Chapter Twenty-one

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PRAY FOR HER. PRAY FOR HER UNBORN BABY. PRAY FOR ALL OF US. It is all ugliness and evil. It has no name. She thinks of it as the snake. It comes in the night, in her dreams. It tells her in its sneering way something she cannot bear to hear. YOU WANT TO KISS ME. It comes closer, ever closer. It whispers lewdly. WE CAN DO IT, WE MUST DO IT. OUR LOVE IS THE FUTURE, THE HOPE OF THE WORLD ... "THE NIGHT CHURCH is. . . death by blowtorch, the whiff of bubonic plague, a sinister Lourdes, demons shucking off their human skins. Strieber has tied everything together so well that we happily accept even his most extravagant inventions, and anybody who has read The Hunger knows that he is indeed an extravagant inventor." —Peter Straub, author of Ghost Story
Prologue AUGUST 1963 IT WAS A WET NIGHT in Queens. Kew Gardens was quiet, the only sounds along Beverly Road the slow-dripping rain, the occasional hiss of tires on the slick asphalt, or the hurrying splash of feet on the sidewalk. A man came swiftly along, huddling in his raincoat, his eyes hooded by a hat. When he stopped and raised his head to read a street sign his face was revealed to be as pale and creased as a worn-out mask. The wrinkles framed a tight mouth and green eyes, ironic and cold. He consulted an address book, then walked up to the front door of a particular house. It had been carefully selected; the tenants had moved here only a few weeks ago from another state. Their little boy had not yet begun attending Holy Spirit Parochial School, had not yet registered. The Cochrans were a demographic oddity of very special interest to certain people, for the Cochrans had no relatives but <strong>one</strong> another, and the Cochrans had just come here. They were utterly al<strong>one</strong>. The old man did not ring their bell; he did not even pause on the porch. Instead he glanced over his
Page 4 and 5: shoulder, then slipped around the s
Page 6 and 7: a new life, with new hopes and new
Page 8 and 9: name. As gingerly as a frightened l
Page 10 and 11: had to start somewhere. Although sh
Page 12 and 13: professor of psychology at NYU, but
Page 14 and 15: So she had met Mr. Apple. Now she s
Page 16 and 17: sweet-smelling cloth was pressed ag
Page 18 and 19: Harry's familiar morning exhaustion
Page 20 and 21: "Anoint?" The kid had assumed he wa
Page 22 and 23: "Well, yes, that's right, Mike." "S
Page 24 and 25: "Hell, I'd know in a second you did
Page 26 and 27: going through a file cabinet. "Out,
Page 28 and 29: awful sense of evil within, was sti
Page 30 and 31: MOST PRIVATE To: The Prefect of the
Page 32 and 33: Terry's tone made Mike want to slug
Page 34 and 35: above all, the dark gargoyled uglin
Page 36 and 37: elentless, and cruel. But this ti
Page 38 and 39: Seeking the edge of the future, we
Page 40 and 41: A species apart. .. It came as a su
Page 42 and 43: There was the slightest incline of
Page 44 and 45: Jonathan was touched. In all his li
Page 46 and 47: critical families themselves be inc
Page 48 and 49: Sure. Look at this bunch, scrubbed
Page 50 and 51: Faces began to look expectantly at
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available to him he cleared his thr
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Only Jonathan knew how to comfort h
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eporter and the reporter disappeare
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Father took the Host and ate it. Pa
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ed. Anyway, your machine's irrele
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Superhuman violence. Tommy himself
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practicing on the way to work," she
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JONATHAN HAD HOPED that their journ
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first. No information about this in
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"He doesn't like the hotel," Mary s
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When Gottlieb told me that her para
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and blazing cascades. Enormous cu
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Was that funny, sad, or both? Oh, h
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"Oh, my darling." In his voice was
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Destination: Paolo Cardinal Impelli
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drink before he could speak. "You w
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She closed her eyes, nodded her hea
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from her head she didn't change. Sh
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the graph paper, ripped it off the
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Strange mementoes themselves were o
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Mike read: "He will bear the appear
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honey, I'd like to get you in my ar
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of thing, it was a raging, furious
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"Leave us alone, Mary. Don't you da
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it happen. It was late afternoon be
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espect for the Night Church. Best t
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"Relax, Mike, she's as committed as
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The van slowed, turned another corn
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He was a dried-up, incredibly ancie
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creating a teaching machine for you
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Chapter Twenty-one PATRICIA LAY IN
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We may be mutated in a thousand dif
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He wasn't here for evidence. There
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the hell down here! Come on, Harry,
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had been waved and shouted, "Rememb
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whether or not I love Christ enough
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words as truly as a tonic in his bl
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lessed Michael the Archangel, to bl
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This had never been intended as a w
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father and mother and cleave unto a
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penetrated deep into Jonathan's sku
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"He didn't" hurt me. He wanted to b
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Chapter Twenty-one

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