The Servants of Twilight (26 page)
The big man said, “What’d you do to her? What’d you do?”
“Nothing,” Charlie said. “We were—”
“Let them go,” Grace Spivey said. “Let them pass, Kyle.”
The giant hesitated. His eyes, like hard bright sea creatures hiding deep under a suboceanic shelf, regarded Charlie with a pure malignant fury that would have given nightmares to the devil himself. At last he let go of Charlie, lumbered toward the table at which the woman sat. He spotted blood on her hands and wheeled back toward Charlie.
“She did it to herself,” Charlie said, edging toward the door. He didn’t like the wheedling note in his own voice, but at the moment there didn’t seem to be room for pride. To give in to a macho urge would be ironclad proof of feeblemindedness. “We didn’t touch her.”
“Let them go,” Grace Spivey repeated.
In a low, menacing voice, the giant said, “Get out. Fast.”
Charlie and Henry did as they were told.
The florid-faced woman with the protruding green eyes was waiting at the front of the rectory. As they hurried down the hallway, she opened the door. The instant they stepped onto the porch, she slammed the door behind them and locked it.
Charlie went out into the rain without putting up his umbrella. He turned his face toward the sky. The rain felt fresh and clean, and he let it hammer at him because he felt soiled by the madness in the house.
“God help us,” Henry said shakily.
They walked out to the street.
Dirty water was churning to the top of the gutter. It formed a brown lake out toward the intersection, and bits of litter, like a flotilla of tiny boats, sailed on the windchopped surface.
Charlie turned and looked back at the rectory. Now its grime and deterioration seemed like more than ordinary urban decay; the rot was a reflection of the minds of the building’s occupants. In the dust-filmed windows, in the peeling paint and sagging porch and badly cracked stucco, he saw not merely ruin but the physical world’s representation of human madness. He had read a lot of science fiction as a child, still read some now and then, so maybe that was why he thought of the Law of Entropy, which held that the universe and all things within it moved in only one basic direction—toward decay, collapse, dissolution, and chaos. The Church of the Twilight seemed to embrace entropy as the ultimate expression of divinity, aggressively promulgating madness, unreason, and chaos, reveling in it.
He was scared.
31
After breakfast, Christine
called Val Gardner and a couple of other people, assured them that she and Joey were all right, but didn’t tell any of them where she was. Thanks to the Church of the Twilight, she no longer entirely trusted her friends, not even Val, and she resented that sad development.
called Val Gardner and a couple of other people, assured them that she and Joey were all right, but didn’t tell any of them where she was. Thanks to the Church of the Twilight, she no longer entirely trusted her friends, not even Val, and she resented that sad development.
By the time she finished making her phone calls, two new bodyguards arrived to relieve Vince and George. One of them, Sandy Breckenstein, was tall and lean, about thirty, with a prominent Adam’s apple; he brought to mind Ichabod Crane in the old Disney cartoon version of
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
. Sandy’s partner was Max Steck, a bull of a man with big-knuckled hands, a massive chest, a neck almost as thick as his head—and a smile as sweet as any child’s.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
. Sandy’s partner was Max Steck, a bull of a man with big-knuckled hands, a massive chest, a neck almost as thick as his head—and a smile as sweet as any child’s.
Joey took an immediate liking to both Sandy and Max and was soon running back and forth from one end of the small house to the other, trying to keep company with both of them, jabbering away, asking them what it was like to be a bodyguard, telling them his charmingly garbled version of George Swarthout’s story about the giraffe who could talk and the princess who didn’t have a horse.
Christine was not as quick as Joey to place her confidence in her new protectors. She was friendly but cautious, watchful.
She wished she had a weapon of her own. She didn’t have her pistol anymore. The police had kept it last night until they could verify that it was properly registered. She couldn’t very well take a knife from the kitchen drawer and walk around with it in her hand; if either Sandy or Max
was
a follower of Grace Spivey, the knife might not forestall violence but precipitate it. And if neither of them was a Twilighter, she would only offend and alienate them by such an open display of distrust. Her only weapons were wariness and her wits, which wouldn’t be terribly effective if she found herself confronted by a maniac with a .357 Magnum.
was
a follower of Grace Spivey, the knife might not forestall violence but precipitate it. And if neither of them was a Twilighter, she would only offend and alienate them by such an open display of distrust. Her only weapons were wariness and her wits, which wouldn’t be terribly effective if she found herself confronted by a maniac with a .357 Magnum.
However, when trouble paid a visit, shortly after nine o’clock, it did not come from either Sandy or Max. In fact, it was Sandy, keeping watch from a chair by a living room window, who saw that something was wrong and called their attention to it.
When Christine came in from the kitchen to ask him if he wanted more coffee, she found him studying the street outside with visible tension. He had risen from the chair, leaned closer to the window, and was holding the binoculars to his eyes.
“What is it?” she asked. “Who’s out there?”
He watched for a moment longer, then lowered the binoculars. “Maybe nobody.”
“But you think there is.”
“Go tell Max to keep a sharp eye at the back,” Sandy said, his Adam’s apple bobbling. “Tell him the same van has cruised by the house three times.”
Her heartbeat accelerated as if someone had thrown a switch. “A white van?”
“No,” he said. “Midnight blue Dodge with a surfing mural on the side. Probably it’s nothing. Just somebody who’s not familiar with the neighborhood, trying to find an address. But . . . uh . . . better tell Max, anyway.”
She hurried into the kitchen, which was at the back of the house, and she tried to deliver the news to Max Steck calmly, but her voice had a tremor in it, and she couldn’t control her hands, which made nervous, meaningless, butterfly gestures in the air.
Max checked the lock on the kitchen door, even though he had tested it himself when he’d first come on duty. He closed the blinds entirely on one window. He closed them halfway on the other.
Chewbacca had been lying in one corner, dozing. He raised his head and snorted, sensing the new tension in the air.
Joey was sitting at the table by the garden window, busily using his crayons to fill in a picture in a coloring book. Christine moved him away from the window, took him into the corner, near the humming refrigerator, out of the line of fire.
With the short attention span and emotional adaptability of a six-year-old, he had pretty much forgotten about the danger that had forced them to hide out in a stranger’s house. Now it all came back to him, and his eyes grew big. “Is the witch coming?”
“It’s probably nothing to worry about, honey.”
She stooped down, pulled up his jeans, and tucked in his shirt, which had come half out of his waistband. His fear made her heart ache, and she kissed him on the cheek.
“Probably just a false alarm,” she said. “But Charlie’s men don’t take any chances, you know.”
“They’re super,” he said.
“They sure are,” she said.
Now that it looked as if they might actually have to put their lives on the line for her and Joey, she felt guilty about being suspicious of them.
Max shoved the small table away from the window, so he wouldn’t have to lean over it to look out.
Chewbacca made an interrogatory whining sound in the back of his throat, and began to pad around in a circle, his claws ticking on the kitchen tile.
Afraid that the dog would get in Max’s way at a crucial moment, she called to it, and then so did Joey. The animal couldn’t have learned its new name yet, but it responded to tone of voice. It came to Joey and sat beside him.
Max peered through a chink between two of the slats in the blind and said, “This damn fog sure is hanging on this morning.”
Christine realized that, in the fog and obscuring rain, the garden—with its azaleas, bushy oleander, veronicas, carefully shaped miniature orange trees, lilacs, bougainvillaea-draped arbor, and other shrubbery—would make it easy for someone to creep dangerously close to the house before being spotted.
In spite of his mother’s reassurances, Joey looked up at the ceiling, toward the sound of rain on the roof, which was loud in this one-story house, and he said, “The witch is coming. She’s coming.”
32
Dr. Denton Boothe,
both a psychologist and psychiatrist, was living proof that the heirs of Freud and Jung didn’t have all the answers, either. One wall in Boothe’s office was covered with degrees from the country’s finest universities, awards from his colleagues in half a dozen professional organizations, and honorary doctorates from institutions of learning in four countries. He had written the most widely adopted and highly praised textbook on general psychology in thirty years, and his position as one of the most knowledgeable experts in the specialty of abnormal psychology was unchallenged. Yet Boothe, for all his knowledge and expertise, wasn’t without problems of his own.
both a psychologist and psychiatrist, was living proof that the heirs of Freud and Jung didn’t have all the answers, either. One wall in Boothe’s office was covered with degrees from the country’s finest universities, awards from his colleagues in half a dozen professional organizations, and honorary doctorates from institutions of learning in four countries. He had written the most widely adopted and highly praised textbook on general psychology in thirty years, and his position as one of the most knowledgeable experts in the specialty of abnormal psychology was unchallenged. Yet Boothe, for all his knowledge and expertise, wasn’t without problems of his own.
He was fat. Not just pleasantly plump.
Fat.
Shockingly, grossly overweight. When Charlie encountered Denton Boothe (“Boo” to friends), after not having seen him for a few weeks, he was always startled by the man’s immensity; he never seemed to remember him as being
that
fat. Boothe stood five-eleven, Charlie’s height, but he weighed four hundred pounds. His face did a good imitation of the moon. His neck was a post. His fingers were like sausages. Sitting, he overflowed chairs.
Fat.
Shockingly, grossly overweight. When Charlie encountered Denton Boothe (“Boo” to friends), after not having seen him for a few weeks, he was always startled by the man’s immensity; he never seemed to remember him as being
that
fat. Boothe stood five-eleven, Charlie’s height, but he weighed four hundred pounds. His face did a good imitation of the moon. His neck was a post. His fingers were like sausages. Sitting, he overflowed chairs.
Charlie couldn’t understand why Boothe, who could uncover and treat the neuroses even of those patients highly resistant to treatment, could not deal with his own compulsive eating. It was a puzzlement.
But his unusual size and the psychological problems underlying it did nothing to change the fact that he was a delightful man, kind and amusing and quick to laugh. Although he was fifteen years older than Charlie and infinitely better educated, they had hit it off on first encounter and had been friends for several years, getting together for dinner once or twice a month, exchanging gifts at Christmas, making an effort to keep in touch that, sometimes, surprised both of them.
Boo welcomed Charlie and Henry into his office, part of a corner suite in a glass high-rise in Costa Mesa, and insisted on showing them his latest antique bank. He collected animated banks with clockwork mechanisms that made a little adventure out of the deposit of each coin. There were at least two dozen of them displayed at various points in the office. This one was an elaborate affair the size of a cigar humidor; standing on the lid were hand-painted metal figurines of two bearded gold prospectors flanking a comically detailed donkey. Boo put a quarter in the hand of one prospector and pushed a button on the side of the bank. The prospector’s hand came up, holding the coin out to the second prospector, but the donkey’s hinged head lowered, and its jaws clamped shut on the quarter, which the prospector relinquished. The donkey raised its head again, and the quarter dropped down its gullet and into the bank underneath, while both prospectors shook their heads in dismay. The name on the donkey’s saddlebags was Uncle Sam.
“It was made in 1903. So far as anyone knows, there are only eight working models in the world,” Boo said proudly. “It’s titled ‘The Tax Collector,’ but I call it ‘There Is No Justice in a Jackass Universe.’ ”
Charlie laughed, but Henry looked baffled.
They adjourned to a corner of the room where large comfortable armchairs were grouped around a glass-topped coffee table. Boo’s chair groaned softly as he settled into it.
Being a corner office, the room had two exterior walls that were largely glass. Because this building faced away from the other high-rise structures in Costa Mesa, toward one of the few remaining tracts of agricultural land in this part of the county, there seemed to be nothing outside but a gray void composed of churning clouds, gauzy veils of lingering fog, and rain that streamed down the glass walls in a vertical river. The effect was disorienting, as if Boothe’s office didn’t exist in this world but in an alternate reality, another dimension.
“You say this is about Grace Spivey?” Boothe asked.
He had a special interest in religious psychoses and had written a book about the psychology of cult leaders. He found Grace Spivey intriguing and intended to include a chapter about her in his next book.
Charlie told Boo about Christine and Joey, about their encounter with Grace at South Coast Plaza and the attempts on their lives.
The psychologist, who didn’t believe in being solemn with patients, who used cajolery and humor as part of his therapy, whose face seldom played host to a frown, was now scowling. He said, “This is bad. Very bad. I’ve always known Grace is a true believer, not just a phony, mining the religious rackets for a buck. She’s always been convinced that the world really was coming to an end. But I never believed she was sunk this deep in psychotic fantasy.” He sighed and looked out at his twelfth-floor view of the storm. “You know, she talks a lot about her ‘visions,’ uses them to whip her followers into a frenzy. I’ve always thought that she doesn’t really have them, that she merely
pretends
to have them because she realizes they’re a good tool for making converts and keeping disciples in line. By using the visions, she can have God tell her people to do the things
she
wants them to do, things they might not accept if they didn’t think the orders were coming straight down from Heaven.”
pretends
to have them because she realizes they’re a good tool for making converts and keeping disciples in line. By using the visions, she can have God tell her people to do the things
she
wants them to do, things they might not accept if they didn’t think the orders were coming straight down from Heaven.”
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