The suitcase flipped open, and the letter fell out, along with the empty liquor bottle, which rolled beneath the sink to stop with a hollow sound against the porcelain wall.
"Oh, Billy," she sobbed.
When she looked up, he was …
Smiling
.
My God
, she thought. Had she really drunk that much? The liquor was doing it for her, just as it had done when he was a baby. His eyes had turned soft and warm, his face had melted into a little boy grin, as if he had just come home from fishing with his friends on a summer afternoon, something he had never done.
"Billy?"
He was smiling, and it was not the liquor. It was real. The liquor coursed through her, but this was real and Billy was being what she always knew he could be. He was her little Billy boy. He had his father's wide smile, the corners of the eyes wrinkling when he smiled, his face glowing, red and healthy. He looked as though he would laugh at any moment.
"Billy, yes!"
"Is this what you want?" he asked.
She felt the cold air of the window at her back. He was standing close in front of her, his face split into an unstopping grin. The features were as rigid as those of a ventriloquist's dummy, a mockery of his face.
"Is this what you want, Mother?"
"Billy, stop!"
His face grew larger, expanded like a balloon, the eyes wide, lips huge, teeth white slabs in his smile, the mouth, the face, growing, growing . . .
"IS . . . THIS . . . WHAT . . . YOU . . . WANT . . . ME . . . TO . . . BE . . . ???" the monstrous face said, the cavernous mouth opening with a whoosh at each word.
"Billy, stop!"
She felt cold air—then something colder, a rip of fabric and a shattering sound, the rush of icy air at her back.
"BILLY!"
The face began to laugh, and then suddenly it was gone. She was looking up from the floor. She saw nothing, an unfocus of ceiling, and then suddenly he was standing over her. She smelled faint autumn, felt the waft of cool breeze behind her. Her back was sticky. She reached beneath herself, felt the floor rise languorously to meet her hand, felt something sharp. Slowly, she brought her hand from beneath her and felt it close around one of the shards, rising slowly in front of her face. Billy was still standing over her. His face was calm, his hair falling over his brow as it always had, his mouth unsmiling. Her Billy boy. She brought her hand up. It was red as paint. The shard was a piece of smoky glass. A leaf wafted into sight above her, blotting out Billy's face for a moment. She felt the leaf settle across her face before falling away. She could not feel or see her hand anymore.
"Billy?" she called weakly. She could not see him. Then he was there. He was there over her, bending down, but his face was not monstrous. It was merely his own face. His eyes were blank copper. His face was calm as ice, and then he smiled, the smile she had always wanted him to have, only with those vacant eyes. He took the shard of glass from her hand and drew it deliberately across her throat. She barely felt it. She heard him walk away. She heard the crinkle of paper as he bent to pick up the letter she had brought for him. The door to the bathroom opened, then closed.
"Billy boy," she breathed, in a whisper, before she went away.
Faith.
That was what it all came down to. But what was faith? Belief in something that wasn't there, could not be tested, tasted, smelled, or touched? Hope in the powers of the invisible? Suspension of disbelief. Something that the senses knew was not measurable but nevertheless chose to allow. Faith was a chimera—an impossibly foolish idea. But one that the mind nevertheless accepted. Why?
Because it wanted to. Needed to.
Was that faith?
Without his being able to control them, tears had pushed themselves out of Jacob Beck's eyes. He clasped his hands in mock prayer, and began to sob. He pressed his head down against his fists.
What in hell is happening to me?
He didn't like the answer.
Around him, in the church, there were no echoes, only the sound of his own rational mind beating against itself inside his skull, and the hard rasp of a middle-aged man's crying.
It had fallen apart like a house of cards. All the new reasonings, the renewed hope, the rejuvenated feeling of purpose—all of it had collapsed and was gone. The place he had been before, the ledge of his crisis in faith, was so far above him he could barely see it from the pit he had dropped into. That had been a temporary loss, a questioning. This was the destruction of the temple.
I believe in nothing.
Man was garbage. He was a creature conceived in filth, destined for the ashcan. There was no reason for his existence. Whatever beauty man seemed to possess or create was all illusion, concealing the sewage underneath. How in God's name could man believe in anything? There was nothing to believe in. It all ended the same way—in a wood-walled room, with the worms and maggots tapping on the door and waiting for the dampness to do its work so they could enter and finish the job. It came down to white bones, and the grin that a skull showed because there was no more appropriate look for it than a fixed, mocking smile.
The sobbing fit passed, and Jacob sat up.
His hands, he saw, were red from clutching each other. The nails needed trimming. For a moment the shimmer of tears blurred his vision.
The night is dark,
he thought, recalling his futile Saturday evening fights with himself over his sermons.
The day is dark, too,
his mind told him, surveying the brightly lit church with its polished rows of oak pews, the red carpet, the clean, velvet-topped rail, the sturdy pulpit.
A passing cloud broke the sunlight in two, then let it come shining back with full force.
The day is dark.
What had been that sermon he had wrestled with that night Billy had come?
Hate the evil, and love the good.
And what puerile comments had he made? Something about loving good being the hard part. That hating evil was easy, but loving good was difficult. Pure garbage. Then again, maybe not. Loving good was hard, but that wasn't the hardest part. The hardest part was finding good. Good was impossible to find.
Once more, self-pitying tears forced themselves up into his eyes. He held them back, but then they came in a flood and he was weeping into his clasped hands, remembering again the cold white body on the marble slab, the calm, lifeless mouth that would soon be a grinning skull.
They had called him at seven-thirty that morning. When he got there, they brought him down a long marble hallway, then down a wide stairway that led to another long hallway. All of the doors had windows set in them. There was a medicinal smell. The policeman with him opened one of the doors for him, then followed him in. He was the same young, nervous cop that had brought Christine home. He looked as though he had been through a lot in the last couple of days.
Jacob had a feeling the officer was waiting for him to say something.
"She had a note with my number on it?" The policeman said, "Yes, sir."
The attendant opened one of the doors and pulled out a slab. The woman was lying on it. Her face was relaxed, as if filled with a sorrow long suppressed but finally, at the end, resigned.
"You were expecting her today?" the young policeman asked, looking away as the attendant pushed the slab back into the wall.
Jacob replied distractedly, "She didn't tell me she'd be here this early."
"You say you've been taking care of her son?"
Jacob nodded.
They stood in silence. Jacob tried to keep the disturbing thoughts from forming in his head. He turned to the policeman and asked, "Did anyone see this happen?"
"There weren't any witnesses. The ticket seller heard some noises coming from the bathroom, but didn't investigate. The only other person around was a young boy."
The thoughts in Jacob Beck's head came together. As if a shower of ice had suddenly rained down upon him, he felt his blood turn cold. "A young boy?"
"I'd like to talk to him," the policeman said. "The ticket seller said the boy came up to the window and just stood there, staring at him. He said the kid's eyes were like copper pennies."
For Jacob Beck, the world disintegrated.
In the church, with the bright light of day streaming in through the windows, Jacob Beck wept. He had not hated the evil—he had embraced and loved it. He had embraced it as if it were his own, taken it to his heart and sought to strengthen it. What would Joe Marchini say now? What pious bullshit would his old friend the priest spout at him? Something about this only being a temporary setback? That God moves in mysterious ways? If they drank enough scotch, maybe Marchini would tell him about his own second testing and how the Lord watched over him and brought him through with flying colors.
Beck was convulsed by a sob. He had tried to find Billy when he returned from the morgue. He still hadn't wanted to believe what his mind was screaming at him. He wanted to talk to the boy, see if there could possibly be any mistake, hear what the boy had to say. He wanted to help him, if there was anything that could be done. But Billy was gone, the window in his room opened, his jacket missing, Mary's silent, sure stare telling him that what she had said had been right, that the boy was evil, that Jacob had been fooled.
Billy's face floated up before him, copper eyes darkening. The serious, determined look on his features dissolved into a sudden, vicious smile, teeth bared like an animal, willing to kill anyone.
On the phone, John Mifflin said, "Are you by yourself?"
Christine Beck said, "Yes." She wanted her voice to sound strong, not girlish, but it wasn't working. She sounded scared. She realized that John sounded scared, too.
"I . . . needed to talk to you," he said.
She drew strength from the fear in his voice. "Tell me what's the matter."
"Where is Billy now?"
She could feel the fear in him, but there was also the sense that he was holding it down, that he had made up his mind about something.
"John," she said, "what are you going to do?"
"Where is Billy?" He sounded almost desperate.
"Let me come over and talk to you."
"No."
"John, please." Her voice was trembling.
He said nothing.
"You saw what he did to Danny!" she begged. "You're the one who told me about what he could do."
There was a pause. "Christine," he said slowly. He sounded like both a little boy and a man. "He killed Danny French. He's killed others, too. You told me your mother said he killed that drunk in the park. I think he can kill anybody he wants to. Nobody would believe me if I tried to tell them. What are we going to do? Wait until he kills everybody? He could do that if he wanted. I think he likes to play with people." A hint of the self-pity that John always seemed to show when talking about Billy crept into his voice. "I watched him a long time, when we were at Melinda's home. He could get anyone he wanted on his side. He's still doing that. If I don't do anything, he'll just keep doing whatever he wants. You said yourself your father was on his side."
He was pleading. Christine's mind was a mass of fears—for John, for herself, for her mother and father.