Again, he had the creepy feeling that something dangerous was moving in on him, and a chill quivered down his spine as he turned to peer into the shadow-draped rear yard. The wind clattered through the thick, somewhat brittle leaves of a huge ficus, hissed in the fronds of two palms, and caused smaller shrubs to sway and flutter as if they were alive. But it was the empty swimming pool that drew O'Hara's attention and became the focus of his fear. He suddenly got the idea that something large and hideous was hiding in the pool, crouched down in that concrete pit, listening to him, waiting for the opportune moment in which to make its move. Something that had coalesced out of the darkness. Something that had risen up from the pits of Hell.
Something sent to stop them from killing the boy. Underlying the myriad sounds produced by the wind, he thought he could hear a sinister, wet, slithering sound coming from the pool, and he was suddenly cold clear through to his bones.
Baumberg returned with the two laundry bags, startling O'Hara.
"Do you feel it, too?" Baumberg asked.
"Yes," O'Hara said.
"It's out there. The Beast himself Or one of his messengers."
"In the pool," O'Hara said.
Baumberg stared at the black pit in the center of the lawn.
Finally he nodded." Yeah. I feel it. Down there in the pool."
It can only hurt us if we begin to doubt Mother Grace's power to protect us, O'Hara told himself. It can only stop us if we lose our faith or if we let our fear of it overwhelm us.
That was what Mother Grace had told them.
Mother Grace was never wrong.
O'Hara turned to the French doors again. The suction cup was still firmly affixed to one of the panes. He switched on the small device to which the suction cup was connected, and a glass-covered dial lit up in the center of the instrument case.
The device was a sonic-wave detector that would tell them if the house was equipped with a wireless alarm system that protected the premises by detecting motion. The lighted dial did not move, which meant there was no radio wave activity of any kind within the family room, beyond the French doors.
Before Mother Grace had converted him, O'Hara had been a busy and professional burglar, and he had been damned good at his trade. Because Grace had a propensity for seeking converts from among those who had fallen the furthest from God, the Church of the Twilight could tap a wealth of skills and knowledge not available to the average church whose members were from the law-abiding segments of the population. Sometimes that was a blessing.
He popped the suction cup off the glass, switched off the wave detector, and returned it to the flight bag. He withdrew a roll of strapping tape and a pair of scissors. He cut several strips of tape and applied them to the pane of glass nearest the door handle. When the glass was completely covered, he struck it hard with one fist. The pane shattered, but with little sound, and the fragments all stuck to the tape. He pulled the pieces out of the frame, put them aside, reached through, fumbled for the deadbolt, unlocked it, opened the door.
He was now pretty sure there was no alarm, but he had one last thing to check for. He got down on his knees on the patio, reached across the threshold, and pulled up the carpet from the tack strip. There was no alarm mat under the carpet, just ordinary quilted padding.
He put the carpet back in place. He and Baumberg went into the house, taking the laundry bags and the flight bag with them.
O'Hara closed and locked the French doors.
He looked out at the rear lawn. It was peaceful now.
"It isn't out there any more," Baumberg said.
"No," O'Hara said.
Baumberg peered across the unlighted family room, into the breakfast area and the dark kitchen beyond. He said, "Now it's inside with us."
"Yes," O'Hara said. He had felt the hostile presence within the house the moment they'd crossed the threshold.
"I wish we could turn on some lights," Baumberg said uneasily.
"The house is supposed to be deserted. The neighborswould notice lights and maybe call the cops."
Overhead, from an upstairs room, a floorboard creaked.
Before converting to Mother Grace's faith, in the days when he had been a thief, stealing his way along the road to hell, O'Hara would have figured the creaking was merely a settling noise, one of the many meaningless sounds that an empty house produced as joints expanded and contracted in response to the humidity-or lack of it-in the air. But tonight he knew it was no settling sound.
O'Hara's old friends and some in his family said that he had become paranoid since joining the Church of the Twilight. They just didn't understand. His behavior seemed paranoid only because he had seen the truth as Mother Grace taught it, and his old friends and family had not been saved. His eyes had been opened; their eyes were still blind.
More creaking noise overhead.
"Our faith is a shield," Baumberg said shakily." We don't dare doubt that."
"Mother has provided us with armor," O'Hara said.
Creeeeeaaak.
"We're doing God's work," Baumberg said, challenging the darkness that filled the house.
O'Hara switched on the flashlight, shielding it with one hand to provide just enough light to guide them but not enough to be seen from outside.
Baumberg followed him to the stairs and up to the second floor.
"Her name's Grace Spivey," Charlie said as their car moved through the increasingly blustery February night.
Christine couldn't take her eyes from the photograph. The old woman's black-and-white gaze was strangely hypnotic, and a cold radiation seemed to emanate from it.
In the front seat, Joey was talking to Pete Lockburn about Steven Spielberg's E. T, which Joey had seen four times and which Lockburn seemed to have seen more often than that. Her son's voice sounded far away, as if he were on a distant mountain, already lost to her.
Charlie switched off the penlight.
Christine was relieved when shadow fell across the photograph, breaking the uncanny hold it had on her. She put it in the envelope, returned the envelope to Charlie." She's head of this cult?"
"She is the cult. It's primarily a personality cult. Her religious message isn't anything special or unique; the whole thing's in the way she delivers it. If anything happened to Grace, her followers would drift away and the church would probably collapse."
"How can a crazy old woman like that draw any followers?
She sure didn't seem charismatic to me."
"But she is," Charlie said." I've never spoken to her myself, but Henry Rankin has. He handled that case I mentioned, the two little kids whose mother took them with her into the cult.
And he told me Grace has a certain undeniable magnetism, a very forceful personality. And although her message isn't particularly new, it's dramatic and exciting, just the sort of thing that a certain type of person would respond to with enthusiasm."
" What is her message?"
"She says we're living in the last days of the world."
"Every religious crackpot from here to Maine has made that proclamation at one time or another."
"Of course."
"So there must be more to it. What else does she say?"
Charlie hesitated, and she sensed that he dreaded having to tell her the rest.
" Charlie?"
He sighed." Grace says the Antichrist has already been born."
"I've heard that one, too. There's one cult around that says the Antichrist is the King of Spain."
"That's a new one to me."
"Others say the Antichrist will be the man who takes over the Russian government after the current Premier."