by John Saul
23
The first faint glimmers of dawn were breaking when Carl Anderson, his hands trembling, reached for the phone one more time. He’d fallen asleep several times during the night, but his sleep had been troubled, for the degeneration taking place within his body kept waking him up.
His joints were stiffening with arthritis, and his lungs felt clogged, his breath coming in deep raling gasps. As he groped for the phone, his trembling fingers failed him and the receiver clattered to the floor. He tried to reach down and pick it up, but flashes of pain in his spine made him lie back on the pillow for a moment, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He waited for the pain to pass, then reached for the cord of the dangling receiver, finally grasping it and pulling it up. At last he was able to pull the phone, too, onto the bed, and laboriously punch in Warren Phillips’s number. Once more the impersonal machine answered.
“I can’t wait any longer,” Carl gasped. “I’m coming over.”
Groaning with the effort, he raised himself into a sitting position and dropped his legs over the edge of the bed, his knees protesting painfully as he forced them to flex. At last he pushed himself up. A wave of dizziness washed over him, forcing him to reach out and steady himself against the night table. He could feel his heart beating raggedly in his chest; the simple effort of getting out of bed had all but exhausted him.
He tried to breathe deeply, but each breath shot needles of pain through him. He fought against the pain, forcing himself to walk slowly to the bathroom, where, his terror mounting, he stared at the unrecognizable image in the mirror.
An old man, far older than Carl Anderson truly was. It was as if all the years kept at bay by the shots Phillips had been giving him over the last decade and a half were now crashing back on him, overwhelming him.
His skin, leathery and slack, hung loosely around his jowls, and his beard, stubbly after the long night, was shot through with gray. The hair on his head was wispy, his scalp showing through everywhere; and his bloodshot eyes, shadowed by dark circles, squinted from their deep sockets, resisting the bright lights around the mirror.
His right hand came up, reaching out, as if by touching the vile image he could erase it.
His nails were cracked, and scabs had formed around his torn cuticles. The liver spots, barely visible only a few hours ago, now blotched his hands with the unhealthy color of old age, and his fingers were gnarled and twisted, distorted by the ravages of the decay that was consuming him.
An unintelligible croak of fear rising in his throat, Carl turned away, lurching back to his bedroom, where he pulled on the same clothes he’d worn the day before.
They bagged on his shriveling frame, the pants threatening to slide off his bony hips, the shirt hanging in deep folds from his drooping shoulders.
His eyes drifted to the pillow, all but obscured by the hair that had fallen away from his scalp during the night.
He was dying—he could feel it in the weakness that was inexorably spreading through his body.
He picked up his keys from the dresser by the door, then abandoned his bedroom, stumbling through the living room toward the kitchen and the garage beyond. As he climbed into the cab of the pickup truck, groping for the remote control that would open the garage door, he was no longer certain whether the weakness he was feeling came from the degeneration of his body or the fear of death that was overwhelming his mind.
Phillips.
He had to get to Phillips before it was too late.
The garage door behind him ground slowly upward, seeming to take forever before he could finally back the truck out into the street, but at last he was on his way. He shifted the truck into forward, moving quickly off into the brightening light of the summer morning.
Kelly stood frozen at the window long after her grandfather’s pickup had disappeared around the corner.
She’d stayed awake all night, watching the telephone, waiting for the red light to blink on in the darkness, signaling that her grandfather was once more calling Dr. Phillips. Each time the telltale light had come on, she’d picked up the phone, pressing it to her ear as she heard her grandfather leaving another message.
With each call his voice had sounded weaker, until finally, on the last call only a few minutes ago, she’d barely been able to distinguish his words at all.
She was certain he was sick, and getting sicker as the night went on. For a brief moment, three hours ago, she’d wondered if she shouldn’t go to him and find out what was wrong. But even before she’d left her room, she’d remembered that distinct feeling she’d had earlier that he was part of the dreadful evil that was being carried out deep in the swamp.
At last, when she’d heard him coming out of his room, she’d gone to her own door, opening it just far enough to press her eye against the crack and peer down the stairs into the foyer.
She’d gasped when she’d seen him moving through the shadows toward the kitchen, his tall figure stooped as he shuffled across the flagstone floor, his pace slow and careful, as if he was afraid of losing his balance.
Then, as he’d backed down the driveway, she’d gotten a clear look at his face, and it was that vision that had made her blood run cold.
This morning it truly was the face from her dreams; the face she’d glimpsed in the mirror sometimes, leering over her shoulder.
The hands she’d seen clenching the steering wheel of the truck were the same hands that she’d shrunk away from in her dreams, the clawlike hands that reached for her, as if intent on choking the life out of her.
But it wasn’t her life those hands had been reaching for at all.
It was her youth.
That hideous being wanted the resilience of her flesh, the suppleness of her muscles and strength of her bones, the freshness of her skin, the brightness of her eyes and lushness of her hair.
Did he, and the others like him, even know what else they had stolen from her?
A cold knot of hatred filled her heart, and she knew now the feeling that Michael had known just after midnight, when he was sure his sister had been taken from her crypt.
They would find a way to take back what had been stolen from them, find a way to end the evil.
At last she turned away from the window and returned to her bed, the exhaustion of the long night finally overcoming her.
She drifted into sleep, and once more the nightmares came, but when the ancient visage appeared out of the darkness this time, it was no longer the face of a stranger.
It was the face of her grandfather.
The sun was creeping over the horizon as Carl Anderson arrived at Warren Phillips’s house, and as its first brilliant rays struck his rheumy eyes, Carl blinked, cringing away from the light as a creature of the night slinks to its den at daybreak.
He felt exposed, and imagined there were eyes everywhere, watching him, uncovering the secret he’d protected for so many years, recognizing him for the skulking thief he knew he was.
He pulled the truck around to the back of Phillips’s house, abandoning it with the key still in the ignition as he staggered to the back door, pressing the doorbell with a shaking finger.
He heard the soft chime of the bell within, echoing oddly, as if to signal him that the house was still empty.
Defeated, he sagged down onto the back steps, coughing roughly to clear his throat of the thick mucus that was coagulating there, his breath rasping as he struggled to keep his lungs filled with air.
Hearing a car, he shrank back until he recognized Warren Phillips’s Buick gliding down the driveway, then hope surged within him.
Phillips, seeing him, braked the car to an abrupt halt. Then he was at the foot of the steps, helping Carl up, supporting him with one arm as he opened the back door.
“I’ve been calling all night,” Carl rasped as Phillips helped him through the house to the library. “Where the hell—”
“I’ve been at the hospital,” Phillips snapped. “Just take it easy.”
“A s
hot,” Carl pleaded. “I’m dying …”
Phillips disappeared for a moment, returning with a hypodermic syringe. Carl’s eyes fixed greedily on the needle as he struggled to roll up his sleeve. But then a doubt came into his mind.
“It’s not full. Why isn’t it a full dose?”
Phillips swabbed Carl’s arm with alcohol, and inserted the needle. “You’re lucky I even have this,” he said, pressing the plunger. “If it weren’t for Jenny Sheffield …”
Carl felt the restorative fluid spread through him, reveled in the miraculous warmth that seemed to wash the pain from his body. Already, only a few seconds after the shot, his pulse was smoothing out, the irregular spasms of his heart returning once more to the strong steady beats that would keep his blood surging through his body.
The panic that had consumed him only a moment ago began to recede, and the words Phillips had just spoken slowly sank in. “Jenny Sheffield?” he repeated. “But she’s—”
“Don’t be stupid, Carl. She’s not dead. She’s in my lab. And if you’re lucky, she’ll keep you alive until you can find someone else.”
Carl Anderson felt the panic creeping back up. “I can’t do that,” he muttered. “I pay. I pay a lot—”
“It doesn’t matter how much you pay if I don’t have anything to sell,” Phillips told him. His eyes fixed darkly on the old man. “And if I were you, I’d stay out of sight for a while, Carl. You look terrible.”
There was a cruel note in the doctor’s voice that chilled Carl’s soul. “But you said—”
Warren Phillips cut him off before he could finish. “If you want to live, you know what you have to do.”
Ted Anderson came into the kitchen, stopping short when he found no one there except his wife. “Where’s Dad?” he asked.
Mary shrugged. “He must have gotten up early. He wasn’t here when I came down, and the truck’s gone.”
Frowning, Ted went to the door leading to the garage. Save for his own worn Chrysler, the garage was empty. Puzzled, he moved to the stove and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the back burner. “Where the hell would he go this early?”
Mary glanced archly at her husband. “I’m afraid he didn’t leave a note. Would you call Kelly?”
Ted went to the bottom of the stairs leading to Kelly’s room, calling out, then went up and knocked on the door. “Kelly? Time to get up.” There was a silence, then he heard his daughter’s voice.
“I’ll be down in a second.”
Returning to the kitchen, he sat down at the table just as Mary slid a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. A minute later, wrapped in a robe, Kelly appeared. Ted glanced up at her, then looked more closely. Kelly’s face was pale and her eyes were edged with dark circles, as if she hadn’t slept at all. “Honey? Are you okay?”
For a moment he wasn’t sure Kelly had even heard him. She was staring off into space, lost in some world of her own. Then her expression changed, as if a veil had dropped over her eyes.
“I guess I didn’t sleep very well last night,” she said, her voice flat.
Mary, hearing the strange vacant note in her daughter’s voice, looked worriedly at her. “Do you feel all right?”
Kelly said nothing. What would they say if she told them what had happened last night and what she’d seen this morning? What would they think if she told them that her grandfather had stolen her soul from her?
They’d think she was crazy.
And yet she wasn’t crazy. She knew what had happened in the swamp, knew what Clarey Lambert had told her.
This morning, at dawn, she’d seen her grandfather, and finally understood the terrifying vision that had tormented her for as long as she could remember.
And knew that it wasn’t a vision from her imagination at all.
It was a vision of the truth.
A truth she couldn’t speak of to anyone except Michael Sheffield, because no one else would believe her.
“I—I’m fine,” she murmured at last.
But she wasn’t fine at all.
In the bright light of a perfect summer morning, when she should have been feeling good about everything, she felt only a dark terror.
A terror she realized might never leave her.
Ted pulled the Chrysler through the gates of Villejeune Links Estates and was relieved to see his father’s pickup truck parked in front of the trailer that served as a construction office. Ted was early himself this morning, and except for his father’s truck, the site was still empty. He pulled the Chrysler alongside the truck, shut off the engine, and went into the trailer.
“Dad?” he called out. “Dad, it’s me!”
He glanced toward the closed door of the office at the far end of the trailer, then turned the other way, toward the small kitchen where he and his father usually sat conferring with the site supervisor over Cokes, feeling more relaxed around the Formica table than they did around the desk in the office.
“Dad?” Ted called again as he stepped into the kitchen, half expecting to find his father already at the table, poring over drawings, checking specifications against lists of supplies on hand.
The kitchen was empty.
He gazed out the window, over the golf course that was in the first phases of construction.
Nothing.
He turned away from the window, moving back through the trailer toward the closed office door.
Hearing his son’s heavy tread, Carl Anderson realized it had been a mistake coming here. He should have simply driven on past the site and kept going until he’d come to a motel.
He could have checked into one of those anonymous tourist courts along the highway, staying out of sight for a few hours until the shot Phillips had given him did its work.
But it was early, and the site had been deserted, and he’d decided to stop for a few minutes to leave some instructions for Ted.
And now Ted was here.
“G-Go away, Ted. I need to be alone right now.”
He heard the sound of his voice, rasping, rattling in his throat like that of an old man.
“Dad?” Ted called through the door. “What is it?”
“Nothing! Will you just get the—”
The door opened and he saw Ted step in, then stop short, staring at him.
“Jesus, Dad,” Ted whispered. He hardly recognized the old man as his father. Carl’s strong features were all but hidden under the slack skin of his face, and his frame had taken on a stooped and shrunken look. Carl’s eyes, burning deep in their sockets, were fixed on Ted, and as the younger man gazed at the ancient figure, he had the feeling he was facing the countenance of death.
“I told you not to come in here,” Carl rasped.
“Dad, we’ve got to get you to the hospital—”
“No!” Carl barked, stepping behind the desk.
“Dad, you’re sick—”
“I saw Phillips this morning. I’ll be all right.” The fingers of his right hand curled around the handle of the drawer, and he pulled it open. Glancing down, he saw the familiar shape of the butt of the gun he kept there. “Go away, Ted. Just leave me alone.”
Ted shook his head. “I can’t do that, Dad. Whatever’s in those shots, it’s not working.”
“He’s running out,” Carl said without thinking.
Ted’s eyes bored into him. “So they’re not vitamins,” he said. “What are they, Dad?”
Carl’s jaw tightened. “It’s something he makes himself.”
“Then he’ll make more,” Ted said, his voice taking on a note of desperation. “Whatever it is, he can make more, can’t he? Dad, what is it? What’s wrong with you? If we don’t get you to the hospital, you’re going to die!”
He took a step toward his father, but stopped short when Carl’s hand suddenly came up from behind the desk, holding a gun.
“I want you to leave, Ted,” Carl rasped coldly. “I want you to get out of here and forget about what you’ve seen. I’ll be gone for a few hours, and
when I get back I’ll be fine.”
Ted shook his head in disbelief. “You’re dying, Dad,” he whispered,
“No, goddamn it!” Carl roared, his son’s words triggering a fury in him that overcame the fear that had all but paralyzed him since he’d left Phillips’s house. “I’m not dying! I’m not ever going to die!”
He raised the gun, grasping it with both hands now, pointing it at Ted. Though his hands trembled violently, he was so close to his son that he knew he couldn’t miss.
Ted knew it, too. His hands came up slowly and he backed toward the door. “Take it easy, Dad,” he said. “If you don’t want to go to the hospital, I won’t make you.”
“Just leave me alone,” Carl rasped. “Get out of here.”
Ted had reached the doorway. A moment later Carl saw him dart out of the trailer toward his car. But instead of going to the Chrysler, Ted jerked open the door of the truck and pulled the keys from the ignition where Carl habitually left them. Pocketing them, he got into his own car and drove away.
Carl stood where he was, his mind racing.
The men would be arriving soon, and Ted would be coming back, too.
Ted thought he’d gone crazy, and when he came back, he’d bring help.
Shoving the gun into his belt, Carl, too, left the trailer. The shot Phillips had given him was working now; his legs felt much stronger, and the pain in his joints was fading quickly.
He started away from the trailer, walking rapidly, toward the canal.
They wouldn’t find him, Carl had decided. Not Ted, nor whomever he brought with him. By the time Ted got back, he would be long gone.
He came to the edge of the canal and clambered down the bank, sliding into the water, his feet coming to rest on the mud bottom.
He started across, pulling the gun from his belt as the water rose to his waist. A few seconds later he was across and scrambling up the other bank.
He would find what Phillips needed, find a child somewhere in the swamp.
If he didn’t, he would die.
And Carl Anderson had no intention of dying.
