8
"Aren't you coming?" Martin said through the open side window of the car.
"Grace shook her head. "No… I can't. She's my niece."
"That may be true," Martin said, "but this is the Lord's war. You've got to stand up and be counted sooner or later."
The authority Brother Martin had given him seemed to have gone to his head.
"I'm with the Lord," she said, "but I can't picket my niece's home. I just can't."
Grace shut her eyes to block out the sight of the placard-carrying Chosen walking toward the little white cottage that had been her brother Henry's home before he and Ellen had been killed. Too many lunches and dinners and afternoon cups of tea with Ellen, plus half a dozen years of living there and making a home for her dear, orphaned Carol while she commuted to college at Stony Brook. Too many memories there to allow her to parade in front of it and call Carol's husband the Antichrist, even if it was true.
But looking at that familiar little cottage sitting there in the light of day, she wondered how such a thing could possibly be true.
"Where are the reporters?" Martin said, his eyes flicking up and down the street. "I called all five local TV stations, the big papers, and the local rag… what's it called?"
"The Express, " Grace said.
"Right. You'd think someone would have sent a crew out here to cover this!"
"It's Sunday, after all," Mr. Veilleur said. "You're probably far ahead of them. You moved pretty fast."
"Yes, we did, didn't we?" he said with a note of satisfaction. "But we can't wait forever, and it'll probably be better if we're on line and marching when they arrive. Are you sure, Grace?"
"I can't. Please don't ask me any more."
"How about you?" Martin said, opening the door next to Mr. Veilleur. "Time for you to earn your keep."
Mr. Veilleur smiled. "Don't make me laugh."
Martin's expression turned fierce.
"Listen, you! Either get out and walk that picket line or get out and start walking back to the city. I'm not having any deadweight around here!"
Grace didn't have time to express her shock at Martin's rudeness. In a blur of motion Mr. Veilleur's big hand darted out, took hold of Martin's tie, and dragged his head and shoulders into the car.
"I will not be spoken to that way," he said in a low voice.
Grace could not see Mr. Veilleur's eyes, but Martin could. She saw his face blanch.
"Okay, okay," he said quickly. "Have it your way."
Neither Grace nor Mr. Veilleur said anything as they watched Martin hurry over to the cottage. The Chosen were lined up on the walk before the house. She watched Martin pass through them and stride to the front door. He knocked a few times but there was no answer. She saw him try the knob. The door swung open. Grace almost cried out as she saw Martin go inside with a group of the others trailing behind. They shouldn't be in there! Not in Henry's old house!
It took maybe fifteen minutes but seemed like hours before Martin reappeared, hurrying toward the car. His face was flushed, his eyes feverish as he slipped back in behind the wheel.
"No one's home, but I think we found the proof we need!"
"Proof?" Mr. Veilleur said.
"Yes! Books on Satanism, the occult! He's obviously been studying them!"
Mr. Veilleur's smile was wry. "If he's this Antichrist you talk about—the Devil himself or his offspring—one would think he'd already be intimately familiar with all there is to know about Satanism."
Martin only paused for a beat. "Yes, well, whatever… it establishes a link between this James Stevens and the Devil."
"Where are the books?" Mr. Veilleur asked.
"I told them to destroy them." He turned to Grace. "Now, do you know how to get to this mansion he inherited?"
"Of course," she said. "It's on the waterfront. Everybody in town knows the Hanley mansion. Why?"
"Because if he's not here, he's probably holed up there."
"Maybe he left town," Grace said hopefully.
"No," Martin said slowly. "He's here. I can feel the evil in the air. Can't you?"
Grace had to admit that there was a sense of wrongness about Monroe, a vague feeling that some sort of cancer was growing in its heart. But she hated to admit it.
Finally she said, "Yes, I think so."
Martin started the car. "Which way?"
"Down here and to the left until you get to Shore Drive," Grace said, pointing the way.
As the car shifted into gear, Grace glanced out the rear window. The other cars, filled with the Chosen, were falling into line behind them. She looked past them and gasped. Smoke was pouring from one of the cottage windows.
"The house!" she cried. "It's burning!"
Martin glanced in his rearview mirror. "The idiots! I told them to burn the books outside!"
"Stop! We've got to put it out!"
"No time for that now! We're going to beard the Devil in his den!"
9
Carol heard the wail of the siren on the downtown volunteer firehouse. Since she had been a little girl, the sound never failed to disturb her. It meant that somewhere, at that very moment, flames were eating someone'? home, maybe devouring someone's life. She glanced out the parlor window, southeastward, toward their own little house. She was startled to see a pillar of smoke rising from that direction. It looked as if it were coming from their neighborhood. She wondered with a pang of fear if it was someone they knew, someone who needed their help.
And then she lowered her gaze and saw the cars pulling up outside the mansion's front gate. Her first thought was, Reporters! But then she saw the placards and picket signs and knew something else was going on.
"Oh, no!" she said. "Who on earth are they?" Bill joined her at the window.
"They look like protesters. But what are they protesting?" Carol strained to read the words on the signs but could make out only the larger ones.
"Something about God and Satan."
"Oh, great!" Bill said. "Just what Jim needs!" Carol glanced back toward the library where Jim sat with Emma. The presence of people he loved and trusted seemed to have had a bolstering effect. The tension had been oozing out of him since their arrival.
"What can they want?"
"Who knows? Probably a mob of religious nuts who think he's some sort of Frankenstein monster. I'm going out there. Don't say anything to Jim until I get back."
"What can you do?"
"Chase them off, I hope." Bill shrugged and pointed to his cassock and clerical collar. "Maybe this will have some influence on them."
"Be careful," she said.
As she watched him step out the front door she felt a sudden rush of dread and knew that something awful was going to happen today.
10
As Bill strode the fifty yards or so to the front gate, he began to make out the messages on the signs. There were quotations from scripture about the Antichrist and Armageddon and the end of the world. Others were original, and he found these the most disturbing:
A MAN WITH NO SOUL IS A HOME FOR THE DEVIL! and GET THEE OUT, DEMON! and the worst, JAMES STEVENS—ANTICHRIST!
Bill would have found them laughable were it not for the fact that they were talking about his friend. He had caught the hunted look in Jim's eyes a while ago, the look of a man who felt like a freak, who wasn't completely sure to whom he could turn or trust. Harassment by a bunch of religious nut cases might push him over the edge.