“Mother!” Paul yelled, his scream ripping through the yellow, stinking murk.
Stanford fired again, at the sound of the voice. “Setup,” he muttered. “And I walked right into it.”
“Mother!” Paul shrieked.
Stanford fired again.
The demon leaped at Stanford, its clawed hands ripping his face, shredding the flesh. Blood dripped onto the carpet.
Abruptly, the yellow haze vanished. The demon was gone. Stanford stood in the room, tall and bloody, a gun in his hand. Paul huddled in one corner, appearing to be no more than a frightened little boy.
The bedroom door opened. Connie stood there, her eyes dulled from hard sleep, both pill induced and mind controlled.
She held Mark’s shotgun in her hands.
“Mother!” Paul wailed. “He’s trying to kill me. Stop him, Mother!”
Stanford turned, pistol in hand, to face the woman.
She lifted the shotgun and blew Stanford’s head all over the room.
* * *
“How is he?” Leo asked Mary Beth.
“He’s all right. The bullet just grazed him. He’s healing so fast it’s defying medical explanation.”
Leo shook his head. Felt a myriad of emotions. He had not known Stanford long. But in a very short time the men had become good and fast friends. With a sigh, he looked at Mary Beth.
“Now is the time, Mary Beth. And the best place. Kill the boy.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do that, Leo. I just can’t. ”
“You know what he is.” He felt like grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.
“I know what you and Mike and Father Gomez suspect him of being. But I cannot cold-bloodedly murder an eight-year-old child.”
“You’ve seen the head?”
“Unfortunately.”
“The headless man?”
“You know I have.”
“The woman?”
“This conversation is pointless, Leo. There is nothing to link Paul with those people . . . things. Whatever they are.”
Leo stared at her. With a silent curse, he turned and walked away.
But he stopped and turned around. “You’ve seen the book. You’ve seen the mark on Paul’s arm.”
“A birthmark. It could be nothing more than that.”
He had to keep trying. For Stanford’s sake. For everybody’s sake. “His sister is convinced.”
She stared at him.
“Mary Beth, I myself saw, in Paul’s bedroom, his demon brother. I shot it. Both Father Gomez and I were pinned up against a wall by some invisible force, and held there. Why would we both lie about something like that?”
She remembered the dead-but-alive cop in the back seat of her car. “It’s been a stressful time, Leo. For all of us.”
“I tried,” Leo said. He walked off. This time, he did not turn around.
“I can’t explain it,” Mary Beth muttered.
She understood Leo’s frustration and felt sorry for him. She had liked the tall inspector from the islands.
And she felt Paul was responsible for the deaths of Jenny, Mrs. Cauldman, Mr. Cauldman, Stanford, and all the others. Felt it—couldn’t prove it.
But she just could not bring herself to kill an eight-year-old boy.
Her eyes followed the ex-New York City cop. A group of press-types tried to stop him at the end of the corridor, to throw questions at him.
Leo brushed them off with a curt slash of his hand, and kept walking.
They didn’t pursue him because they didn’t know who he was.
Mary Beth walked to the doctors’ lounge, which, like most areas of the hospital, was now off-limits to the press. She poured a cup of coffee and sat down.
Like most of her colleagues, she was sure that sooner or later somebody was going to talk, spill the beans to the press. Faced with a constant barrage of never-ending questions, somebody would get angry and let something slip.
She had no idea what might happen after that.
Chaos, surely.
But that might be a good thing. Expose the horror to the public.
She lifted her eyes as a very tired-looking Mike Bambridge walked in and poured a cup of coffee. He sat down at the table with her.
They were alone in the lounge.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I am.”
“I can arrange for a bed here. You can get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. God knows, you look like you can use it.”
He shook his head. “I could, but when I closed my eyes something else would break loose.”
She met his tired gaze.
“I put an end to the truck drivers’ complaining about being released. I told them they could either stay here and get fat and keep their mouths shut, or go to jail under a protective-custody order. They suddenly decided the hospital was a really great place.”
Mary Beth smiled. “Goose and the Lone Arranger. They certainly are a couple of characters.”
“They are that. But you can’t fault them when it comes to courage. That scene out in the country would have frightened anybody. Sure scared me.”
“We’ve had to keep Jake heavily sedated. He’s really having a bad time of it, drying out.”
She remembered the disgusting and impossible head in Carleson’s lab. Reached across the table and touched Mike’s hand. “Mike, what are we going to do?”
He gently squeezed her fingers. “I don’t know. God help me, I just don’t know. I hate to admit it, but I suppose that depends on Paul, doesn’t it?”
He’s been talking with Leo, Mary Beth thought. “Paul is just a little boy, Mike.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
She refused to reply. She didn’t know the answer.
“Mary Beth, he isn’t just a little boy. I’m not even sure he’s human. You said yourself it was medically impossible for a gunshot wound to heal that quickly. And by the way, he’s being released now. I passed him in the hall.”
She could not suppress a shudder. “At least he’s gone from here.”
Mike pressed her. “If you believe your own words, why should you be afraid of a child?”
She side-stepped that. “When Leo left a few minutes ago, he was very upset with me.”
“I know.”
“I’m afraid he might try to do something to Paul.”
“I hope so.”
“You don’t mean that, Mike!”
“The hell I don’t.” There was as much heat in his reply as there had been in her objection.
“Mike, can’t you just lock the boy up? Can’t you get a judge to declare him legally insane?”
“It isn’t that easy, Mary Beth. I think the boy would breeze through any sanity hearing. Besides, without Connie’s permission it would be practically impossible to do that. And from what Janis tells me, the boy has his mother in his pocket. No”—he sighed—“we’d be wasting our time.”
“So what are you saying we should do?”
“It’s like a boil, Mary Beth. It has to come to a head.”
“Speaking of heads . . .”
The chief of police shuddered. “I saw that thing outside of town, remember? I want to take it out into the desert and destroy it. But sooner or later, the press is going to bust this story wide open. If we don’t want to come off looking like a bunch of fools, we’ve got to keep those ... things intact—in a manner of speaking—to show them.”
“The hospital is being filled with the macabre and the impossible, Mike.”
He rubbed his face. “It’s got to break, Mary Beth. And soon. It has to.”
“I just wonder what is coming next?”
* * *
Carla Weaver’s parents found their daughter in her room. Hanging by an extension cord from the clothes hook on the closet door. From the condition of her body, it was assumed she’d been hanging there for about twelve hours. There was no note to indicate why the child had committed suicide.
&nbs
p; Janis and her group, along with Mike and Leo and Father Gomez and many others on both sides of the dark line, knew that it wasn’t a suicide.
Knew it, but couldn’t prove it.
“More souls for the Master, sister dear,” Paul whispered to Janis, then laughed at the expression on her face. “You’ll see her again, sis,” he promised, his breath foul on her face. “I promise you that. One way or the other.”
Janis slapped him.
Paul recoiled, his face ugly with hate. But the intense light in his eyes softened as he regained control. He smiled at her. “I’ll make you watch when I take Mother. Then I’ll turn you over to Lisa’s gang ... and I’ll watch. Don’t you think that will be fun?”
She spat in his face, then ran to her bedroom, closing the door and locking it.
Janis now knew what she had to do. Not Leo or Mike or Father Gomez or Deputy Loneman.
Janis.
She had to do it.
She touched the cross that lay cool on the skin of her chest.
It seemed to throb under her fingertips, as if telling her something.
She threw herself onto the bed, sobbing.
“It’s just too much,” she whispered, her tears dampening the spread. “It’s just too much to ask me to do.”
You won’t be alone! The voice sprang into her head.
The tears stopped, and Janis sat up in the center of the bed. Her eyes were wide and frightened. “Who said that?”
Silence greeted her. Both real and imagined. She didn’t know what to believe.
“I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough. No matter how much I hate him, Paul is my brother.”
He is the child of Satan!
“Even if I were strong enough, how would I do it?”
You will know.
Janis lay across the bed and cried herself to sleep.
She did not hear the voice again.
* * *
Stanford’s remains were shipped back to the islands, to be buried beside his wife’s. The police told the press it had been a horrible accident. Nothing more. By some miraculous happenstance, the press bought the story.
“Maybe our luck is changing,” Sheriff Sandry muttered.
“Don’t count on it,” Mike cautioned. “I think Paul is just taking a breather. Letting things calm down for a while.”
To the cops it also seemed that some divine intervention had calmed the town. The stink vanished. Domestic violence returned to normal; that is to say the cops could just about name those couples who were prone to hammering on each other on any given night.
Mark Kelly was buried, and on the next afternoon, Carla Weaver was laid to rest.
Father Gomez had fought to have both bodies cremated. But Connie had resisted as had Carla’s parents. The priest had watched the services with a grim expression on his face.
He had a horrible feeling that the community had not seen the last of the dear departed.
There was a bright note, however: No more was seen of Andy and Mary or Darrel and Mona.
Coyotes dragged the bones of the salesman out into the desert, and scattered them. It would be weeks before a California detective traced the man to Tepehuanes.
The truck drivers were released from the hospital. By this time, they had convinced each other that the horror-filled night had never happened. Impossible. They had both suffered from food poisoning, or something like that. But headless zombies? Naw! No way.
They climbed into their rigs and pulled out, happy to do so. And certain if dispatch ever tried to route them through Tepehuanes again, somebody was gonna get punched in the mouth.
Linda was sent home from the Kelly house. She didn’t want to go, and Janis didn’t want her to leave But Paul convinced his mother it was the best thing to do. They could now get on with their lives, he said as a family unit.
Becky and Sam Matthews put their house up for sale and moved away from Tepehuanes. No explanation offered.
None was needed by those who knew what was going on.
Old Jake was finally released from the hospital. A judge agreed that he could return to the ranch and look after things until probate settled the estate of the missing Mary.
Old Jake bought three cases of rye whiskey, locked himself in the bunkhouse, and got raging drunk. So far, he’d stayed that way.
Jenny Cauldman died. Of old age. Her remains were cremated.
Summer drifted slowly toward fall.
The head remained locked in its wire cage. Still quite talkative.
The headless young man and his girlfriend were alive, and strapped down securely in isolation. After the horrible, gut-wrenching experience with Glen Holland, none of the doctors wanted to be a part of anything like that. Not again.
They often said as they looked in on the impossible, “Die, goddamn you. Just die!”
Rather redundant, since both creatures were dead.
Sort of.
Lisa and her gang kept out of sight and behaved, at least on the surface, like little angels.
Mantine and Nicole seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.
Gillette stayed close to home.
Leo rented the Matthews’ house and settled in. He waited, keeping a low profile.
The press left Tepehuanes. No news there.
Janis prayed a lot.
And Paul smiled a lot.
* * *
Connie settled down behind her word processor, and inserted the software. She had a book due in a couple of months and had to finish it. Two months had passed since the family’s return from the islands.
It was time to put the past behind her and get things back to normal.
She was working on a historical romance, set in the mid 1800s, in Mississippi. Much researched history and subtle sex.
Her fingers flew over the keys. She wrote several pages, then reviewed them.
Her mouth dropped open at what she’d written.
Connie blinked her eyes. Rubbed them. Shook her head. Surely she hadn’t written that!
She could visualize her editor lying on the floor in a dead faint.
She erased that part of the floppy disk, and clicked off the word processor.
She knew she had not written the words she had reviewed on the screen. She was a good writer. Her books sold well, and were translated into many languages.
She had never—would never—write such trash.
But, she pondered, if she hadn’t written the words, who had?
She rose from her work station and walked to the rear of her study, located at the back and to the side of the house. From the window, she could see Leo Corigliano sitting by the pool behind the Matthews’ house. It seemed to Connie that he was always there, day and night, waiting. Sometimes watching the house.
In the two weeks since he’d rented that place, Leo had never once tried to engage Connie in conversation. But Janis spent a lot of time over there, as did Linda and Melissa and Jean and Carol and Roy and Bing.
But never Paul. He would not go near the ex-cop.
She leaned against the wall and stared out the window at Leo.
She sensed that he blamed Paul for the death of Inspector Willingston, that he believed Paul—an eight-year-old, nine next month—had conspired to have Stanford killed. And she knew how Janis felt, how Mark had felt about his own son.
They all believed that Paul was evil. Connie had heard Janis and her friends talking. They said Paul was the Son of Satan. A devil-child. The spawn of Hell. That his brother was a demon. That Paul wanted to kill them all and sexually assault his mother.
That was the most ridiculous thing Connie had ever heard of.
Paul was just a little boy.
She sighed.
A strange little boy, she admitted. Brilliant. And with a well-hollow, deep voice.
But a devil-child?
Utter nonsense.
Movement caught Connie’s eyes. She stared as Paul crept silently up to the stone fence that separated the two properties. But what
in God’s name was that beside him?
She peered at it more closely. It was a mist. She blinked. The mist was gone.
Paul was standing up, staring at her, an odd light in his eyes. The light vanished. He smiled and waved and moved toward his bicycle, pedaled off.
Had she imagined the mist? Surely she had.
Connie watched as Father Gomez walked around the Matthews’ house to join Leo by the pool. The men shook hands, and the priest sat down.
Then he and Leo looked toward the Kelly house.
Instinctively, Connie drew back, even though she knew they could not see her.
Janis was with her friends. Her group, as she called it, was congregating at Melissa’s.
Connie struggled within herself for a moment, finally reached a decision.
Let’s bring this out in the open. To a head. Face it. Talk it out. Settle it. Once and for all.
She turned out the lights and walked out of her office, through the den and the back door, to the fence that separated the large plots of land. When she approached the gate, Leo and Father Gomez stood up, facing her.
“Mrs. Kelly,” Leo said.
The priest smiled at her.
“Mr. Corigliano. Father.” Connie pushed open the gate and went over to the men. “We’ve been neighbors for a couple of weeks now, Mr. Corigliano. My daughter and her friends think very highly of you. Yet you and I have not exchanged a word since you moved in. I find that very strange.”
She stared at him, putting the verbal ball in Leo’s court.
Leo batted it back. “What is there to say, Mrs. Kelly?”
“Connie, please.”
“Leo. ”
She smiled. “It seems we’ve covered this ground before, haven’t we?”
“I believe so.”
“May I join you, gentlemen?”
“Please do, Connie.” Leo pointed to a chaise lounge and Connie sat. “Something to drink? I just fixed a fresh pot of coffee.”
“That would be nice. Black, please.”
Coffee poured, the three of them sat in silence for a time, none of them knowing exactly what to say or how to say it.
Connie tried a wan smile. “Paul is just a little boy, gentlemen. Very bright. Perhaps too bright for his own good—if that is possible. I do not believe that he is evil. Nor do I believe that he is some sort of devil-child. I don’t believe in those sorts of things. Some . . . well, odd things have occurred; I will admit that. But I do not believe that my son had anything to do with them. And to tell you the truth, Leo, I resent your presence here.”
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