"Ohmigod, is he hurt?" Lisl cried.
"No such luck," Rafe said. "Watch."
The door to Brian's car opened and Lisl watched his white-coated figure stagger out. He was rubbing his head and he looked dazed, but he didn't seem seriously hurt.
She felt a smile slowly work its way onto her lips.
Serves you right, you bastard.
As he moved away from his car to survey the damage, he stepped onto the oiled asphalt. Suddenly his arms began windmilling as his feet did a spastic soft-shoe routine. He went down flat on his back with his legs straight up in the air.
Lisl burst out laughing. She couldn't help it. She'd never seen Brian look so ridiculous. She loved it.
With her hand clapped over her mouth, she watched him roll over and work his way to his hands and knees. The back of his white coat was now black and he had motor oil in his blow-dried hair. He was halfway to his feet when his legs slipped out from under him again and he went down on his face.
Lisl was laughing so hard now she could barely breathe. She beat a fist against Rafe's shoulder.
"Get me out of here!" she gasped. "Before I die laughing!"
Rafe was smiling as he shifted the car into gear.
"Not so scary now, is he?" he said.
Lisl shook her head. She couldn't answer because she was still laughing. Brian Callahan would never be able to intimidate her again.
A question leapt to her mind.
"Why me, Rafe? Why are you doing all this for me?"
"Because I love you," he said, smiling brightly. "And this is only the beginning."
THE BOY at fifteen years
July 21,1984
Carol caught him at the front door.
"Aren't you even going to say good-bye?" she said.
During the past two years Jimmy had sprouted to the point where he was now taller than Carol. Slim, handsome, he looked down at her the way a cat might glance at a plate of food it had no taste for.
"Why? We'll never see each other again."
Jimmy had somehow worked a change in his birth records back in Arkansas to show that he was now eighteen. He'd hired a shyster from Austin who'd obtained a court order that had forced her to turn most of the fortune over to him. He'd treated her as so much dirt these past few yeas. So many times she had loathed her son, hated him, feared him. Yet something within her cried out with loss at the thought of his leaving.
"I've raised you, cared for you for fifteen years, Jimmy. Doesn't that mean anything?"
"It's the blink of an eye," he said. "Less. And why should you worry? It's not as if you haven't profited in that time. I've left you millions of dollars to play with."
"You don't understand, do you?"
He looked at her quizzically. "Understand what?"
They stared at each other and Carol realized that he really didn't understand.
"Never mind," she said. "Where are you going?"
"To settle an old score."
"With that red-haired man you keep looking for?"
For the first time, his face showed emotion.
"I told you never to mention him!" Then his face softened into a chilling smile. "No. I'm about to renew an old acquaintance."
He left. Not a touch, not a smile, not a wave, not even a shrug. He simply turned and walked out to his waiting sports car.
As her Jimmy drove off, Carol began to cry. And hated herself for it.
THIRTEEN
New York
Another New Year's Eve.
Outside St. Ann's Cemetery in Bayside, Mr. Veilleur watched the red glow of the cab's rear lights fade into the darkness, then he turned and walked toward the cemetery wall. The cab was to return for him in an hour. He'd given the driver half of a hundred-dollar bill as tip and told him the other half would be his when he returned. He'd be back.
He found a large granite stone jutting from the earth near the wall. He eased himself down on it. The December cold of the frozen earth began to seep into his buttocks.
"I've come to sit with you awhile," he said, speaking to the wall.
No reply came from the unmarked, uneasy grave that lay just over the wall.
Veilleur couldn't get into the cemetery at this hour, especially on New Year's Eve, so he settled for a seat just outside. Magda would not miss him tonight. She did not even know it was a holiday. He pulled out a thermos filled with hot coffee and brandy, and poured some into the cap. He sipped and felt the chill melt away.
"This is the fifth anniversary of your interment here. But I do not come to celebrate, simply to mark the occasion. To sit watch over you. Somebody should."
He sipped some more of the brandied coffee and thought about the future. The near future, for he knew his future was severely limited.
The Enemy was steadily growing more powerful. Veilleur sensed the psychic storm clouds gathering, thunderheads of evil piling up on all horizons, closing in. And the nexus point of many of the forces seemed to be here, just over the cemetery wall, in that unmarked grave. Something was going to happen here. Soon.
"What part do you play in all of mis?" he asked the grave's restless occupant.
There was no reply. But Veilleur knew he'd find out soon. Too soon.
He sipped his coffee and continued his solitary vigil.
North Carolina
Another New Year's Eve.
Will sat alone in his drafty living room watching Dick Clark host yet another New Year's Rockin' Eve show. God, how he hated this night.
Five years ago… five years ago this very night he had committed The Atrocity, the act that had drawn an indelible line between himself and the rest of humanity.
This year would be worse than usual because of the phone call.
So long since he'd heard it. For years he'd managed to avoid it. And then Lisl's party. He shouldn't have gone, but he'd thought he could get away with it. He'd tempted fate.
And he'd heard it. All the way across the room, he'd heard that poor boy's voice.
Will got up and turned off the TV. If he looked at Dick Clark's grinning face much longer he was afraid he'd toss a chair through the screen. All those people milling around in Times Square, ready to jump around like idiots to celebrate the start of a new year.
A new year. Right. For him it was the start of another year in hiding. Day one of year six.
But this new year would be different. This year he'd find the strength to/ go back, to try to resume his former life. And the best way to do that was to start the year off in prayer.
He pulled his old breviary from his rear pocket—the book he'd been hiding from Lisl since September—and got an early start on tomorrow's daily office.
But tonight the prayers seemed even more meaningless than they had since he'd gone back to them. Usually he could count on the rhythm of the familiar phrases to provide temporary relief from the memories of the horrors of the past. But not tonight. The faces, voices, sights, sounds—they splattered him like raindrops, falling fitfully at first, then increasing to a steady trickle, finally swelling to a rush that flooded the room. He fought the current but it was too strong tonight. Despite his best efforts it swept him into the past.
PART II
THEN
FOURTEEN
Queens, New York
Things started going wrong toward the end of winter that year. It began in March, with spring only a couple of weeks away.
People hadn't called him Will then. His friends and folks called him Bill. The rest of the world called him Father.