Showdown (28 page)

They stared, uncomprehending. And who could comprehend such a thing?

“It was only after I'd circled the desk twice in disbelief that I looked at what Christopher had written. ‘The desk is red.' Those were the words on the page written in his distinctive chicken scratch. He'd written ‘the desk is red,' and now I was looking at a red desk.”

“Surely you aren't suggesting that it had anything to do with his writing,” Andrew said.

“Exactly my thoughts. I was inclined to think that my mind was playing tricks on me. That I'd had someone paint the desk red and forgotten about it, and that my son was simply writing what he saw. But my wife assured me that the desk had indeed been stained oak. She thought I'd painted it that hideous color and was outdoing myself by making up some nonsense about forgetting.”

“That could have been.”

“But it wasn't. It took me three days to accept the fact that my son's writing had somehow changed the desk. You have to understand, I wasn't a religious man at the time. This desk turning red because it was written red was tantamount to words becoming real, something that I wasn't able to accept. I took a chip off the desk and had it analyzed—trust me,my friends, the desk was red. Candy-apple red, to be exact. It was only then that I formed my hypothesis. This book from Iran was a history book with the power to
create
history. The power to create fact. My son had written ‘the desk is red,' and so the desk was red.”

“Impossible!”Mark said.

David stood and paced at the end of the table. “Impossible? For me, at the time, yes, it was impossible. But for religious men like you, it should be commonplace!”

He leveled his argument with animated gestures now. “Think of it! Holy Scripture is
full
of references to the power of words. A disciple cries, ‘Rise up and walk,' and a man rises up and walks. Christ calls to the storm, ‘Be still,' and the waves become still.”

David strode to the shelf, pulled out the black leather-bound Bible, and thumped it with his knuckles. “Recorded in this book are scores and scores of events that are no less impossible than my desk turning red. Speaking donkeys, writing on the wall, people rising from the dead. These impossibilities, my friends, are the word becoming real. The word becoming flesh. This is the common ground which all such events share.”

He set the Bible down.“‘In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.' That which is supernatural becomes natural—this is the incarnation, not only of Christ, but of all supernatural events. Satan reveals himself as what? A dragon, a snake, through an antichrist who is raised from the dead. Now how do those compare to my desk turning red?”

“They have spiritual significance,” someone said.

“And so does this, as you will clearly see.” Sweat beaded David's face. He took a calming breath.

“Why would God allow such a book to—”

“Why would God allow Hitler his chapter in history? Why would God send a whale to swallow Jonah or turn a woman into a pillar of salt? Surely there were other ways. But I'll leave the particular methods of God to God.”

They could hardly argue. No one attempted to.

“What happened to the book?” Andrew asked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

PARADISE

Saturday afternoon

IT TOOK Johnny twenty minutes at a steady climb to reach the lookout over Paradise. He'd been up to the large rock slab that jutted out from the mountain a dozen times with Roland and the others—this far and no farther, their parents warned.

From this vantage, the buildings lining Main Street looked like play blocks strung along a nearly obscured street, black beneath the dust. Other than the Starlight Theater and the church,
both of which looked too large for the town, the buildings were proportionate and evenly spaced. Behind the town, homes scattered across the valley, and long dirt roads wandered between a couple dozen fruit farms.

Johnny looked at it all through a haze kicked up by the wind. He'd been delayed by a scene of carnage as he left town. Someone had taken an ax to the south side of a building. Claude and company. Other than the toppled theater sign and several busted-up telephone poles, he couldn't see the damage through the dust from this distance.

Above him, the clouds roiled. They seemed to be lower today. The air was thinner up here. His right leg ached.

He faced the mountain. From here, a game trail led to only God knew where. This was it. This was the end of the line, and no red marble.

Which meant that he'd been mistaken. Deceived. Stranded. He scanned the trees for the red orb. Anything to suggest the red orb had been here. Anything at all out of the ordinary.

But the only thing that was clearly out of the ordinary was the fact that he'd come up here because a floating red marble had led him up here.

Johnny faced the valley feeling like an imbecile. Maybe he'd imagined the whole thing after all. Maybe this was what the others were doing down in Paradise right now. Chasing little red marbles around. Or other things that had worked themselves into their minds. Things like Black.

He stared out at the clouds, swamped with desperation. Something bad was happening, and no one could stop it. His vision clouded, then distorted with tears. Black and gray swirled. There was nothing to do. Nothing to see besides a hazy blur and the red sun floating low . . .

Johnny blinked.

It was a red sun floating low on the horizon. It was the red marble, hovering over the cliff ten feet from him. His heart jumped.

The marble streaked past him and he whirled. It stopped momentarily at the trailhead, then plunged into the brush.

He didn't need any more encouragement. He didn't care if he was being led into a trap. A voice in his head urged him to follow that marble, so he did. Branches broke and fell limp as he passed.

He began to run, stumbled once, caught himself, and continued his pursuit up the trail.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been following the marble when the trees ended and he found himself facing a huge canyon. He pulled up, panting.

The canyon yawned before him like a mouth cluttered with broken teeth.

Dozens of rock formations cast shadows along the sandy floor. Boulders the size of small cars squatted at the base of a dozen landslides.

Blue sky, not black clouds, arched above him. The sunlight was bright enough to make him squint after four days of dusk. He started forward, elated.

The red marble moved deeper into the canyon.

Johnny followed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE MONASTERY

Saturday afternoon

“WHAT HAPPENED to the book?” David said. “Yes, that's the question, isn't it? I'll spare you the tedious details, but suffice it to say that I confidentially tested the book in every way I knew how. My first discovery was that the book didn't work for me. Only for Christopher. If I wrote, ‘I have a million dollars in my account,' and then checked my bank balance, I had no more than before. But if I told Christopher to write, ‘Daddy has a million dollars in his account . . .'Well, you get the point.”

“You did that?”

“Did what?”

“Had your son write a million dollars into your account?”

“Wouldn't you?” He winked at Raul. “I reported it as an error, though not for a few days, I'll admit.”

Several soft chuckles.

“Why only children?”Matthew asked.

“Belief. I am quite sure that an adult who possesses the faith of a child would also be able to write history.”

“Do you still have this book?”

David held up his hand.“Let me finish. I also learned that the dealer who sold me the crate containing the book had a whole cache of them. Blank, every one of them. I immediately acquired all of them.”

“How many?”

“One thousand four hundred and forty-three. Which is—”

“So many!”

“—significant. Yes, so many. I had them sent express delivery at considerable expense. I was a mess those days. Every waking moment was consumed by the book. I knew I had in my possession the most powerful tool in history. I could do anything, make anything. My power was mind-boggling. Or I should say,my son's power was mind-boggling. Fortunately he was willing to write whatever I wanted him to write. Then one day, three weeks after Christopher wrote my desk red, he wrote three simple words about our cat in a fit of frustration. ‘Snuffles is dead.' And Snuffles was dead.”

“Dead?” Andrew said.

“Dead. Right there in the hallway with no apparent cause of death. This terrible side of the books kept me awake that night. And the next. Imagine what one evil man could do with such a weapon. To make matters worse, Christopher was catching on. He played some havoc with his best friend following a heated argument. He broke the boy's arm. The next morning I made a decision to rid the world of the books. I asked Christopher to write a notation which is permanently etched on my mind into the book:

“‘The books of histories are hiding deep in a Colorado canyon, in a home consistent with their nature, where they will remain until the day they are meant to be found by those destined to bring love into the world.'”

“Here?” Andrew said.

“You're getting ahead of me.” He picked up his pace, eager to tell them the whole truth. “The books vanished, all of them. One year later, my son Christopher was killed, as you know. It crushed me. I spent months trying to convince my wife, Andrea, to conceive—”

“Another child for the books,” one of them said.

“No, the books were gone. I simply wanted another child. She did conceive, and Samuel was born into the world. But the pregnancy was difficult, and my wife died giving birth. This you also know.”

David slipped into his seat and leaned back.

“What you don't know is the depth of my depression at her death. I took a sabbatical and set out to find the books. I was desperate to bring my wife back, you see. My sorrow clouded my judgment. For a full year I methodically searched every canyon in the Colorado mountains. But I'd written them into hiding until the day they were meant to be found, and I gradually became convinced that I had done so wisely.”

“So then you didn't find them. You want the children to find them.”

“Patience, Nathan. One night I had a dream. An epiphany that introduced me to God in a way that haunts me still. I was thoroughly convinced that I should raise my son, Samuel, in total innocence, so that if he were to have the books, he would use them only for good. This, I determined, was the reason God had allowed the events in my life.”

“I thought—”

“I found the books the next day. Which only confirmed my vision. The books were meant to be found, and meant to be found by me. To be used, not by me, but by Samuel. Or perhaps more than one Samuel.”

Understanding dawned on the overseers' faces.

“I found them here, in this monastery hidden from the world. All 1,443 of them. I found 666 of them in the dungeons below, which I promptly sealed. And I found 777 of them in the library above—though I don't believe there
is any difference between the books above and those below except in their symbolic placement. You see, the books had found themselves in a place consistent with their nature, exactly as Christopher had written. My friends, we are sitting on more raw power than has been known by any mortal man in all of history.”

“They . . . you're saying that the books are here now?”Andrew demanded. “Where?”

David drilled them with a stare. He rose to his feet, crossed the room, and pushed the wall. It gave way under his weight. Slowly a large bookcase rotated into view. Hundreds of books lined the shelves.

Leather-bound books.

David extracted one and brought it to them. He sat down and placed it on the table.

They leaned in as one. Ancient black leather, roughly an inch thick. No title.

“The rest are in the dungeons. To the best of my knowledge they are the source of the worms in the dungeons. It's not the disease on Billy's skin that worries me most, it's the deception brought on by the worms.”

“But nothing you, or we, or any adult writes in these books will occur,” Nathan said. “Unless they have the belief of a child.”

“That is my belief.”

“But if the children, these thirty-seven that we've raised, were to write in the books, their words would actually change history?”

“To a point. As I understand it, the books can't force a person's will any more than God can force a person's will. But they can do almost everything else.”

Andrew leaped out of his chair, sending it skidding across the stone floor behind him. “The books in the dungeons—Billy's writing in them?”

David lifted a hand. “Please, Andrew, sit.”

He did, but slowly, fearfully.

“The answer is yes. I don't think the children are aware of the books' power, but they are writing a story.”

It was too much information in too short a time, but David was confident that if he guided them methodically through the meat of his choice, they would come around to seeing the wisdom of it.

“They are writing a story about a town called Paradise.”

“Not the town in the valley below us?”Mark said.

“Yes, that Paradise.”

“Is . . .What's happening?”

“The town is coming apart at the seams,” David said. “Apart from one man who had a heart attack, I don't think there's been any death, but there is certainly a mess brewing in Paradise.”

A cacophony of protest filled the room. He let it run until a single question rose above the rest. “How do we know this?”

“I have my ways. Trust me, Paradise is falling under Billy's pen.”

“You said he doesn't know the power of his words,” Raul said.

“No, but he knows plenty about the town. He can see what's happening in his characters' minds. Although he can't force their wills, this bunch is influenced easily enough.”