by John Saul
Where else to look? Then he remembered: women sometimes kept their most precious objects hidden with their lingerie.
He opened the top drawer of the dresser and gently ran his hands through the soft silk underwear, probing all the way to the back of the drawer.
Nothing.
Where? Where?
The bedside table.
As he opened the nightstand drawer, his elbow caught the edge of a picture frame, which tipped over the edge. He lunged to catch it, missed, and watched as it fell to the wooden floor, the glass shattering.
He looked at the photograph beneath the broken glass. A young boy, holding up a small fish. Should he take the broken photograph with him?
No, better to encourage wrong thoughts.
Abdul let it lay, returned to the jewelry box, grabbed up a handful of earrings and necklaces and stuffed them into one of his pockets. He opened the lingerie drawer and left it open.
Then he left as silently as he had entered, his spirits heavy with disappointment. It was dark now, and in the blackness of the shadows behind the house he stripped off his black gloves, then walked nonchalantly back to the quiet street and around the corner of the next block.
He would dispose of the cheap jewelry in the Dumpster behind the convenience store he had passed on his way here.
As he slipped away into the darkness of the night he told himself that his failure to recover the relic was only a potential problem for his mission. The chances that the stupid people in the house even knew what they owned were slim, and if they truly didn’t, then the object’s existence would be of no consequence. Though he would feel supremely safer if he had it in hand, his chances of success in his mission were still all but certain.
Victory —vengeance—would still be his to claim.
CHAPTER 40
FATHER LAUGHLIN SLOWED as he neared the door to Jeffrey Holmes’s tiny room buried deep in the subbasement beneath the old brownstone that had been absorbed by the school nearly a century earlier and now served as its rectory. As he stood alone in the murky depths of the labyrinth beneath the school, what had seemed like an excellent idea in the aftermath of his conversation with the boy’s poor grandmother now seemed more like the act of an old fool. Still, if he could recreate what Father Sebastian had achieved with Sofia Capelli a few days ago, and Melody Hunt this very afternoon—and he believed in his heart that he could—what a wonderful thing it would be.
He would bring Jeffrey Holmes back into God’s light.
Despite Sebastian Sloane’s certainty that the boy was beyond redemption, Laughlin’s faith told him that God would not abandon Jeffrey any more than he had Sofia or Melody.
He would not abandon any child.
Laughlin reached to draw the bolt on the door of Jeffrey’s cell, but before his pale, soft fingers touched the cold metal, he hesitated. He could still go back upstairs to his rooms, enjoy a cup of hot tea, put his aching legs up on a stool and listen to some Puccini. No one would blame him for leaving the boy solely in the hands of Sebastian Sloane, who was an expert in the ancient rites, far better educated than Laughlin himself.
But if he could manage to save the boy in spite of Sebastian’s certainty that he was lost, then he could retire—even die in peace—knowing without the shadow of a doubt that he had done God’s work.
God would not let Jeffrey Holmes down, and He would watch over the recitation of the litany as Laughlin remembered it.
Ernest Laughlin looked at the low dark ceiling and whispered a barely audible prayer: “God provide me sufficient faith.” Then he crossed himself, kissed his fingertips, and with those same fingertips threw open the bolt on the heavy metal door.
An ice-cold wave of pure evil carrying the fetid stench of rot poured forth from the darkened cell, withering Laughlin’s resolve.
Then, in the faint light of the open doorway, he saw Jeffrey’s naked body, cowering in the corner.
The boy’s pale, veined skin was stretched taut over his protruding ribs, his hair was matted with filth, and his eyes streamed with yellowish pus.
Laughlin’s first instinct was to go to the child, hold him, comfort him. Yet the aura of evil surrounding the child held him back, and instead of kneeling next to the starved and fragile body, the old priest concentrated only on the evil that was consuming Jeffrey from within.
Laughlin gripped the crucifix that hung from his belt and began the litany he’d heard Sebastian Sloane recite only a few hours ago, repeating the words as closely as he remembered them, holding the beatific smile of Melody Hunt clearly in his mind. Even now, the girl lay quietly in the infirmary, in the same bed occupied by Sofia Capelli earlier in the week, both of them completely cleansed of all evil, and at peace.
He must do the same for this poor, wretched creature.
But while the words seemed clear in his mind, they didn’t sound right as they left his lips. Where Sebastian’s robust and vibrant voice had been filled with the authority of his faith, Laughlin’s sounded thin and reedy even to himself.
Even the pronunciation of the Latin words sounded wrong, weakened by his own age and infirmity.
He knew now that he should not have come.
Yet the young boy’s body began to writhe, and Sebastian had assured him that such movement was certain evidence that the evil residing in the boy was responding. Encouraged slightly, Father Laughlin raised up his crucifix and intoned the passages of the liturgy as best he could remember.
He deepened his voice and filled his lungs as if to command the evil’s obedience by sheer volume.
Jeffrey Holmes’s limbs began to spasm and anguished moans escaped his lips.
“Thank you, Father,” Ernest Laughlin whispered, then raised his voice even further, feeling the power of the Lord welling up inside him to cast out the demon that inhabited the poor boy’s body.
“Most cunning serpent,” Laughlin found the phrases he’d been trying to remember. They weren’t in Sebastian’s Latin, but he remembered them from his college texts. “You shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God’s elect and sift them as wheat. The Most High God commands you, He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal!”
As he bellowed the last words, he saw the wasted muscles of the boy’s back and arms bunch as he struggled to a sitting position.
“Begone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit, enemy of man’s salvation.” Laughlin fumbled in his pocket for the vial of holy water he had brought with him.
“Father?” The boy’s voice was so faint, Father Laughlin wasn’t certain he had heard anything at all.
“Father?” It was the tiny voice of a small child.
“Yes, my son?” Laughlin stepped into the cell, closer to Jeffrey, to better minister to the boy. He leaned down and reached out to touch him. “I’m here to help you.”
“You!” the evil roared, its foul breath knocking Father Laughlin back. “You help me? Never!”
Laughlin stumbled backward, struggling to maintain his balance, then felt the solid wall behind him and regained his footing.
The boy stood up. Though his body was frail, his face reflected the twisted countenance of Satan himself. “You will never defeat me!” Jeffrey stretched out his filthy hands and moved slowly, one step at a time, toward the old priest.
Laughlin, frozen with a terror such as he’d never felt before, could only stare at the snarling, drooling creature that approached him.
Jeffrey spat, and a hot, viscous gob landed on the priest’s lips and began to sizzle.
Laughlin cried out as he wiped the stinking mucus from his face. Finally jarred from his paralysis, he bolted for the door, finding it only an instant before the creature would have been on him. He slammed the door shut and threw the bolt, just as Jeffrey’s poor body slammed against it. A furious howl erupted from the being trapped beyond the door, and it smashed Jeffrey Holmes’s body against it over and over again, the unearthly voice reverberating through the
walls of the tunnels and into the very bones of the buildings above them.
Laughlin hobbled away from the cell as quickly as he could, and when he was far enough to be certain he was safe, he leaned against the wall and tried to catch his breath.
He dampened his handkerchief with the holy water that was supposed to have washed the evil from Jeffrey Holmes’s body and soul, and used it instead to wipe the spot where the devil’s sputum still burned his lips.
When his heart had finally slowed its pounding and he trusted himself to walk, he crossed himself, and hurried back toward his rooms, listening to the unearthly howls that might fade from the walls of the school, but which would follow him all the way to his grave.
In the infirmary, Melody Hunt’s eyes snapped open. She listened to the howling for a moment, and then, as if soothed by a lullaby, closed her eyes and fell back into an easy sleep.
In her room in the dormitory, Sofia Capelli sat listening to the wailing of a kindred spirit. As its volume rose, it awakened in her a hunger so desperate that it clawed at her insides. She curled up on her bed and held a pillow to her stomach. The time would come when they could be together.
Not yet, but soon.
Deep in the bowels of the underground, the being inhabiting Jeffrey Holmes fell to the stones in rage and frustration at the weakness of its host. Forcing Jeffrey to his feet, it hurled him against the wall, forcing the boy to smash his own head against the stones, but keeping him conscious. Totally conscious.
The boy must suffer—suffer as the evil itself was suffering.
Using the boy’s own long, broken fingernails, the evil began gouging at Jeffrey’s face, thrilling at the agony the boy was feeling. As its power and rage built, the thing went after Jeffrey’s throat, tearing at the pulsing artery in his neck, ripping and slashing at his skin and muscles and tendons until finally the torn and jagged nails found what they sought and tore into the pulsing artery that pumped blood into the boy’s brain.
Blood gushed from the ruined artery, spewing onto the stone floor.
One final rattling laugh bubbled from Jeffrey Holmes’s throat as his life drained away, spreading across the floor of the dark cell.
The evil sucked in the last of Jeffrey Holmes’s strength, then retreated like a maggot into a chrysalis, waiting for its next host to come….
CHAPTER 41
RYAN MCINTYRE DUMPED his gym bag on his bed, dropped down next to it and swore softly. So much for spending a night back home; now he’d hurt his mother’s feelings, Tom Kelly was sure to be pissed off at him, and he had no idea what to do about the whole mess. On the other hand, maybe there wasn’t really anything to do; it was his mother who’d decided to let Kelly move in, not him, and maybe the best thing to do would be just to stay at school and let his mother do whatever she wanted.
Maybe it wasn’t any of his business. Except it was his business—anything to do with his mother was his business, and even though he knew Tom Kelly was a perfectly decent guy, there was just something about him that rubbed Ryan the wrong way.
Bullshit, he heard his father’s voice whispering inside his head. You’re just pissed off because he’s not me, and he never will be. But that’s your problem, not your mom’s. So grow up and deal with it.
He took a deep breath, looked up, and saw his roommate look quizzically up from the book he was reading. “Thought you were gone for the weekend,” Clay said.
“Change of plans,” Ryan said, seeing no point in even going into it with Clay. “Have you seen Melody?”
Clay shook his head. “I’ve been in here all afternoon.”
Ryan fished his cell phone out of the gym bag and punched in Melody’s number, but her voice mail came on fast enough to tell him she either didn’t have the phone on, or didn’t have it with her. So where wouldn’t she have taken it? Nowhere very far from her room—probably just the laundry room in her dorm. “Hey,” he asked Clay, “can I go into the girls’ dorm?”
“No chance,” Clay said without looking up from his book. “But maybe you can find someone who’d go knock on her door or something.”
Five minutes later, Ryan opened the door to the foyer of the girls’ dormitory. In a small parlor to the right, an elderly nun sat in a wing chair by the fireplace, reading. She peered suspiciously at Ryan over the rims of her glasses. “May I help you?”
“I’m looking for Melody Hunt. Or her roommate. Sofia Capelli?”
“I haven’t seen Melody,” the old nun said, “but Sofia will be working in the kitchen this evening.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said. By the time he’d turned back to the foyer, the nun had already disappeared back into her book.
“Sofia, stop daydreaming and take the garbage out.”
Sofia made a face at the cook’s back and her fingers tightened on the haft of the carving knife she’d been about to drop back into the drawer under the serving table. She felt a sudden urge to plunge the blade deep into the cook’s back.
“Now!” the heavyset nun who had been cooking the same recipes at St. Isaac’s for the last thirty years commanded, and the vision of blood spurting from her back vanished from Sofia’s mind.
“Okay,” she sighed and pulled the heavy black plastic bag from its container by the sink. Half-carrying and half-dragging the bag, she pushed the heavy outside door to the kitchen open, and nosed the wooden doorstop into the jamb with her toe, so she wouldn’t be locked out when the door closed behind her.
The stench of rotting meat filled her nostrils as she raised the lid off one of the garbage barrels that stood at the mouth of a narrow passageway leading to the street, but instead of turning away from the stink as she always had before, tonight she found herself breathing it in deeply, sucking the noxious fumes into her lungs as if it were fresh salt air blowing in from the beach.
Releasing her grip on the bag she’d brought from the kitchen, Sofia leaned over the open barrel, peering down at the source of the oddly exciting aroma. At the bottom of the barrel lay a tangled mass of chicken entrails, scraps of beef, and rotting vegetables.
Crawling over the whole mass, making it look as if it were some kind of living thing, were hundreds—thousands—of tiny white squirming things.
Maggots.
The light from the security lamp high above cast a strange yellow-orange glow into the barrel, and as the creatures wriggled and slithered, their skins seemed to glint with millions of tiny diamonds.
She bent closer.
The mass boiled, heaved and swirled, as if all the maggots were but tiny parts of a single living being.
She reached into the barrel and let her fingers brush over them.
Hunger rose in her.
She could feel saliva coming into her mouth, and deep in her gut she felt a strange craving, a craving she knew could only be satisfied by one thing.
Her fingers closing on a fistful of the tiny larvae, she straightened up, then opened her hand to gaze at what she held.
The maggots moved in every direction. One by one they began to drop back into the barrel, instantly burying themselves in the rancid mass at its bottom. But before the last of them could escape, the hunger overcame her and Sofia raised her hand to her face, sucking the last of the maggots into her mouth.
She could feel them on her tongue, feel them writhing against her cheeks.
She began chewing, and as each of the tiny bodies exploded, a burst of sweetness erupted in her mouth.
She reached into the barrel again, scooping out a larger handful of maggots mixed with rotting flesh, and shoved it into her mouth, whimpering softly as she chewed and swallowed.
Another fistful followed, then another.
She could feel them in her belly, as if they were still alive, squirming and twisting, radiating out to fill not only her stomach, but every cell in her body. She was tingling all over, feeling them under her skin, giving her a strength she’d never felt before.
She reached for another handful when suddenly she heard someone behind her
speak her name.
Instantly, she brushed the maggots and scraps of rotting meat from her lips and chin, wiped her hands on her apron, and swallowed quickly, emptying her mouth of the last morsels of her feast, then turned to see who had spoken.
Ryan McIntyre was framed in the open door to the kitchen.
“Sofia?” he asked, almost as if he wasn’t certain it was really her. “I’m looking for Melody.”
“She’s not here,” Sofia said, her voice rasping oddly as she raised the hem of the apron to wipe her chin.
Ryan cocked his head uncertainly. “Have you seen her?”
Sofia shrugged. “Father Sebastian wanted to see her,” she said as she lifted the heavy garbage sack.
“Let me help you with that,” Ryan said, stepping forward to take the sack from Sofia. But before he dropped the bag into the barrel his eyes fell on the slimy mass at its bottom, and he instinctively pulled away from the stench that boiled up from it. “Yuck,” he muttered as he pressed the bag down on top of the writhing maggots. “That’s disgusting.”
Sofia only shrugged again, this time saying nothing at all.
“Well, if you see her, have her call me, okay?” Ryan asked as he put the lid onto the barrel.
Sofia just nodded, then turned and disappeared back into the kitchen.
Ryan watched Sofia go. What was going on? It looked like she’d been eating out of the garbage can. But of course that couldn’t be—his own stomach was still churning after only a glance at the roiling mass of maggots squirming like something in the last throes of death. And the stink—
He shuddered just at the memory of it.
He must have been mistaken—she couldn’t have done what he thought she’d been doing. It must have been the way the light hit her. But telling himself he must have been wrong wasn’t calming his own stomach at all, so he turned his mind away from what he’d seen to what he’d heard.
