CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

RON TALON WAS ON THE COUCH, SITTING STRAIGHT BACKED, facing the windows, the terrace and the sun, when the phone rang. His eyes were closed, a glass of bourbon sweat in front of him.

He had found the house empty. His station wagon was gone, so were Chandal and Kristy. All the suitcases were also gone. Though he had prepared himself for this since the very beginning, it all seemed unreal to him.

He let the phone ring.

He kept his eyes closed.

He knew that there was one thing in life that was absolutely certain. You must pay, in some way, for everything you are, for everything you have been. There were no exceptions. And it had been foolish to think for one moment that there would be no payment due for that time spent in the carriage house in New York City. For possessing the bloodstone.

Evil begets evil. He felt a pressure climaxing inside his body. He felt the past in his mind and stomach and chest loosening and flowing, the scabs giving way, and a fresh separation of bone, flesh and tissue.

Chandal had been possessed. In order to rid herself of evil, she had inadvertently committed evil. Not intentionally. But people had died. Doreen Hammer had died. Billy Deats had died. Eric Savage, Ron had discovered later, had died. None of it had been Chandal’s doing. Still, people had died.

The past was more than a darkness of mind, it was a nudity of soul. It was a place of deep sorrows and hopelessness.

His vision blurred. The sins of the mother visited upon the daughter. Was that it? Was that what the carnival was all about? The crowning, Last Friday, Mardi gras? Yes, he was sure that it was. Yet he was helpless to know what to do.

The telephone rang again.

He lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

“Mr. Talon?” asked the operator.

“Yes. This is he.”

“Go ahead, California, your party is on the line.”

The voice on the other end belonged to the receptionist at his office. A shy girl in her early twenties. Sometimes Ron had had the idea she wouldn’t mind being in show business. Now the voice had an odd, choked, rather breathless quality to it. The girl spoke slowly at first, then told him almost in a rush that Mimi Halpern was dead. That she, along with Dwayne Clark, had been killed in an automobile accident Wednesday evening. “It’s such a tragedy, really...” Words of sympathy and regret etched their way into his eardrum and he could see Mimi smiling, her saggy-haired, gray cat-eyed beauty beaming at him across his desk.

“We’ve tried to reach you for several days now. We closed your office... there was only the bookkeeper and me, so...”

“You did the right thing,” Ron said, testing his voice. It was remarkably steady.

Ron knew Mimi’s death was no accident. Dr. Luther had suffered a similar accident in New York while treating Chandal. Only the doctor had been fortunate enough to escape with his life.

“...We’re still quite stunned.”

“Yes. I understand,” Ron said and felt tears brim in his eyes. “Please, I—I must hang up now...” Slowly he lowered the receiver, then let it drop into its cradle. All at once he felt a kind of shattering inside and wondered if he wasn’t going under, right here, right now—sinking to the bottom of life, drowning in his own misery and despair.

The pain turned to sudden anger which materialized in his physical self. He vowed war on Brackston. He vowed to destroy every last one of its people. He would topple their mountains, poison their rivers, burn down their houses. “Do you hear me, old woman? I swear as God is my judge—I shall destroy you! All OF YOU!”

He heard the last rumbling traces of his words die away; replaced in the silence by a little graveled whisper, deliberate and slow.

“Come... get... me... if... you... can.”

Then silence. He steadied himself. His vision blurred again, reminding him he was falling into repetitive patterns. He waited. His pain waited with him.

And then he heard it. A light tread on the creaking stairs. He sat very still and quiet. As the footsteps descended the stairs he realized they were moving beneath him and not above as was the usual pattern. He knew it would have been better not to have heard them.

He staggered to his feet. His face was peaked, pale. He moved into the hallway and saw that a door leading to the basement stood ajar. He inched through the doorway and down the narrow stairs toward the awaiting darkness.

The silence below was more nerve shattering than the previous clamoring in the streets, more frightening. As he came to the bottom step, he paused. Something was radically different. In fact, nothing about his surroundings was similar to substitute images. There was something awesome, even terrifying, in the glacial chill that rushed at him from the open-mouthed archway ahead. Yet there was no movement of air. And no sound; no sound at all.

He knew he was waiting for their next move. They would move, he knew. They hadn’t summoned him below for nothing. His instinct told him that he was in the midst of an occurrence, not the beginning, and that the moment was upon him.

Yet, he didn’t regret it. He couldn’t understand why he didn’t. The thought astounded him. And, in a half-crazed sort of a way, elated him. Perhaps he realized he could not live with this kind of tension, not any longer. He could not live in constant fear. He had to do something soon.

It didn’t seem quite so dark now; Ron’s eyes were beginning to adjust. He could feel sweat roll down from the back of his neck, struck suddenly by the cold air.

He moved; something moved with him. Beyond the massive archway a wan, watery light glittered, shifted, as though something or someone had moved a light source. A candle? A flashlight? He wasn’t sure.

He weaved through the passageway ahead and stopped to gaze at the large room circling him. Softly lit, its shadows crawled away to cluster in the corners. The room’s low slung ceiling was supported by pillars carved with lozenges and croziers. The floor was covered with rough broken stones and in the far corner the gapes of a naked opening of a well. Above the well a hemp rope dangled, swayed, disappearing into the depths below. A small lantern was resting on the well’s ledge, its yellowish light fanning out, softer, until it dissolved into blackness.

Something moved beyond the light.

Ron twisted around, startled. For a moment he could not see anything. Just darkness. And from within the darkness: scratching. The harsh, grating scraping of fingernails.

Someone moved again, laughed. A childlike giggle. A few seconds later Kristy stepped into the light and stood still, utterly motionless. Her thin shoulders drooped, allowing her arms to dangle freely at her sides, the palms of her hands turned upward toward the ceiling as if she were about to receive something of importance. Her pink tongue slowly licked her dark red lips. Then she hissed.

Ron’s mouth felt dry. He tried to work up some saliva, but there was none. Sweat broke on his forehead, ran down over his brows, into the corners of his eyes. He blinked away stinging fluid.

“Kristy?” he murmured and moved closer.

The child backed deeper into the corner, until her face became almost lost to the shadows. Only her large eyes peered out.

“Kristy? Are you all right?”

“Jennifer is dead, Daddy. She’s dead.” She stared speculatively into the well. Her face was twisted, uneven. Her mouth turned down on the right side. Her left eye seemed lower than the other. Her black hair hung limp over her white forehead and cheeks.

“Is Jennifer down there, Kristy?”

She did not answer.

The make-believe took Ron by surprise and drew him closer to the well. He reached out and took hold of the rope. Slowly, he began to pull.

Kristy responded at frequent intervals with nervous little bursts of laughter, little screeches of enthusiasm and pleasure.

“I did it, Daddy,” Kristy explained anxiously. “I killed her.”

When the last of the rope appeared in the weak light, Ron saw it was wound around Jennifer’s doll neck. He had hardly lifted the doll from the well when Kristy screamed: “She’s dead! Look at her, Daddy! She’s dead, she’s dead!”

Kristy’s face was very flushed. For the first time there was color in her skin. Her features were twisted and disturbed.

“What have you done?” Ron’s voice sounded to him detached, remarkably so.

“I made her bleed first,” she hissed. “Then I killed her.”

The doll’s china-face had been bashed in. Her eyes had been removed. Both arms and legs had been slashed with a knife.

Kristy giggled. “You are having a bad dream, Daddy. A nightmare. But do not run away, because...”

She moved now; the air moved with her, a warm breeze that carried with it the slightly unpleasant odor of dead flowers. Swiftly, she ran to a small door, not as tall as an ordinary door, but as wide. Opening the door, she laughed: “But do not run away, because...”

“Kristy!” he screamed.

She was gone.

He reached for the lantern. “Kristy, please...’’ He spun around; the door swung open completely and smacked the wall. “KRISTY!”

That gripping sensation in his stomach now as he inched through the doorway. The passageway ahead was narrow, choked on either side by a bizarre lattice-work of limestone, roots, and parasitic vines. There was room enough for one person, but no more.

If this was a trap, it would be over within the next few seconds.

He straightened, holding his breath, and stared into the darkness. There was a silence which he felt reluctant to break. How still it was, how absolutely unmoving—not a ruffle.

“Kristy?” he breathed. “Where are you?”

He raised his eyes, as if to try them out. The light from his lantern shone only a few feet in front of him, fading suddenly into thick shadows and impenetrable vegetation.

Now he moved without sound, one careful step at a time, the pale light guiding his way. He found a small opening and took a route that was neither direct nor circuitous. It was merely there, as if he were being guided along a path made just for him. He moved effortlessly, soundlessly, with such fluidity that there was no sensation of movement, merely a gliding forward into the bowels of the earth. The way grew thicker and more choked with foliage and vines, yet his speed had actually increased. He was totally alone, or so it seemed to him. The cavern was quite still, just an occasional fluttering of wings overhead. A flapping sound.

Before him, the walk was barely visible, only a shade lighter than the surrounding darkness, but still sufficiently lighted to enable him to find the next opening.

Once more, there was a flapping of wings.

He stared upward. He could see nothing in the darkness. Yet he felt air move against his face, and something came to rest above him. From the impact, he knew that it was something immense.

He turned quickly and held out his light. He had arrived at a broad and spacious portico, its columns spiraling upward to support an elaborately carved roof. To Ron, it was astonishing. Like an archaeologist who has just stumbled upon some great hidden treasure, he was rooted to the spot, his mouth agape.

As he paused to recover himself, a light emerged from a passageway ahead and shone full upon the walls of the cavern. A dark vine cluster appeared far and wide in front of him, and behind it rose a copse of lofty forest trees, sleeping in the melancholy half-glow of azure light.

Something moved, flashed in the distance.

“Kristy!”

The shadowy figure in a drab yellow cloak vanished.

There was another flapping of wings and another sound behind him. He turned and felt a hard object brush against his neck. He screamed, beating his hand wildly about his head. The hawk screamed.

Light flashed as he turned and started to run. His body became unfamiliar and awkward. He dashed through the arching vines, slipped. Breathless, he regained his balance and began running again, his eyes darting upward. The hawk was gone.

“Kristy? KRISTY!”

He touched stone, dismayed anew by the dark twisting amphitheaters, the hanging stalactite, the quaking rot of bone beneath his feet that reeked its smell with every step. Strange shapes caught his eye; putrescent smells choked his nostrils.

He rushed aimlessly through the dark subbasement tunnels below the earth. “Kristy?” he cried. “Where are you?” His voice echoed, enlarged, came back to slap him across the face.

Abruptly he was propelled downward into instant hallucination. The little clearing in which he stood expanded before him, opened like a huge jagged slit. Swiftly animals rose from their graves; bears, pumas, jackal and hyenas. They leapt enormous before his eyes. Just as swiftly a large lizard emerged, opened its huge jaws and began to devour its prey.

Everything before Ron had gone into action, thrashing violently, echoing, bones cracking, splintering and still the hallucination persisted—the air was rent with sickening screams. The ceiling became alive with the massive fluttering of wings; bats, guacharos and swifts, their breasts, in the half-glow, resembling flecks of fire; prehistoric cave dwellers began emerging from beneath the stone. Blind groping creatures with withered flesh and fungi hair; their eyes sightless sockets devoid of life, their screams impotent wails, soundless, yet their lips were twisted with unspeakable sounds of terror.

“Noooo!” Ron screamed. He ran. Sharp light speared his eyes. He veered to his left, running, always running, trying to find his way. Voices now. Human voices. He paused breathless to force his senses to try and separate the sounds around him, what was real from what wasn’t.

In front of him the space widened, revealing an endless expanse of soft golden light. Everything felt suddenly warm and cozy. Too cozy. Yet he could not move away. He swallowed dryness in his throat and then saw her. He stared into the soft light at Kristy. And Kristy stared back with eyes that were wide and shiny like a quiet night.

“The darkness,” she whimpered. “The darkness. I can’t get out of the darkness. Help me, Daddy.”

For an instant he was startled, not expecting to see her so suddenly, so clearly. As his eyes adjusted, he recognized the figure before him. It was not his daughter at all, but the little girl he had seen in his own garden weeks ago.

He caught a glimpse of movement, a quick flash as Kristy moved from the shadows and darted behind the little girl. Their images merged.

“Kristy?”

The little girl smiled. “Help me, Daddy. Help me.”

“Kristy, come to Daddy.”

The little girl hissed vehemently, in irritation, puffing her lips out; then she moved away into the darkness. Kristy, like the other child, had simply vanished before his eyes.

“Daddy... don’t leave me. Don’t leave me!”

The high quivering voice, pitched almost to a scream, droned on and on, growing fainter until abruptly it ceased.

Ron looked dazedly around. Moved. He wasn’t sure where Kristy’s voice had been coming from.

On either side of the passageway the earth’s crust suddenly turned to igneous rock, throwing off large amounts of heat. Yet, further on, the passageway was ice cold. Suspended from the roof, incrustations, like icicles. A sizzle as fire and ice mingled.

He stopped for a moment as an overwhelming panic seemed to strain and shift the organs of his body. In the blanket gloom, his strength began to deteriorate. From great depths of weariness he heard his daughter’s pleading voice: Daddy, help me. Please, help me.

Her voice grew louder, nearer. He moved quickly, following her voice that echoed along the gigantic corridor. A curious yellow light filtered into the passageway ahead, and the passageway became other passageways, cold and hot passageways, endlessly multiplying, and thronged with great rock formations, which appeared to move as he thrust between their jagged edges.

Yes, Daddy—come to me....

He held the meager light out in front of him. Ahead was a small opening. He moved swiftly through the narrow space. He turned suddenly and saw he was caught between two walls. Now the lantern dimmed. It came back again, but only to flare for a moment. Then it flickered to a tiny speck until it went out.

Without allowing himself to think about his situation, he rummaged through his pockets until he found a book of matches. He struck a match. It wasn’t much, but enough to get him to the other side.

The match burned evenly for a second, then quickly flickered and died. He struck another, moved. Struck another, moved. With only three matches left, he did not want to think about what was to come... about how lost he was and how little oxygen there seemed to be. He paused to curse the darkness. He struck another match and carefully approached the opening ahead.

It took him several moments before he realized that his match had gone out. Yet the space ahead was aglow with light. Candles. Yes, there was definitely candlelight ahead.

When he emerged from the darkness, he found himself in a dim and half-lighted chamber which he realized was some sort of a crypt. Around him, chiseled from solid stone, eagles and jaguars and dancing jackals. Visages of gods graced the ceiling and a break in the roof far above let a bolt of sunshine fall to a carved sandstone floor. Upon the floor were sprinkled hundreds of tiny red flowers.

The wide chamber was lighted by lofty candelabra of elaborate bronze, and around the walls were wrought vast hieroglyphics, in dark and solemn colors.

At the extremity of the crypt, a solid gold casket. A small tripod stood at a little distance, from the incense in which the smoke slowly rose. Near this was a statue of a winged goat-headed god with serpent’s tail and cloven hooves, and the soft light gave an additional and yet solemn calm to its large, harmonious, passionless features.

With a flush of awe and ghostly fear, Ron moved and longed for an echo to his noiseless steps. He moved to the end of the chamber quietly, without taking his eyes off the casket. And now he knew where he was. Kristy had described it only too clearly. A place where they have dancing jackals, she had said. And flower wars. Kristy had known all along.

He hesitated before peering into the casket. The sunken, withered features, the purple lips and flowing white hair were instantly recognizable to him. It was Thomas Wheatley. The stonecutter.

All at once a thin bony hand placed itself lovingly on the old man’s cheek. Ron spun around with a start, seizing the edge of the casket for support.

The Widow Wheatley smiled. She fixed her gaze on him unwaveringly. “Brackston, Utah. Grandeur above, secrets below. If you are looking for a scenic drive, take any road out of town.”

Her voice echoed about the chamber, metallic and jangling, bouncing airily above the gods, swirling about the great goat-headed statue which stood silently confronting him like a mad tribunal of one.

But in a moment there were more than one. Many more. From out of the shadows stepped the townspeople. Matthew Todd, the Hadley brothers, Lou Harris, Sheriff Nash, Mrs. Taylor and Isabelle Carroll. Scattered among them, children.

At first, Ron did not recognize Kristy. She stood back in the shadows, flanked by the boy and girl who had been part of the happening from the beginning. She wore rags, a tattered brown sack dress—and, around her waist, a pelt. Upon seeing her, Ron didn’t know what he felt. Relief? Confusion? Anger?

He looked at the other faces—at Matthew Todd’s, which seemed to reflect arrogant power; at Isabelle Carroll’s which shone with unbridled pleasure; and at Kristy’s—relaxed, totally at ease, her eyes smiling.

“Kristy?” The word caught in Ron’s throat.

Kristy laughed, hissed at him, saliva forming at the corners of her mouth. Then she stood motionless, her eyes vacant.

Blankly, he stared at her, unable to believe, unable even to absorb what he saw. “What have you done to her?” he breathed.

“Done? We have done nothing to her,” Widow Wheatley said.

Ron could not take his eyes from his daughter. She looked so unnatural. Almost—drugged, hypnotized. Odd that the association should come into his mind. Yet he had seen that look before. Mrs. Taylor as she popped green pills into her mouth. Chandal as she lifted Kristy into the cart. Lou Harris as he spoke of his daughter.

Drugs?

The word raced through Ron’s mind. It would certainly explain a lot. Chandal’s lack of concern. His sudden lapses of time, his extended periods of sleep.

“Let me speak to my daughter,” he said.

“Speak of what?” Matthew Todd demanded.

“I’m her father!”

Frank Hadley raised his gun. Laughed. “Oh, I’m not going to kill you now,” he said. “Unless I have to.”

All eyes sparkled at the thought.

Without thinking, Ron snapped. “What the fuck is wrong with you people? She’s my daughter. I just want to talk to her.”

Widow Wheatley hesitated. She spoke, tightly, to Sheriff Nash. “Control him. Or kill him now. The choice is yours.”

“Why?” Ron screamed. “Why are you doing this?”

She wheeled around and glowered at him. “You want to know? For your wife’s sins, Mr. Talon. For the mockery and shame and death she has leveled on our people. It’s all here—our revenge, our hatred. Can’t you feel it. See it? Thousands of years of hatred sculpted into the stone, buried beneath the earth, jammed into the cracks and crevices. It’s all here. Buried... alive. This valley bears the hatred of the world. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...” She smiled. “We are the Ruling Elders. And these,” she indicated the children, “are the Keepers of the Hate.”

The others moved closer, their eyes animal-like, shining with the purity of vision and purpose, moving in harmony with their fellow men, a pageant of human hatred, personified. And now the hungry smile to go with it...

“We have not forgotten,” she hissed. All hissed with her.

Ron suddenly felt himself seized by violent hands. Widow Wheatley’s lips were still moving. “Your wife has taken something from us. Now it is our turn to take something from her.”

She poked her bony white finger into his face. Sweat poured down each side of her long nose in a thick stream, soaking her dry cracked lips. Behind her, heavy figures, tiny figures lusted for blood—silent, waiting.

“Life is the only substance we have. We are truth. God is fiction! Our hatred—that is real! That is substance! That is the only truth there is!”

She nodded to the others.

Matthew Todd and Frank Hadley forced Ron quickly to the ground. Tim Hadley and Sheriff Nash came behind him carrying ropes. They pushed him against the cold stone, pinning his arms back. They tied his hands roughly; when they let go, he slid down and fell on his side. He lay there, his face bent toward cold stone. Sweat suddenly froze on his face from the cold air, then just as suddenly exploded and rolled down his face, coating his cheeks, flooding his eyes. He opened his mouth and tried to breathe, but sweat bubbled in his nostrils, flowed in his mouth until he had begun to choke.

Then from all sides children came smashing; like little gnomes, each having a whip-like tree branch, small heads and flat round eyes, they began to beat him savagely. Ron threw himself into a fetal position in a paroxysm of fear. He struggled feebly to protect himself, but was unable to escape their lashes.

“HATE... HATE... HATE... HATE...”

They repeated the phrase again and again in vicious tones, brilliantly enunciated, and gradually everyone in the crypt had begun to sway with the slow rhythm of the chant, intoning the word more and more rapidly. As the sound increased, each Elder stepped forward and spat at him furiously. The children smiled, laughed gleefully. Kristy’s laughter seemed the loudest.

“Kristy,” Ron cried.

Kristy moved closer and raised her stick. “Ahhhhh” from the Elders. She brought the branch down hard across his face. Instantly dark blood streamed greasily from the side of his mouth. She brought the stick down again. Again. And again. Panting, she stepped back and smiled with satisfaction; nodded.

The Widow Wheatley took the child lovingly into her embrace. She peered down at Ron. “Nothing can change the laws of creation. The power of light and darkness. These are the stuff we are carved from. So it will remain. Must remain. Our children, what they have seen, what they have heard, they will remember. They...” She nodded her head profoundly. “They, most of all, are the best Keepers of the Hate.”

Now the assembly began to disperse. They drifted away imperceptibly into deep crevices from whence they came. The Widow Wheatley was the last to depart.

“Revenge is our justice,” she said. “Hatred is our supper.”

She paused an instant longer. Her features sun-tipped, radiant. “What is there to eat?” she whispered. “What is the real food? I have meat to eat that you know not of; for flesh is meat indeed.” She sighed heavily. “Oh, passing stranger— sleep well. For your days are numbered.”

She laughed then, at first with some restraint, then more and more raucously, finally guffawing. Abruptly laughter and footsteps receded into the darkness.

Ron’s head sagged on his neck. He lay like a corpse, motionless and alone.