Chapter Eight

 

I

 

"It's nothing serious," Jane heard a voice saying. The voice seemed to be directed at someone else, though, not her. Tall dark shapes surrounded her. She felt like the time she'd had an impacted tooth removed, that imperceptible moment right before the general anesthetic had put her out, only this time it was in reverse. Her consciousness was slowly trickling back, her eyes fluttering open as her vision went from dark to grainy to sharp.

"Hello, Jane."

The kind face smiled down on her from beneath spectacles and short blond hair. It was Dr. Mitchell, the family physician. Behind him stood Steve, Kevin, and Jennifer, all looking hopefully down at her. She was lying on the couch in the living room.

"It's nothing serious, Jane," the doctor said again.

"You fainted and fell down. You smacked your head on the way, I'm afraid, but there's no sign of concussion. You'll be fine."

Her thoughts ticked backward as she remembered in blocks. The mass slayings at the Seaton School, Carlton committing suicide. It had been too much for her to handle all at once. She winced when she recalled the state of all those bodies, all those poor girls.

Nevertheless, she felt foolish, especially in front of her children. I have to be strong for my kids, but look at me. "Thank you, Dr. Mitchell. I'm sorry you had to go to this trouble."

"No trouble, it's my job."

Steve stepped up next to him. "We're just glad you're okay. You gave us a little scare."

When Jane leaned up, she winced again.

"You'll probably have a devil of a headache for a few hours," the doctor said, "but aspirin will take care of that. By morning you'll be as good as new and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to go to work. Just call me if there are any complications."

The doctor closed up his bag and left. Kevin and Jennifer rushed over to Jane's side and knelt beside her. Kevin was holding his fat horned toad, Mel, in his hands.

"Okay, kids, you heard the doctor," Steve said. "Your mom's going to be fine."

"I actually don't feel that bad now," she said, not altogether honestly. "Just a little headachy."

"You sure you're okay, Mom?" Jennifer asked.

"Yeah, Mom. You don't look okay," Kevin added.

I probably look like death warmed over, she feared. Her eyes felt puffy, her hair astray. "Really, I'm perfectly fine, just like Dr. Mitchell said." She stifled another wince when she sat up on the couch and put her arms around Kevin and Jennifer. "What time is it?"

"A little after eight," Steve said.

At first she wondered through the fading dizziness if he meant eight at night or eight in the morning, but then she looked to the bay window and saw the yard darkening. "That late? You kids haven't eaten yet. Let me get up and fix you something."

"Chief Steve got us blue-cheese and bacon burgers at the Food Island," Jennifer said.

"Yeah, Chief Steve's cool," Kevin said.

The name confused her at first but then she thought, Chief Higgins. That's right, he said his first name was Steve. She looked at him. "Thanks, Chief Higgins. That was very thoughtful. I hope they weren't too wild for you."

"It was my pleasure, and they were no trouble at all" he said. "We got you one to go for when you're feeling hungry."

"Thank you." She turned to the kids. "Why don't you go watch TV now, okay? Chief Higgins and I need to talk for a few minutes."

"Great!" Kevin said. "Croc Hunter's on!"

Jane kissed her children and watched them scurry off, Kevin cradling the pet toad.

Steve looked down at Jane. "Are you really feeling better or are you just saying that?"

"I'm sort of just saying that," she admitted. "But I really appreciate your taking care of my kids while I was out. You've much more important things to be worrying about right now."

"Forget it." He took off his jacket and sat down on the couch. At first the sight of his gun and shoulder holster alarmed her-she'd never really seen a firearm up close like that-but she shrugged it off. He's the chief of police, for God's sake. It's his job to be armed. "I was worried. You really did take a spill."

She brought a hand to the back of her head. "Was I bleeding?"

"No, just a good conk."

Jane spared a smile. "It's a good thing I didn't land on my face. I can see the looks on customers' faces when they see the branch station manager with a broken nose." But the smile broke, when she thought again about what had happened.

"What's wrong?"

She paused. "I just... I can't get those images out of my head-you know-about Carlton. You were right about him, but I still can't believe it."

"If we'd only gotten there a little sooner," Steve muttered.

"How could he do that to those poor girls, and that nun? And then to do that to himself. How could anybody do that?"

"He went out of his mind," Steve said simply. "He was crazy."

"And a few days ago? Marlene Troy went out of her mind too. That's too much of a coincidence."

"It's abnormal psychology, Ms. Ryan. Shared delusions, multiple hysterics-"

"I don't buy any of that," Jane insisted. "It's just too much of a coincidence."

"Not really. We've touched on this before, haven't we? Carlton and Marlene knew each other well."

"Of course they did!" she replied, louder. "They worked together for years."

"What I mean is, they knew each other very closely, and very discreetly, in some ways that no one else would've guessed. I already told you-we've known beyond a doubt that they had sexual contact the morning that Marlene murdered her family and then shot all those people at the main branch."

Jane closed her eyes in frustration. She found the sex part impossible to believe, too, but how could she deny it? The autopsy tests and DNA profiles didn't lie. But she still couldn't see the connection that Steve was implying. "All right, so they had sex. They were having an affair. What does that have to do with the rest of it? What, they had sex and that's why they both went crazy at the same time?"

"No."

"They were secret lovers and they made some insane murder-suicide pact?"

"Not that either, we don't think. Things like that do happen, but there aren't any characteristics for that scenario here."

"So what's the connection?"

"That design. That bell-shaped symbol that keeps popping up."

Jane nodded, still not buying that one, either. She remembered his earlier insinuations. "Oh, yes-that business. You believe that Carlton and Marlene were in some sort of satanic cult."

"Or if not a cult, they were involved in some ritual thing together."

Some ritual thing together. Murder rituals. Sacrifice. Jane shook her head. "Have you talked to anyone- anyone-any witness at all, any family member or relative, who believes that either of them were capable of that? Have you talked to anyone who said that they were anything but upstanding, level headed, and perfectly sane individuals?"

"No. All I know is what I see," Steve answered. "And all I know is this: They both were involved in discreet sexual activity and-"

"Yeah? And what?"

"And they both committed mass murder in the same vicinity. I don't know anyone who'd call mass murder the act of perfectly sane people."

Jane had no response to that one. What could she say? There's no way to deny that.

"And they both left the same design at their crime scenes," Steve continued. "I'm sorry MS. Ryan, but you can't deny it. That bell-shaped symbol with the star at the bottom looks pretty creepy, doesn't it?"

"Well, yes," she admitted, all too easily remembering its outline in blood at the Seaton school.

"It looks like something with occult significance."

"All right, I agree. I can't argue with anything you've said," she gave him. "I'm just having trouble with all of it."

"That's understandable, because you knew both of them very well. Denial isn't uncommon in situations like this. I'd want to deny it, too, if they'd been friends of mine. But from my point of view, I can only look at the subject based on the evidence and the facts.  Discreet relationship. Occult symbols. Mass murder. That's what I have to base my investigation on. That, and nothing more."

Again, Jane couldn't argue. He's right. I guess I am in denial. "It's time for me to start seeing the light here. So...okay...say they were in a cult. I don't know the exact definition but I assume that a cult is made up of more than two people."

"Right, and that's my biggest fear right now," Steve let on. "Who else out there is in the cult too?"

The question made Jane feel as though a shroud had been pulled over her. There could be other people, out there right now, she realized. Ready to do the same thing.

 

 

II

 

The campanulation.

The bell. With a single star as its striker.

The Morning Star.

Cymbellum Eosphorus, he thought.

Even through the polycarbonate sheets, each a quarter-inch thick, he thought he could smell the paper that the plate had been printed on: something like wood long gone to rot but something organic as well.

Something just traceably awful.

Dhevic knew that the observation was impossible, at least technically. It was simply one page of a very old book. God knew how many hundreds of years ago it had been printed. The page was an intaglio print, and it had been sealed against time and air and human fingers in the polycarb sheets that had been expertly melted along all four edges. Along the bottom, in English and in Italian, were the words property of the ARCHIVES OF THE HOLY OFFICE.

A monk defrocked from the St. Gall monastery in Maijvo, Hungary, had sold the plate to Dhevic decades ago, insisting that it had been pilfered from the Sixtus V Wing of Vatican Apostolic Library when the current structure was being built in 1590. From there, Dhevic was told, the plate had been preserved by private collectors handed down through the following decades and finally inherited by the Maijvo monk for successfully exorcising the last owner's son of a multiple demonic possession. The monk was eventually excommunicated for, he said, "unholy indiscretions," which Dhevic suspected were sexual in nature. It didn't matter. Dhevic couldn't absolutely verify the print's certification.

He simply knew it was authentic.

Dhevic knew a lot of things.

The engraving was said to have been torn from a nine-hundred-year-old book entitled Das Grimoire de Praelata, said to be written by prelates-or antipriests-who were known as satanic visionaries. They'd put themselves into trances to achieve psychic contact with the hierarchs of hell and then transcribed their epistles for worshipers on Earth. The engraving itself was supposedly crafted by an artist with the same interworldly talent.

Dhevic laughed in the lamplight. The single print could probably be sold to a private collector for a million dollars, yet here he was, in a $40-per-night St. Petersburg motel, eating Dollar Store baked beans cold out of a can.

He knew he'd need more money; his benefactors always came through, if a little late sometimes. This fleabag was all he could afford. He could hear bickering through the door from time to time. Periodic muscle cars and rudely loud motorcycles tearing down the main drag made the night seem like it was exploding. In the next room, a bed frame could be heard thumping against the wall, an impatient female voice complaining, "Hurry up, man! Your half hour's up!"

Yes, in times like these Dhevic could only laugh to himself at this strange plight he'd inherited. When he looked through the room's bent blinds, he saw a Denny's across the street, and a sign in the lit window: BREAKFAST SERVED ALL NIGHT!

God, I wish I could have an omelet, he thought and laughed again. The beans weren't bad, actually, but after so many days?

He smiled and closed the blinds.

He didn't want to put on the television again-it would just be more of the same-but he switched it on regardless. He'd learned long ago, when he'd first started, never to be alarmed, or shocked. There was no point.

It comes with the turf, he thought.

Besides, he'd seen far, far worse.

The bed creaked when he sat on it. The television screen came alive.

The Channel 9 newswoman stood in front of the school, hairspray stiff blond hair wilting in the humidity. She was clearly on edge as she recited the events.

"... the second inexplicable tragedy to strike the quiet town of Danelleton in just three days, both involving postal employees..."

The screen snapped to a employee-file photograph of...

"...Longtime postal supervisor Carlton Spence allegedly went on a rampage today at the Seaton School for Christian Girls, murdering a nun, a dorm assistant, and six students before taking his own life when local police arrived at the school's dormitory building..."

The shot cut back to the disheartened newswoman, her voice droning. In the background, police and paramedics rushed in and out of the dormitory's pillared entranceway.

This shocking second mass murder of the week brings Danelleton's death toll to thirty-eight."

The words faded out in Dhevic's head. He'd seen it before-and wasn't surprised. He knew full well that it was happening again.

He nodded off on the bed, still fully clothed. His dreams were awful, they often were, because they typically replayed what he'd witnessed in his visions. Horrors stacked upon horrors stacked upon horrors in a place where time did not really exist. Seconds ticked by in twinges of agony, minutes ticked by in screams. Hours ticked by in atrocities designed to exist without purpose, for their own sake. It was not understandable. Not by humans.

The human mind could not reckon, it could not grasp this timeless war. We're just too stupid, too simple and unsophisticated, he thought.

Some things aren't meant to be known.

That would have to suffice.

He sat up on the bed, rubbed his eyes. Then he got up, stepping over a cockroach, and went to the bathroom. He washed his face in the stained sink, as if that might wash away the atrocities of his dreams and visions. He felt tainted, contaminated by these truths revealed to so few.

But he never lost his faith.

A click in his head; he glanced up quickly, spied his face in the mirror and saw water dripping off his beard. He looked like Rasputin, sopping wet as when his body was pulled from the West Dniva River. The familiar yet always strange noise creaked in his head, like a bad hinge, then a quiet bonelike snap!

He could see them out there.

Dhevic sighed. He was a tall man but not physically strong. He had no weapons. But he needed the vehicle that his benefactors provided. I'll call the police, the truck will be gone or stripped by the time they get here.

And it's a damn nice truck!

He had but one recourse. Confront them.

I'm a recipient augur, not a tough guy. He toweled off his face, put on his black jacket, and opened the motel room door.

Punks was the only word to describe them. Dhevic knew their plight: abused, terrifying domestic environments as infants and children, poverty, and just plain evil influence. But they were still punks. They were intently clothes-hangering Dhevic's brand-new silver Ford Explorer.

Late teens, Dhevic could see. One black, one white. Buzz cuts and lip rings. Baggy long pants, waistbands of their briefs showing, sneakers untied. Dhevic didn't get the style. Neither wore shirts, and both had an array of tattoos.

"Please. Stop that. Go away. I need that vehicle more than you can know."

Both kids glared up, not even momentarily taken aback by Dhevic's height.

"Fuck off, man. We'll kill ya," the black one said.

The white one pulled a small pistol.

"Let's kill the fucker anyway..."

They laughed, White Kid keeping the gun on Dhevic, Black Kid clothes-hangering the Explorer's door. "Fuck this shit, man," the black said, arrogantly eyeing Dhevic. "Gimme the keys."

Dhevic could smell what they were both thinking: Now that he'd seen them, they'd have to kill him, to prevent their description from being given to the police. They'll put me in the truck at gunpoint, make me drive, then kill me on some back road.

"Keys, man," White Kid insisted. "Now."

"No," Dhevic said. "Just go away."

The punks exchanged incredulous glances. "Man, what is wrong with people? Can you believe it?"

"Fuckin' Acan't."

"Hey, buddy? Hey, beard?" White Punk aimed the pistol straight at Dhevic's face. "You listenin' to me, mother fucker? You gimme those keys right now or I cap your ass."

Dhevic stood there perfectly still, eyes wide. "Look," was all he said.

White Kid was staring back now, right into Dhevic's eyes.

"Do you see?" Dhevic asked him quietly. "Look closely."

The kid's expression collapsed. The gun lowered and he fell to his knees. But he could not take his gaze off Dhevic's eyes.

"Do you see her?" Dhevic asked. He stepped closer, wielding his stare like a weapon itself. "I can. She's waving to you, isn't she? Here, I'll show you more."

"No!" the kid shouted. Tears poured down his face. "Don't make me see any more!" He slid the pistol to Dhevic's feet. A trembling hand reached into his pocket and threw Dhevic a wad of cash. Then he brought his face to his hands and cried outright.

"The heck you doin'?" Black Kid yelled.

"I-I-I just saw my mother."

"The fuck you just say?"

"He made me see my mother!" White Kid wept.

"What the shit you talkin' about, man? Your mother's dead."

"No," Dhevic corrected. "She's very much alive. Someplace else. Forever."

Hitching sobs and gagging, the white kid literally crawled away on his hands and knees.

Black Kid's gaze whipped back and forth, between Dhevic and his comrade. His expression kept forming and re-forming, the best he could do to mask his fear and confusion. He looked back at Dhevic, who seemed much more formidable now, and his hands patted his pockets in frustration.

"No weapons now?" Dhevic's voice grated. At his feet lay the pistol; he kicked it over to the black kid. "Before you pick it up, though ... look."

The kid's defiant stare began to tremble. Dhevic stepped forward once, twice, baring his gaze down into his opponent's face. "And what of you? Would you like to see your sister?"

Their stares locked.

"Her name is-what? Jerrica? Erika? Something like that? Look. In my eyes. Look and you'll see her." His voice ground down like gravel rubbing. "Look and see what they're doing to her."

The kid's mouth fell open, lips quivering. It appeared that what he saw was making his eyes quiver, too. "No more, no more," he murmured.

"It was you who hooked Erika up with the stoners" Dhevic said. He said it because he knew it. He knew nothing but everything. "It was part of some deal, wasn't it? Some kind of gang initiation. Well, that's what she's doing now. She'll die soon, too, and be in the same place as your friend's mother-but that doesn't matter. Look. Look."

"No. God. Please."

"And now Twanna," Dhevic said. "Your first girlfriend, right? Right now, she is in the same place as your friend's mother. You indoctrinated her...very effectively. Look. Look at her now."

The kid fell to his knees and vomited. Like the other kid, he began to sob from the impact of the catastrophic vision.

"Those things eating her are called dentatapeds, a species of cacodemon from the Lower Orders. They eat her alive and regurgitate her every night, and then start again the next night. It's part of the entertainment for the Court of Grand Duke de Rais. The entire court rapes her first, of course. Twanna is immortal now. This is how she will spend eternity. Here, let me show you your brother."

"NO!" The kid teetered on his knees like a svelte tree in high wind. Eyes bugging, he snatched the gun up from the pavement and put it to his head.

"Don't do that," Dhevic said very calmly. "What you have to understand is that you still have a chance, and so does your friend. Keep it all in mind, along with everything you've seen tonight." Then Dhevic gave the kid a selfless smile. "Who knows what the future holds?"

The kid dropped the gun, stood up in his shock. Like the other one, he fumbled in his pocket and threw some cash toward Dhevic. "Please. No more."

"Go. Go find your friend and tell him this: 'O send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me.'"

The kid sobbed as he staggered away.

Dhevic sighed in relief. This is wearing me out, he thought with a laugh. He looked up and down the motel front; no one had seen the bizarre confrontation. He quickly pocketed the pistol, then scooped the cash off the ground.

This is a fair shake of cash!, he thought.

Then he thought: Yep. God works in mysterious ways.

He stuffed the money in his jacket pocket and walked across the main drag, to treat himself to an omelet at Denny's.