The devils touch, p.3
The Devil's Touch, page 3
Devil worshippers … here in Logandale? Monty just could not accept that. College kids up to something.
He rolled down the window to catch some air.
The air was hot and smelled bad.
"What the hell?" Monty muttered. It had been cool for the past few weeks; now hot air that smelled bad. Last week in October and getting summertime weather that smelled worse than the Hudson. Didn't make sense.
That's when Monty heard the shouting.
The hand that touched Father Le Moyne's face was sticky with blood. When Le Moyne recovered sufficiently from his initial fright to run inside his quarters and grab a flashlight, he could see why the man was bloody.
The man was naked, his body covered with strange-looking cuts and slashings and markings. The man was bloody from his mouth to his toenails. Or where his toenails were supposed to be. Father Le Moyne tried to avert his eyes from the man's groin. The man had been castrated. Among other hideous acts. Covering the tortured body with his jacket, Father Le Moyne told him, "Lie still. I'll get help."
He ran back inside and jerked up the phone. The phone was dead. But it had been all right an hour before. "Damn!" the priest said. He ran out the side door of his quarters and toward the street.
The church was located on the edge of town, the nearest neighbor a full block away. The gas station across the street was closed. Le Moyne saw the lights of an approaching vehicle. He ran toward the street, waving his arms and shouting.
Monty slammed on his brakes and jumped out of the car. "Steady now, Father. What's the matter?"
Pulling the chief toward the church, the priest explained as best he could. Monty could not believe what the priest was saying. In New York, yeah, it would not even make the pages of the worst rag in town. It seemed to the rest of the nation—Monty had been told, many times—the people living and working in the Big Apple seemed more concerned about the rights of street slime than in the rights of the citizen. That wasn't true. But just try explaining that to a tourist with a busted head, minus his watch, ring, and wallet. And the punks that mugged him back out on the streets before the tourist is out of the emergency room.
Maybe there was some truth in it, Monty finally admitted privately.
The priest knew his story sounded far-fetched. He held out his hands to the cop. Monty looked at the dark blood and quickened his step.
"There!" Le Moyne pointed to the side of the church.
The ground was sticky with blood. The jacket the priest had used to cover the man was there, blood soaked. But the man was gone.
The Beasts feasted that evening. They tore the intestines from the tortured man's belly and ate them while steam rose from the man's open stomach. The Beasts ripped flesh from bone and devoured the sweet meat. They cracked open bone and sucked the marrow from it. One Beast contented herself with eating the flesh from the man's head, peeling the head like an orange, popping the eyeballs into her mouth like grapes. Then she ate the brain.
The few bones that were left were gathered and taken deep underground, through a hole behind the Catholic church. The hole had at one time been a well. It now connected with an elaborate labyrinth of underground tunnels. The tunnels crisscrossed under the entire town of Logandale, with exits under all church basements, the city hall, the police station, the sheriffs department substation, the public schools, many homes, and into the town's sewage system.
The digging and reenforcing of the tunnels had begun years before, back in 1948. For when one coven falls, as happened that year, in another part of the country, it is written in The Book that another must spring forth so the number will remain constant. The coven in Logandale was one of the oldest in the Northeast, and one of the largest. The coven in Logandale was almost ready to begin its full possession of the town. It was down to a matter of hours.
THREE
Father Daniel Le Moyne sat in Chief Draper's small office. He went over his story again … and again. Monty could not break the priest's version. Not that he wanted to, or expected to, for he believed the priest had seen exactly what he described.
"Do you want to go over it again, Monty?" the priest asked patiently.
"That won't be necessary, Father. I believe you saw a man. Hell, here's your bloody jacket. The ground was covered with blood. I have samples to send off to the lab. But what happened to the man?"
Father Le Moyne shrugged, shrugged as eloquently as only a Frenchman can; even a third generation American of French heritage.
"Father, let me ask you a question you—well, may think odd."
The priest waited.
Monty said, "I don't know how to put this except to just jump right in. But bear in mind I fully realize this is not a question you would expect to hear from a trained cop. Have you felt—evil in this town? I mean, especially over the past few weeks?"
Father Le Moyne lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He was thoughtful for a long moment, his eyes hooded with caution. Finally, he said, "Yes. I have."
The chief of police seemed to relax. "Care to elaborate, Father?"
"Are you asking if there is such a thing as varying degrees of evil?" The priest smiled.
"I was raised in the church, Father." Monty's response was dryly spoken.
"Your question about evil concerns the man I found this evening, correct?"
"Yes."
"The poor man had strange, bizarre markings cut into his flesh, Chief Draper."
Strange and bizarre, Monty thought. Those words keep cropping up. First from Noah, now from the priest. "Describe them, Father. We only touched on that."
The priest closed his eyes. When he spoke, his words were slow as he brought back the tortured man's condition. "Stars, moons, upside down crosses. Other symbols I—am not that familiar with. Some I have never seen at all. It looked as though the man had been tortured for several days. Some of the cuttings appeared to be crusted over; others were fresh. There were numbers cut into the poor man's flesh. Sixes and nines. 1 believe part of his tongue had been cut out. His words were so slurred. And as I told you previously, he had been castrated."
Le Moyne opened his eyes. Monty thought them to contain a haunting expression.
"What did the symbols mean to you, Father?"
Did the priest shudder? Monty thought so. "I— would rather not venture an opinion at this time, Chief. If you don't mind."
He knows, Monty thought. Knows more than he is telling me. Without warning, Monty opened the center drawer of his desk and removed the prints of Noah's dog. He flipped them to the priest. Father Le Moyne took one look and covered his mouth in shock.
"What's the matter, Father?"
"That's obvious, isn't it? The poor animal. That's Noah's dog, Victor."
"I wasn't aware you two knew each other."
"The dog or Noah?" Le Moyne asked, with a sense of humor that surprised Monty.
"Go on, Father. But I am glad to see you have a sense of humor. It helps in times like these."
"Quite true," the priest responded, lighting another cigarette from the smoked-down butt of his first. "I have been in Logandale for a great many years, Monty, more than twenty-five. I know practically everyone within a ten mile radius of the town: Protestant, Catholic, Jew. I came here when I was barely thirty years of age. Been here ever since.
"You see, Monty, I am one of the few people who remember the real Noah Crisp. The man who could have been a truly great author. But that was before— well, his breakdown, to put it as kindly as possible."
This was something Monty had never heard. "I always thought Noah was—well, just a little on the strange side." That word again. Strange.
"No. That isn't a fair or accurate portrayal of the real man. Noah was brilliant when I first met him. A deeply religious man, and, I think, perhaps on the edge of great literary success. Then one night—no, it was early evening—he came to me with this idea for a manuscript. He was going to write a book about the occult. The Devil. A fiction book. In it, he was going to kill Satan.
"I'm not saying there haven't been writers who wrote of killing Satan, but 1 can't recall ever reading one of their books. You see, Monty, Satan, like God, is immortal—no human can kill either. I told Noah that; begged him not to write the manuscript. Warned him of the danger of his project. He waved my objections aside. Then Noah became obsessed with his work. He stopped coming to Mass; broke all ties with God. He practically barricaded himself in his house—his parents were killed when he was just a little boy—and Noah seldom came out of the house during this period of— Devil research. He conducted all sorts of Black Masses and the calling out of witches and warlocks. He conducted lone seances. He became quite the expert on Satan."
The priest's gentle features hardened for a moment. "Then—one night, just after midnight, I believe it was, my phone rang. To this day I do not know who the caller was, but it was about Noah. Noah was running around on his property, stark naked, shouting that he had seen the face of Satan; that he had talked with the Dark One. It is written, Monty, by men much more versed in the subject than I, that if one sees the face of the Prince of Darkness, that person dies. Noah was very lucky—in a manner of speaking. He's alive. But he was a broken man, mentally and physically. He spent two years in a mental institution, another five years in deep analysis. Noah will never write another worthwhile book—about anything."
Monty was silent for a moment, mentally digesting all the priest had said. "You believe he saw the devil?"
"I—believe he saw something. Yes. Yes, I believe Noah Crisp met with the Dark One."
"Then you really, truly believe in the supernatural?"
"Yes, Monty. I do."
"You really believe the devil has—followers, covens, if you will; people who are really, actually in touch with the forces of the—well, beyond?"
"With all my heart and faith."
"Jesus!" Monty muttered. "Father Le Moyne, have you ever performed or been a witness to an exorcism?"
Without hesitation, the priest said, "Yes. To both your questions."
"Here in Logandale?"
The priest struggled with that for a moment. "I—can't answer that, Monty. I'm sorry."
The cop surfaced in Monty, and he knew the priest had performed the rite of exorcism in Logandale. But out of respect for the man—and, he would readily admit, fear stemming from his early teachings in the church—he would not press the man for an answer. Monty leaned back in his swivel chair. "So my feelings that something—evil was hovering over this town were correct?"
"Yes."
"Has it, in your opinion, become stronger during the past few weeks?"
The priest met the cop's eyes. "Yes," he said softly. "Quite a bit, I would say."
The weekend dawned gloriously, with the touch of approaching winter cooling the morning air. It was a morning for woolen skirts and shirts; the type of fall morning that makes a hearty breakfast more appealing to the palate. Steam colored the air white at the expulsion of breath. Kids jumped and ran and played in the coolness of this Saturday morning in upstate New York. People busied themselves raking up the multicolored leaves that fell in profusion, painting the landscape a joyous color of bronze and gold and green and red.
But for most of the people in Logandale, the acts were superficial, disguising the evil that lay bubbling just under the human surface. The evil that blanketed the area would soon burst forth, showering all who came close with its stinking pus of depravity.
And … it was also the Saturday morning that Judith Mayberry found young Marie Fowler hanging upside down in the apple grove behind her house. Hanging by her ankles. Marie was naked. Or perhaps it would be better to say what was left of Marie who was naked. Certain parts of her anatomy had been quite crudely hacked off. Definitely not the work of a skilled surgeon.
Judith, when she recovered from her fainting, thought she'd better call the police. She was not conscious of eyes watching her movements from the homes around her. Eyes that contained evil in its blackest form. Judith was on her way to the house when she heard the low growl behind her. Judith Mayberry turned around for the last time—in her human form—and froze rock-still in shock.
She dropped the basket of late-blooming wild flowers she had just picked to decorate her kitchen table.
She opened her mouth to shriek out her fright when a pawlike hand clamped around her left ankle and jerked. Another pawlike hand dropped over her mouth, stilling her yet unleashed howl of terror. She was dragged to a thicket that ran on the north side of the orchard and pulled down into the earth through a hole she never knew existed. When Judith came to her senses she was naked and cold and wished she were dead.
She soon would be. Sort of.
Judith was thirty-six years old, and while no one would ever call her beautiful, she was attractive, with long legs and full breasts. The attractive part of her was about to undergo a drastic metamorphosis. She sat on the cold rocky floor of the cave, or tunnel, or whatever the hell it was—she wasn't certain—and looked at the Beasts who sat squatting, looking at her.
She had never seen such horrible-looking creatures in all her life. Not even in the movies.
An old Beast—one might call him a silver-back—grunted a command. Two younger Beasts seized Judith and forced her to a knees-and-hands position, her buttocks elevated.
The old silver-back then mounted her.
Judith began screaming out her pain and outrage.
The old Beast bit her on the neck several times as he mated with her.
When the sex act was over, Judith was allowed to crawl into a corner of the huge cave room and huddle in pain and shock. After only a very short time, Judith wondered why she was suddenly getting warmer. She looked at the back of her hands. Thick coarse hair was sprouting, not just on the back of her hands but all over her body.
Her face, especially her jaw, was beginning to ache. Her teeth felt odd to her. She ran her tongue over her teeth and found they were fanged. And now, as the rapid change spread over her entire body, it did not seem odd to her. Her jaw swelled to accommodate the new growth of teeth.
Several of the Beasts were talking, and Judith found she could understand them. She crawled over to them and they welcomed her.
She was one with them.
She tossed her head, glad of her new strength and body. One earring gleamed dully in the gloom of the cave room, as it remained pierced in place.
All that was left of the woman once known as Judith Mayberry.
"Sam?" Nydia called to him on this glorious Saturday morning.
The two of them were working out in the yard; more specifically, working by the fence that separated their property from a field to the northeast. Sam straightened from his work to look at his wife.
She stood very still, her face suddenly pale. She was pointing toward the old orchard.
Sam looked. He could see nothing. "Nydia?"
"I—saw something move over there." She again pointed her finger. "Then it just disappeared into the ground, like the earth swallowed it."
Sam knew Nydia was not the type to panic. They had both been through too much horror for that. And if she said she saw something, she saw it, and that was it.
"Let's go take a look," Sam said.
"No," she replied. She put out a hand to stop him. "Sam—it's them." Her eyes were now wide and frightened.
"Them?"
"The Beasts, Sam. They're back. They're here. They found us, Sam."
"Nydia—" He opened his mouth to calm her.
"I know what I saw, Sam."
He believed her. He walked to her, took her hand, and they started toward the house. "Stay with Little Sam. You have your pistol; you know how to use it."
There was no fear in the tall young man. He had faced the Beasts before. He had faced almost everything Satan could hurl at him in black fury. And he had been victorious. While it was something he hoped he would never have to do again, if it had to be, then so be it.
In his heart, Sam had always known he would be called upon to fight again.
Sam unlocked his gun cabinet. Chief of Police Draper had visited the Balon house several times, enjoying the young man's company for one thing, but the main reason for the visits was that the young man fascinated Monty. He had no past that police computers could punch up, other than the most mundane. And Monty Draper, with a cop's instinct, knew there was much more to Sam Balon.
Chief of Police Draper always shook his head and clucked his tongue at the sight of Sam's arsenal. He was like any good liberal New Yorker who had grown up under the most asinine of gun control laws: The Sullivan Act. While Sam displayed no illegal weapons (those were carefully hidden), the weapons visible were awesome. Of course a cap pistol is frightening to many screaming liberals.
