The Revelation (34 page)

Screaming, she blacked out.

The truck moved slowly up the winding highway that switch backed up the face of the Rim. From this vantage point, they could see the forest below them. Jim saw that the clouds of billowing black smoke were still spreading upward from the landfill, now augmented by the more natural gray smoke of a forest fire. Farther south, the morning sunlight glinted off the buildings of Randall, a small whitish patch in the sea of green trees.

Jim wondered what was happening back in town. He should have given Pete more explicit instructions. He should have brought along some type of two-way radio so he could communicate with the office and find out what was happening. He shook his head. There were a lot of things he should have done.

At least Annette and the kids had gotten out safely.

He looked at Gordon and felt immediately guilty. He should have allowed Gordon to check on his wife. It would have only taken an extra ten minutes or so. She was the one who was really in danger, anyway.

He should have overridden Brother Elias and allowed Gordon to drive by his house. It was very stupid of him not to. What if something happened to her? Gordon met his gaze, and Jim glanced guiltily away, concentrating his attention on the j road.

"We need to go faster," Brother Elias said, "or we will be too | late.

The adversary knows now that we are here. He knows we are f coming for him and he will be prepared."

"I have to use low gears here," Jim explained. "We'll be able to go a lot faster once we get to the top."

Brother Elias said nothing, staring silently out the front windshield.

Gordon turned to look at Father Andrews, leaning against the door. The priest was forced into an uncomfortably tight position, but his eyes were closed and he was sleeping. He was exhausted.

The pickup finally reached the top of the Rim, and Jim shifted the truck into third, flooring the gas pedal. The vehicle shot forward.

The road wound through the forest, following the lay of the land. The two-lane blacktop skirted especially thick stands of tall trees and wound through gullies, finding the easiest route through the rough terrain.

Ahead, Jim saw the small brown Forest Service sign that marked the turnoff to Aspen Lake and he slowed down. He rolled up the truck's window and turned onto the dirt road. Once again, he sped up, and soon the pickup was flying over the innumerable bumps in the road, sailing past the close-growing trees.

Fifteen minutes later, the pines began to be replaced by aspens, and he could see the blue of the lake through the trees. "We're almost there," he announced.

He slowed down as they reached the lake, searching for the old dirt path that led to Milk Ranch Point.

"There it is," Brother Elias said, pointing.

Jim followed the preacher's finger. Several newly cut aspens were piled across the path, barring the truck access.

"Something doesn't want us back there," Gordon said.

Brother Elias nodded. "We'll have to walk."

The truck braked to a stop, and Father Andrews blinked open his eyes.

"Are we there?" he asked.

"Yeah," Jim said. He opened the door and got out, stretching his tired muscles. Above, the sky was darkening, gray rain clouds from the north intermingling with the heavy black smoke still streaming up from the landfill below the Rim. A warm wind had sprung up from somewhere, and it brought to his nostrils the odor of burning flesh.

Brother Elias stepped out of the cab, carrying the box with the last two jars of blood. He moved to the back of the truck and put the box down on the ground at his feet. He drew from the rear of the pickup a small canvas bag containing the four crosses he had requested, and he dropped the bag into the box.

He pulled out one of the rifles and a box of ammunition.

"Does everyone know how to use one of these?" the preacher asked.

Gordon looked at Father Andrews, and both men shook their heads.

"You won't need one," Brother Elias said to the priest. He looked at Gordon. "You will." He handed Gordon the rifle and threw another one to the sheriff. "Show him how to use it," he said.

Father Andrews watched as Gordon and Jim walked to the front of the truck, grasping their rifles. He turned his attention to Brother Elias, who was staring at him with that black unflinching gaze. "Come," the preacher said. He put a strong arm around Father Andrews' shoulders and led him to the makeshift barrier that was blocking the trail to Milk Ranch Point. This close, the priest could see that the felled aspens had not been chopped down. They had been gnawed on. By tiny teeth. He felt suddenly cold.

"How strong are your ties to your church?" Brother Elias asked.

The priest stared at him. "Why?"

"What I will ask you to do goes against everything you have ever been taught. It runs contrary to the very tenets of your faith." Father Andrews smiled slightly. "So what else is new?"

"This you will not be able to rationalize. What I will ask you to do is specifically prohibited in the Bible. It is considered blasphemous before the eyes of God." He paused for a moment, his gaze focusing upward on the gray clouds and black smoke creeping across the sky above them. The air was hot, humid, uncomfortable. "Good and evil are not abstract concepts," he said finally. "They exist and they have always existed."

The priest frowned. "I have always thought so."

"They exist outside and independent of any religion. Religions, all religions, are merely crude attempts to explain their existence.

Religions are created to label and categorize powers they do not understand."

Father Andrews looked at the preacher. He could feel the evil of this place. It suffused the trees, the bushes, the very ground they stood upon. Corruption thickened the air they breathed, and he felt almost overwhelmed by nausea as the evil pressed in upon his senses. He felt his arm, now healed, and that too seemed wrong somehow. His eyes met those of Brother Elias, and he looked away, frightened.

The preacher pointed up the trail before them. "This is an evil spot," he said. "It has always been an evil spot. The power that is here has always been here and always will be here." He paused, and his voice lowered as if he were afraid of being overheard. "In the countless centuries before man, animals brought their young here to die. Deer that were born crippled were dragged here and left by their mothers.

Bears that were undersized and would obviously not survive their first winter were brought here and abandoned. The evil was fed, and its power grew."

Father Andrews paled. He knew where the conversation was headed.

"The first men also left their unfit young here instinctively. But as cultures evolved, reasons were needed for continuing these practices.

Elaborate rationalizations were concocted by men. Sacrifices were incorporated into emerging religions. This was considered the home of the dark gods, and sacrifices of infants, healthy or unhealthy, were supposed to appease the deities and keep their anger at bay." He looked at the priest. "Always, the evil of this place was recognized."

Father Andrews licked his lips, which were suddenly dry. "So what happened?"

"The evil fed on the bodies, on the blank innocent energy of the infants. But rather than appease the evil, the sacrifices added to its power until it began to expand, until it had grown far beyond its traditional confines." He smiled, but there was no joy in it. "This is the lake of fire."

Father Andrews nodded dumbly.

"Religions, as they changed, abandoned the sacrifices and no longer condoned them, but the sacrifices were still practiced surreptitiously by the people of this area. Stillborn infants were brought here and abandoned. Unhealthy babies were dropped off to die. The people forgot the reasons why they brought the infants here, but the reasons had not mattered to begin with. They were only rationalizations." He looked again at the darkening sky, then down at Father Andrews.

"Infants are still brought here to die," he said.

"It's not possible. Not in this day and age."

"Aborted fetuses are brought here by doctors. Dead babies are stolen from their rightful graves and deposited here. The people often do not know what they do or why, but the evil is strong and it demands to be fed. It stretches outward as it grows, exerting more influence as its power increases." There was the sound of one gunshot, then another, as behind them Jim and Gordon practiced shooting. The sound echoed like thunder in the wilderness. "There is nothing we can do to stop any of this. The evil exists and it will always exist. We can only keep it contained, diffuse it when its power begins to grow. This is why we perform the ritual."

"Why are you telling this only to me?" Father Andrews asked. "Why aren't you telling the others too?"

The preacher once again put a firm hand around the priest's shoulder.

"Because you need to know. They do not. We all have our roles to play."

"And what exactly is my role?"

"You must communicate with it. You must allow it to speak through you and to hear with your ears while I recite the words of the ritual."

A wave of terror passed through Father Andrews as the import of the preacher's words struck him. Panic flared within him, and he pulled away from Brother Elias. "You want me to let it possess me? I'm supposed to willingly let myself be possessed by some ..." He could not find the word to finish his sentence.

"It's not dangerous," Brother Elias said. "If we do everything right, there will be no danger to you whatsoever."

Father Andrews felt the lie of the preacher's words. "I don't believe you!" he shouted. He glared at Brother Elias, his eyes wide with fright, his head pounding. "You're lying!"

Brother Elias stood unmoving as a warm wind blew around him. He looked at the priest but said nothing. His eyes were unreadable.

As Brother Elias talked in low tones to Father Andrews, Jim gave Gordon a crash course in firearm use. After showing him how to unlatch the safety, how to aim and fire the rifle, he shot a pine cone lying on the ground. The pine cone was blown into tiny fragments. He then coached Gordon through a shot of his own. Gordon aimed at a blue logger's marking on a tree, but the bullet whistled harmlessly through the nearby branches, missing the tree completely.

"That's okay," Jim said. He then showed Gordon what he had done wrong, demonstrating how to hold the rifle properly and how to sight by tilting his head and not the gun. After several more tries, Gordon was finally able to hit one of the wider trees. He shot the rifle twice on his own, with no help from Jim, and he hit the tree both times.

"That's good enough," Brother Elias said, walking over to them. "You don't need to be any more precise than that. Your target will be big."

"How big?" Jim asked.

Brother Elias did not answer.

Behind the preacher, Father Andrews came shuffling forward. His face was ashen, his walk slow and stilted. He looked from Jim to Gordon, but his eyes were blank. His hands were clenched into trembling fists.

"We must start walking," Brother Elias said, stepping to the back of the pickup. He picked up a box and put it down at his feet, drawing something hidden in a greasy rag from the rear of the truck and dropping it into the box. "I hope we are not already too late."

The four men climbed over the hastily made barrier of downed aspens, Jim and Gordon shouldering rifles, Brother Elias carrying his box.

Father Andrews followed close behind the preacher, carrying nothing, lost in silence.

The warm wind that had been blowing around them grew stronger as they walked. It whipped around them in strange and unnatural currents, sending strings of round aspen leaves fluttering in tiny whirlwinds, blowing against their faces from first one direction then another.

Above them, the clouds and smoke were slowly encroaching on the sun.

Ahead of them, the trail was already shadowed.

Brother Elias walked fast. He was obviously used to walking, and even wearing a suit and dress shoes he strode quickly and purposefully over rocks and ruts, pushing his way pastmanzanitas and mimosas. There was a trace of urgency in his movements, a hint of desperation in his longlegged stride. The trail they followed wound gradually upward, climbing a graded slope, but the preacher did not seem to notice. He did not slow down as he climbed but maintained a consistently even pace.

Ahead, the trail widened into a dirt semicircle. It was here that the off-road vehicles able to navigate the rough trail parked. Beyond this point there was only a small narrow footpath. Brother Elias did not even slow down as he came to the trail's end. He stepped purposefully over the low border of intentionally placed boulders and continued walking.

The climb was much steeper now. They were walking almost straight uphill, and both Gordon and Father Andrews were soon gasping for breath. Even Jim was having a difficult time. In addition to the rigorousness of the climb, the altitude was quite high and there was a noticeable lack of oxygen.

But Brother Elias seemed not to notice any of this. If anything, his gait became quicker, surer. He continued forward at a rapid pace, undaunted by either the steep climb or the thin air. He did not even bother to look back to make sure the others were following him.