This Present Darkness

by Frank E. Peretti

  “I need your help, Kevin. I don’t have much time. There isn’t much time.”

  “Time for what?” he asked very dully.

  “Please listen. Write it down if you have to.”

  “I don’t got a pencil.”

  “Then just listen. Now you know about the Ashton Clarion? The newspaper in Ashton?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know about it.”

  “Bernice Krueger works there. She’s the sister of my old roommate, Pat, the one who committed suicide.”

  “Oh, man … what’s going on around here?”

  “Kevin, will you do something for me? Will you get ahold of Bernice Krueger at the Clarion and … Kevin?”

  “Yeah, I’m listening.”

  “Kevin, I’m in trouble. I need your help.”

  “So where’s your boyfriend?”

  “He’s the one I’m afraid of. You know about him. Tell Bernice all about Alexander Kaseph, everything you know.”

  Kevin was nonplussed. “So what do I know?”

  “Tell her what happened, you know, between us, with Kaseph, the whole thing. Tell her what Kaseph’s up to.”

  “I don’t get this.”

  “I don’t have time to explain. Just tell her—tell her that Kaseph is taking over the whole town … and let her know I have some very important information about her sister Pat. I’ll try to reach her, but I’m afraid the Clarion phone might be bugged. Kevin, I need you to be there to answer the phone, to …” Susan was frustrated, full of emotion, unable to select the right words. She had too much to say and too little time.

  “You’re not making a whole lot of sense,” Kevin muttered. “You on something?”

  “Just do it, Kevin, please! I’ll call you again as soon as I can, or I’ll write, or do something, but please call Bernice Krueger and tell her everything you know about Kaseph and about me. Tell her it was me she saw at the carnival.”

  “How’m I supposed to remember all this stuff?”

  “Please do it. Tell me you’ll do it!”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ll do it.”

  “I’ve got to go! Good-bye!”

  Susan hung up the phone and dashed out of the booth. Tal followed her, ducking inside the buildings as much as he could.

  He reached the alley a few moments ahead of her to check it out. Trouble! Four more sentries had moved in to take the place of the original twenty, and they were fully alert. There was no way of knowing where Guilo and the twenty might be. Tal looked behind him. Susan was running full speed for the alley.

  Tal dove headfirst through the pavement and penetrated deep under the city, gaining speed, bringing forth his big silver sword. The power of God was increasing now; the saints must be praying somewhere. He could feel it. He only had seconds and he knew it. He checked his bearings, made a wide subterranean sweep away from the hotel and then, over a mile away, he circled back, gaining speed, gaining speed, gaining speed, shining light, building power, faster, faster, faster, his sword a blinding lightning bolt, his eyes like fire, the earth a blur around him, the roar of passing clay, boulders, pipe, and stone like a freight train. He held the sword crossways, the glimmering tip ready for that one infinitesimal moment.

  Quicker than a thought, like the explosion of a missile, a brilliant streak of light burst from the ground across the street and seemed to cut space in half as it pierced through the alley and right across the eyes of all four demons. The demons, stunned and blinded, fell to the ground, stumbled about, tried to find each other. The streak of light vanished back into the ground as quickly as it came.

  Susan came around the corner and into the alley, heading for the window.

  Tal cupped his wings and braked himself. He had to get back to help her through that window before any demons could recover and sound an alarm. He snapped his wings into a violent forward rush and doubled back.

  Susan clambered up the crates and cans and onto the dumpster. The demons started to regain their vision and were rubbing their eyes. Tal emerged behind the fire escape, trying to judge the remaining time.

  Good! Guilo made it back and dropped like a hawk into the alley, grabbing Susan and thrusting her through the window in an instant, holding her up so she would not tumble to the floor inside. Guilo closed the window himself.

  Tal flew out to meet Guilo. “One more time,” he shouted.

  Nothing more needed to be said. The four sentries had recovered and were pouncing on them, and the other twenty had returned, hot on Guilo’s trail. Tal and Guilo shot into the air and streaked away, chased by a flock of frothing demons. The angels flew a course high over the city and kept their speed just slow enough to encourage the demons. They headed west, off into the dark night sky, trailing brilliant white streaks behind them. The demons were tenacious in their pursuit for hundreds of miles, but eventually Tal looked back and found that they had given up the chase and returned to the city. Tal and Guilo picked up speed and headed for Ashton.

  IN THE LADIES’ room, Susan hurriedly rolled up the legs of her jeans, took her evening gown from its hook in the stall, and quickly resumed her proper appearance for the banquet. She removed the slippers and put them in her handbag, slipped on her dress shoes, then opened the stall door and came out.

  A man’s voice outside the lounge door called, “Susan, they’re waiting for you!”

  She checked her appearance in the mirror, combed her hair, and tried to calm her breathing. “Hasty, hasty,” she called teasingly.

  With ladylike dignity she finally emerged into the hallway and took the arm of the escort. He led her back to the Grand Ballroom, now filled with people, and showed her to her seat at the head table, giving the other escort a reassuring nod.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE CLARION OFFICE was finally recovering the nice, healthy efficiency Marshall liked to see, and the new girl, Carmen, had a lot to do with it. In less than a week she had taken the old bull by the horns and had more than filled Edie’s shoes, reestablishing a tight office routine.

  It was only Wednesday, and already the paper was in full swing, heading for the Friday edition. Marshall stopped by Carmen’s desk on his way to the coffee machine.

  She handed him some fresh copy and said, “This is part of Tom’s article.”

  Marshall nodded. “Yeah, the thing on the fire department …”

  “I’ve broken it down into three headings—staff, history, and goals—and figured we could run it in three parts. Tom already has it slotted for the next two paste-ups and thinks he can bump something for the third.”

  Marshall was pleased. “Yeah, go with it, I like it. I’m glad you can read Tom’s writing.”

  Carmen had already proofread the bulk of the material for Friday and was halfway through preparing the copy for George, the typesetter. She had gone through the books and balanced all the accounts. She planned on helping Tom with the paste-up tomorrow. The negatives for the Sportsman’s Club layout were ready.

  Marshall shook his head with happy amazement. “Glad to have you aboard.”

  Carmen smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

  Marshall went to the coffeemaker and poured two cups of coffee. Then it dawned on him: Carmen had found the cord to this fool machine!

  He took the two cups back toward his office and gave her a smile of approval as he passed her desk. The location of her desk had been her only request on the job. She had asked if it could be moved to a location right outside Marshall’s office door, and Marshall was happy to comply. Now all he had to do was turn and holler, and she would spring into action to do his bidding.

  Marshall went into his office, set his cup of coffee on his desk, and offered the other cup to the long-haired, slightly dazed man sitting in the corner. Bernice sat in a chair she had brought in with her own cup of coffee.

  “Now where were we?” Marshall asked, sitting at his desk.

  Kevin Weed rubbed his face, took a sip of the coffee, and tried to pick up his thoughts again, looking around the floor as if he had dropped t
hem down there somewhere.

  Marshall prompted, “Okay, let me at least make sure I’ve got this straight: Now you used to be the … male acquaintance of this Susan, and she used to be the roommate of Pat Krueger, Bernice’s sister. Have I got that right?”

  Weed nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.”

  “So what was Susan doing at the carnival?”

  “Beats me. Like I said, she just came up behind me and said hi, and I wasn’t even looking for her. I couldn’t believe it was her, you know?”

  “But she got your phone number and then she called you last night …”

  “Yeah, all tripped out, shook up. It was wild. She didn’t make a lot of sense.”

  Marshall looked at both Weed and Bernice and asked Bernice, “And this is the same ghostly-looking woman you photographed that night?”

  Bernice was convinced. “The descriptions Kevin gave me match perfectly the woman I saw, and also that one older man who was with her.”

  “Yeah, Kaseph.” Kevin said the name as if it tasted bad.

  “All right,” and Marshall made a list in his mind. “So let’s talk about this Kaseph first, then we’ll talk about Susan, and then we’ll talk about Pat.”

  Bernice had her notepad ready. “What’s Kaseph’s full name, any idea?”

  Weed strained his brain. “Alex—Alan—Alexander … something like that.”

  “But it starts with A.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Marshall asked, “What is he?”

  Weed answered, “Susan’s new boyfriend, the guy she dumped me for.”

  “So what does he do? Where does he work?”

  Weed shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s got bucks, though. He’s a real wheeler-dealer. When I first heard about him, he was hanging around Ashton and the college and talking about buying property and stuff. Man, the guy was loaded and he liked everybody to know it too.” Then he remembered, “Oh, and Susan said he’s trying to take over the town …”

  “What town? This one?”

  “I guess.”

  Bernice asked, “So where is he from?”

  “Back east, maybe New York. I think he’s the big-city type.”

  Marshall told Bernice, “Make a note for me to call Al Lemley at the Times. He might be able to track this guy down if he’s in New York.” Bernice made the note. Marshall asked Weed, “What else do you know about him?”

  “He’s weird, man. He’s into weird stuff.”

  Marshall was getting impatient. “C’mon, try harder.”

  Weed stirred and fidgeted in his chair, trying to get comfortable about talking. “Well, you know, he was like a guru, or a witch doctor, or some kind of far-out ooga-booga man, and he got Susan into all that stuff.”

  Bernice prodded, “Are you talking about Eastern mysticism?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pagan religions, meditation?”

  “Yeah, yeah, all that stuff. He was into all that stuff, he and that professor lady at the college, what’s-her-name—”

  Marshall was sick of the name. “Langstrat.”

  Weed’s face brightened with recollection. “Yeah, that was it.”

  “Were Kaseph and Langstrat associated? Were they friends?”

  “Yeah, sure. They were teaching some night classes together, I think, the ones that Susan was going to. Kaseph was a special guest star or something. He really had everybody wowed. I thought he was spooky.”

  “All right, so Susan was attending these classes—”

  “And she got crazy, and I mean crazy. Man, she couldn’t have been on a higher trip with mescaline. I couldn’t even talk to her anymore. She was always way out in space somewhere.”

  Weed kept talking, starting to roll a little on his own. “That’s what really started to get me, how she and the rest of that bunch started keeping secrets and talking in codes and not letting me in on what they were talking about. Susan just kept telling me I wasn’t enlightened and wouldn’t understand. Man, she just gave it all to that Kaseph guy and he took her, I mean he really took her. He owns her now. She’s gone. She’s had it.”

  “And was Langstrat mixed up in all this?”

  “Oh yeah, but Kaseph was the real heavy. He was the guru, you know. Langstrat was his puppy dog.”

  Bernice said, “And now Susan gets your phone number and calls you after all this time.”

  “And she was scared,” said Weed. “She’s in trouble. She said I was supposed to get in touch with you guys and tell you what I knew, and she said she had some information on Pat.”

  Bernice was longing to know. “Did she say what kind of information?”

  “No, nothing. But she wants to get ahold of you.”

  “Well, why doesn’t she just call?”

  That question helped Weed to remember something. “Oh, yeah, she thinks your phone might be bugged.”

  Marshall and Bernice were silent for a moment. That was a comment they didn’t know how seriously to take.

  Weed added, “I guess she called me to be a go-between, to tip you guys off.”

  Marshall ventured, “Like you’re the only one she has left to trust?”

  Weed only shrugged.

  Bernice asked, “Well, what do you know about Pat? Did Susan ever tell you anything while you were still going together?”

  One of Weed’s most painful undertakings was trying to remember things. “Uh … she and Pat were good friends, for a while anyway. But you know, Susan left us all out in the cold when she started following after that Kaseph bunch. She kinda pushed me off, and Pat too. They didn’t get along very well after that, and Susan kept saying how Pat was … heh … just like me, trying to get in the way, not enlightened, dragging her feet.”

  Marshall thought of the question and didn’t wait for Bernice to ask it. “So, would you say that this Kaseph bunch may have regarded Pat as an enemy?”

  “Man …” Weed remembered some more. “She did stick her neck out, I mean, she got in the way. Her and Susan had a real fight once about the stuff Susan was getting into. Pat didn’t trust Kaseph and kept telling Susan she was brainwashed.”

  Weed’s eyes brightened. “Yeah, I talked to Pat once. We were sitting at a game, and we talked about what Susan was getting into and how Kaseph was controlling her, and Pat was really shook up about it, just like I was. I guess Pat and Susan really had some fights about it until Susan finally moved out of the dorm and ran off with Kaseph. Boy, she dropped out of her classes and everything.”

  “So did Pat make any enemies, I mean real enemies?”

  Weed kept digging up new things that had been buried under the years and the alcohol. “Uh, yeah, maybe she did. It was after Susan ran off with this Kaseph guy. Pat told me she was going to check the whole thing out once and for all, and I think she may have gone to see that Professor Langstrat a few times. A while later I ran into her again. She was sitting in a cafeteria on campus, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days, and I asked her how she was, and she would hardly even talk to me. I asked how her investigation was going, you know, her checking out Kaseph and Langstrat and stuff, and she said she’d quit doing anything about that, said it was really no big deal. I thought that was a little weird, she’d been so torn up about it before. I asked her, ‘Hey, are they coming after you now?’ and she wouldn’t talk about it, she said I wouldn’t understand. Then she said something about some instructor, some guy that was helping her out and that she was doing okay, and I got the message that she didn’t want me butting in, so I just sort of left her there.”

  “Did her behavior seem strange to you?” Bernice asked. “Did she seem like herself?”

  “No way. Hey, if she hadn’t been so against that whole Kaseph and Langstrat bunch, I woulda thought she was one of them; she had the same kind of dopey, lost-in-space look all over her.”

  “When? Just when was it that you saw her like that?”

  Weed knew, but hated to say it. “Just a little while before they found her dead.”r />
  “Did she seem afraid? Did she give you any indication of any enemies, anything like that?”

  Weed grimaced, trying to remember. “She wouldn’t talk to me. But I saw her once after that and tried to ask her about Susan, and she acted like I was some kind of mugger or something … she hollered, ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone!’ and tried to pull away and then she saw it was me, and she looked all around like somebody was following her …”

  “Who? Did she say who?”

  Weed looked at the ceiling. “Oh … what was that guy’s name?”

  Bernice was leaning forward, hanging on his words. “There was somebody?”

  “Thomas, some guy named Thomas.”

  “Thomas! Did she ever say his last name?”

  “Don’t remember any last name. I never met the guy, never saw him, but he sure must have owned her. She acted like he was following her all around, talking to her, maybe threatening her, I don’t know. She seemed pretty afraid of him.”

  “Thomas,” Bernice whispered. She said to Weed, “Is there anything else about this Thomas? Anything at all?”

  “I never saw him … she didn’t say who he was or where she would meet him. But it was kinda strange. One minute she’d be talking like he was the greatest thing that ever happened to her, and then the next minute she’d be hiding out and saying he was following her.”

  Bernice got up and headed for the door. “I think we might have a college roster somewhere.” She began rummaging around in the desks and shelves of the front office.

  Weed fell silent. He looked tired.

  Marshall reassured him, “You’re doing fine, Kevin. Hey, it’s been a while.”

  “Uh … I don’t know if this is important—”

  “Consider everything important.”

  “Well, this stuff about Pat having some new instructor … I think some of the Kaseph bunch, maybe it was Susan, they had instructors.”

  “But I thought Pat didn’t want anything to do with that group.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

  Marshall shifted directions. “So where did you fit into all these goings-on, besides your relationship with Susan?”