House of Six

Father Fast finished his last bit of Irish stew, took a bit of bread, and wiped the last of the gravy from the bowl, and then dabbed his lips with a napkin. “Thank you. That was a fabulous meal. I am in your debt.” Amy smiled at him. “You saved John’s life today. I think it’s about the least we can do to express our appreciation.” Faust nodded and smiled, took a sip of wine, and settled back in his chair. John thought he looked incredibly relaxed for someone who had killed two people and disposed of their bodies in an airport parking lot. If Faust were a priest, as he claimed, John didn’t know how an apparent lack of reflection on having taken human lives could go hand in hand with vows. He tried to think back on whether Faust had even said grace at the beginning of the meal, but he couldn’t remember. Earlier in the afternoon, not knowing what else to do, John had brought Faust back to his house and then left him there for a time when he went into the Salem News. When he’d gotten there, he’d spoken with Jack Daniels, Lucinda Jenkins, Jackie McKinney, and Tim Monahan, apologizing for his absence from the paper at such a critical time. As soon as he said that they told him that earlier that morning, two Boston police officers had shown up at the paper to ask him questions relating to the missing person’s report filed by Sarah’s television station. The police visit had served as enough of a reminder of John’s personal problems that his absence hadn’t upset anyone. After speaking to the staff, John had taken Amy into his office, closed the door, warned her to keep her expression deadpan and not exclaim, and then he’d told her everything that had happened that morning. They had agreed to meet with Faust together over dinner and make him explain who he was, who he worked for, as well as everything he knew about John and Sarah. Now, John reached across and refilled the priest’s glass with more red wine, eager to loosen the priest’s tongue and hear everything Faust had to say. Up to this point, the con- versation had been polite and inconsequential, and each time John had tried to ask more penetrating questions, the priest had deflected. John was struggling to smother his growing anger and frustration, but he also had the impression the priest had been taking his and Amy’s measure, just as John and Amy had been trying to figure out Faust. The priest was trying to figure out what to tell them, whether they could be trusted with the information he had to impart, whether he needed to be blunt or diplomatic. For his part, John needed information, and he was about to get rude, although the thought also occurred to him that getting rude with an armed killer might not be the best approach. The priest was in his fifties, John guessed, but he had a wiry body that carried no fat, and he moved with the grace and quickness of a man who was in excellent physical shape. With his short-cropped bristle of gray hair, intense blue eyes, and narrow face, he didn’t exactly sup- port the image of a friendly priest. Overall, John thought Faust looked much more like a soldier than a man of religion. In fact, Faust’s accent, combined with his crooked nose, suggested it was broken more than once, made John think of a Gestapo officer from an old WWII movie. Throughout the dinner, John had glanced at Amy, and he could sense her wariness of the priest. To the degree that Faust sensed John and Amy’s uneasiness and the questions that were churning in their brains, it didn’t seem to create any sense of urgency to explain himself. It was only after Faust had eaten every morsel on his plate and started to sip his freshened glass of wine that he nodded to Amy. “My thanks again for a very lovely dinner.” He turned to John. “Now we need to talk of more serious matters. I know you’re eager for answers.” John, barely able to contain his impatience, managed a tight smile. “I was wondering when we were going to get to that,” he said, burning to hear everything the man knew about Sarah. “Are you a religious man?” Faust asked. “Hardly,” John said, swallowing his frustration, but realizing Faust wasn’t going to be rushed. “I was raised Catholic, but I’ve been pretty much an agnostic most of my adult life.” Faust nodded. “And you?” he asked Amy. “Basically, the same. I was raised in the Lutheran church, but I don’t practice.” “Has anything changed for you in the past month?” John scowled. “I hope this isn’t an attempted reintroduction to Catholicism. I want to talk about my daughter.” Faust gave him a hard look. “It’s not a reintroduction to religion at all. Please answer my question.” “Well, of course things have changed, but you knew the answer to that question before you asked it.” “How would you explain what happened to you?” “I don’t have a goddamn clue.” “Sure, you do.” “Okay, I was invaded by a spirit.” Faust nodded. “We call it ‘invested.’ It was the spirit of Rebecca Nurse, correct?” John tightened his lips, but he nodded. “How do you know all this? And who is we?” “I’ll answer your questions shortly but before I do, let me ask a few more.” John shook his head and drummed his fingers on the table. “So did you ever encounter this spirit before it invested you?” John pursed his lips, but answered, “Yes.” “And did she reveal anything to you?” “Yes.” “May I ask what?” John looked at Amy, his eyes full of anger and frustration, but she gave him an encouraging nod. “It was very confusing because I had a concussion, but she showed me how to open a secret door that led to the Coven’s underground lair. And then she took me on some kind of,” he raised his hands to show that he was groping for the right words, “some kind of tour through time.” Faust nodded, encouraging him to go on. “We went back to the day she was arrested by Edward Putnam and George Corwin, and then we went to a secret meeting between those two and some other people from early Salem when they swore a covenant to worship Satan.” “And then could you please tell me what happened the night you went down into the catacombs to rescue,” he tipped his head toward Amy, “you I believe.” Amy nodded, and John went on. “A man who I had believed to be one of my best friends, Rich Harvey, went down with me. I thought he was coming to help me. I had no idea that he was trying to deliver me to the Coven.” “And what happened when you got to wherever you were going?” “There was a room, like a paneled dining room with mahogany walls and oriental rugs, and the leaders of the Coven were sitting around a table like they were just having a nice dinner, but there was a big door that opened onto this other room.” John closed his eyes and shook his head, and he saw Amy’s face go pale as she was reminded of the same thing. “I know this is very difficult,” Faust prodded. “But it’s also especially important. Please go on.” “The walls and floor of this room were white tile, like a shower room. Shackles were set in the walls, and I could see two people—they looked like teenagers. They were naked and dead, and their bodies had been terribly disfigured.” John took a deep breath. “The walls and the floor were smeared with so much blood… and then I also saw Amy. She too was shackled. Cabby Corwin, a Salem police officer, was starting to torture her.” John bowed his head and closed his eyes, wishing he could permanently erase every vestige of memory from that horrible night. “What impressions did you have?” Faust asked. John looked up. “What are you talking about!” he snapped. “What impressions? Are you joking? I wanted to kill those people!” Faust held up a calming hand, and Amy reached across and took John’s wrist and squeezed. “Did the members of the Coven appear to fear you when you first walked in?” John tried to remember, and after a second he shook his head. “They seemed pleased, like they were feeling very cocky and thought they had somehow beaten me.” Faust nodded and smiled. “I’m sure they did. But can you tell me what happened next?” “My friend Rich hit me over the head, and when I came to, I was shackled in the tile room.” “And?” “What I said before. When Corwin started to torture Amy, I felt my anger spike like it had never spiked before. I felt, I don’t know, different, like I was split into two parts. One part was fear; the other part was pure rage. And then I looked over and saw Rebecca Nurse holding my hand. She told me something she had told me before, but I’d never understood.” “And what was that?” Faust asked. “That I was the weapon.” Faust nodded, and John could feel the man’s intensity rising, like heat from a fireplace. “Okay,” Faust prodded. “What happened next?” “I felt Rebecca flow into me, but then I felt something else, and I looked to my left and saw this other spirit, and I knew who she was.” Faust’s eyes went a little wider. “Yes, go on.” “It was a local girl named Melissa Blake who’d disappeared, and I felt her flow into me.” Faust was looking at him much more intently suddenly. “Say that again. Think back and try to be clear. You felt invested by a second presence?” John nodded. “Yes.” Faust nodded, squinting slightly as if he was suddenly skeptical. “And then what happened.” “I had been shackled to the wall, like I said, but when both spirits came into me, the shackles exploded.” “You’re quite sure of that.” “I know what an explosion looks like.” “Sorry, it’s just that details are important.” “I’m not sure why that detail is any more important that the rest. If I told these things to anybody else, they’d put me on Thorazine.” Faust folded his hands on the table and gave John a look that made him fall silent. “I fully expected you to tell me the spirit of Rebecca Nurse invested you, but I did not expect you to tell me about the second spirit. You should not have been able to break out of those shackles, even with one spirit investing you, and maybe not even with two.” “There’s more. There’s one thing I forgot.” Faust’s eyebrows went up again. “Yes?” “When Melissa Blake held my left hand, it wasn’t just her. I could see a whole chain of other spirits linking their hands to hers. The line went on and on. I couldn’t count them all, but I knew who they were. They were other people who had been killed by the Coven over the years.” “You actually saw this?” John nodded. “How did you feel?” “Incredibly powerful, like I had power inside me that, if I’d just let it go at once, would have blown up the whole city block above us.” “Dear God,” Faust said to himself. “What?” Amy asked. “Astounding. This explains so much.”