Part 21 (2/2)

Molly stumbled, almost fell.

Between Neil, in the lead, and the man behind him, shattered planks erupted in a jagged bouquet of oak.

A stench breathed out of the bas.e.m.e.nt, and with that reeking exhalation rose a thing less than half glimpsed in the jittering flashlight beams.

Molly thought, Bug. Bug.

Quick impressions in bad light. Insectile. Enormous. Polished carapace. Beetle horns. Wickedly serrated mandibles. Armored abdomen. Pedipalpi. Numerous compound eyes, inexpressibly strange and vaguely luminous. Suddenly a yawning maw and a razored gullet to rival that of any shark.

Screaming, the heavyset man was plucked off the sanctuary floor and dragged into the bas.e.m.e.nt.

In an instant the apparition had appeared, and in the next instant had vanished.

By the bucking of the floor, by the fat man's kicking legs, by their own panic, the five children had been knocked together, three thrown to the floor, and one-the freckled girl with the auburn hair-had fallen into the hole. Having grabbed the jagged end of a plank, she hung by both hands, legs dangling in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

From the darkness below the girl, the lost man's tortured cries begged for death and pleaded mercy, for he was not at once broken and sucked dry, but suffered instead an attenuated death that didn't bear contemplation.

40.

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL IS TOO DEEP TO BE illuminated by the light of reason, and likewise the bas.e.m.e.nt of the church, while no more than twelve feet in depth, presented to Molly a blackness as perfect as that you might find gazing outward to the starless void beyond the farthest edge of the universe.

The heavyset man had dropped his flashlight before being dragged into the chamber below. It had rolled against the ambulatory wall; and now it shone toward the sacristy, revealing little.

Molly dared not direct her light into the hole, for fear of exciting the creature that had risen from it-or a host of others. Instead, she thrust the flashlight at the tall man, instructing him to sweep the chancel and pinpoint, for Neil, any looming threats that might be checked even temporarily by a shotgun blast.

She dropped to her knees at the broken-oak rim of the pit and seized the dangling girl by her arms.

The ghastly screams rising from below did not motivate the girl to give herself to rescue, but froze her. She would not relinquish her grip on the shattered plank.

”Let go, I'll lift you out, I'll lift you up,” Molly promised.

Containing three greens in striation-apple-green, jade-green, celadon-the girl's eyes were beseeching. She wanted help but had no trust.

Seeking some connection to break the ice that froze the child's nerve, Molly said, ”Honey, what's your name?”

From below came shuddering, stuttering miseries of sound out of the lost man, a thras.h.i.+ng, a wet sucking noise-and underlying all the rest, a cold whispering as of a thousand voices expressing eager appet.i.tes.

The girl began to sob with terror.

Her twin brothers bent to the hole, and Molly warned them to get back, but one of them urged his sister to relent: ”Bethany, she wants to help you. Let her help.”

Evidently the thing that wore the mortal coil of the dead priest had gotten to its feet again, for the shotgun boomed.

Through the layered reverberations bouncing back from groin vaults and stained-gla.s.s windows, Neil called out to Molly, ”Hurry!” ”Hurry!”

”Bethany,” she implored, ”let go of the plank.”

Another crash of shotgun, so soon, suggested that the cleric's cadaver was not the only immediate threat.

Molly had the girl's eyes now, and she did not look away from them to see what danger loomed, but said with all the pa.s.sion that her voice could carry, ”Bethany, trust me. I'll die for you. If you fall, I'll come in there after you. Trust me. Trust me.”

A yellow radiance flared behind Molly, the s.h.i.+mmering brightness of thriving flames. The rolling candles must have found combustible material.

”Trust me!”

The girl's gaze slid away toward something to the right of Molly, and her sobbing subsided.

The dog. Good Virgil had come boldly to the splintery edge of the hole.

Below, the fat man's last cry spiraled into a groan and then into silence.

Holding fast to Bethany, looking past her, Molly saw nothing more than shades of blackness moving in the bas.e.m.e.nt, different intensities and textures of restless darkness. The many whispering voices might have been angry urgent speech or only sound without substance.

For a moment Bethany seemed to be in communion with the dog. Then she said to Molly, ”Help me,” whereupon the cloud of panic clarified in her green eyes.

Gripping the girl's upper arms, Molly lifted, as though curling weights. The girl let go of the plank and, kicking as if something were plucking at her feet, came out of the hole, onto the floor of the ambulatory.

Reflections of flames now capered on the walls, whipped bright tails in salamander flourishes across the windows, added l.u.s.ter to wooden surfaces. Molly smelled smoke and saw it curling in greasy coils around her legs.

Urging Bethany and her brothers to move past the shattered floor to safer territory, Molly glanced back and saw real flames, not the reflection of them, in the nave, unfurling and billowing like the flags of a war-mad nation.

Opening the gate in the communion railing, a corpse in fiery clothes came forward, its hair ablaze, but resolute.

Molly turned from that walking tallow and followed the tall man, who followed Bethany and her brothers, around the broken planks, toward Neil and Abby and Johnny, toward the sacristy.

This time the tremors had the power of a seismic event. The floor leaped, fell back, rocked.

The tall man staggered, almost fell into the hole, windmilled his arms, kept his balance, but- -that cousin to earwigs, brother to centipedes, sister to wasps, that beast which might have been the G.o.d of all insects thrummed thrummed out of the bas.e.m.e.nt, skewered the man's abdomen with a stinger as long as a knight's lance, and took him screaming down into the pit. out of the bas.e.m.e.nt, skewered the man's abdomen with a stinger as long as a knight's lance, and took him screaming down into the pit.

Molly felt sudden blistering heat at her back. In her mind's eye, she saw the fiery hand of the blazing corpse reaching for her hair. She ran.

41.

TALL MAN SCREAMING IN THE DARK BELOW, crackle of combusting wood, hissing of undetermined origin, excited cries of frightened children, and Neil shouting words broken into meaningless fragments of sound by the pounding hammer of Molly's heart...

He stepped forward, leveling his shotgun at her. She tucked and rolled into the low smoke, and he fired over her.

Although she held her breath, she tasted the greasy vapors and scrambled to her feet, gagging, spitting.

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