therapy at St. Joseph's Hospital for Children three weeks ago, the
young priest had been so troubled by his loss of faith that he'd been
growing rapidly thinner. Now he had stopped losing weight. He was
still thirty pounds lighter than usual, but he was no longer as wan and
haggard as he had been following his shocking outburst during Mass on
the first of December. In spite of his spiritual fall, there was a glow
to his skin and a light in his eyes that was almost ... beatific.
"You feel splendid, don't you?" Stefan asked. "Yes, though I'm not sure
why."
"Your soul's no longer troubled."
"No."
"Even though you've still not found your way back to God."
"Even though," Brendan agreed. "Maybe it has something to do with the
dream I had last night."
"The black gloves again?"
"No. Haven't had that one in a while," Brendan said. "Last night I
dreamed that I was walking in a place of pure golden light, beautiful
light, so bright I could see nothing around me, and yet it didn't hurt
my eyes." A peculiar note, perhaps Of reverence, (intered the curate's
voice. "In the dream, I keep walking and walking, not knowing where I
am or where I'm going, but with the sense that I'm approaching a thing
or a place of monumental importance and unbearable beauty. Not just
approaching but . . . being called to it. Not an audible call but a
summons that just ... reverberates in me. My heart is pounding, and I'm
a little afraid. But it isn't a bad fear, Father, what I feel in that
bright place, not bad at all. So I just keep walking through the light,
toward something magnificent that I can't see but that I know is there."
Drawn by Brendan's hushed voice as if by a magnet, Father Wycazik moved
to the bed and sat upon the corner of it. "But surely this is a
spiritual dream, the call of God coming to you in sleep. He's calling
you back to your faith, back to the duties of your office."
Brendan shook his head. "No. There was no religious quality to the
dream, no sense of a divine presence. It was a different kind of awe
that filled me, a joy unlike the joy I knew in Christ. I woke up four
times during the night, and each time I woke, the rings were on my
hands. And each time that I fell back to sleep, I dropped into the same
dream again. Something very strange and important is happening, Father,
and I'm a part of it; but whatever it is, it's not anything that my
education, experiences, or previous beliefs have prepared me for."
Father Wycazik wondered if the call that had come to Brendan in the
dream had been from Satan instead of God. Perhaps the devil, aware that
a priest's soul was in jeopardy, had dressed his hateful form in this
deceptively attractive golden light, the better to lead the curate from
the righteous path.
Still firmly determined to bring his curate back into the fold, but
temporarily out of winning strategies, Stefan Wycazik decided to call a
truce. He said, "So . . . what now?
You aren't ready to put on your Roman collar and resume your duties, as
I thought you'd be by now. Do you want me to contact Lee Kellog, the
Illinois Provincial, and ask him to authorize psychiatric counseling?"
Brendan smiled. "No. That doesn't appeal to me any more. I don't
believe it'd do any good. What I'd like to do-if it's all right with
you, Father-is move back into my room in the rectory and wait this out,
see what happens. Of course, as I remain a fallen-away priest, I can't
hear confessions or say Mass. But while I'm waiting to see what
happens, I could do some cooking, help you catch up on the filing."
Father Wycazik was relieved. He had expected Brendan to express the
intention of returning to a secular life. "You're welcome, of course.
There's much you can do. I'll keep you busy; no need to worry about
that. But tell me, Brendan . . . you do think there's a possibility
that you'll find your way back?"
empty of Him. As this situation develops, perhaps it'll lead me back to
the Church, as you're convinced it will. I just don't know."
Still frustrated and disappointed by Brendan's refusal to see the
miraculous presence of God in the healing of Emmy and Winton, Father
Wycazik was nonetheless glad that he would have the curate close and be
provided the opportunity to continue guiding him back to salvation.
Brendan went downstairs with Father Wycazik, and at the front door the
two men embraced in such a way that a stranger, without any knowledge of
their occupation, would have thought them father and son.
Accompanying Father Wycazik as far as the front stoop, where a blustery
wind gave a howl more suited to Halloween than to Christmas, Brendan
said, "I don't know why or how, Father Stefan, but I feel we're about to
embark upon an amazing adventure."
"The discovery-or rediscovery-of faith is always an amazing adventure,
Brendan," Father Wycazik said. Then, having gotten in the last clean
jab, as a good fighter for souls should always do, he left.
Reno, Nevada.
Whimpering, gasping for breath, struggling valiantly against the
narcotizing effect of his lunar obsession, Zeb Lomack clambered through
the garbage and squirming roaches that carpeted the kitchen, grabbed the
shotgun that lay upon the table, jammed the barrel between his teeth and
suddenly realized that his arms were not long enough to reach the
trigger. The urge to look up at the bewitching moons on the walls was
so overpowering that he felt as if someone had hold of him by the hair
and was pulling his head back to force his gaze up from the floor. And
when he closed his eyes defensively, it seemed as if some invisible
adversary began to pry insistently at his. eyelids. In his horror of
being committed to a madhouse like his father, he found the strength to
resist the mesmeric moon-call. Eyes still closed, he collapsed into a
chair, kicked off one shoe, stripped away the sock, braced the shotgun
with both hands, put the barrel in his mouth, raised his unshod foot,
and touched one bare toe to the cold trigger. Imagined moonlight on his
skin and imagined lunar tides in his blood (no less forceful for being
imaginary) demanded his attention with such sudden power that he opened
his eyes, saw the many moons on the walls, and cried "no!"
into the barrel of the gun. Even as the spellbinding mooncall pulled
him back toward a trance, even as he pressed his foot down upon the
trigger, the swelling memory balloon at last burst in his mind, and he
remembered everything that had been taken away from him: the summer
before last, Dom inick, Ginger, Faye, Ernie, the young priest, the
others, Interstate 80, the Tranquility Motel, oh, God, the motel, and
oh, God, the moon!
Perhaps Zebediah Lomack was unable to check the downward motion of his
bare foot or perhaps, instead, the suddenly revealed memory was so
terrible that it encouraged suicide. Whichever the case, the .12-gauge
went off with a roar, and the back of his head blew out, and fo
r him
(though for no one else) the terror ended.
Boston, Massachusetts.
All Christmas afternoon, Ginger Weiss read Twilight in Babylon, and at
seven o'clock that evening, when it was time to go downstairs for drinks
and dinner with the Hannaby family, she resented the interruption and
did not want to put the book aside. She was a willing captive of the
engrossing story, but she was more captivated by the photo of the
author. Dominick Corvaisis' commanding eyes and dark good looks
continued to arouse in her an uneasiness bordering on fear, and she
could not overcome the peculiar feeling that she knew him.
Dinner with her hosts, their children and grandchildren, might have been
pleasurable if Dominick Corvaisis had not exerted a mysteriously
powerful claim on her attention. At ten o'clock, when she could at last
gracefully withdraw without offending anyone, she cast out and gathered
in a final series of Christmas wishes for happiness and health, then
returned to her room.
She began reading where she had left off, and with a minimum of
interruptions to scrutinize the author's photograph again, she finished
the book at three-forty-five A. M. In the deep post-midnight silence
that had settled over Baywatch, Ginger sat with the book in her lap, the
jacket photo turned up, her eyes fixed on Dominick Corvaisis' hauntingly
familiar face. Minute by minute, as she sat in her strange, silent,
onesided communion with the writer's image, Ginger became increasingly
convinced that she had met the man somewhere and that he was, in some
unimaginable fashion, part of her recent troubles. Although her
steadily growing conviction was tempered by the realization that this
intuition might be part of the same mental disturbance that generated
her fugues, and might therefore be unreliable, her agitation and
excitement increased until, shaky and distraught, she was finally driven
to action.
Leaving her room with exaggerated stealth, she went downstairs, through
the dark and untenanted rooms of the great slumbering house, into the
kitchen. She switched on the light and used the wall phone to call
information in Laguna Beach. It was one o'clock in the morning in
California, too rude an hour to wake Corvaisis. But if she could get a
number for him, she would sleep better, knowing that she could get in
touch with him in the morning. To her dismay, though not to her
surprise, his number was unlisted.
Switching off the kitchen light and creeping quietly back to her room,
Ginger made up her mind to write Corvaisis in the morning, care of his
publisher. She would dispatch the message by express mail, with an
urgent plea to the publisher to forward the letter immediately.
Perhaps attempting to contact him was precipitate and irrational.
Perhaps she had never met him, and perhaps he had nothing to do with her
bizarre affliction. Perhaps he'd think she was a crackpot. But if this
million-to-one shot proved a good bet, the payoff might be her very
salvation, which was sufficient reward to risk making a fool of herself.
Laguna Beach, California.
As yet unaware that an advance review copy of his book had made a vital
link between himself and a deeply troubled woman in Boston, Dom remained
at Parker Faine's house until midnight, discussing the possible nature
of the conspiracy that he had theorized. Neither he nor Parker had
enough information to put together a detailed or even slightly useful
picture of the conspirators, but the very process of sharing and
exploring the mystery with a friend made it less frightening.
They agreed that Dom should not fly to Portland and begin his odyssey
until he saw how bad his sleepwalking became now that he had thrown away
the Valium and Dalmane. Maybe somnambulism would not recur, as he
expected it would, in which case he could travel without fear of losing
control of himself in a distant place. But if he resumed his night
rambling, he would need a couple weeks to decide on the best way of
restraining himself during sleep, before heading to Portland.
Besides, by waiting awhile, he might receive additional letters from his
unknown correspondent. Those clues might make the trek from Portland to
Mountainview unnecessary or might target a specific area along that
route as the place where Dom would encounter some sight or experience
that would free his imprisoned memories.
By midnight, when Dom rose to leave Parker's hillside house, the artist
had become so intrigued by the situation that he looked as if he would
be up for hours yet, his mind spinning. "You're sure it's wise to be
alone tonight?" he asked at the front door.
Dom stepped outside onto a walkway patterned with spikey geometric forms
of darkness and wedge-shaped slices of yellow light, which were formed
by the beams of a decorative iron lantern half obscured by
shadow-casting palm fronds. Looking back at his friend, he said, "We've
been through this before. It might not be wise, but it's the only way."
"You'll call if you need help?"
"I'll call," Dom said.
,,And take those precautions we talked about."
Dom attended to those precautions a short while later at home. He
removed the pistol from his nightstand, locked it in a drawer of his
office desk, and buried the desk key under a package of ice cream in the
freezer. Better to be unprepared for a burglar than to risk firing the
gun while sound asleep. Next, from a coil of rope in the garage, he cut
a ten-foot length. After brushing his teeth and undressing, he knotted
one end of the line securely around his right wrist in such a way that
he could escape only by untying four difficult knots, He secured the
other end of the rope to one post of the headboard, taking care to
fasten it tightly. With one foot of the line's length used for the
knots, he was left with nine feet of play, enough to assure his comfort
while keeping him tethered within a safe distance of the bed.
In previous somnambulistic episodes, he had performed complex tasks that
had required some concentration, though nothing quite so tedious as the
unraveling of well-made knots, which were often a challenge to him when
he was awake. In his sleep, he would surely lack the coordination and
mental focus to free himself and the effort to do so would be
frustrating enough to wake him.
Being thus hampered involved some danger. If a fire broke out in the
night or if the house were damaged in an earthquake, he might be so
delayed by the need to untie himself that he would perish in the smoke
or beneath a collapsing wall. He had to risk it.
When he turned out the bedside light and slipped under the blanket,
trailing the rope from one arm, the glowing red numerals of the digital
clock read twelve-fifty-eight. Staring at the dark ceiling, wondering
what in the name of God he had become involved in out there on the road
the summer before last, he waited for sleep to creep upon him.
On the nightstand, the telephone was silent. If his number had not been
unlisted, he
might have received, at that moment, a long-distance call
from a lonely and frightened young woman in Boston, a call that would
have radically changed the course of the next few weeks and might have
saved lives.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In the guest room of her only daughter's house, where a nightlight
burned in consideration of Ernie's phobia, Faye Block listened to her
husband as, asleep and dreaming, he mumbled into his pillow. A few
minutes ago, she had been awakened when he had let out a soft cry and
had thrashed for a moment in the sheets. Now she raised herself on one
elbow, cocked her head, and listened intently, trying to decipher his
muffled speech. He was saying the same thing again and again into the
pillow. The almost panicky urgency in his voice made Faye nervous. She
leaned closer to him, straining to understand.
Suddenly he shifted his head just enough to turn his mouth from the
pillow, and his words became clear though no less mysterious than when
they had been muffled: "The moon, the moon, the moon, the moon .
Las Vegas, Nevada.
Jorja took Marcie into her own bed that night, because it did not seem
like a good idea to leave the girl alone after the disturbing events of
the day. She did not get much rest because all night Marcie seemed to
phase in and out of nightmares, frequently kicking at the sheets,
squirming vigorously as if to free herself from restraining hands, and
talking in her sleep about doctors and needles. Jorja wondered how long
this had been going on. Their bedrooms were separated by back-to-back
closets insulated by hanging clothes, and the child's sleep-talk was
very soft, so it was possible that she had passed a lot of nights in