The Night Church Part 37

"Oh, Mike!" There was a great clattering.

"Hurry!"

"I can't, it's too strong."

"What-were-"

"I'm hitting it with my shoe!" There was another burst of noise.

"No. No." He was drifting into unconsciousness, falling down a well.

A tiny hissing sound brought him back from the depths.

"Mike! Say something!"

"Upend the d.a.m.n thing and drop it! That'll break it open!"

There came a creaking, sc.r.a.ping sound and a great deal of labored breathing. Slowly Mike's position changed. Soon he was struggling with the fact that Harry had lifted the thing feet first.

Then he dropped it. There was a tremendous, bone-jarring crash.

G.o.d love that old priest, was the lid actually loose?

People were coming and going in the bride's room, brides-maids with their dresses and makeup cases, sisters with ironing boards and needles and thread, making last-minute adjustments. Letty and Mary fussed over their Princess, who smiled as best she could, despite the ashes in her heart.

Her mind in its desperation had fixed on the notion that Jonathan might rescue her. He was so clever, surely he would succeed where she was failing. He would find a way to get both of them out.

"Now, my dear," Letty said with great self-satisfaction, "we have something to show you!" She put a large white box on the table with the flowers and opened it. Inside was the most extraordinary dress Patricia had ever seen.

It was sewn entirely of spider-web lace worked with pearls. Tiny diamonds made the collar and cuffs glitter. An emerald belt, green to match her eyes, lay folded on top. Mary drew the dress from the box and held it up. It was purest white silk, the delicate strands worked into flourishes and sweeps of subtle design.

Then she saw the design. She choked back a scream. On the dress, depicted in lace, were bodies struggling in fires, bones and skulls, and grinning devils.

"Feel how light it is! The whole thing doesn't weigh a pound."

Patricia held out her hand, touched the gossamer fabric. "It's very light."

"The dress is over six hundred years old. It was made at the height of the Middle Ages. It's been in the family all this time, waiting for you. It's been worn only once before, during the Rituale Rituale at Salisbury Cathedral in 1334." at Salisbury Cathedral in 1334."

Out of the madness and desperation of the medieval world they had brought this terrible artifact. It was as if the rotted fingers of man's mad past had reached out and clutched her. They were smiling at her. All the bridesmaids were watch-ing. She strove for a steady voice. "It's an inspiration."

Her mind was totally concentrated on Jonathan. Memo-ries of him, desire to see him again, hope of escape. But she dared not even ask after him for fear her tone would betray her.

They had to get careless for a few seconds. They just had had to! And if they didn't, then he had to come to her and take her away. Nothing else could be allowed to happen. Because if there was a to! And if they didn't, then he had to come to her and take her away. Nothing else could be allowed to happen. Because if there was a Rituale Rituale then he would become the then he would become the monstrum. monstrum.

That must not be!

Mary gave her an excited little peck on her cheek. "Before you put on your makeup. For good luck."

Patricia looked down at the awful garment in her hands. A lace skull smiled up at her.

This had never been intended as a wedding dress. It was a shroud.

"Jonathan, you might as well accept your situation. You aren't going to get away," Franklin t.i.tus said.

"Maybe not."

"And we won't give you a chance at suicide."

Jonathan did not reply. That was his one hope.

"I really feel terrible about this. If I had known what it would do I never would have tried the hypnosis.You're pitiful now, son. I find it most upsetting to see you this way."

"You're evil. I'll never stop fighting you."

"If you don't cooperate tonight things will turn out far worse than they did in June. Should the insemination fail because of your resistance I will not stop you like I did in June. This time I'll let you kill Patricia."

Jonathan fought against the straitjacket; he spit at Uncle Franklin and cursed him. "I don't want to hurt her! I mustn't be allowed to hurt her!"

"I agree. Which is why you must cooperate."

"Get away from me!"

"The wedding is going to start in ten minutes, son. You might as well reconcile yourself to that fact." He turned and walked away.

"Don't do it to me! Don't, in the name of all humanity!"

His uncle said something to Jerry Cochran. Jerry came over. "You're disturbing the congregation, Jonathan," he said in an embarra.s.sed tone. "If you can't be quiet we'll have to gag you."

Jonathan became silent. Gagged, he would be helpless even to warn her away. He began to realize that this terrible ceremony was probably going to happen just about as Uncle Franklin wanted it to happen.

He hoped, he prayed that he would somehow manage to be gentle with her.

A great, booming note resounded from the choir loft. The ritual had begun.

By pressing his mouth against the crack that Harry had made and sucking furiously, Mike could get a little air. As he drank it in his whole body seemed to come alive with tingling relief.

The next thing he knew there were fingers in his mouth. Harry was trying to reach in and widen the crack. Mike forced himself to turn aside into the foul air of the coffin. Harry strained. Suddenly a loud snap brought a flood of cool, delicious breeze. Mike found the damp concrete smell of the crypt delightful.

Then Harry's arms were around him, lifting him. "Mike, Mike!"

"I made it. I'm alive."

Harry embraced him. "Thank you, O heavenly Father."

Mike saw a long piece of tubing curling down from the broken coffin lid. He took it in his fingers.

It had been leaking a trickle of oxygen into the coffin all along. "What the h.e.l.l-look at this, Harry."

"What does it mean?"

"They were feeding me just enough air to keep me alive!" He stood up, examined the mechanism of torture. An oxygen tank, its valve set just to bleed. This was perhaps the most hideous torture he had ever heard of. They could have kept him at the edge of death for a long, long time. "No wonder I didn't die.They didn't want me to."

"But they must have. You're dangerous to them."

"Oh, they were going to kill me, all right. But not soon. The point is, I would have lingered in there, slowly suffocating, until they decided to cut off the oxygen."

"Hours?"

"Maybe days."

Harry hugged him again. "Let's get out of here! We can run! Your car's outside, we can go over to the precinct! We'll be safe there."

"Who knows where we'll be safe. What about the kids?"

Harry closed his eyes for a long moment. "I'm due upstairs in a few minutes. I'm supposed to marry them."

"And I have to rescue them. Somehow."

Harry dug in his pocket and came up with what was to Mike a fist-sized chunk of gold. "You gave me this, Mike. Maybe you can put it to better use than me."

Mike took the little pistol. "Thank you, Father." Mike hefted the weapon. Good for head shots. He and Harry walked together across the crypt, to the spiral staircase that led up to the sacristy. From the top of that staircase light shone down. There were excited voices. "I don't want to do this, Mike."

"You go up there. If they miss you we'll both end up getting caught." To rea.s.sure Harry he smiled. "And don't blame me if the wedding doesn't come off quite as planned."

"I hope it doesn't, Mike. I hope to G.o.d it doesn't."

"It won't."

Chapter Twenty-six.

THE ALTAR RAIL seemed very far away, a dim white line at the end of the long stone aisle. Beyond it was the dark, ugly bulk of the altar.

The sacrificial stone.

"Do you see him?" one of the bridesmaids whispered.

Her heart began to flutter. See him? See him?

"Look-he's just to the right among that group of aco-lytes."

She saw that n.o.ble head, those delicate features. "Jona-than!" His eyes met hers and there was lightning between the two of them. Through all the pain and horror of the moment their love shone clear.

Then she was running down the aisle. Footsteps pounded behind her. She was halfway to him before the bridesmaids managed to stop her. "Not too fast," one of them said. "We have to wait for the music. This is supposed to be a procession."

Standing there in her delicate shroud, captured again, she cried.

The flower girl in her white taffeta dress slipped around Patricia. The procession was reorganized.

Mary, standing behind the bridesmaids in the ranks of nuns, called up to the choir loft. "Very well, Mrs.Trask, I think we're ready now." .

The most beautiful, ethereal music began. Patricia recognized it as Bach's "Sleepers, Awake," from one of the cantatas. Sleepers awake, indeed. They had lost their chance for that. The two of them were doomed to carry out the living nightmare of the ritual, and nothing could intervene.

Her flower girl began moving forward, spreading rose and gardenia petals. Patricia followed, her heart full of the most exquisite anguish. She felt the weight of the procession behind her, the six bridesmaids, the deaconesses in their dark-red silk festive habits, the common sisters in then-white ones. Behind them came the children of the t.i.tus School, the girls in blue dresses, the boys in tuxedos. And the pews were filled with the whole congregation of the Night Church, resplendent in the dim candlelight in their jewelry and fine dresses, their tuxedos and gleaming studs.

"Patricia!"

She heard him cry out, quite clearly. The music got louder. There was a stir around him. He was entirely sur-rounded by acolytes. She could no longer see him.

"Run!"

Her bridesmaids began pressing her from behind. "I can't, Jonathan!"

He screamed then, an awful, wild, trapped sound that made her scream too. It reminded her of the sound of a rabbit dying in the country night, crushed in the coils of a king snake.

"Please don't do this," she wailed. "Please, all of you, listen to me! This is evil, it's terribly wrong! Don't any of you understand? Don't you realize it? You must!"

The music swept along, so gentle, so intensely sweet.

Then they reached the altar. The music stopped.

Mike had gone up the winding stairs from crypt to sacristy with the utmost care, pausing in the shadows behind the half-closed door. From here he could see most of the sac-risty and an edge of the sanctuary beyond. He had watched Harry vest and go out into the sanctuary behind his retinue of altar boys. t.i.tus and his own retinue of six of the quietest, best-behaved acolytes Mike had ever seen remained behind.

Even so one or two of the boys amused themselves by swinging their censers at one another. From time to time t.i.tus would snap at them.

Why the h.e.l.l didn't t.i.tus get moving? As long as he remained where he was, Mike was stuck here.

One of the boys took a quartz wand about ten inches long from a little black case. He handed it to t.i.tus, who began examining it carefully and wiping it with a bit of felt.

Outside the wedding started. Mike could see Father and Patricia clearly, but where was Jonathan? He must be among the crowd of men off to the side. Some marriage, when the groom has to be held by force.

"At the beginning of creation G.o.d made them male and female; for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto a wife, and the two shall become as one. They are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore let no man separate what G.o.d has joined."

Harry's voice was quick and strained. t.i.tus had noticed it too; he grew as still as an interested snake.

"Now he enriches you and strengthens you by a special sacrament so that you may a.s.sume the duties of marriage in mutual and lasting fidelity. And so, in the presence of the Church, I ask you to state your intentions."

A horror that made Mike's skin crawl and his heart beat thick and slow came over him. He remembered the picture of the dying monster he had seen in t.i.tus's library. To create anti-man a human being must become like that poor, de-stroyed thing.

To twist and contort and bulge with whatever crazy drugs or trances they used, until you became- Dear G.o.d, poor Jonathan! Poor d.a.m.n kid! No wonder they've got him trussed up like a hog in a slaughterhouse. He's He's their d.a.m.n monster! their d.a.m.n monster!