Second Horseman Out of Eden

surrounding the cottages as he headed toward the swastika-crowned church down the road.

I sidled along the edge of the house, darted around the corner, went up the single step, and tried the front door. It was open. I eased myself into the darkened living room, quietly closed the door behind me until only a sliver of light was coming through, then looked around-and started.

Across the room, on a table set next to a half-closed door from which flickering candlelight emanated, the luminous dial of a clock radio glowed.

It was 10:10 in Idaho, Mountain Time.

In New York, the new year had already begun.

Mr. Lippitt's planes were too late.

Unless the radio transmitter was keyed to Mountain Time, and Lippitt had somehow found that out. But how could he?

All moot questions, I thought as I moved to the doorway, mud-filled revolver in my hand. I paused to clean some of the slime off the metal, hoping to make it at least look threatening, then peered around the edge of the door.

In the center of the room a young couple was kneeling in front of a small, makeshift altar on which a swastika-cross was flanked by two crimson candles. Both the man and woman were dressed in hooded white terry-cloth robes. I put the gun back in the waistband of my jeans, next to my spine, then stepped into the room.

'Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Brown,' I said quietly. 'I have to talk to you.'

Both the man and woman whipped their head and shoulders around. They were young, fresh-faced, and attractive, probably in their mid-twenties. The man had close-cropped brown hair, and the woman's hair was a reddish-blond. Their eyes were filled with shock, fear, and alarm.

'Who are you?!' the man shouted as he leaped to his feet. 'What are you?!'

'My name is Robert Fred-'

'Demon!' the man screamed as he leaped at me. 'You're a demon!'

So much for the easygoing approach. I hit him in the stomach as he reached down for me, then followed up with the barrel of my gun against the side of his head. He went down, and stayed down.

'Mrs. Brown,' I said quickly, 'please listen to me! If I meant harm, I could have killed your husband just now. But I didn't. I didn't even hit him that hard; he'll be all right. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want you to listen to me.'

I paused, put the gun back in my waistband and smiled tentatively-but the woman's almost childlike face remained frozen in shock and horror that I felt almost as a physical blow. She was, I realized, thoroughly terrified of me-not because I was a mud-covered intruder who had startled her, or even because I had cold-cocked her husband with a very large and nasty-looking gun.

The woman was speechless with horror because she believed me to be a demon.

'I'm just a man, Mrs. Brown,' I continued in a quiet voice that I hoped she would find soothing. 'You are Mrs. Brown, aren't you? Vicky's mother?'

'You're one of them,' the green-eyed woman said in a weak, quavering voice. Then she closed her eyes, threw back her head, and raised her arms in supplication. 'Oh, Jesus, please take me to you now. Please take me now.'

'Mrs. Brown, your daughter wrote a letter to Santa Claus. The letter was mailed in New York City by Thomas Thompson, and my brother and I wound up with it because of a certain Christmas tradition that's followed in New York. I'm no demon; I'm a private investigator who just happens to be a dwarf, and right now my brother and I are trying to save a few lives. Did you know that your daughter wrote a letter to Santa Claus a few weeks ago?'

The woman stopped her mumbling, lowered her head, opened her eyes, and stared at me. Then, for my efforts, I got a tentative nod.

'Did you read it?' I continued.

She shook her head.

'Your daughter was being sexually abused by William Kenecky. He was raping her, and he was doing it frequently. Did you know that?'

The green eyes clouded, and the color drained from the woman's face. 'What. .? What are you saying?'

'All right, you didn't know. Kenecky was molesting Vicky, Mrs. Brown-raping her, and worse. She was afraid to tell either you or your husband because Kenecky had her convinced that she wouldn't go to heaven with you if she did.'

'It's a lie,' the woman breathed. 'Reverend Kenecky has gone on ahead, so he's not here to confront you. What you say can't be true.'

'Mrs. Brown, just how do you think Reverend Kenecky 'went on ahead,' as you put it?'

'God took him in a blinding flash of light. Mr. Thompson told us about it. Reverend Kenecky was Raptured ahead of all the others. It's a very great honor.'

'Thompson killed him, Mrs. Brown. He killed him because he knew Kenecky was a child raper, and because he thought that by killing Kenecky he could keep my brother and me from finding this place-which, by the way, doesn't seem to have worked out so well. The air here smells poisonous.'

The woman slowly, reluctantly, nodded. 'Eden is wrong; it was not meant to be. I don't understand why the reverend said we should be here. If we are not to be Raptured, then it must mean that we were meant to die, to go to God now to wait for the end of the Tribulation. You're right when you say that Eden is poisoned. It is another sign. We do not want to suffer at the hands of the demons, so we're all going to God in a little while.'

'Huh?'

'Please let us be.'

'What do you mean, you're 'going to God in a little while'? Who's going to God?'

'All of us. It's been agreed that we should all die by our own hands. It doesn't make any difference, because we'll all be resurrected when Jesus comes to establish His kingdom on earth. That's only seven years away. In the meantime, God will take us to His bosom and we will be spared the agonies of the Tribulation.'

'You're all going to commit suicide?'

The woman's silence was her answer. A chill went through me, and I shuddered.

'Are you going to kill Vicky, too?'

The woman tilted her head slightly and stared at me. She seemed genuinely puzzled. 'Of course,' she said at last.

'Do you think I would leave my own daughter behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation, to be torn by the claws of demons? Armageddon is about to begin.'

'Please listen to me very carefully, Mrs. Brown. Armageddon could begin in a little while-not because God or Jesus wants it, but because Kenecky and a man by the name of Henry Blaisdel wanted it. There are hydrogen bombs, and-'

'It's God's will. All but white, born-again Christians will be sent to hell anyway. What difference does it make if kikes, niggers, and mud people die now or later?'

Hearing the words from the young, attractive, innocent-looking woman shook me, and I involuntarily took a step backward. I wondered if she sensed how afraid I was of her, of the poison in her mind that had, in a few short years, corroded her rationality and morality.

'I'm no demon, Mrs. Brown,' I said, struggling to keep my voice even. 'There aren't any demons outside now, and there aren't going to be any demons outside after midnight. What there's going to be is a whole lot of death and destruction if we don't stop what's been set in motion. But we are going to stop it. You know about the radio transmitter, and you know where it is; if you don't, your husband does, because he's been looking after the place. One of you is going to tell me where it is, and then we're going to shut it down. Then we'll see if we can't talk some sense into the rest of the people in here. If you kill yourself, it will be for nothing. Armageddon isn't coming, Mrs. Brown; just a new year.'

'Lie,' she hissed, and suddenly hatred glinted in her green eyes. 'You are a demon! Satan sent you!'

'Lady, those hydrogen bombs aren't going to go off in any event, because this place is going to be leveled to the ground before the signal is sent. So let's do us all a favor and-'

'Demon!' she screamed. It was her last intelligible word, as she suddenly threw