yellow shards of glass had been broken out of the fanlights, leaving
dark gaps between the thick ribs of leading. The doors were recessed in
a twenty-foot-high cinquefoil arch, above which was an enormous and
elaborately patterned wheel window that still contained twenty percent
of its original glass, most likely because it was a harder target for
stones.
The four carved-oak doors were weather-beaten, scarred, cracked, and
spray-painted with more obscenities that glowed softly in the ashen
light of the premature dusk. On one, a vandal had crudely drawn the
white hourglass shape of a female form complete with breasts and a
crotch defined by the letter Y, and beside it was a representation of a
phallus as large as a man. Beveled letters, cut by a master stone
carver, made the same promise in the granite lintel above each set of
doors, HE LIFTETH US UNTO HEAVEN, however, over those words, the
spoilers had sprayed BULLSHIT in red paint.
The cult had been creepy, and its founder–Jonathan Cainc had been a
fraud and pederast, but Marty was more chilled by the vandals than by
the misguided people who had followed Caine. At least the faithful
cultists had believed in something, no matter how misguided, had yearned
to be worthy of God’s grace, and had sacrificed for their beliefs, even
if the sacrifices ultimately proved to be stupid, they had dared to
dream even if their dreams had ended in tragedy. The mindless hatred
that informed the scrawlings of the graffitists was the work of empty
people who believed in nothing, were incapable of dreaming, and thrived
on the pain of others.
One of the doors stood ajar six inches. Marty grabbed the edge of it
and pulled. The hinges were corroded, the oak was warped, but the door
grated outward another twelve or fourteen inches.
Paige went inside first. Charlotte and Emily trailed close behind Marty
never heard the shot that hit him.
As he started to follow the girls, a lance of ice impaled him, entering
the upper-left quadrant of his back, exiting through the muscles and
tendons below the collar bone on the same side. The piercing chill was
so cold that the blizzard hammering the church seemed like a tropical
disturbance by comparison, and he shuddered violently.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on the snow-covered brick stoop in
front of the door, wondering how he had gotten there. He was half
convinced he had just stretched out for a nap, but the pain in his bones
indicated he’d dropped hard onto his unlikely bed.
He stared up through the descending snow and wintry light at letters in
granite, letters on granite.
HE LiftETH US UNTO HEAVEN.
BULLSHIT.
He only realized he’d been shot when Paige rushed out of the church and
dropped to one knee at his side, shouting, “Marty, oh God, my God,
you’ve been shot, the son of a bitch shot you,” and he thought, Oh, yes,
of course, that’s it, I’ve been shot, not stabbed by a lance of ice.
Paige rose from beside him, raised the Mossberg. He heard two shots.
They were exceedingly loud, unlike the stealthy bullet that had knocked
him to the bricks.
Curious, he turned his head to see how close their indefatigable enemy
had come. He expected to discover the look-alike charging at him, only
a few yards away, unfazed by shotgun pellets.
Instead, The Other remained at a distance from the church, out of range
of the two rounds Paige had fired. He was a black figure on a field of
white, the details of his too-familiar face unrevealed by the waning
gray light. Ranging back and forth through the snow, back and forth,
lanky and quick, he seemed to be a wolf stalking a herd of sheep,
watchful and patient, biding his time until the moment of ultimate
vulnerability arrived.
The poniard of ice that transfixed Marty became, from one second to the
next, a stiletto of fire. With the heat came excruciating pain that
made him gasp. At last the abstract concept of a bullet wound was
translated into the language of reality.
Paige lifted the Mossberg again.
Regaining clarity of mind with the pain, Marty said, “Don’t waste the