Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

"You look wiped out," Henry said. He stood at the foot of the church steps, holding a big black umbrella, frowning as Charlie approached under an umbrella of his own.

"Didn't get to bed until three-thirty," Charlie said.

"I tried to make this appointment for later," Henry said.

"This was the only time she would see us."

"It's all right. If I'd had more time, I'd have just lain there, staring at the ceiling. Did the police talk to her last night?"

Henry nodded." I spoke with Lieutenant Carella this morning early. They questioned Spivey, and she denied everything."

"They believe her?"

"They're suspicious, if only because they've had their own problems with more than a few of these cults."

Each time a car passed in the street, its tires hissed on the wet pavement with what sounded like serpentine anger.

"Have they been able to put a name to any of those three dead men? "

"Not yet. As for the guns, the serial numbers are from a shipment that was sent from the wholesaler in New York to a chain of retail sporting goods outlets in the Southwest, two years ago. The shipment never arrived. Hijacked. So these guns were bought on the black market. No way to trace who sold or purchased them."

"They cover their tracks well," Charlie said.

It was time to talk to Grace Spivey. He wasn't looking forward to it.

He had little patience for the psychotic babble in which these cult types frequently spoke. Besides, after last night, anything was possible; they might even risk committing murder on their own doorstep.

He looked at his car, by the curb, where one of his men, Carter Rilbeck, was waiting behind the wheel. Carter would wait for them and send for help if they weren't out in half an hour. In addition, both Charlie and Henry were packing revolyers in shoulder holsters.

The rectory was to the left of the church, set back from the street, beyond an unkempt lawn, between two coral trees in need of trimming, ringed by shrubbery that hadn't been thinned or shaped in months. Like the church, the rectory was in in-repair.

Charlie supposed that if you really believed the end of the world was imminent-as these Twilighters claimed to believe-then you didn't waste time on such niceties as gardening and house painting.

The rectory porch had a creaking floor, and the doorbell made a thin, harsh, irregular sound, more animal than mechanical.

The curtain covering the window in the center of the door was abruptly drawn aside. A florid-faced, overweight woman with protuberant green eyes stared at them for a long moment, then let the curtain fall into place, unlocked the door, and ushered them into a drab entry hall.

When the door was closed and the susurrous voice of the storm faded somewhat, Charlie said, "My name is-"

"I know who you are," the woman replied curtly. She led them back down the hall to a chamber on the right, where the door was ajar. She opened the door all the way and indicated that they were to enter. She didn't come with them, didn't announce them, just closed the door after them, leaving them to their own introductions. Evidently, common courtesy was not an ingredient in the bizarre stew of Christianity and doomsday prophecy that Spivey's followers had cooked up for themselves.

Charlie and Henry were in a room twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide, sparsely and cheaply furnished. Filing cabinets lined one wall. In the center were a simple metal table on which lay a woman's purse and an ashtray, one metal folding chair behind the table, and two chairs in front of it. Nothing else. No draperies at the windows. No tables or cabinets or knickknacks.

There were no lamps, either, just the ceiling fixture, which cast a yellowish glow that, blending with the gray storm light coming through the tall windows, gave the room a muddy look.

Perhaps the oddest thing of all was the complete lack of religious objects: no paintings portraying Christ, no plastic statues of Biblical figures or angels, no needlepoint samplers bearing religious messages, none of the sacred objects-or kitsch, depending on your point of view-that you expected to find among cult fanatics. There had been none in the hallway, either, or in any of the rooms they had passed.

Grace Spivey was standing at the far end of the room, at a window, her back to them, staring out at the rain.

Henry cleared his throat.

She didn't move.

Charlie said, "Mrs. Spivey?"

Finally she turned away from the window and faced them.

She was dressed all in yellow: pale yellow blouse, a gay yellow polka-dot scarf knotted at her neck, deep yellow skirt, yellow shoes.

She was wearing yellow bracelets on each wrist and half a dozen rings set with yellow stones. The effect was ludicrous.

The brightness of her outfit only accentuated the paleness of her puffy face, the withered dullness of her age-spotted skin. She looked as if she were possessed by senile whimsy and thought of herself as a twelve-year-old girl on the way to a friend's birthday party.

Her gray hair was wild, but her eyes were wilder. Even from across the room, those eyes were riveting and strange.

She was curiously rigid, shoulders drawn up tight, arms straight down at her sides, hands curled into tight fists.

"I'm Charles Harrison," Charlie said because he'd never actually met the woman before, "and this is my associate, Mr. Rankin."

As unsteady as a drunkard, she took two steps away from the window. Her face twisted, and her white skin became even whiter. She cried out in pain, almost fell, caught herself in time, and stood swaying as if the floor were rolling under her.

"Is something wrong?" Charlie asked.

"You'll have to help me," she said.

He hadn't figured on anything like this. He had expected her to be a strong woman with a vital, magnetic personality, a takecharge type who would keep them off balance from the start.

Instead it was she who was off balance, and quite literally.

She was standing in a partial crouch now, as if pain were bending her in half. She was still stiff, and her hands were still fisted.

Charlie and Henry went to her.

"Help me to that chair before I fall," she said weakly." It's my feet"

Charlie looked down at her feet and was shocked to see blood on them. He took her left arm, and Henry took her right, and they half carried her to the chair that stood behind the metal table. As she sat down, Charlie realized there was a bleeding wound on the bridge of each foot, just above the tongue of each shoe, twin holes, as if she had been stabbed, not by a knife but by something with a very narrow blade-perhaps an ice pick.

"Can I get you a doctor?" he asked, disconcerted to find himself being so solicitous to her.

"No," she said." No doctor. Please sit down."

"But-"

"I'll be all right. I'll be fine. God watches over me, you know. God is good to me. Sit. Please."

Confused, they went to the two chairs on the other side of the table, but before either of them could sit, the old woman opened her fisted hands and held her palms up to them." Look," she said in a demanding whisper." Look at this! Behold this!"

The gruesome sight stopped Charlie from sitting down. In each of the woman's palms, there was another bleeding hole, like those in her feet.

As he stared at her wounds, the blood began to ooze out faster than before.

Incredibly, she was smiling.

Charlie glanced at Henry and saw the same question in his friend's eyes that he knew must be in his own: What the hell is going on here?

"It's for you," the old woman said excitedly. She leaned toward them, stretching her arms across the table, holding her hands out to them, urging them to look.

"For us?" Henry said, baffled.

"What do you mean?" Charlie asked.

"A sign," she said.