Get on with it, he scolded himself. So close. Be done with it.
But he did not get on with it. The longer he stared at the blanket, the more it seemed different. The more it seemed to change. And not just seem to change. It really was changing. Brad’s breath clogged inside him. If you looked carefully, you could see the folds moving, rearranging themselves in new patterns.
He rubbed his eyes, sure that when he looked again, the blanket, would be unstirring.
It wasn’t. It was definitely moving.
Dear God, the dog’s alive. Somehow, the fucking dog’s alive.
Except it wasn’t a dog shape anymore. As he watched, his legs paralyzed, the control of his bladder becoming more and more tenuous, the blanket began to unravel. First the end where the dog’s legs had been. Peeling itself back, slowly, excruciatingly slowly, to reveal a glimmer of pink. Pink toes. That’s what they were. Toes. A foot. Another foot. The smooth calf of a leg. The calves of two legs, two small, bony legs. A young child’s legs.
“No!” he screamed. “Noooo!”
He didn’t need to see more to know who it was.
“No! Stop it!” he screamed, his voice echoing hollowly in the cold.
But the blanket did not stop. It was unraveling—and not on its own mystical power. Brad could see fingers now, the fingers to two hands. The hands were moving the blanket. The hands were unwrapping what was inside the blanket. The hands were freeing whoever was inside.
With sudden force, the hands threw off the rest of the fabric, exposing Abbie, dressed in her favorite blue party dress. Exposing Abbie’s face, Abbie’s head, grossly misshapen, her hair matted with blood, just like Maria’s fur.
“How could you, Dad?” she croaked, and he could see crimson spittle, frothing out of her open lips. “My puppy, Daddy! My puppy! Mommy might do something awful like that, but how could you? How?”
Brad covered his eyes and dropped to the ground, an insane man mumbling insanities.
The clouds broke again, and for an instant Thunder Rise seemed to smile.
He walked quietly into her room. It was almost ten, far later than he’d ever expected to be. Abbie had been asleep for hours. Her condition was unchanged, the nurses informed him. Brad listened to her breathing, regular but faint. If he wanted to, he could believe some of the power had gone out of her lungs since he’d left her this afternoon. But he did not want to believe that. There were a lot of things he didn’t want to believe any longer.
The blanket had been a hallucination, of course. He believed that. A trick a fatigued, guilty mind had played on itself. It had passed as suddenly as it had arrived, and he had buried Maria without further incident.
A hallucination, yes.
But it had shaken him like nothing in his life.
As he slipped a five-dollar bill under Abbie’s pillow, wondering vaguely if she would even be aware tomorrow that the tooth fairy had visited, he realized he had made a decision. What Thomasine had called his pigheadedness had dissipated abruptly, completely, leaving only a bland numbness. It might be the wrong decision, but it was the only one to be made. He knew that.
Tomorrow I’ll see Moonlight, he thought. At least let him spell out precisely what he has in mind.
He pulled a chair next to Abbie’s bed. As he pretended to read People magazine, hoping it would lull him into sleep that would blot out the last twenty-four hours, Thomasine’s words echoed in his head.
. . . Abbie’s dying, Brad. Dying. Like the others . . .
If he’d heeded his instincts weeks ago, when the disease first appeared—heeded them and not his career, not that fucking career Heather so rightly criticized—none of this would have happened. He and Abbie would have moved away from Morgantown—far, far away—and everything would be fine now.
It was his fault Abbie was dying. His. Silently he began to cry.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Tuesday, December 23
Early Morning
After the rhamphorhynchus left, Abbie gladly slipped back into the place where you walked through shadows. Cool, comforting shadows, far, far away from this other place, this place of needles and tubes and aches all over and the feeling that you were so hot, so thirsty that you were going to burn up. She slept through the evening and night, not waking until almost eight the next morning. Brad was by her side when she began to stir. Her eyes fluttered open, and she tried unsuccessfully to pull herself up into a sitting position.
“There, there, now,” Brad said soothingly. “Easy, hon.” He had stopped asking his daughter how she felt. The nurses had said it was best she speak as little as possible. “To conserve her strength,” they’d said, and Brad had been struck again by how euphemistic so much of their dialogue with laymen was.
“You know what, Apple Guy?” he said when he’d fluffed her pillow and cooled her forehead with a damp cloth.
She did not respond.
“I think that maybe . . . just maybe . . . the tooth fairy might have visited last night. Want me to check?”
No response.
“Why, look!” he said, reaching under her pillow and speaking with forced excitement. He flashed the five-dollar bill. “A five-dollar bill! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the tooth fairy leaving a reward that big!”
Still, no response, not a smile or a nod. She was listening, she comprehended—Brad could see that in her eyes—but something was troubling her. And it wasn’t only her sickness, the way her body felt.
Something else was written on her face. He could see it there, sketched plainly in the furrows on her brow, in her eyebrows, knitted tightly.
It’s something about me, isn’t it?
She’s afraid of me.
It was a ridiculous thought, and he dismissed it immediately.
But there was no question she was afraid of something. He knew his daughter too well not to recognize fear, even when she was feeling so low. Even when her normal range of emotions was so distorted by sickness.
“What is it, honey?” he asked, ignoring the nurses’ admonishment. Abbie’s eyes locked with his, and then she turned away, the tears falling.
Brad reached for her hand, but she withdrew it.
In another few minutes she lapsed back into unconsciousness.
On the drive to Charlie’s, he puzzled over it.
Maybe she suddenly became afraid of the tooth fairy, he speculated. Maybe the tooth fairy showed up in one of her nightmares, like the dinosaur, and she woke up afraid of it. That would make sense. Or maybe she’s angry at me. Blaming me. Transferring her pain to me. I’ve read that very sick children will do that. Maybe she’s so sick she had no idea what she doing. Had no idea it was me. They were terrifying thoughts, and they gave him new conviction in what he had decided to do.
Charlie met him at the door.
Brad had expected a hostile man, but he did not find one. He found a man who’d had too little sleep for too long, a man who’d spent too many hours with too many worries—a man peculiarly like himself.
“Come in,” Charlie said, as if he’d been expecting Brad, and he had.
“Thank you.”
Brad stepped gingerly into the kitchen. He perused the cabin. Another expectation dashed. Brad had been sure anything reminiscent of the twentieth century would have been banned, and there was, in fact, a preponderance of old-fashioned furnishings. Lanterns and candles. A wood stove, sooty and black and huge and throwing off an incredible amount of heat. A pump sink. Blackened cast-iron pots. Ceramic ware that looked handmade. An oak kitchen table that was probably 150 years old. There also was a VCR and one of the biggest television sets Brad had ever seen. And a chair that was obviously the owner’s favorite—a La-Z-Boy recliner. A genuine Naugahyde La-Z-Boy recliner, for heaven’s sake.
Brad wasn’t sure what his environment said about Charlie, only that the machinery that made him tick couldn’t possibly be as simple as he’d thought.
“Please, sit. Would you like something to drink?” Charlie offered. �
��Coffee? Tea? I don’t have anything alcoholic.”
“No, thanks,” Brad said. “I’m fine.”
“Something to eat?”
“No. I don’t have much of an appetite these days.”
“Nor do I,” Charlie said, settling his long frame into his recliner.
“Before we talk about . . . why I’m here”—Brad faltered—”I—I owe you an apology. For what happened in the restaurant.”
Charlie saw how hard it was for him to say that, and he was impressed that Brad had been able to get it out. “You weren’t alone,” he replied. “There’s an old Quidneck saying about fools: The only thing worse than one of them is two of them. I lost my temper, too. I shouldn’t have. But this has been a very difficult period for me, as it has for you . . . for everyone.”
There was awkward silence, each man trying to gauge the other’s sincerity. Whether since or not, Brad thought, he’s certainly more civil. Of course, he knows why I’m here. He can justifiably claim victory, if that’s the way he wants to play it. Because he has won, if you want to look at it in those terms. A complete and total victory.
Charlie broke the silence. “You’re here because of your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“I’m very sorry for you. I don’t have a child of my own, but I have a nephew. I love him like a son.”
“Jimmy speaks highly of you.”
“I haven’t seen him in weeks. My sister won’t allow it. I’ve tried going through our mother, to no avail.”
“She mentioned something about a disagreement. She didn’t really go into it with me.” It was a shade of truth. Mrs. Fitzpatrick had actually given him all the details over coffee in the hospital cafeteria.
“There was an argument. A bad argument. You must think I’m always arguing.” Charlie laughed, a surprisingly contrite, revealing laugh.
“No, I don’t. I think Ginny feels very bad about what’s happened between you and her, but she’s under a lot of pressure. It’s hard being where she is. Believe me. Jimmy’s a very, very sick little boy.”
“I know. I’ve been calling the hospital every day. They give a condition update. I’ve watched his slide from fair to serious but stable.”
“That’s happened to Abbie, too,” Brad said quietly.
“It’s only a matter of time before they drop the stable part.” Brad did not respond.
“It’s insidious, the stealing of children’s souls,” Charlie said with new energy, new rage. “Even for the devil—which is what, I suppose, a Christian would call Hobbamock. You see, a child’s soul is pure. Very pure, like a child’s mind, or a child’s body, or a child’s perspective on the world around him. It is precisely that pureness that makes it so difficult for Hobbamock to work. Pureness makes it so slow. That is why the ‘disease,’ as people call it, is so prolonged.”
Brad could see that Charlie felt compelled to explain, even though no explanation had been sought. He let him continue without interruption.
“I think it would be different if Hobbamock were interested in adults. Adults would be easier prey. Quicker. How many adults have already sold their souls or had them stolen away—stolen by greed, or the love of money, or the pursuit of pleasure?
“So many. So very many. The developers, who have raped the land. The bankers and brokers, whose lives are defined by dollar bills. The generals and admirals with their killing machines. The pimps and pushers and child pornographers. The industrialists, who have polluted the water and earth and air in their blind pursuit of profits. The people I join at the tables in Las Vegas and Reno, the ones who drop twenty-five, fifty, a hundred grand a night—Thomasine has told you, has she not, how I make my living?—these are people without souls or with souls without any value.
“Hobbamock has no interest in damaged goods. He does not want a grown-up’s soul—not while there is a child’s to be had. That’s what I believe, anyway, although, like much of this, I could not prove it. He wants children’s souls. And he is greedy.”
“Sort of the consummate evil,” Brad said lamely.
“Can you imagine anything more evil than destroying children?” Charlie asked, his voice and face suddenly stern.
“No,” Brad answered quickly, “I cannot.”
“There isn’t. But Hobbamock is not the only evil. Christians—you see evil as the devil, a horned creature standing watch over hell. But that evil is more than Beelzebub, Hobbamock, whatever name you use. It comes in an endless variety of shapes and forms, goes by many names, knows every race and ethnic group. It is what makes the generals kill, the pushers sell their crack to grammar school kids. It is what drives the corporations to pollute rivers and oceans, to poison the earth with radioactivity. It is what makes certain foreign leaders let their own people starve while they sit down to ten-course dinners served on the finest china. It is Hitler, and Pinochet, and the Ayatollah. It is what this country did in Vietnam, what the Soviets did in Afghanistan, the horrors Idi Amin perpetrated in his own country against his own people. Universal.
“Oh, I can see the questions on your lips: ‘What of the Quidneck? Can Charlie Moonlight be so arrogant as to assume his own people are free of evil?’ The answer is no. We are not free, not now, not ever. We had our massacres and brutalities. So did many other tribes. We’ve had our cases of duplicity, and greed, and immorality.
“There have been those of us—I honestly believe they have been rare, but perhaps that is only wishful thinking—who had as little respect for nature as today’s greediest developer. My father often told the story of Mitark, a Quidneck warrior who killed the creatures of the forest wantonly, without regard for his needs. Eventually, when it was discovered who was leaving so many half-eaten carcasses to rot, he was burned to death.
“Can’t you see? If we are successful in defeating Hobbamock, who is to say he won’t rise again? Not that we should not try to stop him. We should. We must. My point is only that evil may be contained, but it can never be eliminated. It may be years, centuries, but there is every chance Hobbamock will rise again. Some other fool will release him—intentionally or not, it does not matter—and people as yet unborn will have to confront him. Can’t you see? Where there are people, Brad, there is evil. I’ve often thought—a thought I’ve kept to myself—that if fate had reversed our roles and the white man had been the Native American, the red man might have done the same thing to your people.”
Charlie stopped. Brad had been listening earnestly, impressed by Charlie’s philosophy. The Indian was not a highly educated man, but he was intelligent, probably well read. He had done what so many never do—he’d taken the time to contemplate how the world around him worked. Brad respected that. He wondered if he could explain his own philosophy of good and bad so eloquently.
“I must sound like some senile old theology professor.” Charlie smiled.
“No,” Brad said. “No, you don’t.”
“Thank you. You’re kind.”
“I have questions.”
“Of course.”
“A lot of questions.”
“I still have many myself.”
“You don’t believe Hobbamock is invincible?”
“No. My people centuries ago proved that. He is powerful— and gaining strength with each new child. But I do not think he is invincible . . . yet. Could he become invincible? Could he gain so much strength that nothing could stop him? This is a question that has kept me up nights.”
“But you’re convinced he can be defeated?”
“Absolutely.”
“By a kid carrying some kind of magic spear.”
“Yes,” Charlie said softly. “I had . . . an experience, what Quidnecks call pniese. What your Bible calls a revelation or apocalypse. The pniese made everything clear.”
“You think . . .” Brad could not pronounce his daughter’s name. “You think the kid carrying that spear will survive.”
“I do.”
“And get better.”
“Along with all the
others.”
“And Hobbamock will be reincarcerated in his cave.”
“Yes.”
“I have trouble with that, Charlie. With all of that. I mean, I suppose on some mystical level I could buy into your soul theory. The concept of a soul is very strong in Christianity, and don’t some of us, at least, believe you can sell your soul to the devil? I guess maybe I could even force myself to believe that the sword has some type of curative powers. Again, the history of Christianity—especially Catholicism—is crowded with stories of holy icons, shrouds, crucifixes, candles, you name it, all believed by some to have amazing powers.”
Charlie understood how great Brad’s concession was.
“But if Hobbamock has the power to steal souls,” Brad continued, “a frightening, incredible power, how could a few rocks piled up against the opening to his cave be anything more than a mere annoyance to him? Why couldn’t he just throw them aside, order them out of his way? Why would he have to wait for some fool to release him again, the way you say Whipple did?”
“Because those rocks will be piled after he has been lanced with the spear. I have already described how the sword does not kill, only weaken, how the evil never can be eradicated, and the best we can hope for is to contain it. I cannot tell you how the sword works. I could speculate that it taps into a child’s intrinsic purity and goodness, and that goodness, like the goodness of your god Jesus is greater than evil.
“But I could not prove this. I take the spear’s ability to stop Hobbamock—to suck from him even the power to move rocks—on faith. Just as you Christians take on faith that a man named Jesus of Nazareth died on a cross and three days later rose from the dead. You cannot demonstrate to me scientifically how Jesus was resurrected, can you?”
“No,” Brad admitted.
“But as a believer you take it on faith. Faith—is it not the very essence of Christianity? Of any religion, white man’s or red man’s or yellow man’s?”
“I suppose it is.”
“And so it is with Hobbamock. I believe these things to be so.” Another quiet—a deeper one—settled over the cabin. Each man was lost in his thoughts. Decision time was near.
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