Strange Highways

magnetic that he seemed to exert an influence upon even inanimate objects, realigning all things around him until even the lines of the church's architecture subtly focused attention toward him.
     Meeting Joey's eyes across the length of the church, P.J. said, "Joey, you surprise me."
     With one sleeve, Joey blotted the sweat on his face, but he didn't reply.
     "I thought we had a bargain," said P.J.
     Joey put one hand on his shotgun, which lay on the presbytery floor beside him. But he didn't pick it up. P.J. could dodge out of the archway and back into the narthex before Joey would be able to raise the gun and pump off a round. Besides, at that distance, mortal damage probably couldn't be done with a shotgun even if P.J. failed to get out of the line of fire fast enough.
     "All you had to do was go back to college like a good boy, back to your job at the supermarket, lose yourself in the daily struggle of life, the gray grinding boredom that you were born for. But you had to stick your nose in this."
     "You wanted me to follow you here," Joey said.
     "Well, true enough, little brother. But I was never sure you'd actually do it. You're just a little priest-loving, rosary-kissing altar boy. Why should I expect you to have any guts? I thought you might even go back to college and make yourself accept my cockamamie story about the mountain man up on Pine Ridge."
     "I did."
     "What?"
     "Once," Joey said. "But not this time."
     P.J. was clearly baffled. This was the first and only time that he would ever live through this strange night. Joey had been through a variation of it once before, and only Joey had been given a second chance to do it right.
     From the floor beside him, Joey scooped up the thirty dollars and, still half sheltered behind the balustrade, threw it at P.J. Although wadded in a ball the paper currency sailed only as far as the end of the choir enclosure and fell short of the sanctuary railing. "Take back your silver."
     For a moment P.J. seemed stunned, but then he said, "What an odd thing to say, little brother."
     "When did you make your bargain?" Joey asked, hoping that he was right about P.J.'s psychotic fantasy and was playing into it in a way that would shake him out of his smug complacency.
     "Bargain?" P.J. asked.
     "When did you sell your soul?"
     Shifting his attention to Celeste, P.J. said, "You must have helped him puzzle it out. His mind doesn't have a dark bent that would let him see the truth on his own. Certainly not in the couple of hours since he opened my car trunk. You're an interesting young lady. Who are you?"
     Celeste didn't answer him.
     "The girl by the road," P.J. said. "I know that much. I would hat had you by now if Joey hadn't interfered. But who else are you?"
     Secret identities. Dual identities. Conspiracies. P.J. was indeed operating in the complex and melodramatic world of a paranoid psychotic with religious delusions, and he evidently believed that he saw in Celeste some otherworldly presence.
     She remained silent. Crouching by the balustrade. One hand on hey shotgun, which lay on the presbytery floor.
     Joey hoped she wouldn't use the weapon. They needed either to lure P.J. farther into the church, within range - or they needed to convince him that they didn't need guns at all and felt confident about trusting in the power of the holy ground on which they stood.
     "Know where the thirty bucks came from, Joey?" P.J. asked. "From Beverly Korshak's purse. Now I'll have to gather it up and put it its your pocket again later. Preserve the evidence."
     At last Joey understood what role P.J. had in mind for him. was expected to take the fall for everything his brother had done - and would do - this night. No doubt his own murder would have been made to look like suicide: Priest-loving, rosary-kissing altar flips out, kills twelve in Satanic ceremony, takes own life, film al eleven.
     He had escaped that fate twenty years ago when he had failed to follow P.J. onto Coal Valley Road - but he'd taken a turn into another destiny that had been nearly as bad. This time, he had to avoid both those options.
     "You asked when I sold my soul," P.J. said, still lingering in the narthex archway. "I was thirteen, you were ten. I got hold of the books about Satanism, the Black Mass