He’d gone to bed around two a.m. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but he was so exhausted he needed to at least lie down. He stared at the ceiling and took stock.
Okay. There’s a demon after me. It sounds insane, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s also true. “His body isn’t in the tomb” probably sounded pretty insane to the first person who heard it, too.
Unless no one ever heard it . . .
Shut up!!
No one ever heard it . . . No one ever said it!
“Stop!” he said out loud, embarrassing himself. He rolled over and went back to reliving the conversation with Charlotte, trying to fit all the insanity into some sort of context. He wondered if this information might explain a lot of things that had always puzzled him—chiefly, the fact that he’d always felt like a bad person without knowing why. He’d always felt that something was fundamentally wrong with him. At the same time, he’d always liked himself, which made him feel guilty for liking a bad person.
What was the truth? Never mind what had been summoned and attached to him; what was in his blood? What was there in Andrew that had made him such a vile person? Whatever it was, had any of it filtered down to Michael? Did that explain his restlessness? His anger? His pervasive sense of disquiet? Did it explain his inability to function from a place of serenity and kindness and charity? His tendency to put up walls, even with the people he loved?
In a very real way, Vincent had been Michael’s spiritual lifeline. Michael had told himself there was enough goodness in Vincent for both of them. He’d told himself that, ultimately, the blood that ran in his veins was Vincent’s, so all the negativity must be superficial garbage that he’d eventually work his way out from under. Now he realized that Vincent’s blood was not going to save him. He couldn’t even be sure he’d ever known Vincent. Hell, for all Michael knew, Vincent could have still been meeting in the woods with fellow Satan worshipers, doing God only knew what horrible things. The exterior Vincent could have been a façade, just like Andrew Kinney, the friendly town mortician and devout Catholic. Or maybe Vincent had just hidden in the Church, building a fortress out of icons and rituals and charitable works. Maybe his goodness had been nothing more than a torch to ward off the circling wolves.
The fire. Was Charlotte right about the fire? He knew Vincent had harbored a lot of guilt about it, but he’d always thought it was because it had been Vincent’s idea for them to stay at the hotel. Had Vincent known he was responsible in an even more direct way? Had there been a supernatural component to the fire? Michael remembered quotes from arson investigators he’d read in the newspaper clippings: “. . . the flammable materials in the hallway (carpet, wainscoting, a folding mattress left out on the third floor) absolutely would not account for the effects produced by this fire . . . the speed with which the blaze spread has baffled officials.” Maybe the fire had spread unnaturally because it was an unnatural fire. Because it had supernatural help.
Michael continued to pummel himself with unanswerable questions until finally, sometime in the hours before dawn, he fell into a haunted sleep.
He dreamed he was running through a thick forest. Briars were scratching his arms, his legs, his face. He knew he was being chased by something odious, and that he had to escape it at all costs.
He saw a cave up ahead and ran into it, seeking shelter and a place to rest. He found neither. Inside the cave were sinister-looking men in black robes, standing in a circle around a small fire. The leader looked at Michael and his mouth formed a smile, but it was devoid of any warmth or humanity.
“Welcome home,” he said.
Another man, who’d had his back to Michael, turned around. It was Vincent. He smiled, too, but his eyes were cold and dead.
“I told them you’d be here,” he said.
Michael opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The men all started to howl with laughter. Michael turned and ran out of the cave. He ran back through the forest, stumbling and picking himself up over and over. Ahead he could see a light. It was a brilliant green. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he felt compelled to run to it anyway. By the time he got close, he was out of breath. He collapsed into the light. When he was able to look up, he found himself in a large meadow. The soft spring grass was dotted with orange and yellow poppies.
A lone Georgia pine stood in the middle of the field. There was a guy leaning against the tree. He was wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and work boots. His shoulder-length hair was a reddish gold and slightly windblown. His eyes were a strange gray-blue, startlingly clear, and fixed on Michael in a gaze that was unsettling in its intensity. There was something beyond ethereal about him. A sense of calm, and a transcendent sadness his slight smile couldn’t mask.
“Hi,” he said.
“Do I know you?” Michael asked.
The smile turned into a bemused expression. “That’s a tough call,” he said.
Michael searched his memory, but nothing came to him, even though the face in front of him was vaguely familiar.
“Michael . . .” the guy said.
And then Michael knew. He couldn’t breathe. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing would come out.
“All right,” Michael said. He took a breath, then unleashed the mental floodwaters: “All right. If it’s really you, then I don’t know how long you’ll be here and I don’t want to waste the time being paralyzed by the scope of it . . . I have too many questions.”
“What questions?”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Start with one.”
Michael racked his brain. Which one? Is this real? Is this more than a dream?
“Yes.”
“Are you . . . here . . . because of what is happening to me?”
“Yes.”
“What do I have to do to make it stop?”
No answer this time. The guy just stared into Michael’s eyes, as if that would communicate some message. Michael tried again.
“I need help. I’m lost.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
Suddenly he was gone, fading like a whisper. Michael felt a cool breeze blow by his face. And then nothing.
He woke, trembling. Aching. Smothering in an unbearable sense of loss.
He lay awake for hours, waiting for the sun to come up. Trying desperately, without success, to remember the guy’s face. His steady voice. His strange demeanor. The look in his eyes. Warm, but demanding as hell. A thousand times more frightening than anything in the dark forest.
When he went down to breakfast, Barbara was sitting at the table, reading the paper.
“Good morning,” she said, glancing up at him. “You look like hell.”
“Good. That’s what I was going for.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look like it.”
Well, maybe that’s because my great-grandfather was a Satan worshiper and Vincent was a teenage Satanic ritual rapist; there’s a demon with a vendetta against me; and I spent five minutes in a dream with Jesus, got scolded, and woke up wanting to throw myself off a cliff !
“What are we doing today?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.
“This morning we’re going through the rest of the stuff in Vincent’s office. I want to get it all sorted before we call Saint Vincent de Paul to pick it up. And for the record, I look a lot better than you do early in the morning.”
“That’s the beauty of my life. I don’t have to look good for anyone early in the morning.” He got a mug out of the cabinet and headed for the coffeepot. “Tell me this isn’t some weird esoteric decaffeinated crap.”
“It’s high octane. It’ll keep you going until at least lunchtime.”
He filled the mug with as much coffee as it would hold. He looked out the window. The sky was a pale pewter and he could hear thunder rumbling in the distance. It had been storming off and on all week. Even one thunderstorm would have been strange for this time of year.
Barbara suddenly put the paper down and looked at him. “Michael, are you not sleeping because of Vincent, or is it more than that?”
“Isn’t that enough?
“It would be. But whatever is radiating from you feels like more than grief.”
He didn’t respond, hoping she’d let it go. She didn’t.
“Who is Tess?”
Oh, crap.
“What?”
“Someone named Tess sent a very nice wreath. I know everyone in Vincent’s life, and there is no Tess.”
He sighed. “Would you also like to know when I stopped beating my wife?”
“Michael, is there a woman in New York?”
“There are a lot of women in New York.”
“Yes, but how many of them are you sleeping with?”
Michael almost dropped his coffee mug. “Barbara!”
“Well, at least I got your attention.”
“Jesus.” Michael put his coffee down on the counter and tried to imagine the path of least resistance.
“If you’re trying to figure out how to get out of this,” she said, “I offer the suggestion that the truth is a wonderful fallback position.”
“All right.” He took a breath, then: “Yes. There is a woman in New York.” It hardly seemed to matter, at this point, what she or anyone else thought of him.
Barbara looked shocked. “Oh, my God. Really?”
“What do you mean ‘really’? You knew it.”
“I was hoping you would say she was your secretary and calm me down.”
He could see the disappointment in her face and it pained him.
“We’re in the process of breaking up,” he offered. “If that makes you feel any better.”
“Really?”
“I think so,” he said, unable to lie.
Barbara gave it a respectful nanosecond of silence, then lobbed the next round.
“Was she the first?”
“Second. But the other was before first vows, so she doesn’t count.”
“That’s a relief, I guess.”
“Barbara, I’m not cavalier about my vows. I should have seen this coming and avoided it, but I didn’t.”
“What about God?”
“What about Him?”
“You two aren’t breaking up, are you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll just agree to see other people.”
Barbara nodded and tried to smile. She wiped a tear.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me too,” she managed to whisper.
An hour later he stood in the living room and wondered what to do with himself. He didn’t want to spend the morning sorting through Vincent’s possessions. That had been hard enough before he’d known about Vincent’s past. Now he couldn’t even stand the thought of going into Vincent’s study. He couldn’t think of anywhere he could stand the thought of being right now.
Barbara wandered in, carrying the newspaper and still reading it. She had calmed down from discovering his fall from grace, but her voice was slightly cold as she addressed him. There was a wall between them now.
“Michael, do you know a guy in Barton named Jackson Landry?”
Michael shook his head. “Why?”
“You really should read this.”
“What?”
“It’s an article about this weird family. It’s just bizarre. These parents had four sons. One drowned under suspicious circumstances. One was a psycho who opened fire on a Christmas Eve service and killed five people. He was eventually executed. The youngest son became a successful novelist; then, last week, for no known reason, he robbed a liquor store and killed the clerk, then threw himself out a fifteenth-story window. And the parents both committed suicide. The father blew his brains out about a year after the first son died, and the mother slit her wrists on the anniversary of the other son’s execution.”
Michael didn’t know how to respond, since he had only heard about every third word. He sipped coffee and pretended to be contemplating it.
“This Jackson Landry is the oldest son, who seems to have remained unscathed so far. Wonder what his secret is.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you haven’t heard of these people. I’d think they’d be the talk of the town.”
“They might be. I’m not exactly up on the local gossip.”
“Oh, wow,” she said, still reading. “You’re going to love this. The guy who wrote this story interviewed the mother right after her son’s Christmas Eve killing spree. She told him the family had a curse on it and was being haunted by a demon.”
“Really?”
“She said the reason it happened on Christmas Eve was that Satan was pissed off about people celebrating Jesus’s birthday.”
“Are you serious?” he asked. Now she had his attention.
“Well, she didn’t say ‘pissed off.’ She said ‘angry.’ ”
“Where did she come up with this theory?”
“A fortune-teller told her she had, quote, ‘inherited a horrible debt.’ And she also had a recurring dream that she was surrounded by a bunch of men in long black robes and the leader told her he had conjured a demon and attached it to her husband’s bloodline and they were all going to die. I love how she puts it off on the husband—”
Michael took the paper out of Barbara’s hands.
“Hey, I wasn’t finished—”
“Why is this story being printed now?” he asked.
“Because the novelist-son-who-shot-the-liquor-store-cashier-and-then-jumped-out-a-window thing just happened a few days ago. I remember seeing a little blurb about it. ‘Georgia-Born Novelist Robs Liquor Store, Kills Self.’ It didn’t seem like much of—”
“When did you see that?”
“I don’t know. A few days ago.”
“Before Vincent died?”
She thought about it. “Oh, yeah. It was the day Vincent died. I was sitting here reading the paper and waiting for you to call.”
Michael heard Vincent’s voice on the tape: “. . . I saw something this morning . . .” And Vincent had been reading the paper when Michael had arrived at the hospital that morning. Was it the story of the novelist he’d seen? Was it just that he was obsessed with another demon-infested family? Possibly. But on the tape, he’d made it sound like whatever he’d seen was connected to the horrible thing he’d done. How could Vincent have had any connection to the novelist-turned-murderer and the family from hell?
“Oh, my God,” Michael said as the answer dawned on him.
“What?”
Michael went to the kitchen, found the piece of paper with Edna Foley’s phone number, picked up the phone, and dialed. Barbara was not far behind.
“Who are you calling?” she asked.
“In a minute,” he said, waving her off. The phone rang twice, then Edna picked it up. “Hello?”
“Edna, it’s Father Kinney. I’m sorry to bother you. I need to know Rebecca’s last name.”
Edna snorted. “You got a lot of nerve calling here. She been sick ever since you left. They put her in the hospital last night, said she’s in a coma. And if she dies, I consider you owe me a job.”
“If you want to keep the one you have, you’d better tell me her name.”
“It’s Landry,” Edna said. “L-A-N—”
“I know how it’s spelled,” he said quietly.
Jesus God, I was right.
“Edna, do you know the name of the baby?”
“What baby?”
“Rebecca’s baby. The one you told me about.”
“Why are you asking me?”
Michael decided to take a shot. “Because I read the article.”
Silence on the other end of the phone. Beside him, Barbara was whispering.
“You found Edna Foley? Why didn’t you tell me? Who is she?”
Michael ignored Barbara and continued to drill Edna. “The father of the Landry family was Rebecca’s son, wasn’t he?”
Still no answer.
“Wasn’t he, Edna?” Michael pressed.
“I don’t have to answer that.”
You just did.
He hung up. “Oh, my God,” he said again.
“Michael, would you please tell me what is going on?” Barbara asked.
Vincent must have wanted me in Barton because this Jackson Landry was there. His last living grandson from the demonic side of the family. The only one who hasn’t spilled any blood. Yet.
“Michael?” Barbara asked again.
“What the hell did he think I could do?” Michael asked out loud.
“What did who think?”
“Barbara, just . . . I can’t,” he said. He handed the newspaper back to her and went back to his room. His mind was racing, pasting the story together.
Vincent’s illegitimate son, conceived during a Black Mass, became the father of the family from hell . . . He had four sons of his own . . . two killed themselves, one was executed . . . Two sons took other people’s lives . . . One son left . . . Vincent’s other grandson, what a thought . . . Only the two of us left . . . the two of us and the demon.
Outside it had begun to rain hard. Hail was beating on the window like the cracking of hundreds of tiny whips. A loud clap of thunder made the house shudder; Michael shuddered with it.
The smell returned. Stronger than before. Michael gagged so hard he had to hold on to the bedpost. With his free hand, he fished a handkerchief out of the duffel bag and held it to his nose. It helped enough that he could draw small breaths.
“Get . . . out of . . . here,” he managed to say.
I was invited.
The bum’s voice. Danny’s demon voice. Michael couldn’t tell whether it was in his head or actually in the room.
“I . . . command . . . you . . .”
Oh, do you?
Michael’s sides were aching from trying to breathe in the foul air. He searched the duffel bag for a crucifix. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the smell was gone. The voice was gone. Even the sound of the hail was gone. The room was still.
Michael dropped to his knees, leaned his arms on the bed.
Jesus. I can’t do this. He’s right. I can’t fight him. And You know that. What do You expect me to do?
Silence.
Look, if this is about Good and Evil, You’d better find someone else for this side of the fence.
Silence.
What do you WANT?
Silence.
Stone-cold, infuriating, silence.