She pulled down the leg of her jeans.
He helped her to her feet. “I think it would be all right if I took you to the rectory.”
“No,” she said.
“It's not far.”
“We're staying here,” she said.
“But those look like animal bites. You've got to have them attended to. Infection, rabies…. Look, it's not far to the rectory. We don't have to go out in the storm, either. There's an underground passage between the cathedral and—”
“No,” Rebecca said firmly. “We're staying here, in the cathedral, where we're protected.”
She motioned for Penny and Davey to come close to her, and they did, eagerly, one on each side of her.
The priest looked at each of them, studied their faces, met their eyes, and his face darkened. “What are you afraid of?”
“Didn't the kids tell you some of it?” Rebecca asked.
“They were babbling about goblins, but—”
“It wasn't just babble,” Rebecca said, finding it odd to be the one professing and defending a belief in the supernatural, she who had always been anything but excessively open-minded on the subject. She hesitated. Then, as succinctly as possible, she told him about Lavelle, the slaughter of the Carramazzas, and the voodoo devils that were now after Jack Dawson's children.
When she finished, the priest said nothing and couldn't meet her eyes. He stared at the floor for long seconds.
She said, “Of course, you don't believe me.”
He looked up and appeared to be embarrassed. “Oh, I don't think you're lying to me… exactly. I'm sure you believe everything you've told me. But, to me, voodoo is a sham, a set of primitive superstitions. I'm a priest of the Holy Roman Church, and I believe in only one Truth, the Truth that Our Savior—”
“You believe in Heaven, don't you? And Hell?”
“Of course. That's part of Catholic—”
“These things have come straight up from Hell, Father. If I'd told you that it was a Satanist who had summoned these demons, if I'd never mentioned the word voodoo, then maybe you still wouldn't have believed me, but you wouldn't have dismissed the possibility so fast, either, because your religion encompasses Satan and Satanists.”
“I think you should—”
Davey screamed.
Penny said, “They're here!”
Rebecca turned, breath caught in her throat, heart hanging in mid-beat.
Beyond the archway through which the center aisle of the nave entered the vestibule, there were shadows, and in those shadows were silver-white eyes glowing brightly. Eyes of fire. Lots of them.
VI
Jack drove the snow-packed streets, and as he approached each intersection, he somehow sensed when a right turn was required, when he should go left instead, and when he should just speed straight through. He didn't know how he sensed those things; each time, a feeling came over him, a feeling he couldn't put into words, and he gave himself to it, followed the guidance that was being given to him. It was certainly unorthodox procedure for a cop accustomed to employing less exotic techniques in the search for a suspect. It was also creepy, and he didn't like it. But he wasn't about to complain, for he desperately wanted to find Lavelle.
Thirty-five minutes after they had collected the two small jars of holy water, Jack made a left turn into a street of pseudo-Victorian houses. He stopped in front of the fifth one. It was a three-story brick house with lots of gingerbread trim. It was in need of repairs and painting, as were all the houses in the block, a fact that even the snow and darkness couldn't hide. There were no lights in the house; not one. The windows were perfectly black.
“We're here,” Jack told Carver.
He cut the engine, switched off the headlights.
VII
Four goblins crept out of the vestibule, into the center aisle, into the light that, while not bright, revealed their grotesque forms in more stomach-churning detail than Rebecca would have liked.
At the head of the pack was a foot-tall, man-form creature with four fire-filled eyes, two in its forehead.
Its head was the size of an apple, and in spite of the four eyes, most of the misshapen skull was given over to a mouth crammed full and bristling with teeth. It also had four arms and was carrying a crude spear in one spikefingered hand.
It raised the spear above its head in a gesture of challenge and defiance.
Perhaps because of the spear, Rebecca was suddenly possessed of a strange but unshakable conviction that the man-form beast had once been — in very ancient times — a proud and blood-thirsty African warrior who had been condemned to Hell for his crimes and who was now forced to endure the agony and humiliation of having his soul embedded within a small, deformed body.
The man-form goblin, the three even more hideous creatures behind it, and the other beasts moving through the dark vestibule (and now seen only as pairs of shining eyes) all moved slowly, as if the very air inside this house of worship was, for them, an immensely heavy burden that made every step a painful labor. None of them hissed or snarled or shrieked, either. They just approached silently, sluggishly, but implacably.
Beyond the goblins, the doors to the street still appeared to be closed. They had entered the cathedral by some other route, through a vent or a drain that was unscreened and offered them an easy entrance, a virtual invitation, the equivalent of the “open door” that they, like vampires, probably needed in order to come where evil wasn't welcome.
Father Walotsky, briefly mesmerized by his first glimpse of the goblins, was the first to break the silence.
He fumbled in a pocket of his black cassock, withdrew a rosary, and began to pray.
The man-form devil and the three things immediately behind it moved steadily closer, along the main aisle, and other monstrous beings crept and slithered out of the dark vestibule, while new pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness there. They still moved too slowly to be dangerous.
But how long will that last? Rebecca wondered. Perhaps they'll somehow become conditioned to the atmosphere in the cathedral. Perhaps they'll gradually become bolder and begin to move faster. What then?
Pulling the kids with her, Rebecca began to back up the aisle, toward the altar. Father Walotsky came with them, the rosary beads clicking to his hands.
VIII
They slogged through the snow to the foot of the steps that led up to Lavelle's front door.
Jack's revolver was already in his hand. To Carver Hampton, he said, “I wish you'd wait in the car.”
“No.”
“This is police business.”
“It's more than that. You know it's more than that.”
Jack sighed and nodded.
They climbed the steps.
Obtaining an arrest warrant, pounding on the door, announcing his status as an officer of the law — none of that usual procedure seemed necessary or sensible to Jack. Not in this bizarre situation. Still, he wasn't comfortable or happy about just barging into a private residence.
Carver tried the doorknob, twisted it back and forth several times. “Locked.”
Jack could see that it was locked, but something told him to try it for himself. The knob turned under his hand, and the latch clicked softly, and the door opened a crack.
“Locked for me,” Carver said “but not for you.”
They stepped aside, out of the fine of fire.
Jack reached out, pushed the door open hard, and snatched his hand back.
But Lavelle didn't shoot.