The Servants of Twilight

Joey was alive. She must concentrate on that wonderful twist of fate, for it was from here that their future began, and she was determined that it would be a bright future full of love and happiness, with no sadness, no fear, and above all no doubts.

Doubt could eat at you, destroy happiness, turn love to bitremess. Doubt could even come between a mother and her much-loved son, producing an unbridgeable chasm, and she simply could not allow that to happen.

Nevertheless, unbidden and unwanted, a memory came to her.

Tiaesday, Laguna Beach, the Arco station service bay where they had waited for Charlie after barely escaping the bomb that destroyed Miriam Rankin's house; she and Joey and the two bodyguards standing by the stacks of tires, with the world outside caught in a fierce electrical storm so powerful that it seemed to signal the end of the world; Joey moving to the open garage doors, fascinated by the lightning, one devastating bolt after another, unlike anything Christine had seen before, especially in southern California where lightning was uncommon; Joey regarding it without fear, as if it were only fireworks, as if… as if he knew it could not harm him. As if it were a sign? As if the pretematural ferocity of the storm was somehow a message that he understood and took hope from?

No. Nonsense.

She had to push such stupid thoughts out of her mind. That was just the kind of craziness that could infect you merely from association with the likes of Grace Spivey. My God, the old woman had been like a plague carrier, spreading irrationality, infecting everyone with her paranoid fantasies.

But what about the bats? Why had they come at exactly the right moment?

Why had they attacked only Grace Spivey?

Stop it, she told herself. You're just. making something out of nothing. The bats came because they were frightened by the first two shots that the old woman fired. The sound was so loud it scared them, brought them out. And then. when they got here. well, she shot at them and made them angry. Yes.

Of course. That was it.

Except. If the first pair of shots scared the bats, why didn't the third and fourth shots scare them again? Why didn't they fly away?

Why did they attack her and dispose of her so. conveniently?

No.

Nonsense.

Joey was staring at the floor, still anemically pale, but he was beginning to emerge from his semi-catatonic state. He was nervously chewing on one finger, very much like a little boy who knew he had done something that would upset his mother. After a few seconds, he raised his head, and his eyes met Christine's.

He tried to smile through his tears, but his mouth was still soft and loose with shock, with fear. He had never looked sweeter or more in need of a mother's love, and his weakness and vulnerability gave her heart a twist.

His vision clouded by pain, weak from infection and loss of blood, Charlie wondered if everything that had happened in the cave had actually transpired only in his fevered imagination.

But the bats were real. Their bloody handiwork lay only a few feet away, undeniable.

He assured himself that the bizarre attack on Grace Spivey had a rational, natural explanation, but he was not entirely convinced by his own assurances. Maybe the bats were rabid; that might explain why they had not fled from the sound of the gun but had, instead, been drawn to it, for all rabid animals were especially sensitive to-and easily angered by-bright lights and loud noises. But why had they bitten and clawed only Grace, leaving Joey, Christine, Barlowe, and Charlie himself untouched?

He looked at Joey.

The boy had come out of his quasi-autistic trance. He had moved to Chewbacca. He was kneeling by the dog, sobbing, wanting to touch the motionless animal, but afraid, making little gestures of helplessness with his hands.

Charlie remembered when, last Monday in his office, he had looked at Joey and had seen a fleshless skull instead of a face.

It had been a brief vision, lasting only the blink of an eye, and he had shoved the memory of it to the back of his mind. If he had worried about it at all, it was because he had thought it might mean Joey was going to die; but he hadn't really believed in visions or clairvoyant revelations, so he hadn't worried much.

Now he wondered if the vision had been real. Maybe it had not meant that Joey would die; maybe it had meant that Joey was death.

Surely such thoughts were proof only of the seriousness of his fever.

Joey was Joey-nothing more, nothing worse, nothing strange.

But Charlie remembered the rat in the battery cellar, too, and the dream he had later that same night, in which rats-messengers of death-had poured forth from the boy's chest.

This is nuts, he told himself. I've been a detective too long.

I don't trust anyone any more. Now I'm looking for deception and corruption in even the most innocent hearts.

Petting the dog, Joey began to speak, the words coming in groups, in breathless rushes, between sobs: "Mom, is he dead?