Right Hand of Evil (22 page)

AND SEE THE GLINT OF LIGHT THAT REFLECTED FROM THE BLADE OF THE KNIFE HE HELD IN HIS HANDS.

INSTINCTIVELY, BESSIE KNEW WHAT WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN TO HER.

THE SAME THING THAT HAD HAPPENED TO LITTLE LUCINDA-HER PRECIOUS LUCY, WHOM SHE'D BARELY SEEN BEFORE MISTER FRANK HAD TAKEN HER AWAY.

AS MISTER FRANK PICKED HER UP AND LAID HER ON THE TABLE BEHIND WHICH MONSIGNOR MELCHIOR STOOD, BESSIE FELT NO FEAR, FELT NO URGE TO SCREAM OUT.

BUT SHE KNEW, AS SHE WATCHED MONSIGNOR MELCHIOR RAISE THE KNIFE ABOVE HER, THAT SHE WOULD NOT RUN AWAY WITH FRANCY NEXT YEAR.

INSTEAD, SHE WOULD GO-THIS VERY MINUTE-TO JOIN LUCY.

AS THE KNIFE SANK INTO HER CHEST AND PIERCED HER HEART, BESSIE DELACOURT FELT A GREAT PEACEFULNESS COME OVER HER.

SHE, LIKE MISS LORETTA BEFORE HER, AT LAST WAS FREE OF THE CONWAY FAMILY.

Monsignor Devlin once again closed the Bible. Was it possible that Frank Conway could have killed his own child, as Bessie Delacourt said? But of course it was-a hundred years ago a child born of a servant in St. Albans was less valued than a hunting dog.

But even so…

The old priest flipped back, searching for an entry in the Bible that might have predated the one made by Loretta Villiers, but found none. Then, as he examined the ancient Bible more closely, he saw something: deep in the crevice between the two pages, cut so close to the binding as to be all but invisible, was the remainder of a page that had been removed from the volume.

Had Cora taken it out before giving him the Bible?

Or had it been someone else, someone who had gone before?

Sighing heavily, Monsignor Devlin put the Bible aside. Later, when his eyes were up to it, he would continue reading the rest of the entries made through the years by the women who had kept this strange journal of the family they had married into. But for now he turned to the histories of his own church-the parish of St. Albans-searching for some clue as to who this Monsignor Melchior could have been, this man who by the title associated with his name must once have been a priest.

A priest who had broken his vows and abandoned his vocation, yet kept his title?

Why?

He gazed dispiritedly at the thick journals filled with the scribblings of all the priests who had preceded him in St. Albans. Most of their hands were no more legible than that of the semiliterate servant, Bessie Delacourt. If he were truly going to find the answer to what might have been written on the pages that had been torn from the Conway family Bible, he would need help.

Father MacNeill!

Of course! He would talk to Father MacNeill, whose mind was much younger and sharper than his own.

Feeling as if a burden had been lifted from his back, Monsignor Devlin let his tired eyes close, and quickly drifted into the quiet of sleep.

The phone call from Father Bernard hadn't taken Ellie Roberts entirely by surprise. In fact, she'd been expecting it-or at least one very much like it. She'd seen it coming ever since Luke started hanging around with Jared Conway. Ellie herself, of course, knew all about the Conways, even though she hadn't been born until a few years after George Conway hanged himself from the magnolia tree behind his house. Even now she could remember the first time she and her friends had snuck over to the big house on Pontchartrain Street. She'd only been five years old, and she'd stood on the edge of the road-none of them had dared set a foot on the property itself-and listened, wide-eyed, as Rudy LaFrenier, who was two years older than her, and knew everything-told them the story of what had happened here.

"Father Fitzpatrick says they was voodoos," Rudy had said, and even now, thirty years later, Ellie could remember the fear the words had instilled in her. "Father Fitzpatrick says this whole place is full of voodoo, and anybody who even walks on the lawn will go to Hell!"

The story had been enough to keep Ellie and her friends away from the Conway house, and even when she was old enough to realize that whatever tale Father Fitzpatrick-who had retired when Father Bernard came to St. Albans-might have told Rudy LaFrenier probably wasn't entirely true, she'd been unable to shake off her fear not only of the house, but of the Conways as well. After all, even if there wasn't anything to the voodoo story, George Conway must have been crazy to hang himself from the magnolia tree, and everyone knew what had happened to his wife when she found him. While Ellie didn't believe in ghosts, there'd always been something about the old Conway Victorian. Which was why she'd told Luke right off that she didn't want him hanging around with Jared Conway. "There's just something about that place," she said. "And the Conways, too. Whenever there've been Conways in this town, there's been trouble."

Luke had rolled his eyes scornfully. "It's just a house, Ma," he replied, his voice taking on a stubborn note that reminded Ellie of his father. "Besides, I like Jared."

For perhaps the millionth time, Ellie wished Luke's father were still alive to deal with Luke, but there was nothing to be done about that. Big Luke had been a good man, doing a good job as a deputy sheriff, and when his motorcycle skidded out from under him that day, Ellie had wondered how she'd ever make it without him, let alone raise Little Luke by herself.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Father MacNeill had explained to her, "and the Lord will provide for you and young Luke."

And He had. She found a job working in the rectory. It didn't pay much, but it was enough. It also meant that Luke could go to St. Ignatius School for free, and during the first few years, the Sheriff's Office helped out, too. Ellie tried to bring Luke up right, doing her best to be both mother and father to him. It hadn't been easy, but she always tried to figure out what Big Luke would have told his son, and all in all, she thought, Luke was turning out all right.

Until he started hanging around with Jared Conway.

Father MacNeill suggested she forbid Luke to spend time with Jared, but she knew that wouldn't work. Times weren't like they used to be, when whatever your parents told you was law, and you didn't even think of disobeying them. Nowadays, kids did pretty much what they wanted to do, and even if Father MacNeill didn't understand it, she did. After all, even in St. Albans a lot of the kids were growing up with only one parent, or even if they had two, both parents worked. You just couldn't keep an eye on them as in the past. But it had helped that Luke was at St. Ignatius, because at least the sisters didn't put up with the kind of nonsense the public school teachers did.

And Luke hadn't caused any problems.

Not until today.

Mortified. That's how she'd felt when Father Bernard called to tell her about Luke's misbehavior. Just plain mortified. She'd sat at her desk in the rectory, the phone pressed so hard to her ear that it hurt, as if she were trying to keep Father Bernard's words from leaking out, so nobody would hear them but herself. But of course that wouldn't happen. Not in St. Albans, and certainly not within St. Ignatius parish.

What if Luke got expelled from school?

What if she lost her job because of it?

Finally, knowing she had no choice, she'd gone to see Father Mack about it.

When he looked up from the homily he was working on, she could tell he'd already talked to Father Bernard. So at least she was saved from the humiliation of having to confess Luke's sins herself. Then, when Father MacNeill began talking to her, Ellie realized that the situation wasn't as bad as she'd feared.

"Nobody blames Luke," the priest assured her. "We all know him, and know what a fine young man he is. But even the finest young men can fall under…" Father Mack hesitated, and Ellie could see him searching for exactly the right words. "Let's just say all of us sometimes fall under the wrong influences, shall we?" He smiled at Ellie, and her fears began to abate. "The problem isn't Luke himself." He pursed his lips, and tented his fingers in front of his chest as if he were about to begin praying. "It's the Conway boy I worry about."

"I know," Ellie quickly assured him. Father MacNeill had not only offered her a job when she was most in need, he'd also become her adviser in everything else in her life as well. "I've been worried ever since Luke started hanging around with that boy." She shook her head. "I wish they'd just go away. I know it isn't charitable of me, but I just wish the entire family would go away."

Father MacNeill's expression eased. "Then perhaps you might want to come to the hearing about the hotel Jared's father is planning to open."

Ellie had heard about the plan to turn the old place into a hotel-everybody in town had. But it hadn't occurred to her that there might be something she could do to prevent it from happening. She'd never paid much attention to politics, and Big Luke had always told her it was best to stay out of it.
"All you can do is get folks mad at you,"
he'd explained. "So
the best thing is just to keep your mouth shut, and let other people make the decisions."
But now, as Father MacNeill spoke, she saw that if she was going to pry her son away from Jared Conway, she would have to take a stand.

In the years since her husband had died, she'd done a lot of things she never would have thought herself capable of doing.

She could do this, too.

When Luke finally got home from cleaning the church, Ellie was waiting for him. She was sitting in Big Luke's chair, which still dominated the living room of the little house on Court Street, and which she never sat in unless she had to lecture Luke. "I want to talk to you," she said as he started toward his room at the back of the house.

"I got homework," Luke countered. "I stayed after school to-"

"I know why you stayed after school," Ellie interrupted. "Father Bernard called me. At work," she added, her eyes fixed accusingly on her son. "How could you have done that? After everything I've done, after everything I've sacrificed-"

"Jesus Christ, Ma," Luke groaned. "All that happened was that me and Jared were a little late getting back from lunch."

"Don't take the Lord's name in vain," Ellie said, quickly crossing herself. "Your father-"

Luke's eyes flashed with anger. "Aw, come on, Ma. Dad's dead, remember? He's been dead since I was a baby! And I bet he swore!"

"He didn't!" Ellie flared. "Never!"
Well, at least he didn't swear in front of me,
she silently compromised. Certainly when Big Luke was working on the car, he'd used some words she didn't approve of. But never in front of her. "But that's not what I want to talk to you about."

Luke's eyes clouded suspiciously. "So what is it? If it's about being late-"

"It's more than that." Ellie hesitated, then decided to face the issue head on. "It's Jared Conway. I don't want you to see him anymore."

"Why?" Luke demanded. "What's wrong with Jared?"

Ellie rose from her dead husband's chair, trying to summon up the words Big Luke would have used. "He's a bad influence and I don't approve of him. So you won't see him anymore. Is that clear?"

Luke's jaw tightened and his eyes smoldered. "Yeah," he finally said. "That's clear. It's bullshit, but it's clear."

"And you will obey me?" Ellie pressed.

Her son eyed her, and for the first time in her life, Ellie found herself frightened by the way Luke was looking at her. It was almost as if he was taking her measure.

"Maybe I will," Luke said, "and maybe I won't."

It was nearly six when the back door opened and Jared entered the kitchen. Janet looked up from the salad she was making, wondering what he would say about his lateness. Until recently, she wouldn't have wondered about it-Jared would have told her. But recently, especially since he'd moved into the basement room, he'd been disappearing downstairs as soon as he came home from school, and staying there until supper-time. And after supper, unless he went off to meet Luke somewhere, he'd vanish back downstairs.

"What's he doing down there?" she'd asked Ted a few days ago.

"It's all right, Janet. Let him have his space," Ted told her. "He's growing up. And no matter what the politically correct view might be, boys and girls are different. You can't expect Jared to be like you." A mischievous sparkle lit his eyes. "Of course, we don't want him to be quite like me, either, do we?"

"Lord, no," Janet replied without thinking, and then old habit had brought up her defenses as she waited for him to bristle at what she'd implied. But he only smiled at her.

"Every day I thank my lucky stars that you put up with it as long as you did. And don't worry-whatever Jared's doing down there, I'm sure he's not drinking. Believe me, I've had enough experience, so I'd know. I'd see it in him even faster than you'd see it in me if I fell off the wagon."

"But why does he need a lock on his door?" she pressed.
"Kim
certainly doesn't seem to need one."

"Territorialism," Ted had told her. "It's like an animal marking the boundaries of its hunting grounds."

Janet sighed. "Well, I guess a lock on the door is better than that." But nothing Ted told her helped: a gulf had formed between Jared and the rest of the family, and it seemed to be widening every day.

Now, as Jared passed through the kitchen on his way to the butler's pantry and the dining room beyond, he didn't even speak to her, not even to say hello, much less offer an explanation of why he was so late coming home.

"Jared?" When her son didn't even slow down, she spoke more sharply. "Jared!"

He stopped, but didn't turn around.

"Look at me, please," Janet said, her voice soft, but pitched to let him know she wasn't in a mood to put up with any nonsense.

He turned to face her.

"Father Bernard called me this afternoon," she said.

Jared shrugged. "So?"

"'So?" Janet echoed. "Is that all you can say?"

"What do you want me to say?" Jared demanded. "Sister Clarence got pissed off at me, and so did Father Bernard, so I spent the afternoon cleaning the church. That's my problem, not yours."

Janet's eyes narrowed. "Your problems
are
my problems. I'm your mother."

Jared's eyes flashed with sudden fury. "Jeez, Mom! I'm not a little kid! I'm almost sixteen years old!"

"And until we came here, you've never gotten in trouble at school."

"I'd think you'd be proud of that, instead of climbing all over my back," Jared snapped, turning his back to her. "I'm going down to my room."

"Jared!" Janet exclaimed. "When I'm talking to you, I-" Catching sight of Molly, whose eyes were wide with worry over the anger in the voices she was hearing, Janet scooped the little girl into her arms. "It's all right, sweetheart," she crooned. "Mommy's not mad at you, and neither is Jared. Nobody's mad at you."

Taking the little girl by the hand, she led her into the library, which served Ted as a temporary office, and turned the little girl over to her father. "How about looking after Molly for a few minutes? I have to deal with Jared."

Ted stood up from the desk. "Maybe I should take care of it-" he began, but Janet shook her head.

"This is between him and me. Besides, I'm finally going to get a look at his room."

"Okay." Ted sighed, lifting Molly into his lap. "But I warn you-teenage boys' rooms can get pretty weird."

"Whatever I find, I'm sure I'll be able to cope with it," Janet replied. Unwilling to reopen any of the slowly healing wounds in her marriage, she resisted the urge to remind him that she'd been dealing with Jared pretty much by herself almost since the day he was born. Leaving Molly and Ted in the library, she headed for the basement.

She stopped at the top of the stairs, peering down into the shadows rendered deeper by the glare of the single naked bulb screwed into a socket in the wall halfway down.
Why would anyone want to live down here?
she wondered as she went down the creaking stairs. She tried to imagine what it must be like in the middle of the night, and shuddered at the thought of the spiders that must be creeping around. She paused at Jared's door, staring at the gleaming brass lock that she'd first noticed a few days ago. But at least there was no KEEP OUT sign, like the one he'd put on the door to his room when he was six. She reached for the doorknob, then changed her mind and knocked softly instead.

A moment later she heard Jared's voice, muffled by the door. "What?"

"May I come in?" she called.

A silence, then: "It's not locked."

Twisting the knob, she pushed the door open, stepped forward, then stopped short. Whatever she'd been expecting-and she wasn't sure if she'd been expecting anything in particular-it wasn't this.

For a single, utterly disorienting moment, Janet felt as if she'd stepped into a void. A wave of vertigo swept over her, and she instinctively put out a hand to steady herself. Then, as her eyes began to refocus, her brain to straighten out the signals it was receiving, the dizziness passed.

The room was painted black.

Not a glossy black, which might have created some interesting light patterns, but a dull, flat black that absorbed practically every ray of light the overhead lamp put out. The rafters that had been exposed the first time she'd been down here had disappeared: Jared-or, more likely, Ted-had filled the spaces between them with sound-deadening insulation, held in place by sheets of plywood painted the same flat black as the walls. The bulb that had once been suspended from a hanging wire was now screwed into a socket mounted on the ceiling, and it was covered by a shade. The shade, though, was nothing more than a red paper lantern, which only served to cast a fiery glow over the room. "Is that thing safe?" Janet heard herself ask, and immediately wished she could retract the words.

Too late.

"It's not gonna burn the house down," Jared said sullenly. "I checked it out with Dad."

As
if he'd know,
Janet thought, and then felt guilty about the disloyal thought. In truth, Ted had learned a lot more about reconstruction since they'd moved to St. Albans than she would have thought possible. There didn't seem to be a single question about wiring, plumbing, heating, or anything else relating to the house that he didn't have an answer for. So far, every one of his answers had proved to be correct.

Janet's eyes swept the rest of the room. There was a bed in one corner-at least most of a bed, for Jared hadn't bothered to put a frame under the box springs and mattress he and Luke had dragged down from the second floor. There were a couple of other mattresses-apparently rescued from the attic, or some part of the huge basement she herself hadn't yet explored-that were half folded up the walls to form rudimentary sofas.

There was a large table, and Jared had built what looked like some kind of workbench along the wall opposite the windows.

Against another wall stood an armoire that Janet remembered from one of the second-floor bedrooms, and a chest of drawers she couldn't recall having seen before.

The windows were covered with black paper.

How can he stand it?
she wondered. No
light, no air, a musty odor.
But she checked herself, remembering her purpose.

She scanned the room again, searching for something-anything-she could relate to, finally fixing on the desk lamp that stood on the table next to Jared's backpack, and on a floor lamp next to the bed.

"Well, at least you can still find enough light to read," she said as brightly as she could.

Jared, sprawled out on the bed with his arms crossed on his chest, glared at her. "I like it, okay?" he said. "And Dad said I could do anything with it I wanted to, as long as you couldn't hear my music upstairs."

"But I'm sure he didn't mean-"

"Can you hear anything?" Jared interrupted. "Do I bother you?"

"No, but-"

"Then what's wrong with it?" he demanded.

Other than the fact that I can't see, I can't breathe, and I feel as if the walls are closing in around me, I suppose there's nothing wrong with it,
Janet said to herself. Then she remembered what Ted had told her before she came down.
"Teenage boys' rooms can get pretty weird."
It wasn't as if she hadn't been warned. "I guess nothing's wrong with it," she finally replied. She took a tentative step toward him. "Truce, okay? I'm just worried about you, that's all. It seems like ever since we came here, you've…" She searched for the right word, but couldn't find anything better than the one already in her mind. "It just seems as though you're different, that's all. And I'm worried about you."

For several seconds Jared said nothing. When he finally looked at her, Janet saw the same fury glittering in his eyes as she'd seen upstairs. "Just leave me alone," he said. "Okay, Ma? Just leave me alone!"

A painful memory broke into Janet's consciousness.
His father,
she thought.
He sounds just like his father!
But it was more than the words Jared had spoken, which she must have heard a thousand times-
ten
thousand times-from Ted. It even went beyond the dark blaze in his eyes. It was an aura that seemed to have gathered around him; the same kind of impenetrable miasma that had surrounded Ted when he was drinking, making it impossible for her to reach him. Instinctively, she took a step toward Jared, but quickly stopped herself, remembering all the rebuffs from Ted over the years.

Was it possible Jared had begun drinking? She tried to reject the thought even as it popped into her head, but scanned the room once more, this time searching for a bottle or a glass.

Drugs?

She sniffed the air, searching for any sign of the sweet pungency of marijuana. All she smelled was the stale, musty odor that permeated the basement. But Jared wouldn't take drugs.

Would he?

Certainly she wouldn't have thought so a few weeks ago; in fact, if anyone had even suggested the possibility, she would have rejected it out of hand. Jared had lived through his father's drinking, and-

– and the children of alcoholics were far more likely to fall victim to the disease than those who hadn't grown up with it.

Not Jared,
she prayed silently.
Oh, God, please don't let it happen to Jared.

She wanted to reach out to her son, to hold him, to tell him that they could deal with whatever was going on inside him. But once again she saw the fury glowing in his eyes, and the impenetrable mask his face had become. Right now, she knew, there was no use trying to talk to him. Right now, he was his father's son. "Okay," she said. "I'll call you when supper's ready."

She backed out of the room, closed the door, and started up the stairs. She was halfway up when she heard the sound of the lock clicking.

Locking me out,
she thought bleakly.
Locking me out of his life.

Supper that evening turned into an eerie echo of all the suppers the Conways had survived when Ted was drinking. Though it was something none of them mentioned-as if they'd reached a silent understanding that by not talking about it they didn't have to admit it existed-Janet, Jared, and Kim had all felt a sense of reprieve, if not relief, when Ted didn't come home for supper, for when he did, the tension that hung over the table was often so thick that even one of the steak knives wouldn't have cut it. Even Molly had always sensed it, and no matter how hard Jared and Kim tried to keep their baby sister distracted, she invariably wound up fussing or making enough of a mess that Ted would demand she be taken away from the table. Recently, though, Molly's favorite place had become the spot just to the right of her father, who seemed to have tapped into an apparently inexhaustible well of patience that none of his children had seen before, and that Janet herself assumed had dried up years earlier.

But now all the old tension was back, except that instead of hanging like a dark curtain between Janet and Ted, the strain had fallen over Kim and Jared. Ever since the twins had first begun to talk, the supper table was their favorite place to recount the events of their day, each of them finishing the other's sentences, each picking up on his or her sibling's thoughts. Now, though, a silence hung over them. It wasn't the kind of comfortable lag in the conversation that used to occur when both of them seemed to run out of things to say at the same moment. Rather, the silence felt like the uneasy quiet of nighttime on a battlefield.

Janet felt as if she and Kim were crouched low in a foxhole, listening for something that might betray the approach of some enemy that neither of them could quite see but both of them knew was there. Now and then they would exchange a wary glance, and Janet could see the worry in her daughter's eyes.

Jared had been the last to arrive at the table, and then he'd hardly spoken, barely even acknowledging Molly's loud greeting. Instead, he sank into his chair and began eating, stolidly moving the food from his plate to his mouth.

Molly, picking up on the mood at the table, quickly began fussing. Then, halfway through the meal, she picked up a fistful of mashed potatoes and hurled it at her brother.

Janet and Kim both froze, their eyes meeting.

For a split second Jared seemed not to notice the wad of potatoes and gravy oozing down his chin, but then he looked up at his baby sister. Molly, pleased finally to be capturing her brother's attention, smiled happily and waited to see what Jared would do. But as Kim and Janet watched-and Jared's eyes fixed on his baby sister-the smile faded from Molly's face, and then she began screaming.

It was a high-pitched wail, the kind of sound a cornered animal might make just before a predator leaps upon it and tears it to shreds.