Now
Miles dreamed he was swimming in a pool and the water around him was gradually darkening. He popped his head above water and he was no longer in a pool but in a lake. His limbs were tired, the closest shore was several hundred yards away, and he knew that if he did not get started now, he would not be able to make it. He began paddling as hard as he could, but when he looked up again, there was no shore.
There was no land. He was in the middle of an ocean, and the water was black. Above, the sky was gray and cloud less. He felt something cold touch his feet, felt something slimy slide past his midsection. Then hands grabbed his limbs and dragged him down into water that lightened from black to the deep crimson color of blood. His lungs were about to burst from the pressure, and involuntarily he opened his mouth to breathe, but there was only the red water, and he sucked it into his lungs and knew that he was about to die.
He awoke to feel an arm around his midsection, and he opened his eyes, looked next to him--and saw Claire.
He smiled, reached over, touched her cheek. She stirred in her sleep, rolled omo her side.
Claire had spent the night, and they had gone to bed together They had made love. It was something he'd been thinking about ever since he'd called her, and he still couldn't believe that it had actually happened. The experience had been tremendously exciting, but it had also been
comfortable, acombination he had never before encountered. Their past had informed their present in a way that was wonderfully liberating, a their lovemaking had been exhilarating.
They had still not talked about where they were in their relationship, whether they were getting back together permanently or if this was just a little fling, a nostalgic visit back to the good old days. They'd talked of everything else, conversing with a candor that had never been possible during their marriage. But somehow they could not seem to broach the subject of their feelings for each other. It was as if both of them were afraid the spell would be broken. Miles glanced over at the clock on the dresser. Seven-fifteen!
He kicked off the covers, leaped out of bed, and shook Claire awake. He had forgotten to set the alarm last night, and they were going to have to hurry like hell if either of them hoped to make it to work on time.
"Get up!" he said. "It's fifteen after seven!" Announcement of the time jolted her into action in a way his shaking of her had not, and for five minutes they ran around the bedroom grabbing clothes and putting them on, practically bumping heads, like some silent screen comedy duo. She was faster than he was, having gathered her hair into a quick ponytail while he wet his head under the sink faucet so his hair would be manageable enough to comb. She kissed him on the cheek as he was brushing his teeth, said good-bye, and promised to come by after work. Before he could even rinse and spit, she was out the door and gone.
Traffic as usual was horrendous, and he had plenty of time to think while he sat in an unmoving line of cars that followed the path of the freeway downtown.
He had opened up to Claire about his visit with Hec Tibbert, telling her the story of Wolf Canyon, even talking about the homeless woman in the mall and the possibility that his
father was tied up in this somehow. She suggested that he sta out the shopping center or the streets around it and see if he couldn't find the old lady again. A lot of homeless people were territorial, so the woman might be still hanging around.
He himself thought it would be more productive to confront Liam once more, this time taking Tibbert with him. Liam obviously knew a lot more than he was telling. It was highly likely that he knew what was behind all this, and if Miles could get the two men together and start them talking, perhaps he'd be able to squeeze some information out of the cantankerous old buzzard.
He reached the office, parked, walked inside. Naomi flagged him down the second he stepped off the elevator. "Where've you been? One of your clients has been frantically trying to get ahold of you all morning.
All morning? It's only eight-thirty."
"And she's been calling me every five minutes since seven-thirty, when I got in. I wouldn't be surprised if there are fifty messages lined up on your voice mail." She handed him a stack of pink call slips.
"Here." Miles glanced down at the top slip. Marina Lewis.
He knew the feeling that settled into his midsection, it was the same one he'd had when the coroner called to tell him his father had walked away. He hurried over to his cubicle, ignoring the blinking message light on his phone, and immediately dialed Marina in Arizona. She answered, too fast, on the first ring. "Hello?"
"It's Miles Huerdeen. I got your messages. What is wrong?
"My father. I think something's happened to him."
It was as if she'd been holding her breath, damming up her emotions, because while her voice started out strong, it ended in almost a sob, and he suspected that hysterics were
very near the surface. She'd obviously been stressing out over this all morning, perhaps all night, and he did not want to be the one to push her past the breaking point, so he said simply, "Well me."
"I can't get ahold of him." He could hear the panic in her voice.
"He's not answering his phone, hasn't answered since I started calling last night. He never goes anywhere, and even if he did, he'd be back this morning. Something's happened. I already called the police, but they won't send anyone down. Could you go over there and make sure he's all right?"
"Of course," Miles said. "I'll head out right now. It should take a half hour to forty-five minutes, depending on the traffic. Don't worry. I'm sure he's fine. I'll call you from there."
He hung up. But the feeling in his gut told him that Liam Connor wasn't fine, that he was in fact dead.
The drive out to Santa Monica seemed endless. Traffic wasn't as bad as he'd expected, but every second seemed to drag out interminably, and each stoplight or slight delay caused him to hit his steering wheel in frustration. If something was wrong, he was no doubt too late to do anything about it, but he could not shake the irrational feeling that if he arrived in time, he might be able to save the man's life.
He pulled into Liam's driveway at precisely nine o'clock, according to the all-news station on the radio, and he hurriedly got out of the car, ran up to the front door. He rang the doorbell, waited. Rang again.
Waited.
He knocked loudly. "Liam?" he called. No answer.
This was going to be bad. Whatever it was, it was going to be bad.
He tried the door, jiggled the knob, but as he'd suspected, it was locked. He had tools to get around inconveniences
such as that, but he had not brought them with him. He stepped around the side of the house, intending to try the back door before searching for a loose or open window.
He hurried around a hydrangea bush, over a brownish weedy section of lawn, and ducked under the thorny branches of a low-growing lemon tree.
"Liam?" he called. The old man was in the backyard. On the fence.
If Miles had had any doubts about the supernatural aspects of this case, about the power of curses or witchcraft or voodoo or whatever it was, they were instantly dispelled.
For Liam Connor had not merely been affixed to the fence, he had merged with it. He was naked, placed in a pose of crucifixion, and his body had melded with the boards, his skin taking on the whorled texture of the redwood, the outlines of knotholes visible beneath the hair on his arms and legs. In an area where a fence slat was clearly missing, Liam's form had been poured into the breach, approximating the shape and grain of the board while still retaining the coloring of human skin. The joining was so seamless at several points that it was impossible to tell where Liam ended and the fence began.
Only his head had escaped this synthesis. It hung forward, onto his chest, and did not touch wood even at the neck. The expression permanently etched on his static features was one of terror and indescribable agony, and his wide-open eyes, stared unseeingly down at the ground.
Miles remained rooted in place, shocked int
o inaction. He flashed back to the sight of Montgomery Jones' torn body-although even that, gruesome as it was, could not compare with the insanity of this.
Confronted with the enormity of a power that could not only kill a man but transform his flesh into something entirely inhuman, Miles was suddenly filled with a feeling of hopelessness.
Part of him was tempted to walk across the lawn, reach
OUt, and touch the sections of Liam's body that had become one with the wood, but though he was almost positive that whatever had done this was gone, he was still afraid, frightened to the core of his being. He turned and ran, unable to remain alone for even a second longer in that backyard.
He'd left his cellular phone in the car. He yanked open the door and grabbed the phone from its place on the passenger seat. He knew he should call Marina first, but he wasn't sure what to say, didn't know how to break the news to her. With trembling fingers, he pressed 9-1-1 instead, calling the police. He spelled out the pertinent facts in a voice that sounded far stronger than it had any right to be, and promised the woman questioning him that he would remain on-site until the authorities arrived.
Talking to the dispatcher helped organize his thoughts, gave him the chance to go through a trial run, and immediately after terminating the call to the police, before his courage failed him, he punched in Marina Lewis' number to tell her that her father was dead.
Janet Engstrom was afraid of her uncle.
She tried to tell herself that it was a fear of death, it was because his condition was worsening, because he was obviously going to die, that she felt so scared when she was near him. After all, her parents' deaths in the accident had been traumatic, and not a day went by that she did not think of the way they'd looked when she'd gone to identify their bodies. But that was not why she was afraid of her uncle.
No, it was because he was changing, because he was becoming someone she didn't know.
The strange thing was that she felt closer to her uncle than to anyone else in her family, even her parents. He was
the only one to whom she had admitted that she'd been molested as a young teenager. She'd told him of her parents' Halloween party, how she could hear the increasingly loud sounds of the partygoers through the closed door of her bedroom, how she'd sneaked out to go the bathroom and had been sitting on the toilet when the clown staggered in. She'd tried to pull up her pajama bottoms, started to yell at him to get out, but he'd lurched across the bathroom, shoved a hand over her mouth, and hit her hand away from her crotch. Then he was pushing her onto the floor, spreading her legs, and he was on her and in her and then it was over. She thought it was Mr. Woodrow from down the street, but it was impossible to tell behind the clown makeup, and afterward she could never be sure.
Her uncle had listened and offered her a shoulder to cry on. He had told her it was not her fault, that she was not used goods but the victim of a violent crime and that one day she would meet the man of her dreams and all of this would be merely a dim and distant memory.
She had never met the man of her dreams, but she had grown up to be a healthy, normal, fairly well-adjusted woman, and if her life did not have a fairy-tale ending, it was not due to the ripple effect of the rape. In fact, what sanity and happiness she possessed was probably due in large part to her uncle's supportive influence.
So when she learned that he had cancer and that it was inoperable, she had right a way returned to Cedar City, vowing to take care of him.
She'd had been prepared to quit her job, but The Store had arranged to transfer her to their Cedar City outlet and had even helped her find an apartment. Her uncle told her she could stay with him, but until he became so sick and weak that he required round-the-clock care, she wanted to have a place of her own so she could have at least a little privacy.
She'd been cooking for him for the past four months,
cleaning his house, taking him to his chemo sessions, keeping him company, being there for him the way he had been there for her. Other relatives called once or twice a week, a few had even stopped by Cedar City for a quick weekend visit, but she was the only one with him day in and day out. It was emotionally draining, and she'd felt sad and angry, depressed and guilty, all of the usual emotions a person experienced sitting helplessly by, watching a loved one die. But now she was also afraid. Because now he was walking.
She didn't know what to make of this, didn't know what to do. He was fading fast. The color in his face was, if anything, even worse than it had been before: white and pale and dry. But he was now pacing around the perimeter of his room, when for the past six days he had been unable to get out of bed at all. He looked like death warmed over, and the juxtaposition of his cancer-ravaged body with this strong purposeful stride that seemed not to be his but appeared to have taken over him, forcing his body to go along with its aggressively inhuman rhythm, terrified her.
The hospital had support groups for relatives of cancer patients, doctors and psychologists who were willing to provide advice and assistance, but the thought of turning to one of those people about this was out of the question. At work, she thought about telling Donise, the only person at the store with whom she was at all close, but Donise had her own family problems, and the two of them were not yet intimate enough that she felt Comfortable imposing upon her friend.
She should really be talking to his doctors. This was not a feeling or an emotion. This was something physical, concrete, an action that could be seen and measured and documented. He needed to be examined by a professional, and it was her responsibility to call the hospital and tell someone.
But she didn't want to.
She was afraid.
He had started walking the day before yesterday, and she did not think he had stopped since. It could not be good for his condition, but she still did not want to alert the doctors. She had the sense that this was entirely unconnected to his cancer, that its cause was above and beyond anything with which she was familiar, and that no doctor on earth would be able to tell her what was happening.
She did not want to hear that.
And she did not want to know what was behind this unless it was simple, logical, and completely ordinary.
The truth was, she wanted her uncle to die.
It was a hard thing to admit, but at this point, she honestly felt that death would be better for him, for her and for the rest of the family.
He had nothing to look forward to other than increased pain and decreased quality of life.
She drove straight home after work. She could see from the street that there was a crowd of kids gathered around the duplex, and the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that it had something to do with her uncle. Sure enough, he came walking around the side of the house, wearing nothing but his pajama bottoms. The kids started laughing and yelling, throwing dirt clods at him. One hit the side of his face, another clump of mud spattered against his bare chest, but he seemed oblivious and kept walking, never varying in his stride.
Janet slammed to a halt in front of the driveway and ran out of her car, furious. The kids scattered at her approach, and she yelled at them that she was going to tell their parents.
Her uncle had disappeared around the east side of the duplex, and she chased after him, catching up to him in the backyard.
"Uncle John!" she called, but he did not stop or slow down. He continued walking, moving past the stunted juniper tree and around the opposite side of the duplex. She ran and caught up with him.
"Let's go inside. Come on." She reached out, grabbed his wrist, but then instantly recoiled. His skin-was cold and rubbery, lifeless, and the muscles beneath felt lax and totally without tension.
He was dead.
She knew it instinctively, and she was filled with horror and revulsion as she dropped his hand and backed away. He continued walking, ignoring her, his dead eyes stating at a fixed point in the sky, his mouth hanging slightly open, a hint of tongue poking between parted teeth.
She followed him to
the front, ran up the porch steps into the house, closed and locked the door.
Only then did she start to scream.
Then
Outside, winter winds were howling through the canyon.
William lay awake in the darkness, next to the sleeping Isabella, feeling her comforting warmth beneath the quilt. Her skin was so smooth, she seemed so soft when she was asleep, but there was an inner core of iron within her, and whether this was hardness or strength he had never been able to tell. Her gifts were obviously powerful, very powerful greater perhaps than his own, but this he knew only through conversation and observation. She had told him of conjurings she'd performed, and he had seen her do magic that was beyond the capabilities of anyone else in Wolf Canyon. But he could sense nothing from her. He felt no power, could not read her or in any way gauge her abilities objectively. She was a cipher to him--to all of them, he suspected--and there were times that he wished he had never brought her back to Wolf Canyon.
But he loved her, loved her deeply, passionately, obsessively and that made up for all doubts and questions, over came all regrets.
He closed his eyes, tried to sleep. He was riding up the canyon tomorrow. According to Joseph, who had just re turned from a cattle-buying trip to Prescott, a family in a wagon had set up camp at the head of the canyon next to the river. Ordinarily, that would not be a problem, but Joseph said that it looked like this family was fixing to stay. The
man had all sorts of gold-mining equipment, sluice boxes and the like, and was planning to stake a claim on their land.
Isabella had wanted to go, but William had overruled her and said that he would take care of the problem. She'd known why he didn't want her to accompany him, and she'd only looked at him in that hard way she had and said, "Make sure you do, take care of it."
"I will," he told her.
His greatest regret had always been that Isabella was not able to bear him children, that even their combined powers had not been enough to create life from their loins. But for the first time he thought that that might be for the best. He was not sure what kind of mother she would be and was not at all certain that he wanted to see the type of child she would produce.
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