"Who are you?" she demanded.
"I am Brother Elias. I have come to save you from your peril and to deliver you from the brink of the pit upon which you stand."
"Go away!"
Brother Elias took out his Bible and opened it to a previously marked page. '"Children, it is thethe last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they all are not of us."" He closed the Bible and looked at her, his eyes holding hers.
Is this how these people keep their followers? Is this how Jim Jones got his disciples? She could not look away. It was as if he had her hypnotized.
"So it is written in The First Letter of John, chapter two, verses eighteen and nineteen. The antichrist is not coming, the antichrists are here!" His voice took on the rolling oratorical delivery of a fundamentalist minister. "We must fight this evil where it dwells! We must bring it out into the open sunshine of the Lord's divine light where it can be dissipated according to the Holy Word of God!" He opened up the Bible again, looking away, and Marina quickly let the curtain drop, retreating back into the room.
She could hear his voice, above the television, as she made her way to the telephone.
""And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world--he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.""
Marina, her fingers fumbling, found the number of the sheriff written on the emergency pad next to the phone. She quickly dialed. The line was busy, and she dialed again.
'"And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child--'"
"Shut up!" Marina yelled. "Shut up!" She was gratified to hear the loud voice stop for a moment. She picked up the phone again. "I'm calling the sheriff!" she announced. "I'm going to have you arrested!"
"I am here to save you from the darkness that threatens, from the evil within. I am here to put you on the path of righteousness and--"
"Get the fuck out of here!"
Marina was aware that her voice sounded panicked, that she was becoming hysterical, but she was terrified. She saw in her mind the bloody kitchen, gray and red portions ofVlad scattered over the tile floor and the Formica countertops. She dialed the sheriff's number again, and this time the phone rang. Someone on the other end picked it up.
"This is Marina Lewis," she said breathlessly into the receiver.
"There's someone at my house. He's outside my front door, trying to get in--"
"We'll have someone there immediately," the receptionist told her.
"Don't let him in. Do you have any firearms in the house?"
"No."
"Then I'd suggest grabbing a baseball bat or a knife or any sort of weapon you do have. Just in case." There was a click, and the receptionist's voice became muffled as she put out the call. "Deputy Chmuraand Deputy Weiss will be there in a moment," she said, reconnecting into the line. "Don't panic."
"I'm not." Marina looked up, putting the receiver down. The voice outside had stopped. She listened for a moment, then ran over and turned down the TV. Nothing. Gathering up her courage, she pulled open the curtains and looked outside.
Brother Elias was gone.
Marina returned to the phone. "He left," she said. "Thank you." She didn't wait for the receptionist's reply but hung up the phone. She again moved to the front of the room and looked out the window, trying to spot any sign of movement in the darkness, listening for the sound of a starting car.
A moment later, she heard the sound of a siren, growing louder, coming closer. The trees lining the narrow dirt road soon glowed with the blue and red of the sheriff's flashing lights. Behind the sheriff's car, thankfully, unbelievably, was the Jeep.
Marina opened the front door and ran outside.
Only then did she realize that she was crying.
Father Andrews milled around after the prayer meeting, shaking hands and talking with parishioners. The meeting had gone much better than he'd expected. He had never conducted a prayer meeting before, and though he knew theoretically what was required of him, he was sure that the actual practice would be quite different. He wasn't sure he'd be able to do it. But Father Selway's congregation had been kind to him on Sunday, and the parishioners at the prayer meeting had been just as nice. They'd guided him through the meeting, letting him know how Father Selway had done things, but letting him know that if he wanted to make changes that was fine, too.
He grabbed a Dixie cup filled with red punch. An elderly woman next to him, wearing a large hat and too much makeup, reached for a cookie. She smiled up at him. "My name's Betty Murphy," she said.
He shook the woman's offered hand. "I'm glad to meet you, Mrs. Murphy, and I'm glad that you could make it to our meeting."
She giggled. "Oh, I wouldn't miss it for the world. I come here every week. Been coming ever since Jim died." She straightened her flowered hat. "I wanted to ask you what you think of that new preacher who's been preaching around town."
"New preacher?"
"Yes. I'm not sure exactly who he is, but I've seen him twice already this week. The first time, he was preaching in the parking lot in front of the old bowling alley. The second time, he was on top of a car parked near the post office, yelling at the people who walked by.
It was real hellfire and damnation stuff, how we are all going to burn if we don't repent." She wrinkled her nose distastefully. "I never did go in for that sort of preaching." She put her hand familiarly on his arm. "That's why I became an Episcopalian." "I couldn't help overhearing you." A thin middle-aged man, wearing a gaudy new western shirt and a bolo tie, turned from the small group he was with to face the priest. He held out his hand. "JeffHaught ."
Father Andrews shook his hand. "I'm glad to meet you."
The man turned to Mrs. Murphy. "Were you talking about that street preacher been around town the past couple days?"
She nodded, her hat bobbing up and down in assent.
"Did you hear what he said?"
Mrs. Murphy sniffed. "I heard enough."
The man faced Father Andrews. "That preacher's crazy. I was just stopping by the Circle K yesterday to buy some ice, and I saw this crowd gathered around the side of the building. I went over to investigate, and there was this preacher, wearing a heavy gray suit, in the hottest part of the day, standing on one of those empty wooden spools they use for telephone line. I stood there listening for a while and," the man shook his head, "I never heard anything like it. He started off like Mrs. Murphy said, regular fire and brimstone fundamentalism, but then he started on this .. . weird stuff. He started saying how Satan and God were going to fight it out here on earth and how we'd better start gathering up our weapons to fight. He said some people were going to be fighting on God's side, but some were going to be on Satan's. Then he started pointing out specific people in the crowd!"
Father Andrews smiled. "That's not unusual. A lot of these evangelists use such techniques to fire up the crowd and get people to listen to them."
"He said God and Satan were going to fight here, in Randall. Next week."
Father Andrews' smile faded. Mrs. Murphy laughed out loud. She let go of the priest's arm and grabbed the other man's. "Oh Jeff. You don't mean to tell me you actually believe that nonsense?"
He shook his head, smiling. "Of course not. But a lot of other people seemed to." He looked at Father Andrews. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Father. Do you think maybe you could give some kind of warning during your sermon Sunday? Tell people not to listen to this jerk?"