'Why do I waste my time talking with you?'
'Because I'm interesting, and despite what you lead others to believe, you haven't yet given up on me, that's why.'
'All right, proud one: I'll wager.'
'I don't believe it!'
'If my team wins, you convert to my side.'
'In a nun's cunt! Judas Priest, when you make up your mind to play, you really want to be a high roller, don't you?'
'Take it or leave it.'
'I'll … leave it.'
'I thought you would. No, Prince of Rats, I don't like this game of yours. I thought we settled all this a blink or two ago?'
The reply was slyly made. 'Balon made a bargain.'
'And it was kept, was it not?'
No reply.
'No, Filthy One, I won't interfere … directly. But I might, and I stress
'You wouldn't dare! That's against the rules.'
'Oh?'
The voice that was laced with venom and evil howled and flung curses and spat ribbons of filth into the Heavens, attempting to penetrate the firmament. But the Mighty Voice chose not to reply.
Conversations with inferiors tended to bore Him … rather quickly.
'Your dad?' Nydia asked. Her ears had been listening, but her eyes had been fixed on a strange occurrence in the eastern sky. She had never seen anything quite like it: streaks of pure white darting down to almost touch upward thrusts of the ugliest yellow she had ever seen.
God rules the Heavens, she thought. But the Devil rules the earth.
And that sudden thought puzzled her, for she had only been to church a few times in her entire life. She did not remember ever hearing it before.
And what did that narrow plume of white and yellow have to do with religion?
She pushed the confusion from her brain. 'I thought your dad was a doctor, Sam?'
'Not my real dad. He was a minister. But from what mother has told me, he was a real rounder. Back during the Korean War, he was a guerrilla fighter; one of the first of the Special Forces. He was a boxer, worked in a carnival, too, I think. Did all sorts of things. He was a real hell-raiser, though, before he became a minister.'
'What happened to him?' she asked.
'He was killed before I was born. I never really knew exactly what happened. Mother has always kind of evaded that question whenever I brought it up. Said I would know someday. But I really want to know. It kind of bugs me.'
'Were you in Special Forces, Sam?'
'No. I was a Ranger, out in Washington State. Real good outfit. You never hear much about the Rangers.'
'Black was a Commando,' she said, but there was not one note of pride in her voice, and Sam wondered about that.
'Yes,' Sam replied. 'That's a good outfit, too.'
'Did you see combat, Sam?' she asked.
'Not … that I can talk about, Nydia.'
'In other words,' she grinned, 'drop the subject?'
'That's about it,' Sam agreed.
The three of them laughed about that.
'Men!' she said with false disgust. 'But I know more about you than you think, Sam,' she said mysteriously.
Sam did not ask what she knew about him, or how she had learned it. When he did remember to ask, he didn't, figuring Black had told her.
The conversation lightened, and they sang songs and told jokes and the miles seemed to fly past; three young people having fun. And then suddenly, out of the deep timber, just at that time when night reared up to touch and alter day, the massive house came into view.
Falcon House.
One could almost touch the evil that hung over the small town of Whitfield, and one could certainly see it in the eyes of the townspeople as they moved slowly up and down the streets. Just as it had happened in the 1950s, the evil had approached the people slowly, as a languoring sickness, sluggish in its growth, but deadly when it reached the brain or the heart.
Now many in that doomed town huddled in their homes, not understanding what was happening around them.
