The Devil's Heart (3 page)

"Ask the people of Prague," Doris said sarcastically. "What ask? That happened—supposedly—in the sixteenth century. I'm sure there are thousands still around who witnessed it."

"It happened," Miles insisted, looking at her. "I know, my grandfather was a cabalist. He told me it did."

"Your grandfather was a
meshuggener,"
she replied. "All this foolish stuff. I'll go make coffee."

Miles shook his head and grinned. "She just called my grandfather a crazy old man. Wade, my God won't let me down. I know it."

"Seems like He did a pretty good job of it at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz. To mention but a few.".

"Don't blaspheme, Wade. Now is not the time. Ah … who am I trying to kid? Me! that's who. I'm talking in one breath about something I was taught not to believe in, and in the next breath talking about being a Jew. Then I talk about a golem. Used to listen to my grandfather talk about golems. Ah," he sighed heavily, "takes a rabbi to build one anyway. I think. I'm an old man, Wade. Sixty-eight next month. You wanna know what I think, Wade—I'll tell you: I think it's too late. That's what I think. For all of us. We should have left this place that summer … after we … did it." He thumped the arm of his chair. "Pulled out. But no, we were full of piss and courage … so we stayed. Like fools. Well, whatever it was, it's back. And you know it. I'm glad our kids have all gone away." He waved a hand, thin and heavily veined. "But I'm just too old to run. Wade, you go back and get Anita. The two of you, get Jane Ann … and run."

"Anita won't run, Miles. I can't convince her it's happening all over again. And Jane Ann is beginning to suspect more each day. She told me she wasn't running."

"Sam is not here to protect us now, Wade. And I don't mean no slight against you in saying that."

"I know you don't. Miles … I believe Sam is here. He told him about the letter.

"My old rabbi should hear this story. He'd crap on himself. May I be forgiven for saying that. Yeah, Sam was a wild one. If there was a way back, he'd find it. I hope he's here. Oh, Wade! What are we saying? Foolishness. Sam is dead. So let's have some coffee and cakes and talk about all the good times."

An hour later, Wade stepped out of the Lansky house. The hot winds still blew. He walked to his car, pausing with his hand on the door. He looked up. "Sam, Jane Ann is not going to run. But if we stay here, they'll kill us, and do much worse to Jane Ann before she dies."

But the wind still blew hot, and Wade received no reply to his statement.

And the clay that Miles had painfully, slowly dug from the banks of a river—several hundred pounds of it—and had carefully shaped into the form of a man, with arms and legs and a featureless face, lay in the basement, in a huge packing crate.

It appeared lifeless.

It was in the summer of 1958 the horror finally surfaced, erupting like a too-long festering boil, spewing its corruption over all those near it. Specifically, the town of Whitfield and part of Fork County.

Those who survived the terror remember it as the summer of The Digging. And not many of the town's 2,500 residents did survive. Only a few. A few believers. More than a few unbelievers.

Whitfield was destroyed. At the end of that week of devil-induced terror, the town was a broken, burned-out, still-smoking ruin.

An archaeological team (they said) had come to Whitfield, ostensibly to investigate a huge stone circle, its interior barren of life. But what they were really doing was searching for a stone tablet. Satan's tablet, upon which were carved these words: HE WALKS AMONG YOU. THE MARK OF THE BEAST IS PLAIN. BELIEVE IN HIM. ONCE TOUCHED, FOREVER HIS. THE KISS OF LIFE AND DEATH.

And the tablet had been found.

After that, the town's fall into the blackest depths of sin and depravity had been swift, with only a few resisting: the minister, Sam Balon, whose own wife, Michelle, was part of the Devil's team, as old and as evil as time. Father Dubois, a Catholic priest, had driven a stake into her heart, then stood by the bed with Sam, watching her metamorphosis through centuries of evil, and finally, her death.

The old priest was killed a short time later. Then the horror unfolded in Fork County.

The Undead walking. The Beasts of the devil prowling.

Sam Balon had pulled together a handful of people, true believers in the Lord God. They fought the horror with everything they could find and with every ounce of strength and faith they possessed. Sam had acted as the right hand of God.

It was a week of mind-tearing horror and days and nights of fear; of seeking out and killing those who worshiped the Devil. Finally, to save the few friends who remained, and to save his new wife, Jane Ann, Sam agreed to fight off the advances of Mephistopheles' witch, Nydia, a beautiful woman whose soul had been given to the Prince of Filth centuries before, in return for everlasting youth and unbelievable beauty.

Sam Balon had sent the Devil's agent, Black Wilder, tumbling back to Hell with a stake through his dark heart. All part of the bargain. Then the witch, Nydia, took Balon into the spinning darkness of trackless time. And the man of God and the Witch of Hell fought for Sam's seed of life. In the end, Nydia beat him and Balon was killed, his naked body found by the survivors. Cut into the earth beside the body, this message: HE MET ME—AND I DO RESPECT COURAGE.

It was signed by Satan.

The young doctor, Tony King, took Jane Ann as his wife, and the son of Sam Balon would not learn of his true father's fate for years—until it was almost too late.

"We'll leave the main highway at St. Gervais," Black said. "Then drive northeast until we come to where mother owns some property. We'll pick up a four-wheel drive there; sometimes you can't even make it to the house in a four-wheel. It can get rough."

Sam nodded, not really paying much attention to the words of his friend and soon-to-be-host. Since the moment he and Black had picked up Black's sister, Nydia, Sam had sat in a near state of shock, overwhelmed by her beauty. He did not believe he had ever seen a more beautiful woman, and when she told him that no, she didn't have a steady boyfriend, and that really she hardly dated at all, Sam began counting his lucky stars.

Nydia was five feet seven, she told him. She did not volunteer her weight, and Sam tactfully didn't ask. But whatever her weight, it was distributed in a most delightful manner. Her hair was as black as the darkest night, her eyes a deep blue. Her skin was flawless, with just a hint of the long-ago Mediterranean ancestry. Her designer jeans were filled out perfectly (Sam could only guess at her shapely legs, and his guesses would later prove one hundred percent accurate), and her breasts were full.

Nydia was as taken with Sam as he with her, looking him over very carefully, and liking everything she saw. Sam was well over six feet and muscular, with big shoulders and arms, a narrow waist. He had his late father's unruly mop of thick, dark-brown hair, and since leaving the army, had allowed it to grow a bit longer than the service likes. Sam's handsomeness was not of the pretty-boy type, Nydia concluded. He was … rugged-looking, with a solid, square jaw. And she had never before in her life been so drawn to a member of the opposite sex. She did not—at least up until now—believe in love at first sight. Now she was not so sure.

But she was certain of one thing: she was going to get to know Sam B. King very well. Just about as well as any woman can know a man.

And that shocked her, for she was a virgin in an age of overt promiscuity.

"How do you get out if you can't use a four-wheel drive?" Sam asked.

"Oh … snowmobiles, helicopters. We have them all at Falcon House," Black replied with the ease of a person born into great wealth.

"Must be nice," Sam mused. "How did your father get his name?" he asked Nydia. "I've never heard of a person named Falcon."

"His name is really Falkner," she replied, her voice touching Sam in some very intimate places, producing some uplifting results. Uncomfortable if one is wearing jeans. "And he isn't really our father. Our real father is, well . . . either dead or gone someplace; we don't know, since mother refuses to discuss him. The only time she ever mentioned him she flew into a rage."

"We don't have to hang dirty linen in public, dear," Black said. "Besides, you are digressing from the question."

"Forgive me, brother dear," Nydia said, her eyes narrowing in sudden anger.

Quick temper, Sam noted, filling that away in the back of his mind.

"Falkner means," she continued, "or so I'm told, Falcon hunter. His father began calling him Falcon when he was just a baby. It's been Falcon ever since. Truth or fiction, it's an interesting story."

"Your mother's name?"

Black smiled, the smile not going unnoticed by Sam, who chose to ignore it, but he filed that away, too. The smile had seemed … odd.

"Roma," Nydia said. "Means the wanderer. My mother has … seen most of the world during her life. But despite her age—which by the way, she will not reveal—she is still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

"Even more beautiful than you?" Sam said, the words popping from his mouth.

Black laughed and so did his sister. "Thank you," she said. "But in answer to your question: yes, she is. You'll see. Roma is beautiful."

"Falcon and Roma," Sam mused. "Fascinating names."

"We are an unusual family," she replied. "I believe after you've spent some time with us you'll agree with that."

More than you realize, sister, Black thought. And soon it will be time for you to know just who you are. And what you were born to do—and become.

The trio had flown into Montreal, picked up one of the family's fleet of cars, and now, at St. Gervais, they all helped transfer the gear, then clamored noisily into the four-wheel for the eighty-mile trip into what Black called Canada's near outback.

A thought popped into Sam's brain, the thought becoming vocal before he knew why he said it, "You guys go to church?"

"No," Black said, trying to keep his reply from being too short. "We were taught to believe in God … and especially," he fought a smile, "the Devil. But we practice no form of … popularly organized religion."

"I've gone to a church several times since I've been at Carrington," Nydia said. "I found it most interesting. I plan to keep on attending."

Black almost lost the big four-wheel. He wanted to scream at his sister, but instead bit his lip so hard he brought a drop of blood. Stupid bitch! he silently cursed her.

"Do you go to church, Sam?" she asked.

"Not as often as I should. I kind of got away from it in the service. I've got to start back, though. Nydia? How come you didn't go on to college when you got out of high school? I mean, I don't mean to be nosy; you can tell me to go to hell if you want."

Precisely where you are going, Sam, Black thought. In time.

Again, that lovely laughter from the backseat. "Don't be silly, Sam. No, mother asked if I wanted to go straight to school, or see the world with her and wait for Black to complete his stint in the service. Mother wanted him to go into the military. A real tough branch of the service.

Said in the years to come, the training would do him a lot of good. She said she once knew a man whom she admired greatly; she wanted Black to be like him in some ways. I think she said this man was a guerrilla fighter of some type; Special Forces, maybe."

"Sounds like my dad," Sam said, gazing out the window.

If the communiques could have been heard by human ears, they would have sounded like the rolling of enormous thunder splitting the heavens.

"How about it, Mighty One?" the dark voice ripped through the heavens. "A wager, perhaps?"

The replying voice was calm and assured. "Don't tempt me, Beelzebub. I might decide to end it all. I did once before, remember?"

"Bah! You won't. Not for this inconsequential bit of rabble. Your team against mine, like in the old days. If you win, I'll give you a million whimpering souls from the pits—so to speak."

"I could take them if I so desired. It was their choice. It always is. You should know. Remember: Thou shalt have no other God …"

"Oh, shut up! Don't bore me with that drivel! I had quite enough of that claptrap infinities ago."

"Why do I waste my time talking with you?"

"Because I'm interesting, and despite what you lead others to believe, you haven't yet given up on me, that's why."

"All right, proud one: I'll wager."

"I don't believe it!"

"If my team wins, you convert to my side."

"In a nun's cunt! Judas Priest, when you make up your mind to play, you really want to be a high roller, don't you?"

"Take it or leave it."

"I'll … leave it."

"I thought you would. No, Prince of Rats, I don't like this game of yours. I thought we settled all this a blink or two ago?"

The reply was slyly made. "Balon made a bargain."

"And it was kept, was it not?"

No reply.

"No, Filthy One, I won't interfere … directly. But I might, and I stress
might,
make the teams a bit more even."

"You wouldn't dare! That's against the rules."

"Oh?"

The voice that was laced with venom and evil howled and flung curses and spat ribbons of filth into the Heavens, attempting to penetrate the firmament. But the Mighty Voice chose not to reply.

Conversations with inferiors tended to bore Him … rather quickly.

"Your dad?" Nydia asked. Her ears had been listening, but her eyes had been fixed on a strange occurrence in the eastern sky. She had never seen anything quite like it: streaks of pure white darting down to almost touch upward thrusts of the ugliest yellow she had ever seen.

God rules the Heavens, she thought. But the Devil rules the earth.

And that sudden thought puzzled her, for she had only been to church a few times in her entire life. She did not remember ever hearing it before.

And what did that narrow plume of white and yellow have to do with religion?

She pushed the confusion from her brain. "I thought your dad was a doctor, Sam?"