Christ have been a woman? Were not women those who had suffered the
most and therefore served as the greatest symbol of self-sacrifice,
grace, and innocence? God had granted women a special sensitivity, a
talent for understanding and tenderness, for caring and nurturing-then
had dumped them into a world of savage violence in which their singular
qualities made them easy targets for the cruel and depraved.
Horror enough existed in that truth, but a greater horror, for Hatch,
lay in the discovery that anyone as insane as Jeremy Nyebern could have
such a complex insight. If a homicidal sociopath could perceive such a
truth and grasp its theological implications, then creation itself must
be an asylum. For surely, if the universe were a rational place, no
madman would be able to understand any portion of it.
Lindsey reached the approach road to Fantasy World and took the turn so
fast and sharp that the Mitsubishi slid sideways and felt, for a moment,
as if it would roll. But it remained upright. She pulled hard on the
wheel, brought it around, tramped on the accelerator.
Not Regina. No way was Jeremy going to be permitted to realize his
decadent vision with that lamb of innocence. Hatch was prepared to die
to prevent it.
Fear and fury flooded him in equal torrents. The plastic casing of the
cellular-phone handset creaked in his right fist as though the pressure
of his grip would crack it as easily as if it had been an eggshell.
Tollbooths appeared ahead. Lindsey braked indecisively, then seemed to
notice the tire tracks through the drifting, sandy earth at the same
time Hatch saw them. She whipped the car to the right, and it bounced
over the concrete border of what had once been a flower bed.
He had to rein in his rage, not succumb to it as his father had always
done, for if he didn’t remain in control of himself, Regina was as good
as dead. He tried to place the emergency 911 call again. Tried to hold
fast to his reason. He must not descend to the level of the walking
filth through whose eye she had seen the bound wrists and frightened
eyes of his child.
The surge of rage pouring back across the telepathic wire excited
Vassago, pumped up his own hatred, and convinced him that he must not
wait until both the woman and the child were within his grasp. Even the
prospect of the single crucifixion brought him such a richness of
loathing and revulsion that he knew his artistic concept was of
sufficient power. Once realized through the death of the gray-eyed
girl, his art would reopen the doors of Hell to him.
He had to stop the Honda at the entrance to the service road, which
appeared to be blocked by a padlocked gate. He had broken the massive
padlock long ago. It only hung through the hasp with the appearance of
effectiveness. He got out of the car, opened the gate, drove through,
got out again and closed it.
Behind the wheel once more, he decided not to leave the Honda in the
underground garage or go to the museum of the dead through the
catacombs. No time. God’s slow but persistent paladins were closing in
on him. He had so much to do, so much, in so few precious minutes.
It wasn’t fair. He needed time. Every artist needed tine. To save a
few minutes, he was going to have to drive along the wide pedestrian
walkways, between the rotting and empty pavilions, and park in front of
the funhouse, take the girl across the dry lagoon and in by way of the
gondola doors, through the tunnel with the chain-drive track still in
the concrete floor and down into Hell by that more direct route.
While Hatch was on the phone with the sheriff’s department, Lindsey
drove into the parking lot. The tall lamp poles shed no light. Vistas
of empty blacktop faded away in every direction. Straight ahead a few
hundred yards stood the once glittery but now dark and decaying castle
through which the paying customers had entered Fantasy World. She saw
no sign of Jeremy Nyebern’s car, and not enough dust on the acres of