Okay, that wasn’t fair. She was shooting really, really low there. I didn’t intend to kill the bastard out of some bizarre and lethal sex fetish. I was going to do it because he desperately needed it. I was going to do it to balance the scales. I was going to do it out of…rage.
Crap. Okay, so maybe my motives weren’t so pure. Nobody’s perfect. I would remind myself to feel really rotten about it later. I glared around her at the son-of-a-bitch, trying to visualize where to make the first thrust.
But Casey seemed determined to ruin that too.
“Please, Mark,” she actually sounded desperate, and I had never seen such a look of appeal in her eyes. “Ed really wouldn’t want this. He would want you to get me out of here. Let’s do that, please? Forget Tommy. He’s done. Let’s go.”
I could barely believe my ears. I could tell by the look of pure loathing she cast in his direction Casey hated Tommy with every fiber of her being. He had killed the man who had been her surrogate father, and who she probably loved more than any other guy on the planet. If anybody should want him dead, it would be her. Yet here she stood, frantically trying to keep me from killing the piece of garbage.
Why? What in the hell for?
And yet even as I struggled with that question, I realized the answer stared me right in the face.
Those crossed axes on her do-rag were not weapons. And they weren’t just some design that happened to catch her eye either. They were a symbol for something integral to her. They were tools, and they were used to save people.
They represented everything she stood for, and that was simply what she did.
Yeah, she could be difficult and obstinate, and she might even lose her temper and want to throw down with somebody who really pissed her off, but when shit got real and lives were on the line…that became her prime directive. Ed had done it, her father had died doing it, and her path may as well have been set in stone too. They saved lives.
And now I realized in her current attempt to do that, she was trying to save a great big piece of my soul as well.
Doug Stafford had raised one hell of a daughter.
And when he fell, Ed Morgan had been there for her when she needed him most. Now, although though she didn’t know it, they were both looking at me through her eyes; waiting to see if I had what it took to step up...or if I would do the easy thing and lose myself in a bout of pointless vengeance when I had more important matters to attend to.
Which didn’t give me a whole lot of choice.
Still, letting go of that spear had to be one of the hardest acts of my life. My hands actually shook with the effort it took to do it. But I did, and the relief on Casey’s face was an appalling sign of how far out on the edge I had wandered.
“Go get the lantern,” I sighed. “I’ll join you in a minute. But I’m going to explain a couple of the facts of life to this asshole first.”
Casey studied me for a second, then gave a slow nod. She apparently decided I had come back to my senses enough to trust me. The girl did as instructed, giving Tommy a wide berth on her way.
I walked over to where I first attacked Tommy, and picked up the other item he had dropped there. Then I retrieved the torch burning on the ground near the praying angel before returning to a spot about ten feet from where he lay. Once there, I squatted so I faced him directly.
“This,” I held up the bloody strip from Ashlyn’s pajamas, “was never her.”
Then to his dawning horror, I did what I should have done back at the cell tower.
“It also,” I continued as I held it over the torch’s flame, “does not belong to you.”
He screamed as it caught fire, but was simply too weak to mount an attempt to stop me. I watched the cloth curl and burn before dropping the last scrap on the torch head to be consumed. Then I leaned forward and lowered my voice so only he and I could hear it.
“On the other hand,” I added, “you can keep your little headband and necklace. Wherever she is, I bet Darla’s going to find it funnier than hell when this torch burns out and the smell of her blood leads every predator in the area straight to you. Have fun with that.”
I rose to my feet, dropped the torch and headed back for Casey. His karma would find him, and I still had my own job to do.
She waited in silence, standing by the lantern, with the bow in one hand and the spear in the other. The combination of worry, grief, and exhaustion on her face said more than any words could express. I felt a slight bit of shame at the knowledge I had contributed to that.
“We’re done here,” I told her. “Let’s go find Stella.”
As we turned to leave, I took the spear and the bow from her. Then I drew my arm back and threw the bow far, far out into the darkness. Tommy howled behind us but I ignored him. As soon as we reached safety, I intended to do the same with the spear.
It was a weapon, and there is a place for such things in the world…but I had chosen to be a man of tools.
Chapter Fifteen: The Man at the Crossroads
As it turned out, we reached “safety” less than fifteen minutes later.
We exited the front of the graveyard and started our way south. But by then all the abuse I suffered in my fight with Tommy had finally made itself felt. I think I went from swaggering victor to hobbling invalid within the space of three hundred feet. Fortunately, I’m only an average sized guy because poor Casey tried to both support me and keep herself erect as we crept along the front of the cemetery.
She “led the way” because my attention had been pretty much reduced to trying not to stumble while keeping as much of my weight off of her as possible. Any attempt at self-assessing the damage was doomed from the start. I couldn’t find a single square inch of my body that didn’t hurt.
So I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise that when the world suddenly brightened, and Casey jerked to a halt, I responded by falling flat on my face.
“Ow?” I informed anybody who might care nearby.
“Mark,” I could tell by Casey’s urgent whisper she now knelt beside me, “don’t move. Something’s going on. The sign just lit up at the Crossroads.”
The Crossroads was the store and gas station at the intersection we were heading to. It sat on our side of the highway, across from the road leading to the overpass over the train yard. My hope had been to check the windows to see if anything lurked inside, and if not maybe risk breaking in for some temporary shelter while getting Casey and me something to eat and drink.
But now?
I raised my head and squinted into the light in front of us.
The sign was one of those tall, illuminated affairs with the store’s logo and a series of gas prices listed below. The red, eight pointed star of the Crossroads now shone on its white background like a guiding light in the heavens. It illuminated the area, revealing the fact we had almost reached the end of the cemetery, and the point where the asphalt of the store’s parking lot began.
The store itself remained dark, as did the large awnings on each side and the gas pumps beneath. And we weren’t out of this warped nightmare yet either. A hint of motion caught the corner of my eye and I turned my head to see what appeared to be an enormous centipede disappearing into the trees of the greenbelt across the highway. The sudden light must have surprised it as well.
But the creatures who shunned the light didn’t worry me now. Most of the ones we dealt with tonight did that. My concern now was the type of monsters who would follow that bright guiding star toward us. Our lantern wouldn’t deter those, and the first to arrive would most likely not be the type to worry about head on confrontations.
We needed to do something, and fast.
But what?
Should we turn around and make for the northern overpass? We would be exposed to the predatory sky when we reached the shopping center. Or did we try to push our way through the greenbelt on the other side of the highway and get to the train yard? Considering the beast I had watched enter there a few seconds earlier, that ide
a appealed even less. Our only other option would be to dash past this area as fast as we could, in full view of anything deadly, and then race for the overpass.
As it turned out, the answer would be none of the above.
“Mr. Garrett! You’ve made it! Please, do come out of the darkness.”
I knew the voice before I spotted him, and I couldn’t believe my ears.
Now that my eyes started to adjust to the light, I spotted the white-garbed figure leaning casually against the bottom of the sign pole. It was unmistakably him. The top hat, the cane, the Victorian cut of the suit…and the sense he was somehow more real than anything around him. Despite the distance, that aspect of him made it easy to sense he was different.
“What in the…?” Casey whispered as she peered at the unique figure, then turned with a slow, wondering look back to me. “No way!”
“And I see you managed to bring the redoubtable Miss Stafford out with you! Exemplary work, sir! I said I would rejoin you at the overpass, but after your encounter with the flying polyp at the tower I realized parking lots might give you pause and saw no reason to quibble over a couple of hundred feet. Now please do come along. I assure you, you are absolutely safe, and I have much yet to do.
Sometimes all you can do is go forward.
“Marrrrrrk?” Casey whispered in sudden trepidation beside me as I rose to my feet and started in the other man’s direction, “Are you sure about this? Who is this guy?”
“Somebody who answers prayers,” I muttered absently, still trying to come to grips with the fact he actually existed.
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I sotto voced back. “The important thing is to be really careful here, Casey. I have no idea who this guy is, but he’s a lot more than what he looks like. And I mean a lot more.”
We crossed the parking lot toward him, only pausing when we reached the front of the store and saw what the light from the sign revealed through the windows.
Imagine an octopus crammed into a Mason jar, without an inch of room to spare. Nothing to see but tentacles and suckers squirming against the glass. Now make the octopus much bigger and give it a thousand more arms. Then make the Crossroads store the Mason jar. Tentacles writhed tightly against the windows, dragging the occasional small scrap of detritus across the glass. And the suckers appeared to include mouths. Pale orifices that opened and closed in an obscene rhythm as the nightmare twisted against the panes.
One more slice of insanity in a world gone mad.
“Yes, that was an unfortunate place to manifest,” the man in white observed with sardonic detachment, “both for the creature and the people inside, I imagine. But fear not, the glass will hold.”
If he said the glass would hold, then I felt pretty sure it would.
“What is that thing?” Casey asked, still staring back in horrified fascination at the store as we resumed our approach to the stranger. I think she may have simply been wondering aloud, but our benefactor seemed inclined to answer anyway.
“The beast has no name,” he replied with an amused shrug, “It barely has the intellect to be self-aware, much less name itself. Nor does anything from its particular dimension possess the capacity to give it one. I’m sure there’s some ridiculous philosophical point about existence to be explored there, but I do not deal in philosophies so you have nothing to fear on that score either.”
He smiled at the last part, as if it were a private joke.
Now that we had reached him, the sense of hyper-reality increased. It didn’t feel so much like standing in front of the man as being in his presence. He simply overshadowed the area around him. He had a way of holding one’s attention to the point it became easy to ignore everything else.
“Well then,” he smiled, and made a grand gesture with his cane in the direction of the overpass, “let’s not tarry. There’s still a bit of a walk left, and although you’ll be under my protection, I would imagine the sooner you are out of this, the happier you’ll be.”
He set off in the direction indicated and I mulled this over as we fell in behind him.
“Then that’s it?” I asked cautiously. “We’re getting out of here?”
“That’s it, Mr. Garrett. It’s over. You have faced your last monster, fought your last killer, and crept down your last dark street. You are officially saved. No charge, no thanks necessary, and no strings attached. I shall give you some parting advice when we reach our destination, but you are free to follow or ignore it as you will.”
After everything we had been through, the idea it could be over like this struck me speechless.
“So,” Casey spoke softly in my place, “you’re some kind of angel then?”
That brought the man to a halt and he turned a look best described as delighted incredulity on the girl. Then he threw his head back, and his laughter boomed through the night.
“Oh, my dear girl!” he practically howled with glee. “I have been confused with many things by humans over the millennia, but this has to be a first! If nothing else, that question alone has made my dalliance tonight worthwhile.”
He pulled a red handkerchief out of thin air and mirthfully dabbed his eyes as he resumed walking. As he did, I suddenly realized we were now across the street and well on our way to the overpass. Which was impossible. We hadn’t been walking near long enough to cover that much area.
I don’t think Casey noticed the discrepancy in distance due to her attention being centered more on our escort. And judging from her expression, she had combined his amusement at her guess along with the dark, saturnine features, and came to an idea she didn’t like very much. She wasn’t the superstitious type, but after tonight’s encounters anything must have seemed possible.
In fairness to her, if you took away the ancient Egyptian trimming, the resemblance was there. Not to mention his levity and almost joyous demeanor amidst the carnage had unsettling implications as well.
The look of alarm she cast my way told me all I needed to know about her concerns regarding our rescuer. And I couldn’t blame her. I could offer her no comfort other than a silent squeeze of her hand.
But I guess her expression wasn’t lost on our companion either.
“On the other hand,” the man in white subsided to a rich chuckle, “you are hardly the first to arrive at the conclusion you currently entertain. Allow me to assure you I am nothing so clichéd. If you will recall, I am the one escorting you to safety with no strings attached. My role has merely been that of a passerby who happened upon a burning building and gave some of the people inside a little nudge toward the exit. I must confess, the ironies of tonight have been exquisite!”
As if for emphasis, he tossed his handkerchief into the air only for it vanish in a sudden burst of flame. It left behind a little ball of smoke in the shape of a horned imp lingering in the air.
“The amusing thing is,” he smiled, and scattered the smoke daemon with a theatrical poke of his cane, “you imagine such a being, and then give him nothing better to do than sit around plotting how to lead each of you astray. What a pitiable wretch. You humans are most unkind to your gods, and absolutely appalling toward the adversaries you saddle them with.”
Yeah, okay.
I didn’t quite know what to make of that little speech, other than to take it as a concession on his part he wasn’t human. I had already come to that conclusion a long time ago. On the other hand, I couldn’t dispute his earlier point. He had offered us nothing but free escort to safety. On top of which, I would bet real money he had saved my life earlier tonight.
So why did he still scare the hell out of me? What about him gave me the worst case of heebie-jeebies in my life?
And, of course, if I was trying to quietly figure that one out, then a certain other member of our party would be doing the same thing…only without the quietly part.
“So you’re saying,” Casey probed cautiously, “you really had nothing to do with what happened here tonight?”
Casey, I si
lently begged her, please don’t interrogate this guy. He is way out of our league, and I don’t think he expected you to make it this far in the first place.
But if her questioning annoyed him, he didn’t show it.
“My dear young lady,” he crowed, “that is exactly what I’m telling you. I assure you it was not I who so inelegantly collapsed four inhabited dimensions into each other. Nor was it I who ripped away the minds of your sleepers, filled your skies with death, or your wishing wells with ghouls. And it was certainly not I who concealed a shoggoth in your duck pond.
No, I’m afraid you will find both the mind responsible for this spectacle, and the hand that wrought it, was very much one of your own. A moment please…”
He paused and turned to face back the way we came.
We followed his example, and as we did I realized we now neared the apex of the overpass. Once again, we had covered ground in a way not at all in keeping with the time spent walking. Whatever he claimed to be, or not be, this man could bend space itself.
But that was almost a side thought as we gazed back over the darkness that had once been Coventry Woods. At this elevation, we could now see over most of the trees. And the reason we could see were the glows of what had to be fires scattered throughout the vast sea of foliage stretched below us. What had once been a quiet, upscale part of a modern city now lay before us as a dark continent of savagery, shadows, and death.
Our escort held up a finger, as if to forestall comment.
“Annnnnnnnnnnnnnddddd…” he droned like a verbal drum roll, then stabbed his finger out toward the darkness. “…there!”
In the distance, a column of fire rose above the trees with a muted ‘boom’. Something had exploded out there. Something big. And while not too terribly impressive from this distance, I’m sure the story would be different up close. It had enough energy to briefly illuminate the low hanging clouds, revealing the swirling mass of shadows that floated, flapped, and flew underneath. Then it faded, and the darkness returned.
Nightwalk Page 29
