"I may or may not return this evening."
"Your choice, Tony. But I think you've already made the most important choice."
He looked at her, his eyes hooded and evil. He nodded his head and walked out into the night.
Across the street, at the Cleveland home, eyes watched his movements, then lifted to the woman standing in the door. In her mid-forties, Jane Ann was still a very beautiful and shapely woman, with the ability to turn men's heads as she walked past.
Jane Ann lifted her eyes as the feeling of being watched touched her. The Cleveland family—father, mother, and three children—stood behind the huge picture window, all of them staring at her. She stepped quickly back into the house, picked up Balon's old Bible and returned to the porch. She held up the Bible, the dull gold cross on the leather shining in the glow of streetlights.
The Cleveland family pulled the drapes.
Jane Ann stood for a moment on the steps, the hot winds blowing around her. "I won't run," she whispered, clutching the Word of God to her breast. "I won't run, and you can't make me run."
The wind sighed around her. And had she looked closely at the invisible wind, she could have seen a light mist forming where the wind touched the corner of the house.
"Miles, this is foolish," Wade pleaded with the man. "It's … folklore; myths. Hell, man, you haven't been in a synagogue in fifty years! You sure haven't been kosher in all the years I've known you."
"I'm a Jew," Miles said stubbornly. "My God will not forsake me."
"Bubbemysah!" Doris said.
Wade looked up. "What?"
"Old wives' tale," Miles translated. "It is not. Just ask the people of Prague."
"Ask the people of Prague," Doris said sarcastically. "What ask? That happened—supposedly—in the sixteenth century. I'm sure there are thousands still around who witnessed it."
"It happened," Miles insisted, looking at her. "I know, my grandfather was a cabalist. He told me it did."
"Your grandfather was a meshuggener," she replied. "All this foolish stuff. I'll go make coffee."
Miles shook his head and grinned. "She just called my grandfather a crazy old man. Wade, my God won't let me down. I know it."
"Seems like He did a pretty good job of it at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz. To mention but a few.".
"Don't blaspheme, Wade. Now is not the time. Ah … who am I trying to kid? Me! that's who. I'm talking in one breath about something I was taught not to believe in, and in the next breath talking about being a Jew. Then I talk about a golem. Used to listen to my grandfather talk about golems. Ah," he sighed heavily, "takes a rabbi to build one anyway. I think. I'm an old man, Wade. Sixty-eight next month. You wanna know what I think, Wade—I'll tell you: I think it's too late. That's what I think. For all of us. We should have left this place that summer … after we … did it." He thumped the arm of his chair. "Pulled out. But no, we were full of piss and courage … so we stayed. Like fools. Well, whatever it was, it's back. And you know it. I'm glad our kids have all gone away." He waved a hand, thin and heavily veined. "But I'm just too old to run. Wade, you go back and get Anita. The two of you, get Jane Ann … and run."
"Anita won't run, Miles. I can't convince her it's happening all over again. And Jane Ann is beginning to suspect more each day. She told me she wasn't running."
"Sam is not here to protect us now, Wade. And I don't mean no slight against you in saying that."
"I know you don't. Miles … I believe Sam is here. He told him about the letter.
"My old rabbi should hear this story. He'd crap on himself. May I be forgiven for saying that. Yeah, Sam was a wild one. If there was a way back, he'd find it. I hope he's here. Oh, Wade! What are we saying? Foolishness. Sam is dead. So let's have some coffee and cakes and talk about all the good times."
An hour later, Wade stepped out of the Lansky house. The hot winds still blew. He walked to his car, pausing with his hand on the door. He looked up. "Sam, Jane Ann is not going to run. But if we stay here, they'll kill us, and do much worse to Jane Ann before she dies."
But the wind still blew hot, and Wade received no reply to his statement.
And the clay that Miles had painfully, slowly dug from the banks of a river—several hundred pounds of it—and had carefully shaped into the form of a man, with arms and legs and a featureless face, lay in the basement, in a huge packing crate.
It appeared lifeless.
It was in the summer of 1958 the horror finally surfaced, erupting like a too-long festering boil, spewing its corruption over all those near it. Specifically, the town of Whitfield and part of Fork County.
Those who survived the terror remember it as the summer of The Digging. And not many of the town's 2,500 residents did survive. Only a few. A few believers. More than a few unbelievers.
Whitfield was destroyed. At the end of that week of devil-induced terror, the town was a broken, burned-out, still-smoking ruin.
An archaeological team (they said) had come to Whitfield, ostensibly to investigate a huge stone circle, its interior barren of life. But what they were really doing was searching for a stone tablet. Satan's tablet, upon which were carved these words: HE WALKS AMONG YOU. THE MARK OF THE BEAST IS PLAIN. BELIEVE IN HIM. ONCE TOUCHED, FOREVER HIS. THE KISS OF LIFE AND DEATH.
And the tablet had been found.
After that, the town's fall into the blackest depths of sin and depravity had been swift, with only a few resisting: the minister, Sam Balon, whose own wife, Michelle, was part of the Devil's team, as old and as evil as time. Father Dubois, a Catholic priest, had driven a stake into her heart, then stood by the bed with Sam, watching her metamorphosis through centuries of evil, and finally, her death.
The old priest was killed a short time later. Then the horror unfolded in Fork County.
The Undead walking. The Beasts of the devil prowling.
Sam Balon had pulled together a handful of people, true believers in the Lord God. They fought the horror with everything they could find and with every ounce of strength and faith they possessed. Sam had acted as the right hand of God.
It was a week of mind-tearing horror and days and nights of fear; of seeking out and killing those who worshiped the Devil. Finally, to save the few friends who remained, and to save his new wife, Jane Ann, Sam agreed to fight off the advances of Mephistopheles' witch, Nydia, a beautiful woman whose soul had been given to the Prince of Filth centuries before, in return for everlasting youth and unbelievable beauty.
Sam Balon had sent the Devil's agent, Black Wilder, tumbling back to Hell with a stake through his dark heart. All part of the bargain. Then the witch, Nydia, took Balon into the spinning darkness of trackless time. And the man of God and the Witch of Hell fought for Sam's seed of life. In the end, Nydia beat him and Balon was killed, his naked body found by the survivors. Cut into the earth beside the body, this message: HE MET ME—AND I DO RESPECT COURAGE.
It was signed by Satan.
The young doctor, Tony King, took Jane Ann as his wife, and the son of Sam Balon would not learn of his true father's fate for years—until it was almost too late.
TWO
"We'll leave the main highway at St. Gervais," Black said. "Then drive northeast until we come to where mother owns some property. We'll pick up a four-wheel drive there; sometimes you can't even make it to the house in a four-wheel. It can get rough."
Sam nodded, not really paying much attention to the words of his friend and soon-to-be-host. Since the moment he and Black had picked up Black's sister, Nydia, Sam had sat in a near state of shock, overwhelmed by her beauty. He did not believe he had ever seen a more beautiful woman, and when she told him that no, she didn't have a steady boyfriend, and that really she hardly dated at all, Sam began counting his lucky stars.