The Right Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 35

Kim sat through the first hour of classes barely hearing a word that Sister Clarence said. She continually glanced out the window, hoping to see Jared coming across the square toward the school, but by the time the class was half over, she knew he wasn't coming. Even then she couldn't concentrate. From the moment she'd seen Sandy Engstrom, she knew something was wrong. Sandy arrived at school just as the bell rang, and when she rushed by her, Kim assumed Sandy was trying to get to her locker while she still had time. But when Sandy finally arrived in class-two minutes late-her friend hadn't taken her regular seat right next to her.

Instead, she slid into an empty desk at the back of the classroom.

Sister Clarence had gone silent when Sandy entered the room, and Kim expected her friend to be sent directly to Father Bernard's office. But after fixing Sandy with a stern glare, Sister Clarence's face took on a look of concern. "Sandra? Are you all right?"

Every head in the class turned to gaze at Sandy. She was wearing more makeup than Kim had ever seen on her before, but even the makeup couldn't cover the pallor of her complexion.

"I'm fine, Sister Clarence," she announced in a challenging tone that made Kim brace herself for her immediate banishment to Father Bernard's office. The whole class held its collective breath, waiting. But for the first time in anyone's memory, Sister Clarence backed down.

"Very well," she said. "But I won't tolerate your being late again."

For the rest of the hour Kim kept stealing peeks at her friend, but Sandy never looked back at her. When the bell rang, Sandy was out the door before Kim had even finished packing her books into her bag. She hurried after Sandy, threading her way through the crowded corridor toward the lockers, where the two girls had fallen into the habit of meeting between classes.

Sandy was nowhere to be seen.

Sandy hadn't been in church yesterday.

Sandy hadn't called her yesterday, either.

And now, this morning, she hadn't even spoken to her.

Kim was just starting back toward her own locker when she caught a glimpse of Sandy through the glass of the school's front door. She glanced at the big clock on the wall above the door, and saw that she still had five minutes before her next class. Working her way through her milling classmates, she pushed the front door open and went out onto the sidewalk.

Sandy was deep in conversation with Luke Roberts. As Kim approached them, both teenagers fell silent.

"Sandy?" Kim asked uncertainly. "What's going on?"

Sandy turned to gaze at her. As Kim met Sandy's eyes-which seemed to have sunk within her skull-she saw it.

The same look she'd seen in her brother's eyes this morning. And her father's.

Then Luke turned to look at her, and there it was in his eyes, too.

Kim's pulse raced as an image rose in her mind, from the nightmare she'd had, when she saw Sandy and Luke writhing in front of that strange candlelit altar with the inverted cross.

Then Sandy spoke, in an angry, hissing voice Kim had never heard from her before. "Leave us alone, you stupid bitch!"

Kim's eyes widened in shock, but even as the words battered her, another memory rose in her mind.

Sandy sounded like Jared! Just like Jared when Father MacNeill had come to the house yesterday afternoon!

She took a step toward her friend. Without warning, Sandy spat at her, sending a great wad of greenish phlegm oozing down the front of Kim's blouse. Kim stared at the mess in shock, then, as peals of ugly laughter erupted from Luke and Sandy, she turned and fled back into the school. Tears of pain and humiliation streamed down her cheeks, and the crowd, already thinning as the students drained into the classrooms, parted to make way for her as she lurched toward the girls' room. She dropped her book bag on the floor and stared at herself in the mirror. Her face looked almost as pale as Sandy's, and as more images and memories tumbled through her mind-some of them dreamed, some of them real, all of them terrifying-confusion and terror overwhelmed her.

She ran the water in the sink, splashed some on her face, then gingerly scraped the wad of phlegm from her blouse. Sandy had spit at her! Actually spit at her! How could she have-

Her thought died as her eye caught something in the mirror. She looked down, and where the phlegm had been, there was now a small hole in her blouse.

A hole with blackened edges, as if it had been burned.

A whimper escaped Kim's lips. She rubbed harder at her blouse, as if trying not only to erase the charring from the material, but the hole as well. She was still working at it when she heard her name.

"Kimmie? Kimmie!"

Jumping, she glanced in the mirror, and there he was.

Jared!

She whirled around.

The girls' room was empty; she was alone.

"Kimmie!"

She whirled around again, but this time the mirror was as empty as the room behind her.

"Kimmie, help me!"

Jared's voice had a plaintive note to it now, and she remembered the dream she'd had this morning, when Jared was drowning and she tried to reach him but couldn't.

"Jared?" she whispered, but even the barely spoken word echoed in the emptiness of the room. "Oh, God, Jared, what's happening to us?"

A moment later she heard him calling to her again, but now his voice seemed to be coming from beyond the room. Leaving her book bag where it lay, Kim stumbled out of the bathroom.

The hallway outside was empty.

Still she heard Jared's voice, calling out to her.

She followed the voice, moving down the corridor, then turning into another.

Then up some stairs.

Down another corridor.

More memories tumbled through her mind, images of the corridors through which the unseen menace of her nightmares had pursued her, but still she kept going, following Jared's ever fainter voice.

Then, at last, she came to a closed door. She stood paralyzed with a terrible certainty that she knew what lay beyond.

The obscene cathedral, where she'd witnessed all the worst horrors of her nightmares.

Where only this morning she'd seen little Molly, suspended upside down from the cross above the altar, the candles flickering in front of her tortured face.

Then, barely audible through the confusion in her mind, she heard Jared's voice once more. "Kiiimmmm…"

Steeling herself, Kim pulled the door open.

Not the cathedral.

The biology lab, with zinc-topped worktables laid out in neat rows, each of them equipped with a sink.

And on the walls, shelf after shelf of specimens, the dissected carcasses of frogs and mice, the organs of larger creatures, all of them floating in sealed jars of formaldehyde. As she stared at the jars, she saw that they were now filled with blood-overflowing with blood. And in every one of them was some fragment of Molly's body.

A little foot in one, a leg in another. Another jar held a hand. In the largest jar was her baby sister's head.

Molly's eyes were wide open, and her mouth was stretched into a grimace of agony. She seemed to be staring through the haze of blood right at Kim, and as she looked into Molly's twisted face, Kim felt every bit of pain Molly must have felt as-

Screaming, Kim cut off the thought, unable to bear it. But no matter where she turned, there were more jars and still more jars, and from every one of them, Molly stared at her.

Kim kept screaming, and finally, her mind no longer able to cope with the images that churned through it, she collapsed to the floor, sobbing and moaning.

"No," she whimpered. "Oh, no… please, no…"