by Ted Dekker
The second was the silence, if indeed silence was something to be heard. This kind was, a heavy absence of life beyond the crickets. The sound of a graveyard. The thin sound of death.
Perfect stillness surrounded by the shrill screams of insects in hiding.
She left the door open and walked forward, each step one more away from the car’s relative safety. Daniel was in that mound of earth ahead? She stopped and scanned the compound again. Nothing moved, not even the tall grass.
Yet she couldn’t shake the certainty that someone, something, was staring at her from the trees.
She hurried forward, fighting back panic. Panting now. Rounding the rise.
The hole in the ground looked like a framed throat, a large mouth into a massive ant mound. She pulled up hard, half expecting to see a stream of insects pouring past the door, which rested half-open.
She walked over the uneven earth leading up to the root cellar, ground she herself had crossed less than two days earlier with a bag over her head.
Fear crowded her mind. She knew that there was only one way to do this, and so she shoved her last reservations aside, yanked the door open, and spun into the subterranean chamber.
Foggy vapor billowed from her mouth. The cold hit her like a wall of ice and everything in her line of sight slowed. She stared at the corner in which she’d last seen Daniel. Flames from a torch where she’d been held licked the air. Thick black timbers ran along the wall. All the same.
But Daniel wasn’t there.
The ground smelled of feces and urine. She pivoted to her right and stared at the end of the cellar, where the light barely parted deep shadows.
Daniel sat on a metal chair. Hands taped behind his back. No tape on his legs.
A small gunnysack covered his head.
“Daniel?”
Her eyes darted around the cellar. No sign of Eve. Alex Price.
Heather crossed the barren earth between her and Daniel in five long steps and pulled up at the sight of his body. He was wearing the flannel shirt that Eve had been wearing, she saw. Under that shirt, his body was shivering.
“Daniel?” Heather set her bag on the floor, careful not to break the syringes inside. “It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay. We’re going to get you out of here.” She was aware that she sounded no more confident than a trembling mouse, but she wasn’t sure he could hear her anyway.
She had to get the medication into him. All three, Lori had said.
She reached up and pulled the bag off his head. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s going to be . . .”
Heather never made it past the be. She’d never actually seen a human body being ravaged by meningitis before, and wasn’t prepared for the grotesque sight facing her now.
His eyes were closed. Not clenched.
The skin of his face was pale, bloodless. Stretched tight over his cheekbones and nose. Pulling his lips flat against his teeth.
But it was the slight twist on his face that kept Heather momentarily frozen. The left side of his face was skewed, higher than the right side, as if strings had been attached to the left corner of his mouth and cheek and were tugging them up toward his temple. The effect made the cheekbone under his skin look as if it had been lifted slightly upward.
Not a single wrinkle on his face.
Heather pulled herself from the horror of seeing him in such pain, grabbed the bag, and pulled out the first syringe with trembling hands.
“Hold on, just hold on.” She yanked the protective cap off the needle, squirted some of the clear fluid out the end to clear it of any trapped air. She didn’t have the presence to find a vein, so she jabbed the needle into his bicep and eased the antibiotic into his quivering muscle.
Daniel showed no sign that he was aware of the needle, much less her.
“Hold on, hold on . . . It’s going to be okay, sweetie.”
She dropped the syringe on the ground, fumbled with the second, and injected its full contents into the same arm. Then repeated the same with the third, this one filled with the adrenaline Lori had insisted she use if she found Daniel unresponsive.
The whole procedure took her less than a minute. She tossed the last syringe and dug for her knife.
Except for her own heavy breathing and the soft crackle of flames from the torch behind her, the chamber remained still.
Heather scrambled behind him and slashed at the tape that bound his wrists. She nicked his skin, deep enough to expose white flesh. The cut did not bleed, but she was too frantic to consider whether meningitis prevented the blood from flowing.
His arms swung free and hung below the seat.
He was loose. With enough antibiotic to kill the strongest strains of meningitis now working its way through his system.
“Okay. Okay, one step at a time.” Speaking to herself. “It’s all going to work out.”
She had no idea how she was going to lift his dead weight, but the need to get him out of this tomb now raged through her mind.
Heather stuffed the knife back in her handbag and turned back to Daniel. He hadn’t moved. But his face had.
The grotesque contortion was gone. His face now appeared relaxed, almost boyish. And his shaking had eased to a very slight tremor. The drug was working.
She knelt in front of him and rubbed his right arm. “Can you hear me?”
Still no response.
She whispered, begging. “Please, Daniel, I need you to hear me. We have to get you out of here. Please.” She shook him gently. Then with more force.
But he sat board-still. Breathing steady.
Heather sniffed. “Okay . . .” She leaned forward, pulled his arms over her shoulder, got under his chest, and heaved him up. She staggered under his limp weight, had to bring her full strength to bear to keep from falling backward.
But she had to carry him; it was the only way.
She stood with Daniel draped over her shoulder and turned toward the door. Still no sign of Eve. Maybe he’d left Daniel to die. It wasn’t his normal way, but Daniel was his first Adam. Maybe they were looking at a whole new pattern here. Maybe he’d left, not trusting that the FBI wouldn’t find him.
She staggered forward and made it halfway to the exit before remembering her bag. She’d have to leave it. Retrieving it would mean putting—
Daniel’s body tightened like a coil and spun off of her shoulder with enough force to pop out of her grip. He slammed into a timber three feet above her head and fell to the earth, face-first.
Heather yelped and jumped back. Her first thought was that the adrenaline had kicked in.
But then Daniel pushed himself to his feet, walked back to the chair, and sat facing her. For a moment she looked into the same soft blue eyes she’d gazed into for so many years. Then he closed them and sat still, hands on his lap.
“Daniel?”
She cautiously stepped closer.
“Listen, honey, I don’t know what he’s done to you, but it’s me. It’s Heather. You’ve been infected. Your mind’s disoriented. You have to let me help you.”
A soft giggle echoed through the chamber. She jerked her head around. But there was no child or animal or . . .
The sound trailed off and she turned back to the chair.
And then Daniel calmly opened his eyes and stared at the wall to his left with eyes as black as coal.
Heather forgot to breathe. Daniel was no longer shaking as he’d been when she’d found him. But she was.
His voice whispered like wind through tall grass. “I see you, Heather.” His teeth were black.
Heather took a step back, gasping for breath. She knew she couldn’t leave him. But the prospect of walking back up to him now terrified her.
“Daniel. Oh, please, Daniel.”
“No,” he whispered, still fixed on the wall. “So wrong. So, so, so wrong.” Slowly he turned his head and stared into her eyes. He whispered with complete sincerity. “Will you be my friend?”
“Oh God, oh Jesus!” Waves of fear crashed through her chest.<
br />
“No,” Daniel whispered. “No, not God, not the other. Adam.”
The unblinking black eyes drilled a hole through her.
“Do you want an apple, Eve?”
A slight smile coiled around Daniel’s mouth like a serpent’s tail. His voice came sinister and thin. “If you come near me again, you little obsessed whore, I’m going to take your tongue and ram it down your throat. Adam’s apple.”
She took another step back.
Daniel’s coy grin lingered another beat, then before her eyes, his face began to shift, stretched back, slightly askew. He closed his eyes.
Heather stood immobilized by the certain knowledge that she was facing much more and much less than Daniel. She started to hyperventilate.
Daniel’s eyelids snapped wide, revealing black eyes. He jerked forward and snarled in a low, crackling voice through twisted lips.
“Leave me, you sow!”
Knowing that she couldn’t leave Daniel, that she couldn’t stay, that she was staring down death’s throat into hell itself, Heather lost any remaining capacity for rational thought. She backpedaled, nearly tripped on her heels as she turned, and ran into the descending night.
Crickets screamed. Her lungs worked at her throat like a plunger, desperate to clear choked airways.
She reached the car and hit the side of her head sliding into the front seat, but she felt no pain. The Explorer fired and she threw the gear shift into drive, then bounced off, and back onto, the gravel road in a tight turn.
She did not slow until she reached the paved road. And then only for the turn. The service bars on her phone reappeared for the first time three miles down the highway.
Heather brought the car to a screeching stop on the shoulder and made the call that would change her understanding of reality forever.
THIRTY-FOUR
HELLO?”
“Father?” Heather knew it was Father Seymour, but she lost the direction of her thoughts. The sound of another human voice had never so overwhelmed her with emotion.
“Father?”
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
Tears slipped from her eyes. “It’s Heather. Heather Clark.” And then her words rushed out frantically. “I need help. I don’t know what to do. I’m . . . I don’t know what I should do—”
“Calm down, darling. You should calm down and take a deep breath. Can you do that?”
She sucked in a long breath, felt her lungs hitch, then tried to calm her jittering hands.
“Okay, now tell me what the problem is.”
Where did she begin? “What I tell you’s between us, right?”
“Of course.” His gentle voice was soothing.
“I read the book on the way down. Hostage to the Devil.”
He waited for her point, but she wasn’t even sure what her point was.
“That’s good,” he finally said.
“Is it possible for someone to become . . .” The words were so foreign on her tongue, even now. “You know—”
“Possessed,” he finished.
“Possessed. In a short time. Like a day? The cases I read were gradual, over years.”
“It’s unusual, but yes. It all depends on the nature of the afflicted party.” She could practically hear him trying to read her mind. “It’s not the book that has you so upset, is it?”
“And the exorcisms took a long time. Too long.”
“The exorcism rite itself usually takes only hours, up to a day. But we’re a cautious lot in the Roman Catholic Church. Before any exorcism takes place, the exorcist confers with diocesan authorities. The subject is submitted to a full slate of medical and psychiatric tests to be sure the problem isn’t merely clinical or psychological in nature. Most are mentally deranged or psychologically wounded individuals who need a good dose of therapy, not an exorcist. Once it’s determined that the subject is indeed possessed by an evil spirit, there are other steps, preparations—”
“I understand. Okay, fine. But none of that’s necessary. I mean, if it was pretty obvious that a person had a problem, you could do the . . . perform this rite immediately, right?”
“You could. It’s up to the subject’s willingness and—”
“They have to agree?”
“But of course, my dear. A man has free will. He can’t be unpossessed against his will any more than he can be possessed against his will.”
“He has to agree?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“And if he doesn’t agree?”
The father paused. “Like a drug addict entering rehab, he must participate.”
That could be a problem. That she was even thinking in these terms was unsettling. Then again, it was not nearly as disturbing as the images that the root cellar had planted in her mind.
Father Seymour continued. “Now, please, you didn’t call me for a Sunday school lesson. Tell me what happened.”
Heather told him the whole story, repeating the most gruesome details repeatedly, as much to convince herself of their veracity as to make sure he understood exactly what had happened.
He remained quiet when she finished.
“So,” she said. “Is he? And how’s that possible? I mean the eyes, the teeth.”
“Did you already forget the photograph I showed you last night?”
“No.”
“Well, then. That spirits can affect objects in the natural world is well documented. Now you’ve seen it yourself.”
“It’s just . . . no one would believe me.” She slammed the wheel with her palm. “Do you know how crazy this is?”
“You’re wrong. Many do believe, or they wouldn’t be frightened of movies on the subject, now, would they? Jaws terrified the country because people knew that shark attacks were real. The reason so many details of exorcism have become clichés in the movies is because they, too, are real. Any researcher will tell you that. Spiderman, Superman . . . not frightening, make-believe. But the movie The Exorcist? Except for a few details, amazingly accurate. And it terrifies us all. I say all of this because you’re right to be terrified, Heather. Frankly, it bothers even me.”
“So he is. Right?”
“If what you’re telling me is correct—”
“It is. I was there.” Her voice was pitched too high.
Father Seymour was slow in responding. “You see how it feels to be doubted?”
“Okay, fine. I need your help, Father. We both know that.”
“No sign of Alex?”
“No. Can you come?”
“Me? No, I really don’t think I could. But I’m sure with a little digging I could find someone to help you. The FBI—”
“No! That won’t work.” She knew she would have to call Lori as soon as she hung up, but the FBI couldn’t help Daniel now. “You know him, Father. And you know Alex is here.”
“Forgive me for sounding crass, dear. I’m very sorry for you, but it seems to me that Daniel was so quickly taken because of a profound unbelief. I imagine he exchanged liberties during one of his near-death experiences. Such a man doesn’t strike me as the kind who will change his stripes overnight.”
Heather shifted the phone to her other ear. “Yes, my husband is as stubborn as they come. But he knows now, and he’s as strong as an ox.”
The line stayed empty.
“You have to come.”
“I wish—”
“You have to come because you failed all of us when you mishandled Alex Price. He’s killed sixteen women with Eve. You’re to blame, at least in part.”
It was a low blow, but she knew he couldn’t dismiss it.
She continued while he was at a disadvantage. “Look, I know that there’s a price to pay in all of this, and it’s clear that whatever you saw in France scared the living hell out of you. But this is my husband! I’m begging you!”
Another stretch of silence.
“Father . . . If Alex Price is right, Daniel will be dead in two days. If the FBI come, Alex will kill him.
For all I know, Alex wants you to come. Every killer returns to his roots, and you’re a part of his.”
Heather hadn’t consciously considered that until the words came from her mouth, but she realized then that the idea wasn’t preposterous.
“I’ll be on the first flight in the morning,” he said.
“No, there has to be a red-eye. Please.”
“Then tonight, if I can make it. Where will you be staying?”
She looked out at the dark. Imagined Eve walking up behind her car and hauling her back to the root cellar. She slipped the car into drive and pulled onto the deserted road.
“In a well-lit town with a busy bar,” she said. “I need to be around people.”
“I’ll call you. And Heather . . .”
“Yes.”
“I have one requirement of you.”
“What?”
“Finish the book. Examine your own heart. We don’t need your eyes turning black on us.”
THIRTY- FIVE
LORI AMES WALKED DOWN the hallway with Brit, mind lost in information she was intentionally withholding. She’d filled her mind with enough justification to hold herself back, but the burden of holding back was growing too large to bear alone, and with both Daniel and Heather now gone, she was only hanging on by a thread.
Heather had called and left a cryptic message. She was waiting for a priest to join her before going in after Daniel. Please don’t breathe a word. Numerous calls from Lori had gone unanswered since.
“Heather’s gone after him,” Brit said. Sweat darkened his shirt under his arms and a brown stain ringed his white collar. The SAIC had only left the field office for several lengthy interviews at the seminary Alex Trane had attended. It hadn’t taken them long to infer that Alex Trane was actually Alex Price, kidnapped with his sister, Jessica, from their home in Arkansas when they were children.
But without the page Lori had withheld from the file they were analyzing, the trail had gone cold.
“You’re right, it’s what I would do in her situation,” Lori said.
“They’ve either found Eve and don’t think they can call it in, or he’s taken them both and they can’t call it in.”
“The first, let’s hope.”
