Deviation (4 page)

“Okay, thanks,” Cliff said. Then Dianne
felt the phone hit her in the back. “Get up! Don't touch
that fucking knife!”

Reaching out, Dianne grasped the handle of the little
knife. The little knife that Father Frank had blessed for her. How
could it not work? How could this big dumb slob be too much for it?

Cliff was on his feet. “I said, don't touch
it!”

Dianne sat up, holding the knife. She looked at
Cliff. She hated him so much she could barely stand it. She was
going to slice him up. Frank told her to slice him until he thought
he was going to die. “Make every gash count,” she said.

Cliff stood there, towering over her. “What?”

“Make every gash count,” she repeated.

“Give me that fucking thing.” He bent
over, his big body casting her in its shadow. “You have no
fucking idea how sorry you're going to be.”

When Dianne was a child, she'd been chased around the
back room of her foster parent's house by a big lumbering bee. The
bee had kept buzzing in her face, scaring her almost to the point of
fainting. When she'd tried to move away from it, it had followed
her. It went on and on, and she'd gotten more and more frightened.
And angry. She'd hated that big dumb bee. Finally, after what
seemed like an eternity of being terrorized by it, it zoomed away
from her and landed on one of the windows. She'd sensed her chance
then. She'd picked up one of her foster father's shoes and walked
right up to the bee. She'd stared at it, hating it. When she'd
swung the shoe, she did it with at least ten times more force than
was necessary. The force had been driven by her anger and her fear
and her desperation to make certain that the bee wouldn't survive
and come chasing after her again. She'd swung that shoe so hard
that the window exploded into hundreds of tiny shards, showering
down all over the floor. Miraculously, she hadn't gotten cut. And
the bee had been reduced to nothing but a series of smears.

Dianne swung like that now. She was gripping the
small handle of the knife so fiercely that her fist was white with
exertion. There was no way in hell it was going to flip out of her
hand this time. She watched the blade, almost feeling detached from
it as it sketched a red line along the length of Cliff's forearm.
The assault caused him to yelp in surprise, and he stood up
suddenly. When he did, the sketch opened up and began leaking
blood.

He held it up, staring at it in shock. It was
dripping blood all over the carpet. “What the fuck? Oh, you
fucking cunt! This is going to be the end of you!”

His words terrified her. Before he had a chance to do
anything, she slashed out again, hard enough to hurt her shoulder.
This time the little blade opened up the flesh of Cliff's thigh,
blood spilling out instantly and running down his leg.

He was too stunned to comment. He jumped back,
horrified, and began to look around for something to hit her with.

Dianne was overcome with a sense of urgency. She was
doing it! But she had to finish. If he got his hands on a weapon
now he'd kill her for sure. She leaped to her feet, the adrenaline
rushing through her blood and fueling her rage.

Cliff had his back to her, trying to pull a floor lamp
out from between the couch and the wall. The base of it was
partially wedged beneath the couch and was giving him some trouble.
He sensed her approach and turned his head to look at her. She'd
never seen him look scared, but he certainly looked scared now.
“Stay the fuck away from me!”

She swung the knife again, this time opening up his
lower back. It was soft and flabby and parted like gelatin around
Father Frank's beautiful little blade. Blood gurgled out and ran in
rivulets down Cliff's leg as he screamed and jerked at the base of
the lamp.

“Get away! Get the fuck away from me!”

“Just keep cutting,” Dianne said. Her
eyes looked wild as she swung the knife again, and again, slicing
open Cliff's shoulder and his belly, just above the elastic of his
underwear. She was astonished to see a bloody coil of his
intestines poke partially out as if it were attempting to flee.

He twisted and fell on the couch, holding up his arms
and legs to protect himself. “Stop it! Jesus Christ, you're
going to fucking kill me!” He was covered in blood, as was
the floor and much of the furniture. Even the walls were splattered
with blood .

Dianne had never seen him look so weak, and so
helpless. It was really working! She held the knife to her mouth
and kissed the blade. Then she lunged out with it again, slicing
open Cliff's hands as he tried to ward her off.

He screamed, obviously scared for his life now. He
tried to curl up into a ball on the couch to avoid her onslaught.
“Enough! Jesus Christ, that's enough!”

She stepped closer to him, her face and hands and
clothing red with his blood. “Go for the face,” she
said. She slashed at him again, putting a gash in his cheek and
another above his ear. Blood sprayed out at her, some of it getting
in her mouth. She didn't care. She slashed at him again, cutting
open the side of his neck as he screamed in terror.

“No more! No more!” His screams were
muffled now, his head buried in the cushions as he struggled
desperately to escape her fury. There was very little he could do.
He was bleeding profusely, from more wounds than he could keep track
of, and there were more of them being inflicted all the time.

“No more!”
Dianne agreed. She appeared insane as she stood over him,
brandishing the tiny knife. Her heart was thundering in her chest,
so hard she could feel it in her ears. She slashed at him again,
and again, no longer even aiming but only trying to do more damage.
“It's fucking over! Do you hear me? It's fucking
over
!”

Cliff lay still, no longer trying to protect himself.
He didn't utter a sound as the knife tore through his flesh again,
spraying blood onto the couch and the wall and the bookshelves. It
didn't occur to Dianne until later that he was already dead. She
stood there stabbing his corpse with the paring knife until her
muscles ached and she could no longer stand up. Then she backed
away, still half convinced that Cliff was going to leap from the
couch and attack her.

Cliff didn't move. The apartment was silent.

She sat down on the chair in the corner, her body
splattered with gore. The whole room was covered in it. It looked
like a slaughterhouse.

It took a moment or two for it all to sink in. Then
she began shaking. She shook hard, her entire body quaking with
involuntary spasms. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on
her breathing. It was difficult, but she was a very capable woman.

Father Frank had said so.

* * *

When the pizza delivery man rang the buzzer twenty
minutes later, Dianne didn't even hear it. She was curled up in the
chair, sleeping, the knife still clenched in her fist.

In the morning, Frank sat in his room nursing a brutal
hangover by sipping from a bottle of Carlsberg. He swore to himself
almost every morning that he would lighten up on his alcohol
consumption, but by late afternoon or early evening the idea seemed
absurd to him. He knew that when he started drinking heavier again
later on he'd feel terrific. Also, without the alcohol in his
system, the meth wouldn't allow him to fall asleep. It was a
balancing act, one he was still working on calibrating.

In the meantime he needed to figure out where he was
going to go.

He was sitting at his small desk, paging through a
book of road maps of the Untied States. Each two-page spread was
another state, and he looked them over thoughtfully, waiting to see
if any of them called out to him. He took a mouthful of beer and
turned the page. He'd never spent much time outside Wisconsin
before, and the prospect of it was really starting to intrigue him.

“I still need to stock up on supplies, my lord,”
he muttered. Lester had promised to gather as much as he possibly
could the night before. “He'd better call soon. If I'm
unable to figure out what's become of McKenzie, I'm going to want to
get moving. I can't put it off much longer.”

He opened the drawer to have another peek at his meth,
thinking he'd smoke just a tiny bit of it. It would really help to
improve his outlook, not to mention his hangover. As he was
reaching into the drawer to retrieve the bag, a sudden knock on the
door caused him to retract his hand and slam the drawer shut.

“Ah, shit. Here we go.” He stood up,
taking another quick drink of beer. Then he crossed the room and
stood directly beside the door. “Who's there?”

“It's me,” came the voice of Edgar
Stevens. “I just wanted to speak with you for a moment.”

Frank relaxed. It was probably nothing. Stevens was
a harmless old drunk and usually had no clue what was going on
around him. Frank unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Father Stevens stood there gazing in at him, looking
both weary and tense. He was a few years older than Frank, and
mostly bald. He was also fat, his cassock bulging out in front and
hanging down like a maternity dress.

“What's the good word, Father Stevens?”

Stevens chewed his lip for a moment, his eyes taking
in the bottle of Carlsberg in Frank's hand. “I'm not sure
there is one. That's what I wanted to discuss with you.”

Frank felt a twinge of apprehension. It was rare that
he and Stevens discussed anything at all. “Is this about
McKenzie?”

“More or less.”

Frank nodded, holding the door open wider. “Would
you like to come in?”

Father Stevens looked past him momentarily, his eyes
surveying the small, cluttered room. “I'd prefer to speak
with you somewhere else, if you don't mind.”

“Somewhere else would be fine.”

“It won't take long. It shouldn't, anyway.”

Frank made sure he had his keys with him and then
stepped outside the room, shutting the door behind him. They walked
down the hall to the sanctuary, their footsteps echoing hollowly in
the dusty silence of the church. When they reached a row of pews
Stevens sat down, motioning for Frank to do the same.

“Quiet in here today,” Frank observed,
taking a seat. Long shadows stretched across them from the high
windows; their faces reflected blue and green light from the stained
glass. “Not many of our faithful congregation have managed to
find the time to join us for spiritual enlightenment yet this
morning.”

Stevens stared at him blankly. He was obviously not
amused.

“It was a joke.”

“I realize that. A funny one, too.”

“Maybe not so funny,” Frank admitted. He
lifted his bottle of beer and took a sip. “Anyway, what did
you wish to discuss?”

A sparrow had gotten into the church somehow, possibly
through one of the broken windows; it flew across the room and
disappeared behind one of the curtains up near the altar. Stevens
watched it and then yawned, at the last moment covering his mouth
with a fat hand. “Basically, Frank, I just wanted to let you
know that I'm leaving.”

Alarms went off in Frank's mind. “Leaving?”

“Yes.” Stevens settled back and regarded
him soberly. “As soon as we're through speaking here, I'm
going to go clear out my room. I've got a rental car outside. I'm
leaving.”

“You mean running off?”

“I'm not running off. I've put a lot of thought
into this. We both know...” He glanced around the massive
room suspiciously, as if he feared someone might be hiding, crouched
down behind one of the pews. “We both know McKenzie is out of
control. Out of his mind, too. I've been trying for quite some
time to secure a position elsewhere, and I just recently managed to
do so.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you. If I were you, I'd be doing the
same thing.”

“I'm considering it,” Frank admitted. He
took another drink. “Where are you going?”

“Tampa.”

“Tampa. Nice weather down there.”

“Yes. If you like it hot and muggy.
Personally, I don't. But that's not why I'm going.”

Frank waited. He and Stevens had never been close,
and never would be. But they shared an unlikely association with
Pastor McKenzie, and they were both intelligent enough to realize
that if the law ever caught up with the Pastor and there was a
trial, and there most certainly would be a trial, they would both be
seen as conspirators even though they had never taken part in any of
McKenzie's little games. They didn't even know for certain what
McKenzie had been doing in his spare time for the past ten years,
although they both had a fairly good idea.

“What have you heard?”

Stevens sighed, looking older and more tired than
Frank had ever seen him. “It's not so much what I've heard.
It's more of what I've deduced.” He looked Frank in the eyes,
licking his big lips. “As well as a little something I've
seen.”

Frank braced himself. He'd begun keeping his distance
from McKenzie over the course of the past several years, sensing it
was a wise thing to do. The deterioration of the crazy pastor had
been impossible to miss. “Yes?”

Stevens looked away. “I don't want to go into
details. Hell, I don't know any details, not really.”

“We both know what he's been doing.”

“That is
untrue!
”
Stevens shouted. His face turned red and he began breathing very
fast. “I don't know
what
he's been doing! I can only assume, and I think the same goes for
you!”

“Yes, yes. Assume is what I meant.”

“It had better
be. You want to watch your words in regards to this, Father. This
is worlds apart from your little drug habit, or your constant
drinking.” He looked away for a moment. “Or
my
drinking, for that matter.” He turned back to Frank. “What
McKenzie has been doing... Jesus, Christ, I don't even want to think
about it.”

“So you're splitting.”

“Of course I'm splitting! If you had any sense,
you would be, too! While there's still time!”

Frank thought it over. “But you don't know
anything? You haven't seen him lately?”

“I've seen the news,” Stevens muttered.
“I've been seeing it for years. I don't want to see it
anymore.”

“I've seen the news myself. That doesn't prove
anything.”

Stevens looked at him. “I've seen some of those
kids. Not those most recent ones, but some of the ones from years
back on the news. I'd seen them here in the church. Before they...
went missing.”

Frank believed him. Stevens was relatively observant.
“Yes?”

“Not all of them, of course. But two or
three... over the past several years...”

“But you've
never seen him
do
anything...”

“Oh, come on.
What kind of man do you take me for? If I'd have seen him do
anything like that I'd have called the police immediately. I'm just
saying I
saw
some of those kids... that's all...”

“When they were still alive.”

Stevens took an
enormously deep breath, his eyes closing briefly. “Yes.
While they were still alive.” He looked at Frank. “If
he did anything to them, I don't think he did it here. Not in the
church. He might have... taken them home... I don't know... I
wouldn't know... I don't
want
to know.”

Frank took a drink. “You've never heard...
never mind.”

“I never heard
anything!
”

Frank knew he was lying. He'd heard the shrill
screams coming up through the floors on more than one occasion.
Whatever McKenzie had done, he'd done it in the basement. Right
here in the church basement.

“Anyway,” Stevens continued. “I
just wanted to let you know I was leaving.”

“Why now? Why not last year, or the year
before?”

“I told you. I just now managed to secure a
position...”

“You saw something,” Frank accused. “Or
heard something.”

Stevens opened his mouth to argue and then shut it
tight, his lips turning white.

“What was it? Did you figure out a way to get
into that fucking vault down there?”

Lifting his chin, Stevens seemed to smirk at that.
“As a matter of fact, I've tried. I've tried several times
over the past several years.” He shook his big head. “I
couldn't do it, though. The damn thing is impossible.”

“I know,” Frank agreed. “I've been
trying every so often for ten years.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. You've got to admit, it's rather
curious.”

“I'll say.” Father Stevens scoffed.
“Curious. Jesus Christ, that's a fucking understatement.”

Frank sat up
straight, stretching his back. “So why now? You must have
heard
something
.”

Stevens stared at him. He started to speak and then
stopped. He was sweating. He wiped his forehead and stared at
Frank's bottle of beer. “I don't want to talk about it. I'm
just telling you, it would be a good idea to leave.”

“Is someone down there now? One of these more
recent children?”

“No! I don't mean that at all!”

“What is it, then?”

Stevens shook his head. His face was now livid and
covered in a sheen of perspiration. “Just...” He threw
his hands up in defeat. “I was checking his room, okay? I
thought it would be prudent to see if he was in there. He could
have died in his sleep for all we know.”

“Was he in there?”

“No. But since I broke the lock, I admit, I
looked around a little bit. I was... looking for clues. Think what
you want, but I was just trying to figure out what happened to him.”

“It doesn't bother me. I should have thought of
it myself.”

“Anyway, I didn't see too much. I just kind of
poked around, feeling uncomfortably nervous. Almost like he was
watching me somehow. I would have left, after making sure he wasn't
there, but something caught my eye. It looked out of place. I
don't know, I just kind of noticed it sitting there on his desk and
so I picked it up for a closer inspection.”

“What was it?”

Stevens looked at him, his eyes glossy. “It
was... a lunchbox. A child's lunchbox.”

Frank sighed, rubbing a hand through his hair.
“That's it? A lunchbox?”

“Yes. I opened it.”

“And?”

“It was full of teeth.”

“Teeth?”

“Children's teeth, I'm assuming. Hundreds of
them. Maybe thousands.”

“There
couldn't
have been that many!”

“There were hundreds, at the very least! Many
of them small, and still crusted with old blood. I don't know how
many teeth kids have, they probably have at least 25 apiece.”

Frank frowned. “Why 25?”

Stevens rubbed his
face. “I don't know! I'm estimating! Any way you look at
it, there were a lot of teeth.”

“What did you do with them?”

“I closed the box and set it back on the desk.
And I got the hell out of there.”

Frank thought about it. “And that's it? That's
why you're leaving?”

“I told you, I've been trying to leave for a
long time. I just recently got an offer.”