Right Hand of Evil (23 page)

Janet rose from her chair to pick the child up. But before she could get to Molly, Ted had boosted the little girl out of the high chair and was cradling her against his chest. Molly's arms were coiled around his neck as she clung to him, her face buried in his shoulder as her body quivered with frightened sobs.

"There there, sweetheart," Ted crooned. "It's okay, Molly. Daddy's here, and nothing's going to hurt you."

As Molly settled down, Janet turned furiously on Jared. "What did you do?" she demanded. "What did you do that made her start screaming like that?"

"Me?" Jared shot back. "I didn't do anything! She's the one who threw the food. Why don't you get mad at her?" Standing, he wiped the last of the gravy from his cheek, crushed his napkin, and hurled it onto the table. As he stalked out of the kitchen, Scout, who was curled up on his blanket in the corner, tensed, then snarled at Jared.

"Shut up," Jared told the dog as he passed by. "Don't even think about it!"

Scout cowered back as if he'd been struck, his snarl dying away to a whimper.

When Jared was gone, Janet turned to Kim, whose face was ashen, her eyes wide. "What was it?" Janet asked. "Did you see what happened?"

"I-I don't know," Kim breathed, her voice shaking. "It was-I don't know. It was just the way he looked at Molly." Her eyes met her mother's, and Janet could see the fear in them. "Mom, it was awful. It was…" She paused as if trying to find the right words, then shook her head helplessly. "He looked like he wanted to kill her, Mom." Tears were running down Kim's face now. She slid her chair back and fled from the kitchen.

Janet turned to her husband. Ted, still rocking Molly in his arms and crooning softly into her ear, seemed not to even notice that his two older children had left the room. Suddenly, her worries about Jared's sullen behavior coalesced into anger. How could Ted simply ignore the scene Jared had caused? "Do you still think everything's just fine with Jared?" she demanded. "Or were you drunk for so many years that you don't even know how normal families behave anymore?" Regretting her words the moment she spoke them, Janet braced herself against the eruption of Ted's temper she expected her words to trigger. But again no trace of the old Ted appeared. Instead, he offered her a sympathetic smile, and when he spoke, his tone was as soothing as the crooning he'd just used to calm Molly.

"Take it easy, hon. It was just a little squabble."

"Little squabble?" Janet echoed. "You call that a little squabble? Molly was scared to death!"

"And Jared was covered with potatoes and gravy," Ted reminded her.

"He wasn't
covered
at all," Janet objected. "He had a couple of blobs of-"

"All right, 'a couple of blobs,' " Ted agreed. He transferred Molly back into the high chair, ignoring the food stains that had spread across his own shirt as he'd held the little girl close and dabbed her tears away with a napkin. Then he began spooning food into her mouth. "All Jared did was glare at her," he reminded Janet. The beginning of a grin played around the corners of his mouth. "Consider yourself lucky he didn't sling some peas back at her, or maybe an even bigger blob of potatoes. We could have had a major food fight on our hands."

"For God's sake, Ted!" Janet flared. "He terrified Molly! He even terrified Scout! And have you seen his room? What is he doing down there? It looks like-oh, God, I don't know what it looks like!"

Then Ted's arms were around her and he was cuddling her as gently as he'd held his baby daughter moments before. "Hey, take it easy," he said. He tipped her face up so she was looking into his eyes. "Nothing that terrible happened. It wasn't anything more than a little squabble, and it's over now." His eyes held hers, and the fears she felt for Jared began to melt away. "There's nothing wrong with Jared," Ted assured her again. "He's just a perfectly normal teenage boy. When you think about it, we've been incredibly lucky at just how normal he is." His finger stroked her cheek, and she felt a thrill run through her body. "When I think about the problems we could have had…" He let his voice trail off, and was just bending over to kiss her when there was a loud knocking at the back door. "Don't move," Ted whispered. "Just hold my place and I'll be right back."

Ted opened the door and saw Luke Roberts standing nervously on the porch. "Is Jared here?" the boy asked.

"Down in his room." Ted held the door wide open so Luke could come in. The boy hurried through the kitchen, barely nodding to Janet, and disappeared through the butler's pantry, toward the stairs to the basement. As soon as he was gone, Ted's arms were once more around his wife. "Told you I'd be right back," he murmured.

Janet looked worriedly up into his face. "After the trouble they got into at school, don't you think we ought to send Luke home? At least tonight?"

Once again Ted's eyes sought out her own and held them. "If we did, Jared would be gone in an hour," he told her. "Better to know where they are, don't you think?"

"But-" Janet began, but Ted didn't let her finish.

"No buts," he said. "Let's just clean up the kitchen, and put Molly to bed. And maybe," he said, putting on a wide smile, "I'll put you to bed, too."

As she and Ted set to work, all the worries-the fears-Janet had felt a few minutes earlier drained from her. By the time she and Ted went upstairs half an hour later, all she was thinking about was the way Ted had looked at her, and the feeling his touch-just his finger, stroking her cheek-had brought to her body.

Everything else was forgotten.

Luke Roberts wasn't quite sure what was happening, but on the other hand, he didn't really care, either. At least he was out of his house-away from the sound of his mother's voice. Did she even know he was gone? Probably not. He'd left his door locked, then gone out the window, cutting through the backyards of the two houses between theirs and the corner. His mom might have knocked on his door, but when he didn't answer, she'd figure he was either asleep or pissed at her-which he was-and call Father MacNeill. But at least she wouldn't go around and try to look in the window to see if he was there. "You're thirteen now," she'd told him on his birthday two years ago. "You're growing up, and Father MacNeill says you should have some privacy."

Father MacNeill!

For as long as Luke could remember, his mom had acted as if the priest was his real father-in fact, when he was real little, he'd actually thought Father Mack
was
his real dad, until someone told him that the priest wasn't really anyone's father at all. Sometimes late at night, Luke still tried to picture what his father looked like, but no matter how hard he tried, the only image he could conjure was that of Father MacNeill. Which sort of figured, he decided, since his mother used to start almost every sentence with "Father says…" So even when she'd given him the "gift of privacy," as she'd called it-when all he'd really wanted was a dirt bike-she took half the gift away right off the bat by adding that "Father says you mustn't abuse the privilege." After taking a deep breath, her face turned beet red and she blurted the other thing Father MacNeill had said: "And you mustn't use the privilege to abuse yourself, either. That would be a mortal sin." He'd considered pretending that he didn't know what she was talking about, just to see how she'd explain it, but finally decided not to, figuring if she ever walked in and caught him, he could at least claim ignorance that he was committing a sin. Of course, then he'd have to go confess to Father MacNeill, since she'd be bound to fell him what she caught him doing. But at least she'd stuck by her promise not to come into his room unless he said it was okay. Father Mack had probably told her she'd go to Hell if she broke the promise. So after their fight tonight, he'd just gone out the window to hang out with Jared for a while. His mom would probably be on the phone with the priest for at least an hour anyway, and by the time he got home, she'd have either gone to bed or fallen asleep in front of the TV. Either way, she'd never even know he was gone.

When Luke arrived, Jared was taking a bunch of candles out of the big wooden cabinet they'd dragged down from the attic last week and setting them up on the workbench. Luke flopped down on one of the mattresses, dug into his pants for a joint, but only found a roach. He and Jared each took a hit or two while Luke told Jared about the fight he'd had with his mom, then they threw the butt through the grate that covered the sump in the middle of the floor. After that, Jared lit the candles-and some incense to cover the smell of the joint, just in case. He turned on some music and started fiddling with the lights, then the strobe came on, and Luke began to see strange patterns emerging from the blackness of the walls.

"Cool, man," he murmured. "How'd you do that?"

"Do what?" Jared countered.

"That stuff on the walls."

Jared looked at him. "What are you talking about? What stuff?"

Luke frowned, confused. Was Jared putting him on, or was he actually starting to see things?

"Tell me what you see," Jared said. Though his voice was barely audible above the pounding music, the words resonated in Luke's head with the authority of a command. "Tell me what you see," Jared repeated. "And tell me what you want."

Luke concentrated on the strange patterns that seemed to be floating in nothingness in front of the black wall. Fluorescent paint, he thought. He glanced around for the source of the black light that made the designs seem to glow with a luminescence of their own, but Jared had hidden it so well he couldn't see it at all.

Cool.

The patterns began moving, their colors-hot pinks and brilliant greens-transmuting before his eyes into a rainbow of hues in evershifting shapes. The fumes of the incense filled his nostrils, and he sucked them in, imagining that it was another joint.

The candles flared brighter, and the floating patterns took on a blinding brilliance.

"What's going on, man?" he asked. "Jeez, I can hardly see!"

"Watch," Jared commanded. "Keep watching, and think about what you want. Anything you want. Anything at all."

The patterns of color began to pulsate, swelling to fill the entire room with swirling light that now seemed to come from everywhere. A golden cross appeared above the workbench. It was blurry at first, as if out of focus, and as Luke concentrated on it, he realized it was spinning.

Spinning, and upside down.

And there was something on it-some figure he couldn't quite make out. He wished the cross were spinning slower so he could see more clearly.

Even as the thought formed in his mind, the spinning began to slow…

As he had almost every night since Ted Conway moved his family into the house where his mother had died, Jake Cumberland lurked in the protective shadows of the carriage house, blending so perfectly into the night that even someone passing within a few feet of him would not have sensed his presence.

The magic he had attempted with the cat-the magic he'd learned by watching his mama-had failed. The Conways were still here, and every night he could feel their evil growing and spreading-spreading like the kudzu that crept across the countryside so quickly you hardly knew it was there until one morning you woke up and the shrubs were covered with it, and the trees were choked with it, and it was too late to do anything about it.

And if the Conways stayed-

But they wouldn't stay, for he was there every night, working his mama's magic.

Now, as he sensed midnight coming on, he spread out his amulets and herbs and began muttering the incantations he'd heard from his mama's lips before she'd died…

Weird,
Jared thought.
"Where's it all coming from?

It wasn't the grass-there'd only been enough left of the joint for a couple of quick hits, and he hadn't sucked it in the way you were supposed to. In fact, he didn't really like the drug much, since all it had done the couple of times he actually tried it was make him feel like he was going to throw up. He hadn't actually done it, but had to spend a couple of hours concentrating on keeping peristalsis working in the right direction. Then he'd wondered if the rest of his autonomic systems-his breathing, heartbeat, and everything else-was going to have to be consciously controlled, too. That put him into a panic for a minute, and he actually felt himself stop breathing. Once he'd gotten the panic under control, though, everything was okay. But he hadn't been tempted to try it a third time.

So if it wasn't the grass, where was it all coming from?

The light.

The sounds.

The voices.

None of it was real-it couldn't be. There wasn't anyplace in the room the light could be coming from, since the one bulb hanging from the ceiling wasn't even on. And there was no way the candles could be making the room look the way it did. Still, when he set up the candles, taking them out of the armoire and arranging them on the workbench, he'd kept changing them around. It was almost like there'd been something inside his head, some pattern, telling him exactly how to set them up, and he kept adjusting them, moving one and then another, until he knew-just somehow
knew
-that they were right. Then he lit them and dropped down onto the mattress. And it had all begun.

The music from his boom box had taken on a different sound, and he heard things he'd never even imagined before-wailing notes that sounded almost like human voices, but that he knew were not. And although the candle flames hadn't actually seemed to change at all, weird patterns started to emerge from the black walls, and a strange glow that didn't look like any light he'd ever seen before began to suffuse the room. It started as nothing more than a speck of light hovering in the center of the room-right over the sump, in fact-which had slowly grown, swelling until it filled the space, then somehow kept on expanding. The walls faded away, and it seemed he was in some kind of cathedral.

That was when he started hearing the voices.

It was just a babble at first, but after a while a couple of them were clear enough to recognize.

Kim's voice.

She was calling out to him, but sounded so far away that he could barely hear her.

Luke's voice was much closer, and when he concentrated on it, Jared realized he could hear it as clearly as if Luke were talking right into his ear. But then, as he listened, he realized it wasn't actually Luke's voice he was hearing at all.

It was his
mind.

Somehow, in some way he didn't understand, he was listening to Luke Roberts's thoughts.

Then, as he focused his mind on Luke, he began to see the things Luke was seeing.

And feel Luke's emotions.

Luke was angry.

Jared could feel his friend's fury-even see it. It looked like a bubbling pool of molten lava, glowing red, churning within the confines of Luke's subconscious.

But what was he angry about?

An image flashed into Jared's mind.

A woman.

Luke's mother!

But he'd never met Luke's mother. How did he know it was she he was seeing?

He knew.
Somehow, he knew.

And as he saw what Luke was seeing, and felt what Luke was feeling, Luke's anger became his own…

Jared?" Kim called out, but even to herself, her voice sounded almost inaudible, as if coming from a great distance away. She called out again, louder this time, "Jared!"

Where was he?

Kim took a tentative step forward, searching for some sign of him, but she could barely see in the misty darkness that had closed around her.

Fog!

Of course! That was it. Fog had settled in, muffling her voice, and making it hard to see. "Jared," she cried out yet again. "Where are you?"

She listened, but heard nothing. Yet how was that possible? She was certain he'd been with her-right next to her-just a moment ago. But where could he have gone?

She shivered, although she didn't feel the least bit cold. What should she do?

Should she just wait for him to come back?

Should she try to find him?

The dark mist grew thicker, and as it swirled closer, wrapping Kim in a gauzy miasma, the uneasiness that had come over her when she first realized Jared was no longer by her side began to congeal into fear.

"No," she whispered. "I don't want to be alone, Jared. Don't leave me. Please?"

Where could he have gone?

He'd been there just a minute or so ago-she was sure of it. They'd been looking around the old house-exploring some of the rooms they'd never been in, and then suddenly he'd vanished.

A trick!

That was it-he was just playing a trick on her!

The grip of fear loosened slightly-enough to let Kim start moving again, but as soon as she did, she knew she was lost. Alone in a place she did not recognize. She'd fallen into some kind of vacuum, and everything she'd ever known seemed to have vanished.

Her heart began pounding as fear once more tightened its hold on her.

Move!

She had to move!

If she didn't, she might never escape from this terrible place where she could see nothing-hear nothing-
feel
nothing!

Finally, she forced herself to grope her way through the dark fog, her hands stretched out in front of her as she felt her way along.

Something brushed at her fingers, and she jerked them away.

She froze, straining her ears as she struggled to hear a sound that might betray the identity of the thing she'd touched, but all she could hear was the pounding of her own racing heart.

Then she felt the touch again, only this time it was her legs that the thing brushed against.

Stifling a scream, she shrank away from the strange sensation.

Why couldn't she see? Though there wasn't much light, there should have been enough for her to see something other than the swirling mist that floated around her.

She gasped as the thing that lurked just beyond her vision and just beyond her hearing brushed up against her again.

Then, as if from somewhere far in the distance, she heard a throbbing sound emerge from the mists, and for a moment she thought it must be the beating of her own heart. But as it grew louder, she realized that wherever it was coming from, it wasn't within her own body. Yet even as the sound swelled, it sounded oddly muffled, as if the mists surrounding her were smothering it as well.

Then something pressed against her legs.

Her heart racing, she instinctively reached down to shove whatever it was away.

A second later her fingers sank into-

Fur! The soft, wonderful feel of Scout's thick golden coat!

It was Scout she'd touched, Scout she'd felt brushing against her. Dropping to her knees, she put her arms around the dog and pulled him close, burying her face in his coat. "Where's Jared?" she whispered to the dog. "Where is he, Scout? Find him for me."

The dog stiffened, and twisted out of her arms, disappearing into the swirling mists.

Follow him! She had to follow him, or she'd be lost forever in the suffocating gray fog.

"Scout?" she called out. "Scout, where are you?"

She began moving again, forcing her legs to carry her forward, stretching her hands out to feel her way. A moment later she felt something, and began exploring it with her fingers.

A door!

She found the knob and pulled it open, stumbling through into a corridor.

The mists thinned, and finally she could see.

She wasn't in a corridor at all, but on the broad mezzanine that ringed the house's huge entry hall!

The stairs! There they were, off to the right!