The Reality Conspiracy (45 page)

The executive continued, "You were in the war, Mr. Barnes. So you've seen man at his worst. But you also understand something about loyalty and idealism—those are among the attributes of humankind at its best. Suppose I were to tell you there will be no more wars? That we are entering an age of peace, of ideals and loyalties? A better time is coming, Mr. Barnes. You can be part of it. You have seen the light. You know that it's real."

"I see a dead man, and a little girl that looks like she belongs in a hospital. I know you're keeping another little girl upstairs. And I don't see the woman whose house we're sitting in."

McCurdy cocked his head to one side, smiling wanly as if he were listening to some sweet music, faint and far away. "Things are not always as they appear, Mr. Barnes. But I don't have to tell you that. Now that you have seen the divine light in the forest, nothing will ever appear the same to you. You are growing under that light, Mr. Barnes, like a flower. For you it is the sun."

"Frankly, mister, I ain't got no idea what you're talkin' about." Again Alton flexed his arms. The cords bit into his wrists. "If what you got to tell me is so all-fired holy, how come you gotta tie me up to do it?"'

"The light can be painful."

"What's this light you keep yakkin' about?"

"The light you saw in the woods. The light you try to understand in your dreams. Like any miracle, it's difficult to comprehend, but you may accept it on faith."

"How the hell you know what I seen?"

"I know the ones who are chosen. They're the ones who see the light. You were chosen. Your friend Mr. Dubois was called. Summoned."'

"Then I suppose you can tell me where he was summoned to!"

McCurdy clicked his tongue, shaking his head as if Alton were impenetrably obtuse. "I can do better than that, my friend. I can show you. Think of the light as a gateway, Mr. Barnes, a golden gateway that shines like the sun."

C
asey suspected McCurdy had been embarrassed to stay while she urinated; he'd left her alone with an old plastic dishpan.

Good! Now, she had some privacy. Yet she had no idea how to turn the situation to her advantage. Escape was out of the question. Simply getting down the stairs would be impossible. And since there was no electricity, it was unlikely there'd be a phone. Contacting the police was another impossibility.

What about the window? Opening it and crying for help would do no good. No one would hear in this wilderness.

The only thing she could do was arm herself. If she could find some sort of weapon . . . But there was a problem with that, too: even if she were able to knock McCurdy unconscious and crawl all the way out to his car, she still would not be able to drive.

Casey fought her growing sense of hopelessness. She had to be tough, determined. Hell, hadn't she recovered from the paralyzing bullet? Didn't she survive the devastation of her mother's death? By God she could handle this, too.

First, she knew she'd feel a little better if she were armed. That way if McCurdy tried anything, she could fight back.

Casey wheeled herself around the bed, past the computer, and over to the window. Silent shadows filled the yard. Hundreds of fireflies blinked in the neighboring pasture.

Below the horizon, about halfway up the massive silhouette of a far-off mountain, she could see a hazy white light. She watched it burning among distant trees.

What could it be?

At first she hoped it was some kind of search party that had come looking for her. But no, that couldn't be right.

In a moment the light seemed to rise, then—like the single headlight of a fast-approaching train—it appeared to be speeding directly toward her!

It must be a UFO
, Casey thought.
A real UFO. Dad was right about these things!

In seconds it was in the yard below her window. There it stopped, hovering above the ground like a six-foot globe of pale fire. As she watched, it began to shrink like a balloon deflating, until, amazingly, it was no bigger than a firefly of incredible brilliance.

Bright as it was, the intense glow did not hurt her eyes; it wasn't like looking into a spotlight or photographer's flash. She wasn't trying to blink away afterimages.

Odd.

In motion again, it floated closer to the house where it vanished beneath the overhang of porch roof below her window.

She felt muscles tightening in her stomach as the fantastic realization took hold. A UFO. Something from another world. Something completely alien and strange. . . .

Her mind fought the notion, repelled it like a psychic magnet. She pushed back into the shadows of the bedroom where she sat trembling, her laced fingers pulled tightly to her chest.

In an upper corner of the kitchen, at the right angle where two walls met the ceiling, a point of light appeared as if moving through the wall. Disbelieving, Alton stared. The light pulsed, and spun, seemed to grow. Now it was the size of a golf ball, now a baseball.

The naked child cringed from it. She flattened herself against the kitchen floor like a dog expecting a beating. Alton could hear her whimpering, and the sound wrenched his heart.

The light grew, became round and perfect, like a radiant crystal ball.
Yes
, Alton thought,
it is very like the sun
.

It seemed to get closer. Alton strained his neck backward as it moved overhead. There it stopped, hovering directly above him.

Panic seized him with electrical fingers. He bucked and fought, pulling against his restraining cords, rocking the chair on its wooden feet. Yet he couldn't tear his eyes away. It was as if he were looking up into the round shade of a brilliant lamp. This time, as before in the woods, the intensity of the light didn't hurt his eyes.

Now—he was sure of it!—the light was descending. He closed his eyes as it got closer, squeezed them tighter as his head passed through the radiant sphere. A trillion electrical prickles danced across his skin as the circle of light settled over him, enveloping his whole body.

I have to fight this
, he thought.
I have to be strong and fight this thing
.

Oddly, when he dared look, he found himself in utter darkness. The room was gone, the whimpering child was silent.

There was the sensation of cold wet flesh, like the side of a salmon, rubbing against his face. He tried to draw away, but the chair and ropes were unyielding. When he inhaled, he could smell an acrid odor, putrid as a corpse, and he felt his gorge rising. The air tasted of filth and decay. Nausea roiled in his stomach.

I've got to fight this.

He could almost make out the words of distant whispering. Almost. Or was it a mechanical humming? Or an insect buzzing?

Or—? Before he knew for sure, all sounds were lost as a clammy breeze swept past him. And as the wind grew stronger he somehow knew its source: the beating of giant wings. He heard them, great leathery sheets flapping in the black void.

He wanted to scream, but a voice cut him off—

You're one with us, it seemed to say in his reeling mind. Your will is our will. You are of us, and we are one.

Alton felt the pressure of panic building. Heaving against his restraints, he felt his invisible chair rocking on the vanished floor.

A light flashed. He snapped his head to look.

Something slapped him.

Another flash jerked his attention to another bright point. Another slap.

He felt warm blood trickling over his lips.

His gut clenched like a fist, lungs fought the alien atmosphere.

Slap!

It's that hypnotism business
, he thought.
It's some kinda trick or drug
.

As the foul wind subsided, he heard whispers again, closer now:

Shall we take him?

Let's peel his skin.

Freeze his lungs, turn them to powder.

Snatch his soul!

Open him up! Let's see what this old man's made of . . .

The words came faster, faster.

When Alton screamed, no sound came. Some invisible substance, slimy and moist, entered his mouth, pushed wetly against his eyes, his ears. He couldn't breathe.

Hot; he could feel his temperature soar.

A new sensation—some vast wet tongue lapping at him, dragging itself across the skin beneath his clothing.

A horrible dizziness . . . his head floating above his body.

Separating at the neck. Drifting away.

Take his mind!

Take him now!

Rattling. Vibrating. Chair scraping the vanished floor.

We want you. . . .

We have use for you. . . .

We are your purpose. . . .

We are what you wish. . . .

We are what you are. . . .

. . . and suddenly Alton could see himself, far below. His body bound to the wooden chair. A tiny struggling man trapped in a circle of light.

We have him! There was triumph in the voice.

He is ours!

He is ours!

Alton knew something was pushing against him, pressing at his mind. It wanted him to scream, but—damn it—he would not scream. It wanted him to surrender, but he refused.

Alton Barnes had no idea how much time had passed before he came to in Daisy's kitchen.

He remembered the light and the terrible void as he might remember a dream. He had come through it. And he had been through hell before. So he had won; he knew he would be protected as long as he maintained his nerve, his independence of spirit. The realization gave him confidence.

He had also learned that the pain was much less when he pretended to go along with their demands. And pretending, he found, was easy enough.

He was all right. He hadn't surrendered. In the end he had been stronger than the thing that tried to enter him.

But there'd been a trade-off. Yes, some kind of tradeoff. He had agreed to do . . . something.

"Come on, Mr. Barnes," said McCurdy. "I'll drive you into town." Following McCurdy, Alton stumbled from the farmhouse in a kind of weary daze.

As they drove down the hill he thought about the future. Thought about the Chandlers. And Dr. Bradley.

Thought about the light.

And within that light, he thought about the things he had seen. Oh my God, the things he had seen.

"This is amazing," Jeff said, closing Father Mosely's Bible.

"I know," Father Sullivan answered as he entered the room with three bottles of Miller's beer. "I admit it's pretty unbelievable."

"No," said Jeff, "that's not what I mean. This old man, this Father Mosely, he's speculating about many of the possibilities I was forced to consider while I was at the Academy. This is eye-opening stuff, but he was just pulling it out of the air, figuring it out all by himself with guesswork and intuition. He doesn't really reach a conclusion, but he comes close."

"Frightening, isn't it," Sullivan agreed.

"At the Academy, we were cobbling the same theory together from literally millions of pages of documentation from all over the world. And we had use of a multimillion-dollar computer!" Sullivan handed bottles to Karen and Jeff.

"What's Father Mosely say, Jeff?" Karen shifted her position, crossing her legs.

Jeff used the Bible's marker ribbon to find where he'd left off, then turned back a few of the delicate pages'. "This part near the end, the part I was just reading, it really blew me away. Listen to this. . . ."

It is quiet now. The thing is at rest, or it has retreated to wherever it goes.

No. More precisely, it is I who retreat. I must. I need this precious respite. I need to think, to meditate. I pray for strength and guidance.

It is so terrifying to realize that it is me the thing wants—ME. Yet I still do not understand why. Nor do I understand what made it take notice of me in the first place. Why have I become its quarry and its prey? Even after all these days of torment, I still do not know what it requires of me.

It will not say.

I know one thing: if I try to escape, it will find me. If I leave St. Joe's for a trip to the store or to the library, it will follow. Even within the rooms of the church and rectory, it pursues me with a diabolical persistence. It whispers in my ear; it touches me at the most private of times, in the most personal of places. It inflicts pain and unprovoked terror. It keeps me from my sleep.

And now I am so tired, so worn, yet I dare not ask for help. Though it lies, I believe its promise: that it will humiliate and destroy all who offer comfort or assistance. I believe it can do that.

Alone against it, my only weapons are words and relics, prayers and faith. I have implored, beseeched, entreated, but I have not begged. As I reflect, I have come to understand that its apparent aversion to holy things is only a part of its pretense. I admonish it with holy water, and the water turns to blood. It taunts me in a nonsense language that is no more than the Roman Ritual recited in reverse. It mocks me; it mocks the Church and the sacraments.