Billy sat frozen for a moment, shocked numb. "No," he whispered. "No, not him. . . ."
"You know it's true. I've seen the way you look at each other. You've felt the same thing, probably, as him—maybe a kind of curiosity or attraction. I think . . . both of you need the other, without knowing it. You understand the meaning of your Mystery Walk, but Wayne is afraid and floundering in the dark."
"Why?" he asked, rising to his feet. He was angry and confused and dazed, and he realized he had always felt a pull toward the young evangelist, but he'd fought against it. "If it was a secret for so long, why tell me now?"
"Because J. J. Falconer passed on this summer. He was all that stood between Wayne and the grinding gears of that Crusade machine he built. Wayne is a young businessman now, and his mind is sealed with Jimmy Jed Falconer's thumbprint. He'll follow his father's path, but he doesn't know what's waiting for him at the end of it. He was taught at an early age how to use the power of fear and hatred and call it religion. His spirit is weak, Billy. The shape changer looks for weakness, and if it can use Wayne Falconer against you, it will—in a minute."
Billy bent and picked up a rock, flinging it into the stream. A bird wheeled for the sky from its cover of brush. "Why does he hate us?"
"He may feel the same pull we do. He may mistake it for our trying to lure him away from what he thinks is the righteous path. He doesn't understand us, and neither did his father."
"Do you think he could . . . ever really heal?" Billy asked her.
"I don't know. He's charismatic, there's no doubt. He can make a person believe they've been healed, even if maybe nothing's wrong with them. Falconer had a hand in teaching him that. But if Wayne can heal, he has to find that power deep inside himself, just like you do when you take on the revenants. He has to hurt, just like you do. The Crusade demands that he heal time after time, with no stopping. I think he pretends to heal so he won't have to feel that pain, if indeed he ever really felt it. Oh, he may be able to throw those people a spark or two—but if you throw off enough sparks, you don't have enough left to start a fire when you really need it."
"What's going to happen to him?"
"He may crack under the weight of the Crusade, or he might find the strength to stand on his own two feet. For him, that might be turning away from the greed that's all around him, and finding out he can learn more about his healing power and he doesn't have to sell it every day on a stage." She shook her head. "I don't think he'll leave the Crusade, though. It would be too much of a leap into the dark for him."
Billy's shoulders sagged. Ramona stood up, unsteadily. "We'd better be getting home before it gets dark," she said wearily.
"No, not yet. I need to ... be alone for a while, to think. All right?"
She nodded. "Take all the time you need." She touched his cheek with a lingering hand, then started to walk away.
He asked, "Are you afraid of him?"
"Yes," she said. "There's something in him that wants to come home, but he doesn't know the way." She walked on, alongside the littered road, toward Hawthorne.
Billy watched her go, then crossed the stream to lose himself in the forest.
43
Beneath the same forbidding October sky, a group of men in business suits were slowly walking the length of the county's huge public swimming pool just outside Fayette. The pool was drained and in need of painting.
"I want it rebuilt," Wayne Falconer was saying to O'Brien, the architect from Birmingham, "in the shape of a Cross. I want the church there." He pointed to the concessions building. "I want it to be the biggest church this state has ever seen. And I want a fountain in the middle of the pool. One with colored lights. Can you do that?"
O'Brien chewed on a toothpick and nodded thoughtfully. "I think so. Have to be careful with wiring. Don't want to electrocute anybody. It would be some visual effect though, wouldn't it?" He grinned. "Not electrocution ... I mean the colors."
Henry Bragg and George Hodges laughed. Bragg was still lean and boyish-looking, only a touch of gray in his stylishly cut sandy-brown hair; as a rule he wore blue blazers and gray slacks with razor-sharp creases. He'd moved his growing family to Fayette four years ago and had taken over the job of chief attorney for the Falconer Crusade, Inc.
George Hodges, by contrast, had not aged so gracefully. He was bald except for a fringe of brown hair, and his face had slowly collapsed into folds under the pull of gravity. He wore a rumpled brown suit, his breast pocket lined with pens.
"I want this to be the biggest baptismal pool in the world," Wayne said. The Crusade had recently purchased the pool for a million and a half. "People will come here from everywhere, wanting to be baptized. Of course, there'll be regular swimming here too—for Christian youth only—but the baptisms will be the big thing. It'll be . . . like a Christian swim club, but there won't be membership fees. There'll be donations to the Falconer Memorial. . . ." His voice trailed off. He was staring at the high-diving platform, the Tower. He remembered when he was almost ten, and he'd finally gotten the nerve to climb up there and try to jump. Poised on the edge, he felt his knees shaking—and then the older kids down in the pool had started yelling for him to jump, jump, Wayne, jump. It was just too high, and from way up there it looked like a sheet of blue glass that would cut him to pieces. Coming carefully down, he'd tripped and fallen and busted his lip and, crying, had run out to where the church bus was parked to get away from the laughter.
"I want that down," Wayne said quietly. "The Tower. I want it down, first thing."
"That's been here for over twenty-five years, Wayne," George Hodges said. "It's sort of a symbol for the whole—"
"Down," Wayne told him, and Hodges was silent.
At the far end of the pool, Wayne suddenly dismissed Bragg and O'Brien. As the two men walked away, Hodges waited uneasily for Wayne to speak. The young man stared at the pool, took a small bottle from his coat, and popped a pill into his mouth. His eyes were almost the same shade as the pool's faded paint. "I know I can trust you, George. You've always been there when I needed you." Hodges had done such a good job in his years as the Crusade's business manager that he could now afford a colonial-style house a few miles from the Falconer estate.
"That's right, Wayne," Hodges replied.
Wayne looked at him. "My daddy came again last night. He sat on the foot of my bed, and we had a long talk."
Hodges's face pulled tight. Oh God! he thought. Not again!
"He told me that the Creekmore witch and her boy want me now, George. They want to destroy me, like they destroyed my daddy."
"Wayne," Hodges said quietly, "please don't do this. That woman lives in Hawthorne. She's no threat to you. Why don't you just forget about her, and let's go on like—"
"I can feel her wanting me to come to her!" Wayne said. "I can feel her eyes on me, and I can hear her filthy voice, calling to me at night! And that boy's just as bad as she is! He puts himself in my head sometimes, and I can't get him out!"
Hodges nodded. Cammy was calling him at all hours of the night now, and driving him crazy with her complaints about Wayne's fits of black temper. One night last week Wayne had left the house and gone to the airport, flying up in the company Beechcraft and doing loops and circles like a maniac. Wayne wasn't yet eighteen, yet already he was faced with decisions that would stagger a seasoned business executive. Maybe it was understandable, Hodges thought, that Wayne should pretend to be counseled by his father's ghost as a way of shouldering the burden.