“You win, priest,” he said, then shouted to his men, “Shoot them all!”
With a snap, the soldiers brought their rifles up. The villagers screamed and wailed against the wall.
“Wait!” Merrin shouted.
The soldiers paused. Kessel looked at Merrin expectantly. The street fell absolutely silent.
Hear me…hear me, O…O Lord…
Nothing came to him. No ideas. No words. No alternatives. Save one.
Hands shaking like leaves in a storm, Merrin raised an arm to point. “Joost Harmensz.”
Joost looked at him in shock. Merrin’s throat closed. One of the soldiers stepped forward to pull the man from the crowd, but Kessel halted him with a gesture.
“Too late, Father,” he said. “You had your chance. Kill them all!”
Inside Merrin something broke. He flung himself down in front of Kessel, his wet robe flapping like heavy wings. “No!” he begged. “Please! Take Joost! And him—Klaus Briejer. And Erica van Hout!”
A cold wind whirled up the street, scattering droplets and rustling Merrin’s black robes. Kessel smiled down at him. “Good, Father. Good.”
Soldiers dragged the people Merrin had indicated from the ranks of the villagers and forced them to their knees in a line. Three shots cracked through the air and they fell to the ground.
“Seven more,” Kessel said with a smile. “Who shall be next?”
And Father Lankester Merrin raised his arm to point.
Sarah sat upright in bed. Footsteps and low voices were coming from the clinic. She yanked on some clothes, dashed down the hallway, and stopped dead in the clinic doorway. A crowd of ghosts, white and spectral, surrounded Joseph’s bed. Then she caught sight of Emekwi standing among them, and the scene snapped into clearer focus. She was looking at four Turkana warriors, dressed in nothing but loincloths, their bodies covered in white clay. A fifth Turkana, older than the rest, carried a covered basket and a rattle made of antelope hooves tied loosely together at the end of a heavy stick. The warriors were tying Joseph’s wrists and ankles to the bed. The older man—clearly a shaman—shook the rattle over Joseph, who was staring upward, his eyes vague and cloudy. Weepy lesions covered the boy’s face and neck. Tears ran down Emekwi’s face.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“What are you doing?” Sarah demanded. “That’s my patient!”
The men ignored her. The shaman set the rattle down and drew a wicked-looking knife from the basket.
“No!” Sarah screamed, and charged. Two sets of rough hands grabbed her up and hoisted her away, kicking and snarling. For a horrible moment, Sarah was back in the camp at Chelmno, with the guards snatching at her, tossing her around like a broken toy. She twisted and spat and fought with hysterical strength, but the guards—the warriors—were stronger. The shaman raised the knife over Joseph’s chest. The boy began to shudder and shake. The hanging lamps dimmed and their chimneys rattled. The shaman’s knife flicked downward.
“No!” Sarah screamed again. But the shaman only slashed open Joseph’s pajamas, leaving behind a long, thin cut on the boy’s chest. It oozed blood. The shaman set the knife aside and took a clay jar from the basket. Using wooden tongs, he plucked several small black objects from the jar and laid them along the cut on Joseph’s chest.
Sarah realized they were leeches. They clamped down on Joseph’s skin. She swore she could hear sucking sounds. Sarah lost what little composure she had left, and with a shriek of fear and rage, she fought against the warriors holding her back. Then she felt cold metal at her neck. One of the warriors held a knife against her throat, the threat clear even without words. Sarah went absolutely still. The shaman picked up the knife and rattle again.
Emekwi abruptly bolted for the door, his face twisted with conflicting emotions. He fled into the night with a choked sob. Sarah, still held captive by the knife, had no such choice. She watched in cold horror as the shaman began a low chant. He rattled the antelope hooves over Joseph with one hand and raised the knife with the other.
Will Francis wandered aimlessly about Derati, heading more or less in the direction of the hospital. Maybe he’d drop in on Dr. Novack for a little conversation.
He rounded the corner just in time to see Emekwi flee the hospital, a horror-stricken look on his face. The man was clearly in horrible distress. What on earth…?
“Emekwi?” Will said.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Emekwi said hoarsely. “Forgive me.” He was gone before Will could respond. Then he heard screams from the hospital.
Sarah could see that the shaman’s next blow was intended to go straight to Joseph’s heart. His convulsions shook the bed. The lamp flames danced and flickered madly. One of the warriors grabbed Joseph’s arm in an attempt to hold him still.
Snap.
The warrior holding Joseph looked down in confusion, then shock and pain. His index finger had bent backward until the bone had broken. Even as he stared at his hand, his middle finger twitched. The warrior’s breathing grew rapid as he tried to fight whatever force was working on his hand. His fourth and fifth fingers began to bend as well. Sarah watched in horrified fascination as the fingers bent inexorably backward. The warrior screamed.
Snap snap snap.
The shaman shouted something in Turkana and brought the knife down. The bones in his wrist and forearm shattered and his arm twisted sideways at a gruesome angle. The knife clattered to the floor.
Sarah was vaguely aware of Father Francis bursting into the room as the place erupted into mayhem. The injured warrior and the shaman howled in agony. The left leg of another warrior bent backward at the knee and shattered with a hideous wet splintering noise. Overhead the lamps flickered like strobe lights, making shadows dance and gibber in the corners.
Snap snap snap.
Sarah lost track of whose bones bent and broke. The warriors and the shaman scrambled away from the bed, helping their more injured compatriots, all of whom were screaming. Sarah was flung to the ground. Blood ran from their wounds, and Sarah caught glimpses of yellow-white bone. The bed shook and pounded against the floor. Francis tried to reach the bed, but was knocked back by an unseen force. He slammed into the wall. The warriors and the shaman got to the front door and fled into the night.
Instantly the room went still. The bed stopped moving, and the kerosene lamps cast a serene yellow glow. Silence rang through the room. Sarah pushed herself upright, then staggered to her feet. Father Francis pulled himself to a standing position. A bruise was already forming on his cheek. Sarah stumbled over to the bed and fumbled with the ropes that restrained Joseph’s hands. His lesions leaked thick, bubbly fluid. Francis ran over and grabbed her wrist.
“Don’t!” he cried.
“Get off me!” Sarah shoved him away, but he came right back.
“Sarah, no!” He grabbed her wrist again, and she fought back, this time with more success. Francis didn’t retreat. “Sarah, stop! The boy’s dangerous! Didn’t you see?”
“I don’t know what I saw,” Sarah said stubbornly.
“Yes, you do,” he insisted. “He crippled all those men. Could a child have done that? Could anything human have done that? The devil’s responsible, Sarah. He’s possessed Joseph.”
His words made Sarah laugh, though the sound came out edged and harsh. “Possession? No. There must be another…another explanation for…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Her head was filled instead with images of bending fingers and breaking bone, of bloody trails and shaking beds. It was ridiculous! Stories of demonic possession were just that—stories. No one seriously believed in such things. Freud and those who came after him had proven that simple hysteria was the root cause of so-called curses and possessions. Sarah’s unexpected bleeding could probably be traced to some sort of post-stress reaction. Again—hysteria.
Except hysteria wouldn’t cause bone to bend and break. Hysteria wouldn’t cause the lights to flicker or the bed to jump. Hyste
ria wouldn’t cause the hyenas to ignore Joseph while they devoured James.
“He needs an exorcism, Sarah,” Francis said. “To cast out the devil with the power of God.”
“Then why don’t you do one?” Sarah asked. Her tone was snide, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. The scientist in her was still trying to wrap itself around this both obvious and ridiculous idea.
“Because I can’t do it alone,” Francis replied.
“Get Lankester, then.”
“He’s too far from God. He won’t listen.”
“ ‘He’ who? Lankester or God?”
Francis didn’t answer.
“Dammit, Francis,” Sarah snarled, “what happened to him in the War?”
The door slammed open. Sarah jumped, expecting more warriors or strange phenomena. But it was Lankester Merrin, disheveled and sweaty and covered with dirt. Behind him outside, the sky was lightening with the dawn.
“They’re empty!” he growled.
“What—?” Francis said.
Before Sarah or Francis could react, Merrin charged across the room, grabbed Francis by the shirt, and shoved him through the doorway, hard. Francis stumbled outside, grunting in surprise. Merrin followed, grabbed him again, and shoved him against the wall. Sarah rushed outside, face pale.
“I dug up three graves, and the coffins were all empty!” Merrin pulled Francis forward and slammed him against the wall again.
“Lankester, no!” Sarah shouted. “What are you doing?”
Merrin didn’t listen. “What happened here?” he hissed through clenched teeth.
Francis strained to get his bearings. “I don’t know—”
Merrin slammed him a second time. “Yes, you do! You’ve been lying to me since we got here!”
“Let go of me,” Francis said, rallying.
A third slam. This time the priest’s head cracked against the wood and he groaned in pain. “Don’t keep up the charade, you bastard! It’s all a farce. The Turkana burn their dead, but there are crosses on the graves—on the coffins. That means the Church buried them, didn’t it? Didn’t it?” He gave Francis a shake.
“Lankester—” Sarah began again.
“Yes,” Francis said.
“What?” Sarah said.
“Yes,” Francis repeated. “It’s true. The Church ordered empty coffins to be buried in false graves.”
Merrin didn’t let go. “Why? What were they hiding?”
“That this place is damned,” Francis said simply.
“Don’t give me that,” Merrin barked. “It’s a line of—”
“No!” Francis interrupted sharply. “You asked the question, you’re going to listen to the answer. There was a massacre here. Fifteen hundred years ago. A Byzantine army led by two priests was searching for the source of a powerful evil. They found it here, in this place. They tried to fight it, contain it, but the evil devoured them, twisting their thoughts. They enslaved the natives and forced them to build the lower temple, and there they performed blood rites and sacrifices. The Byzantines thought they were imprisoning the evil, but they were feeding it instead. Eventually the priests, natives, and soldiers turned against each other in a fury of blood that only a single priest survived. When he heard of the carnage, Emperor Justinian ordered a new church built over the site, then buried in order to seal the evil inside. All mention of it was to be stricken from the history texts forever.”
“But it wasn’t,” Merrin stated.
“No,” Francis said. “Fifty years ago, a Vatican researcher found an ancient letter in the archives. Four priests came to examine the site, enlisting the people of this valley in their search. And they all disappeared.”
“Where did they go?” Sarah asked, not sure if she felt more fascinated than ill.
“No one knows. The Vatican ordered a cover-up. The false graveyard. The tale of a plague to scare people away.”
“But then there was the gold rush, which brought people back. And then the British stumbled across the church,” Merrin said. Sarah noticed he hadn’t relaxed his grip on Francis.
“Yes. And I was sent here to see if the legend was…real.”
“What legend?” Merrin’s teeth were clenched again.
“That after the war in heaven…” Francis’s voice trailed to a whisper. “…this is the place where Lucifer fell to earth.”
A pause, and Merrin released Francis so abruptly that the other man lost his balance for a moment. Merrin turned his face away and made a strangled sound. Sarah couldn’t tell if it was a laugh or a cry. In his bed, Joseph stared emptily at the ceiling.
Francis put a hand on Merrin’s shoulder. “God brought you here, Lankester,” he said.
Merrin shook him off. “Leave me alone.”
“No. The devil is here,” Francis insisted. “Inside that boy. The Turkana know it. They came to drive the devil from him, and he almost killed them. You can’t run from this. You must help me.”
“I can’t,” Merrin said in a broken voice.
“But surely you have to believe—”
Merrin rounded on him. “I believe in nothing.”
The two men stared at each other for a long moment. At last Francis gave a sad and heavy sigh. “Then I have no more use for you,” he said, and went back inside the hospital.
Sarah shot a glance at Merrin, but he didn’t meet her eyes and looked away instead. Deafening silence gave way to the sound of an engine. Chuma pulled up to them in his jeep.
“They’ve found Jefferies,” he said.
Eleven
Archaeological survey site, British East Africa
The cruel people are consumed on the celebration day.
—Kenyan proverb
THE SUN WAS AT ITS STRONGEST by the time Merrin and Chuma reached the dig site. Soldiers swarmed over the place like army ants. They had apparently dug through the night and cleared the area around the church’s main doors. The archaeologist in Merrin was furious—who knew how much information they had destroyed with their picks and shovels? Leaping from the jeep the moment Chuma braked, he sprinted over the rocky ground toward the newly uncovered building. Someone had poured a liquid—mineral oil?—on the stone hinges, and Major Granville himself was thrusting an enormous crowbar into the crack between the great doors. A contingent of soldiers stood nearby, looking angry and alert.
“Major!” Merrin shouted. “Wait!”
“I will do no such thing,” Granville snapped, and heaved on the bar. He encountered a moment of resistance, then the doors groaned open.
A cloud of flies boiled out of the church. Merrin and the others shielded their faces, and the insects buzzed angrily before dispersing in the light breeze. Granville started inside, but Merrin seized his arm.
“What’s going on, Major?” Merrin demanded.
“One of my men took a little climb down your rope ladder last night on a dare, Mr. Merrin,” Granville said. “He told me what he found.”
“Why didn’t anyone notify me?”
“We couldn’t find you, Mr. Merrin,” Granville said. He wrenched his arm from Merrin’s grip and strode into the church.
Daylight flooded the building from the open doors. More flies gathered in a buzzing chorus. A terrible stench made Merrin gag. He followed the major deeper into the church, the soldiers right behind him. Granville got midway up the main aisle and sucked in a great breath. Merrin halted and stared.
Caught in the spotlight of the open dome was the corpse of Trenton Jefferies. It was strung up between Michael statues like a gory ornament on a line of Christmas tinsel. At first glance Jefferies appeared to have wings of his own, but Merrin saw the skin of the man’s back had been flayed and peeled outward to create the effect. He also looked to have a white tail. It was his broken spine, dangling between his legs. Bits of rib still poked out from it. Jefferies’s face was a cratered ruin.
Granville staggered backward. A soldier threw up, and Merrin’s own gorge rose. He swallowed hard.
“Moth
er of God,” Granville whispered. Then he recovered himself. “Get him down!”
None of the soldiers moved, except the one who was retching. They were frozen by the sight.
“Get him down!” the major barked, and this time the soldiers moved. Their efforts were hampered when they discovered the material that held Jefferies strung between the statues was a long loop of his own bowel. The skin wings collapsed into a sloppy pile.
Granville’s head jerked around. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Merrin asked.
“I thought I heard—There it is again.”
Merrin listened. The only sound was the muted conversation of the soldiers and the wet rustling noises they created in cutting down Jefferies’s corpse. “Major—”
Granville’s head jerked around again. His breathing came quick and shallow. He reached out a shaking hand into the shadows, as if he were straining to touch something. Concerned, Merrin stepped closer to him.
“Major, are you—”
Granville snapped to himself. His breathing returned to normal and his hand stopped shaking. “Savages,” he whispered. “Bloody savages.”
“Sorry?” Merrin said, but Granville was already striding out of the church and into the hot, harsh sunlight. Merrin looked around the church again, trying to understand what had just happened. Who had brought Jefferies down here and done this to him? And why? Jefferies was far from the best of men, but even he didn’t deserve this kind of treatment.
Then the meaning behind Granville’s comment penetrated Merrin’s mind. He spun and ran from the church. Outside he found Granville a short distance from the site. He was striding toward a group of Turkana with a hurried, unsteady gait. Jomo, spear in hand, moved to the front of the group as the major stopped in front of him.
“Savages,” Granville repeated with rising intensity. “Bloody savages!”
“Major!” Merrin shouted, still running. “No!”
Before anyone could react further, Granville yanked his sidearm from its holster and shot the warrior leader in the face. The bullet exploded out the back of his head and sprayed the men behind him with blood. Jomo dropped like a butchered bull. Merrin was only aware that he was running and screaming at the same time with a troop of soldiers right behind him. Granville was moving away, waving his pistol. Two opportunistic flies had already alighted on the steaming ruin of Jomo’s head.
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