"Please," Grant said, restraining her arm. He wore a light plaid shirt and dark pants, and his spectacles twinkled in the glare from the skylights. "Let's not tumble again. I'm still sore from our last encounter."
Audrey relaxed, and pulled away from the librarian's grasp. He had done it again, she thought. Crept up on them without the slightest notice.
"Please sit down," Grant said, extending a hand to the nearest table and chair. "I'm risking more than you can imagine by this meeting. You can make it up to me by listening attentively."
Nick was all too happy to oblige the request. He took the closest chair and sat with a heavy sigh. Audrey slowly took a seat beside him, crossing her legs.
"I imagine," said Grant, sticking his hands in his pockets as he stood before them, "That you have some questions. About me, about this town."
"About last night," Nick grumbled.
Grant made a coughing sound and began to pace. "Yes, of course." He stopped and fixed them both with a curious stare. "What do you think happened, Mr. Murphy?"
Nick peered over the edge of the dark-rimmed sunglasses. "Your Reverend messed me up."
Grant clapped his hands. "Excellent. At least I don't have to convince you of the source of your problems. He's not really the source, though. More like the catalyst. You were the source. You were very fortunate to pull through; I'm glad to see you're a fighter. No one else could have done it. In fact, no one else has ever escaped on their own after the ceremony."
Audrey blinked. "Ceremony?"
"That's the official name for what the Reverend does. At the services he will lay his bare hands on someone's forehead, part of a ritual to absolve sins. But it could be any touch – even a handshake. That night, or immediately – depending on the Reverend's plans – the individual touched will come face to face with what he or she has perceived as a past transgression." He lowered his eyes. "And usually, it's a doozy of a transgression. The worst thing you've ever done. And somehow it will actually take shape, relentlessly haunting and tormenting you until you break down and go begging the Reverend for redemption."
Grant watched them closely. "And then comes the coup de grace. Another touch and the manifestation is withdrawn. The Reverend banishes it for good, and you perceive that he has just cleansed your soul. As you can imagine, the person is overcome with a sense of newfound freedom and of course, gratitude and devotion to the one responsible for that salvation." He sighed. "This week saw the program's first casualty. Doug Jacobs hanged himself before the second touch."
"I think I know how he felt," Nick said. "The absolute horror... it's just too much. Maybe this trick is fine for shoplifting or cursing, but when the stakes are higher, I think the mind snaps before making the rational decision." Nick whistled softly and looked at Audrey. "Well, now we know how he maintains such a hold on everyone in this town. He scares them to death, then takes the fright away."
"Correct again," Grant said. "He's got Silver Springs in a stranglehold. He's feared and loved simultaneously."
"But how?" Audrey asked. "What is this power? Mind games? Hypnosis?"
Grant laughed. "Unfortunately, no. And it's not divinely-granted, in case you were wondering. Although Zachary has convinced himself that it is. He's sure he's doing the Lord's work. His religious devotion has proven a blessing and a curse; the former because he only uses the power through a strainer of religion; all other possibilities are ignored. And that is to our benefit. The good Reverend doesn't realize the extent of his capabilities."
"Which are?" Nick asked, beginning to sweat.
Grant raised a hand. "In time. First, how are you feeling?"
Nick shrugged. "Like shit, I guess you could say."
Smiling, Grant nodded. "Good. The water acts on your nervous system first and usually results in painful migraines. It will pass."
"Water?" Audrey asked. "You wanted him to drink a lot. What's in the water?"
Nick cleared his throat. "Spring water. Stan said I was on a different system than the town. I get my water from springs underground." He searched Grant's features for a hint to the mystery. "Is it dangerous?"
"Not at all, my boy." Grant smiled and thought for a moment. "Didn't your mother ever make you have lots of vitamin C in the winter? Orange juice, fruit, pills? She was trying to build up your resistance to colds, right?"
"Yeah." Nick wiped his forehead. "What am I building an immunity to?"
Ignoring his question, Grant said, "The water comes, in part, directly from the lake behind your house. It seeps through the stone and is purified on the way to your well. But it still contains the same basic minerals common to the lake."
"The lake with no fish," Nick muttered to Audrey. Except the one that got away.
"Oh," Grant said. "There's fish. Just, they might be a little different. And shy. But the fact is, the lake water acts as a resistant to the reaction Zachary provokes in people. How, I'm not quite sure. We need a scientist to come down here and examine that lake, take samples and all that crap. I imagine, though, even computers would have a damnable time trying to sort it out." He took a deep, raspy breath. "All I know is, there's three folks in Silver Spring the Reverend's worried about. Little Theresa, Stan Michaels and me. What do we all have in common?"
Nick thought a moment, then said: "The lake – both Theresa and Stan were in the lake for some time. It kept Theresa alive somehow for nearly an hour. Stan wasn't in that long, but–" Nick looked at Grant more closely. "What about you? When did you have contact with the lake?"
Grant looked down at his shoes. "Shortly after Reverend Zachary made his appearance in Silver Springs and started doing his miracles and astounding the beJesus out of Godfearing people, I began to do some checking. Into his background, that kind of thing. I wasn't a religious man, hadn't been for quite some time. I was too old and too damn tired to hold onto a belief like he was demanding. Anyway, I was one of the last on his list. He went through the churchgoers first. He served as an understudy of our regular minister for six months. About that time, old Minister Brennan suffered a stroke.
"Zachary took over and implemented some changes. He pursued an aggressive campaign to get people into the church every Sunday morning. Once he had them there, it was all fire-and-brimstone sermons, week after week. Those he didn't scare into regulars he went after in their homes. Got them to come crawling back to the church begging for divine intervention and signing away their souls to a life of service and dedication.
"I couldn't find any record of Zachary Bright – in Washington or any other state he claimed to have credentials in. So one night I decided to discreetly follow the Reverend on his nightly errands. It was a clear night, brilliant stars, a quarter moon. I tracked the Reverend as he walked alone, away from the town and deep into the woods."
Grant paused and looked up at the skylights. "I tracked him to the lake. And I watched from behind a thick spruce trunk – watched as Zachary stripped off his clothes and marched right into the still water. Except, he didn't exactly go into the lake. He walked right across the top, as if there were a path of rocks an inch under the surface and he knew where each one was in the dark.
"He got about to the middle when I kind of lost him in the darkness. I couldn't believe what my eyes had shown me, and I had to be sure. As quietly as I could, I made my way towards the shore. Within a few steps from the gentle water, a strong multi-colored light began to spread across the lake, issuing from a part in the center. I blinked and forced my eyes to focus, and there it was: an enormous crescent smack in the middle of the lake. I could tell there was something under the water, burning with its own illumination, strange and beautiful.
"And there, at the edge of the glow, was Zachary. He was kneelin' on the water, palms outstretched, reaching for the glow. He was bathing in the light, breathing it in. His skin glowed like it was on fire.
"That's when his head pivoted, and he saw me. Standing like a blabbering idiot on the shore. I think I tried to turn around. I even thought of running
, but time seemed to slow down. My thoughts and movements were trapped in a world of slow motion. And all the while Zachary just calmly strode back across the water. Then his movements became a blur, and before I knew it he was right in front of me, his damn hands settling around my head.
"He whispered something as his blazing fingers dug into my flesh. He said that he'd remain to watch my suffering, and that no matter how much I pleaded, salvation would not be given. He wanted to watch me die.
"I don't really recall what happened next. Somehow he had accelerated the process, and my horror began right then. It materialized, and I don't think Zachary was remotely prepared for the extent of my sin, or the manner in which it weighed on my conscience. In any case, once my agony had begun, the Reverend fled, probably out of fear that I would hurt him in my fury.
"So, within minutes after entering that terror, a distant part of my brain saw the only way out, and I took it. I stumbled, then leapt headfirst into the lake, desperate to escape the hounding sins that had materialized on the shore. I swam, then dove, kicking as deep as I could go until I caught hold of something and held on to it, hoping to die there at the bottom.
"I opened my mouth and let the cool water rush inside. After several moments, a distant glow tickled my eyes. Something swam across my face... and I drifted into a world of wonder. I think my sins pursued me under the depths, but they quickly lost substance in the face of that light. I stayed under for several hours, just clinging to that root. My lungs were full, my mouth crawling with a vibrant taste and a texture like bubbling champagne. But I could breathe – in a weird, unexplainable sense of the word.
"When I finally floated to the surface and vomited up quarts of lake water, I found my head clear of the visions. And what's more, despite a pounding headache, I felt lighter, stronger. My skin was charged, my blood seemed electrified, and my senses were heightened as well: I could see clearly. I concentrated and made out the grooves in the bark of a tree over twenty yards away in the shadows. My ears picked up a variety of sounds: crawling things in the earth, animals breathing as they slept, an owl adjusting on its perch."
Grant laughed at this point and tapped his spectacles. "I retrieved these things from the shore. I've kept the glasses and worn them ever since, as a reminder of what I was. Kind of a humbling notion. Anyway, that's how I learned of the lake's power. There's something in there, at the bottom, something powerful."
Nick took a deep breath, still half-believing this story and half-convinced he was still dreaming. But he decided to play along for now. "Then, Zachary must have found his way into that lake before coming to Silver Springs."
"That's the only thing I could figure at the time," Grant said. "But I had a theory about that as well. I approached Zachary with my accusation a few weeks after my 'transition'. I think he was scared to hell to find out I was still around. I met him up at his church – and I even let him shake my hand. I laughed in his face when his 'God-given' power failed to elicit a shred of reaction.
"But... I was foolish. An old man, yet far from wise. He had other cards in his deck – and he immediately drew out the highest one."
Nick and Audrey waited while Grant walked to his desk and leaned against it. "He used my daughter against me."
"Daughter?" Nick asked, shocked.
He nodded. "My only child, the product of a short and regrettable affair with one of Silver Springs' own."
Nick felt the wheels turning. A chilling conclusion crept into his mind. "You mean..."
Grant said: "Yes. Theresa is my daughter. Mrs. Angetti never allowed herself to believe it, and even I had my doubts–that was, until after my transition. Then I saw she was mine, I smelled the similarity, you might say. There was no doubt in my mind. But I let her mother go on believing her dead husband was the natural father. I saw no reason to ruin her version of the truth. Of course, this sin had come up during her weekly run-ins with the Reverend, so he knew, and he used it against me."
Nick let out a deep breath. He thought for a moment on how distant his problems of last week seemed now. "Zachary threatened to kill your daughter?"
"That," Grant said, "or turn her into a slave. Children have a very imprecise notion of good and evil – one that can be easily warped. He was trying to destroy that fine line and let evil hold sway over her conscience. In that way, he could convince her that the most benign of actions – and even thoughts – were evil, and could then draw upon them to drive the girl insane."
Audrey, silent on the sidelines, finally hit on the thread. She was trying to picture what she would do if she were Grant in such a situation. "Oh my God! That's when you arranged it – you caused her accident on the ice."
Grant stared at her with wide eyes. "Impressive deduction. Yes, I was able to soften the ice, melt it a little – it's difficult to explain, but just by touching an object I can feel its nature, and can become attuned to its properties. Much the same way I opened your locks last night, I heated the ice, and slipped away so quickly neither Theresa nor her mother noticed.
"So now we're at a stalemate. He can't get control of Theresa, and yet I really can't take her back. I've dreamt of kidnapping her and fleeing the state, but I would be no decent father to the girl. And I couldn't steal her from her mother. So I'm left alone and Theresa is treaded around very carefully. She doesn't know her strengths and gifts now, but at least she can resist the Ceremony."
"And Stan?" asked Nick. "What about him? He seemed quite entranced by the Reverend." Except he still clung to his beer and didn't always agree with the Reverend's sermons.
Grant scratched his ear. "The only thing I can figure is that he wasn't under long enough. He was touched, that much is sure. But you have to remember, he and Theresa went under in broad daylight. I – and I assume the Reverend, had our experience when the object was, I don't know, call it aroused. We were given a deeper jolt of whatever this thing is."
"What is it?" Audrey asked suddenly. "Something giving off radiation?" She frowned. "But only at certain times of the month?"
Grant looked thoughtful. "I don't know. And I really don't care what it is any more. It's there, and it's given Zachary a power no one can stand up to."
"Except you," Nick said.
"Yeah," Grant agreed. "But if I fail, Theresa's dead. He's even made it clear that any further efforts at saving other townspeople will result in her untimely end. Like I said, my hands are tied." Grant made a thin smile. "But now you're a new player. And if you choose to stay after hearing all this, and provided you believe me, which I think after last night you do, then you're now his biggest problem. And Silver Springs' only hope."
Nick said nothing. He adjusted the sunglasses and looked at his feet. Audrey touched his shoulder, a strong grip.
"Now," said Grant. "I told you. I did what I said I wouldn't. I don't exactly know why, except that maybe I never did get absolved from that sin Zachary dragged out of me years ago. Maybe this, in some way, will make up for it." He sighed and started to walk down a dark aisle of books. "Now please leave, before he learns any more of my indiscretion."
Nick and Audrey got up and moved to the door, watching the old man. "Wait," said Audrey at the exit. "What was your sin? What could have been so horrible?"
Grant turned, his features embraced by the dank shadows in the nonfiction section.
He uttered a deep, dry cough. "That, dear lady," he said, "is between me and whatever true divine power exists."
Audrey accepted that, and turned to leave when Grant called back to them. "And one last thing. Don't go trying to duplicate my stunt. Just drinkin' the water will protect you, and that's enough. Trust me, all these new powers are fine, but there are... side effects. Unpleasant ones that I wouldn't wish on anyone."
He winked at them and disappeared behind a bookshelf.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Seattle
Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
The sun was just dipping behind the Seattle skyline as Audrey exited the highway and drove east, to
the city's borders. She couldn't imagine exactly what she was going to put in her report about this case. What could she tell the director? That the peaceful town they had assumed was the perfect hideaway was really entangled in a nightmare thicker than the one Nicholas Murphy had fled? Could she write that they had acquired a potential ally in the form of an old man that read minds, melted ice, and had a talent for sneaking up on people?
What about describing the scene Friday night? She was supposed to keep watch on the witness's mental state; his emotional well-being was a key element to monitor. Just how was she supposed to explain that Murphy believed his dead wife and child paid him a visit?
Audrey rolled down the window and let the cool wind jar some sense into her. About the only thing she could put down in this report was that she found the subject to be something other than she expected: sensitive, thoughtful, and charming. But, on second thought, she decided against writing anything of the sort, since it might be inferred that she was becoming attached to him in a personal way.
On the long drive from Silver Springs, she tried to keep in mind that Nick was just a subject. Her first case. She had to remain detached, to approach him only from a professional aspect.
Too late, Audrey.
Too late, she realized. It was too late the moment he opened up to her in his kitchen, when he had spoken of his wife, and their tragedy. Audrey had never seen a man show such emotion before. She had always held men up to the ideal of her father, and believed them all to be impervious, stubbornly refusing any signs of weakness. Her father had never shed a tear before her... not even at the end.
She still remembered his eyes on that fateful day in the hospital. He merely stared at her unresponsively. Not a trace of emotion.
And that made it all right, didn't it?
Audrey shivered and brushed the thought away. She didn't want to think about that day. Not now. Not ever.
She had more important things to do. The first of which was to decide if Nick was safe enough in Silver Springs. It was left to her judgment. She could request another relocation if for any reason the witness was in personal danger.
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