F Paul Wilson - Novel 10

by Midnight Mass (v2. 1)

  "We?" Lacey's stomach twisted and bile rose in her throat. "You mean ... ?"

  Carole was nodding. "There's no other way."

  "No! I can't!"

  "I can't move him alone, Lacey. The parishioners must never know, must never find him. They must think he died fighting for them. If they learn he's become the enemy, that he's preying on them ..."

  "But put a stake through his heart? I can't!"

  "You can't not, Lacey. Not if you have the slightest bit of regard for who he was and what he stood for and how he'd want to be remembered."

  In that instant Lacey knew Carole was right. Her Uncle Joe had lived his life by a certain set of rules, not simply avoiding evil but actively trying to do good. She couldn't let these undead vermin make a lie and a mockery of his entire life. Stopping that would not be something she did to him, it would be for him.

  Somehow, somewhere, she found the strength to rise from the bed. Let's go.

  "Can you get a car?"

  Lacey nodded. "We brought in a bunch of them to block the streets. There's extras. I'm sure I can get one."

  "Good. Keep the lights out and drive it around to the side door of the rectory, then come inside. I'll be waiting in the basement."

  The next ten or fifteen minutes would forever be a blur in Lacey's memory. Finding the keys to an old Lincoln Town Car and sneaking it around the block remained clear, but after that. . . creeping down into that dank cellar .. . seeing her uncle's lifeless, bloodless face when Carole unwrapped the top of the sheet—it was him, really, really him—and then struggling his dead weight up the stairs . . . placing him in the trunk of the car . . . hearing the clank of the tools Carole had found in the caretaker's shed as she carefully placed them on the back seat. . . slumping in the passenger seat as Carole drove them away toward the brightening horizon . . .

  And thinking about her Uncle Joe . ..

  The earliest memory was riding on his back, he barely a teenager and she barely in kindergarten. A flash of watching from a front row pew as he took his Holy Orders and officially became a priest. And then later, much clearer memories of long conversations about faith and God and the meaning of life with her doing most of the talking because no one would listen to her, only him, and Uncle Joe not agreeing but giving her his ear, letting her finish without cutting her off and dissing her dissidence.

  And now he was gone. Her sounding board, her last anchor... gone, erased. She felt adrift.

  The car stopped. Returning to the present, Lacey wiped her eyes and looked around. They were at the beach. A boardwalk lay straight ahead. She'd been here a few days ago.

  They'd arrived at the edge of the continent... to do the unthinkable . . . in order to prevent the unspeakable.

  "I don't know if I can go through with this," Lacey said.

  Carole was already out of the car. "Stop thinking of yourself and help me carry him."

  Thinking of yourself. . . That angered Lacey. "I'm thinking about him, and what he's meant to me, what he'll always mean to me."

  "Do you hear yourself? Me-me-me. This isn't about you or me. It's about Father Joe's legacy. And if we're going to preserve that, we have to do what has to be done."

  She was right. Damn her, this weird nun was right. Lacey got out of the car as Carole popped the trunk.

  "Where are we taking him?"

  "Up to the beach."

  "Why the beach?"

  "Because we can dig a deep hole quickly, and because very few people come here anymore."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I watch. I watch everything. No one will find him. Now help me lift him."

  Lacey glanced around. The area looked deserted but who knew what was hiding in the shadows. Her guns ... after taking the dead Vichy woman's clothes, she'd crept back into the Post Office and lifted the pistols off a couple of the undead corpses. She wished she'd thought to bring them, but her mind had been numbed with loss.

  Carole opened the trunk to reveal the sheet-wrapped form. Steeling herself, Lacey took the shoulders, Carole the feet, and they carried Joe's body up a ramp, across the boardwalk, then down the steps to the sand. Carole directed them toward a spot under the boards with about five feet of headroom, maybe a little less.

  Lacey stayed with the body while Carole ran back to the car. She returned moments later with a pair of shovels and a beat-up purple vinyl book bag. The sky had grown light enough for Lacey to see ST. ANTHONY'S SCHOOL emblazoned along the side in yellow.

  "What's in there?" Lacey asked, although she had a good idea what the answer would be.

  Carole said nothing. She responded by pulling out a heavy, iron-headed maul and a wickedly sharpened length of one-inch doweling. She drew the sheet back from Uncle Joe's head and upper torso.

  Lacey's stomach heaved as she caught sight of his torn-open throat. She'd seen only his face back in the rectory. Good thing she hadn't eaten since yesterday, otherwise she'd be spewing across the sand.

  "Look what they did to him!" she screeched. "Look what they did!"

  Carole didn't respond. Her face seemed set in stone as she raised the stake and placed the point over the left side of his chest.

  "Can't it wait?" Lacey cried.

  "Till when?" Carole's expression had became fierce, her voice tight, thin, stretched to the breaking point. "Tell me a good time for this and I'll gladly wait. When, Lacey? When will be a good time?"

  Lacey had no answer. When she saw Carole place the point of the stake over her uncle's heart, she turned away.

  "I can't watch this."

  "Then I guess I'm on my own."

  Sobbing openly, Lacey resisted the urge to run screaming down the beach. She kept her back to Carole and jammed her fingers into her ears while she began a tuneless hum to block out the sounds—of iron striking wood, of wood crunching through bone and cartilage. She knew she should be helping, but after what she'd already been through in the last dozen hours, pounding a stake into her uncle's chest was more than she could handle right now. She couldn't. She. Just. Couldn't.

  So she stared through her tears at the ocean, at the pink glow growing on the horizon.

  Finally she pulled her fingers from her ears and tried to turn, but her brain refused to send the necessary signals to make her body move. The mere thought of seeing her uncle lying there with a shaft of wood protruding from his chest. . .

  She heard a noise ... sobbing .. . Carole.

  "Is... is it over?"

  Carole moaned. "Nooooo! I couldn't do it!"

  Lacey whirled, took one look at the nun's tear-stained face, and she knew.

  "You loved him, didn't you."

  Another bubbling sob from Carole as she nodded. "In my fashion, yes. We all did. A good, goo d man ..."

  "I don't mean loving him like that, like a brother. I mean as a man."

  Carole said nothing, just stared down at the sheet-wrapped body before her.

  "It's okay, Carole. It's not just idle interest. He was my uncle. I'd like to know how you felt about him, especially now that he's . . . gone. Did you love him as a man?"

  "Yes." It sounded like a gasp of relief, as if a long pent-up pressure had been released. "Not that we ever did anything," she added quickly. "Not that he ever even knew."

  "But you" ... she needed the right word here . . . "longed for him?"

  "God forgive me, yes. Not lust, nothing carnal. I just wanted to be near him. Can you understand that?"

  Lacey shrugged, unsure of what she could understand. This was so unreal.

  "I'm not sure how to say this," Carole said, "because I've never expressed it, even to myself."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it wasn't right. I took vows. He took vows. I shouldn't have been thinking of a man like that, especially a priest. God was supposed to be enough. But sometimes..."

  "Sometimes God just isn't enough."

  "It must be a sin to say so, but no, sometimes He isn't. Father Joe had something about him that made me ... made me want,
long to be near him. His very presence just seemed to make the world seem right. I'd see him touch some of the other sisters, the older ones—nothing but a hand on the arm or, rarely, an arm across the shoulders as they'd laugh about something. But never me. And I never knew why. Not that I wanted more, not that I'd ever lead him astray, but a simple touch, just to let me know he knew I existed, that would have made me so happy."

  Lacey felt as if she were talking to some lonely preteen, and sexually, maybe that was where Carole was. She'd probably joined the convent right out of high school—maybe during high school—and she'd never progressed past that stage in her relationships with the opposite sex.

  "Do you think my uncle was avoiding you?"

  "Sometimes it seemed like it."

  "Well, I can think of only one reason for that."

  Carole looked up. "What?"

  "Maybe he felt the same about you."

  "Oh, no." Carole shook her head vehemently, almost violently. "He didn't. He couldn't have."

  "I'm sure of it."

  She wasn't sure at all, but the sweet light flaring in Carole's eyes now touched Lacey more deeply than she could have imagined a few moments ago when this seemingly icebound woman had crouched there with a stake poised over Uncle Joe's heart.

  "Carole, you should have seen his face the other night after you stopped by the church. He was worried about you, wished you'd come into the church with us, but he was beaming too ..."

  Wait a sec. That was no exaggeration. Joe had been beaming. Maybe there'd been more going on between those two than anyone knew, least of all themselves.

  "Beaming?" Carole said.

  Lacey knew a prompt when she heard one. "Yeah. Beaming. He seemed really, really happy to see you and know you were still alive. He kept talking about you."

  How sad, Lacey thought. The two of them could have made each other's lives so much brighter, but they'd been kept apart.

  Carole sobbed again. "Now he's gone!"

  "Not quite," Lacey said. "Not yet. And that's where we come in, I guess."

  "How can I do this?" She wiped her eyes and sniffed. "I could do it, I know I could if he were one of them, if I could see that cold evil hunger in his eyes, I could save him from that. But look at him. Except for his throat he looks so normal, so . .. peaceful. I can't."

  "But we have to," Lacey said. She realized with a start that their roles had been reversed. "Why don't we dig the hole—the grave—first, and then ... and then we'll do it together."

  Carole stared at her. "You'll help me?"

  "Yes." Lacey nodded, hoping she was making a promise she could keep. "For him. For Uncle Joe."

  They began to dig, together at first, then taking turns as the grave deepened.

  Lacey was waist deep in the hole as the sun began to emerge from the sea. She pointed to the loose sand sliding down the walls around her.

  "If that keeps up we'll never make six feet."

  Carole sat to the side, taking her turn to rest. "We'll do the best we can. We need it deep enough to discourage any wild dogs from trying to dig him up."

  The exertions of digging plus her earlier concussion had started blinding bolts of pain shooting through her head. That, the beating she'd endured, and the lack of food made the work agony, but she'd keep on digging till nightfall and beyond if it meant putting off what they had to do once Joe's grave was ready.

  "All right," Lacey said. "We'll go down another foot, then—" She stopped as she caught a sharp, pungent odor. "What's that? Something burning?" A puff of white smoke wafted past her. "What the hell? It almost smells like—"

  "Oh, dear God!" Carole cried, scrambling to her hands and knees. "Father Joe!"

  Lacey looked and saw her uncle lying in the full light of the rising sun. His exposed skin was smoking and bubbling.

  "Shit!"

  She scrambled out of the grave and grabbed his arm, then released it in a spasm of revulsion. The flesh felt like hot wax. She looked for a place to hide him from the sun. With the light shining at this low angle, the only shady spots here were the narrow bands behind the pilings, nowhere near enough to shelter him.

  "Quick!" Carole said. "The grave!"

  She grabbed Joe's sheet-wrapped feet and started dragging him toward it. Lacey helped. Seconds later they tumbled him into the opening. He landed on his back, out of the sun, and immediately his skin stopped boiling. But the odor of burning flesh still rolled off of him.

  "Look at him," Lacey whispered. "Look what it did to him."

  They crouched and stared at him. The still-smoking skin of Joe's face and chest and upper arms was dead white and rippled and pitted like a bad stucco job.

  Finally Carole said, "Why did we do that?"

  "Do what?"

  "Protect him from the sun."

  Lacey saw what she meant. "You mean if we'd left him there, the sun might have done the job for us?"

  Carole shook her head. "I don't know, but that's what seemed to be happening."

  "Are you saying we should drag him out on the beach and just let him . . . what. . . boil away?"

  That struck Lacey as a greater defilement than driving a stake through him. Almost like setting him on fire.

  "I don't know," Carole said. "I used to be so very sure about some things, especially this sort of thing. Now ... I don't know."

  Lacey glanced again at her uncle's body, appalled by his ruined skin, and noticed something. She squinted into the shadows of the grave, still not sure.

  "What is it?" Carole said.

  "Look at his throat. Wasn't it all torn open a few minutes ago?"

  Carole slapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh, no! It's happening already!"

  "What?"

  "The change! He's turning!"

  "How do you know?"

  "Because Bernadette. .. because I've seen it before. As they turn, the death wound heals up as if it never was."

  Lacey grabbed Carole's flashlight and fixed the beam on Joe's throat. The area where it had been torn open was thickened and puckered, a different kind of scarring than the rest of his ruined skin. "That doesn't look healed up to me. Looks more like its been fused or ..." What was the word? "... cauterized."

  "He's turned, I tell you." Carole looked around, then picked up Joe's big silver cross from the sand. "Watch."

  As Carole leaned into the grave and pressed the cross against Joe's chest, Lacey winced, expecting a puff of smoke and who knew what else. But nothing happened.

  "That's strange," Carole said. "It should have burned him."

  "Which means he hasn't turned."

  "Yet," Carole's eyes took on a haunted look. "This doesn't let us off the hook, I'm afraid."

  Lacey glanced over to where the stake and the maul rested on the sand.

  "What if.. ." Her thoughts were scattering like a startled flock of birds. "What if the sun burned it out of him?"

  "Burned what out of him?"

  "Whatever makes you turn undead. Look, it cauterized his wound."

  "And all his exposed skin as well. He would have . . . dissolved out there if we hadn't pushed him into this hole!"

  She had a point. Joe had looked like he was melting, but Lacey wasn't giving in. She had this feeling ...

  "Okay, but what if he was out there in the sun long enough to kill him—I mean, to burn off whatever was going to make him undead and leave him really dead? It's possible, isn't it?"

  Carole sighed. "Possible, I suppose. But I've never heard of anything like that."

  "There must be tons we don't know about these creatures. If you agree it's possible, then why can't we leave him as he is and just fill in his grave?"

  Carole shook her head. "We need to be sure. We owe him that."

  "All right then ..." Her mind ranged over the options, anything but jumping into that hole and driving a stake through that limp body. "How about we come back here at sunset? If he's not dead, we'll be waiting when he starts to dig his way out, and we'll. .. stop him."

  "You w
ant to risk that?" Carole said, eyeing her. "It will be harder, but we can stop him as he's crawling out. Just remember, it will be much worse to have to stake him while he's moving."

  Lacey wrung her hands. "I know, I know. But I've got this feeling we won't have to."

  "This is nothing but wishful thinking, Lacey."

  "It's more than that. Please. Do it my way, just this once."

  Carole sat silent for a long moment, then, "All right. I just hope we don't regret this."

  Her tone was wary, but Lacey thought she detected a hint of relief.

  "We won't. I've got—"

  "A feeling. So you said." Carole grabbed a shovel. "But swear to me you'll be back here with me before sunset, and that we'll watch over him all night until dawn." "I swear."

  Carole nodded and started shoveling sand back into the grave.

  "Wait," Lacey said. "Let me cover his face."

  She slid into the hole, careful not to step on him, and tugged up the sheet so that it covered her uncle's face.

  As soon as Lacey crawled out, Carole started shoveling again. She couldn't seem to wait to cover him.

  "Shouldn't we say a few words over him first?"

  Lacey didn't want a prayer, but she thought they could at least say something about the man he was and the life he'd led.

  Carole looked at her. "Not yet. Not till we're sure he's at rest. Truly at rest. Then we'll give our eulogies."

  - 8 -

  He awakens in crushing darkness, a damp, dusty sheet pressed hard against his face, pushing at his eyes, an anvil resting on his chest.

  Air! He needs air!

  Then he realizes that he doesn't. He feels no urge to breathe, no need. Why not?

  Where is he? More important—who is he? The answer is there, just beyond his grasp. Reaching for it, he tries to claw at the entrapping sheet but his arms are pinned to his sides by its enormous weight. He worms one hand up across his chest to where he can grip the sheet. He pulls it down—

  Sand! Cascading into his eyes, filling his mouth and nose. He's buried in sand!

  He's got to get out!

  His struggles become frantic. He tears through the sheet and fights the incalculable weight, working his hands and then his arms through the granules. He's strong, and soon his hands are snaking up through the sand, slowly making their way to the surface. . .