Cat's Eye

by William W. Johnstone

  “Oh, no. Just one small battle. The next battle will be completely different from this one.”

  “What do you mean and how do you know that?”

  Carl waited almost a full minute before replying. “It’s a cycle, Lieutenant. If you do this often enough you’ll see that it all goes in cycles. The Devil opted for violence in this battle. It backfired on him. The next time will be much more subtle and psychological in nature. A war of nerves, probably. Remember, I’ve seen it before and studied hundreds of case histories. Satan doesn’t like me very much. I’ve figured out his pattern.”

  “Better you than me,” the state trooper said. “I think I’ll request a transfer back to traffic.”

  “Too late for that, Daly. Satan’s got your name written down in his book. From this point on, be very, very careful. Don’t get into a routine. Watch your back. And be suspicious of everything and everybody.”

  “I’m going to have a hell of time explaining that to family and friends.”

  “You’ll find a way. If you want to live.”

  The governor’s aide walked over and stood for a time, eyeballing Carl. Carl returned the stare. Byron blinked first.

  “I understand you had a lot to do with bringing this, ah, unfortunate situation to an end, young man.”

  “It isn’t over yet.”

  “Really?” Byron drawled the word while he arched one eyebrow.

  Carl wondered how many hours he’d spent in front of a mirror practicing that move. “That’s what I said.”

  “Well, it certainly looks over to me!”

  “Do I have to remind you who we have been dealing with here? We, not you.”

  Byron flushed and his eyes narrowed at the obvious slur. “I don’t think I like your attitude very much, young man.”

  “I know I don’t give a damn what you like. You’re standing in a danger zone, Mister Governor’s Aide Winston. There are dozens of beings, of this earth and not of this earth, that are still unaccounted for. And if you think the Prince of Darkness is going to take defeat gracefully, then that makes you as full of shit as I think you are.”

  “Trying to milk the tragedy for some publicity, Garrett?”

  “You are a damn fool, Winston!” Carl turned his back to the man and walked away, Daly right beside.

  The aide looked all around him, spotting Jim. “Sheriff Hunt!” Winston shouted. “I command you to arrest this insolent person!”

  “Command me?” Jim stuffed a fresh wad of chewing tobacco into his mouth and said, “On what charge?”

  Winston sputtered and stammered and finally shut his mouth.

  More people arrived from town, Dee among them. She walked to Carl’s side and put her arms around him. “You shouldn’t have come out this soon, Dee.” He softened that with a smile. “Not that I’m unhappy to see you.”

  “You look like you’re about ready to drop.”

  “I’m all right. I got a couple hours’ sleep. The town?”

  “All the animals have returned to normal. Some dogs chasing cats, some cats just lounging about, sunning themselves. Dogs sleeping on front porches. Is it over, Carl?”

  Carl looked up at the sun. About eleven o’clock, he guessed. “The Devil, Dee, is a bastard, but he’s a dramatic bastard. If he’s going to pull something, he’ll do it at high noon.”

  “Is it safe to go into the house?” She looked at the leaning A-frame. “Or what’s left of it.”

  “No. But I went in anyway. I got the manuscript you were working on from your office and most of your files and research papers. They might be a little worse for wear; I tossed them out the side window. I gave the manuscript to your father.”

  “So what now, Carl?”

  “Let’s get something to eat and wait for the Devil to make his move.”

  “You sound so matter-of-fact about it, Carl.”

  “I don’t mean it to sound like I am. I’m really rather curious as to what the Dark One has in mind for his swan song.”

  “You aren’t afraid that . . . he might try to kill you for what you’ve done?”

  “Oh, yes!” Carl answered that very quickly. “But he could do that anytime he wanted to. In his own perverted and evil way, I imagine he sort of likes me.”

  “Likes you!”

  “Sure. He hasn’t been able to beat me—yet. He enjoys a good fight. He gets his way so often a good challenge is something he probably relishes.”

  “You sound as though you’re sorry this has ended.”

  “Not this one,” Carl said. “This has been the toughest one so far. For me, that is.”

  “And there will be more?” she asked, as they walked on toward the road. She got the impression that Carl wanted distance between them and the house. Most of the others had already distanced themselves from the house.

  “Yes, Dee. There will be more. If you want me to share any of your life, you’re going to have to accept that and live with it.”

  She kissed him right in front of God and everybody else, including the Devil. “I already have, Carl.”

  * * *

  The A-frame exploded, the force of it knocking them all off their feet and to the ground. The roof of the house sailed hundreds of feet into the air, breaking up and coming down, the fragments hitting the earth like bombs. When the explosion came, Carl grabbed Dee and shoved her under a Ford Bronco, then crawled in after her, the heavy four-wheel drive protecting them from the debris. Dingo had beaten them both under the Bronco.

  The walls of the house caved inward as the earth opened up and the sky changed colors. A whirlwind sprang out of the hole where the house had stood, the mini-cyclone kicking up dirt and rocks and flinging the rocks like bullets in all directions.

  One of the men who had flown in with the governor’s aide stood up to watch in fascination at the sight unfolding and spinning before his eyes. A timber from the house roared out of the whirlwind and decapitated the man. The headless man stood for a few seconds before collapsing, the blood gushing out of the nub where his neck had been.

  The hole widened and the spinning, howling winds intensified, sucking in anything close to the hole, splintering and mangling it, then spitting it out at super-sonic speeds.

  Smoke began pouring out of the widening hole in the earth, and with the smoke, pitiful cries and screaming and whimpering from once-human throats, those damned beings forever trapped in the hellish fires of the Devil’s pits. The heat followed the smoke and the cries. It blistered the outside lip of the hole and baked the soggy earth for a hundred feet outside the yawning, shrieking, smoking entrance to Hell.

  White-hot rocks, some the size of automobiles, began spewing out of the burning crevice; they flew hundreds of feet into the air and then came crashing down, smashing into cars and trucks, destroying them, the heat exploding the gas tanks and turning the area into a besieged no-man’s-land.

  Edgar crawled under the Bronco, trying to push Dingo aside. The dog gave him one look and Edgar gave up that idea.

  “You said it would be quite a show!” Edgar had to lean close to Carl and shout to make himself heard above the roaring.

  Carl nodded his reply.

  The winds began to abate. The cyclone began to lose its strength and definition. The screaming of the damned faded and grew silent. The heat cooled and the smoke stopped pouring out of the hole.

  A hush fell over the area.

  Carl crawled out from under the Bronco and stood up. Soon the others followed his lead, to stand in shocked silence.

  A screaming began.

  Ermma Barstow’s dead, bony, and white hands were locked around Byron Winston’s throat. Her head was smashing against his, her long hair flopping from side to side as the mouth opened and closed, laughter and howling pushing past her lips.

  Byron’s head was bloody from the bashing and his eyes were rolling back into his head from the lack of oxygen. Carl ran to the man and grabbed the hair of the bodyless head. She tried to bite him. Carl began spinning like a shot-putter
, swinging the head while Jim and Pastor Speed fought to free Byron’s throat from the death-grip of the hands.

  Carl released the head and it sailed into the huge hot hole in the middle of the Devil’s graveyard.

  Byron fell to the ground, the life choked out of him. Still the hands could not be torn from his bruised and mangled throat. The fingers had to be broken, one by one, to finally free the governor’s aide.

  Carl tossed the misshapen hands into the hole.

  Jim stood over the dead aide, looking at him. “Well,” he finally drawled. “I don’t reckon he’d have made a very good governor, noways.”

  The hole belched.

  Chapter 40

  Carl made one visit to the lip of the hole in the earth, a tether rope tied to him. The opening appeared to be bottomless. Carl returned to the safety of the road.

  “I’ll have a construction crew out here at first light in the morning,” Edgar said. “They’ll build a covering for that hole, put it in place, and then erect a series of fences with warning signs. I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “That’s sufficient,” Carl told the man. “If somebody falls in there, that’s their problem. I don’t have any sympathy for anyone who ignores warning signs.” He looked around. The cars of the Agency people were gone. They had done their work and silently left the area.

  The woods were clean. In a manner of speaking.

  “Thank God it’s over,” Father Vincent said.

  “Not yet,” Carl said sternly. “That Stinson fellow and his wife are still out there. And no telling how many others who were changed. They’ll all surface, sooner or later. You’ve got some unpleasant days still facing you.”

  “Will you stay and help us, Carl?” Jim asked.

  “If you want me to, yes.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  * * *

  The men and women who had survived the ordeal ate hot meals, took long baths, and rested well for the first time in days.

  For the most part, except for supplies and Edgar’s construction crews, and a host of state cops, the area remained sealed off while the mop-up continued. The farmer and his wife who had been visited by Josh Taft and his band of escaped cons were found and destroyed . . . by Carl and by fire.

  Champ Stinson and his wife were not found, and they did not surface during the search-and-destroy period.

  “My daddy knows ten thousand places in these woods to hide,” Sonny told Carl. “We might never see him and Momma again.”

  “That shore wouldn’t come as no great disappointment to me,” Bullfrog said, looking walleyed at the silent timber around the Stinson home place.

  Keith was sitting out in the meadow, plucking petals off wildflowers and making up simple little songs to sing. He had found another stash and was off in sugar-pie land again.

  The remains of Janet had been located and laid to rest in a quiet little ceremony.

  Gary, overcome with grief, had hanged himself that same afternoon.

  The owners of the hardware store, the drugstore, the funeral home, and the newspaper, and others who were known to have been coven members, surfaced and went back to work, each of them loudly and solemnly proclaiming what a terrible tragedy it had all been and offering money and supplies to help rebuild the shattered community.

  “They give me just one excuse,” Jim said sourly, his words tinged with hate, “they step out of line just one time, and they’ll get a bullet in the head. I can promise you that, Carl.”

  And Carl knew the newly appointed sheriff of Reeves County meant every word of it. More importantly, the former coven members knew it. They would all walk very lightly around Jim Hunt for a long, long time.

  Sonya and Jesse wrote and filed their stories about the takeover of the town by escaped convicts and the horrible events that followed. None of it true, but it made for good copy. The newspapers and TV played it up for a few days, and then dropped it. Old news.

  Doctor Robert Jenkins returned to Richmond, and became a born-again Christian and a leader in his church.

  Lib and Peter, Jack and Becky, and Susie and Tommy refused to return home to their parents. Edgar agreed to foot the bill for them to stay in Richmond and attend a private school.

  As Carl and Dee were driving out of the small town, Dingo in the back seat, Dee pointed to a group of teenagers standing by a vacant building. One had a can of spray paint in his hand. He had spray-painted an upside-down cross on the building. He grinned at the young couple, gave them the finger, rubbed his crotch obscenely, and lifted the can, painting the numbers 666.

  Dee noticed the tight set of Carl’s jaw and the hard look in his eyes as they drove past the group. She shook her head. “I thought it was over,” she said as they drove on past and out of sight of the teenagers and the symbols denoting the worship of Satan. “How can they be so bold so soon after all that’s happened?”

  “That bunch may just be getting started, Dee. I hope so. If that’s the case, Jim can slap some sense into them and end it right now.”

  “If not?”

  He said the words that she knew he would, and that she dreaded to hear.

  “Then I’ll be back.”

  Look for these other horrifying tales from William W. Johnstone.