John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

A Christian cross, inverted?

"What about Satanists?" she asked.

Ray Beckwith groaned out loud. "Now you're starting to sound like Father MacNeill. Next thing, you'll be trying to blame this on the Conways, just like he did with the cemetery yesterday morning." He started toward the door.

"Where are you going? You haven't even searched the cabin."

"Gonna get the dog," Beckwith replied. "Maybe he can lead us right to whoever was here."

The hound made no objection as Beckwith replaced its chain a few minutes later with a strong leather lead he kept in the trunk of the squad car. But when he tried to coax it into the cabin, the animal turned recalcitrant, pulling and tugging at the leash as Beckwith tried to pull him through the front door. When the officer kept tugging, the hound snarled and snapped at him.

"Jesus!" Beckwith snatched his hand back just in time and glared at the dog. "What's going on with him?" he asked. "He musta been in here a million times before."

"Well, he's not going in now, and he didn't want me going in earlier," Corinne told him. "The question is, what does that mean?"

Beckwith scowled. "It means Jake had a stupid, stubborn good-for-nothin' animal here, that's what it means!"

"Or it means whatever happened in here last night scared him so much he doesn't want to go near the cabin," Corinne said.

Rechaining the dog, they went back into the cabin. As Corinne watched, her husband repeated the search he'd carried out the afternoon before.

Two minutes after he began, he lifted Scout's severed head from the trunk. "Oh, Jesus," he whispered. "Look at this."

As Corinne Beckwith's stomach threatened to betray her, she forced herself to look at the grisly object in her husband's hands. "I know that dog," she whispered. "It belonged to Jared Conway."

Morning did nothing to dispel the terrors Kim had felt the night before. As she came downstairs, fingers of panic still reached out to her. Although everything in the cavernous entry hall looked exactly as it had yesterday, it felt strangely ominous even in the morning light. Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, Kim found herself shivering, as if the terrible chill she'd felt at the door to Molly's room as dawn was beginning to break had now spread down the stairs. As she passed through the dining room on her way to the kitchen, she stopped to gaze at the trompe l'oeil mural her mother was painting on the wall opposite the windows. The perfectly executed French doors, the faux terrace, even the balustrade outside, looked exactly as they had yesterday afternoon, but now, with the sun flooding in the windows opposite, it looked as if her mother had done something to the garden beyond the terrace. Kim studied the mural for several minutes before she realized what had changed.

The garden seemed to be dying. The flowers that appeared so perfectly fresh and lifelike only yesterday looked this morning as if they were starting to wilt, and the green of the trees seemed to have faded, as if the painted foliage were somehow starting to turn brown. But why would her mother have done it?

Kim moved closer to the wall, to see if some kind of wash had been applied to the whole garden, but it was almost as if each flower, each leaf, had taken on a faintly unhealthy cast. The mural, which a day earlier had given the whole dining room a bright and cheerful feel, now sent a somber mood over the room.

Kim turned away.

As she pushed open the kitchen door, she unconsciously braced herself against Scout's enthusiastic morning greeting. In the fraction of a second it took for her to remember that Scout was no longer in the house, the strange feeling of unease she'd had as she came downstairs notched up. Turning on the stove and setting a pot of water to boil, she went to the back door, stepped out onto the porch, and called out to Scout. As she waited for the dog to respond, she sucked the morning air deep into her lungs, and felt some of the tension that had been building inside her start to abate. She called out to Scout three more times, and when the big retriever didn't appear, she went back into the house.

Her father and brother were in the kitchen now, standing at the counter, their backs to her. The memory of the two robed and hooded figures she'd seen in her dream came to mind, and when first Jared, then her father, turned to look at her, another memory snapped into focus. The expression she'd seen in their eyes-the terrible look of hatred-recurred to her.

The terrible vision dissolved as quickly as it had come as she realized that the "hooded robes" of her dream were this morning nothing more than the same bathrobes they wore practically every day.

"Where's Mom?" she asked.

"I told her to sleep in this morning," her father said.

Had a look passed between her father and Jared? She wasn't sure. She cocked her head, frowning uncertainly. "Is something going on? Something I don't know about?"

This time she was certain that Jared glanced at his father. Then he grinned at her. Not the friendly grin he used to give her, when they'd still been so close. This morning the grin had an edge to it.

"Going paranoid on us?" he asked.

Kim felt herself blushing. "I'm not paranoid," she said, too quickly. "I just-I don't know. Something just doesn't feel right."

"That sure sounds like paranoia to me, doesn't it, Dad?"

Kim's unease hardened into anger. Since when had Jared and their father gotten so buddy-buddy? Especially since Jared was supposed to have gotten a chewing out last night!

"I better go up and get Molly," she said, suddenly wanting to get out of the kitchen.

"She's still asleep, too," Ted said softly, in a tone of voice that stopped Kim short. She turned to look at him. Her father's eyes locked on hers. "You'd better just get ready for school, Kim," he said quietly. "If you don't hurry, you're going to be late." His eyes held hers a few seconds longer, then he smiled. "All right?"

Kim nodded silently and left the kitchen. As she went upstairs to get dressed, she had a vague feeling that there was something else she'd intended to do before she realized how late it was and that if she didn't hurry she wouldn't make it to school by the first bell. She dressed, still trying to remember what it might have been, but as she combed her hair, then gathered up her books, she decided that whatever it was, it couldn't have been important.

It wasn't until she was a block away from the house that she remembered Molly and the dream she'd had last night. She wondered if maybe she shouldn't go back to the house.

Just to be sure.

But if she did, she would surely be late to her first class.

And besides, the dream she'd had last night was only that-just a dream.

Wasn't it?

The two cars pulled to a stop in front of the Conway house, and both drivers got out. But as Corinne Beckwith started to follow Ray across the lawn toward the columned porch fronting the house, her husband held up a hand as if he were controlling traffic. "This isn't exactly a committee we've got here," he reminded his wife. "I think I can deal with this one alone, okay?"

Corinne glared at Ray. "If I hadn't gone out to Jake's to take care of that dog this morn-" she began. But her words died on her lips because something seemed off kilter. It was as if something were emanating from the house, something that left her feeling she didn't want to be here, after all. It's just the light, she told herself, peering into the shadows that darkened the porch. But it wasn't just a trick of the light; it was as if the entire house had taken on a dark cast; as if it held something unknown that even the structure's massive walls couldn't quite contain.

Why would anyone want to live in this place? Corinne wondered as she let her husband continue-alone, and with no further argument-up to the porch. For some reason, just looking at the Conway house this morning made her shudder.