‘Don’t try to make me feel better, Mr. Kerrigan. And don’t lie to me either. I just want to know what will happen to them.’
There was no point hiding the truth. The chances were that neither he nor Carla would make it through the night.
‘I saw them,’ he said.
She looked at him in the darkness.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just now in that group. They’re all heading back to the tree.’
Carla’s hopeful smile was pathetic to behold. He was glad she couldn’t see his expression.
‘So they’re not dead?’
‘No. Being fed upon doesn’t necessarily kill you unless they drain you of so much fluid that you can’t recover. They can pass the disease on to you but, until now, I’ve rarely known them to do that. They like their secrets. They can feed for years on a community if their numbers are small enough and their victims don’t remember a thing about it. Fugue is like a fever that comes and goes.’
‘What will happen to them now?’
‘In normal circumstances —’
‘Nothing about this is normal.’
It wasn’t an easy subject to explain. He sighed.
‘Usually, I find one or maybe two at any time. I hit them with a binder when they’re in Fugue and then put them through a healing ritual to cleanse them of the disease. After a while they carry on with life as normal and don’t ever think about it again.’
‘So, you’re saying you could save my family? Make them . . . normal again?’
‘In theory, yes, but you have to understand, I’ve never seen this many of them before and I’ve never taken on more than two at one time. There are too many for me to handle on my own.’
‘You will try, won’t you?’
Kerrigan didn’t need to think of an answer. His whole life was the answer.
In the silence that followed her words, though, he felt the entire forest and all its creatures, even the very valley and the mountains on either side, speak silently to him. The land wanted to be rid of the pollutant Fugue forever. He drew strength from the thought that he had the Earth itself behind him. He had taken Fugue for granted when he was in Lethe and had done all his life. Sensing the land’s protest so strongly made him wonder for the first time what the origin of Fugue might be. He had a profound conviction that the disease had come a long, long way.
‘Of course, I will.’ he said. ‘It’s in my blood.’
Chapter 32
Some time before they reached the arbour, Carla became aware of a faint radiance illuminating the claustrophobic path. Now that she could see just a little she swung her head from side to side often, in fear of an ambush. The closer they came to the end of the trail the brighter the light became. It reminded her of the many twilights she’d witnessed since coming to Hobson’s Valley, but it was different in that, instead of the light fading away and leaving a dusty purple mist, there was a source from which the light emanated. And it didn’t dim: it became brighter.
Fifty yards farther along the trail and Carla could see well enough to make out the vials of wellspring water on Kerrigan’s belt and the indents where the binders were embedded into the long wrist straps he wore. The straps made her think of ancient swordsmen who’d protected their forearms with decorated leather gauntlets. Even though she could see well enough not to fall over she still clung to his hand, enjoying the feel of his strength and the way his hand yielded to accommodate hers.
He stopped then.
‘You okay?’ he whispered.
‘I’m fine. Do you see the light?’
‘Yes, I see it. We can’t just walk in or God knows what may happen. We’ll get close enough to take a look and then we’ll slip into the trees and make a plan.’
‘Whatever you say.’
She watched Kerrigan turn his head from side to side, popping the tension from his neck in two ratcheted snaps. Then he eased the muscles of his shoulders, reaching over to knead each uppermost slab of muscle with the opposite hand.
‘I have to tell you now, Carla, that our chances of success here are real slim.’
‘We’ve come this far and we can’t turn back. We’ll just do our best. That’s all we can do, right?’
‘Right.’
He turned away and she followed him until they were just a few yards from the arbour.
Staying out of sight, Kerrigan lay on his stomach and tried to see into the huge vaulted space that the tree’s branches had created. Carla pressed close to him and he felt her trembling.
Light emanated from the tree’s trunk and branches, brightening and dimming with a slow pulse. Veins of purple beat beneath the bark of the tree. Its light changed hue in time with the pulses of its sap, mingling coronas of neon pink, purple and indigo. On the far side of the arbour Kerrigan saw a Fugue lifted into the air by a branch. To the right of it another.
There was a crunching sound right in front of them and Randall Moore stepped into view, naked and snapping fallen twigs beneath the soles of his bare feet. Kerrigan pulled Carla back against the brush. Breath locked, they waited for Randall to raise the alarm. A moment later his feet left the ground and his grizzled body sailed upward out of their line of vision.
Near the trunk of the tree, a girl was dancing, silhouetted by the phosphorescence of the tree.
‘Gina Presley,’ said Kerrigan.
She danced for the tree’s pleasure and the rhythm built to an erotic frenzy. She squeezed her breasts cruelly with one hand and manhandled herself between the legs with the other. Gina was provoking the tree, teasing it with her lascivious gyrations. She turned away from the trunk and bent over, exposing her sex to it in the most vulnerable way. In this stance she continued to circle her hips and stimulate her labia for the tree’s benefit.
Carla squeezed herself tight to Kerrigan as they hid from the creatures in the arbour; so close that he turned on his side to make their shape at the base of the pines even smaller. They watched the dance in silence and, unable to control himself, Kerrigan stiffened against her. She pressed back against him.
He reached over and clutched Carla tightly to himself. She squeezed the hand he used to hold her.
Then, she turned to kiss him, properly.
‘We can’t do this,’ he whispered.
Kerrigan saw the disappointment in her eyes and the stronger emotion written there: a look of deep need. All he wanted to do was satisfy that need, knowing that in doing so he would satisfy himself.
In one moment he was seeing this look in her eyes and in the next she was standing over him. He didn’t understand how she could have stood up so quickly. Was she that outraged? Then he saw what had made her lightning movements possible and understood the reason why her expression changed from lust to fear. She opened her mouth to scream and a pale, spidery hand closed over it.
Kerrigan leapt to his feet to see that the sallow man held her in the grip of his many tongues. The old man kept her away from the many spikes on his body, holding her at arms length so as not to hurt her. This fact froze Jimmy’s heart when he realised what it implied.
The sallow man, in full Rage, clucked and snarled as he spoke:
‘She’s promised to another, foundling.’
In the entrance to the arbour, two silhouettes appeared with the lights from the tree throwing off auras all around their bodies. Carla immediately recognised their outlines and the sallow man uncovered her mouth.
‘Mama, papa, you’re okay.’ She was sobbing with relief.
‘Yes, Carlita,’ said José Jimenez. ‘We are safe and now you are too.’
The sallow man let her go and she ran to her parents, barrelling in to them so hard that she knocked them back a couple of steps into the arbour.
‘Hey, take it easy.’
Her father was laughing.
‘We’ve been worried about you,’ said her mother. As she spoke she caught the sallow man’s eye. He nodded to her and she nodded back.
‘How is Luis? Is he safe too?’<
br />
‘He’s very safe. He’s playing in the tree.’
They turned away as a group and began to walk towards the centre of the arbour where, even as the family watched, Gina Priestly cried out in hoarse gasps as she neared orgasm.
Kerrigan heard the panic creep back into Carla’s voice as they walked away.
‘But the tree is dangerous, Mama.’
‘Not any more. Not to us.’
Carla took a backwards glance at him, uncertainty rising in her eyes. Then their voices were lost under the animal shouts of Gina as she worked herself towards ecstasy for the pleasure of the tree. Its light grew brighter in response and by that light Kerrigan saw the sallow man advance towards him.
He was perfect in that unholy emanation. Not diseased and freakish but tall and noble, his skin alabaster smooth and his veins defined as though he’d been cut from the finest stone. His tongues waved threateningly from his groin, belly and underarms and the tongue in his mouth darted in and out of his head testing the air, sensing Kerrigan’s state of mind. The tubes that would wound and drain his victims stood in glorious rows along his abdomen and chest. They thrust, too, from his shoulders and thighs and even from his knees. He was a walking weapon. The long oval that his head had become still sprouted the grey hair he’d never cut, but in this form it looked majestic rather than ragged and his eyes showed a greater wisdom and understanding than any human eyes Kerrigan had ever seen. Gone were the scrawny sinews of the old man, the undernourished hermit. Here instead were long, supple muscles that looked iron hard and polished until they gleamed under the tree’s ever-changing glow. A sneer played around the sallow man’s lips and he bared his obsidian black teeth. They were tiny but numerous and set four rows deep in his mouth, both above and below. The sneer grew into a snarl and the teeth tilted forward, extending until they met and meshed and all Kerrigan could see was a shining blackness that hid hundreds of points.
‘You’re such a disappointment,’ said the sallow man through his clenched jaws. ‘You’re so weak and pathetic I can’t believe I ever dreaded your return. Killing you won’t be any fun at all, but watching you lose your precious valley and all the people in it may be of some amusement.’
While the sallow man spoke, Kerrigan raised himself into a sitting position and when there was no response to that, he stood very slowly. Tongues quivered and muscles clenched when he reached his full height and the sallow man took a step forward.
‘Nothing you can do will make a difference now, foundling.’
‘I have to finish you. You’re beyond saving. Then I’ll take care of the rest of them. I’ll recover as many as I can.’
The sallow man laughed and shook his armoured head.
‘You can’t destroy me, foundling. It’s obvious you don’t have the skill. And even if you could, everything’s changed now. There’s been an evolution that you can’t contain. Tonight, Fugue will leave this valley for the first time. It will take a new form. You will be gone and there will be no more Fugue Hunters to contain the spread. Tomorrow there will be a purple dawn.’
Kerrigan glanced into the arbour. The Jimenez’s had nearly reached the trunk of the tree but they’d slowed a little as they neared Gina. Something about her behaviour made them hesitate. Kerrigan could see that Carla too, had lost most of her joy at being reunited with her parents. She’d looked up into the branches of the tree and seen the many people suspended there. Kerrigan could make out her parents’ hands, not embracing her anymore but forcibly steering her towards the tree. He looked back at the sallow man.
‘Why haven’t you turned her?’
‘The tree needs her more than I do,’ said the sallow man in guttural tones.
‘What does that mean?’
The sallow man stepped closer still to Kerrigan, his tongues hovering in the air near both sides of his face. Kerrigan could smell the scent of raw human fluids on the sallow man’s cellar-cool breath as he spoke.
‘The tree needs a human female, young and strong, to carry its seed. It will use one of those it holds to pass its seed into her and she will be the mother of the new Fugue.’
Kerrigan tried to take it in, but all he found within himself was anger. His staff lay out of reach on the ground but he had a binder in each palm. He let them fly simultaneously and dived away from his target, rolling before standing up again and facing his foe.
The sallow man had been knocked into the trees on the other side of the narrow trail but was already pulling himself free of the tangle of brush. Before he had regained himself, Kerrigan loosed two more binders at him and sprinted to collect his staff. The sallow man was even quicker to recover after the second pair of binders made contact and Kerrigan realised that letting him rally from the first attack in the arbour had been a mistake. He should have either killed him or recovered him then and there. Now the sallow man seemed to be developing an immunity to his airborne weapons.
The sallow man advanced, stunned and damaged by the hits he’d taken. In two places on his abdomen, there were weeping burn holes. A long scorch mark smoked on the side of his head and one of his shoulder spikes had been removed completely by the fourth binder. Kerrigan smiled, holding his staff across the middle of his body ready for the sallow man’s assault.
He didn’t sense the tongue snaking towards him along the ground until it had seized his left ankle. It squeezed so hard he thought it would cut through his Achilles tendon. His foot lost all sensation and the sallow man yanked his tongue in, sending Kerrigan onto his back. The tongue tightened, crushing Kerrigan’s ankle. He screamed. The sallow man leapt forward intending to land on Kerrigan with every available spike and puncture him mortally. Kerrigan raised his staff only when the sallow man had left the ground and could do nothing to arrest his fall. Kerrigan buried one end of the staff into the earth between his elbow and his body and aimed the other end at the sallow man’s face.
The huge head was arrested by the impact and the sallow man’s legs hit the ground first instead of his body. With the staff touching him the sallow man couldn’t move. Kerrigan stood with the staff pressed to the creature’s elongated forehead. Gas escaped from the point of contact and a scream began deep in the sallow man’s belly, keening at first and then erupting in an unrestrained howl.
Using the moment, Kerrigan retracted his weapon, spun it between his hands and landed a crashing downward blow along the sallow man’s body. His aim was perfect, snapping off every feeding spike on the right of the sallow man’s pale torso. Kerrigan saw no humanity left in the thing that dropped to its knees in the dirt before him and in his heart he felt no mercy. He drew the tomahawk from his belt and swung it high over his head before bringing it down against the sallow man’s neck and removing his head.
In the incandescent glow, another light sparked bright. It was the head of the tomahawk giving off a bright blue-white glare as it absorbed the fluids of the sallow man. Kerrigan replaced the weapon and strode to where the head lay, the eyes blinking in surprise and the mouth working without a sound.
He wasted no time. There were things he needed to know that only the sallow man could tell him. He held the head back against the earth to expose the wound and thrust his fingers deep into the dying creature’s brain.
Chapter 33
He saw many things — past, present and future:
A child in a blanket stolen from a house in another valley. The child wept as it was taken into the forest and Kerrigan wept too, to behold it. They were the very same tears.
The sallow man, years younger, cutting himself with a worn-bladed knife and dripping his blood onto a huge flat rock.
The blood drying in the sun and him scraping it into a leather pouch. The sallow man mixing the dried blood with goat’s milk and feeding it to the child. The look of hunger and absence on the poor child’s face.
The nights, so many nights, when the sallow man had crept to the window of his childhood home or the threshold of his cabin and watched him sleeping. His voice as he instruct
ed him in the ways of the Fugue Hunter while he slept. His voice was soothing, fatherly. He repeated his lessons over and over.
The sallow man stalking night after night through Hobson’s Valley looking in at the windows of those who slept. The saliva on his chin.
The sallow man hungering in the forest and using a shattered stone to cut into the bark of a small tree in a tiny clearing. The sallow man drinking the sap of that tree and infecting it with Fugue.
The tree growing rapidly and its clearing becoming too small for it. The trees and plants around it shrinking and dying as it sucked the life from them and grew into the spaces left when there was nothing left of them.
The sallow man feeding animals to the tree.
The sallow man stalking and feeding on the people of Hobson’s Valley.
The sallow man feeding a live mountain lion to the tree.
The sallow man kidnapping and raping Gina Priestly and sharing her blood with the tree.
Carla held against the tree while a male Fugue, still gripped by the branches of the tree deflowered her and in so doing ejected not only his seed but the seed of the tree into her.
Beyond that last snippet, the sallow man had seen no further ahead and Kerrigan, the Fugue Hunter, had seen enough.
Chapter 34
Kerrigan removed his hand from the cooling mess within the dead creature’s skull. He watched as the spark of life left the sallow man and his eyes took on a dull sheen. So ingrained in his cells and so long-lived was the Fugue within him that he did not return to human form even in death. What remained of him degraded into some fetid amalgam of ash and mucus. The stinging smell of decay made Kerrigan’s eyes water and he backed away from his victim to look once more into the arbour.
The future was already unfolding.
Maria and Jose Jimenez had ceased their pretences with their daughter. They each held one of her hands and were dragging her backwards towards the tree. The looks on her parents’ faces were set and blank. They could easily have been butchers about to slaughter a pig and their strength, much exaggerated by Fugue, was far more than Carla could resist. They pulled until she was stretched against the trunk of the tree, her arms wide and high above the level of her shoulders. As they pressed the backs of her hands against the luminescent bark, it parted and Carla’s hands disappeared. The bark closed over them as far as the wrist and gripped her. The look of disgusted shock on Carla’s face made Kerrigan nauseous. A moment later, whatever workings were inside the tree tightened and Carla’s shoulders and chest were stretched to their very limit. She screamed, her agony laid bare.
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