'We have no choice.'
Gordon left the sheriff in his office and walked back toward the front of the building. He nodded politely to Rita as he passed by, then moved through the double glass doors. As he walked across the parking lot toward the car, he couldn't help glancing at the storm on top of the Rim.
The red lightning was flashing much more often now. And was getting much stronger.
The day's storm hit earlier than usual, just after twelve, and Father Andrews found himself staring outside for most of the afternoon at the torrents that fell from the gray-black sky, trying to gauge the damage being done to his recently planted seedlings. He stared, almost hypnotized, as the rain fell in never-repeating patterns on the concrete floor of the open patio.
Another of God's small miracles.
He turned away from the window and was surprised by the darkness of the house. He walked across the kitchen and switched on the light. The light illuminated the kitchen but sent the rest of the house and the world outside into further darkness. He found himself, against his will, listening for noises from the back of the house, from Father Selway'sstudy. But there was nothing. He put on some water for tea and sat down at the kitchen table. He picked up the Episcopal Concordance where he had left it. Several of the pages were marked with small bits of paper. Next to the concordance, on the table, was a list he had written. A list of everything the sheriff and Gordon had told him, as well as what he had learned on his own. Most of the things he had written, he knew, would not he found in the Bible. But he hoped to somehow link together what elements he could, to discover some meaning in the emerging patterns.
He had begun by reading all relevant passages relating to Satan or the devil. Though he had studied all such passages thoroughly in the seminary and knew most of them by heart, he felt it important to double check. Just as he had thought, the passages concentrated on Satan's acts rather than on descriptions of the fallen angel. The only description he could find--and that one an analogy-had been in Revelation. Satan here was described as a dragon and a serpent. Not the traditional cloven-hoofed devil he had been searching for. He had underlined the passage anyway, marking it with a scrap of paper, and had moved on to accounts of dreams and visions, but dreams and visions were so prevalent in the Bible that he had barely begun to scratch the surface before he had had to quit for the evening.
Now, he picked up the concordance and leafed through it. He happened upon the description of Satan in Revelation and reread the blue underlined verse. His eye moved back to the beginning of the chapter:
'And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth.'
Father Andrews shivered and put down the book. He knew that the woman was Mary, her son Jesus Christ and the dragon Satan, and he knew the traditional explanation of the symbols, but there was something about the passage that spoke to him, that somehow had a bearing on the disjointed thoughts whirling around in his head. He had no alternative interpretation of the passage, but he had a gut feeling--premonition? insight?--that it related to the situation in Randall.
The situation in Randall. It was amazing how quickly he had come to believe that there was a 'situation' in Randall, that there was something going on which could not be explained away by logic or any of the other placebos of rationality. Something was happening that encompassed all of the recent bizarre occurrences. Something so big that the obvious crimes comprised only a small part of its totality.
Something entirely unseen and possibly incomprehensible.
Father Andrews knew that such a line of thinking could not be supported by an objective look at the available facts. But what the mind could deduce and what the mind actually thought were often two different things. And he had always been one to trust his feelings and instincts rather than his rational mind. What he felt and what he sensed were always more important than what he thought. Although a similar leap of faith, a similar trust of feeling rather than fact, was required of anyone practicing a religion, he knew that the bishop would frown upon such a practice from one of his priests. Particularly in regard to an ostensibly secular matter. He smiled as he thought of Jim Weldon's description of the bishop. The sheriff had dismissed him with one short blunt word: 'Prick.' He wouldn't go quite so far, but he knew that he and Bishop Sinclair did not see eye to eye on many matters.
Unfortunately. He needed someone to talk to on this matter, someone with more experience, someone he could trust.
The sheriff . The phone. These thoughts, neither words nor images, forced themselves upon his consciousness, separate but connected. In the split second after his brain received and acknowledged the thoughts, the phone rang, and he knew immediately that it would be the sheriff. He picked up the receiver. 'Hello?'
'Hello, Father? It's me, Jim.'
The priest felt an icy finger of fear shiver down his back. 'I know,'
he said. 'I knew you were going to call before the phone rang.'
The sheriff sounded surprised. 'Really?'
'Just a routine psychic experience.' He tried to make his tone light.
'So why did you call, Sheriff? What can I help you with?'
'Actually, it's along those lines.'
'What lines?'
'Psychic lines.' The sheriff's voice lost its open, friendly tone.
It was now very serious, and Father Andrews thought he could detect a slight note of fear in it. 'We have someone here, in custody. He's a streetcornerpreacher. We found him preaching in front of the Valley National this morning. A few nights ago, he was out at Gordon's house, scaring the heebie-jeebies out of Gordon's wife.'
'Brother Elias,' the priest said.
The sheriff was silent for a moment. 'You know him?' he said finally.
'No. But I know of him. I've heard a lot of things about him the past couple days.'
'You're going to be hearing a lot more about him. I want you to come down to the station right now. I think you should hear what he has to say.'
'What's this about?'
'I'd rather not tell you over the phone,' the sheriff said hesitantly.
He's scared, Father Andrews thought. The sheriff is scared. 'Okay,' he said aloud. 'I'll be right over.' He told the sheriff good-bye and hung up the phone. He sat unmoving for a few moments, staring at the black receiver, feeling the cold seep into his bones. He had a sudden premonition of death, of destruction.
Outside, the rain had abated somewhat, the torrential downpour of the early afternoon tapering off to a constant drizzle. The sound of thunder rolled down from the top of the Rim. Father Andrews ran across the yard to his car. He had not brought a raincoat with him to Randall because he had not anticipated the monsoons. It seldom rained in Phoenix during the summer. He hopped in the car and started it up, turning on the windshield wipers. The driver's wiper worked all right, but the passenger blade flopped around with each sweep across the windshield.
He pulled out of the driveway, driving slow, trying to see through the small curved rectangle of clearness created by the single wiper blade.
The road curved next to the river, now brown and muddy because of the rain, and crossed the water on the east side of the sawmill. Through the windshield he could see the billowing smoke of the smelter, fighting bravely against the rain. There was a sharp flash of red, and he braked to a stop.
What was that?
The flash came again, a crimson light that flashed over everything and turned even the trees a blood red.
Lightning. It was lightning, and Father Andrews stared out his windshield in wonder. He had never seen red lightning before. There was another flash. And another. And another.
He took his foot off the brake and started moving again. There was something strange about the colored
