The Servants of Twilight

In spite of the rain booming on the roof and the thumping of the windshield wipers, the night was unbearably silent in the oppressively humid car; there was a dearth of meaningful sound, just the random noises of the storm which, by their very randomness, reminded him of the chasm of chaos above which his life and all other lives unfolded. That was a thought on which he preferred not to dwell at the moment.

He pulled back onto the road, accelerated, and sent up twin plumes of spray from a deep puddle, heading toward the hills, and home.

29

Christine hadn't expected to be able to sleep. She stretched out on the bed where Joey lay like a stone, but she figured she would just wait there with her eyes closed, resting, until he woke. She must have dropped off instantly.

She came around once during the night and realized the rain had stopped.

The silence was profound.

George Swarthout was sitting in a chair in the corner, reading a magazine in the soft glow of a table lamp with a mother-ofpearl shade.

She wanted to speak to him, wanted to know if everything was all right, but she hadn't the strength to sit up or even talk. She closed her eyes and drifted down into darkness again.

She came fully awake before seven o'clock, feeling fuzzyheaded after only four and a half hours of sleep. Joey was snoring softly. She left George watching over her son, went into the bathroom, and took a long, hot shower, wincing when water got under the bandage on her hip and elicited a stinging pain from her still-healing wound.

She finally stepped out of the shower, toweled dry, applied a new bandage, and was pulling on her clothes when she sensed that Joey was in trouble, right now, terrible trouble; she felt it in her bones. She thought she heard him scream above the rumbling of the bathroom's exhaust fan. Oh Jesus no. He was being slaughtered out there in the bedroom, hacked to pieces by some Bible-thumping maniac. Her stomach tightened, and her skin goose-pimpled, and in spite of the moaning bathroom fan she thought she heard something else, a thump, a clubbing sound.

They must be beating him, too, stabbing and beating him, and her lungs blocked up, and she knew it, knew Joey was dead, my God, and in a wild panic she pulled up the zipper on her jeans,

didn't even finish buttoning her blouse, stumbled out of the bathroom, shoeless, with her wet hair hanging in glossy clumps.

She had imagined everything.

The boy was safe.

He was awake, sitting up in bed, listening wide-eyed as George Swarthout told him a story about a magic parrot and the King of Siam.

Later, worried that her mother would hear about their problems on the news or read about them in the papers, she called, but then wished she hadn't. Evelyn listened to all the details, was properly shocked, but instead of offering much sympathy, she launched into an interrogation that surprised and angered Christine.

"What did you do to these people?" Evelyn wanted to know.

"What people?"

"The people at this church."

"I didn't do anything to them, Mother. They're trying to do it to us.

Didn't you hear what I said?"

"They wouldn't pick on you for no reason," Evelyn said.

"They're crazy, Mother."

"Can't all of them be crazy, a whole churchful of people."

"Well, they are. They're bad people, Mother, real bad people."

"Can't all of them be bad. Not religious people like that.

Can't all of them be after you just for the fun of it."

"I told you why they're after us. They've got this crazy idea that Joey-"

"That's what you told me," Evelyn said, "but that can't be it. Not really. There must be something else. Must be something you did that made them angry. But even if they're angry, I'm sure they're not trying to kill anybody."

"Mother, I told you, they came with guns, and men were killed-"

"Then the people who had guns weren't these church people, " Evelyn said

" You've got it all wrong. It's someone else."

"Mother, I haven't got it all wrong. I-"

"Church people don't use guns, Christine."

"These church people do."

"It's someone else," Evelyn insisted.

"But-"

"You have a grudge against religion," Evelyn said." Always have. A grudge against the Church."

"Mother, I don't hold any grudges-"

"That's why you're so quick to blame this on religious people when it's plainly the work of someone else, maybe political terrorists like on the news all the time, or maybe you're involved in something you shouldn't be and now it's getting out of hand, which wouldn't surprise me. Are you involved in something, Christine, like drugs, which they're always killing themselves over, like you see on TV, dealers shooting each other all the time-is it anything like that, Christine?"

She imagined she could hear the grandfather clock ticking monotonously in the background. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe well.