Showdown (27 page)

Black is bad.

Black is not good.

Black is a psycho preacher, not an angel sent from heaven.

And you, Johnny, are not powerless.

Wind howled through the front door. The screen door slammed shut. He knew that there was no way to stop her, but he had to try—he had to do something!

Johnny ran for the hall and had just stepped past his doorway when a loud
plunk
sounded behind him.

He seized up, midstride. He turned back to his bedroom.

The first thing Johnny saw was that the red marble wasn't lying on the floor. The second was that it had embedded itself in the wall above his headboard.

Plunk
.

The marble shot out of the wall and came to a halt six inches from his nose.

He jumped back, but the marble jumped with him, staying exactly six inches from his nose. Johnny turned and ran down the hall, too panicked to scream.

He'd only taken four steps before realizing that the marble wasn't behind him. It was zooming through the air, still six inches in front of his nose.

He yelped and instinctively swatted at it like he might swat a bee doggedly pursuing him. Amazingly he made contact, and the ball flew into the wall, then fell to the floor. And lay still.

For one moment.

It returned to the air and came to rest six inches in front of his nose. This time it started to bounce in little one-inch hops.

If the marble was dangerous, wouldn't it have hit him by now? Didn't matter. Johnny couldn't accept this impossibility, bouncing in the air right in front of his nose.

He backed up. The marble hesitated, then bounced forward.

On the other hand, Johnny
had
to accept this impossibility in front of his nose. It was real, it was here, and it was bouncing like a pet, daring him to play.

Play?

Or daring him to hit it again, so that it would have sufficient justification to smash a neat round hole through his forehead
.

Why would a marble bounce in front of him? And how?

The marble stopped bouncing. It slowly floated wide, then down the hall. Johnny watched in fascination.

The red shooter came to rest just in front of the rear door. It began to bounce again. He couldn't help thinking that the marble was like a dog, begging him.

The back door opened. Wind howled. The screen door squealed. The marble slid outside.

The screen door remained still in the face of the wind, unaffected by gusts that whipped into the house and down the hall.

The marble began to bounce again.

Johnny felt like he was being led into a decision. The marble seemed to want him to follow.

To what? A trap set by Black? But if Black wanted him, why didn't he just come and get him? Johnny could hardly believe that he was thinking like this. He'd always doubted the supernatural, mostly because his mother didn't believe in it. She hated the church and convinced him over the years that everything the church stood for was nonsense. That included the miraculous—everything from a virgin birth to blind eyes being opened.

So what would she say about floating marbles?

Well,
his mother had been wrong. This was no hallucination, no magic trick. That marble bouncing outside their back door was supernatural.

If he didn't follow, then what?

Johnny turned into the short hall that led to his mother's room. He stepped past the wall. Waited.

The marble zoomed into view. And waited.

Johnny took a step toward it and the red sphere moved away, back down the hall and out of view. Johnny stepped out and faced the back door. The marble had taken up its bouncing just outside the house again.

Completely out of alternatives, Johnny walked down the hall and, when the marble flew into the alley, out of the house.

Gusts of hot wind tore at his clothes, but Johnny hardly cared about anything as insignificant as wind. His eyes were on the marble, which now rose a good ten feet into the air where it hovered, oblivious, like Johnny, to the wind.

Then it moved. At an angle. Gaining speed. Over the trees. It streaked out of sight in the direction of the steep slopes that rose to the south.

And it didn't return.

The sky was empty except for black clouds and blowing leaves. The marble was gone. Johnny felt stranded. Maybe even betrayed. He waited a full minute. Nothing. He couldn't just walk up the mountain.

Strange how badly he wanted that marble to return.

Johnny turned back to the door and saw that it was still open. He took a step toward the house. The door slammed shut.

Okay, so maybe he was supposed to go the other way, up the mountain. There was only one way that he knew of—a path that headed up behind the old theater, and that was rarely used because it traversed property owned by some corporation out east who frowned on trespassing. More than one hefty fine had been paid over the years.

Johnny faced the alley, gathered his courage, and struck out against the wind.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE MONASTERY

Saturday afternoon

TEN OF the eleven teachers were seated around the thick mahogany conference table when David Abraham stepped into the room from his office. Ten. Raul was still missing.

The teachers looked crestfallen by the monumental defeat they'd been handed two hours earlier. A dozen white candles suspended from a golden chandelier lit their faces. Heavy navy blue velvet drapes imported from Spain lined the entire conference room except for the south wall, where a large painting of two children tickling each other's noses with daisies served as a constant reminder of why they'd all given so many years of their lives to Project Showdown.

“Where is Raul?” David asked, crossing to the head of the table.

“He's checking on the students,” Andrew said.

As if on cue, Raul walked in, robe swirling. He walked to the table quickly.

“Fifteen more have followed the others into the tunnels,” he said. “That makes nineteen below and eighteen above. I can hardly imagine a worse scenario.”

Raul reached the table, but didn't sit. He paced, ran an arm across his wet brow, pushing his locks to the side as he did. “I understand this principle of testing them by fire to harden the steel of their wills, but it appears those wills have melted. At least most of them, and I imagine others will follow.”

“Sit down, Raul.”

The head overseer sat.

“Where is Samuel?” David asked.

“He's retreated to his room. To write, he said.”

David nodded. He had always known that this moment would come, and upon reflection his decision to withhold the truth from these good-hearted men seemed right. Certainly necessary.

Now they would learn what he told Samuel four days earlier, when Billy first entered the forbidden places below.

“Evil has conquered the students,” Andrew said.

David pulled out his chair and sat.“Has it,Andrew? Our risk has increased, but can there be life without risk? Did God take a risk by creating man with a free will? Did he know of the horrors that would follow?”

“God knew the outcome. We do not,” Andrew said.

“True, but allowed evil to test that outcome. Did you all think this day would never come?”

“Don't get me wrong,” Raul said. “God allowing evil and us jeopardizing our life's work strike me as two different things. Just because God allowed evil doesn't mean we should. These are children, David! They're contracting a disease down there!”

David looked around the table. “The rest of you feel the same?”

To a man they looked desperate. Several nodded. The rest didn't respond.

Mark Anthony, the forthright monk who'd come to them from a little-known New Mexico monastery, Christ in the Desert, spoke. “Correct me if I'm misunderstanding the situation, but there are only three ways out of our current predicament. One, the children come to their senses on their own, through a second challenge perhaps. Two, the children remain in the tunnels and disintegrate into an unholy mess, perhaps ending in death. Or three, we intervene.”

“I think that summarizes it well enough,” David said. “Assuming we can stop what has started. And of these outcomes, which conforms to the purpose of this project?”

Raul responded from the far end. “Certainly not death.”

“Then what, Raul, is your suggestion?”

The head overseer hesitated. No matter how much they protested, surely none of them would suggest throwing in the towel until every possible alternative had been explored. David was counting on it.

“We cast another challenge immediately,” Raul said. “This time Samuel can argue—”

“The rules require us to wait three days.”

“Then change the rules!”Andrew said. “It's the rules that have put us here.”

“So you're suggesting we pull the plug on the monastery now? Send the children back to the orphanages and count our project as a failure?”

No response. Good. He would build on this position of strength.

“Excuse me for the interruption.” Francis Matthew, the quiet priest from Ireland, looked up at David.“But do we know what is causing their disease?”

David eyed the man. “The worms,” he said.

“Worms?” Andrew said. “What worms?”

“There are worms in the dungeons. Their excretions seem to have a harmful effect on . . . certain children.”

The teachers stared at him, clearly taken aback by this revelation.

“How long have you known about these . . . these worms?” Andrew asked.

David put his elbows on the table and gently pressed his palms together. “Bear with me for a moment. Mark, please remind us why we are here.”

The overseer looked around the table, searching for the catch. They all knew why they were here. Why would David ask?

“We are twelve teachers—now eleven—gathered from around the world for this project sponsored by Harvard University. The project's purpose is to examine innocence and the effects of evil upon that innocence. We are sworn to follow strict guidelines in the instruction of thirty-seven children, which you brought to this monastery nearly thirteen years ago. The children have been carefully isolated from influences that might corrupt them. When they are sixteen, they will be reinserted into society, and we will see what effects the children and society have upon each other.”

Mark stopped. In a nutshell that was it. Or, more correctly, that was what they all thought.

“And how have they been instructed?”

“They have been instructed in all disciplines. We have carefully taught them to distinguish right from wrong according to a monotheistic world-view that follows the teachings of Christ.”

“Good. And what else?”

“I'm not sure how specific you want me to be. You determined from the beginning that we should focus all of their learning through writing. We've taught the children to understand the best of all human experiences and to pen them eloquently. They are arguably the world's finest writers at this age.”

“An understatement, wouldn't you say?”

“I would. To a student, they are brilliant writers, regardless of their age.”

David nodded slowly. “You've each done a masterful job with admirable dedication. I couldn't have found more loving and honorable men if I'd spent a decade scouring the earth.”

They sat in silence. The air felt heavy.

“What I'm about to tell you will come as a shock. When you've heard, I think you'll understand my decision not to tell you sooner.”

For twelve years, he'd dreaded this moment. Now that it was upon him, he was eager for it.

“You all know of me as a historian and psychologist. You also know that I was and am an avid collector of antiquities. My collection was well known before I left Harvard University.”

“Left Harvard?” Andrew asked. “You're no longer with the university?”

“No, my friend, I am not.” He took a deep breath. “In truth, Project Showdown has nothing whatsoever to do with Harvard. Or, for that matter, any other institution. It is funded and run solely by me. The sale of my collection was quite lucrative.”

He paused and studied them. They would need a minute to absorb that he'd been feeding them a bald-faced lie for the past thirteen years. They were in shock. Either that or exceptionally even mannered.

He seized on their silence.

“Nearly twenty years ago, an antiquities dealer from Iran sent me a rather large shipment of unspecified and unverified artifacts for a tidy sum. Mostly clay pots, for which I quickly determined I'd overpaid. But there was one item of interest.

“The shipment contained a crate of ancient books, mostly diaries kept by mullahs and such. Among the books was one particularly old leather-bound volume that was unique for two reasons. One, it appeared to be from a time period earlier than its binding would suggest, like finding a steel sword from the bronze age. Two, it contained only one entry. The rest of the book was blank, which I could not make sense of, because the title was
The Stories of History
. I analyzed the single entry and discovered that it was written in a unique kind of charcoal whose use was discontinued long before the kind of paper in the book was ever discovered. Very odd. Do you follow this?”

They stared at him without responding, but these anomalies weren't lost on such scholars.

“For two years the book sat in my study, a mystery to me. Then one day my eldest son, Christopher, when he was five years old, wrote in the book. Yes, he was a very bright boy.”

They all knew that his eldest son had been killed in an automobile accident when he was six.

“How he got the book from the shelf I don't know, but he had the book on the desk behind me. It was a secretary I reserved for paying bills and attending personal business. An oak desk. Stained, not painted. But you see, that was a problem, because when I glanced back to see my son with the book, I saw that the desk was red, not a stained oak as it had been only minutes earlier. I was stunned. Here sat a bright red desk in my office, and I had no idea how it got there.”