“Where’s Mom?” she asked.
“Well …” he said, trying to come up with an answer. “She’s gone to her mother’s for a while.”
“She’s left you, in other words,” she replied quite directly.
Marshall was direct too. “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.” He watched her for a while; she was grabbing clothing and belongings and throwing them into a suitcase and some shopping bags. “Looks like you’re leaving too.”
“That’s right,” she said, without slowing down or even looking up. “I felt it coming. I knew what Mom was thinking, and I think she was right. You get along so well all by yourself, we may as well let you have it that way for keeps.”
“Where will you go?”
Sandy looked up at him for the first time, and Marshall was chilled and even sickened by the look in her eyes, a strange, glassy, maniacal expression he had never seen before.
“I’ll never tell you!” she said, and Marshall couldn’t believe the way she said it. It was not Sandy at all.
“Sandy,” he said gently, pleadingly, “can we talk? I won’t put any pressure or demands on you. Could we just talk?”
Those very strange eyes glared at him again and this person who used to be his loving daughter responded with, “I’ll see you in hell!”
Marshall immediately sensed those all too familiar sensations of fear and doom. Some thing had come into his house.
HANK ANSWERED THE door and immediately felt a certain check in his spirit. Carmen stood there. She was dressed neatly and conservatively this time, and her demeanor was much more down to earth; yet Hank had his qualms.
“Well, hi,” he said.
She smiled disarmingly and said, “Hello, Pastor Busche.”
He stepped aside and motioned for her to come in. She stepped inside the door in time to see Mary coming from the kitchen.
“Hello, Mary,” she said.
“Hello,” said Mary. She took an extra step and gave Carmen a loving embrace. “Are you all right?”
“Much better, thank you.” She looked at Hank, and her eyes were full of repentance. “Pastor, I really owe you an apology for the way I acted before. It must have been very alarming for you both.”
Hank hemmed and hawed a little and finally said, “Well, we certainly were concerned for your welfare.”
Mary moved toward the living room and said, “Won’t you have a seat? Can I bring you anything?”
“Thank you, no,” said Carmen, sitting down on the sofa. “I won’t be staying long.”
Hank sat in a chair opposite the sofa and looked at Carmen, praying a mile a minute. Yes, she looked different, like she’d gotten a lot of loose ends finally tied together in her life, and yet … Hank had seen a lot in the last few days, and he had the distinct impression that he was seeing more of the same thing this very moment. There was something about her eyes …
SANDY BACKED UP a little and narrowed her eyes at Marshall like a wild bull about to charge. “You get out of my way!”
Marshall remained in the bedroom door, blocking it with his body. “I don’t want a big fight, Sandy. I won’t stand in your way forever. I just want you to think for a moment, okay? Can you just calm down and give me an audience just one last time? Huh?”
She stood there rigidly, breathing heavily through her nose, her lips shut tightly, her body crouched a little. It was simply unreal!
Marshall tried to calm her down with his voice as if approaching a wild horse. “I’ll let you go anywhere you want. It’s your life. But we don’t dare part without saying what needs to be said. I love you, you know.” She didn’t respond to that. “I really do love you. Do you—do you believe that at all?”
“You—you don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Yeah … yeah, I can understand that. I haven’t done very well these past years. But listen, we can put it back together. Why let this thing go in the shape it’s in when we could heal it?”
She looked him over again, observed how he was still standing in the doorway, and said, “Daddy, all I want right now is to get out of here.”
“In a minute, in a minute.” Marshall tried to speak slowly, carefully, gently. “Sandy … I don’t know if I can explain it to you very clearly, but remember what you said yourself about the town that one Saturday, how you thought—what was it? Aliens were taking over the town? Do you remember that?”
She didn’t answer, but she seemed to be listening.
“You don’t know how right you were, how true that theory really was. There are people in this town, Sandy, right now, that want to take the whole town over, and they also want to destroy anyone who gets in their way. Sandy, I’m someone who got in their way.”
Sandy began to shake her head incredulously. She wasn’t buying it.
“Listen to me, Sandy, just listen! Now … I run the paper, see, and I know what they’re up to, and they know that I know, so they’re just doing what they can to destroy me, take away my house, the newspaper, undermine my family!” He looked at her in earnest, but had no idea if any of this was getting through. “All that’s happening to us … it’s what they want! They want this family to fall apart!”
“You’re crazy!” she finally said. “You’re a maniac! Get out of the way!”
“Sandy, listen to me. They’ve even been using you against me. Did you know those cops in town are trying to find anything they can to put me away? They’re trying to pin a murder rap on me, and it even sounds like they’re accusing me of abusing you! That’s how terrible this whole thing is. You have to understand—”
“But you did it!” Sandy cried. “You know you did it.”
Marshall was stunned. All he could do was stare at her. She had to be crazy. “Did what, Sandy?”
She actually broke down and tears came to her eyes as she said, “You raped me. You raped me!”
CARMEN SEEMED TO be having a very difficult time getting around to whatever she had come to tell them. “I—I just don’t know how to begin … it’s just so difficult.”
Hank reassured her, “Oh, you’re among friends.”
Carmen looked at Mary sitting at the other end of the sofa, and then at Hank, still sitting opposite her. “Hank, I just can’t live with it anymore.”
Hank said, “Then why don’t you just give it over to Jesus? He’s the Healer, you know. He can take away your regrets and your sorrows, believe me.”
She looked at him and only shook her head incredulously. “Hank, I am not here to play games. It’s time we were truthful and cleared the air once and for all. We’re just not being fair to Mary.”
Hank didn’t know what she was talking about, so he just leaned forward and nodded, his way of telling her he was listening.
She continued, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to say it and get it out. I’m sorry, Hank.” She turned to Mary, her eyes filling with tears, and said, “Mary, for the last several months … ever since our first counseling appointment … Hank and I have been seeing each other on a regular basis.”
Mary asked, “What do you mean by that?”
Carmen turned to Hank and implored him, “Hank, don’t you think you should be the one to tell her?”
“Tell her what?” Hank asked.
Carmen looked at Mary, took her hand, and said, “Mary, Hank and I have been having an affair.”
Mary looked startled, but not very stunned. She did pull her hand away from Carmen’s. Then she looked at Hank.
“What do you think?” she asked him.
Hank took another good look at Carmen and then nodded to Mary. Mary turned directly toward Carmen, and Hank got up out of his chair. They both looked intently at Carmen, and she began to look away from their eyes.
“It’s true!” she insisted. “Tell her, Hank. Please tell her.”
“Spirit,” said Hank firmly, “I command you in the name of Jesus to be silent and come out of her!”
There were fifteen of them, packed into Carmen’s body like crawling, superimposed
maggots, boiling, writhing, a tangle of hideous arms, legs, talons, and heads. They began to squirm. Carmen began to squirm. They moaned and cried out, and so did Carmen, her eyes turning glassy and staring blankly.
Outside the room, Krioni and Triskal watched from a distance.
Triskal fumed, “Orders, orders, orders!”
Krioni reminded him, “Tal knows what he’s doing.”
Triskal pointed toward the living room and cried, “Hank’s playing with a bomb in there. You see those demons? They’ll tear him apart!”
“We have to stay out of it,” Krioni said. “We can protect Hank’s and Mary’s lives, but we cannot keep the demons from doing whatever they might do …” Krioni was having trouble with it himself.
SANDY GOT LOUDER and louder. Marshall felt that at any moment he would lose control of her altogether.
“You … you let me out of here or you’re going to be in big trouble!” she nearly screamed.
Marshall could only stand there in total dismay and horror. “Sandy, it’s me, Marshall Hogan, your father. Think, Sandy! You know I never touched you, I never molested you. I only loved you and cared for you. You’re my daughter, my only daughter.”
“You did it to me!” she cried hysterically.
“When, Sandy?” he demanded. “When did I ever touch you wrongly?”
“It was something my mind had blocked out for years, but Professor Langstrat brought it out!”
“Langstrat!”
“She put me under hypnosis, and I saw it like it was yesterday. You did it, and I hate you!”
“You never remembered it because it never happened. Think, Sandy!”
“I hate you! You did it to me!”
Nathan and Armoth, from outside the house, could see the hideous deceiving spirit clinging to Sandy’s back, its talons deep in her skull.
Alongside them was Tal. He had just given them their special orders.
“Captain,” said Armoth, “we don’t know what that thing might do.”
“Preserve their lives,” said Tal, “but Hogan must fall. As for Sandy, see to it that a special detachment follows her at a distance. They’ll be able to move when the time is right.”
Just then, with a very low, stealthy trajectory, Signa floated in for a landing.
“Captain,” he reported, “Kevin Weed is dead. It worked.”
Tal gave Signa a strange, knowing look and smile. “Excellent,” he said.
THE FIFTEEN SPIRITS in Carmen were foaming and frothing, wailing and hissing. Hank held Carmen down gently, one hand on her right hand, one hand on her left shoulder. Mary stood beside him, clinging to him a little out of her own timidity. Carmen moaned and twisted, her eyes glaring at Hank.
“Let us go, praying man!” Carmen’s voice warned, and the sulfurous odor coming from deep inside her was strong and nauseating.
“Carmen, do you want to be delivered?” Hank asked.
“She can’t hear you,” said the spirits. “Let us alone! She belongs to us!”
“Be silent and come out of her!”
“No!” Carmen screamed, and Mary was almost sure she saw a puff of yellow vapor from Carmen’s throat.
“Come out in the name of Jesus!” said Hank.
The bomb exploded. Hank was thrown backward. Mary leaped aside. Carmen was on top of Hank, clawing, biting, mauling. Her teeth clamped onto his right arm. He pushed and pounded with his left.
“Demon, let go!” he ordered.
The jaws opened. Hank gave all the shove he had and Carmen’s body staggered backward, twitching and shrieking. Her hands found a chair. Instantly it shot upward and came down with a crash, but Hank scurried out of the way. He dove for Carmen and tackled her as she was grabbing another chair. Her leg came up like a catapult and flung him across the room where he thudded into the wall. Her fist was right behind him. He dodged it. It rammed a hole in the plaster. He was looking into the eyes of a beast; he smelled the sulfurous breath hissing through the bared teeth. He jerked himself away. Sharp fingernails snagged and tore at his shirt. Some dug into his flesh. He could hear Mary screaming, “Stop it, spirit! In Jesus’ name, stop it!”
Carmen doubled over and clapped her hands over her ears. She staggered and screamed.
“Be silent, demon, and come out of her!” Hank ordered, trying to keep his distance.
“I won’t! I won’t!” Carmen screamed, and her body careened toward the front door. She hit it full force. The center of the door caved in with a loud crack. Hank ran to the door and pulled it open, and Carmen flew out the door and down the street. As Hank and Mary watched her go, all they could do was hope the neighbors wouldn’t see.
“SANDY,” SAID MARSHALL, “this isn’t you. I know it isn’t you.”
She said nothing, but like the strike of a rattlesnake she pounced at him, trying to get through the door. He held his hands up to protect his face from her flying fists.
“Okay, okay!” he told her, stepping aside. “You can go. Just remember, I love you.”
She grabbed her suitcase and a shopping bag and bolted for the front door. He followed her down the hall toward the living room.
He came around the corner. He looked to see her, but all he saw was the lamp that smacked into his skull. He heard and felt the blow in every part of his body. The lamp fell to the floor with a crash. Now he was on one knee, slumped against the couch. His hand went to his head. He looked up and saw the front door still standing open. He was bleeding.
His head was so light he was afraid to try to stand up. His strength was gone anyway. Nuts, now there’s blood on the rug. What will Kate say?
“Marshall!” came a voice above him. A hand rested on his shoulder. It was a woman. Kate? Sandy? No, Bernice, squinting at him through blackened eyes. “Marshall, what happened? Are you—are you still there?”
“Help me clean up this mess,” was all he could say.
She scurried into the kitchen and found some paper towels. She brought them back and pressed a wad of them against his head. He winced at the pain.
She asked him, “Can you get up?”
“I don’t want to get up!” he answered crossly.
“Okay, okay. I just saw Sandy drive off. Was this her doing?”
“Yeah, she pitched that lamp at me …”
“It must have been something you said. Here, hold still.”
“She’s not herself at all, she’s gone crazy.”
“Where’s Kate?”
“She’s left me.”
Bernice settled to the floor, her bruised face the picture of shock, dismay, and exhaustion. Neither of them said anything for a few moments. They just stared at each other like two shot-up soldiers in a foxhole.
“Man, you’re a mess!” Marshall finally observed.
“At least the swelling’s gone down. Don’t I look foxy?”
“More like a raccoon. I thought you were supposed to be resting at home. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I just got back from Baker. And I have nothing but bad news from there too.”
He anticipated it. “Weed?”
“He’s dead. The truck he was driving went off the Judd River Bridge and into that big canyon. We were supposed to have met each other. He’d just gotten a call from Susan Jacobson, and it sounded pretty important.”
Marshall’s head fell back against the couch, and he closed his eyes. “Aw, great … just great!” He wanted to die.
“He called me this afternoon, and we set up the appointment. I imagine either my phone or his was bugged. That accident was set up, I’m sure of it. I got out of there fast!”
Marshall took the wad from his head and looked at the blood on it. He placed it back over the gash.
“We’re going down, Bernie,” he said, and went on to tell her about his whole afternoon, his meeting with Brummel and Brummel’s buddies, his loss of the house, his loss of the paper, his loss of Kate, of Sandy, of everything. “And did you know that I’ve made it a habit to molest my daughter
besides having an affair with my reporter?”
“They’re cutting you up into little pieces, aren’t they?” she said very quietly, her throat constricted with fear. “What can we do?”
“We can get the heck out of here, that’s what we can do!”
“You’re going to give up?”
Marshall only let his head sink downward. He was tired. “Let somebody else fight this war. We were warned, Bernie, and we didn’t listen. They got me. They got all our records, any proof we ever had. Harmel blew his brains out. Strachan’s getting as far away from it as he can. They took out Weed. Right now I think I’m just barely alive and that’s all I have left.”
“What about Susan Jacobson?”
It took some extra effort and willpower to make himself think about it. “I wonder if she even exists, and, if so, if she’s alive.”
“Kevin said she had the goods and she was getting ready to get out of wherever she was. That sounds to me like a defection, and if she has the evidence we need to seal this thing up—”
“They took care of that, Bernie. Remember? Weed was our last contact with her.”
“Want to toy with a theory?”
“No.”
“If Kevin’s phone was bugged, they know what Weed and Susan talked about. They heard it all.”
“Naturally, and Susan’s as good as dead too.”
“We don’t know that. Maybe she managed to get away. Maybe she was going to meet Kevin someplace.”
“Ehhh …” Marshall passively listened.
“What I’m toying with is that somewhere there must be a recording in somebody’s hands of that phone call.”
“Yeah, I suppose there is.” Marshall felt half-dead, but the half of him that was still alive was thinking. “But where would it be? This is a big country, Bernie.”
“Well … like I said, it’s a theory to toy with. It’s all we have left, really.”
“Which sure isn’t much.”