The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) Read Online Free PDF Page B

them into the inner sanctum. Sweat, lots of it, was an integral part of Grimstone’s services, which had little to say about the gentle Lord Jesus. The Lord he venerated skulked away from the light in deeper and darker places, devoid of anything a normal priest or vicar would have recognized as Christian caring and kindness.
    On entering the sacristy, they saw that his soiled dog collar had been flung onto the desk surface. They also saw, with a slender hope, that he had little or no interest in their lateness, or, for that matter, the dirtied state of their clothes. Ignoring the clatter of their arrival, Grimstone leaned against the sill and stared out into the fading evening through the wide round-topped window. As usual when he was coming down from the high of a service, the black silk shirt was stuck to him with sweat, sculpting his heavily muscled body.
    They waited in silence for more than a minute, listening to the deep methodical rasp of his breathing.
    “You’ve been wondering why I brought you here? I know you have, so don’t bother to deny it.” His voicewas quiet, a sonorous growl, but they knew him well enough to sense danger.
    “Well, much as it surprises me too, this town is of growing interest.” He inhaled a deep draught of the cool air of evening. “There is the reek of old power here. Not that you would catch the whiff of it. It is almost buried and forgotten, yet lingering, the way heavy stinks do. Maybe you girl, with your whore-witch heritage, can actually smell it? I’ve seen you scribbling into that book. So tell me what you’ve discovered.”
    “The nuh-nuh-nuh . . . the name is Cuh-Cuh-Celtic.”
    “Cuh-Cuh-Celtic! Of course it’s Celtic. Clonmel in their degenerate tongue means the Vale of Honey. But this stink is older . . . far older still. Pah! Why do I waste my breath on the likes of you! What can you tell me that I don’t know already?”
    “I’m nuh-nuh-nuh . . . nuh-not sure, Suh-Sir.”
    “You’re nuh-nuh-nuh-not sure? Well, let me explain then what is to be done. We face a more formidable challenge than I realized when I came here to proselytize this backwater. Why, then, I hear your small minds wondering, does he bother to share the good news with us? Why? Because it is my Lord himself, my sacred Master, who senses the threat. The threat is to Him. Oh, yes, indeed. He senses a threat to Him, here in this town, in the old power that still lingers here.”
    Mark muttered, “A threat, Sir?”
    Grimstone’s head was nodding slowly, his hair glistening with an opalescent sheen of sweat. “I had anticipatedevery sewer of Papist heresy, with its confessionals and slothful delusions. But this is far worse. What’s at the bottom of it? A lingering relic of the old paganism? I wouldn’t be surprised.” His voice rose, throaty and rasping. “Old power! Old power, and a threat to My Lord, that by His blessed will, I will expose and crush.”
    Only now, as he spun around to face them, did they see that the black metal cross, the symbol of the church Grimstone had personally founded, was clasped in his right hand. He lifted it lovingly against his brow, pressed its embossed sigil against the scars of many such impressions, a new branding. Although the cross did not look hot, the smell of his burning flesh pervaded the room. Then he intoned the mantra:
    “My own Lord! My beloved Master! My personal salvation!”
    Mark and Mo shivered, their eyes averted from the repulsive sight. The cross was matted and gnarled with great age. He never tired of recounting how he had acquired it, when, as a young man, he had been a wastrel, heading for perdition. He had rescued the cross from an elderly antiquarian, a greedy robber of graves. Yet the very moment he first held it in his hands he had his first vision. So forceful was the shock of revelation, he had lost consciousness. When he came around, the collector was dead, drowned in his own blood. Grimstone had staggered from the