by Dean Koontz
She groaned. Her eyelids fluttered but did not open.
Still sitting on the floor and holding their candles steady, the eleven disciples of the inner council became tense, but none of them spoke or made any sound that might break the fragile spell.
“Oh God,” Mother Grace said as if she had just seen something awesome or perhaps terrifying. “Oh God oh God oh God!”
She winced. She shuddered. She licked her lips nervously.
Sweat broke out on her brow.
She was breathing harder than before. She gasped, openmouthed, as if she were drowning. Then she drew breath through clenched teeth, with a cold hissing sound.
Barlowe waited patiently.
Mother Grace raised her hands, grabbed at the empty air. Her rings gleamed in the candlelight. Then her hands fell back into her lap, fluttered briefly like dying birds, and were still.
At last she spoke in a weak, strained, tremulous voice that was barely recognizable as her own. “Kill him.”
“Who?” Barlowe asked.
“The boy.”
The eleven disciples stirred, looked at one another meaningfully, and the movement of their candles caused shadows to twist and flap and shift all over the room.
“You mean Joey Scavello?” Barlowe asked.
“Yes. Kill him,” Mother Grace said from a great distance. “Now.”
For reasons that neither Barlowe nor Mother Grace understood, he was the only person who could communicate with her when she was in a trance. If others spoke to her, she wouldn’t hear them. She was the only contact they had with the spirit world, the sole conduit for all messages from the other side, but it was Barlowe, through his careful and patient questioning, who made certain that those messages were always clear and fully detailed. More than anything else, it was this function, this precious gift that convinced him he was one of God’s chosen people, just as Mother Grace said he was.
“Kill him . . . kill him,” she chanted softly in a raspy voice.
“You’re sure this boy is the one?” Barlowe asked.
“Yes.”
“There’s no doubt?”
“None.”
“How can he be killed?”
Mother Grace’s face was slack now. Lines had appeared in her usually creaseless skin. Her pale flesh hung like wrinkled, lifeless cloth.
“How can we destroy him?” Barlowe inquired again.
Her mouth hung open wide. Breath rattled in her throat. Saliva glistened at one corner of her lips, welled up, and drooled slowly onto her chin.
“Mother Grace?” Barlowe prodded.
Her voice was even fainter than before: “Kill him . . . any way you choose.”
“With a gun, a knife? Fire?”
“Any weapon . . . will succeed . . . but only if . . . you act soon.”
“How soon?”
“Time is running out. Day by day . . . he becomes . . . more powerful . . . less vulnerable.”
“When we kill him, is there a ritual we must follow?” Barlowe asked.
“Only that . . . once dead . . . his heart . . .”
“What about his heart?”
“Must be . . . cut out,” she said, her voice becoming somewhat stronger, sharper.
“And then?”
“It will be black.”
“His heart will be black?”
“As coal. And rotten. And you will see . . .”
She sat up straighter in her chair. The sweat from her brow was trickling down her face. Tiny beads of perspiration had popped out of her upper lip. Like a pair of stricken moths, her white hands fluttered in her lap. Color returned to her face, although her eyes remained closed. She was no longer drooling, but spittle still shone on her chin.
“What will we see when we cut his heart out?” Barlowe asked.
“Worms,” she said with disgust.
“In the boy’s heart?”
“Yes. And beetles. Squirming.”
A few of the disciples murmured to one another. It didn’t matter. Nothing could disturb Mother Grace’s trance now. She was thoroughly caught up in it, swept away by her visions.
Leaning forward in his chair, his big hands clamped on his meaty thighs, Barlowe said, “What must we do with the heart once we’ve cut it out of him?”
She chewed on her lip so hard he was afraid she would draw blood. She raised her spastic hands again and worked them in the empty air as if she could wring the answer from the ether.
Then: “Plunge the heart into . . .”
“Into what?” Barlowe asked.
“A bowl of holy water.”
“From a church?”
“Yes. The water will remain cool . . . but the heart . . . will boil, turn to dark steam . . . and evaporate.”
“And then we can be certain the boy is dead?”
“Yes. Dead. Forever dead. Unable to return through another incarnation.”
“Then there’s hope?” Barlowe asked, hardly daring to believe that it was so.
“Yes,” she said thickly. “Hope.”
“Praise God,” Barlowe said.
“Praise God,” the disciples said.
Mother Grace opened her eyes. She yawned, sighed, blinked, and looked around in confusion. “Where’s this? What’s wrong? I feel all clammy. Did I miss the six o’clock news? I mustn’t miss the six o’clock news. I’ve got to know what Lucifer’s people have been up to.”
“It’s only a few minutes till noon,” Barlowe said. “The six o’clock news is hours away.”
She stared at him with that familiar, blurry-eyed, muddleheaded look that always marked her return from a deep trance. “Who’re you? Do I know you? I don’t think I do.”
“I’m Kyle, Mother Grace.”
“Kyle?” she said as if she’d never heard of him. A suspicious glint entered her eyes.
“Just relax,” he said. “Relax and think about it. You’ve had a vision. You’ll remember it in a moment. It’ll come back to you.”
He held out both of his large, calloused hands. Sometimes, when she came out of a trance, she was so frightened and lost that she needed friendly contact. Usually, when she gripped his hands, she drew from his great reservoir of physical strength and soon regained her senses, as if he were a battery that she was tapping.
But today she pulled away from him. She frowned. She wiped at her spittle-damp chin. She looked around at the candles, at the disciples, clearly baffled by them. “God, I’m so thirsty,” she said.
One of the disciples hurried to get her a drink.
She looked at Kyle. “What do you want from me? Why’d you bring me here?”
“It’ll all come back to you,” he said patiently, smiling reassuringly.
“I don’t like this place,” she said, her voice thin and querulous.
“It’s your church.”
“Church?”
“The basement of your church.”
“It’s dark,” she whined.
“You’re safe here.”
She pouted as if she were a child, then scowled, then said, “I don’t like the dark. I’m afraid of the dark.” She hugged herself. “What’ve you got me here in the dark for?”
One of the disciples got up and turned on the lights.
The others blew out the candles.
“Church?” Mother Grace said again, looking at the paneled basement walls and at the exposed ceiling beams. She was trying hard to get a handle on her situation, but she was still disoriented.
There was nothing Barlowe could do to help her. Sometimes, she needed as long as ten minutes to shake off the confusion that always followed a journey into the spirit world.
She stood up.
Barlowe stood, too, towering over her.
She said, “I gotta pee real bad. Real bad.” She grimaced and put one hand on her abdomen. “Isn’t there anywhere to pee in this place? Huh? I got to pee.”
Barlowe motioned to Edna Vanoff, a short stout woman who was a member of the inner council, and Edna led Moth
er Grace to the lavatory at the far end of the basement. The old woman was unsteady; she leaned against Edna as she walked, and she continued to look around in bewilderment.
In a loud voice that carried the length of the room, Mother Grace said, “Oh, boy, I gotta pee so bad I think I’m gonna bust.”
Barlowe sighed wearily and sat down on the too-small, too-hard wooden chair.
The most difficult thing for him—and for the other disciples—to understand and accept was Mother Grace’s bizarre behavior after a vision. At times like this she didn’t seem at all like a great spiritual leader. Instead, she seemed as if she were nothing more than a befuddled, crazy old woman. In ten minutes, at most, she would have regained her wits, as she always did; soon she would be the same intense, sharp-minded, clear-eyed woman who had converted him from a life of sin. Then no one would doubt her insight, power, and holiness; no one would question the truth of her exalted mission. However, just for these few disconcerting minutes, even though he had seen her in this dismaying condition many times before and knew it wouldn’t last, Barlowe nevertheless felt uneasy, sick with uncertainty.
He doubted her.
And hated himself for doubting.
He supposed that God put Mother Grace through these sorry, undignified spells of disorientation for the very purpose of testing the faith of her followers. It was God’s way of making certain that only Mother Grace’s most devoted disciples remained with her, thereby insuring a strong church during the difficult days ahead. Yet, every time she was like this, Barlowe was badly shaken by the way she looked and acted.
He glanced at the members of the inner council, who were still sitting on the floor. All of them looked troubled, and all of them were praying. He figured they were praying for the strength not to doubt Mother Grace the way he was doubting her. He closed his eyes and began to pray, too.
They were going to need all the strength, faith, and confidence they could find within themselves, for killing the boy wasn’t going to be easy. He wasn’t an ordinary child. Mother Grace had adamantly made that clear. He would possess awesome powers of his own, and perhaps he would even be able to destroy them the moment they dared lift a hand against him. But for the sake of all mankind, they had to try to kill him.
Barlowe hoped Mother Grace would permit him to strike the mortal blow. Even if it meant his own death, he wanted to be the one who actually drew the boy’s blood because whoever killed the boy (or died in the attempt) was assured of a place in Heaven, close to the throne of God. Barlowe was convinced that this was true. If he used his tremendous physical strength and his pent-up rage to strike out at this evil child, he would be making amends for all the times he had harmed the innocent in the days before Mother Grace had converted him.
Sitting on the hard oak chair, eyes closed, praying, he slowly curled his big hands into fists. He began to breathe faster. Eagerness was apparent in the hunch of his shoulders and in the bunching of muscles in his neck and jaws. Tremors passed through him. He was impatient to do God’s work.
11
Less than twenty minutes after he had left, Henry Rankin returned to Charlie Harrison’s office with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ report on the white van’s license number.
Rankin was a small man, five-three, slender, with an athletic grace and bearing. Christine wondered if he had ever been a jockey. He was well dressed in a pair of black Bally loafers, a light gray suit, white shirt, and a blue knit tie, with a blue display handkerchief carefully folded in the breast pocket of his jacket. He didn’t look anything like Christine’s conception of a private investigator.
After Rankin was introduced to Christine, he handed Charlie a sheet of paper and said, “According to the DMV, the van belongs to a printing company called The True Word.”
Come to think of it, Charlie Harrison didn’t look much like a private investigator, either. She expected a PI to be tall. Charlie wasn’t short like Henry Rankin, but he was only about five-ten or five-eleven. She expected a PI to be built like a truck, to look as if he could ram through a brick wall. Charlie was lean, and although he looked as if he could take care of himself well enough, he would never ram through a wall, brick or otherwise. She expected a PI to seem at least a little bit dangerous, with a violent aspect to his eyes and perhaps a tight-lipped, cruel mouth. Charlie appeared to be intelligent, efficient, capable—but not dangerous. He had an unremarkable, though generally handsome face framed by thick blond hair that was neatly combed. His eyes were his best features, gray-green, clear, direct; they were warm, friendly eyes, but there was no violence in them, at least none that she could detect.
In spite of the fact that neither Charlie nor Rankin looked like Magnum or Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, Christine sensed she had come to the right place. Charlie Harrison was friendly, self-possessed, plain-spoken. He walked, turned, and performed every task with an unusual economy of motion, and his gestures, too, were neat and precise. He projected an aura of competence and trustworthiness. She suspected that he seldom, if ever, failed to do his job well. He made her feel secure.
Few people had that effect on her. Damned few. Especially men. In the past, when she had relied upon men, her faith had not always—or even usually—been well placed. However, instinct told her that Charlie Harrison was different from most other men and that she would not regret placing her trust in him.
Charlie looked up from the paper Rankin had given him. “The True Word, huh? Anything on it in our files?”
“Nothing.”
Charlie looked at Christine. “You ever hear of them?”
“No.”
“You ever have any brochures or stationery or anything printed for that gourmet shop of yours?”
“Sure. But that’s not the printer we use.”
“Okay,” Charlie said, “we’ll have to find out who owns the company, try to get a list of their employees, start checking everyone out.”
“Can do,” Henry Rankin said.
To Christine, Charlie said, “You might have to talk with your mother about this, Ms. Scavello.”
“I’d rather not,” she said. “Not unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”
“Well . . . all right. But it probably will become necessary. For now . . . you might as well go on to work. It’ll take us awhile to dig into this.”
“What about Joey?”
“He can stay here with me this afternoon,” Charlie said. “I want to see what’ll happen if you leave without the boy. Will the guy in the van follow you—or will he wait for Joey to come out? Which of you is he most interested in?”
He’ll wait for Joey, Christine thought grimly. Because it’s Joey he wants to kill.
Sherry Ordway, the receptionist at Klemet-Harrison, wondered if she and Ted, her husband, had made a mistake. Six years ago, after three years of marriage, they had decided they didn’t really want children, and Ted had had a vasectomy. With no children, they could afford a better house and better furniture and a nicer car, and they were free to travel, and the evenings were always peaceful and perfect for curling up with a book—or with each other. Most of their friends were tied down with families, and every time Sherry and Ted saw someone else’s child being rude or downright malevolent, they congratulated themselves on the wisdom of avoiding parenthood. They relished their freedom, and Sherry never regretted remaining childless. Until now. As she answered the telephone and typed letters and did filing, she watched Joey Scavello, and she began to wish (just a little) that he was hers.
He was such a good kid. He sat in one of the armchairs in the waiting area, dwarfed by it, his feet off the floor. He spoke when spoken to, but he didn’t interrupt anyone or call attention to himself. He leafed through some of the magazines, looking at pictures, and he hummed softly to himself, and he was just about the cutest thing she’d ever seen.
She had just finished typing a letter and had been surreptitiously watching the boy as, with much frowning and tongue-biting, he checked the knots in the laces of his sneaker
s and retied one of them. She was about to ask him if he would like another of her butterscotch Life Savers when the telephone rang.
“Klemet-Harrison,” Sherry said.
A woman said, “Is Joey Scavello there? He’s just a little boy, six years old. You can’t miss him if he’s there; he’s such a charmer.”
Surprised that anyone would be calling the boy, Sherry hesitated.
“This is his grandmother,” the woman said. “Christine told me she was bringing Joey to your office.”
“Oh. His grandmother. Why, yes, of course, they’re here right now. Mrs. Scavello is in Mr. Harrison’s office at the moment. She’s not available, but I’m sure—”
“Well, it’s Joey I really want to talk to. Is he in with Mr. Harrison, too?”
“No. He’s right here with me.”
“Do you think I could speak to him for a moment?” the woman said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble—”
“I won’t tie up your line for long.”
“Sure. Just a minute,” Sherry said. She held the phone away from her face and said, “Joey? It’s for you. Your grandmother.”
“Grandma?” he said, and seemed to be amazed.
He came to the desk. Sherry gave him the phone, and he said hello, but didn’t say anything else. He went stiff, his small hand clenching the handset so tightly that his knuckles looked as if they would pierce the skin that sheathed them. He stood there, wide-eyed, listening. The blood drained out of his face. His eyes filled with tears. Suddenly, with a gasp and shudder, he slammed the phone down.
Sherry jumped in surprise. “Joey? What’s wrong?”
His mouth became soft and tremulous.
“Joey?”
“It was . . . h-her.”
“Your grandmother.”
“No. The w-witch.”
“Witch?”
“She said . . . she’s gonna . . . c-c-cut my heart out.”
Charlie sent Joey into his office with Christine, closed the door after them, and remained in the lounge to question Sherry.
She looked distraught. “I shouldn’t have let her talk to him. I didn’t realize—”