In his mind it was as if a series of relays clicked into place and a current of pure cognitive energy flowed uninterrupted for the first time in weeks. Of course it was Michael Sweeney. Vic Wingate’s stepson. Eddie had even seen the boy at the garage once or twice. So why had it been so hard to identify him at Crow’s shop? A devil’s mind trick, that had to be. The Beast was, after all, the Father of Lies…it wasn’t so hard to assume those lies could have been more subtle than words. Hadn’t the air shimmered like heat vapors from hell? That was all part of a glamour put on him by the Beast. He hadn’t seen it then, hadn’t grasped it fully, but now everything made sense. Now everything was crystal clear.
Michael Sweeney was the Beast and he was out there now, soaked in blood, probably laughing as he fled into the farmlands. The soulless bastard!
No wonder God had sickened of him and turned His back. How could He not when His son was so weak that the Beast could thwart him with such a simple conjuring trick.
“Forgive me, Father, for I am most heartily sorry for my sins.” He recited a dozen different prayers of humility and confession, then threw his car into gear and headed out of town.
(4)
Vic Wingate chain-lit his eighth cigarette and between puffs probed experimentally at his nose and ear. A plastic bag of ice cubes lay on the floor by his feet. He saw Polk’s stare. “What?” he snarled.
They were alone in the living room. Lois was upstairs, and the neighbors had been shooed unceremoniously back to their houses. Polk had taken the call alone, making very sure that no other deputies set foot in Wingate’s house. That would lead to all sorts of complications. He perched on the edge of Vic’s overstuffed wing chair and jiggled his uniform cap in his hands.
Polk cleared his throat. “How bad is this going to be for us?”
Bitterly, Vic said, “Dumb bitch helped him get away. She showed herself to him.”
Polk’s eyes went wide. “She…showed her…? I don’t get it, if she’s one of them why’d she help him?”
“She ain’t gone over to Him, yet. Bitch has been living on neighborhood dogs and beef blood from the butcher’s. Still got her frigging soul, as if that matters to her. Shit, she never used it before.”
Polk swallowed the rock in his throat.
The door banged open and Polk leapt to his feet as Ruger walked in from the kitchen carrying the limp body of a teenage girl in his arms. The sight of him made Polk’s balls climb up into his body.
“Hey hey, welcome to the funhouse, Polkie.”
Polk couldn’t answer. He was staring at what Ruger held in his arms—a teenage girl, head lolling, eyes closed, her face and throat smeared with bright blood.
“Oh, Jesus,” Polk whispered and almost—almost—crossed himself.
Ruger ignored Polk and glanced up the stairs. “She still acting out?”
Vic took a drag, eyes narrow and hard, said nothing. Smoke leaked out of his nostrils. Ruger snorted. The girl he carried could not have been more than thirteen. Her T-shirt was torn, exposing one cup of a functional white bra. Her blond hair hung over Ruger’s arm and nearly to the floor. He hefted her like she weighed nothing. “Well, maybe we can whet her appetite.” He put one foot on the bottom step and glanced back at Vic. “Your face looks like shit.”
“Blow me.”
“Maybe the kid’s turning into something like his old man after all.”
Vic picked a fleck of dried blood from his nostril and wiped it on the arm of his chair. “Yeah,” he said, “maybe. Maybe that’s the only way a pussy like him’d ever get a sly one in on me.”
“Good thing you didn’t cut him,” Ruger said, nodding to the knife on the coffee table. “If Lois hadn’t stepped in…”
“I wasn’t going to kill him, asshole…I was just going to carve my initials on his balls. Maybe take an ear off, or a finger. I wasn’t going to kill the little shit.”
“The Man’s going to really be pissed.” He gave Vic a wink and carried the girl upstairs. Vic and Polk stared at the ceiling for a long time. They could hear Ruger’s muffled voice and Lois’s scream, high and shrill. Polk cut his eyes toward Vic and saw an expression he didn’t expect to see: hurt. When Vic caught him watching he put on a poker-face scowl.
“We have to find the kid,” Vic said, “before Halloween.”
“I put Tow-Truck Eddie on it. He’ll catch him.”
Upstairs Lois gave another long scream, and this time it rose like a banshee wail, filled with such horror that Polk lowered his head and pressed his palms to his ears until it stopped. The scream rose and rose and then suddenly cut off. For a long while there was no sound at all except the vague creaking of the timbers and the twilight wind outside whispering through the slits in the shutters.
Polk rubbed his eyes. “This is getting to be too much,” he said. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Taking a long drag, Vic squinted at him through the blue smoke that filled the living room. “Yeah, well…it’ll all be over soon,” he said.
Those words tightened around Polk’s heart like a vise.
(5)
Iron Mike Sweeney was the Enemy of Evil.
At least, that was how he had once thought of himself, back when his inner fantasy life was a safe and exciting escape hatch from the real world. That was before, when evil was an abstract concept from comic books and TV and movies—granted a concept enhanced by the hard hands of his stepfather, but still abstract. That was before evil had become an actual thing, a presence, a force, a reality that chased him through the gloom of the cold October afternoon and the darkness of his cold, shrieking thoughts.
Now evil was a thing that drew a knife and came at him with burning eyes and a whispering voice. Now evil was a thing that roared at him with his mother’s mouth and a monster’s voice. Now evil was more than just real, it was unreal. Titanic, overwhelming, impossible—and he fled before it.
He tore along the roads, not aiming for any particular place. Just away. Away from town. Away from Vic. Away from home and from what that word no longer meant, and what it now meant.
The farthest away he had ever been by himself was the dark stretch of A-32, and so he went that way. Not because he chose to, but because the path was programmed into him and his mind was a small cringing thing that hid from conscious thought. Inside him the chrysalis writhed. Cracks appeared in the cocoon that was wrapped around his transforming soul.
Behind him, Mike felt the vastness of nowhere to go; back there was everything he had ever known and nowhere that he wanted to be. A sudden realization blindsided him with the force of a runaway train and he skidded and slewed his bike to a stop on the verge, kicking up gravel and a plume of dust.
He could never go home again.
Never.
Not just because of Vic, but because of Mom. Tears fell like hot rain and he bent forward over the pain, buried his face in his arms as he hunched down over the handlebars. His lips tried to speak, but they were twisted with weeping, streaked with phlegm. He managed only one word, but he said it over and over again, trying to rediscover its lost meaning.
“Mom!”
The gathering twilight painted him and the surrounding fields in shades of bloody red. He was still crying, oblivious to the rest of the world, when the police cruiser crested the hill behind him.
Chapter 24
(1)