Showdown Page 34

  “Didn’t need me? You are me,”Marsuvees said.

  “You mean my flesh?” Black jerked his head around and flashed a searing smile. He lifted his arm, bit deeply, and pulled a chunk of flesh from his hand like a wolf might pull the flesh from a fresh deer kill. He spit the hunk of meat at Marsuvees.

  “Have a bite.”

  Marsuvees sidestepped the flying flesh. The child in Billy had become part of Black. At this very moment, he wasn’t sure if Billy had suggested to Black that he bite his own arm, or if Black had done it on his own.

  He stepped up beside the character and stared ahead. Dusk was coming fast. By morning this would all be finished.

  “You’re sure you can do this?”Marsuvees said.

  “You’re insulting me?” Black asked.

  “No, I just want to know. We have a lot riding on it.”

  “We? I think you’re assuming too much.”

  “Without me, you have nothing. I’ve made sure of that. Only I have the knowledge required to take this further. And tonight I will extend my own power by having Billy write several far-reaching statements into the books.”

  Black pulled a book from his pocket and lifted it up. “You mean the books like this one?”

  He had one of the blank books?

  Black grunted, replaced the book in his pocket, and faced the town.

  Marsuvees would take care of the book later. The last thing he needed was this monstrosity running around with a book in his possession.

  “When we’re finished here, we’ll hand the monks in the monastery the same fate and start over,”Marsuvees said. “Only this time it won’t be a small town sitting conveniently at the bottom of the mountain.”

  “It’s been a real drag working with you,” Black said. Billy talking. “I have to be honest, although I had some respect for you in the beginning, I’ve come to hate you. Maybe it was the mask you insisted on wearing. Maybe it’s the fact that you look like . . .” Black faced him, eyeball to eyeball, not a foot away. “Black.”

  “Just remember who the real flesh is around here,”Marsuvees said.

  “I’m not sure I like real flesh.” There was a glint in his eyes. If Marsuvees didn’t know Billy’s dependence on him better, he might suspect a foolish streak of murder in there.

  Black sniffed. “Do I smell like that?”

  “You smell like the sewer that you came . . .”

  Black’s right hand shot forward. Marsuvees felt the intense pressure before he felt the pain. He looked down, stunned.

  Billy’s character had thrust his hand through his midsection. The man’s black-sleeved arm was buried up to the elbow in Marsuvees’ gut.

  Pain overtook him like a tsunami. He felt his body start to fold over the arm and it occurred to him that Black had shoved his hand right through his spine. It had to be broken.

  Billy had knifed him with Black’s arm! Or Black had done it on his own. Marsuvees tried to speak, but his facial nerves were paralyzed, and his head felt like it might explode. He could hear a loud thumping and then splashing. Blood, from the exit wound.

  Black jerked his arm free.

  Marsuvees buckled. He heard a chuckle.

  Then his world went black.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  THE MONASTERY

  Tuesday morning

  GASPING FOR breath from the climb, Raul banged on David’s door and then barged in without waiting for a response.

  The rising sunlight burst through the window across the room. David lay on the bed, raising to his elbows, eyes wide and lost. Raul’s banging had obviously aroused him from deep slumber.

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but I have news.”

  David swung his legs to the floor. “News? Well, tell me.”

  Raul hesitated. How could he say—

  “Tell me!”

  “I’m afraid it’s not so—”

  “Just tell me, man!”

  Raul paused, terrified to speak. “Samuel has been taken. Or should I say the character that Samuel has written has been taken.”

  “Taken? What do you mean, taken?”

  “They have him. I . . . I don’t know how. I can’t seem to find Samuel in the—”

  “Have they hurt him?” David stood.

  Raul stepped back. “They used force. They had to restrain him.”

  David’s face washed white with shock.“My . . . my boy would never resist them!” He swallowed. “Did . . . did they hurt him?”

  “Pardon me for saying, but he wasn’t—”

  “He’s my son! Samuel didn’t write a character. It’s him down there!”

  Raul stared at the director, aghast. Samuel himself had gone down? “How could . . .”

  “It was the only way! He had to go himself. Have they hurt him?” David demanded.

  David’s erratic behavior earlier now made perfect sense. Raul wanted to fall down and beg David to end this madness, to save his son, to yank Billy from his tunnels and punish him so that he would never forget. But he knew they were past all that.

  So, instead he nodded. Once.

  For a moment David stood like stone. His face flushed and he began to quiver. His eyes glassed with tears that dripped straight down his cheeks and to the floor.

  Then the father threw his hands to his face and wailed. “Oh, my son! Dear Father, have mercy on my son!”

  He stepped across the room, blind to his steps, smothering his face with large hands. “No, no, no!”

  Raul could hardly bear the sight.

  “Jesus, our blessed Savior, have mercy. My son! How could they hurt you? How . . .”

  He whirled to Raul, who jerked in fright. David’s face twisted into a furious snarl.

  “If they hurt a single hair on his body, I’ll kill them!” he roared. “You hear me, man? I’ll kill them all!”

  Raul settled to one knee, waiting for David to collect himself.

  David looked through the open door, hesitated, and then bolted past Raul into the outer hall.

  “David! You can’t . . .”

  He leaped to his feet and ran after David. He’s going down there! He’s going down to Paradise to rescue Samuel! He’d seen the look in those inflamed eyes—that desperate love of a father willing to cast his own head on the block for the sake of his son.

  But if Samuel couldn’t stop them, neither could David. For the first time since Raul had learned the truth about the books, he knew they had to trust their power or suffer even more harm. He was suddenly certain that if David ran into Paradise, they would kill him along with his son.

  The tail of David’s nightshirt disappeared into the stairwell.

  “David!”

  Raul flew down the stairs in threes, hand on the rail to keep from tumbling headlong into the stone walls. David was taking the stairs even faster. The slapping of his bare feet echoed up to Raul. Only once did he see David, and then only his heel.

  When Raul burst into the atrium, the large doors were already swinging closed.

  “David!”

  Raul ran for the doors, yanked them open, and sprinted into the canyon. His sandals slipped in the soft sand as he rounded the first corner. The canyon gaped, a dry riverbed littered with large stones. Now a full fifty yards ahead David sprinted, his arms and legs pumping like a world-class athlete.

  Surely he didn’t intend to run all the way down to Paradise. But wouldn’t Raul do the same? What kind of good sense could overcome blind passion for a son?

  On the other hand, if David was right about the books, interfering with them might be the undoing of them all! In trying to save his son, David might condemn him.

  Raul ran hard, panting through burning lungs, praying that David would come to his senses. There had to be a way, but it wouldn’t be up to a man like David, who had no power. Samuel was a strong boy. He had more power than the lot of them. Including Black. Samuel would find a way.

  Raul lost sight of David at the canyon’s mouth. If David stopped, it would be at the overlook.r />
  Falling more than running, Raul stumbled down to the overlook. He burst from the brush fifteen minutes later and doubled over, gasping. David knelt at the ledge, silhouetted against the overcast sky. The town of Paradise lay like charred sugar cubes two miles beyond him.

  “Sir.”

  Raul approached carefully. David faced the town and rocked back and forth on his knees, wind whipping at his thin cotton shirt. His body shook with sobs, Raul now saw.

  A lump rose into his throat. He knelt beside David and placed a gentle hand on his back. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling the words inadequate. Possibly even insensitive. But he said them anyway, over and over.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  PARADISE

  Tuesday morning

  JOHNNY AWOKE with the smell of onions and earth in his nostrils. At first he thought his mother had let him sleep late and was out in the kitchen preparing dinner, but then the image of four hundred crazies sitting in church pews filled his mind, and he jerked his head off the cellar’s dirt floor.

  His temples throbbed and he groaned. He rolled on his back and tried to focus on his dark surroundings. He’d put potatoes in the cellar for Steve on occasion—on the wood shelves lining the walls. Their roots grew like long white tentacles.

  “Pretty smart, eh?” Steve had said once when Johnny pointed them out. “They only grow toward the light. Like snakes trying to escape.” He’d chuckled and Johnny decided then that he didn’t like root cellars with hairy potatoes.

  A distant sound drifted into the cellar, something like a whistle at a soccer match.

  Johnny rolled toward the wall—the one made of wood with the crack near the top above ground level. He saw it now, tangled with a dozen roots reaching through. If he remembered right, the crazies had thrown him in here at night, but now daylight glowed through the small crack.

  The whistle came again. But it sounded more human this time—a high-pitched shriek, the kind made by placing a thumb and a forefinger in your mouth. Johnny never could whistle that way. Who could possibly be whistling out there?

  Samuel.

  The boy’s face filled his mind. That blond head and those blue eyes, smiling softly.

  The whistle came again, a little sharper now. But it wasn’t a whistle, was it? It didn’t have that piercing, harsh quality. Had more of a throat . . .

  Johnny caught his breath and snapped to a sitting position. A scream! It was a scream!

  The sound reached his ears again, only this time with a word.

  “Pleeeeeease!”

  It was Samuel’s voice. Johnny scrambled to his feet, ignoring the raging headache.

  “Samuel?” The name echoed around him. What were they doing to him?

  “Samuel!”

  He tore at the shelves, sweeping potatoes and onions onto the floor. He yanked the spud roots from the crack and pried his right eye to the thin opening.

  A large tin garbage can blocked half his view on the right. The alley lay vacant on his left. Fifty yards ahead tall evergreens bent in the wind under a gray sky.

  The morning air carried the sound to him again, and Johnny knew they were doing something to Samuel out on the front street. Something that made the small boy scream.

  He beat against the boards on both sides of the crack. The planks were rotted nearly clean through.

  Dirt drifted into his eyes. He brushed at it, and then in a fit of frustration he threw himself at the slit.

  With a crack the rotted board caved out and hot wind blasted into the cellar. Johnny jumped back, surprised that he’d broken the board.

  A sharp report chased by a shriek rode the wind. Johnny dove at the opening and pulled desperately at the rotting boards. They came away in clumps. He pulled four down and clambered though the opening into the alley.

  He jerked his head each way. The alley was empty. He edged along the back wall to the south corner of the saloon, dropped to his knees, and crept between Smither’s Saloon and the convenience store, trembling.

  Five yards from the end, he eased down on his belly and snaked along the ground. Then Johnny poked his head around the corner and looked out to where the blacktop split the town of Paradise in two.

  The whole town had gathered, right out there on the asphalt, kneeling in a large semicircle with their backs to Johnny. Claude Bowers and his son Peter were dressed in the same overalls they’d worn for a week. Paula was there, on the edge closest to Johnny. Crying. Katie knelt ten feet from Paula, glaring at her with contempt, draped in a weasel or bear or some other fur.

  Father Yordon knelt on the far side, his head hung low, his hands folded like he was giving a blessing for the gathering. The rest of the people knelt into the wind, facing Steve. The only missing character in this gathering was Black. No sign of Billy’s black-clad preacher.

  Steve Smither stood in the center of the circle with arms spread. He had a whip in his right hand, and he was gloating at something on the pavement.

  From his perspective hugging the dirt, Johnny couldn’t see over their heads to see what Steve was looking at. Very slowly, with quivering muscles, Johnny pushed himself to his knees.

  They’d stripped Samuel’s shirt off. He knelt with his head bowed to the black pavement, facing away from Steve. His shoulders and arms were bleeding. Long streaks of red and blue on his back.

  Johnny’s vision swam.

  Steve lunged forward with the whip. A black streak lashed through the air and cracked just above the boy’s back. A thin red gash opened on Samuel’s white skin, as if he were a painting and the artist had flipped a red brush over the canvas.

  The boy jerked without screaming. Then settled back to his knees. His soft sobs reached Johnny’s ears.

  Johnny collapsed face down. He started to push himself up and immediately thought better of it. What if they saw him? Would they beat him like they were beating Samuel? Would they strip him and whip him?

  Samuel’s quiet cry rose into the wind. But not a scream like before. And no crack of the whip. Johnny lifted his head.

  Samuel had struggled to his feet. The young boy stood with the wind at his back, his legs spread and slightly bent at the knees. He was calling out in a thin voice.

  “Father . . .”

  The words sliced into Johnny’s heart like a razor.

  “Father, please . . . please help me . . .”

  Johnny glanced at the mountains. The lookout jutted from the rocky face like a gray shoe far above them. Beyond it . . .

  “Father! Fatherrr! Please, Father! Save me!”

  Samuel was wailing now.

  The frail boy sucked at the air with a dreadful groaning sound and then shrieked again. “Don’t let me die! Don’t . . .” He was sobbing now, screaming between gasps. “Please, please, I’m just a boy . . .”

  Tears streamed from Johnny’s eyes. He began to groan softly, and he knew they might hear him, but he didn’t care anymore. He wanted to die. A thought forced its way into his mind.

  Why didn’t Samuel run?

  Samuel stood on the road at least five paces from Steve and the rest of them. The Starlight Theater’s remains hid the path leading to the mountain behind. The boy had a way of escape. He had to know that he could reach the theater and lose himself in the hills before the mob caught him.

  But Samuel did not run.

  He stood there and begged the empty sky to save him. In long weeping wails he cried to the wind until Johnny thought his heart would burst.

  The people knelt in their semicircle, unmoved. Steve still gloated, Yordon still bobbed his head. Only Paula wept—possibly for Samuel, possibly for herself.

  “Whip him, Stevie,” Katie said.

  The whip flashed. Samuel fell. His body smacked onto the asphalt like a slab of meat. The fall took the wind from him and he twisted in agony. Then his soft groans carried to Johnny again.

  “Father, please. Father, please!”

  Anguish. Such anguish.

/>   Johnny clenched his eyes and pushed himself back, keeping his belly low. He turned first to his right and then to his left, undecided where to go, only knowing that he had to get away.

  Away from where the people watched the boy rolling before them with mild interest, like chicken farmers watching another rooster go under the ax. Why do they flop like that, honey? Why? I don’t know, they all do.

  Then Johnny staggered to his feet, covered his ears against Samuel’s wails, and ran for the trees.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  THE MONASTERY

  Tuesday morning

  RAUL SAT on his haunches ten yards from the edge, rocking back and forth, a monk committed to a mantra. He’d watched David’s endless pacing along the lookout for an hour. In the beginning he’d attempted several approaches of consolation.

  “Samuel’s a strong boy,” he said, and David just wept harder, leaning against a lone tree whose roots had found purchase on the rock surface. “Trust God,” he said. “He gave us these books. Trust the books, David. In the end, love will prevail.” But David just whirled to him.

  “He’s my son! Every moment is the end!”

  Raul had changed tactics then. Never mind that a wrong turn now could wreak havoc throughout the earth; the pain of this one moment seemed to supersede any such risk.

  “Go down and save him, David! Together, we could.”

  “You don’t understand,” David groaned.

  “You’re his father, man! What else is there to understand? We’ll burn the town to the ground!”

  “I can’t!” David’s cry sounded guttural and horrid, and it struck Raul that he was tormenting the man with such absurd statements. If Thomas and Samuel couldn’t stop Black, surely a troop of unarmed monks would only walk to their deaths.

  But how could a father stand by while his son was brutalized? David would give his life for Samuel without a second thought. There was more here than Raul knew. More than this simple agreement they’d made to trust the books.