"You were dealing from a loaded deck!"
"I have no intention of wasting my time debating with you. But let me point out that one inescapable fact remains: Everything Lisl's done'has been of her own free will. I pointed out certain paths to Her, but it was she who chose to set out upon them. Never once did I threaten her—with anything. I did not make her choices; she did. The responsibility for anything she's done lies with her."
Bill's rage was nearing critical mass.
"She was vulnerable! You took advantage of her weaknesses, knocked down her defenses, twisted her up in knots. Then you put that vial of alcohol in her hand in Everett Sanders's apartment.
That was like giving her a loaded gun."
"But she's an adult, not a child. And she knew what she was doing when she pulled the trigger. Your outrage is misdirected, my friend. You should be shouting at Lisl."
That did it. Bill grabbed the front of Rafe's shirt and yanked him out of the chair.
"I'm not your friend! Now I want some answers and I want them now't"
The phone began to ring. That long, protracted ring. The sound so startled Bill that he released Rafe's shirt.
Immediately Rafe stepped over to the phone and lifted the receiver. He listened for a second, then turned and extended it toward Bill.
"It's for you, Father Ryan."
Bill stumbled back. Danny Gordon's pleas echoed faintly from the receiver.
"Father, please come and get me! Pleeeeease!…"
But breaking through the horror was the realization that Rafe had called him Father Ryan.
"You know?"
"Of course."
"But how?"
"Does it matter? I think it's more important that you answer little Danny. He wants you to come help him."
"He's dead, you bastard!"
Bill was about to leap at Rafe but the younger man's condescending smile and slow shake of his head stopped him cold.
"Don't be so sure of that."
"Of course he is!" Bill said. "I—I buried him myself!"
The infuriating smile continued through another slow shake of the head.
"You may have buried him… but he didn't die."
Bill knew it couldn't be true. He's lying! He's got to be lying! But he had to ask.
"If he's still alive, where is he?"
Rafe's smile broadened.
"Right where you left him."
Bill's knees threatened to buckle but he locked them straight. Still, he swayed. He could barely hear his own voice over the roaring in his ears.
"No!"
"Oh, yes. Oh, most certainly yes. For more than five years he's been lying in the bottom of that hole you dug for him in St. Ann's
Cemetery. Waiting for you. Hating you."
Bill stared at Rafe. There was no reason in the world to believe a single word from this… this creature's mouth, yet somehow he believed this.
Because in the darkest corners of his soul, within the most obscure convolutions of his brain, in the deepest crevices of his heart, there had always lurked the faintest suspicion that he had been duped, fooled by the force that controlled Danny's fate into committing the atrocity of burying Danny alive in the hope of ending his pain. When he would awaken sweating and palpitating in the darkness of his bedroom, it was the memory of that final night that haunted him, but laced through it was the unspeakable possibility that Danny might not have died in that hole. Bill had never faced that fear, but now he had no choice.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
No! It's impossible!
Impossible… but the impossible had been true five years ago when Danny remained alive and in torment, a bottomless pit for the transfusions and medications being pumped into him. So the impossible could be true now.
He opened his eyes and looked at Rafe.
"God dammit, who are you? What are you?"
Rafe smiled and suddenly the lights began to dim.
"I'd dearly love to show you," Rafe said. "But it doesn't serve my purpose at the moment. However, I will grant you a brief glimpse."
The room grew darker and colder, as if some hidden vortex were sucking all the heat and light from the room. And then the black swooped in, a darkness so perfect that Bill's nervous system screamed as direction went awry, as up and down lost all meaning. But this was not a quiet darkness, not a simple absence of light; this was a devouring of light. A living blackness, a slithering, shuffling, shambling, hungry blackness, ravenous not for his flesh but for his soul, his essence, his very being. As Bill dropped to his knees and hugged the floor, digging his fingers into the pile to keep from tumbling toward the ceiling, a noxious grave-born odor seeped into his nostrils, caressed his tongue—sour, acrid, moist, carrying a hint of putrescence—gagging him.
And then he saw the eyes, hovering before him. Huge, round, the whites like glazed porcelain, the irises crystalline black, but not nearly as black as the bottomless sinkholes into infinity at their center. From those pupils there radiated such palpable malevolence that Bill had to turn away, squeeze his eyes shut to shield himself from the beckoning madness.
And just as suddenly there was light beyond his lids. He opened his eyes. The living room was lit again. He gasped for air. What had just happened? Had he been hypnotized somehow—or was that the real Rafe?
Bill shook off the body-numbing horror and looked around. Rafe was gone. He staggered to his feet and searched from room to room, upstairs and down—Rafe was nowhere in the condo. Shouting Rafe's name, he stumbled toward the door.
So many questions still unanswered. Who was Rafe? Was he even human? He didn't seem to be. What was his connection to Sara? How could he possibly know about Danny? Bill's numbed mind could barely frame the questions, his tongue couldn't speak them. And there was no one here to answer them.
Danny… alive. It couldn't be true, but he had to know. Because if by some unholy power Danny was still alive in that grave, Bill couldn't allow him to stay there a moment longer.
He had to go back. Back to New York, to mat cemetery. He had to know!
He ran for his car.
The priest almost caught Renny with his pants down—literally.
Getting into Ryan's house had been easy. The little ranch was set back from the road and surrounded by trees. Completely shielded from its neighbors. Renny broke a pane in the back door, reached in, turned the dead-bolt knob, and he was in. When he saw all the velvet paintings on the walls, the tigers, the clowns, the Elvises, he thought he'd made a mistake. He couldn't imagine the Father Ryan he'd known going for this stuff. But Will Ryerson had to be Ryan.
Renny used the first hour or so to search the place but found little of interest. Somewhere along the way he noted the absence of a phone. That bolstered his conviction that he was on target—the last time he'd seen him, the priest had been terrified of phones.
He spent most of the remainder of the day sitting around, watching TV, keeping the sound low. He even brewed himself a pot of coffee and made a sandwich from the cold cuts in the fridge. Why not? Ryan wouldn't be needing them.
But along around five he turned off the TV and seated himself in the front room, his pistol drawn, waiting.
And waiting.
He'd already waited five years for this meeting. He could wait a few more minutes. But these last minutes were killing him, dragging on like slugs on sandpaper.
What's going to happen here?
After all these years, what was he going to do when he came face-to-face with the priest? Renny hoped he wouldn't blow it. He had to keep his cool, because he knew what he wanted to do: nail him to the wall and gut him, just like he'd done to that little kid. But he'd be sacrificing himself then, too.
No. He'd decided to play it straight. Arrest him, take him to the state capital, and start extradition proceedings.