Chapter 36
Carey Ellis had gotten separated from Josh and the rest of the cons. He had stopped to retie the laces on his tennis shoes and when he looked up, the others had rounded a curve in the gravel road and were out of sight.
A flitting gray shape near the timber’s edge caught his eyes and turned his head. “What the hell is that?” he muttered. He caught another glimpse of the shape and relaxed. “Big-assed dog, I reckon,” he said. He straightened up and continued his walking. The timber was silent all around him. Carey wanted to cut and run away, maybe head for Richmond, get away from this craziness, but the memory of what had happened to Mark Hay stayed fresh in his mind and kept pushing him on. He hoped to link up with the other cons.
A snarl from the darkness of the timber’s edge reached him, stopped him, and turned his eyes to the timber. A low growl from the other side of the road spun him around. He could see brown-yellow eyes glaring at him and the long bared teeth glistening as the sunlight touched them.
“Goddamn wolf!” Carey said. He jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fired.
But the wolf vanished just as he pulled the trigger.
“Impossible!” Carey muttered.
Snarling and growling from the other side of the road spun him around, his heart racing from fear.
A half a dozen large gray wolves were staring at him, fangs bared.
Again he jerked the rifle to his shoulder and fired. And as before, the wolves vanished just as he pulled the trigger.
Ghost wolves! The terrifying thought leaped into his brain. He calmed himself by thinking: But if they’re ghosts, they have to be on our side!
A gray hairy shape hit him hard in the back and knocked that thought from the con as it sent him sprawling on the gravel. He lost his rifle and cut his hands on the gravel as the wolves nailed him, great fangs ripping his flesh, tearing the screams from his throat and shredding the life from him.
As his bloody life, past and present, painfully left him, the con could see the marks in the wolves’ chests and sides, marks left there by bullets. Some of them had mangled paws and legs where they had been crippled by one of the cruelest of all of man’s insults to the animal world: steel traps.
Carey Ellis let life leave him and he drifted into darkness. As he drifted from the light side to the dark side, a hideous shape bounced and pranced and chuckled before him. The face was indescribable but still unmistakably, unspeakably, and horribly evil.
The mouth opened, and the foulest of odors circled him like rotting rats’ tails. The creature chuckled darkly and spoke.
“As promised, you shall live forever.” He flung his arm and the flames and stinking smoke reached Carey. “In this!” Satan roared.
Carey Ellis started screaming as the intense pain began creeping over his body and searing his dead but still-living flesh. He would scream forever.
The Devil had kept his promise. In a manner of speaking.
* * *
More children were rounded up, most of them savage-eyed and screaming, kicking, and biting as they were carried off—dragged off in most cases.
Daly was true to his word: If an adult coven member was found and offered the slightest resistance, Daly would put a very final end to the evil life. No prayers from pastor or priest were offered for the dead souls. And Daly finished the walking evils with a look of satisfaction on his face.
“Doesn’t make a shit to me,” the state trooper said. “I can retire any damn time I please.”
One group of men and women stayed at the high school, working from tall ladders, nailing up sheets of plywood over the windows of selected rooms, inside and out, creating makeshift cells for the kids and for those few adults who were brought in alive.
Jim used the phone in the Jaguar to call the governor. He got the governor’s aide.
“Jim! How’s it going in Butler?” the aide questioned cheerfully.
“Bastard thinks we’re having a picnic in here,” Jim muttered. “Oh, just wonderful. I don’t recall ever havin’ such a marvelous time of it. The sheriffs dead. The mayor’s dead. Their wives are dead. Trooper Tolson is dead. We got bodies of dead coven members layin’ all over the damn streets. Half a dozen downtown buildings have been burned to ground level; at least that many more homes are gone. We got no power, no regular phone service. And you got the nerve to ask me how the fuck it’s going?” he screamed at last.
“Now, now, Jim,” the aide said, an unctuous earnestness to the words. “Look on the bright side. The governor has the power to appoint you sheriff, you know? As a matter of fact, I’ll see that that’s done within the hour. Tit for tat, Jim. You’ve done a good job.”
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Byron Winston, Sheriff Hunt.”
“Well, Byron, do you have any idea what’s taken place here?”
“I think so. I was on the investigating team that went into Ruger County after that, ah, incident.”
“You have any trouble sleepin’ at night?”
“Not a bit. Jim”—the aide’s voice hardened—“it has to be this way. You surely must sense, and I certainly know, that the governor’s come under terrific pressure from, ah, just north of us.”
“Hell, say the word, Byron. Washington, D.C.”
“You said it, Jim, not I. These conversations are being monitored by more than one agency and organization, believe me.”
“Big deal.”
“A bigger deal than you might think, Jim. Jim, a story has already been prepared as to what went on in Butler. We know a dozen or more convicts escaped from your jail, most of them already sentenced to long prison terms. It isn’t unheard of for those types of individuals to take over and terrorize an entire town, especially one as isolated as Butler.”
“It won’t wash, Byron,” Jim said flatly.
“We think it will, Sheriff Hunt.”
“Don’t try to buy me, boy.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think of doing anything that odious, Sheriff. Oh, my, no.” He clucked his tongue at just the thought. “But don’t you have a son in the service? Career man, I believe. We wouldn’t want to have anything placed in his jacket that might muck up his career, would we? And you have a daughter who works for the FBI, right? She handles a lot of sensitive material. The temptation must be great. One boy in college, yes? A brilliant lad, I must say. I have his file before me now. Yes. Oh, my. Just look at all the government grants he’s receiving. Am I getting through to you, Sheriff Hunt?”
“You stinkin’, slimy, son of a bitch!”
Byron laughed at him. “It’s the way of the world, Sheriff. But you do get my point, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I get it. But someday the truth will out. Bet on it.”
“Oh, it always does, Sheriff! Years down the road, of course.”
“You got reporters in here, boy.”
“And they’ll get their story, Sheriff! Oh, my, yes. We believe they’ll see the light, so to speak.”
“So I go along with you on this. Does that mean the state sends some help in?”
“Help? Why do you need any help? Sheriff Hunt, you’re still alive. That alone tells me you and your people have the situation under control and are making marvelous progress toward restoring law and order. Keep up the good work, Sheriff.”
The connection was broken.
Daly noted the expression on Jim’s face. “We’re still alone in this thing, right?”
“You got it.” Then he told Daly and the others gathered around what the aide had said—all of it.
“I know Byron,” Daly said. “That’s just like him. He’s the next governor of the state, bet on it. And after that, he’ll run for U.S. Senate, and win.”
“I get the impression that he actually runs the state now, not the governor.”
“You’re right. The governor doesn’t make any decisions without consulting Winston.”
“Well, to hell with Byron Winston. We come this far on our own....” He looked toward Heaven. “Sort of.
We’ll go on handlin’ it our way.”
Daly shoved another round into the tube of his riot gun. “Suits me.”
* * *
Just before dusk settled over the land, Carl headed back to the A-frame, followed by Edgar and his men. He was using a different route, wanting to check out the only other road to the house.
Most of the town was now secure. As the search-and-destroy had intensified in Butler, more and more of the coven members had begun giving up without a fight. The word had gone out: Daly and the others, including Pastor Speed and Father Vincent, would kill if any type of resistance was offered. The bodies were taken to the city landfill and burned. All the slides and cultures in Bartlett’s lab had been destroyed by fire.
Acting out of pure spite, those coven members still active—their hearts too blackened by evil to ever be redeemed—had burned as many churches as they could, before running from the town to take refuge in the woods. They had destroyed the fire-fighting equipment of the town’s small department, so Jim and the others could do nothing except use garden hoses to wet down the homes close to the churches in an attempt to save them. The more stupid of the coven members had been ordered by the leaders to stay in town with rifles and snipe at those fighting the fires.
They did not last long, and their sniping hurt no one.
As his headlights picked up the body in the road, Carl slowed and stopped. He carefully checked both sides of the road before getting out of the Jag and walking up to the torn body.
He did not know the man, had no way of knowing he was looking at what was left of Carey Ellis.
“Jesus,” Edgar said. “What did this?”
“Probably the wolves that came in here. Look at those fang marks.”
“There are no paw prints,” the industrialist pointed out..
“I noticed.”
“And? So?”
“You want a theory?”
“Beats a knock on the head.”
“It’s a ghost pack.”
Edgar sighed. “I think I’d rather have had a knock on the head.”
“It’s the best I can do.”
“The body looks . . . well, strange.”
“The soul is gone. I saw that in Ruger. But not taken by God.”
“He made a pact with the Devil and the Devil collected?”
“Yes. I would imagine the Devil always gets what’s due him, and probably a bit more.”
Carl looked up at the sky. Heavy, dark, fat clouds were moving in. The humidity had gone up fifty percent in the past hour.
“It’s going to be a very interesting night,” Edgar commented.
“And probably going to swing the pendulum for the last time.”
“But swing it where?”
“Only two mighty powers know the answer to that, Edgar.”
“I believe very strongly in one and worship Him. I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to have anything to do with the other.”
“You meet him every day, Edgar. We all do. In some form or another. I’d guess that maybe fifty percent of us actually try to resist him, and we’re not successful much of the time.”
“Only fifty percent?”
“Certainly no more than that. Father Denier said that come Judgment Day, a lot of people were going to be sorely disappointed, for Heaven was going to be a very sparsely populated place.”
Edgar smiled in the windy and soon-to-be-stormy night. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re exclusively an Old Testament man?”
“Because it’s true. That’s where it all is as far as I’m concerned. God didn’t whimper around and make deals and so forth. He said: This is the way it is, and this is the way it’s going to be. Screw up, and I’ll send Michael down to kick your ass and then I’ll ship it off right straight to Hell.”
“Sunday School would have been a lot more interesting studying out of your bible,” Edgar said with a laugh.
Chapter 37
The most violent storm any could ever remember seeing tore open the sky that night, forcing Conners’s security men out of the field and into the house and the shed, into cars and trucks and, in some cases, under trucks.
Edgar used a secure line to call into his headquarters in Richmond. It was a bright, clear, and starry night everywhere in the state. “Except for Reeves County,” Edgar said.
“Nothing on the radar, sir,” he was told.
“It’s a message,” Carl said, standing by a rain-slashed window and looking out at the interplay of the elements. “But from whom?”
The others in the crowded house offered no reply or comment, knowing he was thinking out loud. And even among the tough security men, Carl was viewed with no small degree of awe. Anyone who would openly stand up and confront the Devil was either a nut or a very brave man.
And it did not take the men long to discover that Carl Garrett was no nut.
Carl turned away from the window. “What happened in Ruger was an accident. We know that much for a fact. It became time for Anya and Pet to rest, and their sleep was disturbed by engineers. So they were on a journey. Where? If I’ve got it all sorted out in my mind, their destination was right here.” He stamped one booted foot. “Perhaps in the woods, but I don’t think so. I think it’s right here on the land this house was built on.”
“Why?” Dee asked.
“That I don’t know. Edgar, how long has this land been yours?”
“My great-great-grandfather bought it. Each reading of the will after that always contained the stipulation that the land must never be sold or given away to anyone outside the family, and that it must never be cleared.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea, Carl. I’ve tried to find out but the secret obviously died with my great-great-grandfather.”
“Yet you allowed Dee to clear the land to build this A-frame?”
“No, he didn’t,” Dee replied. “This has always been cleared ground. At least as long as I can remember.”
“For as long as I can remember too,” Edgar said. “Trees just don’t grow here.”
“Why?” Carl persisted.
“I don’t know. Nothing grows on this spot. Never has. A few scrawny bushes and some weeds, and damn little else.”
Carl was thoughtful for a moment. “Linda lied to me. Everything she said was a lie. She didn’t come here to set up a coven. The coven was already here. It might even be the oldest one in the United States. And it might be something else too.” He fell silent as he turned to look out the window.
“What, Carl?” Dee asked.
“Something unspeakable. Something so evil it scared the crap out of your ancestors and they bought the land and declared it uninhabitable . . . in the only legal way they could.”
“Now you’re spooking me, boy!” Edgar told him, standing up and walking to the window. “What sort of evil could it be? And if that’s the case, why didn’t my ancestors give future generations some sort of warning about it?”
“They probably did. But they probably did it in some cryptic form that would be understood only by a Conners. Perhaps in some old family bible.”
“I have the oldest one in our family right here,” Dee said. “I’ll get it for you.”
Lamps were turned up and Carl sat down, the old bible in his hands. He handled it very carefully, for the pages were stiff and broke easily. “What’s your great-great-grandfather’s name, Edgar?”
“Edgar Edison Conners.”
He found the genealogy-records section and noted when Edgar Edison Conners was born and died. In the important-events section, he found E.E.C., and in a fine, bold, beautiful handwritten script: “Read not these passages as they are meant to be. Jeremiah Ch 26, V 23, Genesis Ch 23, V 20.”
“Anybody ever read these Biblical passages?” Carl asked.
“I have,” Dee said. “It doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
Carl turned to Jeremiah and read. “And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him unto Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with th
e sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people.” He turned to Genesis and read, “And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a burying place by the sons of Heth.”
“Death and burial,” Dee said. “Everyone in the family has read those passages a dozen times. No one knows what they mean.”
“Are there any caves on this property?” Carl asked.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Edgar told him. “And no one has ever reported finding any.”
“So that leaves the field. The grounds, in other words.” Carl laid the bible aside and stood up, once more walking to the window and looking out. The storm had intensified, the rains almost a solid, blinding sheet of silver gray lashing at the earth.
He thought he saw movement and stared hard. There was something moving around, but he couldn’t make out what it was.
The A-frame suddenly shifted, throwing everyone standing toward the left front of the home.
One of the girls screamed in fright.
“A piling has broken off or settled into a hole,” Edgar said, bracing himself against a wall.
“It settled into a hole, all right,” Carl said, his words tinged with grimness. His eyes did not leave the strange movements on the storm-torn landscape around the A-frame. They were lurching movements, stiff and jerky, like that of a person just trying to walk who had been bedridden for many years.
Or someone who had been confined in a casket for several hundred years.
“We got company outside!” a security man yelled.
A horrible scream reached those inside the awkwardly tilted house.
“What the hell?” Edgar said.
“It’s a graveyard,” Carl said, his words just audible over the howling of the storm. “The whole damn place is a graveyard. Where devil-worshippers have been buried over several centuries. Probably brought in here from all over the state—maybe several states—over God only knows how many years. God and Satan. Brought in at night and buried—”
Hard gunfire cut off his words as the security people still outside began firing at the lurching, staggering, stumbling shapes of those long dead who now had been summoned from their wormy, rotted caskets to once more walk the land.
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