Crucifax (20 page)

"Yeah."

"Oh, Jesus, you think they might have gone down there?"

"Maybe."

When she agreed, he told her to come to the back of the store. As he waited on two more customers, then prepared to lock up, he thought of Mallory, wondering if she'd returned home. He called the apartment but got no answer.

I
think I've got just the girl for you,
Mace had said.

Somehow, he knew Mallory. And somehow—

He was just bluffing, please, God, just bluffing.

—he knew of Jeff's feelings for her.

He
had
to know more about Mace.

The weather had gotten worse. Rain fell with a constant, monotonous purr, and the wind rattled the window-panes.

When Lily knocked at the back door, Jeff opened it, and a rush of wind and rain followed her in. Her short hair was wet and tossed.

As Jeff went through the store turning out the lights he said, "Do you have a flashlight in your car?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

"I don't have a car."

"You were gonna walk home? In this weather?"

He nodded.

"I'm so sure. I'll take you when we're done."

Jeff smiled. "It's gonna stink down there," he said. "Sure you want to go?"

"Well… what are we looking for, anyway?"

"I'm not sure. I just want to see if we can find out where Mace went."

"If Nikki might be with him… yeah, I wanna go. I'm scared for her."

Jeff was touched by her devotion to her friend. He realized he knew nothing about Lily but hoped to remedy that soon. He liked what he'd seen so far.

While he got his things together, she stood at the front window staring out into the rain.

"This weather," she mumbled. "You know, it's not like fall around here. It's… strange. Everything's been strange lately. Like something's just… wrong. Ever since that last weekend. You know, that last Saturday night before school started, it was really weird. I was with some…" She frowned out the window, scratching her chin with one finger, then suddenly turned to him and smiled. "I'm rambling. Sorry."

But she was right. For the first time since it had happened, Jeff remembered walking on the boulevard with Mallory and Brad and the others, leaving the Calvary Youth behind at the theater. He remembered the odd hush that fell, the way everyone stopped to look up at the sky, as if there was something to see.

But there was nothing there. Nothing he could see, anyway. He wondered if Lily had had a similar experience.

They had no time to talk now, though.

"Okay," he said, putting on his coat. "It's getting late. Let's go."

When they stepped out the back door, the wind nearly blew them over.

They found a flashlight in the tool compartment in back of Lily's car, then hurriedly pressed through the wind and rain to the manhole ip the back alley.

Jeff hooked the index finger of each hand into a hole and lifted the cover with a grunt, sliding it to the side.

"I'll go first," he said, shouting to be heard above the rain.

"I know," Lily said with a nervous laugh.

Shining the light into the hole, Jeff saw the rungs, the dirty pipes, and the filthy floor a few yards below. He tried to wipe his wet hands on his jeans so they wouldn't slip on the rungs, but his jeans were soaked. Clumsily holding the flashlight in one hand, he carefully climbed into the hole, shining the light on the rungs for Lily.

Jeff was going to scurry back lip when she reached bottom and replace the cover, but before climbing down, Lily reached out and, with effort, dragged it back over the hole.

Once she was beside him, she winced and said, "Jesus, it reeks down here!"

It did, but the smell was not as bad as Jeff had expected. The wind blew through the sewer in gusts, whistling through the grates and manhole covers above like angry ghosts. Water poured from above, and the flashlight beam danced over the black, gushing sewage below them.

"Now where do we go?" Lily asked, her hushed, trembling voice echoing in the darkness.

"He went this way," Jeff said, turning to the right. "This walkway's pretty narrow, so be careful."

"I'm right behind you." She clutched the back of his wet coat and pressed close to him as they walked.

A couple yards ahead they came to an intersection. Jeff shone the light right and left, but the beam was swallowed by the darkness.

"Let's keep going straight," he said.

They crossed a narrow metal plank that spanned the intersecting gutter.

A little farther on, Jeff felt a draft from the right. He shone the light toward the wall.

At first it appeared to be a small, dark, rectangular nook in the wall, but the light fell on nothing—no wall or door—so it was deeper than it seemed.

"Just a sec," Jeff said. He leaned into the opening a bit and shone the light around. Beyond the wall to their right, sound seemed compressed, the darkness seemed thicker. The beam passed over tangled, intestinelike pipes; beyond that was only more darkness.

Bracing himself against the edge of the opening, Jeff leaned in a bit more.

"What is it?" Lily hissed.

"I… don't know. It looks like some kind of… room."

To the left, at some distance away, Jeff saw a fire flickering in the darkness. Moving shapes hovered around it.

Jeff immediately backed out, but it was too late. Heavy footsteps crunched through the darkness toward them as Jeff reached behind him and grabbed Lily's coat to pull her away, snapping, "Jesus, c'mon, let's—"

A broken baseball bat with a splintered end swept out of the darkness and cracked against the edge of the opening, and a pale, bony hand slapped onto Jeff's head and clutched his hair.

Lily's scream echoed all around them….

Mallory lay on a pile of cushions in the swimming pool, naked from the waist down, her legs entwined with Kevin's beneath a warm blanket. A cloud of smoke was suspended a few feet above them, and more rose from the pool as the group sprawled around her continued to take drags on joints and pipes.

There were lanterns above them on the floor, but in the pool it was dark. A radio was playing somewhere in the room, but it didn't cover the moans and sighs and wet smacking sounds in the pool.

"Glad you came?" Kevin whispered.

"Mm-hmm."

He laughed.

The night before she'd been hesitant, but she certainly didn't want to go home to her mother. The trip through the sewer had frightened her, but the reception she got from Mace made up for it. There were more people in the building than she'd expected. Besides the band members and their girlfriends, there were a couple dozen other teenagers, some of whom she recognized from school. They were all lounging around on cushions and piles of blankets, smoking grass, drinking beer, and, to Mallory's horror, holding and stroking those tusked, almond-eyed creatures that had frightened her during her first visit to the building. She didn't want to go in when she saw them, but Mace was quick to welcome her with a few tokes on a pipe. It wasn't long before she was relaxed, floating, a little drowsy, and in good spirits.

Mace made a big deal of her arrival and ceremoniously presented her with a strange cross that seemed to be made of red obsidian. He said it was a Crucifax and that she was never to take it off.

A few moments after she put it on, she realized everyone was wearing them.

Mace rolled a joint for her and told her to relax while the band rehearsed. It had been a while since she'd heard them play, and she was stunned by their performance. It was as if she were listening to an entirely different band. Their music enveloped her like a mist, seemed almost tangible, and when Mace sang, his voice, which alternated between low and seductive and high and piercing, with a razor's edge, was hypnotic, totally captivating.

After running through a couple songs, Mace turned to the band, smiled, and watched them silently with what looked like pride.

"I think it's time to show our stuff," he said. "We're playing Fantazm next Wednesday night."

None of them knew how he'd arranged it, and none of them asked.

For a while, Mallory worried that she would make her mother angry by being out all night; she imagined Jeff lying awake, worrying about her. Eventually, though, they fled her memory like strangers.

The group partied the rest of the night; someone went out for burgers and fries; people came and went through the hole in the sub-basement; there was never less than a crowd in the room. Around three A.M., Mallory and Kevin and Trevor and his girlfriend, Tracy, went out in the rain for ice cream.

Mallory could not remember enjoying herself like this.

Back in the pool, they dozed, smoked grass, made love, and, when Mace offered it, snorted some coke.

Time became a blur, and it was impossible to tell if they'd been there a few hours or a few days.

Earlier that Friday evening, Mace had brought in three men and a girl and introduced them to the group. The men were off-duty police officers who, Mace said, were going to be "very good and very important friends." The girl's name was Nikki Astin, and Mace encouraged the others to help lift her spirits. Mace gave them some grass, some coke, and they got in the pool. Two of the officers made fast friends with a couple of girls, the third with a thin blond boy who'd been lying quietly in a corner of the pool. Nikki was shy and took a while to loosen up, but soon she was in the pool with the others.

As far as Mallory knew, they were still there, but it was hard to tell. In the darkness around her she saw slowly moving arms and legs, lumps beneath blankets. She got an occasional glimpse of a mouth sliding down over a glistening erect penis, or a hand gently closing on a pale, round breast. Slanted, glowing eyes peered down over the edge of the pool, and small claws clicked against the cement. Mallory was more comfortable in the presence of the creatures and paid them little attention.

Mace had left over an hour ago, promising to return with company.

Rock music was thumping through the speakers of a portable stereo.

Mallory felt Kevin's hand slip between her legs, and she moaned as his fingers began to move and thoughts of school and Erin and Jeffand everything else in her life were worlds away….

The reverend sat stiffly in the passenger seat of his van as the tires below him screamed around the curves of Beverly Glen. The windshield wipers droned back and forth and, at the wheel, Mace grinned into the night, occasionally glancing at Bainbridge.

The reverend could feel the creatures at his feet; three of them, pressing themselves against his ankles and crawling over his shoes. There were more in the back, squeaking as the van rounded the sharp turns.

Bainbridge's mouth was dry as old felt, and he could not stop trembling as he prayed frantically for deliverance from what he was certain was the devil's henchman.

If not the devil himself.

"What… what are you going to—to do to me?" he asked, his voice a froglike croak.

"
Do
to you?" Mace laughed. "Nothing. Just taking you to a party."

"Why me? Why am I being tried like this?" He closed his eyes as they shrieked around another curve.

"You're not being tried. I'm sorry you feel that way. Why don't you just think of me as… oh, how about a buddy? Not friends yet," he chuckled, "just buddies. But later we'll—"

"You're
evil!
This is a trial, a test of my faith!" The reverend clenched his eyes tighter, wanting to cover his ears, but afraid to move because of the beasts at his feet.

Mace's laugh was deep and rich. He punched the dashboard jovially.

"Black and white," he said. "Everything is black and white to you people, good and evil. You're white and I'm black, all black, evil to the bone, right? But Reverend, you live in a gray world, don't you know that? There is no black, no white, only gray. You say I'm evil, but those kids are
nuts
about me, Rev; I make them happy. Now, is that evil? Making them happy? Huh?
I
don't think so. Now you. You're supposed to be good, all white, but you've been sneaking around with somebody's little girl, and now she's pregnant and you won't let her do what she wants with the baby that's growing in her belly. Hah! That's goodness? You see? We're all gray. Some are blacker than others, maybe a few are all black, but I can promise you one thing, Reverend. Nobody… nobody is all white."

Taking in a deep, unsteady breath, Bainbridge said, "Satan uses the truth to tell lies, and—and we're told he can—can fool the very elite, and I will
not
listen to—"

"I'm… not… Satan." His tone was very serious now, almost threatening. "I'm not from hell or heaven. I'm from…
nowhere.
And you brought me here. You. Your fellow clergy. All the many, many moms and dads here in this valley." He drove in silence for a while, then said, "There is no place in this universe for gaps, Reverend. I've come to fill the gaps that you have made."

Bainbridge clenched his fists in his lap and continued to pray….

A hand pulled Jeff's head back hard as a ragged voice cried, "Leave us alone! Leave us
alone!
"
Jeff saw the bat lifted high over his face, saw it stop before swinging down again, and he slammed his arm up, knocking the hand away. He felt Lily grab his coat, and they dashed away from the opening, avoiding the bat by inches as they moved on down the walkway in a staggering, swaying run, their hands slapping the wall, their feet scraping over the grimy cement.

"Get away!" the voice cried as the bat smacked against the wall once, twice, again. Footsteps followed them a few feet, then stopped.

They didn't look back, kept moving, passed another intersection and another, their gasps echoing in the darkness. The sewer veered left then right as their feet clanged over another metal plank.

"Wait, wait!" Lily panted, pulling on Jeff's coat.

When he turned and shone the light on her, he saw her tears, and she stepped into the crook of his arm.

"What… what was that?" she asked.

"I don't know. A bum, I guess. I hear a lot of them live down here."