Divine Evil (48 page)

“Not right now. There's something I want to show you. Can we sit down?”

“We can go inside. I can give you some cookies.”

He smiled, straining for patience. “I'm not really hungry right now. Can we just sit down on the steps there, so I can show you?”

“I don't mind. I've been walking a long way. My dogs are tired.” She giggled at the expression, then her face lit up. “You brought your motorcycle. Can I have a ride?”

“Tell you what, if you can help me, I'll take you out real soon, all day if you want.”

“Really?” She petted the handlebars. “You promise?”

“Cross my heart. Come on, Annie, sit down.” He took
the sketches from the saddlebag. “I have some pictures to show you.”

She settled her solid rump on the yellow stairs. “I like pictures.”

“I want you to look at them, look at them very carefully.” He sat beside her. “Will you do that?”

“I sure will.”

“And I want you to tell me, after you've looked at them, if you recognize the place. Okay?”

“Okeedoke.” She was grinning widely when she looked down. But the grin faded instantly. “I don't like these pictures.”

“They're important.”

“I don't want to look at them. I have better pictures inside. I can show you.”

He ignored his rapidly beating pulse and the urge to grab her by her poor wrinkled neck and shake. She knew. He recognized both knowledge and fear in her eyes. “Annie, I need you to look at them. And I need you to tell me the truth. You've seen this place?”

She pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head.

“Yes, you have. You've been there. You know where it is.”

“It's a bad place. I don't go there.”

He didn't touch her, afraid that no matter how he tried to keep his hand easy, his fingers would dig right through her flesh. “Why is it a bad place?”

“It just is. I don't want to talk about it. I want to go in now.”

“Annie. Annie, look at me now. Come on. Look at me.” He forced himself to smile when she complied. “I'm your friend, aren't I?”

“You're my friend. You give me rides and buy me ice
cream. It's hot now.” She smiled hopefully. “Ice cream'd be good.”

“Friends take care of each other. And they trust each other. I have to know about this place. I need you to tell me.”

She was in an agony of indecision. Things were always simple for her. Whether to get up or go to bed. Whether to walk west or east. Eat now or later. But this made her head ache and her stomach roll. “You won't tell?” she whispered.

“No. Trust me.”

“There are monsters there.” Her voice continued to whisper through her wrinkled lips. An aged child telling secrets. “At night, they go there and do things. Bad things.”

“Who?”

“The monsters in the black dresses. They have animal heads. They do things to women without clothes on. And they kill dogs and goats.”

“That's where you found the bracelet. The one you gave to Clare.”

She nodded. “I didn't think I should tell. You're not supposed to believe in monsters. They're just on the TV. If you talk about monsters, people think you're crazy, and they lock you up.”

“I don't think you're crazy. And no one's ever going to lock you up.” He touched her then, stroking her hair. “I need you to tell me where the place is.”

“It's in the woods.”

“Where?”

“Over there.” She gestured vaguely. “Over the rocks and through the trees.”

Acres of rocks and trees. He took a deep breath to keep
his voice even. “Annie, I need you to show me. Can you take me there?”

“Oh, no.” She got up, spry from panic. “No, indeedy, I don't go there now. It'll be dark. You can't go there at night when the monsters come.”

He took her hand to still the jingling bracelets. “Do you remember Clare Kimball?”

“She went away. Nobody knows where.”

“I think someone took her away, Annie. She didn't want to go. They may be taking her to that place tonight. They'll hurt her.”

“She's pretty.” Annie's lips began to tremble. “She came to visit.”

“Yes. She made this for you.” He turned the bracelet on her wrist. “Help me, Annie. Help Clare, and I swear to you I'll make the monsters go away.”

Ernie had been driving for hours. Away from town, in circles, out on the highway, and back on the rural roads. He knew his parents would be frantic, and he thought of them, for the first time in years, with real regret and need.

He knew what tonight would mean. It was a test, his last one. They wanted to initiate him quickly, finally, so that he would be bound to them by blood and fire and death. He'd thought of running away, but he had nowhere to go. There was only one path left for him. The path that led to a clearing in the woods.

It was his fault that Clare would die tonight. He knew it, had agonized over it. The teachings he had chosen to follow left no place for regret or guilt. They would wash him clean. He craved that, thought only of that as he turned his truck around and headed for his destiny.

Bud passed the Toyota, glanced at it absently, then remembered.
Swearing under his breath, he turned around and reached for the radio.

“Unit One, this is Unit Three. Do you copy?” He got nothing but static and repeated the call twice. “Come on, Cam, pick up. It's Bud.”

Shit on a stick, he thought, the sheriff was off the air, and he was stuck following some kid in a truck. God knew where, God knew why. Annoyed or not, Bud followed procedure and kept a safe distance back.

It was dusk, and the taillights of the pickup gleamed palely red.

When the truck turned off the road, Bud pulled over and stopped. Where the hell was the kid going? he wondered. That old logging trail led straight into the woods, and the Toyota wasn't a four-wheel drive. Hell, the sheriff had said to see what the kid was up to, so that's what he'd have to do.

He decided to go on foot. There was only one road in and one road out. Grabbing the flashlight, he hesitated. The sheriff might say it was cowboying, Bud thought as he strapped on his gun. But with everything the way it was, he wasn't going into the woods unarmed.

When he reached the start of the logging trail, he saw the truck. Ernie stood beside it, as if waiting. Thinking it would be his first-time-ever genuine stakeout, Bud crept back and crouched low in a gully.

Both he and Ernie heard the footsteps at the same time. The boy stepped forward, toward the two men who came out of the woods. Bud nearly betrayed himself by calling out when he recognized Doc Crampton and Mick.

They hadn't bothered with masks, Ernie thought, and was pleased. He shook his head at the cup with drugged wine.

“I don't need that. I took the oath.”

After a moment Crampton nodded and sipped from the cup himself. “I prefer a heightened awareness.” He offered the cup to Mick. “It will ease that twinge. That chest wound's healing well enough, but it's deep.”

“Damn tentanus shot was almost as bad.” Mick shared the drug. “The others are waiting. It's nearly time.”

Bud stayed crouched until they had disappeared into the trees. He wasn't sure what he had seen. He didn't want to believe what he had seen. He glanced back toward the road, knowing how long it would take him to go back and try to contact Cam again. Even if he succeeded, he would lose them.

He crawled out of the gully and followed.

They'd taken her clothes. Clare was beyond embarrassment. She hadn't been drugged. Atherton had told her, privately, that he wanted her fully aware of everything that happened. She could scream and beg and plead. It would only excite the others.

She'd fought when they dragged her to the altar. Though her arms and legs were stiff and weak from disuse, she'd struggled wildly, almost as horrified to see the familiar faces surrounding her as to recognize what was happening.

Less Gladhill and Bob Meese tied down her arms, Skunk Haggerty and George Howard her legs. She recognized a local farmer, the manager of the bank, two members of the town council. They all stood quietly and waited.

She managed to twist her wrist so that her fingers gripped Bob's.

“You can't do this. He's going to kill me. Bob, you can't let it happen. I've known you all my life.”

He pulled away and said nothing.

They were not to speak to her. Not to think of her as a woman, as a person they knew. She was an offering. Nothing more.

Each, in his turn, took up his mask. And became her nightmare.

She didn't scream. There was no one to hear, no one to care. She didn't cry. So many tears had been shed already that she was empty. She imagined that when they plunged the knife into her, they would find no blood. Only dust.

The candles were placed around her, then lighted. In the pit, the fire was ignited, and fed. Shimmers of heat danced on the air. She watched it all, eerily, detached. Whatever hope she had clung to through the days and nights she had spent in the dark was snuffed out.

Or so she thought, until she saw Ernie.

The tears she hadn't thought she had now sprang to her eyes. She struggled again, and the ropes scraped harmlessly against her bandages.

“Ernie, for God's sake. Please.”

He looked at her. He'd thought he would feel lust, a raw and needy fire inside the pit of his belly. She was naked, as he'd once imagined her. Her body was slender and white, just as it had been when he'd caught glimpses of her through her bedroom window.

But it wasn't lust, and he couldn't bear to analyze the emotion that crawled through him. He turned away and chose the mask of an eagle. Tonight, he would fly.

However immature her mind, Annie's body was old. She couldn't go quickly, no matter how Cam urged, pleaded, and supported. Fear added to the weight of her legs so that she dragged her feet.

The light was fading fast.

“How much farther, Annie?”

“It's up ahead some. I didn't have my supper,” she reminded him.

“Soon. You can eat soon.”

She sighed and turned, as instinctively as a deer or rabbit, taking a path overgrown with summer brush.

“Gotta watch out for them sticky bushes. They reach right out and grab you.” Her eyes darted right and left as she searched the lengthening shadows. “Like monsters.”

“I won't let them hurt you.” He put an arm around her waist, both for support and to hurry her along.

Comforted, she trudged ahead. “Are you going to marry Clare?”

“Yes.” Please God. “Yes, I am.”

“She's pretty. When she smiles, she has nice white teeth. Her daddy did, too. She looks like her daddy. He gave me roses. But he's dead now.” Her lungs were starting to trouble her so that she wheezed when she walked, like a worn-out engine. “The monsters didn't get him.”

“No.”

“He fell out the window, after those men went up and yelled at him.”

He looked down but didn't slacken pace. “What men?”

“Was that another time? I disremember. He left the light on in the attic.”

“What men, Annie?”

“Oh, the sheriff and the young deputy. They went up and then came out again. And he was dead.”

He swiped sweat from his brow. “Which young deputy? Bud?”

“No, t'other one. Maybe they went up to buy a house. Mr. Kimball, he used to sell houses.”

“Yes.” His skin turned icy beneath the sweat. “Annie, we have to hurry.”

Bud stood in the shelter of the trees and stared. He knew it was real, but his mind continued to reject it. Alice's father? How could it be? His friend and partner, Mick?

But he was seeing it with his own eyes. They were standing in a circle, their backs to him. He couldn't see what they were facing, and was afraid to try to move closer. It was best to wait and watch. That's what the sheriff would have him do.

He wiped a hand across his mouth as the chanting began.

It was like the dream. Clare closed her eyes and drifted between past and present. The smoke, the voices, the men. It was all the same.

She was in the bushes, hiding, watching herself. This time she would be able to run away.

She opened her eyes and stared up at the seamless black sky, crowned by a floating crescent moon. The longest day was over.

She saw the glint of a sword and braced. But it wasn't her time. Atherton was calling the Four Princes of Hell. She wished they would come, if there were such things, and devour him for his arrogance.

She turned her head away, unable to look, refusing to listen. She thought of Cam and the years they wouldn't share, the children they wouldn't make. He loved her, and now they would never have the chance to see if love was enough. To make it be enough.

He would find them. Stop them. She was sure of it, or
she would have gone mad. But it would be too late for her. Too late to talk to her mother again, to make up for the coolness and distance she'd put between them. Too late to tell the people who mattered that her father had made mistakes, had taken wrong turns, but hadn't been a thief or a murderer.

There was so much she'd wanted to do. So much left to see and touch. But she would die like this for one man's ego and others′ blind cruelty.

The rage built up in her. They had stripped her naked, of clothes, of dignity, of hope. And of life. Her hands balled into fists. Her body arched as she screamed.

Bud's hand went to the butt of his gun and stuck there, trembling.

Cam's head reared up, and the fear that shot through his veins was hot and pulsing. “Stay here.” He shook off Annie's clinging hands. “Stay here. Don't move.” He had his weapon out as he raced through the trees.

Atherton raised his knife toward the sky. He'd wanted her to scream. He'd yearned for it, sweated, the way a man yearns and sweats for sexual release. It had infuriated him when she'd lain still, like a doll already broken. Now she writhed on the altar, skin gleaming with sweat, eyes full of fear and anger.

And the power filled him.

“I am annihilation,” he cried out. “I am vengeance. I call upon the Master to fill me with His wrath so that I might slash with keen delight His victim. Her agony will sustain itself.”

The words buzzed in Ernie's ears. He could barely hear
them, could no longer understand them. The others swayed around him, captivated. Hungry for what was to come. It wasn't hunger that crawled through Ernie's gut, but a sickness.