93

"Well," Tommie said to his colleague Jean Landetta, over Drambuie in the cocktail lounge of the inn where they were staying, "she throws a pretty good block, does Edith. I wouldn't exactly say she won the jury back after I got through with them. But she sure as hell has them curious, and maybe a little on edge."

"I still wish we had the last of those kids who saw the murder being committed," Jean said.

"We won't need Warren Hasper. We've got Trux Landall and plenty of other witnesses who will testify that Devon was acting like an animal before and after he killed the girl."

"Do you think Edith will put him on the stand?"

"She practically promised to do that today. She has to. Her bucket won't hold water without him. But it's the old double-bind effect. No matter what kind of tale he chooses to tell, he won't have a shred of credibility left when I'm finished with him."

94

Trux Landall was the first witness called by the state the next day.

In contrast to Rich, who looked jail-puffy around the eyes and fidgeted as if demoralized at the defense table while Trux took the stand, the Harvard Law student cut an impressive figure. His French blazer and tie were impeccable. He'd just returned from a few days' loafing in Virgin

Gorda, and his eyes, enhanced by a deep water tan, gleamed in his good-looking face.

"Mr. Landall," Tommie asked him, "when did you first meet Karyn Vale?"

Tommie, like any good trial lawyer, never asked a question in court unless he already knew the answer. He led the witness through an account of his romance with Karyn and their subsequent parting.

"And the next time you saw Karyn was at Hermitage Mountain on the morning of January nineteenth?"

"Yes, sir, that is correct."

"Were you introduced to the defendant, Richard Devon, at that time?"

Trux glanced to where Rich sat, eyes down. Rich was tearing thin little strips of yellow paper from a legal pad. "Yes, I was."

"What was your first impression of the defendant?"

"He didn't have much to say. Not shy. Just— aloof, like he didn't want anything to do with us."

"Was Karyn happy to see you?"

"Yes, sir, I had that impression."

"How long did you talk to Karyn?"

"Only a few minutes. Then I went with my friends to the lift."

"Did you make a firm date to join Karyn and Rich at a later time?"

"No. It was just sort of, we'll get together while we're up here. That sort of thing."

"Can you tell me what happened while you were waiting in line with your friends for the chair lift?"

"Karyn and, uh, Rich got into an argument. They were pretty loud. She was crying."

"Do you know what they were fighting about?"

"Objection, Your Honor," Edith said. "The witness has said that Richard and Karyn were arguing. May we continue with that usage?"

"Sustained," Knox Winford said.

"Do you know what they were arguing about?" Tommie amended.

"All I heard her say was 'You better just forget about me.' " "Did they reconcile their differences while you were observing them?"

"No, sir. Karyn got her skis and poles from the corral and skied off to the T-bar."

"And did you see Karyn again that day?"

"Yes, sir. A group of us got together at the Frog Prince restaurant. That's in Londonderry."

"Was the defendant with her?"

"No, she was with a couple of girls."

"Did she seem upset that Rich wasn't there?"

"No. She had a good time. She was expecting him, but he just never showed up."

"What happened after dinner was over?"

"We all, uh, went back to the Davos Chalet Lodge. I went upstairs with Karyn, but Rich wasn't in their room. I asked her if they were having problems, and she said, 'Everybody has problems.' We talked for a while, and then I left."

"Did you kiss her good night?"

"Yes. I did. In the hall outside."

"There was no impropriety?"

"It was just a friendly good-night kiss. Anyone could have seen us, it didn't matter."

"But it was Rich who saw you?"

"Yes."

"And how did he react? With reasonable behavior, or— "

"Your Honor, I shall object to that," Edith said.

"Sustained."

"How did he react, Mr. Landall?"

"He didn't say a word. He just glared at me, and came at me. Swinging."

"He was violent? He assaulted you?"

"He tried to kick me in the groin."

"How did you react?"

"I didn't want any part of a fight; it wasn't worth it. I said, 'Take it easy, guy,' but he just kept coming at me. Karyn pleaded with him to stop. After he landed a couple of punches— he got me on the elbow, and the shoulder, and also he kneed me in the thigh— I figured I'd better do something to stop it."

"When did you make that decision?" "Well, Karyn grabbed hold of Rich trying to stop him, and he shoved her out of the way. I thought he was going to throw a punch at her— "

"Object to speculation on the part of the witness. We are concerned with what actually did happen, not what might have happened."

"In your opinion, the defendant was out of control— "

"Objection, Your Honor!"

Tommie wheeled on Edith and snapped, "The opinion of the witness, who was brutally under attack, is perfectly valid at this point."

"Overruled. I'll allow it." Winford told them.

"You found yourself taking a beating from the defendant, and were forced to fight back in order to avoid serious injury?" Tommie asked Trux.

"That's correct, sir. I hit him. Just once. A short jab below the breastbone. He folded up."

"What was Karyn's reaction?"

"She was upset. And mad."

"Mad at the defendant?"

"Yes. I apologized for hitting him. And she said, 'He's impossible when he gets like this.' "

"Was the defendant able to talk? Did he say anything to you, or to Karyn?"

"A lot of obscenity. I don't know if I should repeat it verbatim. He accused Karyn and me of— getting it on."

"Having sex together?"

"Yes, sir."

"In fact, you did not have sexual relations with Karyn that night?"

"No, I didn't."

"Did the defendant say anything else before you left?"

"Yes. He said, 'I'll get you for this.' "

"To whom did the defendant say 'I'll get you for this'?"

"He said it to Karyn."

Tommie paused and strolled to the jury box, looking at each of their faces like a beneficent old uncle. He was terribly fond of them all, and let them know it. And he was becoming intimately familiar with every detail of their faces, their unconscious idiosyncrasies as they listened to the proceedings. With his back still to the witness stand, Tommie began his next line of questioning.

"When was the last time you saw Karyn Vale alive?" he asked.

Trux described his encounter with Karyn in the tavern of the Davos Chalet Lodge, and their subsequent midnight walk through the snow. He told of her decision to break off with Rich, and her feeling of relief at finally being able to make this decision.

"I walked her back to the lobby of the hotel and said good night. Some of the kids were leaving just then and I got a lift down to the lodge were I was staying."

Trux's voice became strained. He paused for a long time, sniffing, his coppery brightness scuffed and dimmed by tragedy relived, his composure cracking.

"Next morning one of the guys I was bunking with shook me awake. 'My God,' he said, 'my God, Trux. Get up. Karyn's been murdered.' And that's the first ..."

Trux sobbed and put a hand over his mouth. He looked at the defense table.

Rich's head was up. His eyes were on the witness. They expressed a chilling contempt. Edith, seated at the end of the table, did not have to look at Rich to be aware of the evil of Zarach'; it attacked her like a migraine. She was all but blinded.

"No further questions," Tommie said.

Edith, her eyelids fluttering, slumped against Adam.

"Your Honor, may we have a recess at this time?" Adam requested.

Rich turned his attention from the witness stand to the jurors. Smiling. All twelve jurors were appalled and angered by this show of heartlessness.

"Stop it," Edith murmured. She pressed a hand against the top of her forehead, thumb and forefinger on her temples.

"We will have a fifteen-minute recess," Judge Winford announced from the bench. To Edith he said, "Shall I call a doctor for you, Counselor?"

Edith, with a great effort, straightened in her chair and opened her eyes. She looked momentarily confused, and further confused herself by saying "Thank you, my Lord— I mean, Your Honor. I'll be all right. Just some water."

Tommie, looking on with a pucker of concern, said quietly to Jean Landetta, "She'll never make it through the trial."

The defendant went back to compiling thin strips of paper from the legal pad he'd been destroying. His ardor had dwindled; he showed no interest in Edith's distress. Except for his attention to his strips of paper he seemed close to oblivion.

95

When they reconvened, Edith approached the witness stand with her customary briskness. The milky cast of pain had disappeared from her eyes. She took several seconds to look over the jury, particularly the young woman in the first seat of the second row, behind the forelady.

Angela Gunther was an unmarried dental technician. At twenty-four, she was the youngest of the jurors, and, Edith thought, the most impressionable. It was Angie's first trial. She was excited about it, and very determined to do a good job. So far life had treated her very well. She had a supportive and affectionate family. She "loved people." By her own admission she'd had "loads of boyfriends," but "nothing too serious so far." She had yet to face a major problem or tragedy in her life. She usually skipped the front page of the daily paper if the news looked "real depressing" and concentrated on the advice and social columns.

Angie was one of Tommie Harkrider's favorite jurors, a fact he'd already made apparent by the attention he gave her, but Edith felt that the sharp-eyed barrister had fundamentally misjudged the direction which this good-hearted and uncomplicated girl's sympathies would take. Edith's instinct told her that Angie was still finding it impossible to comprehend how one human being could so wantonly and viciously take the life of another. Nobody she had ever known could do a thing like that. Eventually she would welcome, and stubbornly support, the explanation Edith had to offer.

Right now Edith wanted to reinforce Angie's subconscious bias, and see if she could cast a slight shadow of doubt across the minds of those jurors who were already convinced that Rich was guilty.

"Mr. Landall, when you were awakened in the morning following the death of Karyn Vale, can you tell us what it was you said to your friends once you had been apprised of the shocking details?"

Trux hesitated, thinking, biting his lower lip. "I— I said, 'Only a monster could do something like that.' "

"A monster. Thank you, sir. That will be all."

96

Tommie made sure the jury was aware of every gruesome detail of the murder by calling the county coroner, who came with multiple copies of the autopsy photos to hand out. Edith raised no objection. The recess that followed was much lengthier than the one she had needed during the morning's session.

After the coroner, police surgeon Arthur Harbison took the stand.

"Dr. Harbison," Tommie asked, "how long have you been a police surgeon?"

"For twenty-one years."

"When did you first examine the accused, Richard Devon?"

"At approximately three fifteen A M. on the morning of January twenty-first of this year."

"What was his physical condition at that time?"

"His pulse was rapid, more than a hundred and twenty beats per minute. The pupils of his eyes were fixed and dilated; his skin was cold and clammy to the touch."

"In other words, he was in a state of shock."

"That is correct." All witnesses, no matter how many trials they have been through, exhibit nervous mannerisms.

Harbison had a mild sty on his left eye, and was continually pulling off his glasses to nudge it with a fingertip.

"Was he physically injured?"

"No, sir."

"Was he able to speak?"

"Yes, he was. But his speech was rambling, disconnected, more often than not inappropriate to the situation."

"Did he know who he was?"

"Yes."

"Did he know where he was?"

"Yes, he knew he was at the police station."

"Did he know why he was there?"

"I do not believe he did, not at that time. No, sir."

"Why is that, Dr. Harbison?"

"His lack of cognizance of recent events is all part of the normal emotional reaction to a shocking and highly stressful event. A serious accident, a sudden death, any sort of unexpected and overwhelming tragedy."

"Have you observed this partial or total lack of coherence before, in other victims of shock?"

"Hundreds of times."

"Richard Devon, then, was in a state of shock, which is understandable, considering what he had just done, but he was not, in your opinion, mentally deranged?"

"Objection, Your Honor! The witness is a medical doctor, not a psychiatrist. Symptoms of shock could easily mask other symptoms which would not be evident until long after the precipitating event."

"Objection sustained."

"I believe," Tommie said, unruffled, "that all medical doctors, as well as many laymen, are familiar with the term temporary amnesia, is that not so, Doctor?"

"It is certainly familiar to me."

"Is temporary amnesia a form of mental illness?"

"Not to my knowledge, no. It is a condition directly related to shock trauma and usually disappears in a matter of hours, or days at the most."

"In your expert opinion, was Richard Devon suffering from temporary amnesia when you first saw him?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, Dr. Harbison. I have no further questions."

"No questions, Your Honor," Edith said.

At dinner that night at Morecambe's with Rich's lawyers, Conor asked Edith why she had limited her cross-examination of the witnesses so far to the one question she had asked Trux Landall— whose answer, Conor felt, had been even more damaging to Rich's cause.

"There is no way I can refute the basic facts which the prosecution has thus far presented. There was a murder, and it was a gruesome affair. What I want the jurors to keep in mind is the gross inhumanity, the monstrousness of the act. Only a monster could have done it. But that monster is Zarach', not Richard. And I will have the opportunity to prove it before long."

"Where do you think Tommie is going from here?"

"He must now attempt to establish that Rich was sane when Karyn was murdered, that your brother, quite in keeping with his psychoanalytical profile, reacted to her desire to end the relationship in a paroxysm of jealousy and rage. Tommie will also, if he is clever— and I cannot fault him there— do everything he can, through psychiatric testimony, to destroy our credibility even before we have had the opportunity to present our case to the jurors."

"Edith, you haven't touched your salad," Lindsay said. "As a matter of fact, I haven't seen you take a bite for three days. I'm worried about you."

"I'm not ill, my dear. I'm not taking any food as a matter of choice, and necessity. I must fast at this time, to be prepared, to keep all of my channels of perception open, and clear."

"You almost fainted this morning," Adam said.

"I was taken quite by surprise," Edith admitted.

"By Zarach'?" Conor asked her.

"Yes. But it shan't happen again."

The prosecution was able to conclude its case in only three and a half days. The last witness Tommie Harkrider called, one of three psychiatrists who had examined Rich and spent a total of twenty-seven hours taking detailed case histories, was Dr. Lewis Shea, director of forensic psychiatry at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City.

Dr. Shea was an affable man with a high forehead, squirrel teeth, and the wiry toughness of a dedicated jogger. He had testified at numerous criminal trials in the East. He had written half a dozen books and was a recognized authority on a specialized subject, the minds of murderers.

"In your expert opinion, sir," Tommie said, after he had spent considerable time impressing the jurors with his witness's qualifications, "was Richard Devon suffering from any form of mental illness at the time he killed Karyn Vale?"

"No, he was not."

"Is he mentally ill at this time?"

"No, sir."

Rich, who was busily weaving a basket from his many strips of legal-pad paper, took time to glance at the eminent psychiatrist.

"At no time during your interviews with Richard Devon, which took up a total of nine and a half hours over a four-week period, did you observe any evidence of psychotic behavior on his part?"

"Mr. Devon is not psychotic."

"I see. Did he at no time mention to you an entity, whom he referred to as 'Zarach' "— Tommie took the time to spell the name for the jury— "and who he claimed was living in his body with him?"

"Oh, yes," Shea said calmly. "I heard quite a bit about Zarach'."

"Did you?" Tommie turned away from the witness stand, looking as if he could barely contain his astonishment. "Well, Doctor. Pardon me for being confused, but if I spent considerable time talking to somebody who advised me, out of the blue, that he wasn't just who I thought he was, that he had another, totally different personality living inside his body with him, well then, I don't claim to be well schooled in the fundamentals of psychology, Doctor, but I'd sure think that guy was whacko." Tommie made bird-twittering sounds and circled a finger in the air while rolling his eyes at the same time. The courtroom erupted in laughter.

"Order!" said Judge Winford, and he frowned at Tommie, who smiled slyly as he returned to the witness stand.

Dr. Shea also was smiling. Tommie looked long and hard at him.

"You mean he wouldn't necessarily be whacko, Doctor?"

"Not at all, sir."

"Well, then, is there some kind of psychiatric terminology that we can all understand that would account for this— this rather strange belief?"

"It is most frequently known, in lay terms, as denial. To be more specific, a guilty-reactive mechanism."

"Thank you, thank you, Dr. Shea. No, I'm not through with you yet. I just want to analyze what you've told me, sec if we can break it down into terms that a layman like myself can understand without boiling his brains. Okay, so we have this guilty-reactive mechanism— "

Edith said, "Your Honor, is the prosecution going to address a question to the witness, or will this become a monologue?"

'Please address yourself to the witness, Mr. Harkrider," Winford directed.

I intend to, I intend to. My apologies, Your Honor. Now, Dr. Shea, you have observed this guilty-reactive mechanism at work in the defendant?"

"Yes, sir."

What he has to feel guilty about is, of course, the murder of Karyn Vale."

"Yes, sir."

"Objection, Your Honor. The prosecutor is leading the witness."

"Sustained. The witness's reply will be stricken from the record."

"Tell me, Dr. Shea, during your long hours of interviewing the defendant, did you discuss the murder with him?"

"I made several attempts to do so."

"He wouldn't talk about it?"

"No. He was evasive at first. But I could see that any mention of the girl, and the murder, placed him under tremendous tension. It was only later during our sessions, when I persisted in referring to the murder, that he blamed Zarach'."

"Exactly how did the defendant put it, Doctor?"

"He finally said to me, still under tension, 'No, no. I didn't want to. It was Zarach'. He wanted her to die. He made me do it.' "

" 'He made me do it,' " Tommie repeated slowly, and glanced at the jurors. "Did the defendant tell you anything about this Zarach' who was suddenly giving the orders?"

"Yes. He referred to Zarach' as an inhuman spirit, one of the fallen angels."

"A devil?"

"That is theologically correct, yes."

"Did he tell you how he came to be possessed by this devil?"

"No, he didn't."

"Do you have any ideas as to where this so-called Zarach' might have come from, Dr. Shea?"

"Yes. Richard had a strict Catholic upbringing. He was both obedient to and in terror of the Church, the priests and nuns who taught him. Our youthful fears can be sublimated, but we never outgrow them. Nowadays Catholicism places less emphasis on hell and the devil than it once did, but I'm Catholic myself and I can tell you that some of the older sisters could frighten the wits out of impressionable children with their stories of sinners flogged across the fiery coals of hell, of souls seized by the devil because they skipped Mass one Sunday. Richard was certainly impressed by all of this, and he never got over his feelings of guilt when he fell away from the Church shortly after he entered Yale. The 'Zarach' ' that exists in Richard's mind now is a specter recalled from childhood. Perhaps in reading the Bible he ran across the name— "

"What you are trying to tell us— just to keep this a little shorter, Doctor— is that the defendant, Richard Devon, is blaming the murder on a quasi-religious or mythological being?"

"Because he simply cannot come to terms with the enormity of the crime he committed. All of us have various techniques for avoidance or evasion of the unpleasant things of life, the unthinkable; we rationalize our little fears and our minor transgressions so we can continue to live on good terms with ourselves. But Richard was so overloaded with guilt following the slaying that all of the mind's usual means of coping were inadequate. So that he wouldn't be driven to madness or suicide, a new pathemic channel was opened, through which appeared Zarach'— the archetypal blame-taker. Omnipotent, powerful, evil. Only Zarach' could handle the input of guilt and grief that was suffocating Richard."

"But his belief in the existence of this devil does not mean that Richard Devon is mentally ill?"

"Such a belief is purely neurotic in origin and function. Rich is using this imagined possession as a guilt-blocker in much the same way as a dentist uses lidocaine to deaden the nerve impulses in a tooth."

"And there is no way this Zarach' could have been around before the defendant killed Karyn Vale?"

"Only as an archetype buried deeply in the Jungian unconscious." Dr. Shea smiled. "But in that sense, we all have our Zarach's."

"Thank you very much, Doctor. Your Honor, I have no further questions."

At first it seemed as if Edith didn't care to cross-examine Dr. Shea; she closed a folder in front of her that contained a number of copies of reports and documents and fiddled indecisively with her reading glasses before rising and, perhaps reluctantly, approaching the witness stand. She smiled tentatively at the psychiatrist.

"Dr. Shea, is there any limit to the varieties of neurotic behavior you've observed in your professional career?"

"None so far. Every day brings a new surprise."

"And how many categories of mental disorders are there?"

"Oh, dozens."

"Every day brings a new surprise?"

"No, that's not true of pathological behavior. It's safe to say we've seen everything there is to see."

"All pathological behavior is classifiable by type, is that correct?"

"Yes, I'd say so."

"Would you also say that, from a psychiatric viewpoint, there is no such thing as motiveless behavior?"

"Yes, that's an accurate statement."

"I was merely asking a question; but you've answered it very assuredly. Do you still practice your religion, Doctor?"

The abrupt change in the line of questioning flustered him slightly. "Oh, yes."

"You're basically in agreement with the major doctrines of your faith?"

"If I wasn't, I couldn't call myself a Catholic."

"You accept the virgin birth, the veneration of Mary, the resurrection of the body, the confession of your sins, and the sacrament of reconciliation?"

"Yes," the doctor said, a trifle impatiently.

"Do you believe, as your Church does, in the existence of the devil?"

"As— metaphor; I can't seriously— "

"Your Honor," Tommie Harkrider said, "I don't know where we're going with this line of questioning."

"Allow me to complete it and we'll all find out," Edith retorted.

"Do you have an objection, Mr. Harkrider?" the judge asked him.

Tommie hesitated, then sat down with a little exasperated shake of his head. "No, sir."

"As a Catholic psychiatrist, Dr. Shea, have you had cases referred to you by your archdiocese, cases involving prominent laymen or members of the hierarchy itself?"

"Occasionally. Priests have emotional problems like anyone else."

"And nuns. Nuns also have emotional problems?"

"Certainly."

"Have you ever examined a nun whose symptoms were so baffling and so persistent that you found yourself unable either to categorize her presumed psychosis or treat her successfully?"

Lewis Shea looked amazed. "There— was such a case, yes."

"And what, ultimately, was your conclusion?"

"I concluded that it was— a matter for the Church."

"And not for psychiatry? Why not?"

"After thoroughly investigating her condition, I felt its origins were so deeply rooted in— in religious mania, that she could only benefit from— certain prescribed rites of the Church."

"Which rites?"

"The— Rituale Romanum."

"In English?"

"The Roman Ritual— the rites of exorcism."

"Did you, in fact, believe that psychiatry was of no use in her case because she was possessed by the devil or demons from hell?"

"I never believed any such thing! As I've said, in stubborn cases of religious mania manifested as psychotic behavior, I've found that religion itself, properly administered, is the best healer."

"Hair of the dog?" Edith suggested, with a lean smile. "Thank you, Dr. Shea. This has been very illuminating. No more questions."

Tommie Harkrider decided that Edith had not done much damage to the psychiatrist's firm position that Richard Devon was not mentally ill. He passed up the redirect and said portentously, "Your Honor, the state rests."

99

As it was ten minutes to two in the afternoon, Edith requested a recess until the following day, preferring to give the members of the jury a chance to think about her line of defense, which she had just previewed for them.

"How did you know Shea had seen a case of demonic possession in his practice?" Adam asked the former Queen's Counsel after they had left the courthouse and run the gauntlet of photographers and TV news correspondents waiting on the lawn.

"But I had no such information," Edith replied blithely. "I went fishing."

Lindsay nearly steered the car into a rock wall by the side of the road.

"Edith," she scolded. Edith attempted but couldn't manage a contrite look.

"One must sometimes trust one's instincts, and seize the moment. It was rational to assume that Dr. Shea, a devout Catholic who had practiced his profession for some twenty-one years, had many times been asked to treat disturbed individuals within the Church. He practices in one of the largest dioceses on earth. The incidence of priests and nuns afflicted with feelings of persecution by the devil is higher than you might expect. There have been rare, authenticated cases of possession as well. Cloisters and monasteries are hotbeds of neuroses. The veil and the cloth do not disguise the fact that they are all human beings. Remember this: God permits the existence of the shadow in order that it may intensify the purity of the light. He has created both; they are inseparable. Each is necessary, and each is incomprehensible without the other. But to live with a knowledge of the shadow so close, so everlastingly close, can become a test of will that, unfortunately, results in casualties of the mind and spirit."

100

During the selection of the jury and through the first days of the trial small groups of religious people had peaceably gathered on the spacious Chadbury village green opposite the district courthouse. They represented long-established churches with millions of members, and churches that consisted of a few rows of folding chairs in the basement recreation room of their founders. They all wanted to see Richard Devon go to jail forever. For the most part they kept silent vigils, read their Bibles, lighted candles toward nightfall, unfurled banners which revealed Christ bleeding for our sins, and wore placards with biblical quotations badly printed on them. They were not allowed to display anything that might be interpreted as an attempt to persuade the hearts and minds of the jury, like one confiscated poster that had proclaimed RICHARD DEVON WILL BRING US HELL ON EARTH. All but official traffic was banned in in front of and behind the courthouse, to lessen the danger that someone might actually attempt to carry out one of the numerous daily threats to car-bomb the proceedings. Police Chief Jim Melka had established a bullpen for the many representatives of the media who couldn't get into the courtroom, which restricted their activities most of the time. He was enforcing, in cooperation with Captain Moorman of the state police, a temporary ordinance prohibiting more than four people at a time from gathering on the streets of Chadbury from sunset to sunrise. Moorman had asked for additional troopers and police cars from other parts of the state, and these were prominently displayed at every intersection and on the several roads leading into town. Rottweilers and Dobermans were paraded on short leashes.

All of this latent power on view didn't discourage nineteen members of the Church of Satan the Revealed Messiah from trying to set up shop on the green the morning the defense was to begin presenting its case.

Their leader, Lord Mongo, provided just that dash of eccentricity and flamboyant menace the press had been needing for an exaggerated but colorful illustration of the dark side of the trial in progress. Mongo was six and a half feet tall, of indeterminate age, very thin, with a shaved head and a long waxed beard, the sharp point of which ended at his breastbone, on which was tattooed a circle containing an emblem of the devil. Naked to the waist, he wore black silk pants and black patent leather boots and a cape that was decorated with talismans of evil. One of his necklaces was composed of tiny replicas of human skulls. On his long fingers he wore a number of gold rings with moody-looking stones in them. His fingernails were long and painted jet black. He had the numbers 666 branded on each cheekbone. He smelled as if he had gone unwashed for at least a couple of weeks.

Mongo's dark eyes had a baleful glow reflected in dozens of camera lenses pointed his way.

"We are here to support our brother in darkness, so unjustly accused."

"Do you mean Richard Devon?"

Mongo bowed in a sinister way, his eyes half closing. "Richard," he confirmed, as if it was necessary. "Beloved of our Most Holy Prince."

Someone shouted, "What do you mean, unjustly accused? Do you have evidence that Richard Devon didn't murder Karyn Vale?"

Mongo raised his head and glared, but was pacified by the constant whirring of motor-driven camera shutters.

"She was not murdered. The girl was a most willing and joyous sacrifice to him we serve, the coming messiah, our master Satan."

It was as far as he got; the state police converged from all directions before a group of outraged Seventh Day Adventists nearby began to throw the clods of flowerbed dirt they had been picking up. Sirens. Dogs. Screams. There was a melee, gleefully filmed by the cameramen present, but it was bloodless. The smirking and satisfied satanists had no desire for violence. They were driven safely away in police vans, but not before the members of the jury had passed by on their way into the courthouse.

Before the defense called its first witness Judge Winford felt obliged to instruct the jury to ignore what they may have seen, and the coverage that would be all over the television news programs that night. He did not make a particularly strong impression on them.

"Just what we needed to start off our day," Adam said unhappily at the defense table.

"Never mind," Edith told him. "They were poseurs, lunatic cultists, and any intelligent person could see that. They know less of the true nature of evil than children who play with matches know of hellfire."

Edith inclined her head to look past Adam and Lindsay at Richard, who sat at the far end of the table. He was instantly aware of her scrutiny, but didn't look around.

"And how are you this morning?" Edith said. His reply was the faintest of smiles. Lately she had sensed that there was less of Rich in the courtroom, and more of Zarach'; she felt a sharpness at the breastbone and then at the nape of her neck, a probing that had her on guard.

And will you let him speak? she wondered. What Rich would have to say was the key to her successful defense; quite possibly, it would mean her downfall as well.

"Anything wrong, Edith?" Lindsay asked.

Edith smiled and shook her head slightly, wishing she could reveal to her cocounsel what she knew was about to take place, with the introduction of her first witness.

My dear Lindsay. There are two prime antagonistic forces at work in this courtroom, representing right and wrong, the great dual law: the duad. It is the secret of life; to reveal that secret, which is embodied in the myth of the tree of knowledge in Genesis, means death. And only in death may these supreme forces be finally reconciled.

She looked, as she so often did, at the faces of the jurors, the twelve. Twelve. Another ritual number. The twelve primal fears of man, she thought idly. The fears of water, fire, air, earth, and on to the most agonizing fear of all: of death and punishment, the rejection by God. The soul lost forever. Each face suddenly had new meaning for her, because now she sensed where the full force of Zarach's attack was going to go. In the fourth seat of the first row was Ivan Mandelko, a small bearded man, intense and earnest, who owned a nursery business. He was the emigre son of a Russian who had died during the Stalinist purges. Would Zarach' go first to Ivan, or would he choose—

"Is the defense ready to proceed?"

Edith rose and stepped out from behind the table. "Thank you, Your Honor. We are ready."

"You may call your first witness."

"The defense calls Conor Devon."

101

Edith spent a great deal of time that morning, through her questions and his answers, giving the members of the jury full knowledge of the man who was going to spend most of the rest of the day testifying; his initial testimony was extremely important. When she was fully satisfied that the jurors had accepted Conor as a man of strict conscience and honesty, she began the substantive questioning.

"Mr. Devon, will you tell us when you first learned that your brother Richard had been arrested for the murder of Karyn Vale?"

From there she led him, slowly, to an account of his first meeting with Rich at the county jail, his shock and feelings of terror. Conor's tears flowed freely and he shuddered as he recalled Rich's words.

"He said, 'You're a priest, Conor. You can help me, can't you? Get him out of me! Before he makes me do . . . something terrible again.' "

At the defense table Rich scuffed his shoes together and wetted his lips, giving his brother swift, darting looks, as if he himself doubted what Conor was relating.

"Can you tell us if the police have ever interrogated any of the people Rich named during your conversation with him?"

"No, they have not."

"Why not?"

"Because— Henry Windross was killed by a train a few days later. Polly Windross disappeared. And— no trace has ever been found of Inez Cordway."

"Did you believe your brother when he insisted he had been possessed by a demon?"

"No, I did not."

"Why not, sir?"

"I didn't really believe— that kind of thing could happen."

"You did not believe in the possibility of the devil or demons possessing another human being?"

"In seminary I took an elective course in demonology, but I— I suppose I never wanted to think too deeply about it."

"Subsequently you became a priest. Did you ever see a case of demonic possession?''

"No, and I never met a priest who had either. It just wasn't something we talked about."

"What happened, sir, to change your belief?"

Conor described his brother's persistently bizarre behavior during subsequent meetings, his own nagging doubts that had led him to consult Monsignor Garen and, finally, the shelves of the Boston Public Library. Which inspired his experiment with the gold cross in the interview room not far away from where the court was in session. He told that story calmly, and in great detail. Lindsay Potter rubbed her forehead where a hairline scar remained from the cut she had received.

"If it please the court," Edith said, "I would like to have Mr. Devon step down and approach the jury box so that the jurors may see for themselves the scars which were caused by the melting of the gold cross which he had in his hand on the morning in question."

Judge Winford granted permission and Conor passed self-consciously with Edith at his side the length of the box, holding out his left hand, palm up. Tommy Harkrider sat with his arms folded studying Conor closely; Gary Cleves scribbled a note on his yellow legal pad, which he pushed toward Tommie. The note said, "Feb.— radiator on"; Gary then pulled a three-dimensional sketch of the interview room from a folder. But Tommie already knew what his rebuttal would be. Nothing Conor h#d said so far bothered him in the slightest. At this point in the trial Tommie's comfort level was very high.

As she was returning to the witness stand with Conor, Edith glanced at the forelady of the jury, Mary Adelaide Hotchkiss, who seemed less bright-eyed and attentive than she usually was. She had a hand at the base of her throat, massaging gently. Her eyes were not on Conor.

She was staring at Rich. The look on her face could only be described as haunted.

Edith stopped squarely in Mary Adelaide's line of sight and turned toward the defense table. So you've begun. But it is Richard Devon who I will put on the witness stand. And not Zarach' Bal-Tagh. You will not be allowed to terrorize these people.

The defendant turned his head aside, blinking, looking a little bored.

102

It was close to four thirty by the time Conor had completed his second, harrowing account of manifestation which he had witnessed in the company of Adam and Father Merlo in the basement room of the courthouse. His long testimony, Edith realized, had been too heavy a dose for the jurors to swallow; the dose had very nearly turned into a doze despite their best efforts to be alert. She was tired herself, and inclined to be irritable. Few of the jurors would sleep well tonight, weighted as they were with too much difficult information, with skepticism and the anxiety to be, above all, reasonable. Thus in the morning they would all look hopefully to Tommie Harkrider to establish for them in his cross-examination that Conor— a demonstrably good man, a former priest— had suffered deeply on behalf of his brother, and in his suffering had, innocently enough, deluded himself.

Edith had worked hard, she could not have done a better job of presenting Conor to the jury. But she had decisively lost the day.

103

Mary Adelaide Hotchkiss was one juror who did not give much thought to what Conor had been telling them. For most of the day she had not listened very closely, although she tried to maintain an appearance of alertness; it had been an ordeal for her. And that night she couldn't close her eyes for long as she tried to make herself comfortable on the lumpy bed in her room at the inn where the jury was sequestered. She was too engrossed in reliving the horror of having been a spectator at her own death.

For relaxation Mary Adelaide and her husband Andy liked to shoot whitewater rapids in small rubber rafts or narrow, fragile boats called kayaks in which there was room, barely, for one person. They belonged to a club that made weekend trips in the spring to nearby rivers swollen by the waters of melting snow.

In her vision, or whatever it was she had suddenly switched on to in the courtroom, she had seen herself clearly, wearing her prescription goggles and paddling furiously as her kayak leaped and skimmed through a shallow twisting gorge, spray dashing high above her head, wet black rocks looming all around. In this place she had split seconds to make hairsbreadth calculations, but what it came down to was instinct and experience, with a sizable luck factor involved. And her luck simply had run out. Her kayak, tossed end over end like a matchstick, had become wedged between two boulders by the pressure of the water pouring through a bottleneck, and she was trapped, upside down, in four feet of water. All of this she had perceived in a flash as she sat in the courtroom looking at the defendant, who had looked back at her for a few seconds. And more: she could feel her scalded throat open, the impact of cold water rushing into her lungs.

Hours later she wept, and thereafter was successful in blocking out the specific, oppressive sensations of death by drowning. She knew very well she didn't ever have to take that kayak down from its rack in the garage if she didn't choose to do so. And she wanted to live. But something dreary diluted this conviction, a thinness of spirit resulted. There was no responsive joy at the thought of her children. Because something had been stolen from her in the courtroom: it was a theft of light, a little of the light from one soul. Mary Adelaide didn't even know she was missing it, this too-small-to-measure portion of the larger light that had always served to keep the unimaginable, the hunters of the Endless Night, at bay. But because it wasn't there any longer the dark was just a little closer, a little more threatening than it had been before.

104

"Now, Mr. Devon, when you thought you saw— "

"Objection, Your Honor! Mr. Devon has described faithfully to us what in fact he did see take place in the interview room on the morning of February fourth, and I object to the prosecution's attempt to cast doubt on the accuracy of his perceptions, or his memory."

"Sustained."

"Mr. Devon, when you saw what appeared to be— "

"I object, Your Honor!"

The wrangling over Tommie Harkrider's cross-examination became so heated that Judge Winford called both barristers to the side bar to try to straighten out their fundamental disagreement before any more bad blood could taint the proceedings.

"Your Honor," Tommie said, his cheeks flushed to the whites of his eyes, "I'm not sure of just how it's done in the Old Bailey, but I do know in an American court of law I have every right to contest the accuracy of the witness's memory, particularly in light of recent research that has cast considerable doubt on whether a man's memory has any more permanence than a baby tooth. It is a well-known fact that in a stressful situation eyewitness accounts of an event can and do differ widely— that a witness's 'memory' of such an event may consist of facts from unrelated experiences, of totally fictional material provided by the unconscious mind to fill gaps in the story, and of conscious lies. What I'm looking for are obvious contradictions that I have reason to believe will invalidate a large part of Mr. Devon's testimony."

"Okay," Winford said. "If you have reason to believe there are contradictions, then you may establish them, but through the witness's conflicting testimony and not by implying there is a conflict even before you ask the question."

"None of these 'well-known facts' regarding memory that Mr. Harkrider has referred to have been established in this courtroom by expert testimony, and it would not please me to have him try to establish them at the expense of Mr. Devon."

"Oh, I don't need to do that, Edith. The witness is my expert on the fallibility of memory, and he's about to demonstrate it very conclusively."

Edith smiled dubiously; the look on Tommie's face was that of an old alley cat with bird feathers leaking down his chin.

The prosecutor labored at Conor for more than three hours. Conor proved equal to the demands Tommie made on him, tripping up only in his inability to remember just where the radiator was located in the interview room. It was beneath the window, and not on the opposite wall where he had placed it. He was also forced to admit that at some time during the confusion and turmoil in the room his burned hand might have come in contact with an exposed— and scalding— pipe near floor level. But he still insisted the partly melted cross, which the jury had viewed the day before, had caused his injuries.

When Conor was finally allowed to stand down, most of the jurors looked at him in sympathy, and perhaps with respect. No one at the defense table detected any hostility, but Lindsay leaned toward Edith and said, "Mr. Aughtman doesn't look so good, Edith."

Edith glanced at the juror in question and immediately asked permission to approach the bench. She called Winford's attention to Gerald Aughtman, who sat in the third seat of the second row. He was a forty-year-old car salesman from Cheswick whose only serious flaw as a juror had been his abominable taste in neckties. He looked pale and uncomfortable and had been rubbing the back of his neck. Winford immediately declared a fifteen-minute recess.

"I'm fine," Aughtman told the judge. "Just— something came over me, I don't know what." He smiled, and looked like a man who is smiling to deny an urge to scream instead. Winford let him lie down for a few minutes in chambers.

Edith strolled around the emptied courtroom as if her mind was on her next witness, but she was concentrating on Rich. He had remained seated at the defense table. He was drinking a Coke from a paper cup. A bailiff stood nearby, keeping an eye on him. Rich was aware of the attention from Edith, but he didn't acknowledge her. He had quite a collection of tidy little baskets woven from strips of yellow paper on the table in front of him.

A basket for a soul, she thought. The looks on the faces of two of the jurors that morning— Mary Adelaide Hotchkiss and now Gerald Aughtman— had convinced her beyond a doubt. Zarach' was preparing a conduit through which all of hell would flow into the courtroom before long. It was a direct challenge to her and the power she represented.

She touched the small sundial she wore just below the notch of her throat and bowed her head for a moment. She heard, in the back of her mind, a snarl like that of a maddened wolf. The defendant put his Coke aside and reached for a fresh pad of legal paper. He began deliberately to turn its pages into more neat strips.

105

After his brief rest in the judge's chambers Mr. Aughtman was able to resume his duties, but he was still shaken, unable to forget an extraordinarily clear vision of being slowly sucked into a whirlpool of hot, choking desert sand. Asthmatic as a child, he had always been in terror of not being able to breathe. He jogged almost every day to improve his lung capacity, and was an ardent nonsmoker. When he returned to his seat in the jury box and looked quickly at the defendant, he felt his throat tighten and his lungs compress into chunks of hot coals; thereafter he avoided looking anywhere but at the witness stand. He tried to shut the trial out of his mind, concentrating instead on his lengthy client list— over three hundred names, addresses, and telephone numbers filed neatly in memory— and the sales of the new models he hoped to make in the first quarter. But he just couldn't feel the old enthusiasm, the anticipation. Maybe the new models were lemons. Maybe the uptrend in sales wasn't going to continue. Maybe he wouldn't be able to keep up his alimony payments to Hilda. Maybe, just maybe, life didn't mean a hell of a lot anymore.

The defense called Father James Merlo.

Edith had an outstanding witness in Merlo. He was testifying with the full approval of his superiors in the Vatican, testimony in itself of how seriously they regarded this trial.

"Father Merlo, you are an exorcist for the Catholic Church, is that correct?"

"Yes, it is."

"And what does it mean to be an exorcist, to 'exorcise'?"

"By the use of certain ritual words, phrases, and ceremonies, to bind the devil and evil spirits to strict obedience to the will of God."

"When one hears of the rites of exorcism, of an exorcism that has been performed, it seems as if there is always a Roman Catholic priest involved. Is exorcism a phenomenon relating only to Catholics and their Church?"

"No. Exorcism, and the trade of the exorcist, has existed probably since man first became aware of the influence of evil spirits. There were exorcists in ancient Greece and they are referred to in both the Old and the New Testament, among other references Acts 19. Solomon was an exorcist. All major religions today practice exorcism in one form or another."

"How many exorcisms have you participated in, Father Merlo?"

"More than a hundred."

"In all cases demonic possession or infestation was involved?"

"Yes."

"Could you explain to us, please, just what is meant by 'demonic possession'?"

Merlo explained with care the circumstances through which the demonic spirits were licensed and, in most cases, obligated to plague human beings.

"Is there any such thing as a 'typical' case of possession?"

"Whenever a devil or a demon has established dominion over a human soul, his presence is announced by physical disturbances within the environment of the individual who is possessed. These include foul odors, loud noises, destructive activity, inexplicable and frightening occurrences that symbolize the presence of evil. Animals behave erratically in the presence of the possessed; they run away. Entire houses have been torn to pieces by the actions of the possessor. There can be gross deformities of the body, but not always. However there is a look of depravity, a maniacal intensity in the eyes that, once seen, isn't easily forgotten. The possessed can, and does, demonstrate incredible strength. Once the rites of exorcism have begun, some or all of these phenomena may recur, so repetitively and with such violence that the body of the possessed may be distorted almost beyond recognition."

"Thank you, Father Merlo. Will you tell us now, please, what you observed when you met the defendant, Richard Devon, for the first time on the morning of February twenty-third?"

Merlo told them, leaving out no detail, however repugnant. He substituted "excrement" for "shit," but otherwise he made no effort to spare anyone's sensibilities.

Although the priest was doing the talking, Richard Devon was, again, the center of attention in the courtroom. He looked introspective and a little glum. He met no one's eyes, but there was nothing abnormal about his own eyes, no unholy light shining redly from the pupils. He didn't rave, fart, belch, or drool. It simply wasn't possible to relate him to the horrors Merlo recited.

Edith seemed blissfully unaware of this.

"In your expert opinion, Father Merlo, was all of the phenomena that you, Mr. Conor Devon, and Mr. Kurland observed an indication of demonic possession?"

"A very clear indication, yes."

"Did this demon or devil identify himself to you when called upon to do so?"

"Yes. He said, 'I am Zarach' Bal-Tagh.' The name means Son of the Endless Night in a dialect of Hittite, which is the oldest recorded Indo-European language. The Hittite people had a civilization that rivaled Egypt and the most powerful kingdoms of Mesopotamia in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries before Christ. So you can see that conflict between man and demons goes far back into history."

"In your experience as an exorcist, had you ever encountered this particular devil named Zarach'?"

"No. The number of inhuman spirits is close to infinite. And not all of them have names."

"But you had heard of Zarach' Bal-Tagh?"

Tommie Harkrider shifted restlessly in his chair at the prosecution's table and said in a voice so low only Gary Cleves could hear, "Oh, baloney. Baloney, baloney, baloney. That's a translation from the modern vernacular of trial lawyers, and it means 'Don't shit me.' "

"Yes," Merlo said, in response to Edith's question. "The Church has known about him for more than ten centuries."

Tommie was so eager to begin his cross-examination of the priest that he almost bounded up to the stand when Edith was finished.

"Father Merlo, did the jail guards who brought the accused to the basement room of the courthouse remain in the room long enough to witness any of the phenomena you've described to us?"

"No, sir, they were waiting outside."

"Do you happen to know how far outside? Did they go down the corridor to have a smoke?"

"I believe they waited just outside the door."

"And when you spoke to the, ah, this Zarach', in what tone of voice did you address him? A normal, conversational tone?"

"No, I spoke more firmly than that."

"And more loudly? LOUDER THAN I'M SPEAKING TO YOU NOW?"

"A little louder, perhaps."

"Would you speak to us now in the same tone of voice you used when speaking to Zarach'? Would you mind repeating exactly what you said to him?"

"I'm sorry; I can't do that."

"Do you mean you don't remember just what it was you said?"

"What I mean is, the words I spoke at the time were part of a religious ritual which I am bound by the regulations of my office not to repeat without observing all forms of the ritual. There could be some harm in it."

"All right, Father Merlo. Now tell me, did you get an answer out of Mr. Zarach'— "

"Objection, Your Honor. The reference is plainly sarcastic and unnecessary."

"Sustained. Mr. Harkrider— "

"Yes, sir. All right, Your Honor. We'll just call him, or it— if I may be so presumptuous as to assume inhuman spirits are not classifiable by gender— Zarach'. The question is this, Father Merlo: did Zarach' reply to your request to identify himself promptly, or did you have to hassle him to get that information?"

Merlo smiled. "I had to hassle him."

"Was he giving you an argument, calling you names?"

"Yes, he was."

"Things got pretty lively in there, and you had to really get tough with him, shout him down I presume?"

"I wasn't quite shouting."

"And when he answered you, how did he sound?" Tommie dropped his voice to a whisper. "Like this?"

"He was much more forceful."

"WELL THEN DID HE BELLOW LIKE THIS, SO YOU COULD HEAR HIM ACROSS THE CHADBURY GREEN?"

"Something like that."

Tommie dropped his voice to a more reasonable level. "And while this argument was going on, there was a whole lot else going on at the same time. That room must have looked and smelled terrible. There were, we are told, dungheaps on the floor. I hope I'm saying it with sufficient delicacy, but I think we all know what I mean. Would you say you were engaged at that point in an all-out struggle, a contest of wills with Zarach'?"

"Yes."

"And you won?"

"I was able to control the manifestation."

"Through the power of your ritual?"

"Yes."

"Did you, in fact, exorcise the demon of Zarach' from the body of Richard Devon?"

"I made no attempt to do that."

"What!" Tommie said, astounded. He turned and gazed in dismay at the defendant before slowly giving the priest his attention again. "Father Merlo . . . you mean to say that when you finally finished with your— your epic encounter in that basement room, and the door was opened and the guards came in to take the prisoner back to his cell, Richard Devon"— Tommie pitched his voice to a theatrical whisper— "still had the devil in him?"

"No aspect of the possession had been altered."

"Why, those poor guards must have taken one look and run away in terror! Screaming! Overcome by the stenches of evil and corruption, by the gross disfigurement of Mr. Devon's body! Is that in fact what happened?"

"No, sir. By the time they came in, all of the fecal matter and other organic substances produced during the manifestation had dematerialized."

"Do you mean vanished? Into thin air?"

"Vanished is correct. This is quite common. As I was saying, Mr. Devon was lying unconscious on the floor, without his straitjacket. The physical distortions, particularly of his facial features, were no longer evident."

"What you are telling me, Father Merlo, is that everything occurring in that room went unobserved and unremarked by the guards, despite the fact that they were just outside while all the bellowing and caterwauling was going on; that the whole remarkable series of events seems to have been presented strictly for the benefit of, shall we say, those initiated into the mysteries of 'demonic possession': or in other words, true believers?"

Merlo said wryly, "I doubt if you could have counted Mr. Kurland among the true believers at that time; but you'll have to ask him."

"I don't want to ask Mr. Kurland anything." Harkrider turned from the witness stand to the bench. "Your Honor, if it please the court, may we have the defendant rise and stand for a few moments, just where he is, so we can all see him better?"

Knox Winford considered the request and glanced at Edith, who said nothing. "The defendant will please rise."

Lindsay Potter had to speak to Richard before he stirred himself and, reluctantly, stood up. One of his meticulously constructed paper baskets— he had made several of them so far— fell off the table to his feet. He made a motion as if to retrieve it and then straightened self-consciously, hands at his sides, avoiding eye contact with anyone, his stance that of the shunned.

"Thank you, Your Honor." Tommie again approached the witness.

"Father Merlo, if you were unable to exorcise Zarach' from the body of Richard Devon on the day in question, which was nearly four months ago, what then do you think has become of Zarach'? Did he leave voluntarily?"

"No. Once an inhuman spirit is in possession of a human being, he will never leave until, through the intervention and authority of an exorcist, he is compelled to do so."

"Then— then what you are telling us is that the defendant, the very same Richard Devon who is standing there— is still possessed by this demonic spirit?"

"That is my belief, yes."

"Have you personally, in all your wide experience as an exorcist, seen a case where the possessing devil, once he was in charge, just seemed to get bored with it all and departed without a word or a sign to anyone?"

"No. I have not."

"But, Father: what about all these gruesome, frightening things we're supposed to see? The distorted, brutish features, the inhuman glare of hate in his eyes? I don't see any of those things when I look at the defendant, do you? He appears to have behaved with decorum during this trial. Where is any trace whatsoever of this loathsome demon from whom we should all be cowering in fear?"

Merlo had known this was coming from the moment he had taken the stand. He smiled gently and said, "The phenomena you've described are not constants in cases of demonic possession."

Tommie Harkrider waved a hand in Rich's direction. "Father Merlo, if, as we have rather painstakingly established, there are observable phenomena— or let's call them laws— peculiar to the condition known as demonic possession, then do these laws not apply in the case of Richard Devon?"

"Zarach' is not your ordinary— "

"Please answer the question: yes or no."

"Yes. The laws apply."

"Then where is Zarach'?"

The priest's eyes changed focus, he flinched slightly as if he were seeing, deeply, something abhorrent, a roaring sewer diverted through the courtroom yet cheating the surface of their dimension; on his high forehead a maroon vein rose and thrashed at the edge of his gray skullcap. Then Merlo flexed his long fingers, effecting control over himself; he gazed above the heads of the spectators and was still.

"I can assure you he's here," Merlo said reluctantly.

"There?" This time Tommie jabbed a finger sharply at the hapless defendant.

"In the courtroom," Merlo amended.

Tommie made a slow full circle on his sore feet in front of the witness stand, looking high and low, mouth open in wonderment.

"But where? Is he up there with Judge Winford? Is he hiding behind the flag of these United States? Is he sitting like a june bug on that windowsill over there? I really wish you'd help me out, Father Merlo— how do you know, for a certainty, that Zarach' is with us today?"

"Through the power of discernment."

"A power which the rest of us, regrettably, are lacking."

"Perhaps not all of us."

Tommie just shook his head wearily and walked toward the defendant. Halfway to Rich he seemed to change his mind about something. He gestured for the defendant to take his seat again, and approached the jury box.

"Just one small sign," he said. "Any indication at all that us lesser mortals can grasp, so that we know the— the laws of possession are in force here— is that asking too much?" The prosecutor threw up his hands in despair. "There is a question we all want an answer to," he said, as if he had appointed himself the thirteenth juror. "But it is a question that has no answer; that in truth cannot be answered. Because, Father Merlo, I submit there is not, and never was, a creation known as Zarach' Bal-Tagh!"

"Objection, Your Honor!" Edith said peevishly. "We are not into summation here."

"Sustained. Mr. Harkrider, do you have further questions for this witness?"

"No further questions, Your Honor. Thank you."

106

Tommie was determined not to let the next witness for the defense be sworn in. As soon as her name was called, the prosecutor was up, asking for a meeting of counsel with the judge at the side bar.

"Your Honor, I fail to see what connection Sigrid Torgeson has with the case being tried! She was not even in this country at the time of the murder, and she has never met the defendant."

Edith said, "Miss Torgeson's ordeal as a victim of possession is well documented. We require her testimony as further validation of the phenomenon of demonic possession."

"The issue here is whether or not Richard Devon was demonically possessed when he committed the murder! Nothing Miss Torgeson may have to say could possibly be considered relevant to that issue, Your Honor. And how many supposed victims of possession must we listen to while counsel for the defense continues to stall in her attempt to avoid putting her key witness on the stand? Miss Torgeson may look terrific on the seven o'clock news, but it's only the testimony of Richard Devon that matters now. I respectfully request a ruling on this, Your Honor."

It was already a little after four in the afternoon. Winford said, "Since it's getting late in the day I think we'll adjourn, and I'll have a ruling on Sigrid Torgeson in the morning. Mr. Harkrider, you may enter your motion for dismissal of this witness for the record."

Edith had continued to fast and meditate; she was getting by on four hours of sleep a night but didn't seem to be any the worse for it. Having Sigrid there, however briefly, and having a full report on Philip's condition— which had not worsened appreciably— gave her strength.

Although she was taking only fruit and vegetable juices, Edith didn't find it objectionable to accompany others to dinner.

"Do you think she'll be allowed to testify?" Conor asked Edith as he cut into a rare T-bone steak. Sigrid, not a meat eater, was making a salad for herself and attracting nearly as much attention as a film star in the restaurant.

"There is almost no chance of that. Tommie was quite correct in his objection; I would have done the same in his place."

"Seems like she made a long trip over for nothing," Conor said, glancing up as Sigrid made her way back to their table with her salad.

"Not at all; I needed her here at this time." She smiled at Sigrid as the girl sat down.

"What other witnesses can you call?" Sigrid asked.

"Maggie Renquist; Lindsay Potter. Perhaps Benny Childs, to testify as to Rich's sudden interest in demonology just before the murder occurred. None of their testimony will be of great help, but it will use up time; a day and a half, perhaps two days."

"What are you waiting for?" Conor asked Edith, looking at a piece of steak on the end of his fork. Sigrid looked at it, too, with faint disapproval. Conor put his fork down; his appetite wasn't what he had thought it would be.

"She's waiting for another juror to go down," Sigrid offered, with a glance at Edith.

"I don't understand."

"Zarach' has placed two of the jurors under psychic attack; there will be others," Edith said. "But one more will be enough for our purposes."

"What purpose? What are you going to do?"

"Three jurors are needed to complete the tetrad," Sigrid explained.

"What is that?"

"The tetrad is the Trinity, plus one to make four, because unity is required to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, which is three persons in God."

"I know what the Trinity signifies, but— "

"Four is also the perfect number; it is the source of all numerical combinations. In nearly all the ancient languages the name of God had four letters. According to the lore of the cabalists, the personification of evil was God spelled backwards, meaning that evil is merely the shadow or reflection of good. Goodness loses its meaning if there is no opposite in nature. Are you still confused?"

"I don't know what the tetrad has to do with Rich being guiltyor innocent."

"The tetrad," Edith told him, "may be the only way in which his guiltlessness can be revealed. But for the purity of the light of the tetrad to prevail, the shadow must first be seen. I wonder how many of us are prepared to survive that experience."

"What if you don't put him on the stand, Edith?" Conor said, after a long silence.

"Then the trial has been for nothing. And Zarach' will own his soul. Permanently."

108

Conor said on the phone to Gina that night, "So Rich has to take the stand. It's just about our last hope of convincing the jury."

"When will that be?" "Probably the day after tomorrow." "I'm coming," she said.

"Gina— I don't know; maybe that's not such a good idea. I'm afraid— "

"Afraid of what? Conor, he needs all of us now. All of our support and prayers. I'm going to be there."

109

"Martin," Tommie Harkrider said to his former client Martin Vale, after watching him finish off a fourth vodka and tonic in just under three minutes, "I'm going to throw caution to the winds at this point and predict the outcome of a trial, which is something I never do. The fact is, I just don't see how we can lose."

"How much time will he serve?" Martin Vale mumbled. "How many years for the years my daughter had coming to her? Is that a prediction you'd care to make?"

Tommie reached out and put a hand on the smaller man's shoulder. "I just don't know. But I can tell you we'll be asking the maximum."

"Whatever he gets, it won't be enough."

"Martin, as a sympathetic friend, I'd urge you to spare yourself and Louise by skipping the rest of the trial. I see you sitting there, day after day, and I know how it's eating you up."

Martin Vale's chin bunched and there were tears in his eyes. "Eating me up," he acknowledged. He licked a last drop from the inside rim of his glass. Tommie tightened his grip a little on Martin's shoulder. It was past midnight. They were sitting on the screened porch of the luxurious summer home which the Vales had rented for the duration of the trial. Ceiling fans with varnished wooden paddles cooled the air around them. Moths prostrated themselves on screenwire, magnetized by distant lamplight.

"Why don't you go on up and try to get some sleep?" Tommie advised. "I'll let myself out."

But long after he had gone Martin Vale continued to sit on the porch, moping on wicker, down to one lamp, down to an ounce of vodka in the bottle he had opened a few hours ago.

There were creatures in the dark, nightsingers. The track of the moon lay fernlike on the surface of the nearby lake. The moths on the screen in front of him had rearranged themselves subtly into an image that at first was as dim and shadowy as the face of Christ on the shroud of Turin. The last ounce of vodka, taken neat, helped to clarify what he was seeing. Karyn, pale but full-blown. The moon shining through her silent form except where the two dark ellipses of her eyes gazed steadfastly into his heart. Those eyes judged him. As a father. As a man.

The little Smith and Wesson Bodyguard Airweight revolver which Martin Vale held in his right hand weighed only fourteen and a half ounces. When loaded with the five .38 Special cartridges which he held in his left hand, it would weigh a little more.

He loaded it, and put out the last light. The image of Karyn on the screen faded gradually to a bearable distance from his mind. He fell asleep on the porch, the revolver in his hand.

110

As she had said she would do, Edith stalled for time. Sigrid was on her way back to Heraclio. Until she got there, Edith knew she couldn't put Rich on the stand.

Tommie lost his temper twice over the time she was taking to question Benny Childs on matters of theology that seemed to have been of interest to the defendant before the murder. Tommie argued with Winford, and he argued with Edith.

"All I want to know, and a simple yes or no will do, is: do you intend to call Richard Devon?" When Edith wouldn't answer him he appealed to the judge. "Because I fail to understand, Your Honor, how the information gleaned thus far from the memory of Mr. Childs has been worth three hours of our time."

Tommie lost his argument and was forced to sit through another forty-five minutes of Edith's painstaking interrogation of the witness before she turned Benny Childs over to him. By then it was four thirty-five in the afternoon; there was an air of torpor in the courtroom.

"No questions!" Tommie snapped.

The trial was adjourned for the day.

111

At noon on the following day on the island of Heraclio nearly two hundred people, Sigrid among them, gathered in the plaza around the bronze sundial. At that moment of the day when there was not a trace of a shadow on the face of the sundial, the members of the society linked hands and began the prayers that would continue until the rim of the setting sun was extinguished on the horizon nine hours later.

It was eight o'clock in the morning in Chadbury, Vermont.

112

At six minutes after ten Edith Leighton announced to the court, "The defense calls Richard Devon."

The soporific dullness of the day before had been replaced by a tension that was almost morbid. Edith reacted to this negative charge by shielding herself with a psychic white light. She continued her close appraisal of Rich, begun the moment the bailiffs escorted him into the courtroom through a side door. He looked, more than ever, shackled by chains of guilt as he slumped into his chair at the end of the defense's table. The movements of his hands were tentative; he looked weak around the mouth, his face half wakened, with an unlit pallor despite the flow of sun through the windows. Edith was as fully absorbed as with an immense work of art that was simultaneously an allegory and a conundrum; she might have been studying a medieval tapestry into which one had to delve, to penetrate beyond thick interweavings and layers of meaning to an elusive image of God or His nemesis. There were no clues, yet, as to which personality she would encounter on the witness stand: the hell-bound youth, or the consummate, Infernal Trickster.

What she must do was done; she would not consider the possibility of failure.

From her seat beside her husband in the second row of the courtroom, Gina Devon leaned forward to get a better look at Rich in those moments of silence before he rose from the table to walk to the witness stand. She had to look away quickly, afraid she would cry. She pressed closer to Conor.

"What is that in your hand?" Judge Winford asked from the bench, before the defendant reached the witness stand.

Rich stopped as if he were about to stumble and looked confused; he stared up at the judge.

"I don't— did you say— ?"

"I said, you're carrying something in your right hand. Would you tell us what it is?"

Rich lifted his hand. From it dangled little baskets of yellow paper, a chain of them. There were twelve in all.

"These are"— Rich's voice was very low-pitched— "baskets I've been making." They could barely hear him in the jury box ten feet away; behind him, in the spectator's seats, he wasn't audible at all. His lack of volume provoked a stir.

Edith, coming up behind Rich, said, "Why don't I take those? You won't need them while you're testifying."

Rich nodded, holding out the little baskets to her and for a moment she saw far down into his eyes. She felt the drag of those depths despite her shield: the attraction of two small, almost microscopic pips of red.

There you are.

"You keep them; I made them for you," Rich asserted. He smiled, and the two of them were joined by some arc of the sinister, brighter than the day around them. But of the others in the courtroom, only Father James Merlo was aware of it.

Edith looked into one of the linked baskets. It appeared to contain, in fine miniature, the writhing form of the juror named Ivan Mandelko. He was naked and cruelly blemished. His eyes had been put out; their sockets steamed as if the white-tipped irons had only that instant been withdrawn. In places his skin and flesh hung in strips and tatters from his bones. His genitals had been turned to charred stubs by those same hot irons.

She was just able to suppress an outcry. She looked up and into the eyes of Ivan Mandelko in the jury box. He was dropsical from shock. She couldn't make contact with him.

Edith felt all the baskets sagging slightly in her hand, as if from added weight. She realized what she would see if she looked into any more of them. She did not look. She carried the baskets to the defense table and placed a heavy lawbook on top of them. Then she walked slowly back to the witness stand, a matter of a few steps but a road of infinite hardship to travel against the red fury that was streaming at her from the pupils of the defendant's eyes, an assault against her own light, the strength of her resolve.

And as quickly as it had begun, the onslaught ended. The possessor, confident of his gamesmanship, dealt Rich back to her like a dog-eared trump and withdrew a little distance from the proceedings. Rich sat twisting his hands, his head bowed. He mumbled at the swearing-in, and had to be asked repeatedly to sit closer to the microphone.

Then it was Edith's turn.

"Mr. Devon, will you please tell us when you first met Polly Windross?"

Silence. Rich held his throat and breathed harshly, and Edith wondered, bleakly, if he was going to be allowed to speak at all.

"Mr. Devon, are you all right?" Judge Winford asked from the bench.

Rich continued to massage his throat. He nodded slightly.

Edith said calmly, "Allow me to repeat the question. When did you first meet Polly Windross?"

"It— it was— August— a year ago."

"Are you finding it difficult to speak to me, Mr. Devon?"

"Yes."

"I'm only here to help you. And you will be helped. But as I told you in the beginning, you must help yourself too."

Tommie Harkrider slapped a hand on the prosecutor's table and said, "Objection, Your Honor. What is this all about? Can the witness testify, or can't he?"

"I c-c-can testify," Rich got out, twisting and turning his head as if to dislodge an obstruction from his throat. Whatever it was, he swallowed it and was momentarily still.

"Was Karyn Vale with you when you met Polly Windross last year?"

"Yes ... she was."

"Just take your time," Edith advised. "We have all the time you need, Richard."

With halting slowness, guided by her questions, Rich established the relationship he'd had with Polly. Edith brought him forward in time then, to January, the message left on his answering machine. This tape was introduced as evidence, and the jurors heard the voice of Polly Windross.

"Could call you if I ever needed ..."

"... hurting me, I'm afraid ..."

"... somebody doesn't stop ..."

". . . you're the only one . . ."

". . . can trust you . . ."

". . . can trust you . . ."

". . . please come . . ."

Rich's expression, at her first words, underwent many rapid shadings, changes flashing one through another like tinted glass balls in a juggler's deceptively lazy hands: anxiety, fear, anger, pity, mourning. Finally overcome, he listened, unbreathing, with a lowered face that slowly darkened as if he were suffocating. Only the end of the tape relieved him.

"Mr. Devon," Edith said, "is there any doubt that the voice you've just heard is the voice of Polly Windross?"

"No. That's— that was Polly."

"When you arrived with Karyn at the Post Road Inn on the evening of January the eighteenth, were you able to get in touch with Polly right away?"

"I— uh— touched her— so she was real." He began to nod, brows knitted, concentrating on the perplexing matter of Polly until Edith said quickly, "Did you understand my question? Can you— "

"What's real, and what isn't real. That's the crucial question, right? The sad news is, what's real one minute isn't real the next. It depends on the degree of apprehension. Synchronicity is involved, and— and— the light has to be right, among other things— "

"Richard— "

"Well! To answer your question, Polly . . . was . . . real, that's as true as I can tell you." He looked up at his counsel, waiting for her to acknowledge his sincerity.

Edith smiled comfortingly. "All right, Richard. Now let's go back. Will you please tell us what happened when upon your arrival you inquired after Polly?"

She was expecting almost anything, but after Rich thought for a few moments, he answered the question in a straightforward manner, with no hint of ellipsis or a gimcracked mind. Prompted by Edith, his voice growing stronger, more confident in his memory, Rich explained all his difficulties in discovering the girl's whereabouts. He told of his climb over the icy roof, his shock at discovering that Polly had been physically abused. Then came the most profound shock of all: when he returned with the police, there was no trace of her in room 331.

With that revelation Rich's spirits sagged, his voice thinned, he lost heart. It was twelve thirty, he'd spent a grueling two hours on the stand with more to come. Judge Winford called a recess for lunch. The defendant was taken away, drank two cups of black coffee but ate nothing, and napped in his cell, breathing through his mouth, the landscape of his upturned face constantly illuminated by bolts and twitches of dream lightning.

The trial resumed at one thirty. By three o'clock the jury had heard every harrowing detail of the dinner party at the Courdewaye house in Ripington Four Corners, and the rite of possession that followed. Rich was laboring by then, his voice nearly gone. Conor, in a sweat bath of sympathy that ruined the shirt he was wearing, chewed his lips raw.

Before her last questions Edith turned and with a glance at the courtroom clock knew that the sun had begun to set in Heraclio, three thousand six hundred miles away, off the coast of Africa. The prayers of the members of the society would be continuing around the sundial.

Nonetheless she felt a need to hurry, to conclude.

"Do you remember leaving the Courdewaye house and driving back to the Davos Chalet Lodge?"

Rich writhed slowly, his gaze wandering. "No, I don't remember."

"Do you remember taking a tire iron from the boot of your car and going in search of Karyn?"

He cried out unintelligibly, but shook his head.

"And do you remember striking her with the tire iron?"

"It wasn't me! I know everybody says I killed her, but it wasn't me!"

Edith asked no more questions. Rich slumped on the witness stand, his head in his hands, groaning almost inaudibly. She looked again at the courtroom clock. It was now three twenty. Tommie Harkrider had risen to begin his cross-examination.

Edith said quickly, "Your Honor, I don't believe the witness is capable of answering many more questions today. I move that we adjourn until the morning, when— "

"Oh, now, wait just a minute!" Tommie protested.

"It is getting late in the afternoon, Mr. Harkrider," Judge Winford reminded him.

"But not that late, Your Honor. Now, I don't intend to be longwinded. In fact I can promise"— Tommie also turned and glanced at the clock— "that we'll all be out of here by four fifteen at the latest."

Winford considered this proposal, then looked down at the witness stand.

"Mr. Devon," he said, "I'll leave this up to you. If you're not feeling well enough to continue at this time, we'll adjourn."

Edith waited, gazing at Rich's bowed head, her agitation well concealed. Then the defendant raised his head slowly and looked right at her, and Edith swallowed a nugget of gall, seeing in his eyes the red of sunset, the coming of Endless Night.

"I'll go on," he said, smiling gamely. "Could I just have a drink of water, please?"

Water was brought to him in a glass. He sipped slowly.

More time passed. Tommie was pacing. Edith fingered the small sundial at her throat, and studied the jurors; she paid particular attention to the forelady, Mary Adelaide Hotchkiss, the emigre Mandelko, and Mr. Aughtman, the car dealer with the awful neckties.

"Mr. Devon," Tommie said, "we have heard you describe the evil spirit which ostensibly has possessed you as being a pretty little girl in white stockings, and as some kind of prehistoric-looking winged creature as big as a Cessna 150. And then again as an inhuman spirit who goes by the name of Zarach' Bal-Tagh, whom you haven't said much about: but given that you have been in rather close association with the spirit for the last several months, you must have a very good idea of what he looks like; so would you mind describing him to us?"

"He looks like me," Rich said.

"Does he!"

"Or you. Or"— he searched the rows of spectators— "Gina. Or anybody he wants to look like. Or nothing and nobody."

"What you are trying to say is, he doesn't have a face of his own?

"I didn't say that."

"Let me tell you, sir, I don't appreciate your playing games with me, and I'm sure I can speak for all of us in this courtroom when I say— "

"Objection, Your Honor!"

"Mr. Harkrider— "

"Oh, all right," Tommie said angrily. "Now, Mr. Devon, does this Zarach', who you say possesses you and controls your every thought and action, who presumably has intended for you to answer as you've been answering, does he talk to you?"

"Talk?"

"Talk, yes, converse, tell you what he wants you to do at a given time?"

"No. He doesn't have to."

"Well, then, what is it, this controlling mechanism, some kind of thought process? Telepathy? I don't understand it at all. Can you possibly enlighten me?"

"I am he and he is me."

"Is that supposed to imply a symbiotic relationship?"

"No."

"So you want it both ways, is that it? When you don't care to be held accountable for your actions, Zarach' is to blame?"

"Zarach' is not blamable. There is no concept of guilt."

"There is no guilt in the murder of an innocent girl?"

"Only Richard feels guilt."

"Only Richard— " Tommie stopped his pacing and stared at the defendant. "Am I talking to Richard now?"

"Yes."

"And who else am I talking to?"

Silence.

"The witness is directed to answer the question."

"Your Honor, objection!"

Tommie went on, as if no one else had spoken, "Is it possible that I'm talking to the almighty Zarach' we've heard so much about?"

"Tommie, stop!" Edith said chillingly.

The defendant turned his head slowly, vaingloriously, toward her.

"Edithhhhh." It was a dry sound, with faint rustlings of malevolence as of ancient silk stirring in a newly opened tomb.

Seeking to regain the defendant's attention, Tommie Harkrider pressed closer to the witness stand and said in a loud hectoring voice, "Well, I want to talk to you, Zarach'. Because I want to hear the truth, and I know damn well I'm not going to hear it from Richard Devon!"

Gavel. "Mr. Harkrider— "

"Edith," said the defendant, growing as giddy as ribtickling Death, "the sun has set. The time is now."

"Get away from him, Tommie!" There was a note of despair in her ultimate warning.

Harkrider turned quickly, glaring, offended by her interruption, then thrust his face to within inches of the defendant's. He was like a beast sniffing excitedly the blood pumping from a torn jugular.

"Come out, come out!" he said challengingly. "Come out and talk to me, Zarach' Bal-Tagh!"

Tommie stood on his toes, trembling from the force of his righteous contempt, both hands clutching the railing of the witness stand. The defendant was aloof. He had raised his eyes to the courtroom clock. It was three fifty-one in the afternoon. A slight tremor went through him.

And if Tommie Harkrider, or anyone else, could have looked directly into his eyes at that moment, they would have seen the beginnings of a stormy eclipse.

113

In Heraclio, the plaza was now deserted, except for Sigrid Torgeson.

The burnished bronze sundial gleamed in the last rays of the setting sun.

Seabirds wheeled raucously overhead.

There was no wind, but the force issuing from the sundial peeled Sigrid's blond hair back from her temples. Her body, minimally clad in a singlet, was outlined in an aura of scintillating, foaming white light.

114

The clock in the courtroom in Chadbury stopped.

Edith, braced for a taxing denouement, bowed her head. The courtroom was plunged into hell.

115

At approximately three-fifty that afternoon, the twenty-ninth day of June in Chadbury, Vermont, a plague of insects appeared from out of a fair sky and poured, like ruby red wine from a transparent vessel, onto the courthouse, the small lawn in front and the locust trees that grew there. They covered the sidewalk, the street, and part of the village green. They were a little like horseflies and a little like grasshoppers. From a single thick stream they separated into millions of individuals. They had a high, honed, whining sound in concert that tended to give pain to the eardrums. Dogs, cats, and even birds fled the vicinity.

The insects seemed to prefer crawling to flying. They crawled over everything, not voraciously but with a blanketing, stifling effect, obscuring the outline of the three-story courthouse, covering all the windows, burying the roof inches-deep, and the clock tower. The clock soon stopped, its works gummed by a mass of insects. The sun shining through rosy wings cast a pall over the area. No one was able to go in or out of the courthouse without literally taking a bath in insects. The red bugs didn't bite, but they disintegrated all too easily, giving off a noxious odor and searing human skin with their vital fluids. After a few painful welts had been raised, people kept their distance. It got late.

Entomologists and pest-control experts were sent for. The insects willingly died at the first whiff of toxic chemicals, but the odors of their dying drifting on the evening breeze threatened to make much of the surrounding area uninhabitable. And when the insects died, there seemed to be even more to take their places. Tens of millions of people saw live coverage of the eradication attempts on television, and close-ups of the unidentified insects. Within the hour a number of amateur and professional authorities on prehistoric fossils had concluded that the last-known specimens of this now-abundant insect dated from the late Jurassic period, an epoch one hundred sixty million years distant.

Meanwhile no communication had been possible with anyone inside the courthouse. Telephone lines were dead. There was a great deal of concern. The fire department tried to open a path to the front doors with a high-pressure hose. The insects loved water. They reconverged almost as soon as they were washed aside. Men in awesome white suits, hoods, and boots waded toward the doors but became so covered with insects they couldn't see where they were going; they slipped and fell on smashed bodies as thick as cranberry sauce.

Not a few people, relating the phenomenon of the insects to the trial going on inside the courthouse, gathered spontaneously at dusk a block away. They prayed for divine intervention but were soon acrawl with vivacious, glittering red insects and fled in terror.

It was eight fifteen P.M. For more than four hours no one had emerged, not a sound had been heard from inside the courthouse.

116

In the courtroom to which Zarach' Bal-Tagh had been summoned, time had no meaning at all.

At the instant the clock stopped, the light of day, occult in its mathematics, reversed itself, spiraling in toward the center of the feverish eclipse.

The light changed swiftly; in the disorienting deepness of vermilion, faces glowed like pink ingots. A magnetic disturbance combed through each of them, huge as a stellar tide.

At each window tiny wings oscillated. Their room had become a nest, and they were food for the nest.

On the witness stand the defendant rose, and lowered his gaze to the captive spectators. To the jury of those who were no longer his peers. The radiance of his eyes painted the room with magenta shadows.

To each of them he gave clairvoyance; and from all but a few, he took reason.

They found themselves removed to the far edge of the universe, their little seething nest suspended over a void terrifying in its immensity, scorching in its blackness. Here the soul of a man had no more hope of survival than a drop of water in a desert, and they screamed telepathically in fright.

The defendant smiled at this tribute to the effectiveness of his initial exercise. Then his magic became harsher.

Those who tried to escape from their seats, to trample others mindlessly and batter themselves against unyielding walls and doors, found themselves immobilized by various ingenious means.

Tommie Harkrider had taken only two steps before he felt a biting pain in his left ankle. He looked down and saw that he had stepped into a trap of sorts: the gaping jaws of a human skull. Strong teeth bit him to the bone.

At the prosecutor's table Gary Cleves could move his hands and feet, but not his head. His bearded chin was pressed against the top of the table and his extended tongue was impaled on a wooden stake. As he struggled to free himself the stake grew like a tree from the roots of his tongue; his body rotted to feed it. And in the branches of the tree that swelled above him deformed shapes stirred and spread their wings.

Opposite him Edith Leighton sat with her head bowed, almost on her chest. Alone in the ruddiness, the blood-splashed gloom that had turned other faces to anguished masks drawn in shadows, she glowed like a lantern. There were fierce pulses in the otherwise dormant flesh of her body. She was impervious to the horrors now visiting them, the withering vanity of the master of the revels, their oppressor. Her eyes were narrowed, but in them were steady depths. Inwardly she was a coldly burning skein of nerves, a puzzlebox of impulse, a psychic transmitter.

Louise Vale, the bereaved mother of Karyn, found herself on her back with her knees up, her belly a heaving mountain as she gave birth— to dribbling packs of rodents, which upon entrance into the air, began voraciously to pierce her thrombosed veins for nourishment.

The eyes of the oppressor touched them all in turn; his lurid alchemy raged in the secret mind.

Some were toughened by the assault: their minds held fast. Father James Merlo, acclimated to horrors, prayed steadfastly in support of Edith Leighton, prayed for a turning of the black torrent.

And still they had seen nothing of the oppressor's full power. They had yet to look into the face of Zarach' Bal-Tagh.

Gina Devon, her mind too still, like a glassy pond beneath the threat of a runaway moon, sought the strength of her husband. Turning to Conor, she found he had divided at the waist into two warring wolves, yellow-eyed they snapped and slavered in each other's faces.

Lindsay Potter, violated once again by the crack of doom, embraced her pain and shuddered in orgasms that rubbed her raw; with nerves unbraided and flesh falling from her bones like drops of dark rain she sorrowed for a more powerful, truly consuming love.

WHO SEEKS ME? went the whisper around their minds.

Edith felt the stirrings, the craving for deliverance in the three jurors whom she also coveted: Mary Adelaide Hotchkiss, Ivan Mandelko, and Gerald Aughtman. She felt the confusion of their naked souls; she fought the further encroachment of Zarach' Bal-Tagh, who lied like the Serpent, flattered with a winkless eye. Her features all but disappeared in the scintillation from the sundial on her breast.

Her own power gave the oppressor pause. But then, enriched by the violence around him, by primal fear and blood, he descended from the witness stand. And with each princely step, he stood taller.

Tommie Harkrider fell shuddering at the feet of the oppressor, who looked past him at Edith. Edith's own eyes waxed distantly behind the helm of white light that protected her.

He knew she could not, by herself, stop his transformation, his tumultuous growth.

With a beautifully disarming gesture, Zarach' Bal-Tagh revealed himself.

In the language they had all been given to understand— and speak— they heard him: the seductive lyre of his palate, the gracious, singing tongue.

His looks were a match for his voice: in the midst of red chaos, anarchy of the senses, self-torture, shone the redeemer's golden eyes, a brazzle in their ashen bones.

"I AM ZARACH ," he advised them.

"ONLY I CAN SAVE YOU."

"Yes, save us! Zarach'! Zarach'! Save us!" Threatened, groveling, they begged for a glint of his compassion.

Edith groaned, as if she lay in drugged sleep.

"WHO AM I?" Zarach' demanded.

"You are Lord!" they answered, forgetting pain, obsessed by his beauty.

He nodded devotedly. Eight feet tall, robed like the phoenix, he spread his arms to embrace them.

"No!" Edith shouted, in the only language they now understood. Almost no one heard her.

"THEN YOU SHALL BE SAVED," Zarach' said. "AND ALL OF YOUR KIN."

"All! All!"

"AND ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH WHO COME TO ME,

AND PLEDGE THEMSELVES TO ME, THEY TOO SHALL BE MY CHILDREN."

"We will all come to you, Lord! We will follow you!"

"He is no messiah," Edith warned. "He is worse than death. He is the Endless Night!"

But they had suffered too much; they believed the lies of Zarach'. Many of them rejoiced in the dysangel's undeniable majesty: the caves of light at his temples, cheeks of milk and blood, mercy in the offered palm. His strong body attracting them as sky attracts the bird.

Even as he seduced the others Edith felt the boldness of Zarach' swelling like a storm-driven sea, rounding on the light of the sundial which she had so zealously conserved; the breadth and blackness of the wave approaching her scared her to the marrow. In this winding-sheet of salt rose heavy, mouthing things, to swallow the light from her breast— and then her powerless, emptied bones.

Strength, she murmured to herself, now sightless within the storm breaking around her head, wearied by the outcries of the nearly maddened souls she must somehow turn away from Zarach'.

Edith's hands were raised to her breasts, fingers pointing outward. The sundial glowed within her hands like a star exploding into thought.

Engrossed, she nursed it to a white noon of volatility. Then, refreshed, Edith hurled the equation of the light into the jury box, into the shadowed minds of Hotchkiss, Mandelko, Aughtman.

At the first tentative bonding of the tetrad, before its power could be released, Zarach' Bal-Tagh's siren song ended and he flew into a frenzy of hate. With the full resources of the demon-sorcerer he struck at them all. New horrors abounded in the courtroom.

In a dreary winter landscape Martin Vale sat sobbing, surrounded by the truncated flesh of his daughter. He sorted through feet and hands and tresses trying to put her together again while nearby, crouching, Richard Devon with eyes lividly mad was eating the heart he held in streaming hands. Dark rays fell from the sun like petals from a blackened rose.

"WHO SEEKS ME?" Zarach'demanded.

"Zarach'!" they began again, wailing.

In the hands of Judge Knox Winford were the faces of his children, their throats swelling up from the cruel tendons of his wrists, eyes of fancy blue. He began sadly to applaud, ignoring their screams and then the sharp bone-crack, bringing his hands together again and again until the faces became squashed, mixed, unrecognizable.

The population of the courtroom doubled in an instant, became crowded with breath. There were ant forms, and fan-shaped serpents, and slinking noisome beasts of no known species. There" were jaded ladies with the stingers of scorpions curled over their shoulders and perplexing eyes faithless as gold. A mob of youths fair-faced but grossly furred at the hips and wobbling on claws. Great cats, all ebony and ire, with the slowly stirring wings of jackdaws. Old demons in rouge and silk, the long nails of their hands whispering like rapiers for the unguarded soul. Late of this earth, they were the scarred, the treacherous, the corrupt. They contributed to the tumult until the thin, pure light of the cross of the tetrad shone through the bloodred murk.

The lesser demons panicked easily at the sight of the living cross that lay from the point of Edith's breastbone across the courtroom to the jury box. They went whining and howling and tumbling head over heels back to the Endless Night. They went empty-handed while Zarach' fulminated; he dwelled on Edith alone, source of his misery and potential defeat. His eye a weight of toppling stone, his countenance like the volcano towering over the sundial of Heraclio.

Bound by the law of the light, her energy committed, Edith trembled, clinging to her life as weightlessly as a damp leaf on a windowpane.

IT IS YOU WHO SEEKS ME, EDITH.

She had tried to prepare herself for pain, for the torment of having her mind pressed and pressed again until it leaked drop by inky drop down the sheer white bone of her forehead. She had not been prepared for such outrageous confidence.

I do not.

Her anger at Zarach' nearly exhausted her; she had never felt this frail.

He drew closer, as close to the light as he dared; peering in, like a giant at a keyhole. Her eyelids fluttered, her pupils darkened with his handsome head.

WE SHALL SEE.

And when he withdrew to a more bearable distance he did so with a shrug. In the next instant with a snap of his fingers he shed his plumed but smoldering resurrection robe, stood naked as glass to her enchanted eye, a tower of mirrors, bright prisms of magic in which she saw (closing her eyes but seeing through the lids) what she most feared to see:

Herself.

No!

But there was a shaking in the air, in the chill and deathwatch mirrors: her veins were ripped from her flesh and writhed round the light like strangler fig.

The power of the tetrad began to wane; the light was dying.

In the many-mirrored, enslaving body of the demon Edith sank slowly to those depths where sorrow goes.

I must not fail.

Another flicker of his magic; Zarach' showed her the twin side of her nature, with every weakness, every flaw magnified into evil.

WE WILL WORK SO WELL TOGETHER, EDITH.

So little of the light left; his shadow falling swift and fatally.

It was the will of God that the shadow exist. And Zarach' was a part of God; powerful, yes, but imperfect. He could torment them, make them suffer. But in their suffering they were redeemed. This was the power they had over Zarach', and even as she weakened and prepared herself to lie down in the grave of his illusion, there was a last exultant flaring of Edith Leighton's spirit.

Edith reached for the sundial on the chain around her withered neck, and found the strength to snap the chain.

Turning, she hurled the little sundial toward the smoking red-eyed mirrors of the demon-magician.

In midflight the sundial began to glow again; to speed. It struck the body of Zarach' with the force and luminosity of a comet. Light erupted piercingly, intensified by every shattered facet; spears of light shot everywhere through the courtroom as the whirling, white-hot sundial penetrated more walls of cascading glass. Zarach' turned, falling to pieces, roaring like a tornado as glass streamed inward toward a distant spot of darkness, following the flight of the sundial. The courtroom was afire like a tropic noon, but heatlessly. Only the spot of darkness persisted, entry to the Endless Night, a whirlpool of Stygian blackness terrible to contemplate.

Give him back to us, Edith prayed. Give him up. Now.

From out of the sink of darkness something came flying, almost too small at first to be grasped by the eye; then Edith realized it was a human body, small but perfectly formed, tumbling into the light. Just before it hit the floor it became the size of a man.

Richard Devon lay sprawled on his face, twitching, dazed, but with a cry for breath. In that instant the dark entry shrank to the size of a pinpoint; with a last stupefying shriek from an inhuman throat it closed altogether.

In Rich's outstretched hand was the sundial. Its light continued to flow over them like a warm and nourishing sea. Balm for the eyes, for the mind. No one stirred. Not one of them had the power to speak, or even to think very clearly: but there was no need for thought. They all had the same insatiable need, to bathe in the purifying light, and be cleansed.

117

In Heraclio several members of the Sundial community carried Sigrid gently from the plaza and put her to bed. She was trembling uncontrollably, and the muscle spasms continued for a while. Three of the women took turns rubbing her down. Part of the time she was conscious. She babbled happily, the way a new mother still under the influence of anesthesia will babble about the baby to whom she has given birth but hasn't yet seen. When Sigrid finally fell asleep, she would sleep for twenty hours straight.

118

Shortly before eleven o'clock that night in Chadbury, those observers still keeping watch on the courthouse witnessed the abrupt disappearance of the insects. The formless mass became cone-shaped, as if it was under the influence of an attractive force stronger than the gravitational field of earth. Then the head of the cone burst like a lanced boil and insects poured into the sky, staining the moon red. Swiftly this stain shrank in size, resembling a large spot in a blood orange. The spot continued to diminish until it was a pinpoint and could barely be seen by the naked eye.

Around the courthouse there were no reminders of the visitation; not so much as a single frayed wing remained on the windows or the lawn.

At the west end of the Chadbury green, where access to the green was blocked by a line of state police vehicles, Captain Moorman stood beside Police Chief Jim Melka; both men studied the entrance to the courthouse with binoculars.

"There's not one damn bug left," Melka muttered.

Moorman lowered his glasses and snapped at a subordinate, "Jim and I are going in. Keep everyone else back."

They drove the two short blocks to die courthouse in Moorman's car and lurched up the sloping lawn to the steps. As they got out of the car a courthouse door opened and a stout middle-aged woman carrying an attache case stepped outside. She stiffened and looked around in shock, glanced at her wristwatch, shook it, held it to her ear. She drew back anxiously when the two policemen ran up the steps toward her. Her lips trembled as she tried to smile.

"How could it be dark already?" she said to Melka. Her voice squeaked.

"What's going on in there?" Moorman demanded. The woman looked oddly at him, frowning, as if she had found his tone accusatory.

"What? I'm sure I don't know what you mean. I just came down from the recorder's office— I couldn't have been there more than fifteen or twenty— " She gazed in fright at the black sky. "It can't be so late."

From somewhere in the courthouse there was a gunshot, followed by a piercing scream.

The woman jumped and began, incoherently, to wail.

Moorman ignored her and looked at Melka. He knew in his bones where the shot had come from.

"Upstairs," he said. "Main court. Hurry."

119

On the threshold of consciousness Richard Devon moved slowly, his cheek dragging on the worn marble floor of the courtroom, his hands clenching and unclenching. Edith Leighton's sundial had fallen from his fingertips. With most of its energy dissipated, the sundial retained only a faint, warm, slightly animated aura.

The intensity of the light it had brought to the courtroom had dimmed to a shadowless summery twilight in which the figures of men and women stirred. All around him Rich heard them sighing, weeping quietly, rejoicing in whispers. He felt a sense of community to which he did not belong.

He felt something else: where an ugly growth had taken root in the conscious mind, a twisted dark mandrake crowding him to the outer edge of sanity, permitting him to exist only as an observer of his soulless life, there was now a contracting void. Yet he felt a remnant of a tidal pull, excruciating, twisting his bones; he smelled a scorched blackness, as if there was a blot in the comfortable twilight, like the head of a just-extinguished match. His nostrils were clogged with the odor. His hands, unbound, moved more frantically, fingers scrabbling for life, for safety. The marble was too smooth, too hard; he found no handholds. His eyelids fluttered. Blood surged. Adrenaline hit him like a round of chilled brandy, enlarging his perceptions, his panic and pain. He cried out deliriously.

120

Conor had his arms around his wife. He trembled windily, a spent and battered man, but felt himself on a sharp edge of exultation: the self-inflicted wounds of years, erupting all at once, now were clean from the fire and would heal; he would be stronger than before this reckoning. Half blinded by tears, Gina ran a hand over his face, her lingering fear of wolves vanishing as her fingertips were charged with the familiar rough tangle of his beard: she kissed him.

"You're all right. You're you. God be praised."

"God be praised," he repeated in a confident voice. Then he turned his head, straining, trying to distinguish one small cry in the babble around them.

"Listen. Wasn't that Rich? He needs help. Come on."

121

But Edith was the first to reach him.

With a slow hand she retrieved the sundial from the floor. Her face, in the steadfast light— an eternal amber enclosing them all like remnants, like ghostly husks— looked as worn and tightly shrouded as a mummy's. The bravery extinguished now. The lean flesh chilly and rendered close to the bone. The eye ways dark entries, sunken passages. She had given nearly all she had.

His eyes, open, asked for more. Pleaded.

"No, Richard. Stand on your own feet now. There's nothing else I can do for you."

He staggered getting up, nearly pitched head first to the marble floor. Then he straightened. He was steadier as his brother closed in, followed by Gina and Adam Kurland.

"Am I going to die, Conor?" Rich sobbed.

"No, kid. It'll be all right now."

Edith bowed her head slightly and walked away to lean against the defense table as, slowly, Rich was surrounded by others, including several members of the jury. Some, like Lindsay, who would have been afraid to touch or even speak to him before, now offered encouragement. Rich, unheeding, continued to weep.

No one paid attention to Martin Vale, no one was aware of the gun in his hand until Knox Winford, from the bench, shouted a warning.

By then the two-inch barrel of the revolver was nearly against Rich's forehead.

"Nothing's changed," Vale screamed. "She's still dead, isn't she? Don't any of you see? Nothing's changed!"

Rich clenched his teeth, now feeling the weight of the muzzle a half inch above his left eyebrow. It tilted his head back sharply. His eyes were fixed on air. Martin Vale was no more than a shadow to him, a cloud of hatred at the lower limit of his vision.

Rich felt, behind him, Conor's bulk, his brother's large hand stealthily loosening its grip on his upper arm.

"Don't, Conor," Rich said. The strong, violent pulse in his temple seemed to dare a bullet. But in the threat of death there was an ardor he welcomed, a clarifying force. Stand on your own feet, Richard. To Martin Vale he said, "If nothing's changed, then you have to kill me."

His charge, his admonition to Vale, had no immediate effect. They remained poised against each other in an atmosphere dense as a thunderstorm. The fatal shot was withheld. Yet Vale, stunned by the inevitability of his action, seemed to have no mind other than what was contained in his outstretched hand, no desire except to be rid of the lethal poison that slowly had been wrung from his body during the trial and was now concentrated like a boil on the tip of his tongue.

"Martin," his wife said behind him, her voice so slight and familiar it caused no change in his expressionless face, no ripple in the steel of his concentration, "it could have been a truck without brakes running a red light. It could have been her boat tipping over on the sound. It could have been a blood clot when she had her tonsils out, or a careless surgeon or too much anesthetic. Or a fall down a flight of stairs. A snake. A disease. A rapist. A fire."

Now her voice trembled; so did the hand that held the revolver at Rich's bloodless forehead. Louise came closer. She touched calmingly the nape of her husband's neck. Her face, half hidden by his large, motionless, totem head, had, in her sincerity and anguish, a kindled look, the glow of the SALVATIONIST.

"She was simply— taken from us. Now we know why. The truth is more terrible than anything we thought— but at least we know the truth. Martin— will you listen? Please. Come and sit down. I don't know if we're ever going to feel any better. But it'll be over."

Vale shuddered, and it became a small seizure. No one else moved; they had all dried up from fear. They watched him. Vale's mouth opened in a kind of gfin. Death grinned at Richard Devon and withdrew.

Vale's hand fell away from Rich's forehead in a slow outward arc which Conor deftly intercepted, at the same time yanking Rich to one side and out of danger. As he snatched the revolver from Vale's unresisting hand, it fired. The bullet, traveling upward, shattered one of the chamberpot light fixtures near the judge's bench; fragments showered down as the fixture sparked. A woman screamed, but no one was cut by the pelting glass.

"Bailiff," Judge Winford called out, "put some lights on in here!"

After fifteen or twenty seconds the lights sprang on in the courtroom.

Caught in the sudden brilliance, expelled from the borderline of unreality between the Endless Night and the world in which they must resume their appointed places, most of them flinched or cringed; others shielded their eyes and bowed their heads.

Captain Moorman and Chief Melka came running into the courtroom with drawn guns. As soon as he saw them, Conor slipped the Airweight revolver he had taken from Martin Vale into a pocket of his jacket. Vale, in his wife's embrace, still shuddered, the broad white wings of his hair slumped over his ears. With the wick of his passion snuffed, there was no life at all in his eyes. She led him as easily as her own shadow to the rows of seats, sat with her mouth to his ear, consoling, stroking, loving him.

"Your Honor— " Melka began.

"What's the meaning of this?"

Moorman said, "We heard a shot and— "

Winford looked up from rubbing his temples and said, "You mean the light fixture? It exploded. No harm done. Bailiff, will you please get a broom and sweep up that glass?"

"Yes, Your Honor," said the perplexed bailiff.

"Gentlemen," Winford said to the policemen, not concealing his irritation, "you're in a court of law. Put those guns away. You've disrupted proceedings."

"Disrupted?" Melka said incredulously, looking around while trying to holster his gun. Only a few people were in their seats. Most of them looked as if they'd just walked away from a plane crash. Several jurors were standing near the defendant on the floor. There was a livid round spot on the defendant's forehead that looked as if it had been made by the muzzle of a revolver. Conor Devon had one hand on his brother, as if he were holding him up. Tommie Harkrider was leaning against the prosecution's table with one hand, and the other hand was Dressed against his chest. He was the color of day-old Hollandaise. "Your Honor," Melka continued, "do you realize what time it is? And court is still in session? Don't you know what's been happening outside?"

Winford pounded his gavel hard. "Yes, this court is still in session! It will remain in session until this time next week if need be, and in the meantime we can do without further interruptions. Do I make myself clear?"

There was a mild stirring in the courtroom; all of them, including the defendant, turned to look at Knox Winford.

Then, spontaneously, applause began.

Winford looked enlightened, and rewarded. He let the applause run for a few seconds. Then he nodded, smiled briefly, and gaveled for order.

"All right, I want everyone back in their seats. Will the defendant please take the stand?"

Rich seemed too dazed to move. Conor, after another look at the judge, guided his brother by the elbow.

Tommie Harkrider brushed past them on his way to the bench. He didn't move quickly. His complexion was still poor. He opened and closed his mouth several times, as if to get his wind up as he stared at the judge.

Knox Winford leaned over the bench toward him.

"I couldn't quite make out what you said, Mr. Harkrider."

"I said— " Tommie sputtered. Then he caught fire. "SAID JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?"

"A trial is going on, Mr. Harkrider. And if you ever address me in that tone of voice again, you'll be held in contempt. Please proceed."

"Proceed? With what? This is a mistrial! I demand that you declare a mistrial! We were all— we've all been under— what happened here was— hallucination! Yes! Some kind of— of mass hypnosis, by God!"

Where she sat with her head lowered, Edith's lips moved. "Not by God, sir," she murmured. No one heard her. But the sound of her own voice, the wan attempt at humor, stimulated her. She straightened and looked at Tommie Harkrider.

"Look at them!" Tommie waved his hands at the jurors. "You saw them! Congratulating this murderer like he was some kind of hero!"

"That's not fair," Mary Adelaide Hotchkiss shot back.

"Mr. Harkrider, a last warning," Winford said, his gavel poised.

Thomas Horatio Harkrider took a step away from the bench and rocked on his tender feet. His lips quivered. He struck his thighs with his fists. He said, in a controlled voice, "There has been a theft of reason in this courtroom; I will not stand for a rape of justice as well. How the— the display we were made to suffer was achieved I don't know, but I will not, even at the risk of being held in contempt, continue to be a party to— "

"Mr. Harkrider— "

"I am, sir, a believer in the sanctity of the courtroom, the majesty of the law. I will stake my life on my— my reputation, my veracity, my dedication, my love, sir, my love for the legal profession." And suddenly Tommie had no more control. His face sagged and he gushed tears. Twitching and turning, he looked up at the judge like a hurt and indignant child.

Winford sank back wearily in his leather chair.

"Mr. Harkrider."

"I'm— sorry, Your Honor."

"We are going to continue. Try to calm yourself. You and your colleagues for the state may file whatever motions you feel are called for upon the conclusion of this trial. But let me say a few words. I think my ability to reason, to separate fantasy from reality, is as good as the next man's. I haven't been drunk since I was seventeen years old. I've never taken a drug stronger than aspirin. Nor have I been treated by a psychiatrist for mental difficulties. I sleep well at night and I don't have nightmares and I've never claimed to have much of an imagination.

"There are two things of which I am certain: if I were in a war, I would damn well know when I was being shot at. And if I were in hell, I'd know the devil when I saw him."

Winford paused for a long time, as if his voice had given out. When he spoke again it was in such a low tone the microphone mounted on his bench barely amplified his words enough to carry through the courtroom.

"Well, today I saw him. Therefore by simple logic I'd have to say that for a little while I was in hell. We all were. Some of us eventually will deny that, and some will try to forget it. Every one of us will deal, in his own time and his own way, with what he saw and experienced. In the meantime— we have a duty to perform. My head aches and I want very much to go home. So let us get on with it."

Judge Winford looked at Edith.

"Mrs. Leighton, are you able to proceed for the defense?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"He is still your witness, Mr. Harkrider."

Rich turned his face to the prosecutor. He could not have looked more terrified or drained of hope than if he had been on the chopping block. His teeth chattered and came together.

Tommie studied him in confusion and despair. He seemed about to speak. His shoulders lifted and fell.

"Mr. Harkrider, do you have further questions for this witness?''

Tommie shook his head, turned quickly, and walked back to the prosecution's table, where he slumped down beside Gary Cleves. Gary looked at him, and then away.

"Mrs. Leighton?" Winford inquired. "Would you care to redirect?" ,

Edith rose, very slowly, gripping the edge of the table with both hands.

"No, Your Honor," she said. "The defense rests."

122

As part of her summation to the jury, Edith Leighton said, "I have no doubt in my heart that you will find Richard Devon not guilty by reason of demonic possession. But there are questions that must be answered, tonight, by all of us— although the hour is late, and we are all very tired.

"As long as there are evil men who pass from this earth and live in the Endless Night, there will be the likelihood of evil revisited on human beings. Is there a remedy for this evil?

"The possibility for sin and error is consistent with, and inseparable from, life itself. More force of character, more power for good, is displayed by the sinner who ultimately redeems himself than by the meekly obedient. Therein lies our greatest glory, and a clear and present danger. Such power is the most precious thing we know in life: the determination to be masters of ourselves. With it, we are a force that defeats the darkness.

"Without it, we are doomed.

"Richard has suffered from the murder of Karyn Vale; through your power he will gradually be restored, and relieved of this crippling guilt.

"Through your verdict on his life he will achieve life, and the opportunity to make himself whole again."

The trial of Richard Devon ended shortly after midnight on the first of July. After deliberating for no more than twenty minutes, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of demonic possession.

Events that had taken place on the final day of the trial— the infestation of primordial insects, the apparent suspension of time within the courthouse— already had caused a morbid sensation, which was intensified upon release of news of the verdict.

The news itself was fashioned by the twenty-five journalists who had attended the trial from the beginning, and who were present on that marathon last day. They reported for the TV cameras or filed with their respective newspapers and services stories that were factual as far as they went, as similar in tone and content as if they had reached a communal decision on what to say and how to say it. None of them referred to Zarach' Bal-Tagh's appearance in the courtroom. Each journalist depended for his living on his objectivity, judgment, sobriety, and obedience to the facts. Each of them knew very well what he had seen. But to experience Zarach' was one thing. To describe him was another.

The human mind is very well equipped to deal with irrationalities and to tidy up the inconsistencies which everyday living presents. And human behavior, even on a mundane level, is more often than not inexplicable, perverse, and even bizarre; behavior dictated by the intricacies of surviving in a world in which there is too much competition among the would-be survivors, too many demands and not enough rewards, and too much news of all kinds, much of it morbid, oppressive, or fear-provoking. The nursery school teachers running a kiddie porn ring. The respected obstetrician with a collection of more than a thousand human fetuses in a trunk in his basement. The

necrophiliacs in a California mortuary. The fullmoon snipers. The cow-pasture ritualists. The sadist tinkering with packaged headache remedies in drugstores. The religious paragon sacrificing children in an endless desert war.

Just as there was no beginning or end to the horrors of Zarach', there was no way to deal adequately with his manifestation in words. A few of the journalists, secretly, tried. And tore up what they had written. After Chadbury not many of the journalists remained in the profession. Not unexpectedly, they found they had reached a junction in their lives where simpler pursuits, a less detached involvement with human beings, would be good for their souls. And eventually they achieved peace of mind.

The other spectators and participants were reticent in response to endless questions about the last day of the trial. There was no way to say what they felt. But their silence was not hysterical, it was meditative.

Thomas Horatio Harkrider went back to New York, and issued dire prophecies about the turmoil that would ensue in the criminal courts of America if Vermont v. Devon was not overturned by the state supreme court. But Gary Cleves failed to file the appropriate motions; ten days after the verdict in district court, he abruptly resigned as state's attorney for Haden County. He went into private practice and prospered. In the year that followed, five pleas of demonic possession in capital cases were entered in five different states; in each case the jury rejected the plea and found the defendants guilty as charged. The plea of demonic possession did not become the rage that Tommie Harkrider had predicted. He died, peacefully and in his sleep, of a cardiac event, almost one year to the day he had risen to address the prospective jurors in the Chadbury courthouse.

Conor and Gina went home, stopping en route to retrieve their daughter from the convent in New Hampshire. Conor cut back on his drinking and returned to the wrestling ring. A knee injury ended that career a few months later. Gina moved her boutique to the new mall in Lowell, a move that coincided with an upswing in the country's economic cycle. Things went well for her. She supported the family until Conor wrapped up his Ph.D. in comparative literature and began teaching at a small college near Joshua.

Adam and Lindsay were married four days before Christmas in the Catholic church in Braxton. Even before the trial Lindsay had begun attending Mass again, and her experience with Zarach' Bal-Tagh was just the impetus needed to bond her strongly to her faith. Her wedding present to Adam was a solid gold sundial on a chain with the dates of the trial engraved on the back. His present to her was a full partnership in the firm of Kurland Bates Harpold and Potter.

Father James Merlo was invited to the wedding, but by then he was involved in a case of possession in a remote mission village in the highlands of Cameroon and couldn't make it.

The principal in the trial might well have become the object of as much speculative publicity as any luminary of the twentieth century. Because there were far more questions about Richard Devon than there were answers. But sixteen hours after he was acquitted, Richard Devon, accompanied by his brother and two of his lawyers, eluded packs of investigative reporters and disappeared.

And Edith, declining to give interviews, returned to Heraclio after a brief stopover in London.

When she heard the Land-Rover pull up outside the double walls that surrounded the house, Sigrid Torgeson got up from the mat on the floor of the veranda where she had been meditating and said to the man sitting silently nearby, "Edith's here." She saw a rearrangement of the facial muscles that, not too long ago, might have resulted in a smile; but again, the afternoon shadows were tricky, and maybe she'd only fooled herself into thinking that Philip had reacted. She slipped into her sandals and went out to open the gates.

Edith had gotten out of the Land-Rover and was pulling her luggage from the back. She moved jerkily and impatiently. In the blaze of sun her face looked blanched, except for the hard butternuts of her eyes. Her brows needed plucking. There was a heavy squiggle of a vein at one sunken temple, and wispy commas of gray hair were sticking to her forehead. She was so pale and thin that

Sigrid was alarmed. But even as Sigrid watched, the skin of Edith's face was beginning to lose its deathly grayness, as if in these first moments of homecoming she had begun to cast off veils.

Sigrid gave Edith a hearty welcoming kiss and tried to take the luggage from her. Edith shook her head curtly, then shrugged and with a backward nod indicated the young man behind the wheel of the Rover, who was gazing vacantly through the dusty windshield. He had driven them all the way from the airfield at Los Arroyos. Now he just sat there, looking from the ugly blistered flank of the Mountain of Fire to the cool green lagoon at the base of the cliff. And back again.

"How is he?" Sigrid said to Edith in a low voice.

"In that miserable transition state; he is gradually losing his self-loathing and self-pity but isn't quite ready to accept himself as a useful human being. He is convinced that because Karyn's life has ended, his own can have no value. The usual nonsense that I'm too old and impatient to deal with."

"I'm not. But what do I say to him?"

Edith, with a quizzical little smile, stared up at her for a few moments. "It will amaze me if you have to say much of anything." And she went into the house, calling cheerily to her husband.

Sigrid looked around thoughtfully at Rich, who hadn't yet taken notice of her. After a few moments of standing there edgily she walked up to the Land-Rover and intruded on his view, the cool shadow of her head eclipsing his heated face. He looked startled. Her blue eyes were wide and tranquil, but there was a hint of confrontation in her gaze.

"I'm Sigrid. Welcome to Sundial."

He nodded and licked his drying lips. There was a pained cleft between his eyes. He resumed staring up at the mountain, as if he had taken flight only to find himself in an airy prison.

She knew, oh how well she knew, what he must be feeling. Sigrid had not murdered anyone during her own captivity, but for a year after being exorcised she had felt so abused and defiled it was difficult to look anyone in the eye. Time and this place, the fellowship of the Sundial, had healed her. Richard would come around, she was confident. He had to. Because they needed him badly.

"I'm sure it's all right if you sit there the rest of the day. But aren't you tired? Wouldn't you like to come in?"

He stirred and flinched as the changed angle of his face brought the sun to his eyes like the point of a spear. He looked around for shade; for a blade of grass.

"I've never— seen anything like this," he said, his tone dismayed. "I don't know what to think."

"Who can tell?" Sigrid said. She put a hand on his right forearm, which was rocklike: he still had a tight grip on the steering wheel. She leaned closer to him. The wind lifted her blond hair, and it fluttered across his sunburnt cheek, softly enclosed his throat. Again she caught his eye; this time held it. His expression didn't change, but his lips parted slightly. She detected a quickened breath and, beneath the skin, the one vital impulse beyond the will of any man to control— the longing, the need for another human being.

She nodded, just a little, and smiled at him.

"Maybe it's home, Richard," Sigrid said.

SPECIAL PREVIEW

Here is a sizzling scene from SHATTER, the next exciting TOR novel from John Farris, coming in June

. . . Anneliese was using the toilet when they came in. Two or three men. She had only a startled glimpse before all lights but one went out and she was snatched up with her pantyhose below her knees. A gloved hand sealed her mouth before she could scream. They were wearing black stocking masks.

She tried to bite and tried to claw, humiliated by her nakedness. Her legs were neatly bound together by the mobbed pantyhose. The skirt had fallen off. They handled her firmly, without roughness, and immediately she sensed it wasn't going to be rape. What then, murder? Only the ceiling light in the shower had been left on; it provided faint illumination through the opaque glass. But there was enough light to reveal all of the thin pointed blade in the hand of one of the men. Her insides felt like cold rusted machinery. Her neck, which had been twisted as she struggled, ached. She felt an involuntary dribble of urine.

Three of them for sure. The third man, the one with the knife, had picked up the expensive borrowed skirt. His knife was like a razor. Quickly he made strips of the cambric before her eyes. Then the other two, holding her arms behind her back, still gagging her, offered her up to the knife wielder like a sacrificial virgin.

He was careful as he slashed the blouson to rags, not drawing even a drop of blood. But by then Anneliese had stopped struggling. Her head was dizzy with horror, her vision blurring.

They jammed one of the cotton gloves in her mouth, dropped her on the pile carpet. For a few moments the one with the knife held her head up by the hair. Anneliese's face was inches from the flat, stocking-black face. She could see the glint of eyes, the mashed-down nose. Her hands and feet were cold. She had the highly stressed, roller-coaster feeling that comes just before fainting.

But there was something else, a faint odor of yesterday's perfume, and she realized that it wasn't a man who held her after all.

"We won't forget you, Anneliese."

Words in a windy tunnel. She was released. She didn't feel the soft drub of her head hitting the carpet again. . . .