The Skull Ring (6 page)

"And Satan has come unto the world, the world that Satan owns, the one that he has stolen from God," the man said. "And Satan spread his wealth, spread his lust disguised as love, spread his greed disguised as need, spread his warfare disguised as righteousness. Satan stretched his fingers out across the world, touching every man, woman, and child."

The man pointed at the camera, at Julia, his voice softening. "Touching
you
."

Yeah, right. The Devil touched me in the HEAD. Thanks, mister. Now I have an excuse. Here I was, all ready to accept the blame for my little problem, and now you come along and give me the greatest out of all time. I'm only a victim. Of course. Why didn't I see it before now?

The preacher allowed a dramatic pause. "This world belongs to the devil. It's right there in the Book of Luke, set down by God's own hand. 'To you I will give all this power and glory,' the Devil says to Jesus, as they stood on the mountain overlooking the wonders of this world. 'For it's been given over to me to do with as I please.' The Lord could withstand the temptation, but you would snatch it right up, wouldn't you? You'd take it all and still want more.

"And I don't blame you," the wild-eyed man continued, wiping away the sweat that was collecting on his face from the Klieg lights and exertion. "I don't blame you for biting into the apple, into that red, shiny, sweet apple. I've tasted it myself, we
all
have. How can we resist?"

Julia almost clicked the screen off, but something about this televangelist's spiel fascinated her. His hair was slick and perfectly styled, swooped up in a grand swirl that would stand in a hurricane. The man's teeth sparkled, brighter than heavenly pearls, his jaw muscles contorted in the rapture of his delivery. She had no doubt of his utter sincerity.

"How can we resist?" he repeated, and the camera pulled back to reveal the man's outstretched arms, as if he were offering himself up for Christ's welcoming hug or the next UFO. "We are empty vessels, and unless we fill ourselves with the Lord, the devil will wash in”–the man arched his arms as if diving into a lake—"and drown us with sin, drown us with sorrow. He'll steal our breath with his false promises. He'll take us down and we won't even fight it. We’ll hug him right back and give him thanks."

The man paced back and forth in front of the plush purple curtain and floral arrangements that served as a stage setting. The Love Offering telephone number was emblazoned on a banner in great golden numerals.

"But the
Lord
will fight," said the man, voice lifting, fist shaking in the air. "The Lord will burn Satan's eyes out, the Lord will take our love and use it as a weapon, a mighty sword that will cleave down into the fire—" He made a slicing motion with his free hand "—and cut Satan's grasping fingers and silence that nasty tongue, the one that whispers such sweet lies to us. Lies of all the pleasures we can have, if we only turn our hearts from God."

Pause. Medium close-up. The man lowered his head in sad reverence. A perfectly scripted moment.

He pointed again. "Satan wants you," he said, almost a caricature of those patriotic Uncle Sam posters. "He
owns
you."

Julia pointed back, her fascination shifting to boredom. "No, he's only borrowing me."

She'd rather watch the Cardinals lose by six. The VCR must have jumped its memory, shut off and lost its programming. First the clock and now this. She'd have to call George Webster and have Walter check out the wiring.

Sure, blame it on mechanical failure, not operator error. Or operator insanity. Talk about God sending messages wrapped in ridiculous packaging.

She clicked the set off, the sound dying, the televangelist's face sinking rapidly to black. After checking the front-door lock, she went to the bathroom and took a shower. She managed to shampoo and rinse without once looking outside the shower stall. No Creeps here, no Anthony Perkins wannabes, no peepholes carved in the walls, nothing but the sweat of mist on the tiles.

Before leaving the bathroom, she glanced at the figure in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. The steamy glass almost disguised the two long scars than ran up her belly and just under the swells of her breasts. Aside from the scars, she was not too bad for an old-timer of twenty-seven. Mitchell certainly found her worthy.

She went to bed and read some Jefferson Spence and was carried away to a land where the protagonists always drew upon inner reserves to overcome evil obstacles. The clock was still behaving itself, so she set it to wake her early. As she turned off the bedside light, she went over a checklist in her head.

Doors locked. Windows locked. Curtains pulled closed. Mace in the living room. Baseball bat under the bed, the commemorative Louisville Slugger her adoptive parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday.

All set.

Nothing but darkness and the quiet settling of the house. The leaves flapped a little on the trees outside, one of them occasionally brushing against the window screen. The neighbors had cut the music. They were pretty considerate about that, except during their weekend parties.

She lay in the dark thinking of the morning's episode of paranoia, the wooden blocks, the session with Dr. Forrest, the Satanic murder, Rick. Dr. Forrest. Something during the hypnosis. A memory, crawling from its slumber, fingers reaching from the damp murk of the cellar. Clawing its way out.

The bad people, around her, touching and hurting her.

No.

That memory was for Dr. Forrest's office, where it could be bound by walls. Not here, not in Julia's house, where it could slither out of her ears and under the bed to lie in the beggar's velvet and wait. Wait for just that right moment when Julia was asleep, tangled in the sheets of nightmare. Then it would grab her ankle, open its slathering jaws and—

She sat up and flicked on the bedside lamp.

The digital clock moved on, counted its way from the past or toward the future, however you wanted to look at it. Julia watched it for a while, and then picked up her book. Julia read until after midnight. By that time she was thoroughly irritated with Spence's too-perfect heroine and his libertarian worldview, not to mention the obligatory dog chuffing here and there among the pages and occasionally bloated, pompous prose. But the book had helped her forget her troubles. Spence was reliable for that, as solid as a dictionary.

She tried the pillow again.

Not so bad this time. She was almost ready to try the dark, but decided to sleep with the light on. Just once more wouldn't hurt.

She thought of the tape, tried to remember setting the VCR. She
could
remember. She could see herself punching the buttons, Channel 27. And she'd gotten the hair-oiled preacher from hell.

Oh, well. Everybody made mistakes.

Her thoughts spilled into nonsense, Rick's face, the lake at the club where she'd met Mitchell, her dead adoptive parents, a teacher she'd had in the sixth grade who had worn green suspenders, Mickey Mouse, images skipping by faster and faster on the preview screen of dreams.

She was nearly asleep when she heard a crack outside the window. The sound of a damp stick breaking.

She held her breath, kept her cheek against the pillow. Listened. Listened.

A scrabbling sound on the outside wall. How close was the baseball bat?

It's nothing, Julia. Probably the neighbor's boxer, leaving you a stinky present for tomorrow. Or a raccoon. You live right by the WOODS. Remember wildlife?

A swashing across the window screen. The boxer couldn't reach six feet off the ground.

It's a Creep.

Should she pretend that she hadn't noticed, turn off the light as if preparing to sleep? In the darkness, she could reach the bat unobserved. She could roll to her feet and wait by the window for the Creep to come through. Then—

What?
Whammo
, like a steroid-stoked Mark McGwire in his prime feasting on a rookie pitcher's fastball?

No. She could call the cops.

The cops.

First cop: "You see anything?"

Second cop (playing his flashlight beam on the ground outside the window): "Hmm. Looks like some kind of animal tracks."

First cop: "What kind of tracks?"

Second cop: "Damn. I just stepped in dog crap."

Sometimes a cigar was just a cigar.

Sometimes noises were only noises.

She reached out, switched off the light without looking at the window.

Swash
against the screen.

She couldn't resist looking.

Eyes.

A scarce glint of fire on them from the distant streetlight, weak between the curtains.

But
eyes
.

And a face behind them?

She eased one hand off the bed, tensing, ready to scream, to reach for the Louisville Slugger, the phone, anything.

The eyes were gone.

She lay in her own sweat, trying to convince herself that she'd imagined the eyes, that she was safe as milk. Dr. Forrest warned her about letting her fantasy world intrude on reality. Dr. Forrest wasn't going to like hearing about nonexistent eyes at her bedroom window.

The wooden blocks had been real. But, if she closed her eyes, she could picture herself selecting them off the toy rack, paying the cashier, taking them home and arranging the letters on her table. Then forgetting so she could scare herself later.

That sounded crazy, multiple-personality loopy, and she was not ever going to be crazy. Dr. Forrest wouldn't let her. Better to pretend that the blocks had never existed. No Creep played tricks on her except the one inside her head.

Julia would leave that part out of the journal she would start in the morning. And if she didn't want to imagine eyes at her window, the best thing was to shut her own eyes and watch the imaginary silent movies on the backs of her eyelids.

For a moment, she longed for Mitchell’s presence in the bed beside her.
Better the devil you know.

She lulled herself into a shallow, exhausted sleep by the second reel.

CHAPTER SIX

"
How
many did you say?" Julia asked.

The manager of the animal shelter took a draw on his cigarette, exhaled, and made a futile attempt to brush cat fur from his sweater. "About thirty or so. Might not seem like much, but if you're the pet owner . . . "

Thirty dogs and cats reported missing in the last two weeks. The leathery old man who'd walked her through the shelter and let her take pictures with her digital camera leaned against the fence, flicking his ash to the gravel. Five dogs pressed their noses against the chain links, only one wagging its tail. The rest looked like lifers, fur dull, ears drooping from the boredom of chronic confinement.

"We usually get about three reports a week," the manager said, his voice rough from half a century of smoke. "Most of them are killed by cars, of course. Some just plumb run off, but a dog or a cat is a lot smarter than you think. But, just lately, a hell of a lot of them been lost, if you'll pardon my French."

"I don't speak French," Julia said. "That's a hell of a language."

The man laughed, coughed.

Julia wrote some notes on her pad. "Has this ever happened before?"

"Not since I been here, ten years," he said. "I'd just as soon you leave that part out of the story. The people who did our stories before focused on what important work we do, how much we rely on donations, that sort of thing."

"A warm and fuzzy piece?"

"Yeah." He knocked the fire from his cigarette butt, stomped it out, and put the butt in the pocket of his coveralls. The strong smell of animal waste rose with the shifting of the wind. The man didn't seem to notice. "We got enough problems here, as you can probably imagine."

"Let me guess. The county funds only a tiny portion of your operation, but they impose all kinds of regulations. Not to mention all the state laws you have to follow. Then there are the outbreaks of parvo and feline leukemia and mange and fleas and heartworms. And the only thing you get out of it is, every once in a while, somebody comes by and adopts one of these guys."

She reached her fingers through the fence and rubbed the nose of the nearest dog. It licked her fingers and gazed at her with morose, questioning eyes. She looked away before the guilt could finish its journey from her heart to her brain.

"That's about the size of it," the man said. "A lot of people don't give a second thought to the way animals are treated. I just wish I could take them all home with me."

The manager's eyes misted a little. Julia averted her eyes and scanned the wedge of sparse woods, the river, and the Elkwood wastewater treatment plant on the neighboring property. The mountains rose in the distance, red and gold and orange with the changing of the leaves. The clouds were high and thin in the sky.

"Okay, warm and fuzzy it is," Julia said. "Just a question. Off the record, of course. Why do you think so many animals are missing?"

The man reached into his pocket as if for another cigarette, but brought his hand away empty. "I used to live down in Austin, Texas," he said. "One morning a few farmers on the outskirts woke up to find some of their animals dead. Dogs, cats, a few lambs, even a cow. Had their throats cut. The cops found a little mashed-out place in a mesquite thicket. Whoever done it had themselves a little party."