Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

"Sign?

"A holy sign."

Charlie stared at her hands.

"Stigmata," she said.

Jesus. The woman belonged in an institution.

A chill worked its way assiduously up Charlie's spine and curled at the base of his neck, flicking its icy tail.

"The wounds of Christ," she said.

What have we walked into? Charlie wondered.

Henry said, "I better call a doctor."

"No," she said softly but authoritatively." These wounds ache, yes, but it's a sweet pain, a good pain, a cleansing pain, and they won't become infected; they'll heal well on their own.

Don't you understand? These are the wounds Christ endured, the holes made by the nails that pinned Him to the cross."

She's mad, Charlie thought, and he looked uneasily at the door, wondering where the florid-faced woman had gone. To get some other crazies? To organize a death squad? A human sacrifice? They had the nerve to call this Christianity?

"I know what you're thinking," Grace Spivey said, her voice growing louder, stronger." You don't think I look like a prophet.

You don't think God would work through an old, crazy-looking woman like me. But that is how He works. Christ walked with the outcasts, befriended the lepers, the prostitutes, the thieves, the deformed, and sent them forth to spread His word. Do you know why? Do you know?"

She was speaking so loudly now that her voice rebounded from the walls, and Charlie was reminded of a television evangelist who spoke in hypnotic rhythms and with the projection of a well-trained actor.

"Do you know why God chooses the most unlikely messengers?" she demanded

" It's because He wants to test you. Anyone could bring himself to believe the preachings of a prettyboy minister with Robert Redford's face and Richard Burton's voice! But only the righteous, only those who truly want to believe in the Word. only those with enough faith will recognize and accept the Word regardless of the messenger!"

Her blood was dripping on the table. Her voice had risen until it vibrated in the window glass.

"God is testing you. Can you hear His message regardless of what you think of the messenger? Is your soul pure enough to allow you to hear?

Or is there corruption within you that makes you deaf?"

Both Charlie and Henry were speechless. There was a mesmerizing quality to her tirade that was numbing and demanding of attention.

"Listen, listen, listen!" she said urgently." Listen to what I tell you. God visited these stigmata upon me the moment you rang the doorbell. He has given you a sign, and that can mean only one thing: You aren't yet in Satan's thrall, and the Lord is giving you a chance to redeem yourselves. Apparently you don't realize what the woman is, what her child is. If you knew and still protected them, God wouldn't be offering you redemption.

Do you know what they are? Do you know?"

Charlie cleared his throat, blinked, freed himself from the fuzziness that had briefly affected his thoughts." I know what you think they are," Charlie said.

"It's not what I think. It's what I know. It's what God has told me.

The boy is the Antichrist. The mother is the black Madonna."

Charlie hadn't expected her to be so direct. He was sure she would deny any interest in Joey, just as she had denied it to the police. He was startled by her forthrightness and didn't know what to make of it.

"I know you're not recording this conversation," she said.

"We have instruments that would have detected a recorder. I would have been alerted. So I can speak freely. The boy has come to rule the earth for a thousand years."

"He's just a six-year-old boy," Charlie said, "like any other six-year-old boy."

"No," she said, still holding her hands up to reveal the blood seeping from her wounds." No, he is more, worse. He must die. We must kill him. It is God's wish, God's work."

"You can't really mean-"

She interrupted him." Now that you have been told, now that God has made the truth clear to you, you must cease protecting them." "They're my clients," Chaflie said." I-"

"If you persist in protecting them, you're damned," the old woman said worriedly, begging them to accept redemption.

"We have an obligation-"

"Damned, don't you see? You'll rot in Hell. All hope lost.

Eternity spent in suffering. You must listen. You must learn."

He looked into her fevered eyes, which challenged him with berserk intensity. His pity for her was mixed with a disgust that left him unable and unwilling to debate with her. He realized it had been pointless to come. The woman was beyond the reach of reason.

He was now more afraid for Christine and Joey than he had been last night, when one of Grace Spivey's followers had been shooting at them.

She raised her bleeding palms an inch or two higher." This sign is for you, for you, to convince you that I am, in fact, a herald bearing a true message. Do you see? Do you believe now? Do you understand?"

Charlie said, "Mrs. Spivey, you shouldn't have done this. Neitheir of us is a gullible man, so it's all been for nothing."

Her face darkened. She curled her hands into fists again.

Charlie said, "If you used a nail that was at all rusty or dirty, I hope you'll go immediately to your doctor and get tetanus,5hots. This could be very serious."

"You're lost to me," she said in a voice as flat as the table to which she lowered her bleeding hands.

"I came here to try to reason with you," Charlie said." I see that's not possible. So just let me warn you-"

"You belong to Satan now. You've had your chance-"

"— if you don't back off-" I 6-and you've thrown your chance away-"

"— if you don't leave the Scavellos alone-"

',-and now you'll pay the terrible price!"

"— I'll dig into this and hang on. I'll keep at it come Hell or high water, until I've seen you put on trial, until I've seen your church lose its tax exemption, until everyone knows you for what you really are, until your followers lose their faith in you, and until your insane little cult is crushed. I mean it. I can be as relentless as you, as determined. I can finish you. Stop while you have a chance."

She glared at him.

Henry said, "Mrs. Spivey, will you put an end to this madness? " She said nothing. She lowered her eyes.

"Mrs. Spivey?"

No response.

Charlie said, "Come on, Henry. Let's get out of here."

As they approached the door, it opened, and an enormous man entered the room, ducking his head to avoid rapping it on the frame. He had to be almost seven feet tall. He had a face from a nightmare. He didn't seem real; only images from the movies were suitable to describe him, Charlie thought. He was like a Frankenstein monster with the hugely muscled body of Conan the Barbarian, a shambling hulk spawned by a bad script and a low budget. He saw Grace Spivey weeping, and his face knotted with a look of despair and rage that made Charlie's blood turn to icy slush. The giant reached out, grabbed Charlie by the coat, and nearly hauled him off the floor.

Henry drew his gun, and Charlie said, "Hold it, hold it," because although the situation was bad it wasn't necessarily lethal.

The big man said, "Whatd you do to her? Whatd you do?"

"Nothing," Charlie said." We were-"

"Let them go," Grace Spivey said." Let them pass, Kyle."

The giant hesitated. His eyes, like hard bright sea creatures hiding deep under a suboceanic shelf, regarded Charlie with a pure malignant fury that would have given nightmares to the devil himself. At last he let go of Charlie, lumbered toward the table at which the woman sat. He spotted blood on her hands and wheeled back toward Charlie.

"She did it to herself," Charlie said, edging toward the door.

He didn't like the wheedling note in his own voice, but at the moment there didn't seem to be room for pride. To give in to a macho urge would be ironclad proof of feeble-mindedness." We didn't touch her."