The Night Church Part 38

His dream! The poor kid, he was was guilty all along just like he thought. What a d.a.m.n sad, terrible thing! guilty all along just like he thought. What a d.a.m.n sad, terrible thing!

And he told me, he told told his dad he was guilty! He was begging for help and all he got was a pat on the back. I can be G.o.dd.a.m.n thickheaded! his dad he was guilty! He was begging for help and all he got was a pat on the back. I can be G.o.dd.a.m.n thickheaded!

Tears were blurring his vision. Poor kid was crying out for help and his own dad wouldn't believe him.

Oh, Christ, help him! Her too. Help all three of us!

To the core of his soul Mike wanted to rush out there and stop that wedding. But he couldn't, not while t.i.tus was between him and the altar. Among so many people his only chance, and a slight one at that, lay in achieving absolute surprise.

The old sorcerer waited in the wings. And the wedding went on.

Jonathan had struggled so hard to break free that he was becoming exhausted. They had gagged him after he had tried to call to Patricia. Despite his hopeless situation he strove against the straitjacket, frantically chewed the gag.

"Patricia and Jonathan, have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?"

Jonathan wanted desperately to tell her that he loved her, that he wouldn't hurt her as long as there was a particle of humanity left in him. But the gag was a skillful one. It went all the way down his throat. He could barely groan.

"They have," his mother said in a firm, clear voice. Father Goodwin looked as if he wanted to disappear into the floor.

"Will you accept your issue lovingly from G.o.d, and bring him up in the law, Patricia?"

"No! Not unless I hear Jonathan say he wants to marry me. And you won't even let him talk!"

"She will," Mary said. Jonathan begged G.o.d to stop his heart, to somehow preserve Patricia from seeing what was inside him. How he longed to spare her that!

Twisting, grinding into her, crus.h.i.+ng bone and flesh, listening to the piercing ecstasy of her screams. screams.

"Since it is your intention to enter into marriage, join your left hands, and declare your consent before G.o.d and His Church."

"Their hands are joined in spirit," Mary said.

From where the deacons had forced him to crouch down among them Jonathan could just see a bit of his mother's face. He looked at it with utter loathing. That was not his mother. He considered Mary t.i.tus Banion dead. The body might be walking and talking as if she were alive, but the human being inside was dead. By loving Satan Mother had committed suicide.

I want to be dead too. I want to be dead!

But he was far from dead. In fact a new life was beginning to stir within him. Even as the wedding proceeded a strange, low hum began under the soaring music of the organ.

The hum got louder, and as it did Jonathan began to feel more and more and more ANGRY! ANGRY!

Patricia could hardly bear the bone-jarring sound that had replaced the organ music. It hurt her ears and stirred her deepest senses to loathing. Her bridesmaids took her by the arms. When she felt their strong hands on her she had a wave of panic. Not ten feet from here she had knelt while It strode to her across the sanctuary. She had broken her rosary, and listened to the beads scattering in the dark.

Altar boys began dousing the few candles, leaving only the vigil candles in their cups and the unwinking red of the votive candle.

G.o.d, give us light!

Altar bells began jangling, dozens and dozens of them in the dark. The music boomed to a crescendo.

The sisters and the schoolchildren had filed into the pews. Patricia was surrounded only by her bridesmaids now, and the deaconesses.

All heads turned to the back of the church. A gaudy and amazing procession, far different from the wedding party, was starting there. Acolytes carried bejeweled invert crosses, blood red. Behind them deacons held aloft banners of richly worked silk depicting magical symbols, pentacles and six-sided stars and rings in rings.

Behind them all came Uncle Franklin, wearing vestments of material too dark to see in the gloom. On his bishop's miter there romped a serpent that called up in Patricia an emotion so strange that it didn't even have a name.

She felt as if swarms of miles were crawling over her body. Her skin became so sensitive that the dress seemed as if it were made of fire. "No! Please, no!" Her bridesmaids were close around her, holding her in strong hands.

The acolytes went left and right along the altar rail until finally Uncle Franklin arrived face to face with Patricia.

"At last," he murmured. His dry old hand came up, touched Patricia's cheek. She bit him. "Ah! Such spirit, you little viper!" He wiped his b.l.o.o.d.y finger down the front of her dress. "Prepare her, please, sisters."

Jonathan struggled on the floor like an animal. But he was no longer struggling to escape or even to end his own life. He was struggling against the savagery that had been pouring up out of his depths ever since that infernal horn started roaring.

Now something was happening. His guards were moving him. Were they undoing the straitjacket-was there a glimmer of hope?

Yes!

He was more sane than they must realize. Perhaps he would yet have a chance at killing himself.

But then he knew he would not. They had only loosened a few straps to put chains through the loops. He was now standing up just at the gates to the sanctuary, chained tight to the altar rail. He couldn't even bash his forehead against a corner of the rail; the chains were too tight.

Uncle Franklin stepped to the center of the sanctuary. Boys took his miter and staff. He held up the quartz wand in the dim candlelight.

Patricia was dragged to a spot just in front of the altar. How beautiful she was all in white, her face floating in that wonderful blond spray of hair.

"I love you, Jonathan!"

"I love you! I love you!" All that issued from behind the gag was a faint series of grunts. "I want to be gentle with you!"

I want to break you in half with my power! You'll love it too, you b.i.t.c.h! want to break you in half with my power! You'll love it too, you b.i.t.c.h!

Her bridesmaids laid her on the floor of the sacristy. She was tied with silken ropes to four rings that had been fixed there.

For me. She is tied down for me.

He rattled his chains, fighting wildly, desperately. "Relax," Uncle Franklin muttered. "You'll have all the strength you need in just a minute."

The madonna purity of Patricia's skin, the way she was biting her bottom lip as she tried to raise her head enough to see him, began to excite him.

No! I must be gentle with her. It's all we have left. To deny himself the pleasure of seeing her helpless he closed his eyes. His body, his very blood, became a prayer. To deny himself the pleasure of seeing her helpless he closed his eyes. His body, his very blood, became a prayer.

The serpent within him slithered faster and faster toward the surface of his being.

The nave was filling with an incense that seemed to mix rare perfume with the odor of decaying flesh.

Graves must have smelled thus in ancient times.

"Very well, Jonathan. I shall now dance up your demon for you."

I am the genius of death. am the genius of death.

Uncle began by striking the tip of the wand on the altar rail. He held it before Jonathan. "Look!" Jonathan shut his eyes.

But the demand was only a trick to get him to do that very thing. Next thing he knew the wand was being pressed against the center of his forehead. Like a tuning fork it resonated with rich vibrations. They penetrated deep into Jonathan's skull, filling him with the most extraordinary agony.

He could not turn his head. And when Uncle Franklin ordered his eyes to open, the lids rose despite Jonathan's frantic efforts to keep them down.

He could not look away from the spinning, gleaming tip of the wand.

Uncle began moving gracefully back and forth. Such was Jonathan's own concentration that it seemed to him as if everything else had simply disappeared, everything except the dancing, turning body of his uncle and the glittering wand.

Jonathan's stomach twisted and rumbled and almost twisted inside out. He began to gag.

"Get ready!" Uncle shouted. "Here he comes!"

Jonathan's guts began to feel warm, then hot. In an instant he felt as if he were boiling alive from the inside. Almost driven mad with the clawing torment, he shrieked and shrieked. He knew that he was going to tear off the strait-jacket. But it was not him him doing it, it was the thing within, taking control of his muscles. doing it, it was the thing within, taking control of his muscles.

He found himself shaking the straitjacket away as if it were tissue paper, rattling the manacles until his wrists were b.l.o.o.d.y. The torment of the inner boiling had increased his strength a hundredfold.

Then the manacles parted as easily as if they had been made of wax.

When he tried to tear off his gag it snagged on his teeth. He s.n.a.t.c.hed away the thin cloth.

How beautiful she was!

Clumsily, with the newfound gait of a body that seemed an unfamiliar size and shape, he began to go closer to her.

His own part of the ceremony finished, Harry had come back from the sacristy and crept around behind the high altar with Mike. They were hiding amid the orchids and the irises just to the right of the tabernacle.

When Harry saw the horror out there he tore through the flowers and bolted across the altar. He began struggling with the tabernacle, trying to preserve the Host from the aston-is.h.i.+ng blasphemy being enacted before it. Acolytes promptly subdued him.

The last gesture of a guilty priest.

Mike watched and waited, hoping for some chance to make a move that would matter. He knew only two things- Patricia had to be saved and poor, pitiful Jonathan had to be given the best care that money could buy. He stood glaring down at Patricia like a great golem, golem, bellowing as if in agony. He seemed bloated. bellowing as if in agony. He seemed bloated.

Mike noticed something extraordinary about the poor, pitiful kid, something that made his chest hurt with sorrow. Jonathan was standing over that girl literally sweating blood. Actual, red blood.

More and more of it oozed out, covering his body with a red sheet. Then the most awful thing Mike had ever seen began to happen to the only person he had ever been able able to call a son. to call a son.

His fellow human being, whom he loved, started drying and cracking apart. He undulated like a snake shedding its skin. As he did the b.l.o.o.d.y skin began to separate from dark, scaly flesh underneath. Suddenly he began pulling huge slabs of himself off. He ripped off his chest, throwing the translucent skin to the floor. Then with a grunt he sc.r.a.ped his back against the altar rail and left a ma.s.s of flesh there. Fissures formed in his legs and he drew them off, the suddenly hollow skin of the feet collapsing like punctured balloons. It made a sound like the shrink wrap coming off a record jacket.

Even as he did this his eyes began to bulge out of his head. They fell, two dried sh.e.l.ls, to the floor. What appeared from within was bright yellow, as big as the eyes of a vulture. Mike remembered similar eyes staring at him from the sky above t.i.tus's house. He drew the rest of his face away with trembling hands.

There emerged a snake's face, glaring with intelligence and insane hatred.

In the dead silence of the church Mike could hear the wet "pop" as It drew off the last bit of Jonathan, the hand and skin of his left arm, and tossed it aside like an empty glove. It flexed the strange, gleaming claw that had been within.

Seeing this hideous miracle, Mike was at once humbled and filled with creeping horror. G.o.d was not the only power in the universe.

Jonathan began to scream again, but this time it was an awful, crackling sound somewhere between a reptilian hiss and the yammering of a crow.

Mike couldn't bear it anymore. If he had ever seen human suffering, he was seeing it now. Jonathan's heart and mind were in there enduring the torment of becoming that- something. Mike raised the pistol to put him out of his misery.

But he didn't get a shot. There was a flurry of activity around the thing. thing. Two deacons grabbed Father and pushed him up against It. Two deacons grabbed Father and pushed him up against It.

It shrank back. They pushed Father into Its arms again. It twisted away, It screamed, but they persisted.

Soon, as if unable to stop Itself, It plunged Its claws into him.

He gasped, he hammered at the bulging, relentless mus-cles, he kicked the scaly armor that covered the body. The claws sliced his flesh away from his muscles.

Then It threw the agonized, half-flayed priest aside and began moving toward Patricia. Father lay dying on the floor of his own sanctuary.

G.o.d, G.o.d, why have You let something like this come alive?

Patricia began to cry out, as sharply and desperately as a baby. Mike looked for a good shot but the candlelight and the swiftly moving deacons and acolytes made it impossible. It knelt down beside Patricia and caressed her with one of Its long nails. Then It lay upon her.

She could do nothing to prevent that s.h.i.+vering, crusty body from a.s.saulting her. "Jonathan," she shouted,"Jonathan, remember yourself! You're not that thing, you're a human being and you love me!"

Somewhere in the depths of what he had become, she could see him remembering. It was just a glimmer in the savagery of him, but it was human and it was good. There was a gurgling sound, and something like sorrow began to battle the hate in the eyes.

"Oh, Jonathan, I know you're still there. I love you. I love you! I'll always love you!"

"I-I-I-ooaaahh!" It glared into her face with Its impossibly huge yellow-green eyes. She could not bear to look any longer. She turned her face away.

It began Its awful croaking again. She felt It beginning to move, to twist eagerly against her, ripping the flimsy material of the dress. "Jonathan, darling, if you can still hear me, don't hurt me! Please, darling!"

It grew rapidly more excited. She tried to remain as calm as she could. She could feel It bouncing heavily on her, making her breath come in ragged gulps. Then It was pound-ing frantically.

But It wasn't hurting her. It was trying to be gentle!

When she opened her eyes she saw on that hideous face an expression of intense conflict. It wanted to hurt her, but It was resisting the urge as best It could.

"Oh, Jonathan, Jonathan!"

The barrel of a pistol emerged past the edge of the altar above her head.

The thing that had been Jonathan stopped moving on her. It raised Its eyes, facing the gun.

"P-lease-shuuuhhttt. P-lease!"

For an instant n.o.body moved.

Bullets went snap! snap! snap.' It fell back onto the steps of the altar, thrashed once, then was still.

Pandemonium. Mary's voice, sharp and collected, rose above the general uproar. "Franklin-was there insemina-tion?"

Patricia saw Franklin t.i.tus smile happily. But who had inseminated her-the thing thing or the little spark of Jonathan that remained inside? or the little spark of Jonathan that remained inside?

Oh, Jonathan, it was you, I know it was! And it And it is is your baby in me, I can feel it! Not the thing's! No, your baby in me, I can feel it! Not the thing's! No, not that! not that!