None of them will be able to find any certainty. It simply occurred. All three of them felt it. Their bodies filled with the terrible, overpowering certainty of it happening.
Anything. Whatever you desire.
One wish. A terrible one. They were granted their heart’s desire. Unconsciously and involuntarily. And from that moment forward, they would be forever burdened with it.
WHEN THEIR MENTAL HAZE BEGAN to lift, they found that they were still in the chamber. The baby was crawling toward Eli.
“No,” Micah said.
He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. What had just gone on? He felt like a dinner party guest who had entered a room where everyone had been talking about him and now they had all lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
The baby continued humping toward Eli. Its fingers were elongating, becoming less plump and coming to resemble twitching pink wires.
“No,” Micah said, more forcefully this time.
I neeeed them, the thing’s voice wheedled in his mind. I gave you what you wanted… gave you everything…
Gave him what? Micah shook his head again. He couldn’t clear the fog; his skull felt as if it was stuffed full of cotton balls.
“Not the children,” he said.
You must give me someone, it groveled. You must must must—
Micah took two big steps, pistonned his leg back and punted the hateful infant as hard as he could. His boot sank into the marbled tissue of its chest. The baby tumbled pell-mell into the darkness, arms and legs flapping. Silence… then a squalling cry that rose to a petulant shriek.
The children at the back of the chain were beginning to stir. Their hands came unstuck as they entered wakefulness. Their movements were clumsy, as if they’d been drugged. Minerva and Ebenezer helped them up. They were scared and shaky, like children who had just come out of a coma—and perhaps they had, of a sort. None of them cried. They were too shocked for tears, though those would surely come before long.
“Where are we?” asked a little girl.
“We’re in the dark,” Minerva told her gently. “But we’re going to find our way back out, okay? You stick tight with me.”
The girl rubbed her eyes. “Why is a baby crying? I can’t see it.”
“It misses its mom, I guess.”
“Oh.”
Eli, Elsa, and the Redhill boys did not stir. Their hands were welded together, the flesh melded and seamed. The other children had not suffered this same fate. Those ones—who Micah had to assume had only recently arrived here—seemed to be recovering already. He hoped so. He shook Eli’s shoulder; flies buzzed from the rotten hole under his armpit. Wordlessly, Micah held his hand out for Ebenezer’s pistol.
“Take the rest,” he said. “I will follow directly.”
Ebenezer and Minerva led the children to the tunnel. Ebenezer said: “Hop lightly, boys and girls.”
They trailed him into the tunnel. Minerva waited until they were all through before bringing up the rear. She hesitated.
“You sure, Shug?”
“Go on, Minny.”
Once she was gone, Micah sat with Eli. The baby’s keening screams shot acid through his veins. Biting back his disgust, he gripped the umbilical cord fixed over Eli’s mouth. It clung to his face as if attached with fishhooks. He pulled, terrified he’d rip the boy’s skin off or discover some giant leech projecting from his mouth—
The baby’s cries abruptly cut out.
Take them, then, it said spitefully.
Eli shuddered upright. His eyes shone black and he was screaming; his gleeful, lunatic cackles traveled through the funnel of opaque skin. The other children staggered up, too. Their stick-figure bodies began to prance in the flashlight’s beam as their ghastly laughter filled the darkness. Their hands were fused together in those ulcerated florets; they swung one another around as if playing a hellish version of “Skip-to-My-Lou.”
There was no longer anything recognizably human about them. Some essential quality had been cleansed away. The thing living inside Preston hadn’t simply eaten their flesh—it had eaten their spirits, their sanity… their almighty souls, if those existed.
Micah stifled a scream, his own sanity threatening to go right along with them. There was no saving them. There was only one final mercy he could offer.
He raised Ebenezer’s gun. It should have taken four bullets. But it took a few more. It was so dark.
And Micah’s hands were shaking so damn bad.
17
WHEN MICAH MET THEM outside the black rock, his hands were still trembling.
The night was cool. The children who had been saved were standing around a strange vehicle. Micah figured it must be the track machine the shopkeeper in Grinder’s Switch had spoken about. Ebenezer was helping them into its bed. Micah caught snatches of the children’s anguished speech—“Where’s Mommy and Daddy?” and “What did the Reverend do to my momma?”
Down the slopes, the forest was burning against the night. A fire was spreading quickly, urged on by the wind blowing over the mesa.
“We have to get out of here,” Minerva said.
“We can still make it,” Eb said, “but the fire is curling down the hillside to Little Heaven. Our only shot is to outrun it.”
Nate rounded the edge of the machine. His face was peppered with ash.
“Where’s Ellen?” he said.
“Wasn’t she with you?” Micah asked the boy.
“No. She followed them down.” Nate pointed at Minerva and Ebenezer.
Jesus. Ellen was still in there.
“Go,” Micah told Minerva.
“We can wait, Shug. We’ll go back together.”
Micah shook his head. “If you do not get the children out now, it will be days before help comes.”
Minerva cast a glance at the fire gathering along the hillside.
“Five minutes,” she said. “Then we go.”
Micah nodded. He walked back into the cleft.
WORMWOOD WORMWOOD WORMWOOD the star’s name is called—
Amos Flesher lay in his rocky burrow with the burn-faced woman. Their bodies were pressed together. He could smell the blood from her wound, warm on his nose. He giggled. He had hit her quite hard. Had he fractured her skull? He hardly knew his own strength anymore! Something about the darkness, the smells, and the dripping rock gave him an immense sense of power. Wonderful voltages coursed through his bloodstream.
He had been tucked safe in his hidey-hole when the gunshots rang out. Four or five, he couldn’t count, as they had come so fast. Then three more, spaced out with some deliberation. The woman jerked with each shot, but she did not regain consciousness—just nerves, he figured, the way a fish will flop when you drive a knife into its brain.
Next came the sounds of passage through the tunnel. Someone was exiting, following the children he’d heard leaving already. Things went silent again. Had everyone gone? Were they all alone, finally?
Aaaaaamos.
The Voice filled his skull. Oh! Painful. Like putting his ear next to a huge stereo speaker. Warm wetness coated his lips. Was his nose bleeding? He could feel it trickling from his ears, too.
Come to me. Worship.
Yes, Father, Amos thought. Anything for you.
He squirmed out of the burrow. Gripping the woman’s ankles, he dragged her into the tunnel with him. He flicked her flashlight on. Oh my! That was a lot of blood. Doc Lewis could have stitched up that gash on her head, but Lewis was now dead in a pool of his own blood. Ah, well. Fiddle-dee-dee.