This was no miracle.
It was a dumb show, a gaudy deception. Instinct told him it had something to do with the demonic presence Father Mosely had battled in the church.
Yes, this too was a manifestation of evil. Real. Tangible. Deadly and absolutely corrupt. Sullivan watched evil operating before his disbelieving eyes. In all his life, nothing had prepared him for anything like this. No one ever told him he'd someday meet evil face-to-face.
He took a deep breath, trying to focus his thoughts. Was he the only one who recognized this malignancy for what it was? Was he the only one who could fight it?
Sullivan's heart pounded like a frenzied fist. So this is what it's all about. This is the culmination of a lifetime in the priesthood. This is the battle for which we all prepare, but so few of us undertake. Today is the day I've been training for all my life.
But he had one more piece of information to gather before he launched any sort of an attack. Almost immobile in the clutch of mounting terror, Father Sullivan once more turned his gaze to the last locked door in the farmhouse kitchen.
Karen stopped in the middle of the dooryard when she saw Alton Barnes leave the house. He carried something bulky in his arms. Thank God he was all right!
He ran down the steps toward her, making no attempt to conceal himself as she hurried to meet him.
"Father Sullivan's okay," he blurted as soon as he was within hearing distance. "He's gonna keep an eye on Jeff and Casey. Come on, miss, we're gettin' out of here. We gotta get this girl to the hospital and we gotta call the police."
Karen fell in step behind him, rushing toward Alton's car. "Who's this?" Karen asked.
"Some kid we found in the house. Something awful's happened to her. We gotta get her to a doctor."
"Is she all right? Hold on a minute, let me have a look."
"I'm not so sure you wanna, miss."
Without pausing, Alton hugged the child tightly and hurried on his way.
From the doorway of the dark bedroom, Father Sullivan studied the nearly invisible form on the bed. It didn't move; there was no sound of breathing. Was this another murder victim like those in the kitchen?
Holding his breath, he stepped closer, sensing a rapid temperature change. odd, it was so much colder in the bedroom. When he finally inhaled, the air was ripe with a feculent odor. The body on the bed must be a corpse; had to be.
Squinting into the gloom, Sullivan stepped slowly to the foot of the bed. The corpse was a spidery old man lying beneath a sheet. His skin appeared brown, leathery. His face and upper body were crisscrossed with deep wrinkles like bloodless cuts.
Sullivan was about to utter a prayer when something moved!
The head turned almost invisibly on the pillow. One eye opened. Just a bit. It seemed to glow in the shadow-shrouded face.
And there was a whispered growl, "Father Sullivan, pray for me." Then a wheezing chuckle.
Sullivan's muscles locked. Somehow the voice sounded vaguely familiar.
"Come in, William, I've been waiting for you."
He stepped closer, walking along the side of the bed. It was too dark to recognize the man beneath the sheet.
He realized his flashlight was in his hand, but it was off. When he pushed the switch nothing happened.
The air became fouler with each step. He swallowed rapidly, an effort to short-circuit his reflex to vomit.
As he neared the reclining man, he experienced a sensation of inexplicable dread, as if he had touched something completely unclean and totally unhuman. The feeling rippled in nauseating waves through his stomach. His hands shook; his legs felt weak. It was nearly impossible to find his voice. "W-who is it?" he asked tentatively. "Do I know you?"
The voice came from far away. "You will recognize me, but you do not know me." A hint of delicate laughter rumbled from the dark man in the bed. "Strike a match. William. I'm best seen in firelight."
The cold sting of rain had stopped. Jeff's skin tingled as he looked up. The thing was directly overhead.
He squinted needlessly against light that did not hurt his eyes. As he watched, every muscle tensed; his blood froze in his veins. His own voice spoke clearly in his mind, Hold on, don't move, don't panic.
In spite of numbing cold and damp discomfort, a feeling of misplaced tranquility passed through him. It was akin to the relaxing sensation of sinking slowly into a warm pool.
Still staring, the light seemed different now!
Though it had not changed, perhaps he had: his vision had improved, his mind seemed oddly sharper. It was as if he were not looking at a thing at all, but at a lighted emptiness, an illuminated passageway. He saw a bright tunnel that ran, not through earth and rock, but through time and space, and on to an infinitely distant world.
Jeff might have closed his eyes, basked in that tranquilizing light, but his mind said, No! Don't buy it; you're not thinking clearly. Hold back. Look away.
But he could not look away.
All the while, in some barely functioning pocket of rational consciousness, Jeff knew the hypnotic thing in the air was soothing him, influencing his thoughts as it was influencing those around him. He fought, trying to concentrate, trying to understand, to analyze. Resist, he told himself. Resist.
Images from his research moved in and out of focus. He recalled that bright tunnel of light sometimes perceived by dying people. He remembered their reports that a comforting contentment beckoned from the unseen end of the luminous passageway. It lulled them with infinite gentility until they were called back, rudely, only to waken with a profound sense of peace and no more fear of death . . .
Don't move. Hold on.
Jeff imagined the circular hole in the sky that Alton Barnes had described, a hole through which his friend Stuart had been pulled, kicking and screaming. . . .
Don't move. Don't speak.
And there were the lights, the fiery globes that had zipped through the skies since before the time of Ezekiel, continuing their celestial light show unabated until . . . tonight . . . when the air above Hobston was thick with them.
Spacecraft? Witchcraft? The glowing eyes of demons peering hungrily from the heavens?
If he stared long enough, he knew, the light would pull him to it and he would understand everything.
Hold on. Please. Don't let go.
Sullivan patted the pockets of his jacket and pants until he found a butane lighter. He flicked it on. Light flared. His hand trembled and he almost dropped it. "N-no. Oh no! This is impossible."
The chuckle again.
"Impossible, William? Hardly. Even if you were exceptionally dull-witted, the events of today would have taught you that nothing is. impossible. You do recognize me, don't you, son?"
Son? The word was uttered with a chilling contempt.
Orange light played on the man's face as Sullivan stared aghast. The butane lighter grew strangely heavy, as if every reserve of strength had drained from him.
"F-Father Mosely! You're . . . you're . . . But. . . what's happened to you?"
He could step no closer to the old priest.
Pencil-thin lips twisted into a tight smile exposing gray toothless gums. The eyes were beady dots, glistening black marbles embedded in wrinkled sockets. The pale skin of the forehead stretched tightly, transforming the old man's face into a grinning skull.
Sullivan let the flame go out. Oddly, he could still see clearly in the dark bedroom. Shadowy shapes of wooden furniture—chairs, bureaus, benches—stood like alien watchmen at the periphery of the room. A round mirror above a vanity was covered with a dark blanket.
"I've waited a long time for this day. William."
Sullivan stared dumbly, trying to blink away the strangeness. "I grow stronger . . . stronger."
Father Mosely had awakened from a decade-long coma but he had changed. Though recognizable, something essential about him had . . . altered.
"Strength comes and the power grows . . ." he whispered.
Beneath the folds
of the lightweight sheet, the delicate outline of his twisted limbs completed the image of a living skeleton.
Whatever he was sensing, Father Sullivan knew this was unnatural. Maybe ungodly. He lacked the joy he should feel as he stared into the aged eyes of his beloved friend. "Y-you know what's going on here, don't you, Father Mosely. You know what . . . all this is about." Sullivan took a step closer.
"Of course. And each of us has a role to play. I know that, too; I wrote the parts long before you were born."
Something slipped; it heaved and shifted in Sullivan's mind. Bombarded with an infinity of impossibilities, how could anything ever again strike him as strange? But this, this was truth. This was reality. And it was flexing. Contorting. Changing shape before he could understand any of it.
As Sullivan wrestled with this deviant reality, fragments of his body and his mind responded in unfamiliar ways to alien sensations. He was in the presence of something totally foreign, something otherworldly, cunning, and profoundly evil.
In his jacket pocket, Sullivan's hand tightened around Alton Barnes's revolver.
McCurdy's sing song sermon droned in Jeff's ears, disrupting his euphoria1 like the howling of a dog. "Now you'll see that the Light is good and true. Now you'll see what it has to offer. Now you'll see a miracle of the Lord!"
As the crowd looked on, Jeff witnessed fear and wonder in a dozen upturned faces.
"Look at that!" somebody cried.
"Oh, it's so beautiful!"
The fascinating unreality that held him began to loosen its hypnotic grip as the one-hundred-foot expanse of light began to shrink, to draw itself together. Jeff watched its circumference pulling toward its middle, contracting like a gargantuan amoeba wriggling in the sky. It became smaller, brighter, like a spotlight adjusted to a crisp, sharp focus.
"This girl cannot walk!" McCurdy screamed, crossing the ground directly toward Casey. "Just look at her!" He waved his hand at Casey, as if she were an exhibit in a courtroom. "For years she has been paralyzed from the waist down. See there; her legs are as useless as empty sleeves.
"But in the Light she can walk! She can stand and walk and do the work of the Lord. Help me. Pray with me! Let the Light that heals perform its holy work!"
McCurdy reached out for her—
"Nooo!" Casey cried, turning terrified eyes toward Jeff.
—and grabbed her under the arms. Seemingly weightless in his hands, McCurdy snatched her from the wheelchair. "You don't need this mechanical abomination," he said, spinning her away from the chair toward the open mouthed spectators. "God gave you those legs to walk."
Casey's legs dangled like ribbons, her toes skimming the ground.
"Pray with me now," McCurdy bellowed. "Everyone, pray to the Light. Give this girl the strength she needs to do Your holy work. Let the Light shine and strengthen. Let it return the warmth to these cold and useless limbs."
"Daaad! Help me!"
Jeff couldn't move. Fear of that horrid light held him immobile. Even the screams of his daughter could not animate him. It was he who was paralyzed. Helpless. Useless.
"Let Your warmth fill these dead limbs! Walk now. Arise and walk!"
McCurdy let go of her and she collapsed to the ground like a wet rag. Casey hid her face in her arms; her body quaked with silent sobbing.
"Up now, girl! On your feet. Be cured! Do as the Light commands!"
You're crazy, McCurdy. You're crazy as hell! Jeff couldn't push the words out. All he could do was stand there, a brainless scarecrow, watching his daughter suffer relentless humiliation at the hands of a madman.
"Stand up and walk. Now. Up. Do as I tell you, you weak ungrateful child."
"I can't."
"You cart, damn it. You can!" Veins bulged like blue blisters on McCurdy's forehead. His cheeks burned livid red. Tufts of red hair shot out from his scalp as if they were electrified.
Quickly, like slides on a screen, Sullivan's years in the priesthood flashed through his mind. He searched his memory for some point of reference, some precedent, some particle of information to help him analyze what he was experiencing in this simple farmhouse bedroom.
He wanted an explanation beyond the obvious, the one he was trying to deny.
If this was not a demon, what could it be?
Over the years he had fought evil on many battlegrounds: in the classroom, in the confessional, and in the comfortable chairs of his consulting room. More recently he'd fought it from the altar of St. Joseph's Church. And long ago, in the military, he'd witnessed firsthand the damage evil can do. He'd seen the scars it left in the form of hollow-eyed skeletons stumbling, liberated, from among piles of stinking corpses at Nazi concentration camps. Then, and ever after, he'd known the enemy.
But, now, in this room, he realized he had been mistaken. He had not been fighting evil itself, only the product of evil. The weapons he'd used—intellect, knowledge, and faith—were useless to him now.
He shuddered, and the motion shook him like an earthquake. He hoped his fear did not show. Yet somehow he knew that the man on the bed saw everything, and sensed what he did not see.
Invisibly, Sullivan released the gun. It would not protect him. This unholy presence filled the room; it was not confined to the fragile figure on the bed.
The ancient body laughed. It was a muted, sharp-edged sound, the product of unpracticed lungs.
Until this moment, Sullivan had spent his life and career without looking evil in the face. He—and most of his colleagues—had squandered their years preparing to fight an enemy most would never meet. How many truly believed there could be such an enemy? And if they'd known, how many would have continued in the priesthood?
Most of Sullivan's colleagues would snigger at the idea they might one day come face-to-face with Satan. But all would laugh at the suggestion there could be something far worse than the Devil.
"You're not Father Mosely," Sullivan whispered. "W-who are you?"
Again Sullivan endured that low, growling chuckle as it corrupted the darkness. "Who am I, Father Sullivan? I thought you were beginning to understand." The thin-lipped smile was the sneer of a serpent. "Look at me. Do you see nothing at all? Am I not the soul of those who died at Salem? The death cry of all who perished in Torquemada's fire? The stain of blood spilled by the swords of Christian crusaders?
"No?
"Then I am a whisper in Jeanne d'Arc's ear. A homeless child asleep against the walls of the Vatican. The terror-prodded pittance tithed to televised salvation."
The creature laughed and his words took on speed. "I am the bite of the Spaniard's lash. An Indian's blistered back, the poison cup of the holy power-seeker, the ash of the banned and burning book. I am all hypocrisy and lies. I am all good Christian works done in the name of God and in the celebration of Satan.
"Arid I grow stronger as we speak. With each death my power grows."
Sullivan felt feverish. Hot bolts of terror seared through him. Again his clumsy, sweat-slick fingers fumbled inside his pocket. This time he was not looking for the gun. This time he groped for his rosary.
For now he understood: Father Mosely's demon—or whatever this obscenity was—had won. It had possessed the old man completely, lived within him for a decade, dormant, infinitely patient, waiting for whatever evil rite would set it free.
And Sullivan grappled for the only weapon that might save him. Even as his fist closed around the rosary beads, part of him rejected what was undeniably happening. He wanted to turn and run from the unearthly atmosphere in the dark, cold, foul-smelling bedroom.
Possession was not the conceit of medieval demonologists. The Church still trained exorcists. And, rarely, the exorcists were called upon to challenge the fiend. Within the last year New York's Cardinal O'Connor had authorized at least three exorcisms. Three out of how many possessions?
But if this were not a demon . . . ? If this were something else, something impervious to the Church's holy arsenal . . . ?
No! He had to cont
rol himself. He had to remember that whatever evil this was, it was his responsibility to oppose it. He had to fight it, fight the only way he knew how.
The beads were in his fist.
Mere human power, he knew, was always useless against the preternatural. To challenge a demon without divine aid would be to invite personal disaster.
Sullivan removed his fist from his pocket. He extended his arm toward Mosely, let the rosary dangle from his thumb and forefinger. "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to identify yourself."
The old man pulled back, sucking air with a wheezing snarl. Turning his head away from the swinging crucifix, a frightened look distorted the time-scarred face. But Sullivan immediately realized the reaction was insincere, an expression of mock-terror. The demonic Impostor laughed again. "We have taught you to defy us with your baubles and trinkets. Now I'll show you how completely you've been deceived. Now you'll see the folly of worshiping your humiliated god on his popsicle stick."
The dangling silver crucifix twitched in Sullivan's hand. It leapt, tugged, coiled around his right wrist like a metallic snake. Stumbling backward, Sullivan reached out with his left hand to untangle himself. The chain of beads flexed again. It jumped, twisted, curled itself around both wrists, binding him as if he were handcuffed. He struggled, knowing that to free himself he would have to destroy the sacred beads.
Evil laughed.
"Your symbol is now my symbol, William. And we are presented with an interesting paradox, don't you think? You are bound by your beliefs, aren't you? Would you destroy your precious symbol of good to escape the proximity of evil? Would you burn your church to save your parishioners? Would you press the button to demolish this world for the promise of a better world to come?"
The shackles tightened. Sharp-edged beads nipped at his wrists. "Let's talk, William, shall we?"
A cane-backed chair from the corner scraped noisily across the floor and stopped behind the struggling priest.
"Sit down, why don't you?"
The Reality Conspiracy Page 40