Then she would begin scraping.
She would clean the inner walls of the uterus until she had torn the embryonic Satan-child from his lair. And then she would take the bloody membranes and bits of tissue and burn them in the fireplace. And then she would scatter the resultant ashes to the wind.
And the world would be safe once more.
20
Carol slowly became aware that she could see. She found herself looking down the length of her body. It was like looking into a canyon. Her pubes formed the floor and her raised thighs the walls. And framed within the canyon was Grace's head. She tried to move, to call out, but her limbs wouldn't respond.
Was it over? Had they killed her baby?
If only I could move!
Then she heard Grace's voice: "We're ready to begin."
It wasn't over yet! She still had a chance! But she needed help—she couldn't do this herself!
She thought of her parents, dead all these years now, and wished they could rush in and save her. Her Dad could yank Grace away and give his sister pure hell for what she was about to do.
She tried to move again, and this time felt her limbs respond a little. But not enough! She had to get away, but she was too weak. Too weak to fight.
If only her Jim were here—he'd wipe the floor with these people and set her free.
But Jim was dead, just like her parents. And Emma too. All dead. Maybe Bill and Jonah were dead now as well. There'd be no help from the dead. She'd have to do it herself.
Herself. From now on she'd have to do everything herself. Starting now.
The women holding her legs seemed tense and distracted. No one was holding her arms. Carol gathered her strength and turned her body partly on its side. She tried to continue the motion in an effort to roll off the table. She heard Grace's voice shouting in the sudden confusion, felt hands rolling her onto her back again.
That was when she saw Emma's blank-eyed, blood-streaked, grinning face rise in the canyon above Grace's.
21
As she was slipping the uterine probe toward the os, Grace glanced up and saw Carol staring at her, a look of horror on her face. Her legs began to move. Her pelvis writhed, ejecting the speculum. It clattered to the floor.
"She's coming to!" Grace cried. She looked up at the woman standing at Carol's head. "Give her more chloroform! Quickly!"
But the woman wasn't paying attention. She too had a look of horror on her face. Grace noticed then that the woman's gaze was actually fixed above and behind her. Suddenly the other women were screaming and moving away from the table.
"What's wrong?" she cried. "Don't let her go!"
And then she felt a cold hand close on the back of her neck in a grip of iron.
22
The horror of it was slow in coming, for Carol realized in that instant that no one was restraining her any longer. She managed to roll onto her side again but rolled too far. Suddenly she was falling. She hit the linoleum hard and lay there a moment, stunned.
She shook off the pain, the dizziness, the nausea, and used the table leg for support to pull herself to a kneeling position, instinctively pulling the skirt down around her legs. Even though she was naked beneath it, the thin fabric gave her a protected feeling.
In the center of the kitchen, Emma and Grace were struggling. Emma was trying to get a lock on Grace's throat, but Grace was fighting her off this time, keeping her from getting the death grip she'd had in the parlor. And the ax—oh, God, the ax was still in Emma's head!
The other women clung to the sides of the room, their backs pressed against the walls like passengers spinning on that amusement park ride, the Round-Up.
A couple of the men came in from the front hall, timidly, like mice watching two cats locked in combat. They whispered to each other. Carol wondered where the rest of them were, especially that skinny one—Martin.
Suddenly Grace gave out with a choking cry and Carol saw that Emma was slowly reestablishing her stranglehold on her throat. Still weak and nauseous, Carol fought to make sense of her roiling emotions. She wanted Grace stopped, wanted her put away where she couldn't threaten or hurt her baby ever again, but she didn't want her killed—especially not at the hands of this walking horror that had once been Emma Stevens.
The two men seemed to gather some strength from Grace's peril. They rushed forward and tried to pull Emma away. Two of the women helped. This time they succeeded in freeing Grace by yanking Emma's arms outward and away, one in each direction. As Grace staggered free and gasped for breath, Emma shook off the Chosen and reached behind her head. With no change in her expression, no indication that she felt the slightest discomfort, she levered the ax handle up and down until it came free from her skull with a wet, sucking noise.
Carol knew what was going to happen next, as did everyone else in the room, most likely, yet she could not move to prevent it. Neither could any of the Chosen. Neither could Grace.
Still grinning horribly, Emma raised the ax until its red-stained blade almost touched the ceiling. Grace screamed and raised her arms over her head, but to no avail. The ax swung down with blinding speed and crushing force.
Carol screamed and turned away before the blow struck, but she heard the awful splitting impact and heard screams and trampling feet, heard and felt a heavy thump on the floor.
Then silence.
Slowly Carol opened her eyes. Her head was down. She could see a limp, outstretched arm and blood on the floor on the far side of the table. Fighting nausea, she raised her head. Emma still stood in the center of the kitchen, stiff, swaying. She looked at Carol, and for an instant there was a spark of something in her dead eyes—maybe a spark of Emma. But if so, it was a miserable, infinitely sad Emma.
She raised her arm and pointed toward the door to the hallway. Shakily Carol pulled herself to her feet and stumbled toward it, giving wide berth to Emma and averting her eyes from the still form in the pool of blood on the floor. As soon as she was past them, she ran.
As she reached the hall she heard the thud of a second body hitting the kitchen floor, but she didn't look back.
When she got to the parlor door and saw Bill, bound in a chair but still alive, she almost lost it. She wanted to cry out his name and throw herself on him, wanted to clutch at him and sob out all the grief, rage, horror, and relief exploding within her. But she couldn't do that. That was what the old Carol would have done. She was now the new Carol.
Besides, even as she stood here, all her emotions seemed to be running out of her. An endless tunnel had opened inside her. All her feelings seemed to be flowing down its black length toward a yawning, bottomless pit, leaving her empty, cool, controlled.
"Carol!" Bill cried. "Thank God you're all right!"
She started toward him, then saw Brother Robert's body with the bloody crucifix jutting from his heart.
I don't know who should be thanked, she thought, but I've got a funny feeling it's not God!
She looked away and darted behind Bill's chair.
"What happened in there?" he said, trying to look at her over his shoulder as her shaking fingers worked at the knots.
Carol experienced another of those sudden surges of hatred for Bill, a blazing rage that urged her to take a length of clothesline and strangle him with it. It frightened her. She shook it off.
"Grace is dead."
"I mean, to you. Are you okay?"
"I'll never be the same," she said, "but I'm okay, and so's the baby."
"Good!"
Oh, I hope it's good!
"What about… Emma?" he said.