The Right Hand of Evil

by John Saul

  "It's all right, Kimmie," she whispered, using the nickname her older daughter had shed five years ago, on her tenth birthday. "It was only a bad dream. I'm here."

  "It was Jared," Kim cried. "Mom, it was awful! He—He killed Scout!"

  "No," Janet soothed. "It was just a dream, Kim. It didn't really happen."

  "What's doing it, Mom?" Kim sobbed. "What's making me have these terrible dreams about Jared?"

  "What dreams?'' Janet asked. Settling herself onto the bed next to Kim, she gently eased her daughter's head onto her lap. "Honey, what have you been dreaming?"

  Kim hesitated, recalling images from her nightmares. Then, slowly, she began talking, telling her mother about the strange things she'd seen in her dreams, the terrible things she'd witnessed Jared doing. "But they weren't like real dreams at all, Mom," she finished. "They were so real, it seemed like it was all really happening! But it couldn't have happened, could it?"

  "No, of course not," Janet soothed, stroking Kim's hair. "I know dreams can seem real, but they aren't. And you mustn't let them frighten you."

  Sniffling, Kim sat up and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown. "It's just that Jared's changed," she said. "He isn't anything like he used to be." She looked bleakly at her mother. "You know how I used to know what Jared was thinking? What he was feeling?"

  Janet smiled. "The Twin Thing."

  Kim nodded. "It was like that tonight. It was like I knew exactly what he was doing. I could see it as clearly as if I were standing right next to him. He—He had a knife, and Scout was lying on a table, and—" Her voice broke into a choking sob.

  "But it wasn't real," Janet assured her once again. She got off the bed and gently pulled Kim to her feet. "Come on. "I'll show you. We'll go down to the kitchen and get Scout, and he can come up and sleep with you tonight. Okay?"

  Nodding, Kim let Janet lead her out of her room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen.

  "Scout?" Janet called out softly.

  There was no welcoming thump of the big dog's tail banging against the wall as he wagged it. There was only silence.

  Janet switched on the light.

  Scout's bed was empty.

  She frowned, trying to remember when she'd last seen the dog.

  She wasn't sure. "He has to be here somewhere," she said. "Come on."

  But fifteen minutes later, Janet and Kim both knew that Scout was gone. Nor did he come when they opened the back door and called him.

  "It doesn't mean anything," Janet insisted as she and Kim climbed the stairs back up to the second floor. "He might have gone off with Jared this afternoon."

  "He doesn't even like Jared anymore," Kim said, her voice wavering. "That's why he sleeps in the kitchen now!"

  "Then maybe he went with your father," Janet said. But she'd watched Ted leave, and hadn't seen the dog go with him.

  But there was something else that could have happened, something that she could see had already occurred to Kim: If Scout had vanished into the woods the same way Muffin had on the night they'd moved into the house, would he be found the same way the cat had?

  Just the thought of it made Janet shudder, and as if by mutual consent, neither she nor Kim even mentioned that possibility.

  The cabin lay dark and hushed beneath the pale silvery light of the moon. Jake Cumberland's hound was perfectly still, flattened against the ground beneath the cabin's floor. He'd neither moved nor made a single sound since he'd first scented the two figures stealing through the darkness toward the house. Had the chain not restrained him, he would have fled away through the covering darkness rather than slunk into the meager shelter provided by his master's house.

  The night prowlers had gone silent; neither owls nor bats swooped and flitted in search of prey, for every creature they might have sought had vanished into burrows beneath the ground or hollows inside the trees.

  No fish jumped in the lake, no frogs croaked along its bank; even the insects they hunted had ceased their nightly feeding and mating.

  The quiet of death had fallen over the night. A dark cloud scudded over the moon as if to protect even it from bearing witness to the ceremony taking place within the cabin's walls, where five flickering candles on the table struggled to hold back the descending darkness.

  Luke Roberts stood next to Jared Conway, his unblinking eyes fixed on the object that lay on the table in the center of the pentagram formed by the candles.

  In his right hand, Jared held a knife—its cutting edge honed to razor sharpness by Jake Cumberland's own whetstone and strop. As he clutched its leather-bound haft, the instrument itself seemed to speak to him, whispering of the creatures it had disemboweled, the hides it had slit, the flesh it had slashed. Jared lowered the knife toward the offering on the table, but just before he drove the blade into the creature's breast, he gazed one last time into its eyes.

  "Don't," he heard his sister's voice whisper inside his head. "Oh, God, Jared, please don't."

  Jared hesitated as Kim's voice, only dimly heard, tugged at him, tried to restrain him. It was as if he stood on the edge of a dark and fathomless abyss, feeling inexorably drawn to it. Every fiber of his being wanted to step over the edge, to drop into the darkness below, plunge deep into whatever lay within the blackness that beckoned to him.

  And only Kim's dimly heard voice held him back.

  "Don't," her voice whispered again. "Please, Jared. Don't."

  Jared's eyes moved from the body of the creature to its head.

  Scout lay on his back, his legs splayed wide as if to expose his belly in submission to some far stronger creature than he. His head lolled to one side. His mouth lay open, his tongue hung out.

  And one of his eyes—his soft, trusting brown eyes—seemed to gaze up at Jared, as if joining in Kim's whispered plea.

  But it was already too late. He plunged the knife into the dog's heart and Scout's life ended with a silent spasm.

  Now all that remained was to carry out the ceremony, to offer his pet to his new master.

  Pulling the knife from the dog's corpse, he lowered its point until it just grazed the skin of Scout's belly.

  Yet still he hesitated, looking one last time into Scout's eyes, hesitating as, fleetingly, a brief, flickering doubt entered his mind, as though something within was telling him to step back—step back from the edge of the abyss.

  Too late. With Kim's pleading voice fading away, he felt himself slide into the darkness. As Luke watched, Jared slipped the point of the knife through the retriever's hide and ran its edge up the center of its belly and chest to its throat. Four more slits ran up each leg, and then he began peeling the skin away from the flesh below. He worked quickly, the blade seeming to guide his hands as if the knife itself had performed the work so often, it needed no aid from him.

  Deftly, he sliced through the abdominal muscles, then cut away the creature's entrails.

  He cut through the rib cage and laid open the animal's chest, exposing the lungs and heart.

  Raising the knife high, Jared muttered a dedication of the blood offering he was about to make, then plunged the knife deep into the heart. Dropping the knife, he plunged his hands into the blood that oozed from the punctured heart into the chest cavity. With reddened fingers he anointed Luke's forehead.

  Plunging his hands again into the gore within the slaughtered dog, he moved away from the table and began tracing patterns on the cabin's wall, intricate designs that rose out of some hidden place in his subconscious, flowing from his bloodied fingertips onto the ancient wood. And as he etched the design in blood, muttered imprecations—unintelligible curses condemning the man who had lived his entire life within the cabin's shelter—flowed from his lips.

  Jake Cumberland's eyes flicked open in the darkness of his cell. He felt disoriented for a moment, but slowly his mind cleared and he remembered where he was. And why.

  He wasn't going to get out of jail—he already knew that. His mama had explained it to him when he was small: "
Don't ever do nothin' that'll let 'em put you in jail," she'd told him. "'Cause once they gets you in, they ain't gonna be lettin' you out again. Not around here. Onliest way they ever gonna let you out is at the end of a rope. That's what they did to my daddy, Jake, when I was no bigger'n you. They came for him one night, and took him down and tied a rope around his neck, and after that I didn't have a daddy no more. So you watch yourself, hear?"

  Now, in the blackness of the Halloween midnight, he heard another voice. An evil voice, whispering inside his head.

  Do it yourself, Jake, the voice said. Don't wait, Jake. Don't wait for morning. Do it now.

  At first Jake tried to ignore the voice, but it wouldn't be put off, and as the seconds ticked by and turned into minutes, it grew stronger, more insistent.

  Do it, Jake. You know you want to. Come on, Jake. Now, Jake. Now!

  The voice took on a mesmerizing rhythm. Without thinking about it, Jake rose from the cot on which he lay and took off his pants. He began ripping at the denim, tearing the legs into strips.

  You know what to do, Jake, the voice whispered. Just do it. Do it now.

  Jake began braiding the strips of denim together, his fingers working the material as easily as they knotted together the twine for his snares. Soon he was done.

  The rope was nearly six feet long, plenty long enough to do what had to be done.

  Now, Jake, the voice whispered. Do it now.

  Jake tied one end of the braided rope around his neck, then stood on the cot and reached up to the sprinkler pipe that ran across the cell's width.

  He tied the free end of the rope around it and tested the knot. It was solid; it would hold.

  Die! the voice commanded. Die right now!

  Without another thought, Jake Cumberland stepped off the edge of the cot. He dropped a foot, and then the rope jerked tight.

  His neck did not break, but the loop around his neck dug deep, closing his windpipe.

  His body twitched, his feet kicked out.

  Then, in the darkness, he saw his mama. She was at the end of a tunnel, and her hand was held out to him. As Jake began hurrying through the darkness toward his mother, the voice faded away. Jake Cumberland was dead.

  His incantations done, the inscriptions on the walls complete, Jared Conway severed the dog's head from the carcass and placed it inside the trunk where the night before he had hidden the head of the cat.

  He cleaned the hide of the last remnants of flesh, rolled it tight, and slipped it into a plastic sack. As Luke carried the flesh, bones, and entrails outside, Jared blew the candles out, one by one. As the last candle flickered out, the room plunged into utter blackness.

  Taking the skin of the slaughtered dog with him, Jared left the cabin, and as he and Luke disappeared into the darkness, the life of the night began again.

  A trout broke the surface of the lake, snapping at a water bug.

  An owl swept down from the trees, its talons closing on a mouse that had only a moment ago ventured forth from its burrow.

  Bats flitted through the night sky, feeding on the gnats and mosquitoes that rose into the air from their hidden shelters in the grass and leaves.

  And Jake Cumberland's hound crept out from beneath the cabin, sniffed at the pile of entrails left at the foot of the steps, and began devouring the unexpected feast.

  Ted Conway slumped behind the wheel of the Toyota, waiting in the darkness. After leaving the house, he'd done exactly as he'd promised Janet he would—he'd driven past the Roberts' house. It was dark and quiet.

  He cruised around the square, slowing as he passed the pizza parlor but barely glancing through its brightly lit windows, certain the boys would not be there.

  Then he came back, parking the car in the darkness well away from the house, waiting.

  He heard the night fall silent, saw the cloud slide over the moon. Still he waited, knowing that soon his vigil would end.

  Finally the sky cleared and the night sounds picked up again. Ted straightened in the seat, his senses sharpening, his eyes scanning the edge of the forest that lay beyond the grounds. The seconds ticked by, turning into minutes. Still he waited, until his patience was rewarded by a flicker of movement within the shadows. Two figures emerged from the trees and slipped as silently as phantoms across the grounds toward the house. Starting the engine of the Toyota, Ted shifted it into gear, switched on, the headlights, and drove down the street to the driveway. He pulled close to the carriage house, then shut off the engine, got out, and slammed the car door behind him. Entering the house through the back door, he paused at the door to the basement, listening.

  The sound of discordant music boiled up the stairs and filtered through the door.

  Satisfied, he climbed the stairs to the second floor and went into the master bedroom where his wife and older daughter waited.

  "Found him," he said, smiling at the relief that came into Janet's face. "He was at the pizza parlor with Luke. I dropped Luke off at his house and had a long talk with Jared on the way home."

  "I think maybe I'll have a talk with him myself," Janet said, starting to get out of bed.

  "And I think maybe you should just stay where you are," Ted told her, gently pushing her back into the bed. "Believe me, he's stinging bad enough after what I had to say to him. Anything you want to add can wait until morning." He shifted his attention to Kim. "And tomorrow's a school day. You should be in bed, too."

  "What about Scout?" Kim asked. "Was he with Jared?"

  Ted's eyes clouded. "I don't think so. Isn't he here?"

  Kim shook her head.

  "Well, if he's not back by morning, I'll go look for him, too. He's probably just out doing what dogs do."

  "But after what happened to Muffin—" Kim began, but her father didn't let her finish.

  "It's not the same thing," he assured her. "But Scout will be back—I guarantee it. And now it's time for you to go to bed."

  Kissing his daughter good night, Ted watched her circle around the landing and disappear back into her room. When her door was closed, he went back into the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed next to Janet.

  "You okay now?" he whispered, taking her in his arms and nuzzling at her ear.

  Janet pulled away from him. Should she tell him about the terrible cold that had come over her in front of Molly's room? Or would he just laugh at her, and accuse her of listening to the ghost stories people told about the house? And what about Kim's nightmares?

  Feeling the tension in her body, Ted propped himself up on one elbow. "Something's wrong," he said. "Tell me about it."

  Still Janet hesitated, not sure where to begin. Ted gently turned her face so she was looking into his eyes.

  "Tell me," he whispered. "Tell me what's wrong."

  "It was when I was coming up the stairs," Janet began. But as she was about to describe the chill she'd felt, she realized how foolish it would sound. In fact, now that he was back and caressing her cheek, it seemed that nothing unusual had occurred.

  She'd felt a draft, which she exaggerated in her own mind simply because of the vastness of the house and the lateness of the hour.

  Kim had had a nightmare.

  And Scout, like any normal dog, had taken off into the night.

  The important thing was that Jared was safely back home, and so was Ted. She turned to face him, snuggling close. "It's all right," she murmured. "Nothing happened at all."

  Then, as Ted's fingers crept beneath her nightgown and began tracing patterns on her naked skin, the last of the fears she'd felt that night drained away.

  It was nearing midnight, but neither Monsignor Devlin nor Father MacNeill was ready to give up their vigil.

  "It's Halloween," Father MacNeill had said as they'd eaten their supper earlier. "And something's going to happen. I can feel it."

  "Perhaps you're wrong," the older priest had cautioned. "Perhaps we're both wrong." He rested a bony hand on the old Bible that Cora Conway had entrusted to him the day she died. "Perhap
s none of this means anything. Perhaps it's nothing more than the ramblings of unhappy women."

  "You know that isn't true," Father MacNeill replied. "And we haven't read it all. If we could find the missing pages—"

  "They're gone," Devlin sighed. "I've already examined every page of the Bible twice. They simply aren't there."

  After their evening prayers, the two priests had retired to Monsignor Devlin's small room, where Father MacNeill had searched the entire Bible one more time, carefully turning each page. He could almost feel the missing leaves. So certain was he that he would find them that it wasn't until he'd turned the very last page and even carefully examined the binding itself that he made himself admit they weren't there. Sighing heavily, he pushed the Bible away, as if to distance himself from the source of his disappointment. As the book slid across the table, there was a crash as the small box behind it fell to the floor.

  His disappointment giving way to regret, he reached down and picked up the music box. "I'm so sorry," he said. "How could I have been so clumsy?"

  "It's all right," Monsignor Devlin assured him. "It doesn't work anyway."

  Frowning, Father MacNeill opened the lid of the music box. There was a faint click as the mechanism engaged, but no music played.

  "When I bought it, it played a truly frightening rendition of Ave Maria." Devlin chuckled. "I suspect Cora broke it deliberately."

  "Cora?" MacNeill echoed. "Cora Conway?" When Devlin nodded, Father MacNeill turned the box over and examined its bottom. A winding key protruded through a brass plate held in place by four small screws. His pulse quickening, the priest hurried downstairs, returning a few minutes later with a battered metal tool box. Sorting through the jumble inside, he finally came up with a screwdriver small enough to fit the screws on the music box.

  A minute later he carefully lifted the brass plate. And there, carefully folded, were the missing pages. His hands trembling, he unfolded them, smoothed them on the table, and began reading Loretta Villiers Conway's perfect script....