His throat went bone-dry. The pale skin around the lacy underwear was smooth. He aimed the beam there and had time to wonder if Emma had the area waxed.
Not entirely, he saw. Within the diaphanous black netting, he glimpsed dark curls—
“Wanna touch it?” a voice behind him asked, and Jesse gasped in surprise.
Anger immediately flooded through him as he craned his neck and shined the helmet back at Ruth Cavanaugh.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“Her pussy,” Ruth said in a cackling crone’s voice that scarcely resembled her normally diffident one. “I’m asking if you’d like to touch her pussy.”
“Why don’t you—” Jesse gritted his teeth and threw a nervous glance at Emma. He fixed the light on Ruth’s face. “Just shut up, all right?”
Ruth tilted her head in mockery. “Shut up, huh? Don’t like me tattlin’ on you? Afraid your pin-up girl’s gonna know you jerk your little weed to her every—”
“Hey.”
“—night before you turn in?” Ruth’s shrill voice swelled. “Pitiful little fantasies, Miss Emma sunbathin’ on her belly and askin’ you to rub some oil on her back.”
“Shut the hell up! What if she hears—”
“Hears what? That you wanna peel back those black panties inch by inch and run your tongue up her buttcrack?”
Jesse kicked at her white moon of a face.
She recoiled, an infuriating brew of surprise and merriment in her eyes. “Now don’t get your feelin’s hurt. Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with giving your little carrot a tug now and then, ‘specially when you ain’t got a snowman’s chance in hell of ever stickin’ it inside the real thing!” Ruth cackled again, a throaty, wheezing sound that chilled his blood.
And now he noticed something peculiar. Ruth’s hair, which before had been frizzy but cut fairly short, now seemed to cascade over her shoulders and continue down the middle of her back. Her face had also undergone some strange elongation, the chin more angular, tapering to a witch-like point. This, combined with the cracked voice, caused him to make an unconscious movement forward. He was practically lying on top of Emma’s legs before he realized it. She shifted, and then her light was blaring at him.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
He blinked, warded off the beam with a forearm. “I was just wondering why we stopped.”
She seemed to relax slightly. “I don’t know yet. Marc’s saying something to Clevenger. Something about a cavern.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, trying to look interested.
“You’re sweating,” she said.
He tried a laugh, but it came out an octave too high. “Aren’t you?”
“I guess.” Her eyes flicked down. “You’re also on my legs.”
“Oh, I’m—”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “It feels sort of nice.”
Before he could respond, the others commenced crawling. Emma turned and followed them. He felt something tap the heel of one sneaker and directed the light at Ruth’s ugly face.
“Atta boy!” she rasped. “You might get to fuck something other than your hand yet!”
Jesse turned away, disgusted. He was thankful for the darkness of the cave. It hid the plum-colored blush on his skin.
He crawled after Emma, but he hardly glanced at her crotch.
Hardly at all.
Chapter Eight
Sam decided he’d just ask. He’d kept quiet about the monster that slaughtered Larry Robertson, assuming someone else would broach the subject. But Charly’d been too busy kissing him—not that he had any complaints on that account—to discuss nine-foot-tall creatures or what would happen if they encountered another one. Melanie was too busy taking up for Eric Florence to philosophize about the beast—girl had it bad for the coach, as hard as that was to believe. Thinks she’s in love with him, Sam thought. And on top of that she had a mothering complex that made her bristle like a nursing porcupine every time Florence got mistreated, which admittedly had been often of late. Florence himself might’ve mentioned the white-skinned monster, but he seemed lost in his thoughts, which would’ve been fine by Sam if not for the odd expression Florence sometimes wore as he trudged along behind them. Like he was relishing some secret revenge fantasy in which Sam and Charly were the unfortunate stars. Sam glanced back and discovered Florence was wearing that grim smile now, likely imagining how it would feel to lock Sam’s head in a table vise and crank. He suspected the gleaming-eyed, open-mouthed expression on Florence’s face was very similar to the expression a suicide bomber wore right before he pulled the pin on the grenade inside his jockey shorts.
Sam said, “What do you all think that thing was?”
“Or more importantly,” Charly said, “where did it come from?”
“That too.”
Melanie’s voice was sulky. “I can’t believe you guys talked me into staying down here. We’d be back at the house by now, those FBI guys would be—”
“My dad had a saying,” Sam interrupted. “Second-guessing is for fools.”
Melanie crossed her arms. “Thanks a lot.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Sam said agreeably. He stopped and regarded her in the gloom. “The main reason we kept going, if you’ll recall, is the cry we heard. Had we gone back, we would’ve lost baby Jake’s trail.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t know anything, and neither do you. All I know is that we made the best choice we could with what we knew at the time.”
“You don’t know anything about leadership. We’ve got a finalist for the NCAA Coach of the Year, and you think you know more than he does.”
“This isn’t collegiate athletics,” Charly said.
“No it isn’t, it’s your baby. And you trust this jerk to save him when he failed miserably in his only chance at being a father?”
“Ouch,” Sam said.
“This isn’t helping,” Charly said, taking Sam’s arm.
“And you’re the one who put him in charge,” Melanie spat. “Your family’s at stake here, can’t you see that? One of those things took Junior—”
“Jake,” Charly corrected.
“—and you’re ruining everything else. What’ll the girls think when they find out you’ve been kissing this piece of crap?”
“Man,” Sam said, chuckling, “she sure does get warmed up, doesn’t she?”
“My girls,” Charly said, her voice eerily serene, “are none of your business.”
“Oh yeah?” Melanie said with a nasty little shimmy. “Maybe they will be my business before all this is over.”
Charly slapped her.
It wasn’t just the flat, meaty sound Charly’s hand made when it cracked Melanie’s cheek that made Sam and Florence both stare gape-mouthed in amazement, it was the force with which Charly delivered the blow. Melanie was fifteen years younger and a moment ago had seemed on the verge of making Charly cry. Now the younger woman was reeling toward the wall and holding her cheek like it was about to slide off her face.
“You can have Eric if you want him,” Charly said. “I’m filing for divorce after we find my baby. And you’ll never take my children from me.” Turning to Florence, she said, “I want full custody.”
Eric shrugged. “Whatever you say, Char.”
Sam swept the beam closer to Florence’s face, and what he saw there made his balls shrivel. The words had been spoken like a man with a superb marijuana buzz, the face both euphoric and slack. Yet there lurked something else in the man’s features that made Sam uneasy. Florence’s hair, unless it was some illusory trick, had thinned since earlier that day. His dark complexion seemed pasty now, his skin brushed with a queer translucence, only it wasn’t just Florence’s eyelids that showed blue runnels zigzagging beneath the epidermis, it was his whole face. Even more disturbingly—and this was enough to cause Sam to train his flashlight as far away from the coach as possible—the man’s eyes had begun to look green. Not just the whites, but the
whole damn things. Irises, pupils…very much like, Sam was loathe to admit, the monster with which he’d done battle back there. Was it possible, he wondered, for the thing’s condition to communicate itself to one of them? And if it did, how did that bode for Sam, who might as well have taken a bath in the filthy creature’s blood? The memory of the black liquid spewing over him like the world’s least sanitary shower reminded him of his sodden clothes, the way his T-shirt clung wetly to his back. And the smell—ah, why the hell had he focused on that again?—made his gorge clench.
The odor of the creature’s blood contained a sickening tinge of dog shit, but its dominant trait was something even less pleasant, something that took him back a dozen or so years to a hospital room at Shadeland Memorial. His mother had been prone to circulation problems, a product of her diabetes. Because of this, she’d had several blood clots in her legs and was on a destructive cycle of medications, most of which were meant to undo the side effects of the Coumadin she took to thin her blood. One nasty February had seen her admitted to the hospital with a deep vein thrombosis, a diagnosis that had chilled Sam even before he knew what the hell it was.
Evidently, the bored-looking doctor informed Sam and his father, Rita Bledsoe’s femoral artery had been completely clogged for some time by a large clot. That she hadn’t told anyone didn’t surprise Sam; his mom would’ve been embarrassed to ask for a life preserver if she were drowning. Her diabetes and her silence had conspired to give the thrombosis free rein on her leg, and in the short interval between the faint tingling she detected and the soul-shattering pain that had sent her to the emergency room, her leg had begun to rot.
Internal necrosis, the doctor had told him and his dad.
Internal what? Sam had asked.
His dad put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. He’s telling us your mother has gangrene.
Gangrene, Sam repeated.
It was common in ‘Nam, his dad said, and though his voice was even enough, Sam noticed how moist his eyes had gotten. One of my buddies died from it after taking a bullet to the thigh.
Which is our main problem, the doctor said, by way of steering them back to Rita Bledsoe. The condition is quite advanced, and we’re not sure if amputation is still an option.
Wait a minute, Sam said.
I’m sorry, the doctor said, not sounding sorry at all. He stood, a short man with a wispy tumble of fine black hair. We’ll do what we can.
Sam turned to his dad when the door closed. What’s he saying?
His father looked at him square in the eyes, one large tear spilling down his grizzled cheek.
He’s saying your momma’s gonna die.
The next couple days, which proved to be all Rita had left because of the blood poisoning, had been a hazy, interminable hell. The stench hung over the room like a green miasma. Sam avoided looking at the leg whenever the nurses arrived to change the dressing, but one time he made the mistake of stealing a glance at it. This had been at the end, so he should have expected something bad, but the sight of his mom’s rotting foot had still made him rise from his chair and exit the room with poorly concealed haste.
Now, looking at Eric Florence’s altered skin, he remembered that awful rotting foot: the jaundiced toenails a yellowish brown, the little toe purpling like a ripened cherry. The next three toes, gone the same green as the helmet his dad brought back from the army. But worst of all was the big toe, the putrefying bag of tissue as black and bloated as an overripe banana.
And though Eric Florence’s skin didn’t resemble Rita Bledsoe’s, the stench radiating from him did.
Can’t you smell that? Sam wanted to ask Melanie Macomber. Couldn’t you taste that sour death smell when you kissed his cracked lips?
He realized Eric Florence was watching him in the dark. Startled, Sam returned the man’s gaze.
Florence opened his peeling, cracked lips and said, “She suffered a lot.”
His throat as dry as parchment, Sam said, “I don’t know who you’re—”
“Mommy,” Eric Florence said.
The hackles on the back of Sam’s neck stood rigid. He grappled with the black tide of horror welling up in him, but the broadening grin—Jesus, the man’s teeth had elongated and grown sharper, he was sure of it—threatened to undo him.
Take it easy, he tried to tell himself. The man did some snooping around on you. He’s already admitted as much, hasn’t he? If he can go down to the lumber yard and find out about you cheating on your wife, who’s to say he didn’t learn how your mom died?
That should have calmed him, but it didn’t.
Why did he wait until the exact moment you were thinking of your mom’s death to clobber you with it? How long has it been since you’ve thought of that putrescent big toe? A year? Longer?
And more importantly, how long ago did that creature infect the coach, if that indeed was what it had done?
Eric Florence was leering at him now, his curved teeth like a row of scythes eager for a bloody harvest.
“Sam?” a voice asked.
With a Herculean effort, he finally unlatched his gaze from the greenish orbs smoldering in the hollows of Eric Florence’s eyes.
Sam frowned down at Charly.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
My God, he thought, she didn’t even hear her husband utter the word Mommy.
Which meant Florence could not only read his thoughts, the man could communicate telepathically as well. And in thinking this, it was as though Sam had unwittingly tuned in to some far-off radio transmission, one that broadcasted carnage and sadism, a blood-soaked call-in show:
(enjoy guzzling your lifeblood)
“Sam?” Both Charly’s hands on his arm.
(you and the infant, your essences commingling as they gush red over my lips)
“…scaring me, Sam. Please…”
(no escape, no hope for you)
He took Charly’s hands, nodded with an expression he hoped was reassuring.
(your sepulcher)
“It’s okay,” he told her.
(this is your)
“I thought I heard something is all.”
(sepulcher)
“Let’s get going.”
Charly continued watching him with the same alarmed expression. She shook her head. “If you need to rest for a few minutes—”
“Not a chance,” he said between shallow breaths. “Your boy is close. We can’t waste time sitting on our thumbs.”
You’re right, Sammy Boy, we shouldn’t waste time, the buzzing voice murmured. Within the hour I plan on eviscerating you and feasting on the child while his mewling bitch of a mother looks on.
Sam swallowed but did not look back. And when Charly offered her hand, he gladly took it.
Chapter Nine
Jesse sensed the passage expanding around him and thought of how wrong he’d been about newborn babies. He used to think birth was rather a cruel thing: first, content and warm and safe and wet inside the mother’s womb; the amniotic sack bursts and the child is pushed screaming into a cold, vast space of blinding lights and harsh voices. But now he viewed it all differently. The baby had been confined, grown too large for its surroundings, with no space even to flail its limbs. Then the beautiful release, the suffocating fluid vacuumed from its throat…
“Oh thank God,” he whispered, able to crawl on hands and knees again. Ahead someone was squatting and sweeping a flashlight through the blackness. It was Greeley, he now realized, and Clevenger was crouching alongside him.
Jesse chanced a look back at Ruth—the treacherous bitch—and marveled at the way her features had softened. She seemed to be staring through Jesse and beyond the figures ahead.
“You believe this?” Emma asked in a wondering voice.
Jesse frowned and stood abreast of her. Then he realized why everyone had fallen silent.
The flashlight beams carried by the others did slow, awestruck passes along the wall opposite.
It was at least fifty feet away
.
He and Emma had hung back, but now they scuttled forward to see what Greeley and Clevenger were seeing. Both men, he noted with confusion, were now on their knees. They reminded him of a pair of crewmates on a storm-tossed ship, clutching the deck of their vessel and praying the surf wouldn’t sweep them shrieking into a watery grave.
The walkway, it appeared, ended in a kind of curving promontory. Above them hung innumerable stalactites, many longer and thicker than full-grown men. Their glistening contours reminded him disquietingly of dangling shrouds.
Jesse directed his gaze downward and felt the strength go out of his legs.
The valley seemed endless.
He didn’t want to venture too close to the edge—he’d always been a little afraid of heights—but his curiosity won out. He got down on all fours, pointed the mining helmet straight down.
Far, far below, perhaps ten stories, something shimmered. An underground river?
No, he realized with an inchoate sense of wrongness. The odor came next, and with it a desire to whirl and return to the tunnel, claustrophobia be damned. He scooted backward and yelped when he bumped someone’s knees.
He spun and saw Colleen squinting down at him.
“You mind getting that light out of my face?”
“Sorry.”
She nodded toward the others. “What’s everyone so…holy shit,” she said when she saw the dropoff.
A scratching sound behind him. Jesse whirled.
And let out a startled cry.
Demonic eyes stared at him from a bloody red face. Just when he was sure the Big Nasty had somehow tracked him here to finish the job, he discerned Frank Red Elk’s longish black hair, usually glossy but now clotted with Debbie’s blood.
“Want me to hold your hand?” Red Elk said.
Jesse let out a shuddering exhalation. “Shut up,” he muttered.
Red Elk scrunched his nose. “The hell’s that smell?”
“Guano,” Greeley called back.
“That’s bat shit, right?”
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