John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

"It was done last night," the priest said softly. "I'm sure of it."

"Okay," Beckwith said. "Let's just close it up for now. I'll get a crew out here later on to examine the area more closely. Let's just have us a look around the rest of the cemetery and see if they did anything else."

Sliding the coffin back into the crypt, they closed the door as carefully as they'd handled the coffin itself, then walked through the cemetery, looking for any other signs of vandalism.

The graveyard appeared undisturbed, until they came to the grave of Cora Conway.

On a tree next to her grave, held in place by the sharpened end of a crucifix, was the skin of a dead cat, complete except for its head.

But it wasn't the grizzly hide of the cat upon which Father MacNeill's eyes instantly fixed, but the profaned crucifix.

He recognized it immediately.

It had come from inside his own church.

He turned to face the policeman.

"We're going to find out who did this," he said, his voice unsteady. "We're going to find out, or I fear all our souls will burn in Hell. Every single one of us."

But what will Father MacNeill say?" Marge Engstrom waited for her words to have their expected effect on her daughter. But when Sandy announced that she didn't care what Father MacNeill said, she was too tired to go to church that morning, Marge's brow creased in frustration. "I don't know what's gotten into you, Sandra Anne," she declared, using her daughter's full name, which she only did when seriously annoyed. "You know perfectly well that after last night-"

"After last night, why would it matter if any of us go?" Sandy protested. "Father MacNeill's already mad at us, isn't he? I don't see how me going to church is going to make any difference!"

"He's not angry at us," Marge explained with a note of exaggerated patience that only made Sandy want to dig her heels in and stick to her position. "It wasn't your father who swayed the meeting last night-it was Ted Conway. But if we don't go to church this morning, Father MacNeill might very well assume that we've taken a position against him."

"Well, haven't we?" Sandy demanded.

Marge pursed her lips. "As mayor, your father didn't vote last night, and though you may not have noticed, neither did I. Your father wants to maintain a position of neutrality, for the good of the entire community."

"You mean he wants to be reelected," Sandy said, and saw by her mother's wince that she was right.

Marge Engstrom recovered quickly. "Your father is a very good mayor, and part of the reason he's a good mayor is that he maintains bridges to every part of our community. If you look at the votes two years ago-"

Sandy rolled her eyes. "I read Dad's campaign brochure, Mom. I even wrote part of it, remember? And I'm still not going to church!"

Marge eyed Sandy carefully, wondering yet again if perhaps it had been a mistake to let her spend the night at the Conways'. It was a thought that had occurred to her when Sandy came home looking like death warmed over. Her face had been sallow, and her eyes so dark that Marge didn't think she could have slept at all. What on earth had she and Kim Conway been up to?

"Nothing," Sandy had insisted. "All we did was watch a couple of horror movies and go to bed."

"Well, no wonder you look so terrible," Marge had replied. "I swear, I don't know why they let them make those terrible movies. All that blood and violence! Why can't you and your friends watch nice movies? I'll bet you didn't sleep a wink. Not a single wink."

By yesterday afternoon, after Sandy had a long nap, she'd seemed fine. But this morning she looked pale again.

The argument over church had been going on for half an hour. Now, with only fifteen minutes left before mass, Marge gave up. "Well, I guess I can't force you," she told Sandy, making one last effort, "but you're the one who'll have to answer to your father. He'll be very disappointed in you. It's very important to him that the family be together on Sunday morning."

It's important for us to be seen together, Sandy silently corrected, certain her mother knew as well as she did that if her father really wanted them all to be together, he wouldn't go off to play golf every Sunday morning, and meet them at church just in time for them to walk down the aisle together. Did he really think he was fooling anybody? "Maybe I'll go later," she offered, but knew she wouldn't.

The moment she woke up that morning, she knew she couldn't sit through one of Father MacNeill's masses today. Just the thought of it made her feel almost as sick as she'd been yesterday morning at Kim's. But now that she'd gotten out of church, she was starting to feel better. Maybe, after her mother left, she'd just go back to bed for another hour.

When Marge Engstrom stepped out into the bright fall morning a few minutes later, she decided that if Sandy didn't want to go to church, it was her daughter's loss, not her own. Besides, Sandy didn't look well, and perhaps just this once it really would be better for her to lie down for a while. Surely Phil-and God-would forgive her this once!

Marge set out toward St. Ignatius briskly, nodding to everyone she met. Birds were chirping, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and by the time she was across the street from St. Ignatius, even her concern about Sandy had all but vanished. Then she saw the activity in the graveyard, and stopped short.

Had someone died?

But no-surely she would have heard about it!

Marge hurried her step. "What's happened?" she asked Corinne Beckwith, who was standing just inside the cemetery gate, whispering to Sister Clarence.

"It's terrible." Corinne glanced around to be certain no one else was listening, though Marge suspected that whatever Corinne was about to reveal had already been repeated-in strictest confidence-to everyone Corinne had talked to already. "Ray told me this in the strictest confidence, so you have to promise not to breathe a word to anyone. Not anyone!" Then, without waiting for the demanded promise to be tendered, she plunged on. "Someone opened up George Conway's coffin last night, and cut off his right hand. Can you imagine such a thing? Just cut it off! What kind of person would do such a thing! Well, of course it's the fault of those Conways. Everything was fine until they came to town. Now the church has been vandalized, and people's pets are being slaughtered, and…"

But Marge had stopped listening, her attention drawn to the cat that was pinned to the tree with the broken crucifix. For some reason, what kept running through her mind over and over like a stuck record were the words Jake Cumberland had spoken at the meeting last night: "The work of the Devil! I'm tellin' you, this is the work of the Devil!"

For the first time in years, Marge Engstrom didn't wait for Phil to arrive before going into the church. With all the tales she'd heard since she was a little girl, all the whisperings about the things that had supposedly gone on in the Conway house spinning anew through her head, she dipped her fingers in the font, made her genuflection, and slipped into her regular pew. When her husband sat down at her side a few minutes later, she slid her hand into his. "There's going to be trouble," she whispered. "I can feel it."

Then she began to pray. But this morning, her prayers went far beyond her regular pleadings for her husband and daughter.

This morning she prayed for the souls of every single person in St. Albans.

Father MacNeill dressed for mass with deliberation. Slipping first into the finely woven linen alb-pressed perfectly wrinkle-free by his housekeeper, Sister Margaret Michael-he fastened the cincture around his waist, then added a stole. Finally he put on the chasuble, then gazed at himself in the mirror. Beyond the closed door of the vestry he could hear the murmuring of the crowd gathering in the sanctuary, but instead of the usual soft, almost chanting rhythms of prayer, this morning he heard the excited buzz of gossip winging through the church.