The Vanishing (20 page)

Brian hurried back out. He wanted to talk to one of the officers and explain what had happened, but no one appeared to be in charge, and the older policeman who seemed to be sort of a natural leader was on the ground and out of commission, awaiting an ambulance while his partner administered emergency first aid.

Another patrol car arrived—someone must have had time to radio for help—and after quickly conferring with the cops already on the scene, one of them walked over carrying a notebook and pen. Brian flipped open his own notebook.

They were ready to listen to him now, and he explained that his mother had been receiving nocturnal visits from an intruder the past several nights, that she’d thought it was her long-estranged husband but that apparently it had been Stephen Stewart. He conveniently left out the part about the letters, hoping his mother and sister wouldn’t mention them either, then told the cop that he was a reporter working on the Stewart story.

‘‘Do you think that’s why your family was targeted?’’ the policeman asked.

Brian shook his head. ‘‘No one knew I was working on the story. It’s not possible.’’

‘‘Then how do you explain the fact that Mr. Stewart traveled all the way across the country, eluding police along the way, to end up naked in your mother’s yard?’’

‘‘I don’t.’’

‘‘Don’t what?’’ The policeman frowned.

‘‘I don’t explain it. I have no idea what happened. I’m as confused as you are.’’

The man sighed. ‘‘Maybe we’ll be able to get something out of him when we question him.’’ He thanked Brian for his time, then walked over to the house to talk with Jillian, Del and his mother.

None of the officers wanted to be quoted for attribution, but Brian did get their names and a promise that he would be the first reporter allowed to interview Ron MacNeill, the older officer who’d been mauled.

He watched the police cars and the ambulance drive away.

Stewart, Lowry, Devine, Fields. The list of rich men going off the deep end was growing (and they were all
men,
weren’t they?). Stewart was the first to be captured alive, and Brian wondered if he might be able to shed a light on what was happening and why—
if
they could get him to talk.

If he
could
talk.

For what struck Brian most about Stewart was the utter wildness of the man, the complete lack of humanness he seemed to possess. It was not just the physical abnormality—which was odd enough—but his actions and the expressions on his face that seemed so frightening, that were so completely unlike anything he had ever seen. Brian had serious doubts that, in the state he was in, Stewart would even be able to formulate words, much less speak in coherent sentences.

Were they all like this? Had Bill Devine been this way at the end as well? He remembered the Oklatex owner’s voice on the answering machine—

—but he found it hard to reconcile such anarchic monstrousness with the controlled insanity of that message.

He tried to recall what he’d heard about Wesley Fields. Fields had been the most recent multimillionaire to freak out, and Brian had read about it in a wire service report before it hit the airwaves yesterday. The Midwest media mogul had murdered his son, stepson, wife and dog before going on a rampage and getting shot by police. As always, the details were horrific, and an unpublished AP photo showed the daughter’s torso— minus legs, arms and head—sliced open and stuffed with apples. Fields’ body had been naked when they’d found it. He’d been savagely mutilated by his own hand, and Brian could imagine him being as crazy and out of control as Stewart.

What about his own father?

Brian had been trying not to think along those lines, but it was the question behind everything, the fear that impelled him and made the subject of these murders and suicides so important to him, and as he walked past the overgrown bushes, back into the house with his mother and sister and Del, he could not help worrying that in some other yard, perhaps in some other town, his dad was jumping around naked and howling at the moon.

The Reverend Raymond Charles was awakened from a sound sleep by the conviction that he immediately had to go to his church—in order to protect it. Protect it from what, he did not know, but he dutifully got out of bed and began changing from his pajamas to his clothes.

He always obeyed his convictions. They didn’t come as often these days as they used to, and when they did they usually led to nothing, but there was always a chance that it was the Lord speaking to him, and he could not afford to miss The Call when it came.

He glanced over at the alarm clock on his nightstand, not bemoaning the fact that it was two a.m., merely noting it. There was a tingling in his bones unlike anything he had ever felt before, and though he tried to remain humble, he could not help thinking that this was It. The Lord was finally speaking to him. Not just by proxy through the Bible, but directly.

The reverend drove purposefully over to the church, his heart giving a little lurch when he saw that one of the inside lights was on. He
always
turned off everything before he locked up. He parked in his usual spot, his eyes on the soft glow that issued from within and illuminated the lighter colors in the two stained-glass windows flanking the door. He knew he should call the police— violent burglars could have broken into the church, for all he knew—but the same strong belief that had led him here in the middle of the night told him that this was not a secular matter and what was required of him now was to go inside the chapel himself and find out what was happening.

He felt no fear as he walked up to the door. As expected, it was unlocked, and he went inside, noticing instantly that there was someone sitting in one of the middle pews. The light that was on was the one above the pulpit, and it threw the figure into silhouette. ‘‘Hello!’’ the reverend called.

There was no answer.

The figure did not move.

Maybe the person was dead, he thought. Maybe whoever it was had been shot or stabbed and had come here to make peace with God.

But there were no drops of blood on the floor. And the door had been locked, the lights turned off, so the person had to have broken in.

‘‘Hello!’’ he called again. ‘‘May I help you?’’

The silhouette shifted in its seat but said nothing.

The reverend walked up the aisle, concerned but not afraid. Nothing appeared to have been stolen or vandalized. He himself had not been threatened or attacked. This wasn’t an ordinary criminal. This was someone suffering a crisis of conscience, and it was his responsibility to show that person the Way.

He reached the center of the church and stopped, frowning at the figure in the pew, not sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. ‘‘George?’’ he said, squinting in the dim light. ‘‘George Howells?’’

The man stared straight ahead blankly.

It was him, although Reverend Charles never would have made the connection had not Alice Howells been confiding her fears to him for the past week. The figure in the pew, hairy and filthy, dressed in rags, bore absolutely no resemblance to the clean-cut and meticulously groomed young family man he remembered from all those years ago. Privately, he had dismissed Alice’s rantings as the delusions of an unbalanced woman. She was a good parishioner and could always be counted on to support the church’s causes, but lately there’d been a whiff of fanaticism to her activism that made him slightly uncomfortable. So when she’d started telling him about the return of her husband, he’d taken it all with a grain of salt.

Obviously, though, she’d been telling the truth.

‘‘George?’’ he said again.

There was no answer.

The reverend was suddenly afraid. He shouldn’t have been. This was his church. And the house of the Lord. But fear followed no logic, and while he could tell himself that there was no place on earth that was safer or more comforting—and believe every bit of it—the fact remained that the dirty man frightened him. He said a quick prayer and took a step between the pews toward the hairy figure.

The head swiveled toward him.

And grinned.

He had never seen a smile so evil. Even in his dreams of hell, his mind had been unable to conjure a look such as that.

It was not God who had called him here tonight, he realized.

The light at the front of the chapel switched off.

They were not alone in the church. He saw movement in his peripheral vision. The slinking of shadows darker than the surrounding night. He held still, tried not to move or make noise. These beings were not human at all. They were monsters, demons, and they were here for him.

One by one, the windows of the chapel were shattered. Faint light from the city outside crept in at odd angles, throwing curious segments of the church’s interior into relief. A stray ray of diluted blue shone upon a section of side wall, highlighting a confluence of boards that suddenly looked like a face. Refracted moonlight made the back of a pew resemble a coffin.

George Howells was gone, but there was movement all around, though he could see only suggestions of shapes, not the actual outlines of the monsters themselves. They were there, though, massing in the vestibule, blocking his exit, creeping up the side aisles, moving between the pews. He had no idea how many were there, but it felt like dozens, and their foul stench was overpowering in his nostrils.

A floor-shaking crash sounded from the front of the church as the mounted statue of the crucified Christ was dislodged from its perch and slammed down on the dais.

A car drove by on the street outside, its headlights shining through first one broken window then another, like a searchlight, as it passed the church. Now he could see one of the demons. It was coming toward him from the aisle on the right, a hideous thing of fur and scale, vaguely humanoid but with a mane of wild hair, ultralong arms and cloven hooves that hit the floor sounding like nails being pounded into the wood. Its mouth was impossibly wide, with too many teeth, and its red eyes glittered in the darkness.

Claws scraped along the backs of the pews as the monster approached.

The reverend looked around frantically for a way to escape. The church’s front entrance was out of the question, but to the side of the pulpit was his office, and it had a door that led outside. If he could just get there, he might be able to run away and . . . and . . .

And what?

He could go to the police, but he doubted that bullets would stop these hell spawn. He could run to his fellow clergymen, but what could they do that he couldn’t? His only hope was to simply hide and pray that God protected him by keeping those demons far, far away from him.

God wasn’t protecting him now, though.

He didn’t want to think about that.
Couldn’t
think about that.

There was a whispery moan from behind him, followed by what sounded like a mocking human laugh.

The reverend ran. He knew every square inch of this church, could have navigated it blindfolded. Such familiarity served him well as he dashed for the office, maneuvering around pockets of darkness and the unknown horrors they hid, as well as the curiously methodical monsters moving toward him in the indirect light.

He reached the door to his office and—

It was locked.

The key was on the ring in his pocket, and if he had time he could have found it, but he did not. The demons were suddenly next to him, segmented bodies leaning toward him at impossible angles. There were just two of them, and when he glanced out at the pews and toward the rear of the chapel, he saw only George Howells standing in the doorway, grinning hugely. His mind had merely
thought
there’d been more, darkness and shadows exaggerating the threat and creating the illusion of creatures that were not there. He probably could have escaped, he realized; he probably could have gotten away.

A clawed hand grasped his shoulder, sharp nails sinking into his flesh.

There was no escaping now.

He was turned around to face the demon, and he closed his eyes to pray. There was no better place to die, he thought, than inside the house of the Lord.

Only he didn’t die. Not right away. They played with him first. One of them was female, and it did things to him that were so wrong and evil that his soul cried out in torment even as his body responded with ecstasy.

The other was male, and it participated, too, humiliating him, debasing him before slowly tearing him apart.

And
then
he died.

Fourteen

Carrie stared at the massive bouquet of flowers sitting in a crystal vase on top of her desk. Jan, Donna and Lateeka stood nearby, curious yet patient, waiting for her to open the tiny envelope and find out who had sent the obviously very expensive array. She was sure they would have checked themselves, but the small envelope accompanying the flowers had been sealed shut.

Carrie put down her purse and briefcase. ‘‘What is this?’’

‘‘You tell us,’’ Lateeka said, grinning.

‘‘It arrived about ten minutes ago,’’ Jan explained.

Matt?
Carrie wondered. She picked up the small envelope and opened it. Inside was a card with a picture of red flowers on the cover. On the blank space within, written in a sloppy, unfamiliar hand totally unlike Matt’s mannered calligraphy, was a message: ‘‘Dear Ms. Daniels, I enjoyed meeting you Saturday night. I was wondering if we could continue our conversation sometime. Please give me a call.’’

It was signed ‘‘Lew’’ and was followed by a phone number.

She frowned. ‘‘I don’t know any Lew.’’

‘‘Oh my God,’’ Donna said. ‘‘
Saturday night? Lew?
I bet it’s Lew Haskell!’’

‘‘No,’’ Carrie protested, but even as she denied it, she knew that was exactly who it was.