Anathema (17 page)

A tree branch crashed through the kitchen window. Something brushed the side of his face, and he yelped as the phone slipped from his fingers. It spun on its curly cord as it banged against the wall.

Jim backed against the wall and slid to the floor. He pulled his knees up to his chin and cupped his hands over his ears to blot out the screeching of the Travis-thing.

"Make it go away,” Jim wailed. “Please, God, make it stop!"

Jarvis found Jim naked and curled up with Rufus under the kitchen table and when he reached to wake him, Rufus's eyes snapped open.

The dog put a protective paw across his master and bared its teeth. Hackles stood, and a growl vibrated deep in the animal's throat.

"Rufus? What is it, boy?” Jarvis said. “You know who I am."

The dog caught the man's scent, recognized the voice, and relaxed. Satisfied the intruder meant no harm, Rufus sniffed Jarvis's hand and licked his fingers. Jarvis gave the animal a scratch behind the ears.

Jim stirred. “Is that you, Jarvis?"

"Yeah, Jim, it's me,” Jarvis was on his hands and knees, looking at Jim's backside between the table legs. “What the hell's wrong?"

Jim rolled over and smiled. He looked like a derelict that had just come off a helleva toot. “I'm so glad you came.” The smile turned to a frown. “But how'd you get in?"

"The door. It was standing wide open."

Jim crawled out from under the table, grabbed a dishtowel from the refrigerator handle, and wrapped it around his waist. He gently moved Jarvis aside and padded to the door. He closed it. Opened it. Closed it again. Bewilderment shadowed his face. There wasn't the slightest resistance. Whatever had prevented the door from opening before no longer existed.

He walked to the window and peered outside. There was no branch against the window; no trees in the yard. Nothing could've made the scraping sound he heard. There was no screeching of the Travis-thing from the living room. The house was silent.

Jim shuffled next to Jarvis and grabbed his friend's arm. “You need to go upstairs and check something out for me,” he whispered. His eyes were big and glassy, like a rabbit's that was cornered by a hungry wolf. “You need to go check the bathroom. Tell me what you find."

"All right,” Jarvis said, prying Jim's fingers from his bicep. Jim had squeezed so hard, he left a perfect pattern of fingerprints on the reddened skin. Jarvis pulled a chair out from under the table. “You just sit here until I get back."

Jim nodded, smacking his lips together as if he had just finished a delicious piece of dessert, sat down and waited. Rufus sat next to him and rested his snout on his master's knees.

Three minutes later, Jarvis returned somber-faced and with some of Jim's clothes under his arm.

"Here, put these on.” Jarvis handed the clothes to Jim.

"Did you find anything?"

"Yes."

"Did you see the writing on the mirror?"

"No. There was no writing."

Jim swallowed hard, dreading the next question he knew he had to ask. “Did you see Diane?"

"Yes, Jim, I did. And I'm sorry."

Jim closed his eyes. So, it wasn't a dream after all. At least, not the suicide part. The gypsy's warnings tumbled in his mind, and while her first two prophecies had been correct, he wondered what secret Diane had locked inside of her that taking her own life was the only way out.

(If she really took her own life.)

Yes, if she really did.

While Jim dressed, Jarvis made a pot of coffee. Neither man talked while it brewed. Jim sat in the chair staring across the kitchen; Jarvis gazed out the window, looking at the trees. They looked closer to the house than before.

When the clock in the hall chimed three o'clock, both men yelped with surprise. It would be daylight soon, and Jarvis knew there was so much to be accomplished in so little time.

The coffee done, Jarvis took down two mugs from the cupboard and filled them up. “Do you have any brandy?"

"Top shelf. Next to the macaroni."

Jarvis took down the bottle and poured a healthy portion into both cups. He handed one of the mugs to Jim.

"The booze'll help take the edge off things,” Jarvis said, sitting in the chair next to his distraught friend. “Now, I want you to tell me exactly what went on here tonight."

Jim took a sip of the spiked coffee, “All right. It started with a dream, a nightmare, really. At least I
think
it was a nightmare..."

It took Jim twenty minutes to tell his tale, and he had gone through two mugs of Jarvis's special coffee, but by the time he was finished, he was certain he hadn't left out a single detail.

Jarvis listened, sipping his coffee rather than gulping it, and said nothing until Jim was through.

"So, am I losing my mind?” Jim asked. He tried to smile, but found he couldn't.

"No, you're as sane as me, but we need to go talk to Pastor Tim. He'll be able to explain everything."

Jim sighed. The ‘go see Pastor Tim’ thing again. But maybe Jarvis was right. Maybe there was something more than fate working here. Maybe there really was something evil running amok. He certainly didn't have a reasonable explanation for everything that's been happening.

"All right,” Jim conceded, “let's go see Pastor Timothy. But what about Diane?"

"When the rest is done, we'll take good care of her."

The men deposited the mugs in the sink and walked to the door. Jim stopped just before he stepped onto the porch. He looked back at the stairs.

"I'll be right by your side to see you through it.” He put his arm around Jim's shoulder. “We'll lay Diane to rest together. I promise."

Chapter 23

Jarvis called Cal on his cell phone, told him about the latest events, and said to meet them at the church. Then he called Timothy and told him the same thing, but the pastor didn't have to be called. A dream told him they were coming.

Jarvis pulled his truck into the parking lot and dumped it in the space closest to the door. Jim crawled out of the vehicle.

As they walked toward the church, Jim noticed the building appeared to have a kind of glow. It commanded the darkness and dared the unholy to cross the threshold. The gigantic shadow of the cross that stretched across the asphalt suggested the same thing, offering sanctuary to the Just and damnation to the rest. Jim wanted to credit the shadowing and strange illumination to the moon. Wanted to, but couldn't. The sky was overcast, and the moon wasn't visible. This phenomenon had to come from the Lamp of God.

Cal met them at the church steps. There were large sweat rings under the arms of his shirt, and a circle of grime around the collar. His dungarees clung to his legs and climbed up the crack of his buttocks. Salty perspiration streamed like rain down the sides of his face. It was too hot for this time of day. A storm was definitely on its way.

Cal nodded a greeting to Jarvis, then turned to Jim. “I'm sorry about Diane. We'll give her a right Christian burial when this is all over."

"Thanks,” Jim said.

"Well, I suppose we should go inside."

Pastor Timothy was in the front pew praying. When he heard the heavy oak door open, he stopped his meditations, rose, and went to meet his visitors.

"Welcome,” Timothy said, “we best get started."

He led the trio up the center aisle. On the altar burned three candles in remembrance of the fallen that had made the journey that cursed summer of 1983. They paused a moment and said a quick prayer as the flames flickered in the dusty darkness of the sacred house.

Jim had seen these three candles burning during every church service and function. He saw them burning during his son's funeral, and not even the blood rain of his hallucinations was able to snuff out the flames. He didn't know what the candles represented, but somehow, he knew they were related to what they had to do. And the fact that they hadn't been extinguished during his nightmarish visions gave him a strange sense of hope and solace.

Timothy brought them into the office and closed the door. Then, he walked across the room and pushed on the far wall. There was a click, and he slid a panel open to reveal another room.

This was Tim's private place, and other than Jarvis, Cal, Sheriff Ebert, and now Jim, no one else knew of its existence.

Walls were lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases. Shelves were filled with books dealing with all subjects on demonology, witchcraft, and the supernatural. Some books were bound in leather that looked like human flesh. Some were paperbacks that could be purchased at any store. But there was little doubt in Jim's mind that all of them were possibly as old as time itself.

The room was furnished with a pair of comfortable sofas and an overstuffed chair. An oak coffee table sat between the two sofas. There was a carafe of ice water on the table along with a stack of plastic Dixie cups.

A matching desk dominated most of the room. A computer rested on the desktop and the soft, bluish light of the monitor filled the room.

Behind the desk, on the west wall, hung a huge cross. It was carved from a pair of old railroad ties. Timothy had sanded and polished the wood until the brilliance of the grain sparkled like the facets of a diamond. Then, he anointed it with oil and blessed it with Holy Water. At the foot of the glorious cross, an eternal flame, the Light of Salvation, brightly flickered.

"Come in. Sit.” Timothy motioned to the sofa. He sat on the corner of the desk, opened the large black book that was next to him. He silently read some of the text, sighed, and looked at Jim. “This is the Book of the Ages. It's a companion book to the one I keep locked up in the safe. This one's a diary of sorts. But I do not write in it. It is written by the Forces of Good.

"Your name is in the book, Jim, and that's why I asked Jarvis to bring you to me. There are things you must know, and what your involvement in all this is."

Jim poured himself a glass of water and took a swallow, wished he had something stronger. “Jarvis told me my house is haunted."

"Yes. But there is more you need to know."

"Like?"

"Prairie Rest is a kind of gateway. A passage between good and evil."

"Like a doorway to Hell."

"No, not exactly. I believe Hell exists, but not as it's described in the Bible. I think Hell is another plane of being. I have no doubt it is a place of extreme suffering and punishment, but I don't believe it's a fire and brimstone kind of place. That image was created so humans can visualize a place that we know is a hundred times more terrifying. The evil in this town is different. It is physically real. Tangible. It lives deep within the earth and gains its strength by tapping into a person's deepest, darkest, and most perverse thoughts. It makes you think of and do things you'd never otherwise consider."

Jim's face reddened. Was that what the three dead whores were all about? Had it tapped into his subconscious and pulled out the thought? His latest book did have a scene dealing with necrophilia. Did this ... this
thing
pull that idea from his mind?

Jarvis touched his friend's knee. “It's all right, Jim. It's happened to all of us here. We've all encountered the three dead whores."

"How did you know?"

"We could smell them on you."

"Could everybody?"

"No,” Jarvis reassured. “Only the Chosen: Cal, Pastor Tim, Judge Majors, the sheriff, and me."

Jim guzzled another glass of water. His throat had suddenly dried up.

"You were drawn to the old Miller place; even though you thought you bought it of your own free will, there were great forces at work,” the pastor said.

"Larry Taft was told never to sell the place, but he gaffed at our insistence the house remain vacant. By you moving in, you reopened a passageway,” Cal said.

"Jim, the first day you moved in did you feel anything strange?” Jarvis asked.

Jim thought for a moment. “I remember I had a terrible headache and I was angry at Diane. I had this terrible urge to hurt her.” Jim gave a nervous laugh. “I even heard voices telling me to."

Cal sighed. “Then it was happening already."

"What does this thing want, Tim?” Jim asked. By the light of the computer monitor, he saw how old Timothy really looked. There were creases in his face that belonged to a man twice his age. His hair was so thin, Jim saw the pink of his scalp beneath it. Eyes were hard and tired. Whatever this thing was, it had taken a toll on the reverend over the years.

"Us, I imagine. People. Because we have something it can never have: souls. In my studies, this entity has existed from beyond the beginning of time. It is older than God.

"For countless years, it was dormant, but during the Gold Rush, it seemed to be most active. It would lure people by promising them wealth beyond their dreams. People came in droves. Once they built towns and settlements, the entity would wipe them out, or rather, the entity would have them wipe each other out and feed upon their hatred.

"I believe that's why there may be so many ghost towns in the southwest. That's where this beast concentrated itself. As the population grew, so did the entity, and today, I believe there may be thousands, maybe tens of thousands of passages all over the world.” Timothy paused to pour himself a drink of water. “These passageways that are in the city go virtually unnoticed. People disappear all the time in the city, and most are never found. But when things like this happen here in communities like Prairie Rest, certain people, the Chosen Ones, the Elders, notice."

"Can it be stopped?” Jim asked.

"In eighty-three, six of us tried,” Jarvis said. “We were young and scared, and obviously didn't do the job. We fucked up—er, sorry, Tim."

The pastor smiled.

"What'd you do in eighty-three?” Jim asked.

"We tried to blow it up."

"All right. Then we'll try it again. Where can we get some explosives?"

"I have crates of the stuff in the basement of the service station,” Cal offered. “Don't know how good it is. Been there a long time."

"Timothy, how will we know if we succeed?"