by John Saul
Her whole body spasming with terror, Kim jerked her hand back, and her fingers closed on the golden cross that still hung suspended on her breast where her great-aunt had placed it.
The face before her contorted with fury, and the figure twisted aside, screaming in rage, phlegm and bile erupting from its gaping mouth.
Sickened, Kim reeled away. As she turned to flee back up the aisle, she saw Luke Roberts.
Naked, he lay before one end of the altar, sprawled atop Sandy Engstrom, whose arms and legs were wrapped around his glistening torso as she writhed ecstatically beneath him. Stunned into frozen immobility, Kim stood rooted to the spot as her brother's best friend and her own twisted and flailed on the floor before the altar. Then, as if feeling her watching him, Luke looked up, and his eyes locked on hers.
He smiled.
Once again Kim saw the face of the demon—eyes running with mucus, skin turned into a reptilian hide erupting with pustules. Now the twin serpents burst forth from his mouth, along with a terrible, high-pitched laugh that crashed against Kim like shattering glass.
Her gorge rising, her throat filling with the burning fire of vomit, Kim turned away from the grotesque scene on the floor, and now the grinning visage of the demon loomed above her once more, both his hands outstretched, his fingers growing into curving talons that dripped with blood. Just as the creature's claws were about to sink into her flesh, she turned one last time and raced back up the aisle of the cathedral. The aisle seemed to stretch away from her as she ran. The taunting laughter she'd heard boiling from Luke's throat was joined now by other cackling voices, the peals striking her back like the stinging tips of a lash, driving her on despite the exhaustion that threatened to overwhelm her.
Finally she came to the doors and burst through, pulling them closed behind her. In an instant she was plunged into darkness, but she bolted ahead and a moment later stumbled headlong into the bottom of the stairs.
Screaming, she threw her hands out to break her fall and—
Kim jerked awake, a scream still rising in her throat. She choked it back just before it could smash the silence of the night, and then she lay still, her heart pounding, her mind reeling as the last fragments of the nightmare faded away.
She became aware of the faint throbbing of music then, and a glowing point of light in the darkness surrounding her.
Oh, God, was she still caught up in the nightmare?
But no—she couldn't be. If she were still in the clutches of the dream, would she even be wondering if it was a dream?
She must be awake!
She willed her pounding heart to slow, and as her pulse eased, so also the terror that gripped her began to ebb. Disoriented, she looked around.
The library! That's where she was! And the glowing point of light was nothing more than the stand-by indicator on the television set!
She sat up. "S-Sandy?" she stammered.
Silence, save for the muted rhythms of the music.
The music from the dream?
She got up and switched on the floor lamp at the end of the sofa on which Sandy Engstrom had been sprawled while they watched the movie.
The sofa was empty; Sandy wasn't there.
The details of the dream loomed once more in her mind, and she whimpered softly as she saw again the vision of her friend, her body glistening in the candlelight, her limbs entwined around—
No!
It hadn't happened! She hadn't seen it! It had only been a dream.
Then where was Sandy?
The question hanging in her mind, Kim moved out of the library and through the living room to the entry hall. The house seemed to have grown in the gloom; the huge rooms appeared more immense than ever. She crossed the entry hall, moved into the parlor and the dining room.
Nothing.
She was passing the door to the basement stairs when she paused. The music—the music she had thought was only another vestige of the nightmare—was louder now.
Her terror mounting once again, and wishing she could just turn away, Kim reached out and pulled open the door.
The music blared.
She stepped through the door so she was standing on the landing at the top of the stairs, gazing down into the darkness.
The darkness, and the faint point of light that leaked through the keyhole of the door to Jared's room.
Just like in the dream...
Don't, Kim told herself. Just don't go down there.
But even as the words filled her mind, her feet began carrying her down the staircase. With each step she took, the rhythms of the music reached deeper into her, and the point of light drew her steadily onward. At the bottom of the stairs she stood before the door to Jared's room.
She paused, listening.
Now she could hear more than just the music itself.
Whispered voices, and faint, mocking laughter.
And moans.
Moans of ecstasy.
She was in Jared's room! Sandy was in Jared's room!.
Kim's hand reached for the knob, but she stopped herself as the memory of the pagan cathedral she'd seen in her dream—the cathedral that had turned into a chamber of horror—rose in her mind. What if it wasn't a dream? What if everything she'd seen were somehow real? What if Sandy really was—
Unable to finish the thought, Kim turned away from the door and hurried back up the stairs, then shut the basement door behind her and leaned against it.
What should she do?
Should she wake up her parents?
Sandy would never forgive her!
But if she was with Jared and Luke—
Kim felt as if she were caught in another nightmare, but this time she knew it wasn't a dream. This time it was real. From behind her the music reached through the door, and she could almost feel its tentacles sinking into her once again, as it had in the nightmare, trying to draw her back down into the basement.
Just as in her dream, her fingers closed on her aunt's tiny cross, and as she felt it in her hand, her resolve strengthened. She left the door to the basement and made her way back to the entry hall.
As she started up the great staircase toward the second floor, the waves of music receded, loosening their grip on her.
At her parents' door, she hesitated.
Whatever was going on in Jared's room wasn't any of her business.
No one had forced Sandy to go down there.
And if she told on her, Sandy would never speak to her again.
Silently, Kim made her way around the mezzanine to her own room, easing her door open just far enough to slip inside, praying it wouldn't creak. Just as she was closing it behind her, she realized her room wasn't empty.
Kim froze, listening.
Breathing! She could hear the sound of breathing!
Once again her heart began to race, but even as her fear built, she moved her hand slowly toward the light switch on the wall. When she finally felt it beneath her fingers, she drew in her breath and held it.
She flipped the switch, and the chandelier in the middle of the ceiling glared into brilliant light, washing the darkness from the room.
Sandy Engstrom sat bolt upright in Kim's bed, clutching the sheets around her neck. For a long second the two girls stared at each other in shock, then Sandy collapsed back against the pillows, giggling. "What are you doing?" she asked when she finally subsided. "You scared me half to death!"
"I didn't even know you were up here," Kim began. "I thought—" She was about to blurt out the truth when she caught herself. "I woke up, and you were gone, and I thought you must have gone home or something. How come you didn't wake me up?"
Sandy rolled her eyes exactly as Kim had when she herself had been frightened by watching Scream. "I tried," she said. "When the movie ended, I tried to wake you up, but finally I just gave up and came up and went to bed." She looked at the clock. It was just past three A.M. "Do you always sleep that hard?"
Kim shook her head. "I thought—" She hesitated, th
en shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what I thought," she finally finished.
She got undressed and slid into bed next to her friend.
Should she tell Sandy about the nightmare?
No. She didn't even want to remember it herself.
But long after Sandy had fallen back to sleep, Kim lay awake as the details of the dream came back to hang in the darkness in front of her.
Over and over, she witnessed the wanton scene on the bloody altar, saw over and over again the face of the demon that had reached out to her. As the night crept on, she tried to banish the visions, but failed.
It was only as the rising sun drove back the dark that the demons finally released Kim from their grip and let her sleep.
Even then she could still feel the throbbing rhythms from the basement as the tentacles of Jared's music reached out to ensnare her.
She slept, but she didn't rest.
CHAPTER 27
It was a dream. It had to have been a dream. Yet even now, with the morning sun flooding through the windows, Kim could remember every detail. She lay staring up at the ceiling while the horrifying images—the impossible images—she'd seen last night recurred in her mind like some insanely repeating videotape, endlessly replaying the same sequence.
Beside her, Sandy Engstrom stirred, then sat up, rubbing her eyes. Seeing Kim was awake, she pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, then eyed Kim warily. "If I tell you about a dream I had, will you promise not to tell anybody?" she asked, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I mean, not a soul!"
A flicker of foreboding flashed through Kim, but she nodded.
Sandy's eyes gleamed, and even in the warmth of the morning she shivered with remembered pleasure. "It was about Jared."
Kim's stomach knotted as she was consumed by a terrible feeling that she didn't want to hear what Sandy was about to tell her. But she heard herself say, "I promise. I won't tell a soul."
Sandy hugged her legs more tightly to her chest and sighed. "It was really weird," she began. "I was sound asleep, and then I started to wake up. I could feel someone touching me, but I wasn't scared at all. It felt really wonderful. And when I was wide awake, he took me somewhere. It was the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Oh, God, Kim, you should have seen it! It looked kind of like a church, but a lot more beautiful than any church I've ever been in!"
No! Kim thought. It's not possible!
As she listened to Sandy, Kim recalled the details of her own dream, in which she'd watched Luke making love to her friend.
Could it be that she hadn't been dreaming at all? Her mind reeled as she tried to make sense of the possibility that it had all really happened. But that made no sense, either. The house was big, but none of the rooms was anywhere near as large as the one Sandy described.
The one she herself had seen in her own dream.
Could she have been sleepwalking? Had it been some strange hypnotic state? If not a dream, then what?
"Kim?" Sandy said. "Kim, what's wrong? You look white as a ghost. Are you okay?"
Jerked out of her maelstrom of thoughts, Kim nodded mutely. Should she tell Sandy they'd both had the same dream—exactly the same dream?
No way. Sandy would think she was crazy. Besides, they couldn't possibly have had exactly the same dream, so there must be some other explanation.
Something that made sense.
"I—I'm fine," she stammered at last. "I just didn't sleep very well, that's all."
Sandy cocked her head, and for a second Kim had the strange feeling that somehow Sandy was looking right into her. But then the color drained from Sandy's face, and she scrambled out of bed and hurried toward the door.
"Sandy? What is it?"
"S-Sick," Sandy blurted, clapping her hand over her mouth as she rushed out into the hall. Moments later Kim heard the muffled sounds of Sandy throwing up in the bathroom next door.
Getting out of bed, Kim hurried toward the bathroom, where her friend was kneeling on the floor in front of the toilet. A racking seizure hit Sandy, and she retched into the toilet, a blackish fluid spewing from her mouth.
As Kim ran cold water in the sink, soaked a hand towel and pressed it against Sandy's forehead, another spume of vomit burst from Sandy's mouth into the toilet bowl.
When the seizure passed, Sandy took the wet towel from Kim and eased away from the toilet. Not trusting herself to stand, she leaned against the wall and wiped her face with the towel.
"I'll get my mom," Kim said, then flushed the toilet and opened the bathroom window to let the rancid odor escape.
"Don't," Sandy said, pushing off from the wall and steadying herself against the sink. "I—I think I'm okay now. I don't want my mother to know."
"But if you're sick—" Kim began, but Sandy didn't let her finish.
"So I got sick! Remember what I ate last night?" She groaned just thinking about the pizza, potato chips, Fritos, cookies, ice cream, and Cokes they'd consumed. "I'm okay," she said. "Really, just let me take a shower, and I'll be fine."
But Kim wondered. She'd eaten nearly as much as Sandy. If it was the food, why wasn't she sick, too?
Kim stood at the top of the basement stairs, staring down at the closed door to Jared's room. Jared had left half an hour ago, so the room was empty.
Should she take a look at it? But how could it possibly look like what she'd seen in her dream, and what Sandy Engstrom had described?
But even as she argued with herself, Kim moved down the steep flight of stairs to Jared's door.
Don't do it, she told herself as her hand went to the doorknob. It's his room. Whatever he's got in there isn't any of your business.
She turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Inside, she saw nothing more than the four black-painted walls, the workbench, Jared's bed, and the mattresses that served as furniture.
No altar.
No stained-glass windows.
Nothing.
A dream, Kim repeated to herself as she went back upstairs.
It was just a dream.
But she didn't believe it.
Something had happened last night.
Something terrible.
CHAPTER 28
Ellie Roberts eyed her own image worriedly. The mirror on the back of her closet door was so old the silvering was flaking away, but despite the mottled look of her reflection, she knew something was wrong. Maybe she shouldn't go. Maybe she should just take off the dress—her best one, the one she only wore to mass on special holidays—and stay home. But she'd promised Father MacNeill, and a promise was a promise, especially to the man to whom she owed so much. When he'd mentioned the town meeting, it hadn't seemed so much to ask. Ellie knew practically everyone in town, especially the Catholics. She'd grown up with them—known them her whole life. But on the evening Father Mack had asked her, she'd had a bad dream about it, a horrible dream that woke her up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Ellie knew what was causing her bad dreams. Speaking at the meeting.
She had almost gone to Father MacNeill the next morning and told him she'd changed her mind, that she just couldn't do it, couldn't get up in front of the whole town to speak. But she'd put it off all day, and the next day, too, and every day since then. And every night, she woke up with her skin clammy and covered with goose bumps, and a feeling of dread.
And now the night was here and there was no turning back.
Her eyes shifted from the burning face in the mirror to the sparse contents of the closet. Just as she decided her best dress was too dressy and reached for the dark blue outfit she often wore on Sundays, the doorbell rang. Luke called out to her, "Mom! Father MacNeill's here!"
Too late to change.
Her stomach churning, Ellie turned away from the closet, patted her hair nervously as she checked herself out in the mirror one last time, then went out to greet the priest.
"Ellie, you look lovely," Father MacNeill said, reaching out to take both her hands in
his own. "I swear, if I weren't a priest you could positively turn my head!"
Ellie felt a flush rise on her face, but pleasure turned to embarrassment as her son spoke.
"What's going on?" Luke demanded. "How come you're all dressed up?"
Before she could reply, Father MacNeill turned to Luke. "We're going to the meeting. Perhaps you'd like to come along."
Luke's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What meeting?"
"To protest the permit the council's considering issuing to convert the old Conway house into an inn."
Luke's expression hardened as his gaze swung accusingly back to his mother. "That's a bunch of crap!"
Ellie's shocked eyes flicked toward Father MacNeill. "Luke! Don't use that kind of language in front of—"
"I'll say whatever I want," Luke declared, his voice rising, his eyes flashing angrily. "Just because you don't like Jared is no reason to—"
"It doesn't have anything to do with Jared Conway," Father MacNeill broke in. Luke swung around to glower at him.
"Bullshit!" he said. "You got it in for Jared same way as Mom does. What the hell's going on?"
"That will be enough, Luke!" Ellie's cheeks burned with shame. "How dare you speak that way to Father MacNeill?" She turned to the priest, her hands playing nervously at the buttons of her dress. "I'm sorry, Father. Ever since he started hanging around with this Jared person—"
"He's not 'this Jared person'!" Luke broke in, his voice trembling with anger. " You don't even know him!"
"I don't have to know him," Ellie said, doing her best to keep her own voice under control. "I know he's a bad influence on you, and that ever since he came to town, you haven't been the boy I raised!"
"Maybe I don't want to be 'the boy you raised,'" Luke shot back, his voice mocking his mother's words with mimicry. "Maybe I want to be whoever I am! Did you ever think of that?"
"I just want you to be the best person you can—"
"No you don't!" Luke flared. "You want me to be whoever Father MacNeill thinks I ought to be. You think I don't see how he runs us? All I ever hear is Father Mack says this and Father Mack says that! So now you're gonna go down and make a jerk out of yourself in front of the whole town, just 'cause Father Mack says so? Jesus!"
