The Scream (40 page)

The murder.

And the presence of Cyndi Wyler . . .

The girl's story was lunacy, even for a man of the Spirit. It was one thing to claim that her missing friend had shown up at Rock Aid, quite another to claim she was a walking, talking corpse.
Damn
that idiot Weissman! Furniss didn't know much about mind-destroying drugs, other than the obvious connotations; but he had heard about flashbacks, and there was little doubt in his mind that Mary had gotten away from him at the concert and experienced exactly that. Probably smoked some pot or crack or God knows what! He wondered how prudent it was to allow a girl like that to remain at the Village.

The water splished down. Still, there was something compelling about her. He thought about it as he rinsed away the soap and shampoo. Her commitment to the spirit,
whatever
its original inspiration, was truly impressive. Ever since she'd arrived at the Village, she'd done little other than study the Scriptures, day in and day out. That drive, that level of scholarly intent, was almost unheard of at LCV.

That, combined with the terrible aura of sadness around her, made her an object of powerful fascination. (This he mused as he lathered up once again, this time with simple Prell.) She had experienced true Christian suffering, and its mark was upon her. It made her seem so vulnerable, so pure. . . .

It was the smoothness of the lather, the gentle warm rushing of the water, that put the thought in his head. It was the simple fact of his nakedness, his isolation.

It was the Devil Himself.

Suddenly, in his mind's eye, she had come to his arms, and the sun was shining, bright and warm, and she was naked against him, he could feel her tight young flesh against his own
. . .

"No," he muttered, wiping and opening his eyes. The familiar pale aquamarine tiles of the shower stall greeted him, pulled him back toward safety.

But it was too late. Too late. The seed had awakened, and every steaming molecule of air in the room was charged with that knowledge. This wasn't like the other times, no . . . not like the sinful weakness he'd felt toward the Anderson boy (Lord, forgive me!) or any of the other times he'd yielded to the lusting of the foul animal within him. He could feel the slow stirring in his male organ, like a long-slumbering beast aroused from hibernation by the scent of fresh-killed meat.

"No," he repeated, and then his eyes went shut again . . .

. . .
and her long blond hair was in his hands, flush against her smooth back as he stroked its length, down to her glorious hips, the great round globes of her
. . .

"NO!" Furniss shouted, slamming his fist against the tiles. A pointless gesture. The pictures were still there, even with his eyes open: a ghost image transposed over the shower's reality, the sight of suds cascading down his belly and to either side of his burgeoning erection . . .

. . .
and she made a little noise, so sweet, as his tongue caressed her ear, while her own hands came up and around to take and stroke him gently
. . .

He was stroking himself. He stopped, stared at the offending hand. Sweat began to form under his skin despite the water, as if, in fact, it had suddenly hiked up thirty degrees. "Dear God," he began, "please help me. This is wrong. . . ."

. . .
and she was sliding down the length of him now to take him in her mouth
. . .

". . . Jesus, please . . ."

. . .
her fine ripe succulent fifteen-year-old mouth
. . .

". . . have mercy . . ."

. . .
and he could feel the motion, was slave to the motion, the deep and shallow and deep and shallow and deep
. . .

. . .
and he was committed now, God help him, there was no turning back, he was fully erect now and aching for release as she worked him and worked him, shallow and deep
. . .

. . . and he leaned against the wall with his free hand, no longer praying, eyes squinted against the tumbling water and his own deep-seated shame . . .

. . .
as he entered between those beautiful hips from the rear, entered her deeply, wrenching great sweet sobs of joy from her as he ground inexorably toward his own massive conclusion
. . .

. . . and then he watched, grim-faced and panting, as the last few strokes of his hand produced the driblets of squandered seed that were his just reward. Even as the passion gripped him, caught the breath in his lungs and then bucked it out in spasms, he was disgusted.

He saw himself, his fantasy gone: a pudgy middle-aged man of God, clutching his reddened pud while his heart hammered in his throat. He watched his semen spiral around to catch in the hair-clogged drain, and a physical wave of revulsion ballooned in his gut.

A man of
God
!

For surely this was the Devil's work. The Devil, working through the weakness of the flesh and the soul's own sinful nature, dragging him down to the level of the animals and worse!

Because he knew better.

Because he was a man of God, anointed in the blood of the Lamb . . .

"Give me strength," he croaked, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Give me strength, O Lord, and forgive me my weakness. For I have fallen short of the Glory of God.

"But I am your servant, chosen by You to lead Your flock in the ways of Your love.

"Help me, O Lord, so that I might save them from themselves."

Then he turned off the shower, toweled dry, and-almost as an afterthought-eliminated all evidence of his crime.

The target range was directly across the trail from Cody's shack, roughly equidistant between the lodge and the house. The trenchlike slice had been carved ten-feet deep into the clay soil of the mountainside around nineteen fifty-two, back when little Cody was glued to a black-and-white Zenith somewhere in Arizona, watching Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. It had long fallen into disrepair: the timbers that lined its thirty-meter length rotting away with each successive season's cycle of decay, brush and branches falling to clog the clearing.

Cody had fixed all that, damned near single-handedly. He cleaned out the flora, replaced the rotten beams and put in a variety of fresh targets. It was set up to accommodate all manner of projectile-throwing implements: rifles, side arms, or bows. Pennsylvania's weapons laws were significantly more accommodating than the Big Apple's, and quite a few members of the crew had availed themselves of that fact and either acquired weapons or legitimized ones already in their possession. Most of them, anyway.

Personally, Cody preferred more subtle, if no less lethal, devices. "This here," he lectured, "is yer basic Magnum Force Trident." He brandished the bizarre weapon: a black, high-tech-looking crossbow pistol, replete with cross-haired scope. "It's twenty-four-ounce, heavy-gauge aluminum, with a laminated fiberglass bow strung with forty-five pounds of tension, and it's accurate up to sixty feet." He aimed it at a sandbagged target halfway back and squeezed the trigger. An eight-inch bolt whizzed out and away, sinking into the bull's-eye with an abrupt
thwok
!

Slim Jim whistled appreciatively. Hempstead just shook his head and laughed. "Not bad, but somehow it would be a whole lot mo' fearsome if you didn't boost yo' sales pitch straight outta the
Sharper Image
catalog."

"Yeah, well"-Cody grinned-"you take it where you find it, dude."

"You got this from the
Sharper Image
?!" Slim Jim asked incredulously, taking the weapon into his hand and hefting it. "Who the fuck are they
selling
'em to?"

"Same yups that buy the fake samurai swords, ah guess." Hempstead nudged; Cody winced. "Seriously," Hempstead continued, letting the ribbing drop, "I prefer something with more of a
kick
."

He held up his hunting rifle like a kid at Christmastime and looked very serious. "Kleingeunther K-fifteen two seventy Winchester, Frontier one forty-grain boat-tail spire-point interlock ammo, Redfield Illuminator 3X-9X scope." He finished the dissertation, shouldered the gun, sighted in the target, and said, "Go 'head, homeboy. Fire another bolt."

Cody looked at Slim Jim, shrugged, and loaded up another one. He took aim, said, "Puttin' it in at three o'clock," and squeezed the trigger. The bolt flew out; Hempstead squeezed off a shot a split second later.

And blew the bolt out of the air not five inches from the target.

"Whoa," the voice behind them said, "nice shootin' thar, Tex."

They all turned. Jake smiled wanly as he stepped off the trail. "Nice day, huh. You boys rehearsing for World War III or something?"

They all grinned and kicked at the dirt. Cody lit a joint and passed it on to Slim Jim. "Could be," Hempstead replied, "given our current situation, it's not the worst idea in the world. You joining us?"

He nodded toward the Cordura bag slung across Jake's right shoulder. Jake shrugged and laid it down on the rough-hewn balance beam, unzipped it, and withdrew a lever action Marlin .30-06, also scope-mounted.

"Just thought I'd do a little target practice, is all."

"Uh-huh. Looks like you're not the only one."

"Looks like things are getting a little tense around here."

"Uh-huh."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Jake was staring at Hempstead quizzically when he heard the metallic
claack
of a machine-gun bolt pulling back. Every hair on the back of his neck went static-upright. He turned around to face Slim Jim, who cradled an Uzi in his arms.

"I do believe," Jim said, "that we need to do a wee bit more than talk."

Walker felt the shadow fall across his face like an ink-black pillow, threatening to smother the life out of him.

"
Walker
,
" Momma hissed in a voice like rope twisting in a high wind.

"
WALKER!!
"

He sat up, rumpled and sweating. Beads of perspiration trickled into the indentation in the leather upholstery of the couch, where his shirt could better absorb them. His neck hurt. It had not been a nice dream: short and violent and born of sleep not deep enough to ease the fatigue. His scars throbbed. He looked across the office.

The drapes sealed out ninety-nine percent of the afternoon sun, but several valiant beams had weasled through a slit in the drapes to shine across the ancient carpet; dust motes floated langourously in the swaths of golden light.

"
Get up
.
"

The dust swirled turbulently. The sunbeams halted in midair, sliced off and swallowed by the blackness that loomed toward him. "What is it? What's going on?"

"
Trouble
.
"

"Great," he spat, sitting fully upright. "What, specifically?"

Momma told him what she knew. It was limited. He was still her eyes and ears, and her "other sources" operated on much more obscure levels of perception. But they were usually right, and it could indeed be dangerous.

Walker ran a hand through his hair; he was exhausted. "Can it wait?"

"
I think not
.
"

"So what should we do?"

"
Take care of it. Make a call. Head 'em off at the pass
.

"
Just fix it
.
"

"All right." He sighed, standing and walking to the desk. The number was already loaded into the phone's memory. The arrangements were made in less than three minutes.

Walker sat back in the big leather chair. The shadow was a jack-o'-lantern slit in the middle of the floor. "I had a dream. It was about-"

"
I know what it was about
,
" Momma said. "
Remember the old saying, Walker: Be careful what you dream
. . .
"

Yeah
, he thought.

It just might come true
.

It was the Symphony of Life: her own soul-music, sweetly redefining the air itself with sound. Jesse let it flow over her, catch her in its rhythms, propel her as she rose and fell and ground and writhed and rose to fall again upon the sweet hard love inside her.

And Pete was beneath her, smiling up at her, then closing his eyes and making little Pete-noises. They mingled with her own, the sound from the speakers, feeding life back into the symphony.

Just as the electrodes attached to them fed living pulses back to the master translator.

Back to DIOS.

She rode him, with heat and deliberate abandon, anticipating the flood within her that would signal his release, anticipating her own wild ride's conclusion. It was building now, and she picked up her pace, giving herself over more fully to the pull of the waves.

For that was the essence of the cosmic dance, the fabric underlying all creation. That moment of release and abandon.

When all of the barriers break down.

And the mysteries reveal.

On the subatomic level there are no barriers. On the subatomic level even the binary code is subsumed. No more on or off, yes or no, life or death. Just an endless continuum of being, neither isolated as a particle nor undifferentiated as a wave. Quantum theory calls them wavicles; and they join all things together into one infinitely multifaceted Whole.

Within that Whole, all things are contained. Every choice. Every option. If it exists anywhere in the universe, it is there. If one can imagine it, it is there.

The only difference is in the rate of the vibration.

And that rate of vibration determines everything. Determines shape. Determines sound. Determines density and the characteristics thereof. Determines, even in dreamland, what is bed and what is bedded, what is solid and what is gas, distinguishes between vagina and penis and the chemical structure of the lubricants between.

If one could listen in, at the subatomic level, one could hear the infinite timbres come together in exquisite song.