Darkling I Listen (54 page)

He sat perfectly still, feeling sweat rise on his skin, causing his wounds to burn. Oddly, in that moment a clarity crystallized in his mind. His senses expanded to an excruciating rawness. He could easily hear his own
breathing,
and the rapid pounding of his heart in his ears. Betty had warned him:
Whatever you do, don't let him see your weaknesses. Don't anger him.

Billy dropped to his knees, put aside the lantern, and clasped his hands under his chin; he bowed his head.

"I have waged a war against the evils who would harm
You
, the demon spirits Satan cast into Your path to tempt You. I now throw myself on
Your
mercy, and ask that You bless me with the miracle of Your healing so that, at long last, I am cured of this distorted and repulsive abomination placed upon me by a woman whose body and spirit were possessed by wickedness."

Brandon
glanced toward the stairs as sweat poured freely from his scalp, and ran down his cheeks and the back of his neck. What would happen if he made a run for it? His hand itched to reach for the bed leg in the back of his pants—not yet. Not yet. He would need better leverage, as weak as he was—
"Please," Billy
cried,
his voice strident and urgent. "So that I might walk at
Your
side as pure of body and spirit as You. You have healed the blind, the crippled,
the
sick—" His hand flew out and clamped on
Brandon
's leg as
Brandon
attempted to stand. The powerful fingers dug into
Brandon
's thigh muscle as fiercely as a cramp, wringing a short gasp of pain from him.

Billy slowly tipped back his head. His ember eyes fixed on
Brandon
's sweating face. His lips pulled back, exposing his teeth in something not even close to a smile. "Fix it," he demanded in a soft monotone that sent a fresh wave of dread crashing over
Brandon
.

Twisting his big hands into the linen garment he wore, Billy ripped it down the middle and flung it aside. Oily flesh reflecting the lamplight, he slowly stood, naked, trembling, and white-faced. Tears trickled down his cheeks as he spread his arms. His sagging breasts swayed like pendulums. His flaccid penis drooped between his legs.

A surge of sickness rose in
Brandon
's throat. He jumped from the bed and scrambled toward the stairs—feet sliding in the slick mire. Too late—those hands snared his bad arm, and the immeasurable pain rocketed up his throat and filled the room with an agonized howl. He hit the ground and rolled, clutching his arm against him as blackness flirted with his consciousness. Little by little the pain subsided as he lay with his face partially buried in the fetid muck. It oozed through his lips and into his left nostril.

Teeth clenching and grinding on grit, he rolled and did his best to focus on Billy's face and not his body, which stood over
Brandon
, legs slightly spread and hands fisted. An expression of confusion and anger twisted Billy's features as he looked from
Brandon
's eyes to his shoulder and back to his eyes.
Brandon
sensed his thoughts. Right about now Billy must be realizing that something was pretty damn wrong with this picture. If he were capable of working heavenly miracles, he would hardly be suffering from a wound in his shoulder. He glanced toward the mattress, where the bed leg had fallen from his jeans when he bolted for the stairs. Billy apparently hadn't noticed.

Brandon
tried to sit up.

Billy reached down and hauled
Brandon
to his feet, pushed him back to the bed. He dropped like a rock, falling against the wall with a groan he couldn't swallow. Silent, Billy regarded him through narrowed eyes, bringing a cold, sick sweat to
Brandon
's brow. His mind scrambled for thought, then—
"Betty!"
Brandon
shouted, and spat mud from his mouth. "Betty, I need you!"

Billy's eyes
widened,
and he frowned as his confusion intensified. "Gone," Billy declared. "Betty is gone. What do you want with—
"

"Betty! I know you can hear me. Don't let him take control, Betty. Don't let him hurt me—"

"We don't need her any longer—"

"Betty, fight him!"

Billy stumbled back and grabbed his head. His eyes rolled and his face contorted. His teeth
bared
as he growled, "I
…
destroyed her. Gone. She's gone to hell. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, then cut it off and cast it from you—"

"Betty, if you don't do something, he's going to kill me!"

His eyes bulging and his hands pressed against his ears, Billy roared, "Impostor! Spurious, unrighteous fiend, maggot of hell and wicked disciple of Satan—"

"Betty!"
Brandon
shouted again, so loudly that the sound ripped up his throat. His hand closing around the bed leg beside him, he surged to his feet, and as Billy lunged with clawed hands,
Brandon
swung the wood as hard as he could against Billy's head, knowing as he felt the impact that it would do little good. The worm-eaten wood gave a dull snap and disintegrated like pulp in his hand.

Billy recoiled momentarily, tottered back; a stream of blood poured down over his left ear.

Brandon
stumbled for the stairs, reached them, and clawed his way up toward the dark hole, despair overtaking him as his weak legs burned and trembled in their attempts to climb.

"Impostor!"
came
the shriek from below.

Billy's hand seized
Brandon
's ankle.
Brandon
jerked and kicked and heaved himself up the stairs in an attempt to break his hold, but to no avail. He looked down into Billy's face and eyes, desperate for some hint that Betty could be rallied—
"Behold," Billy sneered, "let no one deceive by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. And the lawless one will be
revealed,
whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming!"

With a furious, guttural cry, Billy pulled
Brandon
down the stairs, propelled his sweating, naked body onto
Brandon
's, and closed his hands around his neck. Gasping for air and getting none,
Brandon
attempted with his last ounce of strength to drive his fist into Billy's jaw—no good, too weak. He clawed at the hands squeezing his life away, tried to fight back the encroaching fringe of darkness—no good.
A weightlessness
replaced the burning in his brain, and the fear that had momentarily consumed him vanished, replaced by an equanimity that filled him with a strange serenity even as he looked directly into Billy's eyes.

Billy's voice drifted to him through a tunnel: "And the temples of idols shall be razed and false gods crucified, in the name of our Father. Amen."

*

The lily pads formed a carpet over the water, which was
black as ink. Having killed the motor as Ruth instructed, Alyson oared the boat through the vegetation at a snail's pace, her lungs and muscles burning with exertion and her panic mounting, her hope lost of reaching the compound before daylight. Then again, she felt thankful to have gotten this far.

Twice she had lost control of the boat in the currents, once caught up in an eddy that had spun her in a circle until she'd suffered something like pilot's disorientation in the dark. She'd lost her direction and, having fought her way out of the problem, had motored all the way back down the creek to the River Road before realizing she was headed in the wrong direction.

With a thump and shush, the boat slid onto a sandbar, bringing her to a sudden stop. Alyson focused the beam of her flashlight ahead. The lily pads reflected the beams like mullioned glass. Cypresses loomed out of the water, their branches forming a gnarled and twisted canopy overhead.

Silence rang in her ears. She told herself that the lack of insect and animal sounds was due to the season—the cold, of course, would drive them into their burrows—but she couldn't help thinking of the old baygall legend—and how once she had read a story about the dead zone, how animals would not reside in a place haunted by the living dead.

Alyson eased the oar down through the water, connecting with the ground no more than a foot beneath the surface. Leaving the boat was obviously a necessity in order to dislodge it, and sitting here shaking down to her Ropers wasn't getting it done.

Still, the thought of sliding into the dark water made her lungs quit. The air suddenly felt too thick to breathe. Her blouse beneath the life vest clung to her skin, soaked with sweat. She realized in that moment, as she closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands, just how infrequently she prayed—hadn't actually gotten on her knees and addressed God seriously since her grandmother's illness. Her faith had never been quite as strong after that, and had continued to be eroded by life through the years. Would He listen now? Would He think her a hypocrite?

"Please," she prayed into her hands, "please help me do this. I can't do it without
You
."

Slowly, she lifted her head.

Nothing had changed. No golden road lit by heavenly light had opened up before her. No giant, benevolent hand had reached down from the sky to pluck her out of this boat and drop her safely on terra firma. The water stretched before her as black as pitch. She then shone the light behind her, the way she had come, noting there wasn't a single sign that she had passed there. The lily pads she had disturbed had shifted back into place, covering her tracks.

Her throat tight, Alyson put down the flashlight and oar, thought on whether she should remove her boots, and decided she should. They were already heavy; filled with water, they would weigh a ton. She set them aside, by
Clyde
's gun. The hull's coldness crept through her socks and made her ankles ache.

She eased to her feet. The boat barely wobbled. It wouldn't, she reminded herself. It was beached, after all. Carefully, she stepped over the side with one foot.

The water felt shockingly cold, and she gasped. Her foot sank into deep mud, and panic seized her; she tried to draw it back, but the muck sucked at her, momentarily refusing to give her up. Sediment bloomed in a cloud around her shin as she struggled, falling back into the boat as she managed to release herself. Sprawled across the boat bottom, the stench of old fish scales flooding her nostrils, she stared at her foot propped on the side rim. Mud dripped off her sock, as did tendrils of vegetation.

Again. Alyson took a deep breath and slid her foot into the water. Not so cold this time. Her foot sank, sank,
then
stopped. Then with her right foot. She shuddered at the feel of the gelatinous mush oozing over her toes.

The boat, minus her weight, floated loose. She took a cautious, labored step forward, her hands nudging the light boat along the surface of the water while her shins caused the lily pads to wobble out of her way. Still, she was often forced to struggle to free her ankles from the plants that felt like prickly fingers clutching at her.

Traveling that way for possibly ten minutes, Alyson began to relax. This was far easier than rowing through the vegetation. She'd begun to make good time, and hope returned that she'd reach the compound before daylight. If Nora was right, the last thing she wanted was for Billy Boyd to see her coming.

The ground beneath her disappeared without warning.

She sank to her nostrils before the vest caught her weight. Gulping for air and getting a mouthful of scum-covered water, she thrashed and splashed, panic overwhelming her until the realization set in that she wouldn't sink, thanks to the vest.
Relax, relax,
her mind chanted as her teeth began to chatter from cold. From the corner of her eye she saw the boat drift away.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Alyson made an ineffectual lunge for it. It danced farther away, as if taunting her. Her arms tangled in the lily pads, and the harder she fought them, the farther the boat slipped into the dark.

She started to cry, hot angry tears, and slammed the water with her fists. Then she remembered
Brandon
's words:
The next time you find yourself in water over your head, try to relax. Whatever you do, don't fight the water, because the water will win every time.

Closing her eyes, Alyson took several deep, slow breaths, forced her legs and arms to hang limply in the water while her heart pounded so fiercely, she wondered if she was having a heart attack. The cold seeped deeper into the muscles of her back and legs. Her teeth chattered harder.

Finally, as gently as possible, she paddled with her feet, barely rippling the water. She crept up to the boat, eased her hands up the side, and snared it. Her head fell in relief and exhaustion against the cold metal, and her eyes drifted closed. Now for the hard part: she had to heave herself into the boat and hope that she didn't capsize it.