The Influence(80)

Cameron pushed the foreman aside and found himself grabbed and held by two men he didn’t even recognize. Joe’s workers? Jack’s? The others separated, formed parenthesis to either side of them. Jorge reached out and quickly took the gas can from his right hand. Someone else grabbed the book of matches from his left.

In the dirt behind Jorge was a body, and when the foreman stepped aside to put the gas can down, Cameron saw that it was Rudolpho, the kid he’d Sanduskyed, only he was dead and lying on the ground, and between his legs sprouted an enormous erection. His skin was an odd amber color, and though there were scrapes and cuts in it, there was no blood.

His must have been the scream Cameron had heard last night, but he didn’t even have time to think about it because while the two men continued to hold his arms, Jorge unbuckled Cameron’s belt, unbuttoned his pants and yanked them down around his ankles. He was turned around, dragged backward, then shoved down onto the dead Rudolpho’s crotch. The corpse’s stiff penis was obviously supposed to penetrate him, but it missed at first, just poking skin. Then he was wiggled around, readjusted, and shoved down again, and this time the cock found its mark. He screamed as he was entered, feeling the dry hard organ rammed inside him. It broke as he was pushed all the way down on it, and the agonizing penetration grew twenty times more painful as his insides were jolted sideways. Something obviously ruptured within him, because along with the mind-blowing pain came a dribble of warm liquid that had to be blood.

The men let him go, and Cameron was left to fend for himself as, crying in anguish, he tried to pull away from the corpse and get off the broken erection that seemed to be stuck inside him. Finally, he succeeded in releasing himself, and whimpering like a beaten puppy, he pulled up his pants and hobbled back into the house, shutting and locking the door behind him before collapsing on the floor.





TWENTY SIX




In the dream, Father Ramos was in a small dark room that he didn’t recognize but that he knew was Cameron Holt’s smokehouse. He was not alone. There were others there—Holt’s foreman Jorge, parishioners of his like Cissy Heath, even that lunatic Vern Hastings—and they were all gathered before the angel, which was unmoving but glowing. It was curled into a fetal position, and although it had been killed, there was life within it yet. That life was responsible not only for the shimmering radiance but for the creation of the shell-like layer that had formed from fused sections of the body and started to encase the blackened figure.

It resembled nothing so much as a chrysalis, and Father Ramos understood that it was in the process of becoming.

This was why God had not punished them. His angel was not really dead but was transforming into something else.

An avenger?

Father Ramos would not have been surprised, and he was filled with dread at the thought of what might happen when the metamorphosis was complete. His eyes focused on the silently screaming mouth, filled with sharp needle-like teeth, and he shivered as he imagined those teeth ripping into flesh and tearing apart the people who had shot their guns into the sky.

And those who had let it happen.

Like himself.

Father Ramos awoke, suffused with a feeling of foreboding. He was supposed to perform an early morning mass and then hear confessions, but a much stronger impulse gripped him, and he put on his clothes and, without showering, shaving or eating, drove over to Cameron Holt’s ranch. Jorge was waiting for him by the cattle guard, and as they looked at each other, an understanding passed between them. Jorge had had the same dream, he realized, and all of the others he’d seen probably had as well.

“Go,” Jorge said, gesturing back up the drive toward the house and smokehouse. Though the chain was down this time, the way was blocked by recently installed metal posts that had been cemented into the ground and prevented any vehicles from going through. Father Ramos thought of the last time he’d been here, when his goal had been to give the angel a proper burial in the hopes that it would put an end to all that was happening, and he understood why the posts had been put up. He was probably not the only person who wanted to bury, burn or destroy the body, and he recognized Cameron Holt’s desire to protect it because he now felt the same way. The dream last night had awakened something within him, and though he was still frightened of the angel—and feared God’s wrath—he knew that the way to salvation lay not in trying to cover up the past but in embracing the future.

He stopped the car. “I can’t—” Father Ramos began, but Jorge interrupted him.

“Park here,” he said. “Walk.”