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speaking quietly. "Been wiped free from dust in the last day or so."
"Must be a priest."
"We should get back to the raft." He had an urgent feeling that wouldn't
translate into words.
"In a minute. Door's open, look."
Krysty pushed it silently back, walking away from Ryan into the cool interior.
He followed her, combat boots ringing on smooth gray stone, catching the
strong smell of incense, a scent that seemed to overlay another, more familiar
odor that made him hesitate. But he couldn't quite identify the elusive smell.
There were a dozen pews ranged down each side, and a stone altar sat at the
far end of the nave. Now in the gloomy interior, with the bright sun outside,
it was possible to appreciate the delicate stained glass.
Five separate windows ran down one side. The other side still had the lead
patterning, but all color was gone and the glass was starred and fractured.
Ryan looked behind him for a moment, sensing the door closing of its own
accord. He saw that it hung on drop hinges and relaxed a little. Walking down
the aisle, they admired the workmanship of the pictures.
They all, oddly, showed scenes of violence but done in a Victorian classic
way, strangely devoid of emotion. Despite the horror show, nobody seemed to be
actually suffering any real pain or emotion.
A man in a white sheet was being stabbed to death by a dozen others, similarly
clothed. A tall, powerful black man was strangling a slender young woman
across a wide bed. A grizzled man in armor knelt on the floor, arms held
tightly, while a shadowy figure was plucking his eyes from their sockets. A
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blond woman held out stumps of arms, mouth wide open to show the bloodied rags
of her tongue. And in the
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drowned in what looked like a barrel of beer.
Krysty had also been looking at the stained glass, turning away from it with
an expression of disgust.
"Brilliantly done, but horrible," she said. "Why put something like that in a
church? Hideous."
"Concentrate the mind on death," Ryan said.
"I remember reading some plays by an old-time predark writer called
Shakespeare, back in Harmony. I
think these some of them, anyway, are from his plays, Mebbe the other side was
the same before it got nuked."
A large Bible stood open on a lectern in the shape of a brass eagle. Ryan
walked to it, stopping by a carved plaque set in the wall.
This is a shrine to the blessed memory of Saint Antoninus of Padua and all
penitents, remembering the legendary visit to this spot of Josephus of
Arimathea, where it was once stated that this site on the
Tennessee River was, perhaps, a hiding place of the Holy Grail.
"Holy Grail," Ryan said. "I didn't know that any of the old gospelers ever got
this far west."
Krysty had walked to the bottom of the tower, craning her head back, staring
up at a single bronze bell, with a long red-and-white plaited rope dangling
from it.
Ryan looked at the book on the lectern, realizing that it wasn't actually like
any Bible that he'd ever seen.
It was open to the second chapter of the Dissertation of the Blessed Alphonse
Donatien.
Only through pain and suffering shall there be redemption and an end to mortal
weakness. Agony is seemly. There shalt be those who endure and tolerate the
rending of their flesh and the splintering of their bones, and there shalt
also be those that shall carry out such punishments in the name of all the
holy ones.
"Sick stuff," Ryan said, turning away.
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Krysty had been unable to resist the temptation and had loosened the rope from
its cleat, tugging gently at it.
The bell tolled immediately, sending out a booming note across the summer
morning.
"Leave it," Ryan snapped. "Want to rouse the whole bastard country against
us?"
"Nobody here but us chickens, boss," she said, her teeth flashing in the gloom
of the belfry. "Take it easy, lover. I always wanted to do this."
Ryan noticed that there was something lying on top of the altar. It was a
multithonged whip, with tiny metal barbs knotted into each lash. All of them
were stiff and stained black with what looked unmistakably like old, dried
blood.
Suddenly the feeling of a threatening danger became much stronger. "Come on,"
he called. "Something's not straight about this place. Not a proper church."
Krysty let go of the rope, letting it dangle loose, the bell carrying on
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ringing, quieter and quieter, until its whispering sound faded away.
"Probably be able to hear that down by the river," she said. "Unless the noise
of the water drowns it. Still, Mildred and J.B. would be close enough."
Ryan joined her, peering up in the darkness at a narrow metal ladder that
climbed into the tower, seeing the softly swinging, silent bell.
"Out of here," he said urgently. "Before someone comes and brings trouble."
Neither of them heard the door whisper open, but they both recognized the
audible click of the twin hammers being drawn back on a scattergun.
"Welcome, pilgrims," said a jolly voice.
Chapter Fourteen
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