The Killing Kind

25

THE BOOK WAS ABOUT FOURTEEN INCHES LONG and seven inches wide. Six small bones curled horizontally across its spine in three equidistant sets of two. They were slightly yellow and coated with some form of preservative that made them gleam in the sunlight. I wasn't certain, but I thought they might once have been the ends of ribs. They felt slick to the touch compared to the texture of the material upon which they lay. The cover of the book had been dyed a deep red, through which lines and wrinkles showed. Close to the top left-hand corner, a raised mole stood.

It was human skin. The hide had been dried, then sewn together in patches, using what appeared to be tendon and gut for stitching. When I moved my fingers gently over the cover, I felt not only the pores and lines of the dermis used to construct it but also the shapes of the bones that formed the framework beneath: radius and ulna, I suspected, and probably more ribs. It was as if the book itself had once been a living thing, skin over bone, lacking only flesh and blood to make it whole again.

There was no writing on either the cover or the spine, no indication of what the book might contain. The only marking was the cover illustration, Jansenist in style with its single central motif repeated in each of the four corners: a spider, indented in gold leaf, its eight legs curled inward to hold a single golden key.

Using only the tips of my fingers, I opened the book. Its spine was a human spine, held together with gold wire, the only material used that did not appear to have come from a human body. The pages had been attached to it using more tendon. The inside covers had not been dyed, and the differentiations in the pigments of the various skins used in its construction could be more clearly distinguished. From the top of the spine a bookmark curled down, constructed from lengths of human hair tightly bound, scavenged from bodies that, for reasons of discretion and concealment, could not be marked in more obvious ways.

There were about thirty pages of varying sizes in the book. Two or three were constructed from single patches of skin, twice as large as the book itself. These had been folded, then bound through the fold, creating a double page; other pages had been made up from smaller sections of skin sewn carefully together, some of them no bigger than two or three square inches. The pages varied in thickness; one was so thin that the color of my hand showed through beneath, but others were more thickly layered. Most appeared to be sections taken from the lower back or shoulders, although one page showed the strange sunken hole of a human navel and another bore, close to its center, a shrunken nipple. Like the bifolios of old, the parchments made from goatskin and calfskin used by medieval scribes, one side of the page was smooth where any remaining body hair had been rubbed off, while the other was rough. The smooth sides had been used for the illustrations and the script, so that on any one double page only the right-hand side was filled.

On page after page, in beautiful ornate script, were sections from the book of Revelation: some were complete chapters, others simply quotes used to elaborate upon the meaning of the illustrations contained in the book. The writing was Carolingian in origin, a version of the beautiful clear script inspired by the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin of York, with each italic letter being given its own distinct but simple shape to aid legibility. Faulkner had worked around the natural flaws and holes of the skin, disguising them, where necessary, with a suitable letter or ornamentation. The capital letters on each page were uncials, each one an inch high and carefully created from hundreds of individual pen strokes. Animal and human grotesques cavorted around their bases and stems.

But it was the illustrations that drew the eye. There were echoes of Dürer and Duvet in them, of Blake and Cranach and later artists too: Goerg and Meidner and Masereel. They were not copies of the original illustrations, but variations on a theme. Some were painted in ornate colors, while others used only carbon black mixed with iron gall to create a dense ink that stood out from the page. A version of Hell Mouth drawn from the Winchester Psalter marked the first page, hundreds of tiny bodies twisting in what looked like the jaws of a creature half man, half fish. A greenish tint had been added to the human figures so that they stood out from the skin on which they had been inscribed, and the scales of the fish were marked individually in shades of blue and red. Elsewhere, I found Cranach's Four Horsemen in red and black; Burgkmair's Harvest of the World in tones of green and gold; a vision of an arachnid beast, inspired by the twentieth-century artist Edouard Goerg, beside the words, “The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them all, and kill them”; and a richly detailed variation on Duvet's frontispiece for his 1555 Apocalypse, depicting St. John against a backdrop of a great city, surrounded by emblems of death, including a swan with an arrow in its mouth.

I flicked forward to the last completed illustration, which accompanied a quotation from Revelation 10:10: “And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.” Inspired by Dürer, the illustration depicted, once again, St. John, a sword in one hand as he consumed a representation of the very book I now held in my hand, the human spine and the spider with the key clearly visible as he fed it to himself. An angel watched him, its feet pillars of fire, its head like the sun.

St. John had been drawn in black ink and enormous effort had been expended in detailing the expression on his face. It was a representation of Faulkner as he was in his younger days, reminiscent of the picture of him that I had seen in the newspaper following the discovery of the bodies to the north. There was the same high brow, the same sunken cheeks and almost feminine mouth, the same straight, dark brows. He was swathed in a long white cloak, his left hand raising the sword toward the sky above.

Faulkner was in every illustration. He was one of the Four Horsemen; he was the jaws of hell; he was St. John; he was the beast. Faulkner: judging, tormenting, consuming, killing; creating a book that was both a record of punishment and a punishment in itself; an unveiling and a concealing of the truth; a vanity and a mockery of vanities; a work of art and an act of cannibalism. This was his life's work, begun when the human weaknesses of his followers displayed themselves and he turned against them, destroying them all with the aid of his brood: the men first, then the women, and finally the children. As he had begun, so he had continued, and the fallen had become part of his great book.

In the bottom right-hand corner of each page, like marginalia, were written names. The pages constructed of a single sheet of skin bore only one name, while those made up of a number of sections contained two, three, or sometimes four names. James Jessop's name was on the third fragment of skin, his mother's on the fourth, and his father's on the fifth. The rest of the Aroostook Baptists took up the majority of the book's entries, but there were other names too, names that I did not recognize, some of them comparatively recent, judging by the color of the ink on the skin. Alison Beck's name was not among them. Neither was Al Z's, or Epstein's, or Mickey Shine's. They would all have been added later, once the book had been retrieved, just as Grace Peltier's name would also have been written, and perhaps my own as well.

I thought back to Jack Mercier and the volume I had been shown in his study, its three double spine markings here transformed from gold to bone. A craftsman like Faulkner would not simply have ceased to make the books he loved so much. The copy presented to Carter Paragon was proof of that. Now it was clear that Faulkner had a wider vision: the creation of a text whose form perfectly mirrored its subject; a book about damnation made up of the bodies of the damned; a record of judgment composed of the remains of those who had been judged.

And Grace had found him. Deborah Mercier, jealous of her husband's first daughter, had told her of the existence of the new Apocalypse and its source. By then, Jack Mercier had already commenced his moves against the Fellowship, recruiting Ober, Beck, and Epstein to his cause, but Grace couldn't have known that, because it was more than Deborah Mercier would have been willing to tell her. She would put Grace at risk, but not her husband.

Grace had confronted Paragon with her knowledge of the sale of the Apocalypse, but Paragon was simply a dupe and Grace, clever woman, must have guessed it. He would have been afraid to tell Pudd and Faulkner that he had sold the book, but he would also have been too frightened to tell them nothing of Grace's visit. And so Grace had watched him and waited for him to panic. Did she follow him north, or wait for them to come to him? I suspected the latter if Paragon had died because he could not tell the Golem of their hiding place. Whatever had occurred, Grace had somehow found her way to the very gates of Faulkner's own, private hell. And then, when the opportunity arose, she made her way in and managed to escape with this book, a book that contained the truth about the fate of the Aroostook Baptists and, in particular, Elizabeth Jessop. Its theft had forced the Fellowship to respond quickly; while Pudd and the others searched for it, they set about eliminating all those who were moving against them and for whom the work stolen by Grace Peltier would have been a powerful weapon, a task that assumed a new urgency with the discovery of the bodies at St. Froid Lake.

I closed the volume, laid it carefully in its packaging, then ran my hands under the kitchen faucet. When I had cleaned them thoroughly I picked up a towel and turned to face Rachel and Louis.

“Looks like we got a whole new definition of the word ‘crazy,’ ” muttered Louis. “You know what that thing is supposed to be?”

“It's a record,” I replied. “A journal of deaths, and maybe more than that. It's an account of the damned, the opposite of the book of life. The Aroostook Baptists are in there, and at least a dozen other names, male and female, all used to create a new Apocalypse.

“And Faulkner made it. His remains weren't among those found at the grave site; neither were his son's or those of his daughter. They killed those people, all of them, then used parts of them to create his book. I think the other names are those of people who've had the misfortune to cross the Fellowship at some time, or who posed a threat and had to be eliminated. Eventually, parts of Grace and Curtis Peltier, Yossi Epstein, and maybe a piece of Jack Mercier and the others on the boat would have been added, once the book had been retrieved. It would have to be as complete a record as possible, otherwise it would have no meaning.”

“I take it you're using ‘meaning’ in the loosest possible sense,” said Rachel. Her disgust was obvious.

I was rubbing my hands red on the towel yet still feeling the taint of the book upon me. “Its meaning doesn't matter,” I said. “This thing is a confession to murder, once it can be traced back to Faulkner.”

“If we can find him,” added Louis. “What's going to happen when Lutz don't report back?”

“Then he'll send someone else, probably Pudd, to find out what happened. He can't let this book remain out in the world. That's assuming that our friend with the bald head doesn't get to him first.”

I thought of what I knew, or suspected, of Faulkner's hiding place; I knew now that it was to the north, beyond Bangor, close to the coast, and near a lighthouse. There were maybe sixty lighthouses on the Maine coast, most of them automated or unmanned, with a couple given over to civilian use. Of those, probably only a handful were north of Machias.

I knelt down and took the wrapped book in my hands.

“What are you going to do with it?” asked Rachel.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Not yet.”

She moved closer to me and held my gaze. “You want to find him, don't you? You're not prepared to let the police do it.”

“He had Lutz and Voisine working for him,” I explained, “and Voisine is still out there somewhere. There could be others as well. If we hand this over to the police and even one of them shares Lutz's loyalties, then Faulkner will be alerted and he'll be gone forever. My guess is that he's already preparing to disappear. He's probably been planning it ever since the moment the book was lost and certainly since the discovery of the bodies at St. Froid. For that reason, and for Marcy's safety, we're going to keep this to ourselves for the present. Marcy?”

She picked up her bag and stood expectantly.

“We're going to put you somewhere safe. You can call your parents and let them know you're okay first.”

She nodded. I went outside and called the Colony on the cell phone. Amy answered.

“It's Charlie Parker,” I said. “I need your help. I have a woman here. I need to stow her out of sight.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”

But I think she knew.

“I'm close to him, Amy. I can bring this to an end.”

When she answered, I could hear the resignation in her voice. “She can stay in the house.” Women, with the obvious exception of Amy herself, were not usually admitted to the Colony, but there were spare bedrooms in the main house that were sometimes used under exceptional circumstances.

“Thank you. There will be a man with her. He'll be armed.”

“You know how we feel about guns here, Charlie.”

“I know, but this is Pudd we're dealing with. I want you to let my friend stay with Marcy until this is over. It'll be a day or two at most.”

I asked her to take Rachel in as well. She agreed, and I hung up. Marcy made a short call to her mother and then we drove away from the house and into Boothbay. There, we parted. Louis and Rachel would drive south to Scarborough, where Angel would take Marcy Becker and a reluctant Rachel to the Colony. Louis would rejoin me once Marcy and Rachel were in Angel's care. I kept the book, concealing it carefully beneath the passenger seat of the Mustang.

I drove north as far as Bangor, where I picked up a copy of Thompson's Maine Lighthouses at Book Marcs bookstore. There were seven lighthouses in the Bold Coast area around Machias, the town in which Marcy Becker had been left while Grace went about her business: Whitlock's Mill in Calais; East Quoddy at Campobello Island; and farther south, Mulholland Light, West Quoddy, Lubec Channel, Little River, and Machias Seal Island. Machias Seal was too far out to sea to be relevant, which left six.

I called Ross in New York, hoping to light a fire under him, but got only his secretary. I was twenty miles outside Bangor when he called me back.

“I've seen Charon's reports from Maine,” he began. “This part of the investigation was minor stuff, pure legwork. A gay rights activist was killed in the Village in 1991, shot to death in the toilet of a bar on Bleecker; MO matched a similar shooting in Miami. The perp was apprehended but his phone records showed that he made seven calls to the Fellowship in the days preceding the killing. A woman called Torrance told Charon that the guy was a freak and she reported the calls to the cops. A detective named Lutz confirmed that.”

So, if the killer had been working for the Fellowship, they had a cover story. They had reported him to the police before the murder, and Lutz, already their pet policeman, had confirmed it.

“What happened to the killer?”

“His name was Lusky, Barrett Lusky. He made bail and was found dead two days later in a Dumpster in Queens. Gunshot wound to the head.

“Now, according to Charon's report, he went no farther north than Waterville during his inquiries. But there's an anomaly: his expenses show a claim for gas purchased in a place called Lubec, about a hundred and fifty miles farther north of Waterville. It's on the coast.”

“Lubec,” I echoed. It made sense.

“What's in Lubec?” asked Ross.

“Lighthouses,” I answered. “And a bridge.”

Lubec had three lighthouses. It was also the easternmost town in the United States. From there, the FDR Memorial Bridge stretched across the water to Canada. Lubec was a good choice of location if you needed an escape route left permanently open, because there was a whole new country only minutes away by car or boat. They were in Lubec: I was certain of it, and the Traveling Man had found them there. The gas receipt was careless, but only in the context of what came later and the murders he himself committed, using a strange justification based on human frailty and inconsequence that mirrored some of Faulkner's own beliefs.

But I had underestimated Faulkner, and I had underestimated Pudd. While I closed in on them, they had already taken the most vulnerable one among us, the only one left alone.

They took Angel.

26

THERE WAS BLOOD ON THE PORCH, and blood on the front door. In the kitchen, cracks radiated through the plaster from a bullet hole in the wall. There was more blood in the hallway, a curving snake trail like the pattern of a sidewinder. The kitchen door had been torn almost off its hinges, and the kitchen window had been shattered by more gunfire.

There were no bodies inside.

Taking Angel was partly a precaution in case we found Marcy Becker first, but also an act of revenge against me personally. They had probably come to finish us off, and when they found only Angel, they took him instead. I thought of Mr. Pudd and the mute with their hands on him, his blood on their clothes and skin as they dragged him from the house. We should never have left him alone. None of us should ever have been alone.

They would never let him live, of course. In the end they would never let any of us live. If they escaped and disappeared from our sight I knew that one day they would reemerge and find us. We could hunt them, but the honeycomb world is deep and intricate and rich with darkness. There are too many places to hide. And so there would be weeks, months, perhaps years of pain and fear, waking from uneasy sleep to each new dawn with the thought that this, at last, might be the day on which they came.

Because, finally, we would want them to come, so that the waiting might be brought to an end.

I could hear the sound of a car engine in the background as Rachel told me all that she had seen. She was driving Marcy Becker to the Colony in her own car; now that they had Angel, she was safe for a time. Louis was on his way north and would call me within minutes.

“He's not dead,” said Rachel evenly.

“I know,” I replied. “If he was dead they'd have left him for us to find.”

I wondered how quickly Lutz had talked and if the Golem had reached them yet. If he had, all of this might be immaterial.

“Is Marcy okay?” I asked.

“She's asleep on the seat beside me. I don't think she's slept much since Grace died. She wanted to know why you were willing to risk your life for this: Angel, Louis, me, but you especially. She said it wasn't your fight.”

“What did you tell her?”

“It was Louis who told her. He said that everything was your fight. I think he was smiling. It's kind of hard to tell with him.”

“I know where they are, Rachel. They're in Lubec.”

Her voice had tightened a notch when she spoke again. “Then you take care.”

“I always take care,” I replied.

“No, you don't.”

“I guess not, but I mean it this time.”

I was just beyond Bangor. Lubec was about another 120 miles away along U.S. 1. I could do it in less than two hours, assuming no eagle-eyed lawman decided to haul me over for speeding. I put my foot on the gas and felt the Mustang surge forward.

Louis called when I was passing Ellsworth Falls, heading down 1A to the coast.

“I'm in Waterville,” he said.

“I think they're in Lubec,” I replied. “It's on the northern coast, close to New Brunswick. You've a ways to go yet.”

“They call you?”

“Nothing.”

“Wait for me at the town limits,” he replied. His tone was neutral. He could have been advising me not to forget to pick up milk.

At Milbridge, maybe eighty miles from Lubec, the cell phone rang for the third time. This time I noticed that the ID of the caller was concealed as I pressed the answer button.

“Mr. Parker,” said Pudd's voice.

“Is he alive?”

“Barely. I'd say hopes for his recovery are fading fast. He seriously injured my associate.”

“Good for him, Leonard.”

“I couldn't let it go unpunished. He bled quite a lot. In fact, he's still bleeding quite a lot.” He snickered unpleasantly. “So you've worked out our little family tree. It's not pretty, is it?”

“Not particularly.”

“You have the book?” He knew that Lutz had failed. I wondered if he knew why and if the shadow of the Golem was already almost upon him.

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“Augusta,” I said.

I could have cried with relief when he seemed to believe me.

“There's a private road off Route 9, where it crosses the Machias River,” said Pudd. “It leads to Lake Machias. Be at the lakeshore in ninety minutes, alone and with the book. I'll give you whatever is left of your friend. If you're late, or if I smell police, I'll skewer him from his anus to his mouth like a spit pig.” He hung up.

I wondered how Pudd planned to kill me when I reached the lake. He couldn't let me live, not after all that had taken place. And ninety minutes wasn't enough time to reach Machias from Augusta, not on these roads. He had no intention of bringing Angel there alive.

I called Louis. It was a test of trust, and I wasn't certain how he would respond. I was closest to Lubec; there was no way that Louis could get there before Pudd's deadline ran out. If I was wrong about Lubec, then somebody would have to be at the rendezvous point to meet him. It would have to be Louis.

The pause before he agreed was barely detectable.

27

THREE WOODEN LIGHTHOUSES decorated the sign at the outskirts of the town of Lubec: the white-and-red Mulholland Light across the Lubec Channel in New Brunswick; the white Lubec Channel Light, a spark-plug-style cast-iron structure out on the Lubec Channel; and the red-and-white-striped West Quoddy Light at Quoddy Head State Park. They were symbols of stability and certainty, a promise of safety and salvation now potentially corrupted by the stain of the Faulkners' presence.

After a brief stop at the edge of the town, I drove on, past the boarded-up frame of the old Hillside Restaurant and the white American Legion building, until I came to Lubec itself. It was a town filled with churches: the White Ridge Baptists, the First Assembly of God, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Congregational Christians, and the Christian Temple Disciples had all converged at this place, burying their dead in the nearby town cemetery or erecting memorials to those lost at sea. Grace Peltier had been right, I thought; I had only glanced at the thesis notes Marcy had given me, but I had noted Grace's use of the term “frontier” to describe the state of Maine. Here, at the easternmost point of the state and the country, surrounded by churches and the bones of the dead, it was possible to feel that this was the very end of things.

On the waterfront, seabirds sat on the dilapidated pier, its walkway sealed off with Private Property notices. There was a stone breakwater to the left, and to the right, a congregation of buildings, among them the old McMurdy's Smokehouse, which was in the process of being restored. Across the water, the Mulholland Light was visible, the FDR Memorial Bridge extending toward it across the water of the Lubec Narrows.

It was already growing dark as I drove up Pleasant Street, the waterfront on my left, to a dirt lot beside the town's wastewater treatment facility. From there, a small trail led down to the shore. I followed it, stepping over seaweed and rocks, discarded beer cans and cigarette packs, until I stood on the beach. It was mainly stones and marram grass, with some gray sand exposed. Beyond, the Lubec Channel Light scythed through the failing evening light.

Maybe half a mile to my right, a stone causeway reached into the sea. At the end was a small island covered in trees, their branches like the black spires of churches set against the lighter tones of the evening sky. A dull green light shone between the branches in places, and I could see the brighter white lights of an outbuilding close to the northern side of the island.

There were three lighthouses on Lubec's sign, for only three lighthouses were still in existence. But there had once been another: a stone structure built on the northern shore of the Quoddy Narrows by a local Baptist minister as a symbol of God's light as well as a warning to mariners. It was a flawed, imperfect structure, and had collapsed during a heavy gale in 1804, killing the minister's son who was acting as lighthouse keeper. Two years later, concerned citizens nominated West Quoddy Head, farther down the coast, as a more suitable position, and in 1806 Thomas Jefferson had ordered the construction of a rubblestone lighthouse on the spot. The Northern Light was largely forgotten, and now the island on which it lay was in private ownership.

All of this I learned from a woman in McFadden's variety store and gas station on the way into town. She said the people on the island kept themselves pretty much to themselves, but they were believed to be religious folk. There was an old man who took ill sometimes and had to be treated by the doctor in town, and two younger people, a man and a woman. The younger man shopped in the store sometimes, but always paid with cash.

She knew his name, though.

He was called Monker.

Ed Monker.

It had begun to rain, a harbinger of the coastal storm that was set to sweep northern Maine that night, and heavy drops hammered on me as I stood watching the causeway. I got back in the car and took the road to Quoddy Head Park until I saw a small, unmarked private drive heading down to the coast. I killed my lights and followed the trail until it petered out among thick trees. I left the car and walked through the grass, using the trees for cover, until the trail ended. Ahead of me was a barred gate with high fencing on either side and a camera mounted on the gatepost. The fence was electrified. Beyond it was a small locked shack in the middle of a copse of pines. I could guess at what was in the shack: an old iron bath with a toilet beside it and the corpses of spiders decaying in the drain.

I took my flashlight from the glove compartment and, shielding the light with my hand, shadowed the fence. I spotted two motion sensors within fifty feet, the grass cropped low around them. I figured there were probably more among the trees themselves. As the rain soaked my hair and skin, I stayed with the fence until I found myself at the top of a steep incline leading back down to the shore. The tide was rolling in and the base of the causeway was now covered in water. The only way to reach the island without getting drenched, or maybe even washed away, was through the gates and along the causeway, but to take that route would be to alert those on the island to my approach.

Grace Peltier must have stood here, weeks earlier, before she scaled the gates and walked onto the causeway. She must have waited until they were gone, until she was certain that the island was unoccupied and that nobody would be returning for some time, and then crossed over. But she had activated the sensors, alerting them to an intruder, and the system would have informed Pudd or his sister, automatically calling a pager or his cell phone. When they returned, closing off the causeway, Grace had taken to the sea. That was why her clothes had been soaked with seawater. She was a strong swimmer. She knew she could make it. But they had seen her face on the camera's tapes, maybe even spotted her car. Lutz and Voisine had been alerted, and the trap was closed on Grace.

I looked out on the dark waves, glowing whitely as they broke, and decided to take my chances with the sea. I unloaded the spare.38 at my ankle, then put the bullets and the spare clip for the Smith amp; Wesson beneath my arm into a Ziploc plastic bag. Something tightened in my belly, and the old feeling came over me again. The sea before me was a dark pool, the hidden place on which I had drawn time and time before, and I was about to plunge into it once more.

I waded through the water, teeth chattering as I approached the causeway. Waves rocked me and once or twice I was almost pushed back to the shore by their force. The stones and rocks that made up the causeway were slick and spotted with green algae, and the tide was already splashing almost to the level of my waist. I tried to wedge my boots into the cracks and hollows, but the rocks had been bound with cement, and after only two awkward sideways movements, my feet slid from under me and I lost my grip. I slid quickly back into the sea, the water drenching me to my chin. As I recovered from the shock, a line of white emerged to my left and I barely had time to take a breath before a huge wave lifted me off my feet and pushed me back at least fifteen feet, salt water filling my mouth as the rain fell and seaweed twisted around me.

When the wave had passed, I began to wade again along the edge of the rocks, trying to find a point at which I could pull myself back onto the road. It took me about ten minutes and two more dousings to find a hollow where one of the stones had fallen from the concrete. Awkwardly, I placed a wet boot into the alcove, then barked my knee painfully as it slipped out. Digging my fingers around one of the highest stones, I tried again and managed to haul myself up and onto the road. I lay there for a moment, catching my breath and shivering. My cell phone, I discovered, was now at the bottom of the sea. I stood, let the water run out of the barrel of the Smith amp; Wesson, reloaded the.38, and continued on down the causeway at a crouch until I reached the island.

Thick green firs grew on either side of the road as it made its way to the remains of the lighthouse, where the road became part of a gravel courtyard that touched on the entrance to each of the island's structures. There should have been nothing more than a pile of old stones where the original lighthouse had once stood, but instead I found an edifice about thirty feet high, with an open gallery at the top surrounded by a chain-link fence, offering a clear view of the causeway and the coast itself. It was a lighthouse without a light, except for a faint illumination in one of the windows at the highest enclosed level.

To the right of the new lighthouse stood a long wooden single-story building with four square windows covered with wire frame, two on either side of the heavy door. A greenish glow emanated from it, as if the light inside was struggling to penetrate water or the leaves of plants. In front of the lighthouse, blocking my view of its entrance, was what I took to be a garage. Farther back, almost at the eastern edge of the island, was a second similar structure, possibly a boathouse. I leaned against the back of the garage and listened, but I could hear nothing except the steady falling of the rain. Staying on the grass and using the building as a shield, I began to make my way toward the lighthouse.

It was only when I cleared the garage that I saw him. Two tree trunks had been bound together to form an X, supported in turn by a second pair of trunks that kept the cross at an angle of sixty degrees to the ground. He was naked, and his arms and legs had been bound to the wood with wire. There was a lot of bruising to his face and his upper body, and swellings on his arms, chest, and legs that looked like the result of bites. Blood had flowed from the wounds in his femoral arteries and lay pooled on the ground below him. The rain washed over his pale body, dripped from the soft flesh on his arms and glistened on his bare skull and white, hairless face. A patch of skin was missing from his stomach. I moved closer to him and checked his pulse, his skin still warm to the touch. The Golem was dead.

I was about to leave him when gravel crunched to my right and the mute appeared. There was mud on her boots and her loose denim jeans, and she wore a yellow windbreaker, which hung open over a dark sweater. She held a gun in her right hand, pointing to the ground. There was no time for me to hide, even if I wanted to.

She stopped short when she saw me, her mouth opened soundlessly, and she raised her arm and fired. I dived left. Beside me, the Golem's body shuddered slightly as the bullet struck his shoulder close to where my head had been. I knelt, sighted, and squeezed the trigger. My first shot took her in the neck, the second in the chest. She twisted, her legs wrapped themselves around each other, and she fell, loosing off two shots into the air as she hit the ground. I ran to her, keeping the gun trained on her body, and kicked her gun away from her right hand. Her left leg was trembling uncontrollably. She looked up at me, the scars on her neck now obscured by the blood flowing from her wound. Something rattled in her throat, her mouth opened and closed twice, and then she died.

In the outbuilding to my right, a shape distorted the flow of green light for an instant. A thin shadow passed across the glass and I knew instinctively that Mr. Pudd was waiting inside for me. He could not have failed to have heard the shots, yet he hadn't responded. Behind me the door of the lighthouse remained securely closed, but when I looked to the top of the building, the light that had been burning was now burning no longer. In the darkness it seemed to me that something was watching me closely. Pudd would have to be dealt with first, I thought; I did not want him at my back.

Quickly, my hands brushing the long, wet grass, I ran to the door of the outbuilding. There was a small glass panel at about face level, crisscrossed with wire, and I stayed low as I passed beneath it. A bolt had been pulled across midway down the door, and a lock hung open beneath it. Stepping to one side, I eased my foot against the crack and pushed the door open.

Three shots sounded and the door frame exploded in showers of splinters and flaking paint. I jammed my gun into the gap and fired five times in an arcing pattern, then threw myself into the room. I could still hear glass falling as I sprinted to the far left wall, but no more shots came. Working quickly, I ejected the magazine from the Smith amp; Wesson and replaced it with a full clip, scanning the room while my hands worked at the gun.

The stench was incredible, a powerful smell of decay and defecation. There were no lights on the ceiling or on the walls, and the single skylight had been draped with folds of thick, dark cotton to prevent direct sunlight from falling on the room. Instead, the only illumination came from small shielded bulbs set below the metal shelves that ran in five rows across the width of the room. The shelves had four levels, and the green tint to the light came from plants that grew in pots alongside the glass cases that rested on each shelf. Every case or cage on the shelves had a thermometer and a humidity gauge, and dimmer switches had been placed in series with the lightbulbs to reduce the intensity of their radiant heat. Aluminum foil had been used to partially shield the bulbs, protecting the spiders and insects in the cases from direct light, while the use of foliage further softened the glare. The bulbs were not powerful enough to penetrate to the farthest corners of the room, where thick pools of darkness lay. Somewhere among them, Pudd waited, his form hidden by the shadows and the greenery.

A sound came from close to where my hand rested on the ground, a soft tapping on the stone floor. I looked to my left and saw, resting in a small arc of green light, a dark, semicircular shape, its body perhaps an inch and a half long and its spiny legs, it seemed, at least as long again. Instinctively, I yanked my hand away. The spider tensed, then raised its first pair of legs and exposed a set of reddish jaws.

Suddenly, and with surprising speed, it moved toward me, its legs almost a blur and the rhythm of the tapping increasing. I backed away, but it kept coming as I lashed out with my foot and felt it connect with something soft. I kicked again with the toe of my boot and the spider tumbled away into the far recesses of the room, where some empty glass cases lay piled untidily upon one another.

In my panic, I had moved almost to the aisle between the first and second lines of shelves. To my right, shards of glass caught the light and the remains of a case shattered by my 10-millimeter bullets lay in pieces on the second level. A square of card, heat-sealed in plastic, was among the glass fragments on the floor. In ornate black script were written the words Phoneutria nigriventer and then, in English below, Brazilian wandering spider. I glanced back toward the shadows into which the aggressive brown spider had bounced, and shuddered.

From far to my right came the sound of something brushing against the leaves of a plant, and the shadows on the ceiling rearranged themselves briefly. Pudd now knew where I was. The sounds of my frantic kicks at the spider had alerted him. I found that my left hand was trembling, so I used it to double-grip my gun. If I couldn't see it shaking, then I could convince myself that I wasn't afraid. Slowly, I moved to the second row of shelves, took a deep breath, and glanced into the aisle.

It was empty. Beside my left eye, a shape shifted in a case. It was small, maybe just over an inch in total, with a broad red stripe running along its abdomen. White spherical egg sacs, almost as big as the spider herself, hung suspended in the web that surrounded her. Latrodectus hasselti, read the card: Red-back spider. Starting a family too, I thought. How sweet. Shame Pop probably wouldn't be alive to see the birth.

Two more cases lay shattered beside each other in the third row. Amid the sharp edges, a long green shape stood semi-motionless. The mantid's huge eyes seemed to stare right at me as its jaws worked busily on the remains of the occupant of the adjoining case. Small brown legs moved weakly as the huge insect chomped away. I didn't feel sorry for whatever the mantid was consuming. As far as I was concerned, the sooner it finished its appetizer and got busy with some of the main courses wandering the floor, the better.

My skin was crawling, and I had to fight the urge to brush at my hair and neck, so I was partly distracted as I stepped into the next aisle. I looked to my left and saw Mr. Pudd standing at the far end, his gun raised. I threw myself forward and the bullet hit the fuse box beside the door. Sparks flew and the lights died as I rolled on the floor and came to rest against the far wall, the gun raised before me, my left hand now supporting myself on the ground for only as long as it took me to realize that something soft was crawling across it. I lifted it quickly and shook it, but not before I felt a sharp bite, like twin needles being inserted beneath my skin. I rose quickly, my lips drawn back from my teeth in disgust, and examined my hand in the dim light that filtered through the windows. Just below the knuckle of my middle finger, a small red lump was already beginning to form.

In a pair of large plastic terrariums to my right, thousands of small bodies moved. From the first terrarium came the chirping of crickets. The second contained oatmeal and bran flakes across which tiny mealworms crawled, speckled with some small black beetles that had already grown to their mature stage. To my left, arrayed along the wall in a long, multilayered display cabinet, were what looked like row upon row of plastic cups. I leaned down and made out a small black-and-red shape at the base of each cup, the remains of crickets and fruit flies lying in the ugly web beside the spider. The smell was particularly strong here, so strong that I started to gag.

This was Mr. Pudd's black widow farm.

My ears rang from the sound of the shots and there were spots before my eyes from the muzzle flare as I returned my attention to the room itself. A long shadow trailed along the ceiling, heading away from me. Through the leaves I caught a glimpse of what might have been Pudd's tan shirt, and I fired. There was a grunt of pain and the sound of glass breaking as the empty cases in that corner tumbled to the ground. I heard the glass grinding beneath his feet as he stepped over them. He was now at the far wall, close to where I had started, and I knew then what I had to do.

The shelves were not bolted to the cement floor. Instead, they rested on tripod legs, the weight of the frame and the cases it supported insurance enough against any casual impact. Ignoring the spreading pain in my hand and the possibility that the spider responsible might still be close by, I lowered myself to the ground, braced my back against the wall beside the racks of widows, and pushed at the shelf with the soles of my feet. For a moment I thought that it might just move across the floor, but then the top row tilted and the heavy frame fell slowly away from me, impacting loudly on the next shelf and creating a domino effect; two, three, four shelves fell, accompanied by the sounds of breaking glass and grinding metal, and then their combined weight collapsed on the final shelf, and I heard a sound that might have been a man's voice before it was lost in the final tumultuous roar of metal and glass.

By then I was already on my feet, using the frames of the fallen shelves to keep off the floor. I was conscious of movement all around me as predatory, multilegged things began to hunt and die. I reached the door and pushed it open, the feel of the sea breeze and the cold rain beautiful after the stale, rotten smell of the insects and spiders. The door slammed behind me and I jammed the bolt home, then stepped back. My hand was throbbing now and the swelling had increased in size, but it didn't feel too bad. Still, it would need a shot, and the sooner the better.

From inside the bug house, I heard sounds of movement. I raised my gun and aimed. A face appeared at the glass screen, and the door shook as Mr. Pudd hurled his body against it. His eyes were huge, one of them already filling with blood, and a muscle in his cheek was spasming. Tiny brown spiders, each only a fraction of an inch in length, crawled across his face and lost themselves in his hair as a large black spider with thin, skeletal legs pursued them relentlessly. Then Pudd's mouth opened and two legs appeared at each corner, pushing his lips apart, and I glimpsed palps and a cluster of dark eyes as the spider emerged from his mouth. I turned away for an instant and when I looked back, Pudd was gone.

A low thudding sound came from behind me, and the door to the lighthouse slammed softly against its frame. I was soaked through and beginning to feel the cold desperately, but I wiped the rain from my eyes and started toward the lighthouse.

The floor inside the door was flagged with stone and an iron staircase wound up to the top of the structure. There were no levels between where I stood and the open platform at the top of the lighthouse, through which a small panel allowed access to the exposed gallery.

At my feet, a trapdoor stood open. It was made of heavy oak bound with iron, and below it a flight of stone steps led into a patch of bright yellow light.

I had found the entrance to the honeycomb world.

I took each step slowly, my gun aimed below me. The final step led into a concrete bunker, furnished with armchairs and an old couch. A dining table stood in the far corner, on a worn Persian rug. To my right was a small galley-style kitchen, separated from the main room by a pair of saloon doors. Wire-rimmed lights hung from the ceiling. A set of shelves in one corner lay empty, a box filled with books and newspapers on the floor beside it. There was a smell of wax polish in the air. The tabletop gleamed, as did the shelves and the breakfast counter.

But it was the walls that drew the eye; every available space, every inch from corner to corner, ceiling to floor, had been illustrated. There were Kohn-like impressions of death upon a dark horse; images of war victims inspired by Dix and Goerg; cities crumbling in a fury of reds and yellows as in Meidner's apocalyptic landscapes. They overlapped one another, blurring at the edges into greens and blues where the pigments had mixed. Images taken from one artist recurred in the work of another, at once out of context yet still part of the greater vision. One of Goerg's demons fell upon the crowds fleeing Meidner's destruction; Kohn's horse wandered among Dix's battlefield corpses.

No wonder his kids were screwed up.

The next room was similarly decorated, although this time the images were medieval in origin and much more ornate. This room was larger than its neighbor, with two double beds on a linoleum floor, a slatted wood divider between them. There were books and magazines on rough shelves, two closets, and a small shower and toilet in one corner, separated from the main room by sliding glass doors. The only light came from a single bedside lamp standing on a table. Close by where I stood were two cardboard boxes filled with women's clothing and an open suitcase containing some men's suits and jackets. All of the clothes looked at least two decades out of date. The sheets had been removed from the beds and tied in two bundles. A vacuum cleaner stood in one corner, its dust bag removed and lying beside it. It seemed that all traces of the bunker's occupants were in the process of being removed.

A door stood half open at the entrance to the third room. I paused as a sound came from inside, a noise like the jangling of chains. I smelled blood on the air. I could sense no movement close to the doorway. Again the sound of metal on metal rang out. I pushed the door open with my foot and drew back against the wall, waiting for the shots. None came. I waited for a few seconds longer before glancing inside.

A butcher's block supported by four thick legs stood in the center of the stone floor. There was old, dried blood at its edges. Beyond it, against the far wall, was a stainless steel table with a sink attachment and a pipe leading from the drain to a sealed metal container below. There were surgical implements on the table, some recently used. I saw a bone saw, and two scalpels with blood on their blades. A cleaver hung from a hook on the stone wall behind. The whole room stank of meat.

It was only when I entered that I saw Angel. He was naked and attached to a metal rail above an iron tub, his arms held over the rail by a pair of handcuffs. He half stood, half knelt in the tub, its sides stained brown with dried blood. His body was twisted toward me, and his mouth had been taped shut. His torso was streaked with blood and sweat, and his eyes were half-open. They closed briefly as I moved to him, and he made a small sound from behind the tape. There was bruising on his face, and a long wound to his right leg; it looked like a knife slash, and had been left to bleed.

I was about to reach around his back to support him before releasing him when the mewling sound rose in pitch. I stepped back and turned his body slightly. A patch of skin, easily six inches square, had been cut from his back, and the exposed flesh pulsed redly. As I stared at the wound, Angel's legs began to shake and he started to sob. I found the keys to the cuffs hanging on a hook, then gripped him around the waist and released him, the full weight of him falling into my arms as I eased him from the tub and lowered him to the floor. I pulled the tape from his mouth as gently as I could, then took a plastic beaker from a shelf and filled it from the sink, the water sending the blood spiraling down into the drain. Angel took the cup and drank deeply, water spilling down his chin and onto his chest.

“Get me my pants,” were his first words.

“Who did this, Angel?”

“Get. Me. My. Damn. Pants. Please.”

His clothes lay in a pile by the tub. I found his chinos, then helped him into them as he sat on the floor, supporting himself as best he could on his weakened arms as he kept his back away from the wall.

“The old man,” he said as we hauled the pants up to his waist. Immediately, they stuck to the wound in his leg and a red stain spread across them. Every time he moved, his face creased with pain and he had to grit his teeth to keep from howling. “There was gunfire from outside, and when I looked around he was disappearing up those stairs. He left the oven open. I might need what's inside.”

He pointed behind me, to where a steel box with a temperature dial at the top stood against the wall. A thin sheet of what might have been paper hung within, assuming paper could bleed. I turned off the dryer, then flipped the door closed with my foot.

“You meet the other two?”

I nodded.

“They're his kids, Bird.”

“I know.”

“What a fuckin' family.” He nearly smiled. “You kill them?”

“I think so.”

“What does that mean?”

“The woman's dead. I fed Pudd to his pets.”

I left Angel and walked over to where a staircase led up from a small doorway at the back of the room. To the left of the first step was a room with another bed and a crucifix hanging from the ceiling. The walls here were covered with shelving, the weight of their books causing them to sag. Some had already been removed in preparation for flight, but many still remained; the arrival of Angel must have caused Faulkner to rearrange his priorities. I doubted that he had been allowed many live subjects on which to practice before. There was a workbench against one wall, inks, pens, knives, and nibs arrayed carefully in a metal carrying case on top of it. In an alcove opposite the bedroom, a generator hummed.

When I went back into Faulkner's preparation room, Angel had struggled to his feet and stood, slightly hunched over, at the wall, supporting himself with his hands, his injured leg raised slightly. His back had begun to bleed again.

“You think you can make it up?”

He nodded. I took his left arm, draped it around my shoulder, then held him carefully around the waist. Slowly, and with the agony etched clearly on his face, he made his way up the stone steps. He was almost at the top when his foot slipped and his back banged against the wall. It left a bright red streak as he briefly lost consciousness, and I had to carry him the rest of the way. The stairs ended in a kind of alcove where a steel door stood open. A sheet of thick plastic lay beside it, slapping in the wind. Beside it, a shape lay rolled up in a second sheet stained inside with blood. Part of Voisine's face was exposed. I recalled Pudd's anger at the wounds inflicted by Angel on his associate; it looked like Voisine had since died from them.

Angel came to as I laid him, facedown, on the floor. I removed the.38 from my holster and pressed it into his hand.

“You killed Voisine.”

His eyes focused blearily on me. “Good. Can I piss on his grave?”

“I'll make some calls, see what I can do.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find Faulkner.”

“You find him, you tell him I sent you.”

The rain fell relentlessly and the ground had turned to mud as I stepped carefully onto the grass. Some fifty feet behind me, the woman still lay where she had fallen and no sound came from inside Mr. Pudd's spider house. The lighthouse was at my back, and in front of me a grass verge sloped down to the boathouse. There, in a sheltered inlet, was a small floating jetty. The door to the boathouse stood open and a boat bobbed at the end of the concrete ramp. It was a little Cape Craft runabout, with an Evinrude outboard. A figure stood on the deck, pouring diesel into the engine's fuel hatch. The rain fell on its bare skull, on the long white hair plastered to its face and shoulders, on its black coat and black leather shoes. It must have sensed me approaching, for it looked up, the diesel spilling over the deck as its concentration lapsed.

And it smiled.

“Hello, sinner,” said the Reverend Faulkner. He went for the revolver tucked into his waistband and I fired once, the can falling from his hands as he stumbled back, his shattered right arm now hanging loosely by his side. The gun dropped from his fingers to the deck of the boat, but the smile stayed where it was, trembling slightly with the pain of the wound. I fired twice and holed the outboard. Diesel sprayed from the ruptured tank.

He was, I guessed, about six feet tall, with long, white, tapering fingers and pale, elongated features. In the light from the cabin his eyes were a deep, dark blue, verging on black. His nose was exceptionally long and thin and his Cupid's bow was tiny, his mouth seeming to begin just where his nostrils ended. His neck was scrawny and striated, and loose flesh hung in a wattle from beneath his chin.

At my feet lay a suitcase and a battered waterproof emergency pack. I kicked at it once.

“Going somewhere, Reverend?” I asked.

He ignored the question.

“How did you find us, sinner?”

“The Traveling Man led me here.”

The old man shook his head.

“An interesting individual. I was sorry when you killed him.”

“You were the only one. Your daughter's gone, Reverend, your son too. It's over.”

The old man spit into the sea and his eyes looked over my shoulder to where the woman lay dead in the rain. He betrayed no emotion.

“Step off the boat. You're going to stand trial for the deaths of your flock, for the killing of Jack Mercier and his wife and friends, for the murders of Curtis and Grace Peltier. You're going to answer for them all.”

He shook his head. “I have nothing to answer for. The Lord did not send demons to kill the firstborn of Egypt, Mr. Parker; he sent angels. We were angels engaged in the Lord's work, harvesting the sinners.”

“Killing women and children doesn't sound like God's work.”

Blood dripped from his fingers onto the timbers of the boat. Gently, he raised his injured arm, seemingly oblivious to the pain, and showed me the blood on his hand. “But the Lord kills women and children every day,” he said. “He took your wife and child. If he believed that they were worthy of salvation, then they would still be alive.”

My hand tightened on the gun and I felt the trigger shift slightly.

“God didn't kill my wife and child. A man tore them apart, a sick, violent man encouraged by you.”

“He didn't need encouragement in his work. He merely required a framework for his ideas, an added dimension.”

He didn't say anything more for some time. Instead he seemed to examine me, his head to one side.

“You see them, don't you?” he asked at last.

I didn't reply.

“You think you're the only one?” That smile came again. “I see them too. They talk to me. They tell me things. They're waiting for you, sinner, all of them. You think it ended with their deaths? It did not: they are all waiting for you.”

He leaned forward conspiratorially.

“And they fuck your whore while they wait,” he hissed. “They fuck both your whores.”

I was only a finger's pressure away from killing him. When I breathed out and felt the trigger move forward, he seemed almost disappointed.

“You're a liar, Faulkner,” I said. “Wherever my wife and child are, they're safe from you and all your kind. Now, for the last time, step off the boat.”

He still made no move.

“No earthly court will judge me, sinner. God will be my judge.”

“Eventually,” I replied.

“Good-bye, sinner,” said the Reverend Faulkner, and something struck me hard in the back, forcing me to my knees. A brown shoe stamped down hard on my fingers and the gun went off, sending a bullet into the jetty before it was kicked away from me. Then a huge weight seemed to fall upon me and my face was pressed hard into the mud. There were knees on my upper back, forcing the air from my lungs as my mouth and nostrils filled with dirt. I dug my toes into the soft earth, pressed my left arm against the ground and pushed upward as hard as I could, striking back with my right hand. I felt the blow connect and the weight on my back eased slightly. I tried to throw it off completely as I turned but hands closed on my neck and a knee struck me hard in the groin. I was forced flat on my back and found myself looking into the face of hell.

Mr. Pudd's features had swollen from the spider bites. His lips were huge and purple, as if they had been packed with collagen. The swelling had almost closed his nostrils, forcing him to breathe heavily through his mouth, his distended tongue hanging over his teeth. One eye was almost closed while the other had grown to twice its original size, so that it seemed about to burst. It was gray-white and partially filled with blood where the capillaries had ruptured. There were strands of silvery cobweb in his hair, and a black spider had become trapped between his shirt collar and his tumid neck, its legs flailing helplessly as it bit at him. I struck at his arms but he maintained his grip. Blood and saliva oozed from his mouth and dripped onto his chin as I reached up and dug the fingers of my right hand into his face, trying to strike at his injured eye.

From behind me, I heard the sound of the boat's engine starting and Pudd's grip shifted as his thumbs tried to crush my Adam's apple. I was tearing at his hands with my fingers, the pressure in my head increasing as my windpipe was slowly constricted. The outboard made a spluttering sound as it pulled away from the jetty, but I didn't care. My ears were filled with the roaring in my head and the labored, spit-flecked breaths of the man who was killing me. I felt a burning pain behind my eyes, a numbness spreading from my fingers. Desperately I raked at his face, but I was losing the feeling in my hands and my vision was blurring.

Then the top of Mr. Pudd's head exploded, showering me with blood and gray matter. He stayed upright for a moment, his jaw slackening and his ears and nose bleeding, then tumbled sideways into the mud. The pressure eased on my throat and I drew in long, painful rattling breaths as I kicked Pudd's body away from me. I got to my knees and spat dirt onto the ground.

At the top of the grass verge, Angel lay on his stomach, the.38 outstretched before him in his right hand while the left used the plastic sheet to shield his injured back. I looked to the sea as the sound came to me of the runabout moving away on the dark, choppy waters. It was only twenty or thirty feet from the shore, the white froth churning at the bow as Faulkner stood at the wheel, his white face contorted with rage and grief.

The engine coughed, then died.

We stood facing each other across the waves, the rain falling on our heads, on the bodies behind me, on the dark waters of the bay.

“I'll see you damned, sinner.”

He raised the gun with his left hand and fired. The first shot was wild, impacting with a whine on the rocks behind me. He swayed slightly with the movement of the boat beneath him, aimed, and fired again. This time the bullet tugged at the sleeve of my coat but there was no impact. It passed straight through the wool, leaving only a faint smell of burning in its wake. The next two shots hissed through the damp air close to my head as I knelt down and flipped open the emergency pack.

The flare was a Helly-Hanson, and it felt good in my hand. I thought of Grace and Curtis, and the patch of black tape covering James Jessop's ruined eye. I thought of Susan, the beauty of her on the first day we met, the smell of pecans on her breath. I thought of Jennifer, the feel of her blond hair against mine, the sound of her breathing as she slept.

Another shot came, this time missing by a good three feet. I pointed the gun at the sea and imagined the incandescent glow spreading across the water as the flare shot along the surface; the flash of pink-and-blue flame as the diesel fuel ignited, bursting from the waves and moving toward the man with the gun; the explosion of the outboard and then the flames scouring the deck, engulfing the figure in their midst. The heat would sear my face and the sea would be lit with red and gold, and the old man would travel, wreathed in fire, from this world to the next.

I tightened my finger on the trigger.

Click.

Out upon the waves, Faulkner rocked slightly as the hammer fell upon the empty chamber of his revolver. He tried to fire again.

Click.

I walked to the edge of the water and raised the flare gun. Once more the hollow sound came, yet the old man seemed neither to notice nor to care. The barrel of the gun followed me as I moved, as if with each pull of the trigger the empty weapon launched a fresh volley of lead that tore through my body and brought me, inch by inch, closer to death.

Click.

For an instant, the flare was level with him, its thick muzzle centered on his body, and I saw the satisfaction on his face. He would die, but I would damn myself in his destruction.

Click.

Then the muzzle rose until the gun was above my head, pointing at the heavens.

“No!” said Faulkner. “No!”

I pulled the trigger and the flare shot forth, shedding bright light on the dark waves, turning the rain to falling silver and gold, the old man screaming in rage as a new star was born in the void.

I went to Angel. A smear of blood lay across the width of his plastic shield, where it had fallen against his wound. Carefully, I lifted it away so that it would not stick. The gun was still in his hand and his eyes were open, watching the figure out on the water.

“He should have burned,” he said.

“He will burn,” I replied.

And I held him until they came for us.

THE SEARCH FOR SANCTUARY

Extract from the postgraduate thesis of Grace Peltier…

“Truth exists,” wrote the painter Georges Braque. “Only lies are invented.” Somewhere, the truth about the Aroostook Baptists remains to be discovered and written at last. All that I have tried to do is to provide a context for what occurred: the hopes that inspired the undertaking, the emotions that undermined it, and the final actions that swept it away.

In August 1964, letters were sent to relatives of each of the families who had joined Faulkner more than one year earlier. Each letter was written by the male or female parent of the family involved. Lyall Kellog wrote his family's letter; it was posted from Fairbanks, Alaska. Katherine Cornish's letter came from Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Frida Perrson's from Rochester, Minnesota; and Frank Jessop's, which assured his family that all was well with his wife and children, from Porterville, California. Each letter was undated, contained general good wishes, and added little more than that the Aroostock Baptists were no more and that the families involved had been chosen to send out the Reverend Faulkner's message to the world like the missionaries of old. Few of the relatives involved were particularly concerned. Only Lena Myers, Elizabeth Jessop's sister, persisted in the belief that something might have happened to her sister and her family. In 1969, with the permission of the landowner, she engaged a private firm of contractors to excavate sections of land on the site of the Eagle Lake community. The search revealed nothing. In 1970, Lena Myers died as a result of injuries received in a hit-and-run accident in Kennebec, Maine. No one has ever been charged in connection with her death.

No trace of the families has been found in any of the towns from which their letters originated. Their names have never been recorded. No descendants have been discovered. No further contact was ever made by them.

The truth, I feel certain, lies buried.