The Devil's Touch

by William W. Johnstone

  Sam carefully checked his weapons. Nydia met him at the side door of the mansion, in the kitchen. "You be careful, Sam," she said, kissing him. "It's a sure bet that while Xaviere is your child, she'll try to lure you into her bed to produce another demon child."

  "Tell you what," Sam said with a grin. "Any genealogist who ever tries to trace this family tree will be a sure bet for the funny farm when he's through."

  She matched his grin, kissed him again, and gently pushed him toward the door.

  "My dear Sam," Xaviere said. She was standing by the gate that was the only opening between the two estates. The gate was locked and chained. She spoke through the heavy steel bars. "Or would you prefer I called you Daddy?"

  "You'll be calling me a lot of things before this ordeal is over, Xaviere."

  Her laughter was loud and evil, mocking Sam. "1 suppose so, Sam. We all watched you and Desiree. You're very well endowed, Sam. I am looking forward to your making love to me at some later date. Poor Desiree. I had no idea she was a virgin."

  Sam said nothing. He continued to stare at the young woman through the steel bars.

  "And young Jon Le Moyne had quite a time with Nydia, did he not? The boy is almost a freak in the sex department. But your wife certainly seemed to enjoy it."

  "It won't work, Xaviere," Sam said. "Give it up."

  "No, Sam. You give it up. It would be the wisest move for you to make. I'll make a pact with you, Daddy. Plant your seed in me and I'll let all of you leave. I give you my word that you all will be allowed to leave in safety."

  "No deal," Sam said flatly. "I won't make deals with you or Satan."

  She smiled at him. Licked her lips. "Am I that unattractive, Sam?"

  "You know you're not, Xaviere. But I wouldn't fuck you with Satan's dick."

  She flushed with anger, then caught her emotions and held them in check. She forced a smile. "How crude, Sam. But I won't accept your answer. Not until you have had the time to think it over. For the consequences will be—ah—well, unpleasant, to say the least."

  "I can imagine."

  "No," Xaviere said softly. "No, Sam. I don't believe you can. 1 know you went through much at Falcon House. But this time is entirely different. You're on your own. No outside help. Let me give you an example. I will order the Catholic priest to be slowly crucified; the priest of the Episcopal church will be raped, by men, in full view of you all. I shall have the prissy little writer skinned alive. That should prove quite amusing, oui, Sam?"

  "Go on, Xaviere, act out your fantasies. Have a ball running your mouth."

  "Oh, they are not fantasies, dear Sam. I assure you of that. Now let me see—where was I? Ah! I shall have the Baptist minister become a Beast; the Methodist to be beaten into submission and forced to become my slave. Mille I shall give to the men of the coven. Monty, I shall—"

  "All right, Xaviere," Sam said, with a curt slash of his hand. "All right. I get your point. All sorts of dire and perverted acts lay in store for us. I'll relay your messages to the others."

  She looked at him oddly. "Yes, I believe you will. Honesty. That queer Christian trait. Do tell them, Sam. But please remember, the only way to prevent their torture and abuse is to give me your seed."

  "I'll pass the word along. That all you have to say to me, Xaviere?"

  "You can't win, Sam. Not this time. Neither your God nor His warrior will interfere this time. And your God has forbidden your earth father to take a hand. You are alone. You and your pitiful little band of weak-sister Christians. It is now ten-thirty." She did not look at her watch but Sam did not dispute her word. "You will have until six o'clock this evening to reach a decision. After that—" She shrugged. "What will be, will be."

  Sam grinned. "Yeah. I saw that old movie on TV some years ago."

  "What!"

  "Never mind. All right, Xaviere, I'll deliver the good word from you. Anything else?"

  "Nothing. Except do not be foolish, Sam. You've put yourself into a box at the Fox Estate. I don't know why you did it. But it is done. And you cannot undo it. Believe this, Sam: You cannot, you will not be allowed to leave. Not unless my conditions are met. Goodbye, Sam. We shall be seeing each other again—very soon."

  "Yes. I'm rather certain of that, Xaviere. Wish I could say I looked forward to it."

  He watched her walk away, disappearing into the Giddon House. He had tried to see himself in any part of the young woman, but could not. It was almost impossible for him to believe she was of his seed. But she was. He walked back into the mansion and gathered everybody in the large study. There, he told them, word for word, what Xaviere had told him.

  There were a number of oohhs and aahhs and one or two "gross-out!" and several cuss words. Richard asked, "Do you think she means it, Sam?"

  "Every word of it, Richard. Don't any of you doubt it for a second. Those people are unparalleled when it comes to savagery and cruelty. They enjoy it."

  "If she were to become impregnated by your seed, Sam," Monty asked, "what would the—baby be?"

  "A demon-child," Noah told him. "But Xaviere would not die birthing it, as Roma did. But just as Xaviere is, the child could not be killed. It would be a pure spawn of Satan. And just as Xaviere will, the child would live forever."

  "A demon cannot be killed?" Joe asked. "How come that is?"

  "They can't be killed by a mortal," Father Le Moyne told him. "Not unless the mortal is blessed." He looked at Sam in an odd way.

  Sam did not catch the strange look.

  "So what is going to happen to us, and when?" Viv asked.

  "For the next couple of days," Sam replied, "my guess would be nothing much. It will be a battle of nerves, mostly. Satan will attempt to sway you with whispered promises, promises of all sorts of things. He'll try to tempt you, play on your weaknesses, anything to make you fall from grace. When that fails, then they use force." He shrugged his muscular shoulders. "But I could be wrong. The coven members might try to beat down the front door tonight. We're just going to have to be very careful and stay alert at all times."

  "Let's get some lunch," Nydia suggested. "We could all use a good meal. And this afternoon, we'll take shifts resting. It's the night we have to fear."

  "They're out there, aren't they?" Monty asked. He stood beside Sam, in a large room facing the road that ran in front of the mansion. Night had wrapped its cloak over the land, and the gathering purple was deep.

  "Yes," the young man replied. "Watching. Waiting for us to make some sort of mistake. But they haven't set foot on this property. Not yet."

  "I wonder why they haven't."

  "I don't know."

  A pitiful howling moan reached the ears of those in the mansion. The sound was that of a human being who had reached the end of his endurance, before sliding off into death or insanity.

  "What in God's name was that?" Monty asked.

  "They're torturing people." Sam's response was bluntly offered. "Get used to it. You're going to hear a lot of it before this is over."

  The voice shrieked once more, the awful yowling of pain ending with a hideous tapering bubble of agony. The sounds of hammering reached the mansion.

  Footsteps came up softly behind the two men. They turned to face Father Le Moyne.

  "I wonder what they are building in the dead of night?" the priest asked.

  "Crosses would be my guess," Sam replied. "They're crucifying people."

  Father Le Moyne signed the cross and bent his head for a moment. He sighed deeply and shook his head in disgust and sorrow. "I wish there were something we could do for those poor people in torment."

  "Hey, the house!" A man's harsh voice cut the night. The man was speaking through a bullhorn. "We got Old Man Fontaine all nailed up proper. We're makin' bets as to how long he'll last 'fore his heart quits on him. Any of you folks want to buy into the bettin'?"

  "There is no limit to man's inhumanity to his fellow man," Father Le Moyne said. "Not when Satan is at the helm of the ship."

  "Oh,
God, it hurts!" a girl's voice cried into the deep night. "For the love of God, somebody please help me. I can't stand the pain." She screamed piteously. "No!" she wailed. "Not there!" Then she screamed, again and again, the voice soon becoming hoarse as it continued to push out of the young throat, straining in agony.

  "It could well be a trick," Sam cautioned the others. "Janet pulled the same thing up in Canada, at Falcon House. Nydia and I thought she was being brutally raped. But it was all just a show for our ears."

  Monty curtly nodded his head in the direction of the howling. "But what if that is not an act? What if that is the real thing?"

  "Then she is having a bad time of it," Sam said, a coldness to his words. "What would you suggest we do?"

  Monty's shoulders slumped. "1—don't know, Sam. But I can't take much more of that poor girl's screaming. It's getting to me."

  "It's getting to us all, Monty. But we can't afford to do anything rash or foolish. We can't afford to lose anybody. There are too few of us compared to many of them. And it's going to get worse; much worse. Believe it."

  Monty turned away and walked into the center of the mansion without replying. His back was stiff with pent-up anger and frustration.

  Sam knew exactly how the man felt.

  "What is being done to that poor girl?" Father Le Moyne asked.

  Despite himself, Sam was growing weary of the constant barrage of questions. He held his temper in check and said, "Probably being raped and sodomized, Father."

  Sam walked away, leaving the priest alone with his prayers. The screaming was getting to Sam, as well.

  DAWN. TUESDAY.

  First light found the small group of Christians haggard and mentally worn. The screaming, howling, and painful shrieking and the dirty laughter and shouts of obscenities had picked up during the night and continued without abatement until the first faint touches of light filtered past the dark.

  Telling the others to stay inside, Sam went outside for a look-around.

  The day was cloudy, with low-hanging clouds, gray and black, threatening to spill rain at any moment.

  A short scream of fright stopped Sam. "Oh, my God!" he heard Barbara say. "Look over there! It's horrible!"

  Sam turned, the AK on full auto, off safety. The body of a naked man hung by a rope over the stone fence to the west of the mansion. The noose was around his neck, his face horribly swollen, blackened tongue sticking out of his mouth. He had been tossed over the fence sometime during the night and slowly strangled.

  "Monty!" Sam called. "Come on. I need your help. The rest of you stay in the house." He looked up at the second level of the mansion. Joe stood watching him from a window. "Give me some eyes on the west side, Joe," he called. "Just in case."

  "Gotcha," Joe returned the call. He disappeared from view.

  Sam walked toward the dead man. He recognized him as the minister of a small church in Logandale. He could not recall the man's name or the church. The man had been hideously tortured. Strange markings covered his naked body, cut deeply into once living flesh. Blood streaked down his inner thighs from the horrible wounds where his testicles and penis had been hacked off.

  Monty reached Sam's side. He wore a sidearm and carried a Remington Model Six, .308 caliber. "Dan Abbott," Monty said. "Pastored that little Baptist church over on Davidson Street. 1 didn't know him very well. Seemed like a decent man, though."

  "Married?"

  "Yeah. Two or three kids. Three, I think. Yeah, that's right. Two girls and one boy. Girls are about thirteen and fourteen. The boy is in grade school. Wife's name is—ah—Nancy."

  The men cut the rope and lowered the body to the ground. "I'll get something to wrap him in," Monty said. "A tarp." He looked at Sam. "Next thing is what are we going to do with him?"

  "I don't know. Burn him, I guess."

  "Jesus Christ, Sam!"

  Sam met the man's eyes. "You want to start digging holes, then?"

  Monty didn't.

  "Ya'll got company on the other side of the fence," Joe called. "Two men and two young girls. Look like teenagers. I think it's the Abbott girls."

  "Perhaps we have found, or they have found us, some more Christians," Monty said hopefully.

  "Don't count on it." Sam dashed the hopes.

  The voice of one of the girls confirmed it. She called from the other side of the tall fence. "What are you people gonna do with the old fucker?"

  "What is he to you?" Sam called.

  "He was our daddy," the girl replied matter-of-factly. "We tried to give him some pussy. Our pussy. But he didn't want none of it. Hell with him."

  "Dear God in Heaven," Monty whispered.

  "Get away from this house," Sam warned them.

  "Oh, fuck you, Balon," one of the men with the girls called. "You ain't gonna do nothing except run that goddamn Christian mouth of yours."

  "I wish I had a grenade," Sam muttered.

  "You'd kill the children, too," Monty told him. "My God, Sam. What do you have running in your veins, ice water?"

  "Those 'kids,' as you call them, are dead already, Monty," Sam whispered. "Man—you have to accept that. Don't hesitate to shoot when the time comes. I mean it. Let me show you, Monty." He raised his voice. "Who cut off your father's testicles and penis?"

  "You mean his cock and balls?" a girl asked.

  "Yes."

  "Me and mother. We tried to get him to fuck a boy up the ass but he wouldn't do it. So we cut them off. You should have heard him holler when we done it."

  "Was the boy his son?"

  "Yeah. We give him to some guys. They fucked him all night. I think he's dead, or something."

  Sam cut his eyes to Monty. "Now you see what I'm talking about?"

  Horror leaped into the man's eyes. "Their own father? Their own brother!"

  "Their father is Satan," Sam told him. "I don't know what else has to happen to convince you of that fact. But you'd damn well better get your act together. Because if you don't, you're going to die and take a lot of us with you in the process."

  Sam hooked one toe of his boot into a crack in the stone fence and heaved himself up. He burned half a clip into the group standing on the other side. He dropped back to face a horrified Monty Draper.

  "You killed those people—those kids! You shot them in cold blood."

  "If he hadn't of done it," Joe called from the second floor, "I damn sure was goin' to."

  Sam was rapidly getting irritated at Monty. "Like I said, Monty. Get your shit together. And do it quickly."

  TUESDAY NIGHT

  "Things roamin' around on the other side of the fence," Joe radioed from the second floor. "They ain't them Beasts, but they ain't really human neither, I don't think. I don't know what the hell they are, tell the truth. Look to me like they're all tore up."

  "What are they doing?" Sam radioed back.

  "Nothin'. Just standin' by the gate lookin' in. Man and a woman, I think. But it's hard to tell. They look familiar to me—kind of."

  Sam cut his eyes to Father Le Moyne. The priest stood up. "1 know," he said. "I felt their presence. Now I have to face them."

  "What are you two talking about?" Barbara asked. The woman looked as if she was about to come unhinged.

  "Daniel's brother and sister-in-law," John told her. "They've become part of the walking dead. They're here, looking for Daniel."

  "Oh, come on, John!" his wife blurted. "Now this is getting totally out of hand. This is a nightmare. I'm asleep. None of this is real."

  "Barbara—" John opened his mouth.

  "No!" she screamed at the roomful of people. "I just, by God, will not take any more of this. I can't. I want out of here, John."

  Before anyone could respond, a mocking male voice was heard, speaking through a bullhorn. "Oh, Barbara. Barbara, honey, come on out and play with us, Barbara. You remember me, don't you, Barbara?" He laughed, an ugly, evil ring to the savage bark of dark humor. The voice came from the east side of the grounds.

  John Morton s
ighed and would not meet the eyes of those in the room.

  "Cut the lights," Sam told Mille.

  She plunged the room into darkness.

  "Come on out, Barbara," the voice called. "1 got something long and thick and hard for you. Come on, baby. Don't you remember how you used to love to lick on it?"

  John rose from his chair and walked out of the room, a stiffness to his back. He left the room as if that act alone would prevent him from hearing the vulgarities coming from beyond the fence.

  Barbara sat with tears running down her face. She sobbed quietly.

  "Come on, honey!" the voice boomed through the night. "This is ol' Duke. Don't you remember how you used to love to get on top and sit on it? You said it felt good going in that way. Sure you remember. Come on out and play, Barbara. We'll be waiting."

  Viv went to the sobbing woman. She pulled her from the chair and took her by the arm, leading her from the darkened room and into another room just off the hallway.

  The bullhorn fell silent. Joe said, "1 feel sorry for both them people. It ain't John's fault the way the Good Lord made him, and it ain't really her fault the way she is. Some folks just can't help the way they are." He walked toward the archway leading out of the room. "I got me a rifle upstairs. I think I'll go see if I can't get that Duke Edwards in gunsights. If I do, 1 guarantee you, he's gonna be one dead son-of-a-bitch."

  "Good luck," Monty said grimly, his comment surprising Sam.

  Sam glanced at Father Le Moyne standing quietly in the heavy darkness. "You know what we have to do, Father. Are you ready?"

  "Yes. Did you get the articles I asked for?"

  "I got them," Sam replied. "They're in the hall. One for you and one for me."

  "You're a brave young man, Sam."

  Sam didn't respond to the compliment. He was as scared as the next person; but he knew fear was contagious, and he could not let his personal fear show. "Come on, Father. Let's do it. Noah? Even though a bullet won't stop them, enough lead will knock them down in case we run into—"

  "Sam!" Joe yelled from upstairs. "Them folks that was by the gate—they're gone. I think I seen them walkin' on the grounds."