Romy jerked over his gun cabinet and pulled out two shotguns, quickly loading one, then the other. He looked up as Jackson appeared in the archway of the study. Jackson was … laughing.
When he spoke, his voice was very deep and hollow-sounding. "You're a fool, Romy. But then, you always were.
Romy lifted the shotgun, a Browning five shot autoloader and blew his brother clear out of the archway. He dropped the Browning and lifted the Police Ithaca pump, a sawed-off model holding eight shells. He lowered the shotgun as Mary and Bonnie ran to Jackson's side and began dragging him out of the house. As they dragged, they cursed Romy.
Romy knew he should shoot both women, but he could not bring himself to do it. He stood and watched them drag his brother into the car he had noticed parked in the drive, in front of the house. He watched as they drove off, still hurling curses at Romy.
Romy walked back into his study and reloaded his pistol and Browning. He gathered up all his rifles and shotguns and carried them out to his car, putting them in the backseat. That foul-smelling blood from Jackson was very nearly overpowering in its stench. He closed the door to his house and drove back to Colter's house. He could not remember ever being so tired.
"Brother Elmer has betrayed us," Lester told his flock. "He has gone over to the side of filth and sin. But we shall not be deterred from our task. Them dirty books and magazines has got to be dis-troyed. And them that sells them terrible things is just as guilty as them that reads 'em."
"Amen, Brother!" the flock responded.
No one had noticed Sadie was gone.
"We forgot our signs last time out," Brother Lester reminded his flock. "Let's rejoice for a moment and then take to the streets like good soldiers."
Nobody much wanted to shout and prance; everybody was kinda tired and a little dejected. Brother Lester asked Sister Lucille and Sister Edna if they couldn't perhaps whip up some iced tea and look around and see if there wasn't some of them cookies from dinner left over.
"We'll march just at dusk," Lester announced.
As the afternoon slowly waned, a deceptive calmness settled over the town of Becancour. But those who were part of what was happening, willing and unwilling, on the side of Dark or Light, knew the sudden quiet denoted anything but a calmness.
The cats and dogs worked their way closer to the earth on which they lay. Side by side, the cats and dogs lay touching, each drawing strength and comfort from the other. They waited.
The splashing and sudden eruptions of dead but living flesh from the dark waters of the swamps and bayous had ceased as those fish-belly-white beings had anticipated the call from the minions of the Dark One and surfaced—free from their watery confines at last.
Lula's Love-Inn was filled to capacity and beyond, wall to wall packed with unwashed human flesh. They sat at tables and at the bar, they lined the walls and leaned against the silent jukebox. Men and women and young people with dead evil eyes and willingly lost souls.
They waited for the call to gather.
At the old Dorgenois home, the Princess and her followers had dressed in their finest. They now waited for darkness to fall, for the night to displace day, for all vestiges of sunlight to be gone, for any trace of God's hand to be shrouded in darkness. Only then could they move.
Dave Porter and Bette and Max Encalarde and Louis Black and Frank and Thelma Lovern and Nate Slater and Carl Nichols and Bob Gannon and Mrs. Carmon and a dozen others with souls as black as midnight had gathered at the motel. They waited, breathing the stinking air polluted by their own bodies.
A hundred or more young people had gathered around the local drive-in where they used to bring their girls and drink Cokes and eat hot dogs and hamburgers and french fries. They sat in their cars and trucks and on their motorcycles and looked at Mr. Janson—the guy who owned the drive-in. He stood inside the little building where all the good stuff was cooked and stared back at the sullen young people. Janson didn't know what in the hell was going on, but these damned kids were making him very uneasy, he knew that for an ironclad fact.
"How we gonna do it?" a teenager asked another.
"Slow," his companion replied. "Pay him back for all them greasy, overpriced burgers."
"How 'bout them kids in there with him?" another asked.
"They had their chance. They turned us down, didn't they?"
"Yeah," a girl spoke from the truck parked next to the car. "Now it's too late."
"When?" the question was tossed out.
"Full dark."
Mrs. Wheeler sat on her front porch and listened to the silence around her. She was old enough to remember when conditions came very close to paralleling what was now taking place in this small, quiet off-the-beaten-path town. She had forgotten all about that. She'd been just a little girl … ten years old, maybe. Sixty-five-odd years ago.
She could remember that her parents had been very frightened that day and longer night. But when God's dawn broke free, everybody seemed to settle right down. And it had never happened again.
Until now.
Mrs. Wheeler didn't think the next dawn would improve a damn thing.
Not this time.
Mrs. Wheeler sat with a shotgun across her lap. Her eyes moved from left to right. Those young punks were back; they thought they'd been slipping up on her, but she had seen them. Mrs. Wheeler waited.
Old Man Jobert had been drinking all day. Good homemade wine that he'd made hisself. Jobert lived a few miles out from Becancour, off the road and 'bout a mile inside the deep swamp. Jobert had fought in the big war, back in '44, and then, with a taste for adventure in his mouth, he'd joined up with the French Foreign Legion and got his ass shot in Southeast Asia.
Damn kids comin' back from Vietnam couldn't tell him nothin' about that miserable place. Jobert had been fightin' there when some of them were in diapers.
Jobert took another swig of homemade wine and opened his war trunk, carefully, lovingly, taking out his French Foreign Legion uniform. That he was still able to fit into the thing showed what hard work done for a man.
He dressed up and put his kepi on his head. He felt like marchin' and singin' the old songs this night. So, by God, that's what he'd do. Just pole over to the road and march into Becancour; maybe go to Lula's and have a drink or two with the boys.
For some reason he could not fathom, Jobert strapped a pistol and cartridge case, and picked up his old .30-06, slinging a bandoleer of ammo over his shoulder.
Brother Lester and his flock were just about ready to go. They had their placards and signs and had changed socks and shoes for the big march.
"Brothers and sisters!" Brother Lester shouted. "Let's march!"
Backslider Brother Elmer stood on a deserted street corner of Becancour and wondered how come the town was so quiet?
And in the Becancour cemetery, Bob Savoie opened his eyes and began pushing at the lid of his coffin.
SECOND NIGHT OF THREE
"It's so quiet, Sam," Romy said, stepping out of the house to join Sam on the porch.
"Wait a few hours, it won't be then."
"I still can't believe what I saw happen with Jackson. I can't believe it. It simply is not possible."
"Get it through your head that Jackson is not a human being. Colter believes he sold his soul to the devil when he was just a child. I don't know; I can't say."
"Julie says that our son is … not of this earth."
"No," Sam said bluntly. "He is not."
"How can you be so sure?"
'Because Nydia told me. Little Sam told her. Dog told Little Sam."
"A dog told your son!"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I don't know. I was not there. Both my wife and son have powers that are not of this earth. So, too, does Dog. I rather doubt that Dog opened his mouth and spoke English to my son, but somehow he got the message across."
Sonny Passon, Trooper Norris, and Father Javotte had stepped outside to the porch. They stood quietly, listening.
Both Passon and Norris could not suppress a chilling shudder at the words.
The last rays of sunlight had vanished; deep purple was now mixed and mingled with darkness. And Sam knew that it was no longer God's land. It now belonged to the Dark One.
He said as much, his voice low-pitched.
"How could anyone kill a little child like my Guy?" Romy asked.
"If he can be killed," Sam said, "he will not be a little child. He will be transformed into the demon that he was born to be. And it will not be me who kills him."
"Then … who?"
"Little Sam," Sam said softly.
Brother Lester and his placard-carrying flock had marched up to the main street of town. There they stopped and stared in amazement. The street was so empty someone could have fired a cannon down it not hit a thing but air.
"I knowed we'd picked the wrong time for this here parade," Brother Ira grumbled. "This here street is as empty as Will Jolevare's head."
"Be quiet," Lester said. "I hear singin'. Probably comin' from a jukebox in one of those damn saloons."
The singing drifted to the Brothers and Sisters of Lester's CRAP.
"Sautons ensemble! Sautons ensemble!
Legionnaires, nous ne reviendrons pas.
La bas, les ennemis t'attendent
Sois fier, nous allons au combat."
"It's that drunken old fool, Jobert!" Lester said.
"Come on, soldiers of the Lord. Forward, march!"
The line straggled onward, without much enthusiasm, and without a single citizen-soldier in step. Looked like a bunch of duck hunters after a bad hunt.
Aging Legionnaire met the members of CRAP in the center of the street.
"Get out of the street, you old sot!" Lester hollered.
Jobert slipped his rifle off his shoulder and stood his ground. "Non, bordel de merde!"
'What'd he call me?" Lester asked.
"He called you a damned shit," Brother Benny informed the lay preacher.
"How dare he?" Sister Bertha squalled. "Get out of the way, you old fool!" she screamed at Jobert.
"You get out of the way, putain de merde," Jobert replied.
"'What'd he call me!" Sister Bertha shrieked, her voice very nearly capable of cracking brass.
Brother Benny took a deep breath. "He called you a shitty whore!"
With a war whoop that would have awed Cochise, Sister Bertha put her act in gear and charged, all two hundred odd pounds of CRAP.
Jobert might have been drunk, but he wasn't stupid. Jobert, soaking wet, might have weighed one thirty-five. No way he could halt the charge of this moose coming at him. So he sidestepped and stuck out his boot. Sister Bertha went rolling up the street, making as much racket as an empty fifty-five-gallon drum tossed off a moving truck.
The march was forgotten and placards tossed aside when Brother Lester shouted, "Get that heathen! He's assaulted Sister Bertha."
Jobert slung his rifle and took off running, cutting into a dark alley, very much aware of Brother Lester's footsteps close behind him.
A shadow fell across the open end of the alley. Jobert put on the brakes and stood staring in horror at the thing that loomed up in front of him, blocking the escape route.
Brave Legionnaire he was, but fighting Arabs and Vietnamese was one kind of battle … Jobert didn't even know what this thing was!
Squalling, Jobert turned around and literally ran right over Brother Lester, knocking the leader of CRAP sprawling, amid the beer cans and whiskey bottles.
The huge Beast stepped into the alley. He was still fifty feet or so from Lester, who was trying to get up.
Brother Lester lost his religion for a moment. "Goddammit!" he hollered. "Do I have to do everything all by myself?"
The Beast stepped closer. Brother Lester got to his feet and turned around just as Brother Benny and Sister Alma reached him. They saw the Beast at the same time.
"What in the blazes is that!" Brother Benny said.
Sister Alma took one look at the Beast and let out a shriek that rattled windows. Before the echo of squalling had died away, Brother Lester, Brother Benny, and Sister Alma had cleared the alley and were rapidly closing in on Legionnaire Jobert, who, considering his age, was moving quite well.
All four of them ran into Lula's Love-Inn.
The altar was a heavy oak door placed on concrete blocks and covered with black fabric. Torches, which would be lighted later, were placed in a circle around the altar. A few of the faithful had begun to gather. All around the edges of the open field, animal eyes stared unblinking at the scene.
And beyond the cats, on the fringes of the swamp, staying together, many of the Beasts had gathered. They stayed together, not trusting the hundreds of cats that ringed the field, not really understanding why the little furry things were here at all. As a food supply, the cats were quite tasty, but not the favorite food of the Beasts.
When they did eat, the Beasts much preferred human flesh. With a single thought of food, thick ropes of stinking saliva dripped from the massive jaws of the Beasts, the saliva dripping onto the great hairy chests, dribbling through the thick mat of hair.
The Beasts and the cats and the few human servants of the Lord of Flies who had gathered in the field patiently waited. It was nearly time for the Black Mass to begin.
"Oooo!" the boys around Mrs. Wheeler's home called out in the night. This was good fun, they had all agreed. And it would be even more fun when they grabbed the old witch and tortured her to death. "Oooo!" they hooted and called, believing they were frightening the old lady.
Mrs. Wheeler clicked her shotgun off safety and took a firmer grip on the old wood of the stock. If those crap-headed, spoiled, pampered, and good-for-nothing punks out there felt they were scaring her, they had a very large surprise waiting in store for them, she thought.
And those in the houses close to the home of Mrs. Wheeler listened to the sounds of the night. Many of them were still in limbo, mentally and physically undecided as to what path to take: Light, or Dark. All over the small town, those humans who were wavering between worlds were being forced to choose. Only the very strongest would be able to choose the path of truth and light and freedom.
The majority would bend to the will of Satan.
"Die, old woman!" a girl called from the night-shrouded side yard of Mrs. Wheeler's home. "Now you die!"
As she waited, the retired schoolteacher began remembering bits and scraps of conversation she'd heard as a little slip of a girl, sixty-five or so years back. She knew that nearly everything one heard, saw, or read was retained in the brain, but seldom brought forth. So she did not struggle to pull the words from her mind; just let them surface naturally.
"… them things out in the swamps ain't God's work," she recalled some long-forgotten friend of her parents saying.
"They belong to the devil," her mother had said. "My grand-mere said they've been here forever."
"Oooo! Oooo! Oooo!" the young Satan-worshipers in the yard called.
"Hell with you," Mrs. Wheeler muttered, and forced herself to recall more of the long-forgotten bits of conversation.
"… priest said Satan is always very near to his place."
"… notice how funny a lot of cats were actin' the other night? Priest said the poor animals didn't have no choice in the matter. They follow the actions of their owners."
"Why not the dogs?" That had come from Mrs. Wheeler's father.
"Don't know."
Mrs. Wheeler reached down beside her and lifted her old cat to her lap. She looked at the cat looking at her. "Is that the way it is, Hector?" she softly whispered to the cat.
The cat purred and briefly snuggled close to the old woman. Mrs. Wheeler smiled and shooed the cat inside the house. "You stay in there, Hector. Things are about to get tough out here."
She heard the punks coming closer. Too eager, she thought. This will be a piece of cake. Her heart was beating faster, and she knew her blood pressure was up, but t
hat was normal, she thought, considering the circumstances.
"Die, you old witch!" a young man shouted, jerking open the screen door.
Without rising from her chair, Mrs. Wheeler lifted the shotgun and blew half the punk's head off. The Satan-lover was flung off the steps and to the ground. The old lady shifted the barrel position and pulled the trigger at a flash of movement in her yard. A horrible, choking scream cut the hot air. Footsteps ran in the night and faded from the old lady's ears. A car was cranked up, tires spinning on the concrete.
All was still.
Mrs. Wheeler rose from her chair, replaced the shells in her shotgun, and went into the house for a drink of wine.
"Going to be a long evening," she said to Hector.
"Now!" The call was shouted at the drive-in. "Get them!"
Trixie screamed as several dozen young people rushed the drive-in's kitchen and office. Janson slammed and locked the front door, yelling for the kitchen help to lock the back door.
Laughter greeted his command. Angry, Janson turned around, the screaming of the carhops a raging mass of confusion in his head.
Young George Lemare stood in the kitchen door, a butcher knife in his hand. He was grinning at Janson.
"This is gonna be fun," George said.
Janson picked up a pot of coffee from the burner and tossed the scalding liquid on George.
Add George's horrible screaming to the confusion.
A brick slammed through the glass-enclosed office, shards of cutting light hurled about; Janson felt a trickle of blood from a small cut on his neck.
Janson picked up a broom, broke off the handle, slammed the wood onto a young man's head. Blood spurted from the cut and the young man dropped to the floor.
The front door was kicked in, the small room filling with the stench of unwashed bodies. Janson could see Trixie. Her uniform was ripped from her and boys were holding the screaming girl's legs apart, while another kid was raping her.
"Run, Sheri!" Janson yelled at another waitress. "Run for help!"
George was on the floor, on his knees, both hands to his scalded face. He was moaning and crying in his searing, horrible pain.
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