"I can't help it. I'm easily frightened."
"Well, you have another chance to overcome it. Better that than letting a little fear send you to Hell."
"They threatened me with torture!"
"I think we'll both face that, Father. They do torture priests." The haunted expression crossed his face again.
Harry's mind returned to Mike. "We can save my friend. We've got to! They're torturing him him now!" now!"
"Who, exactly, has captured your friend?"
"A man named Titus. Franklin Titus."
In an instant Father Conlon's face shifted from calm resolution to terrible dread. "Titus! He's here?" here?"
"In the crypt."
He smiled ruefully. "Very well, Father Goodwin. I may already have lost my particular battle." He held out Harry's pistol. "Will you be at the wedding?"
"I am being made to officiate."
"Titus and his mordant wit. When the moment is right, I am afraid we have no alternative but to kill the groom. If I am prevented from doing it, you must."
Harry was astonished. A priest, plotting murder?
"I know how awful it must sound to you. But you don't know the alternative. Believe me, this execution will be a great mercy not only for the groom, but for all mankind."
"His Holiness condones this?"
"The Holy Office is empowered to act in defense of the Faith. Believe me, it is a terrible thing when we are forced to such a measure. But we do not shrink from duty."
A sudden movement at the top of the stairs caught Harry's eye. As he turned toward it Father Conlon pressed the pistol into his hand. "Hide it, Harry! It may be our only chance!" Conlon began backing into the study, pulling a pistol of his own from under his suit.
"No you don't, Conlon! Drop it!"
Father Conlon threw his large, black pistol to the floor. At the same instant Harry put his own palm-sized one into his pocket.
A troop of armed men came running down the stairs. "Your priest is lucky, Laurent," Conlon said to the leader.
For a moment Harry didn't understand. Then he did: Father Conlon was gambling that the two of them hadn't been overheard. "Thank God you came when you did," Harry blurted. "He was going to kill me!"
Father Conlon was edging toward the window. "Not so fast," the one called Laurent snarled. An instant later they took Conlon by the arms. He commenced a mild and hope-less struggle. They surrounded him, then picked him up and began to carry him away. His bald head was bobbing be-tween the shoulders of his captors, his feet were rattling against the floor. His glasses were gone. There was a gash under his right eye.
"Come with me, Harry," said a voice from the dark. Harry knew it at once: Titus, back from his business with Mike.
"Yes. I'm coming." The pistol felt enormous in his pocket. Surely Titus would see the bulge.
Titus led him through the dark rectory. "That man will burn to death, Harry." They went across the dusty living room, into the overgrown rectory yard.
Harry followed him as if in thrall. Those three words kept echoing in his mind: burn to death, burn to burn to death, burn to death, burn to death. death, burn to death.
He saw the young people stuffing Father Conlon into a car. Even with the windows closed his shouts could be heard clearly. "Sounds like he's been given the bad news," Titus commented mildly. Again and again, in a frantic, breaking voice, Conlon called "Je-e-sus! Je-e-sus!" Then the big Mercedes drove away.
"Conlon knows what a hard death is like, Harry. Do you?"
"Yes, Mr. Titus, I do."
"You agree very quickly, for a man who has just been proselytized by the Inquisition. Tell you what, Harry. You go down into the crypt. See what you can do for your friend." He smiled distantly. "You had best be loyal to us if you don't care for hard deaths." The smile broadened. "Go on. Mike needs a friend right now."
With a toss of his head Titus disappeared into the sacristy. Harry wanted to do anything but continue with this horrible mission.
Gingerly, afraid to do it but more afraid of Titus, Harry lifted the storm door that led into the crypt.
Chapter Twenty-five.
THE SAME BLOW that had knocked Mike unconscious had also given him a pounding headache, which woke him up.
He heard music. Church music. "Aeterne rerum conditor noctem diemque qui "Aeterne rerum conditor noctem diemque qui..."
It was very beautiful, being sung by a children's choir. But so far away. He could barely hear them.
". . . regis et temporum das tempora . . ."
He wanted to hear more. When he tried to get up he was hit a flaring blow in the center of his forehead.
He lashed out with his fists and encountered sides and a top.
What the hell was this? They had put him into a box. the box was lined with satin upholstery.
A coffin.
Just like Terry! He sucked air frantically. He beat on the top, he squirmed, he kicked.
Then he stopped. He started taking controlled breaths, trying to quell the panic. If he was going to get out of here he had to do some very clear thinking.
Before they had put Terry in his coffin they had infected him with a disease. Was Mike also sick? He took a deep breath. Lungs clear. And he didn't feel feverish. The only thing that hurt was his head.
He remembered the expert way Titus had pistol-whipped him, a single stunning blow to the side of the head.
He didn't seem to have anything else wrong with him. Then it occurred to him why they hadn't infected him. They already knew their disease worked from trying it on Terry.
They wanted this to be as slow as possible.
It was already awfully hard to breathe. How long had he been unconscious, innocently breathing up his little bit of air? Not too long or he'd be dead. Not a lot of air to begin with.
Okay, guy, let's give this one hell of a good try. He braced his hands against the head of the coffin. Then he kicked with all his might against the foot. The whole thing quaked, but it didn't even begin to give way.
Goddamn!
He spent half a minute in a losing effort to catch his breath. No matter how deeply he inhaled, it helped less each time. The air in here stank. God, it stank.
He was suffocating in his own bad breath.
"Help!"
Silence.
Thank God he had heard that singing. At least he knew he wasn't actually underground.
"Come on, out there, have a heart!" He took gulp after desperate gulp of air.
This was the end. In a few more minutes Michael Banion was no longer going to exist.
He stopped trying to get out. That was not going to work. And he stopped bothering to call. Nobody was going to help him.
He had other things to think about now. This was death. He tried to remember what he was supposed to do at this point. The main thing was an Act of Contrition.
But he couldn't remember the damn Act of Contrition! It was a long prayer, and he hadn't said it in years.
He panicked again, afraid that not even God was going to help him. The frantic physical torment of air hunger over-came him and he drummed his feet and slapped at the top with his hands.
Then he opened his mouth. He began gagging and gasping. Somewhere his mind turned over a page. He couldn't re-member the Act of Contrition, but Sister Louise had paddled him into the Confiteor. Confiteor. He began praying in a loud voice, hoarse with the bad air. "I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to Holy Peter and Paul ... all the saints!" Take a breath, take another, take another. Wow, I'm flyin'! I hurt like hell but I'm flyin'. "Sinned in thought, word, and deed, and what the hell's the rest? Oh, yeah- through my fault, through my fault, through my most griev-ous fault-oh God hurry up this hurts!" He began praying in a loud voice, hoarse with the bad air. "I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to Holy Peter and Paul ... all the saints!" Take a breath, take another, take another. Wow, I'm flyin'! I hurt like hell but I'm flyin'. "Sinned in thought, word, and deed, and what the hell's the rest? Oh, yeah- through my fault, through my fault, through my most griev-ous fault-oh God hurry up this hurts!"
Come on, damn you, die.
I'm gonna be like, like- Sunken eyes, lips stretched away from teeth, stinking like hell, and fingernails embedded in the lid.
Poor old Terry.
Poor old me! me!
Everything went, finally, all the discipline and fight of a lifetime as a policeman. Only the scratching, screaming animal remained.
He kicked and kicked and kicked and his blood pounded in his brain and he gasped until his throat was raw with his own expelled gases.
When they left her alone in the bride's room Patricia's heart leaped with hope. She had been guarded every mo-ment back there, and had come out here in a limousine with Mary and Letty and Jerry. Maybe this would be her chance. But when she looked around and saw the barred windows and heard the lock click behind her, she could only feel the tightness of frustration in her throat.
Although as secure as a prison cell, the room was pretty. The floors were sumptuously carpeted with a Persian rug depicting a wedding. Ancient brass floor lamps gave off warm, yellow light. A spray of roses graced the delicate antique table in the center of the floor. There was a dressing table for the bride, completely stocked with makeup and perfume of every scent.
Patricia went to one of the leaded-glass windows, wonder-ing if she could squeeze between the bars.
They were newly installed; she could tell that by their shine. And they were bolted directly into the walls, not into the window frame. They were also hopelessly close together.
Despite all her efforts to be calm and to seem cheerful to Mary and the others, they had not let down their guard. This was the longest time she had been alone since the capture. They had been very sweet to her. They had also been very careful.
"You are our Princess," they had told her.
She had smiled and accepted their homage. But inside herself she clung to the thought that she could be so much more than their toy, she could be a real wife and make a real home for Jonathan. She thought bitterly, I can can be a human being! be a human being!
She kicked the table-but not hard enough to upset the roses. Then she slumped down at the dressing table. The face staring back from the mirror was so very beautiful, even in its pain, that she was rather startled.
Beautiful mutant.
"Hello, dear. We've got to start dressing you. There's barely half an hour left!"
How incredible that words said so cheerfully, by as lovely a woman as Mary Banion, could hold such dread.
First they had taken Jonathan's belt and shoelaces. Then they had put him into a straitjacket. When he had realized how completely his suicide would ruin their plans he had become almost frantic to do it.
They watched him every second.
An hour ago ten of them carried him down to a waiting van. They brought him out here trussed to its seat. Five guards came with him.
He lay now in his straitjacket against the wall of the sacristy, trying to find some new trick of suicide. He had pleaded with Jerry Cochran and with Uncle Franklin. "Don't you understand what I am? A monster!And I'll breed a race of monsters!"
They agreed. In fact, that was the whole point. "They will be in the image of Satan."
"They'll be horrors! They'll destroy everything beautiful and good in this world!"
Uncle Franklin had at that moment done something that had chilled Jonathan to the depth of his being.
Very deliberately he had leaned down and smiled beatifically into Jonathan's face. And he had whispered, "I know."
Jonathan had screamed to the others to listen to him. Uncle was evil! He was himself something out of Hell-he must must be! Something foul, something supernatural. Please, please listen. be! Something foul, something supernatural. Please, please listen.
He is trying to give this world over to the demons!
Jonathan began to shout yet again. "Please listen to me! Please, please, please listen!"
But they didn't listen. They went on preparing to mate their goddess with their god.
There came a sound of footsteps on flagstones. Somebody was approaching the coffin. Then there was a desolate sigh just outside. The wood creaked. Somebody had knelt down and leaned against it! "Since Almighty God has called-"
"Harry! Oh, God, it's you! I knew knew you'd come if you could! Listen, I'm dying. I've got to get air." you'd come if you could! Listen, I'm dying. I've got to get air."
"Mike, you're alive!"
"Air, Harry. Get me air, air!" Mike felt desperately along the seal. His mind flashed again to the coffin key in Titus's living room. "Is there a key?"
"Key?"
Now, that was confused thinking. Harry wouldn't have any keys to this thing. "Harry! Harry!"