The Reality Conspiracy (3 page)

He detected a faint smell, like incense, in the room. Everything was working perfectly.

05:30 hrs.

All of a sudden Denny's eyes widened. His surprised expression was almost comic, as if he'd been goosed or shocked. Then his spine stiffened. He sat up ramrod-straight. He bucked once, again. His arms and legs strained against their invisible bonds. The fetters seemed like deep black furrows in his skin.

He let out a startled cry. "Uuh—!" It was clipped short as his tongue squirmed from between his lips, sealing his mouth like a cork in a bottle. McCurdy could see perspiration pouring from the man.

Denny began to jump and twitch as if he were being jolted by electrical current.

The monitoring wires moved like a spider web with a fly trapped in it.

"The wires are just for monitoring equipment," McCurdy whispered. "There's no juice hitting the subject."

Rex said nothing.

Pellets of sweat shot from Denny's forehead. He bucked and heaved. Black blood spread from the grooves in his arms and legs. The embedded monofilament tie made his neck look as if an invisible knife were pushing deeper and deeper into its flesh.

A magnificent seizure jerked him forward. His jaw clamped. Teeth broke. A good three inches of severed tongue dropped from his mouth and plopped onto his throbbing erection.

His skin seemed to shine. Black blood from his wounds looked like motor oil. His mouth was a bloody black hole. Garbled, blunted syllables barked from his slick lips. His eyes bulged like overripe fruit about to burst.

He ejaculated.

He puked.

Somehow, he screamed.

McCurdy averted his eyes, then thought better of it. This was no time to appear squeamish.

He looked back at the screen in time to see Denny LaChance in the midst of a violent convulsion. He bucked and bounded like a prisoner in the throes of electrocution. The monofilament sliced the flesh from his arms and legs. White bone peeked from meaty folds of skin.

Denny jerked toward the camera again. His eyes exploded. Viscous liquid flowed down his cheeks.

His body sagged. Convulsed again.

A huge gaping mouth opened in his neck. No blood gushed from the wound.

Hobston, Vermont

Thursday, November 12

7:30 A.M.

A
lton Barnes followed his friend Stuart Dubois across the snow-covered meadow, making toward the woods. The men kicked tides of powdery whiteness from their path as their Sorrel boots sliced through patches of the brown brittle grasses.

Again Alton slowed down, allowing Stuart to remain in the lead. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw their meandering four-footed trail that marked their route all the way back to the Dubois farmhouse.

Alton looked at his own footprints: their line was so much straighter than Stu's. And Stu's stride wasn't as long, though the men were approximately the same height. Stu's trail was punctuated by frequent rest stops where he'd stood, deep breathing, shifting his weight from foot to foot, pretending to look around.

He's getting old
, Alton thought,
he's slowing down
.

Facing forward again, an undisturbed carpet of white offered the men a royal welcome to the wilderness.

"Couldn't've got a more perfect day for trackin'," said Alton.

Stu stopped, turned around, spat a black wad of tobacco juice into the snow. "Praise the Lord," he agreed with an emphatic nod.

Alton wrinkled his nose at the black blemish on the pure white snow. "You back to that creosote chewin' gum again, are you?"

"You betcha." Stu spat again. "This blessed Red Man's the secret of my success. I buys me a two-week supply every year same time I pick up my huntin' license."

Normally, Al knew, Stu didn't chew tobacco. But today was special; it was the first day of hunting season. Stu made a point never to smoke his pipe in the woods. Pipe smoke, the old man explained year after year, would scare the deer away. One whiff of Prince Albert and they'd head for the high country, thinking a forest fire was chasing them.

Maybe Stu was on to something with the chewing tobacco; he got his buck every season, no arguing that.

When the men stopped again they had reached the top of the rise. They leaned their rifles against the stone wall and waited a moment before entering the forest.

"You want high or low ground?" Alton asked. He spat, too, but his colorless saliva left no stain on the virgin ground cover.

Stu looked up, then down at the earth between his boots, giving the question ample consideration. "You take the high ground, Al," he said. "Anything I can do to get you closer to the Heavenly Land is gonna work to my credit when I get the Call."

Alton laughed. "You're gonna get 'the Call' all right, and sooner than you think if you don't stop harpin' at me with all your high holy rollin'."

Stu smiled toothlessly and chuckled as he always did. "Heh, heh, heh-heh-heh." He took off a buckskin glove and massaged his craggy cheeks. Al could hear the scratch of chin whiskers beneath Stu's arthritic fingers. "I'm doin' it for your own good, Alton. I just hate the idea of havin' to talk to you long distance when I'm up there on the righteous side of them Pearly Gates."

Al held up his hands in resignation. "I surrender. I'll mend my ways, just lay off this Oral Roberts stuff."

"Zat mean you'll come to church with Daisy and me on Sundee?"

"Well, I don't want to get fanatical about this—"

"It's settled then. Let's shake on it." Stu held out his gloveless hand. Alton pushed a silver flask into it.

Stu drank, smacked his lips, then passed the flask back. "'Nothin'll cement a bargain better'n a bit of ay-pricot brandy."

"Nothin'll shut you up faster'n a bottle in your mouth."

"Praise the Lord," Stu said.

T
he fading crunch of Alton's boots vanished into the distance. Stuart was alone.

To his right a short row of evergreen trees, their branches heavy with snow, bent toward—sometimes touched—the ground.

The snow weighed on Stuart, too. He was winded. His heart thumped. He could hear the muted roar of blood pulsing past his ears as he stood sweating in the cold wind. That climb from the house to the forest got steeper every year.

Now, with Al out of sight, Stu permitted himself to stop and rest for a while. After placing his rifle against a hickory tree, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the plug of Red Man. He chomped some off between his gums. A stinging sweetness bit back at him and he smacked his lips.

"Lordy," he whispered, "Lordy, Lordy."

Not far away he saw evidence that a rabbit had passed by, and not long ago. As sunlight found each cluster of four tiny paw prints, they were transformed by the melting snow. They blended, ran together, formed the strange tracks of some large, unfamiliar animal. Stuart smiled.
The woods'll play tricks on you if you let it
, he chuckled.
Yessir, Mother Nature can be a great deceiver
.

He rested his hand against the peeling bark of a white birch trunk, gently, as if touching a lover who would soon depart.

He closed his eyes, the rubbery smile still broad on his face. How grand it would be if a man could grow tall and old like the trees. He could keep an eye on everything from above, he could study the mysterious shifting of seasons, look down upon the beautiful ever-changing patterns of sunshine and shadow on the Green Mountains. And at night he could fall asleep to the lullaby of the stream and the soft secret whisper of the wind.

Stuart opened his eyes and looked around.

A cloud must have passed the sun for suddenly it was colder. Trees rustled slightly, depositing tiny falls of snow that scattered in the breeze. Something was nearby.

Snatching up his pa's ancient 32-40 Winchester, Stu tuned his ears to the forest sounds.

Reflexes ready, he scanned the snowy ground, the black tree trunks, the roll of earth where it dipped sharply before angling upward to become the eastern slope of Stattler Mountain.

Lord God it was all so beautiful.

His mind drifted from the thought of game to the wilderness itself. From where he stood, he could see no reminder of civilization: not a road, not a telephone line, not even a church steeple in the distance. The silence was unpolluted by chainsaws or automobiles, or even the barking of dogs.

He breathed deeply and tipped his head back. No jet exhaust discolored the crystal-blue winter sky.

This is the way the forest was meant to be. This is how it must have looked when the first white men came. And this is how it had looked to the Indians, a thousand—or a thousand thousand—years ago. The thought pleased him, made him feel as if he were part of the ages. Whatever had caught his attention was gone now.

Stuart lowered the barrel of the rifle. Soundlessly he stepped up onto a little rise of moss-covered bedrock, protected from the snow by a ledge. From there he could look across a shallow depression, past a shelf of shale, and up at the mountainside.

Then he saw it.

No more than twenty feet in front of him.

White light.

Stuart took an involuntary step backward.

Bright as a flashbulb.

He blinked several times, expecting the strange vision to tighten into some recognizable focus.

The light, it doesn't go out!

The hovering circle of brilliance seemed to pulse as it grew more intense. Stuart squinted, lifting his right hand to shade his eyes. He let the rifle slip from his left.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in aflame of fire out of the midst of a bush . . .

Part of his bewildered mind registered something about the shadows. Juniper bushes. Thick tree trunks. Their shadows should spread out around the glowing thing like the spokes of a wheel. But—

". . . and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed . . .!"

Stuart turned his head away, trying to protect his eyes from the piercing white light.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush . . .

"STUART, STUART!"

"Here I am, Lord," he whispered, taking a cautious step forward.

"Do not come near: put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

Stuart dropped to his knees. He was closer to the fire. But he felt no heat.

He sat down. Cold, wet snow darkened his woolen pants. His frantic fingers worked numbly with the laces of his boots. Before he could pull them free of his feet the brilliant white circle began to rise from the ground.

Stuart followed it with his eyes as it floated upward, passing like smoke through interwoven branches of towering evergreens.

Somehow, he found he was standing. His arms reached out, groping for the vision as it withdrew.

He took a step. "Oh my Lord, I have been a sinner..,."

Another step.

It was above him now, like a white-hot sun directly overhead. "Deliver us from evil, oh my Lord . . . ."

It was then that his feet left the ground.

Stuart felt himself rising into the air. He was weightless, a feather, a lost balloon.

Up. Faster and faster. Cold air streaming past his face, sliding under his collar, chilling his back. He looked down at his feet as they peddled for purchase in the empty air. Clumps of packed snow fell from the soles of his boots, vanishing far below.

Boot laces hung in midair like dead worms dangling from a fishhook.

It's the Rapture
, he thought.
The Rapture's come!

Stuart continued to pray until fear seized him. In a flash elation turned to terror. This wasn't right. None of it was right. He didn't feel at peace, he wasn't—

"Hey leggo! Good God Awmighty, put me down!"

His numb fingers clutched at frozen branches as he drifted higher and faster into the air. Each time his hand locked around a pine bow snow cascaded toward the receding earth now so very far below.