Right Hand of Evil (37 page)

She saw her elder daughter coming toward her. Kim's face was ashen, her eyes wide with a combination of terror and wonder. Her right hand was clutching the cross that hung from a golden chain around her neck. Her left arm was extended straight out before her, and from her fingers hung the second cross, the one Janet herself had put away for Molly. As Kim drew near, Janet reached out to take the cross, but Kim passed by her, her eyes never wavering from-

– the image above the altar! Kim was gazing at it, and the expression on her face was enough to tell Janet that it wasn't she to whom Kim would offer the golden cross, but to the terrible being floating over the glowing candles. Then, as Janet watched, the visage of a perfect Ted changed again, mutating into something else, something with eyes that glittered with hatred. The soft skin that had been so perfect a second earlier turned red and scaly, and Ted's full lips thinned and hardened until Janet was staring at the mouth of a reptile.

The mouth opened, and a two-headed serpent shot out, each of the serpents writhing individually, each of their maws gaping wide to exhibit venom-dripping fangs.

Whimpering with terror, Janet cowered back from the terrible being.

Kim, though, walked steadily forward.

Both Jared and Ted stood before the altar now, the image of their god looming above them. The dagger vibrated in Jared's right hand, a few inches above Molly's naked breast, and as Kim drew closer, Ted's voice echoed through the chamber.

"Do it," he commanded once more. "Do it now!"

Jared's hand moved, and the dagger's point touched Molly's skin.

"DO IT!" Ted screamed. "Make your sacrifice!"

Not real!

Kim repeated the words over and over again as she moved toward the altar. She tried not to look at the terrifying being that floated above the altar, concentrating instead on forcing her feet to obey the will of her mind instead of the power of her fear.

Not real,
she told herself again.

But this time she knew it was real, that what she was seeing was the very source of evil itself, and not merely an image conjured up in some underworld to frighten her away.

She could still hear Jared's voice calling to her, but it was weaker now. She was close enough to feel his mind, and she could sense him weakening as their father railed at him. In another moment or two it would be too late.

The twin serpents flicked toward her once again, their fangs bared, their slitted eyes glowing, but when she moved the cross in her left hand toward them, they veered away, hissing like water splashed on a sizzling griddle.

She moved closer, and now the evil image itself was screaming, bellowing in rage as she drew nearer, then nearer still, until she was next to Jared, standing before the altar, gazing into her brother's face in the light of the flickering candles that lit the area above the altar. The tip of the dagger still rested on Molly's breast. Molly herself was crying, and wailing for her mother.

"Do it, damn you!" she heard her father command, and saw Jared's knuckles turn white as his fingers tightened on the haft of the dagger.

He raised it, ready to plunge it deep into his little sister's chest.

Kim reached out and dropped the chain over Jared's head. The cross fell to his chest.

In the instant the cross touched him, Jared's face contorted with rage, and he lifted the dagger higher. His mouth opened and a screech of fury burst from his throat. A moment later the dagger flashed downward.

And plunged to the hilt into Ted Conway's chest.

Ted staggered, then sank to his knees. Jared, the dagger still clutched in his hand, pulled it loose. Ted gazed up at Jared, his eyes filled with shock, color draining from his face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but Jared thrust the dagger into his father's gaping face, ramming it through the roof of his father's mouth to sink it deep into the core of his brain.

His life already ended, blood still gurgling from his wounds, Ted crumpled to the floor in front of the altar.

"Get Molly," Jared whispered, but even though his words were barely audible, Kim heard them directly from his mind. "Get Mom. Get out. For God's sake, get out."

Lifting Molly off the altar, Kim turned and ran up the aisle, calling out to her mother to follow her. A moment later they burst through the doors.

And back into the darkness of the staircase.

As the terrible nightmare released her from its grip, Janet stopped short. "I-I don't understand-" she stammered. "What-"

But Kim, still carrying Molly, pushed her up the stairs. "Get out!" she said. "Jared says we have to get out. Now!"

Something in her daughter's voice penetrated the confusion that surrounded Janet, and, taking Molly from Kim's arms, she stumbled up the stairs, through the dining room and entry hall, and out onto the front porch.

The sun was shining brightly, and a faint breeze played in the air.

Janet was back in the perfect morning to which she had awakened.

Father MacNeill's prayers died on his lips as the front door of the house flew open. When Kim burst out onto the porch, no more than ten minutes after she'd gone into the house, he was certain she'd failed. Either she hadn't found the second cross, or, more likely, she had lost her nerve.

He didn't want even to think about the worst possibility, that somehow she had lost the cross that had been hanging around her neck.

When Janet Conway appeared with Molly in her arms, however, he released the breath he'd unconsciously been holding and took a step toward the house. But as he moved off the sidewalk and onto the Conway property itself, the chill of evil fell over him, and he knew that the terrible confrontation inside had not yet ended.

Kim, exhausted by what she'd been through, collapsed into his supporting arms. He held her for a moment, feeling her heart pounding, her body trembling. "It's all right," he told her. "You're going to be all right." Eventually, the throbbing of her heart began to slow, her trembling to ease. "Where is your brother?" he asked, then more urgently: "Where is he?"

Kim raised her face-streaked with tears she could no longer keep under control-and looked beseechingly into the priest's eyes. "He stayed," she whispered. "He told me to leave, but he stayed."

"And your father?" the priest went on.

Kim's voice wavered as she struggled against the sob that threatened to choke her. "He-He's dead," she stammered. "Jared-"

Father MacNeill pressed the forefinger of his right hand against her lips to silence her before she could finish. "Not Jared," he said quietly. "Jared did nothing." His eyes fixed on Kim's. "Do you understand that? It was never your brother. Never."

Janet, her strength ebbing away, sank onto the narrow strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the street. Hugging Molly close-as much for her own comfort as for her child's-she tried to grasp what had just happened. But she couldn't. Nothing-not one single thing since she woke up that morning-made any sense. And yet as she listened to Father MacNeill talking to Kim, it sounded as though both of them not only knew about the nightmare she'd just been through, but somehow understood it. Her eyes drifted to the house, but all she could see was the terrible image of her son, a knife-glistening with blood-gripped tightly in his hand as he stood above his father.

Above
Ted
-

No,
not
Ted.

Someone-
something
-else. But not Ted.

Not Jared-

No, it had to have been some kind of nightmare-it
had
to have been…

Certain her sanity was collapsing, she summoned the last reserves of her strength. "Tell me," she pleaded, her voice breaking. "Someone, please-tell me what's happening to me…"

Father MacNeill knelt beside her and placed a comforting arm around her shoulder. "Hell," he said softly. "You've just been to Hell, Janet. But you're back. It's over."

But still he felt the cold of evil spreading out from the house. Still, he knew it was not over.

Not yet.

The vast space around him filled with a cacophony of rage that threatened to shatter Jared's mind. The dagger forgotten, he reflexively clamped his hands over his ears to shut out the anguished shrieks of the damned souls whose wailing agonies resounded around him.

The knife, its blade still smeared with Ted Conway's blood, had fallen only a fraction of an inch from Ted's lifeless hand. As Jared turned away from the altar, his foot touched the haft and it swung around, brushing against the fingers of its victim.

As metal touched flesh, the finger twitched as if shocked by electricity. Then, instead of relaxing back into the stillness of death, Ted's fingers closed on the dagger. The blood on its blade faded as if sucked back into the body from which it had spurted only moments before. A guttural sound spewed from Ted's throat, and he sat up, then staggered to his feet, bracing himself against the altar. His eyes burned into the retreating back of his son with such intensity that Jared, feeling the fury of his father's gaze, turned back.

His father's mouth opened. Jared could see the wound in its roof, and when his father spoke, the words were muddied as they crossed the tear the dagger had opened.

"No," Ted gasped. "Not this way." He tried to straighten his back, and took a lurching step toward Jared. "This isn't how it ends." He reached out, beseeching Jared. "Not like this."

Jared took a step forward, ready to take his father's outstretched hand, but a second before their fingers touched, an image rose out of his subconscious.

Night.

Asleep in his room.

Then awake, uncertain what had called him out of sleep.

A voice
-
his father's
-
calling to him.

Rising from his bed, following his father's voice down the stairs, through the dining room, then down into the basement.

A door.

He opened it.

Beyond the door, a heavy mist, but through the mist, he'd seen his father reaching out to him. "Help me, Jared," he'd heard his father say. "I need you to help me."

He moved forward through the mist, and his father's hand
-
icy cold
-
closed on his. And in that moment when his father's fingers clamped on his own, a terrible feeling of desolation fell over Jared.

He felt lost; abandoned.

Fear entered his soul, a terror of what his father was about to do, but that he had no power to resist.

His father led him through the fog, and they came at last to a golden, jeweled altar, glowing as if lit from within. Above the altar, he had seen an inverted cross, and in front of the cross hung a visage of pure evil.

Jared felt his soul shriveling as he beheld the image. He tried to turn away, but the eyes of the image held him.

The eyes were hungry, and even before his father spoke again, Jared knew what it was the evil image craved.

And he knew he was lost.

"You are my son and my firstborn," he heard his father say. "You will obey me." Unable to resist his father, Jared gazed upon the face of evil.

"I give you my son," Jared heard his father say.

The face of evil smiled, and then Jared heard another voice, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. It penetrated into the deepest part of his mind and soul, and Jared listened.

He had no choice.

"You belong to me, Jared," the voice whispered. "Your father has given you to me, and now you are mine."

Jared nodded.

"You will serve me and only me. You will build me a cathedral, and bring me others. You will feed me. You will worship me. You will destroy my enemies." The voice whispered on, instructing Jared in the depravities he would commit, the sacrifices he would make.

And then, before even the first flicker of dawn began to break, he had returned to his room, to his bed, to his sleep.

When he woke up again, he knew it was not a dream, and that very day he went to the basement and began.

Began doing everything the voice of evil had instructed him to do.

Powerless to resist, he called out to Kim, begging her to help him, and several times she'd come.

She'd seen what was happening, seen what he was doing, but she hadn't understood, hadn't helped him.

Until today.

Jared's hand was only a fraction of an inch from his father's reach when he pulled it away, and instead of his fingers closing on his father's, they closed instead on the gold cross his sister had hung around his neck. He felt his soul expanding within him, felt the cold and loneliness in which he'd been living begin to dissipate. As the grip of evil lost its strength, the intensity of the howls that filled the cathedral grew. But it was no longer the lost souls of Hell crying out. Rather, it was Evil itself, raging at the escape of its victim but powerless to stop it.

Jared's eyes rose once more to the evil image floating before the inverted cross, then returned to his father. "You gave me to him," he said softly. "You gave your own son to the Devil." Stepping past his father, who had already collapsed back to his knees, Jared swept the candles from the altar.

In an instant, flames spread through the profane cathedral, and once more the voice of evil screamed with rage. Jared ignored it, turning away to stride to the door.

"No!" his father screamed. "NOOoooo!"

As his father's scream died away, Jared turned to look at him one last time. The flames were everywhere now, and his father, his wounds once more streaming with blood, was spinning among them, turning first one way, then another, searching for an escape.

But there was no escape.

There would never be an escape.

Jared, his lips forming the first words of a prayer he hadn't uttered since he entered this house, turned and walked through the doors.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death…"

What do you think they're going to do with her?" Luke Roberts asked Sandy Engstrom.

Sandy shrugged indifferently. "They can lock her up and throw away the key, for all I care." Though it was still an hour before noon, they were sitting in the pizza parlor, where they'd been ever since Father MacNeill and Father Bernard had taken Kim Conway out of the biology lab.
As
they finished their second Cokes, they decided that if any of the nuns gave them any grief when they went back to school tomorrow, they'd just say they were so upset by what happened to Kim that they couldn't bear to stay at school.

Luke's lip curled into a smirk. "I thought Kim was your best friend."

"Melissa Parker was my best friend," Sandy retorted. "Kim's way too goody-goody." Cocking her head, she eyed Luke. "Did you and Melissa ever do it?"

Luke's laugh was harsh. "Are you kidding? She was just as bad as Kim! You'd think she was gonna be a nun or something."

Sandy opened her mouth to reply, but suddenly she felt something deep inside her letting go.

Something she hadn't even known was gripping her.

For a moment-a moment that passed in the blink of an eye-she had a terrible feeling that she was going to start vomiting again, as she had every morning since the night she'd spent at Kim's, but that sensation passed, too.

She shook her head, blinking. She felt utterly disoriented. What was she doing sitting in the pizza parlor at eleven in the morning? Sister Clarence would kill her!

And sitting across from her was Luke Roberts! Luke Roberts, whom she'd never planned to speak to again. She was just about to scramble out of the booth when Luke stood up.

"Jeez!" he said. "What am I doing here? Father Bernard and Father Mack are really gonna kill me this time!" Without so much as a goodbye, he dashed out the door and ran toward the school, a block away.

Sandy left enough money on the table to pay for her Coke and Luke's, too.

She slid out of the booth to start back to school, her mind wiped clean of everything that had happened to her since she'd first entered the Conway house.

Still praying, Jared Conway walked through the dining room and entry hall to the front door. He could feel the house throbbing with the evil it contained, and as he neared the front door, he felt it reaching out to him, still trying to ensnare him, to pull him back into the realm of darkness.

He opened the front door and stepped out onto the broad porch.

As he pulled the door closed behind him, he thought he heard his father's voice calling out to him one last time.

This time, he didn't listen.

As he stepped off the porch and started across the lawn toward his mother and sisters, the house burst into flames.

They were flames, Jared knew, that could never be completely put out.

Standing with his arms around his mother and twin sister, he watched the fire for a long time, but at last, as the frame of the house gave way and the structure collapsed into the conflagration, he turned away.

For him, it was finally over.