Mr. Murder

At first, in the obscuring storm and fading gray light of late afternoon, Marty thought the building was in good repair, but that impression was transient. As they drew nearer, he saw that a lot of roof tiles were missing. Sections of the copper rain gutter were gone, while other pieces dangled precariously, swaying and creaking in the wind. Most of the windows were broken out, and vandals had spray-painted obscenities on the once-handsome brick walls.

Rambling complexes of buildings—offices, workshops, a nursery, dormitories, a dining hall—stood immediately behind and to both sides of the steepled main structure. The Prophetic Church of the Rapture had been a cult that required its members to contribute all of their worldly belongings upon admittance and to live in a tightly governed commune.

They raced through the inch-deep snow, as fast as the girls could manage, toward the entrance to the church, rather than to one of the other buildings, because the church was closest. They needed to get out of sight as quickly as possible. Though The Other could track them through his connection with Marty no matter where they went, at least he couldn’t shoot at them if he couldn’t see them.

Twelve broad steps led up to a double set of ten-foot -high oak doors with six-foot-high fanlights above each pair. All but a few ruby and yellow shards of glass had been broken out of the fanlights, leaving dark gaps between the thick ribs of leading. The doors were recessed in a twenty-foot-high cinquefoil arch, above which was an enormous and elaborately patterned wheel window that still contained twenty percent of its original glass, most likely because it was a harder target for stones.

The four carved-oak doors were weather-beaten, scarred, cracked, and spray-painted with more obscenities that glowed softly in the ashen light of the premature dusk. On one, a vandal had crudely drawn the white hourglass shape of a female form complete with breasts and a crotch defined by the letter Y, and beside it was a representation of a phallus as large as a man. Beveled letters, cut by a master stone carver, made the same promise in the granite lintel above each set of doors, HE LIFTETH US UNTO HEAVEN; however, over those words, the spoilers had sprayed BULLSHIT in red paint.

The cult had been creepy, and its founder—Jonathan Caine—had been a fraud and pederast, but Marty was more chilled by the vandals than by the misguided people who had followed Caine. At least the faithful cultists had believed in something, no matter how misguided, had yearned to be worthy of God’s grace, and had sacrificed for their beliefs, even if the sacrifices ultimately proved to be stupid; they had dared to dream even if their dreams had ended in tragedy. The mindless hatred that informed the scrawlings of the graffitists was the work of empty people who believed in nothing, were incapable of dreaming, and thrived on the pain of others.

One of the doors stood ajar six inches. Marty grabbed the edge of it and pulled. The hinges were corroded, the oak was warped, but the door grated outward another twelve or fourteen inches.

Paige went inside first. Charlotte and Emily trailed close behind her.

Marty never heard the shot that hit him.

As he started to follow the girls, a lance of ice impaled him, entering the upper-left quadrant of his back, exiting through the muscles and tendons below the collarbone on the same side. The piercing chill was so cold that the blizzard hammering the church seemed like a tropical disturbance by comparison, and he shuddered violently.

The next thing he knew, he was lying on the snow-covered brick stoop in front of the door, wondering how he had gotten there. He was half convinced he had just stretched out for a nap, but the pain in his bones indicated he’d dropped hard onto his unlikely bed.

He stared up through the descending snow and wintry light at letters in granite, letters on granite.

HE LIFTETH US UNTO HEAVEN.

BULLSHIT.

He only realized he’d been shot when Paige rushed out of the church and dropped to one knee at his side, shouting, “Marty, oh God, my God, you’ve been shot, the son of a bitch shot you,” and he thought, Oh, yes, of course, that’s it, I’ve been shot, not stabbed by a lance of ice.

Paige rose from beside him, raised the Mossberg. He heard two shots. They were exceedingly loud, unlike the stealthy bullet that had knocked him to the bricks.

Curious, he turned his head to see how close their indefatigable enemy had come. He expected to discover the look-alike charging at him, only a few yards away, unfazed by shotgun pellets.

Instead, The Other remained at a distance from the church, out of range of the two rounds Paige had fired. He was a black figure on a field of white, the details of his too-familiar face unrevealed by the waning gray light. Ranging back and forth through the snow, back and forth, lanky and quick, he seemed to be a wolf stalking a herd of sheep, watchful and patient, biding his time until the moment of ultimate vulnerability arrived.

The poniard of ice that transfixed Marty became, from one second to the next, a stiletto of fire. With the heat came excruciating pain that made him gasp. At last the abstract concept of a bullet wound was translated into the language of reality.

Paige lifted the Mossberg again.

Regaining clarity of mind with the pain, Marty said, “Don’t waste the ammo. Let him go for now. Help me up.”

With her assistance, he was able to get to his feet.

“How bad?” she asked worriedly.

“I’m not dying. Let’s get inside before he decides to take another shot at us.”

He followed her through the door into the narthex, where the darkness was relieved only by faint rays penetrating the partly open door and glassless fanlights.

The girls were crying, Charlotte louder than Emily, and Marty tried to reassure them. “It’s okay, I’m all right, just a little nick. All I need is a Band-Aid, one with a picture of Snoopy on it, and I’ll feel all better.”

In truth, his left arm was half numb. He only had partial use of it. When he flexed his hand, he couldn’t curl it into a tight fist.

Paige eased to the eighteen-inch gap between the big door and the jamb, where the wind whistled and gibbered. She peered out at The Other.

Trying to get a better sense of the damage the bullet had done, Marty slipped his right hand inside his ski jacket and gingerly explored the front of his left shoulder. Even a light touch ignited a flare of pain that made him grit his teeth. His wool sweater was saturated with blood.

“Take the girls farther back into the church,” Paige whispered urgently, though their enemy could not possibly have heard her out there in the storm. “All the way to the other end.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’ll wait here for him.”

The girls protested. “Mommy, don’t.” “Mom, come with us, you gotta.” “Mommy, please.”

“I’ll be fine,” Paige said, “I’ll be safe. Really. It’ll be perfect. Don’t you see? Marty, when the creep senses you moving away, he’ll come into the church. He’ll expect us to be together.” As she talked, she put two more shells into the Mossberg magazine to replace the most recent rounds she’d expended. “He won’t expect me to be waiting right here for him.”

Marty remembered having this same discussion before, back at the cabin, when she wanted to go outside and hide in the rocks. Her plan hadn’t worked then, although not because it was flawed. The Other had driven past her in the Jeep, evidently unaware that she was lying in wait. If he hadn’t pulled such an unpredictable stunt, ramming the station wagon right into the house, she might have slipped up on him and dropped him from behind.

Nevertheless, Marty didn’t want to leave her alone by the door. But there was no time for debate because he suspected his wound was soon going to begin sapping what strength he still had. Besides, he didn’t have a better plan to suggest.

In the gloom, he could barely recognize Paige’s face.

He hoped this wouldn’t be the last time he saw it.

He shepherded Charlotte and Emily out of the narthex and into the nave. It smelled of dust and dampness and the wild things that nested there in the years since the cultists had left to resume their shattered lives instead of rising to sit at the right hand of the Lord.

On the north side, the restless wind harried snow through the broken windows. If winter had a heart,