Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

"And how will that stop him?" she asked, moving to Joey's end of the altar to light the three votive candles in the ruby glasses, which he had carefully arranged in front of the statuette of the Virgin.

"It'll rattle him, I think. That's the first thing we have to do — rattle him, shake his confidence and get him to come in out of the darkness, where we have a chance at him."

"He's like a wolf out there," she agreed, "just circling beyond the campfire light."

"He's promised this offering — twelve sacrifices, twelve innocent people — and now he feels he's got to deliver. But he's committed to setting up his tableau of corpses in a church from which God's been driven out."

"You seem so sure… as if you're in tune with him."

"He's my brother."

"It's a little scary," she said.

"For me too. But I sense that he needs St. Thomas's. He has no chance of finding another place like it, not tonight. And now that he's started all this, he feels compelled to finish it. Tonight. If he's watching us right now, he'll see what we're doing, and it'll rattle him, and he'll come in here to make us un do it all."

"Why won't he just shoot us through the windows, then come in and undo it all himself?"

"He might have handled it that way — if he'd realized soon enough what we were up to. But the moment we hung the crucifix, it was too late. Even if I'm only half right about his delusions, even if he's only half as deeply lost in his fantasy as I think he is… I don't believe he'll be able to touch a crucifix on a sanctuary wall any more easily than a vampire could."

Celeste lit the last of the three votive candles.

The altar should have looked absurd — like a playhouse vignette arranged by children engaged in a game of church. Even with their makeshift stage furnishings, however, they had created a surprisingly convincing illusion of a sacred space. Whether it was a function of the lighting or arose by contrast with the starkness of the stripped, deconsecrated, dusty church, an unnatural glow seemed to emanate from the bed sheets on the altar platform, as though they had been treated with phosphorescent dye; they were whiter than the whitest linens that Joey had ever seen. The crucifix, lighted from below and at an extreme angle, cast an absurdly large shadow across the back wall of the sanctuary, so it almost appeared as though the massive, hand-carved icon that had been removed during deconsecration had now been brought back and lovingly re-hung. The flames on the fat Christmas candles all burned strong and steady in spite of myriad cross drafts in the church; not one guttered or threatened to go out; curiously, the bayberry-scented wax smelled not at all like bayberry but quite like incense. By some fluke of positioning and trick of reflection, one of the votive candles in the ruby-red glasses cast a shimmering spot of crimson light on the breast of the small bronze crucifix.

"We're ready," Joey said.0

He put the two shotguns on the floor of the narrow presbytery, out of sight but within easy reach.

"He saw us with the guns earlier," Celeste said. "He knows we have them. He won't come close enough to let us use them."

"Maybe not. It depends on how deeply he believes in his fantasy, how invincible he feels."

Turning his back to the altar steps, Joey dropped to one knee behind the presbytery balustrade that overlooked the choir enclosure. The heavy handrail and the chunky balusters offered some protection from gunfire, but he wasn't under the illusion that they provided ideal cover. The gaps between the balusters were two to three inches wide. Besides, the wood was old and dry; hollow-point rounds from a high-caliber rifle would chop it into kindling pretty quickly, and some of the splinters would make deadly shrapnel.

Kneeling beside him, as if reading his mind, Celeste said, "It won't be decided with guns, anyway."

"It won't?"

"It's not a question of force. It's a question of faith."

As on more than one previous occasion, Joey saw mysteries in her dark eyes. Her expression was unreadable — and strangely serene, considering their circumstances.

He said, "What do you know that I don't know?"

After meeting his gaze for a long beat, she looked out at the nave and said, "Many things."

"Sometimes you seem… "

"How do I seem?"

"Different."

"From what?"

"From everyone."

A shadow of a smile drew her lips into a suggestion of a curve. "I'm not just the principal's daughter."

"Oh? What else?"

"I'm a woman."

"More than that," he insisted.

"Is there more than that?"

"Sometimes you seem… much older than you are."

"There are things I know."

"Tell me."

"Certain things."

"I should know them too."

"They can't be told," she said enigmatically, and her pale smile faded.

"Aren't we in this together?" he asked sharply.

She looked at him again, eyes widening. "Oh, yes."

"Then if there's anything you know that can help—"

"Deeper than you think," she whispered.

"What?"

"We're in it together deeper than you think."

Either she was choosing to be inscrutable or there was less mystery in the moment than Joey imagined.

She returned her attention to the nave.

They were silent.

Like the frantic wings of trapped birds struggling to break free, rain and wind beat against the church.

After a while he said, "I feel warm."

"It's been heating up in here for some time," Celeste confirmed.

"How can that be? We didn't turn on any furnace."

"It's coming up through the floor. Don't you feel it? Through every chink, every crack in the boards."

He put his hand on the presbytery floor and discovered that the wood was actually warm to the touch.

Celeste said, "Rising from the ground under the church, from the fires far below."

"Maybe not so far any more." Remembering the ticking metal box in the corner of the study at her house, Joey said, "Should we be worried about toxic gases?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"There's worse tonight."

Within only a minute or two, a fine dew of perspiration formed on his brow.

Searching his jacket pockets for a handkerchief, Joey found a wad of money instead. Two ten-dollar bills. Two fives. Thirty bucks.

He kept forgetting that what had happened twenty years in the past had also, in another sense, happened only hours ago.

Staring in horror at the folded currency, Joey recalled the persistence with which P.J. had forced it upon him back there in the humid closeness of the parked car. The body hidden in the trunk. The smell of rain heavy in the night. The odor of blood heavier in his memory.

He shuddered violently and dropped the money.

As they fell out of his hand, the rumpled bills became coins and rang against the wooden floor, making a music like altar bells. Glittering, spinning, clinking, wobbling, rattling, they quickly settled into a silent heap beside him.

"What's that?" Celeste asked.

He glanced at her. She hadn't seen. He was between her and the coins.

"Silver," he said.

But when he looked again, the coins were gone. Only a wad of paper currency lay on the floor.

The church was hot. The window glass, streaming with rain, appeared to be melting.

His heart was suddenly racing. Pounding like a penitent fist upon the wrong side of his breast.

"He's coming," Joey said.

"Where?"

Rising slightly, Joey pointed across the balustrade and along the center aisle to the archway at the back of the nave, to the dimly lighted narthex beyond the arch, to the front doors of the church, which were barely visible in the shadows. "He's coming."

WITH A FORTHRIGHT SHRIEK OF UNCOILED HINGES, THE CHURCH DOORS opened out of darkness into shadow, out of the cold night into the strange heat, out of the blustering storm into a quiet one, and a man entered the narthex. He didn't proceed stealthily or even with any noticeable caution, but walked directly to the nave arch, and with him came the rotten-egg fumes from the vent pipe outside.