The cat struck Marty Sullivan’s face, its claws extended, its fangs bared. As its teeth tore into the flesh of Marty’s face, he let out another scream of agony, and finally turned away, lurching toward the door, groping with his free hand as he staggered out of the room.
Myra Sullivan heard the first scream as she was coming through the front door. She froze, but when she heard the second scream, and knew it was coming from the second floor, she left the front door standing open and hurried toward the foot of the steep staircase. “Angel?” she called out. “Angel!”
Now she could hear movement upstairs, and muffled grunts, and a sound like sobbing.
Angel!
She mounted the stairs, but before she was even halfway up, a figure appeared on the landing above, and as she gazed at it, Myra could barely believe her eyes. Blood was spurting from the figure’s chest, and half its face seemed to be torn away. Transfixed by the terrible vision above her, she gazed at it in awe. Then, seeing the knife in the figure’s right hand, she realized it wasn’t a vision at all. “Marty?” she breathed.
Instead of answering her, the great bloodied form of her husband teetered at the top of the stairs for a moment, then began tipping toward her. Reflexively, Myra raised her arm to fend off the falling form of her husband, but it was too late. The arm holding the knife stretched straight ahead of him as Marty Sullivan plunged headfirst down the stairs.
The long blade of the knife tore through Myra’s breast, and she uttered a grunt as her eyes widened in shock. She felt herself falling backward, and a moment later was sprawled on the kitchen floor. Then Marty’s body crashed down on top of her, and as the full force of his weight struck her, the blade of the knife twisted in her breast and slashed through her heart.
Just before Myra died, she caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure at the top of the stairs.
It was a girl, clad all in black, holding a cat.
But it was not her daughter.
It couldn’t be her daughter.
After all, her daughter was an angel…
Chapter 46
ETH BAKER CAME AROUND THE BEND IN THE ROAD and saw the house that stood at Black Creek Crossing looming against the night sky. Even though there were lights on, the house had a look of terrible foreboding about it, and as he made his way across the lawn, part of him wanted to turn away and go somewhere else.
But there was nowhere else to go.
Not after what had happened in his house.
As he approached the front door, the awful sense of foreboding grew stronger, and he paused at the door, which was standing wide open, and listened.
A silence seemed to emanate from the house, a silence that felt as if it was about to swallow him up. Once again he wanted nothing more than to turn away, to leave whatever was inside the house undiscovered, and again he knew he could not. Steeling himself, he stepped over the threshold into the living room.
The television was still on, but somehow even its droning didn’t dispel the strange sense of silence that imbued the house.
Knowing he didn’t want to see whatever it was that lay beyond the living room, but knowing there was no alternative, he moved deeper into the house.
He found Angel at the bottom of the stairs, staring at the bodies of her parents, who were lying on the floor — her father on top of her mother — in a pool of their own blood. Myra Sullivan’s eyes were open, and as he looked down at her, Seth had the uneasy feeling that she was looking back at him. Turning away, he looked at Angel. “It happened at my house too,” he said softly.
Angel gazed at him, and for a second Seth wasn’t sure she even saw him. A moment later, though, she spoke, her voice hollow:
“I know what we have to do.”
Seth said nothing and when she led him out of the house, he silently followed.
They crossed the lawn to the road, and instead of turning right, toward the trail that would lead them to the cabin hidden in the cliff, Angel turned left.
Once again, Seth followed…
Chapter 47
ATHER MIKE MULRONEY HAD A SENSE THAT SOMEthing was wrong from the moment he awoke the next morning. At first he thought he’d slept late, but both the faintly glowing hands of the clock on his bedstand and the darkness of the room told him that was not so.
It was five o’clock, the time at which he always awoke.
Nor did he feel in any way ill.
Then what was it? Rising from his narrow cot and following the routine of years, he used the small prie-dieu in his bedroom to offer his first prayers of the day. Then, still before the sun had risen, he showered, dressed, and prepared his breakfast of orange juice, two fried eggs, a single slice of wheat toast, and a demitasse of the kind of rich bitter coffee he’d fallen in love with the year he’d spent in Rome, before being ordained into the priesthood by His Holiness himself.
And the feeling that something was wrong stayed with him.
After cleaning up what little mess his breakfast had caused in the kitchen, he moved through the rectory, seeing nothing amiss, but with his feeling of unease growing stronger. Finally, as the blackness outside began to give way to the first faint gray of the coming sunrise, he went to his desk to begin organizing the day. Not that there was much to organize: Tuesday was the closest thing to a day off Father Mulroney had, and this Tuesday nothing at all was on his schedule.
So why was he certain that something was amiss?
His eyes fell on the old book recounting the legends of Roundtree’s past — if they were legends at all — and he remembered the storm that had struck yesterday, exploding out of nowhere to batter the town for nearly three hours, and vanishing as quickly as it had come.
Three hours during which Angel Sullivan had not been in either of the places people had expected her to be.
Her mother had expected to find her at school, where she should have been all day.
Father Mulroney, though, had not expected her to be in school — indeed, he would have been very surprised to find her there. However, he’d been very surprised when she hadn’t been at home either. In fact, one of the reasons he’d insisted on accompanying Myra Sullivan back to her house in the afternoon was his certainty that Angel was there, and he was curious to see what she might be doing. Yet the house had been empty, and finally he brought Myra back to the rectory with him, where she’d worked until after sunset, and refused his offer to take her home.
He let her go — after all, the storm had passed.
Now, picking up the book, he locked it back into its usual desk drawer and returned the key to its place in a small box on the mantel. As he turned away from the mantel he glanced out the window behind his desk. The sun had finally risen above the horizon, and across the street, silhouetted against the morning sun, stood the ancient oak tree.
It was a sight Father Mulroney had witnessed thousands of times before, but one he never tired of. And this morning it was almost perfect. The sun was directly behind the tree, which stood in stark contrast to the pale blue of the cloudless sky, its limbs casting black fingers across the brilliance of the morning, which reached all the way to the rectory.
But this morning it wasn’t only the tree that caught the priest’s attention, for there were two other shapes etched starkly against the pale canvas of the morning sky.
Two shapes that Father Mulroney recognized immediately.
Two shapes that told him exactly what had felt so wrong this morning.
Picking up the telephone, he dialed a number, spoke rapidly for a few seconds, and then left the rectory, hurrying across the street to the cemetery.