by Brian Hodge
She knew that much of the discomfort that attacked her now was suggestive—her mind telling her how she should feel and she felt it, whether it was true or not. She knew this was so, but she could not help the lengthening of her stride, growing careless of the traps that the dark had set for her. The flashlight began to swing with her arm, and she spent less time watching where her feet could fall silent, more time staring through the woods up ahead.
Time became elastic.
She tried counting seconds by thousands, by the beat of her walking, finally admitting she had no idea how long she had been gone from the Pike.
Her teeth began chattering.
Once, as she entered a switchback portion of the path, she thought she heard wings hovering above her; and the flashlight lanced upward, dying before it could reach the first star.
But there was no moon; or none that she could see.
Yet something was slowly giving light to the forest, so slowly she did not notice until she’d stumbled, fallen, the flashlight jarred from her hand and extinguished against a rock. Then there were the trees, vague and disturbing, real and not real as they took on death’s pallor. Shadows moved without wind, things rustled without movement … things … without movement; shadows … without wind. Things, and shadows, until she grabbed frantically for the flashlight and shook it until it glowed. Then she knelt on her haunches and sobbed her relief.
… worked for Dr. Kraylin, out on the Pike.
Who?
… worked for Dr. Kraylin …
Who?
Never asked if I heard of it. Just asked me if he worked there.
The path ended so abruptly Cyd didn’t realize she was out of the trees for nearly a full minute. Suddenly the weight of a clearing, the weight of the sky pressed down and alarmed her. Without thinking she snapped off the light and stood there dumbly, feeling as if she had just stepped out of the ocean onto an island, an island where the state of Connecticut should have been.
She was standing on a lawn that, in the afterglow of the light, was a brilliant spring green, too green for the month and the cold in the air. She had an impression of a garden off to her left, another to her right at the edge of the woodland, and an impression she knew had to be wrong that there were flowers still blooming, blossoms that should have been done by the end of the summer. A step forward, and she slipped, dropped to one knee and rubbed at her shin—a stump, and she cursed, stared through the faint moon glow, it had just topped the trees, and saw the lawn dotted with others just as low. Her eyes watered with her squinting, the tears warm on her cheeks, and she let them run for a few moments before taking her sleeve to them.
Another minute of crouching, of waiting, of feeling the cold, and directly ahead formed the vague shape of a building—low, a single story, flat-roofed and clapboard. From where she knelt she couldn’t make out a porch, steps or a window. But when she rose and moved several yards to her left she could see the haze of a light spilling onto the grass at the back; and the house was far larger than the bulk it gained from the moon.
“Good Lord,” she whispered.
And again caution warned her to head back to the road, to Ed or the police, not to try this alone.
And again was her rage at the lying and condescension.
She pushed the flashlight into her pocket and hurried over the grass, angling away from the near corner of the building, trying to stay in the shadows of the trees that surrounded. As she did, she passed by one of the gardens and nearly stopped in her surprise—she’d been right, there were blossoms, though she didn’t know their names. She touched at one as she passed it, drew her hand back at the cold, not bothering to attempt a speculation of the impossible. It was here; she saw it; for the moment it would have to do.
Even, then, with the back wall of the building, she began to move toward it, her ears straining through the silence for the sounds of discovery, her eyes pushing at the darkness to drive it away. Her head began a throbbing. Her left hand started to ache. The minor scratches on her leg began to grow in slow fire.
The corner. She pressed against the wall, peered around to the light and saw a window that stretched from floor to ceiling and was at least fifteen feet from one side to the other. On the lawn were shadow figures, two of them pacing, elongated, grotesque, and she could not help staring until, finally, she shook herself violently and told herself to move.
Gretel returns to the wicked witch’s place, she thought as she lowered herself into a crouch and eased up to the sill. And Hansel sits home with a damned bandage on his head.
It was her nerves that made her giddy, made her think in nursery rhymes; but she was grateful for the madness because it kept her from running.
Caution doubly excited. There were no drapes, no curtains, no blinds on this window, and from the angle she could see into the house she spotted the two men: Kraylin, and a shadow. The single light in the vast room—she assumed it made up most of the building—came from a lamp not five feet from her hand, as though it had been encased in clear glass and would glow there forever.
She dropped lower.
Kraylin and the shadow moved into shadow.
She looked behind her, to either side, waited a bit longer before raising her gaze to the level of the sill.
There were three hospital gurneys set head-on against the far wall. On them she could make out the forms of three people covered with white sheets. Two of them were too dim for her to identify, but the third …
Kraylin turned and stepped out of the shadow.
Chapter 14
Cyd scrambled away so quickly, fell against the house so hard, she was positive the noise could be heard all the way into the village. But there was no sign of immediate pursuit, no cry of discovery as she leaned against the winter-cold wood and tried to find the air to fill her lungs. Her left hand ached, and it was several moments before she looked down and realized she was still gripping the tire wrench so tightly a cramp began to stir at the top of her wrist. She forced herself to relax, to let the iron hang limply in her fingers, and soon enough the pain eased.
An afterimage remained:
The room was nearly twenty feet deep, easily twice that long. The interior walls were fashioned of rough-hewn stone, the ceiling the same with squared and thick posts in its center to support the weight. The flooring was pegged and bare, with islands of scuff marks in the midst of gleaming polish. The single standing lamp by the window had been made of brass, she thought, with a shade of some dark red material from which hung a similarly tinted fringe. She tried to hold the image, thought she had seen through the shadows at the far end— the shadows from which Kraylin had emerged— the outline of a door. She could not be sure.
Only the lamp and the gurneys, and Kraylin walking around them.
He was dressed as he had been when she had first met him, from blazer to white shoes, but there was a new cast now that startled and warned her—the soft edges to his face, the puffs at his cheeks had hardened and sharpened, his shoulders more squared, his stride a bit longer, even some height to add to the illusion.
No, she thought; it was not illusion. On the outside, past the house and the trees was where the pretense began. That was the illusion. Here was the unmistakable air of immense authority. Here, no matter the outward signs, was a man who was used to absolute control.
She waited a few minutes, debating whether or not to run for her car, decided that as long as she had made it this far there would be no sense in leaving without learning something. With the tire iron, then, still firmly in hand she crept back around the side of the house and peered in the window, wishing suddenly there were some means of overhearing what was said.
Kraylin, beyond the strong tinged glow of the lamp, was standing by one of the gurneys. Carefully, as though he were peeling back skin, he pulled one of the sheets off from left to right and let it hang to the floor. He leaned over, whispered , something, straightened and held out his hand. Cyd held her breath, released it in a sigh of knowl
edge unwanted when Myrtle swung her legs over the side and allowed Kraylin to assist her in standing. They spoke, and as they did, Cyd tried to locate any signs of medical equipment, found none and was only a little surprised. Waited to see if the other two would move, scowled when the doctor led her mother away from the wall and toward the lamp, gesturing as he did so to whoever was still standing in the shadows at the room’s far right.
Cyd decided as she ducked back away from the window that to continue to watch the mime would be something less than useless. She needed words, not gesticulations, reasons for her mother submitting as she had—and as had the rest of her family, she had no doubt, though which of them remained on the gurneys was still unsolved. She also wanted a reason for her own curious involvement, and to learn this she needed words. Voices.
But there were no windows as she made her way swiftly, quietly, around to the front. And there was no door, no windows facing the path. She swung the tire iron impatiently, ignoring the small stings when it struck the back of her leg. She had to get in somehow, she thought, and when she reached the house’s far side she was confident enough to step boldly around the corner, expecting that this wall would be the same as the others.
It was.
But there was also a smaller building fifty yards toward the woods. A garage with doors opened. And in it she could see the face of the Greybeast.
The tire iron fell from her grip, clattering on a stone with a cannon-shot explosion. She snatched it up again, held it tightly like a shield against demons.
She gaped at the limousine, unable to move until somewhere beyond her shock she heard the creak of a door being opened. She turned quickly, saw a shadow push out from the wall, and she ran.
Back across the lawn, dodging the unnatural flowerbeds, gasping at the ice-air that sharpened blades in her lungs. The moon darkened, a turbulence of clouds speeding over its face, and Cyd found herself ducking in and out of thickets trying to find the path. Looking back over her shoulder for those who would chase her. Finally locating the break and, not caring now if she were seen, more worried about her footing, snatching out her flashlight to show her the way.
Shadows. And things.
She had seen it often enough in films and had never quite believed it—that branches and rocks and weeds and twigs could reach out to trip her, snag her, entrap her. That the ruts in the path could widen and swallow. That the air itself could thicken to slow her down while the tears of her racing could blind her enough to send her stumbling into bushes, careening off boles, lose the path entirely and send her thrashing through the shrubs. She cried out when the clouds had done their veiling, and the moonlight created chasms where burrows had been. She leapt over nothings, felt her legs lacerated by whips, heard in the silence the clap of her footsteps, and the hissing of her breath.
Behind her…there was nothing.
She tripped, fell, rolled, righted. The flashlight smashed out, but she knew she was on the pike, spun to her right and raced for the car. Flung open the door and threw herself in, wanting desperately to lie on the front seat panting, shivering, waiting for sunrise to show her the world. But she dared not hesitate, gave in to her own goading and fumbled the keys out of her pocket. The ignition did not fire the first two tries—three times the charmer, she whispered silently to herself. Grinned when it was. Grinned wider when the car showered gravel behind it, fishtailed and straightened when it bit into the tarmac.
A car passing in the other direction flicked its lights at her. She almost panicked before realizing she had not turned on her own.
When she turned on the radio there was nothing but static.
Abe. She would head directly for the police station as she should have done from the start and lay it all on Stockton’s desk and force him into action. It would be simple enough: there’s a doctor on the Pike, Abe, who lives about a mile or so off the road in this house that is supposed to be a clinic, but hardly anyone has ever heard of it and he’s doing something to my parents because I saw my mother there tonight and … well, yes, she looked all right to me, but I’ll bet you a million dollars he’s got them drugged or something and can make them do whatever he wants, and that’s why there’s no money. And poor old Angus probably knew about it and was just hoping for … oh, how the hell should I know? He’s dead now, Abe, and you can’t ask him anymore. But you’ve got to get out there because they want me to do something and I don’t know what it is except that they tried to run me down with a limousine and set fire to my shop and—
No. Not if she didn’t want to be locked away before she finished.
Ed. It would have to be Ed. She would have to waken him from whatever the doctors at the hospital had given him, tell him the latest and find out what he thought she should do now. But that, too, was useless—if he were still in the same mood as he had been that afternoon, then he would urge her more than ever to give it up before she got hurt, that her father would soon enough explain what was going on and she should learn to trust him just a little bit more, that he’s known for years what he was doing and there’s no good reason to suspect that he did not know now.
No. Not if she didn’t want to kill him before he was finished.
Something thumped from the back seat onto the floorboards.
What she was doing, she realized, was trying to find someone to take the burden from her. That finally her confusion had overwhelmed her, and she was praying for someone else to drink from the cup. But it was her decision. It was her move. Until she had something concrete to bring either to Abe or to Ed she would have to continue on alone.
The rustling of paper.
There was very little satisfaction, grim or otherwise, in the realization that her first impression of Cal Kraylin had been correct, that she had been wrong in dismissing him simply because he had been obvious. The nose on her face, she thought sardonically; the damned nose on your face.
Rustling.
What she would do, then, is return to the house and make a few calls. To Iris, to see if everything went well at the store—and see if she and Paul were at least unharmed; to Sandy, to see if he would work a full day tomorrow and Monday as well, if his parents would let him; to Ed, just to hear the sound of his voice so she would know there was still some sanity in the world, that she was not paranoiac, that she was not simply creating ghosts from the wind that began buffeting the car.
She pulled into the drive without lowering her speed, paying no attention to the indignant blare of a horn whose car she had cut off when she swung across the road. There was no sense of narrow escape, no sense of guilt, only a—
Rustling.
Her foot slipped off the accelerator, her hands dug into the wheel. Slowly, she raised her eyes to the rearview mirror, expecting to see a hand crawling over the seat’s back.
Rustling. Paper.
The car drifted to a stop just inside the oval.
Cyd refused to turn around. Her arms were too stiff to move, her stomach and chest too tight for her to breathe, and an ache began to make its way coldly across her forehead as her lips worked for a sound that could turn into a scream. She stared at her left hand, willing it, ordering it, saw it stretch away from the wheel to the headlight knob, saw and did not feel her fingers grip it and turn it to switch on the dome light.
Rustling of paper, and a faint breathing sound.
The tire iron was on the seat beside her. She grabbed it, lost it, grabbed it again, and in one swift motion, opened the car door and twisted around on the seat, the iron rod lifted to smash what she saw.
On the floorboard.
Her arm trembled.
The crow had been wrapped in a dish towel, had been stuffed into a brown paper bag. But the bag was now writhing, bulging, rustling, as the crow tried to work its way out. The crow that had attacked her … the crow that was dead.
She felt nothing as she raised herself higher on the seat, felt nothing at all as the tire iron smashed down onto the bag—once, twice, a dozen times over.
/> “You’re dead,” she whispered harshly.
The bag still moved.
Once, twice, a dozen times over.
“Damnit, you’re dead!”
And the bag still moved.
The iron slipped from her grasp and fell out to the ground. She pushed herself out of the car and kicked the door shut, checking numbly the windows to see that they were closed. Then she stumbled backward away from the car, shaking her head, her lips still working though the words would not come. It was impossible, of course, she told herself shrilly, and it was only the light of the moon that made the paper seem to move. But when she looked up at the sky, the moon was gone, the clouds overcoming it in waves of deeper black. She tripped, then, over the raised bricks at the oval, landed on her back and allowed herself to scream.
And scream.
And cry. Until she felt pebbles beneath her digging into her spine and she rolled to her knees and stared at the car. Tried to tell herself immediately that she did not see the shadow that darted helplessly inside, slamming against the glass, connecting once with the horn and shattering the air. There was nothing inside. There was nothing at all.
Only the pain in her knees and the numbness in her arm, and the sandpaper rasping that tore at her throat.
She rocked back to her heels, looked down at her palms and felt more than saw the dirt and stone there. Something to do; it was something to do, she thought as she rose and walked toward the house; and she fished the handkerchief from her pocket and daubed at her hands, was still working to clean herself when she opened the front door and turned on the foyer light. Winced when she saw the dirt stains on the cloth, was about to stuff it back into the coat when she realized with a frown that the handkerchief wasn’t hers.
