by Dean Koontz
In the front seat, Joey was talking to Pete Lockburn about Steven Spielberg’s E.T., which Joey had seen four times and which Lockburn seemed to have seen more often than that. Her son’s voice sounded far away, as if he were on a distant mountain, already lost to her.
Charlie switched off the penlight.
Christine was relieved when shadow fell across the photograph, breaking the uncanny hold it had on her. She put it in the envelope, returned the envelope to Charlie. “She’s head of this cult?”
“She is the cult. It’s primarily a personality cult. Her religious message isn’t anything special or unique; the whole thing’s in the way she delivers it. If anything happened to Grace, her followers would drift away and the church would probably collapse.”
“How can a crazy old woman like that draw any followers? She sure didn’t seem charismatic to me.”
“But she is,” Charlie said. “I’ve never spoken to her myself, but Henry Rankin has. He handled that case I mentioned, the two little kids whose mother took them with her into the cult. And he told me Grace has a certain undeniable magnetism, a very forceful personality. And although her message isn’t particularly new, it’s dramatic and exciting, just the sort of thing that a certain type of person would respond to with enthusiasm.”
“What is her message?”
“She says we’re living in the last days of the world.”
“Every religious crackpot from here to Maine has made that proclamation at one time or another.”
“Of course.”
“So there must be more to it. What else does she say?”
Charlie hesitated, and she sensed that he dreaded having to tell her the rest.
“Charlie?”
He sighed. “Grace says the Antichrist has already been born.”
“I’ve heard that one, too. There’s one cult around that says the Antichrist is the King of Spain.”
“That’s a new one to me.”
“Others say the Antichrist will be the man who takes over the Russian government after the current Premier.”
“Sounds a bit more reasonable than laying it on the King of Spain.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a cult somewhere that thinks Burt Reynolds or Stephen King or Rodney Dangerfield is the Antichrist.”
Charlie didn’t smile at her little joke. “We’re living in weird times,” he said.
“We’re approaching the end of a millennium,” Christine said. “For some reason, that brings all the nuts out of the trees. They say that, last time, when the year 1000 was approaching, there were all sorts of bizarre cults, decadence, and violence associated with people’s fears of the end of the world. I guess it’s going to be that way as we approach 2000. Hell, it’s already started.”
“It sure has,” he said softly.
She perceived that he still hadn’t told her everything Grace Spivey professed to believe. Even in the dim light that came through the car windows, she could see that he was deeply disturbed.
“Well?” she prodded him.
“Grace says we’re in the Twilight, that period just before the son of Satan takes power over the earth and rules for a thousand years. How well do you know the Bible—especially the prophecies?”
“I was very familiar with it at one time,” she said. “But not anymore. In fact, I can’t remember much of anything.”
“Join the club. But from what I understand of Grace Spivey’s preaching, the Bible says that the Antichrist will rule for a thousand years, bringing mankind indescribable suffering, after which the battle of Armageddon will transpire, and God will at last descend to destroy Satan forever. She says that God has given her one last chance to avoid the devil’s thousand-year dominion. She says He’s ordered her to try to save mankind by organizing a church of righteous people who will stop the Antichrist before he reaches a position of power.”
“If I didn’t know there were people—fanatical and maybe dangerous people—who believed in this kind of nonsense, I’d find it amusing. And how do they think their little band of righteous people is going to combat the awesome power of Satan—presuming you believe in the awesome power of Satan in the first place?”
“Which I don’t. But as far as I’m aware, their battle plans are a secret known only to those who’ve become members of the church. But I suspect I know what they’ve got in mind.”
“And what’s that?”
He hesitated. Then: “They intend to kill him.”
“The Antichrist?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“I don’t imagine they think it’ll be easy.”
“I should say not!” Christine said, smiling in spite of the situation. “What kind of devil would allow himself to be killed with ease? Anyway, the logic’s inconsistent. The Antichrist would be a supernatural figure. Supernatural beings can’t be killed.”
“I know that Roman Catholicism has a tradition of justifying points of doctrine through logical processes,” Charlie said. “St. Thomas Aquinas and his writings, for instance. But these people we’re dealing with are fringe types. Fanatics. Consistency of logic isn’t something religious fanatics require of one another.” He sighed. “Anyway, assuming that you believe in all this mythology as presented by the Bible—and as interpreted by Grace—maybe it isn’t such lousy logic. After all, Jesus was supposed to have been a supernatural being, the son of God, yet He was killed by the Romans.”
“That’s different,” she said. “According to the Christ story, that was His mission, His purpose, His destiny—to allow Himself to be killed to save us from the worst consequences of our sins. Right? But I hardly think the Antichrist would be as altruistic.”
“You’re thinking logically again. If you want to understand Grace and the Church of the Twilight, you’ve got to put logic behind you.”
“Okay. So who does she say is the Antichrist?”
“When we pulled those two little kids out of the cult,” Charlie said, “Grace still hadn’t identified the Antichrist. She hadn’t found him yet. But now I think perhaps she has.”
“So? Who?” Christine asked, but before Charlie could respond, the answer hit her with the force of a sledgehammer blow.
Up front, Joey was still talking with Pete Lockburn, oblivious of the conversation between his mother and Charlie Harrison.
Nevertheless, Christine lowered her voice to a whisper. “Joey? My God, does that crazy woman think my little boy is the Antichrist?”
“I’d almost bet on it.”
Christine could hear the old woman’s hate-filled voice, rising from a dark pool of memory: He’s got to die; he’s got to die.
“But why him? Why Joey? Why didn’t she fixate on some other child?”
“Maybe it’s like you said: You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Charlie said. “If some other woman with another child had been in the South Coast Plaza parking lot at that same time last Sunday, Grace would now be after another little boy instead of Joey.”
Christine knew that he was probably right, but the thought dizzied her. It was a stupid, cruel, malignant lunacy. What kind of world were they living in if an innocent shopping trip to the mall made them eligible for martyrdom?
“But . . . how do we ever stop her?” Christine asked.
“If she actually resorts to violence, we deflect it. If we can’t deflect it, then . . . well, we blow her people away before they touch Joey. There’s no question of legal responsibility. You’ve hired us to protect you, and we have legal sanction to resort to violent force, if that’s necessary and unavoidable, to fulfill our obligation.”
“No. I mean . . . how do we change her mind? How do we get her to admit that Joey’s just a little boy? How do we get her to go away?”
“I don’t know. I would imagine a fanatic like this is about as single-minded as anyone can be. I don’t think it would be easy to make her change her mind about anything, let alone anything as important to her as this.”
“But you said she’s got a thousand followers.”
“Maybe even a few more than that by now.”
“If she keeps sending them after Joey, we can’t kill them all. Sooner or later, one of them will get through our defenses.”
“I’m not going to let this drag on,” he assured her. “I’m not going to give them a lot of chances to hurt Joey. I’ll make Grace change her mind, back off, go away.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
An image of the harpy in the parking lot returned to Christine—the windblown hair, the bulging eyes, the lintspecked and food-stained clothes—and she felt despair clutching at her. “There’s no way to change her mind.”
“There’s a way,” Charlie insisted. “I’ll find it.”
“She’ll never stop.”
“I have an appointment with an excellent psychologist in the morning. Dr. Denton Boothe. He’s especially interested in cult psychology. I’m going to discuss the case with him, give him our profile on Grace, ask him to work with us to find her weak spot.”
Christine didn’t see much promise in that approach. But then she didn’t see much promise in any approach.
Charlie took her hand as the car sped through the windy darkness. “I won’t let you down.”
But for the first time she wondered if his promises were empty.
21
On the second floor of the empty house, O’Hara and Baumberg stood by the windows in the large master bedroom.
They still felt the menacing presence of an evil entity watching over them. They tried to ignore it, holding steadfast to their faith and to their determination to complete the task Mother Grace had given them.
Outside, the rear yard lay in darkness, scoured by a rising wind. From up here they could see into the swimming pool. No beast crouched within that concrete concavity. Not now. Now it was in the house with them.
Beyond this property was another lawn and another house, a sprawling, one-story, ranch-style place with a shakeshingle roof and a swimming pool of its own. The pool held water and was lit from the bottom, a glimmering blue-green jewel in the shape of a kidney.
O’Hara had taken a pair of night binoculars from the flight bag at his feet. They made use of available light to produce an enhanced image of a dark landscape. Through them, he had a pretty good view of all the properties that butted up against the rear of the lots along this street. Those houses faced out onto another street, parallel to this one.
“Which is the Scavello place?” Baumberg asked.
O’Hara slowly turned to his right, looking farther north. “Not the house behind this one. The next one, with the rectangular pool and the swings.”
“I don’t see any swings,” Baumberg said.
O’Hara handed him the binoculars. “To the left of the pool. A child’s swing set and a jungle gym.”
“Just two doors away,” Baumberg said.
“Yeah.”
“No lights on.”
“They aren’t home yet.”
“Maybe they won’t come home.”
“They’ll come,” O’Hara said.
“If they don’t?”
“We’ll go looking for them.”
“Where?”
“Wherever God sends us.”
Baumberg nodded.
O’Hara opened one of the laundry bags and withdrew a shotgun.
22
As they turned into Christine’s block and came within sight of her house, Charlie said, “See that camper?”
Across the street, a pickup truck was parked at the curb. A camper shell was attached to the bed of the truck. It was just an ordinary camper; she had noticed it but hadn’t given it a second thought. Suddenly it seemed sinister.
“Is that them, too?” she asked.
“No. That’s us,” Charlie said. “I’ve got a man in there, keeping an eye on every vehicle that comes along the street. He’s got a camera with infra-red film, so he can record license plate numbers even in the dark. He’s also got a portable telephone, so he can call your place, the police, or get in touch with me in a hurry.”
Pete Lockburn parked the green Chevy in front of the Scavello house, while Frank Reuther pulled Christine’s Firebird into the driveway.
The white Ford van, which had been following them, passed by. They watched it in silence as its driver took it into the next block, found a parking space, and switched off its lights.
“Amateurs,” Pete Lockburn said scornfully.
“Arrogant bastards,” Christine said.
Reuther climbed out of the Firebird, leaving the dog in it, and came to their car.
As Charlie put down the window to talk to Frank, he asked Christine for her house keys. When she produced them from her purse, he gave them to Frank. “Check the place out. Make sure nobody’s waiting in there.”
“Right,” Frank said, unbuttoning his suit jacket to provide quick access to the weapon in his shoulder holster. He headed up the walk to the front door.
Pete got out of the Chevy and stood beside it, surveying the night-shrouded street. He left his coat unbuttoned, too.
Joey said, “Is this where the bad guys show up?”
“Let’s hope not, honey.”
There were a lot of trees and not many streetlights, and Charlie began to feel uneasy about sitting here at the curb, so he got out of the Chevy, too, warning Christine and Joey to stay where they were. He stood at his side of the car, his back toward Pete Lockburn, taking responsibility for the approaches in his direction.
Occasionally a car swung around the corner, entered the block, drove past or turned into the driveway of another house. Each time he saw a new pair of headlights, Charlie tensed and put his right hand under his coat, on the butt of the revolver in his shoulder holster.
He was cold. He wished he’d brought an overcoat.
Sheet lightning pulsed dully in the western sky. A far-off peal of thunder made him think of the freight trains that had rumbled past the shabby little house in which he’d grown up, back in Indiana, in what now seemed like another century.
For some reason, those trains had never been a symbol of freedom and escape, as they might have been to other boys in his situation. To young Charlie, lying in his narrow bed in his narrow room, trying to forget his father’s latest outburst of drunken violence, the sound of those trains had always reminded him that he lived on the wrong side of the tracks. The clattering-growling wheels had been the voice of poverty, the sound of need and fear and desperation.
He was surprised that this low thunder could bring back, with such disturbing clarity, the rumbling of those train wheels. Equally surprising was that the memory of those trains could evoke childhood fears and recall to mind the feeling of being trapped that had been such an integral part of his youth.
In that regard, he had a lot in common with Christine. His childhood had been blighted by physical abuse, hers by psychological abuse. Both of them had lived under the fist, one literally, one figuratively, and as children they had felt trapped, claustrophobic.
He looked down at the side window of the Chevy, saw Joey peering out at him. He gave a thumbs-up sign. The boy returned it, grinning.
Having been a target of abuse as a boy, Charlie was especially sensitive to children who were victims of violence. Nothing made him angrier than adults who battered children. Crimes against defenseless children gave him a cold, greasy, sick feeling and filled him with a hatred and a bleak despair that nothing else could engender.
He would not let them harm Joey Scavello.
He would not fail the boy. He didn’t dare fail because, having failed, he very likely wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
It seemed quite a long time before Frank came back. He was still watchful but a bit more relaxed than when he’d gone inside. “Clean, Mr. Harrison. I looked in the backyard, too. Nobody around.”
They took Christine and Joey and Chewbacca inside, surrounding the woman and the boy as they
moved, allowing no clear line of fire.
Christine had said that she was successful, but Charlie hadn’t expected such a large, well-furnished house. The living room had a huge fireplace surrounded by a carved mantel and oak bookshelves extending to the corners. An enormous Chinese carpet provided the focus for a pleasing mix of Oriental and European antiques and antique reproductions of high quality. Along one wall was an eightpanel, hand-carved rosewood screen with a double triptych depicting a waterfall and bridge and ancient Japanese village, all rendered in intricately fitted pieces of soapstone.
Joey wanted to go to his room and play a game with his new dog, and Frank Reuther went with him.
At Charlie’s suggestion, Pete Lockburn went through the house, from bottom to top and back again, checking to be sure all doors and windows were locked, shutting all the draperies, so no one could see inside.
Christine said, “I guess I’d better see what I can find for supper. Probably hot dogs. That’s the only thing I have plenty of.”
“Don’t bother,” Charlie said. “I’ve got a man bringing a lot of takeout at seven o’clock.”
“You think of everything.”
“Let’s hope so.”
23
O’Hara trained his binoculars on an upstairs window of the Scavello house, then on the next window, and the next, eventually scanning the first floor as well. Light shone in every room, but all the draperies were drawn tight.
“Maybe she came home but sent the boy somewhere else for the night,” Baumberg said.
“The boy’s there,” O’Hara said.
“How do you know?”
“Can’t you feel him over there?”
Baumberg squinted through the window.
“Feel him,” O’Hara said in a hushed and frightened voice.
Baumberg groped for the awareness that had terrified his partner.
“The darkness,” O’Hara said. “Feel the special darkness of the boy, the terrible darkness that rolls off him like fog off the ocean.”