John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

"Cool, man," he murmured. "How'd you do that?"

"Do what?" Jared countered.

"That stuff on the walls."

Jared looked at him. "What are you talking about? What stuff?"

Luke frowned, confused. Was Jared putting him on, or was he actually starting to see things?

"Tell me what you see," Jared said. Though his voice was barely audible above the pounding music, the words resonated in Luke's head with the authority of a command. "Tell me what you see," Jared repeated. "And tell me what you want."

Luke concentrated on the strange patterns that seemed to be floating in nothingness in front of the black wall. Fluorescent paint, he thought. He glanced around for the source of the black light that made the designs seem to glow with a luminescence of their own, but Jared had hidden it so well he couldn't see it at all.

Cool.

The patterns began moving, their colors-hot pinks and brilliant greens-transmuting before his eyes into a rainbow of hues in evershifting shapes. The fumes of the incense filled his nostrils, and he sucked them in, imagining that it was another joint.

The candles flared brighter, and the floating patterns took on a blinding brilliance.

"What's going on, man?" he asked. "Jeez, I can hardly see!"

"Watch," Jared commanded. "Keep watching, and think about what you want. Anything you want. Anything at all."

The patterns of color began to pulsate, swelling to fill the entire room with swirling light that now seemed to come from everywhere. A golden cross appeared above the workbench. It was blurry at first, as if out of focus, and as Luke concentrated on it, he realized it was spinning.

Spinning, and upside down.

And there was something on it-some figure he couldn't quite make out. He wished the cross were spinning slower so he could see more clearly.

Even as the thought formed in his mind, the spinning began to slow…

As he had almost every night since Ted Conway moved his family into the house where his mother had died, Jake Cumberland lurked in the protective shadows of the carriage house, blending so perfectly into the night that even someone passing within a few feet of him would not have sensed his presence.

The magic he had attempted with the cat-the magic he'd learned by watching his mama-had failed. The Conways were still here, and every night he could feel their evil growing and spreading-spreading like the kudzu that crept across the countryside so quickly you hardly knew it was there until one morning you woke up and the shrubs were covered with it, and the trees were choked with it, and it was too late to do anything about it.

And if the Conways stayed-

But they wouldn't stay, for he was there every night, working his mama's magic.

Now, as he sensed midnight coming on, he spread out his amulets and herbs and began muttering the incantations he'd heard from his mama's lips before she'd died…

Weird, Jared thought. "Where's it all coming from?

It wasn't the grass-there'd only been enough left of the joint for a couple of quick hits, and he hadn't sucked it in the way you were supposed to. In fact, he didn't really like the drug much, since all it had done the couple of times he actually tried it was make him feel like he was going to throw up. He hadn't actually done it, but had to spend a couple of hours concentrating on keeping peristalsis working in the right direction. Then he'd wondered if the rest of his autonomic systems-his breathing, heartbeat, and everything else-was going to have to be consciously controlled, too. That put him into a panic for a minute, and he actually felt himself stop breathing. Once he'd gotten the panic under control, though, everything was okay. But he hadn't been tempted to try it a third time.

So if it wasn't the grass, where was it all coming from?

The light.

The sounds.

The voices.

None of it was real-it couldn't be. There wasn't anyplace in the room the light could be coming from, since the one bulb hanging from the ceiling wasn't even on. And there was no way the candles could be making the room look the way it did. Still, when he set up the candles, taking them out of the armoire and arranging them on the workbench, he'd kept changing them around. It was almost like there'd been something inside his head, some pattern, telling him exactly how to set them up, and he kept adjusting them, moving one and then another, until he knew-just somehow knew -that they were right. Then he lit them and dropped down onto the mattress. And it had all begun.

The music from his boom box had taken on a different sound, and he heard things he'd never even imagined before-wailing notes that sounded almost like human voices, but that he knew were not. And although the candle flames hadn't actually seemed to change at all, weird patterns started to emerge from the black walls, and a strange glow that didn't look like any light he'd ever seen before began to suffuse the room. It started as nothing more than a speck of light hovering in the center of the room-right over the sump, in fact-which had slowly grown, swelling until it filled the space, then somehow kept on expanding. The walls faded away, and it seemed he was in some kind of cathedral.

That was when he started hearing the voices.

It was just a babble at first, but after a while a couple of them were clear enough to recognize.

Kim's voice.

She was calling out to him, but sounded so far away that he could barely hear her.

Luke's voice was much closer, and when he concentrated on it, Jared realized he could hear it as clearly as if Luke were talking right into his ear. But then, as he listened, he realized it wasn't actually Luke's voice he was hearing at all.

It was his mind.

Somehow, in some way he didn't understand, he was listening to Luke Roberts's thoughts.

Then, as he focused his mind on Luke, he began to see the things Luke was seeing.

And feel Luke's emotions.

Luke was angry.

Jared could feel his friend's fury-even see it. It looked like a bubbling pool of molten lava, glowing red, churning within the confines of Luke's subconscious.

But what was he angry about?

An image flashed into Jared's mind.

A woman.

Luke's mother!

But he'd never met Luke's mother. How did he know it was she he was seeing?

He knew. Somehow, he knew.

And as he saw what Luke was seeing, and felt what Luke was feeling, Luke's anger became his own…

Jared?" Kim called out, but even to herself, her voice sounded almost inaudible, as if coming from a great distance away. She called out again, louder this time, "Jared!"

Where was he?

Kim took a tentative step forward, searching for some sign of him, but she could barely see in the misty darkness that had closed around her.

Fog!

Of course! That was it. Fog had settled in, muffling her voice, and making it hard to see. "Jared," she cried out yet again. "Where are you?"

She listened, but heard nothing. Yet how was that possible? She was certain he'd been with her-right next to her-just a moment ago. But where could he have gone?

She shivered, although she didn't feel the least bit cold. What should she do?

Should she just wait for him to come back?

Should she try to find him?

The dark mist grew thicker, and as it swirled closer, wrapping Kim in a gauzy miasma, the uneasiness that had come over her when she first realized Jared was no longer by her side began to congeal into fear.

"No," she whispered. "I don't want to be alone, Jared. Don't leave me. Please?"

Where could he have gone?

He'd been there just a minute or so ago-she was sure of it. They'd been looking around the old house-exploring some of the rooms they'd never been in, and then suddenly he'd vanished.