around the neck of the infant the priest held above his hooded head.
Devin screamed, twisted, jabbed her finger into her buzzer and held it there.
“Help me, oh my God, help me! Stop them, STOP THEM! Hurry!” she shrieked. And her eyes darted to the time.
Eleven fifty-five.
They were going to take him. Those who claimed the unblessed.
Devin didn’t wait for the buzzer to be answered. There was no more time to spare. She flung the blanket off her and swung her bare feet to the cold floor. She didn’t even bother with slippers. Bare feet offered better traction. She ignored the pains that lanced her and just bolted for the door.
At the end of this floor, the old woman had said. Past the cafeteria…
If God would not intervene, then she would have to do it. And if she could not stop them, then she would go with Christopher, wherever they took him.
At the very end of the hall were twin doors she hadn’t noticed when she’d first come in. The end of the corridor was in gloom, but she could read the gold letters that spelled: St. Andrews Hospital Chapel.
The doors were locked.
Devin jerked at the knobs, cursing, screaming. She pounded with her palms. “Let me in, you bastards! Let me in!” She turned, looked wild-eyed around her. There was nothing to use as a battering ram. No fire axes on the walls. Devin threw her weak hurting body against the blank panels and wailed, “Oh, God,
She pounded with both fists, seized the knobs in both hands, and turned them. They clicked.
Shocked, for a moment she nearly hesitated. Then she flung the doors open.
None in the congregation had admitted her; they were too obviously surprised as they whirled toward her. She did not look at them, being too close to madness already. Instead, she turned to the left and right, searching for something she knew must be there. A fount…
The figures were shadows, and the shadows poured at her like dark winds, reached out hands to her that even before they could touch her were arctic cold. But Devin still didn’t look. She cupped both hands into a wall- mounted receptacle of cool water.
Then, she walked up the aisle, carrying her dripping chalice of flesh before her. The reaching hands withdrew sharply, the dark forms recoiling like a black parted sea. There was a gasp of revulsion from their throats more like a rustling of autumn leaves. Devin ignored them. She wanted to run to the altar, but didn’t dare spill the water. The tears in her eyes made the candlelight scintillate, but she saw the head priest more clearly now. She saw that in the time it had taken her to reach and enter the chapel, he had set the nude little body of her son upon the chest of the woman on the floor, and draped one limp arm of the woman over him. It was not the umbilical cord around his neck—of course, the doctors had removed that. It was a black rope, representing that life line. Devin knew, then, that it was a black cord with which the young woman had been strangled.
They were an obscene Madonna and child for this Christmas eve. It was not a funeral mass, but a midnight mass, after all. See? The great cross above the altar—out of her range on TV—had even been inverted for the occasion.
The head priest recoiled, lifting one arm to shield himself—itself—from Devin’s offering. But it was not for him anyway. She knelt before the bodies of the sacrificed, gently positioned her hands over the brow of her son, with his sad, troubled face.
Much of the water had wound down her wrists, despite her efforts. Only drops remained, but they splashed his small round head. Devin even shook loose the last two drops onto the head of the Madonna.
A howling of wind or voices erupted, and the congregation rushed into that dark doorway in the corner. The head priest went last, casting one last hateful look over his shoulder. The touch of his gaze made Devin scream.
The door slammed shut.
* * *
One of the nurses found Devin there, on the floor of the chapel. She screamed also.
It was first thought, naturally, that Devin had somehow stolen both the body of her stillborn son and that of the woman from the emergency ward, and moved them into this room. After all, a nurse had inadvisably told Devin about the victim. But after interviewing her, and talking with the nurses from postpartum recovery, police were willing to at least accept the possibility that some sort of cult had broken into the hospital and transported the bodies into the chapel. After all, one drugged and hurting woman could scarcely have turned that heavy cross upside-down by herself.
She was released after questioning, though there were problems with her story. For instance, there was no door in that shadowy comer of the chapel where she claimed the congregation had emerged, and fled.
It was no wonder they thought her responsible, at first, and still wondered about her later. For when the nurse found her, Devin was sitting beside the body of the murdered girl, and rocking her dead son in her arms. And laughing, of all things. Laughing as if with joy. Or at least, with relief. And her words sounded like the rantings of a madwoman.
Because she was laughing, “I saved him. I saved him.” Over and over. Her eyes bright and fervent, like those of an acolyte.
The Yellow House
When I was a boy the Yellow House was as much a part of Halloween as the jack-o’-lanterns it so closely resembled on that night, its black windows gaping sightlessly in its bright yellow face. You could see the Yellow House way down the street, glowing in the dark, almost, and the dread excitement would build. We had to go up the walk and knock on the door. Every year we did this and no one answered, but we were always convinced (okay, half convinced) that this would be the time the door would crack open and there would stand some resurrected something-or-other, decayed, grinning and glaring at the same time. So we’d knock and then run, screaming and laughing. That’s how we confront what we’re afraid of, right?—give it a quick close look and a touch and then run. But without having really seen inside.
Every town has its Yellow House, so to speak: a house where a mad old woman (witch) lived, or where someone had been murdered, or where the Devil once looked out of the fireplace. The Yellow House wasn’t located up on some desolate hill, and structurally or architecturally speaking, my old family house looked much, much more foreboding. It was a small two-story crammed between two similar houses, with only a scrap of front yard. But it had that weird color, for one. A sort of traffic sign yellow, the yellow they paint bulldozers and such. And damned if I ever saw anybody repaint the thing, but the paint never peeled or flaked away or faded in all those years I knew it as a boy. My father remarked on it more than once. As did my grandfather whom I helped repaint our family home, and he knew his painting. Of course, I moved out of state for nine years, and in that time only saw the house on a few occasions during visits home, but once I asked my father if he’d ever seen anyone adding new paint to the house, and he hadn’t. The house stood empty for most of my boyhood (and all those Halloweens) after the mysterious disappearance of its owner, but the funny thing is that the family who finally bought the house didn’t repaint it a new color. I intend to find them and ask them if they ever added a new coat. Maybe they liked the color, and didn’t want to change the personality of the famous Yellow House. The young yuppie-type couple living there now must think it’s neat, and they put up new black shutters and painted the door black. It looks quite striking, like a big plastic toy house. I’ll have to talk to them, too, now…see what they may have learned, if anything, by living inside the Yellow House.
They must have heard the stories; you can’t have lived in town a year or two without having heard them. And it was for these stories more than because of its strange color that the place had become our town’s official haunted house.
First of all, the town’s all-time prize loony had owned the Yellow House, and painted it himself, as the town was very much aware at that time. It was no quaint town tradition or landmark then, but a plain old eyesore. So kids began rapping on the door and running away laughing on Halloween night even back then in the forties. Supposedly one kid got shot with a BB gun by the owner—at least my mother seems to remember that story.
His name was Edwin Phillips, the town dog officer. Another great reason for banging on his door. One time, my mother has never forgotten (the reason she curses him to this day, obsessive animal lover that she is), three
