The Servants of Twilight

Perhaps the oddest thing of all was the complete lack of religious objects: no paintings portraying Christ, no plastic statues of Biblical figures or angels, no needlepoint samplers bearing religious messages, none of the sacred objects-or kitsch, depending on your point of view-that you expected to find among cult fanatics. There had been none in the hallway, either, or in any of the rooms they had passed.

Grace Spivey was standing at the far end of the room, at a window, her back to them, staring out at the rain.

Henry cleared his throat.

She didn't move.

Charlie said, "Mrs. Spivey?"

Finally she turned away from the window and faced them.

She was dressed all in yellow: pale yellow blouse, a gay yellow polka-dot scarf knotted at her neck, deep yellow skirt, yellow shoes.

She was wearing yellow bracelets on each wrist and half a dozen rings set with yellow stones. The effect was ludicrous.

The brightness of her outfit only accentuated the paleness of her puffy face, the withered dullness of her age-spotted skin. She looked as if she were possessed by senile whimsy and thought of herself as a twelve-year-old girl on the way to a friend's birthday party.

Her gray hair was wild, but her eyes were wilder. Even from across the room, those eyes were riveting and strange.

She was curiously rigid, shoulders drawn up tight, arms straight down at her sides, hands curled into tight fists.

"I'm Charles Harrison," Charlie said because he'd never actually met the woman before, "and this is my associate, Mr. Rankin."

As unsteady as a drunkard, she took two steps away from the window. Her face twisted, and her white skin became even whiter. She cried out in pain, almost fell, caught herself in time, and stood swaying as if the floor were rolling under her.

"Is something wrong?" Charlie asked.

"You'll have to help me," she said.

He hadn't figured on anything like this. He had expected her to be a strong woman with a vital, magnetic personality, a takecharge type who would keep them off balance from the start.

Instead it was she who was off balance, and quite literally.

She was standing in a partial crouch now, as if pain were bending her in half. She was still stiff, and her hands were still fisted.

Charlie and Henry went to her.

"Help me to that chair before I fall," she said weakly." It's my feet"

Charlie looked down at her feet and was shocked to see blood on them. He took her left arm, and Henry took her right, and they half carried her to the chair that stood behind the metal table. As she sat down, Charlie realized there was a bleeding wound on the bridge of each foot, just above the tongue of each shoe, twin holes, as if she had been stabbed, not by a knife but by something with a very narrow blade-perhaps an ice pick.

"Can I get you a doctor?" he asked, disconcerted to find himself being so solicitous to her.

"No," she said." No doctor. Please sit down."

"But-"

"I'll be all right. I'll be fine. God watches over me, you know. God is good to me. Sit. Please."

Confused, they went to the two chairs on the other side of the table, but before either of them could sit, the old woman opened her fisted hands and held her palms up to them." Look," she said in a demanding whisper." Look at this! Behold this!"

The gruesome sight stopped Charlie from sitting down. In each of the woman's palms, there was another bleeding hole, like those in her feet.

As he stared at her wounds, the blood began to ooze out faster than before.

Incredibly, she was smiling.

Charlie glanced at Henry and saw the same question in his friend's eyes that he knew must be in his own: What the hell is going on here?

"It's for you," the old woman said excitedly. She leaned toward them, stretching her arms across the table, holding her hands out to them, urging them to look.

"For us?" Henry said, baffled.

"What do you mean?" Charlie asked.

"A sign," she said.

"Sign?

"A holy sign."

Charlie stared at her hands.

"Stigmata," she said.

Jesus. The woman belonged in an institution.

A chill worked its way assiduously up Charlie's spine and curled at the base of his neck, flicking its icy tail.

"The wounds of Christ," she said.

What have we walked into? Charlie wondered.

Henry said, "I better call a doctor."

"No," she said softly but authoritatively." These wounds ache, yes, but it's a sweet pain, a good pain, a cleansing pain, and they won't become infected; they'll heal well on their own.

Don't you understand? These are the wounds Christ endured, the holes made by the nails that pinned Him to the cross."

She's mad, Charlie thought, and he looked uneasily at the door, wondering where the florid-faced woman had gone. To get some other crazies? To organize a death squad? A human sacrifice? They had the nerve to call this Christianity?

"I know what you're thinking," Grace Spivey said, her voice growing louder, stronger." You don't think I look like a prophet.