by Tad Williams
Everything in her wanted to give in to that summons-everything except a tiny, thinking part that was still Lucinda and only Lucinda. It was like fighting against a riptide: the muddy ground all around her seemed alive as creatures of a dozen different sizes, bugs, rodents, wounded birds, crawled and hopped toward the greenhouse and whatever it was that called them all. Meanwhile, Gideon was fighting to get up, struggling and thrashing like a wounded animal, and only his witlessness allowed her to keep him from succeeding.
The greenhouse was only a few dozen yards away now-she could see it looming above the wind-lashed plants like a ship on an stormy sea. Gideon squeezed out from under her, ripping at her skin with his bare nails, and in the fight she was rolled over and her head shoved down toward the mud. Lucinda found herself face to face with what had once been a rabbit, but was now only a shriveled sack of skin covered with little white bumps, pierced through and through with smooth, white, wormlike stems that had grown up out of the kitchen garden soil. As she pulled back, gagging, she realized that she was surrounded by tiny corpses, dozens of insects and small animals snagged in white tangles.
The fungus. It really was a fungus, just as the letter from Madagascar had said, a fungus that could somehow infest a living creature and then draw it in toward the parent growth… the thing in the greenhouse…
“Help!” she shrieked, terror giving her strength. She held desperately to Gideon as though they were both caught in a whirlpool. “Help us! Help me! It’s got Gideon!” The rain washed her tears away before they reached her cheeks. “Can’t anybody hear me?”
“I heard you,” said a voice close to her ear. “You can let him go.” Strong brown hands closed on Gideon and lifted him from her grasp as easily as plucking a dandelion. Mr. Walkwell carried Gideon back many yards, to the edge of the garden, then dumped on the ground. The caretaker leaned down and flicked his finger at the back of Gideon Goldring’s skull and the old man in the muddy bathrobe immediately collapsed in a heap.
“I did not want to do that to him.” Mr. Walkwell’s hooves were plunged deep in the muddy ground. “But the thing has enslaved him.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you…!” Lucinda began, but Simos Walkwell was already walking past her toward the greenhouse.
“Get the others. I will need help,” he told her.
She felt too exhausted even to stand. “Where are they? Where’s Ragnar?”
“He cannot come.” He waded through the greenery like a fairytale giant crashing through a forest. “The manticores are out,” he called, “and some of them are in the Reptile Barn.”
“The Reptile Barn…?” No wonder poor Desta had seemed so frightened. Lucinda got to her feet, about to run back to the house, but saw that Gideon was already stirring and beginning to crawl back toward the garden. “Mr. Walkwell! Wait…!”
The man with goat’s hooves had almost reached the greenhouse.
“You must deal with it!” he shouted. Another flare of lightning blazed across the sky and lit up the entire garden. A huge cloud of what looked like white dust puffed out of the greenhouse, enveloping Mr. Walkwell like a fog. Thunder boomed, then lightning scratched across the sky again. Even as Mr. Walkwell waved his arms, trying to clear the powdery mass, countless white tubes or stems suddenly wriggled up out of the greenery to tangle and tie him like Gulliver on Lilliput’s beach. Mr. Walkwell fought back, snapping many of the faintly luminous stems, but for every one he broke several more wrapped around him, lively and clever as fingers. Within instants he had become a wriggling, man-shaped mass of fungus strings, but his thrashing was already beginning to slow.
“Oh, God, somebody help us!” Lucinda shrieked.
Gideon was crawling back into the garden. She wrapped her legs around his waist and then threw herself down, grabbing at the thickest, most well-rooted plants she could reach, but she knew that her failing strength couldn’t hold out long against the pull of the thing in the greenhouse. Rain splashed dirt into her eyes. “Help us, please!”
Then, to her immense relief, she saw that somebody was coming toward her with a flashlight. She prayed it was Ragnar or one of the Mongolian herders, anyone who could help her keep Gideon from the greenhouse. The flashlight played over Gideon’s maddened face.
“Good God, what is that fool doing?” asked Ed Stillman.
“Help me!” Lucinda begged. “Grab him!”
Stillman stood and stared for a long moment. “You know,” he said at last, “I don’t believe I will. I’ve made sure no one’s altering the will tonight. That’s all I really cared about.” He looked out over the storm-whipped garden and the almost unrecognizable form of Simos Walkwell in his cocoon of white strands. “Now if, as it appears, some botany experiment of Gideon’s has gone badly wrong, I don’t think I want to be around for the end… especially if my old friend is as determined to get himself killed as he appears to be.” He laughed and pointed his light at Gideon’s face again; Gideon growled and snapped his teeth at the beam like a trapped animal. “And I’m not interested in staying to answer police questions. No, I rather think that’s up to you and the rest of Gideon’s weird little cult… ”
“You… you rat! We’ll tell them you were here…!”
“Oh, I rather think you’ll have trouble getting that to stick.”
Somebody else came stumbling toward them out of the darkness, a big, shadowy shape, but Lucinda’s hope that Ragnar had finally arrived was quickly dashed.
“Mr. Stillman,” said the man named Cater, out of breath and frightened, “something… something attacked the car!”
“Really?” The billionaire smiled sourly. “And you two with all those guns and the car with all that armor? What could possibly be the problem?”
“I don’t know! But it ripped through the metal in a couple of places and it almost got Deuce! The power went out in the house and we turned the light on in the car, then it just… jumped on us. From nowhere!”
Stillman rolled his eyes. “Fine. I was just thinking we should be leaving anyway-after all, we’ll own this all soon enough. Come along, we still have to go collect that idiot Dankle and get him fixed up.” Stillman looked to Lucinda with a shrug. “I shot him by accident. My God, the fuss he made! You would have thought I’d blown a hole in his chest instead of giving him a harmless wound in the fat of his arm
… ”
Lucinda was losing her hold on Gideon, who was as slippery-wet as a giant otter. “Please, Mr. Stillman, please don’t leave…!”
He shook his head sternly. “You don’t understand, little lady. Other people don’t use me to get what they want- I’m the one who gets what I want. That’s how it works.” He turned to Cater. “Let’s leave these folks to their… horticultural activities.”
Ed Stillman and his bodyguard turned and walked back toward the darkened house, visible only in the intermittent flashes of lightning.
“No!” screamed Lucinda. Gideon had his hand over her face now, pushing so hard it felt like her nose might break. “Don’t leave us like this! Don’t do it!”
But only the storm answered her.
Chapter 38
Colin’s Cunning Plan
In all the world there was only Colin and the manticore and the flashing sky. The orange eyes stared as it paced toward him. The weird, almost manlike face showed no expression, a pale, wrinkled leather mask with feral jaws agape so that he could see every terrible tooth. As it neared the smell of the thing struck Colin like a blow: instead of trying to run he collapsed like something broken that should never have been forced to stand in the first place. Then the huge shape loomed above him, blocking light and hope, choking him in that terrible, sour smell as he waited for the end…
Then it stepped over him, and rain struck Colin’s face again. Sky. The sky was above him once more. But where was the monster?
For long, long moments he waited, empty as a torn sack, and in the screaming center of his thoughts he wondered if the thing meant to play with him before it killed him,
like a cat with a mouse. At last, when nothing but warm rain had touched him for long seconds, he cautiously opened his eyes.
Colin turned his head slowly, mud rolling beneath him, and saw with blinking surprise that the manticore was walking away from him, less like a stalking predator and more like a ship in a strong wind, lurching and swaying as it stepped onto the gravel drive. It turned and took a few steps toward the far end of the house, away from the kitchen, then it slowed, stopped, and began to shiver, a violent shake from tail to head and back again so that the creature seemed to be pulled between two invisible masters, one at each end. It staggered, overbalanced, and then collapsed to the ground where it lay kicking and twitching. Colin did not even consider moving: he lay peering at it through slitted eyes, holding his breath. As he had feared, the creature lurched to its feet again and took a few wobbly steps before finding its balance, but instead of turning toward him it resumed a slow, slightly unsteady march toward the space between the end of the house and the nearest outbuildings. Where was it going? The beast seemed have some terrible duty, something that would carry it forward as long as strength lasted.
As it vanished into the dark and Colin lay gasping, he realized that the tickling he felt on his feet and ankles and legs and wrists and fingers was not mud but what could only be termed a horde of snakes, frogs, worms, and other slithering and hopping things, all following in the path of the limping manticore.
He jumped up and shook the small things from his clothes and backpack. This seemed like a good time to head back to the house, and quickly: his heart had just begun to slow, and in the comparative calm he realized that several other manticores were still unaccounted for.
But what was that human-faced monstrosity doing in this part of the farm? Could the electrical storm have somehow sprung the locks on the manticore cage, or had someone let the things out on purpose, as Colin had once done himself? Could it have been Tyler? The Jenkins brat was always making mischief, but somehow even in his most indignant certainties, Colin Needle couldn’t quite convince himself that Tyler, horrid though he was, would deliberately let loose a killer like that.
When Colin reached the house he locked the front door behind him. The power was still out but his flashlight gave as much light as he needed to see that the house seemed empty. The Snake Parlor next to the entry hall was a shambles and Gideon’s bed there was empty. Smaller pieces of furniture had been thrown around, and Colin also saw what looked suspiciously like spatters of blood on the floor. He felt a sudden chill. What had happened here? Where was Gideon? And more importantly, where was Colin’s mother?
Azinza and Pema and Sarah were locked in the kitchen and wouldn’t come out. Sarah shouted something about shooting and screaming, but refused to open the door, as though Colin wasn’t just as much of a victim as any of the women. He hurried up the stairs toward his mother’s room; to his relief he could hear her voice as he stepped onto the landing, but her words were uglier than anything he’d ever heard from her before.
“The snake! How dare he? I will show him his own beating heart, freshly torn from his chest and still steaming…!”
“Mother?” He stepped into her office. Her desk and the floor around it were littered with papers. “What happened?”
She looked up sharply at his entrance and for a moment just the sight of her face twisted into a grimace of pure rage was enough to make Colin take a step backward, hands raised as though to protect himself from a blow. His mother’s expression froze, then relaxed into something less terrifying. “Colin Needle, where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you! You were supposed to be in your room!” Her eyes widened as she saw his backpack. “Have you been outside? When I told you very, very clearly to stay in the house?” For a moment he thought she might cross the room and strike him, but then she shook her head, her mouth like a tightened string. “Go to your room.”
“Where’s Gideon? What happened?”
“Not now.” She turned back to the papers, rummaging through them frantically, as if the disordered pile was a haystack and she had dropped her last needle into it.
“Mother, stop! Everything’s crazy! One of the manticores has gotten out, and it almost… ” But she was no longer paying attention, as if her only child had suddenly ceased to exist. “What were you shouting about when I came in, Mother? What are you trying to find…?”
“ Not now, Colin,” she snapped.
“You aren’t listening! One of the manticores is out-maybe all of them! We have to find Walkwell! He’s the only one… ”
She turned on him in fury. “You have become a very disobedient child. Go to your room this moment and lock the door. That is an order. ”
Such was the force of her voice and the nature of their long, unequal relationship that a moment later Colin was stumbling out of his mother’s office and headed toward his own bedroom. He pushed through the door and dropped his pack on the floor, then shoved it under the bed with his foot. Whatever happened, he wanted the Continuascope safe. It was bizarre to think how excited he had been feeling only half an hour ago, how optimistic, how triumphant!
Then he saw that his laptop computer was open on his desk.
But Colin Needle never left his laptop open. He hated the thought of the dust that floated through the ancient house, the residue of its moth-eaten carpets and uncleaned rooms, filtering down onto his keyboard. He always closed it. But who had been into his computer, then? And why?
As he stood, still wearing his dripping jacket and muddy clothes, he considered the possible guilt of the Jenkins kids, and even whether old Caesar might have left his laptop that way after some senile attempt to dust it, but he couldn’t forget that earlier in the day his mother had told him to stay inside-several times and very forcefully, in fact. She had said she was worried about the storm, and of course Colin had ignored her, since the place he had planned to go was underground and would be unaffected by even the worst electrical storm. But now that he thought about it, she had been very insistent.
And other than Colin himself (and of course Gideon Goldring, who had been too sick even to talk much, let alone climb the stairs to play with Colin’s laptop) the only regular resident of the farm who knew how to use a computer… was his mother.
No! He couldn’t believe that his mother would have used Colin’s own program to open the manticore cage-it must have been Tyler Jenkins! But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t convince himself. His mother had been preparing for something feverishly all day. Had it been something she wanted to hide? Had she released those murderous beasts to keep Walkwell and the Norseman busy while she saw to her own business, whatever it had been?
And where was Gideon Goldring? Good God, could he be… outside ? Had he worked himself free somehow? Maybe that was Gideon’s blood on the parlor floor, and now he was wandering, confused and dripping blood, out where the manticores were hunting.
Colin hesitated for a moment, then grabbed up his flashlight and headed out into the hallway. He had promised his mother he would lock his door, so he did. From the outside. A few moments later he was downstairs. He took a heavy iron poker from the entry hall fireplace to use as a weapon, but he was praying he wouldn’t have to use it: Colin had no illusions that he could kill a mythical creature as big as a lion with little more than a metal back scratcher.
Despite the heavy winds the storm still hung just above the farm, a lightning-painted darkness, clouds black as ink. Colin stood in the ankle-deep mud and stared down at Lucinda Jenkins, who was wrestling in with what appeared to be a very dirty, very crazy Gideon Goldring. “What are you doing?” Colin demanded.
Lucinda turned her face toward him. “Oh, Colin, help me, please! There’s something in that greenhouse, some… killer fungus! It gets into animals and then… I don’t know, it calls them. Like they’re hypnotized! They come and get tangled up-it even got Mr. Walkwell!” She tried to point; he followed the line of her clumsy gesture and saw a tangled, manlike shape beside the greenho
use, something that looked like a struggling, upright sleeping bag made of faintly glowing white lace. “It’s trying to get Gideon, too-he keeps trying to go to it! It grabbed Mr. Walkwell when he got too close, and I think I can feel it too, now. Oh, Colin, please help! I can feel it pulling at me… ”
He stared at the greenhouse. The whole thing was moving-no, the greenhouse was stationary, but it was covered with pale tendrils and they were moving, thousands of threadlike things waving in the wind like the fronds of a coral reef. Was that what his mother had been searching for so desperately? For a way to kill such a monstrosity? But what could accomplish such a thing except a million gallons of weed killer? They didn’t have anything like that on the farm.
Lightning flashed again, turning everything in the garden either flat black or glaring white. He looked down at the fire iron in his hand. Electrical storm, he suddenly thought. Lightning…
He threw the fire iron away. It spun through the rain and squelched down into the mud, but even as he watched it he suddenly thought of something-something crazy. Something big. Without a word, he turned his back on Gideon and Lucinda and ran toward the farmhouse.
“No! Where are you going?” Lucinda shrieked. “Colin, come back or I’ll hate you forever! I can’t hold him any longer…!
“You have to-just for a minute,” he called back over his shoulder, hurrying his words before the thunder would drown him out again. “I’ll bring back something to tie him with. Just hold on!” Because Colin had an idea.
That’s right, he told himself. I’m going to save Gideon. I’m going to save everybody. Watch Tyler Jenkins try to top that…!
It took long seconds, minutes even, to find the big spool of wire left over from the installation of the electric fence: it had been buried deep in one of the sheds since the previous autumn. With the heavy spool in one hand and an old iron fence post, electrical tape, and a pair of clippers cradled in the other, Colin ran clumsily back across the property toward the house. He stopped beneath the part of the roof with the tallest turret-the one that held the house’s lightning rod-and located the wire that led from the rod, across the roof and down the side of the house until it wrapped at last around a metal water pipe that grounded it to the muddy earth. Colin looked up to make sure no lightning was flickering, then swiftly cut the lightning rod wire near the ground and spliced it to one end of his own wire, trying to make up for his clumsy, wet hands by rapping several layers of black electrical tape around the splice. When he finished he clambered to his feet and hurried around the side of the house toward the garden, unspooling the wire behind him.
