In dream paralysis, Alice could only watch as it bent down, arms and legs akimbo, and tore at the throat of the body, which she now saw was a human child. Mingled with the dark crimson of its blood was a lighter red. Hair, matted and tangled. The creature flipped the body over onto its back and Alice screamed with her entire soul. The face of the child belonged to Margaret.
Alice fell to her knees, heart pounding out of her chest, and felt soft carpet under her hands. Looking around the darkened room, she realized she had rolled off the sofa.
“What the hell …?”
Staggering up, Alice went to Margaret’s bed. Her daughter slept deeply under the Sheraton’s blue satin coverlet. The world she knew was back, but that other place clung to her; she couldn’t see it, but she could feel its tendrils brushing her face and arms.
Trembling, Alice went to the bathroom and washed her face and hands. In the bright lights over the sink, nothing seemed amiss. Her clothes were just a bit rumpled. But her face in the mirror wore a look she’d seen before—controlled terror.
Lightning split the clouds as she came out of the bathroom. The storm they’d seen on the horizon was blowing in. With sudden fury, rain lashed across the hotel with enough force to send long rivulets pouring down the glass door and pooling around the sill. Thunder boomed in hollow thuds that rolled out over the ocean. Alice watched and shivered.
Dread settled into a tight knot in her stomach. She’d had no trouble of any kind for nearly a year, but now she was reliving that terrifying rain-soaked afternoon where she’d been cornered in the abandoned church whose bell Cecil Rider had been reluctant to sell stupid Milton Crouch. The demon Harrow had come out of the shadows near the belfry staircase, a darker shadow in his black parson’s coat and hat, his mud-spattered riding boots echoing across the plank floor. At his heels trotted the soot-black dingo, tall as a Great Dane. It glared at her with one flickering red eye; the other was blind.
Trembling, she remembered how the dingo had morphed into a salamander the size of a Komodo dragon. Even now she could see its mottled skin pulsing dark muddy red as it flicked a forked tongue over rows of needle-sharp teeth. Muscles along Alice’s back spasmed as rain fell across the hotel pool in torrents.
And she remembered what the hellspawn preacher had breathed into her ear as he’d held her fast with fists of ice. “The shifter and I are bound to you.” Alice shuddered. She couldn’t get the guttural, strangely accented voice out of her head.
Watching cabana patio chairs tumbling in the storm’s onslaught, Alice allowed herself to remember the worst Harrow had said. It had been about Margaret.
“Perhaps she’ll do what your father and you apparently cannot.”
Memory brought back in fine detail how those black eyes, soulless in his weathered brown face, had frozen her, filling her with a deep-space cold that stopped her brain and heart.
“One day, we’ll conclude this business,” he’d said and vanished in a spiral of dust motes where sunlight from a high window hit the staircase. Since then, she’d talked herself into believing the encounter had been delusional, brought on by the high stress of mounting her first museum show and fueled by the menacing content of the exhibit, the Lightning Man himself being the central image on a floor-to-ceiling mural. Namarrkun. The name rumbled through her mind.
Margaret coughed in her sleep and turned over. Watching her, Alice racked her brains for an explanation she could accept. Ned had been painting the ancient Outback landscapes Alice saw in her visions. How was that possible? Thunder crashed outside.
“Mom?”
“I’m here.”
“Why are you still up? What are you looking at?”
“Just watching the rain. A bad dream woke me up, that’s all.”
“I was dreaming, too. What was yours about?”
Alice went to Margaret’s bed and without undressing and slipped under the comforter. She related the dream in a general way, including a few details like the black cockatoos chased away by the small black bird with the white breast, but omitting the final scene. She wasn’t putting that image into words.
“Weird,” was Margaret’s only comment. “I had a chase dream. I kept hiding and running away and hiding again. It scared me awake. Can I have a glass of water?”
“Sure, I’ll get it.” Alice went to the bathroom and filled a glass. Margaret drank it all, and then settled back under the covers. “I’m okay now. ‘Night, Mom.”
Alice kissed her forehead and turned off the light.
Getting into her own bed she lay awake, staring at the shadows of the darkened room. She was tired, but no longer sleepy. In fact, she intended to stay awake the rest of the night.
With dread, she began doing something she’d promised herself she would never do, which was to go back over those unbearable few months where beings from the Dreamtime had somehow come into her waking world and threatened her life and that of her child. And only then did she remember something very important.
In last year’s research on the old plank church, among the clippings and other documents in a dust-covered folder in the county library’s Florida Collection, she’d discovered a notebook belonging to Harrow, the church’s founder. Showing it to the church’s current pastor, Cecil Rider, had nearly given him a heart attack. He’d implored her to burn it.
In spite of that, she’d kept Harrow’s notebook, assessing it to be a valuable artifact of the county’s history. Only now did she remember the hieroglyphic-like images sketched on the back pages. She had no doubt now what they were: Dreamtime sorcery symbols like those painted on the rock caves of Queensland. She’d stored the book away somewhere, and in the fog of her breakdown and subsequent months of recovery, it had slipped out of her memory. But now, she knew the very first thing she had to do when they got home was to take it someplace far away from the house and burn it to a fine ash.
Settling back into the pillows, Alice watched the rain beating in torrents against the glass. It was well into the gray dawn before her chin sank onto her chest and the world slipped away.
Chapter 11
April 1965
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”
“You sure this is the place?” Rain beat against the windshield in counterpoint to the wipers’ steady thump-thump. Set off from the county road by a waist-high hedge, the house was barely visible. Just beyond it, a post and chicken-wire fence defined the front yard.
“Yeah, this is it.” Ned opened the truck door and stepped down into a puddle deep enough to soak his resoled boots over the insteps.
“Awright, then. You be careful on a night like this.” The driver pulled the door shut and drove away, the taillights of his pickup disappearing in the downpour. That was a stroke of luck, catching a ride from the airport in Citrus Park as soon as his thumb was out, and the irony of arriving here the same way he had departed so many years ago was not lost on Ned.
Shouldering his backpack, he opened the fence gate and ran for the house. A single light gleamed through lace curtains from a side window, which gave him hope the occupants were at home and that someone was still up this late at night.
He was soaked to the skin as he sprinted up onto the porch and knocked at the screen door. Thunder boomed overhead, and he knocked harder. Shaking his head like a dog, Ned sprayed water in all directions. Thoroughly miserable, he hoped like hell the old man would recognize him.
More moments of waiting, and then he heard slow footsteps coming down the dim hallway. A shadowy figure appeared in the doorway.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s Ned, sir.” He slung the backpack off his shoulder and set it down. Wiping rainwater out of his face, he presented his most engaging smile.
“Who did you say?” Cecil Rider turned on the porch light, the naked yellow bug-light casting a bronze sheen over Ned’s face and arms.
“Ned, Mr. Rider. You took me in twelve years ago, remember? I was a kid half dead from a rattler bite.”
The screen door
opened wide. “Good Lord! Ned!” Cecil offered his slim brown hand, and then changed his mind, giving Ned a quick half-hug instead. Patting him on his rain-soaked back, Cecil stepped aside so Ned could enter.
“Come on in, son, you’re soaking wet. Estell and Pearl, that’s our daughter, have gone to bed already, but I can get you a glass of tea. Ned! What a surprise!” The reverend was shaking his head as if unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes.
Ned followed him inside and down the familiar hallway to the kitchen, where the light was on and the remains of a midnight snack sat on the same masonite-topped table where Ned had eaten his last Massalina County meal a dozen years ago.
Cecil motioned Ned to his regular spot at the table, and then sat down in his own chair. He stared at Ned with such open amazement that Ned self-consciously looked away. He hoped his bedraggled appearance hadn’t put the old man off too much.
“Forgive me, I just couldn’t help staring. You look so much like someone else. I thought for a minute you might be a ghost from the past.”
Ned smiled. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Reverend Rider?”
“The only ghost I believe in is the Holy Ghost, but you sure enough gave me a start when I saw your face through the screen.” He was still staring, his head cocked to the left, as if that would bring Ned’s features into sharper focus and explain everything.
Ned put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “The thing is, I have to know something very important, and you’re the only person who can tell me.” No sense wasting his time or the old man’s with useless small talk.
Now it was Cecil Rider who smiled. “And you waited twelve whole years to ask me this thing that’s so important you had to come out here in a thunderstorm in the middle of the night? It must be mighty important, this thing of yours.” Then his voice took on a hurt tone. “We had everything set up for you. Why’d you run away?”
Ned shrugged. “Reasons.” He leaned toward Cecil, his skin stinging as if he’d stuck his arms in a fire ant bed up to his elbows. “You say I remind you of somebody. Take a good look. Do you know who I am?”
“Just Ned?” Then suddenly Cecil leaped up and scrambled away from the table, knocking over his chair. He backed up against the kitchen sink, horror in his eyes. Lightning popped nearby, filling the room with a bright flash. More thunder boomed and subsided.
Ned stood up. “What’s the matter?”
“Keep away!”
Ned froze, barely breathing.
“Your face. For a minute I thought …”
“What did you see?”
The old man was shaking so violently he could barely speak. “When you leaned toward me, I thought … your eyes turned reddish, then yellow, with slits like a reptile. But that’s not possible.”
Ned said softly, “I’m sure it was just a trick of the light.”
Two figures in bathrobes appeared in the shadowy doorway.
“Cecil, what on earth was that noise—” Estell stopped in mid-sentence. Ned had no trouble recognizing a slightly older and larger version of the woman who’d facilitated his sudden departure from the Rider household.
“Mama, who’s that?” A young girl of around seven or eight peeked at Ned from behind her mother’s ample hips. Ned smiled at her. Unafraid, she returned the smile and then some.
Recovering himself, Cecil set the chair upright and skittered around Ned to stand beside his family.
“See, Estell? Ned’s come back. We’re just talking. He’s got some business or other, but he won’t be staying long.” All three of them looked at Ned.
“No, I won’t stay. But I left something here, way back then, and I came to see if I could retrieve it.”
“What’s that?” Estell asked, her jaw set. Ned could tell her temper had not improved with age.
“A photo.”
“What photo? Of who?” Estell left no doubt as to who was in charge here.
“My father.”
Ned counted a full ten seconds before anyone responded.
“I cleaned up that room after you took off and there wasn’t no photo laying around anywhere.” Estell’s jaw jutted even further.
Ned sighed and sat back down at the table. “No, that’s not what I meant. You might want to have a seat, too, and hear me out.”
Estell and Cecil looked at each other in silence and then discussed the situation in heated whispers. Finally Estell took Pearl by the hand and led her away. “Just one night. No more.”
Cecil Rider waited until a door closed loudly down the hall, and then he turned to Ned.
“You shouldn’t sit there in wet clothes. Don’t you want to change first? Then we can talk. We’ll put you up in my grandmother’s room again.”
Ned shook his head. “I’ve come a long way to find out about him, and I don’t want to wait any longer.”
“All right.” The reverend came back into the kitchen, keeping his distance from Ned.
“Sit down. I won’t hurt you.”
Cecil mopped his brow with a white handkerchief and said, “I been living out in the country all my life and, Jesus forgive me, I damn sure know snake eyes when I see them.” He dabbed at the back of his neck.
Ned’s forearms burned, but the rest of his skin had gone icy. He was pretty sure what Cecil had glimpsed. He’d seen it himself. Did that mean he’d become wholly possessed by the thing? And where was that other presence, the one who’d fought off the death adder that night he’d burned his ancestral home to the ground? Would she come to his defense if the Quinkan finally decided to kill him?
Ned swallowed. “What do you see now?”
“Just Ned.” Cecil eased back into his chair. He took his glasses out of his shirt pocket, rubbed them on his sleeve, and put them on. “You know how it is, once you get past fifty your eyesight starts to go.” His voice was steady, but his face still broadcast his fright.
“Sure,” Ned said. He started to smile, but held it back. “Reverend Rider, I’m not here to cause you or your family any trouble, but I need to know everything you can tell me about that boy your grandmother adopted, Lazarus, or Lacy. My father.”
“What makes you think it’s him? I showed you that picture when you first came to us and you didn’t say a thing.”
“Sorry about that. It’s true I recognized him right off. And so did you, just now, when you let me in. You want more proof? Let me describe my mother to you. A big woman, probably weighed over two hundred pounds. Hazel eyes, pale freckled skin, straw-colored hair with gray streaks that she wore parted in the middle and down to her butt. Silver and turquoise rings on most of her fingers. She made charms out of snake venom for a living. Her name was Teresa. You knew her, didn’t you?”
Without speaking, Cecil Rider nodded. Then he said, “I always felt you were sent to us for a reason.” He folded his hands in his lap. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything you know about them, especially Lacy. You said he was adopted. Where did he come from? That’s what I most want to know.”
“And that, sadly, is the one thing I can’t tell you. I never knew who his parents were. My own father only told me Granny Yu took him in as a newborn when his parents were killed in a hurricane. Their house was demolished. Trees fell on it, and no one survived but that tiny baby. My father was about eight when that happened.”
“But, there has to be some way to trace it, a public record of some sort.”
“All I know is that Lacy was born in nineteen-hundred and that we always celebrated his birthday on September eighth, so I guess that’s the day he was born. He lived with us ‘til he was just past thirty, and that’s when he ran away with Teresa Waterston, or as Granny Yu said, she stole him off us. He had fits, which I think I told you, and Granny was always scared he would hurt himself by accident. For years we wondered whatever happened to him.”
“Your fears came true,” said Ned. He sat still for a moment, remembering. “He had a seizure and fell on a filleting knife.”
&
nbsp; “Horrible! I’d hoped for better things for him. Was he a good father to you?”
Ned nodded. “We had some things in common. We both enjoyed a healthy fear of my mother.”
“A hateful woman,” Cecil said, and then looked down, studying his hands. “I shouldn’t say that. No soul is without merit in God’s eyes, so who knows what part she played in His great design.”
“You grew up with Lacy in this house … I’d like to know what you remember.” Ned tried out his most polite tone of voice.
“Well, understand that he was a teenager when I was born, so what I know about his childhood I only heard from others. I remember him as very sweet-tempered, but he always seemed … not complete. You could be talking to him and realize he’d gone blank and hadn’t heard a word. Or he would just cry out for no reason, or hide in his room with the door locked. Cheerful and fearful at the same time. I never understood why he was so spooky. Granny Yula just told us to hush up and leave him be. My father knew, I think, but he never told me. He’s been dead since nineteen forty-five, so you can’t ask him, either.”
Ned slumped in his chair, bone weary. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to talk to one of them. Maybe you’d let me look through Lacy’s old room, in case there’s some clue left behind.”
“That’s not possible. When Estell became pregnant, we cleaned out that back room and turned it into a nursery. It’s been Pearl’s room ever since.”
“Then I’m at a dead end.”
Cecil’s smile of sympathy appeared genuine. “I’m truly sorry.” He got up and touched Ned’s shoulder. “Get out of those damp clothes and go to bed. In the morning we can rummage through my father’s papers and see if there’s anything that might help.”
He stopped in the doorway. “I’m glad you came back, Ned. Just finding out who you are and knowing what happened to Lacy fills in a gap for me, too. You’re no real kin to me, but in a way you are. You’re a fine-looking young man, and I hope you do well in life. God bless you.”
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