The Servants of Twilight

He popped the suction cup off the glass, switched off the wave detector, and returned it to the flight bag. He withdrew a roll of strapping tape and a pair of scissors. He cut several strips of tape and applied them to the pane of glass nearest the door handle. When the glass was completely covered, he struck it hard with one fist. The pane shattered, but with little sound, and

the fragments all stuck to the tape. He pulled the pieces out of the frame, put them aside, reached through, fumbled for the deadbolt, unlocked it, opened the door.

He was now pretty sure there was no alarm, but he had one last thing to check for. He got down on his knees on the patio, reached across the threshold, and pulled up the carpet from the tack strip. There was no alarm mat under the carpet, just ordinary quilted padding.

He put the carpet back in place. He and Baumberg went into the house, taking the laundry bags and the flight bag with them.

O'Hara closed and locked the French doors.

He looked out at the rear lawn. It was peaceful now.

"It isn't out there any more," Baumberg said.

"No," O'Hara said.

Baumberg peered across the unlighted family room, into the breakfast area and the dark kitchen beyond. He said, "Now it's inside with us."

"Yes," O'Hara said. He had felt the hostile presence within the house the moment they'd crossed the threshold.

"I wish we could turn on some lights," Baumberg said uneasily.

"The house is supposed to be deserted. The neighborswould notice lights and maybe call the cops."

Overhead, from an upstairs room, a floorboard creaked.

Before converting to Mother Grace's faith, in the days when he had been a thief, stealing his way along the road to hell, O'Hara would have figured the creaking was merely a settling noise, one of the many meaningless sounds that an empty house produced as joints expanded and contracted in response to the humidity-or lack of it-in the air. But tonight he knew it was no settling sound.

O'Hara's old friends and some in his family said that he had become paranoid since joining the Church of the Twilight. They just didn't understand. His behavior seemed paranoid only because he had seen the truth as Mother Grace taught it, and his old friends and family had not been saved. His eyes had been opened; their eyes were still blind.

More creaking noise overhead.

"Our faith is a shield," Baumberg said shakily." We don't dare doubt that."

"Mother has provided us with armor," O'Hara said.

Creeeeeaaak.

"We're doing God's work," Baumberg said, challenging the darkness that filled the house.

O'Hara switched on the flashlight, shielding it with one hand to provide just enough light to guide them but not enough to be seen from outside.

Baumberg followed him to the stairs and up to the second floor.

20

"Her name's Grace Spivey," Charlie said as their car moved through the increasingly blustery February night.

Christine couldn't take her eyes from the photograph. The old woman's black-and-white gaze was strangely hypnotic, and a cold radiation seemed to emanate from it.

In the front seat, Joey was talking to Pete Lockburn about Steven Spielberg's E. T, which Joey had seen four times and which Lockburn seemed to have seen more often than that. Her son's voice sounded far away, as if he were on a distant mountain, already lost to her.

Charlie switched off the penlight.

Christine was relieved when shadow fell across the photograph, breaking the uncanny hold it had on her. She put it in the envelope, returned the envelope to Charlie." She's head of this cult?"

"She is the cult. It's primarily a personality cult. Her religious message isn't anything special or unique; the whole thing's in the way she delivers it. If anything happened to Grace, her followers would drift away and the church would probably collapse."

"How can a crazy old woman like that draw any followers?

She sure didn't seem charismatic to me."

"But she is," Charlie said." I've never spoken to her myself, but Henry Rankin has. He handled that case I mentioned, the two little kids whose mother took them with her into the cult.

And he told me Grace has a certain undeniable magnetism, a very forceful personality. And although her message isn't particularly new, it's dramatic and exciting, just the sort of thing that a certain type of person would respond to with enthusiasm."

" What is her message?"

"She says we're living in the last days of the world."

"Every religious crackpot from here to Maine has made that proclamation at one time or another."

"Of course."

"So there must be more to it. What else does she say?"

Charlie hesitated, and she sensed that he dreaded having to tell her the rest.

" Charlie?"

He sighed." Grace says the Antichrist has already been born."

"I've heard that one, too. There's one cult around that says the Antichrist is the King of Spain."

"That's a new one to me."

"Others say the Antichrist will be the man who takes over the Russian government after the current Premier."

"Sounds a bit more reasonable than laying it on the King of Spain."