John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

Father MacNeill? But could that brief conversation have been enough to make the priest try to drive them out of town?

"Might just be," Phil Engstrom mused when she repeated the incident. "Father Mack don't take lightly to people not holdin' with his religion. Don't take lightly to it at all." His eyes shifted from Janet to Ted, then back to Janet. "Anything else happen that day? If we're gonna beat this opposition tomorrow night, I better know exactly what we're up agin'."

Janet, about to shake her head, was stopped by another memory rising up like a cobra uncoiling. "Jake Cumberland," she said. "He was there, too. He just stood outside the fence, glowering at us." There had been something strange, even eerie, about the man, and Janet shuddered, recalling his mute, angry stare. Then she herself grew angry that their hope for a new life was threatened by something so trivial as rumors spread by an angry priest and the antipathy of a slightly deranged trapper who apparently held Ted responsible for something that might have happened to his mother forty years earlier.

"There has to be something we can do," she said, still searching for a solution as the evening came to an end. "Maybe we should sue Father MacNeill, or-"

"We're not going to sue anyone," Ted interrupted.

Janet sighed. "But it just seems so unfair-"

"It is unfair," Ted agreed. "But we'll get through it. We'll just have to go to the meeting tomorrow, and convince everyone that even if everything they've heard is true, it doesn't have anything to do with us. I'll just have to bring them around, that's all."

As they were driving home later, Janet found herself looking at the houses they passed. On most of the porches, the jack-o'-lanterns were still flickering, as if winking mockingly at her. Hadn't she read somewhere about a movement to ban Halloween on the grounds that the celebration might have some connection to Satanism? A month or two ago, the notion would have struck her as ludicrous. Now, as she looked at the leering faces of the carved pumpkins, she found herself wondering how many of the people behind those jack-o'-lanterns had been listening to the rumors about Ted's family, believing them, and passing them on.

Hypocrites! she thought bitterly. They're all a bunch of hypocrites.

"Looks so peaceful, you'd never know what's going on, doesn't it?" Ted asked, seeming to read her mind.

She reached over and slipped her hand into his. "Do you really think it will all blow over?"

"Sure it will." Ted braked the car to a stop. "Maybe when people find out tomorrow that nothing terrible happened to Sandy when she spent the night at our place, things will start dying down." He grinned. "I mean, wouldn't you think if we were such monsters-or even if the house really is haunted-that something awful would happen to her?"

"Don't say that," Janet protested, shuddering. "Don't even think it!"

Yet the words were already spoken, hanging in the air. As she put her key in the lock of the front door, Janet had a terrible premonition about what she might find inside the house.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside, Ted right behind her.

The lights in the entry hall were off.

The house was silent.

Then she heard something.

A door, creaking open.

Her pulse quickened, and a chill passed through her.

Then, as the unseen door creaked once more, the quiet of the house was shattered by a scream.

"Kim?" Janet shouted, switching on the chandelier and flooding the entry hall with light. "KIM!"

There was a silence-a terrifying silence that froze Janet's blood-until she heard her daughter's voice.

"In the library!" Kim called out. "We're watching a movie."

From behind her, Janet heard Ted snicker, and turned to glare at him. "Don't you tell her," she warned. "Not a single word."

"Please?" Ted begged. "You looked so scared."

"And you weren't?" Janet countered.

Ted hesitated, then nodded. "Well, maybe just a little bit," he agreed. "Come on, let's go take a head count and make sure the right number of bodies are here."

Together, they went into the library, where the two girls were stretched out on the floor watching a movie. On the screen, a masked figure held one of the nastiestlooking knives Janet had ever seen, about to plunge it into a terrified victim. "How can you watch that?" she asked. "I'd be scared out of my wits."

"It's fun," Kim told her.

"It's creepy," Sandy declared.

Kim rolled her eyes at her friend's nervousness. "It's only a movie. We can shut it off anytime we want."

Janet glanced pointedly at the clock. "Well, just make sure it's off by midnight, okay?"

Ten minutes later Janet and Ted were in their room. Molly was still sound asleep in her crib, and there'd been no sign of Jared all evening. "See? I told you there was nothing to worry about," Ted said as he slid into bed. "Now, why don't you come join me?"

"Ted! Kim and Sandy are right downstairs!"

"They won't hear a thing," Ted assured her. "Come here."

As Ted wrapped his arms around her and began covering her with kisses, Janet felt the tension of the evening finally slipping away.

"It'll be all right," Ted whispered in her ear. "Don't worry, sweetheart, I'll make it all right."

Then his mouth covered hers, and she gratefully gave in to the pleasures of their bodies.

The touch was as gentle on her skin as the caress of a summer breeze, so light that at first Sandy was hardly even aware of it. All she knew was that a slight thrill had run through her, disappearing so quickly that she wasn't quite sure she'd felt it.

Yet something had happened.

Something she wanted more of.

She stretched her body languidly, but didn't open her eyes for fear of losing the last faint vestiges of the elusive pleasure.

The touch came again, as soft and soothing as the fur of a kitten, but now she could hear something, too.

A strange sound, not quite a voice, but not quite music. The sound reached deep within her, resonating inside her.

The touch was stronger now, like gentle fingers against her skin, and once more she stretched her body, as if reaching out to the source of the caress.

The sound-the odd not-quite-music-was forming into a whispered voice, drawing each syllable of her name into a sigh of longing: "Saann… deee…"

Then again: "Saann… deee…"

"Yes," Sandy whispered. "Oh, yes…"

Now, lying in the darkness, the soothing sounds washing over her, she felt soft lips touch her own, and the gentle touch grew more bold.

Hands slipped beneath her blouse, and the nipples on her breasts hardened while at the same time a great lassitude spread over her.

She wanted nothing more than to lie where she was, surrounded by the protective darkness, thrilling to the touch, yet calmed by the soothing sounds.

She shivered with pleasure, straining closer to the touch.

And in the instant she responded to it, it vanished.

Sandy's breath caught, and she felt a terrible sense of disappointment.

Of loss.

"Nooo," she whimpered so softly the word was barely spoken. "Noooo…"

She reached out, searching in the darkness for the source of the touch, silently pleading for its return.

And in the darkness she felt something. Her fingers closed on a strong hand, and a moment later she felt herself being drawn to her feet.

"Come," a whispered voice instructed. "Come with me…"

Sandy let herself be led through the darkness, afraid to open her eyes lest the magical touch and voice prove to be as ephemeral as a dream, vanishing as she came wide-awake.

She had no sense of where she might be going, where the pleasure might lead her, but it didn't matter. All she wanted was to follow.