a group of fanatics,” Frank said. “I believe we’re dealing with a group of people that’s just as fanatical about their beliefs as the most rabid, fundamentalist Bible-thumper.” Hank Powell’s expression darkened at that description, but Frank ignored him. “To tell you the truth, I think organized religion is a crock of shit. I think Pat Robertson is just as dangerous as Louis Farrakhan and that nut that lives in that cave in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden. I think these guys are operating on the same delusions as all your television evangelists, only they—”
“The Lord God is not an illusion,” Reverend Powell said, sternly.
“—believe in the devil. Frankly, I think the whole concept of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is a fraud. I think they’re all based on a bunch of old myths and the early churches and mosques and synagogues forced this crock of shit down people’s throats as a power trip. They made people believe this shit—”
“That’s enough!” Hank Powell thundered. His face was beet-red.
“—and they had the power to either make people pay lip service or they’d kill them. Haven’t you ever heard of the Crusades or the fucking Inquisition?”
“I will not have you curse in my house!” Reverend Powell said through gritted teeth.
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