The Right Hand of Evil

  He's all right, Beau Simmons found himself thinking in his seat in the fourth row. Maybe Father MacNeill just didn't know him very well. And the Church never wanted anything to change. Jeez, if he and Sue Ellen had listened to him, he'd be trying to support ten kids by now! And if he hadn't paid attention to what Father MacNeill said about birth control, why should he listen to what he thought about Ted Conway? The hostility he'd initially felt toward Ted Conway melting away, Beau Simmons sat back on the bench and listened intently to every word Ted spoke.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. ...

  Father MacNeill's fingers tightened on the beads. He'd gone through the rosary twice already, concentrating only on the words he silently spoke to God, shutting out the ones Ted Conway was addressing to the townspeople around him. But no matter how hard he concentrated, he could feel the change in the room.

  The mood of the crowd—the mood that he himself had created so carefully over the last few weeks—was rapidly changing.

  The Devil take him! the priest silently cursed, then instantly begged forgiveness for his blasphemy. But what was he going to do? Should he rise to his feet once again, as soon as Conway was done, and try to undo the damage?

  No.

  The man would only take a second turn himself, spinning out the same silken net that was falling over the crowd right now.

  Better to ignore it and seek guidance from a higher source.

  Once again closing his ears to the sound of Ted Conway's voice, Father MacNeill returned to his prayers.

  For as long as St. Albans has existed, my family has been here," Ted Conway finished a little over an hour later. His voice, showing no sign of strain after the long speech, reached out across the room, touching everyone there. "All I'm asking is that you let me and my family be part of this community. I promise you'll never regret it." As the audience gazed silently at him, Ted left the podium, shook Phil Engstrom's hand, and returned to his seat.

  "Well," the mayor said, gazing out over the room and reading the shift in its mood as clearly as Father MacNeill and everyone else who had heard Ted speak, "I think we might as well take the vote." He read the variance one more time, then looked at the crowd. "All those in favor?"

  For a moment no one moved, and Phil wondered if he'd completely misgauged the effect of Ted Conway's speech. But then there was a stir of movement in the fourth row as Beau Simmons raised his hand. A moment later three more hands went up, then another dozen, and soon Phil Engstrom was gazing out at a sea of waving hands. "Contra-minded?" he asked, making no effort to hide his pleased smile as he saw the scope of the victory.

  Father MacNeill, Father Bernard, Sister Clarence, and two other nuns raised their hands.

  "Well, then I think that's that," the mayor announced. "Congratulations, Ted. You have your variance."

  A smattering of applause was interrupted when a figure rose at the back of the room.

  "The work of the Devil!" Jake Cumberland proclaimed, his arm raised, his shaking finger pointing directly at Ted Conway. "I'm tellin' you, this is the work of the Devil!"

  The townspeople turned to the source of the outburst. "Oh, for God's sake," Beau Simmons hooted when he recognized Jake. "Who let you in?"

  The tension broken, a wave of laughter broke over the room, and suddenly they were all on their feet, crowding around Ted and Janet, offering congratulations. As the crowd pressed in, Molly began to cry, and Kim took her from her mother's hands and quickly moved through the crowd and outside.

  Standing on the steps in the cool and quiet of the night, Kim could see Father MacNeill and Father Bernard, together with the three nuns who had accompanied them, making their way across the square. She also saw Jake Cumberland. He stood beneath a streetlight, staring at her, and for a moment her eyes met his. Then he turned away, shaking his head as he started down the street. But even as he retreated, she heard him talking to himself, and the words rang in Kim's ears and made her hold Molly close.

  "The Devil's work," he said once again. "It's all the Devil's work."

  She's been like this since a little after she arrived." Sue Ellen Simmons nervously twisted one of the buttons on the blouse of her nurse's uniform as she looked down at Ellie Roberts's face. Her complexion was ashen, and her eyes seemed to be focused on something off in the distance, as if she were gazing at something far beyond the unadorned wall six feet beyond the end of the hospital bed in which she lay. Her right arm was in a cast, and there were a few abrasions on her face, but other than that, she was uninjured. "I just don't understand it," Sue Ellen fretted. "She was in shock when she came in, of course, but who wouldn't be? And she was talking—asking about Luke, asking where he was. But when we asked what happened—just whatever she remembered, you know?—she got this look on her face and she hasn't said a word since. Not one word."

  "What does the doctor say?" Father MacNeill asked.

  "When she first came in, I figured she'd be on her way home within an hour," Sue Ellen replied. "But Doctor might keep her overnight."

  The meeting at Town Hall had ended half an hour ago. Father MacNeill hadn't even taken the time to stop at the rectory before coming to the hospital to see Ellie, and when he'd told Sue Ellen that even her husband had voted for Ted Conway, she'd clucked her tongue.

  "Something's going on," she'd said. "Beau told me himself there was no way he was voting for that variance. He said everyone knows Ted Conway's an alcoholic, and there's nothing Beau hates worse than a drunk." She shook her head sadly. "His pa used to beat him, you know."

  "I'd like to talk to her alone," Father MacNeill said now. "If you don't mind?"

  "That might be the best thing for her," Sue Ellen replied. "If you need anything, I'll be right down the hall."

  He waited until the nurse was gone, then pulled a chair close to Ellie Roberts's bed. Taking her left hand in his, he patted it gently. "Ellie? Ellie, it's Father MacNeill. Can you hear me?"

  For nearly a minute there was no reaction from Ellie. Just as Father MacNeill was about to speak again, he felt a slight pressure on his hand and saw a flicker of movement in Ellie's eyes. Then he heard her voice, so faint it was all but inaudible.

  "Father, forgive me," she whispered, her lips barely moving, "for I have sinned...." She trailed off into silence. Father MacNeill waited. When Ellie said nothing more, he reached out and gently stroked her forehead.

  "I don't believe that, Ellie," he said. "Whatever happened, it was only an accident. You didn't sin, and you weren't being punished."

  Another long silence fell over the room. Ellie didn't seem to react to his words, but Father MacNeill sensed that she'd heard them.

  He waited.

  It was nearly five minutes before Ellie's head turned just enough so her eyes could gaze into his. When their eyes met, Father MacNeill knew there was something different about her, that something deep inside her had changed.

  "What is it?" he asked. "What happened, Ellie?"

  Her fingers tightened painfully on the priest's hands. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled and her eyes filled with terror. "Evil," Ellie whispered. "I've seen the face of Evil, Father."

  Father MacNeill felt a chill, but did his best to slough it off. "It was only an accident, Ellie," he soothed.

  Ellie shook her head. "No!" Her voice took on a harsh intensity as her fingers clamped the priest's more tightly. "No, you don't understand, Father. It wasn't an accident!"

  Father MacNeill felt the icy mantle of foreboding close around him. "Tell me," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Tell me exactly what happened."

  Ellie Roberts tensed. She didn't want to tell the priest what she'd seen, didn't want to remember it at all. Yet since Sue Ellen Simmons had asked her about the accident, she'd been fixated on the image that had seared her mind the instant before Clarie Van Waters's car struck her.

  There'd been nothing wrong. Nothing at all. She was waiting to cross the street, and no matter what anyone said,
she hadn't been careless. She looked both ways, just as she always did, and saw Clarie's car coming around the corner. She could still remember it perfectly; even remember the exact words that had gone through her mind: Uh-oh, here comes Clarie—better stay on the curb until she's gone all the way past.

  But for some reason, which she hadn't understood, she found herself stepping off the curb between two of the cars parked across the street from Town Hall.

  She'd seen Clarie bearing down on her. Even now she could watch it like a movie running in her head. Clarie's car was coming around the corner and heading right toward her. If she didn't stop, didn't stay where she was, safely tucked between the red Taurus and the white minivan, there would be no way Clarie could avoid hitting her.

  But she didn't stop.

  Couldn't stop.

  It was as if some force—some unseen power—had taken control of her and pushed her out from between the cars, impelling her to step in front of Clarie's old DeSoto just as if she hadn't seen it.

  At the last second she tried to turn away from the force, to rip herself loose from its grip. Twisting around, her eyes hunted for the source of the power that held her, and then she saw it.

  Jared Conway!

  He was standing only a few yards from her, and looking right at her.

  But how did she know it was him? She'd never seen him before—she was sure of it.

  Yet the moment her eyes met his, she knew who he was.

  And then, as Clarie's car bore down on her, he smiled.

  But it wasn't a smile; not really. Rather, it was a cruel twisting of his lips, as if he was anticipating what was about to happen to her, and relishing the pain she was about to feel.

  Then, in an instant, his face changed.

  His lips twisted and stretched, and she saw sharp fangs jutting from bloodied gums. Saliva dripped from his mouth, and when his tongue flicked out, she could feel the sting of its forked tip, even though he stood less than ten yards away.

  Everything about him changed in that instant. His ears grew pointed, and his skin red and scaly. His body swelled, and his clothes fell away, revealing skin that was a tissue of suppurating, festering boils oozing pus that clung to him in reeking globules. His eyes narrowed to glowing slits, and his fingers lengthened into viciously taloned claws that stretched toward her.

  The single scream she uttered, the one cut off by the impact of Clarie's car, had less to do with her fear of the oncoming car than her shock and terror at the visage she beheld. For in that single instant before she was lifted off the street and tossed from the hood of the DeSoto, she recognized the face of evil.

  "The Devil," she whispered now as she clung to Father MacNeill's hand, which had turned cold and clammy as he listened. "That's what I saw, Father. The Devil himself." But then a glint of triumph flickered in Ellie Roberts's eyes. "He didn't get me, though. He tried, but I'm still here. And tomorrow morning I'll be in church, just like always."

  "You don't have to do that, Ellie," Father MacNeill told her, but she shook her head.

  "I do," she whispered. "I've looked on the Devil himself, and now I need to look to God. I'll be there."

  As Ellie Roberts dropped back against the pillow, exhausted after recounting what she'd seen, a series of images flicked through Father MacNeill's mind.

  Beau Simmons, whose innate stubbornness had evaporated in the face of Ted Conway's mesmerizing speech in Town Hall. His opinion, usually so stubbornly held that no logic in the world could change his mind once he'd made it up, had bent to Ted Conway's will that night like a reed bowing to the wind.

  Jake Cumberland, rising at the back of the room to point an accusing finger at all of them, his voice nearly echoing what Ellie Roberts had just told him: "The work of the Devil! I'm telling you, this is the work of the Devil!"

  Releasing Ellie's hand, he rose from the hard chair and went to the window. The moon, nearly full, was high in the sky, bathing the town in silvery light.

  Was it possible?

  Surely it had to be something else.

  Jake was a superstitious man whose mother had filled his imagination with all kinds of tales as he'd grown up.

  Beau Simmons, for once in his life, might simply have changed his mind. Even he himself, Father MacNeill recalled, had felt his resolve weakening in the face of Ted Conway's spellbinding speech. And if he could be swayed, who in the hall that night could not have been?

  And Ellie Roberts? Who knew what aberrations the shock and pain of the accident might have caused in her mind? She might easily have blacked out, even for a few seconds, and seen some fragment of a nightmare left over from her childhood. But to have seen the Devil in the body of a fifteen-year-old boy? Surely it was impossible.

  And yet, deep inside, Father MacNeill knew he was lying to himself.

  He knew that at the core of his being, in the place where his faith and his religion resided, he believed every word she'd told him.

  She'd seen the Devil.

  He was right here, in the heart of St. Albans.

  Just as he'd always been.

  It was well past midnight—long after the hour that normally found Monsignor Devlin whispering the last prayers of the evening before offering his arthritic bones the respite of his bed. On this night, though, he was aware of neither the hour nor the pain in his body, so consumed was he with the final pages of the Bible that Cora Conway had entrusted to his care. For a quarter of a century after Bessie Delacourt's scrawled entry, no one had written in the Bible at all, but then Abigail Smithers Conway had taken up a pen and continued the account of the Conway family. Abigail's hand was far more sure than Bessie's had been, but the story she had slowly unfolded was so painful that the old priest had been able to read only small pieces of it at a time.

  Tonight, though, he went back and read it through from the beginning....

  15 May 1937

  Today I opened this Bible for the first time. My purpose was only to record the death of my husband, Francis Conway, three days ago. I had not wished to read these pages, for I am afraid I have always been something of an ostrich—I prefer not to see things as they truly are. But Frank is gone and I must now Face the truth of the last twenty-five years.

  Though I would not let myself even think it, I believe I must have known that Bessie Delacourt did not leave my husband's house the night before our wedding to go to Atlanta, as he always told me. I chose to believe him that day, and in making that choice I condemned myself to accept whatever he told me during all the years of our marriage. It seems that a lie must become the truth if one is to live with it throughout one's life.

  Believing Frank, though, did not mean I was deaf to the whispers that have swirled like dead leaves around this house for all the years I have lived in it, and though I tried not to, I always heard Bessie's voice in my mind, telling me that I would know when it was time to read these pages.

  Frank killed Bessie.

  I believe that, just as I believe he killed Francesca's sister—his own daughter!

  I thought—hoped?—that all the terrible things I have dreamed over the years were only nightmares filled, with demons and rituals from which I would awaken screaming.

  After my nightmares I would hear the rumors, though no one ever spoke them to my face.

  So many babies—ltttle girls all—vanishing in the night without a trace.

  I always told myself the children never came to play with Phillip and George because of other things, but after reading these pages, I know the truth.

  My sons had no friends because the other children's parents were afraid for them.

  It seems that they were right.

  Phillip must have known, too, for he left when he was fifteen and has not come back—I fear I shall never see him again..

  I do not know what the future holds, though I am sure that I, like Francesca and her little daughter Eulalie, will never be able to escape this place. I do not know about Francy's husband. Abraham Lincoln Cumber—land seems a good
man, but surely he must hate all of us.

  1 November 1937

  Abe Cumberland was hanged last night. The men came for him at midnight, wrapped in sheets, their torches filling the air with smoke. It was like one of my nightmares come to life, and when George pointed to the rooms above the carriage house where Abe and Francy live with their little Eulalie, I screamed and screamed, hoping to wake up.

  I did not.

  Instead I was condemned to watch little Eulalie—who is only five—as my own son helped the mob to lynch her father.

  They said Abe had stolen a baby, and killed her.

  I do not believe it, for I saw that infant die in one of my dreams, and I saw my son holding the knife above her little breast. But even now I cannot bring myself to speak any of it aloud.

  22 January 1950

  Eulalie Cumberland's child will be born soon. If it is a girl, I fear for what my son might do. I—

  AS THE PAIN STRUCK HER CHEST, THE PEN IN ABIGAIL CONWAY'S HAND SKIDDED ACROSS THE PAGE, LEAVING A JAGGED LINE THAT WOULD BE THE LAST MARK SHE MADE IN THE WORLD. SHE CRIED OUT AS THE SECOND STAB OF PAIN LASHED THROUGH HER, SHOOTING DOWN HER LEFT ARM INTO HER FINGERTIPS. AS THE AGONY MOMENTARILY RECEDED, THE DOOR TO HER ROOM OPENED AND HER DAUGHTER-IN-LAW HURRIED IN.

  "MOTHER CONWAY?" CORA ASKED ANXIOUSLY. "WHAT IS IT? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?"

  ABIGAIL STRUGGLED AGAINST THE SURGE OF PAIN, AND SHOOK HER HEAD. HER HANDS TREMBLING, SHE CLOSED THE BIBLE THAT LAY OPEN ON THE DESK IN FRONT OF HER, AND REPEATED THE SAME WORDS TO CORA THAT BESSIE DELACOURT HAD SPOKEN TO HER THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS EARLIER. "YOU'LL KNOW WHEN TO READ IT," SHE WHISPERED AS ONCE AGAIN THE HOT KNIVES SLICED HER. "YOU'LL KNOW."