Joey glanced toward the spilled water in which P.J. had slipped. The church was hotter than ever, sweltering, but steam had stopped rising from the puddle. Anyway, that wasn't the fall she meant.
After a hesitation, he said, "Who're we talking about, Celeste?"
She appeared to be listening to voices that only she could hear. "He's coming," she whispered tremulously.
"You're not talking about P.J., are you?"
"He's coming."
"What? Who?"
"The companion."
"Judas? There's no Judas. That's fantasy."
"Beyond Judas."
"Celeste, be serious, the devil himself isn't really in P.J."
As alarmed by his insistence on reason as he was alarmed by her sudden descent into full-blown mysticism, she gripped him by the lapels of his denim jacket. "You're running out of time, Joey. Not much time left to believe."
"I believe—"
"Not in what matters."
She let go of him, vaulted over the presbytery balustrade into the choir enclosure, landing solidly on both feet.
"Celeste!"
Rushing to the sanctuary gate, she shouted, "Come touch the floor, Joey, touch where the water spilled, see whether it's hot enough for steam, hurry!"
Frightened for her, frightened by her, Joey also vaulted the balustrade. "Wait!"
She shoved through the sanctuary gate.
Over the incessant drumming of the rain on the roof, another sound arose. An escalating roar. Not from under them. Outside.
She hurried into the center aisle.
He looked toward the windows on the left. Toward the windows on the right. Darkness on both sides.
"Celeste!" he shouted as he pushed through the sanctuary gate. "Show me your hands!"
She was halfway down the aisle. She turned toward him. Her face was slick with sweat. Like a ceramic glaze. Glistening with candlelight. The face of a saint. A martyr.
The roar swelled. An engine. Accelerating.
"Your hands!" Joey shouted desperately.
She raised her hands.
In her delicate palms were hideous wounds. Black holes thick with blood.
From out of the west, shattering windows, smashing through clapboard and wall studs and old wood paneling and stations of the cross, the Mustang exploded into the church, headlights unlit but engine screaming, horn suddenly blaring, tires popping like balloons as the floor splintered under them, driving forward with tremendous power, plowing into the pews, unstoppable. Those benches cracked free of their moorings, tilted up, slammed into one another — pews and kneelers erupting and crashing together and piling one atop the next in a cresting wave of wood, in a geometry of penitence — and still the Mustang surged forward, engine racing, gears grinding, trumpeting as it came.
Joey fell to the floor in the center aisle and shielded his head with his folded arms, certain that he was going to die in the tsunami of pews. He was even more certain that Celeste would die, whether crushed to death now or, later, after being nailed to the floor or to the wall by P.J. Joey had utterly failed her, failed himself. Following the storm of broken glass, the,hail of plaster, the avalanche of wood, there would be a rain of blood. Over the roar of the Mustang, over the banshee horn, over the crack-split-shatter of wood, over the ringing of falling glass, over the ominous creak of sagging ceiling beams, he heard one special sound separate and eerily distinct from all others, and instantly he knew what it was: the bronze clatter and thud of the crucifix dropping off the back wall of the sanctuary.
THE COLD WIND WAS IN THE CHURCH NOW, SNIFFING AND PANTING, LIKE a pack of dogs through the ruins.
Joey lay facedown under a stack of tumbled pews and shattered wall beams, and although he felt no pain, he was afraid that his legs were crushed. When he dared to move, however, he discovered that he was neither injured nor pinned in place.
The rubble was a multitiered, three-dimensional maze. Joey was forced to crawl, writhe, and squirm through it as though he were a rat-seeking ferret exploring the depths of an ancient timberfall.
Shingles, laths, and chunks of other debris still dropped out of the demolished wall and from the damaged ceiling, clattering into the wreckage. The wind played the narrow twisting passages in the destruction as though they were flutes, piping an eerie, tuneless music. But the car engine had died.
After wriggling through an especially cramped space between slabs of prayer-polished oak, Joey came to the front wheel of the Mustang. The tire was flat, and the fender had crumpled around it like paper.
From the undercarriage, greenish antifreeze drizzled like dragon's blood. The radiator had burst.
He squeezed farther along the side of the car. Just past the driver's door, he reached a place where he was able to stand up between the vehicle and the surrounding rubble.
He hoped to see his brother dead in the Mustang, the shaft of the steering wheel driven through his chest by the impact or his body pitched halfway through the windshield. But the driver's door was open just wide enough to allow escape, and P.J. was gone.
"Celeste!" Joey shouted.
No answer.
PT would be looking for her.
"Celeste!"
He smelled gasoline. The fuel tank had burst.
The surrounding pews and slabs of wood paneling and sheared-off two-by-fours had tilted up higher than the car. He couldn't see much of the church.
Joey levered himself onto the roof of the Mustang. He rose to his feet, turning his back to the damaged wall and the rain-slashed night.
St. Thomas's was filled with strange light and swarming shadows. Some ceiling bulbs were still on, but others were out. Toward the rear of the church, showers of white-gold-blue sparks cascaded from a damaged overhead fixture.
In the sanctuary, the candles had toppled when the building had been shaken by the impact of the hurtling car. The sheets on the altar platform were afire.
Shuttling, weaving shadows made a fabric of confusion, but one among them moved with a linear purpose that snapped Joey's attention to it. Coming off the ambulatory onto the presbytery was P.J. He was carrying Celeste. She was unconscious, cradled in his arms, head tilted back, tender throat exposed, black hair trailing almost to the floor.
Christ, no!
For an instant, Joey couldn't breathe.
Then he was gasping.
He plunged off the roof of the Mustang onto the crumpled hood and clambered up from the car onto the surrounding jumble of pews and beams and buckled wallboard. The wreckage shifted under him, threatening to open and swallow him in a maw of wickedly splintered boards and twisted nails, but he kept moving, wobbling and lurching, arms spread like those of a lumberjack trying to maintain his balance in a logrolling contest.
At the three altar steps, P.J. ascended.
The back wall of the sanctuary, without crucifix, crawled with images of fire.
Joey jumped down from the pile of rubble into an open space in front of the sanctuary railing.
On the altar, P.J. dropped Celeste onto the burning sheets, as though she were not a persona special and needed person — but only an armful of trash.
"No!" Joey shouted, leaping across the sanctuary railing, stumbling into the curving ambulatory that would take him around the choir and up to the high altar.
Her raincoat caught fire. He saw the flames leap hungrily from that new fuel.
Her hair. Her hair!
Stung by the flames, she regained consciousness and screamed.
Rounding the ambulatory, reaching the presbytery walkway, Joey saw P.J. standing over Celeste, on the burning sheets, oblivious of the fire around his feet, hunched like some round-backed beast, the hammer in one hand and raised high to strike.