F Paul Wilson - Novel 10

by Midnight Mass (v2. 1)

  "Carole?"

  Carole didn't reply—couldn't reply.

  "Carole, it's me. Bern. Let me in."

  Against her will, a low moan escaped Carole. No, no, no, this couldn't be Bernadette. Bernadette was dead. Carole had left her cooling body lying in the basement. This was some horrible joke . . .

  Or was it? Maybe Bernadette had become one of them, one of the very things that had killed her.

  But the voice on the other side of the door was not that of some ravenous beast . . .

  "Please let me in, Carole. I'm frightened out here alone."

  Maybe Bern is alive, Carole thought, her mind racing, ranging for an answer. I'm no doctor. I could have been wrong about her being dead. Maybe she survived . . .

  She stood trembling, torn between the desperate, aching need to see her friend alive, and the wary terror of being tricked by whatever creature Bernadette might have become.

  "Carole?"

  Carole wished for a peephole in the door, or at the very least a chain lock, but she had neither, and she had to do something. She couldn't stand here like this and listen to that plaintive voice any longer without going mad. She had to know. Without giving herself any more time to think, she snapped back the bolt and pulled the door open, ready to face whatever awaited her in the hall.

  She gasped. "Bernadette!"

  Her friend stood just beyond the threshold, swaying, stark naked.

  Not completely naked. She still wore her wimple, although it was askew on her head, and a strip of cloth had been layered around her neck to dress her throat wound. In the wan, flickering candlelight that leaked from Carole's room, she saw that the blood that had splattered her was gone. Carole had never seen Bernadette unclothed before. She'd never realized how thin she was. Her ribs rippled beneath the skin of her chest, disappearing only beneath the scant padding of her small breasts with their erect nipples; the bones of her hips and pelvis bulged around her flat belly. Her normally fair skin was almost blue white. The only other colors were the dark pools of her eyes and the orange splotches of hair on her head and her pubes.

  "Carole," she said weakly. "Why did you leave me?"

  The sight of Bernadette standing before her, alive, speaking, had drained most of Carole's strength; the added weight of guilt from her words nearly drove her to her knees. She sagged against the door frame.

  "Bern ..." Carole's voice failed her. She swallowed and tried again. "I—I thought you were dead. And . . . what happened to your clothes?"

  Bernadette raised her hand to her throat. "I tore up my nightgown for a bandage. Can I come in?"

  Carole straightened and opened the door further. "Oh, Lord, yes. Come in. Sit down. I'll get you a blanket."

  Bernadette shuffled into the room, head down, eyes fixed on the floor. She moved like someone on drugs. But then, after losing so much blood, it was a wonder she could walk at all.

  "Don't want a blanket," Bern said. "Too hot. Aren't you hot?"

  She backed herself stiffly onto Carole's bed, then lifted her ankles and sat cross-legged, facing her. Mentally, Carole explained the casual, blatant way she exposed herself by the fact that Bernadette was still recovering from a horrific trauma, but that made it no less discomfiting.

  Carole glanced at the crucifix on the wall over her bed, above and behind Bernadette. For moment, as Bernadette had seated herself beneath it, she thought she had seen it glow. It must have been reflected candlelight. She turned away and retrieved a spare blanket from the closet. She unfolded it and wrapped it around Bernadette's shoulders and over her spread knees, covering her.

  "I'm thirsty, Carole. Could you get me some water?"

  Her voice was strange. Lower pitched and hoarse, yes, as might be expected after the throat wound she'd suffered. But something else had changed in her voice, something Carole could not pin down.

  "Of course. You'll need fluids. Lots of fluids."

  The bathroom was only two doors down. She took her water pitcher, lit a second candle, and left Bernadette on the bed, looking like an Indian draped in a serape.

  When she returned with the full pitcher, she was startled to find the bed empty. She spied Bernadette by the window. She hadn't opened it, but she'd pulled off the bedspread drape and raised the shade. She stood there, staring out at the night. And she was naked again.

  Carole looked around for the blanket and found it... hanging on the wall over her bed . . .

  Covering the crucifix.

  Part of Carole screamed at her to run, to flee down the hall and not look back. But another part of her insisted she stay. This was her friend. Something terrible had happened to Bernadette and she needed Carole now, probably more than she'd needed anyone in her entire life. And if someone was going to help her, it was Carole. Only Carole.

  She placed the pitcher on the nightstand.

  "Bernadette," she said, her mouth as dry as the timbers in these old walls, "the blanket . . ."

  "I was hot," Bernadette said without turning.

  "I brought you the water. I'll pour—"

  "I'll drink it later. Come and watch the night."

  "I don't want to see the night. It frightens me."

  Bernadette turned, a faint smile on her lips. "But the darkness is so beautiful."

  She stepped closer and stretched her arms toward Carole, laying a hand on each shoulder and gently massaging the terror-tightened muscles there. A sweet lethargy began to seep through Carole. Her eyelids began to drift closed ... so tired ... so long since she'd had any sleep . . .

  No!

  She forced her eyes open and gripped Bernadette's cold hands, pulling them from her shoulders. She pressed the palms together and clasped them between her own.

  "Let's pray, Bern. With me: Hail Mary, full of grace ..."

  "No!"

  "... the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou ..."

  Her friend's face twisted in rage. "I said, NO, damn you!"

  Carole struggled to keep a grip on Bernadette's hands but she was too strong.

  "... amongst women..."

  And suddenly Bernadette's struggles ceased. Her face relaxed, her eyes cleared, even her voiced changed, still hoarse, but higher in pitch, lighter in tone as she took up the words of the prayer.

  "And Blessed is the fruit of thy womb ..." Bernadette struggled with the next word, unable to say it. Instead she gripped Carole's hands with painful intensity and loosed a torrent of her own words. "Carole, get out! Get out, oh, please, for the love of God, get out now! There's not much of me left in here, and soon I'll be like the ones that killed me and I'll be after killing you! So run, Carole! Hide! Lock yourself in the chapel downstairs but get away from me now!"

  Carole knew now what had been missing from Bernadette's voice—her brogue. But now it was back. This was the real Bernadette speaking. She was back! Her friend, her sister was back! Carole bit back a sob.

  "Oh, Bern, I can help! I can—"

  Bernadette pushed her toward the door. "No one can help me, Carole!"

  She ripped the makeshift bandage from her neck, exposing the jagged, partially healed wound and the ragged ends of the torn blood vessels within it. "It's too late for me, but not for you. They're a bad lot and I'll be one of them again soon, so get out while you—"

  Suddenly Bernadette stiffened and her features shifted. Carole knew immediately that the brief respite her friend had stolen from the horror that gripped her was over. Something else was back in command.

  Carole turned and ran.

  But the Bernadette-thing was astonishingly swift. Carole had barely reached the threshold when a steel-fingered hand gripped her upper arm and yanked her back, nearly dislocating her shoulder. She cried out in pain and terror as she was spun about and flung across the room. Her hip struck hard against the rickety old spindle chair by her desk, knocking it over as she landed in a heap beside it.

  Carole groaned with the pain. As she shook her head to clear it, she saw Bernadette approaching, her movements swift, more
assured now, her teeth bared—so many teeth, and so much longer than the old Bernadette's—her fingers curved, reaching for Carole's throat. With each passing second there was less and less of Bernadette about her.

  Carole tried to back away, her frantic hands and feet slipping on the floor as she pressed her spine against the wall. She had nowhere to go. She pulled the fallen chair atop her and held it as a shield against the Bernadette-thing. The face that had once belonged to her dearest friend grimaced with contempt as she swung her hand at the chair. It scythed through the spindles, splintering them like matchsticks, sending the carved headpiece flying. A second blow cracked the seat in two. A third and fourth sent the remnants of the chair hurtling to opposite sides of the room.

  Carole was helpless now. All she could do was pray.

  "Our Father, who art—"

  "Too late for that to help you now, Carole!" she rasped, spitting her name.

  "... hallowed be Thy Name ..." Carole said, quaking in terror as frigid undead fingers closed on her throat.

  And then the Bernadette-thing froze, listening. Carole heard it too. An insistent tapping. On the window. The creature turned to look, and Carole followed her gaze.

  A face was peering through the glass.

  Carole blinked but it didn't go away. This was the second floor! How—?

  And then a second face appeared, this one upside down, looking in from the top of the window. And then a third, and a fourth, each more bestial than the last. And as each appeared it began to tap its fingers and knuckles on the window glass.

  "NO!" the Bernadette-thing screamed at them. "You can't come in! She's mine! No one touches her but me!"

  She turned back to Carole and smiled, showing those teeth that had never fit in Bernadette's mouth. "They can't cross a threshold unless invited in by one who lives there. I live here—or at least I did. And I'm not sharing you, Carole."

  She turned again and raked a clawlike hand at the window. "Go aWAY! She's MINE!"

  Carole glanced to her left. The bed was only a few feet away. And above it—the blanket-shrouded crucifix. If she could reach it...

  She didn't hesitate. With the mad tapping tattoo from the window echoing around her, Carole gathered her feet beneath her and sprang for the bed. She scrambled across the sheets, one hand outstretched, reaching for the blanket—

  A manacle of icy flesh closed around her calf and roughly dragged her back.

  "Oh, no, bitch," said the hoarse, unaccented voice of the Bernadette-thing. "Don't even think about it!"

  It grabbed two fistfuls of fabric at the back of Carole's blouse and hurled her across the room as if she weighed no more than a pillow. The wind whooshed out of Carole as she slammed against the far wall. She heard ribs crack. She fell among the splintered ruins of the chair, pain lancing through her right flank. The room wavered and blurred. But through the roaring in her ears she still heard that insistent tapping on the window.

  As her vision cleared she saw the Bernadette-thing's naked form gesturing again to the creatures at the window, now a mass of salivating mouths and tapping fingers.

  "Watch!" she hissed. "Watch me!"

  With that, she loosed a long, howling scream and lunged, arms curved before her, body arcing toward Carole in a flying leap. The scream, the tapping, the faces at the window, the dear friend who now wanted only to slaughter her—it all was suddenly too much for Carole. She wanted to roll away but couldn't get her body to move. Her hand found the broken seat of the chair by her hip. Instinctively she pulled it closer. She closed her eyes as she raised it between herself and the horror hurtling toward her.

  The impact drove the wood of the seat against Carole's chest; she groaned as new stabs of pain shot through her ribs. But the Bernadette-thing's triumphant feeding cry cut off abruptly and devolved into a coughing gurgle.

  Suddenly the weight was released from Carole's chest, and the chair seat with it.

  And the tapping at the window ceased.

  Carole opened her eyes to see the naked Bernadette-thing standing above her, straddling her, holding the chair seat before her, choking and gagging as she struggled with it.

  At first Carole didn't understand. She drew her legs back and inched away along the wall. And then she saw what had happened.

  Three splintered spindles had remained fixed in that half of the broken seat, and those spindles were now firmly and deeply embedded in the center of the Bernadette-thing's chest. She wrenched wildly at the chair seat, trying to dislodge the oak daggers but succeeded only in breaking them off at skin level. She dropped the remnant of the seat and swayed like a tree in a storm, her mouth working spasmodically as her hands fluttered ineffectually over the bloodless wounds between her ribs and the slim wooden stakes out of reach within them.

  Abruptly she dropped to her knees with a dull thud. Then, only inches from Carole, she slumped into a splay-legged squat. The agony faded from her face and she closed her eyes. She fell forward against Carole.

  Carole threw her arms around her friend and gathered her close.

  "Oh Bern, oh Bern, oh Bern," she moaned. "I'm so sorry. If only I'd got there sooner!"

  Bernadette's eyes fluttered open and the darkness was gone. Only her own spring-sky blue remained, clear, grateful. Her lips began to curve upward but made it only halfway to a smile, then she was gone.

  Carole hugged the limp cold body closer and moaned in boundless grief and anguish to the unfeeling walls. She saw the leering faces begin to crawl away from the window and she shouted at them though her tears.

  "Go! That's it! Run away and hide! Soon it'll be light and then I'll come looking for you! For all of you! And woe to any of you that I find!"

  She cried over Bernadette's body a long time. And then she wrapped it in a sheet and held and rocked her dead friend in her arms until sunrise on Easter Sunday.

  CAROLE . . .

  The voice yanked her from sleep, the voice that sounded like Bernadette's but robbed of all her sweetness and compassion.

 

  After the horrors of Easter weekend had come loneliness. Carole had begun talking to herself in her head—just for company of sorts—to ease her through the long empty hours. But the voice had taken on a life of its own, becoming Bernadette's. In a way, then, Bern was still alive.

  "Yes," Carole said, sitting up on the side of the bed and peering out the window at the lightening sky. "I suppose that was when it began."

  She'd walked out of the tomb of St. Anthony's convent on Easter morning and left the old Sister Carole Hanarty behind. That gentle soul, happy to spend her days and nights in the service of the Lord, praying, fasting, teaching chemistry to reluctant adolescents, and holding to her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was dead.

  In her place was a new Sister Carole, tempered in the forge of that night and recast into someone relentlessly vengeful and fearless to the point of recklessness.

  And perhaps, she admitted with no shame or regret, more than a little mad.

  She'd departed St. Anthony's and begun her hunt. She'd been hunting ever since.

  Carole stretched and glanced around the room. The walls had been decked with family pictures of weddings and children when she'd moved herself in. She'd removed those and lain the ones on the bureau and dresser face down. All those smiling children ... she couldn't bear their eyes watching her.

  She knew their names. The Bennetts—Kevin, Marie, and their twin girls. She hadn't known them before, but Carole felt she knew them now. She'd seen their family photos, seen the twins' bedroom.

  She knew from the state of the empty house when she'd found it that the owners hadn't moved out. They'd been driven out. She hoped for the sake of their souls that they were dead now. Truly dead.

 

 
"But the rules have changed," Carole whispered.

  Being a good person meant something different than it had then. And doing the Lord's work . . . well, it was an entirely different sort of work now.

  - 2 -

  ZEV . . .

  It had been almost a full minute since he'd slammed the brass knocker against the heavy oak door. That should have been proof enough. After all, wasn't the knocker in the shape of a cross? But no, they had to squint through their peephole and peer through the sidelights that framed the door.

  Zev sighed and resigned himself to the scrutiny. He couldn't blame people for being cautious, but this seemed overly so. The sun was in the west and shining full on his back; he was all but silhouetted in it. What more did they want?

  I should maybe take off my clothes and dance naked?

  He gave a mental shrug and savored the salt tang of the sea air. The bulk of this huge Tudor mansion stood between him and the Atlantic, but the ocean's briny scent and rhythmic rumble were everywhere. He'd bicycled from Lakewood, which was only ten miles inland from here, but the warm May day and the bright sun beating on his dark blue suit coat had sweated him up. It had taken him longer than he'd planned to find this retreat house.

  Spring Lake. The Irish Riviera. An Irish Catholic seaside resort since before the turn of the century. He looked around at its carefully restored Victorian houses, the huge mansions facing the beach, the smaller homes set in neat rows running straight back from the ocean. Many of them were still occupied. Not like Lakewood. Lakewood was an empty shell.

  Oh, they'd been smart, those bloodsuckers. They knew their easiest targets. Whenever they swooped into an area they went after officialdom first — the civic leaders, the cops, the firemen, the clergy. But after that, they attacked the non-Christian neighborhoods. And among Jews they picked the Orthodox first of the first. Smart. Where else would they be less likely to run up against a cross? It worked for them in Brooklyn and Queens, and so when they came south into New Jersey, spreading like a plague, they headed straight for the town with one of the largest collections of yeshivas in North America.