Dean Koontz - (1984)

by The Servants Of Twilight(Lit)

  She jackknifed onto her feet an instant after hitting bottom, in spite of the pain in her leg, and she clawed for firm handholds, for the hidden side of the gully or pit into which she had stepped.

  But she couldn't find it. Just snow. Soft, yielding snow, infuriatingly insubstantial.

  She was still screaming. A clump of snow fell into her open mouth, choking her. The pit was caving in above her, on all sides, pouring down around her, up to her shoulders, then up to her chin, Jesus, and she kept pushing the snow away from her head, desperate to keep her face and arms free, but it closed over her faster than she could dig it away.

  Above, Charlie's face appeared. He was lying on the ground, leaning over the edge of the drop, looking down at her. He was shouting something. She couldn't understand what he was saying.

  She flailed at the snow, but it weighed down on her, an ever increasing cascade, pouring in from the drift all around, until at last her aching arms were virtually pinned at her sides. No! And still the snow collapsed inward, up to her chin again, up to her mouth. She sealed her lips, closed her eyes, sure that she was going under altogether, that it would cover her head, that Charlie would never be able to get her out, that this would be her grave .

  But then the cave-in ceased before her nose was buried.

  She opened her eyes, looked up from the bottom of a white funnel, toward Charlie. The walls of snow were still, but at any moment they might tremble and continue to collapse on top of her.

  She was rigid, afraid to move, breathing hard.

  Joey. What about Joey?

  She had released the tether (and Joey) as soon as she'd felt herself going into the pit. She hoped Charlie had stopped Joey before he, too, had plunged over the edge. In his trancelike state, the boy would not necessarily have halted just because she had gone under. If he had fallen into the drift, they would probably never find him. The snow would have closed over him, and they wouldn't be able to locate him by listening to his screams, not in this howling wind, not when his cries would be muffled by a few feet of snow.

  She wouldn't have believed her heart could beat this fast or hard without bursting.

  Above, Charlie reached down with his good arm, his hand open, making a come-tome gesture with his fingers.

  If she dug her arms free of the snow that now pinned them, she could grab hold of him, and together they could try to work her up and out of the hole. But in freeing her arms, she might trigger another avalanche that would cover her head with a couple of feet of snow. She had to be careful, move slowly and deliberately.

  She twisted her right arm back and forth under the snow, packing the snow away from it, making a hollow space, then turned her palm up and clawed at the stuff with her fingers, loosening it, letting it slide back into the hollow by her arm, and in seconds she had made a tunnel up to the surface. She snaked her arm through the tunnel, and it came into sight, unhampered from fingertips to above the elbow. She reached straight up, gripped Charlie's extended hand. Maybe she would make it, after all. She clawed her other arm free, grabbed Charlie's wrist.

  The snow around her shifted. Just a little.

  Charlie began to pull, and she heaved herself up.

  The white walls started falling in again. The snow sucked at her as if it were quicksand. Her feet left the ground as Charlie hauled her up, and she kicked out, frantically searching for the wall of the gully, struck it, tried to d ig her feet in against it and use it to shove herself toward the top. He eased backwards, pulling her farther up. This must be agony for him, as the strain passed through his good arm and shoulder into his wounded shoulder, sapping whatever strength he had left. But it was working. Thank God. The sucking snow was letting go of her. She was now high enough to risk holding on to Charlie's arm with only one hand, while she grabbed at the brink of the gully with the other. Ice and frozen earth gave way under her clutching fingers, but she grabbed again, and this time she gripped something solid. With both Charlie and solid earth to cling to, she was able to lever herself up and out and onto her back, gasping, whimpering, with the unnerving feeling that she was escaping the cold maw of a living creature and had nearly been devoured by a beast composed of ice and snow.

  Suddenly she realized that the shotgun, which had been stung from her shoulder when she'd fallen into the trap, had slipped off, or the strap had broken. It must still be in the pit. But the

  hole had closed up behind her when Charlie had pulled her out .

  It was lost.

  It didn't matter. Spivey's people wouldn't be following them through the blizzard.

  She got onto her hands and knees and crawled away from the snow trap, looking for Joey. He was there, on the ground, curled on his side, in a fetal position, knees drawn up, head tucked down.

  Chewbacca was with him, as if he knew the boy needed his warmth, though the animal seemed to have no warmth to give .

  His coat was crusted with snow and ice, and there was ice on his ears. He looked at her with soulful brown eyes full of confusion, suffering, and fear.

  She was ashamed she had blamed him, in part, for Joey's withdrawal and that she had wished she'd never seen him. She put one hand on his large head, and, even as weak as he was, he nuzzled her affectionately.

  Joey was alive, conscious, but hurting bad. Impacted snow clogged his ski mask. If she didn't get him out of this wind soon, he would be frost-bitten. His eyes were even more distant than before.

  She tried to get him to stand, but he couldn't. Although she was exhausted and shaky, although her left leg still hurt from the fall she had taken, she would have to carry him.

  She dug the compass out of her pocket, studied it, and turned to face east-northeast, toward the section of woodland where the caves ought to be. She could see only five or six feet, and then the storm fell like a heavy drapery.

  Surprised by the extent of her own stamina, she scooped Joey up, held him in both arms. A mother's instinct was to save her child, regardless of the cost to herself, and her maternal desperation had loosed some last meager store of adrenaline.

  Charlie moved in beside her. He was on his feet, but he looked bad, almost as terrible as Joey.

  "Got to get into the forest!" she shouted ." Out of this wind!"

  She didn't think he could have heard her, not with the banshee storm shrieking across the meadow, but he nodded as if he understood her intention, and they moved into the white-out, trusting in the compass to lead them to the comparative shelter of

  the mammoth trees, shuffling with exaggerated caution to avoid falling into another snow trap.

  Christine looked back at Chewbacca. The dog was getting up to follow, but creakily. Even if he could regain his feet, there was almost no chance that he would make it to the trees with them. This would probably be the last glimpse she ever had of him; the storm would swallow him just as the snow-filled pit had tried to swallow her.

  Each step was an ordeal.

  Wind. Snow. Cruel cold.

  Dying would be easier than going on.

  That thought scared her and gave her the will to take a few more steps.

  One good thing: There was no doubt that their trail would be completely erased. The raging wind and arctic-fierce snowfall would make it impossible for Spivey's fanatics to follow them.

  Snow dropped from the sky as if it were being dumped out of huge bins, came hurtling down in sheets and clumps.

  Another step. Another.

  As if plating them with suits of armor, the wind welded the snow to their arms and legs and backs and chests, until their clothes were the same color as the landscape around them.

  Something ahead. A dark shape. It materialized in the storm, then was blotted out by an even more furious squall of snow. It appeared again. Didn't fade away this time. And another one .

  Huge blobs of darkness, shadowy formations rising up beyond snowy curtains. Gradually they became clearer, better defined .

  Yes. A tree. Several trees.

  They trudged at least fifty y
ards into the forest before they found a place where the interlacing branches of the evergreens were so thick overhead that a significant amount of snow was shut out. Visibility improved. They were free of the wind's brutal fists, as well.

  Christine stopped, put Joey down, peeled off his snow-caked ski mask. Her heart twisted when she saw his face.

  Kyle Baflowe, Burt Tully, and Edna Vanoff gathered around Grace at the edge of the forest, under the last of the evergreens .

  The wind licked at them from the meadow, as if hungry for their warmth. With her gloves off, Grace held her arms out, palms spread toward the meadow beyond the trees, receiving psychic impressions. The others waited silently for her to decide what to do next.

  Out on the open floor of the valley, the fulminating blizzard was like an endless chain of dynamite detonations, a continuous roar, the violent waves of wind like concussions, the snow as thick as smoke. It was appropriate weather for the end of the world.

  " They went this way," Mother Grace said.

  Barlowe already knew their quarry had left the forest here, for their tracks told him as much. Which direction they had gone after heading into the open was another question; although they had left here only a short while ago, their footprints had not survived much past the perimeter of the woods. He waited for Mother Grace to tell him something he could not discern for himself.

  Worriedly studying the snow-lashed field in front of them, Burt Tully said, "We can't go out there. We'd die out there."

  Suddenly Grace lowered her hands and backed away from the meadow, farther into the trees.

  They moved with her, alarmed by the look of terror on her face.

  "Demons, " she said hoarsely.

  "Where?" Edna asked.

  Grace was shaking ." Out there

  "In the storm?" Barlowe asked.

  "Hundreds . . . thousands . . .

  waiting for us . . . hiding in the drifts . . . waiting to rise up..... and destroy us . . ."

  Barlowe looked out at the open fields. He could see nothing

  but snow. He wished he had Mother Grace's Gift. There were malevolent spirits near, and he could not detect them, and that made him feel frighteningly vulnerable.

  "We must wait here," Grace said, "until the storm passes."

  Burt Tully was clearly relieved.

  Barlowe said, "But the boy-"

  "Grows stronger," Grace admitted.

  "And Twilight?"

  "Grows near."

  "It we wait-"

  "We might be too late," she said.

  Barlowe said, "Won't God protect us if we go into the meadow? Aren't we armored with His might and mercy?"

  "We must wait," was the only answer she gave him ." And pray. I I

  Then Kyle Barlowe knew how late it really was. So late that they must be more vigilant than they had ever been before. So late that they could no longer be bold. Satan was now as strong and real a presence in this world as God Himself. Maybe the scales had not yet tipped in the devil's direction, but the balance was delicate.

  Christine peeled off the boy's ice-crusted ski mask, and Charlie had to look away from the child's face when it was revealed.

  I've failed them, he thought.

  Despair flooded into him and brought tears to his eyes.

  He was sitting on the ground, with his back to a tree. He rested his head against the trunk, too, closed his eyes. took several deep breaths, trying to stop shaking, trying to think positively, trying to convince himself that everything would turn out all right, failing. He had been an optimist all his life, and this recent acquaintance with soul-shaking doubt was devastating.

  The Tylenol and the anaesthetic powder had only slight effect on his pain, but even that minimal relief was fading. The pain

  in his shoulder was gaining strength again, and it was beginning to creep outward, as before, across his chest and up his neck and into his head.

  Christine was talking softly and encouragingly to Joey, though she must have wanted to weep at the sight of him, as Charlie had done.

  He steeled himself and looked at the boy again.

  The child's face was red, lumpy, and badly misshapen from hives caused by the fierce cold. His eyes were nearly swollen shut; the edges of them were caked with a gummy, mucous-like substance, and the lashes were matted with the same stuff. His nostrils were mostly swollen shut, so he was breathing through his mouth, and his lips were cracked, puffy, bleeding. Most of his face was flushed an angry red, but two spots on his cheeks and one on the tip of his nose were gray-white, which might indicate frostbite, though Charlie hoped to God it wasn't.

  Christine looked at Charlie, and her own despondency was evident in her troubled eyes if not in her voice ." Okay. We've got to move on. Got to get Joey out of this cold. We've got to find those caves."

  "I don't see any sign of them," Charlie said.

  "They must be near," she said ." Do you need help getting up? "

  "I can make it," he said.

  She lifted Joey. The boy didn't hold on to her. His arms hung down, limp. She glanced at Charlie.

  Charlie sighed, gripped the tree, and got laboriously to his feet, quite surpri sed when he made it all the way up.

  But he was even more surprised when, a second later, Chewbacca appeared, cloaked in snow and ice, head hung low, a walking definition of misery. When he had last seen the dog, out in the meadow, Charlie had been sure the animal would collapse and die in the storm.

  "My God," Christine said when she saw the dog, and she looked as startled as Charlie was.

  It's important, Charlie thought. The dog pulling through-that means we're all going to survive.

  He wanted very much to believe it. He tried hard to convince himself. But they were a long way from home.

  The way things had been going for them, Christine figured they would be unable to find the caves and would simply wander through the forest until they dropped from exhaustion and exposure to the cold. But fate finally had a bit of luck in store for them, and they found what they were looking for in less than ten minutes.

  The trees thinned out in the neighborhood of the caves because the land became extremely rocky. It sloped up in uneven steps of stone, in humps and knobs and ledges and set-backs .

  Because there were fewer trees, more snow found its way in here, and there were some formidable drifts at the base of the slope and at many points higher up, where a set-back or a narrower ledge provided accommodation. But there was more wind, too, whistling down from the tops of the surrounding trees, and large areas of rock were swept bare of snow. She could see the dark mouths of three caves in the lower formations, where she and Charlie might be able to climb, and there were half a dozen others visible in the upper formations, but those were out of reach. There might be more openings, now drifted shut and hidden, because this portion of the valley wall appeared to be a honeycomb of tunnels, caves, and caverns.

  She carried Joey to a jumble of boulders at the bottom of the slope and put him down, out of the wind.

  Chewbacca limped after them and slumped wearily beside his master. It was astonishing that the dog had made it all this way, but it was clear he would not be able to go much farther.

  With a grateful sigh and a gasp of pain, Charlie lowered himself to the ground beside Joey and the dog.

  The look of him scared Christine as much as Joey's tortured face. His bloodshot eyes were fevered, two hot coals in his bumtout face. She was afraid she was going to wind up alone out here with the bodies of the only two people she loved, caretaker of a wilderness graveyard that would eventually become her own final resting place.

  "I'll look in these caves," she told Charlie, shouting to be heard now that they were more or less in the open again ." I'll see which is the best for us."

  He nodded, and Joey didn't react, and she turned away from

  them, clambered over the rocky terrain toward the first dark gap in the face of the slope.

  She wasn't sure if this part of the valley wa
ll was limestone or granite, but it didn't matter because, not being a spelunker, she didn't know which kind of rock made for the safest caves, anyway. Besides, even if these were unsafe, she would have to make use of them; she had nowhere else to go.

  The first cave had a low, narrow entrance. She took the flashlight out of her backpack and went into that hole in the ground .

  She was forced to crawl on her hands and knees, and in some places the passage was tight enough to require some agile squirming. After ten or twelve feet, the tunnel opened into a room about fifteen feet on a side, with a low ceiling barely high enough to allow her to stand up. It was big enough to house them, but far from ideal. Other passages led off the room, deeper into the hillside, perhaps to larger chambers, but none of them was of sufficient diameter to let her through. She went out into the wind and snow again.

  The second cave wasn't suitable, either, but the third was as close to ideal as she could expect to find. The initial passageway was high enough so she didn't have to crawl to enter, wide enough so she didn't have to squeeze. There was a small drift at the opening, but she stamped through it with no difficulty .

  Five feet into the hillside, the passage turned sharply to the right, and in another six feet it turned just as sharply back to the left, a double battle that kept the wind out. The first chamber was about twenty feet wide and thirty or thirty-five feet long, as much as twelve to fifteen feet high at the near end, with a smooth floor, walls that were fractured and jagged in some places and water-smoothed in others.

  To her right, another chamber opened off this one. It was smaller, with a lower ceiling. There were several stalactites and stalagmites that looked as if they had been formed from melted gray wax, and in a few places they met at the middle of the room to form wasp-wasted pillars. She shone the flashlight beam around, saw a passage at the far end of the second room and guessed it led to yet a third cavern, but that was all she needed to know.

  The first room had everything they required. Toward the back,

  the floor rose and the ceiling dropped down, and in the last five feet the floor shelved up abruptly, forming a ledge five feet deep and twenty feet wide, only four feet below the ceiling. Exploring this raised niche with her flashlight, Christine discovered a twofoot-wide hole in the rock above it, boring up into darkness, and she realized she had found a huge, natural fireplace with its own flue. The hole must lead into another cave farther up the hillside, and either that chamber or another beyond it would eventually vent to the outside; smoke would rise naturally toward the distant promise of open air.