Fear Nothing

members of the troop or by anyone else, I didn't want to make it easy for someone or something to follow us into the rectory.
        A quick sweep with my penlight revealed a dining room. Two doors - one to my right, the other in the wall opposite the windows - led from the room.
        Switching off the penlight, drawing the Glock again, I tried the nearer door, to the right. Beyond lay the kitchen. The radiant numerals of digital clocks on the two ovens and the microwave cast just enough light to enable me to cross to the pivot-hinged hall door without walking into the refrigerator or the cooking island.
        The halfway led past dark rooms to a foyer lit only by a all candle. On a three-legged, half-moon table against one wall was a shrine to the Holy Mother. A votive candle in a ruby-red glass fluttered fitfully in the half-inch of wax that remained.
        In this inconstant pulse of light, the face on the porcelain figure of Mary was a portrait less of beatific grace than of sorrow. She appeared to know that the resident of the rectory was, these days, more a captive of fear than a captain of faith.
        With Orson at my side, I climbed the two broad flights of stairs to the second floor. The felon freak and his four-legged familiar.
        The upstairs hall was in the shape of an L, with the stairhead at the junction. The length to the left was dark. At the end of the hall directly ahead of me, a ladder had been unfolded from a ceiling trapdoor; a lamp must have been lit in a far corner of the attic, but only a ghostly glow stepped down the ladder treads.
        Stronger light came from an open door on the right. I eased along the hall to the threshold, cautiously looked inside, and found Father Tom's starkly furnished bedroom, where a crucifix hung above the simple dark-pine bed. The priest was not here; he was evidently in the attic. The bedspread had been removed and the covers neatly folded back, but the sheets had not been disturbed.
        Both nightstand lamps were lit, which made that area too bright for me, but I was more interested in the other end of the room, where a writing desk stood against the wall. Under a bronze desk lamp with a green glass shade lay an open book and a pen. The book appeared to be a journal or diary.
        Behind me, Orson growled softly.
        I turned and saw that he was at the bottom of the ladder, gazing up suspiciously at the dimly lighted attic beyond the open trapdoor. When he looked at me, I raised a finger to my lips, softly hushed him, and then motioned him to my side.
        Instead of climbing like a circus dog to the top of the ladder, he came to me. For the time being, anyway, he still seemed to be enjoying the novelty of routine obedience.
        I was certain that Father Tom would make enough noise descending from the attic to alert me long before his arrival. Nevertheless I stationed Orson immediately inside the bedroom door, with a clear view of the ladder.
        Averting my face from the light around the bed, crossing the room toward the writing desk, I glanced through the open door of the adjoining bathroom. No one was in there.
        On the desk, in addition to the journal, was a decanter of what appeared to be Scotch. Beside the decanter was a double-shot glass more than half full of the golden liquid. The priest had been sipping it neat, no ice. Or maybe not just sipping.
        I picked up the journal. Father Tom's handwriting was as tight and precise as machine-generated script. I stepped into the deepest shadows in the room, because my dark-adapted eyes needed little armed the last paragraph on the light by which to read, and I scanned the page, which referred to his sister. He had broken off in mid sentence:
        
         When the end comes, I might not be able to save myself I know that I will not be able to save Laura, because already she is not fundamentally who she was. She is already gone. Little more than her physical shell remains - and perhaps even that is changed. Either God has somehow taken her soul home to His bosom while leaving her body inhabited by the entity into which she has evolved - or He has abandoned her. And will therefore abandon us all. I believe in the mercy of Christ. I believe in the mercy of Christ. I believe because I have nothing else to live for. And if I believe, then I must live by my faith and save whom I can. If I can't save myself-or even Laura, I can at least rescue