He grinned. "Sorry."
She pointed toward the top of the Rim. "Look up there," she said.
"Watch that lightning."
Gordon followed her finger. "I don't see anything."
"Just keep watching."
He stood there for a moment, staring. "That's weird," he said finally.
"It's red."
Gordon was right. Marina did not have to see Brother Elias to sign a complaint. She simply filled out the form the sheriff gave her and signed her name at the bottom. Jim looked over the form and nodded.
"Fine," he said. He handed it to Rita for processing.
Although Marina had not mentioned the kitten, she was somewhat cold to the sheriff, and Gordon was happy when the complaint had been signed and it was time for them to leave. It had been a somewhat awkward situation. They were about to step out the door, when he heard the sheriff loudly clear his throat behind them. He turned around.
"Could I speak to you for a moment?" Jim asked. "In private?"
Gordon looked at Marina. "I'll wait in the car," she said flatly. She walked out the door without even glancing at the sheriff.
Jim smiled. "Still mad at me, huh?"
"Well, you know--"
"Happens all the time," the sheriff said, waving his hand dismissively.
"Don't worry about it." He opened the small gate next to the front desk and motioned for Gordon to follow him back to his office.
"What is it?" Gordon asked when they were alone.
"It's Brother Elias. Tell me what you think of him."
Gordon shrugged. "I don't know. I only met him that one time. I thought he was crazy. Marina thinks he's crazy."
"He didn't .. . scare you?"
Gordon looked at the sheriff. "What are you getting at?"
Jim chewed on his upper lip for a moment, thinking. "Okay," he said.
"I don't want you to breathe a word of this to anyone."
"You know I won't."
"He's been around town here for a couple days now, preaching."
He paused. "Predicting. He predicted those church fires, and he said he didn't have anything to do with them starting, and I believe him."
Gordon remained silent.
"And he talked about my great-grandfather as if he knew him. I've been thinking about this all day, going over it in my head, and I don't see how he could know anything about my great-grandfather. Not realistically." He looked at Gordon. "To be honest, he scares the shit out of me. I've gone back there a couple of times today, to check on him, and each time I do he's always staring at me, waiting for me, as if he knows when I'm coming. It gives me the creeps. There's no logical connection other than the fires, but I think he's involved in all this. It's nothing that'll hold up in court, but .. he trailed off. "I think I'm going to ask Father Andrews to come here and look at him, see what he thinks."
"What other predictions has he made?" Gordon asked.
The sheriff shook his head. "I don't know. Something about flies, an earthquake, different colored lightning--"
"Red?" Gordon asked.
The sheriff nodded, looking at him. "Yes."
"Look outside," Gordon said. He found that his hands were trembling.
Jim moved over to the window, glancing out at the town. His eye was captured by the building storm on the Rim. He saw a flash of red lightning, and he paled. He turned back to Gordon. "How long has this been going on?"
"I don't know. We just noticed it about a half hour ago."
"Do you think its some type of legitimate weather disturbance? I mean, do you think he could have known about it ahead of time?"
Gordon shook his head. "I don't know."
The two men stared at each other. "Do you want to see him?" the sheriff asked finally.
"Not now," Gordon said. "Right now I just want to take Marina home and forget about this whole damn thing."
Jim nodded, understanding. "But what if we have an earthquake in the middle of the night?" he said softly.
"Then I'll hold her even closer. And I'll wait for it to go away."
"But we can't just ignore it. We can't pretend there's nothing going on."
"What else can we do?"
"I'm going to call Father Andrews," Jim said. "He's dealt with this kind of stuff before. We'll see what he has to say about all this.
Maybe he can make some sense out of what Brother Elias is saying."
"Are you still having nightmares?" Gordon asked.
The sheriff nodded. "Of course. You?"
"Yes. I had a hell of a one last night."
"What was it about?"
"I was at the dump, then I was at this place with little white crosses and there was a boy--"
"Jesus," Jim said. He sat down hard on his chair. "I had the same dream." He stared at Gordon. "You take your wife home," he said.
"Then you get back here. I'll call Father Andrews. We're going to talk to Brother Elias."
Gordon nodded silently.
The sheriff looked at his watch. "It's four right now. Be back here at five-thirty. We're going to get to the bottom of this."
"Are you sure we want to?" Gordon asked.
"We have no choice."
Gordon left the sheriff in his office and walked back toward the front of the building. He nodded politely to Rita as he passed by, then moved through the double glass doors. As he walked across the parking lot toward the car, he couldn't help glancing at the storm on top of the Rim.
The red lightning was flashing much more often now. And was getting much stronger.
The day's storm hit earlier than usual, just after twelve, and Father Andrews found himself staring outside for most of the afternoon at the torrents that fell from the gray-black sky, trying to gauge the damage being done to his recently planted seedlings. He stared, almost hypnotized, as the rain fell in never-repeating patterns on the concrete floor of the open patio.
Another of God's small miracles.
He turned away from the window and was surprised by the darkness of the house. He walked across the kitchen and switched on the light. The light illuminated the kitchen but sent the rest of the house and the world outside into further darkness. He found himself, against his will, listening for noises from the back of the house, from Father Selway'sstudy. But there was nothing. He put on some water for tea and sat down at the kitchen table. He picked up the Episcopal Concordance where he had left it. Several of the pages were marked with small bits of paper. Next to the concordance, on the table, was a list he had written. A list of everything the sheriff and Gordon had told him, as well as what he had learned on his own. Most of the things he had written, he knew, would not he found in the Bible. But he hoped to somehow link together what elements he could, to discover some meaning in the emerging patterns.
He had begun by reading all relevant passages relating to Satan or the devil. Though he had studied all such passages thoroughly in the seminary and knew most of them by heart, he felt it important to double check. Just as he had thought, the passages concentrated on Satan's acts rather than on descriptions of the fallen angel. The only description he could find--and that one an analogy-had been in Revelation. Satan here was described as a dragon and a serpent. Not the traditional cloven-hoofed devil he had been searching for. He had underlined the passage anyway, marking it with a scrap of paper, and had moved on to accounts of dreams and visions, but dreams and visions were so prevalent in the Bible that he had barely begun to scratch the surface before he had had to quit for the evening.
Now, he picked up the concordance and leafed through it. He happened upon the description of Satan in Revelation and reread the blue underlined verse. His eye moved back to the beginning of the chapter:
"And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth."