did it.' He thumped the arm of his chair. 'Pulled out. But no, we were full of piss and courage … so we stayed. Like fools. Well, whatever it was, it's back. And you know it. I'm glad our kids have all gone away.' He waved a hand, thin and heavily veined. 'But I'm just too old to run. Wade, you go back and get Anita. The two of you, get Jane Ann … and run.'
'Anita won't run, Miles. I can't convince her it's happening all over again. And Jane Ann is beginning to suspect more each day. She told me she wasn't running.'
'Sam is not here to protect us now, Wade. And I don't mean no slight against you in saying that.'
'I know you don't. Miles … I believe Sam is here. He told him about the letter.
'My old rabbi should hear this story. He'd crap on himself. May I be forgiven for saying that. Yeah, Sam was a wild one. If there was a way back, he'd find it. I hope he's here. Oh, Wade! What are we saying? Foolishness. Sam is dead. So let's have some coffee and cakes and talk about all the good times.'
An hour later, Wade stepped out of the Lansky house. The hot winds still blew. He walked to his car, pausing with his hand on the door. He looked up. 'Sam, Jane Ann is not going to run. But if we stay here, they'll kill us, and do much worse to Jane Ann before she dies.'
But the wind still blew hot, and Wade received no reply to his statement.
And the clay that Miles had painfully, slowly dug from the banks of a river—several hundred pounds of it—and had carefully shaped into the form of a man, with arms and legs and a featureless face, lay in the basement, in a huge packing crate.
It appeared lifeless.
It was in the summer of 1958 the horror finally surfaced, erupting like a too-long festering boil, spewing its corruption over all those near it. Specifically, the town of Whitfield and part of Fork County.
Those who survived the terror remember it as the summer of The Digging. And not many of the town's 2,500 residents did survive. Only a few. A few believers. More than a few unbelievers.
Whitfield was destroyed. At the end of that week of devil-induced terror, the town was a broken, burned-out, still-smoking ruin.
An archaeological team (they said) had come to Whitfield, ostensibly to investigate a huge stone circle, its interior barren of life. But what they were really doing was searching for a stone tablet. Satan's tablet, upon which were carved these words: HE WALKS AMONG YOU. THE MARK OF THE BEAST IS PLAIN. BELIEVE IN HIM. ONCE TOUCHED, FOREVER HIS. THE KISS OF LIFE AND DEATH.
And the tablet had been found.
After that, the town's fall into the blackest depths of sin and depravity had been swift, with only a few resisting: the minister, Sam Balon, whose own wife, Michelle, was part of the Devil's team, as old and as evil as time. Father Dubois, a Catholic priest, had driven a stake into her heart, then stood by the bed with Sam, watching her metamorphosis through centuries of evil, and finally, her death.
The old priest was killed a short time later. Then the horror unfolded in Fork County.
The Undead walking. The Beasts of the devil prowling.
Sam Balon had pulled together a handful of people, true believers in the Lord God. They fought the horror with everything they could find and with every ounce of strength and faith they possessed. Sam had acted as the right hand of God.
It was a week of mind-tearing horror and days and nights of fear; of seeking out and killing those who worshiped the Devil. Finally, to save the few friends who remained, and to save his new wife, Jane Ann, Sam agreed to fight off the advances of Mephistopheles' witch, Nydia, a beautiful woman whose soul had been given to the Prince of Filth centuries before, in return for everlasting youth and unbelievable beauty.
Sam Balon had sent the Devil's agent, Black Wilder, tumbling back to Hell with a stake through his dark heart. All part of the bargain. Then the witch, Nydia, took Balon into the spinning darkness of trackless time. And the man of God and the Witch of Hell fought for Sam's seed of life. In the end, Nydia beat him and Balon was killed, his naked body found by the survivors. Cut into the earth beside the body, this message: HE MET ME—AND I DO RESPECT COURAGE.
It was signed by Satan.
The young doctor, Tony King, took Jane Ann as his wife, and the son of Sam Balon would not learn of his true father's fate for years—until it was almost too late.
'We'll leave the main highway at St. Gervais,' Black said. 'Then drive northeast until we come to where mother owns some property. We'll pick up a four-wheel drive there; sometimes you can't even make it to the house in a four-wheel. It can get rough.'
Sam nodded, not really paying much attention to the words of his friend and soon-to-be-host. Since the moment he and Black had picked up Black's sister, Nydia, Sam had sat in a near state of shock, overwhelmed by her beauty. He did not believe he had ever seen a more beautiful woman, and when she told him that no, she didn't have a steady boyfriend, and that really she hardly dated at all, Sam began counting his lucky stars.
Nydia was five feet seven, she told him. She did not volunteer her weight, and Sam tactfully didn't ask. But whatever her weight, it was distributed in a most delightful manner. Her hair was as black as the darkest night, her eyes a deep blue. Her skin was flawless, with just a hint of the long-ago Mediterranean ancestry. Her designer jeans were filled out perfectly (Sam could only guess at her shapely legs, and his guesses would later prove one hundred percent accurate), and her breasts were full.
Nydia was as taken with Sam as he with her, looking him over very carefully, and liking everything she saw. Sam was well over six feet and muscular, with big shoulders and arms, a narrow waist. He had his late father's unruly mop of thick, dark-brown hair, and since leaving the army, had allowed it to grow a bit longer than the service likes. Sam's handsomeness was not of the pretty-boy type, Nydia concluded. He was … rugged-looking, with a solid, square jaw. And she had never before in her life been so drawn to a member of the opposite sex. She did not—at least up until now—believe in love at first sight. Now she was not so sure.
