Sandman

by William W. Johnstone

  “You can talk in front of us, Father Gomez,” Janis called from the kitchen. “We know all about it. Me and Melissa and the gang.”

  The men smiled, Gomez calling out, “Sorry, Janis. I suppose it is an adult’s inclination to be protective of the young.”

  Laughter drifted out of Paul’s room, floating like an evil invisible vapor up the hall and into the den and kitchen.

  “He has extraordinarily good hearing,” Leo noted.

  “Yes. But that’s about as far as it goes,” the priest replied, accepting a cup of coffee and a plate of toast with thanks.

  The others waited for an explanation of that statement.

  “I spent most of last night in study and consultation with the Monsignor in Phoenix.” He glanced at Janis. “Would you turn on the stereo, dear? A little noise would be most helpful.”

  She got his drift and smiled. Just like in the books and movies, she thought, walking to the bank of electronic equipment that made up a complete entertainment center.

  But this is real, she reminded herself. I’ve got to keep remembering that.

  She touched the cross hanging around her neck.

  With the stereo set on a loud rock station, Gomez motioned the little group to come closer.

  “Mantine is vulnerable. Don’t worry, neither he nor Nicole can hear us. But Paul probably can. I was wrong about some things. They are not all-knowing and all-seeing. To put it plainly, they’re on our turf now. Oh, they still hold a good hand, so far; but that is subject to change, and soon. I hope,” he added grimly.

  “But Paul is still dangerous, isn’t he?” Janis asked, a part of her not wanting this adventure to end.

  A larger part wishing fervently that her brother was on the moon.

  Or even farther away.

  “Dangerous doesn’t even begin to describe him, Janis,” Gomez stated quietly. His eyes were very sad as he looked at Janis. “You do believe that Paul was responsible for what happened to your father last night, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you fully realize what has to be done to your brother?”

  She stared at him. “I know what they do in books and movies.”

  “And . . . ?”

  She side-stepped that for a moment. “He’s my brother, Father Gomez. So I’ve got a question. Maybe two or three. First, could I turn out to be like Paul?”

  Gomez’s sigh was painful. He’d been wondering when the child would ask that. “I don’t know, Janis. I can’t answer that; not with one-hundred-percent certainty. But I would say that you are perfectly normal, and be ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent certain of it. I wish I could give you a better answer.”

  She nodded her head, her expression serious. “Can the demon inside my brother be destroyed without killing Paul?”

  As she spoke the damning words, she knew what must be done.

  A heavy burden for a child.

  Gomez shook his head. “No, dear. That’s impossible. Again, I’m sorry.”

  “I see. All right. Answer me this: could Paul have prevented this from happening? I mean, to him.”

  “Perhaps in the beginning. But you see, we don’t know when the beginning was. You see, Paul is ...” He paused, searching for words that would best explain to a young girl that her brother was beyond redemption. That an innocent-looking young boy was, in reality, evil incarnate. A monster in human form. The Son of Satan.

  Janis found them for him. “Paul is not eight years old, is he? He’s old, very old, right?”

  “That is my belief, Janis. And we really don’t know why your mother was chosen to birth him. These things just . . . happen, that’s all.”

  “So it wasn’t anything that my mom did, right? I mean she isn’t looked on as being bad. By God, I mean? You’re saying it wasn’t her fault, right?”

  “That’s correct, Janis.”

  With a very adult sigh, the girl stood up and looked up the hallway. Paul’s door was still closed, as best she could tell from her angle of vision.

  “These aren’t questions, Father Gomez. I’m just talking out loud. Paul killed those people on the island, or had them killed, somehow. He did something to Jenny, and then did it to her mother. He was responsible for . . . whatever happened to those people at the hospital. And he caused the death of that cop, right there”—she pointed—“in the hall. He even set up our dad, made him go crazy. But even if the police could prove he did all those things, Paul is in a child’s body, and the courts won’t do anything to him. Paul knows that. My brother isn’t just bad, and he isn’t nuts. He’s just evil. The Bible says that evil must be destroyed.” She looked at Father Gomez. “Does that answer your original question, Father?”

  “Yes, it does. But the important thing, Janis, is this: Are you certain in your own mind?”

  “Yes,” she replied in a soft voice. “I am. I always knew something was wrong with Paul. I always did. But you’re going to have a hard time convincing Mother. And there is this: I don’t want to be around when . . . what we’re talking about happens. Mother is going to have to be away, too.”

  “I understand that, Janis. But you might not have a choice, either of you,” Gomez cautioned, “even though we’ll do everything we can to keep you out of and away from . . . the final act.”

  “But . . .” Janis’s voice revealed her anguish and fear.

  Stanford averted his eyes and shook his head.

  Leo said a silent little prayer for a child with such a heavy load on her young shoulders.

  Melissa looked around her, her eyes touching all of them, then fixing on Janis. She did not really understand what was going on.

  The priest met Janis’s eyes. “There is a possibility that you might have to finish what we are unable to.”

  “I don’t know if I could do that, Father. You’re asking an awful lot of me.”

  “Hey, what are you talking about?” Melissa asked.

  Janis waved her silent, not taking her eyes from the priest’s.

  Melissa got it then. “Aw, come on! Paul is her brother! ”

  “That is precisely the reason, child,” Stanford told her.

  Janis’s shoulders slumped.

  Janis looked at the shattered and boarded-up windows of the den, the bloodstains still on the carpet in the hall. Her mother had already ordered new carpeting.

  In his room, Paul laughed and laughed. The sound was ugly and evil and taunting as it drifted to those seated in the den.

  “If it has to be”—Janis’s words were just audible over the blaring of the stereo and her brother’s wild laughter—“then I guess I’ll find the strength to do it.”

  Gomez bowed his head and began to pray softly.

  A breeze picked up suddenly on the desert, kicking up grains of sand, hurling them, ticky-tacky, against the house.

  “One by one!” Paul’s voice came hurtling at them, deep and well-hollow and evil. “You’ll all know the coldness of the grave. One by one!”

  His laughter cut at them.

  The house began to stink as a foul odor drifted about those in the den. And thin tentacles of yellow smoke snaked about their ankles.

  Paul’s laughter was now louder than the music blaring from the speakers.

  “You know me, and I know you!” His words came to them. “But I’m just a little boy,” he taunted. “There is nothing you can do to me.”

  “Yes, there is, Paul,” Janis whispered, her words unheard by the others. “And if that’s the only way, I’ll do it.”

  BOOK TWO

  This is the Black Widow, death.

  —Lowell

  ONE

  “Open the door, Paul. I want to talk to you.”

  Father Gomez waited in the hall, in front of the locked bedroom door. He listened. Thought he could hear movement behind the door. But he couldn’t be sure, although he had been told that Paul was in his room.

  “Paul? Come on. Open the door. Talk to me,” the priest urged.

  “Fuck you!�
�� the deep, well-hollow voice retorted at last.

  “Come on, Paul. Let’s talk. There is no reason for you to be afraid of me.”

  Laughter from behind the closed door. “Afraid of you? Don’t be silly. That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard.”

  “Then why don’t you open the door and talk to met?”

  At the priest’s urging, Stanford had taken the girls outside, to sit by the pool.

  Leo was standing at the hall entrance, listening, watching.

  Gomez heard something behind the door. What, he could not be sure. But it sounded faintly like a quiet roaring; a gathering of wind, perhaps.

  In Paul’s room?

  Gomez tapped on the door once more. “We must meet, Paul. You know that. It’s time.”

  The sounds of laughter. “All right,” Paul said. “So you want to talk to me, heh, Holy Roller? Well, then. Come on in.”

  Gomez heard the door being unlocked.

  He knew Paul had used his powers to do it.

  Leo had walked up the hall, to stand beside the priest. “What’s that roaring sound?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The men exchanged glances.

  “I don’t trust him,” Leo said quietly.

  Gomez only smiled. He turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.

  The roaring sound both men had heard became a dark-tinged maelstromic vortex. The whirling winds grabbed both men, sucked them through the doorway and into the room, then spun them around and slammed them against a wall, almost knocking the breath from them. They were picked up, as if by invisible hands and shaken, as a parent might shake a naughty child.

  Each man felt an invisible hand slap him across the face.

  The bedroom door closed. Locked.

  Gomez and Leo were slammed hard against the wall, their heads bumping against the paneling. Then they were shoved to the floor, to land on their bottoms.

  The part of Leo’s brain that was not in shock, that could still register and record events, noted that not one book, one piece of paper, or record cover—nothing else in the room—was being affected by the winds.

  Only he and Gomez.

  And Paul had not been alone in there.

  But what in God’s name—Leo felt that only He might be able to explain it—was that thing . . . creature . . . that hideousness crouching by the bed, beside Paul?

  The creature began to change before the eyes of the wind-held men. A metamorphosis that both would rather not witness.

  While Paul sat Buddhalike in the center of the bed and laughed demonically. Insanely. The boy’s eyes were wild, his lips peeled back grotesquely. And his teeth were very white, the cuspids long and needle-pointed. Slobber leaked from Paul’s mouth.

  He was hideous-looking.

  But not as horrible as the creature now standing by the bed. The metamorphosis had produced a standing snake, a snarling deformed caninelike beast, a great cat out of prehistoric times, a winged serpent, a half-man/half-beast, and a scaly creature that defied description, but whose sight would produce terror in even the bravest of person.

  Then it became what it was.

  A demon.

  Both men knew it. Leo without knowing how. Father Dan Gomez because he had been born to, someday, face it.

  That day had arrived.

  The priest whispered a prayer that could not be heard by human ears over the wailing of the funnel-like wind that held the shocked men in its embrace.

  The demon’s eyes were huge and half-mooned, slightly slanted. Two holes in the center of its ugly face dropped green-yellow stinking slime. Scales covered the upper part, mottled and loose skin the lower part of its face. And its long, needle-pointed teeth were stained and crusted with scum and filth. A long, forked tongue flicked in and out of its lipless mouth. That mouth, open and hissing, was blood-red and expelled an olfactory-insulting odor.

  Leo and Gomez were jerked to their feet by the forceful hands of the demon’s wind. Banged against the wall. Then the wind ceased abruptly. The cessation was so abrupt that both men were slammed to the floor in a sprawl of arms and legs.

  Leo’s hand snaked under his jacket, his fingers touching the butt of the .44.

  His mental confusion ended when the snarling, hissing, walking foulness started to move toward them.

  “Mine!” Paul screamed. “Damn your souls to the pits of my father.”

  Gomez began to pray.

  Paul began to laugh.

  Leo jerked out his .44, earing back the hammer.

  He gave the demon a taste of Smith and Wesson.

  The roaring of the big .44 was enormous in the closed room. The demon was slug-struck in the shoulder. Picked up off its big, flat, dirty and clawed feet, and tossed to the floor. A stinking gush of red, yellow, and green pus and blood flew from the wound.

  The demon screamed in pain.

  But its wound healed as rapidly as it had opened.

  And the room filled with a putrid, yellow, sulfuric eye-smarting mist.

  Before Leo could swing the muzzle of the .44 toward Paul and pull the trigger, which was exactly what he had in mind, he was jerked off the floor, turned around in midair, and—legs straight out in front of him—hurled against the bedroom door, the force of the impact tearing the door from its hinges and dropping Leo to the carpeted hall floor, still holding onto his .44.

  Stanford and the girls came running into the hallway just as Father Gomez was tossed out of the room. He landed on his butt beside Leo, and was just as confused as the ex-cop.

  The door was picked up, placed back into the frame. The cracks vanished. The pins were dropped into place. The lock clicked.

  The wind died into silence.

  But that thin stinking mist oozed out from under the door to softly lick at human feet and ankles as Leo and Gomez were helped up and steadied for a moment.

  “Would you holster that cannon, please?” Stanford requested of Leo.

  Shaken, Leo slipped the pistol back into his shoulder holster. “I hit it. I got in a fair shot. I should have taken my time and killed the goddamn thing! What was that in there?”

  The men were led up the hall and into the den, then seated.

  Melissa and Janis were pale and clearly scared.

  Stanford noticed and gave them something to do. “Get them glasses of water, please, girls.”

  The girls took off for the kitchen, glad to have a mission.

  Gomez looked at Leo. “You wouldn’t have killed it if you’d emptied your gun into it. Didn’t you see it heal almost instantly? And what was it? Some relation of Paul’s, I would imagine.”

  Gomez flexed his left arm; he had struck the wall hard with his left shoulder.

  Leo shook his head. “Relation!”

  Gomez leaned back in his chair. “At least we now know our worst fears are confirmed.”

  “We do?” Leo took his .44 from leather, punched out the empty brass, and reloaded.

  As the girls brought glasses of ice water, Stanford met the priest’s eyes. “He’s the Devil’s own?”

  Gomez nodded. “Without a doubt. And he’s powerful. What happened just a few moments ago was Paul’s way of showing us a sample of what he can do. Believe me, the worst is yet to come.”

  The inspector stood up and took his service revolver from its holster. He looked down at Janis. There was sadness in his eyes.

  Gomez rose to face him. “No, Stanford. Not here. Not now. Not yet.”

  Leo stood up. “I’ll go with you, Stanford. Between the two of us we ought to do it.”

  “No!” The priest’s voice was harsh.

  “Why not?” Stanford demanded. He held the pistol muzzle-down, by his side, his trigger finger resting on the trigger guard. “He’s shown us what he is. The battle lines have been drawn. I see no point in delaying what you and I know is inevitable.”

  Gomez opened his mouth just as the doorbell sounded. Janis answered it. The gang. Carla and Carol and Jean and Bing and Roy. She waved them inside an
d down the steps to the sunken den.

  Stanford had turned and quickly bolstered his pistol.

  “Gonna be big doings down at the civic center,” Bing said. “That Dr. Slater and his wife have just called a press conference for late this afternoon. The TV people are comin’ in, and a bunch of newspaper reporters. We just heard it on the radio. You know what’s goin’ on, Janis?”

  “Not really.” She looked at the men, one by one.

  “I’ll get on the horn to Mike.” Leo moved toward the phone. “See if he knows anything.” He quickly punched out the number of the hospital, figuring Mike would still be there with Connie.

  It took the switchboard operator about a minute to track down the chief.

  Leo turned as he waited, to look up the hallway. The door to Paul’s room was closed.

  Gateway to Hell, Leo thought.

  He was having a very difficult time accepting all that he’d seen in that room, though he knew damned well he’d pulled the trigger on something.

  And that something was not of this earth.

  But then, he thought . . .

  ... neither is Paul.

  Mike came on the line. “Chaos is about to break loose, Leo. Dick and his wife had some sort of encounter, last evening, I guess it was. He’s turned in his resignation at the hospital. Says he’s going to bust this thing wide open, that it’s his moral duty to put a stop to it.”

  “Now how does he figure he can do that by blabbing to the press?”

  “Beats me, buddy.”

  “Hang on.” Leo handed the phone to Gomez.

  The priest listened, his face tightening as the words rolled into his ear. “Listen, Mike . . . see if you—or somebody—can dissuade Slater. If you don’t, he’ll die. I’m convinced of that. Paul will never let him talk. The boy knows he can’t stand that kind of publicity. And for that matter, neither can we. Slater has got to be stopped—right now. See what you can do.”

  “Too late, Father. Dick and his wife are holed up in their house. They’re not seeing anyone, nor are they answering the phone. The statement they issued jointly says it will all be explained late this afternoon, at the civic center.”