This Present Darkness (55 page)

Outside the room, Krioni and Triskal watched from a distance.

Triskal fumed, “Orders, orders, orders!”

Krioni reminded him, “Tal knows what he’s doing.”

Triskal pointed toward the living room and cried, “Hank’s playing with a bomb in there. You see those demons? They’ll tear him apart!”

“We have to stay out of it,” Krioni said. “We can protect Hank’s and Mary’s lives, but we cannot keep the demons from doing whatever they might do …” Krioni was having trouble with it himself.

SANDY GOT LOUDER
and louder. Marshall felt that at any moment he would lose control of her altogether.

“You … you let me out of here or you’re going to be in big trouble!” she nearly screamed.

Marshall could only stand there in total dismay and horror. “Sandy, it’s me, Marshall Hogan, your father.
Think,
Sandy! You know I never touched you, I never molested you. I only loved you and cared for you. You’re my daughter, my only daughter.”

“You did it to me!” she cried hysterically.

“When, Sandy?” he demanded. “When did I ever touch you
wrongly?”

“It was something my mind had blocked out for years, but Professor Langstrat brought it out!”

“Langstrat!”

“She put me under hypnosis, and I saw it like it was yesterday. You did it, and I hate you!”

“You never remembered it because it never happened.
Think,
Sandy!”

“I hate you! You did it to me!”

Nathan and Armoth, from outside the house, could see the hideous deceiving spirit clinging to Sandy’s back, its talons deep in her skull.

Alongside them was Tal. He had just given them their special orders.

“Captain,” said Armoth, “we don’t know what that thing might do.”

“Preserve their lives,” said Tal, “but Hogan must fall. As for Sandy, see to it that a special detachment follows her at a distance. They’ll be able to move when the time is right.”

Just then, with a very low, stealthy trajectory, Signa floated in for a landing.

“Captain,” he reported, “Kevin Weed is dead. It worked.”

Tal gave Signa a strange, knowing look and smile. “Excellent,” he said.

THE FIFTEEN SPIRITS
in Carmen were foaming and frothing, wailing and hissing. Hank held Carmen down gently, one hand on her right hand, one hand on her left shoulder. Mary stood beside him, clinging to him a little out of her own timidity. Carmen moaned and twisted, her eyes glaring at Hank.

“Let us go, praying man!” Carmen’s voice warned, and the sulfurous odor coming from deep inside her was strong and nauseating.

“Carmen, do you want to be delivered?” Hank asked.

“She can’t hear you,” said the spirits. “Let us alone! She belongs to us!”

“Be silent and come out of her!”

“No!” Carmen screamed, and Mary was almost sure she saw a puff of yellow vapor from Carmen’s throat.

“Come out in the name of Jesus!” said Hank.

The bomb exploded. Hank was thrown backward. Mary leaped aside. Carmen was on top of Hank, clawing, biting, mauling. Her teeth clamped onto his right arm. He pushed and pounded with his left.

“Demon, let go!” he ordered.

The jaws opened. Hank gave all the shove he had and Carmen’s body staggered backward, twitching and shrieking. Her hands found a chair. Instantly it shot upward and came down with a crash, but Hank scurried out of the way. He dove for Carmen and tackled her as she was grabbing another chair. Her leg came up like a catapult and flung him across the room where he thudded into the wall. Her fist was right behind him. He dodged it. It rammed a hole in the plaster. He was looking into the eyes of a beast; he smelled the sulfurous breath hissing through the bared teeth. He jerked himself away. Sharp fingernails snagged and tore at his shirt. Some dug into his flesh. He could hear Mary screaming, “Stop it, spirit! In Jesus’ name, stop it!”

Carmen doubled over and clapped her hands over her ears. She staggered and screamed.

“Be silent, demon, and come out of her!” Hank ordered, trying to keep his distance.

“I won’t! I won’t!” Carmen screamed, and her body careened toward the front door. She hit it full force. The center of the door caved in with a loud crack. Hank ran to the door and pulled it open, and Carmen flew out the door and down the street. As Hank and Mary watched her go, all they could do was hope the neighbors wouldn’t see.

“SANDY,” SAID MARSHALL,
“this isn’t you. I know it isn’t you.”

She said nothing, but like the strike of a rattlesnake she pounced at him, trying to get through the door. He held his hands up to protect his face from her flying fists.

“Okay, okay!” he told her, stepping aside. “You can go. Just remember, I love you.”

She grabbed her suitcase and a shopping bag and bolted for the front door. He followed her down the hall toward the living room.

He came around the corner. He looked to see her, but all he saw was the lamp that smacked into his skull. He heard and felt the blow
in every part of his body. The lamp fell to the floor with a crash. Now he was on one knee, slumped against the couch. His hand went to his head. He looked up and saw the front door still standing open. He was bleeding.

His head was so light he was afraid to try to stand up. His strength was gone anyway. Nuts, now there’s blood on the rug. What will Kate say?

“Marshall!” came a voice above him. A hand rested on his shoulder. It was a woman. Kate? Sandy? No, Bernice, squinting at him through blackened eyes. “Marshall, what happened? Are you—are you still there?”

“Help me clean up this mess,” was all he could say.

She scurried into the kitchen and found some paper towels. She brought them back and pressed a wad of them against his head. He winced at the pain.

She asked him, “Can you get up?”

“I don’t want to get up!” he answered crossly.

“Okay, okay. I just saw Sandy drive off. Was this her doing?”

“Yeah, she pitched that lamp at me …”

“It must have been something you said. Here, hold still.”

“She’s not herself at all, she’s gone crazy.”

“Where’s Kate?”

“She’s left me.”

Bernice settled to the floor, her bruised face the picture of shock, dismay, and exhaustion. Neither of them said anything for a few moments. They just stared at each other like two shot-up soldiers in a foxhole.

“Man, you’re a mess!” Marshall finally observed.

“At least the swelling’s gone down. Don’t I look foxy?”

“More like a raccoon. I thought you were supposed to be resting at home. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I just got back from Baker. And I have nothing but bad news from there too.”

He anticipated it. “Weed?”

“He’s dead. The truck he was driving went off the Judd River Bridge and into that big canyon. We were supposed to have met each other. He’d just gotten a call from Susan Jacobson, and it sounded
pretty important.”

Marshall’s head fell back against the couch, and he closed his eyes. “Aw, great … just great!” He wanted to die.

“He called me this afternoon, and we set up the appointment. I imagine either my phone or his was bugged. That accident was set up, I’m sure of it. I got out of there fast!”

Marshall took the wad from his head and looked at the blood on it. He placed it back over the gash.

“We’re going down, Bernie,” he said, and went on to tell her about his whole afternoon, his meeting with Brummel and Brummel’s buddies, his loss of the house, his loss of the paper, his loss of Kate, of Sandy, of everything. “And did you know that I’ve made it a habit to molest my daughter besides having an affair with my reporter?”

“They’re cutting you up into little pieces, aren’t they?” she said very quietly, her throat constricted with fear. “What can we do?”

“We can get the heck out of here, that’s what we can do!”

“You’re going to give up?”

Marshall only let his head sink downward. He was tired. “Let somebody else fight this war. We were warned, Bernie, and we didn’t listen. They got me. They got all our records, any proof we ever had. Harmel blew his brains out. Strachan’s getting as far away from it as he can. They took out Weed. Right now I think I’m just barely alive and that’s all I have left.”

“What about Susan Jacobson?”

It took some extra effort and willpower to make himself think about it. “I wonder if she even exists, and, if so, if she’s alive.”

“Kevin said she had the goods and she was getting ready to get out of wherever she was. That sounds to me like a defection, and if she has the evidence we need to seal this thing up—”

“They took care of that, Bernie. Remember? Weed was our last contact with her.”

“Want to toy with a theory?”

“No.”

“If Kevin’s phone was bugged, they know what Weed and Susan talked about. They heard it all.”

“Naturally, and Susan’s as good as dead too.”

“We don’t know that. Maybe she managed to get away. Maybe she
was going to meet Kevin someplace.”

“Ehhh …” Marshall passively listened.

“What I’m toying with is that somewhere there must be a recording in somebody’s hands of that phone call.”

“Yeah, I suppose there is.” Marshall felt half-dead, but the half of him that was still alive was thinking. “But where would it be? This is a big country, Bernie.”

“Well … like I said, it’s a theory to toy with. It’s all we have left, really.”

“Which sure isn’t much.”

“I’m dying to know what Susan had to say—”

“Please don’t use that word ‘dying.’”

“Well, think for a minute, Marshall. Think of all the people who seem to have responded to the alleged bug. There were the Windsor cops who knew they could find you at Strachan’s after you told me you’d be there—”

“It’s not likely they’d have the recording equipment. They’re too far away.”

“So somebody who did have the recording equipment must have tipped them off.”

Marshall got an idea, and a little bit of color returned to his face. “I’m wondering about Brummel.”

Bernice’s eyes brightened. “Sure! Like I said, he and the cops in Windsor are in cahoots all the time.”

“He fired Sara, you know. She wasn’t there today. She’d been replaced.” New ideas began to form in Marshall’s mind. “Yeah … she talked to me on the phone and ratted on Brummel a little. She said she’d help me out if I could help her out … we agreed to deal … and Brummel fired her! He must have heard that conversation too.” Then it hit him. “Yeah! Sara! Those filing cabinets! Brummel’s filing cabinets!”

“Yeah, you’re cooking, Marshall, just keep going!”

“He had his filing cabinets moved out into Sara’s reception area to make room for some new office equipment. I saw it there, sitting right in his office, and there was a wire coming out of the wall … he said it was for the coffeemaker. But I didn’t see any coffeemaker!”

“I think you might have it there!”

“It was telephone wire, not appliance cord.” Excitement made his
head hurt, but he said anyway, “Bernice, it was telephone wire.”

“If we could find out for sure that the recording equipment is there in his office … if we could find any tapes of phone conversations … well, that might be enough to bring some kind of charges at least: illegal wiretapping—”