She formed the word several times before she could finally utter it in a quaking whisper. “Uncle.”
The tip receded. “That’s better.”
A third figure appeared from nowhere, dressed in white and looking like an angel. The three came close, lining up like a wall before her.
“You saw what I did to Officer Henchle?”
Father, receive my spirit . . . She swallowed, then nodded.
“And you see my friends?”
She couldn’t believe it even as she nodded again.
“So you know your options are limited. As a matter of fact, you don’t have any.”
“Oh, Jesus . . .”
The knife jabbed her neck. “Say that name again and I will surgically remove it.”
His “friends” were a vision she could not blink away. “Who are they?”
“They came to my rescue when God didn’t. We’ve been a team ever since.”
“Are they . . . ?”
He snickered. “Who do you want them to be?”
Near Eastern suddenly gained weight, turned pale and gray, and stared at her through the sunken eyes of an old man: Louis Lynch, Florence’s dead husband.
The man in white suddenly wore a dark suit and turtleneck, the same as . . .
His face changed, shifted, became . . .
Gabe Elliott. He smiled and nodded to her.
No greater pain could have gone through her heart. “NOOOO!!”
THE POLICE WERE STILL WAITING for a van from the phone company that would provide extra phones and monitoring equipment. I had to use their cell phone to call the ranch’s second line one more time.
“Hello?” It was Cantwell.
“Justin, this is Travis.”
“I thought I told you to go home!”
“I have to know—”
Click.
CANTWELL TOSSED HIS CELL PHONE on the kitchen table so he could finish duct taping Morgan to a chair. “The miracle of call forwarding,” he explained. “But he’s going to figure it out. We’ll have to be ready when he does.”
“You could have escaped.” Morgan said it in a very quiet voice. She had agreed to his offer: If she kept her voice quiet, he wouldn’t tape her mouth shut. If she cried out he would slit her throat. It was a solid offer. The body of Brett Henchle lying in a pool of blood at her feet convinced her.
“My loyal followers think I did. They’re buying me precious time.”
“Then why don’t you?”
He cinched down the last strip of tape around her wrists and stood back to admire her helplessness. “I still have to settle my dispute with your boyfriend—if he ever gets here! I was waiting for him, not you and Henchle!”
“What about my son?”
She thought he would strike her. “Your son! The traitor? The turncoat? The coward?”
“Where is he?”
His anger cost him some strength. His face paled and he dropped into another chair. “Don’t worry about him. It won’t do him any good.”
I CALLED THE RANCH’S FIRST LINE.
Matt answered, “Yeah?”
“Matt, can you tell me how many are in the house with you?”
“About twenty.”
I got ready to write. “I need to know their names.”
“I don’t know all their names.”
I could feel Sheriff Parker’s eyes on me. “Matt, the police need to know who’s up there. You have to give them a good reason not to come storming in there right now.”
“Mary Donovan.”
I wrote her name down. “All right. Who else?”
“Dee Baylor.”
“All right.” He went silent. “Who else, Matt?”
“Brandon’s here.”
“Yeah.”
“And there are twenty others.”
I heard a commotion behind me and turned. A motor home had come to a stop at the bottom of the driveway, and the door was opening. Jim Baylor stood right below that door, and let out a whoop when his wife, Dee, appeared, hopping out and embracing him. They started kissing, explaining, apologizing. The scene should have had music.
“Um, Matt, Jim Baylor would like very much to talk with his wife. Would that be possible?”
“No. She’s with the others. We have ’em all confined.”
Jim waved at me as he led his wife away. She was crying, clinging to him. I told Matt, “Okay. Then how about some more names?” “I told you, I don’t know their names.”
“Then how about getting Brandon on the phone?”
“You have to call the other line. That’s what he says.”
“Well he can’t be that far—” I felt a turn in the gut.
“Just call him on the other line.”
“Well . . .” I didn’t want Matt to know my own thoughts were running me over so I forced myself to say, “Okay. I’ll call on the other line.”
I ended the call. Parker was muttering something but I didn’t hear it.
Cantwell had eyes. He didn’t need to be here to know what the cops were doing or whether Sheriff Parker was smiling.
Parker asked me, “Well?”
“Matt won’t, uh . . . I’ll give it another whirl.”
No. Cantwell wouldn’t want to be surrounded or fenced in. Fences were a big issue in his life. So he wouldn’t hole up at the ranch, would he?
“Are you going to dial that thing?” Parker demanded.
I dialed the ranch’s second line. It rang repeatedly without an answer, and then a recording came on: “The cellular phone you called is not answering. Please try your call again later.”
“No answer?” Parker asked.
“I have to talk to Dee,” I said, handing him the cell phone. “JIM! Hold up!”
Jim and Dee waited near the front gate. The loudspeakers on the hill were playing Jimi Hendrix and the floodlights made it look like a night baseball game was in progress. Television reporters were standing just on the other side of the yellow tape, talking into their microphones and looking back at their cameras. The whole landscape was flickering with white, blue, red, and amber sweeps from the police vehicles.
We hadn’t finished our discussion, he said, but we would. I could count on it.
Go home, Travis. Go home.
“Dee,” I asked, ducking under the yellow tape to get to them. “Is Brandon Nichols up there?”
She was still wiping tears from her eyes. “I don’t want to see him. Not anymore. I feel like a fool.”
“But did you see him?”
“No. He wouldn’t even come out of his room to talk to me. He wouldn’t talk to anybody. People are leaving. He’s just . . . I just want to go home!”
Jim gave her a squeeze and led her along. “C’mon, hon. We’ll get you home. Thanks, Travis. Thanks for everything.”
“You too, Jim.”
I took out my own cell phone and punched in Morgan’s number. “The cell phone you have called is not answering. Please try again later.”
I punched in my home phone number. My hand was shaking so much that I got it wrong. I punched it in again. I felt sick.
The telephone rang, and then—
“Okay, we are ready to talk,” said Justin Cantwell. Before I had time to think it, he added, “Don’t look around, Travis. Don’t say anything, don’t signal anyone. I have someone here who’d like to speak with you.”
“Travis?” It was Morgan’s voice, trembling with emotion, her little rasp unmistakable. “Travis. I love you too.” The end of her sentence broke apart as she started to cry.
“So I wasn’t lying the first time,” said Cantwell. “I was just a little early. Do we have an understanding?”
Not far from me, Kyle and the other ministers continued to pray in a circle. I knew I had help.
“We still have to have our discussion,” I said.
“So come home, Travis. Alone.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I came up with some lame excuse I can hardly remember, something about being sick, tired
, or incompetent. I don’t know. But I told Parker I was leaving for a while and ran to my Trooper.
I climbed in, closed the door, started the engine, then bowed my head to pray, gripping the steering wheel tightly enough to reshape it. I intended to burst into desperate prayer. I was going to tackle, wrestle, and grapple with God, crying out in earnest supplication for Morgan’s life and my own and for the tattered soul of Justin Cantwell. I was going to bind and rebuke the powers of darkness and cast them out. I would be waging holy warfare in the heavenlies. It was going to be a struggle—
Before you pray . . . said the Lord.
I looked up. It was quiet inside the Trooper, and suddenly, strangely quiet in my heart. It threw me. What happened? One moment I was ready to leap into the fires of hell and whip-in-the-spirit whatever evil forces might come my way, and the next moment— well, I felt as if I were sitting in heaven. I saw nothing unusual—no visions, no angels, no lightning bolts or faces in the sky. The same cruel, crazy world was in full swing outside my windshield: The lights were still flashing, the cops were still running around, and the floodlights were still there, along with the TV cameras.
But I felt as if I were somewhere else.
How can I describe it? Jesus was in the Trooper with me. I would never presume to put words in his mouth, but I felt him saying, Could we take a moment to review?
I let go of the steering wheel and listened.
MORGAN SAT QUIETLY, praying only in her mind, her wrists anchored to the arms of the chair, her ankles taped together and immobile between the chair legs. Cantwell was sitting at the table, leaning on his left elbow, breathing hard, the knife dangling in his right hand. Though he looked fatigued, the vicious, animal expression never left his eyes. He had made no effort to clean any of the blood off himself. If anything, there seemed to be more blood than before. A pool of red was gathering in his chair and he was sitting in it.
“So you’re one of them, aren’t you?” he asked.
“One of . . . whom?”
He leaned forward and held the knife under her chin. “You’re a church lady, aren’t you? One of the ‘reverends.’ Did Travis tell you what I did to a ‘reverend’?”
His raging eyes were only a foot away. She could smell his breath, his sweat, the blood, now spoiling like meat left out too long. Near Eastern, the Angel, and the Hitchhiker were hovering, lingering, present in the room, sometimes visible, always felt. The house had become an outpost of hell.
It made the peace she felt all the stranger to understand. She never would have expected this enveloping sensation of rest, as if she were somehow separated by a holy capsule from all that was occurring around her. It settled over her the moment her struggle was over and her options gone—the moment Cantwell’s last strip of tape went around her wrist and there was nothing more she could do but trust.
Her voice was steady and gentle as she replied, “He mostly told me what the ‘reverend’ in your life did to you.”
He leaned back, letting the knife rest in his lap. “Maybe he did find out everything.” He looked down at Henchle’s body. “Did he tell you who else was there?”
Morgan thanked God as she recalled the name. “Uh, I think the name was Gallipo.”
Cantwell looked pleased. “Conway Gallipo, Nechville’s permanent chief of police! Very good.”
“Travis pieced it together, the part about Gallipo. He figured it would take two people: one to hold your arms, the other to drive the nails.”
He waved his knife in her face as he lectured, “That should tell you a lot about me and why we’re sitting here right now.” Victoriously, he placed his foot on Henchle’s back. “This little act of God was for Gallipo’s sake.” He saw her grimace. “Hey, come on. You didn’t trust Henchle either—”
He straightened and looked around the room like a guard dog alerted by a noise.
Morgan felt a stirring in the room, a cold flutter in the air, a sense of alarm—on their part.
Then she heard the slam of a car door.
THE BUNGALOW LOOKED COZY and inviting. The porch light was on, and warm lamplight created a glow behind the drapes.
But it felt cold and sinister, and I knew the devils were inside. I stood by the gate for just a moment, gathering my thoughts and reviewing what the Lord and I had discussed all the way down here, that he and history were on my side. There was never a moment or aspect of my life God didn’t have his hand on, and this little adventure was no exception. All I had to do was walk into the house and let him take it from there.
I knew Kyle and the others were still praying. I said a last prayer of my own and stepped through the gate.
I had never regarded myself as a man of keen spiritual discernment. Sure, I could usually get an inkling that something or someone wasn’t quite right, but it was Marian who could sense the presence of a demon and be correct every time. I used to wonder and even ask her how she did it and what it felt like. Tonight I didn’t have to wonder. I could feel a presence in my house as directly, as pungently, as any man could feel a hateful stare or a poisonous taunt. I gazed at the drawn drapes as if the spirits might be looking back at me from behind them. I glanced into the tops of the trees, a little surprised not to see some shadowy creature perched in the limbs.
They were watching me, waiting for me, expecting to play the game by their rules. Come on in, they dared me.
I continued down the walkway and stepped onto the porch.
I heard some movement inside. The scraping of a chair. Morgan gasping. A muttered threat.
I called through the door, “Justin. It’s Travis. I’m coming in.”
There was no reply, although I did feel a painful twist in my gut as if I were stepping off a cliff. I took hold of the doorknob.
We’re ready, they seemed to say. Come on in.
Well I’m ready too, I thought, and we’re coming in.
I turned the knob and opened the door slowly.
The first thing I saw was Justin Cantwell in my dining room, streaked and stained with red, gripping Morgan by the hair and holding a knife to her throat. The second thing I saw was the tape that bound her to the chair. The third thing was Brett Henchle, dead on the floor. I was sickened but not shocked. I remained still. Cantwell was breathing hard, shaking—and desperate.
“Hi there.” I thought my voice would crack or quiver, but it didn’t. “It’s me.”
“Close the door!” he hissed.
I closed the door.
“You weren’t here for the first part of our meeting!” he said, nodding at Henchle’s body. “But you can see who’s in charge!”
I raised my hands so he could see them, then went slowly to the chair by the door and sat down. “I’m all ears.”
The ceiling felt low, as if the joists were supporting a mountain. Breathable air seemed scarce. Though I had just come through the front door, I felt it would not open again. The house, with only three living people in it, felt suffocatingly crowded.
Cantwell released his grip on Morgan’s hair and she shook the kink out of her neck. By leaning shakily on the back of her chair, he made it to the table. By steadying himself against the table, he worked his way back to his own chair and sat down.
“Justin,” I said, “you’re hurt.”
He ignored me. “You see, Travis?” His voice was weak. “I’ve played a better game. I’ve healed more sick, fed more hungry, brought hope to more hopeless, and now I even decide who lives and who dies. People are afraid of me!” He slumped forward, his elbow on his knee, his head drooping. “And that makes me God!”
I shrugged. “If you can’t trust him, be him. Is that how it works?”
“It works.”
“So I see. I can also see you need a doctor.”
He raised his head and grinned at me. “I got what I wanted ever since my back yard.”
“What was that, Justin?”
His head sank again and he spoke to the floor. “Not to be nailed to the fence anymore.”
I hurt for him, even in the midst of the terror. “I hear you.”
“You’ve been there. You know what I’m talking about.”
I had to set the record straight. “Justin, I haven’t been hurt nearly as much as you have. I was discouraged, I was fed up—”
“But you know what I’m talking about!”
“Yeah. I do.”
“So where do you stand?”
“Justin,” I said, staring at his abdomen, “you’re bleeding.”
He leaned toward Morgan, brandishing the knife. “Don’t change the subject, Travis!”
“Okay. Easy.” He relaxed and I continued. “Listen, we were both angry. We were both fed up. We both had wounds and questions. But Justin, my problem was with the church, with all the church stuff. Your problem is with God. There’s a difference.”
His eyes bored into me as he displayed the scars on his arms. “I’m perfectly willing to blame them both.”
I pressed it, hoping I wouldn’t set him off. “But your father wasn’t speaking for God, and Jesus didn’t nail you to that fence.”
He grimaced as if feeling the pain again, then wagged his head. “The point is past arguing!”
I argued anyway. “Remember when your mother came home and got the hammer and pulled the nails out? Remember when she held you and sang to you? That was Jesus. He took the nails. He doesn’t drive them.”
For the briefest moment, his face softened as if he were recalling the moment.
“I met your mom. I can see Jesus in her.”
The hardness and loathing flowed into his face again. “She’s the one who got beaten, torn down, and pushed around every day of her life.”
“It wasn’t Jesus who—”
“It was Jesus who let it happen. Don’t tell me you can’t see that. You’ve had forty years to see it.”
I wasn’t going to lie. “Justin, after forty years of knowing Jesus and just a few months watching you, I’ve decided I can trust him.”
He absorbed the blow, then snickered and shook his head. “You’re just like Mom. You love losing.”
“No. I love winning. It just takes longer.”
He jolted, his eyes darting about the room as if watching a frightful vision. I figured his invisible henchmen weren’t too happy by now. When his gaze finally returned to me, he was weaker. “Well, I love winning too. Daddy found that out.” He waved his knife at the body on the floor. “And . . . and Gallipo. He found out. And God’s finding out!” He stared at me a long moment, his body swaying like a drunkard. “And you’re going to find out too, Travis! Just you wait!”
The Visitation Page 50
