Bethany's Sin

by Robert R. McCammon

  The killer instinct took over. It bared his teeth in a snarl, made his right hand whip out to grasp the trowel that lay only a few feet away. Made him dig his heels into the carpet and plunge toward her even as the ax reached its gleaming zenith and hesitated there for a fraction of a second. Made him thrust out and upward with that garden trowel with all the strength of his shoulders and back behind it. Canary yellow cloth stopped his hand.

  The woman threw her head back and screamed, a scream not entirely of pain but of anger as well. The canary yellow reddened. Reddened quickly.

  She tried to stagger back to deliver her blow, but Evan chopped at her ankles with his free hand, and she fell, still gripping the ax in waxen white hands. At once he withdrew the trowel and, snarling, drove it in again. She screamed, struggled, screamed, clawed at his face and missed; Evan threw his weight against the makeshift weapon and felt it sink deeper. The body beneath him thrashed wildly, seemingly stronger now; her arm came up with the ax and slashed wickedly past his left shoulder. Then her other hand flashed out, caught his cheek, nails digging rents in the flesh. He shook away from her; struck again and again and again.

  Until finally he realized he was stabbing a dead woman.

  He fell back away from her, his hands sticky with blood; the trowel was buried in her midsection up to the handle, and a pool of red had collected around it. Evan crawled away, shaken and sick, and threw up in a corner of the living room. For a long time he lay on his back, unable to move, thin red rivulets trickling down his cheek from three deep scratches. He realized the woman must have heard that door creak, and sensed him hiding there; perhaps she’d smelled his sweat or fear. When he could look at the corpse again, he saw that her eyes were dark and lifeless, the face shrunken and skull-like, all the terrible power gone now. But still he was afraid to turn his back on her. He stared down at his bloody hands; the fingers twitched and trembled. After a while he staggered into the bathroom to clean himself, and saw in the medicine-cabinet mirror a face that shocked him: hollow-eyed, pale, a blackening bruise at his jawline, another on his right cheek, the three bloody scratches. Red gouges in both shoulders, a long, jagged scratch across his chest. His torn shirt flagged around him. He washed his face in cold water, almost threw up again, and then explored the rest of the Demargeon house.

  The rooms were small, neatly decorated, as if from a Sears furniture catalogue. In a room at the very back of the house he found Harris Demargeon’s headless body, still sitting in that wheelchair. There were no windows in the room, and no furniture but a bed with a dark brown spread.

  Evan closed the door quickly.

  In the living room he sat down on the sofa and found himself staring with curiosity at the woman’s corpse. So, he told himself. When the body dies, they die. Or do they? He couldn’t be certain. But he knew one thing for sure: there must be a physical hand to hold the ax, and this woman’s hand would never hold another one. He rose up from the sofa, bent beside the body, and loosened the robe.

  The left breast sagged, the nipple flattened and gray looking; where the right breast had been there was a brown, starlike scar that indicated a severe burn.

  The Rite of Fire and Iron, this woman had said. Tonight; Oliviadre grows restless. Evan closed the robe because he didn’t want to look at that scar anymore. The woman’s dead eyes, half-closed, stared at the ceiling.

  And now Evan, sitting on the floor in the presence of Death, put his head in his hands and saw clearly what it was be must do to save his wife and child.

  29

  * * *

  Evan, Waiting for

  the Night

  EVAN’S SEARCH OF the Demargeon house turned up six empty Coke bottles beneath the kitchen sink. He withdrew two of them, carried them downstairs to the basement, and began to sift through the assortment of boxes for suitable rags—not too dirty, thin enough to be jammed into the necks of the bottles. When he found two rags he could use, he filled the bottles about three-fourths of the way to the top with lighter fluid. He twisted the rags and fit them into the Coke bottles as fuses for his makeshift firebombs.

  Then he went back upstairs to wait. At the top of the stairs, he recradled the telephone, afraid a prolonged busy signal would attract suspicion.

  He was going to have to create a diversion, something that would allow him time to get to the Mabry Clinic and find Kay; he’d already decided he was going to set fire to the Demargeon house, and with those two firebombs he could pick a couple of other targets and unleash enough confusion to shield him. But there was another problem: where was Laurie? The Drago house? The Sunshine School? Yes. Possibly there, under the watchful eye of whatever hideous entity lay within Mrs. Omarian’s form. And now, as the hours moved sluggishly through the afternoon, Evan kept a surreptitious watch from the living room, moving the window curtains aside perhaps half an inch, one eye peering through at McClain Terrace.

  At first it seemed deserted, but as Evan looked he caught the shadowy outline of a figure sitting before a window in a house diagonally across the street. And another figure in the house next door to where Keating had been murdered. They were both sentries, watching the street. Probably Mrs. Demargeon was supposed to be watching for him as well. Damn them all to hell, he breathed.

  The light began to fade. As evening crept across Bethany’s Sin, Evan saw several cars drive slowly along McClain Terrace, heading toward the Circle. Across the street no lights showed in houses, but he knew they were still there, watching and waiting. There was a plastic-based table lighter on the floor, thrown from the overturned coffee table during the fight; Evan bent and picked it up, sat on the sofa, and clicked the flame on and off a couple of times. Fire reflected dully from the eyes of the corpse at his feet.

  Night fell.

  Bethany’s Sin lay silent; but somewhere in the depths of the Demargeon house a clock ticked, ticked, ticked. Evan wiped his face with the back of his hand, wincing as droplets of sweat touched the raw scratches. Now he was alone, totally alone, and whatever happened in this place tonight depended solely on his own instincts, on his ability to slip quietly from shadow to shadow, on his will to survive. Tonight he must face the Hand of Evil, and there would never be any running again. His heartbeat echoed the ticks of the clock.

  At twenty minutes after eight the phone rang. He tensed, stared at it as it rang again. Again. Again.

  Let them know. Yes. Let them know I’m ready to fight them.

  The phone rang on.

  Evan stood up, crossed to the phone, and ripped it from the wall.

  And now it was time to go.

  He took the lighter down into the basement, used the remainder of a can of fluid to soak magazines and news papers and cast-off clothing in boxes, then dragged the boxes to a spot beneath the stairs. He broke the crippled chair into pieces and threw them onto the fluid-gleaming pile; there was enough fluid remaining in the second can to douse the stairs themselves. Then he clicked the flame on, touched it to the edge of a scrapped dress; the cloth smoked, sputtered, burst into fire. The newspapers and magazines caught quickly, pages curling and blackening; tendrils of fire snaked upward toward the stairs and bluish flame rippled across the wood. Evan waited until the pile of boxes had caught completely, the fire hot enough to make him step back a few paces, and he watched the steps begin to blacken; then the lowest step caught, and the dangling railing. Grayish, sour-smelling smoke swirled thickly around the basement. Evan put the lighter in his back pocket, picked up the two firebombs, and slipped through the basement door into the backyard. Ran for the fence and climbed over, cradling the two sloshing bottles in the crook of one arm. He glanced back, could see red light streaming through the door panes, and then he was running along the ditch in the darkness, planning to circle the perimeter of the village until he reached the clinic. Overhead, the near-perfect orb of the moon bathed him in hot, lunatic light. He ran on, keeping his body low, looking from side to side for any trace of movement; to his right lay the backs of houses, to his left th
e solid darkness of the forest.

  And in another moment there came a terrible, high pitched shriek, and three Amazons on horseback burst toward him from that darkness, axes swinging. This time he knew they would kill him, for he recognized the death look in their eyes.

  Evan reached for the lighter, flicked it on, touched that yellow flame to one of the fluid-sopped fuses. He took no time to aim, but threw the bottle into their midst. When the bottle hit, there was a brief, white-startling ball of fire and the horses screamed, rearing. Two of them collided and went down, and the third spun in a fearful circle as the fire leaped along bone-dry brush and tangles of thicket. And then Evan was past them and gone, his legs churning. He looked back for an instant, saw a patch of woodland trembling with flame and the dark horse-shapes caught in it. Then he didn’t look back anymore. He ran on, knowing he was still on the perimeter of Bethany’s Sin but not exactly certain how far away the clinic was. From the abyss of the forest he thought he heard more shrieks, closing in, and he kept one hand firm around the remaining bomb. Shadows leaped at him; the night was a mad house of moonlight and darkness, fighting each other and the man who struggled through them. He tripped, almost fell, kept running; if that bottle should break, his last weapon would be gone.

  And then, his chest heaving and his lungs burning for oxygen, Evan abruptly stopped. Peered into the blackness ahead. Listened. What was that sound? What was that terrible, hellish sound?

  Hoofbeats. Four or five horses. Coming along the ditch toward him.

  And before Evan could leap for the fence, they were upon him: four Amazons with hate-twisted faces, axes shimmering with moonlight and the eerie, pulsating power of the things that gripped them. The red-eyed horses rumbled like world-splitting earthquakes. Shrieks from five raging throats tore at him, and even as he was stepping back he was touching the flame to his last fuse; it sputtered, leaped. He reared back and threw the bottle among them; it glanced off an elbow, off a shoulder, leaving ripples of flames, finally exploded like a hand-grenade blast. Fire and glass shards pierced the air, into the hair and eyes of the woman-things. One of them screamed wildly, began chopping the air while her eyes caught fire; another ripped at her flaming gown; a third clutched to a rearing horse with a burning mane. Evan turned away, leaped for the fence and caught his fingers in it, pulled himself up. An ax slammed the mesh beside him. Evan pushed against the top of the fence, landed in grass, ran through a backyard toward the street, his nerves screaming.

  When he reached the street he saw it was Fredonia; he’d completely circled Bethany’s Sin, gone past the clinic. In the distance he could hear the pain-screams of the horses, and toward McClain Terrace the sky was beginning to redden very slightly. He knew they’d have found the fire, and would be trying to put it out. He stood where he was for a moment, trying to get his bearings; he’d have to go through the village to get to the clinic, and they would be waiting there for him. Evan looked around: there was the Gulf station, a few silent houses, the road leading out of Bethany’s Sin toward safety, and…

  …something lying across that road.

  Lights came on. Evan was caught between them, like a moth frozen by double flames. He squinted, tried to see beyond those lights. Realized they were headlights. A car had blocked the road.

  “Mr. Reid,” someone said. A man’s voice. “Mr. Reid, I think you’d best step on over here now. Come on. And be real careful how you move.” A figure stepped out of the car, walked forward so it was framed against the headlights. Sheriff Wysinger, holding a gun loosely at his side. “Come on, now,” he said, as if coaxing a little boy out from his hiding place. “There’s no use in running. You ought to know that by now, Mr. Reid.”

  Evan didn’t move. “I’m going to find my wife and child,” he said, his mouth bitter-dry.

  “Oh, no, you’re not. That’s not what they want. Your wife’s one of them now, Mr. Reid, or she soon will be. You can’t fight them. Nobody can.”

  “I can fight them!” Evan shouted, trembling; his voice echoed along the street. “For God’s sake help me!”

  “God’s no good in this place,” Wysinger said quietly. “At least, not the God you and I pray to.” He smiled like a lizard. “Used to pray to. No. Even God stays out of Bethany’s Sin.”

  “You and I can fight them together!” Evan said desperately.

  Wysinger shook his head, brought the gun up, and pointed it at Evan. “I’m too old, and I’m too weak. You’re just a fool. And mister, my little niche in Hell is all carved out for me and waiting, and I’m in no hurry to get there.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Evan raged. “You’re the sheriff here, and you’re sitting in a nest of murderesses!”

  “I’m alive because they need me,” Wysinger said, his eyes glittering over the gun barrel. “If they didn’t need me, I’d be out in that place by now, my bones rotting with all the rest: It’s a matter of survival, Mr. Reid; either you do or you don’t. Now step on over here, and hurry up about it.” He motioned with the gun.

  Evan, his mind racing, walked slowly toward the man.

  Wysinger suddenly cocked his head to the side; Evan had caught the smell of fire in a stale, sluggish breeze, and he knew the other man had smelled it too. Wysinger’s eyes widened; he’d seen the faint red smear in the distance, over on McClain, and the brighter burst of light where the forest had caught fire. “You…set a…fire…” Wysinger whispered incredulously. His face reddened with fury. “You son of a bitch! You crazy son of a bitch!” He reached out, gripped the remnants of Evan’s shirt and wrenched him forward, holding the gun up under his throat. “I ought to blast your fucking head of right here and now! That forest’ll burn like dry tinder!” He shook Evan mindlessly. “Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know…?”

  “Yes,” Evan said. “I know.” He locked eyes with the man. “You don’t have the equipment to battle a blaze like that. Neely Ames told me so. When they can see the fire from Spangler or Barnesboro, they’ll send their trucks to help you. And then they’ll find you, and me, and…those women.”

  “Goddamn you!” Wysinger breathed, his teeth gritting. His eyes slid over toward the forest. Sparks were spinning toward the sky, flaring out across the sunbaked woods and setting new fires. He shoved Evan toward the police car. “Get in there!” he roared, fear cracking his voice. “Hurry!”

  Evan slid across the seat. Wysinger, his face drawn and sweat-beaded, climbed beneath the wheel, keeping the gun aimed into Evan’s side; he started the engine. “I’ll kill you if you move,” he said fiercely. “I swear I’ll kill you.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To them. To that…temple.” He put the car into gear with his free hand. “They’ll know what to do about that goddamned fire.” He gritted his teeth. “And they’ll know what to do about you!” He put his foot to the floor, and the car leaped forward.

  Evan spun, gripped the man’s bearish wrist, jerked it upward; the gun cracked and cracked again; glass shattered; Wysinger lost his grip on the wheel, reached for Evan’s throat, and Evan, clinging to the gun hand, threw his weight against the slipping wheel. The tires screamed into the night, banshee wails, and the car rocketed across the street toward the gas station. Too late, Wysinger realized what was about to happen; he cursed, tried to get control of the car again, but in a fraction of a second Evan had slammed his own foot down atop Wysinger’s, forcing the accelerator to the floorboard.

  The police car struck the gasoline pumps with a rending shriek of metal against metal; the pump housings shattered, were thrown to each side by the passage of the car, and then the car was going forward, forward, smashing through the glass front of the main office, where Evan had sat talking with Jess the manager. Evan was jerked forward and then backward, forward again, striking his forehead on the dashboard, striking his shoulder against the door; he caught a glimpse of Wysinger’s sweating face, open mouthed, screaming. The car ground over a sea of glass and slammed heavily into a wooden counter, splittin
g it into two sections; the cash register spun away, crashed into a wall, and exploded. And then the car stopped, engine grinding grinding grinding.

  Through a red haze of pain Evan saw the first tongues of fire licking around the hood. He couldn’t make himself move: pretty fire, he thought. Pretty red fire burn everything down. His shoulder throbbed, and he thought it must certainly be broken, but when he tried he could move all the fingers of that hand except his thumb. Pretty red fire, he thought, staring as it grew. Burn. Burn. Burn. After another moment he could turn his head.

  A livid blue bruise, blackening, covered one side of Wysinger’s face; half of the steering wheel had been broken off and lay in the man’s lap. He moaned softly but didn’t move.