She opened the partition.
The men turned around.
"Hello," Marie said.
The men began screaming.
"Father Le Moyne?" Sam asked when the door opened.
"Yes," the priest said.
"I'm Sam Balon. This is my wife, Nydia. May we come in? I'd—we'd like very much to talk with you."
The priest looked at the young couple. Good-looking young man, very beautiful young woman. He looked at them for a long moment. The moment he had dreaded had arrived. Thank God in human form. Father Le Moyne longed desperately to close the door to his small living quarters. Wanted to shut out the young couple. But he knew he could not do that.
"You're here to tell me the Devil is in Logandale." It was not a question.
"Yes, sir," Sam replied. "I've fought him before, just as my Dad did back in '58. We both beat him—in a manner of speaking—and I feel I can do it again."
Father Le Moyne's knees felt weak; made of rubber. He did not know if they would support his weight. He leaned against the door jamb for a few seconds. With a deep sigh, and an inner plea for forgiveness from the Lord for his doubts, Father Le Moyne straightened up and reluctantly waved the young couple inside.
When they were seated, Le Moyne said, "Have you heard about the poor Fowler girl?"
Sam and Nydia said they had not.
Le Moyne told them.
"I'm surprised the Beasts didn't eat her," Sam said. "Unless they have other plans for her."
Le Moyne could detect no fear or surprise in the young man's reply.
"The Beasts? Other plans?"
Sam leaned forward, Nydia holding onto his hand. "Father Le Moyne, I'm going to tell you a story that you are going to find very hard to believe."
"No," the priest said with an almost painful sigh. "I've known the Dark One was near; knew the time would come when I would have to face him."
"That time is here, Father," Nydia said. The priest closed his eyes. "Tell me your story, Mr. Balon."
"There's a hole in the ground over here," Joe called. "All covered over with brush. And God, does it stink."
Monty walked across the orchard to stand by Joe. His nose wrinkled at the foul odor coming from the hole in the earth. "Jesus H. Christ! What would cause a smell like that?"
"I ain't never smelled anything like that, Chief. And I worked in the mines down in Kentucky as a kid, 'fore my daddy moved us all up here. I thought I'd done smelled everything God could possibly put in the ground, but nothing like this here."
"I thought you were a native, Joe," Monty said with a smile.
"Sure you did. 'Way I talk? I think like a native, but I ain't. I was fifteen when my dad brung us up here. I've lived here forty years."
The men looked down into the dark hole. A glint of something metallic caught Monty's eyes. It gleamed from just inside the yawning hole. With Joe holding on to his ankles to keep him from tumbling into the darkness, Monty retrieved the piece of jewelry. An earring.
"You reckon that's Miss Mayberry's?" Joe asked.
"I'd bet on it. And I'd also bet the neighbors aren't going to tell us a thing."
"You and me both, Chief. Don't turn around, but there's a face at damn near every window back of us. We're being watched real close."
"What the hell is going on in this town, Joe?"
"I don't know, Chief. But I get the feeling it's—don't laugh at me, now—evil."
"That's as good a word as any, Joe. Did Miss Mayberry socialize much?"
Joe smiled. "I wouldn't want to say she was gettin' any on a regular basis, but she's been seein' that ol' boy owns the hardware store. Will Gibson."
"Let's go pay Mr. Gibson a visit."
"I'm ridin' with you, Chief."
The paramedics were found sitting in their ambulance, halfway between Logandale and Blaine. The body of Marie Fowler was not in the ambulance. Since the highway cop who found the ambulance and the dead men knew nothing of their mission, he did not find it odd no one was in the rear of the ambulance. He had looked, but the stretcher did not appear mussed. The paramedics' logbook was missing, so the highway cop could not check that. He did not call in to Clark County because the men were taking a short cut and were in McGray County when whatever happened to them occurred. It was an independently owned ambulance service, so the hospital at Blaine would know nothing of Marie Fowler.
But what did appear odd to the highway patrolman was the condition of the men. There was not a mark on either of them that he could see. But they were so pale-looking. It looked as though there was not a drop of blood left in either man. But there was no blood anywhere in or around the ambulance.
The highway cop stood looking at the men, a perplexed look on his face. He radioed the McGray County Sheriffs Department. They notified the coroner. But he and his small staff were up to their elbows doing an autopsy on an entire family that had been found dead in their van, parked on the edge of the park. The M.E. felt sure they had all died of carbon monoxide poisoning, but he still had to open them all up. And to complicate matters further, a lot of drugs had been discovered in the van. Of the recreational variety rather than medical type.
"Stick them in the cooler," the M.E. told his assistant. "We'll get to them Monday or Tuesday. Damn this Saturday work."
The assistant took a look at the bodies of the paramedics. He had never seen anything quite like them. "So pale," he muttered. "Almost as if they had no blood in them."
"What'd you say, Max?"
"Oh—nothing."
"Come look at the liver on this guy," the M.E. said. "He must have consumed a quart of booze a day. Liver's hard as a piece of leather."
As Max dropped the sheet back over the ambulance driver, he did not notice the man's eyelids fluttering as new life rose to the surface.
"Yes," Will Gibson said, handing the earring back to the chief. "That belongs to Judith. Why are you asking me these questions, Chief Draper?"
"You've heard about Marie?"
"Yes. A terrible thing. Human animals roaming society. People who would do something like that should be shot on sight. But you don't think Judith had anything to do with the Fowler girl, do you?"
"Oh, no, Will. It's just we can't find Judith, and we want to talk to her. She might have seen something that would be of importance to the case."
But Will wasn't buying that. "Something's happened to her, hasn't it, Chief?"
"Will—" Joe said.
"No. Now you people level with me. If something has happened to Judith, I want to know. I have a right to know."
"All right, Will," Monty said. "We found this earring just inside the mouth of a hole on her property. In the orchard. I'm going to get a search team together; ask for volunteers. I—"
"I am a longtime spelunker, Chief. There is no one more qualified in this town. Let me get my gear together and I'll go down in the hole."
Monty sighed. But he knew the man was right. Will Gibson had crawled around every cave and hole in the ground he could find in the state of New York. "All right, Will. I'll meet you out there in half an hour. But I will insist upon you being attached to a rope and be in radio contact with me."
"Sometimes radios don't work down there, Chief. Not for any distance."
"Those are the terms of the deal, Will."
"All right, Chief. I have no objections to that."
Monty's car radio was squawking when the men returned to the police car. "Logandale One," Monty said. "Come in."
"Chief, what is your ten-twenty?"
"In front of the hardware store."
"Was that ambulance that took the Fowler girl into Blaine a hospital rig?"
"You mean belonging to the hospital?"
"Right."
"Negative. The independent service out of Aumsville. Don't know why Jenkins called that one."
"Ah—O.K., Chief. Can you ten-nineteen?"
"On my way."
"What the hell?" Joe muttered.
"Don't know. So let's go fi
nd out."
Father Le Moyne stood gazing out his living room window. He had heard all the young couple had told him, but he found it difficult to believe. He knew in his heart, though, it was true. He turned slowly. "Whitfield was where that giant meteor struck several years ago, destroying the entire town, killing everyone in it."
"That was not just a meteor, Father."
"Are you telling me—"
"It was the hand of God."
Le Moyne crossed himself, his eyes closed. "And the poor Fowler girl is a part of all this?"
"That poor Fowler girl, as you put it, Father, may now be a part of the living dead," Nydia said.
"I cannot accept that premise, Nydia," the priest spoke sharply. "I do not believe in vampires or zombies. Possession, of course. But it ends there."
"You're wrong, Father," Sam spoke bluntly. Another trait he had inherited from his father. "Would you like for us to show you?"
"I—" The priest hesitated.
"Why are you afraid, Father?" Nydia asked, tilting her head to one side, brushing back a strand of midnight hair that fell over one eye each time she did so.
The priest glanced at her. "Perhaps, Mrs. Balon, I know things about Satan you do not."
"I'm sure you do, Father. But I can assure you I have been on a much more intimate basis with the Devil's workers than you."
"How do you mean, child?"
Nydia met his gaze and said bluntly, "A warlock raped me."
* * *
Roma had won. She had managed to seduce young Sam—at the orders of Satan—thus guaranteeing a demon child would be born from Sam's seed. She had done so by trickery, placing Nydia in a state of suspending animation. Sam believed her dead.
Upon reentering Falcon House, Sam had followed the sound of sad funeral music. Upstairs, Nydia lay in a coffin. Weeping and sobbing people lined the room. They had—to a person—told Sam they wanted to accept Christ into their hearts, and turn their backs on the Devil. In his confused state, Sam believed them. He allowed Roma to set him on a couch, the witch beside him. He did not know her perfume was drugged with a powerful ancient aphrodisiac. He fell prey to its black power.
Sam was conscious of cool air on his groin, but he felt it wasn't worth the effort to open his eyes and look. He realized his underwear shorts had been removed. That seemed all right to the young man.
Roma touched his groin, brought him to stiffness. She brought him almost to the point of ejaculation with her skillful fingers. Then, with one swift movement, the witch mounted him, laughing as she did so.
Everything returned to Sam, coming in such a rush it almost overpowered him: the warnings he had received from his dead father; the sight of his father struggling with the witch through boundless space. This woman! Roma was the woman his father had been fighting.
Young Sam began struggling with the witch, attempting to dislodge her from his erection. Her strength was incredible. He exploded within her. She milked him of every drop of semen. Leaving the young man exhausted and confused on the couch, Roma padded naked to a table and drank deeply from a small bottle of fresh blood.
Sam was too weak to move as she began speaking in a language he could not understand. She was calling on the forces of the Dark One, the incantation evil as it rolled from her tongue. Lightning licked around the mansion, thunder boomed, ripping the countryside, the smell of burning sulphur strong in the stormy air.
Laughter reached Sam's ears, spilling from the room where Nydia lay in her coffin. Dead, or so Sam thought. He stumbled into the room.
The scene that greeted his eyes was of the vilest imaginable: Nydia had been lifted from the casket, pillows placed under her. She was naked in death, her lifeless white arms hanging over the sides of the coffin. Her legs were widespread, knees to feet hanging out of the coffin. Falcon was between her legs, his gross maleness swollen to full erection. He was fucking the dead girl.
Sam shouted his rage and charged toward the sickness. Someone tripped him, sending him sprawling on the floor. He was kicked and beaten into semiconsciousness, vaguely aware of the hideous necrophilia before his eyes.
Nydia's head was thrown back, her mouth open, a gaping black hole, eyes closed in surrender on her voyage to the stygian shore.
Sam could but lay helpless, bloodied and weak on the floor, watching through a red mist as Falcon rammed his long thickness into the dead flesh of Nydia. The man began howling like an animal as he ejaculated.
Falcon rose arrogantly from the satin-lined casket like some monster from the grave. He stepped onto the floor and wiped his penis with a towel handed him by one of those as lost as he.
Sam put his head on the carpet and wept for the dead young woman he loved.
Roma's laughter reached him. "Oh, don't be such a crybaby, Sam. You may have her now."
Sam lifted his head as Roma raised her hand toward the casket. A quick movement of her fingers and the sounds of weeping came to him.
Sam thought he was going utterly mad as Nydia's eyes opened and she looked around her in confusion. She looked at her nakedness, then at her temporary home, and screaming joined the weeping.
Sam got to his feet and staggered toward the casket as Roma's words reached him.
"Take your darling, Sam. Take her, and witness when the time comes, what marvelous parturient pops from her womb. How does it feel to be beaten, young man?"
Sam ripped drapes from the walls and covered Nydia's nakedness. When he turned to face the witch, she hissed with fright, drawing back from his burning eyes.
Sam said, "We're not beaten, you whore. I'm whipped for now, but I'm not out for the count. But I have realized something from this—ugliness: You can't kill us. God won't let you kill me, and you have to keep Nydia alive. So, yeah, bitch, I'm going to beat you."
Jeering sounds followed his words. A party began as Sam and Nydia walked from the room with as much dignity as they could muster.
Father Le Moyne crossed himself as Nydia finishing her telling of the rape. He visibly paled when she said, "And Sam and I are not certain if Little Sam is our child, or the child of Satan."
"You have no way of knowing?" he asked.
"No," Sam said. "Do you think you can tell?"
"I—don't know. Perhaps it is not yet time for the true body of the child to surface."
"That's what we think, too," Nydia said.
"But with the sightings of the Beasts," Sam said, "we both feel that time is not far off."
Father Le Moyne walked to his kitchen and poured a tumbler half full of whiskey. He downed it in one gulp. He started to refill the tumbler, then thought better of it and put the cap back on the bottle, screwing it down tight. He put the bottle in a cabinet and shut the door hard.
When the priest turned to walk into the small living room, there seemed to be a fresh new strength to the set of his jaw.
"All right," Le Moyne said. "Let's go see your Devil Beasts. Let's face them."
FIVE
Jon Le Moyne listened to his mother and father leave the house. He had already told them goodbye, see you late Sunday, have a good trip, and all that bullshit. He didn't give a damn whether they had a good trip, a bad trip, or even if he ever saw them again. Fuck you both! he thought bitterly. The vulgarity did not shock the young man any more than his thoughts of their never coming back. A month ago it would have. Now it was just a natural part of him. As much a part of him as the sex magazines he kept hidden in his dresser junk drawer. But the magazines were rapidly becoming inadequate for him; did not give him the kick, the heady erotic feeling they had originally produced a few months back.
Jon wanted to feel real breasts beneath his hands; wanted to touch the flesh of a real female; wanted to feel female hands on his body, touching him, their pretty pouty mouths going oohhh and aahhh at his hot, heavy long erection. And he knew—if and when he got the chance—they would do just that, too, for Jon had studied pictures of other men, and knew he was equipped large in that department. He wasn't as freakishly bu
ilt as that black guy he'd seen in sex ads; wasn't as hefty as that Texas fellow; but he sure as hell wasn't average, either.
Jon felt a flush spread over his body. His face felt feverish and his hands were trembling. His mind replayed pictures of high eroticism. But he vowed he was not going to masturbate.
He was going to find a woman. Or a girl. Didn't make shit to him. Long as it was female. He was going to experience the sensation of getting some pussy.
"Jon?" a voice called to him in a whisper.
The boy spun around, his face pale, his mouth hanging open in shock and fright.
He knew the house was empty. Supposed to be anyway.
"Who—who are you?" Jon whispered. "What are you?"
"A friend."
"Invisible!"
"But very real. Talk to me, Jon. Tell me your troubles. I'll listen and give you real answers, real solutions to your problems."
"All right," Jon said, taking the first step into the dark arms. "I want a woman."
"Then you shall have one."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
The room began to fill with a slight odor, not unpleasant.
"I know someone who desires you," the voice said. "She is not fully aware of that desire, but it is there."
"Who desires me?" Jon was becoming more relaxed. Something seemed to be calming him. He didn't know what; he didn't care. He was in such a high emotional state he was ready to accept anything; ready to believe anything… just somebody, anybody, do something to relieve the high sexual frustrations that had reached the boiling point within him.
And that somebody had arrived. Had waited for just this moment in the young man's life. That somebody would not fail this time.
"You have prayed for help, have you not, Jon?"
"For all the goddamned good it did me, yes."
"I see. Well, I keep my promises. You shall see this afternoon."
"Who desires me?" Jon pushed for an answer.
"Patsy Catlett," the voice whispered.
The Devil's Touch Page 5