Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

jogger who was in a hurry for a date with a heart attack. He tugged the hoodie of his Tennessee Titans sweats and continued on. Julia staggered away and the sea of flesh swept on.
    The hotel lobby was cool and sparsely crowded. Julia controlled her breathing during the solo elevator ride and was finally in her hotel room, the door safely locked. She sprawled on the bed, the image of a million bad people painted inside her eyelids, an entire Memphis filled with hooded Creeps. She lay there until she was as back to normal as Julia Stone could get.
    Then she sat up, carried her purse to the desk, closed the curtains, and took out the box.

 
     
    CHAPTER FIFTEEN
     
    It was the first time Julia had ever used the fingernail file she carried in her purse. She scraped the blunt, hooked edge against the lid to clean the accumulated grime and wiped the lid with tissues moistened by her saliva. She turned the box around and saw that the star was actually a pentagram. Carefully etched into the points of the star were the features of a goat's head, with curling horns and broad nose and evil, slanted eyes.
    Two words were carved beneath the symbol: Judas Stone .
    She had hoped that her memories were faulty, that her father had no connection to the bad people despite what Dr. Forrest said. But here was damning evidence that blew a spark of memory into a bonfire of unavoidable truth. Here was a solid piece of the past, hellish and strange and as disturbing as a dozen Creeps. She realized with a spasm of fear that she would no longer be able to lie to herself.
    Daddy had been one of them .
    Her fingers trembled so much she could hardly hold the file steady. She inserted the blade into the crack and pried open the lid. An aroma of aged mold rose from the box. Inside was a tiny piece of rumpled cloth, stained a dark shade of reddish-brown.
    She carefully lifted the cloth and placed it on the desk. She sat before her tableau of grit and soiled tissues and old wood spread across the brightly shellacked surface of the desk. She had to look away for a moment, to reaffirm that the sane, sterile hotel room still existed, that order and not chaos still held sway. The telephone, the television set, and the crisply made bed provided a cold comfort.
    The cloth tore as she opened it, bits of thread crumbling away from dry rot. At last she reached the final fold, and sat staring incomprehensibly as sunlight bathed the object.
    A skull ring.
    Just like the ring from her dream and the same one that Whitmore had described, with one difference. The eye sockets of the skull were empty, not set with rubies. Julia studied the silver expanse of forehead, the cruel mockery of a grin. Inside the band were engraved those same two horrifying words. Judas Stone , done in an elegant script.
    She knew she shouldn't touch it, that the police would want to dust it for fingerprints. But the police should have noticed the loose boards in her father's closet. True, her discovery of it was accidental, but people trained in investigative techniques would have discovered the box in fifteen minutes.
    Unless they already knew the box was there. And overlooked it on purpose. Maybe Satan had gotten to the cops . . . .
    No, Julia, that is crazy thinking, and Dr. Forrest says you are not crazy. You are NOT going to start spinning conspiracy theories. Who cares if the Bush family plotted 9/11 and if Rick O'Dell says that Satanism reaches into all levels of government, law enforcement, military, and society? I mean, if it were that widespread, it wouldn't exactly be considered "underground," now, would it?
    Satanists had surrendered, joined other more popular and lucrative movements. As counterculture, devil worship had lost favor and was hardly more provocative than Islam beliefs. So far as she knew, no political candidate had ever successfully run on a Satanic ticket. And it wasn't the type of thing one put on a job application. In truth, the orthodox were the only ones who even cared that Satanists had unorthodox practices. And Satan had probably sold more Bibles than Jesus ever had, because fear was the world's greatest sales pitch. Julia knew all about how motivating fear could be. After all, it had pretty much pulled her puppet strings for a couple of decades.
    And though her stomach clenched like a hot fist, though electric sweat sluiced from her pores, though she shook so much that her chair squeaked, she reached out and touched the ring.
    Nothing.
    She didn't know