They (40 page)

“Vince,” Mike said, his eyes closing in frustration. “We’ve gone over this time and time again and—”

“Wait a minute, just hear me out here,” Vince said. He regarded the two men calmly. “I’m not the Anti-Christ. I’ve accepted that. But suppose this other fictional group I’m talking about really
thinks
I am. For whatever…strange reason they might have.”

“Why would they think this?” Mike asked.

Vince didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know.”

“That’s the stupidest reason for them wanting to have you killed,” Mike reiterated.

“But let’s suppose it’s true. Suspend your disbelief for a moment. Use your imagination. Apocalyptic Christian sect splits into two opposing groups. One sect worships the devil. The other remains Christian. Their sole purpose is to bring about the Anti-Christ to usher in Armageddon. They want to fulfill the prophesies in the Book of Revelations. I think it’s insane, and so do you. These guys don’t, though. They’re dead serious about it. Okay, still using your imagination? Great. Let’s pretend my mother and your mother,” he looked at Frank as he said this, “are really into this group, for whatever reasons they may have. They’re stoned, they’re really fucked up, whatever. My mom gets knocked up and has me. I don’t know who my father is, but I know he’s not the guy that I remember growing up with. I know my mother never talked about him. Now, still in make-believe land? Great.” He stepped toward them, really absorbed in the narrative now. “Let’s say with a combination of all the drugs and the mysticism and all that went on back then, that my mom is brainwashed into believing I may be the Anti-Christ. In reality, she probably fucked some guy at a love-in and got knocked up, had me, joined this group around the same time. She’s young, she’s confused, she’s lonely, and they provide all the support and comfort she needs at the time. She also meets a man she falls in love with. He’s a member of this cult. She joins up with them right when they make this split and she’s so happy that they accept her, and the drugs are just blowing her mind that she gets really sucked into their spiritual beliefs. She buys the crap they’re pushing. You still following me?”

Mike and Frank nodded. Frank said, “Yeah, I can buy that. Keep going.”

Vince was on a roll. “Okay, let’s pretend they convince my mother that I really
am
the Anti-Christ. The key word is they
convince
her. Maybe they brainwashed her into believing that she really fucked the devil or something. Maybe they were all tripping the night she got knocked up and they used this to their advantage. I don’t know. What’s important is this: they
need
their Anti-Christ in order to feed on their own religious hysteria and support their theology. They need this…this
figurehead
to
legitimize
their creed. The Christian side of them knows this, but they aren’t aware of me. They may know that the devil side of the sect has, quote unquote, conjured up the Anti-Christ, but they don’t know who he is or where he’s living. Remember, this is a war for them, even though they’re really fighting for the same thing. They’re still playing it out as if one side or the other is going to win. So they convince my mother I’m it, I’m the son of the devil, I’m the one that’s going to lead them to victory and glory and they’re going to rule the world. They bring me to a bunch of rituals and pray to the devil and all that other happy horseshit that I’m now starting to remember. And they brought Frank and some of the other kids to the ceremonies, too, simply because they were still too stupid and too caught up in the drug scene to know any better.”

Mike was listening to the narrative with interest. Frank was nodding along, his features impassive as Vince took him down memory lane.

“So things proceed along as fine as can be. Oh, they need to spread a little mayhem every now and then. Perform some satanic rituals, kidnap and sacrifice a few runaway kids, that sort of thing. They’re Satanists, remember, and even though we think they’re completely bugfuck, they
believe
this horseshit. They really believe they’re performing some divine rituals when they do this stuff. So the years pass, and we move into this nice suburban home, and my mom and who I think is my dad try to protect me and shield me from the world as any good normal parent would do. Mom is pretty much zoned out because maybe her husband keeps her that way. But she wises up somehow. She gets off the drugs, and within a year or two she begins to wise up even more. She begins to think that maybe this crap she’s been led to believe is nothing
but
crap. Maybe she begins to look at me in a different light. After all, I’m just a normal, eight or nine-year-old boy. I don’t have horns growing out of my head, I don’t have a tail, I don’t smell like brimstone or have fangs. My mother has inspected every inch of my body from the time I was a baby and she knows I don’t bear the mark of the beast.” He sniggered. “And forget about that shit about the numbers being on my head. I was as bald as Telly Savalas when I was born. She would have been able to see it.

“The point is that she wises up. She sees them for what they are. Reli
gious fanatics. And during her brief period of rationality, she plans her escape and makes good on it. She takes me in the dead of night, when dad is out of town, and whisks me away. I have vague memories of traveling with her through Arizona, New Mexico, maybe Texas. We were on the road for a long time. Next thing I know, we’re in New York. We move to Buffalo. Mom finds us a small motel room and a few days later she tells me we’re changing our names. She asks me what I want to be called. I’d always hated my name so it was no wonder I almost forgotten about it until you called me that day. I picked Vince as my new name. So my mom had our names changed. I’m guessing that she got us genuine fake identifications, with new birth certificates. Whatever it was she did, it worked for twenty-five years. We lived under our new names, moved to Toronto, mom got really religious, and that was all I knew from then on. We came to Lititz in 1983, when I was sixteen turning seventeen. By then I’d almost forgotten about my early life.

“The point is this.” Vince hunkered down, sitting in a chair. “During this time the group, the Children, they were freaking out. They probably embarked on this huge search for me, but mom was so good at changing our identities, she eluded them for twenty-five years.”

“One would think that if there really were a devil, he never would have allowed you or anybody else to escape the cult,” Frank said. “I can dig what you’re saying. They’re religious nuts. They’re not working with reality. They may be great at skip tracing and eventually tracking people down and getting rid of them, but they never would have been able to anticipate you and your mom’s defection.”

“Exactly! They’re just people. They’re not supernatural bogeymen. But regardless, they’re as fanatical about the devil as Jerry Falwell is about God. They’re also as fanatical as this other group is. This group I’m alluding to, the one that tried killing us this morning and tried to kill me Sunday afternoon. Sometime during the period The Children of the Night was looking for me, this other group found out about me. It is this group, which I am using fictitiously now, which is trying to kill me. Maybe they started off as a genuine church group. Maybe they were already comprised of fringe members of the Christian far right. Who knows? What matters is they somehow found out about not only me, but also The Children of the Night. Maybe it was an ex-member.”

Mike spoke up. “It could be possible. There have been defectors, although most of them usually die in so-called accidents, or disappear.”

Frank rubbed his chin. “Let’s suppose somebody
does
defect though. It’s possible they could have remained hidden very much the way Maggie did. Maybe they started this other church and their sole purpose was finding you,” he nodded at Vince, “and, once finding you, killing you.”

“See?” Vince exclaimed. “How many times do I have to spell things out before you start believing me?”

“Granted, it’s a good theory,” Mike said. Now Mike was pacing the room. He went to the window and peeked out between the blinds. He was silent for a moment. “It’s possible. The more I think about it, the more plausible it sounds.”

Frank appeared to be accepting the theory more, too. “Whoever this group is, they wouldn’t have to be very big. It could be as little as half a dozen members.”

“And they wouldn’t necessarily have to have been together for very long,” Vince said. “Just long enough for whoever knew enough about The Children to preach Children theology to his new congregation, and come up with some kind of tactical plan in finding me.”

“Do you think it’s possible that if this
is
true, that this renegade member might be a member of both sides?” Frank asked Mike. “You know, a member of The Children of the Night and a secret member of this other group?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said, shaking his head. “I find that hard to believe, but anything’s possible.”

They were silent for a moment, Mike returning to the other bed. Frank remained reclining against his bed, Vince in his chair. Finally, Mike broke the silence. “Let’s see what the news says.” He reached for the television remote control and turned it on.

He flipped through the channels. It was closing in on ten p.m., and they had to endure another ten minutes of
Law and Order
before the local news came on. When the broadcast started, the shoot-out in Lititz was one of the top stories.

They watched spell-bounded as the facts were revealed. There were four dead, with another—Reverend Powell—listed in critical condition. Only one of the dead had been positively identified—Lititz Borough patrolman Tom Hoffman. Vince felt a stab of guilt as he learned this, then quickly fought to push the emotion down. Dozens of people had witnessed the gunfight, which erupted shortly before the lunchtime rush. Three of the gunmen had gotten away and were being sought. Police sketches came across the screen and Vince fought the urge to laugh. Frank
did
laugh. “What a joke! How the fuck do they expect to find people with sketches like that?”

The sketches in question were rendered with stiff brushstrokes of heavy pencil. Even though the caricatures didn’t resemble any of them remotely, Vince was able to pick out who was supposed to be who. Frank was easy to pick out—his sketch showed a longhaired man with a puffy face and squinty eyes and a stubbled beard. Good thing they’d all gotten haircuts. As far as a puffy face went, Frank never had one to begin with. So much for witness descriptions.

Mike and Vince’s sketches were crude, and if presented side by side with their actual photographs, one would be hard pressed to find any resemblances. The one Vince guessed represented Mike’s depicted a guy with less hair than Mike really had, also with squinty eyes. Vince’s own sketch revealed a guy that looked like Timothy McVeigh; stony-faced, cold, emotionless.

The broadcaster finished by saying that the State Police and the FBI had been brought into the case and that a manhunt was now underway. And, of course, anybody seeing anybody resembling the sketches was urged to call a special hotline that had been set up.

Mike turned to Vince and Frank. “Good thing we parked our first rental car in a public parking garage. Let’s leave it there. We’ll drive the other one to Pittsburgh and turn it in and catch the first plane we can get tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me,” Frank said.

“You think that’ll be enough to throw them off?” Vince asked.

“You don’t see them breaking down the doors to get to us now, do you?”

“No.” That wasn’t the point, though. There was still the possibility the authorities would eventually catch up with them.

“We’ll see what’s in the paper tomorrow,” Mike said. “And check out the news on the major networks. That should give us some clue as to how the investigation is progressing. Maybe they’ll ID the other guys by then. For now, I think we should get some sleep.”

That was easier said than done. They shed their clothes for T-shirts and boxers, and they all took turns in the shower. They flipped a quarter for the sole bed and Mike won. Vince lay down beside Frank in one of the beds, facing the window, thinking about all that had happened and wondering when the nightmare was going to end.

EVERYTHING WENT SMOOTHLY the following morning, Friday. After waking up, they washed up, brushed their teeth, dressed into the suits they’d purchased the day before, packed their things, and exited the room. Mike turned the TV on while they changed, hoping for more news on the shoot-out but there was nothing else forthcoming. They meandered downstairs to check out. Mike signed the bill and they were off.

Vince was nervous as they headed through the hotel’s parking garage to the vehicle Mike and Frank secured yesterday. He kept expecting federal agents to pop out from behind cars and black SUV’s brandishing weapons yelling, “
Freeze! You’re under arrest!
” Or, worse, another assassin popping out from behind a parked car and letting loose with more automatic gunfire.

Of course they were armed again, but Vince didn’t feel any safer. Mike unlocked the car—an Audi—and they stowed their luggage in the trunk and Vince slid into the front seat. Mike drove. Vince watched to see if they were being followed as they exited the garage and headed up Broad Street. “We aren’t being followed,” Frank said fifteen minutes later as Mike headed west out of the city limits.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know. I’ve been on alert like this for a year now. I’d know if we were being followed.”

Vince almost responded with,
if you’re so good at telling if we’re being followed, how come you didn’t know we were followed to the Family Cupboard yesterday?
That only would have sparked a fight and he didn’t want to fight with Frank.

They made the drive to Pittsburgh in silence. Vince fiddled with the radio, then stopped at a rock station playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Mike turned the air conditioner on, and Vince sat back and watched the scenery flash by.

It was a four-hour drive. Once they got to the Pittsburgh city limits, Mike pulled over to a gas station to fill up the car’s tank. Frank went into the station’s kiosk and emerged with bottled water, sodas, and a map. They consulted the map over their refreshments after the gas tank was filled up and ready to go. “Pittsburgh Airport looks to be a twenty minute drive,” Mike said. “Let’s go.”