John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

The same look she'd seen in her brother's eyes this morning. And her father's.

Then Luke turned to look at her, and there it was in his eyes, too.

Kim's pulse raced as an image rose in her mind, from the nightmare she'd had, when she saw Sandy and Luke writhing in front of that strange candlelit altar with the inverted cross.

Then Sandy spoke, in an angry, hissing voice Kim had never heard from her before. "Leave us alone, you stupid bitch!"

Kim's eyes widened in shock, but even as the words battered her, another memory rose in her mind.

Sandy sounded like Jared! Just like Jared when Father MacNeill had come to the house yesterday afternoon!

She took a step toward her friend. Without warning, Sandy spat at her, sending a great wad of greenish phlegm oozing down the front of Kim's blouse. Kim stared at the mess in shock, then, as peals of ugly laughter erupted from Luke and Sandy, she turned and fled back into the school. Tears of pain and humiliation streamed down her cheeks, and the crowd, already thinning as the students drained into the classrooms, parted to make way for her as she lurched toward the girls' room. She dropped her book bag on the floor and stared at herself in the mirror. Her face looked almost as pale as Sandy's, and as more images and memories tumbled through her mind-some of them dreamed, some of them real, all of them terrifying-confusion and terror overwhelmed her.

She ran the water in the sink, splashed some on her face, then gingerly scraped the wad of phlegm from her blouse. Sandy had spit at her! Actually spit at her! How could she have-

Her thought died as her eye caught something in the mirror. She looked down, and where the phlegm had been, there was now a small hole in her blouse.

A hole with blackened edges, as if it had been burned.

A whimper escaped Kim's lips. She rubbed harder at her blouse, as if trying not only to erase the charring from the material, but the hole as well. She was still working at it when she heard her name.

"Kimmie? Kimmie!"

Jumping, she glanced in the mirror, and there he was.

Jared!

She whirled around.

The girls' room was empty; she was alone.

"Kimmie!"

She whirled around again, but this time the mirror was as empty as the room behind her.

"Kimmie, help me!"

Jared's voice had a plaintive note to it now, and she remembered the dream she'd had this morning, when Jared was drowning and she tried to reach him but couldn't.

"Jared?" she whispered, but even the barely spoken word echoed in the emptiness of the room. "Oh, God, Jared, what's happening to us?"

A moment later she heard him calling to her again, but now his voice seemed to be coming from beyond the room. Leaving her book bag where it lay, Kim stumbled out of the bathroom.

The hallway outside was empty.

Still she heard Jared's voice, calling out to her.

She followed the voice, moving down the corridor, then turning into another.

Then up some stairs.

Down another corridor.

More memories tumbled through her mind, images of the corridors through which the unseen menace of her nightmares had pursued her, but still she kept going, following Jared's ever fainter voice.

Then, at last, she came to a closed door. She stood paralyzed with a terrible certainty that she knew what lay beyond.

The obscene cathedral, where she'd witnessed all the worst horrors of her nightmares.

Where only this morning she'd seen little Molly, suspended upside down from the cross above the altar, the candles flickering in front of her tortured face.

Then, barely audible through the confusion in her mind, she heard Jared's voice once more. "Kiiimmmm…"

Steeling herself, Kim pulled the door open.

Not the cathedral.

The biology lab, with zinc-topped worktables laid out in neat rows, each of them equipped with a sink.

And on the walls, shelf after shelf of specimens, the dissected carcasses of frogs and mice, the organs of larger creatures, all of them floating in sealed jars of formaldehyde. As she stared at the jars, she saw that they were now filled with blood-overflowing with blood. And in every one of them was some fragment of Molly's body.

A little foot in one, a leg in another. Another jar held a hand. In the largest jar was her baby sister's head.

Molly's eyes were wide open, and her mouth was stretched into a grimace of agony. She seemed to be staring through the haze of blood right at Kim, and as she looked into Molly's twisted face, Kim felt every bit of pain Molly must have felt as-

Screaming, Kim cut off the thought, unable to bear it. But no matter where she turned, there were more jars and still more jars, and from every one of them, Molly stared at her.

Kim kept screaming, and finally, her mind no longer able to cope with the images that churned through it, she collapsed to the floor, sobbing and moaning.

"No," she whimpered. "Oh, no… please, no…"

Janet woke slowly, luxuriating in the sunlight streaming through the window and in the memory of the night before, when Ted had taken her in his arms.

It was like being on their honeymoon all over again, before Ted's drinking had taken over their lives. Strange how it had crept over every part of their existence so slowly that she hadn't truly realized quite how bad the problem was. But now that it was over-now that the Ted Conway she'd first fallen in love with was back-she could see exactly how it had happened, how she'd let Ted's alcohol nibble away at her marriage. The thing of it was-as she could now see-it had never taken a big enough bite all at once to force her into facing the true reality of it. Not, anyway, until that last night, when Ted stayed up drinking long after their fight, only to come at last to the realization that she would finally leave him.

She stretched languidly, once again feeling Ted's hands on her body, his mouth on hers, his strength as he made love to her. Her reverie was interrupted by the faint sound of the clock tolling the hour in the living room below her. When it reached seven, she threw back the sheet-if she didn't hurry, she wouldn't have time to fix breakfast for Jared and Kim.

The clock struck twice more.

Nine?

But it couldn't be-she never slept past seven, and most mornings was up by six. A glance at the clock by her bedside confirmed how much she'd overslept. Why hadn't anyone wakened her? Why hadn't-

And then she knew. Ted had known how tired she was, and how worried about Jared. Even after they made love, she'd lain awake until, finally, Ted made her talk it out. It had been hard-she'd become so used to dealing with her problems by herself that she'd almost forgotten how to talk to Ted, but he'd drawn it all out of her, even agreed with her that Jared wasn't just "stretching his wings," but that something more was going on. Only after he promised to help her deal with the problem had she fallen asleep.

In his arms, feeling safe, and comforted, and loved.

And this morning he'd obviously decided to let her sleep in and take care of the kids himself. She pulled on a thin robe and went to the nursery, half expecting to find her youngest daughter awake and playing in her crib. But Molly was gone, her bedding straightened up and tucked in, exactly the way she herself always did it. Sighing contentedly, she moved out onto the landing.

And instantly knew that something was wrong.

She peered down into the yawning entry hall as she moved toward the top of the stairs. Was it something about the light?

She looked up at the skylight, but it looked the same as it had the day Ted cleaned it. Yet when she looked down once again, she realized that there was, indeed, something odd, as if a slight haziness was hanging over everything. Janet blinked a couple of times and rubbed her eyes, but the haziness remained. Then, when she started down the stairs, she felt it.