The Remnant (39 page)

The scene was all too disturbingly Deja Vu.
The deep and ominous darkness. The red
eyes
all around. The
shadowy figure of the Rat King looming just ahead. Trace’s hand
clutched instinctively for the broken knife handle from his youth.
Why hadn’t he thought to find a gun before racing down into these
pitch black catacombs?

But if he had hesitated one more instant the
panel in the study would have swung closed, and there was no
telling how much time might have been lost trying to figure out how
to open it again. Now he was on Rendt’s ground, unarmed, and he was
well aware of Rendt’s abilities. His research had taught him that
the head of the Angels trained with his men. He would be adept at
all sorts of murder and mayhem. And in the darkness there was no
telling how he was armed.

"It’s over," said Trace, bluffing.

"Is that how you see it?" asked Rendt’s
almost incorporeal voice.

"You followed a false God," said Trace.
"False prophets."

"You found the Platinum Casket."

It was a statement not a question, and in
that instant Trace knew that Rendt had seen the contents of the box
long ago, way before Mexachuli, before Paulie ever opened the
Casket.

"You knew all along," said Trace. "Did
Jedadiah know what was inside, too?"

"Of course not. He would never have broken a
commandment by a past Prophet, but had he known, he would have had
to act as I did."

"You misjudge the man."

"What?"

"He’s going to release the contents."

"You’re a fool if you believe that."

"I do believe it," said Trace, realizing it
was true. He trusted the old man implicitly. "It’s over now. Let
Ashley go. It won’t be long until more of Jedadiah’s men arrive or
some of your own wives might just come down here with vengeance on
their minds."

"You’re probably right," said Rendt,
sadly.

And Trace knew he had said just the wrong
words.

Ashley locked her hand around the backside of
the huge blade, gripping with all her might even as Rendt tried to
jerk it away. Her instinct was to shove her other hand under the
arm around her throat to try to keep him from breaking her neck,
but she knew that would be futile. There was no way for her to
fight his strength with her own. Instead her fingers roved upward
and behind her, searching for her father’s eyes. Finding them she
raked deep, gouging at the sockets, trying to burst his eyeballs.
He shrieked in her ear. The knife clattered to the floor. Then
something struck the side of her head, and everything went
black.

"Ash?" shouted Trace when he heard her
gasp.

Then Rendt grunted, and Trace surged toward
the shadowy movement ahead. If Rendt had a gun he most likely would
already have fired it. That left other, subtler but no less deadly
possibilities. As Rendt stepped through a dim gleam of candlelight
Trace saw Ashley drop to the floor, and rage overwhelmed him. He
threw himself on the bigger man, grappling for Rendt’s throat. They
crashed to the floor with Trace on top, his thumbs pressing hard
into Rendt’s Adam’s Apple.

Suddenly Rendt shifted, a leg wrapped around
Trace’s head, and he was thrown to the bottom, Rendt now on top. A
heavy fist crashed into Trace’s chest, and he felt ribs snap. His
hands were slapped aside, and now Rendt had
his
fingers on
Trace’s throat, cutting off not only air to his lungs but blood to
his brain. Trace felt himself blacking out, and frustration and
rage brought stinging tears to his eyes. All his life he had been
dreaming of this moment, of this final confrontation with the evil
that had revealed itself to him so long ago.

Rendt was the Rat King, there was no doubt of
that. He didn’t just serve a false prophet. He served an evil god.
There were no real angels. Or at least Trace was certain he had
never met one. He had been played all his life. He had been meant
to find the Casket and to release its contents to the world. That
would create a furor that would bring down the Latter Day Saints
and destroy the faith of eleven or twelve million people. That it
would also destroy the faith of the NLDS was irrelevant. They had
no faith. This abomination of a town had never been about
faith.

Trace’s hands found Rendt’s face again, but
he couldn’t reach the eyes. He dug his thumbs into Rendt’s mouth
and ripped at the cheeks until Rendt grunted in pain, jerking his
head from side to side. He’d hurt the bastard, but it wasn’t enough
to break his hold, and Trace felt himself slipping under.

Suddenly Rendt grunted again, and he
shuddered so violently that his fingers lost their grip on Trace’s
throat. Trace jerked his head aside, gasping for breath. Rendt fell
forward until his weight pressed Trace even harder against the
floor, but suddenly Trace realized that it was dead weight. Rendt
wasn’t breathing. Trace laboriously worked his way out from under
the man’s corpse. In the distant candle’s gleam he could see the
handle of a large knife sticking up between Rendt’s shoulder
blades. The figure of a frail-but apparently dangerous-woman stood
over Trace, veiled in shadow, but he could see her eyes gleaming
down at Rendt.

He crawled to Ashley’s side and was relieved
to feel her chest rising and falling. He stroked the hair from her
eyes, and she shifted groggily when he lifted her head into his
lap.

"Who are you?" he asked the shadowy
woman.

"My name is Ruth," she said, still staring at
Rendt’s body. "I’ve wanted to do that for a long long time."

Trace nodded.

"Me, too," he said, quietly.

The office was dimmed by heavy curtains that
shielded it from the burning Salt Lake sun, and it was cooled by
hidden vents almost to the point of chill. Ashley sat on Trace’s
left, Marie on his right, close enough on the red leather sofa that
all their legs touched, and their toes nestled against Maxie’s
side. The big dog rested his snout on crossed paws, his undamaged
ear piqued in the funny plastic cone the vet had forced him to wear
until the other healed.

There was plenty of other seating around the
wide desk, but Jedadiah sat on the arm of the couch instead. Trace
glanced at the numerous portraits on the cherry paneled walls,
recognizing most of the previous Prophets. Atop the desk sat a
miniature copy of the statue of Moroni that capped the Temple
across the street. Beside the statue rested the Platinum Casket.
Jedadiah followed Trace’s eyes.

As though on cue two young men in black
business suits entered the room and stood before the desk. Jedadiah
nodded to them. They lifted the Casket as though it was delicate as
cobwebs and carried it away, closing the door silently behind
them.

"I’ll be interested to hear what your experts
have to say," said Trace.

"You will be given access to every report,"
Jedadiah assured him.

"What will you do if it turns out to be
genuine?" asked Ashley. "What will you tell the Mormons?"

"The truth," said Jedadiah, simply. "That we
have been mislead. That God did not decree the Book of Mormon, the
Pearl of Great Price, or the Covenants."

Ashley nodded, sadly. "It will destroy the
Mormon faith."

Jedadiah shrugged. "It will destroy the
creed. But you do your fellow Mormons a disservice to believe it
will totally destroy their faith. I have prayed upon it, I can
assure you. It will not destroy my own faith in God."

Marie smiled enigmatically, and Jedadiah
turned to the girl.

"I’m interested to know," he said, "what you
learned from all this. You more than all of us seem to have been
tested and wielded by the Almighty."

"God’s not in a book," said Marie simply.
"That’s what I told the women in California City. Books are written
by men. Men make mistakes. Men lie."

"Not in any book?" asked Jedadiah,
incredulously.

She shook her head. "Not the true God. And
God doesn’t send angels for messengers. Those are tools of...
something else."

Jedadiah sucked in his breath, and Trace
stared at him. If the girl was right the Prophet’s
angels
had not been what he assumed.

"You know this?" said Jedadiah, almost
whispering.

She nodded.

"But how can you be so sure?" asked
Ashley.

"I do God’s will," said Marie, simply.

She turned to Jedadiah, and the two shared a
moment of silence.

"We found no adult male survivors at the
Meeting House in California City," he said. "Or anywhere else in
that den of iniquity."

She nodded.

"It was the will of God."

"God have mercy on their souls," said
Jedadiah.

Marie gave no response.

She simply stared at each of them in turn,
and Trace felt as though he were being judged by something more
than a teenaged girl. Another presence peered out through her blue
eyes. Trace had only witnessed a little of her control of the crowd
in front of Rendt’s mansion, but Jedadiah had told him of the power
he’d felt in her presence, of the way the mob had responded to her
every word. Jedadiah really did believe she was the One Mighty and
Strong, whether the book that predicted her coming was false or
not.

And who was
he
to say that she wasn’t.
Without her they would all be dead now. Her vision had brought her
to the cusp of Raven’s Head to save his life and later had warned
him of the
eyes
he would face in Rendt’s basement temple.
Finally some power had allowed her to convince women who had been
beaten down all their lives to rise up in righteous wrath against
the men who had enslaved them and to kill all of them in a
bloodbath of Biblical proportions. At that moment she reminded
Trace of stories of Old Testament prophets, men with gleaming eyes
and the power of God Almighty within them, and he shivered. She
might have been the last of a breed of men and women that the world
had not seen in millennia, sitting demurely, hands in her lap on a
plush leather sofa in an air conditioned room, calmly speaking of
the cold blooded murder of apostates.

"What’s going to happen now?" asked
Trace.

"A lot," said Marie, quietly.

"Is God still speaking to you?" asked
Ashley.

The girl smiled beatifically this time and
nodded.

"There’s going to be changes," she said.
"She’s got a lot more to say."

"I’m listening," muttered Trace.

The Remnant is of course a work of fiction.
Rats don’t follow a giant King. Nor do they lead people out of
sewers. But for those who question the power of persuasion in
fundamentalist cults in general and Mormon fundamentalist cults in
particular I would suggest you begin your journey into darkness
with Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.

* * *

Once again, if you enjoyed The Remnant
please take a moment to mention it on Facebook or Twitter. Thank
you
. -
Chandler McGrew

Although he is the author of four critically
acclaimed supernatural/suspense thrillers, Chandler McGrew, lives
in quiet seclusion in the mountains of Maine. He writes ten to
twelve hours a day, fueled by liberal doses of coffee and Pepsi,
with only an occasional dollop of single malt scotch to take the
edge off.

Born in Texas he lived for almost a decade in
Alaska where his first novel, 
Cold Heart
, is
set. 
I Love a Mystery 
called the book
a 
‘tense and satisfying read
.’ While the 
Contra
Costa Times 
said it was 
‘The best opening 10 pages
I've read this year...reads like a good martini tastes: icy cold,
with flecks of terror where the ice chips should be.
’

Not a bad start for a man who didn’t begin to
write professionally until he was in his forties.

Chandler followed 
Cold
Heart
 with 
Night Terror
, a psychological
thriller about a woman who has lost her only son and believes she
may be losing her mind as well. Like all his novels the book is
peopled by characters who might be your next door neighbor. Or they
might be escapees from a boobie hatch. The
 Denver
Post
 said the novel 
‘...plays on the primal fears
that cause most adults to lose sleep.’

That’s an adequate description of all of
Chandler’s work.

The Darkening, 
his third book, is
a dark, apocalyptic thriller in which two very different
individuals must not only find each other but themselves as well
before discovering the path that will lead them to
salvation. 
Publisher’s Weekly, 
the industry
standard, said of the book that it was an 
"addictive...one
part Rapture drama, one part Lovecraftian horror story, one part
blood-soaked chase... a thrilling one-sit read."

Which brings us to 
In
Shadows, 
McGrew’s latest which the 
Chicago
Tribune 
called "...
a born-to-be-a-TV-series
story."

McGrew has the uncanny knack for touching
readers and frightening the bejeesus out of them at the same
time.