Halfway down the tunnel that led to where Jack could see a red light glowing, flickering, off to the left, the angel stopped. She turned and spoke to them. It was the first time she had uttered a word since they stepped into the cave.
“There’s a pentagram drawn on the floor in that cavern,” she said, gesturing with her chin to the flickering red light. “Don’t step inside it.” Her voice was soft but clear and strong. “And remember who this beast serves…”
She turned from one to the other of them, each one in turn, catching their gaze and holding it, staring deep into their eyes.
“He serves the Father of Lies.”
The words hung in the air for a heartbeat. Then the angel turned back around and continued down the tunnel toward the red glow.
That was it? No pep talk? No coaching? Nothing profound that they’d remember the rest of their lives—if they had a rest of their lives?
Nope. They just went on.
Jack was not aware of taking steps, couldn’t feel his legs at all, as a matter of fact. But he had to be walking because he was getting closer to the tunnel that turned left at the far end, where red, flickering light pulsed.
Well, this was where the proverbial Michelin Radial made contact with the asphalt. Jack’s heart was a frantic woodpecker in his chest and he was breathing hard—was he panting?—but he didn’t feel like he was taking in enough oxygen. He felt like he was suffocating.
He’d been here before!
There, on the wall opposite the opening to the cavern where the beast was waiting for them, were Mickey Mouse ears! Or that was what he’d thought the two cup-shaped rocks on top of a round one had looked like when the Bad Kids dragged him past them twenty-six years ago. Why would he remember a stupid thing like that when he couldn’t remember the important stuff? He’d been twelve years old then, but he was certain he felt more fear now than that young man had been capable of feeling. Of course, he hadn’t known what he was facing that time. Returning to the horror now created some emotion way on the other side of fear in his belly. A nameless emotion made of equal parts disbelief, terror and…and anger.
Yeah, anger! He was flat out done with having his life and the lives of every person in the world he cared about terrorized by this monster.
It’s showtime, pal. Come on, give it your best shot. Make my day.
The bravado lasted only as long as it took Jack to round the corner and see what actually did lie in the cavern that opened off the left side of the tunnel.
That one sight melted Jack’s resolve, his courage and his will. They gushed out of him—water through a hole in a wading pool—leaving him parched, so dry and brittle a single touch would turn his whole being to dust.
“You’re going to stop Billy Ray from summoning more efreets?” Jeff’s voice had regained its customary sardonic edge. “How? I must have missed that part.”
Daniel had been considering it ever since Billy Ray ripped the duct tape off his face and he got a good look at the cavern. As soon as Billy Ray started performing the ceremony, he knew.
“What he’s doing is a ritual,” he said. “Billy Ray has to go around to each of the five points of every star in those pentagrams and chant certain words.”
Jeff nodded.
“When he gets to the bottom point on the fifth star, the one next to the crack in the floor, he’ll have his back to us while he says his mumbo jumbo. I’m going to jump him then and bowl him over into the crevice.”
Jeff spoke slowly and deliberately, probably the way he talked to drunk or nutcase clients.
“Daniel, you can’t knock him into the hole without—”
“Falling in with him? I know that. What have I got to lose? Either he kills me and uses my blood to summon demons, or I kill him—and myself. I die either way. Even if I screw it up and miss Billy Ray somehow, I’ve stopped him. He can’t do what he came here to do without my blood.”
Jeff stared at him, an odd expression on his face. At least it appeared to be odd. His face was a train wreck, though, so it was hard to tell.
If Emily could see him now, would she think he was such hot stuff?
Daniel was instantly ashamed of that thought. Ashamed? That was crazy. But things had shifted somehow. Daniel didn’t know and had neither the emotional wherewithal, the energy nor the time to puzzle out why.
“We’ll both jump him,” Jeff said.
“Why? You don’t have to—”
“—do anything I don’t want to? I’m well aware of that. But look at it from my perspective. Best-case scenario: you succeed, you kill him. Where does that leave me? In a cavern I can’t find my way out of. Oh, maybe I could find the boxcar, but then I’d have to chew my way through that gate. Maybe you didn’t notice, but the base is sunk in five inches of concrete. And the key to the padlock on it is in Billy Ray’s pocket. Worst-case scenario: he sidesteps and you go diving off into nowhere all by yourself. Where does that leave me? The same place the best-case scenario does—but add in a homicidal lunatic with a scimitar, a pissed-off lunatic. If I’m lucky, he might only use that blade to cut my head off, but I figure it’s more likely he’ll be in chop-Mr.-Suit-and-Tie-Man-into-little-pieces mode.”
Jeff was right, of course.
“I want to take that stupid hillbilly with me when I buy the farm.” Jeff growled. “Revenge is a whole lot more satisfying than forgiveness.”
“Can you do it hobbled?” Daniel asked.
“I’d rather kick his face in, but yeah, I can move fast enough to pull it off.”
In truth, Daniel was glad Jeff was going with him. Surely, the two of them could knock Billy Ray over the edge. And he very much wanted to rid the world of Billy Ray Hawkins.
“Did you play football in high school, by any chance?” Jeff asked.
“Marching band.”
“Seriously?”
“Tuba.”
Jeff rolled his eyes. “Well, I played football. A real man’s sport, by the way. I’ll hit him high, body-slam him. You hit him low, knock his legs out from under him.”
Daniel nodded.
Billy Ray slowly made his way around the pentagrams, spouting ancient words at the point of each star in a twangy Kentucky accent—words that would unleash monsters from the dawn of time on mankind.
“Sulfuric acid will eat right through concrete,” Jeff muttered thoughtfully to himself.
What?
The non sequitur was jarring. Daniel looked at him quizzically, but Jeff offered no explanation. Neither spoke again, just listened as Billy Ray made unintelligible sounds in his gravelly, guttural voice. They watched him progress from one point of the stars to the next, and when he finished the fourth pentagram and started for the fifth, Jeff whispered, “Stand up slow; stay in a crouch. Don’t rush him until I give the signal.”
Somehow, Jeff had taken over and was running the show. He was a man accustomed to being in charge. Daniel let him have that, here at the end.
“Body slam…” Daniel said. “That chest-bump thing football players do, very macho.”
“There are car batteries on a shelf outside the boxcar,” Jeff said. Another non sequitur. Then he tensed. “Get ready.”
Billy Ray turned to face the crack. Jeff and Daniel rose clumsily from their knees to a crouch, staying low.
Jeff suddenly whispered, “You can get out of here. Take good care of Emily’s little girl!”
He banged his shoulder into Daniel, shoving him sideways. Crouched as he was, the blow knocked Daniel off balance and he tumbled over onto his side. As he fell to the floor, he watched Jeff spring up and race toward Billy Ray.
Billy Ray had heard the scuffle, or Jeff’s footsteps, and he was turning, pulling the gun from his holster, when Jeff yelled a wordless, primal cry and slammed his body into the smaller man. Billy Ray flew backwards with Jeff on top of him and they both disappeared into the abyss.
Stunned, Daniel lay where he’d fallen, listening—waiting for a cry, a thump, some kind of sound. Nothing. He struggled to get to his knees, rolled to a nearby stalagmite and used it for balance. Then he stood and walked on trembling legs to the edge of the crack and looked down. Impenetrable darkness was all that looked back up at him.
The dead-rats statement had the desired effect, stopping Darth Vader in his tracks. He lowered his light saber, pulled his mask up off his face and gaped at her.
Theresa hoped Becca didn’t pass out from shock.
When the black-caped Star Wars bad guy, whose name tag said he was the concierge of the hotel, had called out to them, Theresa’d known she had about three seconds to come up with a plausible explanation or this little party was gone be over before it started. It was Bishop who could think fast on his feet—not Theresa. Why’d God give this to her to do when she was gone mess up the whole thing?
What can I say?
And it had happened to her again, like it’d done that day when she’d faced Chapman Whitworth in Miss Minnie and Mr. Gerald’s parlor with them lying hacked to death with an ax not ten feet away. Words had come out of her mouth, words she hadn’t thought or formed or willed her lips to speak.
“It ain’t towels in this here laundry basket,” she said. “It’s dead rats. Couldn’t very well haul dead rats through the lobby right out in front of everybody, now could we?”
Theresa heard herself continue, “You know, rubber rats.”
She babbled on as chatty as she’d have been giving somebody her granny’s special recipe for corn fritters.
“Didn’t nobody tell you about ’em?”
She reached down into the laundry basket to one of the sacks and stuck her hand inside. “They’s real lifelike, look just like the genuine article.”
She pulled a rat out of the sack by its tail and held it up right in front of Darth Vader’s face.
The big man took a step back.
The rat wasn’t completely thawed out yet. Its neck was broke and its head was laid back and stuck to its backbone. Revulsion threatened to gag her, but she swallowed hard, reached up and pulled the head into place like it was an action figure doll, praying as hard as she’d ever prayed for anything in her life that the head wouldn’t come off in her hand.
“There,” she said with pride. “Don’t that look real?”
The concierge only glanced at the beast, clearly could not stand to get a good look at it. And that was a fine thing, because if he’d looked closely, he’d have seen the drop of blood slide down off its nose and plop on the floor.
“Very real,” he said. “But what—?”
“You didn’t get no memo?” Theresa shook her head. “Somebody higher up on the food chain than me was in charge of tellin’ the folks as needed to know. Not everybody, of course. Then word woulda got out and spoiled the surprise.”
“What are they—?”
Theresa rolled over him like Sherman marching through Atlanta.
“All’s I know is I was s’posed to pick these up at the loading dock and deliver ’em to the kitchen staff. They’s gonna put ’em on the dessert trays of important people is what I heard.”
“Rubber rats—?”
“I didn’t think it was funny my own self but didn’t nobody ask for my opinion. If you got a problem with it, though, that is fine with me.” She shoved the rat at him. “Here. You take care of ’em!”
Theresa watched in horror as the movement dislodged several drips of blood from the dead rat’s smashed nose—one of which landed on Darth Vader’s shiny black boot.
“No, I…” He shot another glance off the rat, didn’t look at it full on. Didn’t look at his boot, neither. “It’s so real.” He actually shuddered then. Hard to fathom a squeamish Darth Vader. “Go on about…whatever you were doing.” He turned on his heel and strode purposefully away.
The smile melted off Theresa’s face, candle wax from a flame, as soon as his back was turned. While they’d been talking, the lobby around them had emptied as the throng of costumed revelers filed into the Balloon Ballroom. Theresa heard a brief squawk of feedback from the microphone on the dais in the front of the room. The ball had begun; the clock was ticking.
Turning wordlessly, Theresa piloted the laundry basket with shaking hands out of the lobby into the huge hallway behind the ballroom, where the service elevator was located on the back wall. She was breathing now, great heaving gulps of relief. She got two or three good lungfuls before she noticed that the red button on the wall beside the elevator had a keyhole beneath it. The elevator required a key to operate. The bellhop trying to impress Nyree had had one. Theresa didn’t.
Crock had prepared himself the best he could for what he would see when they stepped into the cavern lit by the red glow. He’d dropped his gaze, pried it off the back of the angel walking in front holding Andi’s hand, and deliberately looked down at his shoes, concentrated on his shoes—granting his anguished mind a few more seconds before the blow.
One step.
Two.
Couldn’t look at his feet forever.
When he lifted his head, he gasped. From surprise and shock rather than terror.
The cavern was enormous. Bigger than the inside of a cathedral, than a football stadium. Its walls looked like streams of frozen cream. Water-polished flow formations cascaded in swirls and eddies, an unseen current of glossy rock rising seamlessly off the floor and up to the ceiling in the shadows above. Stalactites hung there, stretching down out of the darkness, each with a shiny point, a gigantic chandelier that sparkled but provided no light. The room was lit with the glow of thousands of candles affixed to the shiny, polished walls—how? He couldn’t tell. Their tiny flames danced and flickered as if a breeze gently brushed them. They didn’t give off normal light, though—soft white light. Each candle glowed the color of blood, a garish luminescence that reminded him of college parties when he and his fraternity brothers screwed red light bulbs into every socket.
But the cavern with its otherworldly glow was not what shocked him. What knocked the breath out of him was the young woman standing alone in the center of the otherwise empty expanse of cream-colored rock.
A strikingly beautiful black woman in her twenties, her face looked hauntingly familiar, but Crock couldn’t recall where he’d seen her before. Her hair lay in soft curls, her eyes were wide and sad, her cheeks tearstained. She had the kind of sensually plump lips men went all stupid over, with bright red lipstick. The color matched her dress.
But below her head, the rest of her body was a ruin. If she’d been hit by a train, she couldn’t have been more severely injured. Her arms and legs were twisted and bent, a prickly forest of compound fractures with bloody bones sticking out through her ripped flesh. Her torso had been torn open, her internal organs visible in a smashed tangle that hung out through a hole in the skirt of her bright red dress.
She couldn’t possibly be standing, of course. But she was. In her right hand she held a man’s hand—only the hand. The arm extending from it dangled almost to the floor, ending in bloody flesh and shattered bone, torn off at the shoulder.
She began to shamble toward them on grotesquely broken legs. When she spoke, her voice was tear clotted. She sounded like she’d been crying for a long time.
“I only wanted a baby, Jack,” she said, and stifled a sob. “But you said no.” She mimicked Jack’s voice. “‘I don’t want children. They take up all your time and energy. I don’t even like kids.’”
Then Crock knew where he’d seen her before. In a picture on the wall in Jack’s living room. This was his wife, Lyla, who’d been at work in Tower One on 9/11.”
Crock turned toward Jack. He’d never seen on anybody’s face a look quite like the one on Jack’s. He was surprised and horrified…and glad. Even in such a horrible condition, here was his wife, right in front of him. And she’d been dead for a decade.
But it wasn’t Lyla, of course. It was pure evil. Crock reached out and touched Jack’s arm, but Jack shook off his hand as if he wanted nothing to distract him. He stared at the vision in fascination, horror and delight.
“Lyla?” he said, wonder in his voice.
“Jack, that’s not Lyla,” Crock said. He reached out to him again to get his attention. “Lyla’s dead.”
The not-Lyla turned on Crock in the grip of such loathing rage her face was more horrifying than her shattered body.
“Mind your own business, fat man,” she shrieked like a harpy. “You’ll get your turn!”
A dark black cloud thicker than smoke suddenly rose behind Lyla and filled the cavern from top to bottom, bubbling and boiling like a thunderstorm. The color of the cloud changed to the sick gray-black of tornado clouds, the edges tinged the greenish purple of a day-old bruise.
…and there was something in the cloud.
Crock couldn’t see what it was. Not with his eyes. But somewhere in his most basic self, he could sense it. The form, the dark shape, the thing needed no image to communicate its presence. Even in the not-seeing, there was horror. Orange and red and black. A mouth with too many teeth. A head with horns. A face that defined ugliness.
Lyla went limp, like a marionette when the puppeteer lets go of the strings.
A horrifying roar issued from the depths of the black cloud, a sound that echoed off the chamber walls, fracturing and multiplying.
A rumbling roar like that could not possibly form words. But it did.
“How dare you come here!”
Thunder from the throat of Niagara Falls, the sound itself had substance, took up space in the world like a mountain or an ocean.
“Get out!”
The last words came at Crock with a force like the repercussion of an explosion. An invisible hand slapped him backwards. He stumbled and fell to the chamber floor, banging his head painfully, in the grip of a cold terror that wound through every twist and turn of his bowels.
“—leave now or—” The voice full of boulders broke up. There was static, then sputtering sounds. “—be sorry—” More static.
When Crock’s head’d hit the floor, the hearing aid in his right ear had blinked off, then back on. Cher. She’d always been the one that gave him trouble. Now, her sputtering made the monster sound like it had a speech defect.
“—Maggots! Wretched fools—” Static. “—out of—” More static. Then silence, no sound of any kind in his right ear. He couldn’t hear—
And there it was. That simple. The why Theresa’d told him he’d likely never find out. Charles Allen Crocker had not been selected by God to do battle with a lord of evil because of some remarkable character trait. Or because of his great faith. He hadn’t been twice saved by angels so he could be right here, right now because of his unshakeable courage and resolve. He’d been picked because he was deaf. God had given him a unique hearing loss at birth for just this occasion. No, he wasn’t the one-millionth customer, but the reason he was here was as simple and unpretentious. Crock could stand tall against the malicious, hate-filled lies of the enemy if he couldn’t hear them.
Crock sat up and put his hands over his ears, shaking his head violently, appearing to be so frightened he could barely hold onto his terror. But it wasn’t his terror he was holding onto. It was Sonny and Cher. As he shook his head, he switched both of them off.
Theresa had said a demon couldn’t read your mind, that it didn’t know Becca was down for the count all those years ago and so feared her. That monster surely knew Crock wore hearing aids, but it didn’t know Crock couldn’t hear a single word it was saying right now. And Crock had no intention of letting it find out. As far as this efreet thing knew, Harrelton, Ohio, Police Department Major Charles Crocker was resolute and defiant, uncowed by the worst the monster could throw at him. Surely to goodness, that’d unnerve the beast.
Crock got to his feet as the Lyla puppet came back to life.
“It’s your fault, Jack! I died because of you,” she said. “If you had let me go to that doctor’s appointment, I wouldn’t have—”
“Lyla…baby…” Anguish broke Jack’s voice. “I’m so sorry.”
Crock grabbed his arm and yanked Jack around to face him.
“That’s not Lyla, Jack. Remember what the angel said—he serves the Father of Lies.”
Crock felt the nudge of a percussive force and knew the creature must be speaking. It wasn’t yelling this time, though, and it was not addressing him at all. But whatever it was saying was ripping open Jack Carpenter’s soul.
The arm attached to the man’s hand the Lyla Carpenter monster was holding began to move.
Crock kept his grip on Jack’s arm, refusing to allow him to turn back toward the abomination that was not Lyla Carpenter.
“Look at me, Jack! Make eye contact. “That’s not Lyla!”
Then more Lylas appeared. Literally out of nowhere. Each was a unique abomination—horribly injured but in different ways. One had no face at all, only mashed flesh, broken bones and gore below the soft black curls. One had no head at all, but carried it, held it out in front like offering a plate of cookies. Another was a decayed corpse from the grave, covered in maggots. Three of them. Four. A half dozen. They circled around where Jack and Crock stood, jackals closing in for the kill. And the stench, they reeked of rotted decaying flesh.
“Don’t look at them,” Crock said. “Look at me. Look at my ugly mug.”
The percussion again, the cloud speaking. Crock was profoundly glad he could not hear what it must be saying because he could see the effect of it on Jack’s face.
“I’m real, Jack. They’re not. They’re evil in human-being suits. I’m your friend. Look at me!”
Then someone appeared beside Crock and the strength went out of his arms and he let Jack go. Crock didn’t have to turn to know who it was. But he turned anyway.