“Oh, God,” Leo said in disgust.
The scene was one of horrible depravity and torture.
“Cover your eyes,” Jerry shouted to the kids.
They already had.
The picture on the screen changed. Animals that no one in the room had ever seen roamed a wild countryside. A wolf, with fangs like a Saber-toothed tiger, began snarling. Suddenly the beast leaped from the TV.
Janet shrieked in terror.
The TV set went dark.
There was no animal in the room.
“Be as calm as possible,” Bud urged them all. “Soon you will need all your nerve and strength just to maintain your sanity.”
“What in the hell do you mean?” Jerry shouted the question.
But the Indian would only shake his head.
The front door slammed open, hitting the wall with such force its small panes of glass were shattered. It took all the strength Dick and Jerry had to close the door. The wind seemed to be playing with the men, taunting them, pitting its force against their puny human strength.
“Look at the other homes!” Voyles shouted, standing near a window. “The wind is only around this house.”
Jerry opened his mouth to speak. The wind whipped the words from his mouth. He could only nod his head in understanding.
Bud rose from his seat, a strange look on his usually impassive face. “It is time,” he shouted, his words barely audible.
Voyles thought: I’m not even going to ask—time for what?
The windows began to burst, hurling deadly shards of glass about. Wind roared through the house, sending lamps spinning and crashing to the floor. Curtains and drapes were torn away, and flapped through the air. Pictures were ripped from the walls—shattered. Furniture was overturned, and one chair began spinning madly around and around on the floor. It bounced from side to side, break-dancing on its wooden legs.
The drum beat continued, becoming louder and louder.
Wild laughter rang out, ripping through the room. The insane laughter, the wind, the storm, the rain, and the constant beat of the drum—all provoked chill fear in the small gathering.
Bud leaned close to Jerry He shouted, “We must leave this place. The Manitou has called on other Manitous. We shall all die if we stay here.”
“Where can we go?” Jerry returned the shout, his voice just audible over the roaring.
“The Lancaster house!” the old man shouted. “I don’t believe Sanjaman will be able to buffet that place the way he can this one.”
“Why?” Voyles had to scream out the word to be heard.
The wind ripped a bookcase loose from a wall. Books shot around the room; the words of Fitzgerald, Tennyson, Hemingway, Chaucer, Kipling, and fifty other authors turned into lethal weapons as they slammed against the walls.
“Spirits linger around the Lancaster house. They are caught in the void between life and death. But tell the others to be prepared for a change. They must steel themselves.” He would say no more.
Voyles’s eyes went wide with shock. He got a grip on his emotions, steadied them, and shouted, “Find some rope. We’ve got to tie ourselves together or we’ll be separated by the storm.”
The porch collapsed with a mighty crash, a support post poking through the front wall and narrowly missing Vickie as it bounced onto the floor of the den. She screamed in fright and frustration at her inability to physically fight what was happening around her.
“I don’t have any rope!” Maryruth yelled. “Jerry! What are we going to do?”
“Belts!” Heather screamed from the floor. “Belts and sheets and stuff like that.”
“Yes,” Jerry shouted. “Tie them together and use anything else you can find. Go on—hurry.”
Staying close to the walls to keep from being blown out of the house, the group tied themselves together with belts and sheets and electrical extension cords. Marc and Heather were placed in the center of the line.
Voyles took the point, Jerry the end of the line. “Don’t trust the tie-ons!” Jerry yelled. “Everybody grab onto the person in front of you and hang on. Dick! Lead us out.”
The fury of the raging elements struck them all a hammer blow as they stepped out on the shattered porch and picked their way over the rubble. Conversation, even shouts, could not be heard more than a foot away. The sky was pouring rain all over the town and the surrounding area, but the wind was centered on Maryruth’s house—nowhere else.
There were lights on in most of the homes around Maryruth’s, and the small band could see people in the homes, watching TV, listening to the radio, reading the evening paper. No one paid any attention to the howling storm.
Time had stopped for them.
Halfway between the house and the line of vehicles, Vickie slipped on the wet grass. She screamed. Just as her feet went out from under her, Leo grabbed for her, his fingers clutching at her shirt. Then the wind took her, leaving Leo with only a fistful of cloth from her torn blouse.
Vickie’s scream was torn from her mouth by the wind as it rolled her away from the group. Then she disappeared in the wild darkness of the stormy night. The wind seemed to be frustrating any attempt to follow the woman. Neither Voyles nor Jerry could force his way through the invisible barriers of air.
The drum beat continued, heavy and oppressive, its sound clearly heard over the raging storm.
“Vickie!” Maryruth shouted.
“Forget it!” Voyles shouted, his face grim because of the awful decision he had to make. Leaning close to Jerry’s ear, he shouted, “She’s armed and she’s trained. I don’t like it either, Doc. But we’ve got no choice. Let’s get out of here. When we get the kids safe, I’ll come back.”
Jerry knew they had no choice in the matter. He shouted, “O.K.! Lead on.”
Only a few feet from the house, the wind calmed. Vickie fought the hard hands that dragged her to a shed behind a neighbor’s house. She was stripped naked and forced to bend over an old dresser. Her bare breasts scraped against the wood.
Jack stepped behind the woman. He was naked from the waist down. His wife barked an ugly laugh at the woman held belly-down over the dresser. Arlene’s blouse was open, exposing her braless breasts. Her nipples were erect. “Hurt her, Jack,” she urged her husband.
Vickie began screaming as she felt the man’s heavy hardness pushing at her anus.
Her screaming echoed through the small shed as he penetrated her.
The drumbeat continued, mingling with the rough laughter of the teenage boys and Arlene.
Then, only Jack’s satisfied grunts and Vickie’s painful sobs could be heard.
All sound seemed to combine with the deathlike thump of the drum.
“Sanjaman knows where we are going,” Bud shouted. “And he will do everything in his power, short of killing us, to stop us.”
“Why won’t he kill us?” Jerry shouted, his voice small against the howling wind and rain. Around him leaves swooped and branches crashed to the ground.
“The children. He wants their minds, as well as ours. We are no good to him dead. But death would be better than serving him.”
A hard burst of lightning illuminated the sky, silver streaks of danger darting and lancing ominously close to the embattled little group, which now realized it was in a life and death struggle.
The wind sent them all sprawling several times before they reached the cars, but they made it. Bud and Leo rode with Voyles and Janet. Heather and Marc rode with Jerry and Maryruth. Voyles took the point.
The cars were slung from side to side by the howling wind. It took all the strength Jerry and Dick had to keep the shimmying cars pointed in the right direction.
“If Voyles calls on the radio, you’ll have to handle it,” Jerry shouted to Maryruth. “I’ve got to keep both hands on the wheel.”
The two wind-tossed cars were the only vehicles on the road.
One after the other they surged onto the blacktop leading to the Lancaster house at the edge of town. The
wind and rain and the howling fury of the storm abruptly ceased.
It was as if they had driven into a void; a time-warp. But the sudden silence was foreboding as the huge old three-story house loomed up out of the night.
Something seemed very different about the place.
As the headlights swept the darkness, playing on acreage surrounding the house, Maryruth said, “When was the grass cut? I could swear it was ragged this morning.”
“Come to think of it, you’re right,” Jerry replied. “Dick and I passed this way several times today. The grass was a foot high.”
“Then? . . .” Maryruth left the question dangling in midair.
The CB radio crackled. “What’s wrong around here?” Voyles said. “Hell, this place is different. You people see that?”
The Lancaster house had been built in 1858, and had served as a hospital for those wounded in the many battles fought in this area during the Civil War. It had survived a completely senseless fire—part of the looting, terror, destruction practiced by Union troops to bring the south to its knees during that bloody conflict.
Jerry looked around him. “Goddamn silence is getting on my nerves,” he said.
“I feel funny.” Heather’s voice sounded very small.
“Me, too,” Marc said.
“You kids sick?” Maryruth twisted in the front seat to look at them.
“No,” they replied simultaneously.
“Not that kind of funny,” Heather said. “Weird, sort of. You know what I mean?”
“Doc?” the speaker blurted the word. “You feel kind of light-headed?” Voyles asked. “Christ, I sure do.”
A strange feeling suddenly swept over Jerry and Maryruth—the sensation of sudden travel, much like the elevator ride Jerry had taken in the Empire State Building in New York City. He again felt that part of him was attempting to catch up with the core of him.
Jerry reached for the mike. He noticed his hands were trembling. “Dick? Yes, I sure do. I feel like I’ve been . . . well, traveling, I guess is the word. Yeah, that’s it.” He looked at Maryruth and the kids. All three were shaking their heads and blinking their eyes, as if attempting to clear their minds.
“We all feel strange,” Maryruth said. “I ... I flew from New York to Paris on the Concorde two years ago. It’s the same feeling, but magnified many, many times over.”
“I parachuted through clouds one time,” Jerry said. “Taking HALO training. I know what you mean.”
Everyone got out of the cars to gather alongside the chain that stretched across the gravel entrance to the estate. Voyles unhooked the chain and tossed it to one side.
The silence that had followed the raging fury of the storm was unnerving.
They heard Marc’s sharp intake of breath and glanced at him.
“What’s wrong?” Janet asked.
When Marc replied, his voice was trembling. “The house is all lit up.”
All turned and looked at the house. Candles flickered and oil lamps burned at many of the windows of the huge old home.
“Jerry?” Maryruth said, her voice small in the stillness. “The house . . . the house looks almost new.”
“I see it,” Jerry replied. “It’s well kept.” He shook his head and blinked his eyes. Then he stared in disbelief at Maryruth.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked.
“Your dress,” he replied, real fear he made no effort to conceal now evident in his voice.
“My dress?”
“Oh, my God, my God!” Janet blurted, staring at Maryruth. “Dick—what in God’s name is happening to us?”
“Doc?” the highway cop said. “Your suit, it’s old-timey. What in the hell is going on?”
They all looked at one another. They were dressed in clothing popular in the late 1800s.
The women were dressed in walking dresses and bonnets. Their dresses were floor-length, completely covering their bootees, which had high heels and buttoned up the sides. They wore three-quarter-length kid gloves with frilled edges. Each carried a slim, rolled umbrella.
Jerry and Dick now sported mustaches. Jerry wore a suit of brown, tan, and fawn checked tweed, with short lapels. His shirt collar was stiff and rolled over. He wore a large silk tie. His trousers were not creased and they came down well over his shoes. He carried a walking stick with a crooked handle.
His boots were laced, and had pointed toes. Dick Voyles wore a top hat and frock coat. The coat was made of dark cloth and had long lapels faced with black silk. The double-breasted fastenings were open. The collar on his shirt was high and starched. His wide, knotted tie was of pale gray silk. He wore black-and-gray striped trousers, and his boots were black leather. He carried pale gray leather gloves and a walking stick.
Heather wore a loose full frock of white muslin over a pink silk foundation. Four frills trimmed the hem of her gown. Her bonnet matched the dress. Her stockings were white silk.
“Gross!” Heather said, looking down at her attire.
Marc wore a sailor suit with a white cotton blouse and dark blue serge knickers. His stockings were black cashmere.
“Shit!” Marc said, looking down at his new clothing.
Leo now wore bib overalls, a mule skinner’s hat, and heavy boots. Only Bud’s attire had not changed.
A horse’s soft nickering spun them around. Maryruth could not contain her scream of fright at the sight that greeted her eyes.
The cars were gone. In their places were two horse-drawn surreys. The horses stood patiently. All the houses around them had vanished. To the west, where new subdivisions had stood, were miles of fields and forest. The concrete and blacktop roads were gone. A narrow dirt road now lay before them.
“What? . . .” Voyles gasped.
“This can’t be real,” Jerry said. “The Manitou is playing tricks with us.”
“It is no trick,” Bud said. “We are no longer in the 1980s. We are now all in a very dangerous zone, hovering between life and death. We must not step out of this immediate area; no matter what the reason. To do so means death.”
“Will we be tempted to do that?” Maryruth asked, recovering from her initial shock enough to ask the question.
“I am sure of it,” Bud replied.
Something flew at them, shiny white in the moonlight. The object bounced on the ground, whimpered softly, then lay still.
It was Vickie. She was naked. The marks of the beating and rape covered her body. She stirred and opened her eyes to look at the group standing around her, their mouths open in shock.
Vickie began screaming as the drum began to beat.
BOOK THREE
It is easy to descend into hell: night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to ascend again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air-there’s the rub, the task.
– Virgil
1
“Look,” Heather said, pointing to the lead surrey. “There’re boxes and other stuff in there—and a dress over the seat.”
While Janet and Maryruth attended to Vickie, Dick and Jerry walked to the carriage—both uncomfortable and self-conscious in their new attire—and looked in the rear seat of the buggy.
Jerry fingered the material of the dress. “Yeah,” he said. “A dress. Just the right size too, I’ll bet. And several pieces of luggage.”
Voyles looked at the rear surrey. “Luggage in here, too, Doc. Jesus! I wish this was a bad dream so I could wake up.”
“Me, too, Dick. But we both know it’s anything but that.” He looked around him, trying to get his bearings. He looked toward where he assumed the old Indian burial grounds were located. Since they had been hurled backward in time some seventy or eighty years—maybe more, he wasn’t certain how much time had passed—he really wasn’t certain where the dig site was located. He smiled. “Funny thing, Dick . . .”
The highway cop, now dressed like a dapper Bat Masterson, looked at the doctor. “Tell me something amusing about all this, Doc,” he said drily. “I s
ure could use a good laugh.”
The heavy, ominous sound of the drum picked up in volume. It sounded much closer now. Maryruth, awkward in her long dress complete with bustle, knelt beside Vickie and then mentioned the closeness of the drum.
“That is correct,” Bud said. “We are ever so much closer to the Manitou’s previous life.” And mine, he thought, is rapidly coming to its end. But it is as I thought it would be. I am not afraid of the other side of life.
The old Indian looked toward the west and smiled. It is a fine way to die, he thought: doing something good; saving young lives, and helping destroy an evil life.
“You are a fool, old man.” Only Bud heard the unspoken words. “Your medicine is weak. I will destroy you, fool!”
“Perhaps,” Bud flung back a silent reply. “But my life is not important in this struggle. And don’t be too sure of your power, Sanjaman. I can detect many friendly spirits around this home. I think perhaps you acted foolishly in bringing us here.”
The Manitou laughed.
Bud thought: Your arrogance will defeat you, that and the faith and purity of the children. But he kept these thoughts to himself.
“What are you thinking, old man?” the Manitou projected.
“Nothing that would interest you, Sanjaman.”
The drumming intensified.
Janet jerked at her long skirt. She took a tentative step and stumbled. How in the hell did women ever get around in these damned things? And why did they allow this to be done to them?”
“You’ve come a long way, baby,” Dick said with a forced grin.
“Wonderful,” Janet muttered.
Dick looked at Jerry “You were about to say something, Doc?”
“Just thinking of the dig site. When white men excavate an Indian burial ground, it’s called archaeology. But when someone disturbs a white grave, it’s called desecration.”
Bud grunted. “That statement and attitude will be a point in our favor with my Gods, Doctor Baldwin. I thank you in advance on behalf of my people.”
The drumming ceased. The area was silent.
“Can your Gods get us out of this mess?” Dick asked.
Sweet Dreams Page 20
