And so he saw the sudden change in the depths of that eye at the moment it happened. He watched with mixed fascination and dread as the dark circle of Slater’s right pupil spread slowly wider, completely eclipsing the faded white around it.
He raised the gun and clicked off the safety, staring in horror as a look of naked, uncompromising rage flooded across what remained of Slater’s features.
Something about the old man’s behavior seemed to be changing. Morris sensed it before his eyes could even detect the physical signs of that change. He leaned forward, peering closely into Mahuk’s face, somehow convinced the first indications of trouble would be glimpsed there.
Within seconds, he began to see subtle variations in the patient’s expression: the slow creasing of the brow, the sudden twitching at the corners of his mouth. It was as though something had gone terribly awry, something deep within the dreaming mind. An expression of deep regret rose on his face, the look of a man who is watching his best-laid plans crumble to dust in front of his eyes.
What was the old man dreaming about that was so important to him? Did it have anything to do with the movement of his hands, the cryptic motions that had abruptly ended just a few minutes earlier?
The patient’s vitals were getting weaker once again. Each breath seemed like a struggle, as if it might be his last.
“Hang in there, buddy,” Morris whispered, “we’re going to do everything we can.”
The old man’s upper lip twitched, curling up into a hideous snarl. His teeth were bared now, crooked and yellow, his face taking on the feral look of a predatory animal.
Something was definitely happening. Something that Morris understood all his years of medical training could never have prepared him for. But all he could do was watch, and wait, and hope silently that it would pass.
The gun shivered in Harry’s grasp, his hands shaking so badly he could barely keep his fingers locked in place around the grip.
The corpse had taken another two steps toward him, its features twisted into a grotesque mask of hate. Its single eye burned with rage and with each passing second, Slater’s body seemed to gain more strength, all of its earlier clumsiness gone.
“Jesus,” Harry muttered, “this can’t be happening.”
The words seemed to chase away some of the fear, to push away some of the numbness that had claimed his thoughts.
You have a gun, his mind reminded him. Use it.
He dropped his eyes to the weapon, just for an instant, just long enough to reassure himself that the safety was off and the gun was ready to fire. He lifted it swiftly, brought it to bear in the exact center of Slater’s chest.
And at that precise moment, the body lunged at him. It moved with surprising speed, closing the gap between them before Harry could squeeze the trigger. It slammed into him, slapping aside his outstretched hand with only the slightest effort.
The gun clattered to the floor, sliding beneath Hughes’ desk and out of Harry’s reach.
Harry felt himself going over, his balance thrown off by the unexpected attack. The corpse brought him down hard, the bare floor beneath him forcing the wind from his lungs. A field of stars exploded behind his eyes, a dizzying sense of nausea assaulting him as he struggled to remain conscious.
Slater’s body fell on top of him, its hands digging at his face, the dead fingers trying to close around his throat. Its stench was overpowering, and it was that, more than anything else, that helped Harry to snap out of his stupor and force his head to clear.
He felt a sudden anger of his own, a familiar emotion, one he could work with. Earlier, the fear had practically paralyzed him. Now, the anger, the sweet burning rage brimming over inside of him served to make him stronger, to feed his will to fight.
At this moment, only survival mattered. Because this creature certainly meant to kill him.
He lifted his hands and tried to force the body off of him, to topple it to either side, but Slater wouldn’t budge, possessing more strength and tenacity in death than he ever had in life.
His fingers tightened on Harry’s throat, his thumbs pressing savagely into Harry’s flesh. A terrible grin was stretched across the lower half of Slater’s face, a malevolent smile that suggested he was enjoying this violent and brutal act.
And the blackness in his gaze had grown deeper, encompassing the entire eye now, burning into Harry’s thoughts and memories.
Harry could feel himself beginning to slip away, the lack of oxygen taking its toll. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, that he was dangerously close to passing out. And then Slater could go about his awful business undisturbed, choking the life out of Harry without even a struggle.
Still, the anger inside Harry persisted, giving him the strength to attempt one final action, one last desperate bid for his life. He could feel something sharp pressing against his back, something that he’d fallen on when Slater had knocked him flat. It was fairly solid, jutting into his lower back at a point just above his belt.
A moment later, it came to him. It was the framed photo of his father, the one taken on the fishing trip with Delbert Hughes. He’d knocked it off of the desk just as Slater had come into the office. He could remember the crash of the frame’s glass now, as it had smashed against the floor.
With every bit of strength he had left, he pushed his right hand underneath him, his fingers clawing at what seemed to be his only weapon. He felt its jagged edges, the tips of his fingers bloody now as the shard of broken glass cut into them. Ignoring the pain, or perhaps too desperate to even acknowledge it, he curled his fist around the piece of glass and tugged it free. Without hesitation, he brought his hand up in a swift and decisive arc, burying the shard in Slater’s exposed side, pushing it in as deeply as he could.
Slater howled, though Harry couldn’t say whether the body could even experience the pain. He seemed enraged, furious that Harry dared to strike back at him. He lifted one hand from Harry’s throat, dropping it to his wounded side to slap Harry’s hand away.
The wide end of the piece of glass snapped off in Harry’s hand. He let it drop uselessly to the floor, stained with his own blood, a wide slash marking his right palm.
Taking advantage of Slater’s distraction, Harry slammed his right fist into the side of the corpse’s head, finally upsetting his attacker’s balance and forcing him over onto his side. Harry wriggled out from beneath Slater, his eyes automatically scanning the floor for his lost gun. He saw it under the desk, still too far to reach in his current position. Rolling onto his stomach, he pushed himself across the floor and stretched his arm out under the desk, swept it to either side until his fingers made contact with the gun.
He seized it, dragging it back towards him just as Slater renewed his attack, falling onto Harry’s legs and clawing at his back.
A line of blood welled up suddenly from the old man’s left side, a jagged crimson blotch that appeared out of nowhere before Morris’ startled gaze. The shaman’s face registered the pain, the expression of rage replaced by a grimace of intense suffering.
“Nurse!” Morris shouted, coming to his feet beside the bed. “Get a trauma team in here now!”
He peeled back the sheet in one quick motion, his hands already tugging at the hospital gown, trying to reveal the wound beneath. Blood was flowing steadily from a point just below the patient’s bottom rib, leaving a dark and horrible stain on the bedclothes. He finally succeeded in ripping a small hole in the gown, his fingers tearing at it to widen the gap.
A deep gash had opened in the old man’s side, as if someone had run into the room and stabbed him. But no one had come in this way, no one had disturbed Morris since he’d come in to keep a close watch on his patient. Even more confounding was the fact that the old man’s hospital gown had not been cut, and yet the flesh beneath had clearly been slashed wide open.
An emergency medical team rushed in, moving their equipment into place beside the bed while Morris issued orders, a peculiar quiver appar
ent in his voice.
The old man’s face was once again going slack, a look of serenity falling into place there.
“This is not happening,” Morris whispered, but the denial felt like a waste of breath. He’d just witnessed the impossible but there was no time to think it through now, there was only time to get to work.
If they moved quickly, they just might be able to stem the bleeding and save the old man’s life. Later, when the crisis was over, he would look back on this and try to make a shred of sense from it.
Something told him he wouldn’t have much luck.
Harry peered over his shoulder, directly into Slater’s darkened eye. Once again, he saw a change taking place there.
The white of Slater’s eye was slowly reappearing, its black center shrinking once more to its normal, dilated size. The body’s strength seemed to flood out of it at the same time, leaving behind the slow and clumsy corpse that had originally wandered into the office several minutes before. His fury was gone, and his fingers scratched only feebly at Harry’s back, the ability to do any serious harm well beyond them.
Harry pushed the body off of him, scrambling to his feet and bringing his gun once again to bear on Slater’s upturned face.
A floorboard creaked from the office door and Harry quickly raised the gun, his wide eyes taking in the shape of another intruder.
Hughes stood in the doorway, his mouth hanging open and his eyes flicking nervously back and forth between Harry and the body on the floor. Finally, he seemed to find the will to speak.
“What the Christ is going on here?”
“I don’t know,” Harry whispered. “God’s honest truth, Del, I just don’t know.”
He dropped his gaze to the floor, where, once again, Marty Slater lay dead and unmoving.
Chapter Nine
John came to with an immediate sense of relief, as if an immense burden had suddenly been taken from him. He looked to either side, getting his bearings, finally checking his watch to find out how long he’d been asleep.
Only ten minutes.
“Are you all right?”
It was the young woman next to him. She was looking closely at him, as if studying an interesting specimen in a lab experiment. Or perhaps there was more in her expression than he could see. Fear? Maybe a touch of distrust?
“Just a bad dream,” John told her. He tried to sound convincing, maybe even trying to convince himself at the same time. “I’m not very fond of flying. I guess I must have dozed off and . . . well, you know how it goes.”
She nodded, a tiny smile brightening her face. She seemed to believe him, at least enough to set her own mind at ease. But the flicker of suspicion was still in her eyes as she nodded once more and then went back to the book she was reading.
What the hell had he just seen? At first he’d been certain it was only a dream. A particularly vivid one, true, but still, nothing more than a dream. But then a vague sense of importance had come over him, a feeling that he was meant to see these strange images. And even more, he was meant to remember them. But why?
He turned toward the window, watching the clouds pass slowly by below. In the glass, he could make out his reflection. His eyes were rimmed with red, as if from too many long hours of study. And there was a slightly haunted look to his gaze now, one brought on by the confusing emotions the dream had dredged up within him.
Fear; he remembered that clearly enough. A cold and immobilizing sense of nameless fear that had claimed him almost as quickly as the dream had begun. And there had also been a terrible sense that he was losing control of himself, a feeling like his body had been invaded. During the dream he’d felt like a puppet; a puppet on invisible strings, being pulled along by a will more powerful than his own.
Another emotion came to him then, one that had filled his thoughts just before waking.
Rage. Seething within him, almost uncontrollable in its absolute consumption of his thoughts and actions. A black rage that had blinded him, as if the puppet master’s anger had somehow infected the puppet.
And there had been pain, too; he suddenly recalled an immense pain in his side just as consciousness had come back to him. He moved his hand to his side now, just where he’d felt the stabbing pain in the dream.
Nothing. No discomfort. No unexplained stains in his shirt and no apparent wounds beneath. And yet the feeling of being stabbed, of his flesh tearing, remained stubbornly in his memory.
He couldn’t recall what had preceded the pain, only the pain itself.
He remembered seeing the man in the office, rising to his feet and then turning in what appeared to be shock, even terror. After that there had been a short moment of . . . what?
Contact? Conversation?
No, neither was quite right. It had been more of an attempt at communication rather than an actual exchange of words, a union of minds that had left John feeling even more confused than ever.
Worse than that, he couldn’t recall what he’d been trying so hard to convey to the man. It had seemed so desperately important at the time, as if a great deal was riding on this single attempt at communication.
A headache began to throb at John’s temples. He couldn’t imagine a more frustrating predicament. Normally, he had no trouble recalling his dreams, often in particularly accurate detail. Now, when he felt a serious need to go over the feelings and images he’d experienced, he was drawing a blank on its most important aspects.
At least he still had a clear picture of the man he’d seen in the office, the man wearing what he believed to be a police uniform. Late thirties, maybe even early forties; brown hair and an average build, perhaps in better shape than most in his age group; a bit on the tall side, five eleven or maybe an even six feet.
And the badge sewn onto the shoulder of the man’s uniform, what had it said?
He closed his eyes, trying to coax the memory forward, trying to seize it before it could fade away to nothing, convinced it might be the most important detail of all. His hands curled into fists on the arms of his seat, his knuckles white. And finally, as if it had been there all along, just within his grasp, the memory fell into place in his thoughts.
Glen Forest Sheriff’s Department.
That’s what had been printed on the patch, in stark blue letters against a tan background, the words curling along the top and bottom curves of the patch. In its center there had been some sort of emblem, maybe the state seal, or even its flag, but that hardly mattered. What was important was that he’d been able to dredge up the memory, to assign at least a dim amount of meaning to what he’d seen—
His eyes snapped open.
Of course the man’s face had been significant to him, just as the words on the patch had been a vital ingredient in the fusion of images.
It hadn’t been a dream after all. It had been something far more significant. What he’d just experienced, in the crowded cabin of the airliner, had been a vision, a revelation. Whether Mahuk had anything to do with it was unknown, at least at this point. It could just as easily have been attributed to the strange artifact he’d carried onto the plane with him. The shaman had warned him of its power, and of its value. Could it have possibly played a role in the vision he’d just had?
He wanted to answer the question with a firm and uncompromising no, and a week ago, he might have. But now, after what he’d seen, after the odd feelings he’d just experienced, he couldn’t discount any possibility. Not yet, at least.
When the plane touched down, he would find a phone, try to contact Dr. Morris. If the old man had had a hand in John’s vision, maybe Morris might be able to provide some background on what his patient had experienced at that time. If there was a connection, he wanted to know about it.
The woman next to him was watching him again. “Everything all right?” she asked. Some of the concern had left her voice, and now she sounded more irritated than suspicious.
He tried to smile, but gave up. “I have . . . sort of an odd question to ask you. If I’
m not bothering you, that is.”
She marked her place in her book with one long finger and turned completely towards him.
“Go on.”
“I’m just wondering . . . when I was asleep just a few minutes ago, when you thought something was wrong?”
She nodded.
“Did I say anything in my sleep? Anything at all?”
“You were mumbling, if that’s what you mean. Nothing that I could make out.” She smiled, finding a trace of humor in his question. “If you’re worried you might have given out some secret, don’t worry. Like I said, I couldn’t understand a word you were saying.”
“Do you remember any of it at all?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I just thought—”
She broke off, a flush darkening her cheeks. “Well, it sounded to me like you were speaking in, you know, a different language. I know how terribly prejudiced that must sound—”
“Not at all.”
“Good. Thank you. Anyway, I couldn’t understand any of it. The only time I thought you were actually saying something was when you were repeating the same thing over and over.”
“I repeated something?”`
The woman nodded. “It was something like ‘a day, a day’, over and over again, like you were calling someone’s name.”
John’s mouth went dry. He tried to disguise the shock he felt, but knew he’d failed miserably as soon as he looked back at the woman. Her expression was once again filled with concern, a frown playing at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s nothing you said, don’t worry. But the word you heard . . . do you think it could have been ‘Atae’?”
She nodded, pointing a finger at him. “Yes, that’s it. That’s it exactly. What does it mean?”
John swallowed, hoping the sudden sick feeling he had in the pit of his stomach wasn’t obvious in his expression. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Primal Fear Page 10
