Twilight was coming faster than expected.
The gates of Hell were swinging open.
Although she could no longer understand the spirit voices, although their cries were muffled and distorted, she detected an urgency in all of them, and she knew the abyss loomed ahead.
Maybe if she rested, got a little sleep, she would be stronger and better equipped to break through the barrier between this world and the next. But there was no rest. Not in these desperate times.
She had lost five pounds in the last few days, and her eyes stung from lack of sleep. She longed for sleep. But the incomprehensible spirit voices continued to assault her, a steady stream of them, a torrent, a flood of other-worldly messages. Their urgency infected her, pushed her to the brink of panic.
Time was running out. The boy was growing stronger.
Too little time to do all that was necessary.
Too little time. Maybe no time at all . . .
She was overwhelmed not only by voices but by visions, as well. As she lay in her bed, staring at the dark ceiling, the shadows abruptly came to life, and the folds of the night were transmuted into leathery black wings, and something hideous descended from the ceiling-No!-fell atop her, flapping and hissing, spitting in her face, something slimy and cold-oh God, no, please!-with breath that reeked of sulfur. She gagged and flailed and tried to cry out for help, but her voice failed her the way she had failed God. Her arms were pinned. She kicked. Her legs were pinned. She writhed. She bucked. Hard hands pawed at her. Pinched her. Struck her. An oily tongue lapped her face .
She saw eyes of crimson fire glaring down at her, a grinning mouth full of viciously sharp teeth, a stoved-in nose, a nightmare visage that was partly human, partly porcine, partly like the face of a bat. She was finally able to speak but only in a whisper. She frantically called out some of the names of God, of saints, and those holy words had an effect on the shadowdemon; it shrank from her, and its eyes grew less bright, and the stench of its breath faded, and, mercifully, it rose from her, swooped up toward the ceiling, whirled away into a tenebrous corner of the room.
She sat up. Threw back the tangled covers. Scrambled to the edge of the bed. Reached for the nightstand lamp. Her hands were shaking. Her heart was hammering so hard that pain spread across her chest, and it seemed her breastbone would fracture.
She finally switched on the bedside lamp. No demon crouched in the room.
She turned on the other lamps, went into the bathroom.
The demon wasn't there, either.
But she knew it had been real, yes, terribly real, knew it wasn't just imagination or lunacy. Oh, yes. She knew. She knew the truth. She knew the awful truth-but what she didn't know was how she had gotten from the bathroom to the floor at the foot of the queen-size bed, where she next found herself. Apparently she had passed out in the bathroom and had crawled to the bed. But she couldn't remember anything. When she came to, she was naked, on her belly, weeping softly, clawing at the carpet.
Shocked, embarrassed, confused, she found her pajamas and pulled them on-and became aware of the serpent under the bed .
Hissing. It was the most wicked sound she had ever heard. It slithered out from beneath the bed, big as a boa constrictor, but with the supremely evil head of a rattlesnake, the multi-faceted eyes of an insect, and venom-dripping fangs as big as hooked fingers.
Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, this one spoke: "Your God cannot protect you any more. Your God has abandoned you.
She shook her head frantically: no, no, no, no!
With a sickening sinuos ity, it coiled itself. Its head reared up.
Its jaws fell open. It struck, biting her in the neck -and then, without knowing how she had come to be there, she found herself sitting, some time later, on a stool in front of the dresser mirror, staring into her own bloodshot, watery eyes. She shivered. Her eyes, even the flat reflection of them, contained something she didn't want to see, so she looked elsewhere in the mirror, at the reflection of her age-wrinkled throat, where she expected to find the mark of the serpent. There was no wound. Impossible. The mirror must be lying. She put one hand to her throat. She could not feel a wound, either. And she had no pain. The serpent hadn't bitten her, after all. Yet she remembered so clearly . . .
She noticed an ashtray in front of her. It was overflowing with cigarette butts. She was holding a smouldering cigarette in her right hand. She must have been sitting here an hour or more,
smoking constantly, staring into the mirror-yet she couldn't remember any of it. What was happening to her?
She stubbed out the cigarette she'd been holding and looked into the mirror again, and she was shocked. She seemed to see herself for the first time in years. She saw that her hair was wild, frizzy, tangled, unwashed. She saw how sunken her eyes were, ringed with crepe-like flesh that had an unhealthy purplish tint .
Her teeth, my God, they looked as if they hadn't been brushed in a couple of weeks; they were yellow, caked with plaque! In addition to banishing sleep, the Gift had driven many other things out of her life; she was aware of that. However, until now, she hadn't been so painfully aware that the Gift-the visions, the trances, the communications with spirits-had caused her to completely neglect personal hygiene. Her pajamas were spotted with food and cigarette ashes. She raised her hands and looked at them with amazement. Her fingernails were too long, chipped, dirty. There were traces of dirt in her knuckles.
She had always valued cleanliness, neatness.
What would her Albert say if he could see her now?
For one devastating moment, she wondered if her daughter had been correct in having her hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation. She wondered if she was not a visionary after all, not a genuine religious leader, but simply a disturbed old woman, senile, plagued by bizarre hallucinations and delusions, deranged. Was the Scavello boy really the Antichrist? Or just an innocent child? Was Twilight actually coming? Or was her fear of the devil only a foolish old woman's demented fantasy? She was suddenly, gut-twistingly sure that her "holy mission" was, in fact, merely the crusade of a pitiful schizophrenic.
No. She shook her head violently. No!
These despicable doubts were planted by Satan.
This was her Gethsemane. Jesus had endured an agony of doubt in the Garden of Gethsemane, near the brook of Kedron. Her Gethsemane was in a more humble location: a nondescript motel in Soleded, California. But it was every bit as important a turning point for her as Jesus's experience in the garden had been for Him.
She was being tested. She must hold on to her faith in both God and herself. She opened her eyes. Looked in the mirror again. She still saw madness in her eyes. No!
She picked up the ashtray and threw it at her reflection, smashing the mirror. Glass and cigarette butts rained over the dresser and the floor around it.
Immediately she felt better. The devil had been in the mirror .
She had smashed the glass and the devil's hold on her. Selfconfidence flooded into her once more.
She had a sacred mission.
She must not fail.
Charlie stopped at a motel shortly before midnight. They got one room with two king-size beds. He and Christine took turns sleeping. Although he was positive they couldn't have been followed, although he felt safer tonight than he had felt last night, he now believed that a watch must be kept at all times.
Joey slept fitfully, repeatedly waking from nightmares, shivering in a cold sweat. In the morning he looked paler than ever, and he spoke even less than before.
The rain had subsided to a light drizzle.
The sky was low, gray, bleak, and ominous.
After breakfast, when Charlie pointed the station wagon north again, toward Sacramento, Christine rode in the back seat with the boy. She read to him from some of the story books and comics they had bought yesterday. He listened but asked no questions, showed little interest, never smiled. She tried to engage him in a card game, but he didn't want to play.
&n
bsp; Charlie was increasingly worried about Joey, increasingly frustrated and angry, too. He had promised to protect them and put a stop to Spivey's harassment. Now all he could do for them was help them run, tails between their legs, toward an uncertain future.
Even Chewbacca seemed depressed. The dog lay in the cargo area behind the rear seat, rarely stirring, rising only a few times to look out one of the windows at the soot-colored day, then slumping back down, out of sight.
They arrived in Sacramento before ten o'clock in the morning,
located a large sporting goods store, and bought a lot of things they would need for the mountains: insulated sleeping bags in case the heating system in the cabin was not strong enough to completely compensate for winter's deep-freeze temperatures; rugged boots; ski suits-white for Joey, blue for Christine, green for Charlie; gloves; tinted goggles to guard against snowblindness; knitted toboggan caps; snowshoes; weatherproof matches in watertight cans; an ax; and a score of other items .
He also bought a Remington 30-gauge shotgun, and a Winchester Model 100 automatic rifle chambered for a .308 cartridge, which was a light but powerful weapon; he stocked up on plenty of ammunition, too.
He was sure Spivey wouldn't find them in the mountains .
Positive.
But just in case . . .
After a quick and early lunch at McDonalds, Charlie connected the electronic tap detector to a pay phone and called Henry Rankin .
The line wasn't bugged, and Henry didn't have much news. The Orange County and Los Angeles papers were still filled with stuff about the Church of the Twilight. The cops were still looking for Grace Spivey. They were still looking for Charlie, too, and they were getting impatient; they were beginning to suspect he hadn't turned himself in because he actually was guilty of the murder about which they wanted to question him. They couldn't understand that he was avoiding them because Spivey might have followers within the police department; they refused even to consider such a possibility. Meanwhile, Henry was busy getting the company back on its feet and was, for the time being, headquartering the agency in his own house. By tomorrow they would again be working fullsteam on the Spivey case.
At a service station, they used the rest rooms to change into the winter clothing they had purchased. The mountains were not far away.
In the Jeep wagon once more, Charlie headed east toward the Sierras, while Christine continued to sit in back, reading to Joey, talking to him, trying hard-but without much success-to draw him out of his shell.
The rain stopped.
The wind grew stronger.
Later, there were snow flurries.
Mother Grace rode in the Oldsmobile. Eight disciples followed in the two white vans. They were on Interstate 5 now, in the heart of California's farm country, passing between immense flat fields, where crops flourished even in the middle of winter.
Kyle Barlowe drove the Olds, now anxious and edgy, now bored and drowsy, sometimes oppressed by the tedium of the long drive and the rain-grayed landscape.
Although the church's sources of information-in various police departments and elsewhere-had no news about Joey Scavello and his mother, they headed north from Soleded because Grace said the boy and his protectors had gone that way. She claimed to have received a vision in the night.
Barlowe was pretty sure she'd had no vision and that she was just guessing. He knew her too well to be fooled. He understood her moods. If she'd really had a vision, she would be . . . euphoric. Instead, she was sullen, silent, grim. He suspected she was at a loss but didn't want to tell them that she was no longer in contact with the spirit world.
He was worried. If Grace had lost the ability to talk with God, if she could not journey to the other side to commune with angels and with the spirits of the dead, did that mean she was no longer God's chosen messenger? Did it mean that her mission no longer had His blessing? Or did it mean that the devil's power on earth had grown so dramatically that the Beast could interfere between Grace and God? If the latter were true, Twilight was very near, and the Antichrist would soon reveal himself, and a thousand-year reign of evil would begin.
He glanced at Grace. She was staring ahead, through the rain, at the arrow-straight highway, lost in thought. She looked older than she had last week. She had aged ten years in a few days. She seemed positively ancient. Her skin looked lifeless, brittle, gray.
Her face wasn't the only thing that was gray. All her clothes were gray, too. For reasons Barlowe didn't fully understand, she always dressed in a single color; he thought it had a religious significance, something to do with her visions, but he wasn't sure. He was accustomed to her monochromatic costumes, but this was the first time he had ever seen her in gray. Yellow, blue, fire-red, apple-red, blood-red, green, white, purple, violet, orange, pink, rose-yes, she had worn all of those, but always bright colors, never anything as somber as this.
She hadn't expected to dress in gray; this morning, aft er leaving the motel, they'd had to go shopping to buy her gray shoes, gray slacks, a gray blouse and sweater because she had owned no gray clothes. She had been in great distress, almost hysterical, until she'd changed into a completely gray outfit ." It's a gray day in the spirit world," she had said ." The energy is all gray. I'm not synchronized. I'm not in tune, not in touch. I've got to get in touch!" She had wanted jewelry, too, because she liked jewelry a lot, but it wasn't easy to find gray rings and bracelets and broaches. Most jewelry was bright. She'd finally had to settle for just a string of gray beads. Now it was odd to see her without a single ring on her pale, leathery hands.
A gray day in the spirit world.
What did that mean? Was that good or bad?
Judging from Grace's demeanor, it was bad. Very bad. Time was running out. That's what Grace had said this morning, but she hadn't been willing to elaborate. Time was running out, and they were lost, driving north on just a hunch.
He was scared. He still worried that it would be a terrible thing for him to kill anyone, that it would be backsliding into his old ways, even if he was doing it for God. He was proud of himself for resisting the violent impulses which he had once embraced, proud of the way he had begun to fit into society, just a little bit, and he was afraid that one murder would lead to another. Was it right to kill-even for God? He knew that was wrong-thought, but he couldn't shake it. And sometimes, when he looked at Grace, he had the unsettling notion that perhaps he had been wrong about her all along, that perhaps she wasn't God's agent-and that was more wrong-thought. The thing was . . . Grace had taught him that there were such things as
moral values, and now he could not avoid applying them to everything he did.
Anyway, if Grace was right about the boy-and surely she was-then time was running out, but there was nothin, to be done but drive, wait for her to regain contact with the spirit world, and call the church in Anaheim once in a while to learn if there was any news that might help.
Barlowe put his foot down a little harder on the accelerator .
They were already doing over seventy, which was maybe about as fast as they ought to push it in the rain, even on this long straight highway. But they were Chosen, weren't they? God was watching over them, wasn't He? Barlowe accelerated until the needle reached 80 on the speedometer. The two vans accelerated behind him, staying close.
The Jeep wagon was, as Madigan had promised, in fine shape .
It gave them no trouble at all, and they reached Lake Tahoe on Thursday afternoon.
Christine was weary, but Joey had perked up a bit. He was showing some interest in the passing scenery, and that was a welcome change. He didn't seem any happier, just more alert, and she realized that, until today, he had never seen snow before, except in magazine pictures, on TV, and in the movies .
There was plenty of snow in Tahoe, all right. The trees were crusted and burdened with it; the ground was mantled with it .
Fresh flurries sifted down from the steely sky, and according to the news on the radio, the flurries would build into
a major storm during the night.
The lake, which straddled the state line, was partly in California and partly in Nevada. On the California side of the town of South Lake Tahoe, there were a great many motels-some of them surprisingly shabby for such a lovely and relatively expensive resort area-lots of touristy shops and liquor stores and restaurants. On the Nevada side, there were several large hotels,
casinos, gambling in just about every form, but not as much glitz as in Las Vegas. Along the northern shore, there was less development, and the man-made structures were better integrated with the land than they were along the southern shore .
On both sides of the border, and both in the north and south, there was some of the most beautiful scenery on the face of the earth, what many Europeans have called "America's Switzerland": snow-capped peaks that were dazzling even on a cloudy day; vast, primeval forests of pine, fir, spruce, and other evergreens; a lake that, in its ice-free summer phase, was the cleanest, clearest, and most colorful in the world, iridescent blues and glowing greens, a lake so pure you could see the bottom as far as sixty and eighty feet down.
They stopped at a market on the north shore, a large but rustic building shadowed by tamarack and spruce. They still had most of the groceries they'd bought in Santa Barbara yesterday, the stuff they'd never had a chance to put in the refrigerator and cupboards at the Wile-Away Lodge. They'd disposed of the perishables, of course, and that was what they stocked up on now: milk, eggs, cheese, ice cream, and frozen foods of all kinds.
At Charlie's request, the cashier packed the frozen food in a sturdy cardboard box with a lid, separate from the goods that were not frozen. In the parking lot, Charlie carefully poked a few holes in the box. He had purchased nylon clothesline in the market, and with Christine's assistance, he threaded the rope through the holes and looped it around the box and secured it to the luggage rack on top of the Jeep. The temperature was below freezing; nothing carried on the roof would thaw on the way to the cabin.
As they worked (with Chewbacca watching interestedly from inside the Jeep), Christine noticed that a lot of the cars in the market lot were fitted with ski racks. She had always wanted to learn to ski. She often promised herself that she would take lessons with Joey one day, the two of them beginning and learning together, just as soon as he seemed old enough. It would have been fun. Now it was probably just one more thing they would never get to do together . . .
Dean Koontz - (1984) Page 27