Strange Highways (18 page)

“Sometimes you seem … “

“How do I seem?”

“Different.”

“From what?”

“From everyone.”

A shadow of a smile drew her lips into a suggestion of a curve. “I’m not just the principal’s daughter.”

“Oh? What else?”

“I’m a woman.”

“More than that,” he insisted.

“Is there more than that?”

“Sometimes you seem … much older than you are.”

“There are things I know.”

“Tell me.”

“Certain things.”

“I should know them too.”

“They can’t be told,” she said enigmatically, and her pale smile faded.

“Aren’t we in this together?” he asked sharply.

She looked at him again, eyes widening. “Oh, yes.”

“Then if there’s anything you know that can help-“

“Deeper than you think,” she whispered.

“What?”

“We’re in it together deeper than you think.”

Either she was choosing to be inscrutable or there was less mystery in the moment than Joey imagined.

She returned her attention to the nave.

They were silent.

Like the frantic wings of trapped birds struggling to break free, rain and wind beat against the church.

After a while he said, “I feel warm.”

“It’s been heating up in here for some time,” Celeste confirmed.

“How can that be? We didn’t turn on any furnace.”

“It’s coming up through the floor. Don’t you feel it? Through every chink, every crack in the boards.”

He put his hand on the presbytery floor and discovered that the wood was actually warm to the touch.

Celeste said, “Rising from the ground under the church, from the fires far below.”

“Maybe not so far any more.” Remembering the ticking metal box in the corner of the study at her house, Joey said, “Should we be worried about toxic gases?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“There’s worse tonight.”

Within only a minute or two, a fine dew of perspiration formed on his brow.

Searching his jacket pockets for a handkerchief, Joey found a wad of money instead. Two ten-dollar bills. Two fives. Thirty bucks.

He kept forgetting that what had happened twenty years in the past had also, in another sense, happened only hours ago.

Staring in horror at the folded currency, Joey recalled the persistence with which P.J. had forced it upon him back there in the humid closeness of the parked car. The body hidden in the trunk. The smell of rain heavy in the night. The odor of blood heavier in his memory.

He shuddered violently and dropped the money.

As they fell out of his hand, the rumpled bills became coins and rang against the wooden floor, making a music like altar bells. Glittering, spinning, clinking, wobbling, rattling, they quickly settled into a silent heap beside him.

“What’s that?” Celeste asked.

He glanced at her. She hadn’t seen. He was between her and the coins.

“Silver,” he said.

But when he looked again, the coins were gone. Only a wad of paper currency lay on the floor.

The church was hot. The window glass, streaming with rain, appeared to be melting.

His heart was suddenly racing. Pounding like a penitent fist upon the wrong side of his breast.

“He’s coming,” Joey said.

“Where?”

Rising slightly, Joey pointed across the balustrade and along the center aisle to the archway at the back of the nave, to the dimly lighted narthex beyond the arch, to the front doors of the church, which were barely visible in the shadows. “He’s coming.”

16

WITH A FORTHRIGHT SHRIEK OF UNCOILED HINGES, THE CHURCH DOORS opened out of darkness into shadow, out of the cold night into the strange heat, out of the blustering storm into a quiet one, and a man entered the narthex. He didn’t proceed stealthily or even with any noticeable caution, but walked directly to the nave arch, and with him came the rotten-egg fumes from the vent pipe outside.

It was P.J. He was wearing the same black boots, beige cords, and red cable-knit sweater that he had been wearing earlier in the evening, back at the house, at dinner, and later in the car when he had argued the merits of forgetfulness and brotherly bonds. Since then he had put on a black ski jacket.

This was not the P.J. Shannon whose novels always found a home on the best-seller lists, not the New-Age Kerouac who had crossed the country uncounted times in various vans, motor homes, and cars. This P.J. was still shy of his twenty-fourth birthday, a recent graduate of Notre Dame, home from his new job in New York publishing.

He wasn’t carrying the rifle with which he’d shot the Bimmers, and he didn’t seem to think he needed it. He stood in the archway, feet planted wide, hands empty at his sides, smiling.

Until now, Joey had forgotten the
extreme
confidence of P.J. at that age, the tremendous power that he radiated, the sheer
intensity
of his presence. The word “charismatic” had been overused even in 1975; by 1995, it was employed by journalists and critics to describe every new politician who had not yet been caught stealing, every new rap singer who thought “hate” rhymed with “rape,” every young actor with more smoldering in his eyes than in his brain. But whether in 1995 or 1975, the word seemed to have been invented for P.J. Shannon. He had all the charisma of an Old Testament prophet without the beard and robes, commanding attention sheerly by his presence, so magnetic that he seemed to exert an influence upon even inanimate objects, realigning all things around him until even the lines of the church’s architecture subtly focused attention toward him.

Meeting Joey’s eyes across the length of the church, P.J. said, “Joey, you surprise me.”

With one sleeve, Joey blotted the sweat on his face, but he didn’t reply.

“I thought we had a bargain,” said P.J.

Joey put one hand on his shotgun, which lay on the presbytery floor beside him. But he didn’t pick it up. P.J. could dodge out of the archway and back into the narthex before Joey would be able to raise the gun and pump off a round. Besides, at that distance, mortal damage probably couldn’t be done with a shotgun even if P.J. failed to get out of the line of fire fast enough.

“All you had to do was go back to college like a good boy, back to your job at the supermarket, lose yourself in the daily struggle of life, the gray grinding boredom that you were born for. But you had to stick your nose in this.”

“You
wanted
me to follow you here,” Joey said.

“Well, true enough, little brother. But I was never sure you’d actually
do
it. You’re just a little priest-loving, rosary-kissing altar boy. Why should I expect
you
to have any guts? I thought you might even go back to college and make yourself accept my cockamamie story about the mountain man up on Pine Ridge.”

“I did.”

“What?”

“Once,” Joey said. “But not this time.”

P.J. was clearly baffled. This was the first and only time that he would ever live through this strange night. Joey had been through a variation of it once before, and only Joey had been given a second chance to do it right.

From the floor beside him, Joey scooped up the thirty dollars and, still half sheltered behind the balustrade, threw it at P.J. Although wadded in a ball the paper currency sailed only as far as the end of the choir enclosure and fell short of the sanctuary railing. “Take back your silver.”

For a moment P.J. seemed stunned, but then he said, “What an odd thing to say, little brother.”

“When did you make your bargain?” Joey asked, hoping that he was right about P.J.’s psychotic fantasy and was playing into it in a way that would shake him out of his smug complacency.

“Bargain?” P.J. asked.

“When did you sell your soul?”

Shifting his attention to Celeste, P.J. said, “You must have helped him puzzle it out. His mind doesn’t have a dark bent that would let him see the truth on his own. Certainly not in the couple of hours since he opened my car trunk. You’re an interesting young lady. Who are you?”

Celeste didn’t answer him.

“The girl by the road,” P.J. said. “I know that much. I would hat had you by now if Joey hadn’t interfered. But who
else
are you?”

Secret identities. Dual identities. Conspiracies. P.J. was indeed operating in the complex and melodramatic world of a paranoid psychotic with religious delusions, and he evidently believed that he saw in Celeste some otherworldly presence.

She remained silent. Crouching by the balustrade. One hand on hey shotgun, which lay on the presbytery floor.

Joey hoped she wouldn’t use the weapon. They needed either to lure P.J. farther into the church, within range—or they needed to convince him that they didn’t need guns at all and felt confident about trusting in the power of the holy ground on which they stood.

“Know where the thirty bucks came from, Joey?” P.J. asked. “From Beverly Korshak’s purse. Now I’ll have to gather it up and put it its your pocket again later. Preserve the evidence.”

At last Joey understood what role P.J. had in mind for him. was expected to take the fall for everything his brother had done—and would do—this night. No doubt his own murder would have been made to look like suicide: Priest-loving, rosary-kissing altar flips out, kills twelve in Satanic ceremony, takes own life, film al eleven.

He had escaped that fate twenty years ago when he had failed to follow P.J. onto Coal Valley Road—but he’d taken a turn into another destiny that had been nearly as bad. This time, he had to avoid both those options.

“You asked when I sold my soul,” P.J. said, still lingering in the narthex archway. “I was thirteen, you were ten. I got hold of the books about Satanism, the Black Mass—neat stuff. I was
ripe
for them Joey. Held my funny little ceremonies in the woods. Small animals on my little altar in the woods. I was ready to slit
your
throat, kiddo, and cut your heart out if nothing else had worked. But it didn’t come to that. It was so much easier than that. I’m not even sure the ceremonies were necessary, you know? I think all that was necessary was to
want
it badly enough. Wanting it with every fiber of my being, with all my heart, wanting it so badly that I
hurt
with wanting it—that’s what opened the door and let him in.”

“Him?” Joey said.

“Satan, Scratch, the devil, spooky old Beelzebub,” said P.J. in a jokey and theatrical tone of voice. “Boy, he’s not at all like that, Joey. He’s actually a warm, fuzzy old beast—at least to those who embrace him.”

Though Celeste remained crouched behind the balustrade, Joey rose to his full height.

“That’s right, kiddo,” P.J. encouraged. “Don’t be afraid. Your big brother won’t spout green fire out his nose or sprout leathery wings.”

Desert-dry heat was still coming through the floor.

Like ectoplasmic faces pressed to the glass, condensation began to form on some of the windows.

“Why did you do it, P.J.?” Joey asked, pretending to believe in such things as souls and bargains with the devil.

“Oh, kiddo, even then I was sick to death of being poor, afraid of growing up to be a useless piece of shit like our old man. Wanted money in my pocket, cool cars when I got old enough for them, my pick of the girls. And there was no way that was ever going to happen to me like I was, not when I was just one of the Shannon boys, living in a room next to the furnace. But
after
I made the deal—well, look what happened. Football star. Top grades in my class. Most popular boy in school. Girls couldn’t wait to spread their legs for me—and even after I’d dump one of them, she’d still love me, moon over me, never say a word against me. Then a full scholarship to a
Catholic
university, and how’s that for irony”

Joey shook his head in denial. “You were always a good athlete, even as a kid. And real smart. And everyone always liked you. You always
had
those things, P.J.”

“The
hell
I did,” P.J. said, raising his voice for the first time. “God gave me nothing when I came into this world, nothing, nothing but crosses to bear. He’s a great advocate of suffering, God is. A real sadist. I had
nothing
until I made a deal for it.”

Reason and logic would have no effect on him, especially not if his psychosis had taken root when he’d been a child. He was a long time gone into madness. The only hope of manipulating him into a disadvantageous position was to play into his fantasy, encourage him.

P.J. said, “Why don’t you try it, Joey? You won’t have to learn a lot of chants, conduct ceremonies in the woods, none of that. Just
want
it, open your heart to it, and you can have your own companion.”

“Companion?”

“Like I have Judas. A rider on the soul. I invited him into me. I let him out of Hell for a while, and in return he takes good care of me. He has big plans for me, Joey. Wealth, fame. He wants me to satisfy every desire I have, because he experiences everything through me—feels the girls through me, tastes the champagne, shares the sense of power, the glorious power, when it’s time to kill. He wants only the very best for me, Joey, and he makes sure that I get it. You could have a companion of your own, kiddo. I can make it happen, I really, can.”

Joey was rendered speechless by the astonishing complexity of P.J.’s twisted fantasy of Faustian bargains, negotiated damnation, and possession. If he had not spent twenty years reading the most exotic cases of aberrant psychology ever published, he could not have begun to grasp the nature of the human monster with whom he was dealing He could not possibly have understood P.J. the
first
time that he’d lived through this night, because then he had lacked the special knowledge that allowed him to comprehend.

P.J. said, “You just have to
want
it, Joey. Then we kill this bitch here. One of the Dolan boys is sixteen. Big kid. We can make it look like he did it all, then killed himself. You and me—we walk away, and from now on we’re together, tighter than brothers, together like we’ve
never
been before.”