The Revelation

The Revelation

Synopsis:

A NAIL-BITING, THROAT-SQUEEZING, NONSTOP PLUNGE INTO DARKNESS AND

EVIL"-RickHautola DIVINE PROPHECY. HOLY TERROR

Strange things are happening in the quiet town of Randall, Arizona.

The local minister vanishes, his church defiled by blasphemous obscenities scrawled in blood....A crazed old woman in her eighties becomes pregnant. Herds of animals are discovered butchered in a field. And one by one, the good folks in town are falling victim to the same unspeakable fate. Now an itinerant preacher has arrived spreading a gospel of cataclysmic fury.

Darkness is falling on Randall, Arizona. The smell of fear lingers in the air. And stranger things are yet to come....

BENTLEY LITTLE

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS

New York

ISBN 0-312-03922-0

PROLOGUE

The shaman stared at the newcomer with thinly veiled scorn. Attired in ceremonial skins that were a slightly altered version of his own, the newcomer was loudly addressing a group of villagers gathered on the far side of the creek. His voice carried clearly on the slight wind that blew from the north. He raised his hands high into the air, his upturned face toward the hot summer sun. Red and blue fire would fall from the skies, he predicted, and soon after, the earth would shake with the footsteps of the dark gods. The assembled villagers gasped and muttered amongst themselves.

The shaman shook his head in disgust and glanced toward the hogan , where his apprentice was supposed to be studying the patterns of color on two hawk feathers. The young boy was outside the open doorway, staring wide-eyed across the creek. When he saw that his master was looking at him, he quickly bent down to examine again the two feathers on the ground.

"Go," the shaman said, not bothering to hide his anger. "Come back when you are ready to learn."

"I am ready--" the boy began.

"Go," the shaman repeated. He watched unmoving as his apprentice grabbed his belongings and scrambled off. The boy headed away from the villagers, in the opposite direction from the creek, but the shaman knew that as soon as he went inside the hogan, the boy would sneak over to hear what the newcomer had to say.

The shaman bent down to pick up the hawk feathers and took them into the hogan. When he emerged again into the sunlight, he saw that Nan-Timocha, the village chief, was standing nearby, staring thoughtfully toward the newcomer. He walked slowly toward the chief, who turned to look at him and nodded. The two men were silent for a moment. "What do you think of this new shaman?" the chief asked finally.

"He is no shaman."

The chief nodded, saying nothing, as though he had expected the answer.

"Why do you allow him to continue his stay in our village?" the shaman asked. "He is frightening the people. They are beginning to believe his wild stories."

"Have you seen his eyes?" the chief asked, staring across the creek.

His voice was low, troubled. "They are black. The deepest black I have ever seen."

"You have talked to him?"

The chief nodded. "He has come to me twice, telling me ..." He shook his head. "I cannot even believe it now."

"Are you going to make him leave?" the shaman asked.

Nan-Timochamet the shaman's gaze. His eyes were vague, unfocused, and there was an unfamiliar emotion etched on his features. "I cannot," he said. "I am afraid of him."

The next night, the fire rained from the skies, blue and red, just as the newcomer had said it would. The shaman remained alone in the ceremonial circle, chanting songs of appeasement to the gods, performing the sacred rituals of protection. He had begun the evening with three assistants, including his apprentice, but all three had run away in fear as the fires fell closer and it was clear that the songs were doing no good.

The shaman fasted the next day, remaining alone in hishogan , offering the appropriate sacrifices, and that evening all was as it should be.

But the following night, the earth shook violently, causing jars and pots to rain down on him from their shelved perches as he trembled on the floor in fear of the rampaging feet of the dark gods.

Quiet and subdued, the shaman brought up the rear of the small party that marched down the narrow path to the base of the Mogollon.

Overhead, huge black thunderclouds rolled in from the north, casting their shadows on the forest of pines below. To the right, off in the brush, a family of swallows, startled by the presence of the marchers, flew screeching into the air.

The shaman read the signs as they walked. Next to the path, there were three leafless trees in a row and, farther on, a dead squirrel with its legs pointed toward the Mogollon. The omens did not look good.

But the shaman said nothing. After hearing what the newcomer had to say, after seeing the accuracy of the newcomer's prophecies, he now doubted his own techniques and abilities. He walked in silence, cowed in the presence of a man with powers far superior to his own.

Several hours later, the path opened onto a clearing. The sky overhead was dark, and a shifting wind played against them, spraying them with a light mist. The newcomer stopped and motioned for them to remain in place. He took from the small bag he had been carrying a handful of bones and teeth, which he threw down on the dirt. He bent down to examine the positions in which they had fallen and nodded, satisfied.

Nan-Timocha stepped forward, holding the ceremonial headdress he had been carrying since the start of their journey. The newcomer accepted the headdress and placed it on top of his head. He walked into the clearing, the wind whipping his long black hair and tangling it in the feathers. He began chanting the songs of power, petitioning the gods for courage and strength. Suddenly, his voice changed. The cadences became jerkier, less rhythmic. Harsh words poured out in an unknown alien tongue.

Nan-Timochaturned to the shaman. "What is he saying?"

The shaman shook his head. "I do not know the language. I have never heard it before."

From the surrounding bushes came fluid gurgling noises and strange dry rustling sounds. The chief and the two warriors flanking him, Lan-Notlimand Al-Ankura, grasped their weapons tightly, prepared to use them. The shaman stepped backward, holding the sacred beads around his neck.

In the center of the clearing, the newcomer had stopped chanting and was now holding tightly to his own weapon, crouched in a defensive stance.

Though the newcomer had told him what to expect, the shaman had not in his heart believed him. Now he believed. He looked toward the manzanitas, where the noises were now the loudest. The bushes were shaking as though they were alive. He felt the cold sweat of fear break upon his body, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

The bushes parted.

And as the rain started to fall he began to scream.

The Coconino Sawmill, Randall's lone industry, loomed over the other buildings in town like an angry parent, its chuted conveyor belts and single-stacked smelter silhouetted blackly against the early morning sun. The mill had been the first structure built in the area, the first encroachment of civilization into this part of the wilderness, and the town had grown up around it, spreading outward. In front of the mill's small cluster of office buildings, next to Main Street, rows of stacked lumber were piled fifteen feet high, ready to be trucked out. In back of the buildings, on the other side of the smelter, next to the river, an equal number of freshly cut logs were piled in pyramidal order, waiting to be converted into boards.

Gordon breathed deeply as he drove past the sawmill on his way to work.

He loved the smell of the mill; he never tired of it. Even though it worked at only half-capacity during the summer months, its smell, that deliciously rich odor of pine bark and resin, permeated the air along Main Street from the junction of Old Mesa Road all the way to the post office, supplying somehow a hint of winter to the otherwise overbearing heat of August. In both the fall and winter, of course, the mill warmed the entire town, heat spreading outward from its core as though from a gigantic central heating system, the fresh natural smell of newborn sawdust and burning wood chips drifting as far north as the Rim and as far south as Squaw Creek.

Today the smelter was not operating at all; not a single plume of smoke or flaming speck of sawdust escaped from the black screen that covered the large opening in the top of the stack. He could hear, however, the high-pitched revving whine of the saw blades as they cut logs down to size, and he saw Tim McDowell's blue pickup parked next to the chain link fence that surrounded the sawmill. Nine or ten other cars and trucks were parked nearby.

Gordon passed the sawmill, waving, though he didn't know whether Tim could see him or not, and swung off Main Street onto Cedar, cutting across a corner of the small dirt parking lot Dr. Waterston shared with the Sears Catalog store. The Jeep dipped and bounded over the sharp ruts and washboard surface of the parking lot before leveling off on the paved road. Gordon glanced at his watch. Eight-fifteen. Not bad. He was only fifteen minutes late. He looked to his right. A young boy in short pants--Brad Nicholson's son--was trying to pedal his Big Wheel through the gravel of his driveway out to the street, and Gordon honked his horn, waving. The boy looked up, startled, then grinned and waved back as he recognized the Jeep. Gordon pulled into the vacant lot on the other side of the Pepsi warehouse next door. He hopped out of the car and made his way through a small forest of weeds toward the boy. "Hey Bozo!" he called. "Your dad in yet?"

The boy giggled. "My name's not Bozo. It's Bobby."

Gordon shook his head as though ashamed of himself. "That's right.

Bobby. I keep forgetting." He grinned. "Your dad here yet?"

The boy pointed toward the blue metal front of the warehouse. "He's in there. I think he's waiting for you to load up the truck."

"Thanks,pard ." Gordon waved good-bye and jogged across the gravel to the warehouse door. It was open, but the lights inside were off.

"Brad!" he called, walking in. "You here?"

"I'm out back. Come on through."

Gordon stepped past the couch, chair, and old oak desk that comprised Brad's makeshift office and maneuvered his way through the maze of stacked Pepsi cases toward the rear of the building. He stepped over a stray bottle that had shattered on the concrete floor forming a sticky pond of Pepsi and glass. "How come no lights?" he called out.

"Too damn hot in here. Goddamn metal walls really soak up the heat. I

figure if we keep the place dark and shut up it'll stay cool 'til the afternoon."

The aisle of Pepsi cases opened out and Gordon could see Brad's delivery truck backed up to the loading dock. The rear doors were open. Brad had already started loading cases onto the truck, and there appeared to be about a dozen of them stacked against the far side of the van. Gordon signed his timecard on the small folding table next to the loading door and grabbed his hat from its nail on the wall. He put the hat on. "What're we doing today?" he asked, picking up a case.

"The boonies?"

Brad nodded, his thick bearded face moving almost imperceptibly. He spat. "Willow Creek, Bear Wash, all of those."

Gordon put his case into the truck. "Is Clan going to be helping us today?"

"No," Brad said.

Gordon let the matter drop. They could have used the help; the small outlying areas didn't take many cases, but there were a lot of them and they were few and far between, and if they wanted to finish by nightfall they almost had to take two trucks. But he had been working for Brad Nicholson for the past four years, and he knew that if Brad said no he meant no. And that was that. Brad wasn't a bad guy, but he did take a little getting used to. He was-what was the word?--unaccommodating. Unyielding. Clan only worked part-time now, down from half-time, and Gordon wondered whether he had quit, whether he had found a better job, whether Brad had fired him or whether he was just ill and taking the day off. He usually helped out on these trips.

But Gordon knew that it would be futile to ask Brad anything. He picked up another case of Pepsi.

"Weirdfuckin ' dream last night," Brad said, changing the subject. He stood there for a moment, pulling on his beard.

"Really?"

"Yeah." Brad picked up a case and laughed. "You're a college boy.

Maybe you can tell me what it means."

Gordon put his case down in the truck. "I'll give it a shot."

"Okay. Me and my brother are driving through, like, farmland --"

"I didn't know you had a brother."

"I don't. This is a dream, all right? Okay, so we're driving along, and the road ends. It stops by this farmhouse that's been painted white and turned into a restaurant. We get out of the car and stand there, and a group of men come out through the front door. They're being led by you. You ask us to come into the restaurant and eat breakfast, and we do. It's like a coffee shop inside. Then this guy I've never seen before comes in and startstalkin ' to you. You walk up to us and tell us that we have to help you search for missing children.

We walk outside and everybody splits into groups of two, and me and my brother walk across these grassy hills until we come to, like, a canyon. We start walking through this canyon, and all of a sudden we're scared shitless. We hear whispering coming from the rocks. We start to run, and we come to a stand of trees. There're kids swinging in these trees, babies, and they're sitting on these long white swings, laughing to themselves. Only the kids aren't having fun, they're all deformed and crazy. So we run like hell, and then we're back in front of the restaurant. "Let's get out of here," I say, and we both hop into the car. I try to start the car, but nothing happens. The car won't start. The battery's dead. This strange guy walks out of the restaurant, and he'scarryin ' the car's distributor cap in his hands.

Behind him, a group of farmers comes out. They're grinnin' at me. And they're carrying pitchforks. And then I woke up." He looked at Gordon.

"All right," Gordon said. "Let's figure this out. You don't really have a brother, but you have one in your dream, right?"

"Right."

"And you're driving through farmland?"

"Right."

"And the restaurant used to be a house?"

"Yeah."

"And the kids' swings were white?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay, and the farmers are carrying pitchforks and you think they're going to harm you somehow?"

"That's right."

"That dream has deep psychological significance," Gordon said. He tried to maintain a serious expression but failed. He grinned hugely.

"It means you're a fag."

A half-moon of white teeth appeared suddenly in the midst of Brad's tangled black beard and he laughed. He picked up a bottle cap from the floor of the truck and chucked it at Gordon's head. Gordon ducked, and the cap missed him, clattering onto the concrete floor of the warehouse. "I should've known better than to tell you, you bastard."

"I call 'em as I see 'em."

They both stepped out of the truck and back into the warehouse. Brad picked up a case of Pepsi. He shook his head. "It did scare the hell out of me, though. I thought for sure it was real."

The rains hit in the late afternoon, making the trip up the Rim Road in Brad's truck almost impossible. Besides having three nearly bald tires, which slid at the slightest hint of wetness, the truck had a faulty clutch--something that Brad kept meaning to fix but somehow never got around to doing. They delivered a half case of Pepsi to the store at Willow Creek, then decided to head back toward town.

Gordon sat silently in the cab as they turned back toward Randall , listening to the faint strum of Willie Nelson's guitar on the radio, barely audible over the static, and staring out at the passing scenery.

The rain was thick, almost like winter rain, and only the trees directly adjoining the highway were visible; the others faded impressionistic ally into gray haze. He could see himself as he sat there, staring out the window. To an outsider, he thought, he would appear lost in contemplation, as though seriously mulling over some deep thought or profound idea. But he knew that nothing was going through his head. He was thinking of himself thinking. That was all.

There was a time, five years ago, even three years ago, when he would have been thinking of something--story ideas, plot outlines, clever word associations. Then he had been fresh out of college, recently married, with dreams like millions of other innocents of becoming a writer. Now he was used to--no, content with--his life. His job had ceased being a simple form of manual labor that freed his mind for complex thoughts, it had become enough in and of itself. He was fairly happy with his life the way it was. And why not? Hell, he had an intelligent, pretty wife, he had good friends, he lived in a beautiful area. What more could he ask for? So he wasn't contributing to the legacy of humanity, so he didn't have either the talent or the inclination to write the great American novel. So what?

He sighed. Maybe he should start writing again. At least give it a shot. Before he dried up completely. He did have several unfinished short stories and the first forty pages of a novel sitting in the bottom right hand drawer of his desk at home.

"Hey!" Brad poked his shoulder and Gordon looked up. "What's the matter?"

Gordon shook his head. "Fuckin' rain," he said.

Brad grinned hugely and grabbed a can of Pepsi from the ice chest between them, loudly popping it open. "I always liked rain myself.

Goddamn heat's what I can't stand. Makes me sweat, makes my balls itch, makes my skin break out, drives me crazy."

Gordon pulled himself away from the window and grabbed his own can of Pepsi. He smiled sarcastically. "That's why you moved to Arizona."

"Northern Arizona," Brad corrected.

"Well why didn't you move to Oregon or Washington if you like rain so much? It rains all the time there."

With the back of his hand, Brad wiped away a thin stream of cola that was dribbling down his beard. "I like the seasons here," he said. "I

like the scenery." He laughed loudly. "And this is where Connie's old man wanted to set me up in business."

Gordon laughed too. He knew Brad and Connie did not exactly get along.

As Brad often pointed out, theirs had been a marriage of convenience, and he had been only a few steps in front of the shotgun. Still, it hadn't worked out that badly. Connie's father had been granted the Pepsi distribution franchise for the entire Rim area, fully a third of Northern Arizona. He was already rich, having made a killing in the feed and grain market somewhere in Idaho, and he had offered Brad both the franchise and a loan to start the business if he would only marry his daughter. Now Brad was almost as well off as his father-in-law, and he could afford to treat Connie the way he did.

"Slut's probably spreading her legs for every man in town," he was fond of saying. Gordon knew Connie and knew what Connie looked like, and he didn't think so, but he himself said nothing.

The truck wandered over the double yellow line as they came barreling down the last hill before town, and a Volkswagen traveling in the opposite direction beeped its horn at them. "Fuck you!" Brad yelled, raising his middle finger.

"I don't think he heard you," Gordon pointed out. "Your window's closed."

"I don't care."

Gordon smiled. "And you were going over the line."

Brad snorted. "I don't give a shit. It's the principle of the thing."

They passed a Speed Limit 35 sign almost hidden by bushes and Brad slammed on the brakes. More often than not, Jim Weldon or one of his stooges would be hiding in the dirt pull off just beyond the sign, waiting for speeders. It was a speed trap, the limit dropping suddenly from 55 to 35 that way, but it was a well-known speed trap and all the locals were aware of it. Only flatlanders and out-of-staters ever got caught. Brad glanced at the pull off as they passed by. "What do you know," he said. "No cops today." He automatically sped up to 45 and looked over at Gordon. "Listen, do you have to get home right away, or do you have time to stop for gas? Tank's empty and I'd like to get 'er filled up tonight."

"No problem," Gordon said. "I get paid by the hour."

"I'll make it quick."

They drove through Gray's Meadow and pulled into Char Clifton's station on the edge of town. Clifton himself came out as the truck ran over the rubber-coated cable that rang the bell inside the garage. The old man walked slowly, shuffling toward them as they both hopped out of the cab. He looked from Brad to Gordon. "How's it goin '?" he asked, wiping his greasy hands on an equally greasy rag.

"Not bad," Gordon replied.

The station owner spat a wad of chaw that landed just to the left of the truck's right front tire. He squinted up at Gordon as if thinking.

He spat again. "Heard the news?" he asked finally.

Gordon looked at Brad, who was inserting the unleaded gas nozzle into the tank, and shook his head. "What news?"

Clifton grinned, exposing tobacco-yellowed teeth. "You know Father Selway?" he asked. "Out at the Episcopal church?"

"Yeah." Gordon did not go to church, but he knew Father Selway .

Everyone did.

"Skipped town," Clifton said simply. "Him and his whole family. Left behind about five thousand dollars in debts."

"Bullshit!" Brad yelled.

"I don't believe it," Gordon said.

"It's a fact."

"What did they do? Just pack up their stuff and go?"

Clifton's eyes shone, and Gordon could tell that he was enjoying this.

"That's the weird part. They didn't take nothing at all. All their furniture, clothes, everything is still in the house. The front door of the place is still open, even. Only thing gone is their car."

Gordon shook his head. "Then how do you know they just didn't go off somewhere for a while? Maybe there was a family emergency or something and they had to take off immediately."

"There wasn't."

"How do you know something didn't happen to them?"

"Drive by the church," Clifton said.

"What?"

"Drive by the church."

Brad pulled the nozzle from the gas tank, hung it back on the pump and screwed on the gas cap. He walked over to where Gordon and the station owner were standing. "Why?" he said.

Clifton chuckled. "You'll see."

Brad paid the old man and they got back into the truck. They pulled onto the highway. "You in a hurry to get back or do you want to check out the church?" Brad asked.

"Let's check it out."

They drove into the main part of town, past the Circle K, past the Valley National Bank. They turned right just past the Randall Market. The bumpy and barely paved road curved through a small stand of trees before straightening out near the hospital. A mile or so farther and they reached the Episcopal church. Brad stopped the truck.

GOD DAMN YOU ALL

The words jumped out--a harsh and jagged red against the placid tan of the brick building. The letters were fully three feet high, covering the north wall of the church, the paint dripping in horror-show icicles. The church's two tall stained-glass windows had been smashed, and multicolored bits of glass littered the gravel parking lot.

GOD DAMN YOUR SOULS

TO HELL PIG FUCKERS

Gordon felt his pulse accelerate as he looked through the windshield at the desecration. The small peach-fuzz hairs on the back of his neck bristled. His eyes focused on the small shards of colored glass glinting in the sunlight. He had never been an avid churchgoer, but this.. ..

GOD DAMN YOU ALL

He looked again at the message, his eyes following the dripping red paint that obscured the letters on the lower portion of the wall. And he realized suddenly that it was not paint.

"Goat's blood," Carl Chmura confirmed, sticking his head through the doorway of the sheriff's office. "The lab just called."

Jim Weldon stopped massaging his tired temples and looked up. "All right, Carl. Thanks." He slowly stood up, grabbing his hat from the rack next to the desk and putting it on. "Wait a minute," he said.

"Carl? Call some of the local farmers and ranchers. Check up as far as Turner Draw if you have to. See if any of them have any goats missing."

Carl nodded. "Gotcha."

"Oh, and try Selway's number one more time. Let's give him another chance. I'm going out to the church to see if there's anything we missed. I'll stop by the hospital on my way back and find out if any of the patients saw anything." He grabbed his holster from its hanger on the wall and buckled it on. "Call me if you find something out."

"Will do."

Jim looked around the office, his eyes searching the room as if there was something he had forgotten. He absently patted his pockets. He knew there was something that had slipped his mind, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. He shook his head. This case was really rattling him. Nothing like this had ever happened in his town before--nothing like this had ever happened in any town he'd ever heard of--and he wasn't quite sure what to do. He was just playing everything by ear. He'd already contacted Tim Larson, and Tim was going to clean up the blood and the rest of the mess. And he'd called some glass workers in Flagstaff who were supposed to come up next week with some new fitted windows. But there was still something he was forgetting.

He sighed heavily and followed his deputy out the door into the hall.

He opened the small alarmed gate that separated the back of the building from the front and walked past the front desk toward the sliding double-glass doors that led out to the parking lot.

"Wait a minute! Sheriff!" Rita, sitting by the switchboard, waved him down. "I have the diocese on the line. You wanted to talk to them?"

That was it.

"Yeah. Thanks," he said. He turned back down the hall. "Switch it to my office. I'll take it in there." He walked into his office and picked up the phone, punching the blinking square light of line three.

"Hello. Sheriff Weldon here."

"Mr. Weldon? This is Bishop Sinclair. I am returning your call."

"Hello Bishop." Jim's mind quickly ran down his list of options. He could chat casually with the bishop, easing into the news. He could come right out with it, plunge right in. He could pull a Jack Webb, take the official line. He decided to plunge right in. "Has Father Selwaybeen in contact with you at all today?"

"No he hasn't."

"Then you don't know what's happened up here?"

The bishop's voice sounded wary. "No. What happened?"

"The Episcopal church has been vandalized. Some person or persons unknown smashed all the windows, tore up the landscape --"

"The Episcopal church?"

"That's not all of it." Jim paused for a second, not quite sure how to proceed. "You see, Bishop, someone painted . . . curses all over the front of the building."

"Curses?"

"In goat's blood."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "I got a call from Tim Larson this morning," Jim continued. "Tim's the janitor out at the church. Anyway, he told me that the church'd been hit, told me to get over there as soon as I could. I--"

"What kind of curses?" the bishop asked.

"You sure you want to hear this?"

"I'm sure I've heard such words before, Mr. Weldon. I've probably used them myself."

"There were three lines. The top line said, "God damn you all." The next line said, "God damn your souls," and the bottom line said, "To hell pig fuckers "God damn you all. God damn your souls to hell pig fuckers It covered the whole front of the building." The bishop said nothing.

Jim cleared his throat. "That's why I was calling you. You see, we don't really know what happened here, and we were wondering if Father Selwayhad contacted you at all."

The bishop's voice was quiet. "No he hasn't. But he should have. What did he say to you about it? Does he have any idea as to who might have done such a thing?"

Jim cleared his throat again. "Well, that's the thing, Bishop. We don't know where Father Selway is."

"You don't know where he is?"

"No. Tim tried to call him first, before he called me, to tell him what had happened, but no one answered the phone. Then when I went out to the house around a half hour later, no one was there. The whole family was gone. The front door of the house was open, but the place was empty. A team's out there now, investigating the house, but it doesn't appear that anything happened to the family. The Selways’ car is gone, and we have reason to suspect that they might have used the car to drive somewhere."

The bishop's voice grew suddenly cold, stern. "What exactly are you trying to say, Mr. Weldon?"

"Nothing, Bishop. Like I said, we don't know what happened. At this point, we'd just like to talk to Father Selway and see if he knows anything about this."

"What are you implying?" His voice was a monotone, but there was a threat in that monotone, a suggestion of rigid enforceable authority.

Jim closed his eyes, beginning to feel a tinge of frustration. There was nothing he hated worse than civilians who tried to throw their weight around, who tried to tell him how to do his job, but he kept his voice even, modulated, official. "I'm not implying anything at all.

It's just that--"

"Don't you think something might have happened to the Selway family?

They might have been kidnapped."

"We're investigating all possibilities, Bishop. But to be honest, at this stage of the investigation Selway looks more like a suspect than a victim. We found his fingerprints all over the church."

"Of course his fingerprints are all over the church. It's his church."

"Bloody fingerprints?"

He could almost feel the bishop's anger through the silence of the line.

"Bishop?"

"Yes?"

Jim cringed at the coldness of the voice. "We just want to talk to Selway right now. That's all. If any charges are to be filed in this matter they will have to be filed by the church."

"You are right there, Mr. Weldon."

Jim looked at his watch. "Look, I'm supposed to be over at the church in a few minutes. Do you think you could give me a call if Father Selway gets in touch with you in any way? Or if you hear anything at all?"

"Of course." There was a half-moment of frozen silence. "And Sheriff?"

"Yes?"

"I will be sending a temporary parish priest to assume Father Selway's duties until such time as this affair is cleared up. I will also be sending someone out to look at the damage. Could you please let the parishioners know that services will be continued?"

"Will do. And I'll call you if anything--"

There was a click as the receiver went dead.

"--comes up." He slammed down the phone, cursing the bishop. "Asshole," he said aloud. Just who did that old bastard think he was? God? He grabbed a pencil from the desktop and walked out of the office, snapping the pencil in two and dropping the pieces into the sand-filled ashtray in the hall. He nodded to Rita as he passed again through the front office. "Anyone calls, you tell them I'll call them back."

"Okay."

Why did this have to happen in his town? he wondered as he walked out to the parking lot. Why couldn't it have happened in Pay son or Prescott or Camp Verde? He strode toward the new car at the far end of the lot. This wasn't a small town sort of occurrence. This was something that should have happened in New York or Los Angeles, in one of those big cities with weird cults and gangs.

He unlocked the car, got in and fastened his seatbelt. Turning on the ignition, he jammed the transmission into gear and took off, back tires squealing as he peeled out of the parking lot toward the church.

Clay Henry had been a rancher all his life, like his father and grandfather before him. But he had never seen anything like this.

Clay grimaced and spat. He could taste the blood. It hung thick and heavy in the air, dank and fetid in the mid-morning heat, penetrating his nostrils, engulfing his senses. He felt as though he were drowning in it. Before him, in the brown and trampled grass of the field, all six of his goats lay slaughtered, their throats ripped open by some crude instrument. Blood was everywhere: on the ground, on the matted hair of the carcasses, on the feathers of the two clucking chickens that had come out to investigate. He could see individual, congealed drops of blood on the long stalks of meadow grass at his feet. From the yawning hole in the throat of the nearest goat there protruded a twisting ropelike en trail that wound along the red-spattered dirt like a deformed and bloated snake. It looked as though whoever had ripped open the goat's throat had afterward stuck his arm into the bleeding opening and reached all the way down into the dying body to pull out its guts. Lengths of intestine hung out of the other five bodies as well.

A chicken pecked idly at a blood-soaked piece of intestine and Clay kicked it, sending it flying. The chicken screamed wildly, uselessly napping its feathered wings, and ran squawking back to the barn.

Clay ran his tongue over his teeth and gums, tasting again the blood, and spat to clear out his mouth. Already the flies had come. There were hundreds of them, seemingly every fly in the county, and they were swarming over every available spot of blood, flying spastically up at each movement that he made and then settling once more onto the carcasses. The field was quiet save for the flies--even the chickens were silent--and Clay felt .. . not exactly fear, but a strange sort of dread. The same feeling he'd had right before his accident, when he knew in those final seconds that the two cars were going to hit and there was nothing he could do about it. The buzzing grew louder in his ears and he looked down at the mutilated animals. He spat again. He knew he'd have to get this mess cleaned up as quickly as possible, before the carcasses started breeding disease and affecting the rest of the animals, but he thought he should call Jim Weldon first. The sheriff would want to know about this.

A strange mechanical coughing sound suddenly grew out of the buzzing, becoming louder, and Clay looked up. Across the field he could see a cloud of dust rising from the dirt road that led to the house. Someone was coming to see him. He squinted, trying to make out who it was, but he couldn't see from this far away. He listened, and he recognized the loud sputtering engine of LorenWilbanks ' truck. What could Loren want? he wondered. He stood for a moment, watching the dust cloud move toward his house, then, holding onto his bad leg with his right hand, started limping back across the field to where the truck had pulled to a stop.

Loren was waiting on the porch steps when Clay rounded the corner of the old barn. The tall gaunt farmer had been absently and nervously juggling two small pebbles in his hands, staring out across the north field at the broken skeleton of a windmill, but he jumped to his feet as he saw Clay approach, throwing the pebbles into the dirt. He picked up his hat as he rose. "Where'n Christ have you been? I been tryin ' to call you all morning."

Clay limped over to the steps and grabbed the wrought iron rail for support. He pulled a red bandana handkerchief from the right front pocket of his overalls and used the handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. "Someone slaughtered all my goats," he said. "Ripped out their throats."

"That's why I beentryin ' to call you. Same thing happened to everybody."

Clay stared at him. "What?"

"All my goats were killed. Ace's, Johnny's, Henry's, everybody's."

"Same way?"

Loren nodded. "Ripped open their throats and pulled out their innards.

Looks like it was done with a can opener or something. Goddamn flies everywhere."

"Yeah, same here." Clay sat down on the top step. He looked toward the spot where the six goats lay slaughtered. He couldn't see them from here, their bodies were hidden by the tall grasses and weeds, but he thought he could hear the constant buzzing of the flies. The sound seemed to echo in his head. "I was just going to come in and call Weldon," he said. "See what he could do about it."

Loren looked at him. He waved a fly away from his face with his hat.

"No one's called here yet?"

Clay shook his head, puzzled. "They might've. I've been out in the field all morning. Why?"

"Jesus," Loren said. He kicked at the bottom step with his scuffed work boot, staring down. A piece of hardened sod broke off from the side of the step and fell to the ground. "You didn't hear what happened?"

Clay shook his head.

Loren was silent for a moment. "You know the Episcopal church?" he said finally. "That one out there past the hospital?"

Clay shook his head. "You know I never been no churchgoer."

"Well it don't matter. That's the church Verna goes to. All new and modern looking and real nice. What happened is that someone wrote all over the front of the church. "Damn you all to hell' and shit like that. Wrote it in goat's blood."

"Goat's blood?"

Loren was nodding before Clay had even got the words out. "Yeah. Carl Chmura'sbeen calling all morning. Calling every rancher around.

Prob'ly called you too but you weren't in."

"I was out in the field," Clay repeated. He stood up, holding onto his leg, a sharp flash of pain registering on his face as he lurched to his feet. "I better call them then." Holding the rail, he half-walked, half-pulled himself up the last step. He yanked open the ripped and rusted screen door, holding it open for Loren. He looked at the other rancher. "You coming in or you just going to stand there?"

Loren walked up the steps and caught the screen door just before it slammed. Clay was already walking down the long hall to the back of the house.

"You got coffee or anything?" Loren asked.

Clay waved an arm in the general direction of the kitchen. "Didn't have time to make none this morning," he called out. "You go on ahead and make us some. You know where everything is."

Loren walked into the old kitchen. It was spic and span as always, exactly the way Glenda used to keep it. The same anemic, half-dead creeping charlie was struggling for its life on top of the Sears Coldspot refrigerator, the same faded plastic flowers lay arranged in the same brown wicker basket on the red-and-white checked tablecloth that covered the breakfast table. The ancient gas stove remained brightly polished as always, its few black nicks standing out dully against the gleaming porcelain. Through the greenhouse window above the sink, the mid-morning sun streamed in slatted rays, lighting up the entire room.

Loren walked across the white tiled floor to the row of cupboards that lined the walls above both sides of the sink. He took out a half-empty can of MJB and measured two plastic cupfuls of coffee, pouring them into Clay's drip-pot. He was about to fill the pot with water when he heard a loud crash from the back of the house. He hurriedly dumped out his measuring cup of water, letting the plastic cup fall into the sink, and ran to the hallway. "Clay?" he called. "Clay?"

He strode quickly down the hall, his work boots echoing loudly in the silence of the farmhouse. No noise came from any of the rooms. He glanced into Glenda's old sewing room as he walked by. Nothing.

Clay's bedroom. Nothing.

Clay's den.

The rancher lay on the floor amidst debris of fallen books and knocked-over knickknacks. His eyes were wide open and staring, the pupils fixed at oddly askew angles, and there were several thin red marks running lengthwise down his cheeks. His mouth looked as if it had been forced open; his tongue was protruding from between bared teeth. The fingers of Clay's hands were clenched into claws and blood dripped thickly from his two middle fingers.

Loren staggered back as he looked into the den, instantly nauseated by the putrid smell of violence, which was amplified by the heavy close air of the windowless room. He grasped the edge of the doorframe with his hands and swung back against the wall of the hallway, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. The walls of the den had been spattered with blood, and somehow the flies had already found their way in. He could hear their droning maddened buzzing as they feasted on the blood.

It sounded unnaturally loud in the silent house.

He stumbled down the hall toward the kitchen. And stopped.

Where had all the blood come from? He had seen only that trace of red on Clay's clawed fingers. There were light marks on the rancher's face, but the rest of his friend's body had appeared to be untouched.

He turned around and, taking a huge gulp of air and holding his breath, peered around the corner into the den.

Something small and chuckling, vaguely red and pink, scuttled from the side of Clay's body to a spot under the bed.

Loren felt a trip-hammer of fear interrupt the rhythm of his heart.

"Hey!" he called.

The creature belted out from under the bed and in a crazed blur ran into Loren's legs, connecting just below the kneecaps and knocking him down. For a wild disjointed moment he was sprawled on the floor, looking into the dead staring eyes of Clay Henry, seeing his own panicked reflection in the lifeless orbs. Then something small and sharp and painful dug into the back of his skull and he was knocked unconscious.

Gordon sat in front of the open window typing, the small plastic desk fan trained directly on his face. Even with the artificially generated breeze he was still perspiring, the sweat coursing down his cheeks in salty rivulets, occasionally dripping from his face to the white erasable typing paper. Brad was right. The heat was miserable. He ran a hand through his damp hair. He was beginning to hate summer, really hate it. Such a thought was un-American, he knew. He was supposed to love the long summer days, to want to play volley ball and other outdoor sports, to go on picnics, to listen to the Beach Boys.

But it didn't get dark until nearly nine o'clock at night, and the days were hot, humid, and uncomfortable. He understood that he would be hot unloading cases of Pepsi; that was expected. But here, even wearing shorts and no shirt, he was still sweating like a pig. And when he typed his bare back stuck painfully to the slatted wooden chair.

Of course, the nights and late afternoons had cooled off now that the monsoons had come. But the mornings more than made up for it.

Marina, on the other hand, loved the summer. She always had and probably always would, although God knew why. He could see her lying on her tinfoil-like Space Blanket in the clear treeless area in front of the house, trying to enrich her already ecru tan. He took a sip of iced tea from the tall glass next to the typewriter. The recently poured beverage was already forming a rounded pool of condensation on the walnut desk top, and he wiped away the puddle with the side of his arm. Setting the glass back down, he reread the sentence he'd just typed, thought for a minute, then ripped the sheet from the machine, crumpling it up and tossing it into the overflowing wastepaper basket.

On the lawn, Marina rolled over and faced the window, holding her left hand above her eyes like a visor. "I heard that," she said.

He looked toward her, smiling. "It's too hot to work."

"You've been saying that all morning."

"It's been true all morning."

She stood up, facing away from him, her back an intricately patterned mosaic formed by the serrated material of the Space Blanket. She bent down to pick up her sunglasses and tanning lotion, and he had a clear view of her perfectly round ass. He whistled loudly. Still shielding her eyes from the glare of the noonday sun, she turned to face him. "If you're not going to do any work then let's go into town. There are some things I have to do."

"What things?" "Things." She stuck her tongue out at him. "And that's for whistling. Pig."

Gordon watched her fold the blanket into a small square and, putting it under her arm, trek barefoot across the rocky dirt toward the side door of the house. She'd gained weight this summer, he realized. Not really enough to be noticeable--she still looked svelte, even in her skimpy bikini--but there was a small, barely perceptible increase in the size of her formerly flat stomach. Of course he was a fine one to talk. He stared down at his spreading paunch. Even with the increased demand for soft drinks in the summer and the extra work he'd had to do, he still looked like he had the beginnings of a beer belly. All that loading strengthened his arms but didn't do a thing for his stomach. He smiled. Maybe they should both start to exercise; get the Jane Fonda videotape or something, do aerobics.

Marina passed by the den, peeking into the open doorway as she headed down the hall to the bathroom. "I'm taking a shower!" she called out.

"You get ready too!"

Grimacing, Gordon moved forward, peeling his skin from the back of the chair, and covered the few pages of the manuscript he'd completed. He walked next door to the bedroom, stepping over the small pile of Marina's clothes on the floor, and walked around the quilt-covered brass bed in the center of the room. They'd gotten the bed several years ago at a church rummage sale, and Marina had spent long weekend hours scraping the tarnish off the metal and restoring the bed to its original condition. The antique armoire next to the bed had been a present from Marina's mother. Gordon pulled open the drawer at the bottom of the armoire and pulled out a pair of sneakers. He searched through the small closet for an appropriate shirt. After a cursory examination of his wardrobe, he yanked free from its hanger a loud multicolored Hawaiian shirt. It was the closest thing to summer wear he owned. He put on the shirt and sat down on the bed to tie his shoes. Although they had been living in Randall for more than four years now, Gordon had never adjusted to the complete climate reversals and almost menopausal shifts in seasons that characterized the meteorology of Northern Arizona. For some probably psychological reason, he'd kept telling himself that each year was an atypical one, that the summers were not usually this hot, the winters not usually this cold. As a result, his wardrobe consisted of the same moderate weather clothing he'd worn in California. Which meant that he roasted in summer, froze in winter and seldom had anything appropriate to wear.

They'd learned about Randall through Ginny Johnson, one of Marina's coworkers at the high school. One weekend Ginny had run into her old college roommate, and the roommate told her that she had been offered--and had turned down--a full-time teaching position in Randall, Arizona. "It's a beautiful little town," she said. "I'd love to live there, but they just don't pay enough."

"Sounds like just what you're looking for," Ginny told Marina. "The school's looking for someone to teach English and typing, the land in the area is cheap, there are four seasons and the town's population is a whopping three thousand. You always said that you and Gordon wanted to get out of Southern California."

"Arizona?" Gordon said when Marina relayed the information.

"It's up near Flagstaff," she explained. Gordon started making disgusted faces, and she playfully slapped his cheek. "Be serious.

There are some nice places there."

"In Arizona?"

Nevertheless, they'd driven out to Randall the next weekend. And both of them had fallen instantly in love with the town. It had been a brisk clear autumn day, not a cloud in the ink blue sky, and they'd come in from the southwest, driving the two-lane from Prescott. Their first view of the town looked like a Currier and Ives painting, or the falsely pastoral picture on an artfully retouched postcard. They were driving over a ridge. Below them, the town was nestled into a long narrow valley. The only building clearly visible from this vantage point was the sawmill. Around the mill, smoking chimneys and A-framed roofs peeked out from between leafless oaks, multihued aspens, and green ponderosa pines. Here and there glimpses of blue--brooks or streams or ponds--could be seen between the green foliage. To the north, overlooking the entire region, dominating the scenery, stood the Rim--a huge majestic forested mesa that stretched spectacularly from horizon to horizon.

At his first sight of the town, Gordon had begun grinning widely, the excitement showing in his face. He pulled off to the side of the road, getting out of the car and grabbing his Canon. He snapped several shots of the unbelievable view, finishing off the roll, and took a deep breath of air, inhaling the intertwined fragrance of living forest and burning firewood. He stared down at the panorama below him. "This is it," he said. "This is our town."

Marina coughed loudly from inside the car: a melodramatic stage "ahem."

She looked out at him. "Don't you think you should ask my opinion before making blanket pronouncements about 'our' town?"

He swung around in surprise. "You don't like it?"

She got out of the car and walked to the edge of the cliff, looking around her at the scenery. She pretended to think for a moment.

"It's ... all right," she said finally in her most affected voice. She looked toward him, eyebrows raised.

Then the smile broke through.

Marina had interviewed for the teaching position the next week and had been accepted. They'd bought the place two months later, after several weekend house-hunting trips to the area. Gordon had originally wanted to buy a converted farmhouse--he had dreams of living a cinematic small town existence, complete with a cow for milk and a couple chickens for eggs--but the only farmhouses for sale were way out of their price range. Even with the bank loan and money borrowed from both their parents they were only able to afford someplace small. Still, their new home was by itself, outside the town limits, backed up against untouched National Forest land. An old one-story wood-framed structure, it was set in the middle of a half-acre of thickly wooded property. The previous owners had built a small animal pen next to the tool shed out back and had cleared a large area on the side of the house for gardening. Gordon was delighted. The old owners had also added several large picture windows to the house, allowing for unobstructed views of both the Rim and the surrounding woods.

That first year, they too had made a lot of changes: converting the breakfast nook in the kitchen to a small solarium, furnishing the house with Marina's antiques, painting the peeling walls white, adding on to the storage shed so they would have a place to store firewood. Yes, the winter had been colder than Gordon had expected, and the summer hotter. And the entire cycle had repeated itself the following year.

But he really did love living here. It was everything he'd hoped for.

He loved the house, loved the forest, and loved Randall. Hell, he even liked his menial job.

Marina emerged from the bathroom dressed and ready to go. She walked into the bedroom and stopped just inside the door, staring at him, her eyes moving visibly upward from his grubby sneakers to his torn cutoffs before finally settling on his obnoxious Hawaiian shirt. "You're not planning on going like that?" she asked.

"This is all I've got."

"What about that new light-blue short-sleeve shirt I bought you?"

"It's dirty."

She shook her head. "If we see anyone, I'm pretending like I don't know you."

He grinned. "Want me to walk ten paces behind you? Just in case?"

"You think I'm joking?"

He grabbed his wallet and keys from the dresser and was about to start out the door.

"Wait," she said, as if remembering something. "Maybe you'd better change after all. I forgot I have to stop in and see Dr. Water ston."

"What for?"

"Oh, nothing."

"He's open on Saturday?"

Marina nodded.

He scanned her face, looking for telltale signs of sickness. "What's wrong?"

"I told you. Nothing. I'm just going in for a checkup."

"Why didn't I hear about this checkup before?"

"Because it's not important. Just get dressed so we can go." Annoyance had entered her voice, and she walked over to the closet, pulling out a pair of Levi's and throwing them on the bed. "Wear these," she said.

He put on the pants as she rummaged through the closet for a shirt.

She finally picked out a plain, light green, cotton dress shirt.

"Here. Just roll up the sleeves."

He bowed down before her. "Yes, master. Will there be anything else?"

She laughed. "No. You can keep your shoes."

He put on his clothes.

Gordon sat in the small air-conditioned waiting room for what seemed like an eternity, glancing periodically at thestulted wall clock that hung above the door. The clock's oversized hands moved in a cruelly slow parody of time, ticking off minutes that registered as seconds, hours that clocked in as minutes. He already knew by heart the minute brush strokes that made up the three watercolor prints on the waiting room walls, and now he simply stared into space. Every so often he would pick up one of the magazines on the low glass coffee table in front of him--Flying, Computer Science, or perhaps Modern Medicine--and scan the glossy pages for some item of interest. He had exhausted the magazines and was just about to start on The Children's Living Bible when he heard Marina's muffled voice through the thick clouded glass partition that separated the receptionist's desk from the waiting room.

He put the book down and looked up. There was a blur of colored movement behind the frosted glass.

Marina's face was an embarrassed mixture of conflicting emotions as she came bustling through the waiting room door shoving a folded slip of prescription paper into her purse. Fear and joy, anxiety and excitement all vied for time on her features. She looked around the empty room for a second, as if not seeing him, then fixed him with an unsure smile. Her face was red. "I'm pregnant," she said.

Gordon blinked in startled incomprehension, not sure he had heard her right. "What?" he said.

"I'm pregnant."

He shook his head, still not believing what he heard. What was this?

What the hell was going on here? She had just gone in for a routine checkup. Dr. Waterston had just wanted to look her over, make sure everything was functioning properly. How the hell had he found out that she was pregnant?

How could she be pregnant?

She tried to smile, an attempt that only partially succeeded. She was opening and closing the snap clasp of her purse nervously. "We have to talk," she said.

He nodded dumbly, still stunned, still unable or unwilling to believe her news.

She walked over to him and took his hand, glancing around the empty waiting room. "I--"

"Out in the car," he said. "I don't want to talk about it here."

Outside, the afternoon storm clouds had appeared over the Rim, their blackness blocking the entire northern half of the sky. The two tall pine trees next to the doctor's office stood out against the dark background, their upper branches still illuminated by the afternoon sun, creating a strangely artificial highlighting effect. Across the street, the sawmill's black metal stack was also still in sunlight.

They walked across the empty gravel to the Jeep, parked next to the Sears Catalog store. Gordon unlocked Marina's door. "Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"

"I wasn't sure about it. I didn't want to worry you."

"You didn't want to worry me? You didn't want to worry me?" His voice rose in pitch, the anger showing in his face. "You think it's better to spring it on me like this?" He laughed shortly. "Jesus.

You could've at least prepared me." He walked around the front of the car to the driver's side.

"I'm not even sure I'm going to keep it," she said quietly.

He looked up. "What?"

"I said, "I'm not sure I'm going to keep it.""

He stared at her for a moment, and she could see the pain registering on his face. His brown eyes, usually so clear, looked troubled. They met hers and looked quickly away. He opened his door, getting in, and Marina climbed into the Jeep from her side, closing the door carefully.

Gordon started the car's engine.

"I thought you wanted to talk," she said.

"I do." He put the car into reverse. "But I don't feel like doing it here in the parking lot." He pulled onto Main Street. A blue pickup truck--Tim McDowell's pickup--drove past them going the opposite direction and honked, a hand appearing over the cab, waving. Gordon stuck his own arm out of the Jeep's window and waved tiredly back. He sighed loudly. "Jesus," he said. He was silent for a minute. "All right. Start from the beginning."

Marina smiled feebly. "Well, about a month ago ..."

He didn't laugh. His face, instead, was strained, almost angry. "What happened? Didn't your pills work?"

"Obviously not."

The Jeep sped past Char Clifton's 76 station on the way out of town.

Gordon shook his head. "Isn't the percentage of failures about point-one percent?"

"Something like that."

He looked at her suspiciously. "You have been taking them, haven't you?"

"That's not even worth answering." Her voice was cold.

His eyes met hers. "Okay," he said. "I'm sorry."

"You should be." Now it was her voice that was angry. "I'm the one who didn't want kids in the first place, remember? I'm the one who'd have to carry the baby for almost a year and then be its constant slave for another two. I'm the one who'd have to feed it and take care of it."

"Okay. I'm sorry."

They drove for a while in silence.

"So tell me what happened."

Marina sighed. "I didn't get my period when I was supposed to. I waited a week, then another few days, then I called Dr. Waterston. I thought about telling you, but ... I wasn't sure. I didn't want to worry you. So I decided to keep quiet until I knew for certain. He gave me the test a few days ago." She stared out the window, watching the green blur of the passing scenery as the Jeep zoomed down the winding road through the forest. A hazy pre storm sunlight filtered in prison slats through the trees.

"And?" Gordon prompted.

She turned to face him. "And?"

"Come on."

She sighed again and her voice, when she spoke, was low, mumbling, as though she were talking to herself rather than him. "I was praying to God I wasn't pregnant. I knew something like this would happen."

"Yes?"

She shook her head, her eyes half-closed. She looked tired, and she pushed a stray wisp of hair back from her eyes. "You know about Julie Campbell's baby, right?"

He nodded, frowning. In June, Julie Campbell had gone into labor a full five months early; the doctors still did not understand why. The premature birth, in the back of the maternity ward at Randall General Hospital, had been little more than an abortion. The stillborn fetus had been only a little bigger than a fist, its body and facial features not yet fully formed.

"And Joni Cooper's baby last year?"

Joni Cooper's baby had also been stillborn and premature.

He nodded again.

"And Susan Stratford's?"

"So what are you trying to tell me? That you're afraid to have a baby?" His voice softened. "Look, delivering a baby is a smooth procedure. Those three were just a fluke. We'll go down to Phoenix and have a real doctor look at you. In a real hospital. They have tests for these kinds of things. We'll find out beforehand if the baby will be retarded, deformed, what the chances are for a premature birth or a stillbirth. Hell, we'll even find out whether it's going to be a boy or a girl."

"We'll try the tests," she said. "But ..." She paused, trying to think. She closed her eyes, massaging the lids with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. She opened her eyes and looked at Gordon. "They're probably not flukes. Dr. Waterston thinks they're connected."

His gaze snapped toward her.

She pointed out the windshield. "Keep your eyes on the road."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"He doesn't know what it is. He doesn't know if it's anything. But think about it. All three of them--Julie, Joni, and Susan--live north of town, like we do. All of them are under thirty-five, like we are.

All of them get their water from the Geronimo Wells pump--"

"The fucking water!"

"We don't know if it's--"

"I should've known it!"

"Known what? There's nothing to know. Dr. Waterston just pointed out all the things that Julie, Joni, and Susan have in common. It may be nothing; it may not."

"It may be nothing?"

"Look, they might be coincidences. Dr. Waterston just thinks, possibly, that it might be something else, and he wanted to warn me.

Just in case."

"It might possibly be something else? Three dead babies in the space of one year? In a town this small?"

"You were the one who said they were probably flukes."

"I was wrong, okay? I was wrong." They had driven past Tonto Wash and were coming up on the small dirt side road that led to their house.

Gordon was silent for a few moments. His face, when she looked at it, was working silently in a confusion of anger and frustration. His brow was furrowed, his jaw clenched. He slammed on the brakes of the speeding Jeep, slowing down, and turned onto the dirt road. "There has to be some kind of investigation into this," he said. "I'm calling the EPA, the county government the state government, everyone I can think of. Goddamn it, there are going to be some lawsuits."

"Lawsuits against who?"

"Against ..." He faltered. "Against whoever it is that's causing this." He pulled up in front of their house and cut the Jeep's engine.

He sat silently for a minute, staring out at the line of trees next to the car. He breathed deeply, audibly. When he spoke again his voice was quiet. "What do you want to do?"

"Well, I think we should go to Phoenix like you suggested, and have some tests run." She put her hand on his. "Then we can start talking about the normal questions: Do we want a baby? Can we afford a baby?

All that."

"The normal questions." Gordon smiled sadly. "Jesus."

The sky was completely black now, all traces of the hot morning sun erased. A drop of water fell on the windshield. And another. And another. Marina motioned toward the house. "We'd better get in. It's starting to rain."

Gordon said nothing. She stared at him for a moment, then shifted her attention to the rain-splattered windshield. Several drops exploded on the glass, causing a network of minuscule waterfalls to cascade down the window to the cracked rubber of the windshield wipers where the water formed two small pools. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gordon shift in his seat, heard him pick up the set of keys from the seat between them. He opened his door, got out, and made a dash for the house. She waited a few moments, until he had unlocked the front door of the house, and then followed him. By the time she reached the porch, it was raining heavily, huge hail-sized drops pelting the broad leaves of the oak tree next to the door and causing the loose gravel of the drive to skitter about with noisy click-clacks.

Inside, the house had retained the morning heat despite the cold rain outside. It seemed stuffy, uncomfortable, and Marina went around the house opening all of the windows to let in the cool water-freshened air. Gordon put his keys on the kitchen counter then moved to the front doorway, where he stood looking out through the screen. The thick monsoon clouds formed a wet ceiling above the forest, blocking out even a partial view of the Rim. "Damn," he said.

Marina finished opening the windows in the back of the house and returned to the living room. "What?" she said.

Gordon tried to smile for her sake. "I said "At least it's cool."" She stood next to him and put her arm around his waist, snuggling into the crook under his arm. She looked with him out the screen door toward the forest. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she did not allow him to see them. The tears flowed freely down her cheeks. "Yes," she said softly. "At least it's cool."

Jim Weldon slept for ten hours straight--a record for him--and for the first time in almost a month his sleep remained undisturbed by nightmares. He was exhausted; his body and brain were just too damned tired to allow him to dream, and he lay on the bed unmoving from four in the morning until two in the afternoon.

He had never had a day like this before.

The morning had dawned clear and hot like any other, and he'd gotten to the office by eight. He'd expected a few minor complaints, maybe some drunks or speeders, then an afternoon of paper shuffling and serious rest. But Tim Larson had called less than an hour later with news of the vandalized Episcopal church, and by noon the investigation had spread to include the mysterious disappearance of the Selway family and the series of goat mutilations, which apparently stretched all the way from the Green River Ranch south of town to Bill Heard's place up on the Rim. The bodies of Loren Wilbanks and Clay Henry, or what was left of their bodies (connected somehow with the goat mutilations?), had been discovered by a neighboring rancher late in the afternoon, and by the time they had dusted for prints, taken the pictures, examined the house and carted off the bodies six hours later, the other five churches in Randall had been vandalized. Although the desecration of these churches had to have taken place between six and ten p.m."

none of the nearby residents had seen or heard a thing, and they'd had to spend another four hours sifting through the piles of broken glass and combing every inch of each church, trying to gather what clues they could. Judson Weiss and Pete King were working night shift, and when Jim's brain finally became too tired to function properly, he left everything in their hands and went home to get some much needed sleep.

He'd been up for almost twenty-four hours.

Jim had prayed before falling asleep that somehow, miraculously, Judson and Pete would solve everything in his absence and that the two murders, the disappearances, the vandalism, and the livestock mutilations would all be neatly tied up into one package and written into a typed, double-spaced report that would be placed on his desk for him to read and sign.

No such luck.

A call to the station upon waking revealed that no progress had been made in any of the cases. There were still no leads and nothing to go on.

He hung up the phone, feeling a headache coming on. A bad one. He massaged his temples with his fingers, feeling the rhythmic pounding of blood beneath the thin layer of skin. He just wasn't cut out for this shit. This was for the big-city cops and the motion-picture sheriffs, not him. Already he felt way out of his league, and he wondered vaguely if he shouldn't call for some help on this.

But who would he call?

He pulled on a robe and lumbered into the bathroom, his bare feet sticking to the green tile floor as he walked. He pulled back the shower curtain and turned on the water in the shower, adjusting the two faucets by feel. Why the hell had he been born in Randall instead of one of the hundreds of other small towns scattered throughout Northern Arizona? Why wasn't he sheriff in Sedona or Heber? He climbed into the shower, wincing as the water hit his skin. This was going to make national news for sure--if not television then at least the wire services. People were going to be watching him closely. He'd better not fuck it up.

A note on the refrigerator said that Justin andSuzonne were at the movies with Ralph Pittman and his mother. A second note, held up by a TweetyBird magnet, told him that Annette was at the grocery store. Jim left his own note in reply and grabbed a donut before taking off. He said in the note that he'd be back for dinner, but he knew that was probably just wishful thinking. In all likelihood he'd be coming home late. He had a feeling there were going to be a lot of missed meals over the next couple of weeks.

The child was waiting in his office when he arrived.

The sight threw him for a second, but he did not let the surprise register on his face. He threw his hat on the rack next to his desk, as always, and sat down. CarlChmura was sitting next to the boy on the low vinyl couch against the far wall, and he stood up when Jim entered the room. "Howdy, Sheriff."

"What's up, Carl?"

The deputy walked across the carpeted floor toward the sheriff and nodded his head toward the boy. "This kid here came in around noon today, maybe a little earlier. Said he had something important to tell you. He wouldn't talk to anyone else. I told him you probably wouldn't be coming in for a while, but he wanted to wait. Said it was real important."

Jim looked at the boy. He was small and pale and couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve. He looked as though he had not been out of the house all summer. He was wearing an ill-fitting shirt that looked like it had probably been his father's or grandfather's and a pair of ripped Levi's faded almost white. His hair was thin and greasy and too long, and it curled around his shoulders in matted tangles. He was clenching and unclenching his hands nervously.

But it was the boy's face that captured his attention.

His face was filled with fear.

Jim stood up and smiled kindly at the boy, not wishing to frighten or intimidate him. "What's your name, son?"

"Don Wilson." The boy's voice was timid and uncertain.

Jim motioned Carl to the door with his eyes. "Thanks a lot, Carl.

I'll call you if I need you." The deputy nodded, understanding, and closed the door behind him as he left.

Jim sat on the corner edge of the desk facing the boy. He put on his all-purpose concerned-father expression and bent forward, placing his hands on his knees. "So, Don," he said. "What did you want to talk to me about?" The boy's frightened face looked first toward the door then toward the window--in human approximation of a cornered rabbit checking out its options for escape. He looked immediately sorry that he'd come, and Jim thought for a second he was going to bolt. The sheriff smiled understandingly. "It's okay, Don," he said. "You can talk to me."

"I know where the Selways are!" the boy blurted out. "I know how to find their bodies!"

Jim's smile of patient understanding froze on his face. He stared at the pale scared youth before him, his mouth suddenly dry, his hands holding on to his knees with a vice like grip. Adrenaline flushed into his system.

Their bodies.

Jim snapped his head toward the door, his sheriff's instinct taking over. "Carl!" he called. "Carl!"

The deputy rushed in instantly. His head did a one-eighty as he quickly scanned the room. His eyes stopped on Jim, baffled, but Jim had already turned back toward the boy. "Why the hell didn't you say something about this earlier? Why didn't you tell DeputyChmura ?"

The boy was still cowering, and under the sheriff's verbal onslaught he appeared to almost visibly shrink, but he held his ground. "I can only tell you," he said. His voice was scared, shaky.

"Where are they?" Jim demanded.

The boy looked from the sheriff to the deputy and shook his head.

"All right!" Jim yelled. "Carl, get out of here for a minute!" The deputy retreated, confused, and closed the door behind him. Jim swiveled his gaze back to the boy. "Okay. Where the hell are they?"

The boy licked his lips. "I had this dream a few nights ago--"

"Where the hell are they?"

"Let me finish my story!" The boy looked as though he was about to cry. His shaking hands were balled into fists, and frustration and fear were battling it out for supremacy on his face. A hank of hair fell across his forehead and he angrily nipped it back. Jim took a deep breath and nodded. It wasn't the kid's fault; the boy was doing the best he could. "All right," the sheriff said quietly. "Tell me what happened."

The boy looked at him for a moment, not sure he wanted to tell him. "I had this dream a few nights ago," he said finally. "And I saw the Selwaysbeing murdered."

A dream?

Jim felt his heart begin to pound in his ears, but he forced himself to remain calm. "By who?" he asked.

Don looked at the floor, his feet shuffling nervously, crossing and crisscrossing his legs. He did not look up. "I ... I can't tell you,"

he said.

"Yes you can."

"No, I can't. You won't believe me."

"Yes I will." His voice softened. "Tell me," he said.

The boy looked up at him. "Monsters," he said. "It was too dark to see what they looked like, but they were monsters." He looked at Jim, to make sure he wouldn't laugh.

But Jim did not feel like laughing.

"There were a whole bunch of them," the boy continued, again staring at the ground. "They broke into The Selways’ house and took them off to the dump." His legs were doing nervous figure eights on the carpet.

"They .. . they killed the little baby first. They tore her apart and ate her. Then they tore the other kids apart, ripping open their skin.

There were hundreds of them. Then they .. . they .. . ripped off Mrs.

Selway'shead while she stood there and made Father Selway watch." He looked up at Jim, his eyes shiny with remembered terror. "Her body just sort of crumpled to the ground, like in slow motion, and I could see all the veins and muscles and things popping out of her neck and squirming around. Blood was everywhere. It was squirting up like a fountain."

"Which dump was this at?"

"The one off the control road. By Geronimo Wells."

Jim nodded. "Go on."

The boy's eyes focused on a point far away, in his mind. "They . the monsters .. . played with Mrs.Selway's head for a while, throwing it around and kicking it. Her eyes opened and closed as it flew through the air. There were a lot of them around, but I still couldn't see them. They were in the shadows. But I could see Mrs.Selway's head real good. And I could see Father Selway perfectly. He was just standing there, staring. Then one of them reached over and turned Father Selway toward the fire."

"What fire?" Jim asked.

"The one where they burn all the wood and paper."

"It was night?"

"Yeah. They made him look at the fire and said ..." Don looked down, his hands now trembling badly. He clamped his hands between his legs to hold them still. His face, framed by the long greasy hair, was taut and serious, the muscles pulled tight. "They said, "Worship your new God' or "Bow down before your new God' or something like that. And then .. . something .. . started to come out of the fire. It was huge.

It was big and black and looked like it had two horns." He looked at Jim. "It looked like the devil."

Jim reached over and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Was that all?" he asked.

"No." Don shook his head. "All of a sudden, the fire went out and Father Selway and the devil were gone and the other monsters shoved Mrs.Selway's body into a big hole. Then they threw her head in a little hole and threw the kids in another hole and covered them all up."

"Where? What part of the dump?"

"Under the garbage, by the big tree next to the cliff. Right next to a tractor."

Jim jumped up. "Carl!" he called. The deputy pushed the door immediately open. "Get the posse together. We're going to search for The Selways’ bodies."

"But I thought--"

"Never mind what you thought. Get everyone together. Tell them we'll meet out at the Geronimo Wells landfill. Now!"

Carl ran down the hall toward the switchboard out front, his boots clicking loudly on the tile.

Jim turned back toward the boy. He looked even smaller and paler than he had before. His hands, between his legs, were clasped together, and sweat was running in twin lines down both sides of his face from beneath his hair. Jim looked at the boy and tried to smile reassuringly. He didn't know why he believed the kid, but he did.

Jesus, he thought. His mind really was going. Not just scared of his own dreams, but believing others' as well. "Why did you wait 'til now to tell us?" he asked Don.

"I thought it was just a nightmare. I didn't know it was real. I didn't know anything had happened." His lower lip started to tremble.

His hand intercepted a tear sneaking down his cheek. "I just found out that the Selways were missing this morning. I didn't know."

Jim patted the boy's shoulder. "It's okay, son." The boy wiped away another tear. "But how come you wouldn't tell anyone except me?"

"You were in the dream. I knew you'd understand. I knew you'd know I

didn't do it. I knew you'd know I wasn't really there, I didn't really see anything."

A bolt of fear--wild, irrational--shot through Jim's body, causing his heart to trip-hammer crazily. A wave of cold washed over him. He stared at the boy. He had never seen this kid before in his life; he did not look even vaguely familiar.

But he had automatically believed his story.

And, he realized, something about the boy's dream seemednaggingly , disturbingly true. It had seemed right. As if this were knowledge he'd already had but just could not bring to consciousness. As if the boy had simply put known facts together in a new way; a way he understood intuitively, on a gut level, but could not reason out.

The boy was right, he knew. He had been in that dream somehow, although he could remember none of it. He turned back to Don. His voice was not as assured as he would have liked, but he forced himself to speak anyway. "What was I doing in your dream?"

"You were just standing there watching. Like me." The boy licked his lips. "Like everyone else."

The cold intensified. "Who else?"

"I don't know. You were the only one I recognized. But I'd know them if I saw them."

Carl poked his head in the door. "Car's ready, Sheriff. I called the posse and they're going to meet us there."

Jim put on his hat and grabbed his holster. "Okay." He strapped on the belt and looked at Don. "You coming?"

"Do I have to?"

Jim shook his head.

"Then no, I'd rather not."

"Okay." He looked into the boy's face and saw underneath the childish features a maturity; maturity that had been forced upon him and for which he was not exactly ready but which he was able to cope with. The kid had handled himself well, he thought. Better than a lot of adults would have under similar circumstances. He wished this could be the end of it, the boy could just go home and forget about everything, letting the sheriff's office handle the situation, his civic duty done.

But there was a lot more to come. It would be tough on the kid. "We have some more talking to do," he said. "Leave your name and address with Rita out at the front desk. I'll get in touch with you later."

Don stood up, wiping sweaty palms on his faded jeans. "Do you have to tell my parents about it?"

Jim thought for a moment. Tell his parents what? That they'd decided to look for bodies at the dump because of their son's nightmares? That Don had had some type of psychic experience?

"No," he said. "I don't have to tell your parents if you don't want me to."

The boy looked relieved.

Jim lightly punched Don's arm. "I'll see you later," he said. "I have to go." He strode quickly down the hall and out the front doors, waving without looking back. Carl was waiting in a patrol car, the engine running. Jim got into the car, flipped on the roof lights and told his deputy to take off.

The car pulled onto the highway, tires squealing. "What happened?"

Carl asked. "What'd the kid tell you?"

"He told me where the bodies are buried." Carl whistled. "Did he actually see anything?" Jim stared out the windshield as they sped north through town. "Yes," he said. "Yes he did."

The sky was covered with blackened monsoon clouds by the time they turned off on the control road, twenty minutes later. The dark thunderheads were backlit periodically by the strobe flashes of lightning, although there was no rain yet. "Goddamn it," the sheriff said. "Does it have to rain every fucking day? We're going to be out there digging in a downpour."

They had to go a little slower here than they had on the highway. The control road was narrow, barely one lane, and the campers, hikers, hunters, and fishermen who drove their pickups down the dirt road usually assumed no one would be coming toward them. They invariably sped around the hairpin turns as though they were the only ones on the road. Usually they would be. The control road, winding as it did through the forest along the base of the Rim, was so rough and rutted that it was absolute hell for anyone without a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

The convoy encountered no other traffic on their trip to Geronimo Wells, however, and they pulled into the landfill just as the rain started. Jim got out of the car and walked back to tell the other members of the posse that they could either wait in their cars and trucks for the rain to stop--which might take several hours-or they could start digging now. "Me and Carl are going to dig," he said. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get out of here."

He looked around the landfill as Carl took the shovels out of the trunk. The dump did not look as familiar to him as it should have. He had been out here before, of course, and he knew that scrap metal was dropped off near the large pile just to the north of the cars, that wood went on the pile of combustibles to the left of that, and that regular garbage was dumped over the small dirt cliff just beyond the woodpile and buried. But it looked like only a dump to him; it did not look like the scene of ritualistic killings. He had no intuitive flashes about the landfill, no psychic revelations. He did not even feel any bad vibrations. The dump seemed to him the same as it always had. He had nothing to go on but the kid's testimony.

The other members of the posse got out of their vehicles and took their own picks and shovels from their trunks and the beds of their trucks.

They stood in a huddled group in the drizzling rain, looking toward the sheriff.

Jim jumped onto the hood of the brown sheriff's car and held up his hands. "All right!" he said. "Listen up! We're going to split into two groups. Six of us are going to dig through the garbage by that big tree over there." He pointed toward a tall pine tree by the sandy cliff. A tractor was parked next to the tree, just as Don had said it would be. "Three of you will dig through the woodpile there."

"The boys 'n' I'll take the woodpile," Scott Hamilton said, gesturing toward his two sons. All three of them were still wearing around their necks the protective goggles required for all mill workers.

"You know what you're supposed to be looking for?" Jim asked.

The three nodded grimly.

"AH right then. Let's get to work. Everyone else, come with me." He jumped down from the car and led the rest of the posse past the woodpile to the garbage area. He let his shovel fall into the rain-softened ground. "Start digging anywhere," he said. "We don't know the exact spot where we're supposed to be looking. Just make sure you all stay near the tractor."

The six men spread out along the garbage pile. Jim and Carl moved to the edge of the cliff. It was starting to drizzle harder now, and the ground was soft and spongy beneath their feet. Jim's clothes were already soaked clear through, and he took off his hat and dumped the water from the brim. He put the hat back on and started digging.

It was Kyle Heathrow who, almost half an hour later, called out:

"Sheriff!C'mere ! I think I've found something!"

Jim stepped through the wet pile of garbage, his feet sinking almost to the ankles, toward the spot where Kyle was digging. It was pouring, the rain coming down in torrents, and all of the diggers looked like drowned dogs. He stopped and stood next to Kyle, staring down into the newly dug hole. A woman's face looked up at him, eyes open, a bloodless gash across the cheek where Kyle's shovel had made contact.

Mrs.Selway .

Jim looked away, forcing himself to look at a plastic garbage sack. He licked his lips, suddenly dry despite the rain. "Okay!" he yelled.

"Over here! We're going to dig around this area!"

The others slogged their way through the wet garbage and stared into the hole. Rain had already washed some of the mud from Mrs.Selway's face, making it look strangely alive. Drops of moisture caught on the long eyelashes, and a puddle had formed within the open mouth. None of the men said a word as they turned away.

Carl went to the car to get a body bag.

Jim stared upward, into the falling rain. The water that had collected on the brim of his hat went cascading down the back of his neck but he hardly noticed. He realized suddenly that he did not know Mrs.

Selway'sfirst name.

He looked again at the ground, at the wet and muddy garbage, and picked up his shovel. He started digging.

Gordon spent the evening making phone calls. As Marina lay on the overstuffed couch in the living room trying to watch a snow and static-tingedGoldfinger on the only TV station they could get--an ABC affiliate out of Flagstaff--Gordon dialed St. Luke's Hospital in Phoenix and made Marina an appointment with the resident obstetrician, Dr. Kaplan, for one o'clock Monday afternoon. Marina had refused to make the call herself, and Gordon had agreed to do it for her. He understood how she felt.

After hanging up, he called Brad and told him that he needed to take Monday off. Monday was their busiest day because most of the local stores ran out of Pepsi over the weekend; and since they still had some of the outlying areas to do he assumed he'd have to fight Brad tooth and nail for the day off. But Brad was uncharacteristically understanding, and he told Gordon that he'd get Clan to take his place for the day. Gordon promised to be in extra early on Tuesday.

Next was a call to Dr. Waterston. Gordon told the doctor his fears and outlined his plans. Dr. Waterston agreed wholeheartedly with his decision to take Marina to Phoenix. "Best thing you could do," he said.

After some initial, abstract conversation on the subject of babies and births, they got down to specifics.

"I really have no facts to go on," Dr. Waterston said. "This is all conjecture. But as I explained to your wife, there are similarities between Julie Campbell, Joni Cooper, and Susan Stratford that I find are just too close for comfort." He paused. "Similarities your wife shares with them."

"That's what Marina told me."

"Like I said, I have no proof. But I have sent a sample of water taken from the Geronimo Wells pump station to a lab in Phoenix for analysis."

"The water!" Gordon said. "That's exactly what I thought."

"I'm not saying that's what it is. I could be way off base, here. But you know there's a county landfill just a half a mile or so east of the pump station, off the control road, and some of that might be seeping into the groundwater system. There's been no toxic waste buried there so far as I know, but something could be leaking down. From where I

sit, it sure as hell looks like it."

"Have you told anyone?"

Dr. Waterston laughed shortly. "Have I told anyone? I've told the mayor, the town council, the county board of supervisors, the state water control board, even the local chapter of the AM A."

"Nothing happened?"

"Zippityshit; pardon my French. They all promised to look into it, of course, but I never heard from any of them. That was a good three months ago. I call each of the organizations at least once a week, just to bug them into getting off their dead asses, but I just get shunted around from secretary to secretary." He laughed again, and his voice became absurdly, mockingly officious; the voice of a petty bureaucrat. "With the exception of the mayor's office and the town council, of course. They're looking into it, examining all possibilities, but they are conducting a secret investigation and can't tell me about it yet." He snorted. "What a crock."

"When are you supposed to hear back from the lab?"

"Any day now, I'll let you know when I do."

Gordon nodded into the telephone, though he knew the doctor couldn't see him. "Thanks," he said. "I'll let you know what happens Monday."

"Damn right you will. Just because Marina's going to have her tests and analysis done in Phoenix doesn't mean I'm not still her doctor. She has an appointment for next week and she's going to keep it."

Gordon smiled. "All right. Call you Monday, Doc."

"I'll be waiting."

He hung up the receiver and went out to the living room to check on Marina. The room was dark save for the blue light of the TV, and it took him a moment to find her, stretched out on the couch. "Hey," he said. "You all right?"

She waved him away. "Shhh. This is an important part." On the screen, James Bond came barreling through a chain link fence in his car while an old lady shot at him with a machine gun. The old lady grimaced as the gun kicked back. Marina laughed. "I love that part.

That old woman cracks me up."

"Your appointment's for Monday at one," Gordon said.

Marina did not answer. She appeared to be raptly watching the movie, but Gordon knew that she had heard him. She just didn't want to talk about it.

He retreated back into the den and leafed through the phone book until he found the number he wanted. He dialed Keith Beck at the newspaper.

He wasn't sure the editor would be there this late on a Saturday night, but Beck had an unlisted home phone and he had no other choice. The phone was answered on the first ring.

"Hello?"

Gordon felt a little uncertain talking to the editor about their problem. He did not know a whole hell of a lot, and he could substantiate even less, but he told Beck what he could about the infants and the editor promised to look into it. He said it might take a few weeks, though, what with the rodeo coming up and the desecrated churches and .. .

"Churches Gordon interrupted. "Plural?"

"You haven't heard?"

"No." Gordon thought of the bloody letters he'd seen on Father Selway'sdefiled church and he felt a subtle chill caress his spine.

It seemed suddenly darker in the room, and he flipped on a desk lamp.

"What happened?"

The editor laughed, the laugh turning into aphlegmy smoker's cough.

"Read the paper next Wednesday."

"Come on."

"Okay. What have you heard so far? What do you know?"

"I saw the Episcopal church, and Char Clifton told us Father Selway was missing."

"Well the same thing happened to the rest of the churches. All of them. Windows broken, obscene graffiti, the whole bit. That's why I'm still here, in fact. Jim Weldon gave me a buzz about an hour ago and gave me all the details. Thought I'd like to know. Right now, I'm just trying to figure out how to write about the obscenities. Should I use those cartoon punctuation symbols for the words? Should I use the first letter of each word, followed by an appropriate number of blank spaces? Or should I just refer to them as 'profanities' or 'obscenities?""

Gordon ignored the editor's tunnel-visionedaccount of the situation.

"What about the other clergymen? Have they disappeared?"

"No. But that's really all I can tell you," Beck admitted. "The sheriff is supposed to call me back. The way it's going now, it looks like I'll be here 'til dawn."

"I'll let you go, then. Thanks."

"No problem. And I'll look into that baby situation as soon as I can.

I'll get back to you if I find anything out."

Gordon made his final call of the evening to his parents in California.

After he'd told them of Marina's pregnancy they wanted to talk to Marina herself, and he yelled for her to pick up the other phone. The four-way long distance conversation was very sober and very tearful, and it continued on until well past midnight. Finally his parents hung up, promising to call again Monday night. On his father's request, he dialed the operator and had the charges reversed.

Outside, the rain had long since stopped and the world was completely quiet. Looking out the window, Gordon could see the short line of stars that formed the handle of the Big Dipper standing out sharply against a background of galaxies and nebulas in the now clear night sky. Closer in, the pine trees stood tall and straight, completely unmoving in the breeze less air. He closed the drapes and walked down the hall to the bedroom, slipping naked into bed, where Marina joined him a few minutes later. Although it was late and they were tired, they made love, more for the closeness and intimacy it afforded than the pleasure, and it was nearly two o'clock before both of them finally fell asleep, curled next to each other under the thin sheet.

Neither of them heard the soft scuttling noises that whispered through the house soon after.

And neither of them noticed in the morning that the furniture in the living room had been subtly, slightly moved.

Jim Weldon turned on the fluorescent office lights and shuffled across the carpet to his desk, sitting tiredly down. He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes tightly and pressing against the lids with the palms of his hands. It had been one hellacious day. They had found the rest of Mrs.Selway's body and the bodies of the children in various stages of dismemberment by nightfall, and all of the corpses had been loaded onto Scott Hamilton's truck for the trip back to town.

Jim had ridden with Scott and a few other men to the mortuary and had called the county coroner, while Carl had remained at the dump with the rest of the posse, trying to find the body of Father Selway . Jim had stopped briefly at the newspaper to let Keith Beck know what was happening, then had hurried back out to the dump. Father Selway's body had not been recovered. They had continued searching for another hour and a half with no luck and had finally given it up for the night.

Jim did not think they would ever find the body.

He took his hands from his eyes and let his chair fall forward.

"Supervisor Jones called."

He stared at the three-word note sitting on top of his desk and swore to himself. Jesus fuck. Leslie Jones. The last thing he needed today was to talk to that bitch. She'd probably found out from the coroner that The Selways’ bodies had been recovered and wanted to chew him out for not finding them sooner, or for not giving them adequate protection while they were alive, or for ... something. She always had some bug up her ass. He crumpled up the paper and tossed it on the floor, shaking his head. Luckily, it was a weekend and her office was closed.

He didn't have her home phone number, so he couldn't return her call until Monday.

He picked up the other messages that had been left on his desk and glanced through them. Beck had called from the newspaper and wanted him to call back as soon as possible. Reverend Paulson from the Presbyterian church had stopped by, but he'd come back tomorrow when things weren't so busy. Annette had called to say that she'd heard what had happened and would hold dinner for him.

Don Wilson had called.

Jim tossed the remaining messages aside and dialed the number written on the small square of pink memo paper. It was late, he knew, but he couldn't afford to take any chances. A woman's voice answered.

"Hello."

"Hello," he said. "Is Don Wilson there?"

The woman's voice sounded suddenly suspicious. "Who is this?"

"Sheriff Weldon. I'd like to speak to Don if I could."

The suspicion changed audibly to anger; an anger directed at her son.

The woman's voice grew tense, and Jim could almost see the jaw muscles clenching. "What's he done now?"

"Nothing." Jim had promised the boy that he wouldn't tell his parents anything, but he did not want his silence on the subject to get the boy into trouble. He thought quickly. "I'm calling about the anti litter campaign we're starting," he said smoothly. "We're getting a group of volunteers together to pick up cans along the highway next Saturday, and I was told Don might be interested." He knew it was a lame excuse, but it was the best he could do on the spur of the moment. The woman's voice sounded incredulous. "Don?"

"Could you just put him on the line please, Mrs. Wilson?"

"Okay," the woman said. "Just a second."

There was a moment of silence, then the boy came to the phone. His voice sounded tired, and Jim thought he had probably been sleeping.

"Yeah?"

"Don, this is Sheriff Weldon."

"Oh." The boy's voice was suddenly alert and wide awake.

"We found the bodies. Just like you said."

"I know."

Jim cleared his throat. "I got a note here that you called. You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes."

The boy's answers were unnaturally short, and his voice sounded not quite relaxed. Jim had a feeling that the boy's mother was standing there in the same room, listening. "Can you talk now?" he asked.

"No."

"Is your mother there? Is that why?"

"Yes."

"Okay," Jim said. "But I'd like you to come down to the office tomorrow. I want to talk to you about all this."

"All right."

"How does ten o'clock sound?"

"Fine."

"Okay. I'll see you then." Jim was about to say good-bye and hang up when he thought of something else. "One thing more. Father Selway ?

We found no trace of him. His body wasn't there."

Don's voice was still calm and controlled in front of his mother, but Jim could hear an edgy undercurrent of fear in it. "I know," he said.

"Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Sort of." Don's voice grew suddenly into a whisper. He spoke quickly, and Jim knew that his mother had left the room for a moment.

"I had another dream," he said. "It was--" The whisper cut off in mid-sentence, and the boy's voice resumed it's normal tone. "Later."

"You'll tell me later?"

"Yes."

"Okay, Don. I'll see you tomorrow then. Ten o'clock. My office."

"Fine. Good-bye, Sheriff."

"Good-bye." Jim hung up the phone feeling slightly edgy himself. He knew he was an adult, and a sheriff, and he was supposed to have gotten rid of his childhood fears years ago, but he was frightened nonetheless. The window of his office looked completely dark, he could see nothing but his own reflection in it, and he was reminded of a particularly horrible nightmare he had had last week. He stood up, suddenly spooked, knowing that both Judson and Pete were keeping watch in the front of the building and that he was all alone back here. He saw again the mutilated bodies of those two farmers, and the face of Mrs.Selway in the mud, rain dripping down her dead lips. He walked quickly across the office toward the door.

There was a quiet swishing noise in the hall outside.

Jim stood perfectly still, unmoving, every muscle in his body on alert.

He listened carefully, head cocked, but all he could hear at first was the rapid beating of his own heart. Then the swishing sound came again, darting down the hall toward the rear of the building. He drew his gun, knowing that nothing human could have made that sound, but hoping to God that he was wrong. He counted to five, then threw open the door.

The lights in the hallway were off, and he barely saw the dark shadow skitter around the corner at the far end of the corridor. He ran forward, gun in hand. The hall was cold, unnaturally so, much colder than even the air-conditioning system could have gotten it, and the air smelled faintly of sewage or rotting vegetables. He ran around the corner .. . and into Judson Weiss.

The deputy went sprawling, his wildly flailing arms knocking over a freestanding ashtray and sending a spray of white sand flying across the tile floor. "Jesus!" he yelled. He slid backward for a few seconds, then regained his balance and used his hands to push himself to his feet. He noticed Jim's drawn gun and instantly became alert. He reached for his own firearm. "What is it?"

Jim was trying to regain his own balance; though he had not fallen, the collision had sent him backward into the wall. "Did you see anything run by here?" he asked.

"What?"

"Something--" He stopped, knowing that what he was about to say sounded stupid, but having to say it anyway. "--something small and dark that made sort of a ... whisk-broom sound?"

Judson stared at him. "Like what? A rat?" His voice was puzzled.

Jim ran a hand through his hair. "Did you see anything run by here?"

"No sir."

"All right." Jim put the gun back in his holster. He knew how he probably sounded, and he was aware of the deputy's worried glance. He smiled to show he was all right. "I'm just tired, I guess. I thought I saw something run by my door. I don't know what the hell I thought it was." He picked up the spilled ashtray and refastened its bowl-shaped top. "Maybe Ioughtta get home and get some sleep."

Judson nodded. "Maybe so. Me and Pete will be here tonight. We'll call you if anything comes up."

"Yeah," Jim said. "Maybe I will head home. After that autopsy report is delivered none of us are going to get any sleep around here."

"Don't guess we will."

Jim pointed toward the spray of sand on the floor tile. "Think you could clean that up there?"

"Sure."

He patted Judson on the back. "Sorry I bumped into you."

"No problem, Sheriff."

Jim went back to his office to get his keys. He knew he probably was too tired. He seemed to be losing his grip. He wanted Judson to think nothing was wrong, but something was very much wrong. He had no proof, nothing to substantiate his fears, but he had a gut feeling that whatever was going on in Randall was not caused by anything human. He knew, though, that despite his inner unfounded suspicions he would have to investigate everything using proper police procedure--procedure that automatically assumed that all circumstances were the result of normal criminals operating in normal criminal ways. Maybe that was for the best. It wouldn't do to have a sheriff who based his actions on dreams, who saw things that weren't there.

But Don had been right about the Selways .

Jim sighed. He knew it was irrational, but it was almost inconceivable to him that so many things could be going on at once and not be connected somehow, particularly in a quiet small town like Randall, a town where the annual crime rate hovered just above zero. The way he saw it, in fact, they were connected. Several farmers' goats had been slaughtered, and the goats' blood had been used to desecrate the town's churches. Two of the farmers whose goats had been killed had themselves been murdered. And Father Selway , whose church had been the first hit, had been murdered.

No, not murdered. His family had been murdered. He was still only missing.

Jim closed his eyes. He could feel a headache coming on. He knew he was thinking irrationally, not reasoning correctly, and he knew he should probably tell someone his fears, his suspicions. Judson or Pete. Carl. But he could not bring himself to do it. This was something he could not share. He grabbed his keys and his hat. He nodded as he walked past Pete, who was manning the switchboard for the night, and made his way out to the parking lot. He couldn't help looking at the bushes surrounding the parking lot for any sign of movement, and he stopped to listen before he opened the car door.

But there was no movement and no sound, and he drove home still troubled.

The church bells rang out in staggered order, calling people to their respective Sunday services, their different tones and pitches blending, harmonizing, to create one lovely melded semi melody From his office, Jim could hear the bells of five of the town's six churches, and he could pick out the individual sounds of three of them. He looked out the window, staring at the fluffy white clouds above the Rim; the clouds that would turn into raging thunderheads bymidafternoon . All but one of the bells quit pealing. Their ringing tones faded, quieted, died out. Only the bell to the Episcopal church continued. Three extra rings. Then it, too, was silenced.

Jim stared in the direction of the Episcopal church, though he could see nothing but trees. He wondered who was taking Father Selway's place in the pulpit today. He thought of the horrible attitude of the bishop and he grimaced. He was half-considering popping over to the church for a quick look, just to see what was happening, when he heard the unmistakable sound of the fire department's siren. He cocked his head, listening. The truck seemed to be heading down Main Street, away from Old Mesa Road. He skirted around his desk and turned up the scanner on the shelf above the rifle case.

".. . Ash Lane." There was a sharp crackle of static. "Fire reported at the residence of John Wilson," a woman's voice stated. "Twelve thirty-four South Ash Lane."

Wilson!

Jim ran down the hall to the front office. "Rita!" he called. "Do you have the address of that kid who was here yesterday? Don Wilson?"

The dispatcher looked startled. "Yes, but I think I put it on your desk."

"Never mind! Do you remember whether he lived on Ash?"

"I think he did ..."

Jim was out the door and running, fumbling the keys out of his pocket as he sprinted across the small parking lot. He hit the lights and the siren and spun out onto the street. He grabbed the radio microphone from its spot on the dash. He clicked the radio tuner to the fire emergency channel. "Weldon!" he shouted into the mike. "Get me an update on that fire!"

The woman's voice came over the car's speaker. Sheriff?" It was Natalie Ernst, Chief Ernst's daughter-in-law.

"Howbad's the damage Natalie?"

"The truck's there right now. The neighbor who called said the house just sort of exploded about ten minutes ago."

Ten minutes ago. He hadn't heard a thing. "What about the family?"

"Someone got out, but we're not sure who."

"Was it a kid?"

There was a short hesitation. "I don't think so."

Jim turned the car onto Old Mesa Road. The four travelers on the street pulled over as they heard his siren. He let the radio mike hang. "Sheriff?" Natalie said. "Sheriff?" He flipped the radio off and turned onto Ash. Ahead, he could see the square yellow bulk of the town's new fire engine blocking the road. Smoke was billowing out from the house in front of the fire engine, partially obscuring the scene. A tangle of hoses, like gigantic anacondas, snaked across the partially paved road into the thickest part of the smoke.

A helmeted, uniformed man, probably Ernst, was standing in the middle of the street shouting orders and gesturing authoritatively.

Jim slammed on the brakes and hopped out of the car. He ran straight for the fire chief. "How's the kid?" he yelled.

Ernst looked at him, his face already blackened by soot. "What kid?"

The neighbors were out now, standing in front of their houses in huddled groups, a bizarre mixture of Sunday-suited churchgoers and sleep-garbed stay-at-homes. They were milling around nervously, looking this way and that, talking among themselves in hushed tones.

Jim walked up to the nearest group. He nodded toward a well-dressed elderly man. "Do you know theWilsons ?" he asked.

The man shrugged. "Not too well."

"Any of you?"

"I used to baby-sit Don," one lady offered. She clutched the top of her pink terry cloth robe to her neck, trying to hide her semi nakedness.

"Have you seen Don this morning?"

The lady shook her head. "I just got out here a few minutes ago. I didn't know anything was happening till I heard the sirens pull up."

Jim strode over to another man, standing by himself, staring into the smoke. "You seen anything?"

The man shook his head. "I heard the woman got out. That's all I know."

"Did you see her?"

The man pointed toward an adjoining lawn, where several people were milling about. "I think she's over there. They're waiting for the ambulance to come."

Jim started toward the house next door, but he could see the sheeted figure on the grass between several legs before he even reached the spot. His heart sank as he pushed two people out of the way and looked down on the moaning remains of Don Wilson's mother, her arms, little more than stumps, trying unsuccessfully to shield her charred and blackened face from heat that was no longer there. The sounds that came out of her mouth were barely human, and discolored blood seeped out from beneath peeling folds of burned skin.

He turned away and walked back across the street to where Ernst was adjusting a hose on the fire truck. Orange flames were now leaping out of the smoke. "Chief!" he called.

Ernst waved him away with one short motion of his hand. "You're in the way, Weldon," he said abruptly. "I'll be glad to talk to you, but not right now. We've got a fire to put out."

Jim stepped back and watched as Ernst and another man ran into the smoke toward the house carrying a hose. He heard several voices shouting orders.

He stood alone in the middle of the street, staring numbly. Don was dead, he knew. The boy had never even made it out of the house. He had probably died in his sleep from smoke inhalation. Or else he had fried trying to escape. Jim thought he saw shapes moving through the smoke. It looked like the fire was coming under control. This was no accident, this fire. Someone--something-had wanted Don dead, had known that the boy had come to him and wanted to get him out of the way. He stepped over a puddle, walking back to his car. He was going to make sure that Ernst followed through with an investigation of this fire. A full arson investigation. The fire had been deliberately started, and he wanted some answers.

He stood for a moment staring at the remains of the Wilson house, now visible through the thinning smoke, and remembered the small scared boy sitting in his office, nervously clenching and unclenching his hands, flipping his too-long hair off his dirty forehead. He had not really known the boy, but he had liked him. He'd seemed like a good kid.

He thought unreasonably of his own son Justin. He saw him the victim of a deliberately set fire or some other form of murder made to look like an accident and he shivered. Maybe he should send Annette and the kids down to Phoenix to stay with his brother for a few days. Or a few weeks. Or however long it took for this thing to blow over.

He got into the car and backed slowly out, lights and siren off.

Glancing in the rearview mirror at the chaotic street, at the incendiary destruction, he felt as though something had been taken out of him, as though he were empty. He had not realized until now how much he had been depending on that boy to see him through this crisis, to provide him with more dream-inspired clues, to help him, somehow, solve all of these interrelated cases. He had been expecting the boy to be with him every step of the way, to lead him. Now he was alone.

He was on his own and he would have to use his own deductive powers and abilities to put an end to all this.

And he had nothing whatsoever to go on.

He drove slowly back toward the sheriff's office.

The trip to Phoenix was uneventful. Neither Gordon nor Marina felt like speaking, and they drove down Black Canyon Highway without talking, listening only to the sound of the tires on the washboard road and to the cheerily artificial conversation of the morning deejays on the radio. They left early, so there was no traffic, and they stared silently out at the craggy cliffs, massive gorges, and thick forests of the Coconino as they traveled, both lost in their own thoughts.

They reached the Valley well before noon and spent the morning looking through the myriad expensive Fifth Avenue shops in Scottsdale, talking obviously and self-consciously about third-party events entirely unrelated to the upcoming ordeal.

After a quick and quiet lunch at a fake French outdoor cafe, they drove into Phoenix. To the hospital.

Gordon stared up at the peeling white paint and run-down exterior of the hospital's administration building. He couldn't see the top floor of the structure through his car windshield, but he did notice that several of the third-story windows were broken.

Obscene graffiti was spray-painted on the lower portion of the street wall, and the first floor windows were barred with chain link fence. He had never been to St. Luke's before, and the hospital did not look as he had expected. He looked over at Marina, suddenly apprehensive. "I didn't know the place was this old," he said.

She smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry about it. It's a good hospital." She pointed past the administration building to where a giant complex of new concrete buildings arose. "Besides, that's where we're going. This is just the original hospital. I don't think they even use it anymore."

She was right. Gordon pulled into the parking lot and followed the white arrows painted on the asphalt to the new wing, where he found a spot near the entrance, adjacent to a handicapped space. They got out of the Jeep and walked through the sliding glass doors into the air-conditioned hospital lobby. Marina sat down on a cushiony chair and picked up a magazine while Gordon strode purposefully across the carpeted floor to the front desk. A woman wearing a telephone headset was staring intently down at a series of file cards. Gordon cleared his throat to let her know of his presence. "Excuse me," he said.

The woman looked up. "May I help you?"

"Yes, my wife is here to see Dr. Kaplan."

The woman opened a large notebook. "Does she have an appointment?"

"For one o'clock."

"Name?"

"Lewis. Marina Lewis."

The woman's finger ran down the notebook page to a line halfway down and then stopped. "Just a minute." She punched a key on the switchboard in front of her and spoke into the mouthpiece of her headset. "Dr. Kaplan? Mrs. Lewis is here to see you." She paused.

"Yes." Another pause. "Okay. Thank you, doctor." She looked up at Gordon. "Dr. Kaplan is ready for her. A nurse will be coming out with a wheelchair to take her into the exam room."

Gordon walked back across the lobby to where Marina sat reading her magazine. Her overstuffed straight-backed chair was pushed flush against a wall of crisscrossing unfinished wood. Above her head hung a framed ClanNamingha print. She was staring down at the pages of the magazine and did not notice when he walked up. He cleared his throat loudly, pompously.

She looked up at him, smiling. "So?"

"So a nurse is coming to bring you back to Dr. Kaplan." He grinned.

"You're going in style."

She sighed disgustedly. "Wheelchair?"

Gordon laughed. "You got it." He sat down in the chair next to her and gently lifted the magazine from her lap, putting it back on the small table on the other side of her. He took her hands in his, looking into her large brown eyes. "Are you going to be all right?"

She nodded. "Do you want to come back there with me?"

"I don't think they'll let me. Besides, I have to fill out the insurance forms and everything. I'll just wait here for you."

Marina smiled lightly, mischievously. "You're just afraid to go back there."

He smiled back. "You're right."

"What a wuss ."

A thin old nurse, wearing a traditional white hat and uniform, came through the set of swinging double doors next to the front desk, pushing an empty wheelchair. She looked down at the clipboard she was carrying. "Mrs. Lewis?" she called, scanning the lobby.

"That's you," Gordon said. He stood up and walked with her to the wheelchair. They stared silently at each other for a moment, each painfully aware of what the other was thinking, feeling, and she hugged him tightly before sitting down. "Don't worry," he said. "Everything's going to be okay."

She smiled, but her smile was less genuine than before and there seemed to be a hint of sadness in it. She held up her crossed fingers.

"Let's hope so."

The nurse wheeled her through the double doors and into the depths of the hospital.

The smile fled Gordon's face immediately after the doors swung shut, and he walked slowly back to the front desk feeling tired and emotionally fatigued. God, he hoped everything was going to be all right. A gut-level feeling told him that Marina's test results were going to be bad and his brain told him logically that he should prepare for the worst, but part of him wanted to believe the best and was hoping for the best.

He received a sheaf of duplicate forms and a pen from the woman at the desk and sat wearily down in the nearest chair. He twisted his neck in a slow semicircle to relieve some of the stress and closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he glanced over the papers and began filling out the top form.

"And the Lord said unto woman, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.""

At the sound of the deep oratorical voice, Gordon jerked his gaze up from the forms in his lap. Standing before him, he saw a tall, business-suited man carrying what looked like a small black-bound Bible in his right hand, next to his chest. A bundle of thin pamphlets was clutched in his free-dangling left hand. The man's graying hair was short and neatly combed, parted on the side, and his face was almost pleasant. His eyes were two piercingly black orbs that burned with the fiery intensity of fanaticism. His tie clip, Gordon noticed, was in the shape of a cross.

"Genesis 3:16," the man said.

"I'm not interested," Gordon said shortly. He looked down, turning again to his paperwork, hoping the man would go away. But instead the stranger sat down in the chair next to him. Gordon continued writing, trying to ignore the man. He was acutely aware of the man's presence, and he knew without looking that those burning black eyes were boring into him. After a minute or so, he glanced up. Sure enough, the man was staring. "What do you want?" Gordon asked.

"My name is Brother Elias," the man said. "I want to help you."

"I don't need any help," Gordon said. He turned back to his insurance forms.

"Yes you do. Your wife is going to have a baby. And there will be troubles."

Gordon jerked his head up, shocked and, against his more rational impulses, a little frightened. "What do you mean?" he said. "Who the hell are you?"

Brother Elias smiled distractedly. He fingered his tie clip. "Do you realize," he said, "that if Christ had been killed with a knife instead of on the cross we would today be worshiping a knife? This tie clasp would be a knife." He made an expansive motion in the air.

"Sculpted knives would hang on the fronts of our churches."

The man was crazy, Gordon realized. He did not know whether Brother Elias was an ex-hippie who had turned to Christ, bringing his fried brain along with him, or whether he was a fallen fundamentalist, but he knew that the man was not one of your ordinary everyday Bible-thumpers.

Gordon picked up the pen from his lap, grabbed his forms and stood up, preparing to move to another seat.

Brother Elias stood up as well.

"I know what has befallen you and your loved ones, and I want to help you," Brother Elias said. "You are suffering the consequences of the wicked." He knelt on the lobby carpet and reached up to grab Gordon's hand. "Sit here and pray with me and we will put it right."

Gordon pulled away, shaking his head, staring in disbelief at the kneeling man. "No."

""The field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. And the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the close of the age."

Matthew 13:39."

Gordon looked around the lobby to see if anyone else had caught this, to see if anyone else was watching. But the few people sitting in the overstuffed chairs were either staring out the smoked glass of the window onto the parking lot or looking at the carpet, contemplating their own miseries and misfortunes. No one was paying any attention to Brother Elias.

Brother Elias bowed his head. "Praise Jesus!" he said. "Praise the Lord!"

Gordon stared. Why the hell had this guy decided to pick on him?

Brother Elias looked up. "If Christ had been hung instead of crucified, we would today be worshiping a noose."

Gordon walked over to the front desk. He tapped his hand on the white countertop to get the headsetted woman's attention. "Excuse me, miss," he said. "But is this man supposed to be here?" He pointed toward Brother Elias, still kneeling on the floor of the lobby praying.

The woman took one look at the business-suited preacher, at the Bible and the stack of pamphlets on the carpet next to him, and pressed a red key on her switchboard. "Security?" she said. "The reverend is back again. Would you please escort him out of the hospital? .. . Thank you." She looked up at Gordon and nodded.

Gordon returned to his seat, but this time Brother Elias did not follow him. "Pray," the preacher said, walking voluntarily toward the glass doors of the front entrance. He looked back at Gordon. "Pray for your wife. Pray for your daughter. "For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother."" His black orbs bored into Gordon's for a moment, then he was gone, walking out of the building just as two uniformed security guards entered the lobby from another door.

Gordon picked up his pen and the sheaf of insurance forms.

On top of the stack of papers was a small cheaply printed pamphlet.

The large bold letters on the cover of the pamphlet said: "SATAN is using YOU! HE is here NOW!"

He did not even bother to read the leaflet. He crumpled the paper up and deposited it in the ashtray of the table next to him.

He got to work on the insurance forms.

It was nearly four o'clock when Marina finally emerged from behind the swinging double doors, a different nurse wheeling her out. Gordon, who had been situated in a chair by the front window, staring at the doors and waiting for Marina's return, stood up immediately and went over to her. She looked tired, but she was smiling, and she stood up from the chair as soon as she saw him. "Good news," she said.

"Really?" He could not believe it. He had been preparing himself for the worst, and her announcement took him by surprise.

"I think so. The preliminary tests look good. But it'll be tomorrow before we know for sure." She smiled at him, her eyes twinkling.

"Better start thinking up girls' names."

"Are you sure?"

"No, I lied."

"I mean, it really looks promising?"

She laughed. "It looks that way."

He hugged her, squeezing her close. They kissed. "Let's celebrate," he said, pulling back. "Let's go out somewhere to eat. Somewhere expensive."

Marina shook her head. "I'd rather not. I don't really feel all that well. Some of those tests, you know ..." She shook her head and rolled her eyes in an expression of un believability leaving the sentence unfinished. "Let's just get home."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather stay overnight in the Valley and drive back up tomorrow?"

"You have to work tomorrow."

"I'll call in sick. Brad won't care."

She looked at him as if he'd just said something outrageous. "You're joking, right?"

He smiled. "All right."

"Besides, we need to save all the money we can. We're going to be proud parents."

He thought of her earlier ideas about an abortion and wanted to ask her what her thoughts were now, but he decided against it. "I get the hint," he said, smiling. He offered her his arm and she took it. "We'd better get started if we want to get back before dark."

They walked out of the lobby into the parking lot. Although it was late afternoon, the temperature was still well over a hundred and the sun was high in the clear blue, cloudless sky. There were no monsoons to relieve the heat in Phoenix. They got into the Jeep, leaning back into their seats slowly. The vinyl upholstery of the car felt hot even through their clothing. Gordon rolled down his window and turned the air conditioner on full blast, trying to drive out the hellishly heated air. He was already sweating.

"Thank God we don't live here," Marina said.

"That's a fact."

They pulled onto Washington Avenue, heading west toward Black Canyon Highway.

A few minutes later, they passed Brother Elias, calmly standing by the side of the road in his business suit, hitchhiking. The preacher smiled directly at Gordon and waved as they drove by THE REVELATION /

How did be know my car? Gordon wondered--but Gordon continued driving and stared straight ahead, ignoring him. He thought he could feel those intense black eyes cutting through the glare of the windshield and boring into him. Marina did not notice a thing.

On the way out of Phoenix, they stopped at a Dairy Queen where they each got a sundae for the long trip home.

Old Mrs. Perry was going to have a baby.

Phil Johnson, director of the Randall Rest Home, shook his head and tossed a twisted paper clip into the wastebasket as he reread the doctor's report. It was inconceivable. The woman was well over eighty and just this side of senile. On her best days she was barely coherent. On her worst days she was little more than a blubbering overgrown infant.

Sighing, he stood up and folded the report, placing it in the top drawer along with several file folders. He flipped off the desk lamp and walked down the sterile white-lighted hallway to Mrs. Perry's darkened room. Slowly, quietly, he pushed open the door and looked in, staring down at her sleeping form. Her cadaverous chest rose and fell visibly with each rasping breath. Her back, propped up by a series of pillows, only accentuated her rising belly. His eyes shifted to her face. A thin line of mucus stretched from her small nose across the wrinkled mustached skin to her dried cracked lips. Even in sleep, he noted, her expression was not peaceful. Her brows were furrowed; her mouth curved down in a painful grimace.

He shook his head again. How could she be pregnant?

Who the hell would sleep with her?

The question was never very far from his thoughts. Who would sleep with her? What kind ofsicko would want to have sex with an eighty-year-old woman?

And how in God's name had she gotten pregnant? She was long past menopause. It should have been physically impossible for her to conceive.

But Dr. Waterston had checked her over thoroughly. Several times.

That rising midsection was not caused by overeating, malnutrition, some disease, or any of the other countless possibilities he had first considered. It was caused by the growth of the living fetus inside of her.

Phil quietly left the room, closing the door behind him, and started down the hall to the coffee machine in the kitchen. It was his fault things had gone this far. He should have noticed earlier, he should have kept a closer watch on her, he should have.. ..

But there were other patients in the rest home who also required constant supervision. Too many of them. And he was so hopelessly understaffed that it was a miracle there were not more problems.

Now it was too late for an abortion. In his report, Dr. Waterston said that such a procedure would almost certainly be fatal for the mother as well as the fetus at this stage of the pregnancy. Mrs. Perry's age and precarious physical health made it not only more dangerous but genuinely lethal.

Phil walked into the kitchen, got a Styrofoam cup from the half unwrapped bag on the counter and poured himself some coffee. The room was dark, and he did not bother to turn on a light. A diffused refracted light entered the kitchen through the open hallway door, and the edges of the room were bathed in shadow. He shuddered as he looked into the darkness and thought of what the poor baby would probably look like.

Years ago, as a medic in the army, he had assisted with the birth of an infant to a similarlyove raged woman in a small town in Italy. It had not been a pretty sight. The baby had emerged horribly disfigured, almost indistinguishable from the bloody afterbirth, and had died almost instantly. He had had nightmares about it for years afterward.

He downed half a cup of the lukewarm black coffee and poured himself some more. He looked up at the broken wall clock above the refrigerator, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight coming through the partially open kitchen curtains. The clock said two thirty. He mentally subtracted an hour, then added ten minutes. One-forty.

Another four hours and twenty minutes until Mrs. Stowe needed her medication. He could catch a little sleep.

He finished off the coffee then passed through the back of the kitchen to his bedroom. He set the small alarm on the nightstand for six a.m.

and sat down on the edge of the bed. He started to take off his shoes.

The scream rent the air of the rest home like a harsh and high pitched siren.

He jumped up, startled, scared. The scream came again; a hideously inhuman shriek of pure physical pain. He ran into the hallway. The instinctive fear left his body as quickly as it had come and was replaced by a trained sense of professional duty. The scream had come from Mrs. Perry's room, and he rushed over to her door, flinging it open.

The old woman sat straight up in her bed, her face contorted with agony. Unchecked tears ran down her wrinkled cheeks, and her mouth was wide open, screaming continuously without stopping for breath.

"What's wrong?" Phil called. "What is it?" But he knew she could not answer him, and he ran up to her, pulling the covers from her body.

He stared in shock.

The white sheet of the old woman's bed was covered with blood, which was seeping outward from the space between her legs in a rapidly spreading semicircle.

She was going to have the baby.

Phil pushed her back onto the stack of piled pillows, trying not to panic, telling her all the while to relax, things were going to be all right. Other people had gathered in the doorway by this time, and he yelled for someone to call Dr. Waterston. John Jacobs, a retired air force pilot and the most physically fit of the nursing home's residents, ran off to follow the order.

"It's going to be okay," Phil said, turning back to the old woman on the bed. "Don't worry." But he was not at all sure. It looked like she had lost a lot of blood, and that did not seem natural. More blood was still flowing from between her legs. Taking a deep breath, he held her bony chest down with one hand while he attempted to part her thighs with the other.

The baby was already halfway out.

Phil gasped. The baby's head was already protruding from the opening, flopping deadly back and forth on a too-small neck. It looked as though the neck had been broken by Mrs. Perry's panicked movements.

Holding his breath, looking away, trying to keep down his own feelings of panic and terror, he reached between her legs and gently grabbed the baby's head. It was soft, slimy, slippery--like a piece of pulsating raw liver. He felt a rush of horrified disgust in the pit of his stomach, but he held on. He started to pull.

The baby squirted out in one sickening pop.

"Towel!" he yelled. "Somebody get me a towel!"

A woman handed him a blanket, and he wrapped the baby up in the material, wiping off the blood. He bent down and pressed his ear to the newborn's tiny chest, but he could hear no breathing, no heartbeat.

The infant was not moving. Instinctively, he flopped the baby over onto its back and started pressing down on its midsection, trying to get its heart started, trying to get it to breathe. When that didn't work he covered the baby's mouth with his own and attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He could taste the sickeningly acrid blood on his tongue, and the taste, combined with the strongly rancid smell, almost made him retch. But he fought down his gag reflexes and kept on.

A few minutes later, tired and out of breath, he pulled his mouth away from the baby's and once again pressed his ear to the infant's chest.

Nothing.

He pounded hard on the infant's skeletal ribcage, trying to jar the heart into action, and again started the mouth-to-mouth.

It was no use, though. And he knew it was no use.

The infant was dead.

After a few more seemingly endless moments of frantically trying to revive the dead baby, Phil gave up. He pulled back, wiping the sweat from his eyes, and looked at the small child. It was a girl. Or would have been a girl. Her face, as he had feared, as he had known, was monstrously malformed. There was only one eye-open and staring--and no nose. The mouth spread almost vertically up the side of the right cheek. Her arms and legs were twisted almost beyond recognition.

He covered the infant with the blanket and stood up. Jill had come in while he'd been trying to revive the baby. She was standing at the foot of the bed, half-dressed but fully awake, a concerned-social-worker expression on her face. He told her to stay with Mrs. Perry until Dr. Waterston came. "The rest of you," he said, gesturing toward the gathered patients, "go back to bed. We'll get everything sorted out by morning, and we'll have a group meeting at ten in the dayroom and talk. I'll answer all of your questions then."

The patients reluctantly shuffled off to their individual bedrooms, talking in low shocked tones amongst themselves, while Phil carried the dead infant to the infirmary. He placed the blanketed baby on the steel counter that ran along the south wall of the room, making sure she was completely covered, and went back down the hall to help Jill with Mrs. Perry.

The doctor arrived fifteen minutes later.

"What the hell happened?" he asked, stepping quickly through the open doorway.

"Mrs. Perry had her baby," Phil said.

Dr. Waterston strode down the hall toward Mrs. Perry's bedroom. "She wasn't supposed to have that baby for another month!"

Phil shrugged, not sure of what to say.

"Why didn't you call me earlier?" the doctor demanded. "When she was in labor?"

"She wasn't," Phil said. "I mean, I looked in on her, checking to make sure she was okay, and she was sleeping soundly. Five minutes later, she started screaming, and when I rushed in there she was covered with blood."

"What did you do?"

"She was sitting up. I made her lie back down, then I spread her legs and looked. The baby's head was already halfway out."

"That's impossible."

"That's what happened. It looked like the baby's neck was broken."

They walked into Mrs. Perry's room, and the doctor took a needle and syringe from the white bag he was carrying. He rubbed a swab of alcohol on the old lady's arm and injected her. The drug took effect almost immediately, and Mrs. Perry's sweaty, agonized, tear-stained face relaxed into unconsciousness.

Dr. Waterston examined the mother, checked her heart, her breathing, looked at her pupils, thoroughly studied her dilated vagina, then turned to Phil. "Let's look at the infant."

Phil led the doctor down the hall to the infirmary without speaking.

He opened the infirmary door, turned on the light .. . and saw that the baby was gone.

"What the--"

He ran over to the spot where he'd lain the dead infant. The bloodied blanket was thrown onto the floor next to the counter, but there was no sign of the baby. The doctor strode up behind him. "Is this where you left the infant?"

Phil nodded. "I don't know who would ... I can't understand why anyone would want to .. ." He swallowed hard as he thought of the newborn girl's deformed face and horribly twisted limbs. He looked at the doctor. "It must have been one of the patients." He started going over a mental list of the more emotionally unbalanced residents of the nursing home. "It had to be one of the patients."

The doctor was bending over, looking down at the linoleum floor.

"Maybe," he said quietly. "Maybe not." He stood up and pointed at the top of the steel counter, at the small pool of blood left by the baby.

Claw marks were clearly outlined in the blood.

And the faint imprint of tiny feet could be seen on the floor next to the discarded blanket.

"It woulda scared the shit out of me, too." Brad loaded the last case of Pepsi onto the truck and pulled down the metal door, closing it.

"I'd sue the bastards if I were you."

Gordon shook his head. "I wouldn't know who to sue. Besides, there's nothing really to sue over. The tests said Marina's okay. Even if she was exposed to something there's no way we could prove it." He picked up his hat from the table and put it on. He jumped off the concrete rim of the loading dock and got into the passenger seat of the cab.

Brad finished locking up the warehouse, then came around to the front of the truck and got in. Gordon lifted up the visor of his hat and scratched his head. "As if that wasn't enough, I had a real mother of a nightmare last night."

"That's understandable."

"I can't remember all of it exactly, but it had something to do with my cousins and a huge monster spider."

Brad grinned at him. "You know what that means, don't you? It means you're a fag."

Gordon laughed.

The truck pulled out of the warehouse driveway onto Cedar, then turned from Cedar onto Main. The turn was sharp, and the left rear tires dipped into the ditch as they rounded the corner. Gordon braced himself for the sound of tires popping--a sound he knew was inevitable--but the truck, against all odds, made the turn safely on to the paved street. He looked at Brad and smiled. "I thought for sure we'd eat it that time."

"Are you kidding? Take a lot more than that to cripple this baby."

Brad pounded the steering wheel affectionately and the horn bleated. A

small car, a Toyota, passing them in the left lane, heard the sound and honked back. Brad leaned on the horn, sending out a long sustained blast, and stuck his middle finger out the window. "We weren't even honking at you! Asshole!"

The truck turned onto the highway and headed toward the south end of town. Today they would be covering the gas stations, liquor stores and fast food places within Randall. And, as always, they would work from south to north, then from east to west, big streets to little streets.

Brad pulled into the Whiting Bros, gas station at the southern tip of town. "You say that's what happened to Julie Campbell's baby, huh?

Something to do with the water?"

Gordon shrugged. "Near as we can figure."

Brad shook his head. "Fuckers." The truck pulled to a stop in front of the ornamental wooden hitching post before the door to the gas station office, and he yanked hard on the emergency brake. The Whiting Bros, station was on the downward end of the hill sloping into town, but it was still on a considerable slant, and once before, when he had forgotten to put on the brake, the truck had started rolling on them.

He always made sure the emergency brake was on now. "I used to go out with Julie's sister," he said, getting out of the cab.

"June?" Gordon raised his eyebrows. "I didn't know that."

"Well, it was a long time ago. Before me and Connie met." He grabbed the back door handle and stood for a moment without opening it, staring at the red, white, and blue Pepsi logo painted on the metal. "Took her to my senior prom. Fucked her brains out in the car afterward. First piece of ass I ever got. I still have the picture somewhere."

"Of you fucking her brains out?" Gordon grinned. "That must be a sight to see."

"No, dick meat Our prom picture."

"Whatever happened to June? I've heard Julie talk about her, but I don't think I've ever seen her. Is she still around here somewhere?"

Brad pulled up on the door handle, pushing it upward toward the roof of the truck. "Married some redneck, I think. Some construction worker up in Prescott or something." He looked at Gordon, and the expression on his face said that the topic was closed. "They always take at least a case of regular Pepsi here. You bring that on in, and I'll see what else these jokers need."

Gordon watched Brad's back as he walked into the gas station office. So Brad still had a soft spot for Julie Campbell's sister. He'd have to tell Marina about that one. She'd get a big kick out of it.

He grabbed a case of Pepsi and, grunting, carried it into the gas station office.

After delivering cases of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and Pepsi Light to the other gas stations on the south end of town and to Marty's Liquor, they drove back to the warehouse, loaded up again and then headed back onto the highway to finish the job. Brad pulled to a stop in front of Char Clifton's station. He looked at Gordon. "Is your insurance going to cover the cost of the doctors?"

"I'll probably have to fight like hell for it, but I was looking over our policy last night and it should cover most of it. Of course there is a two hundred dollar deductible. I'll have to scrape that together somehow."

Brad pulled on his beard and nodded. "Tell you what," he said. "I'm going to give you a hundred dollar bonus this month. To help out."

Gordon stared at him in surprise. "Really?"

Brad opened the door and got out, not looking at him. "Yeah. What the hell. This is our busy season. We've made quite a bit this summer from all the tourists coming up to the lakes and all. And you've done a damn good job. Done the work of two men this summer."

"I don't know what to say."

"Don't say nothing," Brad growled. "Just grab a goddamn case and bring it in." He stomped hard on the rubber cable that rang the gas station's bell and started walking toward the office, taking out his order pad. "Shit. Maybe I can get some kind of raise for you too. To help out with the expenses. Kids cost a lot these days."

Gordon just stared at him.

He heard about Mrs. Perry's baby in Pete's Diner.

It was a fifth- or sixth-hand retelling of the story by one customer to another, but at the sound of the words "baby" and "born dead" Gordon had put down his load and stopped to listen. The two customers were seated at the counter, drinking coffee and eatingfrench fries soaked in ketchup. The man who was telling the story looked like a regular, one of those retired men who hang out at diners and coffee shops to talk to others like themselves. He was nearly bald and wearing jeans and a faded work shirt. A straw cowboy hat occupied the vinyl seat next to him. The other man was around Gordon's age and was wearing a greasy mechanic's uniform.

Brad, too, stopped work for a few moments to hear the story, following Gordon's lead.

"She was damn near ninety or ninety-five," the old man said. "They're not even sure how she got pregnant. But there she was. Woke up the whole damn place with her screaming, and by the time anyone got there she'd already had the baby. Guy who told me about it said the thing crawled out on its own."

"But I thought it was born dead," the other man said.

"Oh it was. And it was all deformed, too. Didn't hardly look human at all. They put it in another room while they checked over the old lady, and when they came back it was gone. Disappeared."

"Do they know who stole it?"

The storyteller nodded. "They found some footprints." His voice dropped. "But they weren't human."

"Really?"

"The cloven hoof of the Beast." The old man took a sip of his coffee.

"Brian--he's the one that told me about it--he said he's thinking of writing to the National Enquirer or something and telling them about it. They'd probably be interested in something like this."

The mechanic nodded. "Make mucho bucks off it, too."

"Damn straight."

Gordon didn't believe the last half of the story, but he had no doubt that the first part was true. Even the most outrageous exaggerations usually had some basis in fact. He looked at Brad, then stepped toward the two men. The thought that yet another deformed and stillborn infant had been born in Randall troubled him. He cleared his throat loudly. "Excuse me," he said. "I couldn't help overhearing your story."

The old man nodded. "Yeah, it's something."

"I'd like to know when and where this happened. Could you tell me what you know about it, where you heard about it?"

The man put a ketchup soakedfrench fry in his mouth and followed it with a swallow of coffee. "I heard about it from Brian Stevens. It happened at the Randall Rest Home last night." He held up his empty cup and signaled to the waitress for more coffee.

"Last night?"

"Yeah. Brian's wife is in the nursing home. She saw it with her own eyes."

"The woman was ancient," Brad said, tapping Gordon's shoulder. "What do you expect? You think she's going to have a healthy blue-eyed bundle of joy when she's ninety goddamn years old?"

Brad was right. Such a situation could be attributed to age. Women who had children past the age of forty often had retarded babies or babies with birth defects, and that was certainly possible here.

Still, the story bothered him. He knew nothing save what he'd heard from this old man--and three-fourths of that he attributed to exaggeration--but he had a hunch, a gut feeling, that the baby's problems had been unrelated to the age of the mother.

"Come on," Brad said, picking up his case. "Let's get back to work."

"Yeah, sure," he said. He nodded toward the two men at the counter.

"Thanks."

"No problem." The old man opened a packet of sugar and poured half of it into his coffee, throwing the rest into a dirty amber ashtray. "Glad to be of service."

Gordon followed Brad back out to the truck. Behind him, he heard the mechanic mention the Beast. "I don't like this," he said. "I don't like it at all."

"I don't blame you." Brad grunted as he pulled a case of Diet Pepsi from the truck. "But I wouldn't worry about it too much if I was you.

The doctors took all those tests and they said everything's going to be okay." He smiled. "Whatever it was didn't seem to affect your baby maker none."

Gordon shook his head. "I just don't like it." He pulled down another case of Pepsi and carried it into the diner.

The kitten was .. . cute. It was the only word to describe her, much as Marina hated to admit it. Cute. Even surrounded by unkempt derelict cats in a hideous wire cage at the rear of the Humane Society building, the kitten's spirit was still undaunted; it shone through the dismal surroundings like a beacon. The kitten's light gray fur was clean and fluffy and stuck out on the sides of her flattened face like a mane. Greenish yellow owl eyes, wide and perfectly round, peered bravely, curiously forth from amidst the hair. A red mouth, filled with tiny baby teeth, emitted barely audible but heartrending peeps.

Marina cautiously stuck a finger through the bars of the cage and the little kitten bounced happily toward her on fat little feet. The kitten reached up with her two front paws and grabbed onto the finger.

She bit the tip affectionately. The bite tickled, and Marina pulled her finger back, laughing. She turned to the Humane Society attendant.

"I'll take her," she said.

The man shrugged noncommittally. "Cost you ten dollars, including shots."

"That's fine." Marina smiled as she stuck her finger once again through the wire cage. The kitten grabbed onto the finger and started biting.

She filled out the proper forms and paid the money at the front desk, trying to think of names for her new pet. She definitely didn't want to name the kitten something like Coco or Princess or any of the other sickeningly saccharine names favored by old ladies or young girls. And names like Missy orQueenie that ended in an "ee" sound were definitely out. Perhaps Alfalfa would be good, after the Little Rascals'

character. Or Horton, after Dr. Seuss' elephant. Or Francois, after Truffaut.

The attendant brought the kitten out and asked Marina if she would like a box for the trip home, but she said she'd rather hold the kitty instead. The man handed her the peeping ball of gray fur, and she cradled her new pet in her arms like a baby. The kitten lightly bit her finger and purred.

Dracula. That would be a good name.

No,Vlad . AfterVlad theImpaler , the original Dracula.

She looked down at the gray furry face. "HiVlad ," she said.

The kitten looked up at her and bit her finger.

Vladspent the trip home exploring the car. She crawled under the seats, hopped on the dashboard and spent quite a while doing God-knew-what in the very back of the Jeep. Marina tried to drive and keep an eye on the kitten at the same time. She didn't want her to get stuck under the seat or try to jump out or something.

Once home, she grabbed the kitten, who was rummaging around in a box of emergency car parts, and took her immediately into the house. She put her down on the hardwood floor of the kitchen.Vlad looked around suspiciously at first but quickly lost her fear. She trotted off to explore the living room, padding across the floor on her fat little feet.

Marina spent the afternoon followingVlad around the house, keeping the kitten away from restricted areas such as the couches by picking her up, saying "No" and putting her down someplace else. She poured her new pet a saucer of milk but discovered that she had forgotten to buy any kind of cat food. She opened a can of Star-Kist tuna and made a note to have Gordon get some real cat food.

She made a makeshift litter box from an old Pepsi carton and filled it with dirt from the garden.

At a little after three, she putVlad back in the car and drove into town to pick up Gordon. She parked in front of the warehouse, held the kitten in her lap and waited. A few minutes later, Gordon pulled open the door of the Jeep, sat down and sighed. "Damn I'm tired. My arms hurt like hell."

Marina said nothing.

He looked at her. "What are you waiting for? Let's go." His eyes found the small bundle of fur in her lap. "Got a new pussy, huh?"

She hit his shoulder with her fist. "How can you be so crude?"

He smiled. "Must be from hanging around Brad all day. You'd be that way too if you had to spend all your time with him." He held out his hands. "Let me see the little guy." Marina handed him the kitten and he held the animal's face next to his. "Cute little thing, isn't he?"

"It's not a he, it's a she. And her name isVlad ."

"Vlad? That's a boy's name. Why are you calling her that?"

"Put your finger next to her face."

Gordon held out an index finger andVlad grabbed it with two paws and began biting. Gordon laughed. "That's great." He put the kitten down on his lap and rubbed her fur, playing with her. The kitten leapt and attacked. He held his hand over the kitten's face, and she tried to bite his palm. "You're a little fighter, aren't you? Aren't you?"

Vlad bit.

They drove toward home.

The white Dodge Dart, its bumpers and windows covered with a thin layer of fine reddish dust, sped down the forest service road toward Aspen Lake. The windows of the car were up, the air conditioning on, and the stereo was cranked up almost to the pain level. Matt McDowell, bouncing around on the ripped upholstery of the back seat, leaned forward, sticking his head between his two friends in the front. "How much farther?" he yelled.

Jack Harrison shook his head, unable to hear above the noise of the stereo.

"I said, how much farther is it?" Matt screamed.

"Another ten minutes or so!" Jack screamed back. "It's pretty far in!"

Matt sat back in his seat and looked out the window at the passing scenery. Although he had heard about Aspen Lake since his nursery school days, he had never been there. The most inaccessible lake on the Rim, it could be reached only by taking a narrow untended forest service road; what used to be an old logging trail. His father had never been willing to drive the road--he said he didn't want to ruin his truck--so they had always gone to Crest wood and Sherman lakes instead. And since Matt was still too young to drive, he'd never had any way to get there. Until now. Until Jack and Wayne had invited him to come along with them on an overnight fishing trip; their last of the summer.

An antlered buck, standing stock-still near a puddle of muddy water at the side of the road, looked up suddenly as they approached then bounded away into the trees. Matt watched it disappear into the forest. He had never been on a camping trip alone before, without an adult, and he was a little nervous. He was conscious of the fact that the last sign of civilization they'd passed had been a small bait and tackle store back on the main highway, a good thirty miles behind them.

If something should happen, if one of them got bitten by a rattlesnake or broke his leg or choked on his food or something worse, they wouldn't be able to get help. The store was a forty-five minute drive away from the lake on this road, and it probably wasn't even open at night. Way out here, they could scream all they wanted and no one would hear them. Since this was a weeknight and not a weekend, there probably wouldn't even be any other campers around. And of course there was no phone and no electricity.

No electricity.

That was what he was really worried about, though he wouldn't admit it to Jack or Wayne. There was no electricity out here. No lights. When the sun went down, it would be dark. Completely dark. They'd have a campfire for a while, but they'd have to make sure it was extinguished before they went to sleep so it wouldn't start a forest fire.

They'd be all alone.

In total darkness.

Matt felt a rush of goose bumps cascade down his arms just thinking about it. He turned around and looked through the dusty rear window at the sky. It was clearing already, the storm clouds moving off the Rim toward Randall, but Matt knew from what everyone told him that it often rained at night on the Rim, that a second storm, a storm that would never reach the town, often unleashed its fury on campers around the lakes.

And he'd only brought his sleeping bag. He had no tent.

He might have to sleep in the car.

Jack turned the stereo down for a second, heavy metal guitars fading into a drone that offered a perfect counterpoint to the humming of the rebuilt engine. "We're almost there," he said.

Matt leaned forward and looked through the front windshield. Around them, the pine trees were thinning out, being subtly replaced by white-trunkedaspens. The ground, previously a dusty red gravel covered with a layer of brown pine needles, was becoming green, grassy.

Before them, through the round thickly-clustered leaves of the aspens, he could see the shimmering blue of the lake. "Where are we going to camp?" he started to ask.

But Jack had turned the stereo up again and couldn't hear him.

They camped on the south side of the lake underneath a small outcropping of rock that Jack said would protect them if it rained.

They were not directly on the shore of the lake but were separated from the water by a clump of boulders and several trees. The car was parked off the edge of the road, several yards up an incline from the camp.

Although the lake had supposedly been stocked the day before, none of them got even a bite in their attempts to fish, and after trying several spots and several different types of bait, they decided to give it up. The rods, reels, and tackle boxes were dropped next to the car, and Jack opened the car door and turned on the stereo. He popped in an old Black Sabbath tape, and the opening strains of "Iron Man" blared through the door speakers, assaulting the silence.

They walked back down the dirt path to the campsite.

Matt sat on a fallen log, staring out at the lake and listening to the music. Jack read a car magazine. Wayne lay on his back on a rock, looking up at the passing clouds, then jumped off and began pacing around the cleared campsite. "I'm bored," he said.

Jack laughed. "Fine. You can pick up wood. We need to get some if we're going to have any kind of fire tonight."

"Fuck that."

"Suit yourself." Jack went back to his magazine. "But it's going to get awfully cold tonight. And I'm not collecting wood."

"I'll do it," Matt said.

Wayne looked from Matt to Jack, smiling, "He'll do it."

Jack shrugged. "Fine."

Matt slid off the log and brushed off the back of his pants. His fingers felt something sticky on the material, and they came away with small smears of sap on their tips. "Damn," he said.

Wayne looked at him. "Sap?"

Matt nodded.

"Those pants are gone. There's no way you can get sap out. I've ruined more pants that way."

Matt looked at Jack. "What do I use to carry the wood?"

"Your hands," Jack said.

Matt started up the hill. He passed the car on the road and continued climbing. There were a few small twigs on the ground, but no branches big enough for burning. He headed toward the top of the ridge in search of other, more promising trees.

Overhead, the sky was clouding up again. The dark gray clouds were moving visibly, propelled by airborne winds, billowing, growing thicker. Matt didn't have a watch, but the sun was already starting to go down and his stomach was making whirring sounds of hunger, so it was probably around four or five o'clock. Soon it would be dark.

Above him, on the top of the hill, he thought he saw something move.

"Hello!" he said loudly. He didn't know if it was human or animal, but it didn't hurt to be on the safe side. He wasn't wearing hunter's orange, and he didn't want to be accidentally mistaken for a deer or a bear and shot by some nearsighted hunter. "Hello!" he yelled again.

He reached the top of the ridge and used his hands to pull himself up the last steep little cliff.

The crest of the hill was flat, like a mesa. Most of the trees here had either been cut or had fallen over and there was plenty of good firewood for the gathering. Matt looked around him. Ahead, other hills and other valleys alternated in an endless progression atop the Rim. To the sides, his hill continued, the trees getting thicker and thicker until they finally obscured his view completely. He picked up a nice sized branch, long dead and completely dry, then dropped it.

This would probably be his first and only trip up this hill; he would have to be careful about the wood he chose. His picks would have to last them all night.

He looked around for the hunter, but he couldn't see anyone. Perhaps it hadn't been a hunter after all. It might not have even been human.

Perhaps he had seen a deer or an elk or some other large animal.

Or a bear.

No, it couldn't have been a bear. It wasn't possible. He looked around tentatively, carefully. If it had been a bear he had scared it off.

He quickly started picking up branches.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move.

The wood dropped from his hands and he whirled around in panic. There was nothing there. The top of the hill was empty.

He was starting to Spock himself. He walked to the edge of the ridge and looked down. He could see the water of the lake shimmering through the round clustered leaves of the aspens, but he could see neither the car nor the camp. "Jack!" he called. "Wayne!"

There was no answer.

A cold breeze came up suddenly, swirling the leaves and blowing Matt's hair. He shivered, and goose bumps ran down his arms. He turned around and began once again to gather up wood. There was a name for things seen out of the corner of a person's eyes, he knew. He had read about it in his parents' People's Almanac one day. Some cultures thought they were ghosts, but there was really some scientific explanation for them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move again.

He grabbed one last chunk of wood, headed toward the edge of the hill, and tripped.

He fell sprawling, the wood flying out of his hands, his chin hitting the rough rock of the ground. His jaw was snapped forcibly shut and pain erupted through the nerve endings of his teeth. A sharp twig cut into his hand. A knee of his jeans ripped. Matt sat up, twisting around to see what he had tripped over. The wind was blowing hard now, tugging at his sleeves, and a few splashes of rain hit his face. He kicked at a clump of wildflowers next to his foot.

The leaves of the plant parted to reveal a small stone cross.

He jumped up, heart pounding, but fell immediately back down. His ankle was hurt, twisted, probably broken. He couldn't stand on it. He looked carefully at the rest of the hilltop. All across the flat ridge he could see tiny crosses hidden by weeds and wildflowers and piles of dead wood. He was surrounded by them.

A twig cracked behind him. "Jack!" he yelled. "Wayne! Jack!"

Another twig cracked. Closer.

"Jack!" he screamed.

But his voice was carried away by the wind and by the hard rain that had started to fall on the forest.

Annette Weldon stared down at the sleeping form of her husband as he tossed and turned next to her in the bed, rolling over onto his stomach then rolling back and throwing his arm over his face. His expression was troubled, his brows furrowed into a sleep-bound frown. His mouth worked agonizingly, opening and closing as if to scream, but no sound came out. She reached over and put her hand on the top of his head, letting her fingers run through the rough straw-like hair as she attempted to soothe him. She wanted to wake him up, but he got little enough sleep as it was and she didn't want him to waste any more.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes popping wide open, and screamed.

Annette screamed too, in shock. His glazed and staring eyes turned on her, then settled back into normalcy as his brain registered the fact that he was awake. He closed his eyes and opened them, blinking hard.

When he saw how scared she was, he reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and tried to smile. "Just a nightmare," he said.

"You never have anything but nightmares anymore."

"I know." He idly caressed her upper arm. "It's all these damn murders and all this .. . weird shit. It's really starting to get to me."

She stared at him and there was concern in her eyes. "You're going to get an ulcer."

"I know it." He sighed heavily and settled back down on the bed.

"Maybe I should turn it over to the state police." He looked at her.

"I've been checking into it, you know. The state police does handle things like this if the local operations aren't equipped to handle it.

And I don't think we're equipped. I'm tempted to just turn the whole damn thing over to them and admit that I'm baffled."

"You still don't have any leads? On any of these cases?"

He turned his face toward her on the pillow. She was still sitting up, looking down at him, and there was such a look of sympathetic understanding in her eyes, such kindness in the rounded corners of her mouth, that he thought about telling her his thoughts. His real thoughts. His crazy theories. But no, he couldn't do that. She wouldn't understand. She would want to understand, she would try to understand, but she would not be able to. Hell, who could? "No," he said. "We don't have any leads."

Shelayed down next to him and nestled close, laying an arm over his hairy chest, letting her hand rest in the crook of his arm. He put his hand on hers and they lay there like that for a while.

"Did you ever think that all of this might be connected?" she asked finally.

He had been about to fall back asleep. His eyes were closed and his mind drifted in that netherworld between sleep and wakefulness. But at the sound of her words he jerked awake, eyes opening, startled. "What did you say?"

"Did you ever think that all these cases are connected? I mean, it's common sense. I thought one of you would have noticed by now. AH those goats killed and their blood all over the churches."

"Well, we did put that together."

"And two of the farmers killed? And one of the preachers? It's obvious."

"We're not completely dense," he said defensively. He sat up against the headboard then looked at her indulgently, playing the condescending cop role, trying to remain outwardly calm though he was beginning to feel very excited. "We know they're connected. We just don't know how. Do you have any ideas?"

"Not really. It just seems to me that it's probably a group of devil worshipers or witches or a cult of some kind."

Close but no cigar. Their minds were not quite meeting. Still, they were thinking along the same lines. He was tempted to tell her about Don's dream, about his own dream, about Don's death, about the . . .thing ... he had seen and heard outside his office. Maybe she would understand. Maybe she wouldn't think he was that crazy. But as he looked at her he realized just how far off the deep end his ideas sounded. Her thoughts may have been courting his territory, but they made a hell of a lot more sense than his irrational theories of--what?

Supernatural forces? Monsters?

"You've been watching too many movies," he said.

She frowned. "You just admitted that you're stumped. My idea might be stupid, but it can't hurt to check it out."

"That's true."

"It's not as if you have a million other things to follow up on."

"All right," he said. "I'll look into it."

"Thank you." She settled back into his arms. They were silent for a few moments. "What was your dream about, anyway?"

He shook his head. "Nothing." "Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"I'm sure."

Fifteen minutes later Annette was asleep, her mouth open, snoring softly. Carefully, slowly, so as not to disturb her, Jim crept out from under the covers and walked on tiptoe down the hall to the family room. He was awake already, he might as well call the office and see if Judson or Pete had come up with anything. He picked up the phone and automatically dialed the number. Pete answered. "Hello.

Sheriff's Office. Pete King speaking."

Jim smiled at the young deputy's formal Jack Webb voice. "What's up?"

"Oh, hi Sheriff." His voice relaxed for a moment then grew tense. "Is there anything wrong?"

"No. I was just up and I figured I'd call, see what's happening."

"Not much, really." There was a pause. "Something did come over the wire, though. I thought you might be interested so I put it on your desk. Two churches in Phoenix were vandalized the same way ours were, blood smeared all over them, words written and everything."

Jim's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Really?"

"Yeah. I thought maybe the person who did it up here had moved on down to Phoenix, so I put the wire copy on your desk. I figured you'd want to check on it."

"Definitely. Thanks, Pete." Jim finished the conversation with a list of office questions he knew by rote, but he did not pay attention to the answers. So the same thing had happened in Phoenix. This really made it a candidate for the state police. Identical crimes in two jurisdictions were automatically investigated by the state men anyway.

He felt relieved that he would be getting some help on this, that he could give up some of the responsibility he had been shouldering single-handedly up until now, but he felt guilty about abandoning his own investigation, about not following up on his own train of thought, not acting on what he knew to be the real facts, or the truth behind the facts. He felt, in some way, as though he was deserting Don, as though the boy had died needlessly, uselessly.

But all deaths are needless, he reasoned. All deaths are useless.

But he was pushing everything under the carpet, whitewashing it, not trying to find out the real reasons behind all this.

Don would be ashamed of him.

He was a coward.

"Is that all, Sheriff?" Pete's voice sounded anxious to get off the line.

"Yeah," Jim said. "That's it. I'll see you in the morning." He hung up the phone and stared out the family-room window at the darkened house on the acre lot across the street. He imagined he could hear the river, though it flowed through the opposite end of town. So what if Don Wilson wouldn't approve of his actions? He didn't even know the boy. He only met him the one time and talked to him once after that over the phone. What did he owe him?

He walked slowly down the hall and peeked into Justin's and Suzonne'srooms before going back to bed, checking on them to make sure they were all right. He crawled carefully into bed next to Annette and lay awake for a while, staring at the dark ceiling, listening, thinking.

Finally he fell asleep.

He had nightmares.

Father Donald Andrews took the small teapot off the stove and poured half a cup of Earl Grey into his ceramic mug. The oldErron Garner record playing on the stereo in the living room suddenly got stuck, the same three notes repeating over and over again, and the reverend put his tea down on the counter, rushing out into the other room. He lifted the stereo's dust cover and pressed down on the needle with his forefinger. The song skipped over the rough section andErron resumed playing "Afternoon of an Elf." He went back into the kitchen to get his tea.

When the bishop had ordered him to take over the congregation in Randall until Father Selway returned or a new reverend was permanently assigned, Andrews had jumped at the chance. For a relative novice, who had until now assisted other priests, the opportunity to preside over an entire congregation, even for only a short while, was a major coup.

And when the bishop had offered to let him stay inSelway's house, he had gratefully accepted. The church owned the home and would allow him to stay rent free, thus saving him money on lodgings.

But he had been here for four days now and, truth to tell, he did not like the house. Father Selway had disappeared and his entire family had been murdered--that in itself was enough to start someone thinking unpleasant thoughts in the dead of night. But aside from that, below all that, there was something wrong. The house gave off--what did they used to call it in the sixties?--bad vibes.

It was not a friendly house.

Andrews carried his cup into the living room and turned the record up a little louder before settling down into his chair, hoping to drown out the subtle creaks and cracks made nightly by the old house. The reverend was by no means an easily frightened man, but he had joined the church precisely because he had known, had realized, that there was such a thing as good and such a thing as evil, that these were not nebulous concepts dreamed up by philosophers and religious prophets but were actual concrete realities, facts of life.

And this house was not good.

Andrews considered himself "sensitive" to auras, to feelings, to "vibes." Perhaps he was a trifle psychic. He wasn't sure. But he had always had bad feelings about certain spots and certain people and good feelings about others. Once, as a college student traveling through Germany, he had been unable to enter a restaurant. The restaurant was a popular spot on a guided tour, but the wave of nausea, fear, and revulsion that had swept through him upon nearing its door had been too strong to allow him to enter. He had learned later that hundreds of gypsies had been murdered in the building in the first wave of killings prior to the outbreak of World War II.

The feeling here in Father Selway's house was not quite as strong as it had been in the restaurant, but it was similar.

Andrews shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Only one light was on in the room--a freestanding lamp between his chair and the couch--and the rest of the room seemed suddenly bathed in shadow, considerably darker than it had been a few moments ago. He had to stop thinking about things like this. He forced his mind to concentrate on something else.

The sermon he was going to give Sunday. He picked up the black-bound Bible from the small walnut table next to him and opened it to the page he had marked before dinner; a chapter in Job. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something move, and he looked up. The light was still on in the kitchen and he could see nothing there, but the hallway was completely dark. No lights were on in the back of the house at all.

He heard a strange shuffling noise from somewhere back in the hallway.

Andrews jumped slightly, startled, spilling his tea on the Bible lying in his lap. The already thin andtransluscent pages became instantly transparent, backward letters from the next several pages soaking through the words on the open page, blending to form one unreadable black mass.

Black Mass.

Stop it, he told himself.

He was an adult now, not a little child afraid of the dark. And he was a priest, a man of the cloth, a man with the power of the church and the Lord behind him.

Then why were his muscles tensed? Why was he staring into the dark hallway as if looking for signs of movement? Why was he straining to hear strange sounds over the rhythmic cadences ofEr roll Garner's piano?

Andrews closed the Bible, folded his hands atop the smooth black surface, shut his eyes and began to pray. "Our Father .. ." His mouth formed the words, but his voice was silent.

The record ended and there was a sound of tearing paper from one of the back rooms of the house. He could hear it clearly in the sudden stillness.

Adult or no adult, priest or no priest, he wanted to run. His instinct was to throw open the front door, and dash into the street, jump into his car parked next to the curb, take off and spend the night in a nice, clean, modern hotel with well-lit rooms and a peopled lobby. And his instincts were usually good.

He had not been this scared in years.

That's why he had to stay.

Andrews pulled lightly on the chain around his neck and fingered the gold crucifix that hung on the end of the chain. He closed his eyes and again said the Lord's Prayer. When he reached "Deliver us from evil," he said it aloud.

He opened his eyes and sniffed. There was the smell of something burning--charred flesh?--in the air.

No, it couldn't be. He was overreacting, making himself hysterical.

His brain was overloading on imagination. He wasn't approaching this logically, rationally.

But there was a definite burning smell.

What was it? Sulfur? Cinders? The fiery pits of hell?

Nothing. It was nothing. He was just imagining The smoke alarm went off.

He jumped from his chair this time. The alarm was loud, a piercing shriek that cut through the quiet like a sledgehammer through ice cream and which would have blotted out even the loudest noise.

Now he was no longer worried about the house's vibes or the strange noises in the dark. Here was something real--a fire. He ran toward the hallway, no longer afraid. He flipped on the hall light as he dashed past it. The smell was horrible, almost an emetic, and it was getting stronger. The air was beginning to cloud up with a thick brown smog like smoke.

He turned on the light to Father Selway's study and stood for a second in the doorway, trying to see through the thick smoke. His eyes were watering, and when he rubbed them they began to itch. The smoke was definitely coming from within this room, but he could feel no heat and see no flames. The fire had to be small, still controllable. He ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a big metal cooking pot from the cupboard beneath the sink, turning both the hot and cold water on full blast to fill the pot. He left the water on and sprinted back down the hall.

A bad electrical connection had probably started something on fire. A scrap of paper, perhaps. Or a portion of the rug.

He ran into the room. There was a small single flame visible through the clouded air and he quickly poured the water onto it. He ran back to the kitchen for more water.

Three trips later, the fire was out. Andrews, coughing heavily, lurched through the study and opened both windows. He would have to tell the bishop about this. It wasn't serious enough for him to notify the fire department, but the bishop would want to know what happened. He staggered out into the hall and took a deep breath of fresh air, but that only caused a coughing spasm, and he dropped to his knees, almost throwing up. The coughing spell passed, and he stood up.

His throat felt raw and sore. The smoke had cleared from the study for the most part, and the reverend looked into the room.

The study was a shambles. All of Father Selway's books, which had been neatly stacked on bookcases against the far wall had been thrown on the floor and were rudely scattered around the edges of the room. It was a miracle that they had not caught fire. In the center of the room, the front and back covers of Father Selway's oversized display Bible, which had been exhibited on a special stand next to his desk, lay skeletally empty, all the pages torn out. The pages themselves had been torn and crumpled and put into a pile. That was what had been burning.

Andrews stared at the desecrated room in shock. Who had done this? And why? And how? He had been in the house all evening and had heard nothing until five or ten minutes ago, and even that had been barely noticeable.

He blinked back the tears caused by residual smoke and rubbed his eyes lightly. They watered more. He left his eyes alone and stared at the room. By all rights, the place should have gone up like a torch. Why had there been so little fire damage? He walked toward the desk and picked up one of the remaining pages of the display Bible. It was wet from the water and charred around the edges. It felt slimy to the touch. He held it up close to his face, in order to see it better, then dropped it, gagging.

It was covered with excrement.

He looked down at his feet. All of the pages, and all of the other books, had been smeared somehow with human excrement.

On top of Father Selway's desk was a cross made out of molded feces.

Andrews fell to his knees and vomited. Convulsively. Uncontrollably.

He tried to pray, but his mind could not shift its focus from his involuntarily heaving stomach.

From outside somewhere, through one of the open windows, came something that sounded like a whining high-pitched laugh.

The morning did not dawn clear and hot like any other. Instead, it was overcast, a low ceiling of continuous cloud blocking out the sun and weaving through the ragged line of tall trees at the top of the Rim. Although it was not drizzling, there was a light mist in the air, and when Gordon peeked through the partially parted bedroom curtains his view was blurred by the running moisture on the plate glass. He reached over and pulled open the wood-framed window, expecting a blast of humid hothouse air, but the light breeze that splattered the thin mist through the screen was cool and comfortable.

When Marina woke up, she leaned her chin on Gordon's right shoulder, her cheek next to his, and snuggled close against his back. She stared with him out the window, yawning. "Well this is a pleasant surprise."

He let the two halves of the drapes fall back together. The breeze blew them slightly inward. "The weatherman was wrong again." He fell back on the bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the palms of his hands.

"So what else is new?"

Gordon stopped rubbing his eyes and stared up at the ceiling for a minute. "Sandra," he said.

"What?"

"We can name the baby Sandra."

Marina looked at him for a moment then sat up in bed. He looked so calm, so happy lying there that she hated to disturb his mood, but they had to talk this out, they had to discuss the baby sometime. She'd been wanting to bring it up for three days now, and this was a perfect opportunity. She licked her sleep-dried lips, unsure of how to start.

"We have to talk," she said.

Her seriousness must have imparted itself to Gordon because he sat up on his elbows and looked at her, his eyes expectant, troubled. "I

know," he said quietly.

She put her hands on his, feeling the rough hair on his bony knuckles.

His hands felt larger than they should, different, and she had to subdue an instinct to pull her own hands away. Her fingers began tracing an outline of his hand. "I'm still scared."

"I know you are. I am too."

"It's .. . not right. We don't deserve this." She felt confused.

Alternately hurt and angry. She knew words could not convey her feelings--she was not articulate enough to be able to voice such subtle, disparate, and deeply conflicting emotions--and it frustrated her. She felt as if she might cry, but she knew that would do no good.

Gordon brought her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. "I know," he said.

This was not exactly what she had wanted to talk about, this was not how the conversation was supposed to go. But she couldn't help herself. The emotions flooded over her, the rage, the frustration, an excess of feelings threatening any moment to burst out through the psychological safety valve of tears. "Goddamn it. Why did this have to happen to us? .. . Why does this sort of ... shit . have to happen at all? To anyone?"

Gordon did not have an answer. He did not even have a good substitute, an adequate reassurance. He simply kissed her hand again, murmuring sympathetically,em pathetically hoping it was enough, knowing it was not.

"It's ... so ... fucking .. . unfair."

The sobs came. Tears rolled down her cheeks, silently at first. She closed her eyes tightly, but tears snuck out of them anyway, and her mouth, which had been ready to utter another protest, another complaint, suddenly turned to rubber. She began to cry aloud.

Primally. Unashamedly.

He pulled her to him. He kissed her wet cheeks, tasting the clean saltiness of her tears. His hands ran softly through her thick hair, combing it back. His mouth found hers and they kissed, their tongues touching hesitantly at first then actively entwining. The sobs stopped, slowly, and Gordon's hand slid gently under hernightie , between her legs. She was already wet and offered no resistance.

Soon he was inside her and they were making love. Slowly.

Languorously.

They came simultaneously.

Neither of them spoke for a while afterward, and he stayed on top of her until he fell out. He rolled next to her on the bed and tried to kiss her, but his lips instead became entangled in her hair. She giggled in spite of herself.

Gordon smiled. "Cheered up?"

"Against my will."

"It works every time."

Marina bit her lower lip and put a finger lightly on his mouth. "We might have killed the symptoms, but the problem's still there. We still have to talk."

He nodded. "Shoot."

"What are we going to do?"

Her voice was completely serious once again, and Gordon sat up, looking into her eyes, trying to gauge her feelings, trying to determine in which direction she was leaning. "I don't know," he said.

"I know the tests that were supposed to be positive were positive and the tests that were supposed to be negative were negative, but I'm still worried. What if they're wrong? What do we do then?"

"There's nothing we can do."

"I'm not sure it's worth the risk. I don't know if I want to take that chance. I'm not sure I'm willing to go through with it because I'm not sure I could handle it if anything went wrong."

He put his hand in back of her head and leaned toward her, looking into her eyes. "It's going to have to be your decision. And I'll be behind you no matter what you decide. But I think we should see it through.

The doctors said everything's okay. There's probably a small margin of error there, but not much." He smiled at her. "I think it would be nice to have a little miniature Marina running around here."

She smiled back at him. "Somehow I knew that you were going to be in favor of going through with it."

"What do you think?"

She ran her tongue across her teeth and shrugged noncommittally. "I

don't know."

"You're not leaning one way or the other?"

"Well, maybe I am. But--"

"You'd better decide pretty quick, you know."

"I know. But I'll have to quit school, we'll have to get by on just your salary ..."

"You mean this is because you're worried about money?"

"No, of course not. But we have to take everything into account, and so far the bad points seem to out weight the good."

"Which way are you leaning?"

She tried to look at him seriously, full in the face, but she could not keep the smile from her lips. "I'd kind of like a little Marina running around the house, too."

"Then it's settled."

"Not quite. I still want to think it over a bit." She held up a hand. "I know, I know. I'd better think fast." She kissed his nose. "I will."

Gordon kissed her back, then put his head down on her stomach, as if listening. "Hey," he said, sitting back up. "What about sex? How much longer can we keep on doing it?"

Marina laughed, and her laugh sounded happy, free of troubles. "I should've known you'd worry about that."

"I'm not--"

"We can do it as long as we want."

"It won't hurt the baby?"

She thought for a moment. "Well, maybe we'll have to try a few new positions. You probably shouldn't be on top all of the time."

"All of the time?"

She smiled. "Pretty close."

He looked at her haughtily. "Maybe we should give it up for the next eight months or so. Just to be on the safe side. After all, you do have two other holes."

"Oh no," she said.

He laughed and kissed her. "So how do you feel about Sandra?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of Olga or Helga. Perhaps Bertha."

"If it was going to be a boy you would've planned on Percy?"

"Or Otis," she agreed.

Gordon leaned back against the brass headboard, his head fitting neatly between two brass bars. "You laugh now, but we're really going to have to start thinking about names soon." He cleared his throat. "If you decide to keep the baby," he added.

Marina swung her legs over the side of the bed. "We will have to start thinking about names," she said.

"We will? For sure?"

She nodded. "We will."

"That was quick."

"I'm a quick thinker." She walked over to the Queen Anne chair in the middle of the room and took her flowered bathrobe from its seat, putting it on. She pulled her hair from inside of the robe and let it hang outside the collar. She walked out of the bedroom.

Gordon heard her enter the bathroom and a few moments later heard the toilet flush. She walked into the kitchen .. . and came screaming back down the hall.

"Marina!" Gordon jumped out of bed and almost collided with her as she ran through the bedroom door. He grabbed her shoulders. "What happened?" he demanded. "What's wrong?"

She was sobbing so hysterically that he could not make out what she was saying. He pushed past her into the hall and hurried into the kitchen.

Where he stopped.

The makeshift cat box Marina had fashioned from a Pepsi carton was overturned, its dirt spilled all over the tile floor. The kitten's food and water dishes had also been emptied onto the kitchen floor.

And everything was covered with cat blood.

Red blood had been smeared all over the yellow refrigerator like paint.

Smears of blood and black guts were trailed across the table top. A gray paw stuck out of the garbage disposal in the sink.

The kitten itself, or what was left of her, was lying in the middle of the floor directly in front of the stove. The body--little more than gutted skin and fur--was spread-eagled on the floor and pinned in place with steak knives. The head, severed from the body, lay like an unused gray tennis ball, dead greenish yellow eyes staring up toward the roof.

Gordon's eyes quickly scanned the room. The windows were shut and locked, as was the door. He ran into the living room, but the front door was also closed and bolted.

How?

What?

He opened the front door and looked outside. The mist had dissipated somewhat, but the air still felt damp. A forerunner of autumn; a taste of the coming fall. His eyes searched the gravel driveway, but he could see nothing unusual. He closed the door and returned to the bedroom where Marina, still crying, lay huddled under the blankets. He knelt next to her. "It's all right," he said, hugging her close. "It's okay."

But he was not sure himself that everything was OK. He suddenly felt an unfounded irrational fear for the baby.

ONE

The hitchhiker stood next to the off-ramp of Black Canyon Highway on the road to Randall. He had been standing there for several hours and was sweating profusely in the wet heat of late summer, but the stains under his arms and on his back were covered by his expensive jacket. As always, his tie was securely knotted. Next to him, on the ground, was a blue Samsonite suitcase containing his clothes, toothbrush, and personal effects. On top of the suitcase rested a photo album and a parcel filled with religious tracts. In his hand was a copy of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

A Dodge pickup truck, the first in nearly an hour, pulled off the highway and the hitchhiker dutifully stuck out his thumb. The driver passed him by without a glance.

Another truck, following close upon the heels of the first, passed him by as well, then pulled to a stop a few yards ahead. He looked at the truck and the driver honked, waving him on. The hitchhiker picked up his parcel and suitcase and jogged up to the dirty dented vehicle, pulling open the passenger door. He smiled at the driver, a burly bearded man wearing a red tank top and a yellow Cat hat. "Thank you, sir."

The driver nodded and flicked a newspaper from the seat to the floor of the truck to make room for the hitchhiker's suitcase. "What's your name?"

"Call me Brother Elias."

"Brother Elias?" The driver snorted. "What the hell kind of name is that?"

"I am a preacher of the Lord's living gospel, a testament to his glory, and this is the name by which I am known to his followers." He got into the truck and slammed shut the door.

The driver put the truck into gear and pulled back onto the road. "A preacher, huh? I knew you weren't no ordinary hitcher. I could tell by the way you're dressed. To be honest with you, that's the only reason I picked you up. I don't usually stop for anybody unless I know them or I see their car's broken down. Can't tell what kind of people are out there these days. Never can tell who you're picking up. Some of theseguys'd just as soon kill you as look at you." He offered Brother Elias a thick calloused hand. "Name's Tim McDowell. I work over at the sawmill in Randall. Just got through collecting orders fromHargreve ." He looked at the preacher. "You ever been to Hargreve? Little town out in the Coconino . Hardlymore'n fifty people in it and you can't get there except on this little one-lane dirt road that curves down the side of a cliff to the valley. It's a real bitch." He looked immediately embarrassed, and he smiled sheepishly at Brother Elias. "Sorry." He drove for a few miles in silence, but when the preacher didn't say anything he cleared his throat. "So, what brings you out this way?"