The Big Dark Sky (23)
At the church, three stone steps led up to a wide stoop, where Optime instructed Ophelia to kneel. She obeyed.
Holding the gun in his right hand, with the cold muzzle jammed against the back of her head, he used his left hand to insert a key in the lock that he had installed. He opened the door.
“Crawl inside on your hands and knees.”
She knew that he wouldn’t kill her here, not yet, not until he broke her and could write in his manifesto that she had acknowledged the false promise of hope. He first required the death of the spirit and only then the death of the body. His evil creed was a construct of madness; however, it included principles by which he justified his actions. Ophelia believed he would reliably conduct himself according to those principles.
She had to hope that he embraced his insane vision with the faith of a true believer. She had no other choice.
She crawled out of the orange light and into the church, which was as dark as a coffin with its lid closed.
Optime picked up something from the floor, just inside the door. It was a Tac Light, and Ophelia turned her head away from the blinding beam when he directed it at her.
“Get to your feet.”
She rose and looked around at what was less a church than it was a crude chapel. Five pews to the left and five to the right of the central—and only—aisle. The roof was supported by three tie beams, king posts, and rafters.
“Sit.” With the light, he indicated the first pew on the left.
The four windows were neither tall nor wide. They had been bricked in from the inside. This recent masonry was the work of Optime, which he’d described in his manifesto. The bricks were practical, making both a mausoleum and prison of the building; but they also had a symbolic purpose, being a barrier against hope ever entering this abandoned church.
Ophelia didn’t need to be told the source of the faint foul odor, but Optime said, “I’ll finish my manifesto and offer it to the world when there are seventy-seven dead in the basement, seven of them children, each seven years old or younger.”
He had not yet explained in his writings why he’d settled on that number of victims or why seven must be children. Perhaps he didn’t know. And even if he could explain his morbid mathematics, the explanation wasn’t likely to make sense.
“If you want to know your destiny beyond all doubt,” he said, “open the door to the basement and inhale deeply, get the odor of your future in full strength.”
She said nothing.
“I’ll lock you in here without food or water. But when you’re desperate enough, there’s sustenance below. Rainwater leaks in and pools down there, and the stew awaiting you is richer than what the Donner party had to eat when they were trapped in deep snow in the Sierra, two hundred years ago, with nothing but the stringy meat of their dead companions.”
She said, “You are one sick piece of shit.”
“So it might seem to anyone as unenlightened as you. I’ll leave the Tac Light, so you can inspect your quarters and be certain there isn’t the smallest hope of escape. You’ll want to go down among the dead to assure yourself that there’s no exit from the basement. I’m sorry you have no waders to make that part of the tour less messy.”
He put the Tac Light on the floor, with the beam pointed toward the front of the church.
She was afraid but ready. For years she had been waiting. Now her purpose was at hand.
She turned in the pew to watch him depart through the fiery light of the forthcoming sunset.
He called back to her. “When you’re ready to admit that hope is for fools, that you’re nothing more than another animal born to die, all you need to do is scream. Eventually, I’ll hear you.” He closed the door.
In the unholy silence, she heard the soft scrape of the key in the keyway. The heavy-duty deadbolt seated in the striker plate with a hard, cold clack.
15
Because the summer had brought rain, the gently upsloping meadows were green rather than golden, each rolling into the next. The graceful swells and swales of the voluptuous landscape were almost erotic, pleasing to both the mind and heart, even as the lonely vastness inspired in Wyatt Rider moments of uneasiness, a transient sense of dangerous isolation.
Mile after mile, he saw little evidence to fix this place in the second decade of the twenty-first century. If his Range Rover had been a time machine, he might well have thought he must be traveling in the 1950s, even earlier.
Along the county road and then on private land, an occasional, ugly cell-phone tower broke the peaceful spell of time immemorial. Each had been paid for by Liam O’Hara. His deep pockets allowed him to have the finest service even when getting away from it all at a remote retreat, an indulgence that benefited the widely scattered residents of this part of the county.
The two-lane private road that served Rustling Willows had once been gravel, but Liam had paid to have it paved. A mile and a half from the public highway, fenced meadows began to appear on both sides of the lane, containing none of the horses that had once run and grazed in those confines.
Between the sloping meadows and the foothills lay a broad plateau. To the left were picturesque stables, white clapboard with red-tile roofs, and a caretaker’s cottage, all vacant. To the right, past a windbreak of willows, lay Lake Sapphire, less blue than gold as the westering sun angled its light across the rippled surface.