Running with the Demon (30 page)

“You should eat something, Evelyn,” her grandfather said quietly, breaking the momentary silence.

Gran was drinking her vodka and orange juice and smoking her cigarettes. There was no food in front of her. “I ate some toast earlier,” the old woman responded distantly. Her eyes were directed out the window again, toward the park. “Just eat your own; don’t worry about me.”

Nest watched her grandfather shake his head and finish the last of his coffee. “Ready, Nest?”

She nodded and rose, gathering her dishes to carry to the
sink. “Leave them,” Gran called after her. “I’ll clean up while you’re gone.”

“Sure you don’t want to come?” Old Bob pressed gently. “It would be good for you.”

Gran gave him a sideways look. “It would be good for the church gossips, maybe. You go on. I’ll work on the picnic lunch.” She paused long enough to take a hard drag on her cigarette. “You might want to give some more thought to inviting that boy, Robert. He’s not what you think.”

Her meaning was plain. Nest placed her dishes in the sink and waited for someone to speak. When no one did, she left the room and went down the hall to brush her teeth and give her hair a final comb. In the kitchen, she could hear her grandparents’ voices, low and deliberate, arguing over John Ross.

She rode downtown in the pickup with her grandfather, neither of them saying anything, the windows rolled down so that Old Bob could smell the trees and flowers. It was just after ten o’clock, so the Illinois heat was not yet unbearable and there was still a hint of night’s cool. Traffic on Lincoln Highway was light, and the parking lot at the supermarket as they turned off Sinnissippi Road was mostly empty. Nest breathed the summer air and looked down at her hands. She felt oddly disconnected from everything, as if she had been taken away from the home and the people she had always known and relocated to another part of the country. She felt she should be doing something—she had already been enlisted in the fight against the demon—but she had no idea where she ought to begin.

She looked at her reflection in the windshield and wondered if she really was only fourteen or if she was in fact much older and had missed some crucial part of her life while she slept.

Old Bob parked the pickup on Second Avenue in front of Kelly’s Furniture directly opposite the First Congregational Church. They got out and crossed the street, stopping momentarily on the sidewalk to say hello to a handful of others on their way inside. Effusive compliments were extended to Nest on her achievements in running, sprinkled with comments concerning the depth of her competition, the state of her health, and the nature of the town’s expectations for her. Nest smiled
and nodded dutifully, suffering it all as graciously as she could, all the while looking around without success for John Ross.

Then they were inside the church, passing through wide, double doors into a vestibule that wrapped the sanctuary on two sides. It was cool and dark, the intense heat kept at bay by central air, the burning sunlight filtered by ribbons of stained glass. Greeters stood at each door, waiting to shake hands with those entering, and to pin flowers on the men’s coats and the women’s dresses. An elderly couple welcomed Nest and her grandfather, and the woman asked after Evelyn. An usher took them to a pew about halfway down on the left side of the sanctuary. The church was filling rapidly, and more than half the pews were occupied already. Nest and her grandfather sat on the aisle, holding their programs and glancing around in the hushed, cool gloom. The cathedral ceiling arched darkly overhead, its wooden beams gleaming. Organ music played softly, and the candles on the altar had already been lit by the acolytes. Nest looked again for John Ross, but he was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t coming, she thought, disappointed. But, after all, why would he?

Robert Heppler was sitting with his parents on the other side of the sanctuary near the back. The Hepplers liked the Congregational Church because it wasn’t mired in dogma (this from Robert, purportedly quoting his father) and it embraced a larger span of life choices and secular attitudes. Robert said this was very different from being Catholic. Robert gave Nest a brief wave, and she gave him one back. She saw one of her grandfather’s steel-mill friends, Mr. Michaelson, sitting with his wife several rows in front of the Hepplers.

The choir filed in and took their seats in the loft beside the pulpit, and everyone opened their programs and began studying the order of events and their hymnals.

Then John Ross appeared at the far side of the chamber, limping through the doorway with the aid of his black staff. He wore a fresh shirt, slacks, and a tie, and his long hair was carefully combed and tied back. He looked ill at ease and unsure of himself. Nest tried and failed to get his attention. Ross followed
the usher down the aisle to a mostly empty row behind the Michaelsons and eased himself gingerly into place.

Now the choir rose, and the organist played a brief introduction. The minister appeared through a side door on the dais and walked to the pulpit. Ralph Emery was round and short and sort of strange-looking, with large ears and heavy jowls, but he was kind and funny and he was well known for giving thought-provoking sermons. He stood now in his black robes looking out over the congregation as if trying to decide whether to proceed. Then he asked the congregation to bow their heads, and he gave a brief invocation. When he was finished, he asked everyone to rise and turn to hymn number 236. The congregation stood, opened their hymnals, and began to sing “Morning Has Broken.”

They had just reached the second verse when the feeders began to appear, dozens of them, materializing out of the gloom like ghosts. They crept from behind the empty pews down front where no one liked to sit and from under the offertory and sacrament tables at the chamber’s rear. They rose out of the choir loft, from behind the blue velvet drapes that flanked the altar, and from under the cantilevered pulpit. They seemed to be everywhere. Nest was so stunned that she stopped singing. She had never seen feeders in the church. She had never imagined they could enter here. She stared at the closest in disbelief, a pair that slithered beneath the pew in front of her between the legs of the Robinson sisters. She fought down the revulsion she felt at seeing them here, in this place where God was worshipped and from which dark things were banished. She glanced around in horror, finding them hanging from the ceiling rafters, curled around the chandeliers, and propped up within the frescoes and bays. Yellow eyes stared at her from every quarter. Her heart quickened and her pulse began to race. No one could see the feeders but her. But even that didn’t help. She could not tolerate having them here. She could not abide their presence. What were they doing in a church? In
her
church! What had drawn them? Despite the cool air of the sanctuary, she began to sweat. She glanced at her grandfather,
but he was oblivious of what was happening, his gaze focused on his hymnal.

Then she turned in desperation to find John Ross.

John Ross had seen the feeders at the same moment as Nest. But unlike the girl, Ross knew what was happening. Only the demon’s coming could have caused so many feeders to gather—the demon’s coming coupled with his own, he amended, which now, in hindsight, seemed painfully ill advised. He should not have done this, come into this holy place, given in to his own desperate need to ease in some small measure the loneliness that consumed his life. He should have rejected Robert Freemark’s offer and remained in his hotel room. He should not have been influenced by the attraction he had felt for this church while on his way to Josie’s. He should have done what he knew was best for everyone and stayed away.

He willed himself to remain calm, not to give away what he was feeling, not to do anything to startle those around him. His staff was propped against the seat beside him, and his first impulse was to seize it and ready himself for battle. But he could not find his enemy, could not identify him even though he knew he was there, hiding in plain sight.

An elderly lady several seats away glanced at him and smiled. He realized he had stopped singing. He forced himself to smile back, to begin singing anew, first reaching down for the staff, planting it squarely before him, and leaning on it as if he were suddenly in need of its support.

It was then that he glanced across the heads of the congregation and saw Nest Freemark looking at him. He met her gaze squarely, letting her know he understood what she was seeing and that he was seeing it, too. He saw the fear and horror in her eyes, saw how deep it tunneled, and he understood far better than she what it was that motivated it. He fixed her with his gaze and slowly shook his head. Do nothing, he was warning her. Stay where you are. Keep your head.

He saw in her eyes that she understood. He saw as well that she did not know if she could do what he was asking. He thought to go to her, but there was no way to do that without
drawing attention to himself. The hymn was finished, and the congregation was sitting down again. He cast a quick eye over the assemblage on the off chance he might find the demon. The minister was giving the Scripture lesson. The feeders crawled over the dais at his feet, dark shadows that made the scarlet carpet of the sanctuary appear as if it had been stained by ink. The minister finished the Scripture reading and went on to give the church announcements. John Ross felt his skin turn hot as he sat nailed in place in the pew, unable to act. I should not be here, he kept thinking. I should leave now.

The choir rose to sing, and John Ross looked back at Nest Freemark. Nest was sitting right on the edge of her seat beside her grandfather, her face pale and drawn, her body rigid. Her eyes were shifting right and left, following the movements of the feeders closest to her. Several were almost on top of her, slithering between the legs of the parishioners like snakes. One drew itself right up in front of her, as if taunting her, as if daring her to do something about it. Ross saw the desperation mirrored in her face. She was on the verge of panic, ready to bolt. He knew he had to do something. The choir finished, and the congregation rose to join the minister in a responsive prayer.

When that happened, something caused Nest Freemark to glance suddenly toward the back of the sanctuary, and Ross saw her expression mirror her shock.

Then he saw it, too.

Wraith stood in the doorway, thick fur bristling, tiger-striped face lowered, ears laid back, green eyes narrowed and glittering. He was so massive that he filled the entire opening, a monstrous apparition stalking out of the gloom. His big head swung left and right with slow deliberation, and his muzzle drew back, revealing all of his considerable teeth. He made no sound as he stood there, surveying the unwary assemblage, but his intent was unmistakable. Nest’s fear had drawn him, summoned him to a place he had never been, brought him out of the deep woods and into this unfamiliar setting. His deliberate stare was filled with hunger.

Nest felt her stomach lurch.
No, Wraith, no, go away, go
away!
Feeders scattered everywhere, crawling under pews, skittering down the aisles, and climbing the wood-paneled walls, their dark forms bleeding into the shadows. Their scrambling was so frantic that it stirred the air in the chamber, and among the congregation several heads lifted in surprise.

Wraith took a moment to consider his options, then started forward in that familiar, stiff-legged walk.

Nest was out of her seat and striding up the aisle to intercept him instantly. She did not stop to think about what she was doing. She did not stop to consider that she had never even thought to approach him before, that she had no idea whether she could control him. She did not say anything to her grandfather as she wheeled out of the pew; she did not even look at him. All she could think about was what would happen if Wraith managed to get hold of one of the feeders—here, in her church, among her family and friends and neighbors. She did not know what it would do to the fabric that separated the human and nonhuman worlds, and she did not want to find out.

The responsive reading concluded, and the congregation reseated itself. Heads turned to look at her as she closed on Wraith—on the ghost wolf they could not see—but she ignored them. Wraith seemed to grow even larger as she approached him, and his predatory gaze fixed on her. She felt small and vulnerable in his presence, a fragile bit of life that he could snuff out with barely a thought. But still she came on, fixed of purpose, steeled by her determination to turn him back.

And as she reached him, as it seemed she must come right up against him, right onto the tips of those gleaming teeth and that bristling fur, he simply faded away and was gone.

She continued without slowing through the space he had occupied, eyes closing against the rush of cold that washed over her, until she passed through the doorway and into the hall beyond. She stood there shaking, taking deep breaths to steady herself, leaning against the Christian-literature table, out of sight of those gathered within.

She jumped as a hand touched her shoulder. “Nest?”

John Ross was standing next to her, leaning on his black,
rune-scrolled staff, his pale green eyes intense. He must have followed her out, she realized, and done so quickly.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. “Did you see?”

He glanced about the deserted hall as if someone might be listening. Within the sanctuary, Reverend Emery was beginning his sermon, “Whither Thou Goest.”

“I saw,” he answered. He bent close. “What was that creature? How does it know you?”

She swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “That was Wraith.” She shook her head, refusing to offer any further explanation. “Where did all these feeders come from? What’s happening?”

Ross shifted uneasily. “I think the demon is here. I think that’s what’s drawing them.”

“Here? Why?”

Ross shook his head. “Because of me.” He looked suddenly tired. “I don’t know. I’m only guessing.”

She felt a deep cold settle in the pit of her stomach. “What should we do?”