The Visitation (63 page)

“HOLD IT! HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”

She jumped and then she froze, hands half-raised and trembling. She turned her head.

Brett Henchle wasn’t talking to her. He was looking into the bedroom, sighting down the barrel of his gun. He motioned to her,
get back
. “TURN AROUND SLOWLY AND PUT YOUR HANDS AGAINST THE WALL!”

She ducked behind the far end of the couch, her heart pounding. She managed a prayer, only three or four words, then concentrated on breathing.

Brett advanced on the bedroom, gun extended. He disappeared through the door. “AGAINST THE WALL! SPREAD ’EM!” Something jingled:
His handcuffs,
she thought.

Morgan heard sounds of scuffling and blows. Books thudded and crashed to the floor. A body hit the wall. She half rose from her hiding place, longing to help.

A shot went off. She dropped behind the couch again.

A sound like tearing cloth, the impact of a punch. Brett cried out in pain. More scuffling.

Quiet. Then feet stumbling, dragging.

A hand came through the door, grabbing the doorpost, streaking the paint with blood.

Brett’s face appeared, twisted, shaken, pale. He stared at her, trying to form words. He gagged and drooled red. She jumped up to help him. He had prevailed, but he was hurt. He—

His body lurched forward, and his torso slipped from around a bloodied blade that remained poised in the air, the handle invisible within the doorway. He collapsed, coming down on his knees, then buckling forward, his head thumping on the vinyl flooring.

The knife entered the room, followed by the hand that held it.

The bloodied hand of Justin Cantwell.

D
RESSED IN WHITE
but bloody as raw meat, Cantwell leaned against the doorpost and gazed at her, eyes crazed, knife ready.

Morgan ran for the door.

A man stood there, Near Eastern in appearance—olive skin, black curly hair, a wicked gaze. He reached for her. She spun away.

The Hitchhiker was right behind her, looking pale and dead, his blond hair hanging limply to his shoulders. He didn’t grab for her. He just stood in her path, smiling a toothy grin.

She went for his face with the heel of her hand—he wasn’t there. She fell forward, off-balance.

Justin Cantwell caught her, clamping his bloodied hands around her wrists. His hands were cold like steel, their grip unbreakable. He reeked of sweat—the smell from the bedroom—and blood. She struggled and kicked, twisted, but he got behind her and twisted her arm behind her back. His knife went to her throat.

“Uncle?” His tone was mocking and patronizing.

The Hitchhiker was back, right in front of her. Near Eastern approached from the front door, taking his time, his eyes menacing. She squirmed and pulled, and the tip of the knife poked her neck like a hot needle. She cried out.

“Uncle?”

She held still, gasping, whimpering. The knife had to be cutting her. She was going to die.

“I can’t hear you.”

She formed the word several times before she could finally utter it in a quaking whisper. “Uncle.”

The tip receded. “That’s better.”

A third figure appeared from nowhere, dressed in white and looking like an angel. The three came close, lining up like a wall before her.

“You saw what I did to Officer Henchle?”

Father, receive my spirit . . .
She swallowed, then nodded.

“And you see my friends?”

She couldn’t believe it even as she nodded again.

“So you know your options are limited. As a matter of fact, you don’t have any.”

“Oh, Jesus . . .”

The knife jabbed her neck. “Say that name again and I will surgically remove it.”

His “friends” were a vision she could not blink away. “Who are they?”

“They came to my rescue when God didn’t. We’ve been a team ever since.”

“Are they . . . ?”

He snickered. “Who do you want them to be?”

Near Eastern suddenly gained weight, turned pale and gray, and stared at her through the sunken eyes of an old man: Louis Lynch, Florence’s dead husband.

The man in white suddenly wore a dark suit and turtleneck, the same as . . .

His face changed, shifted, became . . .

Gabe Elliott
. He smiled and nodded to her.

No greater pain could have gone through her heart. “NOOOO!!”

THE POLICE WERE STILL WAITING
for a van from the phone company that would provide extra phones and monitoring equipment. I had to use their cell phone to call the ranch’s second line one more time.

“Hello?” It was Cantwell.

“Justin, this is Travis.”

“I thought I told you to go home!”

“I have to know—”

Click.

CANTWELL TOSSED HIS CELL PHONE
on the kitchen table so he could finish duct taping Morgan to a chair. “The miracle of call forwarding,” he explained. “But he’s going to figure it out. We’ll have to be ready when he does.”

“You could have escaped.” Morgan said it in a very quiet voice. She had agreed to his offer: If she kept her voice quiet, he wouldn’t tape her mouth shut. If she cried out he would slit her throat. It was a solid offer. The body of Brett Henchle lying in a pool of blood at her feet convinced her.

“My loyal followers think I did. They’re buying me precious time.”

“Then why don’t you?”

He cinched down the last strip of tape around her wrists and stood back to admire her helplessness. “I still have to settle my dispute with your boyfriend—if he ever gets here! I was waiting for
him
, not you and Henchle!”

“What about my son?”

She thought he would strike her. “Your son! The traitor? The turncoat? The coward?”

“Where is he?”

His anger cost him some strength. His face paled and he dropped into another chair. “Don’t worry about him. It won’t do him any good.”

I CALLED THE RANCH’S FIRST LINE.

Matt answered, “Yeah?”

“Matt, can you tell me how many are in the house with you?”

“About twenty.”

I got ready to write. “I need to know their names.”

“I don’t know all their names.”

I could feel Sheriff Parker’s eyes on me. “Matt, the police need to know who’s up there. You have to give them a good reason not to come storming in there right now.”

“Mary Donovan.”

I wrote her name down. “All right. Who else?”

“Dee Baylor.”

“All right.” He went silent. “Who else, Matt?”

“Brandon’s here.”

“Yeah.”

“And there are twenty others.”

I heard a commotion behind me and turned. A motor home had come to a stop at the bottom of the driveway, and the door was opening. Jim Baylor stood right below that door, and let out a whoop when his wife, Dee, appeared, hopping out and embracing him. They started kissing, explaining, apologizing. The scene should have had music.

“Um, Matt, Jim Baylor would like very much to talk with his wife. Would that be possible?”

“No. She’s with the others. We have ’em all confined.”

Jim waved at me as he led his wife away. She was crying, clinging to him. I told Matt, “Okay. Then how about some more names?” “I told you, I don’t know their names.”

“Then how about getting Brandon on the phone?”

“You have to call the other line. That’s what he says.”

“Well he can’t be that far—” I felt a turn in the gut.

“Just call him on the other line.”

“Well . . .” I didn’t want Matt to know my own thoughts were running me over so I forced myself to say, “Okay. I’ll call on the other line.”

I ended the call. Parker was muttering something but I didn’t hear it.

Cantwell had eyes. He didn’t need to be here to know what the cops were doing or whether Sheriff Parker was smiling.

Parker asked me, “Well?”

“Matt won’t, uh . . . I’ll give it another whirl.”

No. Cantwell wouldn’t want to be surrounded or fenced in. Fences were a big issue in his life. So he wouldn’t hole up at the ranch, would he?

“Are you going to dial that thing?” Parker demanded.

I dialed the ranch’s second line. It rang repeatedly without an answer, and then a recording came on: “The cellular phone you called is not answering. Please try your call again later.”

“No answer?” Parker asked.

“I have to talk to Dee,” I said, handing him the cell phone. “JIM! Hold up!”

Jim and Dee waited near the front gate. The loudspeakers on the hill were playing Jimi Hendrix and the floodlights made it look like a night baseball game was in progress. Television reporters were standing just on the other side of the yellow tape, talking into their microphones and looking back at their cameras. The whole landscape was flickering with white, blue, red, and amber sweeps from the police vehicles.

We hadn’t finished our discussion, he said, but we would. I could count on it.

Go home, Travis. Go home.

“Dee,” I asked, ducking under the yellow tape to get to them. “Is Brandon Nichols up there?”

She was still wiping tears from her eyes. “I don’t want to see him. Not anymore. I feel like a fool.”

“But
did
you see him?”

“No. He wouldn’t even come out of his room to talk to me. He wouldn’t talk to anybody. People are leaving. He’s just . . . I just want to go home!”

Jim gave her a squeeze and led her along. “C’mon, hon. We’ll get you home. Thanks, Travis. Thanks for everything.”

“You too, Jim.”

I took out my own cell phone and punched in Morgan’s number. “The cell phone you have called is not answering. Please try again later.”

I punched in my home phone number. My hand was shaking so much that I got it wrong. I punched it in again. I felt sick.

The telephone rang, and then—

“Okay, we are ready to talk,” said Justin Cantwell. Before I had time to think it, he added, “Don’t look around, Travis. Don’t say anything, don’t signal anyone. I have someone here who’d like to speak with you.”

“Travis?” It was Morgan’s voice, trembling with emotion, her little rasp unmistakable. “Travis. I love you too.” The end of her sentence broke apart as she started to cry.

“So I wasn’t lying the first time,” said Cantwell. “I was just a little early. Do we have an understanding?”

Not far from me, Kyle and the other ministers continued to pray in a circle. I knew I had help.

“We still have to have our discussion,” I said.

“So come home, Travis.
Alone.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I came up with some lame excuse I can hardly remember, something about being sick, tired, or incompetent. I don’t know. But I told Parker I was leaving for a while and ran to my Trooper.

I climbed in, closed the door, started the engine, then bowed my head to pray, gripping the steering wheel tightly enough to reshape it. I intended to burst into desperate prayer. I was going to tackle, wrestle, and grapple with God, crying out in earnest supplication for Morgan’s life and my own and for the tattered soul of Justin Cantwell. I was going to bind and rebuke the powers of darkness and cast them out. I would be waging holy warfare in the heavenlies. It was going to be a struggle—

Before you pray . . .
said the Lord.

I looked up. It was quiet inside the Trooper, and suddenly, strangely quiet in my heart. It threw me. What happened? One moment I was ready to leap into the fires of hell and whip-in-the-spirit whatever evil forces might come my way, and the next moment— well, I felt as if I were sitting in heaven. I saw nothing unusual—no visions, no angels, no lightning bolts or faces in the sky. The same cruel, crazy world was in full swing outside my windshield: The lights were still flashing, the cops were still running around, and the floodlights were still there, along with the TV cameras.

But I felt as if I were somewhere else.

How can I describe it? Jesus was in the Trooper with me. I would never presume to put words in his mouth, but I felt him saying,
Could we take a moment to review?

I let go of the steering wheel and listened.

MORGAN SAT QUIETLY
, praying only in her mind, her wrists anchored to the arms of the chair, her ankles taped together and immobile between the chair legs. Cantwell was sitting at the table, leaning on his left elbow, breathing hard, the knife dangling in his right hand. Though he looked fatigued, the vicious, animal expression never left his eyes. He had made no effort to clean any of the blood off himself. If anything, there seemed to be more blood than before. A pool of red was gathering in his chair and he was sitting in it.

“So you’re one of them, aren’t you?” he asked.

“One of . . . whom?”

He leaned forward and held the knife under her chin. “You’re a church lady, aren’t you? One of the ‘reverends.’ Did Travis tell you what I did to a ‘reverend’?”

His raging eyes were only a foot away. She could smell his breath, his sweat, the blood, now spoiling like meat left out too long. Near Eastern, the Angel, and the Hitchhiker were hovering, lingering, present in the room, sometimes visible, always felt. The house had become an outpost of hell.

It made the peace she felt all the stranger to understand. She never would have expected this enveloping sensation of rest, as if she were somehow separated by a holy capsule from all that was occurring around her. It settled over her the moment her struggle was over and her options gone—the moment Cantwell’s last strip of tape went around her wrist and there was nothing more she could do but trust.

Her voice was steady and gentle as she replied, “He mostly told me what the ‘reverend’ in your life did to you.”

He leaned back, letting the knife rest in his lap. “Maybe he
did
find out everything.” He looked down at Henchle’s body. “Did he tell you who else was there?”

Morgan thanked God as she recalled the name. “Uh, I think the name was Gallipo.”

Cantwell looked pleased. “Conway Gallipo, Nechville’s permanent chief of police! Very good.”

“Travis pieced it together, the part about Gallipo. He figured it would take two people: one to hold your arms, the other to drive the nails.”