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  “What is your solution . . . your theory of how to combat this . . . evil?” Nelson asked.

  The group was not prepared for the answer that Carl gave them.

  “Kill them.”

  * * *

  The blunt and harshly put statement from someone so young as Carl had been just about as nerve-rattling to the others as the horror they all now knew they faced.

  Carl and Dee had left shortly after Carl’s speech. Rodale had gone home. He had told Jim to take over. He’d see him at the office tomorrow. Maybe. He didn’t know for sure. Felt real bad. Shore did.

  “Rodale’s coming apart at the seams,” Max observed.

  No one, not one among the group, had yet brought up the mysterious voice.

  “You may have to shoulder the load, Jim,” Wilber Purdy told him. “I mean, I know you’ve been doing that for years, but this time you may have to do it all.”

  Jim nodded. He’d already, reluctantly, reached that conclusion. “Let’s talk about that damn voice, people. Somebody say something.”

  “The room was bugged and somebody had a speaker hidden?” Doctor Perry said hopefully.

  The looks he received made him feel even more foolish than the remark.

  “There is this to consider,” Jim said, looking at Max. “Our departments may be infiltrated by satanists.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” the chief of police replied. “So much has been thrown at me, us, in the past hour or so, tell you the truth, I haven’t really known what to think.”

  Jim glanced at the man from Richmond. “Did you plan to stay for a day or so, Doctor Jenkins?”

  “Yes. I came prepared to stay for several days. Cal was rather evasive as to just what he was working on, so I packed accordingly. Look, people, let’s get something worked out. No mention has been made about calling in the state police. Are they going to be notified?”

  “And tell them what?” Jim said. “That the devil is trying to take over the town? Durned if I’ll be the one to do it ... at least not for awhile. They’d come in, all right, and stick us all in the booby house.”

  The chief of police said, “Jim, I’m going to vote that you take charge in this matter. You give the orders and I’ll follow them.”

  Jim had been dreading those words, but he knew they would be coming. “I didn’t know anything like that was comin’ to a vote.”

  All the men in the room raised their hands in agreement with Max.

  Jim nodded his head. “All right. I’ll agree to run the law-enforcement end of it. But I think we’d all better look to Carl Garrett for the rest of it.”

  The group agreed to that.

  “We have to decide on how much we tell our people,” Max said.

  “And how much do we tell the townspeople?” the mayor asked.

  Jim was thoughtful for a few moments. “We sound out our law-enforcement people one by one and just play it by ear as to how much we tell them. Personally, I haven’t seen any signs of personality changes in my bunch. Harry Harrison would be the weak link, I’m thinkin’. He’s been a bully all his life, and most bullies are cowards at heart. I’ll have to watch him. Max, I’d suggest that you keep an eye on Benny Carter. As to the townspeople and them out in the county . . . I don’t know what to say about that. But I’d bet that nine out of ten wouldn’t believe us even if we was to level with them.”

  “Let’s give it a couple of days,” Wilber said. “It could be that we’re all overreacting. I don’t think so, but let’s cling to that faint hope.”

  “What do you think about that last remark of Carl’s?” Cal asked.

  Jim sighed. “He said to carry a bible with us. If we go down, we can at least go out of this world holding on to the word of God. I think it’s a good idea.”

  Snickering filled the large room, the sarcastic giggling grating on the already overstretched nerves of the group.

  “The word of God,” the heavy voice boomed. “Oh, my, yes. You most certainly must carry a bible. And this is how much that worthless gaggle of words will help you.”

  A long, loud, obscene fart erupted, fouling the air.

  Chapter 12

  To anyone not knowing what was taking place behind the scenes, the small town on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains would appear normal. School was out for the summer and smaller children were evident at play on the sidewalks and the lawns. The public swimming pool was filled to capacity with laughing and splashing kids, most of them preteens. There was a conspicuous absence of older teens. A lot of them were busy doing other things . . . like sleeping and waiting for the night.

  Anya and Pet had gorged themselves on the flesh of a bum they’d found walking along a county road. The flesh was not as tasty as that of a professed Christian, but it would suffice for the time being.

  Anya and Pet would rest for a couple of days and then try to call out the Old Ones. Matters were rocking along quite well without their help; besides, they needed the rest to gain more strength. The more converts to their cause, the stronger they would become. That was the way. They would never be as before—that was impossible. Dan Garrett and that damnable priest, Denier, had seen to that. But Pet and Anya had survived. It had been long years of agony, but they had climbed out of the searing pain to once more walk on the surface of the earth.

  This time, they would not fail. They had been assured of that. By the Master.

  In homes around the county, ear-weary mothers were standing on the frayed edges of patience as the violent, anti-social music pounded the terrible messages out at ear-shattering levels. Val Malone’s mother could not take it another second. She jerked at the door to her daughter’s bedroom.

  It was locked.

  She beat her fists on the door. “Val! Turn that damn music down!”

  Inside the darkened room, Val cut her eyes to the door and turned the music up as loud as the speakers could take without shattering.

  “Val!” her mother screamed, her words just audible over the roar. “Open this door!”

  “Fuck you, bitch!” the seventeen-year-old muttered, as the room reverberated with the squallings of the singer.

  “You wait until your father gets home!” the mother yelled. “Then we’ll see how you behave.”

  “Fuck him too,” the girl mouthed, then grinned, a nasty, evil curving of the lips. “Which is exactly what I intend to do.”

  She’d been working on her father for several months, deliberately letting him see her with very little clothes on; parading through the den, when he was alone in the house with her, wearing a sheer nightie with nothing on under it. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her and didn’t think she’d misread it. Yeah. The old man was just about ready.

  And just as soon as he stuck it in, he would be one with them.

  Forever.

  “You little bitch!” her mother screamed, losing what remained of her patience.

  Val laughed at her. Nick would see to her, just about the time Val was seeing to her father. Nick had a thing about Val’s mother; he thought she was good-looking and would be a tremendous lay. Val didn’t think so herself, but it would be fun to watch, no doubt about that. When the time came.

  Soon.

  Val’s mother finally lost all vestiges of patience. Like many parents, she felt she and her husband had done their very best in raising their kids—which they had. Neither she nor her husband could understand what had gone wrong with Val. Her older brother had turned out exceptionally well. Now in college, he had never given them any more than the average teenage problems.

  But Val was another story. The crowd of boys and girls she ran with all came from good homes; solid middle-class roots, raised with good standards. Yet all of them were rebellious. Of late, all of them had been behaving very strangely, from open rebellion to sitting in their darkened bedrooms listening to that awful music.

  Liza Malone didn’t know what to do. She was up against a stone wall and her head was bruised from beating it against solid teenage resis
tance. She walked out to the garage, got a hammer, and returned to the closed and locked bedroom door. She began beating on the door with all her strength, cracking the wood in several places.

  The music stopped, plunging the house into a strange sort of silence. Liza stopped her frantic hammering, dropping the hammer to the floor. The door swung open and daughter faced mother.

  “Have you lost your damn mind?” the teenager asked, a savage tone to the question.

  Liza slapped her.

  Mother and daughter went at it. Val leaped at her mother, hissing like an enraged cat, her hands hooked into clawlike weapons, slashing at her mother, cursing her as she fought. Liza grabbed her daughter and threw her to the carpeted hall floor, losing her balance as she did. Mother and daughter rolled on the floor, yelling and clawing and slapping and hissing. Liza finally pinned her daughter, sitting on her, balled one hand into a fist, and gave the kid five on the side of the jaw. Val’s eyes rolled back and she lay still, not quite unconscious, but hovering on the brink.

  Liza’s face was bruised and scratched from Val’s long fingernails. She stood up, panting from her sudden exertions. She picked up the hammer and knocked the pins out of the hinges, then manhandled the door out into the hall, throwing it on the floor. Entering the dark and dank-smelling bedroom of her daughter, the mother began smashing the stereo equipment, the speakers, and every record she could find. She paused, catching her breath, then reached out and tore the heavy drapes from a window, flooding the room with light. It was then she noticed the strange drawings and diagrams thumbtacked to the walls of the room. Nazi swastikas, petagrams and hexagrams, lightning bolts and 666’s were on every wall.

  “You goddamn bitch!” Val screamed, charging into the room, running into her mother and knocking her down. Liza kicked out, one shoe catching Val on the knee, bringing the teenager down. Mother and daughter rolled on the littered floor, cursing and hitting each other. Val’s hands closed around the hammer and she drew back and threw it at her mother’s head with every ounce of strength she had in her. Liza ducked and the hammer crashed through the window and bounced off the side of the car that had just pulled into the drive, putting a dent in the door.

  Tom Malone jumped out of the car and ran into the house. He could hear the cussing and hollering clear out in the front yard. He ran up the hall, jumping over the door and wondering what in the hell it was doing in the hall, and stood in open-mouthed shock in the doorway, looking at his wife and daughter slugging away at each other on the bedroom floor.

  Tom grabbed his daughter and tossed her into the hall. Val hit the hall wall so hard it knocked the breath out of her. She sank to the carpet, stunned.

  Liza got to her feet, her eyes wild-looking and her fists balled. “I’ll kill that kid!” she panted.

  “That’s your daughter!” her husband yelled. “What the hell happened here? Have the both of you lost your goddamn minds?”

  “Get out of my way!” Liza warned him.

  But Tom was not listening. His eyes had just found all the drawings and symbols lining the walls of his daughter’s bedroom. “Jesus God!” he breathed. That’s devil worship!” He cut his eyes to his wife. “Why haven’t you told me about this, Liza?”

  “Because I’m not allowed in this room, Tom! Don’t you ever listen to me? I’ve been telling you for months that something was terribly wrong with Val. But you just don’t listen to me. You’re the one who told her she could lock her door. You’re the one who told me to stay out of her room and respect her privacy. How dare you blame me for this?”

  Tom held up a hand. “All right, all right, honey. I’m sorry, and you’re right: I haven’t been listening.” He turned toward the hall. Val was on her hands and knees, cursing them both as she tried to get to her feet.

  Tom got her to her feet.

  He grabbed her by her. long, black hair and jerked her to her feet. Val screamed from the pain and tried to knee her father in the nuts. But Tom had grown up in the coal mines of West Virginia, brawling with older and bigger men since his early teens. He blocked the knee and backhanded the girl, misting her eyes and momentarily blurring her lopsided and evil world.

  Then he gave her another pop to regain her attention. He cut his eyes to his wife. “Call Father Vincent. Tell Chuck to get the hell over here—right now.”

  Liza used the phone in her daughter’s room—a private line, of course—to call the Episcopal priest.

  Val tried to walk away from her father. He closed one big hand around her arm and jerked her back. “No. Huh-uh, kid. You stay put. We have a lot of talking to do.”

  “I ain’t got a goddamn thing to say to you or that queer priest,” she popped back at him.

  She got popped. And once again, her world turned misty.

  Through the mist, she heard her father say, “You silly, stupid brat. Don’t you think I haven’t been aware of what you’ve been doing—or attempting to do? Parading around me with practically nothing on; giving me what you perceive as come-on little glances. I came home early to talk to your mother about your behavior. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I damn sure intend to see it stopped.”

  “Nick’ll kill you!” she hissed at him.

  “Nick will shit if he eats regular. And that’s about all that punk is going to do. Nick is barred from this house. You are forbidden to associate with Nick—ever. You are grounded. UFN, baby.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Until Further Notice.”

  He spun her around and marched her up the hall to the den and forcibly sat her down in a chair. Tom pointed a finger at her. “Every time you try to get up, I’m going to slap you back down, kid. And if you doubt it, try me.”

  She didn’t doubt him for a second. Tom Malone was an easygoing sort of guy, a successful insurance agent, well liked by nearly everybody. He had gone through college on a boxing scholarship and served with honors with the 75th Rangers in Vietnam. His hands were big, flat-knuckled, and scarred. Everybody knew Tom was a man with no back up in him; mess with Tom Malone and Tom would hurt you and do it quickly.

  “I’ll stay here,” she said.

  “Fine. You have anything you want to say to me before Chuck gets here?”

  “Not a damn thing!”

  “Suit yourself, kid.”

  “I intend to do just that.”

  Liza washed her face, brushed her hair, and changed clothes, then joined her husband and daughter in the den.

  “I started a pot of coffee,” Tom told her.

  “I’ll put out the cups.” She looked at Val. “I don’t suppose you’d like to help.”

  “You got that right.”

  * * *

  The Episcopal church was one of the smaller churches in the town—this was predominately Baptist country—but the church congregation was slowly growing. Father Charles Vincent was directly responsible for that. Chuck Vincent favored jeans and cowboy boots, enjoyed a couple of drinks before dinner, and pitched a mean game of horseshoes. But he had been worried about the lack of young people attending church. Not just his church, any church.

  And the reason for that lack of attendance was baffling to him.

  On his way to the Malone house, he was flagged down by Dee Conners, who was a friend of his wife. “I’m having a cookout this evening, Chuck,” Dee told him, after introducing Carl. Sitting in the cars, the men nodded at one another. “Just a few of us, nothing elaborate. I’d love for you and Carol to come out, please, if you’re not busy.”

  “I’d like that, Dee. We sure will.” Chuck was curious about the young man with Dee. He sure was a hard-looking fellow.

  Dee and Carl were abruptly pushed out of his mind when he saw the faces of Liza and Val. Both of them scratched and bruised. And strained.

  Tom looked at Val. “You keep your butt where it is.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I? Don’t sweat it.”

  “I’ll stay with her to make sure she does stay,” Liza said.

 
The look the mother received from her daughter was one of pure hate, and it was not lost on Chuck. He kept his thoughts to himself.

  The priest whistled softly as Tom showed him Val’s room.

  “Tell me it doesn’t mean what I think it means,” Tom said, a hopeful note in his voice.

  “ ’Fraid I can’t do that, buddy,” Chuck said. “What hit this place, a mini-cyclone?”

  “Yes. In the form of Liza.” He told him all he knew about the mother-daughter showdown.

  Again, the priest softly whistled as the story unfolded, his eyes taking in all the symbols in praise of the Dark One.

  Tom ended with: “And talk around town is there’s some sort of cult or coven expert in here. He’s staying out at the Conners place. The town is buzzing about the unexplained deaths the last few days.”

  “I just met that young man. I’m going out there tonight for a cookout. I gather you want me to talk with Val?”

  “If you think it would do any good, yes.”

  “It won’t hurt. Come on.”

  The Episcopal priest didn’t pussyfoot around with a lot of Biblical beatitudes. Liza almost spilled coffee down the front of her blouse when Chuck asked, “Val, how come you want to worship an asshole like Satan?”

  And Val didn’t hesitate with her reply. “ ’Cause he’s where it’s at, man.”

  “Like sex and drugs and liquor and stuff like that, huh?”

  “You got it, man.”

  “What does he promise you after death?”

  “Life.”

  “Isn’t that what God and His Son also promise?”

  “Bullshit life. Our god is the real creator—the Gnostic Demiurge.”

  “The what?” her father blurted out.

  She looked him square in the eyes. “The Demiurge is the God behind the creator God, an emanation of the transcendent God.” She spoke as if speaking from rote. “Santanas is the messenger, bringing us the knowledge that there was a God behind the God who created the cosmos.” She smiled. “And if you don’t like that, daddy-dear . . . go fuck yourself.”