46

Hillary Devon, on the telephone with her Blessed Sacrament classmate Beth LeMaster, said, "Look, Beth, it's the same formula, you just have to analyze the problem, break it down so you know what information is given. You know the rate. You know the percentage. So you let m represent the base. Five over one hundred equals thirteen over m. Multiply. Get it?"

"When you explain it to me I do, but then I can't remember how on tests. Oh, Goddd. I loathe pre-algebra."

"We both have first period free in the morning, I'll show you then. It's really very simple."

"It's all simple for you, Hillary," Beth said, not sounding sarcastic exactly; it was more of an airy, slighting tone that got on Hillary's nerves quite easily. What you're good at doesn't count.

They had been friends, on and off, since first grade, and were currently going through more or less a togetherness phase, being, but not by preference, in the same car pool. Beth could go cold and picky and say without warning something meant to be unforgivable. She was like that; a born manipulator. Hillary hung in there partly because their mothers were close. Also Beth's brother Dan was fourteen, and a dream, and Hillary didn't have much excuse for hanging around him unless she was visiting Beth.

Beth yawned, signaling a change of subject. She said, "What do you think of the new father?"

"For a Jesuit he's not hard to take. Do you think he really told Barb and Conni that joke about Superman flying over the nudist colony?"

"Sure. What's wrong with that?"

"Well— it's dirty, isn't it?"

Beth whooped. "You mean you didn't get it?"

"I know what a hard-on is," Hillary said defensively.

"But have you seen one?" Beth said, with a little snigger that Hillary found disgusting.

No, and you haven't either, she wanted to say, but she wasn't so sure. Beth was thirteen and a half. She had menstruated. She was a woman already. Hillary felt poignantly remorseful over her own ambiguous status. It was her turn to change the subject. She said, "Samantha and I couldn't get our locker open today. It was like somebody changed the combination on us. Mr. Eccles will have to drill the old lock out. Samantha threw a fit. All of her best glossies were inside and she had an appointment in Boston this afternoon with that woman from the New York agency, the one who discovered Brooke Shields."

"Oh, Samantha. I can't understand why everybody thinks she's so beautiful. If her eyes were any farther apart they'd be behind her ears."

Looking up, Hillary saw Dean passing by her bedroom door. She called to him.

"If you're going to the kitchen, would you bring me an apple?"

"Why?"

"Because I cleared the supper dishes for you tonight. Because I'm hungry, and I want an apple. Do you need ninety-nine perfect reasons to do somebody a favor, dummy?"

"Shine. I don't do favors for anybody who calls me dummy."

"I'm sorry, I apologizzzze! Please, Dean? Bring me an apple."

Beth said in her ear, "Who's your new friend?"

"That was Dean I was talking to."

"No, I mean the girl you walked home with from jazz ballet. Does she live on your street?"

"What girl? I didn't walk home, I walked a couple of blocks over to the IGA on the square and Mom picked me up in front a few minutes later. Nobody was with me."

"You were on Sorenson Street about four thirty, right?"

"Yes, but— "

"So Judy McRudd saw you. Is it some kind of big secret? I just asked you who the other girl was. Judy didn't know her."

"Beth, I told you. I was by myself."

"Be that way. Judy says she was blond; long blond hair, a little taller than you. She was wearing a red tam and a light green cape with a dark green border like the girls at McMorrow Academy have. So who is she, is all I want to know. Is she in your class?"

After a few moments of utter blankness Hillary said, "There are a lot of blond girls in my class. But I know I was by myself today, and I only walked as far as the supermarket. Maybe Judy saw somebody she thought was me."

"Okayyy," Beth said, like it couldn't matter less to her, but Hillary's cheeks burned slightly, almost as if she were guilty of something, the subject of ribald teenage gossip tonight all over Joshua. Why, when she was being totally truthful, should she be made to feel like a liar? She wished Beth's mother would come along and bellow at her for being on the phone too long.

"Look, Beth, it's a long nickel and I've got six chapters of David Copperfield to finish before my reading enrichment quiz tomorrow."

"Hillareeee, I don't know how you can stand all those boring books."

"I just like to read. Good-night, Beth."

After she hung up, Hillary stayed on her back in the center of her bed, feet elegantly elevated, studying hints of toes through the holes in her athletic socks. The aerator in her twenty-gallon fish tank purled soothingly, but her mind

was in discord. She definitely had not been within twenty feet of any blond girl in a pale green cape today on Sorensen Street, period. Just like Beth to find the most insignificant little thing to nag about, make it seem mysterious— oh, what the hell. Let it go. It had been her most heartfelt New Year's resolution, I will not let Beth LeMaster get the best of me in nineteen eighty—

Dean, again passing by her door, lobbed a gleaming Mcintosh the size of a softball; it struck her on the tender inside of one thigh.

Hillary collapsed in a tangle of legs. "Oww, Dean, why don't you watch what you're doing?"

"No brains, no pain," Dean said enigmatically, vanishing in the direction of his and Charley-chuck's room at the other end of the hall.

Hillary located the apple, which had rolled off the bed. She was about to crunch into it when she noticed that Dean— thoughtlessly as usual— hadn't washed the apple after taking it from the refrigerator; there were traces of milky dried insecticide around the stem. Ugh. Supposedly the spray was harmless to humans only minutes after it was first applied, but Hillary believed in being careful. She took the apple into her bathroom, ran cold water over it, and dried it thoroughly with a hand towel. Then she decided to take her shower and get ready for bed first; she would eat the apple while she zipped cozily through the remaining pages of Copperfield.

She put the apple on the end of the shelf above the pink porcelain sink, turned on the shower, and adjusted the temperature of the water. She pulled off her hockey jersey and black leotards and the gym shorts she had been wearing over the leotards, pinned her hair up hummingly, and sealed it against moisture with a pleated plastic cap. She got out a fresh figured bath sheet, left it folded on top of the covered commode, slid back the fluted opaque glass shower door, stepped over the side of the tub into the steamy downpour from the showerhead. For nearly ten minutes Hillary soaked and rubbed herself all over with the slidey softening bar of lilac-fragrant soap, making loops of quick-melting lather around her nipples, which in their recent burgeoning had become endlessly fascinating to her. She had a real cleft now between her breasts into which, when she pushed her shoulders forward, the soap half disappeared.

Down there, so far, nothing much seemed to be happening; a certain hippiness had overtaken her, and when she went to the toilet lately she had noticed a rusty fuzziness she could almost scrape off with her fingernail. She had learned that she could, by passing her bar of soap back and forth dreamily between tightened thighs, rub up a dense, tickly thicket of sensation, which left her feeling big-headed and drowsy and fumbly. Sometimes she cleaned herself too long that way and had to pull back, panicked, from the brink of something that felt imperative but wrong; then she would be miserable and cross, unable to be so easily rid of that insinuating thickety wrongness in her loins. Those were the nights when she couldn't go to sleep until she lay on her side with a pillow clenched between her legs, rocking gently, easing down from the pinnacle upon which she had nearly stranded herself.

Once she had rinsed, Hillary shut off the water and slid the door back. Through the mist that filled the bathroom something dark flickered; she barely saw it but was bothered. She reached for the bath sheet and pressed it, still folded, against her face and then her breasts.

As she was blotting downward she turned her head slightly toward the fogged mirror, and noticed, on the shelf, the brown wizened core of the apple she had placed there. It seemed to be acrawl with flies. As she was trying to make sense of this, one of the flies, big and soft and greenish, struck her buzzingly above her left nipple; she let out a little shrill cry of consternation and disgust. Instead of winging away, the fly seemed to disintegrate into a pulpy mess. The wings fell off. It slithered over the nipple and left a nauseating track on her skin, making her twitch involuntarily; what was left plopped onto the bath mat. Other flies took off from the remains of the apple and circled in the thinning mist, coming close to her head. Hillary flung the bath sheet about— flies in February? They had never had flies like this in the house at any season. Several of the flies, struck, fell into the tub, the treaded bottom of which was still covered with a foam of soapsuds. Hillary dropped the towel and turned on the shower full force; these flies also began to disintegrate. She grabbed the wash cloth and cleaned her tingling breast, snatched off the showercap and went running naked, half-dried, into her bedroom, banging the bathroom door closed behind her. For several moments she stood panting, electric, directionless, staring at herself in the mirror on the back of the closet door. Then, face reddening, she flung herself at the dresser, pulled out underpants and pajamas, put them on.

She opened the bathroom door again, slowly, and peered inside. No flies. The apple core was still there. She reached in and snatched it off the shelf, went running down the hall to the boys' room, opened their door, burst out crying, and flung the core at Dean's head.

"You think you're so damn funny, Dean! There are flies all over my bathroom!"

The apple core missed him widely and skidded off a poster advertising Return of the Jedi, landing on top of the hamsters' cage. The animals leaped and skittered, falling back in a palpitating huddle behind their water bottle.

Charley looked up in amazement from the handle of the hockey stick he was wrapping with tape.

"What's the matter with you?' Dean said.

"You know what! You know! You snuck in while I was taking my shower, invaded my privacy, took the apple I was saving, and left that rotten p-piece of garbage, and it drew flies!''

"No, I didn't," he said, growing hostile in the face of these absurd, unanswerable accusations.

"You're a damn liar!"

"I've been here all the time! Ask Charley-chuck."

"You're both big liars. I'm gonna tell Mom, I'm sick and tired of the way you treat me all the time, you think because I'm a girl you can get away with it." She stamped her bare foot as Charley's face creased in a befuddled grin. "It wasn't funny, it wasn't!"

"Stop this."

Their father's voice, so unexpected— he had returned home unnoticed by them only minutes ago— snuffed the argument. All eyes went to him, Hillary's still weeping.

Conor stood in the doorway, taking up almost all of the space, staring feverishly at them through slits where the flesh around his own eyes, dark as plums, hadn't quite swollen shut. His nose, also huge across the bridge, was taped. The edges of the tape lapped down unevenly over his cheekbones. Together with the bulges he had for eyes he seemed to be wearing some sort of complicated, profane mask, unspeakably dismaying in its crude symbolism, imbued with a pagan love of death. His left hand had been so thoroughly wrapped in stapled, flesh-colored hospital bandage that only the blunt fingertips showed. Conor held the hand, rather awkwardly, unsupported across his chest. In all the years he had earned his living as a professional wrestler he had never shown himself at home looking so thoroughly ravaged.

Hillary, with a galloping, thundering heart that dragged her attention behind it, glimpsed past him, where his side wasn't touching the door jamb, her mother's face, rinsed of color, flattened by a fright so vast she seemed only just recovered from the throes of a scream no one had heard. The level of blood in Hillary's body fell to her knees, leaving her head an unsupportable stone weight. Darkness; the miasma of deep melancholy she knew so well. She saw, as if from the distance of the moon, to the precious center of her life, now visited by purposeless corruption: the browning of an apple, the bath full of windy overblown flies. Jarred loose from her senses, she touched a cold breast moving in time to her immense heartbeat; she clasped a hand over her widened mouth so as not to let death in. The pupils of her eyes turned chalky. She gagged on hysteria and fell thrashing to the floor.

47

At six fifteen in the morning it was still pitch dark when Father James Merlo drove a Honda Accord into the parking lot of the Arcadia Winter Sports Center on Route 38 just north of the Joshua city limits. Even at that hour there were approximately three dozen other cars and recreational vehicles in the lot, grouped near the entrance to the fabricated steel building.

He got out of his stubby rental car, a surprisingly long-legged black man who wore a navy pea coat over boot-cut corduroys and a turtleneck sweater. He walked into the ice arena, which was reverberating with the sounds of a youth league hockey game in progress on one of the full-size rinks. The other rink was occupied exclusively by figure skaters who looked, even the youngest, to be dashingly adept, with the self-bewitched grace of cygnets coasting in a doze on mirrored surfaces. In contrast to the boisterous hockey players the skaters worked in a chilled, almost ethereal silence except for terse comments by coaches who were videotaping the sessions and the hiss, as of ripping silk, of blades on milk-toned ice.

Lingering for a few moments, Merlo admired the form of a young blond boy with a glossy thatch of hair; he seemed unbound by the demands of gravity as he careened through splits and backspins for which the priest had no names. He had never tried skating himself; it was all his parents could do to keep him in sneakers when he was growing up.

He paused at the snack stand to buy hot chocolate and a day-old cinnamon doughnut, munched his breakfast as he entered the arena where helmeted small fry were spanking the boards and sprawling ungracefully in pursuit of the puck. A referee swooped in with whistle shrilling to stop the action. There was a tier of green-painted bleachers on one side of the arena rising almost to the struts beneath the corrugated roof; Merlo looked up at little knots of spectators, all of them presumably family, at two more teams sitting edgily in a forest of upstanding hockey sticks, waiting for this game to end so they could have their turn on the ice. The fathers and mothers were doing an admirable job of demonstrating spirit and enthusiasm, considering most of them had probably been up at four thirty to get their kids here.

The priest spotted his man, who was sitting alone, with little difficulty: that beard was like a flag of provocation in the slightly fogged gloom of the upper stands. Merlo licked a residue of cinnamon and sugar from his fingertips, took a couple of swallows of the watery beverage, which tasted only vaguely of chocolate, and proceeded up into the bleachers three steps at a time.

"Conor Devon?"

Conor looked up questioningly, then flicked his eyes back to the ice, where a tall boy suddenly sprinted away from the snarled face-off with the puck teetering at the end of his stick; he headed for the opposing team's goal.

"All right, all the way!" he shouted. "Take your time, Charley-chuck, fake him out of there!" Conor half rose from his seat, ignoring Merlo, who also had turned his head to watch the action. Charley approached the goal from the left side, hesitated, then made as if to cut sharply to his right, causing the goalie to shift his balance too far in the direction of the anticipated thrust. The goalie fell down. Charley put on the brakes, wobbled, sighted open net, and fired the puck from a distance of fifteen feet. It went in.

"Yeah!" Conor cheered hoarsely. Merlo looked up at the little scoreboard where the tally had registered. Blackhawks 7, Maple Leafs 2, third period.

"That your boy?"

Conor glanced at the priest again, nodding. His eyes, so badly blackened two weeks ago, now looked almost normal, except for streaks of apple green and dingy yellow in the fleshy orbits. His nose, healed, was back to human proportions. His left hand, showing patches of shiny new skin, was still partially wrapped in an elastic bandage that allowed him to stretch and flex the muscles while protecting the unhealed portion of his palm and thumb, where skin grafts had been necessary.

Merlo held out his own hand. "I'm Father Merlo."

He didn't mind Conor's surprise— he had expected it. Nor did he mind the hesitation before Conor reached across his body to shake the offered hand.

"You're an exorcist?"

"Uh-huh. You look a little disappointed. Who were you expecting, Max von Sydow?"

"I— I didn't know what— who to expect."

Conor tried to size up Merlo in the nimbus of light from the ice rink. His skin was the color of eggplant. His cheeks were lean, unshaven, with a two-day growth of beard. His eyes had a slight sardonic tilt to them, a hint of the Orient in the tautness of the lids. His face still had the luster, the ease, the complacency of a favored young man. But his hair had been condensed, as if by conflagration, to an ashy skullcap. His ears pressed very close to naked runneled skin; his high and thickly boned forehead looked like a battering ram.

Merlo said patiently, "Do you want me to sit down, or did you just decide you don't need me anymore? That's okay; no hard feelings. I'll go get myself some sleep. Haven't had any for the last sixty hours."

"I— yes; I need you. I'm sorry. I didn't expect anyone to show up here, at this time of the morning. Please sit down, Father."

"Thanks." The priest nodded toward Conor's left hand. "Looks like that was a pretty bad burn."

"It's getting better now."

"Your boy there is a hard skater. What's his name— Charley? I guess athletics run in your family. Monsignor Garen said you were a pro wrestler. I can believe it; you've got some size on you, my man. I spent a year in the NBA myself, with the Bullets. I did my college at St. Peter's, third leading scorer in the history of the school. But I was a step too slow for the pros. Couldn't get my shots off, some jig the size of King Kong was always there to stuff the ball in my ear or steal it for a layup. And the moves they can put on you; the in-your-face disgrace shots: a very humbling experience. Earl the Pearl; Dr. J."

He seemed to be talking, not in a vaguely self-conscious, getting-acquainted manner but from a sense of release, wordiness being his way of repositioning his psychic furniture after a long stay in some nether realm of the lost and afflicted. Also he seemed, in the slack way he occupied the narrow bleacher plank, his knees cocked high and spread, boot heels propped against the green plank below, nomadic and perilously tired. "What else would you like to know about me? I was born and raised in the South Ward in Newark, when that was a good neighborhood to be from. My father worked for the Port Authority and my mother is a cosmetician. I was a grunt in Vietnam early on, back about '66, and that's where I began to do some serious thinking about my religion, trying to decide if I might be of some use to the Church. Well, after seminary I was assigned to Holy Rosary parish on 153rd Street in the south Bronx. That parish for some reason is a hotbed of witchcraft, voodoo, and the whole occult bag; we were always getting calls to untangle somebody from Satan. Some days it got so bad I thought I was back in Saigon. My experiences at Holy Rosary got me drafted by the Apostolic Penitentiary. For the last few years I've studied ancient languages. I've also been involved in close to a hundred exorcisms; the most recent ended six hours ago."

"Around here?" Conor said incredulously.

"In Providence, Rhode Island. An infestation, not a possession. Demons. Scuzzy little varmints without much status in the Kingdom, and no willpower. I threw the Book at them and they lit out like bats flocking home to a cave at sunrise."

The priest hitched around and looked Conor in the eye. "I hear you've got a worse problem."

"I— I think so."

"Before you explain," Merlo said, "I should tell you I came up here this morning as a favor to a friend of a friend. I'm a priest of Rome and I don't have official status in any diocese; this is my day off, so to speak."

"What does it matter?" Conor said with an edge of exasperation. "I need help, and the Church— "

"The Church, as we both know, is run by canon law; and in my line of work we follow even stricter rules of procedure or live to regret our lapses. I may not be able to give you much more than advice. With that in mind, do you want to tell me what happened? I prefer to ask questions as we go along, if that's okay."

Conor began with his first meeting with Rich in the Haden County jail, his brother's desperate appeals to him to find Henry Windross and Polly and the mysterious Inez Cord way.

"Exactly how did Richard implicate these people in his supposed situation?"

"He didn't make that very clear to me. He said he had been trying to help Polly, but she died. Those are almost his exact words."

"None of them have turned up since the night of the murder?"

"Windross was struck and killed by a train a few days later. Polly, according to the police, disappeared even before Rich claimed to have seen her in that room in the Post Road Inn. She's still officially listed as missing."

"Have you been inside the house in— where was it?"

"Ripington Four Corners. Yeah, I went to the house. I got inside. To this day I don't know if anybody else was there. I didn't see a soul. The house appeared to be occupied but— not by anybody I'd want to meet if I had a choice. I guess I'm not making myself very clear. Some things happened that— spooked me."

Conor explained about the wine, the mysterious whimpering animal, the sun-filled but sinister playroom, the odor of gasoline, the dreadful photograph.

"I don't know, maybe I was too keyed up and suggestible because of Rich's warning, and I— I didn't have any business being there. I know for sure I wouldn't go back into that house unless somebody held a gun to my head."

"Okay, go on," Merlo said gravely after a long pause. His fingertips were pressed against his high forehead, hands shutting out the glare from the rink below, the fatly padded little boys huffing and tripping and lunging at each other as they neared the conclusion of their game. Whistle. Offsides.

Conor, gazing intently at the ice as if he were trying to interpret the skaters' ghostly hieroglyphs inscribed there, told what he had heard about Rich's first meeting with the clinical psychologist: the missile tooth, the apparent seizure. He paused again, wondering if the priest would have a comment; instead he appeared to have fallen asleep.

"Father Merlo?"

"I'm listening."

Conor came to the near-disastrous morning thirteen days ago, events which in his recklessness he had provoked.

"What did he say about Polly?" the priest asked sharply, raising his head when Conor was reluctant to try to repeat some of the language which had come from Rich's mouth. "I need to know the exact wording, if you remember it."

"No, I don't. It was vile, I can tell you that much. But Lindsay Potter recorded everything that was said on her Dictamite, and Adam made copies."

"Nothing happened to that tape? That's fortunate. I'd like to listen to it. What did you do next?"

Below them a sturdy boy, guilty of an infraction, whirled on the misty ice, grinning like a gargoyle: his two front teeth were missing. Conor continued, his distress growing The cloud of light before his eyes was like a formless apprehension leaked from his skull; his eyes watered pityingly, for the sake of his brother's soul, which he feared was, already, beyond redemption.

When he told of holding the cross behind Rich's head, Merlo said immediately, dismayed, "Where did you learn that little trick?"

"I read a book on demonology."

"And you couldn't wait to try out all the handy hints for banishing evil spirits. Easy as getting pizza stains out of your shirt."

"I had to be sure Rich was telling the truth," Conor said, annoyed and defensive. "And I didn't think the Church was going to give me any help."

"So now you know, and it was more than you bargained for."

"If I'd just had some idea of what was going to happen— "

"Okay, slowly. In detail."

"I held the cross behind his head. There was a sound like— I can't describe it very well— like solid rock splitting apart. A low, grinding, groaning that hurt my ears. It felt as if the little bones there were being ground to splinters and pushed into my brain. It was intensely painful, and I couldn't hear well for three days after."

"Where did the sound come from?"

"It came from Rich. He was on the floor on his hands and knees. Then he wasn't: he swelled up. I don't mean he turned into a balloon, but there was definite swelling all over his body until he literally floated three or four inches off the floor. All the time this groaning, wrenching, breaking noise came from him. You'll hear it. Then he— he suddenly popped into the air, rotated, compressed himself into a ball like a circus tumbler, and began to shoot around the room. I mean fast, from the wall to the floor to another wall, and then the ceiling. I tried to catch him, but it was like getting in the way of an avalanche. The impact busted my nose and loosened some teeth, and I had bruises all over my chest. There were other things going on at the same time. Slats from the Venetian blinds whirling around, lighted cigarettes in the air— "

"Is that how you burned your hand?"

"No. The cross partially melted. It was eighteen-karat gold."

"Very impressive," Merlo said, with a bleak little whistle. "Want to tell me how you got out of there alive? You're lucky to be alive, by the way."

"I crawled to the door and opened it. Then everything just stopped."

"Uh-huh. What kind of shape is your brother in?"

"They put him in the hospital for eight days. He had a contused liver, a cracked rib, a sprained neck, a dislocated shoulder, more bruises than anyone could count, and spasms in the lower back. But other than the rib no bones were broken. It's hard to believe he's not in a body cast. If you'd seen— "

"I've seen a lot of human bodies fly through the air. How soon after the incident did he regain consciousness?"

"Three hours."

"How was he acting?"

"Like a child waking up after a long fever. He didn't remember anything from the time they unlocked the door of his cell to take him upstairs."

"And what did the authorities make of all this?"

"They assumed— and we decided not to contradict them— that Rich had simply gone berserk and caused all the damage. He's in a padded isolation cell now, the only one in the jail. The lights are on twenty-four hours a day. They won't take him out of there without putting a straitjacket on first, and they won't even unlock the door until a shotgun is trained on him."

"No more manifestations have occurred?"

"None."

"Just three witnesses. You. The two lawyers. Were there other injuries?"

"Lindsay was slashed across the forehead, near the hairline. Sixteen stitches."

A buzzer sounded; the disheveled skaters grouped according to their colors at opposite ends of the rink to cheer the opposition, then filed off the ice. Charley-chuck was looking for Conor in the bleachers. Conor stood and waved and the boy pumped his stick up and down victoriously; he had scored two of his team's seven goals. His hair, with his black helmet removed, was plastered to his forehead and looked as drenched as if he had been bathing. His cheekbones were white pennies in a dusky-rose face. He gulped orange juice from a paper cup a teammate handed him.

Conor looked down at Father Merlo. "I have to leave; Charley needs to shower and get ready for school. What are you going to do?"

Merlo said with a slight grin, "Retire." A blight of unhappiness occluded Conor's gaze. "Don't mind me," the priest said. "I'm always saying that. Actually I would like to see your brother."

"When?" Conor asked, not troubling to conceal his relief.

"Today, if it can be arranged. The fact that he's in jail presents problems. We should talk to the lawyers first. When can you be ready to leave for— what's the name of that town again?"

"Chadbury. It's about two hours from here. You said you hadn't slept for a while."

"If you don't mind doing the driving, I'll catch a nap on the way."

48

Adam Kurland said, as soon as the visitors were settled in his corner office on the fourth floor of the Deerhorn Valley State Bank building in Braxton, "I think I should make it clear before we get into any discussions about Rich that I don't buy Conor's conviction that his brother is possessed by the devil. I was raised a Unitarian, and I'm not so sure there is any such thing as the devil."

He was sitting on one side of his worktable, an oval of mermaid-green onyx bound in rococco bronze. It was almost the size of a snooker table and looked as if it weighed as much as the bank's vault. All the furnishings in the large rectangular office were similarly old and eccentric-looking, two centuries worth of family hand-me-downs, but someone had coordinated all this eclecticism beautifully. The walls, paneled in squares of ornamental tin, and the cast-plaster ceiling had been painted a uniform butterscotch shade. The centered windows that overlooked the green were uncovered; the morning sunlight seemed blown-in, concussive in its brilliance.

Adam reached behind him and picked up a letter. "Maggie Renquist evaluated the first set of psychological tests Rich did for her when he got out of the hospital, and she's heard the tape Linds made two weeks ago. Based on his test responses she feels he's a classic paranoid schiz, capable of wildly divergent types of behavior. One of the personalities is the proverbial 'lost soul': weak, confused, unable to integrate his primal urges with the demands society has made on him. The other is a maniacal bully, given to outbursts of hostility and rage, which is how he solves his conflicts. He's very strong and agile, as we know, and contemptuous of human life and dignity. Rich calls him 'the demon.' Rightly so. It was a demonic impulse that resulted in Karyn's death. Titanic, unstoppable. But there are no significant religious implications, despite Rich's Catholic upbringing."

Father Merlo, who sat on a sleigh-shaped couch against one wall, an Egg McMuffin in a Styrofoam container in his lap, nodded amiably and glanced at Lindsay Potter, who was standing near the windows. She wore a tweed suit with an apricot blouse and a neat white rectangle of bandage high on her forehead. The direct light of the sun gave her averted face a look of scoured austerity.

Aware of his scrutiny, she said in a quiet voice, "I haven't been able to explain to myself— or to anyone else— what I saw; so I'll stay out of this."

Adam folded and refolded the psychologist's letter, lips pressed together in disapproval of her lack of support. A cabinet clock chimed: ten thirty.

"Maybe he is schizophrenic," Merlo said to Adam. "He could be a lot of things. Psychology's not my field. Neither is comparative theology. I'm trained to deal with certain phenomena I've found to be authentic, and at

Conor's request I'm here to meet with his brother. Under certain conditions. Otherwise I won't see him at all."

"What are those conditions?" Lindsay asked.

Merlo took a bite from his Egg McMuffin. "Nobody sees him but Conor and myself. I can protect the two of us well enough, but when there's a crowd it gets complicated. I don't want any prison guards hanging around with guns. No guns. I'll talk to Rich in a cell if that's the best we can do, but it's not necessary for the sake of security. While I'm with him I'll be in control."

"He's sedated," Adam interjected.

"He was sedated last time, when he went stunting around that room you were in. I use a different kind of tranquilizer: the Word of God."

"I don't think his body could survive that kind of stress again," Conor said vehemently.

"I can't promise there won't be a manifestation."

"I talked to Maggie Renquist about the— the violent physical activity," Adam said, turning his expansion-band watch around and around on his wrist. He stared assuredly at Conor, who had begun to prowl around the perimeter of a badly worn Persian carpet. "Maggie feels that, although Linds and I are trained observers, there is a lot of latitude between what we thought we saw and what actually occurred. None of us have been able to agree on exactly what happened; true? Okay, I'm certainly not an expert on what highly stressful situations can do to a person's mind, so I'm willing to accept Maggie's hypothesis. Her term for the phenomenon is interreactive hysteria."

"Bullshit," Conor exclaimed. "How do you explain the Venetian blind flying apart? The cigarettes? This." He thrust up his bandaged hand. "Do you know what the melting point of gold is? I do: I looked it up. One thousand and sixty-three degrees Centigrade."

Adam sighed. "I don't want to be pulled back into an old argument, but it's worth pointing out that three of us had lit up, it's not a large room, and there was smoke aplenty in the air. As for the blinds, Rich could easily have torn them down. The cross was twisted out of shape, granted. Not inconceivable that someone of your great strength could have done it, unconsciously, under enormous provocation. The burns may have been self-induced, and I can explain that. I've given it considerable thought. Persons who have suffered for years from extreme pain, nerve problems or migraine headaches, learn to control that pain through biofeedback training, first by directing heat to the palms of their hands. I'm willing to believe that your hand was burned through some super-feedback complication, again brought on by stress that had a psycho-religious orientation. Now, I'm more than satisfied with Maggie's appraisal of Rich's mental state and feel that it's something we can begin to build upon for acquittal, NGRI, and I'm afraid I don't think Father Merlo's conclusions will be helpful toward that end."

"I want Rich to see him," Conor insisted. "I want to save his life— but I've become more concerned about his soul."

Adam spread his hands, a gesture that managed to be both accommodating and arrogant.

"Right. I just wanted you to know my position."

Lindsay said unexpectedly, "I was nearly deaf for three days. So was Conor. That terrible noise— how could it have come from a human throat?"

"Come on, Linds, you agreed with me— "

"Adam, I don't think I've agreed to anything," she replied, but not heatedly. Finding his face studiously closed, as if suddenly he had begun to solve difficult trigonometric equations in his head, Lindsay turned instead to Father Merlo, revealing, in a shy lifting of one hand toward her face— which was all but unseeable in the light that drowned her— the beginning of signing, a nervous entrancement with the power he represented, although he was not wearing a Roman collar and more closely resembled a once-sprightly Harlem Globetrotter than a priest. She was fallen away (he would have guessed), but not beyond the needs her religion had formerly served.

Merlo washed down more of his breakfast with a chocolate shake from a container with Ronald McDonald's vaguely malevolent face on it. "Let's hear the tape," he suggested.

Adam played one of the copies he had made on a reel-to-reel Nagra recorder. For the most part the priest listened silently. When the voice that sounded nothing like Richard Devon's said "Ask Conor about lust; ask him about sodomy,'' Lindsay Potter turned her face away from the men in the room and Conor stood with his burned hand clenched and pressed against his lower lip, his cheeks scarlet from humiliation. But no one except Adam looked at him.

"Can't you take a little joke? Of course it's me: Rich."

As they listened, the power of the morning sun was slowly dimmed by clouds; their interconnected shadows on the butterscotch walls, once strong as char, faded to mere transparencies, negative images that powerlessly haunted each other. And then pandemonium, as on the tape Conor uprooted Rich from his chair and pasted him like an effigy against a wall of the interview room.

' 'Demon Serpent, Foul Tyrant, I show you the cross of our most precious Lord!''

"Turn it down!" Lindsay begged, still looking away from them, the reflection of her face trapped at one low edge of a glass-covered collection of powdery lepidoptera; she seemed pinned there herself, nervy and alive on mildewed black velvet. The sound began that she had dreaded: Low, cracking, groaning, a weight of pain like poured lead swiftly hardening in the volute chambers of the ear.

Merlo sat up straight on the couch.

"Let me hear that again! Can you play it fast-forward?"

"Sure," Adam said, reversing the tape, stopping it. He made the adjustment. The sound came to them again after moments of shrill babble.

"-ZAAAARRRAAACHHHHHHHHHHHH! ROHHHMMMMMMMMM BRAAAGHHHHHHH!"

Four seconds, and it was over.

Adam stopped the tape again and looked dourly at the priest, aware that something would be made of this.

Merlo had laced his long fingers behind his head; the exposed palms, pale with their backing of purple-toned licorice, expressed a potency the hands of a Caucasian priest could never have. He scanned the ceiling, obedient to some inner alert. With the light of the sun withheld, the big office seemed colder than it was.

"It almost sounded like a voice to me," Conor suggested after a few moments.

"It was a voice," Merlo assured him, with a casual lack of emphasis, his own voice curiously soft and soothing, as if he had been thinking of a lullaby. But his posture was rigid, his brow sternly knit. "An old, old language which I know by sight but hardly know by ear, because I imagine only the long-dead or the unenfranchised still speak it."

Adam sighed in exasperation.

"What did the voice say?" Lindsay asked, with a tepid shudder.

"I'll have to study the tape," the priest answered; but they all felt he already knew.

49

"Hilllarrrryyyyy!"

Hillary Devon, home in her bed with a cold and fever, drowsy from the medicine she'd been taking, thought she heard her name called: the sound blended poignantly with the receding daydream that had occupied her semiconscious mind, a vision of herself in an old-fashioned white dress in a summery field stippled with yellow flowers not unlike those on the wallpaper in her room. She was on an outing with her father, who was thinner and was allowing her to shave off his beard. So much more handsome that way. She sat up slowly, feeling an ache, a chill.

Maybe the television was all she had heard. It had been on all morning, for company. Soaps. Troubled faces and desperate passions, lingering closeups of actors who had bad complexions under their heavy makeup. The fish in her tank goggled at her and swam over blue gravel, through miniature sunken temples. Her mind felt as distant from her body as the lightweight shadows of the swimmers on the wall behind her study desk were distant from the watery chuckling tank. She rubbed a sore spot on one breast where a button on her pajamas had pressed too hard. It couldn't have been her mother, who was at work, or one of the boys, who were in school— weren't they? She blinked at the dashed red LED numerals on the clock radio. Ten after one. No, the boys were still in school, she had the house to herself, and so nobody had called from downstairs. Outside, then.

"Hillllanryyyy."

Definitely she was being hailed from outside. A girl's voice, but not one she recognized.

Hillary looked toward the windows. Beyond sheer figured curtains over blinds pulled all the way up she saw a dull gray day. That neutral, impoverished look of winter's bottom of the barrel. But snow had been promised by nightfall. She pushed the heavy covers aside and reached for a bottle of nasal spray, slid her feet over the side of the bed, creating static electricity. While she was jetting spray into each held-back nostril, her feet felt around for her slippers. When she had them on she got up and scuffed to the windows, coughing into a tissue, her throat acrid. She looked out through the curtains.

A car drove by on Carroll Street, slush spewing from the rear wheels. A girl was standing on the other side of the street, in front of the Capalettis'. She didn't seem to be waiting for anyone: she was looking directly at Hillary's bedroom windows. She could have been anywhere from twelve to fifteen. She wore a light green cape with darker border, a red tam, a red scarf, red snowboots. She held her hands inside the cape. Hillary was a little too far away to see her face clearly, but she was certain she didn't know the girl.

"Hillary?"

It was odd; she heard the girl, not as if they were a hundred and fifty feet apart with two thicknesses of glass between them, but clearly, conversationally. Hillary was receptive to every nuance of tone. The girl was glad, so glad, that Hillary had come to the window to acknowledge her. She had been waiting a very long time out there. Obviously she must know this girl. But where had they met? And what did she want? So puzzling.

Hillary desperately wanted to be able to think with more precision. Her brain was as dull as the sky of lightless lead. But she did recall fragments of the phone conversation she'd had with Beth LeMaster about the girl whom she supposedly had walked with from Erickson's dance studio to the IGA a couple of weeks ago. Beth had had a description: this was that girl, wearing the identical outfit.

No, but I was alone. Or was I?

Curiouser and curiouser. She couldn't trust her own memory anymore.

Go down and let her in.

That much was distinct in Hillary's mind, it was almost like a command. She must go downstairs immediately and—

But they had a strict rule at the Devons'. Her mother would be furious, unforgiving, if she violated it; would never trust her again. The rule was this: if for any reason she, Hillary, had to be alone in the house, even for a few minutes, she was never to open the door to anyone except a member of the immediate family. No exceptions. Not even if it was a policeman on their doorstep. Policemen's uniforms, Gina had told her, were not difficult for the wrong people to obtain.

The wrong people.

Hillary was aware of a biting knot of concern pulling tightly under the heart, and worse, she felt an almost painful tucking-in, a shrinkage below the navel, the way she always felt when one of the pediatricians had to see her without panties on and she knew his fingers would soon touch her in secret places.

"Hilllllarrryyyyy."

She sounded so cold, lonely and despairing. In need of friendship.

Hillary peered out again. The girl was still standing there, motionless, breath steaming, lifting one booted foot slowly, then the other. A girl of about her own age, who was dying for someone to talk to. Maybe she had no parents, or— or else she had just moved to the neighborhood and hated her school. Hillary knew what it was like to be an outsider, at the mercy of cliques and snobs. She held her own but was far from the most popular girl at Blessed Sacrament. Tried too hard, sometimes, to be liked, which was always fatal. Hillary felt a tender sense of responsibility for the girl who waited, hopefully, for some gesture of kindness.

A Roto-Rooter truck went by fast, heading up the hill; the girl stepped hurriedly back from the curb. She took an ungloved hand from beneath the cape and appeared to wave, meekly, as if she knew what thoughts were going through Hillary's mind.

I'm okay, she might have been saying. I'm just like you. We'll be great friends. Just give me a chance.

Hillary was tired of her illness, now in its third day, bored with lying abed, sick of the television dramas and inane game shows and the long dragging minutes spent alone. She turned from the windows and picked up her robe from the foot of the bed. She was so lost in anticipation of meeting the girl across the street that her revenant reflection springing from the mirror on the partially opened closet door startled her. She hesitated, an icy spray of caution dispelling some of the mists in which her brain was wrapped. She was reminded of The Rule.

Hillary, please hurry.

Just this one time. Her mother wouldn't know.

"Coming," Hillary murmured, as if the summons inside her head had been as insistent as a knock at the stout front door.

She left her room and went slowly down the carpeted stairs to the center hall of the Colonial house. It was darker downstairs, because the drapes in the living and dining rooms, on each side of the center hall, had been closed almost all the way to conserve heat. But the polished hardwood floor of the hall lifted light toward her feet as she reached the bottom of the steps; the light came through narrow windows on either side of the front door, windows covered only with opaque pleated curtains on little brass rods. More misgivings, as she turned to the door; they were prompted by the expression on her mother's face that morning while she reminded Hillary, again, that it was necessary for her to stay in her room unless she needed something from the kitchen, and to keep all doors double-locked.

Don't answer the phone. When I call—

You'll let the phone ring twice, then hang up and call right back. Mother, I know. I know.

A kiss on Hillary's dry hot forehead, a stitch of guilt at one corner of Gina's mouth. I just hate leaving you alone, even for part of the day, when you're sick.

Oh, I'll be fine. Don't worry.

The front door was solid rock maple and had two locks, one just above the curved brass door handle with its thumb-pedal latch release. The first lock was not a very strong one, with only an oval-shaped bolt throw on the inside. The other, eight inches higher, was a massive Medeco dead-bolt arrangement. In the center of the door, at an eye-height Hillary could reach by going up a little on her toes, there was a peephole that gave a fisheye view of the front stoop and the steps leading down to the street. Fourteen steps in all, bordered by azalea bushes now winter-wrapped in burlap sacking, and two levels of terrace surfaced in old porous snow, crossed and recrossed by the tracks of small birds and animals.

Through the peephole Hillary saw the girl coming, confidently, up the steps toward the front door. Hillary could see her more clearly now. She was smiling. She was pretty, with a thin face and good cheekbones, but she was very pale, almost translucent in her pallor, as if she hadn't been well herself lately.

"Hi, Hillary."

The girl was still twenty feet away, climbing the steps in her red, red boots, so the clarity of her greeting was remarkable, as if the words had originated in Hillary's own mind.

Hillary was warmed by a resurgence of fever, shaken by tremors; she yearned for her bed, the covers piled high, the room closed and half dark and secure. She didn't want any company, nor did she want to talk to—

But her left hand, as she watched the blond girl approach, crept to the dead-bolt lock on the door.

She knew she had definitely decided to turn and go back upstairs, running if necessary, and not let the girl in, even for one minute, to find out her name and where she lived— Oh, you just moved into the neighborhood? Listen, I've got a bad cold, so if you'll excuse me— but her hand seemed unaware of her resolve, it had grasped the round knob that lifted the bolt, the stranger's smile was bigger and assured, she waved again as if she could see Hillary's eye pressed to the optical eyepiece in the door, she was nearly on the stoop, four steps more.

And there was a black cloud forming in Hillary's head.

The phone rang. Twice.

Hillary heard it, but faintly, as the blackness flowed down from her brain like a shadow mind at work, a strict guiding intelligence with a formality of purpose terrifying and unavoidable. The blackness crept along her spinal column; she felt a resonance that made her so drowsy. Her left hand worked the dead bolt; the lock opened with a snap.

The telephone rang again, as her hand dropped to the other lock on the door.

Oh, mother— !

She turned her head away from the door, fighting a lack of will.

"Open the door, Hillary. My name is Polly. And I want to come in."

It was a quiet, cool command. Allowing for no disobedience.

But the phone ringing. Ringing.

The other lock, though simpler, was hard to work with one hand. She needed to push against the door just a little, in the right place, so the bolt throw would turn cleanly. But she was looking toward the back of the house, where the telephone was mounted on a wall of the breakfast room.

"You can get that, Hillary, after you let me in.

"I'm waiting. Just have a look. I'm right here on the other side of the door.

"Let's be friends, Hillary. You need my friendship. And I need you."

Five rings. Six. Her mother probably thought she had fallen asleep. Oh, please don't hang up, I'm—

"You can call her back, Hillary!"

Hillary sobbed. "Oh, Goddd!"

She felt, from the other side of the door, a bolt of displeasure. The blackness like a cat nuzzling at the base of her spine, numbing all her nerves with a downward spread of entrenched claws. Claiming what remained of her will.

"GOD!" Hillary screamed, and found release. She tumbled backwards from the door, got to her feet, went flying down the center hall to the back of the house, the breakfast room with its hanging plants and striped yellow wallpaper. She felt as if something was pursuing her, the uncurling lash of a black whip; she seized the receiver of the telephone with both hands.

The whip touched her spine, lightly. Withdrew.

"Mother!"

"Hillary? Yes, what is it, what's wrong?"

Tears coursed down her cheeks. She had to pause to get her breath.

"Wrong— I— nothing. There was somebody at the door. A girl. But I didn't let her in."

It was beyond her powers to explain the creeping terror, the sensation of being gently pushed against her instincts to do something that would have devastating consequences for herself, for the family.

"Mom, when are you coming home?"

"Right now; I called to tell you. Hillary, are you sure you're okay? What did the girl want?"

"I don't know. I never saw her before! She must be somebody new in the neighborhood, maybe they moved into the Stoltes' house."

"I don't think anybody's bought it yet. Are you downstairs?"

"Yes."

"Well, go back to bed and I'll be there in twenty— "

Hillary gasped.

"What happened?"

"I don't know; nothing. I guess I'm just jumpy." But she thought she had heard a kind of popping noise, a brittle sound of breaking upstairs. She knew she was about to cry, from nerves, and wanted to get off the phone first. " 'Bye, mom, I'm okay, honest. I'll see you. I love you."

" 'Bye, honey. Twenty minutes."

Hurry.

With this unspoken plea Hillary replaced the receiver. She had lost one slipper in her flight down the hall to the breakfast room. Her bare foot was cold. She could barely make out the slipper lying on the floor of the center hall, halfway to the front door. There was no more light coming in through the narrow windows that bracketed the door. It was black as midnight out there on the stoop. She felt that she would never get as far as the stairs.

The doorbell rang, nearly jolting her out of her skin.

Near the phone on the wall was a very old woodcut, a Renaissance version of madonna and child, framed in gold. She snatched it down from the wall and held it against her breast, went up the back stairs, two at a time, gasping.

The door to her room was closed. She hadn't closed it.

Hillary put a hand on the brass knob, still clutching the semisacred woodcut. The knob was so unexpectedly cold her moist hand almost froze tight to it. She lost a little skin when she jerked it away.

"Oh God and Mary and all the saints please protect me!''

There was a sound on the other side of the door, a gurgling noise she couldn't identify. Then in a moment of horrified insight she realized what must be happening. Putting her hand into a pocket of her robe, she turned the doorknob through the pocket and entered her room.

On one corner of her study desk, where a lamp burned, the water of her twenty-gallon tank and her collection of fish were pouring through a hole in the glass, flooding the carpet. There were no cracks or jagged edges: the hole was perfectly round, about four inches in diameter. The edges of the hole were so smooth it appeared not to have been cut by any sort of instrument; rather the glass seemed simply to have dissolved, or dematerialized, where the water rushed through.

50

Conor and Father Merlo took adjoining rooms at the Holiday Inn on Interstate 91 at the Greenleaf Avenue interchange. Adam Kurland had insisted on accompanying them to the jail and being present during the priest's interview with "my client"; Merlo told him plainly that he expected unpleasantness. Adam said that both the police and the prosecutor's office now objected to Rich having visitors, and would undoubtedly refuse to let Conor and the priest meet with Rich alone.

Merlo said, "Find out if they can let us have a room without windows or furniture. A small stool is all I need."

In his room at the Holiday Inn the priest bathed, shaved, changed into his size forty-six long black mohair suit and a Roman collar and spent an hour in solitary meditation and prayer, while in the other room Conor fidgeted and Kurland, sitting on the edge of the bed, made telephone calls. Lindsay Potter had not asked to be included.

Father Merlo tapped on the connecting door when he was ready. He was not smiling. He had a black bag in one hand. Conor did not have to be told what was in it.

"I'm going to bless the two of you now; we don't want a repetition of what happened the last time you met with Richard."

He said a short prayer, anointed them with holy oil, and made the sign of the cross over each man's head. Conor's head was deeply bowed, and he added his own prayers half aloud. Adam, looking discomfited in a sporty plaid suit, gazed sidelong out the windows and kept quiet.

"What do you think will happen?" Conor asked the priest.

"He should be provoked when he sees me."

"Do you mean Rich?" Adam asked.

"No. That's not who I mean."

"Will you exorcise him today?" Conor said.

Merlo laid a hand briefly on his shoulder, but there was a weight of sympathy in his hand, and sorrow in his eyes, which caused Conor's heart to falter.

"The first thing I have to be sure of is that there's a need for either a lesser or major exorcism— the Roman ritual— before one can be authorized. The Church wants indisputable proof of possession. And preparing for a major exorcism is like preparing for a war— there are formal necessities, such as a black fast, and no exorcist works alone if he wants to survive the experience. For now I'm only after information."

"We're running late," Adam announced, looking at his watch.

Adam drove them in his car the fifteen miles to the county courthouse in Chadbury. There he conferred, alone, with the officer in charge of the jail, Steve Wendkos, a tubby man with a balding head and an astonishing mustache, so much uncontrolled hair it looked like an explosion of copper filaments beneath his nose. The jailer emerged from his office and shook hands with the priest, gazing up at him in mild astonishment.

Steve said, "Prisoner's been behaving himself the last couple of days, sits on his bunk and talks to himself mostly. But I think one or two of us should be in there with you, Father. This man here"— he nodded to Conor— "is, I've been given to understand, a professional wrestler, but even he took a beating when the prisoner went on that rampage. They doubled his dose of tranquilizer; still, you never know."

"He'll be in his straitjacket, won't he?" Merlo replied. "I don't think we'll have any trouble. I tend to have a calming effect on them anyway."

"I can believe it. Well, okay, then— Duke!"

A dinky young man with a cast in one eye and a grudging manner took the visitors down a flight of iron steps into the basement, past a huffing boiler and down a corridor where gray paint was peeling off the walls in parchmentlike scrolls. Unshielded bulbs overhead provided illumination. Their footsteps echoed. Adam was whistling nervously through his teeth. Away from the boiler and the steam pipes it was drearily cold.

"Killed a rat down here the other day, size of a cocker spaniel," Duke smirked. If he hadn't been in uniform Conor easily could have imagined him in a shabby pool hall plotting supermarket robberies with equally unpromising confederates. They stopped at a metal door painted dark red. Duke unlocked it and turned on the single light, a hundred-watt bulb screwed into a porcelain socket on a wooden beam. It left areas of darkness in all four corners of the room. Just as well. The room was dank, the floor unswept. A single window high on one wall was black with filth, covered with a grill. Iron pipes, bitter-orange with rust, crisscrossed beneath the ceiling. The top of Father Merlo's head nearly brushed them as he walked in and looked around. Adam coughed gloomily into a handkerchief.

The priest placed his bag on the single stool in the room and opened it. He took out a purple silk stole, kissed it, and draped it around his neck. Then he sank into a meditative state that was almost like a trance. Duke waited with them, fiddling with the worn strap on his holster, which housed a very large revolver, until two more of the jailers brought Rich into the room.

His guards stood watchfully on either side of the prisoner, out of range of his feet should he decide to kick at them.

In the dingy straitjacket Rich looked lopsided, harrowingly deformed. In a straitjacket everyone appears crazed. Rich more so: or perhaps, Conor thought, he was influenced by preconceptions of his brother's condition that so long had preyed on his mind. Rich's pallid face, a little slack from opiates, was calm enough, even when his eyes took in the priest standing tall as a ship's varnished mast between Adam and Conor.

"Hello, Conor. Hello, Adam. Who's this?"

"I'm Father Merlo, son."

Rich's mouth twisted slightly; his tone was rougher. "I don't need a priest. I especially don't need a nigger priest who licks the cunts of menstruating nuns."

"Watch your mouth!" Duke snarled, and the other two guards raised their batons, but Merlo held up a hand.

"It's okay," he said, sounding disinterested to the point of boredom.

Duke said over his shoulder, looking as if he yearned to blast away at Rich with his Colt Trooper, "Ten minutes, Father, that's what Steve said. But that's all the time you're gonna want to spend with this guy."

He left the room still glaring at Rich; the other guards followed, and the door was closed and locked from the outside.

Rich looked around at the door, then back at his visitors. He smiled, preoccupied. "I'm going to take this thing off," he said.

He began to bend and twist and jerk so frantically and strenuously that Conor took a step toward him. Merlo held him back. His own face was impassive as he watched Rich's fierce struggle with the cruel binding garment. Adam, who had been checking out the tape recorder in his hand, stopped to watch with his mouth open.

In less than thirty seconds the straitjacket lay on the floor, unbuckled but not visibly ripped, and Rich was flexing his cramped arms.

"Better," he said. He raised his eyes to the priest. There was bitter hatred in them. His voice deepened. "What do you want?"

"I want to know who you are."

Deeper still; a rumbling. "What is your need to know?"

"I would do the will of God."

An odor saturated the room like brown fog. It was the odor of untreated wounds and charred flesh, of black vomit and cesspools and mass open graves. Of a world totally corrupt, ravaged and dead as it hurtled one last time around the sun. Conor threw his hands to his face; Adam was staggered and nauseated.

Father Merlo swiftly took from his black bag white surgical masks steeped in holy water.

"Breathe through these," he instructed them. Meanwhile he kept his eyes on the figure of Richard Devon, who flexed his hand and arm muscles but didn't move otherwise.

"Will you introduce yourself?" the priest said firmly. "We only have a few minutes, and I want to make the most of them."

"You will die, nigger! You will be torn to pieces on the first day of the Great Violence called Armageddon. You will see your blood stain the cobblestones in front of that shithouse St. Peter's! And we will drink your blood and brains from the vessel of your broken skull!"

Father Merlo sighed almost inaudibly and produced a wooden cross.

Something black and vile and unnameable began to ooze up out of the concrete floor as if it were as porous as a sponge. A pipe overhead burst and they were spewed with a yellow, puslike substance. Adam sucked wind violently, a loud scalded sound.

"Nothing can happen to you," the priest said calmingly, and then to the figure of Rich, "I command you to speak in the name of the Most Holy! What is your name? Who are you? Where have you come from?"

The skin of Richard's face was transformed as if he were an apple baking in an oven. The crusty blackened skin began to split and burst open. His eyes, twice normal size, stood well out of their sockets. His hair rose sizzling on end. And all the time he smiled, revealing black gums.

Adam slipped on the floor and fell down. He moved disconnectedly, as if hipshot, unable to get up again. He stared beseechingly at Merlo.

"You can't be hurt. He only wants to take your mind away from you. Resist. This is not the hour of his greatest strength." He turned his full attention back to the entity that was deforming the head (bones bulging soft as tallow beneath the skin) and the body of Richard Devon. Rich's chest swelled until his jail jumper ripped at the seams. With his crotch exposed, Rich began pissing, the wimpled head of his penis lashing about like a one-eyed snake extruded from the russet basket of his groin. Piss steamed in acid clouds when it hit the cold floor. He farted enormously, wild organ chords blaspheming.

Father Merlo looked displeased.

"In the name of my Lord Jesus Christ," he said, each word precise as a pistol shot in the farting din, "I command you to speak your name!"

The farting stopped, and the shit began to fly, pouring out of the possessed body. Then came the answering voice, cold as winter thunder:

"I AM ZARACH' BAL-TAGH!"

There was a simultaneous whinny of voices in the room, an excited chorus from a distant fenland lit by purple lightning, beaten to dust by the little hooves of the lesser Unearthly.

"BAL! BAL! BAAAAAAAL!"

Outside the locked steel door Duke and the other jailers stood at ease and smoked and kept their ears open. But they never heard a thing.

"And who is Zarach' Bal-Tagh?" the priest demanded. He knew already, but it was submission he was after now; he had the information he'd been seeking.

"BROTHER OF LUCIFER— ENEMY OF GOD!"

In the eyes of the possessed, empty as wormholes in wood, sparks glowed; dark twists of smoke spiraled toward the priest.

Merlo said, indicating Conor beside him, "What do you want with this man's brother?"

"I DIDN'T WANT HIM. HE WANTED ME. NOW SHALL YOU ALL HAVE ME!"

"What do you mean?" Merlo said grimly.

"YOUR CORRUPT AND MISERABLE WORLD HAS NEED OF A REDEEMER— ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU PREACH?"

"No one of us is so sick or troubled that he needs you. Go back where you came from, Evil One."

"I SHALL RETURN WHEN I CHOOSE— WITH ALL OF MY EAGER FOLLOWERS. WITH SOULS BEYOND COUNTING. THIS PUTRID HUNK OF MEAT IS ONLY THE BEGINNING."

"Richard was— he is— a good man. How did you trick him?"

"HIS OWN LUST BETRAYED HIM. AS EACH MAN'S SINS CREATE A LOVE OF ME."

Even as he spoke the taskmaster who called himself Zarach' increased the speed and intensity of his psychic attack on Adam Kurland, who of the three interrogators had the least strength to resist him. Adam was convulsed, his sickened, strained mind drowning in offal. Merlo decided he'd better end this quickly.

From his bag he withdrew an aspergillum, filled with holy water.

"I'll be back," he promised the possessor. "For Richard's soul— brother of Lucifer."

Laughter flew in his face like a black bird with sparkling talons.

"IF YOU WANT THIS HUMAN, YOU WILL HAVE TO TAKE HIM FROM ME. IF YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH TO OPPOSE ME!"

The priest began deliberately to sprinkle the room and everyone in it with holy water. Crystalline purging drops charged with the power of undaunted love. Tears of Christ. They rained blurringly upon the possessed and there came a wild shriek, not of pain but of outrage.

Rich collapsed suddenly, in a dense scrabbling heap, his face pressed against the shit-covered floor. He groveled there briefly and then sat up, as if jerked from behind by a hand on his hair; his horrible defiled face began shrinking toward normality but still ran livid and mad with veins. There was brown froth at the corners of his mouth: he regurgitated some of the shit he had been made to eat. Conor crossed himself fervently twice, three times, to reinforce the priest's efforts to establish dominion over the inhuman spirit. Rich toppled then, and lay still. The ripe goo and heaps of sinister excrement dematerialized within moments. There were no further sounds except for Adam Kurland's panicked breathing. He lay on the floor in a fetal position, grinning vacantly, a grin that looked as if it were sewn to the bulging angles of his jaws. His eyes rolled so anxiously that Conor imagined he could hear them clicking in his head like pinballs. But his own mind was still jerking and balking, unable to fully assimilate the horrors he had thought himself prepared for; he was desperate to get out of that basement room.

He hauled Adam to his feet and found him lightly constructed, of rubber bands and scant padding. His Unitarian God, largely an intellectual exercise, had proved faithless under fire. Adam's entire life was a pragmatic structure, reason and clear thinking his sword and shield. His mind now would hold or not hold, like a car with old worn brakes parked on a steep incline. Seconds counted, no time to be gentle. Conor hit him in the face with a hand like a chopping board. A tooth chipped, blood flew from Adam's lower lip. There. Some spark of anger deep in his haunted eyes, a stiffening of the body. Conor glanced at Merlo, who nodded.

"There's nothing more I can do," the priest said regretfully. "Let's get out of here. And when Adam comes around, we have to talk."

51

Adam's nerve had been severely tested but not broken; his mind, trampled by cloven hooves, was not disabled. In the hours of the afternoon he recovered slowly, like a man with a totally unfamiliar type of hangover, his vision uncharacteristically misty at the edges. He recovered alone, finding both solace and a renewed will to survive in punishing physical activity. Until dusk he skied cross-country, covering twenty-three miles beneath a burnished overcast. When he returned to the remodeled barn, lungs weighted by fatigue, eyes hollowed, all the lingering boyishness had been seared from his face.

Conor, Lindsay, and Merlo were waiting for him. He looked at them as if they were foreign to him, said few words, went to shower and change his clothes. Lindsay had made Irish stew in a big iron pot, and soda bread. She took a drink, a stiff martini, into the bathroom for Adam and returned leading him by the hand. They settled down in front of the fireplace. Adam gazed into the blue and yellow flames of the gas log fire for a long time. Then he raised his eyes to the priest.

"Have you ever seen anything like that before?"

Merlo shrugged. "Well, I've seen much worse, but usually during the Roman ritual, when the— disturbances can go on day and night, sometimes for weeks."

"How can you stand it?" Adam said tonelessly, drinking so fast he seemed to be sloshing solid gin down his throat. Lindsay put a hand casually on his wrist.

"For one thing, I'm conditioned through my faith in God to withstand whatever the inhuman spirit, the guiding intelligence behind these assaults, can devise. And I know that, in the end, ninety percent of the time God will win."

"What about the other ten percent?" Conor asked, with a touchingly slurred voice. He was humped at one end of a blue sofa, working on another Irish and soda, one of many with which, during an endless afternoon, he had soothed his own nerves and blotted the ugly eruptions, like running sores in the mind, that remained of a sixth of a morning hour spent skidding helplessly part way to hell. He had tunnel vision, and poor depth perception; faces swung blandly in and out of his orbit, the fire either roared hotly right between his eyes or receded to the dimness of a star scratched on a windowpane, but he was following the conversation perfectly well, with a deadly ineradicable spot of fear on his heart.

"The possessed body," Father Merlo explained with a tired but still compassionate smile, "is unequal to the strain placed on it, the tug of war between God and devil. And— nobody wins." His own drink, a schooner of beer, had turned warm in his hand. He had reached the point where he couldn't lift the heavy mug from the arm of the sofa. And he was facing a long ride to Boston, a much longer flight to Rome, driven hammer-and-tongs by the sense of urgency that now possessed him as fully as Richard Devon lay possessed in his jail cell.

"Could that happen to Rich?" Lindsay said. She was

not drinking; she had agreed to see to it that the priest made his flight, which was scheduled to depart at ten thirty. She wore a headband to cover the bandage on her forehead, which made a bump like an unrealized but anxious thought.

"Yes. This is the first time I've come face to face with a devil who has the power, the status in the Kingdom, of Zarach'. It's almost unprecedented. The guiding entities behind demonic possessions always like to keep their identities secret. So I can be sure of one thing already: this is not a typical case of possession— in my experience, it's unique. I don't know yet what it means. But Zarach' Bal-Tagh was telling the truth about his place in the hierarchy of the Fallen. Before the world began, his brother, called Lucifer, was next to God in his majesty. But Lucifer wasn't content to be less than perfect. He wanted to possess all that God possessed: to rule, absolutely, the heavens. For this sin of covetousness he and Zarach' and the host of angels who also coveted God's powers were banished, or so we believe, from God's house.

"But they were not chastised in their banishment, nor did they beg God's forgiveness. They swore eternal hatred for their creator. Lucifer became Satan, which means 'the Father of Lies.' And the name Zarach' Bal-Tagh means, in the Palaic dialect of the Hittite language, 'the Son of the Endless Night.' "

"Hell itself," Conor murmured, drooping despite himself, his glass in one hand sinking below the level of his spread knees with a little tinkle of ice.

Father Merlo got up to walk off a strong urge to sleep. Not yet; perhaps on the flight to Rome. He felt that he was not yet out of range of the danger he had stirred up earlier. He rubbed his bald forehead with the heel of one hand.

"Not exactly. The Endless Night is that shadow of God under which the Fallen Angels perpetually dwell. The darkness from which comes all of their hatred, their evil, their disruptive energy. Hell for us, maybe: but it is their element. In the Endless Night all the negative energy of the universe is concentrated. Don't be misled because these spirits are described as 'fallen.' They have inconceivable powers. They're immortal; they don't obey physical laws. They possess all the arcane and mystical secrets of existence. They work ceaselessly for the destruction of mankind. In other words, you don't mess with them unless you know what you're doing. Are you listening, Conor?"

"Listening," the ex-priest mumbled. "Too tricky for us. The in-your-face-disgrace shot."

"Right," Merlo said, with a brisk handclap. Adam looked up, startled, and rattled the ice in his empty glass. He got up and went to the bar to make himself another drink.

"If they're so powerful," Lindsay ventured, "how have we all managed to survive this long?"

"Men have a covenant with God; and that covenant serves to protect them as long as they honor Him, and obey His laws."

Adam rejoined them with a refilled glass, slouching down beside Lindsay, his lower lip swollen, a deep, nearly black bruise along the jawline where Conor had belted him. He looked harassed and anguished. He said, "What I saw this afternoon will stay in my mind until I die. All right. Let's say I'm willing now to accept that Rich is under the influence of something, someone supernatural." He drew a heavy breath; another. "A spirit. The spirit has— dehumanized him, and may have directly caused the death of Karyn Vale. The question is, how do we save Richard?"

"There's no simple answer," Merlo told him. "The problem of Rich's possession is compounded by his being in jail, and by the nature of his possessor. Zarach' is very powerful. I'd have to do some extensive research into old manuscripts, but I know he's been seldom heard from during the past two thousand years. Yet he always seems to make an appearance just before periods of great upheaval, of world catastrophe."

"He said something about Armageddon," Conor reported; he seemed to be chewing the words through suet. His eyes, as he tipped his head to drink, revealed beneath the drooping lids bloodknots of pain.

"Armageddon," Adam said, but only as if it were his turn to keep the conversation going. His jaw muscles were bunched, on the side where it didn't hurt. Fear kept coming back to him unexpectedly, floodtides. He wondered, quite simply, if he would ever be a man again, having so ignominiously failed himself this morning. His tongue had stuck to the roof of his mouth. He had leaked in his pants. He shivered from self-doubt; only Lindsay felt it.

"The end of modern civilization," Merlo explained. "Which we supposedly face along about the stroke of midnight, December 31, 1999. I'm afraid I don't take that timetable seriously, or predictions of global disasters by so-called psychics. Doomsaying is a thriving cottage industry. A great many people are convinced that God is about to exact a terrible vengeance, through nuclear war or some natural calamity like the shifting of the poles of the earth. In their fear, unfortunately, they neglect God all the more. The Dark Ones are easily attracted by a mood of negativism. There's been a tremendous revival of belief in the occult, in Satanism. It's almost safer to play with high explosives. The Church, with the shooting of John Paul II, has reached a point of real peril. The appearances of Zarach' can't be coincidental. Simple possession may not be all he has in mind. That's why I have to return to Rome tonight, to talk to my superiors."

"You can't go," Conor cried, lunging to his feet. "What about Rich?"

"Conor, ridding your brother of Zarach' would require exorcism by the most experienced and holy men of the Church. I can tell you that the rites would last for weeks, even months. It would be an incredible ordeal, particularly for your brother. If we could do it. But we can't. He's in jail."

"Without possibility of bail," Adam said.

"There is nothing the Church can do to help Rich until— unless— he's acquitted."

"But he won't go to trial before May at the earliest," Lindsay pointed out.

"Well, speed it up!" Conor bellowed.

"We need time to prepare," Adam said crossly.

"Maybe we need a new lawyer."

Father Merlo walked over to Conor, put an arm across his shoulders and turned him, rather effortlessly, around, forestalling a confrontation. He talked to him quietly, and Conor nodded.

"Even if Rich gets off on an insanity plea, he'll be committed to an institution. What good can you do him there, Father?"

"I doubt that we'd be granted permission to do anything. Our only hope would be to have him transferred to a Catholic institution, like St. Elizabeth's in Washington, then have him furloughed in our care; but there would be legal problems."

"Conor," Adam said, "I'm doing the very best I can. I'm sure we'll win. The best strategy is to deflect the focus of the jurors from the facts of the case to the complexities of Rich's behavior. The eyewitnesses will be very important, but I also need psychiatric opinions— expert testimony."

"You wouldn't need it if a jury saw what we saw today!"

Adam whistled a few notes that descended, derisively, down the scale, ending with a flat exhalation. "Unfortunately no one in this country has been allowed to plead demonic possession in a murder trial. I wouldn't care to be the first defense attorney to propose it."

Lindsay got up and walked to the stove in the kitchen, stirred the stew with a wooden spoon, opened the oven door. The odor of freshly baked bread flowed along with her as she returned to them.

"If anyone's hungry," she said unhopefully, "we can eat now."

Adam was gazing at the fire with a composed, ironic smile. Conor, without Merlo's long arm to anchor him, merely drifted, a few feet here, a few feet there, like a vast and empty hulk on a windblown reef. Out of it.

Merlo spoke when the others failed to: "Your stew smells wonderful. I'd love to have some."

Lindsay brightened. "Father, you've made my day." She whirled toward the butcher-block table, where place settings surrounded an arrangement of dried flowers in a Greek bowl, caught her lower lip between her teeth, hesitated. She smiled, a little cutely, over one shoulder. Her heart was hammering. "You could make it even better."

"How, Lindsay?"

"Bless this house before you leave."

Crystal Kinsman and her cousin Caitlin met in New York Friday evening to have dinner and see a show, a Neil Simon comedy. Caitlin had taken the train into the city from Springfield, Massachusetts and Crystal drove her Ford Tempo over from New Brunswick to meet her. The plan was for Caitlin to return to Rutgers with Crystal and spend the weekend. There was to be a basketball game and a dance; Crystal had lined up dates for them.

After she stepped off the train at Grand Central and they fell into each other's arms with squeals of delight, and admired each other's outfits, Caitlin's smile faded. She said, "I'm worried sick about Jeff. He's been in the infirmary up at Williams for three days now."

"Why, what's wrong with him, hon?"

"I don't know for sure; he's running a high fever they can't knock down. I tried to call, but they wouldn't let me talk to him. That's how sick he is."

Crystal had met Jeff Pepperdine for the first time on that ill-fated ski holiday in Vermont, and she had found him likable, droll, and self-deprecating, unusual for a redhead. Usually they were pushy as all get-out.

"That's a real shame. But you know he's gonna be okay. Don't let it go and spoil your weekend."

They ate at the Four Seasons, a treat paid for by Crystal's uncle Roy, who had come up from Yazoo City and made a name for himself in the advertising game. Crystal, at least, found the Simon comedy a scream, the best thing he'd done in years. At the intermissions Caitlin went through half a pack of cigarettes, although too much smoking already had aggravated a fever blister that was almost as difficult to cover up as a cockroach on her lip, and she couldn't seem to keep her mind on their conversation.

Crystal gave her reassuring pats and was solicitous about the funk into which she had descended. Crystal herself had a good philosophy of life, which seemed composed of homilies from the lips of Miss America contestants but which nevertheless stood her in good stead: almost nothing could get her down. Caitlin just had this dark streak of fatalism and nothing could be done about it. She was convinced that Jeff had died while she was grudgingly laughing in the crowded, stifling theater, and she felt terrible about it. But she wouldn't go to the telephone after the play ended and purge her fears by calling the college: or perhaps she was genuinely afraid of having those fears confirmed.

Crystal retrieved her Ford from the municipal garage on Eighth Avenue where they'd left it. The city was free of snow but there was a bone-chilling wind; the constellated lights of the city were sharp against a sky black as a sorcerer's curse. There were always too many bums on Eighth, and the tenements of the far west side reminded Crystal of dungeons. She gladly partook of the delights which the city offered but never lingered after dark, and she never caught the bus to Jersey.

Crystal drove downtown on Ninth to the Lincoln Tunnel and they crossed beneath the Hudson River, traffic running moderate as far as the New Jersey Turnpike, which they picked up in Secaucus. Caitlin rummaged and found a tape of her current favorite group and popped it into the cassette player, but even the music didn't cheer her up for long. She smoked two more cigarettes as they traveled south along the boring stretch of turnpike from Newark Airport to the Raritan River.

"It was that murder," Caitlin complained. "See, I've just never been able to get it off my mind. I have such terrible nightmares, Crystal, you can't imagine. Sometimes it's me, and not her, that's getting killed." Crystal shivered sympathetically but Caitlin went on without taking notice. "You don't know how it's affected my life. I meet a new boy and I think he's really darling, but I don't want to be alone with him. Oh, no! Not for one second."

"Aw, you'll get over this."

"Maybe I should see a shrink," Caitlin said morosely. She looked around, as if expecting one to come cruising by in a mini-van. They were passing through flat terrain decorated with skeletal castles of oil refineries, robed in light and hissing flame high into the night sky. "Would you look at that?"

"Look at what?" Crystal said, her eyes flicking to Caitlin's face. But she rarely took her eyes off the road, and she kept two steady hands on the wheel. Five miles over the posted speed limit was as daring as she got. She knew better than to let Caitlin drive, funk or no funk. Caitlin lit out as if her pussy was on fire.

"It's not a cop," Caitlin said disdainfully. "They wouldn't be interested in you. It's an old Cadillac. Older than we are. You almost never see those any more. It must be what, a '58, '59?" She was peering, a trifle nearsightedly, past Crystal's shoulder. "Cousin Bertie Armitage had one like that, three summers ago in Pass Christian."

"Oh, yeah, I remember." Crystal turned her head for a quick look. The turnpike had four southbound lanes, framed by two asphalt-paved breakdown lanes, all of it enclosed by steel guardrails. She saw the Caddy in question, two lanes to her left, cruising slowly abreast of her own car. It looked to be a genteel wreck, although it isn't easy judging the condition of black cars at night. But the ludicrous tail fins were obvious, as was the heavy grill and chrome front bumper with its bulletlike projections.

A ripsnorting tractor-trailer came down the lane between them, and the small Tempo rocked in its wake. When the big truck had passed and Crystal looked again, she couldn't see the Cadillac. Perhaps it had fallen behind them.

Four miles north of the toll booths at exit 11 and the interchanges with U.S. 9 and the Garden State Parkway, traffic began to thicken suddenly, a bright stew of braking lights coming to a boil across all lanes. A huge overhead sign warned of an accident ahead; the speed limit had been reduced to twenty miles an hour.

"It's always something," Crystal sighed, trying to discern what had happened. But they weren't close enough yet to the scene; she didn't see any state police cars or emergency vehicles. "We get off at exit 9, then it's only a few minutes more to the campus."

Caitlin yawned and sulkily bit a thumbnail.

Crystal remained in the second lane from the right. As they edged closer to the toll booth plaza and the Amboy Avenue overpass, flames could be seen, and thick roiling smoke.

"It's on the overpass," Caitlin said. She rolled down the window on her side; a moving van, crusted with dirt, was directly in front of them, obscuring her view. Caitlin leaned out.

"Holy shit!" Now they could hear sirens.

"What is it, Cait?"

"I can't tell— it might be— I think it's a big gasoline tanker burning on the overpass."

"Oh-oh," Crystal said, feeling uneasy. "Wonder if it'll explode?"

"No. I don't think so. They wouldn't let any cars through beneath the overpass, would they? But we're moving. The cops are routing all traffic into the two left lanes; see if you can get over now."

Crystal shuddered. "Sure is getting cold in here."

"Oh, sorry." Her cousin rolled the window up.

Crystal turned on her left-turn indicator, hoping she could move to the far left lanes immediately, although the cars and trucks were creeping along almost bumper to bumper. She didn't like fires of any kind, and this one on the overpass (she had a glimpse of it now as the moving van pulled ahead, opening a thirty-foot gap between them) was huge: flames shooting high into the air.

The poor driver, she thought, and shuddered again.

They continued to move, but slowly. Glancing into the side-mounted mirror, Crystal saw an opening and attempted to pull over, but a car from the far left lane suddenly appeared to fill the space. It was the trampy black Cadillac they had noticed earlier south of Newark Airport.

"Damn!" Crystal said, veering back into her own lane, where she was penned between the van and a flatbed truck hauling big wooden spools of cables. The old Cadillac was only a few feet away on her left and she looked out the window at it, noting the poor condition of the paint job.

A woman was driving. She turned her face toward Crystal and smiled briefly. Kind of a Latin-looking woman, pale, with dark eyes well-mounted on superb cheekbones, and what looked like a long curved scar that lay low on one cheek.

It was the smile that most annoyed Crystal. "May you get four flat tires and have to walk barefoot to Perth Amboy," Crystal muttered, as dreadful a curse as she had ever imagined. She didn't like the woman much, although she had no very compelling reason for the instant antipathy she felt; her car Crystal liked even less, it was too much of a hearse.

Caitlin had pulled out another cigarette, and she flicked her lighter. Three hundred yards ahead the blackened hulk of the overturned gasoline carrier could be seen lying almost on top of the overpass railing. It still burned furiously although high-pressure streams of water had been aimed at the wreck from chartreuse pumper trucks fore and aft. Water cascading off the bridge had turned to enormous icicles that hung down almost to the turnpike roadway. There were a lot of flares, policemen in slickers with bullhorns.

"What's trouble, hon?"

"Can't get my goddam lighter to work," Caitlin grumbled, holding her cigarette steady and at a tilt between compressed lips.

Something pricked Crystal to look out her side window again.

The driver of the black Cadillac now had a passenger, whose face was turned toward Crystal. They were no more than six feet apart, and Crystal could see her perfectly. Crystal's hair felt as if it were frying. She gasped.

It was a young woman's face, but wildly disordered, as if every underlying bone had been broken. Within the open mouth there were only slivers and stumps of white teeth. One eye was like a harvest moon with an off-center bloodspot for a pupil. The other eye socket was empty and oozing blood. Only her luxurious dark hair seemed untouched by carnage.

Crystal Kinsman knew who she was: had admired the thickness and flow of Karyn Vale's hair moments before the girl had walked out onto the hushed snowy terrace at the Davos Chalet Lodge and died so horribly.

From the burning hulk of the oil tanker a fireball shot up into the air. Two hundred feet above the packed lanes of traffic on the southbound Jersey Turnpike the fireball lost momentum, arced over slowly and then, picking up speed again, rocketed downward.

As Crystal screamed once more at the bad news of the apparition seated next to them, the black Cadillac became as insubstantial as a shadow: the windshield of her own car had turned golden, then fiery with light. At the approach of the big fireball Caitlin screamed too.

The fireball struck the center of the windshield, vaporizing much of the glass on contact, then blew apart inside the car, becoming a million incendiary droplets each as bright as a tiny sun.

The girls glowed luminously within this gaseous envelope and almost instantly shimmered down into little piles of ash and remnants of bone. The fire, if it could be called that, cooled down in less than a second and vanished as if sucked into a vacuum. The gas tank of the Tempo, untouched, failed to explode. Almost everything inside the car was made of synthetic materials: these were completely vaporized or fused into grotesque lumps of matter.

By the time would-be rescuers reached the car there was nothing to extinguish, and only wisps of pale smoke indicated where the girls had been sitting.

Within a few minutes Crystal had been identified with the assistance of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Department as one of the unfortunate occupants. Caitlin's luggage, untouched, was in the Tempo's trunk; in one of her bags there was a letter addressed to her from Jeff Pepperdine, dated the thirteenth of February.

At exactly three A.M. in the infirmary on the campus of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Jeff Pepperdine, hospitalized for treatment of a fever of unknown origin, went into massive convulsions and was dead on the floor beside his bed before a doctor could be summoned to help him.

53

On the last day of February Adam Kurland ran into the state's attorney for Haden County, Gary Cleves, at the courthouse. Cleves was a small slender man with a dark and well-shaped beard. He had oversized teeth and not enough lip to cover them completely; the resulting toothiness gave him, falsely, an endearing look. But Gary, despite his slight build, fancied himself a tough customer. He had a black belt in karate and carried a pistol everywhere he went, hinting darkly of ex-convicts, whom he'd dispatched to prison in the past, on the loose with axes to grind. He was one of those men who can't hold even a casual conversation unless he has linked himself physically with the one to whom he is talking: shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm, confidentiality his watchword. But never making eye contact: Gary was always too busy looking out for potential enemies or eavesdroppers. Without any form of greeting Gary took Adam by his elbow and guided him to an unfrequented corner of the lobby. All he said, while gazing raptly over Adam's left shoulder, was "Had your breakfast yet?"

"No."

"Coffee and Danish at the German's? My treat." When Adam hesitated, Gary gave him a little nudge in the ribs. "We need to have a talk."

"I don't think we need to discuss the case anymore before it goes to trial, Gary."

"We don't? I've been hearing rumors that you've considered withdrawing as defense counsel."

"Oh, that's bullshit."

But Gary Cleves had the hook in him; beaming, he trolled Adam on down the street to the popular cafe, where they sat in the prosecutor's favorite booth. It was a single on one side with high wooden armrests and backs, almost as solidly enclosed as a confessional. Adam determinedly made small talk, to which Gary replied in monosyllables, with little punctuating nods, until he had drunk half a mug of coffee and was ready to proceed.

"You haven't been spending much time with your client," he said to Adam, giving him a little reproving tap on the wrist. Gary's hand was furred thick as a glove to the half moons of his fingernails. "I'd almost say you're avoiding him. Nobody's been around to see him this week except that little priest from Pius the Twelfth Parish, and I hear your client scared the piss out of the good father. Want to tell me what's going on?"

"I don't follow you, Gary."

"Father Gregus has been saying that Richard Devon is possessed by the devil."

Adam rubbed his eyes, which were smarting from the brilliance of the sun on the misty window which the booth framed.

"Father Gregus is close to senile. They're retiring him this year. But he had no business going to see Rich without checking with me first."

"I suppose he just wanted to offer some spiritual guidance; your client's a Catholic, isn't he? But I have to tell you, Adam, I think it's a cheap ploy; and where can you go with it?"

"Go with what?"

Beneath the table their knees touched; Gary hunched forward on his elbows. He looked sideways, sharply, waiting until a waitress behind the counter turned her back on them.

"Demonic possession."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Adam said firmly.

With his head down Gary nodded, as if he were willing to wait for Adam to change his tune. Adam outlasted him. Gary said, "You'll plead him not guilty this week, of course."

"Of course."

"And you'll be filing Notice of Defense of Mental Disease or Defect."

"Gary, you'll know what I intend to file when I file."

The prosecutor shrugged and sat back. "Sure. Take your time. It doesn't make any difference to me. I'm just trying to be helpful, Adam. After all, we sleep in the same bed around here."

Adam tried not to laugh. "You've never had a gift for metaphor, Gary."

"You know what I mean. Take some good advice and have your client go easy with this devil-made-me-do-it stuff."

"I'm not responsible for everything Devon says." It was a dumb thing to admit. At this stage of events he knew he should be. Gary resisted the opportunity to chide him further. He was served a hot raspberry Danish with a heap of butter melting on it. Adam got indigestion just looking at it. His stomach wasn't good lately. He was sleeping poorly. He wished he had his father to talk to.

Gary dug into the pastry with a spoon. "Your client is sane, and you know it. I'm sincere when I say I don't want to see you hurt too badly by this trial, Adam. But you will be if you're not careful— and honest with yourself about your prospects. By the way, that was a real tragedy, what happened to those two girls down there on the Jersey Turnpike."

"Yeah."

"And that other witness dying the way he did. Tragic— a tragic coincidence. Three eyewitnesses gone, the same night."

"But there are two other eyewitnesses. Donald Ray Stemmons. Warren Hasper. And there are the state cops who were the first on the scene, Granger and Raff. It isn't only witnesses who are going to win this case for me, Gary."

"As a matter of fact, the witnesses will lose it for you. I know what you're going to try. It worked with Brodkey, but this ain't the same ballgame. There is no way you are going to sell Devon as the emotionally overwrought victim of a blighted love affair who went berserk when he found out she was cheating on him. Adam, it wasn't just one shot from a Saturday night special. He clubbed Karyn Vale to death, and he took his sweet time doing it. And to this day he hasn't shown a drop of remorse for the poor girl. The jailers say he's cold as ice. A born killer. He bothers them, and they've had some tough guys in their lockup. Bikers. Canuck loggers."

"He's pretty damn scared himself."

"Ha," Gary said, without mirth, looking closely at someone who had just walked in the door of the cafe. Satisfied that he wasn't about to be assaulted, he glanced at Adam. "You've got a weak case, counselor. Your weakest link is Devon himself. The jury's going to hate him before the trial is two days old. Attila the Hun wouldn't have liked him. I think you hate him yourself— something happens around your eyes when I mention him. Don't think I'm not aware of that. I don't miss much."

"I know you don't, Gary," Adam said patiently.

"Fact is, if you don't want to withdraw, which would be my sincere recommendation, I can offer you an alternative that's bound to be a plus for your career."

"What do you have in mind?"

"A two-stage trial."

"That's what I thought you had in mind. Have you been seeing a lot of Tommie Harkrider lately?"

Gary missed the barb. "He was up here a while back. I've talked to him on the phone several times since. He represents Karyn Vale's family."

"I know. And lately he's advocated two-stage trials in insanity pleas."

"I like the idea myself," Gary said, as if he was the franchise holder for the state of Vermont. "The insanity plea has become a cancer in the belly of the legal system. We— I mean, you and I and the state— have a chance to do something meaningful about that. Vermont v. Devon could be more than just another murder trial, Adam. It could be a landmark case. Don't you feel that's more important than getting Devon the works on a first-degree conviction. Or a free ride for a couple of years in the state hospital?"

"A two-stage trial would be an experiment, and I'd be doing my client a disservice even to consider it. As for the insanity plea, both of us have been down this road a few times, Gary, and neither of us knows what the jury is likely to do. At this point I'm sure of two things: Rich was not in control of himself when he killed Karyn Vale, and he remains in desperate need of— professional help. I have an obligation to see that he gets the help he needs, as quickly as possible." Adam glanced down at the table, as if to recalculate the odds from the cards the prosecutor had dealt him, then looked up quickly, catching Gary's eye. Gary winced, slightly pained by a threat of genuine intimacy. "Look, Gary, we've had some brawls in court but you have to admit I've always played it straight with you."

"Almost always," the prosecutor said, with a hint of petulance.

"Maybe we can cut a deal here and now."

"I won't plea-bargain."

"I'm willing to go along with the idea of a two-stage trial subject to an appropriate ruling from the bench."

"Now you're being sensible, Adam."

"In return I want my client sprung. Reasonable bail and appropriate custody."

"Whose custody?"

"Private sanitarium of our choice."

"Ha. Not a chance. He's too fucking dangerous."

"What if I can guarantee security?"

"Under the circumstances I wouldn't even let him go to max lock at the hospital. Out of the question. Ask me anything else."

"Richard Devon needs attention now, Gary. Isn't that obvious from what's been going on?"

"It's obvious he's a cold-blooded killer. If you want more psychiatrists to look at him, fine. Your option. But he has to be examined at the jail."

Adam stood and put a quarter on the table to pay for the coffee he hadn't touched. "See you in court, Gary."

"Wait a minute, Adam; we didn't even begin to discuss this."

"No discussion. You know what I want. Call me by five o'clock today, Gary."

Adam walked back to the courthouse through crunching snow, head lowered to keep the raw wind off his face. He hadn't looked at the prosecutor again as he was leaving, but he felt no confidence that his ultimatum would be met. It was worth Gary's job to let Rich out now, and he knew it. Another petition for bail consideration would be worthless, even if the Catholic Church would back the application.

Gary Cleves, he thought, had been right about one thing. The jury, any jury, would hate Richard Devon. Adam didn't hate his client— he was merely scared shitless of him, and dreaded being in the same room with him. But today he had to see him.

The prisoner was brought into the interview room by the pint-size Duke and two other guards. Adam asked them all to stay. He sat as far from his client as possible.

The prisoner was in a straitjacket again. He sat slackly in a chair, chin down, eyes coldly insolent. Adam looked into those eyes and saw nothing of Rich. The prisoner smiled at him. His voice, at least, was almost familiar.

"You can't get me out of here, can you?"

"No."

"Why don't you just drop the case, Adam?"

"Is that what you want me to do?"

"I need a lawyer. You're as good as any."

"Why do you need a lawyer? I'm no help to you unless you want to be helped. What is it you really want? For Richard Devon to spend the rest of his life behind bars? How will that satisfy you?"

The prisoner didn't reply. His smile pricked Adam's nerves. Adam's hands were clammy. Perspiration trickled down the back of his neck.

"What makes you so goddamned pleased with yourself today?" Adam said in exasperation.

"There's going to be a death in the family," the prisoner told him. He went on smiling.

54

Donald Ray Stemmons, the twenty-six-year-old bartender whose mountaineer's blond beard was stained around the mouth by chewing tobacco, worked the six P.M.-to-closing shift in the tavern of the Davos Chalet Lodge, which left his days free for women and other sport.

The first week in March, following several big snowstorms, brought the most beneficent weather they'd had for skiing all season. It also brought out the crowds. Accommodations were jammed, skiers were tripping over each other, and service was bad almost everywhere. The youthful employees at the various lodges and restaurants were all overworked, exhausted, and snappish from long weeks of burning their candles at both ends. Stemmons had given serious thought to walking out on his own job unless the management of the Davos Chalet hired another bartender to help him. He was temporarily without a female companion; the nineteen-year-old Finnish chambermaid he'd been screwing on other people's unmade beds had linked up with a group of ski bums who had migrated north to Smuggler's Notch. But early in this week of aggravating nights in the smoke-fouled tavern and days of fierce joyous release on the most difficult trails Hermitage Mountain had to offer, he'd had his first glimpse of the woman whom he found so tantalizing, and so difficult to make contact with.

She was in the sunup line of the cafeteria at Galeatry Lodge, three quarters of a mile down the mountain from Davos Chalet. No one was with her. For breakfast she was having grapefruit, coffee, and a box of 40% Bran Flakes. She was strikingly tall and dressed all in black, ski clothing that modeled to perfection the figure of a showgirl or a very expensive hooker. Her skin was stained the even dark shade of wild honey. Even from where he stood it was obvious she was no kid: she might be as old as forty. Stemmons had always favored older women for sexual liaisons, which was one reason he was immediately attracted to her. The other reason was— perhaps— the little savage arc of scar low on her left cheek, near her mouth, as if a sensual kiss by a tormented lover had slipped, and bitten deep. The gash of love. She had the ease, the contented expression of money, status, accomplishment.

Out of his league, of course. But then she turned at the register and looked his way. Her eyes were obsidian, they jumped out of her face at him like knives and he felt that curious lift and sizzle of nerves along the spinal column, the sensation of destinies commingled.

Once he had selected his own breakfast Stemmons took his time looking around the big noisy cafeteria to see where she was seated. He was surprised, and disgruntled, not to find her anywhere in the room. A very fast eater. He wondered if she could ski.

She was a superb skier, as he found out early in the week. She was just ahead of him again, this time on the double chair lift; he followed her to High Hazard Two and probably could have caught up to her at the lip of the descent except for a problem with a binding that cost him several minutes. He could only watch as, unaccompanied, she swooped through sets of beautifully precise turns, the technique of an old master like Stein Erickson, leaving a shimmering snow wake in the halcyon air. Later that same day he had a glimpse of her from the heights of a chair lift pier; this time she was on the Devil's Pigtail, a fleet inky shadow, lost to her hips in the spuming powder, so lazily graceful as she laid into her turns that he ached to be there, complementing with his own crisp style her fluid descent, her airy excellence.

Suddenly he was spotting her everywhere on the slopes, but always she was maddeningly distant; he began to keep a mental diary of all of his glimpses of her, trying to figure out a pattern to her day so that he might intercept her. But she had no routine, she was consistent only in her elusiveness. One night, while he was hard at work pumping beer, he looked up to see her face in the glaring doorway of the tavern, turned toward him. He thought he saw her smile, and for a few moments it seemed as if she might come in, but then beer foamed over his wrist and when he looked for her again she wasn't there. He felt a sense of loss that had him in profane bad humor the rest of the night.

The week went by too quickly, and on Friday morning he didn't see her at all. Disappointed, he gave up his by now habitual scanning of the trails as he rose and fell, rose and fell, while the sun circled blindingly in flawless blue. Stemmons skied to classical music, a cassette player clipped to his jacket, small headphones clamped beneath his knit cap. For the lilting turns and cloud-filled plateaus of the High Hazards he liked Tchaikovsky or Mozart; Beethoven and Wagner suited the thundering express of the Rocket. Brahms soothed the lengthy jolting returns up the mountain.

The setting sun found him on the double chair lift rising once more to the summit where the several trails began and diverged, lacing down all sides of the mountain. Most of the ski crowd had packed it in for the day, and only a few of the chairs were occupied. The lift would cease operating, except for the ski patrol, at sunset. Probably ten minutes away. He would take the last long glide down in purpling dusk, through coves and tunnels formed from snowladen birches, the last rays of the sun flashing across his bronze goggles.

When he arrived at the lift ramp nearly four thousand feet above the darkened valley he lingered for a couple of minutes until the lift quit, waiting for the handful of skiers who had come up behind him to push off. Then he slid down the ramp and struck off down a packed, somewhat corny vale toward the most difficult of the mountain's runs, the Devil's Pigtail. It was marked with a sign that featured an impish caricature of a porker looking back over one shoulder at his corkscrew tail. WARNING: FOR EXPERT SKIERS ONLY. The horned pig was pointing to the left, to a cove still golden with the long light of the sun.

And he saw her, poised against a flushed violet sky, goggles raised on her high forehead. She heard his skis rattling down the trail and looked around inquiringly. He held his breath, sure that she was going to disappear before he could sideslip down to where she waited. But she smiled, and made no move. Stemmons couldn't believe his luck had turned at last.

"Hi," he said, coasting past her and executing a little jump-turn that placed him facing her and directly in front of the precipitous trail.

"Hello." Dimples, and those great, somewhat mocking eyes, and that alluring scar. She was wearing a pink joke button on her black partially zipped windbreaker. In white lettering it said THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO SAY I LOVE YOU. FUCKING IS THE FASTEST. Her smile widened when she caught him gawking at it. A rising wind spilled snow from the tip of a looming evergreen. Particles glittered, with a charged, fabulous light, in her hair, across the top of her forehead.

"I've been watching you ski this week," Stemmons told her. "You're good."

"I'm very good," she said, gently correcting him. "So are you. You're Donald Stemmons, aren't you?"

"That's right."

"And you were on the U.S. ski team two years ago?"

"No. Wish I could say I was. My best shot was a little too slow."

"Planning to try again?"

"I just ski for fun now. You up here on vacation?"

"You might call it a working vacation."

"Oh." He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "How long will you be around?"

"Well, that depends."

"Maybe we could have dinner."

"That depends as well."

"On what?"

"Men have to earn me, Donald," she said, even more gently than before, and with a slight wistfulness, as if she had already decided he couldn't measure up.

He might have guessed. A hooker. So much for his luck. He had a trade-off coming at the Hickory Pit, steaks for two, but no money to pay for ass, even this choice piece.

"No," she said, more boldly. "I'm not a whore."

"Well, uh— "

"Dinner's on me. Provided."

"What?"

"We race to the bottom."

"And if I win, dinner's on you?"

"That's right."

"What if I lose?" He couldn't help smiling.

She cocked her head, considering the other side of the wager. "Dinner's still on me. But you do the dishes."

"At your place?"

"At my place."

"Sounds good to me. But in all fairness, you ought to have a head start." He nodded toward the trail. "I've been skiing up here since December."

"That's very generous of you, Donald. How much of a head start will you give me?"

"Fifteen seconds?"

"Oh, you must be fast. This'll be exciting. Well, it looks as if we're about to lose the light. Ready?"

Stemmons dug in his poles and jumped a full turn, sidestepped out of her way. She brushed past him lightly without another word and swooped on down the trail, which already was becoming a little vague in the declining light. He waited, counting half aloud as she described a series of balletic turns that carried her beyond a thick patch of woods and out of sight. She was moving very fast and he bit his tongue in his desire to overhaul her, but was faithful to the count. At fifteen he jabbed his poles deep and lifted off, hurtled through isolated stands of birches and around a broad mogul, establishing an instant almost effortless rhythm across slopes still mildly streaked with sun.

It occurred to Stemmons, belatedly, that he hadn't learned her name. He knew the trail so well he could have skied it by moonlight, and he knew where she would make the mistakes that would enable him to catch up. He just hoped she wouldn't spill. That would take the fun out of it.

When he cleared the woods and turned sharply right for the second stage of the now steeply plunging trail he didn't see her anywhere below him: the trail, in a thin reddish glow, was starkly empty, and he could see almost three hundred yards ahead. He pulled up quickly, astonished, looked past some big rocks and darkly banded trees, afraid that she had overshot this turn and gone pinwheeling into a shadowy pileup.

His spurted breath, frozen, drifted briskly away on the wind. He heard, but couldn't see, some distant ski patrollers. He cupped his gloved hands to his mouth to call out to her. But what was her name?

He wondered then if she had skied just to the woods and decided not to go on. She might be hiding in there, with that smile. Having decided, capriciously, that he wasn't worth her time after all. Nothing but a tease. Suddenly he was angry. The cunt. He regretted all the time he'd spent speculating about her, the rush of lust he'd experienced a minute ago, gazing into her wide-set eyes, dark as old brandy, subtly fuming. There are many ways to say I love you. . . .

Well, go fuck yourself tonight, lady. I don't want to play anymore.

Stemmons pushed off again, slicing down a narrow chute that was a little too icy for his liking, growing more dangerous as night came on and the temperature dropped. He made a left-hand turn and came out onto a narrow plateau, almost flat and devoid of growth, crusty moguls projecting from the ridgeback above him.

That's when he saw her again, far down the trail, a dim figure in the dusk. She was standing with hands on hips, her ski poles at angles of forty-five degrees, looking back the way she had come. Looking for him. Head held at a taunting angle.

He couldn't believe, despite the start he'd given her, his brief reconnoitering pause above, that she had covered so much of the trail so quickly. He hesitated for only a moment, then thrust himself forward savagely and went into a racing crouch as he hurtled on rattling skis down the troughlike trail.

The woman crouched, too, though she was still facing him. She jabbed her poles into the snow and lunged forward.

Uphill.

She was skiing uphill, flying toward him with the same reckless speed he had achieved.

For several seconds Stemmons's mind simply refused to believe what his eyes recorded. It was a physical impossibility. Yet here she came, all in black, the pink joke button glowing on one breast like a diminutive, romantic sun, eyes hidden behind dark goggles, the pale lip of scar somehow frightfully vivid despite the distance between them. At this velocity they would collide in seconds, nowhere to go but off the trail into rock after rock after rock. Men have to earn me, Donald. Her hair wisping like smoke, coiling in the air above her lowered head, her whole body now shimmering blackly, becoming amorphous even as her speed increased, and there was no stopping on this stiletto of ice-slick trail: nothing could stop him now short of a deliberate spill. He had seen racing friends rent from anus to navel by such spills, the bloody broken edges of ribcage and collarbones poking through pulverized flesh.

Donald Stemmons screamed; his skis left the track just as they met, soaringly, head-on. But it was not a fleshly woman he encountered, it was a whirling, seething, dense black cloud, a deeper blackness than anything he'd ever seen, even his own mother's shroud. The cloud drew him in and spun him around at breakneck speed, tearing the breath from his lungs and the skis from his boots before he was hurled nearly sixty feet down one side of the trail. In a splashing sunset moment he came down headfirst onto a thinly iced boulder with such force that every vertebra of his spinal column was crushed, his skull fragmented, his eyeballs ejected from their sockets. Most of his brains were pounded down into his mouth and throat.

Even before Donald Ray Stemmons died, the black cloud had begun to dissipate above the slick white surface of the Devil's Pigtail; streaks of it wafted toward the heights of flame-tipped trees and vanished, in pure thin darkening air, high above the summit of Hermitage Mountain.

55

For the entire week preceding the arraignment of Richard Devon, scheduled for the ninth of March, the prisoner's attitude and behavior were much improved. He spoke politely to his jailers, although no more than he had to. He asked for reading material and passed most of his time in his cell quietly absorbed in War and Peace and a life of Tolstoi. On two occasions he was allowed to watch television with other prisoners, although he had to wear his straitjacket.

Without restraint but with guards present he also had the opportunity to exercise. His appetite was good. He met once with Maggie Renquist and an associate of hers. He was cooperative but revealed nothing of his feelings when asked direct questions about the murder. Adam also met with the prisoner the day before the arraignment; he didn't know whether he was talking to the possessor or to the possessed.

On March 9 the prisoner, wearing a neat gray suit, figured blue tie, and black loafers with tassels, was taken in handcuffs to the courtroom of Judge Ralph D. McComb, where he stood silent and self-absorbed while his lawyer spoke for him, entering a plea of not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder.

Lindsay Potter saw him for the first time since the ordeal in the interview room almost a month before. As Adam was speaking, the prisoner turned his head to look at her; there was something boyish but cruel in the set of the mouth, a look of boredom in the eyes. This one look inspired in her such feelings of hopelessness, despair, and fear for her life that she had all she could do to keep from weeping. The surge of emotions passed, but she was left with a sense of bleakness that was worse than any depression she'd ever known.

"Rich is gone, isn't he?" she said afterwards to Adam. "It's as if this other— thing— just moved in, packed all of Rich up in a small suitcase, and stored him in the attic."

"Did you notice the way McComb kept looking at him? Nobody is more plodding, pedantic, and unimaginative than Ralph. But five minutes after they brought Rich into the courtroom he was so nervous I thought he was going to swallow his teeth. He must be happy he isn't presiding."

"You know what it all adds up to."

"Rich seems without conscience, totally indifferent. If he's like this when the trial begins I don't know how I'll be able to sell an insanity plea to the jury, with or without expert testimony."

"Then we have to try to sell the truth: it isn't Rich, it's— "

"Establishing 'truth' is incidental to the process of law," Adam reminded her. "A courtroom is a place to reach a decision through the adversarial system, which is not the same thing as separating the true from the false. I'm not a philosopher. I'm a trial lawyer. Forget it, Lindsay. There's not much I can do."

"Are you quitting?"

His hands shook and he spilled coffee on his sleeve. He scowled.

"I hate that word, Linds."

"If you can't— or won't— defend him properly, you might as well turn the case over to the public defender."

"No, I— we can always get delays. Keep working, and hope we don't lose any more of our key witnesses. You know I can't build a case for NGRI with depositions. I need the people on the stand, telling the jury what Rich was like when he killed Karyn."

"Adam, I just don't think you have a case for NGRI. But in spite of your objections, I know it may be possible to plead demonic possession."

"How? Look what happened in the Arne Cheyenne Johnson case."

"I read the transcript. I don't know who was more inept, the presiding judge or counsel for the defense."

"Sure, it was a botched trial, but what matters is, the judge refused to allow the defense attorney to present his argument, let alone call priests or other key witnesses. So Johnson's lawyer switched to a plea of self-defense on behalf of another. Which I hardly think will work in Rich's case."

"But demonic possession pleas have been successful in England. I've sent for transcripts of two of those trials. They should be here in a few days. At least look them over, Adam."

He studied her skeptically, and with concern. "You're really serious about this."

"Yes. Believe me, it's not what I want to do. I want to just turn my back on the case, forget I ever saw Richard Devon. And try to get over being as scared as I am. But I can't, Adam. I also want to be able to respect myself for the rest of my life."

"I don't want to be the first Kurland to disgrace himself before the bar of the state of Vermont."

"You're much too good a lawyer. All you need are the means, a way to make it work."

Adam made sure his hands were steady before he lifted his coffee cup again.

"I'll read those transcripts," he said. "Doesn't mean I'm committing myself, Lindsay." But she looked so grateful and newly determined that he had the feeling he had.

"I'll try to get hold of Father Merlo today, find out when he's coming back. And he needs to know about Donald Ray Stemmons."

"Why?"

"Oh, Adam. All those deaths." Lindsay started a shrug that turned into a shudder, then made herself look him in the eye. "You don't really believe they were accidents, do you? I don't. We need him here; we need his guidance and his prayers. Because— it could happen to us. Couldn't it?"

56

On an uncommonly mild end-of-winter day in Rome, Father James Merlo met with his immediate superior, the chief investigator for the office that dealt with exorcisms and the claims of demonic possession that were referred almost daily to the Vatican by priests around the world, and the cardinal in charge of the tribunal known as the Apostolic Penitentiary, in the cardinal's study high above the San Demaso courtyard. Luncheon was served. The windows were open to a vista of Renaissance domes and rooftops and cream yellow clouds, and the breeze was refreshing, with only a hint of the monoxide miasma that usually enshrouded the Eternal City.

Bernardo Luis Cardinal Cosme, an elderly man poignant in his longevity, had decorated his study with some very old works of religious art, and one framed drawing from a recent issue of The New Yorker. It showed a rather startled middle-aged man who had opened his apartment door to a hooded, black-robed specter with a scythe over one shoulder. The caption read, "Relax. I've come for your toaster."

Father Merlo found the cartoon an intriguing touch of levity in these rooms where the monstrous and the diabolical were frequent topics of conversation. All forms of sorcery, including black masses said by renegade priests of the Church, were investigated by the Apostolic Penitentiary. Merlo liked to think he hadn't lost his own sense of humor in a job that could be overpowering, and he related better to the soft-spoken Cosme than to Monsignor Daviano, who seemed to have been compressed to a fiercely glowing cinderbrick by the demands of his calling, his duel of long standing with Satan and the knighthood of hell.

Father Merlo was bothered by conjunctivitis in one eye, a result of many long days spent with fragile old manuscripts and registers behind a locked oak door deep within L'Archivio Segreto Vaticano, the secret archives where the lore of demonology was kept. The condition was treatable with drops, and for the last few days, while his report on the phenomenon of Zarach' Bal-Tagh was being studied by Cosme and others entitled to know, he had used his leisure time for a few rounds of golf at the exclusive Aquasanta Club in Rome, for a visit to the opera, for meditation. The strategy of one of mankind's most devoted enemies was clearer, but as yet Merlo had no counter to Zarach's first bold move.

His Eminence withheld his comments until after they had eaten, preferring to dwell at length on a recent visit to his Andalusian birthplace. Monsignor Daviano ate too quickly, a piece of broiled fish with a lemon butter seasoning, and fueled his chronic indigestion. He had to excuse himself to go to the bathroom. When he returned, looking pale above jowls black with beard shadow, the discussion was opened.

"It is obvious," said the husky-voiced monsignor in English, "that the choice of the possessed, Richard Devon, was not made at random. It may have been carefully arranged, a most unusual circumstance. To date Zarach', except when forced to behave otherwise, has been almost discreet in his possession. He is acting as a caretaker, not with the usual ruthless disregard for the body he inhabits. Therefore he must want Richard Devon to endure, for some larger purpose."

"He wants to go to trial," Merlo said.

"Yes. Exactly. He is looking for a public trial of sensational origins. A forum guaranteed to provide a maximum of publicity when he— indulges in the reign of terror for which he has been noted through the ages."

Cardinal Cosme brushed bread crumbs from the front of his wool soutane. "I also reached this conclusion, and have informed Wojtyla of what we are facing. Needless to say, His Holiness is most concerned and would welcome some encouraging answers. How can we become more involved at this point?"

"Eminence," Merlo said, "I'm afraid it's next to impossible. There's a murder charge, it's a secular matter until after the trial. Which of course would be too late, no matter what verdict the jury returned. But I don't believe Zarach' will let the trial develop any way except his way. None of us can afford the consequences."

Cosme studied him soberly. "Are we helpless against this monster?"

"Frustrated for now; but not without the means of confronting Zarach' head-on."

"Explain."

"We need a combination of legal and spiritual help. I think we have to call on Sundial."

57

Trooper Norm Granger drove across the plank bridge with the other state police car a few yards behind him, only the parking lights showing, and stopped where both vehicles would be out of the line of sight of anyone coming along Marsham Road. He got out of his car, not bothering to zip up his lined leather jacket: it was a mild night for this time of the year, temperature in the high twenties. He walked back to the second police car, handcuffs clinking on his belt.

Pete Raff had rolled the window down. The radio was quiet; Monday night, their tour had been predictably slow for a couple of hours. Pete looked at the small country house beneath the moon a hundred and fifty feet away, the pronged radiance of a TV antenna strapped to the side chimney, the humble front porch that seemed as if it was about to collapse from the weight of cords of firewood stacked under its roof. He took out his Marlboros.

"This where she lives?" he asked Norm.

"Yeah," Norm said. He was a big sweet-tempered man who smiled often, even in his sleep. He was thirty-four. He'd been a good double-A ballplayer for a while in his youth, but couldn't hit well enough in the bigs to compensate for a lack of speed and a tendency to throw the ball away. Now he was balding, though it wasn't that noticeable yet, and he had developed a paunch. He was devoted to the simple pleasures of life: wife, kids, dogs, sporting guns, six-packs. Occasionally he had a little piece of ass on the side. He could have had a lot more, because women liked the way he smiled at them, but Norm was a little lazy, and a certain amount of effort was required in setting up liaisons.

"No lights," Pete said. "And I don't see a car."

"Probably in that shed. She's here. I told her I thought I could get by tonight."

"What's her name?"

"You know something? I never did ask."

Pete lighted his cigarette and sat back. Nine years younger than Norm, he was blond and thin and sallow, and no woman had ever dashed off her phone number for him after a couple of minutes of chitchat in the supermarket checkout line. Norm was sure-handed, easy. He caught them like moths beating senselessly around a bright light, treated them capably and gently, breathed new life into their bored lives, always left them feeling better about themselves.

Norm Granger had only one rule: no matter how tempted he might be, he never saw the same woman twice.

"Okay, partner, I'll cover for you."

"Thanks, Pete. Owe you one." Norm gave his gunbelt a hitch and tucked in his gut a little, as far as it would go these days, and crunched up the rutted drive to the house. The moon was bright enough on glazed snow; he didn't need his flashlight.

Wind chimes tittered on the porch as he walked to the door. There was a noise of tiny feet, scuttlings in the woodpile. He took off his hat and tucked it under one arm. There was a slit between curtains over one front window; he made out the flickering borealis of a color TV screen. He opened the storm door, polyethylene in a skinny aluminum frame, and knocked. Now he could hear the television, the sort of music that accompanied chase sequences on cop shows. He waited, but there was no response to his knock. And as he waited, he felt he was being watched.

Norm turned his head with care. A dozen feet behind him, at the foot of the steps to the sagging porch, stood a large dog. It had a winter's coat thick as a haymow, a sloping narrow head. Some kind of wolfhound. Russian. Irish. After the first skipped heartbeat Norm realized the dog wasn't going to bother him. They either came for you right away, or they didn't.

While he was looking down at the wolfhound, the door of the house opened.

"Oh! I did hear a knock."

The dog bounded up the steps, and Norm stepped aside for him. The dog slipped through the opening and brushed the woman out of the way in passing.

"Hugo!" She scolded. "What's your hurry?" She looked at Norm, eyebrows slightly raised, a smile beginning. "You're a man of your word," she said. "Come in."

"Thanks." Norm walked into the house and looked around. From the shabby exterior he hadn't been expecting much, the usual clutter of worthless furniture, worn carpeting, water stains on the wallpaper. Cramped dark rooms. Instead he found himself in an expensively decorated hacienda. Bright Mexican tile on the floor, a corner hearth with a gas log fire, white walls, unframed canvases filled with bold blue skies and peasant marketplaces, the sturdy furniture upholstered in stripes of red and orange and gold, ceramic and copper bowls and vases in small niches and on tabletops, flowers and green plants everywhere. Over one ear she wore a red flower in her severely braided dark hair. Hibiscus. He had seen a lot of them in Arizona and Florida during spring training. Her mouth was like the flower; his fingers curled slightly as he smiled.

The wolfhound had taken over half of a sofa and lay shivering with his nose toward the blue-toned fire. The woman turned off the television and closed the cabinet doors. Dark old wood, handcarved. He watched her as she went immediately to the bar, where tapers burned in a candleholder, folk art in the form of a speckled dove. "I was having a little wine, would you care for some? Or how about a beer? Dos Equis." "Dos Equis would be fine; haven't tasted any since I was in Tucson with the Tribe. You have a nice place here." "It was an extravagance. But one gets so homesick," "Homesick for where?" "Paracuaro. Mexico." "Oh, that's where you were born?" "More of an adopted home, really. I'm a native of Vermont." "Well, I never would have guessed that. You look— more Spanish, know what I mean?" And so they went, back and forth, the catcher and the moth.

She smiled and preened as if he'd rubbed her vanity in all the right places and brought him his beer in a tall glass. She was mucha mujer, Norm thought, warming to the spirit of his surroundings. Well into her prime, but not having to fight too many holding actions yet. Hips in taut silk without a trace of an untidy bulge, flat bare stomach that didn't ripple or pooch when she walked, breasts high for her age, and the nipples well defined beneath the black silk shirt she wore knotted at the breastbone.

She liked to stand close. He barely had elbowroom to sip his beer.

"Are you off duty now?" she asked.

"Meal break."

"I can't imagine what it's like, being a policeman."

"Dull, most of the time. Some traffic accidents, stolen cars, a few holdups."

"Murders," she said, with a thrilled flaring of her nostrils.

"Two, three times a year. We had a nasty one in January. At the Davos Chalet Lodge. Raff and I were the first ones on the scene. This kid beat his girl to death because she was fooling around."

"Ah," the woman said, catching her lower lip between her teeth. "Was he insane?"

"In my opinion. I never have seen a body that looked as bad as that girl's. But you don't want to hear about that."

"No," she said, with a sigh and a shudder. She put a hand on his, the hand that was holding the beer glass. She wore a lot of rings. Topaz, tourmalines in silver. She drank from his glass, and a little beer trickled from one corner of her mouth; it left a glistening track across the low curved scar on her right cheek. He leaned toward her and kissed away the moisture, and she shuddered again.

The next time he kissed her, his hand went to the flower in her hair, and crushed it. He never did get to finish his beer.

She wanted him with his clothes off but his gunbelt on. Norm carried the most gun he was allowed, the Smith and Wesson Highway Patrolman with the six-inch barrel. Loaded, it weighed about four pounds. It had custom-made, finger-groove walnut grips. It was the first time he'd had sex with a woman with a gun strapped on, but she seemed to get quite a kick out of fondling the butt of the gun with one hand while she rang his dangle-down bells with the other. She came three times while Norm was coming once.

The experience fairly knocked her out. She whimpered and whined, and the dog whined, too, as if he had been aroused by the human rutting. Norm didn't know what he'd do if the dog came over and stuck his nose in. Sometimes you just had to draw the line.

"Oh, lover, lover," she moaned, when at last her hands slipped from his body and lay still at her sides.

Norm smiled down at her, but the truth was he hadn't enjoyed himself as much as he should have. He had made love despite some kind of stomach gripe that was now causing cramps.

"Was I good for you?" she asked.

"Uh, just fine, honey." He pulled away from her and sat up, holding his stomach.

"You're not leaving so soon!"

"I got to use the bathroom, if it's okay."

"Surely." She raised up, breasts bobbing, and pointed the way. "Through the beaded curtain there. The bedroom."

"Thanks— " He hesitated, as if he was about to say her name, but realized he still didn't know it and felt awkward about asking at this point. Then Norm let out a little gasp as pain lanced through his gut.

He got to his feet. The dog looked around at him, quickly, with a little malicious jab of its nose. Norm sensed the wolfhound did not like him. He walked a few steps, loaded down with the black gunbelt and holster, paused to unbuckle it, let it drop in the seat of a basket chair with a serape across the back and pushed on, through the doorway, down a short hall to the bedroom, which was just as nicely furnished as the rest of the house.

The cramps were coming bad now. It was all he could do to hold himself upright as he walked. He made it into the Mexican-style john. Tiled sunken tub, Jacuzzi, bright skylight. A hanging basket filled with bristling cacti. The toilet was a big expensive job with gold fixtures, a padded red seat. Hibiscus again. Her luscious, lewd mouth. He plopped himself down and sat holding his gut, nauseated, frozen by cramps. It was very quiet in the house. He heard nothing but his own grunting and groaning.

It took him several minutes to pass whatever had been affecting him, but the cramps went away almost immediately. Norm cleaned himself, wetting tissue to do a thorough job, then reached behind for the gold lever to flush.

The roar of the toilet was unexpectedly loud; he felt a cool wet blast of air on his tender buttocks, and suction that clamped him tightly to the soft seat.

It was so unexpected it scared him a little, that violent churning, as if there was a whirlpool just below his hanging balls. He tried to get up, and found to his dismay that he was stuck fast, as if glued to the seat.

"What the hell— "

He put both hands down and pushed hard, twisting his torso, trying to wrench himself free as if his buttocks were the cork in a wine bottle, but all of his strength wasn't enough to pop him loose. In fact he felt a pain of compression; he was being drawn millimeters farther down into the oval hole in the seat by the unbelievable suction. And there was a strong downward pull on his genitals as well. They hurt— God, how they hurt!

Frantically, he tried reaching behind him, jiggling the handle to shut off the flow of water. It did no good. He was being sucked into the toilet through an opening barely eleven inches wide. Terrible pain racked the bones of his hips and pelvis. His knees were jammed together. His feet could no longer touch the floor. The toilet roared like a cyclone.

Norm did the only thing left for him to do: he screamed for help.

Pete Raff had left the window down a few inches so the smoke of his several cigarettes could flow out into the night. He was munching potato chips from a bag and fantasizing about what was going on inside the modest house. He knew from other officers that the women who picked up cops liked to be handcuffed; they liked to be swatted lightly on their behinds with the long black batons; they panted for authoritative abuse.

The scream he heard jarred him; it was all wrong. It was the woman who should be screaming at this point, not Norm Granger.

Pete jumped out of the car and ran up to the house, carrying his flashlight.

The wood piled on the porch smelled of dry rot, as if it had been undisturbed for years. The floorboards sagged. There was a screen door, the screenwire torn and rusted, hanging down in veils. The scarred front door was secured with a hasp and padlock. It had not been opened tonight; Pete could see that at a glance.

But inside the house Norm Granger was screaming in horror.

With his skin breaking out in lumps Pete gave a couple of lusty kicks to the door, then whirled to a window and broke open the old shutters. He hammered at panes of glass with the butt end of his flashlight, felt frantically for the corroded latch inside but couldn't budge it. He gave up and reached for a chunk of wood to clean out the rest of the window. He stepped over the sill and into the parlor of the house, boots crunching on fallen glass. He pulled his revolver and cocked it.

The room was colder than the night outside. The floor was covered with cheesy linoleum. The plaster walls were streaked with brown water stains. The only furnishings were a dumpy sofa with enough holes in it for a mouse hotel, and a three-legged wooden chair sitting akilter against one wall.

He saw Norm's gunbelt and holster draped across the seat of the chair, his uniform shirt and pants folded on top of a radiator. He heard Norm screaming in a strangled, nearly breathless way.

Pete followed his light to the back of the house, to a door leaning off one hinge. He heard a toilet running, and only the faintest sounds now from Norm Granger. But there were some loud groaning and snapping sounds, like a birch woods at sunrise after an ice storm. He passed through a small bedroom and located the bathroom with his flashlight.

He saw feet, ankles, legs; he saw hands and wrists and arms, all standing straight up out of an old wooden toilet seat, like a strangely provocative piece of living sculpture. The fingers and toes moved. But the centerpiece of the arrangement, jammed in between the white and hairy appendages, was Norm Granger's swollen, blood-darkened face. His lips were pursed around a tremendous tongue. His eyes, reacting to the light, opened a little, then closed. The toilet was roaring like a geyser, making sucking noises as Norm's bones continued to compress and snap. He slipped farther down into the toilet bowl.

"Yahhhhh!" Pete Raff said; he turned so violently from this scene that he banged his face against the door jamb and saw stars. He also dropped his flashlight, which winked off. Tears of pain sprinkled from his eyes as, in the terrifying dark, he groped to pick up the flashlight.

The popping, gurgling sounds of compaction and flushing continued. Pete raised his flashlight in both shaking hands and turned it on again. The wide beam lit up the whole bathroom. He couldn't avoid seeing what was happening in the toilet; the slow withdrawal of fingers, the last of Norm's long toes, the nail just growing back on the left big toe where he'd dropped the refrigerator he'd been helping his brother-in-law to move. Then there was a last, loud sucking and everything disappeared. The toilet quieted gradually, but by then Pete couldn't hear it anyway, could hear nothing except for the overstressed hammering of his heart.

He approached the toilet by inches. Getting there took most of the rest of his life.

He looked down into the blood-flecked rusty bowl, at the water slowly clearing from a pinkish brew.

A large bubble traveled through the pipe and the water belched at him; he jerked back, the roots of his hair icicles. When he looked down again, there was an eyeball floating in the slowly churning water, roots dangling like the tendrils of a jellyfish. Pete stared at it.

"Oh, Pete," he heard his mother say clearly from the other side of the hallway, "are you going to stay in there all night?"

He turned his head slowly and replied in a boyish voice, "No, Mama. I'm all through with my bath."

"Did you wash your ears?"

"Yes."

"Did you wash your peepee?"

"Yes."

"Be sure you scrub the ring out of the tub. Your father will be home in a little while, and he'll want to take a bath too."

"I did already."

"I thought I heard King at the back door a few minutes ago. Would you go down and let him in? I need to finish this sewing."

"Okay, Mama."

"Put your slippers on first."

"They're on already!"

"Well, you know I have to keep reminding you," his mother said mildly.

Pete took his cap gun with him to let King in. It looked just like a real gun. If a burglar saw it, he would run. Pete was six and he wasn't afraid of burglars. But he liked having the gun with him all the same.

King wasn't on the back porch when he looked out. But he saw fresh paw prints in the snow, going away from the house. To that part of the yard where they dug the vegetable garden every spring, where now the moon was brightest.

There he saw the dog leaping and cavorting, throwing up clouds of snow. But this long-legged animal didn't look much like King, who was a stocky mongrel with cropped ears. He was lanky and shaggy and almost the size of a pony; he had a long pointed nose. And someone was riding on his back, gripping a solid handful of his tawny coat. Fascinated, little Pete pressed his face close to the cold glass pane of the back door, holding his breath now so he wouldn't fog the glass.

The rider on the dog's back was a lady with long dark hair, and as he watched, it occurred to him that she was naked. She was having an exciting time. He could hear faint yips of laughter as the hound carried her dashingly from one corner of the yard to another; he soared with her over the snow-heaped stone barbecue. He was both a prince of dogs and a clown; he made Pete giggle, but there was an element of uneasiness in his mirth, foreboding.

He attempted to deny these feelings by raising the cap gun to the glass. "Bang!" he said. "Bang!" The hairy hound continued, untiringly, to leap from one snowburst to another, which were illuminated like fireworks by the brimstone of his eyes.

The woman became aware of Pete, as his fascination with her nudity, her large breasts like hardboiled eggs with the dark yolk showing through, became both an itch and a guilt. He couldn't bear her scrutiny, her dark intimidating eyes, as she deliberately directed the dog closer to the back door. He slipped down below the level of the glass, and sat with his back to the door.

He would have to tell his mother about the eye in the toilet. Sometime.

He had flushed and flushed, but the eye just wouldn't go down to stay.

She wouldn't believe it wasn't his fault the eye was there in the first place.

With his lower lip stuck out and his cheeks burning, Pete played with the gun in his lap. It seemed large to him, heavier, unfamiliar. He ran a small finger across the ramp front sight, down over the precise shocking hole in the blued muzzle, underneath the six-inch barrel to the trigger guard. He touched the nose of a jacketed hollow-point .38 round in the large cylinder. It was the exact size of the head of his peepee.

Through the wood of the door he felt the heavy blows of the dog's paw. He felt fear.

"You can't come in! Not till I'm ready."

There was room for him, too, on the dog's back, he knew that. But if he climbed up there and went riding with the naked woman, who could tell if they would ever bring him home again.

Pete shivered and shivered. He knew that no one would believe anything he said from now on, just because Norm had to have a piece of ass.

With a forefinger he prodded the trigger of the revolver. It resisted him.

His mother's voice called down the stairs, jolting him. He'd heard that tone before. It meant— it meant—

He was in big trouble!

"Where did that eye in the toilet come from, Peter Raff? I wouldn't want to be you when your father gets home."

Wham! Wham! The hound with the long nose wanted him to come out. But Pete didn't have to see him up close to know that he had long teeth and claws.

"What I'd like to know," Captain Moorman was saying sternly, "is how you could just stand there, Raff, and let poor old Norm flush himself down the toilet. Are you listening to me? You'd better come up with an answer."

"Oh, shit," Pete mumbled, realizing he was a goner. Nobody loved him anymore. He would just crawl under his bed and stay there. In the morning maybe everything would be all right again.

He'd never liked the dark. He hated the dark. He wanted light and more light. Terrible things never seemed to happen when the sun was shining.

His finger prodded the trigger of the gun again. Wishfully, belligerently.

The dawn came up full in Pete Raff's face, it was hail and farewell and flags waving in a redhot breeze, the whistling microdot of a meteor arriving from outer space, circling one pinched, astonished eye while the brain, seething with the stricken power of a collapsed wasps' nest, gave off its final flashes of memory and regret, a strident note of music from a martial horn.