Strange Highways

was nearby, however, P.J. did not reveal himself.
     Fire didn't merely flap like bright banners at the tops of the vent pipes and dissolve in the storm wind. Instead, it shot four or five feet above the iron rims, under considerable pressure, like flames from the nozzles of blowtorches.
     The ground didn't rumble, as it had done earlier, but the fierce rush of gases escaping up those metal shafts from far below produced a great roar that vibrated in Joey's bones. Strangely, the sound had a disturbing quality of rage about it, as though it had been produced not by natural forces but by some colossus trapped in the inferno and less pained than infuriated by it.
     "What's happening?" he asked, raising his voice though Celeste was close beside him.
     "I don't know."
     "Ever see anything like this before?"
     "No!" she said, looking around in fearful wonder.
     As though they were the pipes of a gargantuan carnival calliope, the vents pumped forth a midnight music of roars and growls and huffs and whistles and occasional mad shrieks. Echoes ricocheted off the smoke-mottled walls of the abandoned houses, off windows as dark as blind eyes.
     In the backwash of spectral light from the ferocious gushes of fire, pterodactyl silhouettes swooped through the rain-shattered night. Mammoth shadows lurched across North Avenue as if thrown by an army of giants marching through the street one block to the east.
     Joey picked up the bundle that he had dropped. With a sense that time was swiftly running out, he said, "Come on. Hurry."
     While he and Celeste sprinted along the deeply puddled street toward Coal Valley Road, the burn-off of subterranean gases ended as abruptly as it had begun. The queer light throbbed once, then again, and was gone. The flying-lurching shadows vanished into an immobilizing darkness.
     Rain turned to steam when it struck the fiercely hot iron pipes, and even above the sounds of the storm there arose a hissing as if Coal Valley had been invaded by thousands upon thousands of serpents.

    15

THE DOORS OF THE CHURCH STILL STOOD OPEN. THE LIGHTS GLOWED softly inside, as Joey had left them.
     After following Celeste into the narthex, he pulled the double doors shut behind them. The big hinges rasped noisily - as he had expected. Now, if P.J. followed them by that route, he would not be able to enter quietly.
     At the archway between the narthex and the nave, Joey indicated the marble font, which was as white as an ancient skull and every bit as dry. "Empty the jug."
     "Just do it," he said urgently.
     Celeste propped her shotgun against the wall and unscrewed the cap from the half-gallon container. The water splashed and gurgled into the bowl.
     "Bring the empty jug," Joey said. "Don't leave it where he can see it."
     He led her down the center aisle, through the low gate in the sanctuary railing, along the ambulatory that curved around the choir enclosure.
     The body of Beverly Korshak, swaddled in heavy plastic, still lay on the altar platform. A pale mound.
     "What now?" Celeste asked, following him along the presbytery to the altar platform.
     Joey put down the white bundle, behind the dead woman. "Help me move her."
     Grimacing in disgust at the prospect of that task, Celeste said, "Move her where?"
     "Out of the sanctuary into the sacristy. She shouldn't be here like this. It's a desecration of the church."
     "This isn't a church any more," she reminded him.
     "It will be again soon."
     "What are you talking about?"
     "When we're done with it."
     "We don't have the power to make it a church again. That takes a bishop or something, doesn't it?"
     "We don't have the authority officially, no, but maybe that's not necessary to play into P.J.'s twisted fantasy. Maybe all we need is a little stage setting. Celeste, please, help me."
     Reluctantly she obliged, and together they moved the corpse out of the sanctuary and put it down gently in a corner of the sacristy, that small room where priests had once prepared themselves for Mass.
     On the first visit to St. Thomas's, Joey had found the exterior sacristy door open. He had closed and locked it. When he checked it now, he found that the door was still securely locked.
     Another door opened onto a set of descending