From where he stood on the porch of the rectory, staring at it, he could see that the door of the crypt was slightly ajar. It was the narrow shadow cast by the open door, he realized, that had caught his attention as he bent down to pick up the paper.
Going back into the rectory, Father MacNeill called the police department, and was relieved when one of his own parishioners answered the telephone. As he sat down to await the arrival of Ray Beckwith-who had spent his entire career as one-quarter of the town's tiny police force-his fingers counted the beads of his rosary. His lips moved rapidly as he silently spoke the words of his prayers, repeating them until his orisons were interrupted by the chime of the doorbell. As he opened the door, the look of mild curiosity on Sheriff Beckwith's face turned to one of concern.
"Are you all right, Father Mack?" the officer asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I didn't sleep well last night," the priest confessed. "I had a sort of-well, I suppose you could call it a premonition. And I'm afraid it might have come true."
Beckwith's brows knit into a worried frown. "What's going on?"
"I'm not sure yet," Father MacNeill said. "But something happened in the cemetery last night, and I called you right away. I didn't want to run the risk of disturbing anything."
"Disturbing anything? You mean like one of the graves?"
"One of the crypts," MacNeill told him. "Let me show you."
Together, the two men made their way through the cemetery until they were standing in front of the mausoleum. Now, though, they could see that it wasn't simply that the door had been opened.
It had been defaced, as welclass="underline" above the door, staining the white marble, was a bloodred pentagram.
"Oh, Jesus," Ray said softly. "Who'd want to do a thing like that?"
The priest gazed at the pentagram in silence, and then the inscription beneath the crypt's door:
GEORGE CONWAY
BORN JULY 29, 1916
DIED JUNE 4, 1959
"I'm afraid I can think of a lot of people who might want to do something like that," the priest said, his voice grim. He shook his head. "I still don't understand why they let him be buried here. He died in sin."
Beckwith's lips pursed. "That's why they deconsecrated this part of the cemetery. That's how come the fence is around the mausoleum."
Father MacNeill shook his head. "It's still within the grounds of the church," he insisted, his agitation rising. "It should never have been done."
Beckwith sighed, unwilling to argue with the priest. "Not much anybody can do about it now. Do you want to take a look at the coffin?"
"Don't you need to find out if there are fingerprints?" the priest countered.
Beckwith shook his head. "Everything's so weathered and rough, nothing would show." He glanced around at the empty streets. "But if you want to have a look inside, we better do it now, while there's no one around. Otherwise the whole town'll be talking. Let's just not touch anything more'n we absolutely have to."
Together the two men slid the coffin just far enough out of the crypt to reveal its broken latches. As Beckwith supported the weight of the coffin, Father MacNeill carefully lifted the lid open and peered down into the moldering face of George Conway.
The man's eyes had sunk so deep into their sockets they had almost vanished, and his skin, no doubt initially treated with embalming fluid, had dried and stretched over the years, until now it was a transparent sheath over the skull itself. The teeth showed clearly, and the flesh of the neck, though still showing the abrasion of the noose that had killed him, had desiccated to the point that it seemed the black suit George Conway had been buried in had been put on nothing more than a skeleton.
The priest leaned closer. As his eyes fell on the hands that had been crossed over Conway's chest, he gasped.
The right hand was missing, severed at the wrist.
When the priest gasped, Ray Beckwith struggled to peer around the open lid, and finally worked his way far enough around the end to afford a clear view. "Oh, Christ," he whispered. "What in hell is going on?" Then, remembering to whom he was talking, he quickly apologized. Holding his breath against the odor of ancient death drifting out of the open casket, Beckwith bent to examine the corpse. The cut in the leathery skin looked fresh, and there was a clean nick in the end of one of the arm bones.
"It was done last night," the priest said softly. "I'm sure of it."
"Okay," Beckwith said. "Let's just close it up for now. I'll get a crew out here later on to examine the area more closely. Let's just have us a look around the rest of the cemetery and see if they did anything else."
Sliding the coffin back into the crypt, they closed the door as carefully as they'd handled the coffin itself, then walked through the cemetery, looking for any other signs of vandalism.
The graveyard appeared undisturbed, until they came to the grave of Cora Conway.
On a tree next to her grave, held in place by the sharpened end of a crucifix, was the skin of a dead cat, complete except for its head.
But it wasn't the grizzly hide of the cat upon which Father MacNeill's eyes instantly fixed, but the profaned crucifix.
He recognized it immediately.
It had come from inside his own church.
He turned to face the policeman.
"We're going to find out who did this," he said, his voice unsteady. "We're going to find out, or I fear all our souls will burn in Hell. Every single one of us."
CHAPTER 31
But what will Father MacNeill say?" Marge Engstrom waited for her words to have their expected effect on her daughter. But when Sandy announced that she didn't care what Father MacNeill said, she was too tired to go to church that morning, Marge's brow creased in frustration. "I don't know what's gotten into you, Sandra Anne," she declared, using her daughter's full name, which she only did when seriously annoyed. "You know perfectly well that after last night-"
"After last night, why would it matter if any of us go?" Sandy protested. "Father MacNeill's already mad at us, isn't he? I don't see how me going to church is going to make any difference!"
"He's not angry at us," Marge explained with a note of exaggerated patience that only made Sandy want to dig her heels in and stick to her position. "It wasn't your father who swayed the meeting last night-it was Ted Conway. But if we don't go to church this morning, Father MacNeill might very well assume that we've taken a position against him."
"Well, haven't we?" Sandy demanded.
Marge pursed her lips. "As mayor, your father didn't vote last night, and though you may not have noticed, neither did I. Your father wants to maintain a position of neutrality, for the good of the entire community."
"You mean he wants to be reelected," Sandy said, and saw by her mother's wince that she was right.
Marge Engstrom recovered quickly. "Your father is a very good mayor, and part of the reason he's a good mayor is that he maintains bridges to every part of our community. If you look at the votes two years ago-"
Sandy rolled her eyes. "I read Dad's campaign brochure, Mom. I even wrote part of it, remember? And I'm still not going to church!"
Marge eyed Sandy carefully, wondering yet again if perhaps it had been a mistake to let her spend the night at the Conways'. It was a thought that had occurred to her when Sandy came home looking like death warmed over. Her face had been sallow, and her eyes so dark that Marge didn't think she could have slept at all. What on earth had she and Kim Conway been up to?
"Nothing," Sandy had insisted. "All we did was watch a couple of horror movies and go to bed."
"Well, no wonder you look so terrible," Marge had replied. "I swear, I don't know why they let them make those terrible movies. All that blood and violence! Why can't you and your friends watch nice movies? I'll bet you didn't sleep a wink. Not a single wink."
By yesterday afternoon, after Sandy had a long nap, she'd seemed fine. But this morning she looked pale again.