by Dean Koontz
“Those years were worse for Tony than for me,” she told the detective. “Mainly because, on top of everything else that Evelyn expected of him, she also wanted him to be a priest. The Giavettis had produced two priests in her generation, and they were the most revered members of the family.”
In addition to the Giavettis’ tradition of service to the Church, Evelyn was a religious woman, and even without that family history, she would have pushed Tony toward the priesthood. She pushed successfully, too, for he went straight from parochial school into the seminary. He had no choice. By the time he was twelve, Evelyn had him brainwashed, and it was impossible for him to imagine being anything but a priest.
“Evelyn expected Tony to be a parish priest,” Christine told Charlie Harrison. “Maybe eventually a monsignor, perhaps even a bishop. Like I said, she had high standards. But when Tony took his vows, he asked to be assigned to missionary work, and he was—in Africa. Mother was so upset! See, in the Church, like in government, the way you usually move up through the hierarchy is largely through astute politicking. But you can’t be a constant, visible presence in the corridors of power when you’re stuck in some remote African mission. Mother was furious.”
The detective said, “Did he choose missionary work because he knew she’d be against it?”
“No. The problem was Mother saw the priesthood as a way for Tony to bring honor to her and the family. But to Tony, the priesthood was an opportunity to serve. He took his vows seriously.”
“Is he still in Africa?”
“He’s dead.”
Startled, Charlie Harrison said, “Oh. I’m sorry. I—”
“It’s not a recent loss,” she assured him. “Eleven years ago, when I was a high school senior, Tony was killed by terrorists, African revolutionaries. For a while Mother was inconsolable, but gradually her grief gave way to a . . . sick anger. She was actually angry with Tony for getting himself killed—as if he’d run away like my father before him. She made me feel I ought to make up for how Daddy and Tony had failed her. In my own grief and confusion and guilt . . . I said I wanted to become a nun, and Evelyn . . . Mother leaped at the idea. So, after high school, at her urging, I entered the convent . . . and it was a disaster . . .”
So much time had passed, yet she could still vividly remember the way the novice’s habit had felt when she’d first worn it: the unexpected weight of it; the surprisingly coarse texture of the black fabric; the way she had continually caught the flowing skirts on doorknobs, furniture, and everything else that she passed, unaccustomed as she was to such voluminous clothes. Being trapped within that venerable uniform, sleeping within a narrow stone cubicle on a simple cot, day after day spent within the dreary and ascetically furnished confines of the convent—it all stayed with her in spite of her efforts to forget. Those Lost Years had been so similar to the suffocating life in the Victorian house in Pomona that, like thoughts of childhood, any recollection of her convent days was apt to put pressure on her chest and make breathing difficult.
“A nun?” Charlie Harrison said, unable to conceal his astonishment.
“A nun,” she said.
Charlie tried to picture this vibrant, sensuous woman in a nun’s habit. He simply couldn’t do it. His imagination rebelled.
At least he understood why she projected an uncommon inner tranquility. Two years in a nunnery, two years of long daily sessions of meditation and prayer, two years isolated from the turbulent currents of everyday life were bound to have a lasting effect.
But none of this explained why she exerted such an instant, powerful attraction on him, or why he felt like a randy teenager in her company. That was still a mystery—a pleasant mystery, but a mystery nonetheless.
She said, “I hung on for two years, trying to convince myself I had a vocation in the sisterhood. No good. When I left the convent, Evelyn was crushed. Her entire family had failed her. Then, a couple of years later, when I got pregnant with Joey, Evelyn was horrified. Her only daughter, who might’ve been a nun, instead turned out to be a loose woman, an unwed mother. She piled the guilt on me, smothered me in it.”
She looked down, paused for a moment to compose herself.
Charlie waited. He was as good at waiting as he was at listening.
Finally she said, “By that time, I was a fallen-away Catholic. I’d pretty much lost my religion . . . or been driven away from it. Didn’t go to Mass anymore. But I was still enough of a Catholic to abhor the idea of abortion. I kept Joey, and I’ve never regretted it.”
“Your mother’s never had a change of heart?”
“No. We speak to each other, but there’s a vast gulf between us. And she won’t have much to do with Joey.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Ironically, almost from the day I got pregnant, my life turned around. Everything’s gotten better and better since then. I was still carrying Joey when I went into business with Val Gardner and started Wine & Dine. By the time Joey was a year old, I was supporting my mother. I’ve had a lot of success, and it doesn’t matter at all to her; it isn’t good enough for her, not when I could have been a nun, and not when I am an unwed mother. She still heaps guilt on me each time I see her.”
“Well, now I can understand why you’re sensitive about it.”
“So sensitive that . . . when all this started with the old woman yesterday . . . well, in the back of my mind I sort of wondered if maybe it was meant to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe I’m meant to lose Joey. Maybe it’s inevitable. Even . . . predestined.”
“I don’t follow you.”
She fidgeted, managed to look angry and dispirited and frightened and embarrassed all at the same time. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath and said, “Well, uh, maybe . . . just maybe . . . it’s God’s way of punishing me for failing as a nun, for breaking my mother’s heart, for drifting away from the Church after once having been so close to it.”
“But that’s . . .”
“Ridiculous?” she suggested.
“Well, yes.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“God isn’t spiteful.”
“I know,” she said sheepishly. “It’s silly. Illogical. Just plain dumb. Yet . . . it gnaws at me. Silly things can be true sometimes.” She sighed and shook her head. “I’m proud of Joey, fiercely proud, but I’m not proud of being an unwed mother.”
“You were going to tell me about the father . . . in case he might have something to do with this. What was his name?”
“He told me his name was Luke—actually Lucius—Under.”
“Under what?”
“That was his last name. Under. Lucius Under, but he told me to call him Luke.”
“Under. It’s an unusual name.”
“It’s a phony name. He was probably thinking about getting me out of my underwear when he made it up,” she said angrily, and then she blushed. Clearly, she was embarrassed by these personal revelations, but she forged ahead. “It happened aboard a cruise ship to Mexico, one of those Love Boat–type excursions.” She laughed without humor when she spoke of love in this context. “After I left the sisterhood and spent a few years working as a waitress, that trip was the first treat I gave myself. I met a man only a few hours out of L.A. Very handsome . . . charming. Said his name was Luke. One thing led to another. He must have seen how vulnerable I was because he moved in like a shark. I was so different then, you see, so timid, very much the little ex-nun, a virgin, utterly inexperienced. We spent five days together on that ship, and I think most of it was in my cabin . . . in bed. A few weeks later, when I learned I was pregnant, I tried to contact him. I wasn’t after support, you understand. I just thought he had a right to know about his son.” Another sour laugh. “He’d given me an address and phone number, but they were phony. I considered tracking him down through the cruise line, but it would’ve been so . . . humiliating.” She smiled ruefully. “Believe me, I’ve led a tame life ever since. Eve
n before I knew I was pregnant, I felt . . . soiled by this man, that tawdry shipboard affair. I didn’t want to feel like that again, so I’ve been . . . well, not exactly a sexual recluse . . . but cautious. Maybe that’s the ex-nun in me. And it’s definitely the ex-nun in me that feels I need to be punished, that maybe God will punish me through Joey.”
He didn’t know what to tell her. He was accustomed to providing physical, emotional, and mental comfort for his clients, but spiritual comfort wasn’t something he knew how to supply.
“I’m a little crazy on the subject,” she said. “And I’ll probably drive you a little crazy with all my worrying. I’m always scared that Joey’ll get sick or be hurt in an accident. I’m not just talking about ordinary motherly concern. Sometimes . . . I’m almost obsessed with worry about him. And then yesterday this old crone shows up and tells me that my little boy is evil, says he’s got to die, comes prowling around the house in the middle of the night, kills our dog . . . Well, God, I mean, she seems so relentless, so inevitable.”
“She’s not,” Charlie said.
“So now that you know a little something about Evelyn . . . my mother . . . do you still think she could be involved in this?”
“Not really. But it’s still possible the old woman heard your mother talking about you, talking about Joey, and that’s how she fixated on you.”
“I think it was probably just pure chance. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If we hadn’t been at the mall yesterday, if it had been some other woman with her little boy, that old hag would have fixated on them instead.”
“I imagine you’re right,” he said.
He got up from the desk.
“But don’t you worry about this crazy person,” he said. “We’ll find her.”
He went to the window.
“We’ll put a stop to this harassment,” he said. “You’ll see.”
He looked out, over the top of the date palm. The white van was still parked across the street. The man in dark clothes was still leaning against the front fender, but he was no longer eating lunch. He was just waiting there, arms folded on his chest, ankles crossed, watching the front entrance of the building.
“Come here a minute,” Charlie said.
Christine came to the window.
“Could that be the van that was parked beside your car at the mall?”
“Yeah. One like that.”
“But could this be the same one?”
“You think I was followed this morning?”
“Would you have noticed if you had been?”
She frowned. “I was in such a state . . . so nervous, upset . . . I might not have realized I was being tailed, not if it was done with at least some circumspection.”
“Then it could be the same van.”
“Or just a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“But if it’s the same van, if I was followed, then who’s the man leaning against it?”
They were too far above the stranger to get a good look at his face. They could tell very little about him from this distance. He might have been old or young or middle-aged.
“Maybe he’s the old woman’s husband. Or her son,” Charlie said.
“But if he’s following me, he’d have to be as crazy as she is.”
“Probably.”
“The whole family can’t be nuts.”
“No law against it,” he said.
He went to his desk and placed an in-house telephone call to Henry Rankin, one of his best men. He told Rankin about the van across the street. “I want you to walk past it, get the license number, and take a look at that guy over there, so you’ll recognize him later. Glom anything else you can without being conspicuous about it. Be sure to come and go by the back entrance, and circle all the way around the block, so he won’t have any idea where you came from.”
“No sweat,” Rankin said.
“Once you’ve got the number, get on the line to the DMV and find out who holds the registration.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you report to me.”
“I’m leaving now.”
Charlie hung up. He went to the window again.
Christine said, “Let’s hope it’s just a coincidence.”
“On the contrary—let’s hope it’s the same van. It’s the best lead we could’ve asked for.”
“But if it is the same van, and if that guy’s with it—”
“He’s with it, all right.”
“—then it’s not just the old woman who’s a threat to Joey. There’re two of them.”
“Or more.”
“Huh?”
“Might be another one or two we don’t know about.”
A bird swooped past the window.
The palm fronds stirred in the unseasonably warm breeze.
Sunshine silvered the windows of the cars parked along the street.
At the van, the stranger waited.
Christine said, “What the hell is going on?”
10
In the windowless basement, eleven candles held the insistent shadows at bay.
The only noise was Mother Grace Spivey’s increasingly labored breathing as she settled deeper into a trance. The eleven disciples made no sound whatsoever.
Kyle Barlowe was silent, too, and perfectly still even though he was uncomfortable. The oak chair on which he sat was too small for him. That wasn’t the fault of the chair, which would have provided adequate seating for anyone else in the room. But Barlowe was so big that, to him, most furniture seemed to have been designed and constructed for use by dwarves. He liked deep-seated, overstuffed easy chairs and old-fashioned wing-backed armchairs but only if the wings were angled wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders. He liked king-sized beds, La-Z-Boy recliners, and ancient claw-foot bathtubs that were so large they didn’t force him to sit with his legs drawn up as if he were a baby taking a bath in a basin. His apartment in Santa Ana was furnished to his dimensions, but when he wasn’t at home he was usually uncomfortable to one degree or another.
However, as Mother Grace slipped deeper into her trance, Barlowe became increasingly eager to hear what message she would bring from the spirit world, and gradually he ceased to notice that he seemed to be perched on a child’s playroom chair.
He adored Mother Grace. She had told him about the coming of Twilight, and he had believed every word. Twilight. Yes, it made sense. The world was long overdue for Twilight. By warning him that it was coming, by soliciting his help to prepare mankind for it, Mother Grace had given him an opportunity to redeem himself before it was too late. She had saved him, body and soul.
Until he met her, he had spent most of his twenty-nine years in the single-minded pursuit of self-destruction. He’d been a drunkard, a barroom brawler, a dope addict, a rapist, even a murderer. He’d been promiscuous, bedding at least one new woman every week, most of them junkies or prostitutes or both. He’d contracted gonorrhea seven or eight times, syphilis twice, and it was amazing he hadn’t gotten both diseases more often than that.
On rare occasions, he had been sober and clearheaded enough to be disgusted or even frightened by his lifestyle. But he had rationalized his behavior by telling himself that self-loathing and anti-social violence were simply the natural responses to the thoughtless—and sometimes intentional—cruelty with which most people treated him.
To the world at large, he was a freak, a lumbering giant with a Neanderthaloid face that would scare off a grizzly bear. Little children were usually frightened of him. People of all ages stared, some openly and some surreptitiously. A few even laughed at him when they thought he wasn’t looking, joked about him behind his back. He usually pretended not to be aware of it—unless he was in a mood to break arms and kick ass. But he was always aware, and it hurt. Certain teenagers were the worst, especially certain girls, who giggled and laughed openly at him; now and then, when they were at a safe distance, they even taunted him. He had ne
ver been anything but an outsider, shunned and alone.
For many years, his violent and self-destructive life had been easy to justify to himself. Bitterness, hatred, and rage had seemed to be essential armor against society’s cruelty. Without his reckless disregard for personal well-being and without his diligently nurtured lust for revenge, he would have felt defenseless. The world insisted on making an outcast of him, insisted on seeing him as either a seven-foot buffoon with a monkey’s face or a threatening monster. Well, he wasn’t a buffoon, but he didn’t mind playing the monster for them; he didn’t mind showing them just how viciously, shockingly monstrous he could be when he really put his mind to it. They had made him what he was. He wasn’t responsible for his crimes. He was bad because they had made him bad. For most of his life, that’s what he had told himself.
Until he met Mother Grace Spivey.
She showed him what a self-pitying wretch he was. She made him see that his justifications for sinful and self-indulgent behavior were pitifully flimsy. She taught him that an outcast could gain strength, courage, and even pride from his condition. She helped him see Satan within himself and helped him throw the devil out.
She helped him understand that his great strength and his singular talent for destruction were to be used only to bring terror and punishment to the enemies of God.
Now, sitting in front of Mother Grace as she drifted in a trance, Kyle Barlowe regarded her with unqualified adoration. He didn’t see that her untrimmed mane of gray hair was frizzy, knotted, and slightly greasy; to him, in the flickering golden light, her shining hair was a holy nimbus framing her face, a halo. He didn’t see that her clothes were badly wrinkled; he didn’t notice the threads and lint and dandruff and food stains that decorated her. He saw only what he wanted to see, and he wanted to see salvation.
