the Americas terminated there, in a solid white wall. Rebecca slowed
down, switched the headlights to high beam, drove through the wall and
out the other side.
“I love your father,” she told Penny, and she realized she hadn’t yet
told Jack. In fact, this was the first time in twenty years, the first
time since the death of her grandfather, that she had admitted loving
anyone. Saying those words was easier than she had thought it would be.
“I love him, and he loves me.”
“That’s fabulous,” Penny said, grinning.
Rebecca smiled. “It is rather fabulous, isn’t it?”
“Will you get married?”
“I suspect we will.”
“Double fabulous.”
“Triple.”
“After the wedding, I’ll call you Mom instead of Rebecca-if that’s all
right.”
Rebecca was surprised by the tears that suddenly rose in her eyes, and
she swallowed the lump in her throat and said, “I’d like that.”
Penny sighed and slumped down in her seat. “I was worried about Daddy.
I was afraid that witchdoctor would kill him. But now that I know about
you and him . . . well, that’s one more thing he has to live for. I
think it’ll help. I think it’s real important that he’s got not just me
and Davey but you to come home to. I’m still afraid for him, but I’m
not so afraid as I was.”
“He’ll be all right,” Rebecca said. “You’ll see. He’ll be just fine.
We’ll all come through this just fine.”
A moment later, when she glanced at Penny, she saw that the girl was
asleep.
She drove on through the whirling snow.
Softly, she said, “Come home to me, Jack. By God, you’d better come
home to me.”
Jack told Carver Hampton everything beginning with the call from Lavelle
on the pay phone in front of Rada, and concluding with the rescue by
Burt and Leo in their Jeep, the trip to the garage for new cars, and the
decision to split up and keep the kids safely on the move.
Hampton was visibly shocked and distressed. He sat very still and rigid
throughout the story, not even once moving to sip his brandy. Then,
when Jack finished, Hampton blinked and shuddered and downed his entire
glassful of Remy Martin in one long swallow.
“And so you see'” laelrsaid, “when you said these things came from Hell,
maybe some people might’ve laughed at you, but not me. I don’t have any
trouble believing you, even though I’m not too sure how they made the
trip.”
After sitting rigidly for long minutes, Hampton suddenly couldn’t keep
still. He got up and paced. “I know something of the ritual he must
have used. It would only work for a master, a Bocor of the first rank.
The ancient gods wouldn’t have answered a less powerful sorcerer.
To do this thing, the Bocor must first dig a pit in the earth. It’s
shaped somewhat like a meteor crater, sloping to a depth of two or three
feet. The Bocor recites certain chants … uses certain herbs…. And
he pours three types of blood into the hole-cat, rat, and human.
As he sings a final and very long incantation, the bottom of the pit is
miraculously transformed. In a sense . . . in a way that is
impossible to explain or understand, the pit becomes far deeper than two
or three feet; it interfaces with the Gates of Hell and becomes a sort
of highway between this world and the Underworld.
Heat rises from the pit, as does the stench of Hell, and the bottom of
it appears to become molten. When the Bocor finally summons the
entities he wants, they pass out through the Gates and then up through
the bottom of the pit. On their way, these spiritual beings acquire
physical bodies, golem bodies composed of the earth through which they
pass; clay bodies that are nevertheless flexible and fully animated and
alive. From your vivid descriptions of the creatures you’ve seen
tonight, I’d say they were the incarnations of minor demons and of evil
men, once mortal, who were condemned to Hell and are its lowest
residents. Major demons and the ancient evil gods themselves would be