by Brian Hodge
There were answers out here somewhere, she could almost smell them. She clutched the steering wheel.
Chapter 10
1
For a long time she sat without moving. Every so often a lightning bug would glow nearby. She held the flashlight, flipping it on, flipping it off, trying to gain courage. These were only ordinary lightning bugs, after all, slow, beautiful, a little mysterious.
She watched moon shadows dance along the ground. The moon was only half full, but it shed plenty of light when it emerged from behind the rolling clouds. She fingered the door handle. This was a little like diving into a cold swimming pool. The point was to start.
No. It would be insane to take one step out of this car. She sat, her hand on the door handle, wondering if a thirty-year-old could have a heart attack, just from fear.
She wanted a cigarette, she wanted water, she wanted a gun. Most of all, she wanted somebody to help her.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, reflecting that the Ellen Maas of even a week ago would never have come out here like this. This was somebody else, a secret Ellen Maas that she hardly even knew, a strong, determined woman who was capable of pulling this door handle like this, and shifting in the seat, and putting her feet on the ground like this, and standing up.
She took two wide steps into the middle of Mound Road. In three minutes she could be in the judge’s yard. Thirty seconds later she’d be at the root cellar.
She stood dead still. Using her flashlight, keeping it pointed low, she tried to get a look into the woods. It wasn’t hard to picture the insects waiting back in there with their little lights turned off. Could they fly without their lights, were they doing that now? Or were they coming along tunnels, ready to burst up out of the ground wherever it suited them?
It was difficult to tell through her boots, but she had the impression that some sort of vibration was rising from below. She bent down, pressed against the road with her outspread palm. Nothing.
When she stood up, though, a gust of breeze brought a distinct sound: somewhere in the dark, a powerful vehicle was in motion.
More carefully, she moved forward, going down the side of the road, keeping to the shadows. Was that a crackle in the woods? Yes. Probably an animal.
The memory of that first night she’d seen the glowing insects remained vivid. People had been dying in the judge’s house, she was sure of it. She reached the edge of the property. The house was dark and quiet.
Carloads of people had been here that night. Their cries came back to her, full of dreadful ecstasy.
The judge had not been forthcoming, he’d ordered her off his property, he’d threatened.
She proceeded past the house, forcing authority she did not feel into her stride. Even this close to the house, the windows were absolutely dark. Was he in there? The old Cadillac was in the garage.
As she came closer to the house the forest gave way to a wide lawn. The wind snatched at her hair, seeped down her collar. She increased her speed. The small hairs on the back of her neck tickled. Glancing behind her, she almost stumbled over the stones that lined the judge’s driveway.
The silence was not the silence of sleep, but of watching.
Jagged clouds raced across the sky, pouring down from the north, and suddenly she saw coming toward her, across the hills and forest tops, a great wave of silver light. Then she was in a flood of moonlight so bright she could see the bobbing heads of dandelions in her path.
Hurrying now, almost running, she crossed the shaggy lawn to the root cellar. Quickly she squatted, thrusting the flashlight down into the tangle of undergrowth, then turning it on. She could see an open area below, and in it long black coils.
They were entirely motionless. Could they be roots?
She pressed down into the undergrowth, wishing she had a stronger light.
Then she thought that they must be a garden hose, old and tangled, long since discarded. Beyond them she could see a collapsed brick wall, and considerable evidence of work—footprints, scrape marks, bricks organized into piles.
Ironically, the police investigation might well have destroyed vital evidence.
She shifted, dangled her legs into the opening. The air was cool around her exposed ankles. For a long moment she hesitated. She fought to prevent her thoughts from forming into definite shape.
But that was a battle she couldn’t win. The only thing to do was drop down, and at once.
She hit the floor of the little chamber with a jaw-snapping thud. Her light got away from her, the beam casting wildly among the roots and brush. She ran to it, grabbed it, shone it in the direction of the strange tangle she had seen from above.
There was nothing there.
She went to the spot where the hose had been, but there weren’t even any marks in the earth. Then again, the ground was packed hard.
Her light revealed an opening behind the collapsed wall of bricks. This must be the entrance to the iron mine that Nate Harris had talked about. She moved through the burst wall, careful to avoid dislodging any of the loose bricks still hanging overhead. If they all caved in at once, they could trap her.
The iron mine was little more than a hole leading downward at a steep angle. There were no supporting beams, no steps, no little miner’s railroad. This was an old, old mine of the kind that had been run by slave labor back during the Colonial era, before slavery had been outlawed in the northern states. Her flashlight revealed the scars of chisels and hand drills. The granite had been penetrated with muscle and blood.
As she moved deeper, she cast her beam first at the floor, then at the walls, then the ceiling, continually seeking the bit of wing, the dried carcass, that would prove their case.
Within minutes she had to bow her head, then to crouch. Here the footprints of the state troopers ended. She went on, noticing that the floor of the mine had become curiously springy and soft. She reached down and felt a smooth, giving surface, cool and a little damp. It felt as if it was made of the flesh of mushrooms. But when she tried to tear some off, she found that it was extremely tough, like leather. There was an odor, too, that first tickled the back of the throat, then burned. She sneezed, recovered herself—and realized that the tangle of coils she had seen from above was now two feet in front of her.
She backed away, suddenly very aware that she was deep underground in the middle of the night in a terrible place, and she didn’t have the faintest idea what that thing was.
It was completely inert, but from this close very obviously not a garden hose. It seemed to be the source of the acrid odor. Carefully, she peered at the tightly knotted coils. Was there a faint pattern in the surface? She couldn’t be sure.
This was something alive, and not a normal something. It was unlike anything she had ever seen or heard of, not a snake, certainly not a worm.
She coughed, and the sound went echoing off down the mine like a shot. Shaking now, feeling the sweat trickling down her face, fighting not to choke on the odor, she forced herself to go closer to the thing. The whole knotted mass of it was about two feet across, a foot high. Conceivably she could pick it up, probably even push it out through the growth above to the surface. Gingerly, she touched it with the edge of the flashlight. Then she prodded it harder. Totally inert. She pushed it with her toe. It had heft—maybe it weighed as much as ten pounds.
Pushing harder, she shoved it onto its side. Shining her light, she could see considerably more structure underneath.
Eight of the thick, snake-like appendages came out of a center that had the tightly wrinkled appearance of an anus.
This thing was in no way normal. It wasn’t even something you’d find in the tropical rain forest, not as far as she knew, and she felt sure she’d know about anything this odd. They’d have them in zoos, or stuffed in museums.
To get the thing out, she was going to have to pick it up in her bare hands. She was going to have to touch it, and she didn’t know if that was possible. Again, she shoved it with her foo
t. It was upside down now, still totally motionless.
But it had come in here. So it could move if it wanted to. It wasn’t dead, and she must not allow herself to forget that. On the one hand, she had to be careful. On the other, if it slipped away down the mine, then what was probably the story of a lifetime would have slipped through her fingers. Not to mention the danger, and there was no doubt in her mind that this thing represented danger.
She reached down, grabbed the two most prominent coils like handles and lifted the thing. There was a lot of weight, more than ten pounds. But this was gold, proof absolute, the most valuable scientific specimen in the world, the biggest story.
Staggering, she carried the thing up out of the mine, lurched through the hole in the brick wall, and dropped it onto the floor of the root cellar itself.
Catching her breath, she shone her light upward. Soon she found the place where she’d come down. She would have to shove the thing up, then grab roots and haul herself hand over hand to the surface. Too bad she hadn’t kept up her aerobics. She was going to need every bit of strength she possessed.
But when she picked the thing up and held it overhead, she realized that she was going to need more than strength. She had miscalculated the depth of the root cellar.
When she saw that she was trapped, she cried out, a brief shout, stifled almost at once.
Frantic, she cast her light around, looking for a hanging root, maybe a ladder.
The piles of bricks—she could build up a platform.
It took time, and she discovered that the bricks were soft, old and of poor quality.
As she worked, she watched the coiled creature, which never once moved, never an inch.
In fifteen minutes she had a platform three feet high. When she stood on it, her head was pressed up into the tangle of brush and roots above.
She picked up the coiled creature and put it onto the flat surface. It landed with a wet sound, and seemed to quiver a bit. Getting up onto the platform, she heaved the thing upward, gripping its slick, cool coils in her dusty hands.
The roots and briars overhead seemed almost to come alive, fighting its passage to the surface. She struggled, found that she couldn’t get it quite to the edge of the hole. She had to wedge it in among the roots, then climb up herself.
As she climbed, it slipped, falling toward her, and she caught it against her chest. She pulled up with her arms, struggling desperately now, her feet seeking purchase, not finding it. The thing was knobby and knotted, as hard within as wood, but the surface was taut and felt as if there was a muscular fascia immediately beneath the skin. It was slippery and, she realized, also beginning to flex. She kicked, slipped back, kicked again.
The smell that had hurt her throat was strong now, and easily identifiable: the thing was sweating urine, and she was being soaked in it. The wetter it got, the more slippery the skin became.
She could feel the wetness soaking through her blouse, running along her midriff, tickling down her belly and inner thighs. A wave of nausea rocked her, making her gobble back her own gorge. Then she slipped, felt the thing collapse down on her shoulders, felt the urine running down her face and neck.
She grappled for purchase, slipped, slipped more—then found a long loop of root. As she straightened her leg she burst to the surface. The bundle in her arms fell to the ground and she sprawled out beside it.
She sat up. She had the damn thing. Immediately she gathered it into her arms, embracing it to prevent its slipping back into the hole. The surface of the thing was now covered with a sort of mucus, as slippery as boiled okra. Moonlight flooded down, glimmering on the ooze that covered her hands. She raised her head, trying to escape the stink.
She went off toward her car, charging fast. She got it into the front seat, pushed it down onto the floor under the dash.
The next and urgent step was to get herself cleaned off. Coxon Kill wasn’t far from here, running clean and fresh. The urine was so acidic that her skin was beginning to sting.
Using her flashlight, she crossed the road and dashed into the woods, went at an angle to the mound, toward the place where the kill turned and crossed the meadow where she’d originally been chased. Soon she heard the burbling of the stream. She threw off her wet shirt and sat down beside it, splashing herself with water. She splashed furiously, rubbed, then soaked her shirt. She rubbed it along the bottom stones, squeezed it, then drew it soaking out of the black water and sluiced herself, her face, her chest, her abdomen. As the freezing cold water poured down her, the stinging diminished. This was the second time that water had delivered her. She decided that she loved Coxon Kill.
Cold as it was, she got her shirt back on. Now she had to do one more thing, and that was to get Brian and get this thing to the authorities. He’d know scientists who would do the right thing with it. She wasn’t ready to turn it over to the state police, not without knowing how they would approach the investigation.
She reached the edge of the woods and stepped into the road. Darkness, silence. She began to walk, her heart slowing, her breath coming more easily. Her car was fifty feet away, and she started feeling in her pocket for her keys.
The Viper, when it came, came like fury, its engine pulverizing the silence. She leaped back, falling into a clump of weeds, feeling briars dig into her back.
At once there was a screech of brakes, the sound of tires wailing in protest, a red shadow turning in the dark, then the cruel, rising snarl of the engine.
She was still rolling but she wasn’t going to be fast enough; the car was going to kill her. As she rolled, her flashlight flew to pieces around her.
As the moon went behind clouds the car shrieked past not three inches from her twisting body. She was jerked hard by its slipstream, it had come that close. Then she was in the woods, a big pine with sticky resin on its trunk shielding her.
Clawing at the tree to steady herself, she fought back the panic. The engine guttered, began idling.
Terrified now, she peered around the trunk. It was pitch-black, almost impossible to see. A wave of fear and frustration brought hot tears to her eyes. The Viper was right beside her Duster.
But it looked empty. She could see no movement. But she had a distinct impression—a taste, really—of somebody. It was easy to think that she was being watched by baleful, cunning eyes.
Evil. Horribly so. She was stunned at the power of it, and at the sense of there being an actual personality behind it, as if the whole array of terrors was being orchestrated by a single individual.
She could smell him, taste his foulness.
Another sound came, a sharp curl of breeze…or a whisper. She listened. There it was again—a definite whisper in the woods behind her. She couldn’t make out the words. She cupped her hands behind her ears, faced the sound.
Another whisper. My God, it was coming right down on her. It seemed to know exactly where she was standing.
And it wasn’t alone: there was now a chorus of quiet whispers.
When the moon came out again, it cast mottled gray shadows on the forest floor. But it also made it possible to see, at least a little.
She tried to remember how the roads went. She had to cross Mound and try to sneak out through the woods to Queen’s Road, then double back to her place.
She heard another sound, intimate, growing. Slithery. Something huge was slithering toward her through the leaves.
The moonlight disappeared, but even so she ran. Almost instantly she careened off a tree trunk, tumbled cursing into the dead leaves of the forest floor. It hurt, but also brought her to her senses. She wasn’t going to get away by running, not in a forest this dark. Why wouldn’t the moon stay out, just for ten minutes?
Two careful steps later she fell again, tripped by a low branch. There was a flash in her head, a pain, the momentary sense that the ground was on top of her.
The slithering came again, something brushed against her thigh. That did it: she scrambled to her feet and slogged off, all sense o
f direction gone, blundering and crashing aimlessly.
She hit the road so suddenly that she almost fell flat. She stopped, peered up and down the strip of tarmac. Mound? Main? She trotted along, her side flaring with a stitch, her breath coming in hot gasps.
At last the moon returned, sailing majestically from behind an angry tumble of cloud. She was horrified to see a dark, familiar shape on the immediate horizon—the mound. And off to the right, the judge’s place.
This was Mound Road and she’d gone in a circle.
She crossed it, began to double back. But then light flickered in her eye, followed by a shudder of pleasure that made her heart jump. Just across the road were a dozen dots of purple light, a hissing like a gasoline lantern.
To keep back the scream she jammed her fist in her mouth. She forced herself to retreat… back toward the woods where she’d heard the slithering.
She took a step, then another. Behind her she was aware of more flashes.
Where the light touched exposed skin—the back of her neck, her arms—it left a rich, seductive tingle, like the slowly drawn finger of a gentle and subtle man.
She plunged off into the woods, crying out when she was slapped by limbs, smashed into tree trunks.
Ahead was a gleam.
“Dear God—”
But it wasn’t purple, it looked like the moon on a metal surface. She crouched, moved forward as slowly as she dared. Everything she did made noise—her feet crackled leaves, her breath rattled, she bumped loudly into trunks.
It was a car in the woods. She became cautious, barely moving. It must be the Viper.
She was fifteen feet away when she recognized her own car. She was thunderstruck. This was worse than being in a funhouse. You just did not get anywhere, not one damn inch!
It was right there where she’d left it, seemingly unmolested, seemingly empty. The Viper was nowhere to be seen.
Had she escaped, or was this a trap? Was the car really in the same place? She moved toward it. The keys—she got them out of her pocket. She reached the door. Feeling blindly, she found the lock.
