The Reality Conspiracy (59 page)

McCurdy's
voice boomed in the new darkness. "Rise, child. Rise and give thanks. The Light is in you!"

Jeff wanted to take McCurdy by the throat, choke him into silence, force him to stop badgering the terrified girl. But his muscles were insensible stones beneath his flesh.

With a single phrase McCurdy taunted them both, "You can do it . . . !"

But Jeff couldn't. He couldn't do anything. He just watched the spectators form a tighter ring around his cowering daughter.

"Stand!" McCurdy commanded.

"Stand," the crowd echoed.

Casey's body shook with the effort.

"STAND!"

She was struggling, using the strength in her arms to pry her torso from the sodden ground. Now Jeff could see her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her eyes darted madly as the human circle closed around her.

Was that motion Jeff saw? Had Casey's foot twitched? Had her leg flexed just a bit at the knee?

Yes, his mind cried, yes, honey, stand! STAND!

But he heard Father Sullivan's voice, too. It echoed clearly in his memory:

The demon can bring you gold . . .

Supporting herself with trembling arms, Casey somehow pulled her legs under her, poised in a lopsided kneeling position. Ready.

. . . but can never force you to take it.

"Stand! Stand! Stand! Stand!"

My God, she's going to get up!

"Praise the Lord," someone said.

McCurdy extended a hand. Casey reached to take it.

Awkwardly, unsteadily, she started to pull herself up.

"NO, CASEY! STOP!"

The crowd fell silent. Jeff's own voice echoed in his ears. As Casey fell back, McCurdy glared. The crowd redirected their attention toward Jeff.

"Let's talk about free will, Father Sullivan." The evil's eyes glowed red again, as if a light behind them were increasing in power. "I'm going to ask for your help. But before I do, let me assure you that I will have it, either against your will, or with your complete consent. To me, of course, it makes little difference, for the outcome will be the same."

Sullivan stared, he hoped impassively; the words of his Hail Mary were foremost in his mind.

Again the evil laughed its weak, windy laugh. "'Pray for us sinners. Pray for us, sinners. Prey for us sinners . . . .' Oh, William, how well I understand your retreat into faith. It's a reasonable choice, after all. You haven't anything else just now, have you?

"And of course I know better than anyone how faith is built upon your arrogant belief in free will and personal choice. So now you choose to pray, right? But isn't your faith tainted with the absurd promise of reward in the afterlife? Let me see if I've got this straight: to earn your reward all you have to do is choose good over evil, is that it?"

Sullivan glared at him.

"Doesn't that strike you as simplistic? Sophomoric? Even idiotic? It should, to a man of your intellect. But here's truth from the lips of a liar: there is no reward, William, just as there is no good and no evil. They are lies, and they come from the source of all lies. We have created them for you just as a farmer creates a fence around his cattle—the lies contain and control. It is as simple as that."

A
lton's car still wouldn't start.

He'd laid the bundled child on the back seat, tucked her in, and, whispering soft encouragements, tried to make her comfortable.

Then, with Karen behind the wheel, he'd pushed the vehicle far enough to get it rolling down the hill.

The key was switched on, the car was in gear, and Karen had repeatedly jumped the clutch. The engine just wouldn't fire.

"It's that damn
light
," he told her. "I've read about it time and again. Nothin' works right when them UFOs are around."

J
eff screamed. "Don't do it, Casey. Don't get up. If you stand up, you'll be in its debt. It'll own you."

Casey flattened herself against the ground.

McCurdy's tongue clicked loudly. His eyes sizzled with hatred. The crowd of spectators parted, forming a corridor in which Jeff and McCurdy stood face-to-face. "1 warned you, Jeffrey. I offered you so much."

Stalking toward Jeff, McCurdy continued speaking through clenched teeth'. "All I asked was that you have faith and stay silent until you had witnessed the truth. Damn you, you could have saved your daughter. Can't you see it's your selfishness that cripples her? Can't you see it's you who stands in her way?"

His voice rose, sped up, took on the fire and brimstone strength of a Chautaugua tent preacher's'. "You block the Light, Jeffrey. You and the other soulless shadows keep the Light from the world. But no one can hide within the Light; it has shown you as you are. I have seen, we all have seen that you are not of the chosen."

Now McCurdy stood so close that Jeff could smell his acrid breath. Eye to eye, McCurdy spat venomous words in his face. "I was wrong about you, but that's your mistake, not mine. The Light can heal, but it can cripple and destroy. It illuminates the worthy as it blasts the soulless into endless realms of unimaginable torment."

He raised his arms.

Jeff tensed, preparing for an assault of terrible unknown pain like nothing he'd ever experienced.

Behind McCurdy, a webwork of electrical arcs danced and crackled within the black airborne opening. Frigid mist blasted out like a smoke from a cannon.

The vapor split when it hit McCurdy's back, forked into a two-pronged cloud that passed on either side of Jeff. It never touched him yet he felt its arctic bite. In a moment the gathering was shrouded in a freezing, putrid fog.

Jeff shivered, looking around, hoping someone would step forward to help him. Instead, everyone stood still as statues, their faces frozen masks. Each was an individual pillar of stone; together, they formed a mist-filled cage in which McCurdy and Jeff faced one another.

Jeff fought the urge to plead. Damn it, he wouldn't!

Rain began anew. It pelted Jeff, stung his face and hands. Drops smacked the ground like tiny bursting balloons. As the downpour covered McCurdy, Jeff saw its color. Deep crimson, the color of blood.

Roiling clouds of icy mist billowed past Jeff on either side. He held his ground, shivering, suffering the nauseating odor, wiping the blood rain from his eyes, thinking, thinking.

If McCurdy controlled the light with the power of will, then Jeff's only hope was to challenge that will, weaken it, destroy it if he could. If he could break McCurdy's concentration . . . If he could make him doubt his power, he might lose it.

"The light is gone, Skipp. It's in Casey now. It's for her to control, not you."

"Dad . . . Dad, I feel funny." Casey's voice was wracked with sobs as she cried out against the wind and rain. She looked up at him, her eyes glassy, her mouth twisted in pain. Crimson rain covered her like blood.

"Stay still, baby. Try not to move."

Ignoring Jeff, McCurdy shouted at the girl. "Yes, you feel it, don't you! You feel the Light inside you. The warmth, the power. It's mending you, isn't it? It's cleansing your blood, repairing your nerves, pumping new life into your crippled limbs. You can stand now, girl. You can walk. Get up! Don't just lie there like a lizard in the mud. Stand! Show these people the power of the Light."

"The light is gone, Skipp," Jeff cried. "You thought you controlled it, but it controlled you. You were its puppet. It used you, now it's discarded you. It has moved on to someone more worthy."

"NO!" Smoke coiled around McCurdy's head. Bloody water ran down his face, wind tugged at his rain-slick tufts of hair.

"You thought you contacted God on that computer of yours, didn't you? But you were wrong. You were tricked by some terrible power that would destroy you and me and millions of others to gain access to this world. Think about it, Skipp. You're the soulless one, aren't you? You're the one who let the Devil into God's world."

"Blasphemer!" McCurdy looked to the people surrounding him, face after face. Mist rose from their features like swirling ghosts. Again fixing his deadly eyes on Jeff, he pointed and cried, "You'll burn like the sinner you are . . . ."

Words locked in Jeff's throat. The wind died: the rain stopped. The whole world fell into silence, as if waiting for the next atrocity to come.

"Damn you!" McCurdy pointed at Jeff. "I'll crush your heart in my hand! And the fire of the Light will strike you from God's earth—"

The fatal pronouncement was halted by a heart-stopping scream.

"She's breathing funny," Alton said. "I think maybe she's dying."

"Let me take a look." Karen ran around to the back of the car, pulled open the rear door, and knelt in the rain. "I've had some medical training. Maybe I can help her. Let me check her pulse. . . ." The dome light revealed the child's face.

Wide eyes stared up in confusion. Karen watched perplexity change to tentative recall.

At first Karen didn't recognize the distorted face. She struggled to tear her gaze from those ugly distended lips.

"Pretty bad, ain't it, miss?"

Examining the rain-matted hair, the shape of the skull, the distinct set of the eyes, Karen began to realize who this child really was. "L-Lucy . . . ?" she whispered.

Tears welled in the girl's eyes.

"You know her?" Alton said.

"I . . . I think it's . . . Lucy Washburn. She's my patient, she's . . ." Karen climbed into the car and took Lucy's head on her lap. "There, honey, it's going to be okay."

With trembling hands, she peeled the saturated blanket from the naked child. "Let's just have a look and see what's wrong."

When she saw what the blanket concealed, she screamed.

The loud cry tore McCurdy's attention from Jeff.

For the first time his lunatic expression was tinged with fear. Mechanically, he shouted into unresponsive faces, 'This man speaks with a viper's tongue. He lies! He deceives! He'll say anything to make you look away from the Light. Don't listen to him. Don't believe. His false words are the route to darkness."

"Dad . . . !" Casey rolled on the ground, clutching her stomach.

"It's all right, Casey."

"No, Dad, I'm sick. I feel awful. . . ."

"Look at him," McCurdy continued, "he would shade his own daughter, his own flesh and blood from the healing power of the Light. Think, brothers and sisters, is this the man who can lead you to salvation?"

"You're alone, McCurdy. Your power is gone. The light is out."

"NO!" McCurdy's voice resonated with false confidence'. "You are the soulless one; you must be removed. Take him, people. Take him!"

No one moved. McCurdy looked around expectantly. Not one person returned his gaze. "Can't you recognize the voice of the damned? For God's sake grab him! Tie him."

McCurdy shook the nearest person. Then shoved the unresponsive man toward Jeff. But instead of obeying, the man toppled, shattered on the ground with a sound like ice breaking. Jeff cried out as the man separated into a half-dozen pieces. Each severed fleshy chunk glistened with blood.

Unbelieving, Jeff looked at his daughter. Casey was vomiting onto the ground.

McCurdy's scream was demented and painful, the anguished wail of a man who'd lost everything. He pushed person after person. Each tumbled like bowling pins and shattered as if made of glass.

They're frozen
, Jeff thought.
They've turned to ice!

A teenager in a tank top broke in half as she fell across the body of a man in gray coveralls. McCurdy shoved a woman holding a video camera. She toppled against the old man standing beside her. Both split into sharp-edged fragments. The cold damp air filled with the stench of vomit and excrement.

"See what your light has done, McCurdy? See what your god thinks of you and your misguided apostles? My God, look what's happening!"

McCurdy dropped to his knees, sobbing, hyperventilating.

"Is this the miracle you promised?" Jeff stepped toward him. McCurdy, gasping, looked up with plaintive eyes.

Propelled by the strength of tension and terror, Jeff lifted a foot that caught McCurdy solidly under the chin. McCurdy's head snapped backward and he sprawled on top of a frozen pile of human remains.

A change came over the old man in the bed. As Sullivan watched, the old man somehow looked . . . younger. His drab flesh seemed to catch fire and glow. Closing his eyes, he smiled with tremendous satisfaction.

Father Sullivan lowered his gaze. He had stopped trying to disentangle himself from the rosary. His wrists were bleeding where the sharp-edged beads had scraped and cut him. Undaunted, he held the tiny silver crucifix between his fingers. And he prayed; with his head bowed and his eyes squeezed tight, he prayed.

Still the unhuman voiced droned, creating an inaudible hissing in his brain.

"It is done . . . done . . . done."

The old man took a deep breath that rattled in his lungs.

"Tell me, Father William," he asked pleasantly, "do you think about your death? Do you hypothesize that it might be scant moments away? Are you praying now for your life? Or for your soul?"