The Devil's Touch (4 page)

"Quite true," the priest responded, lighting another cigarette from the smoked-down butt of his first. "I have been in Logandale for a great many years, Monty, more than twenty-five. I know practically everyone within a ten mile radius of the town: Protestant, Catholic, Jew. I came here when I was barely thirty years of age. Been here ever since.

"You see, Monty, I am one of the few people who remember the real Noah Crisp. The man who could have been a truly great author. But that was before— well, his breakdown, to put it as kindly as possible."

This was something Monty had never heard. "I always thought Noah was—well, just a little on the strange side." That word again. Strange.

"No. That isn't a fair or accurate portrayal of the real man. Noah was brilliant when I first met him. A deeply religious man, and, I think, perhaps on the edge of great literary success. Then one night—no, it was early evening—he came to me with this idea for a manuscript. He was going to write a book about the occult. The Devil. A fiction book. In it, he was going to kill Satan.

"I'm not saying there haven't been writers who wrote of killing Satan, but 1 can't recall ever reading one of their books. You see, Monty, Satan, like God, is immortal—no human can kill either. I told Noah that; begged him not to write the manuscript. Warned him of the danger of his project. He waved my objections aside. Then Noah became obsessed with his work. He stopped coming to Mass; broke all ties with God. He practically barricaded himself in his house—his parents were killed when he was just a little boy—and Noah seldom came out of the house during this period of— Devil research. He conducted all sorts of Black Masses and the calling out of witches and warlocks. He conducted lone seances. He became quite the expert on Satan."

The priest's gentle features hardened for a moment. "Then—one night, just after midnight, I believe it was, my phone rang. To this day I do not know who the caller was, but it was about Noah. Noah was running around on his property, stark naked, shouting that he had seen the face of Satan; that he had talked with the Dark One. It is written, Monty, by men much more versed in the subject than I, that if one sees the face of the Prince of Darkness, that person dies. Noah was very lucky—in a manner of speaking. He's alive. But he was a broken man, mentally and physically. He spent two years in a mental institution, another five years in deep analysis. Noah will never write another worthwhile book—about anything."

Monty was silent for a moment, mentally digesting all the priest had said. "You believe he saw the devil?"

"I—believe he saw something. Yes. Yes, I believe Noah Crisp met with the Dark One."

"Then you really, truly believe in the supernatural?"

"Yes, Monty. I do."

"You really believe the devil has—followers, covens, if you will; people who are really, actually in touch with the forces of the—well, beyond?"

"With all my heart and faith."

"Jesus!" Monty muttered. "Father Le Moyne, have you ever performed or been a witness to an exorcism?"

Without hesitation, the priest said, "Yes. To both your questions."

"Here in Logandale?"

The priest struggled with that for a moment. "I—can't answer that, Monty. I'm sorry."

The cop surfaced in Monty, and he knew the priest had performed the rite of exorcism in Logandale. But out of respect for the man—and, he would readily admit, fear stemming from his early teachings in the church—he would not press the man for an answer. Monty leaned back in his swivel chair. "So my feelings that something—evil was hovering over this town were correct?"

"Yes."

"Has it, in your opinion, become stronger during the past few weeks?"

The priest met the cop's eyes. "Yes," he said softly. "Quite a bit, I would say."

The weekend dawned gloriously, with the touch of approaching winter cooling the morning air. It was a morning for woolen skirts and shirts; the type of fall morning that makes a hearty breakfast more appealing to the palate. Steam colored the air white at the expulsion of breath. Kids jumped and ran and played in the coolness of this Saturday morning in upstate New York. People busied themselves raking up the multicolored leaves that fell in profusion, painting the landscape a joyous color of bronze and gold and green and red.

But for most of the people in Logandale, the acts were superficial, disguising the evil that lay bubbling just under the human surface. The evil that blanketed the area would soon burst forth, showering all who came close with its stinking pus of depravity.

And … it was also the Saturday morning that Judith Mayberry found young Marie Fowler hanging upside down in the apple grove behind her house. Hanging by her ankles. Marie was naked. Or perhaps it would be better to say what was left of Marie who was naked. Certain parts of her anatomy had been quite crudely hacked off. Definitely not the work of a skilled surgeon.

Judith, when she recovered from her fainting, thought she'd better call the police. She was not conscious of eyes watching her movements from the homes around her. Eyes that contained evil in its blackest form. Judith was on her way to the house when she heard the low growl behind her. Judith Mayberry turned around for the last time—in her human form—and froze rock-still in shock.

She dropped the basket of late-blooming wild flowers she had just picked to decorate her kitchen table.

She opened her mouth to shriek out her fright when a pawlike hand clamped around her left ankle and jerked. Another pawlike hand dropped over her mouth, stilling her yet unleashed howl of terror. She was dragged to a thicket that ran on the north side of the orchard and pulled down into the earth through a hole she never knew existed. When Judith came to her senses she was naked and cold and wished she were dead.

She soon would be. Sort of.

Judith was thirty-six years old, and while no one would ever call her beautiful, she was attractive, with long legs and full breasts. The attractive part of her was about to undergo a drastic metamorphosis. She sat on the cold rocky floor of the cave, or tunnel, or whatever the hell it was—she wasn't certain—and looked at the Beasts who sat squatting, looking at her.

She had never seen such horrible-looking creatures in all her life. Not even in the movies.

An old Beast—one might call him a silver-back—grunted a command. Two younger Beasts seized Judith and forced her to a knees-and-hands position, her buttocks elevated.

The old silver-back then mounted her.

Judith began screaming out her pain and outrage.

The old Beast bit her on the neck several times as he mated with her.

When the sex act was over, Judith was allowed to crawl into a corner of the huge cave room and huddle in pain and shock. After only a very short time, Judith wondered why she was suddenly getting warmer. She looked at the back of her hands. Thick coarse hair was sprouting, not just on the back of her hands but all over her body.

Her face, especially her jaw, was beginning to ache. Her teeth felt odd to her. She ran her tongue over her teeth and found they were fanged. And now, as the rapid change spread over her entire body, it did not seem odd to her. Her jaw swelled to accommodate the new growth of teeth.

Several of the Beasts were talking, and Judith found she could understand them. She crawled over to them and they welcomed her.

She was one with them.

She tossed her head, glad of her new strength and body. One earring gleamed dully in the gloom of the cave room, as it remained pierced in place.

All that was left of the woman once known as Judith Mayberry.

"Sam?" Nydia called to him on this glorious Saturday morning.

The two of them were working out in the yard; more specifically, working by the fence that separated their property from a field to the northeast. Sam straightened from his work to look at his wife.

She stood very still, her face suddenly pale. She was pointing toward the old orchard.

Sam looked. He could see nothing. "Nydia?"

"I—saw something move over there." She again pointed her finger. "Then it just disappeared into the ground, like the earth swallowed it."

Sam knew Nydia was not the type to panic. They had both been through too much horror for that. And if she said she saw something, she saw it, and that was it.

"Let's go take a look," Sam said.

"No," she replied. She put out a hand to stop him. "Sam—it's them." Her eyes were now wide and frightened.

"Them?"

"The Beasts, Sam. They're back. They're here. They found us, Sam."

"Nydia—" He opened his mouth to calm her.

"I know what I saw, Sam."

He believed her. He walked to her, took her hand, and they started toward the house. "Stay with Little Sam. You have your pistol; you know how to use it."

There was no fear in the tall young man. He had faced the Beasts before. He had faced almost everything Satan could hurl at him in black fury. And he had been victorious. While it was something he hoped he would never have to do again, if it had to be, then so be it.

In his heart, Sam had always known he would be called upon to fight again.

Sam unlocked his gun cabinet. Chief of Police Draper had visited the Balon house several times, enjoying the young man's company for one thing, but the main reason for the visits was that the young man fascinated Monty. He had no past that police computers could punch up, other than the most mundane. And Monty Draper, with a cop's instinct, knew there was much more to Sam Balon.

Chief of Police Draper always shook his head and clucked his tongue at the sight of Sam's arsenal. He was like any good liberal New Yorker who had grown up under the most asinine of gun control laws: The Sullivan Act. While Sam displayed no illegal weapons (those were carefully hidden), the weapons visible were awesome. Of course a cap pistol is frightening to many screaming liberals.

Sam was his father's image, physically and mentally. He stood well over six feet tall, stocky, with a naturally heavy musculature. His hair was dark brown and usually unmanageable. His jaw square. And he despised even the thought of any type of gun control.

"If I ever need a one-man riot squad," Monty had remarked dryly, "I certainly know where to come."

"At your service, Chief," Sam had cheerfully replied.

His curiosity heightened by the sight of the most impressive arsenal he'd seen since leaving the NYPD, Chief Draper ran—or attempted to run—a check on the young man named Sam Balon.

He found out what almost anyone could have discovered. The young man had graduated from high school in Whitfield, Nebraska (why did that name ring some sort of bell in Monty's mind, he wondered?) Sam had been an honor student, his mother a teacher, his step-father a doctor. His real father had been killed back in 1958. Sam Balon King—he had since dropped the King—had spent three years in the army, a member of the Rangers.

And there the information stopped. Dead. Cold.

Monty had run into a stone wall.

He called old friends on the NYPD and asked them to run young Mr. Sam Balon. Run him hard, push for answers. Call in markers if they had to.

He received a phone call late that same afternoon from a precinct captain.

"Monty," the captain had shouted in his ear through the long lines. "What the goddamn hell are you trying to pull up there in that hick town?"

Monty was speechless for a few seconds. "Captain—what do you mean?" Monty had known the man for years.

"Sam Balon King. That's what I mean. Why are you running this guy so hard?"

Monty came very close to losing his temper. "Well—goddamn it, Captain, because I want a make on him, that's why."

"Not good enough, Monty." The man was adamant. "What's the guy done to warrant all this attention?"

Monty had never before encountered this much stonewalling. "Nothing," he admitted. "That I can prove. Except he's got the finest collection of guns I've ever seen in the hands of any civilian. Especially one this young."

Down in New York City, the captain's sigh was audible up in Logandale. "Monty, my boy, listen to me. I won't bullshit you. Get off this young man's back. I've had CID and CIA and FBI and NSC people all over my ass this afternoon. Whatever this Sam Balon King did in the paratroops, it was something special."

"Rangers," Monty corrected.

"Haw?"

"The guy was in the Rangers, Captain."

"I thought those people took care of trees!"

"I think these Rangers eat the goddamn trees, Captain."

"It wouldn't surprise me, Monty."

"And they are trained to kill."

Another long sigh from the Big Apple. "Yeah? Well, so are Green Berets, marine Raiders, navy Seals, and lots of other service people. Not to mention the Mafia and other assorted crazies running around. Whatever, Monty. This kid is to be left
alone
. Just drop it, Chief Draper. For your own good and my peace of mind."

"You can't tell me anything else, Captain?"

"No."

"Can't, or won't?"

"Take your pick, Chief."

"Good talking to another member of the law enforcement field, Captain."

The line went dead.

So the mystery—if there was any mystery about Sam Balon, and Monty felt there was—was never cleared up to Monty's satisfaction. But it would be cleared up. Shortly.

Sam took a Winchester Model 1200 from the gun cabinet and filled up the tube with double 00 buck. He pumped one into the chamber. He took a .41 magnum revolver from the cabinet and checked the loads in that. Fully loaded. He shoved the big pistol behind his belt and turned to his wife.

"Stay in the house with Little Sam. You have your pistol with you and you know how to fire every weapon in this house." He smiled. "Well,
almost
every weapon. And I know you will if you have to. I'll be back in a little while."

Sam walked out the back door and started across the field. It was then the faint odor struck his nostrils. Nydia had been correct. The Beasts were here. He remembered that smell from behind Falcon House in Canada.

Sam and Nydia were falling in love. They both knew they were in love hours after they met.