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\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs16 Winter Moon
\par 
\par By: Dean R. Koontz
\par 
\par PART ONE.
\par 
\par The City of the Dying.
\par Beaches, surfers, California girls. Wind scented with fabulous
\par dreams.
\par Bougainvillea, groves of oranges. Stars are born, everything gleams.
\par A weather change. Shadows fall. New scent upon the wind--decay.
\par Cocaine, Uzis, drive-by shootings. Death is a banker. Everyone
\par pays.
\par 
\par ...the Book of Counted Sorrows.
\par 
\par CHAPTER ONE.
\par 
\par Death was driving an emerald-green Lexus. It pulled off the street,
\par passed the four self-service pumps, and stopped in one of the two
\par full-service lanes.
\par Standing in front of the station, Jack McGarvey noticed the car but not
\par the driver. Even under a bruised and swollen sky that hid the sun, the
\par Lexus gleamed like a jewel, a sleek and lustrous machine. The windows
\par were darkly tinted, so he couldn't have seen the driver clearly even if
\par he had tried.
\par As a thirty-two-year-old cop with a wife, a child, and a big mortgage,
\par Jack had no prospects of buying an expensive luxury car, but he didn't
\par envy the owner of the Lexus. He often remembered his dad's admonition
\par that envy was mental theft. If you coveted another man's possessions,
\par Dad said, then you should be willing to take on his responsibilities,
\par heartaches, and troubles along with his money.
\par He stared at the car for a moment, admiring it as he might a priceless
\par painting at the Getty Museum or a first edition of a James M. Cain.novel in a pristine dust jacket--with no strong desire to possess it,
\par taking pleasure merely from the fact of its existence.
\par In a society that often seemed to be spinning toward anarchy, where
\par ugliness and decay made new inroads every day, his spirits were lifted
\par by any proof that the hands of men and women were capable of producing
\par things of beauty and quality. The Lexus, of course, was an import,
\par designed and manufactured on foreign shores, however, it was the entire
\par human species that seemed damned, not just his countrymen, and evidence
\par of standards and dedication was heartening regardless of where he found
\par it.
\par An attendant in a gray uniform hurried out of the office and approached
\par the gleaming car, and Jack gave his full attention, once more, to
\par Hassam Arkadian.
\par "My station is an island of cleanliness in a filthy sea, an eye of
\par sanity in a storm of madness," Arkadian said, speaking earnestly,
\par unaware of sounding melodramatic.
\par He was slender, about forty, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed
\par mustache. The creases in the legs of his gray cotton work pants were
\par knife-sharp, and his matching work shirt and jacket were immaculate.
\par "I had the aluminum siding and the brick treated with a new sealant,"
\par he said, indicating the facade of the service station with a sweep of
\par his arm. "Paint won't stick to it. Not even metallic paint. Wasn't
\par cheap. But now when these gang kids or crazy-stupid taggers come
\par around at night and spray their trash all over the walls, we scrub it
\par off, scrub it right off the next morning."
\par With his meticulous grooming, singular intensity, and quick slender
\par hands, Arkadian might have been a surgeon about to begin his workday in
\par an operating theater. He was, instead, the owner-operator of the
\par service station.
\par "Do you know," he said incredulously, "there are professors who have
\par written books on the value of graffiti? The value of graffiti? The
\par value?"
\par "They call it street art," said Luther Bryson, Jack's partner.
\par Arkadian gazed up disbelievingly at the towering black cop. "You think
\par what these punks do is art?"
\par "Hey, no, not me," Luther said.
\par At six three and two hundred ten pounds, he was three inches taller
\par than Jack and forty pounds heavier, with maybe eight inches and seventy
\par pounds on Arkadian. Though he was a good partner and a good man, his
\par granite face seemed incapable of the flexibility required for a
\par smile.
\par His deeply set eyes were unwaveringly forthright. My Malcolm X glare,
\par he called it. With or without his uniform, Luther Bryson could
\par intimidate anyone from the Pope to a purse snatcher..He wasn't using the
\par  glare now, wasn't trying to intimidate Arkadian,
\par was in complete agreement with him. "Not me. I'm just saying that's
\par what the candy-ass crowd calls it. Street art."
\par The service-station owner said, "These are professors. Educated men
\par and women.
\par Doctors of art and literature. They have the benefit of an education
\par my parents couldn't afford to give me, but they're stupid. There's no
\par other word for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid." His expressive face
\par revealed the frustration and anger that Jack encountered with
\par increasing frequency in the City of Angels. "What fools do
\par universities produce these days?"
\par Arkadian had labored to make his operation special. Bracketing the
\par property were wedge-shaped brick planters in which grew queen palms,
\par azaleas laden with clusters of red flowers, and impatients in pinks and
\par purples. There was no gnme, no litter. The portico covering the pumps
\par was supported by brick columns, and the whole station had a quaint
\par colonial appearance.
\par In any age, the station would have seemed misplaced in Los Angeles.
\par Freshly painted and clean, it was doubly out of place in the grunge
\par that had been spreading like a malignancy through the city during the
\par nineties.
\par "Come on, come look, look," Arkadian said, and headed toward the south
\par end of the building.
\par "Poor guy's gonna blow out an artery in the brain over this," Luther
\par said.
\par "Somebody should tell him it's not fashionable to give a damn these
\par days," Jack said.
\par A low and menacing rumble of thunder rolled through the distended
\par sky.
\par Looking at the dark clouds, Luther said, "Weatherman predicted it
\par wouldn't rain today."
\par "Maybe it wasn't thunder. Maybe somebody finally blew up city hall."
\par "You think? Well, if the place was full of politicians," Luther said,
\par "we should take the rest of the day off, find a bar, do some
\par celebrating."
\par "Come on, officers," Arkadian called to them. He had reached the south
\par corner of the building, near where they had parked their patrol car.
\par "Look at this, I want you to see this, I want you to see my
\par bathrooms."
\par "His bathrooms?" Luther said.
\par Jack laughed. "Hell, you got anything better to do?"."A lot safer than 
\par chasing bad guys," Luther said, following Arkadian.
\par Jack glanced at the Lexus again. Nice machine. Zero to sixty in how
\par many seconds? Eight? Seven? Must handle like a dream.
\par The driver had gotten out of the car and was standing beside it. Jack
\par noticed little about the guy, only that he was wearing a loose-fitting,
\par double-breasted Armani suit.
\par The Lexus, on the other hand, had wire wheels and chrome guards around
\par the wheel wells. Reflections of storm clouds moved slowly across its
\par windshield and made mysterious smoky patterns in the depths of its
\par jewel-green finish.
\par Sighing, Jack followed Luther past the two open bays of the repair
\par garage. The first stall was empty, but a gray BMW was on the hydraulic
\par lift in the second space. A young Asian man in mechanic's coveralls
\par was at work on the car. Tools and supplies were neatly racked along
\par the walls, floor to ceiling, and the two bays looked cleaner than the
\par average kitchen in a fourstar restaurant.
\par At the corner of the building stood a pair of softdrink vending
\par machines. They purred and clinked as if formulating and bottling the
\par beverages within their own guts.
\par Around the corner were the men's and women's rest rooms, where Arkadian
\par had opened both doors. "Take a look, go ahead--I want you to see my
\par bathrooms."
\par Both small rooms had white ceramic-tile floors and walls, white
\par commodes, white swing-top waste cans, white sinks, gleaming chrome
\par fixtures, and large mirrors above the sinks.
\par "Spotless," Arkadian said, talking fast, running his sentences together
\par in his quiet anger. "No streaks on the mirrors, no stains in the
\par sinks, we check them after every customer uses them, disinfect them
\par every day, you could eat off those floors and it would be as safe as
\par eating off the plates from your own mother's kitchen."
\par Looking at Jack over Arkadian's head, Luther smiled and said, "I think
\par I'll have a steak and baked potato. What about you?"
\par "Just a salad," Jack said. "I'm trying to lose a few pounds."
\par Even if he had been listening to them, Mr. Arkadian couldn't have been
\par joked out of his bleak mood. He jangled a ring of keys.
\par "I keep them locked, give the keys only to customers. City inspector
\par stops around, he tells me a new rule says these are public facilities,
\par so you've got to let them open for the public, whether they buy
\par anything at your place or not."
\par He jangled the keys again, harder, more angrily, then harder still.
\par Neither Jack nor Luther tried to comment above the strident ring and
\par raffle.."Let them fine me. I'll pay the fine. When these are unlocked, the
\par drunks and junkie bums who live in alleys and parks, they use my
\par bathrooms, urinate on the floor, vomit in the sinks. You wouldn't
\par believe the mess they make, disgusting, things I'd be embarrassed to
\par talk about."
\par Arkadian was actually blushing at the thought of what he could have
\par told them.
\par He waved the jangling keys in the air in front of each open door, and
\par he reminded Jack of nothing so much as a voodoo priest casting a
\par spell--in this case, to ward off the riffraff who would despoil his
\par rest rooms. His face was as mottled and turbulent as the stormy sky.
\par "Let me tell you something. Hassam Arkadian works sixty and seventy
\par hours a week, Hassam Arkadian employs eight people full time, and
\par Hassam Arkadian pays half of what he earns in taxes, but Hassam
\par Arkadian is not going to spend his life cleaning up vomit because a
\par bunch of stupid bureaucrats have more compassion for some
\par lazy-drunken-psychojunkie bums than they have for people who are trying
\par their damnedest to lead decent lives."
\par He finished his speech in a rush, breathless. Stopped jangling the
\par keys.
\par Sighed. He closed the doors and locked them.
\par Jack felt useless. He could see that Luther was uncomfortable too.
\par Sometimes a cop couldn't do much more for a victim than nod in sympathy
\par and shake his head in sorry amazement at the depths into which the city
\par was sinking. That was one of the worst things about the job.
\par Mr. Arkadian went around the corner to the front of the station
\par again.
\par He wasn't walking as fast as before.
\par His shoulders were slumped, and for the first time he looked more
\par dejected than angry, as if he had decided, perhaps on a subconscious
\par level, to give up the fight.
\par Jack hoped that wasn't the case. In his daily life, Hassam was
\par struggling to realize a dream of a better future, a better world. He
\par was one of a dwindling number who still had enough guts to resist
\par entropy. Civilization's soldiers, warring on the side of hope, were
\par already too few to make a satisfactory army.
\par Adjusting their gun belts, Jack and Luther followed Arkadian past the
\par soft-drink dispensers.
\par The man in the Armani suit was standing at the second vending machine,
\par studying the selections. He was about Jack's age, tall, blond,
\par clean-shaven, with a golden-bronze complexion that could have been
\par gotten locally at that time of year only from a tanning bed. As they
\par walked by him, he pulled a handful of change from one pocket of his baggy
\par trousers and picked through the coins.
\par Out at the pumps, the attendant was washing the windshield of the
\par Lexus, though it had looked freshly washed when the car first pulled in
\par from the street.
\par Arkadian stopped at the plate-glass window that occupied half the front
\par wall of the station office. "Street art," he said softly, sadly, as
\par Jack and Luther joined him. "Only a fool would call it anything but
\par vandalism. Barbarians are loose."
\par Lately, some vandals had traded spray cans for stencils and acid
\par paste.
\par They etched their symbols and slogans on the glass of parked cars and
\par the windows of businesses that were unprotected by security shutters at
\par night.
\par Arkadian's front window was permanently marred by half a dozen
\par different personal marks made by members of the same gang, some of them
\par repeated two and three times. In four-inch-high letters, they had also
\par etched the words THE BLOODBATH IS COMING.
\par These antisocial acts often reminded Jack of an event in Nazi Germany
\par about which he'd once read: Before the war had even begun, psychopathic
\par thugs had roamed the streets during one long night, Kristallnacht,
\par defacing walls with hateful words, smashing windows of homes and stores
\par owned by Jews until the streets glittered as if paved with crystal.
\par Sometimes it seemed to him that the barbarians to which Arkadian
\par referred were the new fascists, from both ends of the political
\par spectrum this time, hating not just Jews but anyone with a stake in
\par social order and civility. Their vandalism was a slow-motion
\par Kristallnacht, conducted over years instead of hours.
\par "It's worse on the next window," Arkadian said, leading them around the
\par corner to the north side of the station.
\par That wall of the office featured another large sheet of glass, on
\par which, in addition to gang symbols, etched block letters proclaimed
\par Armenian SHITHEAD.
\par Even the sight of the racial slur couldn't rekindle Hassam Arkadian's
\par anger.
\par He stared sad-eyed at the offensive words and said, "I've always tried
\par to treat people well. I'm not perfect, not without sin. Who is? But
\par I've done my best to be a good man, fair, honest--and now this."
\par "Won't make you feel any better," Luther said, "but if it was up to me,
\par the law would let us take the creeps who do this and stencil that
\par second word right above their eyes. Shithead. Etch it into their skin
\par with acid just like they did to your glass. Make em walk around like
\par that for a couple of years and see how their attitude improves before
\par maybe we give them some plastic surgery."
\par "You think you can find who did it?" Arkadian asked, though he surely 
\par knew the answer.
\par Luther shook his head, and Jack said, "Not a chance. We'll file a
\par report, of course, but there's no manpower to work on small crime like
\par this. Best thing you can do is install roll-down metal shutters the
\par same day you replace the windows, so they're covered at night."
\par "Otherwise, you'll be putting in new glass every week," Luther said,
\par "and pretty soon your insurance company will drop you."
\par "They already dropped my vandalism coverage after one claim," Hassam
\par Arkadian said. "About the only thing they'll cover me for now is
\par earthquake, flood, and fire. Not even fire if it happens in a riot."
\par They stood in silence, staring at the window, brooding about their
\par powerlessness.
\par A cool March wind sprang up. In the nearby planter, the queen palms
\par rustled, and soft creaking noises arose from where the stems of the big
\par fronds joined the trunks.
\par "Well," Jack said at last, "it could be worse, Mr. Arkadian. I mean,
\par at least you're in a pretty good part of the city here on the West
\par Side."
\par "Yeah, and doesn't it break your heart," Arkadian said, "this is a good
\par neighborhood."
\par Jack didn't even want to think about that.
\par Luther started to speak but was interrupted by a loud crash and a shout
\par of anger from the front of the station. As the three of them hurried
\par around the corner, a violent gust of wind made the plate-glass windows
\par thrum.
\par Fifty feet away, the man in the Armani suit kicked the vending machine
\par again.
\par A foaming can of Pepsi lay behind him, contents spreading across the
\par blacktop.
\par "Poison," he shouted at the machine, "poison, damn it, damn you, damn
\par you, poison!"
\par Arkadian rushed toward the customer. "Sir, please, I'm sorry, if the
\par machine gave you the wrong selection--" "Hey, wait right there," Luther
\par said, speaking as much to the station owner as to the infuriated
\par stranger.
\par In front of the office door, Jack caught up with Arkadian, put a hand
\par on his shoulder, stopped him, and said, "Better let us handle this."
\par "Damn poison," the customer said furiously, and he made a fist as if he
\par wanted to punch the vending machine.
\par "It's just the machine," Arkadian told Jack and Luther. "They keep
\par saying it's fixed, but it keeps giving you Pepsi when you push Orange.Crush."
\par As bad as things were in the City of Angels these days, Jack found it
\par difficult to believe that Arkadian was accustomed to seeing people fly
\par off the handle every time an unwanted can of Pepsi dropped into the
\par dispensing tray.
\par The customer turned away from the machine and from them, as if he might
\par walk off and leave his Lexus. He seemed to be shaking with anger, but
\par it was mostly the blustery wind shivering the loosely fitted suit.
\par "What's wrong here?" Luther asked, heading toward the guy as thunder
\par tolled across the lowering sky and the palms in the south planter
\par thrashed against a backdrop of black clouds.
\par Jack started to follow Luther before he saw the suit jacket billow out
\par behind the blond, flapping like bat wings. Except the coat had been
\par buttoned a moment ago. Double-breasted, buttoned twice.
\par The angry man faced away from them still, shoulders hunched, head
\par lowered.
\par Because of the loose and billowing fabric of his suit, he seemed less
\par than human, like a hunchbacked troll. The guy began to turn, and Jack
\par would not have been surprised to see the deformed muzzle of a beast,
\par but it was the same tan and cleanshaven face as before.
\par Why had the son of a bitch unbuttoned the coat unless there was
\par something under it that he needed, and what might an irrational and
\par angry man need that he kept under his jacket, his loose-fitting suit
\par jacket, his roomy goddamned jacket?
\par Jack called a warning to Luther.
\par But Luther sensed trouble too. His right hand moved toward the gun
\par holstered on his hip.
\par The perp had the advantage because he was the initiator. No one knew
\par violence was at hand until he unleashed it, so he swung all the way
\par around to face them, holding a weapon in both hands, before Luther and
\par Jack had even touched their revolvers.
\par Automatic gunfire hammered the day. Bullets pounded Luther's chest,
\par knocked the big man off his feet, hurled him backward, and Hassam
\par Arkadian spun from the impact of one-two-three hits, went down hard,
\par screaming in agony.
\par Jack threw himself against the glass door to the office. He almost
\par made it to cover before taking a hit to the left leg. He felt as if
\par he'd been clubbed across the thigh with a tire iron, but it was a
\par bullet, not a blow.
\par He dropped facedown on the office floor. The door swung shut behind
\par him, gunfire shattered it, and gummy chunks of tempered glass cascaded
\par across his back.
\par Hot pain boiled sweat from him..A radio was playing. Golden oldies. Dionne Warwick. Singing about
\par the world needing love, sweet love.
\par Outside, Arkadian was still screaming, but there wasn't a sound from
\par Luther Bryson.
\par Luther was dead. Jack couldn't think about that. Dead. Didn't dare
\par think about it. Dead. Wouldn't think about it.
\par The chatter of more gunfire.
\par Someone else screamed. Probably the attendant at the Lexus. It wasn't
\par a lasting scream. Brief, quickly choked off.
\par Outside, Arkadian wasn't screaming anymore, either. He was sobbing and
\par calling for Jesus.
\par Hard, chill wind made the plate-glass windows vibrate. It hooted
\par through the shattered door.
\par The gunman would be coming.
\par CHAPTER TWO.
\par Jack was stunned at the quantity of his own blood on the vinyl-tile
\par floor around him. Nausea squirmed through him, and greasy sweat
\par streamed down his face. He couldn't take his eyes off the spreading
\par stain that darkened his pants.
\par He had never been shot before. The pain was terrible but not as bad as
\par he would have expected. Worse than the pain was the sense of violation
\par and vulnerability, a terrible frantic awareness of the true fragility
\par of the human body.
\par He might not be able to hold on to consciousness for long. A hungry
\par darkness was already eating away at the edges of his vision.
\par He probably couldn't put much weight on his left leg, and he didn't
\par have time to pull himself up on his right alone, not while in such an
\par exposed position.
\par Shedding broken glass as a bright-scaled snake might shed an old skin,
\par unavoidably leaving a trail of blood, he crawled fast on his belly
\par alongside the L-shaped work counter behind which Arkadian kept the cash
\par register.
\par The gunman would be coming.
\par From the sound the weapon made and the brief glimpse he'd gotten of it,
\par Jack figured it was a submachine gun--maybe a Micro Uzi. The Micro was
\par less than ten inches long with the wire stock folded forward but a lot
\par heavier than a pistol, weighing about two kilos if it had a single
\par magazine, heavier if it featured two magazines welded at right angles
\par to give it a forty-round capacity. It would be like carrying a
\par standard-size bag of sugar in a sling, it was sure to cause chronic
\par neck pain, but not too big to fit an oversize shoulder holster under an.Armani suit--and worth the trouble if a man had snake-mean enemies.
\par Could be an FN P90, too, or maybe a British Bushman 2, but probably not
\par a Czech Skorpion, because a Skorpion fired only .32 ACP ammo.
\par Judging by how hard Luther had gone down, this seemed to be a gun with
\par more punch than a Skorpion, which the 9mm Micro Uzi provided. Forty
\par rounds in the Uzi to start, and the son of a bitch had fired twelve,
\par sixteen at most, so at least twenty-four rounds were left, and maybe a
\par pocketful of spare cartridges.
\par Thunder boomed, the air felt heavy with pent-up rain, wind shrieked
\par through the ruined door, and the gun rattled again. Outside, Hassam
\par Arkadian's cries to Jesus abruptly ended.
\par Jack desperately pulled himself around the end of the counter, thinking
\par the unthinkable. Luther Bryson dead. Arkadian dead. The attendant
\par dead. Most likely the young Asian mechanic too. All of them wasted.
\par The world had been turned upside down in less than a minute.
\par Now it was one-on-one, survival of the fittest, and Jack wasn't afraid
\par of that game. Though Darwinian selection tended to favor the guy with
\par the biggest gun and best supply of ammunition, cleverness could
\par outweigh caliber. He had been saved by his wits before and might be
\par again.
\par Surviving could be easier when he had his back to the wall, the odds
\par were stacked high against him, and he had no one to worry about but
\par himself. With only his own sorry ass on the line, he was more focused,
\par free to risk inaction or recklessness, free to be a coward or a
\par kamikaze fool, whatever the occasion demanded.
\par Then he dragged himself entirely into the sheltered space behind the
\par counter and discovered that he didn't, after all, enjoy the freedom of
\par a sole survivor. A woman was huddled there: petite, long dark hair,
\par attractive. Gray shirt, work pants, white socks, black shoes with
\par thick rubber soles. She was in her mid-thirties, maybe five or six
\par years younger than Hassam Arkadian.
\par Could be his wife. No, not a wife any more. Widow. She was sitting
\par on the floor, knees drawn up against her chest, arms wrapped tightly
\par around her legs, trying to make herself as small as possible, straining
\par for invisibility.
\par Her presence changed everything for Jack, put him on the line and
\par reduced his own chances of survival. He couldn't choose to hide,
\par couldn't even opt for recklessness any longer. He had to think hard
\par and clearly, determine the best course of action, and do the right
\par thing. He was responsible for her. He had sworn an oath to serve and
\par protect the public, and he was old-fashioned enough to take oaths
\par seriously.
\par The woman's eyes were wide with terror and shimmering with unspilled
\par tears.
\par Even in the midst of fear for her own life, she seemed to comprehend.the meaning of Arkadian's sudden lapse into silence.
\par Jack drew his revolver.
\par Serve and protect.
\par He was shivering uncontrollably. His left leg was hot, but the rest of
\par him was freezing, as if all his body heat was draining out through the
\par wound.
\par Outside, a sustained rattle of automatic-weapon fire ended in an
\par explosion that rocked the service station, tipped over a candy-vending
\par machine in the office, and blew in both big windows on which the gang
\par symbols had been etched. The huddled woman covered her face with her
\par hands, Jack squeezed his eyes shut, and glass spilled over the counter
\par into the space where they had taken shelter.
\par When he opened his eyes, endless phalanxes of shadows and light charged
\par across the office. The wind coming through the shattered door was no
\par longer chilly but hot, and the phantasms swarming over the walls were
\par reflections of fire.
\par The maniac with the Uzi had shot up one or more of the gasoline
\par pumps.
\par Cautiously Jack pulled himself up against the counter, putting no
\par weight on his left leg. Though his misery still seemed inadequate to
\par the wound, he figured it would get worse suddenly and soon. He didn't
\par want to precipitate it by any action of his own for fear that a
\par sufficiently fierce flash of pain would make him pass out.
\par Under considerable pressure, jets of burning gasoline were squirting
\par from one of the riddled pumps, splashing like molten lava onto the
\par blacktop. The pavement sloped toward the busy street, and scintillant
\par rivers of fire spread in that direction.
\par The explosion had ignited the roof of the portico that sheltered the
\par pumps.
\par Flames licked rapidly toward the main building.
\par The Lexus was on fire. The lunatic bastard had destroyed his own car,
\par which in some strange way made him seem more completely out of control
\par and dangerous than anything else he'd done.
\par Amid the inferno, which became more panoramic by the second as the
\par gasoline streamed across the blacktop, the killer was nowhere to be
\par seen. Maybe he'd regained at least some of his senses and fled on
\par foot.
\par More likely, he was in the two-bay garage, coming at them by that route
\par rather than making a bold approach through the shattered front
\par entrance. Less than fifteen feet from Jack, a painted metal door
\par connected the garage to the office. It was closed.
\par Leaning against the counter, he gripped his revolver in both hands and
\par aimed at the door, arms extended rigidly in front of him, ready to blow.the perp to hell at the first opportunity. His hands were shaking. So
\par cold. He strained to hold the gun steady, which helped, but he
\par couldn't entirely repress the tremors.
\par The darkness at the edges of his vision had retreated. Now it began to
\par encroach again. He blinked furiously, trying to wash away the
\par frightening peripheral blindness as he might have tried to expel a
\par speck of dust, but to no avail.
\par The air smelled of gasoline and hot tar. Shifting wind blew smoke into
\par the room--not much, just enough to make him want to cough. He clenched
\par his teeth, making only a low choking sound in his throat, because the
\par killer might be on the far side of the door, hesitating and
\par listening.
\par Still directing the revolver squarely at the entrance from the garage,
\par he glanced outside into whirlwinds of tempestuous fire and churning
\par shrouds of black smoke, afraid he was wrong. The gunman might erupt,
\par after all, from that conflagration, like a demon out of perdition.
\par The metal door again. Painted the palest blue. Like deep clear water
\par seen through a layer of crystalline ice.
\par The color made him cold. Everything made him cold--the hollow
\par iron-hard thunk-thunk of his laboring heart, the whisper-soft weeping
\par of the woman huddled on the floor behind him, the glittering debris of
\par broken glass. Even the roar and crackle of the fire chilled him.
\par Outside, seething flames had traveled the length of the portico and
\par reached the front of the service station. The roof must be ablaze by
\par now.
\par The pale-blue door.
\par Open it, you crazy sonofabitch. Come on, come on, come on.
\par Another explosion.
\par He had to turn his head completely away from the door to the garage and
\par look directly at the front of the station to see what had happened,
\par because he had lost nearly all of his peripheral vision.
\par The fuel tank of the Lexus. The vehicle was engulfed, reduced to just
\par the black skeleton of a car enwrapped by greedy tongues of fire that
\par stripped it of its lustrous emerald paint, fine leather upholstery, and
\par other plush appointments.
\par The blue door remained closed.
\par The revolver seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. His arms ached. He
\par couldn't hold the weapon steady. Could barely hold it at all.
\par He wanted to lie down and close his eyes. Sleep a little. Dream a
\par little dream green pastures, wildflowers, a blue sky, the city long
\par forgotten.
\par When he looked down at his leg, he discovered he was standing in a pool.of blood. An artery must have been nicked, maybe torn, and he was
\par going fast, dizzy just from looking down, nausea swelling anew, a
\par trembling in his gut.
\par Fire on the roof. He could hear it overhead, distinctly different from
\par the crackle and roar of the blaze in front of the station, shingles
\par popping, rafters creaking as construction joints were tortured by the
\par fierce, dry heat.
\par They might have only seconds before the ceiling exploded into flames or
\par caved in on them.
\par He didn't understand how he could be getting colder by the moment when
\par fire was all around them. The sweat streaming down his face was like
\par ice water.
\par Even if the roof didn't cave in for a couple of minutes, he might be
\par dead or too weak to pull the trigger when at last the killer rushed
\par them. He couldn't wait any longer.
\par He had to give up the two-hand grip on the gun. He needed his left
\par hand to brace himself against the For mica top of the counter as he
\par circled the end of it, keeping all weight off his left leg.
\par But when he reached the end of the counter, he was too dizzy to hop the
\par ten or twelve feet to the blue door. He had to use the toe of his left
\par foot as a balance point, applying the minimum pressure required to stay
\par erect as he hitched across the office.
\par Surprisingly, the pain was bearable. Then he realized it was tolerable
\par only because his leg was going numb. A cool tingle coursed through the
\par limb from hip to ankle. Even the wound itself was no longer hot, not
\par even warm.
\par The door. His left hand on the knob looked so far away, as if he were
\par peering at it through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.
\par Revolver in the right hand. Hanging down at his side. Like a massive
\par dumbbell.
\par The effort required to raise the weapon caused his stomach to keel over
\par on itself repeatedly.
\par The killer might be waiting on the other side, watching the knob, so
\par Jack pushed the door open and went through it fast, the revolver thrust
\par out in front of him. He stumbled, almost fell, and stepped past the
\par door, swinging the gun right and left, heart pounding so hard it jolted
\par his weakening arms, but there was no target. He could see all the way
\par across the garage because the BMW was up on the service rack. The only
\par person in sight was the Asian mechanic, as dead as the concrete on
\par which he was sprawled.
\par Jack turned to the blue door. It was black on this side, which seemed
\par ominous, glossy black, and it had gone shut behind him.
\par He took a step toward it, meaning to pull it open. He fell against it
\par instead..Harried by the changeable wind, a tide of bitter tarry smoke washed
\par into the double-bay garage.
\par Coughing, Jack wrenched open the door. The office was filled with
\par smoke, an antechamber to hell.
\par He shouted for the woman to come to him, and he was dismayed to hear
\par that his shout was barely more than a thin wheeze.
\par She was already on the move, however, and before he could try to shout
\par again, she appeared out of the roiling smoke, with one hand clamped
\par over her nose and mouth.
\par At first, when she leaned against him, Jack thought she was seeking
\par support, strength he didn't have to give, but he realized she was
\par urging him to rely on her. He was the one who had taken the oath, who
\par had sworn to serve and defend.
\par He felt dismally inadequate because he couldn't scoop her up in his
\par arms and carry her out of there as a hero might have done in a movie.
\par He leaned on the woman as little as he dared and turned left with her
\par in the direction of the open bay door, which was obscured by the
\par smoke.
\par He dragged his left leg. No longer any feeling in it whatsoever, no
\par pain, not even a tingle. Dead weight. Eyes squeezed shut against the
\par stinging smoke, bursts of color coruscating across the backs of his
\par eyelids. Holding his breath, resisting a powerful urge to vomit.
\par Somebody screaming, a shrill and terrible scream, on and on. No, not a
\par scream. Sirens. Rapidly drawing closer. Then he and the woman were
\par in the open, which he detected by a change in the wind, and he gasped
\par for breath, which came cold and clean into his lungs.
\par When he opened his eyes, the world was blurred by tears that the
\par abrasive smoke had rubbed from him, and he blinked frantically until
\par his sight cleared somewhat. Because of blood loss or shock, he was
\par reduced to tunnel vision. It was like looking at the world through
\par twin gun barrels, because the surrounding darkness was as smooth as the
\par curve of a steel bore.
\par To his left, everything was enveloped in flames. The Lexus.
\par Portico.
\par Service station. Arkadian's body was on fire. Luther's was not afire
\par yet, but hot embers were falling on it, flaming bits of shingles and
\par wood, and at any moment his uniform would ignite. Burning gasoline
\par still arced from the riddled pumps and streamed toward the street. The
\par blacktop along the perimeter of the blaze was melting, boiling.
\par Churning masses of thick black smoke rose high above the city, blending
\par into the pendulous black and gray storm clouds.
\par Someone cursed..Jack jerked his head to the right, away from the terrible but
\par hypnotically fascinating inferno, and focused his narrowed field of
\par vision on the soft-drink machines at the corner of the station. The
\par killer was standing there, as if oblivious of the destruction he had
\par wrought, feeding coins into the first of the two vending machines.
\par Two more discarded cans of Pepsi lay on the asphalt behind him. The
\par Micro Uzi was in his left hand, at his side, muzzle pointing at the
\par pavement. He slammed the flat of his fist against one of the buttons
\par on the selection board.
\par Feebly shoving the woman away, Jack whispered, "Get down!"
\par He turned clumsily toward the killer, swaying, barely able to remain on
\par his feet.
\par The can of soda clattered into the delivery tray. The gunman leaned
\par forward, squinting, then cursed again.
\par Shuddering violently, Jack struggled to raise his revolver. It seemed
\par to be shackled to the ground on a short length of chain, requiring him
\par to lift the entire world in order to bring the weapon high enough to
\par aim.
\par Aware of him, responding with an arrogant leisureliness, the psychopath
\par in the expensive suit turned and advanced a couple of steps, bringing
\par up his own weapon.
\par Jack squeezed off a shot. He was so weak, the recoil knocked him
\par backward and off his feet.
\par The killer loosed a burst of six or eight rounds.
\par Jack was already falling out of the line of fire. As bullets cut the
\par air over his head, he fired another shot, and then a third as he
\par crumpled onto the blacktop.
\par Incredibly, the third round slammed the killer in the chest and pitched
\par him backward into the vending machine. He bounced off the machine and
\par dropped onto his knees. He was badly hurt, perhaps mortally wounded,
\par his white silk shirt turning red as swiftly as a trick scarf
\par transformed by a magician's deft hands, but he wasn't dead yet, and he
\par still had the Micro Uzi.
\par The sirens were extremely loud. Help was nearly at hand, but it was
\par probably going to come too late.
\par A blast of thunder breached a dam in the sky, and torrents of icy rain
\par suddenly fell by the megaton.
\par With an effort that nearly caused him to black out, Jack sat up and
\par clasped his revolver in both hands. He squeezed off a shot that was
\par wide of the mark.
\par The recoil induced a muscle spasm in his arms. All the strength went
\par out of his hands, and he lost his grip on the revolver, which clattered.onto the blacktop between his spread legs.
\par The killer loosed two-three-four shots, and Jack took two hits in the
\par chest.
\par He was knocked flat. The back of his skull bounced painfully off the
\par pavement.
\par He tried to sit up again. He could only raise his head, and not far,
\par just far enough to see that the killer had gone down after squeezing
\par off that last barrage, facedown on the blacktop. The round in the
\par chest had taken him out, though not fast enough.
\par Jack's head lolled to his left. Even as his tunnel vision constricted
\par further, he saw a black-and-white swing off the street, into the
\par station at high speed, fishtailing to a stop as the driver stood on the
\par brakes.
\par Jack's vision closed down altogether. He was totally blind.
\par He felt as helpless as a baby, and he began to cry.
\par He heard doors opening, officers shouting.
\par It was over.
\par Luther was dead. Almost one year since Tommy Fernandez had been shot
\par down beside him. Tommy, then Luther. Two good partners, good friends,
\par in one year.
\par But it was over.
\par Voices. Sirens. A crash that might have been the portico collapsing
\par over the service-station pumps.
\par Sounds were increasingly muffled, as if someone was steadily packing
\par his ears full of cotton. His hearing was fading in much the same way
\par that his vision had gone.
\par Other senses too. He repeatedly pursed his dry mouth, trying
\par unsuccessfully to work up some saliva and get a taste of something,
\par even the acrid fumes of gasoline and burning tar. He couldn't smell
\par anything, either, although a moment ago the air had been ripe with foul
\par odors.
\par Couldn't feel the pavement under him. Or the blustery wind. No pain
\par any more.
\par Not even a tingle. Just cold. Deep, penetrating cold.
\par Utter deafness overcame him.
\par Holding desperately to the spark of life in a body that had become an
\par insensate receptacle for his mind, he wondered if he would ever see
\par Heather and Toby again. When he tried to summon their faces from
\par memory, he could not recall what they looked like, his wife and son,
\par two people he loved more than life itself, couldn't remember their eyes.or the color of their hair, which scared him, terrified him. He knew
\par he was shaking with grief, as if they had died, but he couldn't feel
\par the shakes, knew he was crying but couldn't feel the tears, strained
\par harder to bring their precious faces to mind, Toby and Heather, Heather
\par and Toby, but his imagination was as blind as his eyes. His interior
\par world wasn't a bottomless pit of darkness but a blank wintry whiteness,
\par like a vision of driving snow, a blizzard, frigid, glacial, arctic,
\par unrelenting.
\par CHAPTER THREE.
\par Lightning flashed, followed by a crash of thunder so powerful it
\par rattled the kitchen windows. The storm began not with a sprinkle or
\par drizzle but with a sudden downpour, as if clouds were hollow structures
\par that could shatter like eggshells and spill their entire contents at
\par once.
\par Heather was standing at the counter beside the refrigerator, scooping
\par orange sherbet out of a carton into a bowl, and she turned to look at
\par the window above the sink. Rain was falling so hard it almost appeared
\par to be snow, a white deluge. The branches of the ficus benjamina in the
\par backyard drooped under the weight of that vertical river, their longest
\par trailers touching the ground.
\par She was relieved she wouldn't be on the freeways later in the day,
\par commuting home from work. Due to a lack of regular experience,
\par Californians weren't good at driving in rain, they either slowed to a
\par crawl and took such extreme precautions that they halted traffic, or
\par they proceeded in their usual gonzo fashion and careened into one
\par another with a recklessness approaching enthusiasm. Later, a lot of
\par people would find their usual hour-long evening commute stretching into
\par a two-and-a-half-hour ordeal.
\par There was, after all, a bright side to being unemployed. She just
\par hadn't been looking hard enough for it. No doubt, if she put her mind
\par to it, she'd think of a long list of other benefits. Like not having
\par to buy any new clothes for work. Look how much she had saved right
\par there. Didn't have to worry about the stability of the bank in which
\par they had their savings account, either, because at the rate they were
\par going, they wouldn't have a savings account in a few months, not on
\par just Jack's salary, since the city's latest financial crisis had
\par required him to take a pay cut. Taxes had gone up again too, both
\par state and federal, so she was saving all the money that the government
\par would have taken and squandered in her name if she'd been on someone's
\par payroll. Gosh, when you really thought about it, being laid off after
\par ten years at IBM wasn't a tragedy, not even a crisis, but a virtual
\par festival of life-enhancing change.
\par "Give it a rest, Heather," she warned herself, closing up the carton of
\par sherbet and returning it to the freezer.
\par Jack, ever the grinning optimist, said nothing could be gained by
\par dwelling on bad news, and he was right, of course. His upbeat nature,
\par genial personality, and resilient heart had made it possible for him to
\par endure a nightmarish childhood and adolescence that would have broken
\par many people..More recently, his philosophy had served him well as he'd struggled
\par through the worst year of his career with the Department. After almost
\par a decade together on the streets, he and Tommy Fernandez had been as
\par close as brothers. Tommy had been dead more than eleven months now,
\par but at least one night a week Jack woke from vivid dreams in which his
\par partner and friend was dying again. He always slipped from bed and
\par went to the kitchen for a post-midnight beer or to the living room just
\par to sit alone in the darkness awhile, unaware that Heather had been
\par awakened by the soft cries that escaped him in his sleep. On other
\par nights, months ago, she had learned that she could neither do nor say
\par anything to help him, he needed to be by himself. After he left the
\par room, she often reached out beneath the covers to put her hand on the
\par sheets, which were still warm with his body heat and damp with the
\par perspiration wrung out of him by anguish.
\par In spite of everything, Jack remained a walking advertisement for the
\par power of positive thinking. Heather was determined to match his
\par cheerful disposition and his capacity for hope.
\par At the sink, she rinsed the residue of sherbet off the scoop.
\par Her own mother, Sally, was a world-class whiner who viewed every piece
\par of bad news as a personal catastrophe, even if the event that disturbed
\par her had occurred at the farthest end of the earth and had involved only
\par total strangers. Political unrest in the Philippines could set Sally
\par off on a despairing monologue about the higher prices she believed she
\par would be forced to pay for sugar and for everything containing sugar if
\par the Philippine cane crop was destroyed in a bloody civil war. A
\par hangnail was as troublesome to her as a broken arm to an ordinary
\par person, a headache invariably signaled an impending stroke, and a minor
\par ulcer in the mouth was a sure sign of terminal cancer. The woman
\par thrived on bad news and gloom.
\par Eleven years ago, when Heather was twenty, she'd been delighted to
\par cease being a Beckerman and to become a McGarvey--unlike some friends,
\par in that era of burgeoning feminism, who had continued to use their
\par maiden names after marriage or resorted to hyphenated surnames. She
\par wasn't the first child in history who became determined to be nothing
\par whatsoever like her parents, but she liked to think she was
\par extraordinarily diligent about ridding herself of parental traits.
\par As she got a spoon out of a drawer, picked up the bowl full of sherbet,
\par and went into the living room, Heather realized another upside to being
\par unemployed was that she didn't have to miss work to care for Toby when
\par he was home sick from school or hire a sitter to look after him. She
\par could be right there where he needed her and suffer none of the guilt
\par of a working mom.
\par Of course, their health insurance had covered only eighty percent of
\par the cost of the visit to the doctor's office on Monday morning, and the
\par twenty-percent copayment had caught her attention as never before. It
\par had seemed huge. But that was Beckerman thinking, not McGarvey
\par thinking.
\par Toby was in his pajamas in an armchair in the living room, in front of
\par the television, legs stretched out on a footstool, covered in
\par blankets..He was watching cartoons on a cable channel that programmed exclusively
\par for kids.
\par Heather knew to the penny what the cable subscription cost. Back in
\par October, when she'd still had a job, she'd have had to guess at the
\par amount and might not have come within five dollars of it.
\par On the TV, a tiny mouse was chasing a cat, which had apparently been
\par hypnotized into believing that the mouse was six feet tall with fangs
\par and blood-red eyes.
\par "Gourmet orange sherbet," she said, handing Toby the bowl and spoon,
\par "finest on the planet, brewed it up myself, hours upon hours of
\par drudgery, had to kill and skin two dozen sherbets to make it."
\par "Thanks, Mom," he said, grinning at her, then grinning even more
\par broadly at the sherbet before raising his eyes to the TV screen and
\par locking onto the cartoon again.
\par Sunday through Tuesday, he had stayed in bed without making a fuss, too
\par miserable even to agitate for television time. He had slept so much
\par that she'd begun to worry, but evidently sleep had been what he
\par needed.
\par Last night, for the first time since Sunday, he'd been able to keep
\par more than clear liquids in his stomach, he'd asked for sherbet and
\par hadn't gotten sick on it. This morning he'd risked two slices of
\par unbuttered white toast, and now sherbet again. His fever had broken,
\par the flu seemed to be running its course.
\par Heather settled into another armchair. On the end table beside her, a
\par coffee-pot-shaped thermos and a heavy white ceramic mug with red and
\par purple flowers stood on a plastic tray. She uncapped the thermos and
\par refilled the mug with a premium coffee flavored with almond and
\par chocolate, relishing the fragrant steam, trying not to calculate the
\par cost per cup of this indulgence.
\par After curling her legs on the chair, pulling an afghan over her lap,
\par and sipping the brew, she picked up a paperback edition of a Dick
\par Francis novel.
\par She opened to the page she had marked with a slip of paper, and she
\par tried to return to a world of English manners, morals, and mysteries.
\par She felt guilty, though she was not neglecting anything to spend time
\par with a book. No housework needed to be done. When they'd both held
\par jobs, she and Jack had shared chores at home. They still shared
\par them.
\par When she'd been laid off, she'd insisted on taking over his domestic
\par duties, but he'd refused. He probably thought that letting her fill
\par her time with housework would lead her to the depressing conviction
\par that she would never find another job. He'd always been as sensitive
\par about other people's feelings as he was optimistic about his own
\par prospects. As a result, the house was clean, the laundry was done, and
\par her only chore was to watch over Toby, which wasn't a chore at all.because he was such a good kid. Her guilt was the irrational if
\par inescapable result of being, by nature and by choice, a working woman
\par who, in this deep recession, was not permitted to work.
\par She had submitted applications to twenty-six companies. Now all she
\par could do was wait. And read Dick Francis.
\par The melodramatic music and comic voices on the television didn't
\par distract her.
\par Indeed, the fragrant coffee, the comfort of the chair, and the cold
\par sound of winter rain drumming on the roof combined to take her mind off
\par her worries and let her slip into the novel.
\par Heather had been reading fifteen minutes when Toby said, "Mom?"
\par "Hmmm?" she said, without looking up from her book.
\par "Why do cats always want to kill mice?"
\par Marking her place in the book with her thumb, she glanced at the
\par television, where a different cat and mouse were involved in another
\par slapstick chase, the former pursuing the latter this time.
\par "Why can't they be friends with mice," the boy asked, "instead of
\par wanting to kill them all the time?"
\par "It's just a cat's nature," she said.
\par "But why?"
\par "It's the way God made cats."
\par "Doesn't God like mice?"
\par "Well, He must, because He made mice too."
\par "Then why make cats to kill them?"
\par "If mice didn't have natural enemies like cats and owls and coyotes,
\par they'd overrun the world."
\par "Why would they overrun the world?"
\par "Because they give birth to litters, not single babies."
\par "So?"
\par "So if they didn't have natural enemies to control their numbers,
\par there'd be a trillion billion mice eating up all the food in the world,
\par with nothing left for cats or us."
\par "If God didn't want mice to overrun the world, why didn't He just make
\par them so they have single babies at a time?"
\par Adults always lost the Why Game, because eventually the train of
\par questions led to a dead-end track with no answer..Heather said, "You got me there, kiddo."
\par "I think it's mean to make mice have a lot of babies and then make cats
\par to kill them."
\par "You'll have to discuss that with God, I'm afraid."
\par "You mean when I go to bed tonight and say my prayers?"
\par "Best time," she said, freshening the coffee in her mug with the supply
\par in the thermos.
\par Toby said, "I always ask Him questions, then I always fall asleep
\par before He answers me. Why does He let me fall asleep before I can get
\par the answer?"
\par "That's the way God works. He only talks to you in your sleep. If you
\par listen, then you wake up with the answer."
\par She was proud of that one. She seemed to be holding her own.
\par Frowning, Toby said, "But usually I still don't know the answer when I
\par wake up. Why don't I know it if He told me?"
\par Heather took a few sips of coffee to gain time. Then she said, "Well,
\par see, God doesn't want to just give you all the answers. The reason
\par we're here on this world is to find the answers ourselves, to learn and
\par gain understanding by our own efforts."
\par Good. Very good. She felt modestly exhilarated, as if she'd held on
\par longer than she'd any right to expect in a tennis match with a
\par world-class player.
\par Toby said, "Mice aren't the only things get chased and killed. For
\par every animal, there's another animal wants to tear it to pieces." He
\par glanced at the TV. "See, there, like dogs want to murder cats."
\par The cat that had been chasing the mouse was now, in turn, being pursued
\par by a fierce-looking bulldog in a spiked collar.
\par Looking at his mother again, Toby said, "Why does every animal have
\par another animal that wants to kill it? Would cats overrun the world
\par without their natural enemies?"
\par The Why Game train had come to another dead end in the track. Oh, yes,
\par she could have discussed the concept of original sin, told him how the
\par world had been a serene realm of peace and plenty until Eve and Adam
\par had fallen from grace and let death into the world. But all of that
\par seemed to be heavy stuff for an eight-year-old. Besides, she wasn't
\par sure she believed any of it, though it was the explanation for evil,
\par violence, and death with which she herself had grown up.
\par Fortunately, Toby spared her from the admission that she had no
\par answer.
\par "If I was God, I woulda made just one mom and dad and kid of each kind.of thing. You know? Like one mother golden retriever and one father
\par golden retriever and one puppy."
\par He had long wanted a golden retriever, but they'd been delaying because
\par their five-room house seemed too small for such a large dog.
\par "Nothing would ever die or grow old," Toby said, continuing to describe
\par the world he would have made, "so the puppy would always be a puppy,
\par and there could never be more of any one thing to overrun the world,
\par and then nothing would have to kill anything else."
\par That, of course, was the paradise that supposedly once had been.
\par "I wouldn't make any bees or spiders or cockroaches or snakes," he
\par said, wrinkling his face in disgust. "That never made any sense. God
\par musta been in a really weird mood that day."
\par Heather laughed. She loved this kid to pieces.
\par "Well, He musta been," Toby insisted, turning his attention to the
\par television again.
\par He looked so like Jack. He had Jack's beautiful gray-blue eyes and
\par open guileless face. Jack's nose. But he had her blond hair, and he
\par was slightly small for his age, so it was possible he had inherited
\par more of his body type from her than from his father. Jack was tall and
\par solidly built, Heather was five four, slender. Toby was obviously the
\par son of both, and sometimes, like now, his existence seemed
\par miraculous.
\par He was the living symbol of her love for Jack and of Jack's love for
\par her, and if death was the price to be paid for the miracle of
\par procreation, then perhaps the bargain made in Eden wasn't as lopsided
\par as it sometimes seemed.
\par On TV, Sylvester the cat was trying to kill Tweetie the canary, but
\par unlike real life, the tiny bird was getting the best of the sputtering
\par feline.
\par The telephone rang.
\par Heather put her book on the arm of the chair, flung the afghan aside,
\par and got up. Toby had eaten all the sherbet, and she plucked the empty
\par bowl from his lap on her way to the kitchen.
\par The phone was on the wall beside the refrigerator. She put the bowl on
\par the counter and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
\par "Heather?"
\par "Speaking."
\par "It's Lyle Crawford."
\par Crawford was the captain of Jack's division, the man to whom he
\par answered..Maybe it was the fact that Crawford had never called her before, maybe
\par it was something in the tone of his voice, or maybe it was just the
\par instincts of a cop's wife, -but she knew at once that something was
\par terribly wrong. Her heart began to race, and for a moment she couldn't
\par breathe. Then suddenly she was breathing shallowly, rapidly, and
\par expelling the same word with each exhalation: "No, no, no, no."
\par Crawford was saying something, but Heather couldn't make herself listen
\par to him, as if whatever had happened to Jack would not really have
\par happened as long as she refused to hear the ugly facts put into
\par words.
\par Someone was knocking at the back door.
\par She turned, looked. Through the window in the door, she saw a man in
\par uniform, dripping rain, Louie Silverman, another cop from Jack's
\par division, a good friend for eight years, nine years, maybe longer,
\par Louie with the rubbery face and unruly red hair. Because he was a
\par friend, he had come around to the back door in stead of knocking at the
\par front, not so formal that way, not so damn cold and horribly formal,
\par just a friend at the back door, oh God, just a friend at the back door
\par with some news.
\par Louie said her name. Muffled by the glass. So forlorn, the way he
\par said her name.
\par "Wait, wait," she told Lyle Crawford, and she took the receiver away
\par from her ear, held it against her breast.
\par She closed her eyes too, so she wouldn't have to look at poor Louie's
\par face pressed to the window in the door. So gray, his face, so drawn
\par and gray. He loved Jack too. Poor Louie.
\par She chewed on her lower lip and squeezed her eyes tightly shut and held
\par the phone in both hands against her chest, searching for the strength
\par she was going to need, praying for the strength.
\par She heard a key in the back door. Louie knew where they hid the spare
\par on the porch.
\par The door opened. He came inside with the sound of rain swelling behind
\par him.
\par "Heather," he said.
\par The sound of the rain. The rain. The cold merciless sound of the
\par rain.
\par CHAPTER FOUR.
\par The Montana morning was high and blue, pierced by mountains with peaks
\par as white as angels' robes, graced by forests green and by the smooth
\par contours of lower meadows still asleep under winter's mantle. The air
\par was pure and so clear it seemed possible to look all the way to China
\par if not for the obstructing terrain.
\par Eduardo Fernandez stood on the front porch of the ranch house, staring.across the down-sloping, snowcovered fields to the woods a hundred
\par yards to the east.
\par Sugar pines and yellow pines crowded close to one another and pinned
\par inky shadows to the ground, as if the night never quite escaped their
\par needled grasp even with the rising of a bright sun in a cloudless
\par sky.
\par The silence was deep. Eduardo lived alone, and his nearest neighbor
\par was two miles away. The wind was still abed, and nothing moved across
\par that vast panorama except for two birds of prey--hawks,
\par perhaps--circling soundlessly high overhead.
\par Shortly after one o'clock in the morning, when the night usually would
\par have been equally steeped in silence, Eduardo had been awakened by a
\par strange sound.
\par The longer he had listened, the stranger it had seemed. As he had
\par gotten out of bed to seek the source, he had been surprised to find he
\par was afraid. After seven decades of taking what life threw at him,
\par having attained spiritual peace and an acceptance of the inevitability
\par of death, he'd not been frightened of anything in a long time. He was
\par unnerved, therefore, when last night he had felt his heart thudding
\par furiously and his gut clenching with dread merely because of a queer
\par sound.
\par Unlike many seventy-year-old men, Eduardo rarely had difficulty
\par attaining plumbless sleep for a full eight hours. His days were filled
\par with physical activity, his evenings with the solace of good books, a
\par lifetime of measured habits and moderation left him vigorous in old
\par age, without troubling regrets, content. Loneliness was the only curse
\par of his life, since Margaret had died three years before, and on those
\par infrequent occasions when he woke in the middle of the night, it was a
\par dream of his lost wife that harried him from sleep.
\par The sound had been less loud than all-pervasive. A low throbbing that
\par swelled like a series of waves rushing toward a beach. Beneath the
\par throbbing, an undertone that was almost subliminal, quaverous, an eerie
\par electronic oscillation. He'd not only heard it but felt it, vibrating
\par in his teeth, his bones. The glass in the windows hummed with it.
\par When he placed a hand flat against the wall, he swore that he could
\par feel the waves of sound cresting through the house itself, like the
\par slow beating of a heart beneath the plaster.
\par sure, as if he had been listening to someone or something rhythmically
\par straining against confinement, struggling to break out of a prison or
\par through a barrier.
\par But who?
\par Or what?
\par Eventually, after scrambling out of bed, pulling on pants and shoes, he
\par had gone onto the front porch, where he had seen the light in the
\par woods. No, he had to be more honest with himself. It hadn't been
\par merely a light in the woods, nothing as simple as that..He wasn't superstitious. Even as a young man, he had prided himself on
\par his levelheadedness, common sense, and unsentimental grasp of the
\par realities of life. The writers whose books lined his study were those
\par with a crisp, simple style and with no patience for fantasy, men with a
\par cold clear vision, who saw the world for what it was and not for what
\par it might be: men like Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Ford Madox Ford.
\par The phenomenon in the lower woods was nothing that his favorite
\par writers--every last one of them a realist--could have incorporated into
\par their stories. The light had not been from an object within the
\par forest, against which the pines had been silhouetted, rather, it had
\par come from the pines themselves, mottled amber radiance that appeared to
\par originate within the bark, within the boughs, as if the tree roots had
\par siphoned water from a subterranean pool contaminated by a greater
\par percentage of radium than the paint with which watch dials had once
\par been coated to allow time to be told in the dark.
\par Accompanying that pulse had been a sense of presi A cluster of ten to
\par twenty pines had been involved.
\par Like a glowing shrine in the otherwise night-black fastness of
\par timber.
\par Unquestionably, the mysterious source of the light was also the source
\par of the sound. When the former had begun to fade, so had the latter.
\par Quieter and dimmer, quieter and dimmer. The March night had become
\par silent and dark again in the same instant, marked only by the sound of
\par his own breathing and illuminated by nothing stranger than the silver
\par crescent of a quarter moon and the pearly phosphorescence of the
\par snow-shrouded fields.
\par The event had lasted about seven minutes.
\par It had seemed much longer.
\par Back inside the house, he had stood at the windows, waiting to see what
\par would happen next. Eventually, when that seemed to have been the sum
\par of it, he returned to bed.
\par He had not been able to get back to sleep. He had lain awake ...
\par wondering.
\par Every morning he sat down to breakfast at six-thirty, with his big
\par shortwave radio tuned to a station in Chicago that provided
\par international news twenty-four hours a day. The peculiar experience
\par during the previous night hadn't been a sufficient interruption of the
\par rhythms of his life to make him alter his schedule. This morning he'd
\par eaten the entire contents of a large can of grapefruit sections,
\par followed by two eggs over easy, home fries, a quarter pound of bacon,
\par and four slices of buttered toast. He hadn't lost his hearty appetite
\par with age, and a lifelong dedication to the foods that were hardest on
\par the heart had only left him with the constitution of a man more than
\par twenty years his junior..Finished eating, he always liked to linger over several cups of black
\par coffee, listening to the endless troubles of the world. The news
\par unfailingly confirmed the wisdom of living in a far place with no
\par neighbors in view.
\par This morning, though he had lingered longer than usual with his coffee,
\par and though the radio had been on, he hadn't been able to remember a
\par word of the news when he pushed back his chair and got up from
\par breakfast. The entire time, he had been studying the woods through the
\par window beside the table, trying to decide if he should go down to the
\par foot of the meadow and search for evidence of the enigmatic
\par visitation.
\par Now, standing on the front porch in knee-high boots, jeans, sweater,
\par and sheepskin-lined jacket, wearing a cap with fur-lined earflaps tied
\par under his chin, he still hadn't decided what he was going to do.
\par Incredibly, fear was still with him. Bizarre as they might have been,
\par the tides of pulsating sound and the luminosity in the trees had not
\par harmed him.
\par Whatever threat he perceived was entirely subjective, no doubt more
\par imaginary than real.
\par Finally he became sufficiently angry with himself to break the chains
\par of dread. He descended the porch steps and strode across the front
\par yard.
\par The transition from yard to meadow was hidden under a cloak of snow six
\par to eight inches deep in some places and knee-high in others, depending
\par on where the wind had scoured it away or piled it. After thirty years
\par on the ranch, he was so familiar with the contours of the land and the
\par ways of the wind that he unthinkingly chose the route that offered the
\par least resistance.
\par White plumes of breath steamed from him. The bitter air brought a
\par pleasant flush to his cheeks. He calmed himself by concentrating
\par on--and enjoying--the familiar effects of a winter day.
\par He stood for a while at the end of the meadow, studying the very trees
\par that, last night, had glowed a smoky amber against the black backdrop
\par of the deeper woods, as if they had been imbued with a divine presence,
\par like God in the bush that burned without being consumed. This morning
\par they looked no more special than a million other sugar and ponderosa
\par pines, the former somewhat greener than the latter.
\par The specimens at the edge of the forest were younger than those rising
\par behind them, only about thirty to thirty-five feet tall, as young as
\par twenty years.
\par They had grown from seeds fallen to the earth when he had already been
\par on the ranch a decade, and he felt as if he knew them more intimately
\par than he had known most people in his life.
\par The woods had always seemed like a cathedral to him. The trunks of the
\par great evergreens were reminiscent of the granite columns of a nave,
\par soaring high to support a vaulted ceiling of green boughs. The.pine-scented silence was ideal for meditation. Walking the meandering
\par deer trails, he often had a sense that he was in a sacred place, that
\par he was not just a man of flesh and bone but an heir to eternity.
\par He had always felt safe in the woods.
\par Until now.
\par Stepping out of the meadow and into the random-patterned mosaic of
\par shadows and sunlight beneath the interlaced pine branches, Eduardo
\par found nothing out of the ordinary. Neither the trunks nor the boughs
\par showed signs of heat damage, no charring, not even a singed curl of
\par bark or blackened cluster of needles.
\par The thin layer of snow under the trees had not melted anywhere, and the
\par only tracks in it were those of deer, raccoon, and smaller animals.
\par He broke off a piece of bark from a sugar pine and crumbled it between
\par the thumb and forefinger of his gloved right hand. Nothing unusual
\par about it.
\par He moved deeper into the woods, past the place where the trees had
\par stood in radiant splendor in the night. Some of the older pines were
\par over two hundred feet tall. The shadows grew more numerous and blacker
\par than ash buds in the front of March, while the sun found fewer places
\par to intrude.
\par His heart would not be still. It thudded hard and fast.
\par He could find nothing in the woods but what had always been there, yet
\par his heart would not be still.
\par His mouth was dry. The full curve of his spine was clad in a chill
\par that had nothing to do with the wintry air.
\par Annoyed with himself, Eduardo turned back toward the meadow, following
\par the tracks he had left in the patches of snow and the thick carpet of
\par dead pine needles. The crunch of his footsteps disturbed a slumbering
\par owl from its secret perch in some high bower.
\par He felt a wrongness in the woods. He couldn't put a finer point on it
\par than that. Which sharpened his annoyance. A wrongness. What the hell
\par did that mean? A wrongness.
\par The hooting owl.
\par Spiny black pine cones on white snow.
\par Pale beams of sunlight lancing through the gaps in the gray-green
\par branches.
\par All of it ordinary. Peaceful. Yet wrong.
\par As he returned to the perimeter of the forest, with snow-covered fields
\par visible between the trunks of the trees ahead, he was suddenly certain
\par that he was not going to reach open ground, that something was rushing
\par at him from behind, some creature as indefinable as the wrongness that.he sensed around him. He began to move faster. Fear swelled step by
\par step. The hooting of the owl seemed to sour into a cry as alien as the
\par shriek of a nemesis in a nightmare. He stumbled on an exposed root,
\par his heart trip-hammered, and he spun around with a cry of terror to
\par confront whatever demon was in pursuit of him.
\par He was, of course, alone.
\par Shadows and sunlight.
\par The hoot of an owl. A soft and lonely sound. As ever.
\par Cursing himself, he headed for the meadow again. Reached it. The
\par trees were behind him. He was safe.
\par Then, dear sweet Jesus, the fear again, worse than ever, the absolute
\par dead certainty that it was coming-- what?--that it was for sure gaining
\par on him, that it would drag him down, that it was bent upon committing
\par an act infinitely worse than murder, that it had an inhuman purpose and
\par unknown uses for him so strange they were beyond both his understanding
\par and conception.
\par This time he was in the grip of a terror so black and profound, so
\par mindless, that he could not summon the courage to turn and confront the
\par empty day behind him--if, indeed, it proved to be empty this time. He
\par raced toward the house, which appeared far more distant than a hundred
\par yards, a citadel beyond his reach. He kicked through shallow snow,
\par blundered into deeper drifts, ran and churned and staggered and flailed
\par uphill, making wordless sounds of blind panic--"Uh, uh, uhhhhh, uh,
\par uh"--all intellect repressed by instinct, until he found himself at the
\par porch steps, up which he scrambled, at the top of which he turned, at
\par last, to scream--"No!"--at the clear, crisp, blue Montana day.
\par The pristine mantle of snow across the broad field was marred only by
\par his own trail to and from the woods.
\par He went inside.
\par He bolted the door.
\par In the big kitchen he stood for a long time in front of the brick
\par fireplace, still dressed for the outdoors, basking in the heat that
\par poured across the hearth--yet unable to get warm.
\par Old. He was an old man. Seventy. An old man who had lived alone too
\par long, who sorely missed his wife. If senility had crept up on him, who
\par was around to notice? An old, lonely man with cabin fever, imagining
\par things.
\par "Bullshit," he said after a while.
\par He was lonely, all right, but he wasn't senile.
\par After stripping out of his hat, coat, gloves, and boots, he got the
\par hunting rifles and shotguns out of the locked cabinet in the study. He
\par loaded all of them..Mae Hong, who lived across the street, came over to take care of
\par Toby.
\par Her husband was a cop too, though not in the same division as Jack.
\par Because the Hongs had no children of their own yet, Mae was free to
\par stay as late as necessary, in the event Heather needed to put in a long
\par vigil at the hospital.
\par While Louie Silverman and Mae remained in the kitchen, Heather lowered
\par the sound on the television and told Toby what had happened. She sat
\par on the foot-stool, and after tossing the blankets aside, he perched on
\par the edge of the chair. She held his small hands in hers.
\par She didn't share the grimmest details with him, in part because she
\par didn't know all of them herself but also because an eight-year-old
\par could handle only so much. On the other hand, she couldn't gloss over
\par the situation, either, because they were a police family.
\par They lived with the repressed expectation of JUSt such a disaster as
\par had struck that morning, and even a child had the need and the right to
\par know when his father had been seriously wounded.
\par "Can I go to the hospital with you?" Toby asked, holding more tightly
\par to her hands than he probably realized.
\par "It's best for you to stay here right now, honey."
\par "I'm not sick any more."
\par "Yes, you are."
\par "I feel good."
\par "You don't want to give your germs to your dad."
\par "He'll be all right, won't he?"
\par She could give him only one answer even if she couldn't be certain it
\par would prove to be correct. "Yes, baby, he's going to be all right."
\par His gaze was direct. He wanted the truth. Right at that moment he
\par seemed to be far older than eight. Maybe cops' kids grew up faster
\par than others, faster than they should.
\par "You're sure?" he said.
\par "Yes. I'm sure."
\par "Where was he shot?"
\par "In the leg."
\par Not a lie. It was one of the places he was shot. In the leg and two
\par hits in the torso, Crawford had said. Two hits in the torso. Jesus.
\par What did that mean? Take out a lung? Gutshot? The heart? At least.he hadn't sustained head wounds. Tommy Fernandez had been shot in the
\par head, no chance.
\par She felt a sob of anguish rising in her, and she strained to force it
\par down, didn't dare give voice to it, not in front of Toby.
\par "That's not so bad, in the leg," Toby said, but his lower lip was
\par trembling.
\par "What about the bad guy?"
\par "He's dead."
\par "Daddy got him?"
\par "Yes, he got him."
\par "Good," Toby said solemnly.
\par "Daddy did what was right, and now we have to do what's right too, we
\par have to be strong. Okay?"
\par "Yeah."
\par He was so small. It wasn't fair to put such a weight on a boy so
\par small.
\par She said, "Daddy needs to know we're okay, that we're strong, so he
\par doesn't have to worry about us and can concentrate on getting well."
\par "Sure."
\par "That's my boy." She squeezed his hands. "I'm real proud of you, do
\par you know that?"
\par Suddenly shy, he looked at the floor. "Well ... I'm ... I'm proud of
\par Daddy."
\par "You should be, Toby. Your dad's a hero."
\par He nodded but couldn't speak. His face was screwed up as he strained
\par to avoid tears.
\par "You be good for Mae."
\par "Yeah."
\par "I'll be back as soon as I can."
\par "When?"
\par "As soon as I can."
\par He sprang off the chair, into her arms, so fast and with such force he
\par almost knocked her off the stool. She hugged him fiercely. He was
\par shuddering as if with fever chills, though that stage of his illness
\par had passed almost two days ago. Heather squeezed her eyes shut, bit.down on her tongue almost hard enough to draw blood, being strong,
\par being strong even if, damn it, no one should ever have to be so
\par strong.
\par "Gotta go," she said softly.
\par Toby pulled back from her.
\par She smiled at him, smoothed his tousled hair.
\par He settled into the armchair and propped his legs on the stool again.
\par She tucked the blankets around him, then turned the sound up on the
\par television once more.
\par Elmer Fudd trying to terminate Bugs Bunny. Cwazy wabbit. Boom-boom,
\par bang-bang, whapitta-whapittawhap, thud, clunk, hoo-ha, around and
\par around in perpetual pursuit.
\par In the kitchen, Heather hugged Mae Hong and whispered, "Don't let him
\par watch any regular channels, where he might see a news brief."
\par Mae nodded. "If he gets tired of cartoons, we'll play games."
\par "Those bastards on the TV news, they always have to show you the blood,
\par get the ratings. I don't want him seeing his father's blood on the
\par ground."
\par The storm washed all the color out of the day. The sky was as charry
\par as burned-out ruins, and from a distance of even half a block, the palm
\par trees looked black. Wind-driven rain, gray as iron nails, hammered
\par every surface, and gutters overflowed with filthy water.
\par Louie Silverman was in uniform, driving a squad car, so he used the
\par emergency beacons and siren to clear the surface streets ahead of them,
\par staying off the freeways.
\par Sitting in the shotgun seat beside Louie, hands clasped between her
\par thighs, shoulders hunched, shivering, Heather said, "Okay, it's just us
\par now, Toby can't overhear, so tell me straight."
\par "It's bad. Left leg, lower right abdomen, upper right side of the
\par chest. The perp was armed with a Micro Uzi, nine-millimeter
\par ammunition, so they weren't light rounds. Jack was unconscious when we
\par hit the scene, paramedics couldn't bring him around."
\par "And Luther's dead."
\par "Yeah."
\par "Luther always seemed ..."
\par "Like a rock."
\par "Yeah. Always going to be there. Like a mountain."
\par They rode in silence for a block..Then she asked, "How many others?"
\par "Three. One of the station owners, mechanic, pump jockey. But because
\par of Jack, the other owner, Mrs. Arkadian, she's alive."
\par They were still a mile or so from the hospital when a Pontiac ahead of
\par them refused to pull over to let the black-and-white pass. It had
\par oversize tires, a jacked-up front end, and air scoops front and back.
\par Louie waited for a break in oncoming traffic, then crossed the solid
\par yellow line to get around the car. Passing the Pontiac, Heather saw
\par four angry-looking young men in it, hair slicked back and tied behind,
\par affecting a modern version of the gangster look, faces hard with
\par hostility and defiance.
\par "Jack's going to make it, Heather."
\par The wet black streets glimmered with serpentine patterns of frost-cold
\par light, reflections of the headlights of oncoming traffic.
\par "He's tough," Louie said. "We all are," she said.
\par Jack was still in surgery at Westside General Hospital when Heather
\par arrived at a quarter past ten. The woman at the information desk
\par supplied the surgeon's name--Dr. Emil Procnow--and suggested waiting
\par in the visitors' lounge outside the intensive care unit rather than in
\par the main lobby.
\par Theories of the psychological effects of color were at work in the
\par lounge. The walls were lemon yellow, and the padded vinyl seats and
\par backrests of the gray tubular steel chairs were bright orange--as if
\par any intensity of worry, fear, or grief could be dramatically relieved
\par by a sufficiently cheerful decor.
\par Heather wasn't alone in that circus-hued room. Besides Louie, three
\par cops were present--two in uniform, one in street clothes--all of whom
\par she knew. They hugged her, said Jack was going to make it, offered to
\par get her coffee, and in general tried to keep her spirits up. They were
\par the first of a stream of friends and fellow officers from the
\par Department who would participate in the vigil because Jack was well
\par liked but also because, in an increasingly violent society where
\par respect for the law wasn't cool in some circles, cops found it more
\par necessary than ever to take care of their own.
\par In spite of the well-meaning and welcome company, the wait was
\par excruciating.
\par Heather seemed no less alone than if she had been by herself.
\par Bathed in an abundance of harsh fluorescent light, the yellow walls and
\par the shiny orange chairs seemed to grow brighter minute by minute.
\par Rather than diluting her anxiety, the decor made her twitchy, and
\par periodically she had to close her eyes.
\par By 11:15, she had been in the hospital for an hour, and Jack had been.in surgery an hour and a half. Those in the support group--which now
\par numbered six--were unanimous in their judgment that so much time under
\par the knife was a good sign. If Jack had been mortally wounded, they
\par said, he would have been in the operating room only a short while, and
\par bad news would have come quickly.
\par Heather wasn't so sure about that. She wouldn't allow her hopes to
\par rise because that would just leave her farther to fall if the news was
\par bad after all.
\par Torrents of hard-driven rain clattered against the windows and streamed
\par down the glass. Through the distorting lens of water, the city outside
\par appeared to be utterly without straight lines and sharp edges, a
\par surreal metropolis of molten forms.
\par Strangers arrived, some red-eyed from crying, all quietly tense,
\par waiting for news about other patients, their friends and relatives.
\par Some of them were damp from the storm, and they brought with them the
\par odors of wet wool and cotton.
\par She paced. She looked out the window. She drank bitter coffee from a
\par vending machine. She sat with a month-old copy of Newsweek, trying to
\par read a story about the hottest new actress in Hollywood, but every time
\par she reached the end of a paragraph, she couldn't recall a word of it.
\par By 12:15, when Jack had been under the knife for two and a half hours,
\par everyone in the support group continued to pretend no news was good
\par news and that Jack's prognosis improved with every minute the doctors
\par spent on him. Some, including Louie, found it more difficult to meet
\par Heather's eyes, however, and they were speaking softly, as if in a
\par funeral parlor instead of a hospital. The grayness of the storm
\par outside had seeped into their faces and voices.
\par Staring at Newsweek without seeing it, she began to wonder what she'd
\par do if Jack didn't make it. Such thoughts seemed traitorous, and at
\par first she suppressed them, as if the very act of imagining life without
\par Jack would contribute to his death.
\par He couldn't die. She needed him, and Toby needed him.
\par The thought of conveying the news of Jack's death to Toby made her
\par nauseous. A thin cold sweat broke out along the nape of her neck. She
\par felt as if she might throw up, ridding herself of the bad coffee.
\par At last a man in surgical greens entered the lounge. "Mrs.
\par McGarvey?"
\par As heads turned toward her, Heather put the magazine on the end table
\par beside her chair and got to her feet.
\par "I'm Dr. Procnow," he said as he approached her. The surgeon who had
\par been working on Jack. He was in his forties, slender, with curly black
\par hair and dark yet limpid eyes that were--or that she imagined
\par were-compassionate and wise. "Your husband's in the post-op recovery
\par room..We'll be moving him into I.C.U shortly."
\par Jack was alive.
\par "Is he going to be all right?"
\par "He's got a good chance," Procnow said.
\par The support group reacted with enthusiasm, but Heather was more
\par cautious, not quick to embrace optimism. Nevertheless, relief made her
\par legs weak. She thought she might crumple to the floor.
\par As if reading her mind, Procnow guided her to a chair. He pulled
\par another chair up at a right angle to hers and sat facing her.
\par "Two of the wounds were especially serious," he said. "One in the leg
\par and one in the abdomen, lower right side. He lost a lot of blood and
\par was in deep shock by the time paramedics got to him."
\par "But he'll be all right?" she asked again, sensing that Procnow had
\par news he was reluctant to deliver.
\par "Like I said, he's got a good chance. I really mean that. But he's
\par not out of the woods yet."
\par Emil Procnow's deep concern was visible in his kind face and eyes, and
\par Heather couldn't tolerate being the object of such profound sympathy
\par because it meant that surviving surgery might have been the least of
\par the challenges facing Jack. She lowered her eyes, unable to meet the
\par surgeon's gaze.
\par "I had to remove his right kidney," Procnow said, "but otherwise there
\par was remarkably little internal damage. Some minor blood-vessel
\par problems, a nicked colon. But we've cleaned that up, done repairs, put
\par in temporary abdominal drains, and we'll keep him on antibiotics to
\par prevent infection. No trouble there."
\par "A person can live ... can live on one kidney, right?"
\par "Yes, certainly. He won't notice any difference in his quality of life
\par from that."
\par What will make a difference in the quality of his life, what other
\par wound, what damage? she wanted to ask, but she didn't have the
\par courage.
\par The surgeon had long, supple fingers. His hands looked lean but
\par strong, like those of a concert pianist. She told herself that Jack
\par could have received neither better care nor more tender mercy than
\par those skilled hands had provided.
\par "Two things concern us now," Procnow continued.
\par . "Severe shock combined with a heavy loss of blood can sometimes have
\par ...
\par cerebral consequences.".Oh, God, please. Not this.
\par He said, "It depends on how long there was a decrease in the supply of
\par blood to the brain and how severe the decrease was, how deoxygenated
\par the tissues became."
\par She closed her eyes.
\par "His E.E.G looks good, and if I were to base a prognosis on that, I'd
\par say there's been no brain damage. We have every reason to be
\par optimistic.
\par But we won't know until he regains consciousness."
\par "When?"
\par "No way of telling. We'll have to wait and see."
\par Maybe never.
\par She opened her eyes, fighting back tears but not with complete
\par success.
\par She took her purse off the end table and opened it.
\par As she blew her nose and blotted her eyes, the surgeon said, "There's
\par one more thing. When you visit him in the I.C.U, you'll see he's been
\par immobilized with a restraining jacket and bed straps."
\par At last Heather met his eyes again.
\par He said, "A bullet or fragment struck the spinal cord. There's
\par bruising of the spine, but we don't see a fracture."
\par "Bruising. Is that serious?"
\par "It depends on whether any nerve structures were crushed."
\par "Paralysis?"
\par "Until he's conscious and we can run some simple tests, we can't
\par know.
\par If there is paralysis, we'll take another look for a fracture. The
\par important thing is, the cord hasn't been severed, nothing as bad as
\par that. If there's paralysis and we find a fracture, we'll get him into
\par a body cast, apply traction to the legs to get the pressure off the
\par sacrum. We can treat a fracture. It isn't catastrophic. There's an
\par excellent chance we can get him on his feet again."
\par "But no guarantees," she said softly.
\par He hesitated. Then he said, "There never are."
\par CHAPTER SIX..The cubicle, one of eight, had large windows that looked into the staff
\par area of the I.C.U. The drapes had been pulled aside so the nurses could
\par keep a direct watch on the patient even from their station in the
\par center of the wheel-shaped chamber. Jack was attached to a cardiac
\par monitor that transmitted continuous data to a terminal at the central
\par desk, an intravenous drip that provided him with glucose and
\par antibiotics, and a bifurcated oxygen tube that clipped gently to the
\par septum between his nostrils.
\par Heather was prepared to be shocked by Jack's condition--but he looked
\par even worse than she expected. He was unconscious, so his face was
\par slack, of course, but the lack of animation was not the only reason for
\par his frightening appearance. His skin was bone-white, with dark-blue
\par circles around his sunken eyes. His lips were so gray that she thought
\par of ashes, and a Biblical quote passed through her mind with unsettling
\par resonance, as if it had actually been spoken aloud--ashes to ashes,
\par dust to dust. He seemed ten or fifteen pounds lighter than when he had
\par left home that morning, as if his struggle for survival had taken place
\par over a week, not just a few hours.
\par A lump in her throat made it difficult for her to swallow as she stood
\par at the side of the bed, and she was unable to speak. Though he was
\par unconscious, she didn't want to talk to him until she was sure she
\par could control her speech.
\par She'd read somewhere that even patients in comas might be able to hear
\par people around them, on some deep level, they might understand what was
\par said and benefit from encouragement. She didn't want Jack to hear a
\par tremor of fear or doubt in her voice--or anything else that might upset
\par him or exacerbate what fear and depression already gripped him.
\par The cubicle was unnervingly quiet. The heart-monitor sound had been
\par turned off, leaving only a visual display. The oxygen-rich air
\par escaping through the nasal inserts hissed so faintly she could hear it
\par only when she leaned close to him, and the sound of his shallow
\par breathing was as soft as that of a sleeping child. Rain drummed on the
\par world outside, ticked and tapped against the single window, but that
\par quickly became a gray noise, just another form of silence.
\par She wanted to hold his hand more than she'd ever wanted anything. But
\par his hands were hidden in the long sleeves of the restraining jacket.
\par The IV line, which was probably inserted in a vein on the back of his
\par hand, disappeared under the cuff.
\par Hesitantly she touched his cheek. He looked cold but felt feverish.
\par Eventually she said, "I'm here, babe."
\par He gave no sign he had heard her. His eyes didn't move under their
\par lids. His gray lips remained slightly parted.
\par "Dr. Procnow says everything's looking good," she told him. "You're
\par going to come out of this just fine. Together we can handle this, no
\par sweat. Hell, two years ago, when my folks came to stay with us for a
\par week? Now, that was a disaster and an ordeal, my mother whining
\par nonstop for seven days, my dad drunk and moody. This is just a bee.sting by comparison, don't you think?"
\par No response.
\par "I'm here," she said. "I'll stay here. I'm not going anywhere. You
\par and me, okay?"
\par On the screen of the cardiac monitor, a moving line of bright green
\par light displayed the jagged and critical patterns of atrial and
\par ventricular activity, which proceeded without a single disruptive blip,
\par weak but steady. If Jack had heard what she'd said, his heart did not
\par respond to her words.
\par A straight-backed chair stood in one corner. She moved it next to the
\par bed. She watched him through the gaps in the railing.
\par Visitors in the I.C.U were limited to ten minutes every two hours, so
\par as not to exhaust patients and interfere with the nurses.
\par However, the head nurse of the unit, Maria Alicante, was the daughter
\par of a policeman. She gave Heather a dispensation from the rules. "You
\par stay with him as long as you want," Maria said. "Thank God, nothing
\par like this ever happened to my dad. We always expected it would, but it
\par never did. Of course, he retired a few years ago, just as everything
\par started getting even crazier out there."
\par Every hour or so, Heather left the I.C.U to spend a few minutes with
\par the members of the support group in the lounge. The faces kept
\par changing, but there were never fewer than three, as many as six or
\par seven, male and female officers in uniform, plainclothes detectives.
\par Other cops' wives stopped by too. Each of them hugged her. At one
\par moment or another, each of them was on the verge of tears. They were
\par sincerely sympathetic, shared the anguish. But Heather knew that every
\par last one of them was glad it had been Jack and not her husband who'd
\par taken the call at Arkadian's service station.
\par Heather didn't blame them for that. She'd have sold her soul to have
\par Jack change places with any of their husbands--and would have visited
\par them in an equally sincere spirit of sorrow and sympathy.
\par The Department was a closely knit community, especially in this age of
\par social dissolution, but every community was formed of smaller units, of
\par families with shared experiences, mutual needs, similar values and
\par hopes. Regardless of how tightly woven the fabric of the community,
\par each family first protected and cherished its own. Without the intense
\par and all-excluding love of wife for husband, husband for wife, parents
\par for children, and children for parents, there would be no compassion
\par for people in the larger community beyond the home.
\par In the I.C.U cubicle with Jack, she relived their life together in
\par memory, from their first date, to the night Toby had been born, to
\par breakfast this morning.
\par More than twelve years. But it seemed so short a span. Sometimes she
\par put her head against the bed railing and spoke to him, recalling a
\par special moment, reminding him of how much laughter they had shared, how.much joy.
\par Shortly before five o'clock, she was jolted from her memories by the
\par sudden awareness that something had changed.
\par Alarmed, she got up and leaned over the bed to see if Jack was still
\par breathing. Then she realized he must be all right, because the cardiac
\par monitor showed no change in the rhythms of his heart.
\par What had changed was the sound of the rain. It was gone. The storm
\par had ended.
\par She stared at the opaque window. The city beyond, which she couldn't
\par see, would be glimmering in the aftermath of the day-long downpour.
\par She had always been enchanted by Los Angeles after a rain--sparkling
\par drops of water dripping off the points of palm fronds as if the trees
\par were exuding jewels, streets washed clean, the air so clear that the
\par distant mountains reappeared from out of the usual haze of smog,
\par everything fresh.
\par If the window had been clear and the city had been there for her to
\par see, she wondered if it would seem enchanting this time. She didn't
\par think so. This city would never gleam for her again, even if rain
\par scrubbed it for forty days and forty nights.
\par In that moment she knew their future--Jack's, Toby's, and her own--lay
\par in some far place. This wasn't home any more. When Jack recovered,
\par they would sell the house and go . . . somewhere, anywhere, to new
\par lives, a fresh start. There was a sadness in that decision, but it
\par gave her hope as well.
\par When she turned away from the window, she discovered that Jack's eyes
\par were open and that he was watching her.
\par Her heart stuttered.
\par She remembered Procnow's bleak words. Massive blood loss. Deep
\par shock.
\par Cerebral consequence. Brain damage.
\par She was afraid to speak for fear his response would be slurred,
\par tortured, and meaningless.
\par He licked his gray, chapped lips.
\par His breathing was wheezy.
\par Leaning against the side of the bed, bending over him, summoning all
\par her courage, she said, "Honey?"
\par Confusion and fear played across his face as he turned his head
\par slightly left, then slightly right, surveying the room.
\par "Jack? Are you with me, baby?".He focused on the cardiac monitor, seemed transfixed by the moving
\par green line, which was spiking higher and far more often than at any
\par time since Heather had first entered the cubicle.
\par Her own heart was pounding so hard that it shook her. His failure to
\par respond was terrifying.
\par "Jack, are you okay, can you hear me?"
\par Slowly he turned his head to face her again. He licked his lips,
\par grimaced. His voice was weak, whispery. "Sorry about this."
\par Startled, she said, "Sorry?"
\par "Warned you. Night I proposed. I've always been . . . a little bit
\par of a fuck-up."
\par The laugh that escaped her was perilously close to a sob. She leaned
\par so hard against the bed railing that it pressed painfully into her
\par midriff, but she managed to kiss his cheek, his pale and feverish
\par cheek, and then the corner of his gray lips. "Yeah, but you're my
\par fuck-up," she said.
\par "Thirsty," he said.
\par "Sure, okay, I'll get a nurse, see what you're allowed to have."
\par Maria Alicante hurried through the door, alerted to Jack's change of
\par condition by telemetry data on the cardiac monitor at the central
\par desk.
\par "He's awake, alert, he says he's thirsty," Heather reported, running
\par her words together in quiet jubilation.
\par "A man has a right to be a little thirsty after a hard day, doesn't
\par he?" Maria said to Jack, rounding the bed to the nightstand, on which
\par stood an insulated carafe of ice water.
\par "Beer," Jack said.
\par Tapping the IV bag, Maria said, "What do you think we've been dripping
\par into your veins all day?"
\par "Not Heineken."
\par "Oh, you like Heineken, huh? Well, we have to control medical costs,
\par you know.
\par Can't use that imported stuff." She poured a third of a glass of water
\par from the carafe. "From us you get Budweiser intravenously, take it or
\par leave it."
\par "Take it."
\par Opening a nightstand drawer and plucking out a flexible plastic straw,
\par Maria said to Heather, "Dr. Procnow's back in the hospital, making his
\par evening rounds, and Dr. Delaney just got here too. As soon as I saw.the change on Jack's E.E.G, I had them paged."
\par Walter Delaney was their family doctor. Though Procnow was nice and
\par obviously competent, Heather felt better just knowing there was about
\par to be a familiar face on the medical team dealing with Jack.
\par "Jack," Maria said, "I can't put the bed up because you have to keep
\par lying flat. And I don't want you to try to raise your head by
\par yourself, all right?
\par Let me lift your head for you."
\par Maria put one hand behind his neck and raised his head a few inches off
\par the thin pillow. With her other hand, she held the glass. Heather
\par reached across the railing and put the straw to Jack's lips.
\par "Small sips," Maria warned him. "You don't want to choke."
\par After six or seven sips, with a pause to breathe between each, he'd had
\par enough.
\par Heather was delighted out of all proportion to her husband's modest
\par accomplishment. However, his ability to swallow a thin liquid without
\par choking probably meant there was no paralysis of his throat muscles,
\par not even minimal.
\par She realized how profoundly their lives had changed when such a mundane
\par act as drinking water without choking was a triumph, but that grim
\par awareness did not diminish her delight.
\par As long as Jack was alive, there was a road back to the life they had
\par known. A long road. One step at a time. Small, small steps. But
\par there was a road, and nothing else mattered right now.
\par While Emil Procnow and Walter Delaney examined Jack, Heather used the
\par phone at the nurse's station to call home. She talked to Mae Hong
\par first, then Toby, and told them that Jack was going to be all right.
\par She knew she was putting a rose tint on reality, but a little positive
\par thinking was good for all of them.
\par "Can I see him?" Toby asked.
\par "In a few days, honey."
\par "I'm much better. Got better all day. I'm not sick any more."
\par "I'll be the judge of that. Anyway, your dad needs a few days to get
\par his strength back." bring peanut-butter-and-chocolate ice cream.
\par That's his favorite.
\par They won't have that in a hospital, will they?"
\par "No, nothing like that."
\par "Tell Dad I'm gonna bring him some."."All right," she said.
\par "I want to buy it myself. I have money, from my allowance."
\par "You're a good boy, Toby. You know that?"
\par His voice became soft and shy. "When you coming home?"
\par "I don't know, honey. I'll be here awhile. Probably after you're in
\par bed."
\par "Will you bring me something from Dad's room?"
\par "What do you mean?"
\par "Something from his room. Anything. Just something was in his room,
\par so I can have it and know there's a room where he is."
\par The chasm of insecurity and fear revealed by the boy's request was
\par almost more than Heather could bear without losing the emotional
\par control she had thus far maintained with such iron-willed success. Her
\par chest tightened, and she had to swallow hard before she dared to
\par speak.
\par "Sure, okay, I'll bring you something."
\par "If I'm asleep, wake me."
\par "Okay."
\par "Promise?"
\par "I promise, peanut. Now I gotta go. You be good for Mae."
\par "We're playing five hundred rummy."
\par "You're not betting, are you?"
\par "Just pretzel sticks."
\par "Good. I wouldn't want to see you bankrupt a good friend like Mae,"
\par Heather said, and the boy's giggle was sweet music.
\par To be sure she didn't interfere with the nurses, Heather leaned against
\par the wall beside the door that led out of the I.C.U. She could see
\par Jack's cubicle from there. His door was closed, privacy curtains drawn
\par at the big observation windows.
\par The air in the I.C.U smelled of various antiseptics. She ought to have
\par been used to those astringent and metallic odors by now. Instead, they
\par became increasingly noxious and left a bitter taste as well.
\par When at last the doctors stepped out of Jack's cubicle and walked
\par toward her, they were smiling, but she had the disquieting feeling they
\par had bad news. Their smiles ended at the corners of their mouths, in
\par their eyes was something worse than sorrow--perhaps pity..Dr. Walter Delaney was in his fifties and would have been perfect as
\par the wise father in a television sitcom in the early sixties. Brown
\par hair going to gray at the temples. A handsome if soft-featured face.
\par He radiated quiet authority, vet was as relaxed and mellow as Ozzie
\par Nelson or Robert Young.
\par "You okay, Heather?" Delaney asked.
\par She nodded. "I'm holding up."
\par "I don't know if you've heard the latest news," Emil Procnow said, "but
\par the man who shot up the service station this morning was carrying
\par cocaine and PCP in his pockets. If he was using both drugs
\par simultaneously ... well, that's psycho soup for sure."
\par "Like nuking your own brain, for God's sake," Delaney said
\par disgustedly.
\par Heather knew they were genuinely frustrated and angry, but she also
\par suspected they were delaying the bad news. To the surgeon, she said,
\par "He came through without brain damage. You were worried about that,
\par but he came through."
\par "He's not aphasic," Procnow said. "He can speak, read, spell, do basic
\par math in his head. Mental faculties appear intact."
\par "Which means there's not likely to be any brain-related physical
\par incapacity, either," Walter Delaney said, "but it'll be at least a day
\par or two before we can be sure of that."
\par Emil Procnow ran one slender hand through his curly black hair. "He's
\par coming through this really well, Mrs. Mcgarvey. He really is."
\par "But?" she said.
\par The physicians glanced at each other.
\par "Right now," Delaney said, "there's paralysis in both legs."
\par "From the waist down," Procnow said.
\par "Upper body?" she asked.
\par "That's fine," Delaney assured her. "Full function."
\par "In the morning," Procnow said, "we'll look again for a spinal
\par fracture. If we find it, then we make up a plaster bed, line it with
\par felt, immobilize Jack from below the neck all the way past the filum
\par terminale, below the buttocks, and put his legs in traction."
\par "But he'll walk again?"
\par "Almost certainly."
\par She looked from Procnow to Delaney to Procnow again, waiting for the.rest of it, and then she said, "That's all?"
\par The doctors exchanged a glance again.
\par Delaney said, "Heather, I'm not sure you understand what lies ahead for
\par Jack and for you."
\par "Tell me."
\par "He'll be in a body cast between three and four months. By the time
\par the cast comes off, he'll have severe muscle atrophy from the waist
\par down. He won't have the strength to walk. In fact, his body will have
\par forgotten how to walk, so he'll undergo weeks of physical therapy in a
\par rehab hospital. It's going to be more frustrating and painful than
\par anything most of us will ever have to face."
\par "That's it?" she asked.
\par Procnow said, "That's more than enough."
\par "But it could have been so much worse," she reminded them.
\par Alone with Jack again, she put down the side railing on the bed and
\par smoothed his damp hair back from his forehead.
\par "You look beautiful," he said, his voice still weak and soft.
\par "Liar."
\par "Beautiful"
\par "I look like shit."
\par He smiled. "Just before I blacked out, I wondered if I'd ever see you
\par again."
\par "Can't get rid of me that easy."
\par "Have to actually die, huh?"
\par "Even that wouldn't work. I'd find you wherever you went."
\par "I love you, Heather."
\par "I love you," she said, "more than life."
\par Heat rose in her eyes, but she was determined not to cry in front of
\par him. Positive thinking. Keep the spirits up.
\par -His eyelids fluttered, and he said, "I'm so tired."
\par "Can't imagine why."
\par He smiled again. "Hard day at work."
\par "Yeah? I thought you cops didn't do anything all day except sit around
\par in doughnut shops, chowing down, and collect protection money from drug.dealers."
\par "Sometimes we beat up innocent citizens."
\par "Well, yeah, that can be tiring."
\par His eyes had closed.
\par She kept smoothing his hair. His hands were still concealed by the
\par sleeves of the restraining jacket, and she wanted desperately to keep
\par touching him.
\par Suddenly his eyes popped open, and he said, "Luther's dead?"
\par She hesitated. "Yes."
\par "I thought so, but . . . I hoped ..."
\par "You saved the woman, Mrs. Arkadian."
\par "That's something."
\par His eyelids fluttered again, drooped heavily, and she said, "You better
\par rest, babe."
\par "You seen Alma?" That was Alma Bryson, Luther's wife. "Not yet,
\par babe.
\par I've been sort of tied up here, you know."
\par "Go see her," he whispered. "I will."
\par "Now. I'm okay. She's the one ... needs you."
\par "All right."
\par "So tired," he said, and slipped into sleep again.
\par The support group in the I.C.U lounge numbered three when Heather left
\par Jack for the evening--two uniformed officers whose names she didn't
\par know and Gina Tendero, the wife of another officer. They were elated
\par when she reported that Jack had come around, and she knew they would
\par put the word on the department grapevine. Unlike the doctors, they
\par understood when she refused to focus gloomily on the paralysis and the
\par treatment required to overcome it.
\par "I need someone to take me home," Heather said, "so I can get my car.
\par I want to go see Alma Bryson."
\par "I'll take you there and then home," Gina said. "I want to see Alma
\par myself."
\par Gina Tendero was the most colorful spouse in the division and perhaps
\par in the entire Los Angeles Police Department. She was twenty-three
\par years old but looked fourteen. Tonight she was wearing five-inch
\par heels, tight black leather pants, red sweater, black leather jacket, an.enormous silver medallion with a brightly colored enamel portrait of
\par Elvis in the center, and large multiple-hoop earrings so complex they
\par might have been variations of those puzzles that were supposed to relax
\par harried businessmen if they concentrated totally on disassembling
\par them.
\par Her fingernails were painted neon purple, a shade reflected slightly
\par more subtly in her eye shadow. Her jet-black hair was a mass of curls
\par that spilled over her shoulders, it looked as much like a wig as any
\par Dolly Parton had ever worn, but it was all her own.
\par Though she was only five three without shoes and weighed maybe a
\par hundred and five pounds dripping wet, Gina always seemed bigger than
\par anyone around her. As she walked along the hospital corridors with
\par Heather, her footsteps were louder than those of a man twice her size,
\par and nurses turned to frown disapprovingly at the tock-tock-tock of her
\par high heels on the tile floors.
\par "You okay, Heth?" Gina asked as they headed for the four-story parking
\par garage attached to the hospital.
\par "Yeah."
\par "I mean really."
\par "I'll make it."
\par At the end of a corridor they went through a green metal door into the
\par parking garage. It was bare gray concrete, chilly, with low
\par ceilings.
\par A third of the fluorescent lights were broken in spite of the wire
\par cages that protected them, and the shadows among the cars offered
\par countless places of concealment.
\par Gina fished a small aerosol can from her purse, holding it with her
\par index finger on the trigger, and Heather said,"What's that?"
\par "Red-pepper Mace. You don't carry?"
\par "No."
\par "Where you think you're living, girl -- Disneyland?"
\par As they walked up a concrete ramp with cars parked on both sides,
\par Heather said, "Maybe I should buy some."
\par "Can't. The bastard politicians made it illegal. Wouldn't want to
\par give some poor misguided rapist a skin rash, would you? Ask Jack or
\par one of the guys-they can still get it for you."
\par Gina was driving an inexpensive blue Ford compact, but it had an alarm
\par system, which she disengaged from a distance with a remote-control
\par device on her key ring. The headlights flashed, the alarm beeped once,
\par and the doors unlocked.
\par Looking around at the shadows, they got in and immediately locked up.again.
\par After starting the car, Gina hesitated before putting it in gear. "You
\par know, Heth, you want to cry on my shoulder, my clothes are all
\par drip-dry."
\par "I'm all right. I really am."
\par "Sure you're not into denial?"
\par "He's alive, Gina. I can handle anything else."
\par "Forty years, Jack in a wheelchair?"
\par "Doesn't matter if it comes to that, as long as I have him to talk to,
\par hold him at night."
\par Gina stared hard at her for long seconds. Then: "You mean it. You
\par know what it's gonna be like, but you still mean it. Good. I always
\par figured you for one, but it's good to know I was right."
\par "One what?"
\par Popping the hand brake and shifting the Ford into reverse, Gina said,
\par "One tough damned bitch."
\par Heather laughed. "I guess that's a compliment."
\par "Fuckin' A, it's a compliment."
\par When Gina paid the parking fee at the exit booth and pulled out of the
\par garage, a glorious gold-and-orange sunset gilded the patchy clouds to
\par the west.
\par However, as they crossed the metropolis through lengthening shadows and
\par a twilight that gradually filled with blood red light, the familiar
\par streets and buildings were as alien as any on a distant planet. She
\par had lived her entire adult life in Los Angeles, but Heather Mcgarvey
\par felt like a stranger in a strange land.
\par The Brysons' two-story Spanish house was in the Valley, on the edge of
\par Burbank, lucky number 777 on a street lined with sycamores. The
\par leafless limbs of the big trees made spiky arachnid patterns against
\par the muddy yellow-black night sky, which was filled with too much
\par ambient light from the urban sprawl ever to be perfectly inky. Cars
\par were clustered in the driveway and street in front of 777, including
\par one black-and-white.
\par The house was filled with relatives and friends of the Brysons. A few
\par of the former and most of the latter were cops in uniforms or civilian
\par clothes.
\par Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians had come together in
\par companionship and mutual support in a way they seldom seemed capable of
\par associating in the larger community - any more.
\par Heather felt at home the moment she crossed the threshold, so much.safer than she had felt in the world outside. As she made her way
\par through the living room and dining room, seeking Alma, she paused to
\par speak briefly with old friends-and discovered that word of Jack's
\par improved condition was already on the grapevine.
\par More acutely than ever, she was aware of how completely she had come to
\par think of herself as part of the police family rather than as an
\par Angeleno or a Californian. It hadn't always been that way. But it was
\par difficult to maintain a spiritual allegiance to a city swimming in
\par drugs and pornography, shattered by gang violence, steeped in
\par Hollywood-style cynicism, and controlled by politicians as venal and
\par demagogic as they were incompetent. Destructive social forces were
\par fracturing the city--and the country--into clans, and even as she took
\par comfort in her police family, she recognized the danger of descending
\par into an us-against-them view of life.
\par Alma was in the kitchen with her sister, Faye, and two other women, all
\par of whom were busy at culinary tasks. Chopping vegetables, peeling
\par fruit, grating cheese. Alma was rolling out pie dough on a marble
\par slab, working at it vigorously. The kitchen was filled with the
\par delicious aromas of cakes baking.
\par When Heather touched Alma's shoulder, the woman looked up from the pie
\par dough, and her eyes were as blank as those of a mannequin. Then she
\par blinked and wiped her flour-coated hands on her apron. "Heather, you
\par didn't have to come--you should've stayed with Jack."
\par They embraced, and Heather said, "I wish there was something I could
\par do, Alma."
\par "So do I, girl. So do I."
\par As they leaned back from each other, Heather said, "What's all this
\par cooking?"
\par "We're going to have the funeral tomorrow afternoon. No delay. Get
\par the hard part over with. A lot of family and friends will be by
\par tomorrow after the services. Got to feed them."
\par "Others will do this for you."
\par "I'd rather help," Alma said. "What else am I going to do? Sit and
\par think? I sure don't want to think. If I don't stay busy, keep my mind
\par occupied, then I'm just going to go stark raving crazy. You know what
\par I mean?"
\par Heather nodded. "Yes. I know."
\par "The word is," Alma said, "Jack's going to be in the hospital, then
\par rehab, for maybe months, and you and Toby are going to be alone. Are
\par you ready for that?"
\par "We'll see him every day. We're in this together."
\par "That's not what I mean."
\par "Well, I know it's going to be lonely but--"."That's not what I mean,
\par either. Come on, I want to show you something."
\par Heather followed Alma into the master bedroom, and Alma closed the
\par door.
\par "Luther always worried about me being alone if anything happened to
\par him, so he made sure I knew how to take care of myself."
\par Sitting on the vanity bench, Heather watched with amazement as Alma
\par retrieved a variety of weapons from concealment.
\par She got a pistol-grip shotgun from under the bed.
\par , "This is the best home-defense weapon you can get. Twelve-gauge.
\par Powerful enough to knock down some creep high on PCP, thinks he's
\par Superman. You don't ? have to be able to aim perfectly, just point it
\par and pull the trigger, and the spread will get him." She placed the
\par shotgun on the beige chenille bedspread.
\par From the back of a closet Alma fetched a heavy, wicked-looking rifle
\par with a vented barrel, a scope, and a large magazine. "Heckler and Koch
\par HK91 assault rifle," she said. "You can't buy these in California so
\par easy any more." She put it on the bed beside the shotgun.
\par She opened a nightstand drawer and plucked out a formidable handgun.
\par "Browning nine-millimeter semi automatic. There's one like it in the
\par other nightstand."
\par Heather said, "My God, you've got an arsenal here."
\par . "Just different guns for different uses."
\par Alma Bryson was five feet eight but by no means an Amazon. She was
\par attractive, willowy, with delicate features, a swanlike neck, and
\par wrists almost as thin and fragile as those of a ten-year-old girl.
\par Her slender, graceful hands appeared incapable of controlling some - of
\par the heavy weaponry she possessed, but she was evidently proficient with
\par all of it.
\par Getting up from the vanity bench, Heather said, "I can see having a
\par handgun for protection, maybe even that shotgun. But an assault
\par rifle?"
\par Looking at the Heckler and Koch, Alma said, "Accurate enough at a
\par hundred yards to put a three-shot group in a half-inch circle. Fires a
\par 7.62 NATO cartridge so powerful it'll penetrate a tree, a brick wall,
\par even a car, and still take out the guy who's hiding on the other
\par side.
\par Very reliable. You can fire hundreds of rounds, until it's almost too
\par hot to touch, and it still won't jam. I think you should have one,
\par Heather..You should be ready."
\par Heather felt as if she had followed the white rabbit down a burrow into
\par a strange, dark world. "Ready for what?"
\par Alma's gentle face hardened, and her voice was tight with anger.
\par "Luther saw it coming years ago. Said politicians were tearing down a
\par thousand years of civilization brick by brick but weren't building
\par anything to replace it."
\par "True enough, but--"
\par "Said cops would be expected to hold it all
\par together when it started to collapse, but by then cops would've been
\par blamed for so much and been painted as the villains so often, no one
\par would respect them enough to let them hold it together."
\par Rage was Alma Bryson's refuge from grief. She was able to hold off
\par tears only with fury.
\par Although Heather worried that her friend's method of coping wasn't
\par healthy, he could think of nothing to offer in its place. Sympathy was
\par inadequate.
\par Alma and Luther had been married sixteen years and had been devoted to
\par each other. Because they'd been unable to have children, they were
\par especially close. Heather could only imagine the depth of Alma's
\par pain.
\par It was a hard world. Real love, true and deep, wasn't easy to find
\par even once.
\par Nearly impossible to find it twice. Alma must feel the best times of
\par her life were past, though she was only thirty-eight. She needed more
\par than kind words, more than just a shoulder to cry on. She needed
\par someone or something at which to be furious--politicians, the system.
\par Perhaps her anger wasn't unhealthy, after all. Maybe if a lot more
\par people had gotten angry enough decades ago, the country wouldn't have
\par reached such perilous straits.
\par "You have guns?" Alma asked.
\par "One."
\par "What is it?"
\par "A pistol."
\par "You know how to use it?"
\par "Yes."
\par "You need more than just a pistol."."I feel uncomfortable with guns, Alma."
\par "It's on the TV now, going to be all over the papers tomorrow--what
\par happened at Arkadian's station. People are going to know you and Toby
\par are alone, people who don't like cops or cops' wives. Some jackass
\par reporter will probably even print your address. You've got to be ready
\par for anything these days, anything."
\par Alma's paranoia, which came as such a surprise and which seemed so out
\par of character, chilled Heather. Even as she shivered at the icy glint
\par in her friend's eyes, however, a part of her wondered if Alma's
\par assessment of the situation was more rational than it sounded. That
\par she could seriously consider such a paranoid view was enough to make
\par her shiver again, harder than before.
\par "You've got to prepare for the worst," Alma Bryson said, picking up the
\par shotgun, turning it over in her hands. "It's not just your life on the
\par line.
\par You've got Toby to think about too."
\par She stood there, a slender and pretty black woman, an aficionado of
\par jazz and opera, a lover of museums, educated and refined, as warm and
\par loving a person as anyone Heather had ever known, capable of a smile
\par that would charm wild beasts and a musical laugh that angels might have
\par envied, holding a shotgun that looked absurdly large and evil in the
\par hands of someone so lovely and delicate, who had embraced rage because
\par the only alternative to rage was suicidal despair. Alma was like a
\par figure on a poster urging revolution, not a real person but a wildly
\par romanticized symbol. Heather had the disquieting feeling that she was
\par not looking at merely one troubled woman struggling to elude the grasp
\par of bitter grief and disabling hopelessness but at the grim future of
\par their entire troubled society, a harbinger of an all-obliterating
\par storm.
\par "Tearing it down brick by brick," Alma said solemnly, "but building
\par nothing to replace it."
\par CHAPTER SEVEN.
\par For twenty-nine uneventful nights, the Montana stillness was disturbed
\par only by periodic fits of winter wind, the hoot of a hunting owl, and
\par the distant forlorn howling of timber wolves. Gradually Eduardo
\par Fernandez regained his usual confidence and ceased to regard each
\par oncoming dusk with quiet dread.
\par He might have recovered his equilibrium more quickly if he'd had more
\par work to occupy him. Inclement weather prevented him from performing
\par routine maintenance around the ranch, with electric heat and plenty of
\par cord wood for the fireplaces, he had little to do during the winter
\par months except hunker down and wait for spring.
\par It had never been a working ranch since he had managed it. Thirty-four
\par years ago, he and Margaret had : been hired by Stanley Quartermass, a
\par wealthy film producer, who had fallen in love with Montana and wanted a
\par second home there. No animals or crops were raised for profit, the
\par ranch was strictly a secluded hideaway..Quartermass loved horses, so he built a comfortable, , heated stable
\par with ten stalls a hundred yards south of the house. He spent about two
\par months per year at the ranch, in one- and two-week visits, and it was
\par Eduardo's duty, in the producer's absence, to ensure that the horses
\par received first-rate care and plenty of exercise. Tending to the
\par animals and keeping the property in good repair had constituted the
\par largest part of his job, and Margaret had been the housekeeper.
\par Until eight years ago, Eduardo and Margaret had lived in the cozy,
\par two-bedroom, single-story caretaker's house. That fieldstone structure
\par stood eighty or ninety yards behind--and due west of--the main house,
\par cloistered among pines at the edge of the higher woods. Tommy, their
\par only child, had been raised there until city life exerted its fatal
\par attraction when he was eighteen.
\par When Stanley Quartermass died in a private-plane crash, Eduardo and
\par Margaret had been surprised to learn that the ranch had been left to
\par them, along with sufficient funds to allow immediate retirement. The
\par producer had taken care of his four ex-wives while he was alive and had
\par fathered no children from any of his marriages, so he used the greater
\par part of his estate to provide generously for key employees.
\par They had sold the horses, closed up the caretaker's house, and moved
\par into the Victorian-style main house, with its gables, decorative
\par shutters, scalloped eaves, and wide porches. It felt strange to be a
\par person of property, but the security was welcome even--or perhaps
\par especially--when it came late in life.
\par Now Eduardo was a widowed retiree with plenty of security but with too
\par little work to occupy him. And with too many strange thoughts preying
\par on his mind Luminous trees ...
\par On three occasions during March, he drove his Jeep Cherokee into
\par Eagle's Roost, the nearest town. He ate at Jasper's Diner because he
\par liked their Salisbury steak, home fries, and pepper slaw. He bought
\par magazines and a few paperback books at the High Plains Pharmacy, and he
\par shopped for groceries at the only supermarket. His ranch was just
\par sixteen miles from Eagle's Roost, so he could have gone daily if he'd
\par wished, but three times a month was usually enough. The town was
\par small, three to four thousand souls, however, even in its isolation, it
\par was too much a part of the modern world to appeal to a man as
\par accustomed to rural peace as he was.
\par Each time he'd gone shopping, he'd considered stopping at the county
\par sheriff's substation to report the peculiar noise and strange lights in
\par the woods. But he was sure the deputy would figure him for an old fool
\par and do nothing but file the report in a folder labeled CRACKPOTS.
\par In the third week of March, spring officially arrived--and the
\par following day a storm put down eight inches of new snow. Winter was
\par not quick to relinquish its grasp there on the eastern slopes of the
\par Rockies.
\par He took daily walks, as had been his habit all his life, but he stayed
\par on the long driveway, which he plowed himself after each snow, or he
\par crossed the open fields south of the house and stables. He avoided the.lower woods, which lay east and downhill from the house, but he also
\par stayed away from those to the north and even the higher forests to the
\par west.
\par His cowardice irritated him, not least of all because he was unable to
\par understand it. He'd always been an advocate of reason and logic,
\par always said there was too little of either in the world. He was
\par scornful of people who operated more from emotion than from
\par intellect.
\par But reason failed him now, and logic could not overcome the instinctual
\par awareness of danger that caused him to avoid the trees and the
\par perpetual twilight under their boughs.
\par By the end of March, he began to think that the phenomenon had been a
\par singular occurrence without notable consequences. A rare but natural
\par event. Perhaps an electromagnetic disturbance of some kind. No more
\par threat to him than a summer thunderstorm.
\par On April first, he unloaded the two rifles and two shotguns. After
\par cleaning them, he returned the guns to the cabinet in the study.
\par However, still slightly uneasy, he kept the .22 target pistol on his
\par nightstand. It didn't pack a tremendous punch but, loaded with
\par hollow-point cartridges, it could do some damage.
\par In the dark hours of the morning of April fourth, Eduardo was awakened
\par by the low throbbing that swelled and faded, swelled and faded. As in
\par early March, that pulsating sound was accompanied by an eerie
\par electronic oscillation.
\par He sat straight up in bed, blinking at the window. During the three
\par years since Margaret had died, he'd not slept in the master bedroom at
\par the front of the house, which they had shared. Instead, he bunked down
\par in one of two back bedrooms. Consequently, the window faced west, a
\par hundred and eighty degrees around the compass from the eastern woods
\par where he had seen the strange light.
\par The night sky was deep and black beyond the window.
\par The Stiffel lamp on the nightstand had a pull-chain instead of a thumb
\par switch.
\par Just before he turned it on, he had the feeling that something was in
\par the room with him, something he would be better off not seeing. He
\par hesitated, fingers tightly pinching the metal beads of the pull.
\par Intently he searched the darkness, his heart pounding, as if he had
\par wakened into a nightmare replete with a monster. When at last he
\par tugged the chain, however, the light revealed that he was alone.
\par He picked up his wristwatch from the nightstand and checked the time.
\par Nineteen minutes past one o'clock.
\par He threw off the covers and got out of bed. He was in his long
\par underwear. His blue jeans and a flannel shirt were close at hand,.folded over the back of an armchair, beside which stood a pair of
\par boots. He was already wearing socks, because his feet often got cold
\par during the night if he slept without them.
\par The sound was louder than it had been a month before, and it pulsed
\par through the house with noticeably greater effect than before. In
\par March, Eduardo had experienced a sense of pressure along with the
\par rhythmic pounding-- which, like the sound, crested repeatedly in a
\par series of waves. Now the pressure had increased dramatically. He
\par didn't merely sense it but felt it, indescribably different from the
\par pressure of turbulent air, more like the invisible tides of a cold sea
\par washing across his body.
\par By the time he hurriedly dressed and snatched the loaded .22 pistol
\par from the nightstand, the pull-chain was swinging wildly and clinking
\par against the burnished brass body of the lamp. The windowpanes
\par vibrated. The paintings rattled against the walls, askew on their
\par wires.
\par He rushed downstairs into the foyer, where there was no need to switch
\par on a light. In the front door, the beveled edges of the leaded panes
\par in the oval window sparkled with reflections of the mysterious glow
\par outside. It was far brighter than it had been the previous month. The
\par bevels broke down the amber radiance into all the colors of the
\par spectrum, projecting bright prismatic patterns of blue and green and
\par yellow and red across the ceiling and walls, so it seemed as if he was
\par in a church with stained-glass murals.
\par In the dark living room to his left, where no light penetrated from
\par outside because the drapes were drawn, a collection of crystal
\par paperweights and other bibelots rattled and clinked against the end
\par tables on which they stood and against one another. Porcelains
\par vibrated on the glass shelves of a display cabinet.
\par To his right, in the book-lined study, the marble-and-brass desk set
\par bounced on the blotter, a pencil drawer popped open and banged shut in
\par time with the pressure waves, and the executive chair behind the desk
\par wobbled around enough to make its wheels creak.
\par As Eduardo opened the front door, most of the spots and spears of
\par colored light flew away, vanished as if into another dimension, and the
\par rest fled to the right-hand wall of the foyer, where they melted
\par together in a vibrant mosaic.
\par The woods were luminous precisely where they had been luminous last
\par month. The amber glow emanated from the same group of closely packed
\par trees and from the ground beneath, as if the evergreen needles and
\par cones and bark and dirt and stones and snow were the incandescent
\par elements of a lamp, shining brightly without being consumed. This time
\par the light was more dazzling than before, just as the throbbing was
\par louder and the waves of pressure more forceful.
\par He found himself at the head of the steps but did not remember exiting
\par the house or crossing the porch. He looked back and saw that he had
\par closed the front door behind him.
\par Punishing waves of bass sound throbbed through the night at the rate of.perhaps thirty a minute, but his heart was beating six times faster.
\par He wanted to turn and run back into the house.
\par He looked down at the pistol in his hand. He wished the shotgun had
\par been loaded and beside his bed.
\par When he raised his head and turned his eyes away from the gun, he was
\par startled to see that the woods had moved closer to him. The glowing
\par trees loomed.
\par Then he realized that he, not the woods, had moved. He glanced back
\par again and saw the house thirty to forty feet behind him. He had
\par descended the steps without being aware of it. His tracks marred the
\par snow.
\par "No," he said shakily The swelling sound was like a surf with an
\par undertow that pulled him relentlessly from the safety of the shore.
\par The ululant electronic wail seemed like a siren's song, penetrating
\par him, speaking to him on a level so deep that he seemed to understand
\par the message without hearing the words, a music in his blood, luring him
\par toward the cold fire in the woods.
\par His thoughts grew fuzzy.
\par He peered up at the star-punctured sky, trying to clear his head. A
\par delicate filigree of clouds shone against the black vault, rendered
\par luminous by the silver light of the quarter moon.
\par He closed his eyes. Found the strength to resist the pull of each
\par ebbing wave of sound.
\par But when he opened his eyes, he discovered his resistance was
\par imaginary. He was even closer to the trees than before, only thirty
\par feet from the perimeter of the forest, so close he had to squint
\par against the blinding brightness emanating from the branches, the
\par trunks, and the ground under the pines.
\par The moody amber light was now threaded with red, like blood in an egg
\par yolk.
\par Eduardo was scared, miles past fear into sheer terror, fighting a
\par looseness in his bowels and a weakness in his bladder, shaking so
\par violently that he would not have been surprised to hear his bones
\par rattling together--yet his heart was no longer racing. It had slowed
\par drastically and now matched the steady thirty-beats-per-minute of the
\par pulsating sound that seemed to issue from every radiant surface.
\par He couldn't possibly stay on his feet when his heartbeat was so slow,
\par the blood supply to his brain so diminished. He ought to be either in
\par severe shock or unconscious. His perceptions must be untrustworthy.
\par Perhaps the throbbing had escalated to match the pace of his hammering
\par heart.
\par Curiously, he was no longer aware of the frigid air. Yet no heat.accompanied the enigmatic light. He was neither hot nor cold.
\par He couldn't feel the earth under his feet. No sense of gravity,
\par weight, or weariness of muscle. Might as well have been floating.
\par The odors of the winter were no longer perceptible. Gone was the
\par faint, crisp, ozone-like scent of snow. Gone, the fresh smell of the
\par pine forest that rose just in front of him. Gone, the faint sour stink
\par of his own icy sweat.
\par No taste on his tongue. That was the weirdest of all. He had never
\par before realized there was always an endless and subtly changing series
\par of tastes in his mouth even when he wasn't eating anything. Now a
\par blandness. Neither sweet nor sour. Neither salty nor bitter. Not
\par even a blandness. Beyond blandness.
\par Nothing. Nada. He worked his mouth, felt saliva flooding it, but
\par still no taste.
\par All of his powers of sensory perception seemed to be focused solely on
\par the ghost light shining from within the trees and on the punishing,
\par insistent sound. He no longer felt the throbbing bass washing in cold
\par waves across his body, rather, the sound was coming from within him
\par now, and it surged out of him in the same way that it issued from the
\par trees.
\par Suddenly he was standing at the edge of the woods, on ground as
\par effulgent as molten lava. Inside the phenomenon. Gazing down, he saw
\par that his feet seemed to be planted on a sheet of glass beneath which a
\par sea of fire churned, a sea as deep as the stars were distant. The
\par extent of that abyss made him cry out in panic, although no thinnest
\par whisper escaped him.
\par Fearfully and reluctantly, yet wonderingly, Eduardo looked at his legs
\par and body, and saw that the amber light also radiated from him and was
\par riddled with bursts of red. He appeared to be a man from another
\par world, filled with alien energy, or a holy Indian spirit that had
\par walked out of the high mountains in search of the ancient nations once
\par in dominion over the vast Montana wilderness but long lost:
\par Blackfeet?
\par Crow, Sioux, Assiniboin, Cheyenne.
\par He raised his left hand to examine it more closely. His skin was
\par transparent, his flesh translucent. At first he could see the bones of
\par his hand and fingers, well-articulated gray-red forms within the molten
\par amber substance of which he seemed to be made. Even as he watched, his
\par bones became transparent too, and he was entirely a man of glass, no
\par substance to him at all any more, he had become a window through which
\par could be seen an unearthly fire, just as the ground under him was a
\par window, just as the stones and trees were windows.
\par The crashing waves of sound and the electronic squeal arose from within
\par the currents of fire, ever more insistent. As on that night in March,
\par he had an almost clairvoyant perception of something straining against
\par confinement, struggling to break out of a prison or through a
\par barrier..Something trying to force open a door.
\par He was standing in the intended doorway.
\par On the threshold.
\par He was seized by the bizarre conviction that if the door opened while
\par he was standing in the way, he would shatter into disassociated atoms
\par as if he'd never existed. He would become the door. An unknown caller
\par would enter through him, out of the fire and through him.
\par Jesus, help me, he prayed, though he wasn't a religious man.
\par He tried to move.
\par Paralyzed.
\par Within his raised hand, within his entire body, within the trees and
\par stones and earth, the fire grew less amber, more red, hotter, entirely
\par red, scarlet, seething. Abruptly it was marbled with blue-white veins
\par to rival the consuming brightness at the very heart of a star. The
\par malevolent pulsations swelled, exploded, swelled, exploded, like the
\par pounding of colossal pistons, booming, booming, pistons in the
\par perpetual engines that drove the universe itself, harder, harder,
\par pressure escalating, his glass body vibrating, fragile as crystal,
\par pressure, expanding, demanding, hammering, fire and thunder, fire and
\par thunder, fire and thunder-Blackness.
\par Silence.
\par Cold.
\par When he woke, he was lying at the perimeter of the forest, in the light
\par of a quarter moon. Above him, the trees stood sentinel, dark and
\par still.
\par He was in possession of all his senses again. He smelled the ozone
\par crispness of snow, dense masses of pines, his own sweat--and urine. He
\par had lost control of his bladder. The taste in his mouth was unpleasant
\par but familiar: blood. In his terror or when he'd fallen, he must have
\par bitten his tongue.
\par Evidently, the door in the night had not opened.
\par CHAPTER EIGHT.
\par That same night, Eduardo removed the weapons from the cabinet in the
\par study and reloaded them. He distributed them throughout the house, so
\par one firearm or another would always be within reach.
\par The following morning, April fourth, he drove into Eagle's Roost, but
\par he didn't go to the sheriff's substation. He still had no evidence to
\par back up his story.
\par He went, instead, to Custer's Appliance. Custer's was housed in a
\par yellow-brick building dating from about 1920, and the glittering.high-tech merchandise in its display windows was as anachronistic as
\par tennis shoes on a Neanderthal.
\par Eduardo purchased a videocassette recorder, a video camera, and half a
\par dozen blank tapes.
\par The salesman was a long-haired young man who looked like Mozart, in
\par boots, jeans, a decoratively stitched cowboy shirt, and a string tie
\par with a turquoise clasp. He kept up a continuous chatter about the
\par multitude of features the equipment offered, using so much jargon that
\par he seemed to be speaking a foreign language.
\par Eduardo just wanted to record and play back. Nothing more. He didn't
\par care if he could watch one show while taping another, or whether the
\par damned gadgets could cook his dinner, make his bed, and give him a
\par pedicure.
\par The ranch already had a television capable of receiving a lot of
\par channels, because shortly before his death, Mr. Quartermass had
\par installed a satellite dish behind the stables. Eduardo seldom watched
\par a program, maybe three or four times a year, but he knew the TV
\par worked.
\par From the appliance store he went to the library. He checked out a
\par stack of novels by Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, plus
\par collections of stories by H. P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, and M.
\par R. James.
\par He felt no less a fool than if he had selected lurid volumes of
\par flapdoodle purporting to be nonfiction accounts of the Abominable
\par Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, the
\par Bermuda Triangle, and the true story of Elvis Presley's faked death and
\par sex-change operation. He fully expected the librarian to sneer at him
\par or at least favor him with a pitying and patronizing smile, but she
\par processed the books as if she found nothing frivolous about his taste
\par in fiction.
\par After stopping at the supermarket as well, he returned to the ranch and
\par unpacked his purchases.
\par He needed two full days and more beers than he would ordinarily have
\par allowed himself in order to get the hang of the video system. The
\par damned equipment had more buttons and switches and readouts than the
\par cockpit of an airliner, and at times it seemed the manufacturers had
\par complicated their products for no good reason, out of a sheer love of
\par complication. The instruction books read as if they'd been written by
\par someone for whom English was a second language--which was very likely
\par the case, as both the VCR and the camcorder were made by the
\par Japanese.
\par "Either I'm getting feebleminded," he groused aloud in one fit of
\par frustration, "or the world's going to hell in a hand-basket."
\par Maybe both.
\par Warmer weather arrived sooner than usual. April was often a winter
\par month at that latitude and altitude, but this year the daytime.temperatures rose into the forties. The season-long accumulation of
\par snow melted, and gurgling freshets filled every gully and declivity.
\par The nights remained peaceful.
\par Eduardo read most of the books he'd borrowed from the library.
\par Blackwood and especially James wrote in a style that was far too
\par mannered for his taste, heavy on atmosphere and light on substance.
\par They were purveyors of ghost stories, and he had trouble suspending
\par disbelief long enough to become involved in their tales.
\par If hell existed, he supposed the unknown entity trying to open a door
\par in the fabric of the night might have been a damned soul or a demon
\par forcing its way out of that fiery realm. But that was the sticking
\par point: he didn't believe hell existed, at least not as the carnival
\par gaudy kingdom of evil portrayed in cheap films and books.
\par To his surprise, he found Heinlein and Clarke to be entertaining and
\par thought-provoking. He preferred the crustiness of the former to the
\par sometimes naive humanism of the latter, but they both had value.
\par He wasn't sure what he hoped to discover in their books that would help
\par him to deal with the phenomenon in the woods. Had he harbored, in the
\par back of his mind, the absurd expectation that one of these writers had
\par produced a story about an old man who lived in an isolated place and
\par who made contact with something not of this earth? If such was the
\par case, then he was so far around the bend that he would meet himself
\par coming the other way at any moment.
\par Nevertheless, it was more likely that the presence he sensed beyond the
\par phantom fire and pulsating sound was extraterrestrial rather than
\par hell-born.
\par The universe contained an infinite number of stars. An infinite number
\par of planets, circling those stars, might have provided the right
\par conditions for life to have arisen. That was scientific fact, not
\par fantasy.
\par He might also have imagined the whole business. Hardening of the
\par arteries that supplied blood to the brain. An Alzheimer-induced
\par hallucination. He found it easier to believe in that explanation than
\par in demons or aliens.
\par He had bought the video camera more to assuage self-doubt than to
\par gather evidence for the authorities. If the phenomenon could be
\par captured on tape, he wasn't dotty, after all, and was competent to
\par continue to live alone. Until he was killed by whatever finally opened
\par that doorway in the night.
\par On the fifteenth of April, he drove into Eagle's Roost to buy fresh
\par milk and produce--and a Sony Discman with quality headphones.
\par Custer's Appliance also had a selection of audiotapes and compact
\par discs..Eduardo asked the Mozart lookalike for the loudest music to which
\par teenagers were listening these days.
\par "Gift for your grand-kid?" the clerk asked.
\par It was easier to agree than to explain. "That's right."
\par "Heavy metal."
\par Eduardo had no idea what the man was talking about.
\par "Here's a new group that's getting really hot," the clerk said,
\par selecting a disc from the display bins. "Call themselves Wormheart."
\par Back at the ranch, after putting away the groceries, Eduardo sat at the
\par kitchen table to listen to the disc. He installed batteries in the
\par Discman, inserted the disc, put on the headphones, and pressed the Play
\par button. The blast of sound nearly burst his eardrums, and he hastily
\par lowered the volume.
\par He listened for a minute or so, half convinced he'd been sold a faulty
\par disc.
\par But the clarity of the sound argued that he was hearing exactly what
\par Wormheart had intended to record. He listened for another minute or
\par two, waiting for the cacophony to become music, before realizing it
\par apparently was music by the modern definition.
\par He felt old.
\par He remembered, as a young man, necking with Margaret to the music of
\par Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Tommy Dorsey. Did young
\par people still neck? Did they know what the word meant? Did they
\par cuddle? Did they pet? Or did they just get naked and tear at each
\par other straightaway?
\par It sure didn't sound like music you'd play as background to
\par lovemaking.
\par What it sounded like, to him anyway, was music you'd play as background
\par to violent homicide, maybe to drown out the victim's screams.
\par He felt ancient.
\par Aside from not being able to hear music in the music, he didn't
\par understand why any group would call itself Wormheart. Groups should
\par have names like The Four Freshmen, The Andrews Sisters, The Mills
\par Brothers. He could even handle The Four Tops or James Brown and the
\par Famous Flames. Loved James Brown. But Wormheart? It brought
\par disgusting images to mind.
\par Well, he wasn't hip and didn't try to be. They probably didn't even
\par use the word "hip" any more. In fact, he was sure they didn't. He
\par hadn't a clue as to what word meant "hip" these days.
\par Older than the sands of Egypt..He listened to the music for another minute, then switched it off and
\par removed the headphones.
\par Wormheart was exactly what he needed.
\par By the last day of April, the winter shroud had melted except for
\par deeper drifts that enjoyed the protection of shadows during a large
\par part of the day, although even they were dwindling steadily. The
\par ground was damp but not muddy any longer. Dead brown grass, crushed
\par and matted from the weight of the vanished snow, covered hills and
\par fields, within a week, however, a carpet of tender green shoots would
\par brighten every corner of the now dreary land.
\par Eduardo's daily walk took him past the east end of the stables and
\par across open fields to the south. At eleven in the morning, the day was
\par sunny, the temperature near fifty, with a receding armada of high white
\par clouds to the north. He wore khakis and a flannel shirt, and was so
\par warmed by exertion that he rolled up his sleeves. On the return trip
\par he visited the three graves that lay west of the stables.
\par Until recently, the State of Montana had been liberal about allowing
\par the establishment of family cemeteries on private property. Soon after
\par acquiring the ranch, Stanley Quartermass had decided he wanted to spend
\par eternity there, and he had obtained a permit for as many as twelve
\par burial plots.
\par The graveyard was on a small knoll near the higher woods. That
\par hallowed ground was defined only by a foot-high fieldstone wall and by
\par a pair of four-foot-high columns at the entrance. Quartermass had not
\par wanted to obstruct the panoramic view of the valley and mountains--as
\par if he thought his spirit would sit upon his grave and enjoy the scenery
\par like a ghost in that old, lighthearted movie Topper.
\par Only three granite headstones occupied a space designed to accommodate
\par twelve.
\par Quartermass. Tommy. Margaret.
\par pecified by the producer's will, the inscription on the first monument
\par read: "Here lies Stanley Quartermass / dead before his time / because
\par he had to work / with so damned many / actors and writers"-followed by
\par the dates of his birth and death. He had been sixty-six when his plane
\par crashed. However, if he'd been five hundred years old, he still would
\par have felt that his span had been too short, for he had been a man who
\par embraced life with great energy and passion.
\par Tommy's and Margarite's stones bore no humorous epitaphs--just "beloved
\par son" and "beloved wife." Eduardo missed them.
\par The hardest blow had been the death of his son, who had been killed in
\par the line of duty only a little more than a year ago, at the age of
\par thirty-two. At least Eduardo and Margaret had enjoyed a long life
\par together.
\par It was a terrible thing for a man to outlive his own child.
\par He wished they were with him again. That was a wish frequently made,.and the fact that it could never be fulfilled usually reduced him to a
\par melancholy mood which he found difficult to shake. At best, longing to
\par see his wife and son again, he drifted into nostalgic mists, reliving
\par favorite days of years gone by.
\par This time, however, the familiar wish had no sooner - flickered through
\par his mind than he was inexplicably overcome by dread. A chill wind
\par seemed to whistle through his spine as if it were hollow end to end.
\par Turning, he wouldn't have been surprised to find someone looming behind
\par him.
\par He was alone.
\par The sky was entirely blue, the last of the clouds having slipped across
\par the northern horizon, and the air was warmer than it had been at any
\par time since last autumn. Nonetheless, the chill persisted. He rolled
\par down his sleeves, buttoned the cuffs.
\par When he looked at the headstones again, Eduardo's imagination was
\par suddenly crowded with unwanted images of Tommy and Margaret, not as
\par they had been in life but as they might be in their coffins: decaying,
\par worm-riddled, eye sockets empty, lips shriveled back from
\par yellow-toothed grins. Trembling uncontrollably, he was gripped by an
\par absolute conviction that the earth in front of the granite markers was
\par going to shift and cave inward, that the corrupted hands of their
\par corpses were going to appear in the crumbling soil, digging fiercely
\par and then their faces, their eyeless faces, as they pulled themselves
\par out of the ground.
\par He backed away from the graves a few steps but refused to flee. He was
\par too old to believe in the living dead or in ghosts.
\par The dead brown grass and spring-thawed earth did not move. After a
\par while he stopped expecting it to move.
\par When he was in full control of himself again, he walked between the low
\par stone columns and out of the graveyard. All the way to the house, he
\par wanted to spin around and look back. He didn't do it.
\par He entered the house through the back door and locked it behind him.
\par Ordinarily he never locked doors.
\par Though it was time for lunch, he had no appetite. Instead, he opened a
\par bottle of Corona.
\par He was a three-beers-a-day man. That was his usual limit, not a
\par minimum requirement. There were days when he didn't drink at all.
\par Though not lately.
\par Recently, in spite of his limit, he had been downing more than three a
\par day.
\par Some days, a lot more..Later that afternoon, sitting in a living-room armchair, trying to read
\par Thomas Wolfe and sipping a third bottle of Corona, he became convinced,
\par against his will, that the experience in the graveyard had been a vivid
\par premonition. A warning. But a warning of what?
\par As April passed with no recurrence of the phenomenon in the lower
\par woods, Eduardo had become more-- not less--tense. Each of the previous
\par events had transpired when the moon was in the same phase, a quarter
\par full. That celestial condition seemed increasingly pertinent as the
\par April moon waxed and waned without another disturbance. The lunar
\par cycle might have nothing whatsoever to do with these peculiar
\par events-yet still be a calendar by which to anticipate them.
\par Beginning the night of May first, which boasted a sliver of the new
\par moon, he slept fully clothed. The .22 was in a soft leather holster on
\par the nightstand.
\par Beside it was the Discman with headphones, Wormheart album inserted. A
\par loaded Remington twelve-gauge shotgun lay under the bed, within easy
\par reach. The video camera was equipped with fresh batteries and a blank
\par cassette. He was prepared to move fast.
\par He slept only fitfully, but the night passed without incident.
\par He didn't actually expect trouble until the early-morning hours of May
\par fourth.
\par Of course, the strange spectacle might never be repeated. In fact, he
\par hoped he wouldn't have to witness it again. In his heart, however, he
\par knew what his mind could not entirely admit: that events of
\par significance had been set in motion, that they were gathering momentum,
\par and that he could no more avoid playing a role in them than a condemned
\par man, in shackles, could avoid the noose or guillotine.
\par As it turned out, he didn't have to wait quite as long as he had
\par expected.
\par Because he'd had little sleep the night before, he went to bed early on
\par May second--and was awakened past midnight, in the first hour of May
\par third, by those ominous and rhythmic pulsations.
\par The sound was no louder than it had been before, but the wave of
\par pressure that accompanied each beat was half again as powerful as
\par anything he had previously experienced. The house shook all the way
\par into its foundations, the rocking chair in the corner arced back and
\par forth as if a hyperactive ghost was working off a superhuman rage, and
\par one of the paintings flew off the wall and crashed to the floor.
\par By the time he turned on the lamp, threw back the covers, and got out
\par of bed, Eduardo felt himself being lulled into a trancelike state
\par similar to the one that had gripped him a month earlier. If he fully
\par succumbed, he might blink and discover he'd left the house without
\par being aware of having taken a single step from the bed.
\par He snatched up the Discman, slipped the headphones over his ears, and
\par hit the Play button. The music of Wormheart assaulted him..He suspected that the unearthly throbbing sound operated on a frequency
\par with a natural hypnotic influence. If so, the trancelike effect might
\par be countered by blocking the mesmeric sound with sufficient chaotic
\par noise.
\par He raised the volume of Wormheart until he could hear neither the bass
\par throbbing nor the underlying electronic oscillation. He was sure his
\par eardrums were in danger of bursting, however, with the heavy-metal band
\par in full shriek, he was able to shrug off the trance before he was
\par entirely enthralled.
\par He could still feel the waves of pressure surging over him and see the
\par effects on objects around him. As he had suspected, however, only the
\par sound itself elicited a lemming-like response, by blocking it, he was
\par safe.
\par After clipping the Discman to his belt, so he wouldn't have to hold it,
\par he strapped on the hip holster with the .22 pistol. He retrieved the
\par shotgun from under the bed, slung it over his shoulder by its field
\par strap, grabbed the camcorder, and rushed downstairs, outside.
\par The night was chilly.
\par The quarter moon gleamed like a silver scimitar.
\par The light emanating from the cluster of trees and the ground at the
\par edge of the lower woods was already blood red, no amber in it
\par whatsoever.
\par Standing on the front porch, Eduardo taped the eerie luminosity from a
\par distance. He panned back and forth to get it in perspective to the
\par landscape.
\par Then he plunged down the porch steps, hurried across the brown lawn,
\par and raced into the field. He was afraid that the phenomenon was going
\par to be of shorter duration than it had been a month before, just as that
\par second occurrence had been noticeably shorter but more intense than the
\par first.
\par He stopped twice in the meadow to tape for a few seconds from different
\par distances. By the time he halted warily within ten yards of the
\par uncanny radiance, he wondered if the camcorder was getting anything or
\par was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of light.
\par The heatless fire was fiercely bright, shining through from some other
\par place or time or dimension.
\par Pressure waves battered Eduardo. No longer like a crashing storm
\par surf.
\par Hard, punishing. Rocking him so forcefully he had to concentrate on
\par keeping his balance.
\par Again he was aware of something struggling to be free of constraint,
\par break loose of confinement, and burst full-born into the world.
\par The apocalyptic roar of Wormheart was the ideal accompaniment to the.moment, brutal as a sledgehammer yet thrilling, atonal yet compelling,
\par anthems to animal need, shattering the frustrations of human
\par limitations, liberating. It was the darkly gleeful music of
\par doomsday.
\par The throbbing and the electronic whine must have grown to match the
\par brilliance of the light and the power of the escalating pressure
\par waves.
\par He began to hear them again and was aware of being seduced.
\par He cranked up the volume on Wormheart.
\par The sugar and ponderosa pines, previously as still as trees on a
\par painted stage backdrop, suddenly began to thrash, though no wind had
\par risen. The air was filled with whirling needles.
\par The pressure waves grew so fierce that he was pushed backward,
\par stumbled, fell on his ass. He stopped recording, dropped the video
\par camera on the ground beside him.
\par The Discman, clipped to his belt, began to vibrate against his left
\par hip. A wail of Wormheart guitars escalated into a shrill electronic
\par shriek that replaced the music and was as painful as jamming nails into
\par his ears might have been.
\par Screaming in agony, he stripped off the headphones. Against his hip,
\par the vibrating Discman was smoking. He tore it loose, threw it to the
\par ground, scorching his fingers on the hot metal case.
\par The metronomic throbbing surrounded him, as if he were adrift inside
\par the beating heart of a leviathan.
\par Resisting the urge to walk into the light and become part of it
\par forever, Eduardo struggled to his feet. Shrugged the shotgun off his
\par shoulder, Blinding light forcing him to squint, serial shock waves
\par knocking the breath out of him, evergreen boughs churning, a trembling
\par in the earth, the electronic oscillation like the high-pitched squeal
\par of a surgeon's bone saw, and the whole night throbbing, the sky and the
\par earth throbbing as something pushed repeatedly and relentlessly at the
\par fabric of reality, throbbing, throbbing-Whoooosh.
\par The new sound was like--but enormously louder than--the gasp of a
\par vacuum-packed can of coffee or peanuts being opened, air rushing to
\par fill a void.
\par Immediately after that single brief whoooosh, a pall of silence fell
\par across the night and the unearthly light vanished in an instant.
\par , Eduardo Fernandez stood in stunned disbelief under the crescent moon,
\par staring at a perfect sphere of pure blackness that towered over him,
\par like a gargantuan ball on a cosmic billiards table. It was so
\par flawlessly black, it stood out against the ordinary darkness of the May
\par night as prominently as the flare of a nuclear explosion would stand
\par out against the backdrop of even the sunniest summer day. Huge.
\par Thirty feet in diameter. It filled the space once occupied by the.radiant pine trees and earth.
\par A ship.
\par For a moment he thought that he was gazing up at a ship with a
\par windowless hull as smooth as pooled oil. He waited in paralytic terror
\par for a seam of light to appear, a portal to crack open, a ramp to
\par extrude.
\par In spite of the fear that clouded his thinking, Eduardo quickly
\par realized he was not looking at a solid object. The moon-glow wasn't
\par reflected on its surface. Light just fell into it as it would fall
\par into a well. Or tunnel.
\par Except that it revealed no curving walls within. Instinctively,
\par without needing to touch that smooth inky surface, he knew the sphere
\par had no weight, no mass at all, he had no primitive sense whatsoever
\par that it was looming over him, as he should have had if it had been
\par solid.
\par The object wasn't an object, it was not a sphere but a circle. Not
\par three dimensional but two.
\par A doorway.
\par Open.
\par The dark beyond the threshold was unrelieved by gleam, glint, or
\par faintest glimmer. Such perfect blackness was neither natural nor
\par within human experience, and staring at it made Eduardo's eyes ache
\par with the strain of seeking dimension and detail where none existed.
\par He wanted to run.
\par He approached the doorway instead.
\par His heart thudded, and his blood pressure no doubt pushed him toward a
\par stroke. He clutched the shotgun with what he knew was pathetic faith
\par in its efficacy, shoving it out in front of him as a primitive
\par tribesman might brandish a talismanic staff carved with runes, inset
\par with wild-animal teeth, lacquered with sacrificial blood, and crowned
\par with a shock of a witch doctor's hair.
\par However, his fear of the door--and of the unknown realms and entities
\par beyond it--was not as debilitating as the fear of senility and the
\par self-doubt with which he had been living lately. While the chance
\par existed to gather proof of this experience, he intended to explore as
\par far and as long as his nerves would hold out. He hoped never to wake
\par another morning with the suspicion that his brain was addled and his
\par perceptions were no longer trustworthy.
\par Moving cautiously across the dead and flattened meadow grass, feet
\par sinking slightly into the spring-softened soil, he remained alert for
\par any change within the circle of exceptional darkness: a lesser
\par blackness, shadows within the gloom, a spark, a hint of movement,
\par anything that might signal the approach of ... a traveler. He stopped
\par three feet from the brink of that eye-baffling tenebrity, leaning.forward slightly, as wonder-struck as a man in a fairy tale gazing into
\par a magical mirror, the biggest damned magical mirror the Brothers Grimm
\par ever imagined, one that offered no reflections--enchanted or
\par otherwise-but that gave him a hair-raising glimpse of eternity.
\par Holding the shotgun in one hand, he reached down and picked up a stone
\par as large as a lemon. He tossed it gently at the portal. He more than
\par half expected the stone to bounce off the blackness with a hard
\par metallic tonk, for it was still easier to believe he was looking at an
\par object rather than peering into infinity. But it crossed the vertical
\par plane of the doorway and vanished without a sound.
\par He edged closer.
\par Experimentally, he pushed the barrel of the Remington shotgun across
\par the threshold. It didn't fade into the gloom. Instead, the blackness
\par so totally claimed the forward part of the weapon that it appeared as
\par if someone had run a high-speed saw through the barrel and the forearm
\par slide handle, neatly truncating them.
\par He pulled back on the Remington, and the forward part of the gun
\par reappeared.
\par It seemed to be intact.
\par He touched the steel barrel and the checkered wood grip on the slide.
\par Everything felt as it should feel.
\par Taking a deep breath, not sure whether he was brave or insane, he
\par raised one trembling hand, as if signaling "hello" to someone, and
\par eased it forward, feeling for the transition point between this world
\par and . . . whatever lay beyond the doorway. A tingle against his palm
\par and the pads of his fingers. A coolness. It felt almost as if his
\par hand rested on a pool of water but too lightly to break the surface
\par tension.
\par He hesitated.
\par "You're seventy years old," he grumbled. "What've you got to lose?"
\par Swallowing hard, he pushed his hand through the portal, and it
\par disappeared in the same manner as the shotgun. He encountered no
\par resistance, and his wrist terminated in a neat stump.
\par "Jesus," he said softly.
\par He made a fist, opened and closed it, but he couldn't tell if his hand
\par responded on the other side of the barrier. All feeling ended at the
\par point at which that hellish blackness cut across his wrist.
\par When he withdrew his hand from the doorway, it was as unchanged as the
\par shotgun had been. He opened his fist, closed it, opened it.
\par Everything worked as it should, and he had full feeling again.
\par Eduardo looked around at the deep and peaceful May night. The forest.flanking the impossible circle of darkness. Meadow sloping upward,
\par palely frosted by the glow of the quarter moon. The house at the
\par higher end of the meadow. Some windows dark and others filled with
\par light. Mountain peaks in the west, caps of snow phosphorescent against
\par the post-midnight sky.
\par The scene was too detailed to be a place in a dream or part of the
\par hallucination-riddled world of senile dementia. He was not a demented
\par old fool, after all. Old, yes. A fool, probably. But not demented.
\par He returned his attention to the doorway again--and suddenly wondered
\par what it looked like from the side. He imagined a long tube of
\par perfectly nonreflective ebony leading straight off into the night more
\par or less like an oil pipeline stretching across Alaskan tundra, boring
\par through mountains in some cases and suspended in thin air when it
\par crossed less lofty territories, until it reached the curve of the
\par earth, where it continued straight and true, unbending, off into space,
\par a tunnel to the stars.
\par When he walked to one end of the thirty-foot-wide blot and looked at
\par the side of it, he discovered something utterly different from--but
\par quite as strange as-- the pipeline image in his mind. The forest lay
\par behind the enormous portal, unchanged as far as he could tell: the moon
\par shone down, the trees rose as if responding to the caress of that
\par silvery light, and an owl hooted far away. The doorway disappeared
\par when viewed from the side. Its width, if it had any width at all, was
\par as thin as a thread or as a well-stropped razor blade.
\par He walked all the way around to the back of it.
\par Viewed from a point a hundred and eighty degrees from his first
\par position, the doorway was the same thirty-foot circle of featureless
\par mystery. From that reverse perspective, it seemed to have swallowed
\par not part of the forest but the meadow and the house at the top of the
\par rise. It was like a great paper-thin black coin balanced on edge.
\par He moved to take another look at the side of it. From that angle, he
\par couldn't make out even the finest filament of supernatural blackness
\par against the lesser darkness of the night. He felt for the edge with
\par one hand, but he encountered only empty air.
\par From the side, the doorway simply didn't exist-- which was a concept
\par that made him dizzy.
\par He faced the invisible edge of the damned thing, then leaned to his
\par left, looking around at what he thought of as the "front" of the
\par doorway. He shoved his left hand into it as deeply as before.
\par He was surprised at his boldness and knew he was being too quick to
\par assume that the phenomenon was, after all, harmless. Curiosity, that
\par old killer of cats--and not a few human beings--had him in its grip.
\par Without withdrawing his left hand, he leaned to the right and looked at
\par the "back" of the doorway. His fingers had not poked through the far
\par side.
\par He pushed his hand deeper into the front of the portal, but it still.did not appear out of the back. The doorway was as thin as a razor
\par blade, yet he had fourteen to sixteen inches of hand and forearm thrust
\par into it.
\par Where had his hand gone?
\par Shivering, he withdrew his hand from the enigma and returned to the
\par meadow, once more facing the "front" of the portal.
\par He wondered what would happen to him if he stepped through the doorway,
\par both feet, all the way, with no tether to the world he knew. What
\par would he discover beyond? Would he be able to get back if he didn't
\par like what he found?
\par He didn't have enough curiosity to take such a fateful step. He stood
\par at the brink, wondering--and gradually he began to feel that something
\par was coming.
\par Before he could decide what to do, that pure essence of darkness seemed
\par to pour out of the doorway, an ocean of night that sucked him down into
\par a dry but drowning sea.
\par When he regained consciousness, Eduardo was facedown in the dead and
\par matted grass, head turned to his left, gazing up the long meadow toward
\par the house.
\par Dawn had not yet come, but time had passed. The moon had set, and the
\par night was dull and bleak without its silvery enhancement.
\par He was initially confused, but his mind cleared. He remembered the
\par doorway.
\par He rolled onto his back, sat up, looked toward the woods. The
\par razor-thin coin of blackness was gone. The forest stood where it had
\par always stood, unchanged.
\par He crawled to where the doorway had been, stupidly wondering if it had
\par fallen over and was now flat on the ground, transformed from a doorway
\par into a bottomless well. But it was just gone.
\par Shaky and weak, wincing at a headache as intense as a hot wire through
\par his brain, he got laboriously to his feet. He swayed like a drunkard
\par sobering from a week-long binge.
\par He staggered to where he remembered putting down the video camera.
\par It wasn't there.
\par He searched in circles, steadily widening the pattern from the point
\par where the camcorder should have been, until he was certain that he was
\par venturing into areas where he had not gone earlier. He couldn't find
\par the camera.
\par The shotgun was missing as well. And the discarded Discman with its
\par headphones.
\par Reluctantly he returned to the house. He made a pot of strong.coffee.
\par Almost as bitter and black as espresso. With the first cup, he washed
\par down two aspirin.
\par He usually made a weak brew and limited himself to two or three cups.
\par Too much caffeine could cause prostate problems. This morning he
\par didn't care if his prostate swelled as big as a basketball. He needed
\par coffee.
\par He took off the holster, with the pistol still in it, and put it on the
\par kitchen table. He pulled out a chair and sat within easy reach of the
\par weapon.
\par He repeatedly examined his left hand, which he had thrust through the
\par doorway, as if he thought it might abruptly turn to dust. And why
\par not?
\par Was that any more fantastic than anything else that had happened?
\par At first light, he strapped on the holster and returned to the meadow
\par at the perimeter of the lower woods, where he conducted another search
\par for the camera, the shotgun, and the Discman.
\par Gone.
\par He could do without the shotgun. It wasn't his only defense.
\par The Discman had served its purpose. He didn't need it any more.
\par Besides, he remembered how smoke had seeped from its innards and how
\par hot the casing had been when he'd unclipped it from his belt. It was
\par probably ruined.
\par However, he badly wanted the camcorder, because without it, he had no
\par proof of what he'd seen. Maybe that was why it had been taken.
\par In the house again, he made a fresh pot of coffee. What the hell did
\par he need a prostate for, anyway?
\par From the desk in the study, he fetched a legal-size tablet of ruled
\par yellow paper and a couple of ballpoint pens.
\par He sat at the kitchen table, working on the second pot of coffee and
\par filling up tablet pages with his neat, strong handwriting. On the
\par first page, he began with: My name is Eduardo Fernandez, and I have
\par witnessed a series of strange and unsettling events. I am not much of
\par a diarist.
\par Often, I've resolved to start a diary with the new year, but I have
\par always lost interest before the end of January. However, I am
\par sufficiently worried to put down here everything that I've seen and may
\par yet see in the days to come, so there will be a record in the event
\par that something happens to me.
\par He strove to recount his peculiar story in simple terms, with a minimum.of adjectives and no sensationalism. He even avoided speculating about
\par the nature of the phenomenon or the power behind the creation of the
\par doorway. In fact, he hesitated to call it a doorway, but he finally
\par used that term because he knew, on a deep level beyond language and
\par logic, that a doorway was precisely what it had been. If he died--face
\par it, if he was killed--before he could obtain proof of these bizarre
\par goings-on, he hoped that whoever read his account would be impressed by
\par its cool, calm style and would not disregard it as the ravings of a
\par demented old man. He became so involved in his writing that he worked
\par through the lunch hour and well into the afternoon before pausing to
\par prepare a bite to eat. Because he'd skipped breakfast too, he had
\par quite an appetite. He sliced a cold chicken breast left over from
\par dinner the previous night, and he built a couple of tall sandwiches
\par with cheese, tomato, lettuce, and mustard.
\par Sandwiches and beer were the perfect meal because that was something he
\par could eat while still composing in the yellow legal tablet.
\par By twilight, he had brought the story up to date. He finished with: I
\par don't expect to see the doorway again because I suspect it has already
\par served its purpose. Something has come through it. I wish I knew what
\par that something was.
\par Or perhaps I don't.
\par CHAPTER NINE.
\par A sound woke Heather. A soft thunk, then a brief scraping, the source
\par unidentifiable. She sat straight up in bed, instantly alert.
\par The night was silent again.
\par She looked at the clock. Ten minutes past two in the morning.
\par A few months ago, she would have attributed her apprehension to some
\par frightening an unremembered dream, and she would have rolled over and
\par gone back to sleep.
\par Not any more.
\par She had fallen asleep atop the covers. Now she didn't have to
\par disentangle herself from the blankets before getting out of bed.
\par For weeks, she had been sleeping in sweat-suits instead of her usual
\par T-shirt and panties. Even in pyjamas, she would have felt too
\par vulnerable. Sweats were comfortable enough in bed, and she was dressed
\par for trouble if something happened in the middle of the night.
\par Like now.
\par In spite of the continued silence, she picked up the gun from the
\par nightstand.
\par It was a Korth .38 revolver, 120 made in Germany by Waffenfabrik Korth
\par and perhaps the finest handgun in the world, with tolerances unmatched
\par by any other maker..The revolver was one of the weapons she had purchased since the day
\par Jack had been shot, with the consultation of Alma Bryson. She'd spent
\par hours with it on the police firing range. When she picked it up, it
\par felt like a natural extension of her hand.
\par The size of her arsenal now exceeded Alma's, which sometimes amazed
\par her. More amazing still: she worried that she was not well enough
\par armed for every eventuality.
\par New laws were soon going into effect, making it more difficult to
\par purchase firearms. She was going to have to weigh the wisdom of
\par spending more of their limited income on defenses they might never need
\par against the possibility that even her worst-case scenarios would prove
\par to be too optimistic.
\par Once, she would have regarded her current state of mind as a clear-cut
\par case of paranoia. Times had changed. What once had been paranoia was
\par now sober realism.
\par She didn't like to think about that. It depressed her.
\par When the night remained suspiciously quiet, she crossed the bedroom to
\par the hall door. She didn't need to turn on any lights. During the past
\par few months, she had spent so many nights restlessly walking through the
\par house that she could now move from room to room in the darkness as
\par swiftly and silently as a cat.
\par On the wall just inside the bedroom, there was a panel for the alarm
\par system she'd had installed a week after the events at Arkadian's
\par service station. In luminous green letters, the lighted digital
\par monitor strip informed her that all was secure.
\par It was a perimeter alarm, involving magnetic contacts at every exterior
\par door and window, so she could be confident the noise that awakened her
\par hadn't been made by an intruder already in the premises. Otherwise, a
\par siren would have sounded and a microchip recording of an authoritarian
\par male voice would have announced: You have violated a protected
\par dwelling. Police have been called.
\par Leave at once.
\par Barefoot, she stepped into the dark second-floor hallway and moved
\par along to Toby's room. Every evening she made sure both his and her
\par doors were open, so she would hear him if he called to her.
\par For a few seconds she stood by her son's bed, listening to his soft
\par snoring.
\par The boy shape beneath the covers was barely visible in the weak ambient
\par light that passed from the city night through the narrow slats of the
\par Levolor blinds. He was dead to the world and couldn't have been the
\par source of the sound that had interrupted her dreams.
\par Heather returned to the hall. She crept to the stairs and went down to
\par the first floor.
\par In the cramped den and then in the living room, she eased from window.to window, checking outside for anything suspicious. The quiet street
\par looked so peaceful that it might have been located in a small
\par Midwestern town instead of Los Angeles. No one was up to foul play on
\par the front lawn. No one skulking along the north side of the house,
\par either.
\par Heather began to think the suspicious sound had been part of a
\par nightmare, after all.
\par She seldom slept well any more, but usually she remembered her
\par dreams.
\par They were more often than not about Arkadian's service station, though
\par she'd driven by the place only once, on the day after the shootout.
\par The dreams were operatic spectacles of bullets and blood and fire, in
\par which Jack was sometimes burned alive, in which she and Toby were often
\par present during the gunplay, one or both of them shot down with Jack,
\par one or both of them afire, and sometimes the well-groomed blond man in
\par the Armani suit knelt beside her where she lay riddled with bullets,
\par put his mouth to her wounds, and drank her blood. The killer was
\par frequently blind, with hollow eye sockets full of roiling flames.
\par His smile revealed teeth as sharp as the fangs of a viper, and once he
\par said to her, I'm taking Toby down to hell with me--put the little
\par bastard on a leash and use him as a guide dog.
\par Considering that her remembered nightmares were so bad, how gruesome
\par must be the ones she blocked from memory?
\par By the time she had circled the living room, returned to the archway,
\par and crossed the hall to the dining room, she decided that her
\par imagination had gotten the better of her. There was no immediate
\par danger. She no longer held the Korth in front of her but held it at
\par her side, with the muzzle aimed at the floor and her finger on the
\par trigger guard rather than on the trigger itself.
\par The sight of someone outside, moving past a dinningroom window, brought
\par her to full alert again. The drapes were open, but the sheers under
\par them were drawn all the way shut.
\par Backlit by a streetlamp, the prowler cast a shadow that pierced the
\par glass and rippled across the soft folds of the translucent chiffon. It
\par passed quickly, like the shadow of a night bird, but she suffered no
\par doubt that it had been made by a man.
\par She hurried into the kitchen. The tile floor was cold under her bare
\par feet.
\par Another alarm-system control panel was on the wall beside the
\par connecting door to the garage. She punched in the deactivating code.
\par With Jack in the hospital for an unthinkably long convalescence,
\par herself out of work, and their financial future uncertain, Heather had
\par been hesitant to spend precious savings on a burglar alarm. She had
\par always assumed security systems were for mansions in Bel Air and
\par Beverly Hills, not for middle-class families like theirs. Then she'd.learned that six homes out of the sixteen on their block already relied
\par on high-tech protection.
\par Now the glowing green letters on the readout strip changed from SECURE
\par to the less comforting READY TO ARM.
\par She could have set off the alarm, summoning the police. But if she did
\par that, the creeps outside would run. By the time a patrol car arrived,
\par there would be no one to arrest. She was pretty sure she knew what
\par they were--though not who-and what mischief they were up to. She
\par wanted to surprise them and hold them at gunpoint until help arrived.
\par As she quietly disengaged the dead-bolt lock, opened the door--NOT
\par READY TO ARM, the system warned-- and stepped into the garage, she knew
\par she was out of control. Fear should have had her in its thrall. She
\par was afraid, yes, but fear was not what made her heart beat hard and
\par fast. Anger was the engine that drove her. She was infuriated by
\par repeated victimization and determined to make her tormentors pay
\par regardless of the risks.
\par The concrete floor of the garage was even colder than the kitchen
\par tiles.
\par She rounded the back end of the nearer car. Stopping between the
\par fenders of the two vehicles, she waited, listened.
\par The only light came through a series of six-inch-square windows high in
\par the double-wide garage doors: the sickly yellow glow of the
\par streetlamps. The deep shadows seemed contemptuous of it, refusing to
\par withdraw.
\par There. Whispering outside. Soft footfalls on the service walkway
\par along the south side of the house. Then the telltale hiss for which
\par she'd been waiting.
\par Bastards.
\par Heather walked quickly between the cars to the mansize door in the back
\par wall of the garage. The lock had a thumb-turn on the inside. She
\par twisted it slowly, easing the dead bolt out of the striker plate
\par without the clack that it made if opened unthinkingly. She turned the
\par knob, carefully pulled the door inward, and stepped onto the sidewalk
\par behind the house.
\par The May night was mild. The full moon, well on its westward course,
\par was mostly hidden by an overcast.
\par She was being irresponsible. She wasn't protecting
\par Toby. If anything, she was putting him in greater jeopardy. Over the
\par top. Out of control. She knew it. Couldn't help it. She'd had
\par enough. Couldn't take any more. Couldn't stop.
\par To her right lay the covered rear porch, the patio in front of it. The
\par backyard was lit only patchily by what moonlight penetrated the ragged
\par veil of clouds. Tall eucalyptuses, smaller benjaminas, and low shrubs
\par were dappled with lunar silver.
\par She was on the west side of the house. She moved to her left along the.walkway, toward the south.
\par At the corner she halted, listening. Because there was no wind, she
\par could clearly hear the vicious hissing, a sound that only stoked her
\par anger.
\par Murmurs of conversation. Couldn't catch the words.
\par Stealthy footsteps hurrying toward the back of the house. A low,
\par suppressed laugh, almost a giggle. Having such a good time at their
\par game.
\par Judging the moment of his appearance by the sound of his swiftly
\par approaching footsteps, intending to scare the living hell out of him,
\par Heather moved forward. With perfect timing, she met him at the turn in
\par the sidewalk.
\par She was surprised to see he was taller than she was. She had expected
\par them to be ten years old, eleven, twelve at the oldest.
\par The prowler let out a faint
\par "Ah!" of alarm.
\par Putting the fear of God into them was going to be a harder proposition
\par than if they'd been younger. And no retreating now. They'd drag her
\par down. And then . .
\par She kept moving, collided with him, rammed him backward across the
\par eight-foot-wide setback and into the ivy-covered concrete-block wall
\par that marked the southern property line.
\par The can of spray paint flew out of his hand, clattered against the
\par sidewalk.
\par The impact knocked the wind out of him. His mouth sagged open, and he
\par gasped for breath.
\par Footsteps. The second one. Running toward her.
\par Pressed against the first boy, face-to-face, even in the darkness, she
\par saw that he was sixteen or seventeen, maybe older. Plenty old enough
\par to know better.
\par She rammed her right knee up between his spread legs and turned away
\par from him as he fell, wheezing and retching, into the flower bed along
\par the wall.
\par The second boy was coming at her fast. He didn't see the gun, and she
\par didn't have time to stop him with a threat.
\par She stepped toward him instead of away, spun on her left foot, and
\par kicked him in the crotch with her right. Because she'd moved into him,
\par it was a deep kick, she caught him with her ankle and the upper part of
\par the bridge of her foot instead of with her toes..He crashed past her, slammed into the sidewalk, and rolled against the
\par first boy, afflicted by an identical fit of retching.
\par A third one was coming at her along the sidewalk from the front of the
\par house, but he skidded to a halt fifteen feet away and started to back
\par up.
\par "Stop right there," she said. "I've got a gun." Though she raised the
\par Korth, holding it in a two-hand grip, she did not raise her voice, and
\par her calm control made the order more menacing than if she had shouted
\par it in an
\par He stopped, but maybe he couldn't see the revolver in the dark. His
\par body language said he was still contemplating making a break for it.
\par "So help me God," she said, still at a conversational level, "I'll blow
\par your brains out." She was surprised by the cold hatred in her voice.
\par She wouldn't really have shot him. She was sure of that. Yet the
\par sound of her own voice frightened her . . . and made her wonder.
\par His shoulders sagged. His entire posture changed. He believed her
\par threat.
\par A dark exhilaration filled her. Nearly three months of intense taste
\par kwon do and women's defense classes, provided free to members of police
\par families three times a week at the division gym, had paid off. Her
\par right foot hurt like blazes, probably almost as badly as the second
\par boy's crotch hurt him. She might have broken a bone in it, would
\par certainly be hobbling around for a week even if there wasn't a
\par fracture, but she felt so good about nailing the three vandals that she
\par was happy to suffer for her triumph.
\par "Come here," she said. "Now, come on, come on."
\par The third kid raised his hands over his head. He was holding a spray
\par can in each of them.
\par "Get down on the ground with your buddies," she demanded, and he did as
\par he was told.
\par The moon sailed out from behind the clouds, which was like slowly
\par bringing up the stage lights to quarter power on a darkened set. She
\par could see well enough to be sure that they were all older teenagers,
\par sixteen to eighteen.
\par She could also see that they didn't fit any popular stereotypes of
\par taggers. They weren't black or Hispanic. They were white boys.
\par And they didn't look poor, either. One of them wore a well-cut leather
\par jacket, and another wore a cable-knit cotton sweater with what appeared
\par to be a complicated and beautifully knitted pattern.
\par The night quiet was broken only by the miserable gagging and groaning
\par of the two she'd disabled. The confrontation had unfolded so swiftly
\par in the eight-foot-wide space between the house and the property wall,
\par and in such relative silence, that they hadn't even awakened any.neighbors.
\par Keeping the gun on them, Heather said, "You been here before?"
\par Two of them couldn't yet have answered her if they'd wanted to, but the
\par third was also unresponsive.
\par "I asked if you'd been here before," she said sharply, "done this kind
\par of crap here before."
\par "Bitch," the third kid said.
\par She realized it was possible to lose control of the situation even when
\par she was the only one with a gun, especially if the crotch-bashed pair
\par recovered more easily than she expected. She resorted to a lie that
\par might convince them she was more than just a cop's wife with a few
\par smart moves: "Listen, you little snots--I can kill all of you, go in
\par the house and get a couple of knives, plant them in your hands before
\par the first black-and-white gets here.
\par Maybe they'll drag me into court and maybe they won't. But what jury's
\par going to put the wife of a hero cop and the mother of a little
\par eight-year-old boy in prison?"
\par "You wouldn't do that," the third kid said, although he spoke only
\par after a hesitation. A thread of uncertainty fluttered in his voice.
\par She continued to surprise herself by speaking with an intensity and
\par bitterness she didn't have to fake. "Wouldn't I, huh? Wouldn't I? My
\par Jack, two partners shot down beside him in one year, and him lying in
\par the hospital since the first of March, going to be in there weeks yet,
\par months yet, God knows what pain he might have the rest of his life,
\par whether he'll ever walk entirely right, and here I am out of work since
\par October, savings almost gone, can't sleep for worrying, being harassed
\par by crud like you. You think I wouldn't like to see somebody else
\par hurting for a change, think I wouldn't actually get a kick out of
\par hurting you, hurting you real bad? Wouldn't I? Huh? Huh? Wouldn't
\par I, you little snot?"
\par Jesus. She was shaking. She hadn't been aware that anything this dark
\par was in her. She felt her gorge rising in the back of her throat and
\par had to fight hard to keep it down.
\par From all appearances, she had scared the three taggers even more than
\par she had scared herself. Their eyes were wide with fright in the
\par moonlight.
\par "We . . . been here . . . before," gasped the kid whom she'd
\par kicked.
\par "How often?"
\par "T-twice."
\par The house had been hit twice before, once in late March, once in the
\par middle of April..Glowering down at them, she said, "Where you from?"
\par "Here," said the kid she hadn't hurt.
\par "Not from this neighborhood, you aren't."
\par "L.A." he said.
\par "It's a big city," she pressed.
\par "The Hills."
\par "Beverly Hills?"
\par "Yeah."
\par "All three of you?"
\par "Yeah."
\par "Don't screw around with me."
\par "It's true, that's where we're from--why wouldn't it be true?"
\par The unhurt boy put his hands to his temples as if he'd just been
\par overcome with remorse, though it was far more likely to be a sudden
\par headache. Moonlight glinted off his wristwatch and the beveled edges
\par of the shiny metal band.
\par "What's that watch?" she demanded.
\par "Huh?"
\par "What make is it?"
\par "Rolex," he said.
\par That was what she'd thought it was, although she couldn't help but
\par express astonishment: "Rolex?"
\par "I'm not lying. I got it for Christmas."
\par "Jesus."
\par He started to take it off. "Here, you can have it."
\par "Leave it on," she said scornfully.
\par "No, really."
\par "Who gave it to you?"
\par "My folks. It's the gold one." He had taken it off. He held it out,
\par offering it to her. "No diamonds, but all gold, the watch and the
\par band."
\par "What is that," she asked incredulously, "fifteen thousand bucks,.twenty thousand?"
\par "Something like that," one of the hurt boys said. "It's not the most
\par expensive model."
\par "You can have it," the owner of the watch repeated.
\par Heather said, "How old are you?"
\par "Seventeen."
\par "You're still in high school?"
\par "Senior. Here, take the watch."
\par "You're still in high school, you get a fifteen-thousand-dollar watch
\par for Christmas?"
\par "It's yours."
\par Crouching in front of the huddled trio, refusing to acknowledge the
\par pain in her right foot, she leveled the Korth at the face of the boy
\par with the watch.
\par All three drew back in terror.
\par She said, "I might blow your head off, you spoiled little creep, I sure
\par might, but I wouldn't steal your watch even if it was worth a
\par million.
\par Put it on."
\par The gold links of the Rolex band rattled as he nervously slipped it
\par onto his wrist again and fumbled with the clasp.
\par She wanted to know why, with all the privileges and advantages their
\par families could give them, three boys from Beverly Hills would sneak
\par around at night defacing the hard-earned property of a cop who had
\par nearly been killed trying to preserve the very social stability that
\par made it possible for them to have enough food to eat, let alone Rolex
\par watches. Where did their meanness come from, their twisted values,
\par their nihilism? Couldn't blame it on deprivation. Then who or what
\par was to blame?
\par "Show me your wallets," she said harshly.
\par They fumbled wallets from hip pockets, held them out to her. They kept
\par glancing back and forth from her to the Korth. The muzzle of the .38
\par must have looked like a cannon to them.
\par She said, "Take out whatever cash you're carrying."
\par Maybe the trouble with them was just that they'd been raised in a time
\par when the media assaulted them, first, with endless predictions of
\par nuclear war and then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, with
\par ceaseless warnings of a fast-approaching worldwide environmental
\par catastrophe. Maybe the unremitting but stylishly produced gloom and.doom that got high Nielsen ratings for electronic news had convinced
\par them that they had no future. And black kids had it even worse,
\par because they were also being told they couldn't make it, the system was
\par against them, unfair, no justice, no use even trying.
\par Or maybe none of that had anything to do with it.
\par She didn't know. She wasn't sure she even cared. Nothing she could
\par say or do would turn them around.
\par Each boy was holding cash in one hand, a wallet in the other, waiting
\par expectantly.
\par She almost didn't ask the next question, then decided she'd better:
\par "Any of you have credit cards?"
\par Incredibly, two of them did. High-school students with credit cards.
\par The boy she had driven backward into the wall had American Express and
\par Visa cards. The boy with the Rolex had a Mastercard.
\par Staring at them, meeting their troubled eyes in the moonlight, she took
\par solace from the certainty that most kids weren't like these three.
\par Most were struggling to deal with an immoral world in a moral fashion,
\par and they would finish growing up to be good people. Maybe even these
\par brats would be all right eventually, one or two of them, anyway. But
\par what was the percentage who'd lost their moral compass these days, not
\par merely among teenagers but in any age group? Ten percent? Surely
\par more. So much street crime and white-collar crime, so much lying and
\par cheating, greed and envy. Twenty percent? And what percentage could a
\par democracy tolerate before it collapsed?
\par "Throw your wallets on the sidewalk," she said, indicating a spot
\par beside her.
\par They did as instructed.
\par "Put the cash and credit cards in your pockets."
\par Looking perplexed, they did that too.
\par "I don't want your money. I'm no petty criminal like you."
\par Holding the revolver in her right hand, she gathered up the wallets
\par with her left. She stood and backed away from them, refusing to favor
\par her right foot, until she came up against the garage wall.
\par She didn't ask them any of the questions that had been running through
\par her mind. Their answers--if they had any answers--would be glib. She
\par was sick of glibness. The modern world creaked along on a lubricant of
\par facile lies, oily evasions, slick self-justifications.
\par "All I want is your identification," Heather said, raising the fist in
\par which she clenched the wallets. "This'll tell me who you are, where I
\par can find you. You ever give us any more grief, you so much as drive by
\par and spit on the front lawn, I'll come after all of you, take my time,.catch you at just the right moment." She cocked the hammer on the
\par Korth, and their gazes all dropped from her eyes to the gun. "Bigger
\par gun than this, higher-caliber ammunition, something with a hollow
\par point, shoot you in the leg and it shatters the bone so bad they have
\par to amputate. Shoot you in both legs, you're in a wheelchair the rest
\par of your life. Maybe one of you gets it in the balls, so you can't
\par bring any more like you into the world."
\par The moon slid behind clouds.
\par The night was deep.
\par From the backyard came the coarse singing of toads.
\par The three boys stared at her, not sure that she meant for them to go.
\par They had expected to be turned over to the police.
\par That, of course, was. out of the question. She had hurt two of
\par them.
\par Each of the injured still had a hand cupped tenderly over his crotch,
\par and both were grimacing with pain. Furthermore, she had threatened
\par them with a gun outside her home. The argument against her would be
\par that they had represented no real threat because they hadn't crossed
\par her threshold. Although they had spraypainted her house with hateful
\par and obscene graffiti on three separate occasions, though they had done
\par financial and emotional damage to her and her child, she knew that
\par being the wife of a heroic cop was no guarantee against prosecution on
\par a variety of charges that inevitably would result in her imprisonment
\par instead of theirs.
\par "Get out of here," she said.
\par They rose to their feet but then hesitated as if afraid she would shoot
\par them in the back.
\par "Go," she said. "Now."
\par At last they hurried past her, along the side of the house, and she
\par followed at a distance to be sure they actually cleared out. They kept
\par glancing back at her.
\par On the front lawn, standing in the dew-damp grass, she got a good look
\par at what they had done to at least two and possibly three sides of the
\par house. The red, yellow, and sour-apple-green paint seemed to glow in
\par the light of the streetlamps. They had scrawled their personal tagger
\par symbols everywhere, and they had favored the F-word with and without a
\par variety of suffixes, as noun and verb and adjective. But the central
\par message was as it had been the previous two times they'd struck: KILLER
\par COP.
\par The three boys--two of them limping--reached their car, which was
\par parked nearly a block to the north. A black Infinity. They took off
\par with a squeal of spinning tires, leaving clouds of blue smoke in their
\par wake..KILLER COP.
\par WIDOWMAKER.
\par ORPHANMAKER.
\par Heather was more deeply disturbed by the irrationality of the graffiti
\par than by the confrontation with the three taggers. Jack had not been to
\par blame. He'd been doing his duty. How was he supposed to have taken a
\par machine gun from a homicidal maniac without resorting to lethal
\par force?
\par She was overcome with a feeling that civilization was sinking in a sea
\par of mindless hatred.
\par ANSON OLIVER LIVES!
\par Anson Oliver was the maniac with the Micro Uzi, a promising young film
\par director with three features released in the past four years. Not
\par surprisingly, he made angry movies about angry people. Since the
\par shootout, Heather had seen all three films. Oliver had made excellent
\par use of the camera and had had a powerful narrative style. Some of his
\par scenes were dazzling. He might even have been a genius and, in time,
\par might have been honored with Oscars and other awards. But there was a
\par disquieting moral arrogance in his work, a smugness and bullying, that
\par now appeared to have been an early sign of much deeper problems
\par exacerbated by too many drugs.
\par ASSASSIN .
\par She wished that Toby didn't have to see his father labeled a
\par murderer.
\par Well, he'd seen it before. Twice before, all over his own house. He
\par had heard it at school, as well, and had been in two fights because of
\par it. He was a little guy, but he had guts. Though he'd lost both of
\par the fights, he would no doubt disregard her advice to turn the other
\par cheek and would wade into more battles.
\par In the morning, after she drove him to school, she would paint over the
\par graffiti. As before, some of the neighbors would probably help.
\par Multiple coats were required over the affected areas because their
\par house was a pale yellow-beige.
\par Even so, it was a temporary repair, because the spray paint had a
\par chemical composition that ate through the house paint. Over a few
\par weeks, each defacement gradually reappeared like spirit writing on a
\par medium's tablet at a seance, messages from souls in hell.
\par In spite of the mess on her house, her anger faded. She didn't have
\par the energy to sustain it. These last few months had worn her down.
\par She was tired, so very tired.
\par Limping, she reentered the house by the back garage door and locked up
\par after herself. She also locked the connecting door between the garage.and the kitchen, and punched in the activating code to arm the alarm
\par system again.
\par SECURE.
\par Not really. Not ever.
\par She went upstairs to check on Toby. He was still sound asleep.
\par Standing in the doorway of her son's room, listening to him snore, she
\par understood why Anson Oliver's mother and father had been unable to
\par accept that their son had been capable of mass murder. He had been
\par their baby, their little boy, their fine young man, the embodiment of
\par the best of their own qualities, a source of pride and hope, heart of
\par their heart. She sympathized with them, pitied them, prayed that she
\par would never have to experience a pain like theirs--but she wished they
\par would shut up and go away.
\par Oliver's parents had conducted an effective media campaign to portray
\par their son as a kind, talented man incapable of what he was said to have
\par done. They claimed the Uzi found at the scene had not belonged to
\par him.
\par No record existed to prove he had purchased or registered such a
\par weapon. But the fully automatic Micro Uzi was an illegal gun these
\par days, and Oliver no doubt paid cash for it on the black market. No
\par mystery about the lack of a receipt or registration.
\par Heather left Toby's room and returned to her own. She sat on the edge
\par of the bed and switched on the lamp.
\par She put down the revolver and occupied herself with the contents of the
\par three wallets. From their driver's licenses, she learned that one of
\par the boys was sixteen years old and two were seventeen. They did,
\par indeed, live in Beverly Hills.
\par In one wallet, among snapshots of a cute high school-age blonde and a
\par grinning Irish setter, Heather found a two-inch-diameter decal at which
\par she stared in disbelief for a moment before she fished it out of the
\par plastic window. It was the kind of thing often sold on novelty racks
\par in stationery stores, pharmacies, record shops, and bookstores, kids
\par decorated school notebooks and countless other items with them. A
\par paper backing could be peeled off to reveal an adhesive surface. This
\par one was glossy black with embossed silver-foil letters: ANSON OLIVER
\par LIVES.
\par Someone was already merchandising his death. Sick. Sick and
\par strange.
\par What unnerved Heather most was that, apparently, a market existed for
\par Anson Oliver as legendary figure, perhaps even as martyr.
\par Maybe she should have seen it coming. Oliver's parents weren't the
\par only people assiduously polishing his image since the shootout.
\par The director's fiancee, pregnant with his child, claimed he didn't use
\par drugs any more. He'd been arrested twice for driving under the.influence of narcotics, however, those slips from the pedestal were
\par said to have been a thing of the past. The fiancee was an actress, not
\par merely beautiful but with a fey and vulnerable quality that ensured
\par plenty of TV-news time, her large, lovely eyes always seemed on the
\par verge of filling with tears.
\par Various film-community associates of the director had taken out
\par full-page ads in The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, mourning the
\par loss of such a creative talent, making the observation that his
\par controversial films had angered a lot of people in positions of power,
\par and suggesting that he had lived and died for his art.
\par The implications of all this were that the Uzi had been planted on him,
\par as had the cocaine and PCP. Because everyone up and down the street
\par from Arkadian's station had dived for cover at the sound of all that
\par gunfire, no one had witnessed Anson Oliver with a gun in his hands
\par except the people who died--and Jack. Mrs. Arkadian had never seen
\par the gunman while she'd been hiding in the office, when she'd come out
\par of the service station with Jack, she'd been virtually blind because
\par smoke and soot had mucked up her contact lenses.
\par Within two days of the shootout, Heather had been forced to change
\par their phone number for a new, unlisted one, because fans of Anson
\par Oliver were calling at all hours. Many had made accusations of
\par sinister conspiracies in which Jack figured as the triggerman.
\par It was nuts.
\par The guy was just a filmmaker, for God's sake, not President of the
\par United States. Politicians, corporate chiefs, military leaders, and
\par police officials didn't quiver in terror and plot murder out of fear
\par that some crusading Hollywood film director was going to take a swipe
\par at them in a movie. Hell, if they were that sensitive, there would
\par hardly be any directors left.
\par And did these people actually believe that Jack had shot his own
\par partner and three other men at the service station, then pumped three
\par rounds into himself, all of this in broad daylight where there well
\par might have been witnesses, risking death, subjecting himself to
\par enormous pain and suffering and an arduous rehabilitation merely to
\par make his story about Anson Oliver's death look more credible?
\par The answer, of course, was yes. They did believe such nonsense.
\par She found proof in another plastic window in the same wallet. Another
\par decal, also a two-inch-diameter circle. Black background, red letters,
\par three names stacked above one another: OSWALD, CHAPMAN, Mcgarvey?
\par She was filled with revulsion. To compare a troubled film director
\par who'd made three flawed movies to John Kennedy (Oswald's victim) or
\par even to John Lennon (Mark David Chapman's victim) was disgusting. But
\par to liken Jack to a pair of infamous murderers was an abomination.
\par OSWALD, CHAPMAN, Mcgarvey?
\par Her first thought was to call an attorney in the morning, find out who
\par was producing this trash, and sue them for every penny they had. As.she stared at the hateful decal, however, she had a sinking feeling
\par that the purveyor of this crap had protected himself by the use of that
\par question mark.
\par OSWALD, CHAPMAN, MCGARVY?
\par Speculation wasn't the same thing as accusation. The question mark
\par made it speculation and probably provided protection against a
\par successful prosecution for slander or libel.
\par Suddenly she had enough energy to sustain her anger, after all. She
\par gathered up the wallets and threw them into the bottom drawer of the
\par nightstand, along with the decals. She slammed the drawer shut--then
\par hoped she hadn't wakened Toby.
\par It was an age when a great many people would rather embrace a patently
\par absurd conspiracy theory than bother to research the facts and accept a
\par simple, observable truth. They seemed to have confused real life with
\par fiction, eagerly seeking Byzantine schemes and cabals of maniacal
\par villains straight out of Ludlum novels. But the reality was nearly
\par always far less dramatic and immeasurably less flamboyant. It was
\par probably a coping mechanism, a means by which they tried to bring order
\par to and make sense of--a high-tech world in which the pace of social and
\par technological change dizzied and frightened them.
\par Coping mechanism or not, it was sick.
\par And speaking of sick, she had hurt two of those boys. Never mind that
\par they deserved it. She had never hurt anyone in her life before. Now
\par that the heat of the moment was past, she felt ... not remorse,
\par exactly, because they had earned what she'd done to them . . . but a
\par sadness that it had been necessary. She felt soiled. Her exhilaration
\par had fallen with her adrenaline level.
\par She examined her right foot. It was beginning to swell, but the pain
\par was tolerable.
\par "Good God, woman," she admonished herself, "who did you think you
\par were--one of the Ninja Turtles?"
\par She got two Excedrin from the bathroom medicine cabinet, washed them
\par down with tepid water.
\par In the bedroom again, she switched off the bedside lamp.
\par She wasn't afraid of the darkness.
\par What she feared was the damage people were capable of doing to one
\par another either in darkness or at high noon.
\par CHAPTER TEN.
\par The tenth of June was not a day in which to be cooped up inside. The
\par sky was delft blue, the temperature hovered around eighty degrees, and
\par the meadows were still a dazzling green because the heat of summer had
\par not yet seared the grass..Eduardo spent most of the balmy afternoon in a bentwood hickory rocking
\par chair on the front porch. A new video camera, loaded with tape and
\par fully charged batteries, lay on the porch floor beside the rocker.
\par Next to the camera was a shotgun. He got up a couple of times to fetch
\par a fresh bottle of beer or to use the bathroom. And once he went for a
\par half-hour walk around the nearer fields, carrying the camera. For the
\par most part, however, he remained in the chair-waiting.
\par It was in the woods.
\par Eduardo knew in his bones that something had come through the black
\par doorway in the first hour of May third, over five weeks ago. Knew it,
\par felt it. He had no idea what it was or where it had begun its journey,
\par but he knew it had traveled from some strange world into that Montana
\par night.
\par Thereafter, it must have found a hiding place, into which it had
\par crawled. No other analysis of the situation made sense. Hiding. If
\par it had wanted its presence to be known, it would have revealed itself
\par to him that night or later. The woods, vast and dense, offered an
\par infinite number of places to go to ground.
\par Although the doorway had been enormous, that didn't mean the
\par traveler--or the vessel carrying it, if a vessel existed--was also
\par large. Eduardo had once been to New York City and driven through the
\par Holland Tunnel, which had been a lot bigger than any car that used
\par it.
\par Whatever had come out of that death-black portal might be no larger
\par than a man, perhaps even smaller, and able to hide almost anywhere
\par among those timbered vales and ridges.
\par The doorway indicated nothing about the traveler, in fact, except that
\par it was undoubtedly intelligent. Sophisticated science and engineering
\par lay behind the creation of that gate.
\par He had read enough Heinlein and Clarke--and selected others in their
\par vein--to have exercised his imagination, and he had realized that the
\par intruder might have a variety of origins. More likely than not, it was
\par extraterrestrial.
\par However, it might also be something from another dimension or from a
\par parallel world. It might even be a human being, opening a passage into
\par this age from the far future.
\par The numerous possibilities were dizzying, and he no longer felt like a
\par fool when he speculated about them. He also had ceased being
\par embarrassed about borrowing fantastical literature from the
\par library--though the cover art was often trashy even when well
\par drawn--and his appetite for it had become voracious.
\par Indeed, he found that he no longer had the patience to read the realist
\par writers who had been his lifelong favorites. Their work simply wasn't
\par as realistic as it had seemed before. Hell, it wasn't realistic at all
\par to him any longer. Now, when he was just a few pages into a book or
\par story by one of them, Eduardo got the distinct feeling that their point.of view consisted of an extremely narrow slice of reality, as if they
\par looked at life through the slit of a welder's hood. They wrote well,
\par certainly, but they were writing about only the tiniest sliver of the
\par human experience in a big world and an infinite universe.
\par He now preferred writers who could look beyond this horizon, who knew
\par that humanity would one day reach childhood's end, who believed
\par intellect could triumph over superstition and ignorance, and who dared
\par to dream.
\par He was also thinking about buying a second Discman and giving Wormheart
\par another try.
\par He finished a beer, put the bottle on the porch beside the rocker, and
\par wished he could believe the thing that had come through the doorway was
\par just a person from the distant future, or at least something benign.
\par But it had gone into hiding for more than five weeks, and its
\par secretiveness did not seem to indicate benevolent intentions. He was
\par trying not to be xenophobic. But instinct told him that he'd had a
\par brush with something not merely different from humanity but inherently
\par hostile to it.
\par Although his attention was focused, more often than not, on the lower
\par woods to the east, at the edge of which the doorway had opened, Eduardo
\par wasn't comfortable venturing near the northern and western woods,
\par either, because the evergreen wilderness on three sides of the ranch
\par house was contiguous, broken only by the fields to the south. Whatever
\par had entered the lower woods could easily make its way under the cover
\par of the trees into any arm of the forest.
\par He supposed it was possible that the traveler had not chosen to hide
\par anywhere nearby but had circled into the pines on the western foothills
\par and from there into the mountains. It might long ago have retreated
\par into some high redoubt, secluded ravine, or cavern in the remote
\par reaches of the Rocky Mountains, many miles from Quartermass Ranch.
\par But he didn't think that was the case.
\par Sometimes, when he was walking near the forest, studying the shadows
\par under the trees, looking for anything out of the ordinary, he was aware
\par of ... a presence. Simple as that. Inexplicable as that. A
\par presence.
\par On those occasions, though he neither saw nor heard anything unusual,
\par he was aware that he was no longer alone. So he waited.
\par Sooner or later something new would happen.
\par On those days when he grew impatient, he reminded himself of two
\par things.
\par First, he was well accustomed to waiting, since Margaret had died
\par three years ago, he hadn't been doing anything but waiting for the time
\par to come when he could join her again. Second, when at last something
\par did happen, when the traveler finally chose to reveal itself in some
\par fashion, Eduardo more likely than not would wish that it had remained.concealed and secretive.
\par Now he picked up the empty beer bottle, rose from the rocking chair,
\par intending to get another brew--and saw the raccoon. It was standing in
\par the yard, about eight or ten feet from the porch, staring at him. He
\par hadn't noticed it before because he'd been focused on the distant
\par trees--the once-luminous trees--at the foot of the meadow.
\par The woods and fields were heavily populated with wildlife. The
\par frequent appearance of squirrels, rabbits, foxes, possums, deer,
\par horned sheep, and other animals was one of the charms of such a deeply
\par rural life.
\par Raccoons, perhaps the most adventurous and interesting of all the
\par creatures in the neighborhood, were highly intelligent and rated higher
\par still on any scale of cuteness. However, their intelligence and
\par aggressive scavenging made them a nuisance, and the dexterity of their
\par almost hand-like paws facilitated their mischief. In the days when
\par horses had been kept in the stables, before Stanley Quartermass died,
\par raccoons--although primarily carnivores--had been endlessly inventive
\par in the raids they launched on apples and other equestrian supplies.
\par Now, as then, trash cans had to be fitted with raccoon-proof lids,
\par though these masked bandits still made an occasional assault on the
\par containers, as if they'd been in their dens, brooding about the
\par situation for weeks, and had devised a new technique they wanted to try
\par out.
\par The specimen in the front yard was an adult, sleek and fat, with a
\par shiny coat that was somewhat thinner than the thick fur of winter. It
\par sat on its hindquarters, forepaws against its chest, head held high,
\par watching Eduardo. Though raccoons were communal and usually roamed in
\par pairs or groups, no others were visible either in the front yard or
\par along the edge of the meadow.
\par They were also nocturnal. They were rarely seen in the open in broad
\par daylight.
\par With no horses in the stables and the trash cans well secured, Eduardo
\par had long ago stopped chasing raccoons away--unless they got onto the
\par roof at night. Engaged in raucous play or mouse chasing across the top
\par of the house, they could make sleeping impossible.
\par He moved to the head of the porch steps, taking advantage of this
\par uncommon opportunity to study one of the critters in bright sunlight at
\par such close range.
\par The raccoon moved its head to follow him.
\par Nature had cursed the rascals with exceptionally beautiful fur, doing
\par them the tragic disservice of making them valuable to the human
\par species, which was ceaselessly engaged in a narcissistic search for
\par materials with which to bedeck and ornament itself. This one had a
\par particularly bushy tail, ringed with black, glossy and glorious.
\par "What're you doing out and about on a sunny afternoon?" Eduardo
\par asked..The animal's anthracite-black eyes regarded him with almost palpable
\par curiosity.
\par "Must be having an identity crisis, think you're a squirrel or
\par something."
\par With a flurry of paws, the raccoon busily combed its facial fur for
\par maybe half a minute, then froze again and regarded Eduardo intently.
\par Wild animals--even species as aggressive as raccoons--seldom made such
\par direct eye contact as this fellow. They usually tracked people
\par furtively, with peripheral vision or quick glances. Some said this
\par reluctance to meet a direct gaze for more than a few seconds was an
\par acknowledgment of human superiority, the animal's way of humbling
\par itself as a commoner might do before a king, while others said it
\par indicated that animals--innocent creatures of God--saw in men's eyes
\par the stain of sin and were ashamed for humanity. Eduardo had his own
\par theory: animals recognized that people were the most vicious and
\par unrelenting beasts of all, violent and unpredictable, and avoided
\par direct eye contact out of fear and prudence.
\par Except for this raccoon. It seemed to have no fear whatsoever, to feel
\par no humility in the presence of a human being.
\par "At least not this particular sorry old human being, huh?"
\par The raccoon just watched him.
\par Finally the coon was less compelling than his thirst, and Eduardo went
\par inside to get another beer. The hinge springs sang when he pulled open
\par the screen door-- which he'd hung for the season only two weeks
\par before--and again when he eased it shut behind him.
\par He expected the strange sound to startle the coon and send it scurrying
\par away, but when he looked back through the screen, he saw the critter
\par had come a couple , of feet closer to the porch steps and more directly
\par in line with the door, keeping him in sight.
\par "Funny little bugger," he said.
\par He walked to the kitchen, at the end of the hall, and, first thing,
\par looked at the clock above the double ovens because he wasn't wearing a
\par watch. Twenty past three.
\par He had a pleasing buzz on, and he was in the mood to sustain it all the
\par way to bedtime. However, he didn't want to get downright sloppy. He
\par decided to have dinner an hour early, at six instead of seven, get some
\par food on his stomach.
\par He might take a book to bed and turn in early as well.
\par This waiting for something to happen was getting on his nerves.
\par He took another Corona from the refrigerator. It had a twist-off cap,
\par but he had a touch of arthritis in his hands. The bottle opener was on
\par the cutting board by the sink..As he popped the cap off the bottle, he happened to glance out the
\par window above the sink--and saw the raccoon in the backyard. It was
\par twelve or fourteen feet from the rear porch. Sitting on its
\par hindquarters, forepaws against its chest, head held high. Because the
\par yard rose toward the western woods, the coon was in a position to look
\par over the porch railing, directly at the kitchen window.
\par It was watching him.
\par Eduardo went to the back door, unlocked and opened it.
\par The raccoon moved from its previous position to another from which it
\par could continue to study him.
\par He pushed open the screen door, which made the same screaky sound as
\par the one at the front of the house. He went onto the porch, hesitated,
\par then descended the three back steps to the yard.
\par The animal's dark eyes glittered.
\par When Eduardo closed half the distance between them, the raccoon dropped
\par to all fours, turned, and scampered twenty feet farther up the slope.
\par There it stopped, turned to face him again, sat erect on its
\par hindquarters, and regarded him as before.
\par Until then he had thought it was the same raccoon that had been
\par watching him from the front yard. Suddenly he wondered if, in fact, it
\par was a different beast altogether.
\par He walked quickly around the north side of the house, cutting a wide
\par enough berth to keep the raccoon at the back in sight. He came to a
\par point, well to the north of the house, from which he could see the
\par front and back yards--and two ring-tailed sentinels.
\par They were both staring at him.
\par He proceeded toward the raccoon in front of the house.
\par When he drew close, the coon put its tail to him and ran across the
\par front yard. At what it evidently regarded as a safe distance, it
\par stopped and sat watching him with its back against the higher, unmown
\par grass of the meadow.
\par "I'll be damned," he said.
\par He returned to the front porch and sat in the rocker.
\par The waiting was over. After more than five weeks, things were
\par beginning to happen.
\par Eventually he realized he'd left his open beer by the kitchen sink. He
\par went inside to retrieve it because, now more than ever, he needed it.
\par He had left the back door standing open, though the screen door had
\par closed behind him when he'd gone outside. He locked up, got his beer,.stood at the window watching the backyard raccoon for a moment, and
\par then returned to the front porch.
\par The first raccoon had crept forward from the edge of the meadow and was
\par again only ten feet from the porch.
\par Eduardo picked up the video camera and recorded the critter for a
\par couple of minutes. It wasn't anything amazing enough to convince
\par skeptics that a doorway from beyond had opened in the early-morning
\par hours of May third, however, it was peculiar for a nocturnal animal to
\par pose so long in broad daylight, making such obviously direct eye
\par contact with the operator of the camcorder, and it might prove to be
\par the first small fragment in a mosaic of evidence.
\par After he finished with the camera, he sat in the rocker, sipping beer
\par and watching the raccoon as it watched him, waiting to see what would
\par happen next.
\par Occasionally the ring-tailed sentinel smoothed its whiskers, combed its
\par face fur, scratched behind its ears, or performed some other small act
\par of grooming.
\par Otherwise, there were no new developments.
\par At five-thirty he went inside to make dinner, taking his empty beer
\par bottle, camcorder, and shotgun with him. He closed and locked the
\par front door.
\par Through the oval, beveled-glass window, he saw the coon still on
\par duty.
\par At the kitchen table, Eduardo enjoyed an early dinner of rigatoni and
\par spicy sausage with thick slabs of heavily buttered Italian bread. He
\par kept the yellow legal-size tablet beside his plate and, while he ate,
\par wrote about the intriguing events of the afternoon.
\par He had almost brought the account up-to-date when a peculiar clicking
\par noise distracted him. He glanced at the electric stove, then at each
\par of the two windows to see if something was tapping on the glass.
\par When he turned in his chair, he saw that a raccoon was in the kitchen
\par behind him. Sitting on its hindquarters. Staring at him.
\par He shoved his chair back from the table and got quickly to his feet.
\par Evidently the animal had entered the room from the hallway. How it had
\par gotten inside the house in the first place, however, was a mystery.
\par The clicking he'd heard had been its claws on the pegged-oak floor.
\par They rattled against the wood again, though it didn't move.
\par Eduardo realized it was racked by severe shivers. At first he thought
\par it was frightened of being in the house, feeling threatened and
\par cornered.
\par He backed away a couple of steps, giving it space..The raccoon made a thin mewling sound that was neither a threat nor an
\par expression of fear, but the unmistakable voice of misery. It was in
\par pain, injured or ill.
\par His first reaction was: Rabies.
\par The .22 pistol lay on the table, as he always kept a weapon close at
\par hand these days. He picked it up, though he did not want to have to
\par kill the raccoon in the house.
\par He saw now that the creature's eyes were protruding unnaturally and
\par that the fur under them was wet and matted with tears. The small paws
\par clawed at the air, and the black-ringed tail swished back and forth
\par furiously across the oak floor. Gagging, the coon dropped off its
\par haunches, flopped on its side. It twitched convulsively, sides heaving
\par as it struggled to breathe. Abruptly blood bubbled from its nostrils
\par and trickled from its ears. After one final spasm that rattled its
\par claws against the floor again, it lay still, silent.
\par Dead.
\par "Dear Jesus," Eduardo said, and put one trembling hand to his brow to
\par blot away the sudden dew of perspiration that had sprung up along his
\par hairline.
\par The dead raccoon didn't seem as large as either of the sentinels he'd
\par seen outside, and he didn't think that it looked smaller merely because
\par death had diminished it. He was pretty sure it was a third individual,
\par perhaps younger than the other two, or maybe they were males, and this
\par was a female.
\par He remembered leaving the kitchen door open when he'd walked around the
\par house to see if the front and back sentries were the same animal. The
\par screen door had been closed. But it was light, just a narrow pine
\par frame and screen. The raccoon might have been able to pry it open wide
\par enough to insinuate its snout, its head, and then its body, sneaking
\par into the house before he'd returned to close the inner door.
\par Where had it hidden in the house when he'd been passing the late
\par afternoon in the rocking chair? What had it been up to while he was
\par cooking dinner?
\par He went to the window at the sink. Because he had eaten early and
\par because the summer sunset was late, twilight had not yet arrived, so he
\par could clearly see the masked observer. It was in the backyard, sitting
\par on its hindquarters, dutifully watching the house.
\par Stepping carefully around the pitiful creature on the floor, Eduardo
\par went down the hall, unlocked the front door, and stepped outside to see
\par if the other sentry was still in place. It was not in the front yard,
\par where he'd left it, but on the porch, a few feet from the door. It was
\par lying on its side, blood pooled in the one ear that he could see, blood
\par at its nostrils, eyes wide and glazed.
\par Eduardo raised his attention from the coon to the lower woods at the
\par bottom of the meadow. The declining sun, balanced on the peaks of the.mountains in the west, threw slanting orange beams between the trunks
\par of those trees but was incapable of dispelling the stubborn shadows.
\par By the time he returned to the kitchen and looked out the window again,
\par the backyard coon was running frantically in circles. When he went out
\par onto the porch, he could hear it squealing in pain. Within seconds it
\par fell, tumbled. It lay with its sides heaving for a moment, and then it
\par was motionless.
\par He looked uphill, past the dead raccoon on the grass, to the woods that
\par flanked the fieldstone house where he had lived when he'd been the
\par caretaker.
\par The darkness among those trees was deeper than in the lower forest
\par because the westering sun illuminated only their highest boughs as it
\par slid slowly behind the Rockies.
\par Something was in the woods.
\par Eduardo didn't think the raccoons' strange behavior resulted from
\par rabies or, in fact, from an illness of any kind. Something was ...
\par controlling them.
\par Maybe the means by which that control was exerted had proved so
\par physically taxing to the animals that it had resulted in their sudden,
\par spasmodic deaths.
\par Or maybe the entity in the woods had purposefully killed them to
\par exhibit the extent of its control, to impress Eduardo with its power,
\par and to suggest that it might be able to waste him as easily as it had
\par destroyed the raccoons.
\par He felt he was being watched--and not just through the eyes of other
\par raccoons.
\par The bare peaks of the highest mountains loomed like a tidal wave of
\par granite.
\par The orange sun slowly submerged into that sea of stone.
\par A steadily inkier darkness rose under the evergreen boughs, but Eduardo
\par didn't think that even the blackest condition in nature could match the
\par darkness in the heart of the watcher in the woods--if, in fact, it had
\par a heart at all.
\par Although he was convinced that disease had not played a role in the
\par behavior and death of the raccoons, Eduardo could not be certain of his
\par diagnosis, so he took precautions when handling the bodies. He tied a
\par bandanna over his nose and mouth, and wore a pair of rubber gloves. He
\par didn't handle the carcasses directly but lifted each with a
\par short-handled shovel and slipped it into its own large plastic trash
\par bag. He twisted the top of each bag, tied a knot in it, and put it in
\par the cargo area of the Cherokee station wagon in the garage. After
\par hosing off the small smears of blood on the front porch, he used
\par several cotton cloths to scrub the kitchen floor with pure Lysol.
\par Finally he threw the cleaning rags into a bucket, stripped off the.gloves and dropped them on top of the rags, and set the bucket on the
\par back porch to be dealt with later.
\par He also put a loaded twelve-gauge shotgun and the .22 pistol in the
\par Cherokee.
\par He took the video camera with him, because he didn't know when he might
\par need it. Besides, the tape currently in the camera contained the
\par footage of the raccoons, and he didn't want that to disappear as had
\par the tape he'd taken of the luminous woods and the black doorway. For
\par the same reason, he took the yellow tablet that was half filled with
\par his handwritten account of these recent events.
\par By the time he was ready to drive into Eagle's Roost, the long twilight
\par had surrendered to night. He didn't relish returning to a dark house,
\par though he had never been skittish about that before. He turned on
\par lights in the kitchen and the downstairs hall. After further thought,
\par he switched on lamps in the living room and study.
\par He locked up, backed the Cherokee out of the garage--and thought too
\par much of the house remained dark. He went back inside to turn on a
\par couple of upstairs lights. By the time he returned to the Cherokee and
\par headed down the half-mile driveway toward the county road to the south,
\par every window on both floors of the house glowed.
\par The Montana vastness appeared to be emptier than ever before. Mile
\par after mile, up into the black hills on one hand and across the timeless
\par plains on the other, the few tiny clusters of lights that he saw were
\par always in the distance. They seemed adrift on a sea, as if they were
\par the lights of ships moving inexorably away toward one horizon or
\par another.
\par Though the moon had not yet risen, he didn't think its glimmer would
\par have made the night seem any less enormous or more welcoming. The
\par sense of isolation that troubled him had more to do with his interior
\par landscape than with the Montana countryside.
\par He was a widower, childless, and most likely in the last decade of his
\par life, separated from so many of his fellow men and women by age, fate,
\par and inclination. He had never needed anyone but Margaret and Tommy.
\par After losing them, he had been resigned to living out his years in an
\par almost monkish existence--and had been confident that he could do so
\par without succumbing to boredom or despair. Until recently he'd gotten
\par along well enough. Now, however, he wished that he had reached out to
\par make friends, at least one, and had not so single-mindedly obeyed his
\par hermit heart.
\par Mile by lonely mile, he waited for the distinctive rustle of plastic in
\par the cargo space behind the back seat.
\par He was certain the raccoons were dead. He didn't understand why he
\par should expect them to revive and tear their way out of the bags, but he
\par did.
\par Worse, he knew that if he heard them ripping at the plastic, sharp
\par little claws busily slicing, they would not be the raccoons he had.shoveled into the bags, not exactly, maybe not much like them at all,
\par but changed.
\par "Foolish old coot," he said, trying to shame himself out of such morbid
\par and peculiar contemplations.
\par Eight miles after leaving his driveway, he finally encountered other
\par traffic on the county route. Thereafter, the closer he drew to Eagle's
\par Roost, the busier the two-lane blacktop became, though no one would
\par ever have mistaken it for the approach road to New York City--or even
\par Missoula.
\par He had to drive through town to the far side, where Dr. Lester Yeats
\par maintained his professional offices and his home on the same five-acre
\par property where Eagle's Roost again met rural fields. Yeats was a
\par veterinarian who, for years, had cared for Stanley Quartermass'
\par horses--a white-haired, white-bearded, jolly man who would have made a
\par good Santa Claus if he'd been heavy instead of whip-thin.
\par The house was a rambling gray clapboard structure with blue shutters
\par and a slate roof. Because there were also lights on in the one-story
\par barn-like building that housed Yeats's offices and in the adjacent
\par stables where four-legged patients were kept, he drove a few hundred
\par feet past the house to the end of the graveled lane.
\par As Eduardo was getting out of the Cherokee, the front door of the
\par office barn opened, and a man came out in a wash of fluorescent light,
\par leaving the door ajar behind him. He was tall, in his early thirties,
\par rugged-looking, with thick brown hair. He had a broad and easy
\par smile.
\par "Howdy. What can I do for you?"
\par "Looking' for Lester Yeats," Eduardo said.
\par "Dr. Yeats?" The smile faded. "You an old friend or something?"
\par "Business," Eduardo said. "Got some animals I'd like him to take a
\par look at."
\par Clearly puzzled, the stranger said, "Well, sir, I'm afraid Les Yeats
\par isn't doing business any more."
\par "Oh? He retire?"
\par "Died," the young man said.
\par "He did? Yeats?"
\par "More than six years ago."
\par That startled Eduardo. "Sorry to hear it." He hadn't quite realized
\par so much time had passed since he'd last seen Yeats.
\par A warm breeze sprang up, stirring the larches that were grouped at
\par various points around the buildings..The stranger said, "My name's Travis Potter. I bought the house and
\par practice from Mrs. Yeats. She moved to a smaller place in town."
\par They shook hands, and instead of identifying himself, Eduardo said,
\par "Dr. Yeats took care of our horses out at the ranch."
\par "What ranch would that be?"
\par "Quartermass Ranch."
\par "Ah," Travis Potter said, "then you must be the . . . Mr. Fernandez,
\par is it?"
\par "Oh, sorry, yeah, Ed Fernandez," he replied, and had the uneasy feeling
\par that the vet had been about to say "the one they talk about" or
\par something of the sort, as if he was a local eccentric.
\par He supposed that might, in fact, be the case. Inheriting his spread
\par from his rich employer, living alone, a recluse with seldom a word for
\par anyone even when he ventured into town on errands, he might have become
\par a minor enigma about whom townspeople were curious. The thought of it
\par made him cringe.
\par "How many years since you've had horses?" Potter asked.
\par "Eight. Since Mr. Quartermass died."
\par He realized how odd it was--not having spoken with Yeats in eight
\par years, then showing up six years after he died, as if only a week had
\par gone by.
\par They stood in silence a moment. The June night around them was filled
\par with cricket songs.
\par "Well," Potter said, "where are these animals?"
\par "Animals?"
\par "You said you had some animals for Dr. Yeats to look at."
\par "Oh. Yeah."
\par "He was a good vet, but I assure you I'm his equal."
\par "I'm sure you are, Dr. Potter. But these are dead animals."
\par "Dead animals?"
\par "Raccoons."
\par "Dead raccoons?"
\par "Three of them."
\par "Three dead raccoons?"
\par Eduardo realized that if he did have a reputation as a local eccentric,.he was only adding to it now. He was so out of practice at
\par conversation that he couldn't get to the point.
\par He took a deep breath and said what was necessary without going into
\par the story of the doorway and other oddities: "They were acting funny,
\par out in broad daylight, running in circles. Then one by one they
\par dropped over." He succinctly described their death throes, the blood
\par in their nostrils and ears.
\par "What I wondered was'ould they be rabid?"
\par "You're up against those foothills," Potter said. "There's always a
\par little rabies working its way through the wild populations. That's
\par natural. But we haven't seen evidence of it around here for a while.
\par Blood in the ears? Not a rabies symptom. Were they foaming at the
\par mouth?"
\par "Not that I saw."
\par "Running in a straight line?"
\par "Circles."
\par A pickup truck drove by on the highway, country music so loud on its
\par radio that the tune carried all the way to the back of Potter's
\par property. Loud or not, it was a mournful song.
\par "Where are they?" Potter asked.
\par "Got them bagged in plastic in the Cherokee here."
\par "You get bitten?"
\par "No," Eduardo said.
\par "Scratched?"
\par "No."
\par "Any contact with them whatsoever?"
\par Eduardo explained about the precautions he'd taken: the shovel,
\par bandanna, rubber gloves.
\par Cocking his head, looking puzzled, Travis Potter said, "You telling me
\par everything?"
\par "Well, I think so," he lied. "I mean, their behavior was pretty
\par strange, but I've told you everything important, no other symptoms I
\par noticed."
\par Potter's gaze was forthright and penetrating, and for a moment Eduardo
\par considered opening up and revealing the whole bizarre story.
\par Instead, he said, "If it isn't rabies, does it sound like maybe it
\par could be plague?".Potter frowned. "Doubtful. Bleeding from the ears? That's an
\par uncommon symptom.
\par You get any flea bites being around them?"
\par "I'm not itchy."
\par The warm breeze pumped itself into a gust of wind, rattling the larches
\par and startling a night bird out of the branches. It flew low over their
\par heads with a shriek that startled them.
\par Potter said, "Well, why don't you leave these raccoons with me, and I'll
\par have a look."
\par They removed the three green plastic bags from the Cherokee and carried
\par them inside. The waiting room was deserted, Potter had evidently been
\par doing paperwork in his office. They went through a door and down a
\par 
\par 
\par short hallway to the white-tiled surgery, where they put the bags on
\par the floor beside a stainless-steel examination table.
\par The room felt cool and looked cold. Harsh white light fell on the
\par enamel, steel, and glass surfaces. Everything gleamed like snow and
\par ice.
\par "What'll you do with them?" Eduardo asked.
\par "I don't have the means to test for rabies here. I'll take tissue
\par samples, send them up to the state lab, and we'll have the results in a
\par few days."
\par "That's all?"
\par "What do you mean?"
\par Poking one of the bags with the toe of his boot, Eduardo said, "You
\par going to dissect one of them?"
\par "I'll store them in one of my cold lockers and wait for the state lab's
\par report. If they're negative for rabies, then, yeah, I'll perform an
\par autopsy on one of them."
\par "Let me know what you find?"
\par Potter gave him that penetrating stare again. "You sure you weren't
\par bitten or scratched? Because if you were, and if there's any reason at
\par all to suspect rabies, you should get to a doctor now and start the
\par vaccine right away, tonight--"
\par "I'm no fool," Eduardo said. "I'd tell
\par you if there was any chance I'd been infected."
\par Potter continued to stare at him.
\par Looking around the surgery, Eduardo said, "You really modernized the
\par place from the way it was."."Come on," the veterinarian said, turning to the door. "I have
\par something I want to give you."
\par Eduardo followed him into the hall and through another door into
\par Potter's private office. The vet rummaged in the drawers of a white,
\par enameled-metal storage cabinet and handed him a pair of pamphlets-- one
\par on rabies, one on bubonic plague.
\par "Read up on the symptoms for both," Potter said. "You notice anything
\par similar in yourself, even similar, get to your doctor."
\par "Don't like doctors much."
\par "That's not the point. You have a doctor?"
\par "Never need one."
\par "Then you call me, and I'll get a doctor to you, one way or the
\par other.
\par Understand?"
\par "All right."
\par "You'll do it?"
\par "Sure will."
\par Potter said, "You have a telephone out there?"
\par "Of course. Who doesn't have a phone these days?"
\par The question seemed to confirm that he had an image as a hermit and an
\par eccentric. Which maybe he deserved. Because now that he thought about
\par it, he hadn't used the phone to receive or place a call in at least
\par five or six months. He doubted if it'd rung more than three times in
\par the past year, and one of those was a wrong number.
\par Potter went to his desk, picked up a pen, pulled a notepad in front of
\par him, and wrote the number down as Eduardo recited it. He tore off
\par another sheet of notepaper and gave it to Eduardo because it was
\par imprinted with his office address and his own phone numbers.
\par Eduardo folded the paper into his wallet. "What do I owe you?"
\par "Nothing," Potter said. "These weren't your pet raccoons, so why
\par should you pay? Rabies is a community problem."
\par Potter accompanied him out to the Cherokee.
\par The larches rustled in the warm breeze, crickets chirruped, and a frog
\par croaked like a dead man trying to talk.
\par As he opened the driver's door, Eduardo turned to the vet and said,
\par "When you do that autopsy ..."
\par "Yes?"."Will you look just for signs of known diseases?"
\par "Disease pathologies, trauma."
\par "That's all?"
\par "What else would I look for?"
\par Eduardo hesitated, shrugged, and said, "Anything . . . strange."
\par That stare again. "Well, sir," Potter said, "I will now."
\par All the way home through that dark and forlorn land, Eduardo wondered
\par if he had done the right thing. As far as he could see, there were
\par only two alternatives to the course of action he'd taken, and both were
\par problematic.
\par He could have disposed of the raccoons on the ranch and waited to see
\par what would happen next. But he might have been destroying important
\par evidence that something not of this earth was hiding in the Montana
\par woods.
\par Or he could have explained to Travis Potter about the luminous trees,
\par throbbing sounds, waves of pressure, and black doorway. He could have
\par told him about the raccoons keeping him under surveillance--and the
\par sense he'd had that they were serving as surrogate eyes for the unknown
\par watcher in the woods. If he was generally regarded as the old hermit
\par of Quartermass Ranch, however, he wouldn't be taken seriously.
\par Worse, once the veterinarian had spread the story, some busybody public
\par official might get it in his head that poor old Ed Fernandez was senile
\par or even flat-out deranged, a danger to himself and others. With all
\par the compassion in the world, sorrowful-eyed and softvoiced, shaking
\par their heads sadly and telling themselves they were doing it for his own
\par good, they might commit him against his will for medical examinations
\par and a psychiatric review.
\par He was loath to be carted away to a hospital, poked and prodded and
\par spoken to as if he had reverted to infancy. He wouldn't react well.
\par He knew himself. He would respond to them with stubbornness and
\par contempt, irritating the do-gooders to such an extent that they might
\par induce a court to take charge of his affairs and order him transferred
\par to a nursing home or some other facility for the rest of his days.
\par He had lived a long time and had seen how many lives were ntined by
\par people operating with the best intentions and a smug assurance of their
\par own superiority and wisdom. The destruction of one more old man
\par wouldn't be noticed, and he had no wife or children, no friend or
\par relative, to stand with him against the killing kindness of the
\par state.
\par Giving the dead animals to Potter to be tested and autopsied was,
\par therefore, as far as Eduardo had dared to go. He only worried that,
\par considering the inhuman nature of the entity that controlled the coons,
\par he might have put Travis Potter at risk in some way he couldn't.foresee.
\par Eduardo had hinted at a strangeness, however, and Potter had seemed to
\par have his share of common sense. The vet knew the risks associated with
\par disease. He would take every precaution against contamination, which
\par would probably also be effective against whatever unguessable and
\par unearthly peril the carcasses might pose in addition to microbiotic
\par infection.
\par Beyond the Cherokee, the home lights of unmet families shone far out on
\par the sea of night. For the first time in his life, Eduardo wished that
\par he knew them, their names and faces, their histories and hopes.
\par He wondered if some child might be sitting on a distant porch or at a
\par window, staring across the rising plains at the headlights of the
\par Cherokee progressing westward through the June darkness. A young boy
\par or girl, full of plans and dreams, might wonder who was in the vehicle
\par behind those lights, where he was bound, and what his life was like.
\par The thought of such a child out there in the night gave Eduardo the
\par strangest sense of community, an utterly unexpected feeling that he was
\par part of a family whether he wanted to be or not, the family of
\par humanity, more often than not a frustrating and contentious clan,
\par flawed and often deeply confused, but also periodically noble and
\par admirable, with a common destiny that every member shared.
\par For him, that was an unusually optimistic and philosophically generous
\par view of his fellow men and women, uncomfortably close to
\par sentimentality. But he was warmed as well as astonished by it.
\par He was convinced that whatever had come through the doorway was
\par inimical to humankind, and his brush with it had reminded him that all
\par of nature was, in fact, hostile. It was a cold and uncaring universe,
\par either because God had made it that way as a test to determine good
\par souls from bad, or simply because that's the way it was. No man could
\par survive in civilized comfort without the struggles and hard-won
\par successes of all the people who had gone before him and who shared his
\par time on earth with him. If a new evil had entered the world, one to
\par dwarf the evil of which some men and women were capable, humanity would
\par need a sense of community more desperately than ever before in its long
\par and troubled journey.
\par The house came into view when he was a third of the way along the
\par half-mile driveway, and he continued uphill, approaching to within
\par sixty or eighty yards of it before realizing that something was
\par wrong.
\par He braked to a full stop.
\par Prior to leaving for Eagle's Roost, he had turned on lights in every
\par room. He clearly remembered all of the glowing windows as he had
\par driven away. He had been embarrassed by his childlike reluctance to
\par return to a dark house.
\par Well, it was dark now. As black as the inside of the devil's bowels.
\par Before he quite realized what he was doing, Eduardo pressed the master.lock switch, simultaneously securing all the doors on the station
\par wagon.
\par He sat for a while, just staring at the house. The front door was
\par closed, and all the windows he could see were unbroken. Nothing
\par appeared out of order.
\par Except that every light in every room had been turned off. By whom?
\par By what?
\par He supposed a power failure could have been responsible--but he didn't
\par believe it. Sometimes, a Montana thunderstorm could be a real
\par sternwinder, in the winter, blizzard winds and accumulated ice could
\par play havoc with electrical service. But there had been no bad weather
\par tonight and only the mildest breeze. He hadn't noticed any downed
\par power lines on the way home.
\par The house waited.
\par Couldn't sit in the car all night. Couldn't live in it, for God's
\par sake.
\par He drove slowly along the last stretch of driveway and stopped in front
\par of the garage. He picked up the remote control and pressed the single
\par button.
\par The automatic garage door rolled up. Inside the three-vehicle space,
\par the overhead convenience lamp, which was on a three-minute timer, shed
\par enough light to reveal that nothing was amiss in the garage.
\par So much for the power-failure theory.
\par Instead of pulling forward ten feet and into the garage, he stayed
\par where he was. He put the Cherokee in Park but didn't switch off the
\par engine. He left the headlights on too.
\par He picked up the shotgun from where it was angled muzzle-down in the
\par knee space in front of the passenger seat, and he got out of the
\par station wagon. He left the driver's door wide open.
\par Door open, lights on, engine running.
\par He didn't like to think that he would cut and run at the first sign of
\par trouble. But if it was run or die, he was sure as hell going to be
\par faster than anything that might be chasing him.
\par Although the pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun contained only five
\par rounds--one already in the breech and four in the magazine tube--he was
\par unconcerned that he hadn't brought any spare shells. If he was unlucky
\par enough to encounter something that couldn't be brought down with five
\par shots at close range, he wouldn't live long enough to reload, anyway.
\par He went to the front of the house, climbed the porch steps, and tried
\par the front door. It was locked.
\par His house key was on a bead chain, separate from the car keys. He.fished it out of his jeans and unlocked the door.
\par Standing outside, holding the shotgun in his right hand, he reached
\par cross-body with his left, inside the half-open door, fumbling for the
\par light switch. He expected something to rush at him from out of the
\par night. downstairs hallway--or to put its hand over his as he patted the
\par wall in search of the switch plate.
\par He flipped the switch, and light filled the hall, spilled over him onto
\par the front porch. He crossed the threshold and took a couple of steps
\par inside, leaving the door open behind him.
\par The house was quiet.
\par Dark rooms on both sides of the hallway. Study to his left. Living
\par room to his right.
\par He hated to turn his back on either room, but finally he moved to the
\par right, through the archway, the shotgun held in front of him. When he
\par turned on the overhead light, the expansive living room proved to be
\par deserted. No intruder.
\par Nothing out of the ordinary.
\par Then he noticed a dark clump lying on the white fringe at the edge of
\par the Chinese carpet. At first glance he thought it was feces, that an
\par animal had gotten in the house and done its business right there. But
\par when he stood over it and looked closer, he saw it was only a caked wad
\par of damp earth.
\par A couple of blades of grass bristled from it.
\par Back in the hallway, he noticed, for the first time, smaller crumbs of
\par dirt littering the polished oak floor.
\par He ventured cautiously into the study, where there was no ceiling
\par fixture. The influx of light from the hallway dispelled enough shadows
\par to allow him to find and click on the desk lamp.
\par Crumbs and smears of dirt, now dry, soiled the blotter on the desk.
\par More of it on the red leather seat of the chair.
\par "What the hell?" he wondered softly.
\par Warily he rolled aside the mirrored doors on the study closet, but no
\par one was hiding in there.
\par In the hall he checked the foyer closet too. Nobody.
\par The front door was still standing open. He couldn't decide what to do
\par about it. He liked it open because it offered an unobstructed exit if
\par he wanted to get out fast. On the other hand, if he searched the house
\par top to bottom and found no one in it, he would have to come back, lock
\par the door, and search every room again to guard against the possibility
\par that someone had slipped in behind his back. Reluctantly he closed it
\par and engaged the dead bolt..The beige wall-to-wall carpet that was used through the upstairs also
\par extended down the inlaid-oak staircase, with its heavy handrail. In
\par the center of a few of the lower treads were crumbled chunks of dry
\par earth, not much, just enough to catch his eye.
\par He peered up at the second floor.
\par No. First, the downstairs.
\par He found nothing in the powder room, in the closet under the stairs, in
\par the large dining room, in the laundry room, in the service bath. But
\par there was dirt again in the kitchen, more than elsewhere.
\par His unfinished dinner of rigatoni, sausage, and butter bread was on the
\par table, for he'd been interrupted in mid-meal by the intrusion of the
\par raccoon--and by its spasmodic death. Smudges of now dry mud marked the
\par rim of his dinner plate. The table around the plate was littered with
\par pea-size lumps of dry earth, a spadeshaped brown leaf curled into a
\par miniature scroll, and a dead beetle the size of a penny.
\par The beetle was on its back, six stiff legs in the air. When he flicked
\par it over with one finger, he saw that its shell was iridescent
\par blue-green.
\par Two flattened wads of dirt, like dollar pancakes, were stuck to the
\par seat of the chair. On the oak floor around the chair was more
\par detritus.
\par Another concentration of soil lay in front of the refrigerator.
\par Altogether, it amounted to a couple of tablespoons' worth, but there
\par were also a few blades of grass, another dead leaf, and an earthworm.
\par The worm was still alive but curled up on itself, suffering from a lack
\par of moisture.
\par A crawling sensation along the nape of his neck and a sudden conviction
\par that he was being watched made him clutch the shotgun with both hands
\par and spin toward one window, then the other. No pale, ghastly face was
\par pressed to either pane of glass, as he had imagined.
\par Only the night.
\par The chrome handle on the refrigerator was dulled by filth, and he did
\par not touch it. He opened the door by gripping the edge. The food and
\par beverages inside seemed untouched, everything just as he'd left it.
\par The doors of both double ovens were hanging open. He closed them
\par without touching the handles, which were also smeared in places with
\par unidentifiable crud.
\par Caught on a sharp edge of the oven door was a torn scrap of fabric,
\par half an inch wide and less than an inch long. It was pale blue, with a
\par fragmentary curve of darker blue that might have been a portion of a
\par repeating pattern against the lighter background..Eduardo stared at the fragment of cloth for a personal eternity. Time
\par seemed to-stop, and the universe hung as still as the pendulum of a
\par broken grandfather clock-- until icy spicules of profound fear formed
\par in his blood and made him shudder so violently that his teeth actually
\par chattered. The graveyard ... He whipped around again, toward one
\par window, the other, but nothing was there.
\par Only the night. The night. The blind, featureless, uncaring face of
\par the night.
\par He searched the upstairs. Telltale chunks, crumbs, and smears of
\par earth--once moist, now dry--could be found in most rooms. Another
\par leaf. Two more dead beetles as dry as ancient papyrus. A pebble the
\par size of a cherry pit, smooth and gray.
\par He realized that some of the switch plates and light switches were
\par soiled.
\par Thereafter, he flicked the lights on with his sleeve-covered arm or the
\par shotgun barrel.
\par When he had examined every chamber, probed to the back of every closet,
\par inspected behind and under every piece of furniture where a hollow
\par space might conceivably offer concealment even to something as large as
\par a seven- or eight-year-old child, and when he was satisfied that
\par nothing was hiding on the second floor, he returned to the end of the
\par upstairs hall and pulled on the dangling release cord that lowered the
\par attic trapdoor.
\par He pulled down the folding ladder fixed to the back of the trap.
\par The attic lights could be turned on from the hall, so he didn't have to
\par ascend into darkness. He searched every shadowed niche in the deep and
\par dusty eaves, where snowflake moths hung in webs like laces of ice and
\par feeding spiders loomed as cold and black as winter shadows.
\par Downstairs in the kitchen again, he slid aside the brass bolt on the
\par cellar door. It worked only from the kitchen. Nothing could have gone
\par down there and relocked from the far side.
\par On the other hand, the front and back doors of the house had been
\par bolted when he'd driven into town. No one could have gotten inside--or
\par locked up again upon leaving--without a key, and he had the only keys
\par in existence. Yet the damned bolts were engaged when he'd come home,
\par his search had revealed no broken or unlatched window, yet an intruder
\par definitely had come and gone.
\par He went into the cellar and searched the two large, windowless rooms.
\par They were cool, slightly musty, and deserted.
\par For the moment, the house was secure.
\par He was the only resident.
\par He went outside, locking the front entrance after him, and drove the
\par Cherokee into the garage. He put down the door with the remote control.before getting out of the wagon.
\par For the next several hours, he scrubbed and vacuumed the mess in the
\par house with an urgency and unflagging energy that approached a state of
\par frenzy. He used liquid soap, strong ammonia water, and Lysol spray,
\par determined that every soiled surface should be not merely clean but
\par disinfected, as close to sterile as possible outside of a hospital
\par surgery or laboratory. He broke into a sustained sweat that soaked his
\par shirt and pasted his hair to his scalp. The muscles in his neck,
\par shoulders, and arms began to ache from the repetitive scouring
\par motions.
\par The mild arthritis in his hands flared up, his knuckles swelled and
\par reddened from gripping the scrub brushes and rags with almost manic
\par ferocity, but his response was to grip them tighter still, until the
\par pain dizzied him and brought tears to his eyes.
\par Eduardo knew he was striving not merely to sanitize the house but to
\par cleanse himself of certain terrible ideas that he could not tolerate,
\par would not explore, absolutely would not. He made himself into a
\par cleaning machine, an insensate robot, focusing so intently and narrowly
\par on the menial task at hand that he was purged of all unwanted thoughts,
\par breathing deeply of the ammonia fumes as if they could disinfect his
\par mind, seeking to exhaust himself so thoroughly that he would be able to
\par sleep and, perhaps, even forget.
\par As he cleaned, he disposed of all used paper towels, rags, brushes, and
\par sponges in a large plastic bag. When he was finished, he knotted the
\par top of the bag and deposited it outside in a trash can.
\par Ordinarily, he would have rinsed and saved sponges and brushes for
\par reuse, but not this time.
\par Instead of removing the disposable paper bag from the vacuum sweeper,
\par he put the entire machine out with the trash. He didn't want to think
\par about the origin of the microscopic particles now trapped in its
\par brushes and stuck to the inside of its plastic suction hose, most of
\par them so tiny that he could never be sure they were expunged unless he
\par disassembled the sweeper to scrub every inch and reachable crevice with
\par bleach, and maybe not even then.
\par From the refrigerator, he removed all the foods and beverages that
\par might have been touched by . . . the intruder. Anything in plastic
\par wrap or aluminum foil had to go, even if it didn't appear to have been
\par tampered with: Swiss cheese, cheddar, leftover ham, half a Bermuda
\par onion. Resealable containers had to be tossed: a one-pound tub of soft
\par butter with a snap-on plastic lid, jars of dill and sweet pickles,
\par olives, maraschino cherries, mayonnaise, mustard, and more, bottles
\par with screw-top caps--salad dressing, soy sauce, ketchup. An open box
\par of raisins, an open carton of milk. The thought of anything touching
\par his lips that had first been touched by the intruder made him gag and
\par shudder. By the time he finished with the refrigerator, it held little
\par more than unopened cans of soft drinks and bottles of beer.
\par But after all, he was dealing with contamination. Couldn't be too
\par careful. No measure was too extreme..Not merely bacterial contamination, either. If only it was that
\par simple. God, if only. Spiritual contamination. A darkness capable of
\par spreading through the heart, seeping deep into the soul.
\par Don't even think about it. Don't. Don't.
\par Too tired to think. Too old to think. Too scared.
\par From the garage he fetched a blue Styrofoam cooler, into which he
\par emptied the entire contents of the bin under the automatic ice-maker in
\par the freezer. He wedged eight bottles of beer into the ice and stuck a
\par bottle opener in his hip pocket.
\par Leaving all the lights on, he carried the cooler and the shotgun
\par upstairs to the back bedroom, where he had been sleeping for the past
\par three years. He put the beer and the gun beside the bed.
\par The bedroom door had only a flimsy privacy latch in the knob, which he
\par engaged by pushing a brass button. All that was needed to break
\par through from the hallway was one good kick, so he tilted a
\par straight-backed chair under the knob and jammed it tightly in place.
\par Don't think about what might come through the door.
\par Shut the mind down. Focus on the arthritis, muscle pain, sore neck,
\par let it blot out thought.
\par He took a shower, washing himself as assiduously as he had scoured the
\par soiled portions of the house. He finished only when he had used the
\par entire supply of hot water.
\par He dressed but not for bed. Socks, chinos, a T-shirt. He stood his
\par boots beside the bed, next to the shotgun.
\par Although the nightstand clock and his watch agreed that it was
\par two-fifty in the morning, Eduardo was not sleepy. He sat on the bed,
\par propped against a pile of pillows and the headboard.
\par Using the remote control, he switched on the television and checked out
\par the seemingly endless array of channels provided by the satellite dish
\par behind the stables. He found an action movie, cops and drug dealers,
\par lots of running and jumping and shooting, fistfights and car chases and
\par explosions. He turned the volume all the way off because he wanted to
\par be able to hear whatever sounds might arise elsewhere in the house.
\par He drank the first beer fast, staring at the television. He was not
\par trying to follow the plot of the movie, just letting his mind fill with
\par the abstract whirl of motion and the bright ripple-flare of changing
\par colors. Scrubbing at the dark stains of those terrible thoughts.
\par Those stubborn stains.
\par Something ticked against the west-facing window.
\par He looked at the draperies, which he had drawn tightly shut.
\par Another tick. Like a pebble thrown against the glass..His heart began to pound.
\par He forced himself to look at the TV again. Motion. Color. He
\par finished the beer. Opened a second.
\par Tick. And again, almost at once. Tick.
\par Perhaps it was just a moth or a scarab beetle trying to reach the light
\par that the closed drapes couldn't entirely contain.
\par He could get up, go to the window, discover it was just a flying beetle
\par that was banging against the glass, relieve his mind.
\par Don't even think about it.
\par He took a long swallow of the second beer.
\par Tick.
\par Something standing on the dark lawn below, looking up at the window.
\par Something that knew exactly where he was, wanted to make contact.
\par But not a raccoon this time.
\par Don't, don't, don't.
\par No cute furry face with a little black mask this time. No beautiful
\par coat and black-ringed tail.
\par Motion, color, beer. Scrub out the diseased thought, purge the
\par contamination.
\par Tick.
\par Because if he didn't rid himself of the monstrous thought that soiled
\par his mind, he would sooner or later lose his grip on sanity. Sooner.
\par Tick.
\par If he went to the window and parted the draperies and looked down at
\par the thing on the lawn, even insanity would be no refuge. Once he had
\par seen, once he knew, then there would be only a single way out. Shotgun
\par barrel in his mouth, one toe hooked in the trigger.
\par Tick.
\par . He turned up the volume control on the television. Loud. Louder.
\par He finished the second beer. Turned the volume up even louder, until
\par the raucous soundtrack of the violent movie seemed to shake the room.
\par Popped the cap off a third beer.
\par Purging his thoughts. Maybe in the morning he would have forgotten the
\par sick, demented considerations that plagued him so persistently tonight,.forgotten them or washed them away in tides of alcohol. Or perhaps he
\par would die in his sleep. He almost didn't care which. He poured down a
\par long swallow of the third beer, seeking one form of oblivion or
\par another.
\par CHAPTER ELEVEN.
\par Through March, April, and May, as Jack lay cupped in felt-lined plaster
\par with his legs often in traction, he suffered pain, cramps, spastic
\par muscle twitches, uncontrollable nerve tics, and itchy skin where it
\par could not be scratched inside a cast. He endured those discomforts and
\par others with few complaints, and he thanked God that he would live to
\par hold his wife again and see his son grow up.
\par His health worries were even more numerous than his discomforts. The
\par risk of bedsores was ever-present, though the body cast had been formed
\par with great care and though most of the nurses were concerned,
\par solicitous, and skilled.
\par Once a pressure sore became ulcerated, it would not heal easily, and
\par gangrene could set in quickly. Because he was periodically
\par catheterized, his chances of contracting an infection of the urethra
\par were increased, which could lead to a more serious case of cystitis.
\par Any patient immobilized for long periods was in jeopardy of developing
\par blood clots that could break loose and spin through the body, lodge in
\par the heart or brain, killing him or causing substantial brain damage,
\par though Jack was medicated to reduce the danger of that complication, it
\par was the one that most deeply concerned him.
\par He worried, as well, about Heather and Toby. They were alone, which
\par troubled him in spite of the fact that Heather, under Alma Bryson's
\par guidance, seemed to be prepared to handle everything from a lone
\par burglar to a foreign invasion.
\par Actually, the thought of all those weapons in the house--and what the
\par need for them said about Heather's state of mind--disturbed him nearly
\par as much as the thought of someone breaking into the place.
\par Money worried him more than cerebral embolisms. He was on disability
\par and had no idea when he might be able to work again full time. Heather
\par was still unemployed, the economy showed no signs of emerging from the
\par recession, and their savings were virtually exhausted. Friends in the
\par Department had opened a trust account for his family at a branch of
\par Wells Fargo Bank, and contributions from policemen and the public at
\par large now totaled more than twenty-five thousand dollars. But medical
\par and rehabilitation expenses were never entirely covered by insurance,
\par and he suspected that even the trust fund would not return them to the
\par modest level of financial security they had enjoyed before the shootout
\par at Arkadian's service station. By September or October, making the
\par mortgage payment might be impossible.
\par However, he was able to keep all those worries to himself, partly
\par because he knew that other people had worries of their own and that
\par some of them might be more serious than his, but also because he was an
\par optimist, a believer in the healing power of laughter and positive
\par thinking. Though some of his friends thought his response to adversity.was cockeyed, he couldn't help it. As far as he could recall, he had
\par been born that way. Where a pessimist looked at a glass of wine and
\par saw it as half empty, Jack not only saw it as half full but also
\par figured there was the better part of a bottle still to be drunk. He
\par was in a body cast and temporarily disabled, but he felt he was blessed
\par to have escaped permanent disability and death. He was in pain, sure,
\par but there were people in the same hospital in more pain than he was.
\par Until the glass was empty and the bottle as well, he would always
\par anticipate the next sip of wine rather than regret that so little was
\par left.
\par On his first visit to the hospital back in March, Toby had been
\par frightened to see his father so immobilized, and his eyes had filled
\par with tears even as he bit his lip and kept his chin up and struggled to
\par be brave. Jack had done his best to minimize the seriousness of his
\par condition, insisted he looked in worse shape than he was, and strove
\par with growing desperation to lift his son's spirits. Finally he got the
\par boy to laugh by claiming he wasn't really hurt at all, was in the
\par hospital as a participant in a secret new police program, and would
\par emerge in a few months as a member of their new Teenage Mutant Ninja
\par Turtle Task Force.
\par "Yeah," he said, "it's true. See, that's what all this plaster is, a
\par shell, a turtle shell that's being applied to my back. When it's dry
\par and coated with Kevlar, bullets will just bounce off."
\par Smiling in spite of himself, wiping at his eyes with one hand, Toby
\par said, "Get real, Dad."
\par "It's true."
\par "You don't know taste kwon do."
\par "I'll be taking lessons, soon as the shell's dry."
\par "A Ninja has to know how to use swords too, swords and all kinda
\par stuff."
\par "More lessons, that's all."
\par "Big problem."
\par "What's that?"
\par "You're not a real turtle."
\par "Well, of course I'm not a real turtle. Don't be silly. The
\par department isn't allowed to hire anything but human beings. People
\par don't much like it when they're given traffic tickets by members of
\par another species. So we have to make do with an imitation Teenage
\par Mutant Ninja Turtle Task Force. So what? Is Spider-Man really a
\par spider? Is Batman really a bat?"
\par "You got a point there."
\par "You're damned right I do."."But."
\par "But what?"
\par Grinning, the boy said, "You're no teenager."
\par "I can pass for one."
\par "No way. You're an old guy."
\par "Is that so?"
\par "A real old guy."
\par "You're in big trouble when I get out of this bed, mister."
\par "Yeah, but until your shell's dry, I'm safe."
\par The next time Toby came to the hospital--Heather visited every day, but
\par Toby was limited to once or twice a week--Jack was wearing a colorful
\par headband.
\par Heather had gotten him a red-and-yellow scarf, which he'd folded and
\par tied around his head. The ends of the knot hung rakishly over his
\par right ear.
\par "Rest of the uniform is still being designed." he told Toby.
\par A few weeks later, one day in mid-April, Heather pulled the privacy
\par curtain around Jack's bed and gave him a sponge bath and damp-sponge
\par shampoo to save the nurses a little work. She said, "I'm not sure I
\par like other women bathing you. I'm getting jealous."
\par He said, "I swear I can explain where I was last night."
\par "There's not a nurse in the hospital hasn't gone out of her way to tell
\par me that you're their favorite patient."
\par "Well, honey, that's meaningless. Anybody can be their favorite
\par patient. It's easy. All you've got to do is avoid puking on them and
\par don't make fun of their little hats."
\par "That easy, huh?" she said, sponging his left arm.
\par "Well, you also have to eat everything on your dinner tray, never
\par hassle them to give you massive injections of heroin without a doctor's
\par prescription, and never ever fake cardiac arrest just to get
\par attention."
\par "They say you're so sweet, brave, and funny."
\par "Aw, shucks," he said with exaggerated shyness, but he was genuinely
\par embarrassed.
\par "A couple of them told me how lucky I am, married to you."."You punch them?"
\par "Managed to control myself."
\par "Good. They'd only take it out on me."
\par "I am lucky," she said.
\par "And some of these nurses are strong, they probably pack a pretty hard
\par punch."
\par "I love you, Jack," she said, leaning over the bed and kissing him full
\par on the mouth.
\par The kiss took his breath away. Her hair fell across his face, it
\par smelled of a lemony shampoo.
\par "Heather," he said softly, putting one hand against her cheek,
\par "Heather, Heather," repeating the name as if it was sacred, which it
\par was, not only a name but a prayer that sustained him, the name and face
\par that made his nights less dark, that made his pain-filled days pass
\par more quickly.
\par "I'm so lucky," she repeated.
\par "Me too. Finding you."
\par "You'll be home with me again."
\par "Soon," he said, though he knew he would be weeks in that bed and weeks
\par more in a rehabilitation hospital.
\par "No more lonely nights," she said.
\par "No more."
\par "Always together."
\par "Always." His throat was tight, and he was afraid he was going to
\par cry.
\par He was not ashamed to cry, but he didn't think either of them dared
\par indulge in tears yet. They needed all their strength and resolve for
\par the struggles that still lay ahead. He swallowed hard and whispered,
\par "When I get home. . . ?"
\par "Yes?"
\par "And we can go to bed together again?"
\par Face-to-face with him, she whispered too: "Yes?"
\par "Will you do something special for me?"
\par "Of course, silly."
\par "Would you dress up like a nurse? That really turns me on.".She blinked in surprise for a moment, burst out laughing, and shoved a
\par cold sponge in his face. "Beast."
\par "Well, then, how about a nun?"
\par "Pervert."
\par "A girl scout?"
\par "But a sweet, brave, and funny pervert."
\par If he hadn't possessed a good sense of humor, he wouldn't have been
\par able to be a cop. Laughter, sometimes dark laughter, was the shield
\par that made it possible to wade, without being stained, through the filth
\par and madness in which most cops had to function these days.
\par A sense of humor aided his recovery, too, and made it possible not to
\par be consumed by pain and worry, although there was one thing about which
\par he had difficulty laughing--his helplessness. He was embarrassed about
\par being assisted with his basic bodily functions and subjected to regular
\par enemas to counteract the effects of extreme inactivity. Week after
\par week, the lack of privacy in those matters became more rather than less
\par humiliating.
\par It was even worse to be trapped in bed, in the rigid grip of the cast,
\par unable to run or walk or even crawl if a sudden catastrophe struck.
\par Periodically he became convinced that the hospital was going to be
\par swept by fire or damaged in an earthquake. Although he knew the staff
\par was well trained in emergency procedures and that he would not be
\par abandoned to the ravages of flames or the mortal weight of collapsing
\par walls, he was occasionally seized by an irrational panic, often in the
\par dead of night, a blind terror that squeezed him tighter and tighter,
\par hour after hour, and that succumbed only gradually to reason or
\par exhaustion.
\par By the middle of May, he had acquired a deep appreciation and limitless
\par admiration for quadriplegics who did not let life get the best of
\par them.
\par At least he had the use of his hands and arms, and he could exercise by
\par rhythmically squeezing rubber balls and doing curls with light hand
\par weights.
\par He could scratch his nose if it itched, feed himself to some extent,
\par blow his nose. He was in awe of people who suffered permanent
\par below-the-neck paralysis but held fast to their joy in life and faced
\par the future with hope, because he knew he didn't possess their courage
\par or character, no matter whether he was voted favorite patient of the
\par week, month, or century.
\par If he'd been deprived of his legs and hands for three months, he would
\par have been weighed down by despair. And if he hadn't known that he
\par would get out of the bed and be learning to walk again by the time
\par spring became summer, the prospect of long-term helplessness would have
\par broken his sanity..Beyond the window of his third-floor room, he could see little more
\par than the crown of a tall palm tree. Over the weeks, he spent countless
\par hours watching its fronds shiver in mild breezes, toss violently in
\par storm winds, bright green against sunny skies, dull green against
\par somber clouds. Sometimes birds wheeled across that framed section of
\par the heavens, and Jack thrilled to each brief glimpse of their flight.
\par He swore that, once back on his feet, he would never be helpless
\par again.
\par He was aware of the hubris of such an oath, his ability to fulfill it
\par depended on the whims of fate. Man proposes, God disposes. But on
\par this subject he could not laugh at himself. He would never be helpless
\par again. Never. It was a challenge to God: Leave me alone or kill me,
\par but don't put me in this vise again.
\par Jack's division captain, Lyle Crawford, visited him for the third time
\par in the hospital on the evening of June third.
\par Crawford was a nondescript man, of average height and average weight,
\par with close-cropped brown hair, brown eyes, and brown skin, all of
\par virtually the same shade. He was wearing Hush Puppies, chocolate-brown
\par slacks, tan shirt, and a chocolate-brown jacket, as if his fondest
\par desire was to be so nondescript that he would blend into any background
\par and perhaps even attain invisibility. He also wore a brown cap, which
\par he took off and held in both hands as he stood by the bed. He was
\par soft-spoken and quick to smile, but he also had more commendations for
\par bravery than any two other cops in the entire department, and he was
\par the best natural-born leader of men that Jack had ever encountered.
\par "How you doing?" Crawford asked.
\par "My serve has improved, but my backhand's still lousy," Jack said.
\par "Don't choke the racket."
\par "You think that's my problem?"
\par "That and not being able to stand up."
\par Jack laughed. "How're things in the division, Captain?"
\par "The fun never stops. Two guys walk into a jewelry store on Westwood
\par Boulevard this morning, right after opening, silencers on their guns,
\par shoot the owner and two employees, kill em deader than old King Tut
\par before anyone can set off an alarm. No one outside hears a thing.
\par Cases full of jewelry, big safe's open in the back room, full of estate
\par pieces, millions worth. Looks like a cakewalk from there on. Then the
\par two perps start to argue about what to take first and whether they have
\par time to take everything. One of them makes a comment about the other
\par one's old lady, and the next thing you know, they shoot each other."
\par "Jesus."
\par "So a little time passes, and a customer walks in on this. Four dead.people plus a half-conscious perp sprawled on the floor, wounded so bad
\par he can't even crawl out of the place and try to get away. The customer
\par stands there, shocked by the blood, which is splattered all to hell
\par over. He's just paralyzed by the sight of this mess. The wounded perp
\par waits for the customer to do something, and when the guy just stands
\par there, gaping, frozen, the perp says, For the love of God, mister, call
\par an ambulance!"
\par "For the love of God," Jack said.
\par " For the love of God." When the paramedics show up, first thing he
\par asks them for is a Bible."
\par Jack rolled his head back and forth on the pillow in disbelief. "Nice
\par to know not all the scum out there are godless scum, isn't it?"
\par "Warms my heart," Crawford said.
\par Jack was the only patient in the room. His most recent roommate, a
\par fifty-year-old estate-planning specialist, in residence for three days,
\par had died the previous day of complications from routine gallbladder
\par surgery.
\par Crawford sat on the edge of the vacant bed. "I got some good news for
\par you."
\par "I can use it."
\par "Internal Affairs submitted its final report on the shootings, and
\par you're cleared across the board. Better yet, both the chief and the
\par commission are going to accept it as definitive."
\par "Why don't I feel like dancing?"
\par "We both know the whole demand for a special investigation was
\par bullshit. But we also both know ... once they open that door, they
\par don't always close it again without slamming it on some poor innocent
\par bastard's fingers. So we'll count our blessings."
\par "They clear Luther too?"
\par "Yes, of course."
\par "All right."
\par Crawford said, "I put your name in for a commendation--Luther too,
\par posthumously. Both are going to be approved."
\par "Thank you, Captain."
\par "Deserved."
\par "I don't give a damn about the dickheads on the commission, and the
\par chief can take a hike to hell too, for all I care. But it means
\par something to me because it was you put in our names."
\par Lowering his gaze to his brown cap, which he turned around and around.in his brown hands, Crawford said, "I appreciate that."
\par They were both silent awhile.
\par Jack was remembering Luther. He figured Crawford was too.
\par Finally Crawford looked up from his cap and said, "Now for the bad
\par news."
\par "Always has to be some."
\par "Not actively bad, just irritating. You hear about the Anson Oliver
\par movie?"
\par "Which one? There were three."
\par "So you haven't heard. His parents and his pregnant fiancee made a
\par deal with Warner Brothers."
\par "Deal?"
\par "Sold the rights to Anson Oliver's life story for one million
\par dollars?"
\par Jack was speechless.
\par Crawford said, "The way they tell it, they made the deal for two
\par reasons.
\par First, they want to provide for Oliver's unborn son, make sure the
\par kid's future is secure."
\par "What about my kid's future?" Jack asked angrily.
\par Crawford cocked his head. "You really pissed?"
\par "Yes !"
\par "Hell, Jack, since when did our kids ever matter to people like
\par them?"
\par "Since never."
\par "Exactly. You and me and our kids, we're here to applaud them when
\par they do something artistic or high minded--and clean up after them when
\par they make a mess."
\par "It isn't fair," Jack said. He laughed at his own words, as if any
\par experienced cop could still expect life to be fair, virtue to be
\par rewarded, and villainy to be punished. "Ah, hell."
\par "You can't hate them for that. It's just the way they are, the way
\par they think.
\par They'll never change. Might as well hate lightning, hate ice being
\par cold and fire being hot.".Jack sighed, still angry but only smoldering. "You said they had two
\par reasons for making the deal. What's number two?"
\par "To make a movie that will be a monument to the genius of Anson
\par Oliver,"
\par " Crawford said. "That's how the father put it. A monument
\par to the genius of Anson Oliver."
\par "
\par "For the love of God."
\par Crawford laughed softly. "Yeah, for the love of God. And the fiancee,
\par mother of the heir-to-be, she says this movie's going to put Anson
\par Oliver's controversial career and his death in historical
\par perspective."
\par "What historical perspective? He made movies, he wasn't the leader of
\par the Western world--he just made movies."
\par Crawford shrugged. "Well, by the time they're done building him up, I
\par suspect he'll have been an antidrug crusader, a tireless advocate for
\par the homeless--" Jack picked it up: "A devout Christian who once
\par considered dedicating his life to missionary work--" until Mother
\par Teresa told him to make movies instead--"
\par "--and because of his
\par effective efforts on behalf of justice, he was killed by a conspiracy
\par involving the CIA, the FBI--"
\par "--the British royal family, the
\par International Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Pipe Fitters--"
\par "--the
\par late Joseph Stalin--"
\par "--Kermit the Frog--"
\par "--and a cabal of
\par pill-popping rabbis in New Jersey," Jack finished.
\par They laughed because the situation was too ridiculous to respond to
\par with anything but laughter--and because, if they didn't laugh at it,
\par they were admitting the power of these people to hurt them.
\par "They better not put me in this damn movie of theirs," Jack said after
\par his laughter had devolved into a fit of coughing. "I'll sue their
\par asses."
\par "They'll change your name, make you an Asian cop named Wong, ten years
\par older and six inches shorter, married to a redhead named Bertha, and
\par you won't be able to sue for spit."
\par "People are still gonna know it was me in real life."
\par "Real life? What's that? This is Lala Land."."Jesus, how can they make a hero out of this guy?"
\par Crawford said, "They made heroes out of Bonnie and Clyde."
\par "Antiheroes."
\par "Okay, then, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
\par "Still." i
\par "They made heroes out of Jimmy Hoffa and Bugsy Siegel.
\par Anson Oliver's a snap."
\par That night, long after Lyle Crawford had gone, when Jack tried to
\par ignore his thousand discomforts and get some sleep, he couldn't stop
\par thinking about the movie, the million dollars, the harassment Toby had
\par taken at school, the vile graffiti with which their house had been
\par covered, the inadequacy of their savings, his disability checks, Luther
\par in the grave, Alma alone with her arsenal, and Anson Oliver portrayed
\par on-screen by some young actor with chiseled features and melancholy
\par eyes, radiating an aura of saintly compassion and noble purpose
\par exceeded only by his sex appeal.
\par Jack was overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness far worse than anything
\par he had felt before. The cause of it was only partly the claustrophobic
\par confinement of the body cast and the bed. It arose, as well, from the
\par fact that he was tied to this City of Angels by a house that had
\par declined in value and was currently hard to sell in a recessionary
\par market, from the fact that he was a good cop in an age when the heroes
\par were gangsters, and from the fact that he was unable to imagine either
\par earning a living or finding meaning in life as anything but a cop. He
\par was as trapped as a rat in a giant laboratory maze. Unlike the rat, he
\par didn't even have the illusion of freedom.
\par On June sixth the body cast came off. The spinal fracture was entirely
\par healed.
\par He had full feeling in both legs. Undoubtedly he would learn to walk
\par again.
\par Initially, however, he couldn't stand without the assistance of either
\par two nurses or one nurse and a wheeled walker. His thighs had
\par withered.
\par Though his calf muscles had received some passive exercise, they were
\par atrophied to a degree. For the first time in his life, he was sore and
\par flabby in the middle, which was the only place he'd gained weight.
\par A single trip around the room, assisted by nurses and a walker, broke
\par him out in a sweat and made his stomach muscles flutter as if he had
\par attempted to benchpress five hundred pounds. Nevertheless, it was a
\par day of celebration. Life went on. He felt reborn.
\par He paused by the window that framed the crown of the tall palm tree,
\par and as if by the grace of an aware and benign universe, a trio of sea
\par gulls appeared in the sky, having strayed inland from the Santa Monica.shoreline. They hovered on rising thermals for half a minute or so,
\par like three white kites. Suddenly the birds wheeled across the blue in
\par an aerial ballet of freedom and disappeared to the west. Jack watched
\par them until they were gone, his vision blurring, and he turned away from
\par the window without once lowering his gaze to the city beyond and below
\par him.
\par Heather and Toby visited that evening and brought Baskin-Robbins
\par peanut-butter-and-chocolate ice cream. In spite of the flab around his
\par waist, Jack ate his share.
\par That night he dreamed of sea gulls. Three. With gloriously wide
\par wingspans. As white and luminous as angels. They flew steadily
\par westward, soaring and diving, spiraling and looping spiritedly, but
\par always westward, and he ran through fields below, trying to keep pace
\par with them. He was a boy again, spreading his arms as if they were
\par wings, zooming up hills, down grassy slopes, wildflowers lashing his
\par legs, easily imagining himself taking to the air at any moment, free of
\par the bonds of gravity, high in the company of the gulls. Then the
\par fields ended while he was gazing up at the gulls, and he found himself
\par pumping his legs in thin air, over the edge of a bluff, with pointed
\par and bladed rocks a few hundred feet below, powerful waves exploding
\par among them, white spray cast high into the air, and he was falling,
\par falling. He knew, then, that it was only a dream, but he couldn't wake
\par up when he tried. Falling and falling, always closer to death but
\par never quite there, falling and falling toward the jagged black maw of
\par the rocks, toward the cold deep gullet of the hungry sea, falling,
\par falling .
\par After four days of increasingly arduous therapy at Westside General,
\par Jack was transferred to Phoenix Rehabilitation Hospital on the eleventh
\par of June.
\par Although the spinal fracture had healed, he had sustained some nerve
\par damage.
\par Nevertheless, his prognosis was excellent.
\par His room might have been in a motel. Carpet instead of a vinyl-tile
\par floor, green-and-white-striped wallpaper, nicely framed prints of
\par bucolic landscapes, garishly patterned but cheerful drapes at the
\par window. The two hospital beds, however, belied the Holiday Inn
\par image.
\par The physical therapy room, where he was taken in a wheelchair for the
\par first time at six-thirty in the morning, June twelfth, was well
\par equipped with exercise machines. It smelled more like a hospital than
\par like a gym, which wasn't bad. And perhaps because he had at least an
\par idea of what lay ahead of him, he thought the place looked less like a
\par gym than like a torture chamber.
\par His physical therapist, Moshe Bloom, was in his late twenties, six feet
\par four, with a body so pumped and well carved that he looked as if he was
\par in training to go one-on-one with an army tank. He had curly black
\par hair, brown eyes flecked with gold, and a dark complexion enhanced by
\par the California sun to a lustrous bronze shade. In white sneakers,
\par white cotton slacks, white T-shirt, and skullcap, he was like a radiant.apparition, floating a fraction of an inch above the floor, come to
\par deliver a message from God, which turned out to be, "No pain, no
\par gain."
\par "Doesn't sound like advice, the way you say it," Jack told him.
\par "Oh?"
\par "Sounds like a threat."
\par "You'll cry like a baby after the first several sessions."
\par "If that's what you want, I can cry like a baby right now, and we can
\par both go home."
\par "You'll fear the pain to start with."
\par "I've had some therapy at Westside General."
\par "That was just a game of patty-cake. Nothing like the hell I'm going
\par to put you through."
\par "You're so comforting."
\par Bloom shrugged his immense shoulders. "You've got to have no illusions
\par about any easy rehabilitation."
\par "I'm the original illusionless man."
\par "Good. You'll fear the pain at first, dread it, cower from it, beg to
\par be sent home half crippled rather than finish the program--"
\par "Gee, I
\par can hardly wait to start."
\par "--but I'll teach you to hate the pain instead of fear it--"
\par "Maybe I
\par should just go to some UCLA extension classes, learn Spanish
\par instead."
\par "--and then I'll teach you to love the pain, because it's a sure sign
\par that you're making progress."
\par "You need a refresher course in how to inspire your patients."
\par "You've got to inspire yourself, Mcgarvey. My main job is to challenge
\par you."
\par "Call me Jack."
\par The therapist shook his head. "No. To start, I'll call you Mcgarvey,
\par you call me Bloom. This relationship is always adversarial at first.
\par You'll need to hate me, to have a focus for your anger. When that time
\par comes, it'll be easier to hate me if we aren't using first names."."I hate you already."
\par Bloom smiled. "You'll do all right, Mcgarvey."
\par CHAPTER TWELVE.
\par After the night of June tenth, Eduardo lived in denial. For the first
\par time in his life, he was unwilling to face reality, although he knew it
\par had never been more important to do so. It would have been healthier
\par for him to visit the one place on the ranch where he would find--or
\par fail to find--evidence to support his darkest suspicions about the
\par nature of the intruder who had come into the house when he had been at
\par Travis Potter's office in Eagle's Roost. Instead, it was the one place
\par he assiduously avoided. He didn't even look toward that knoll.
\par He drank too much and didn't care. For seventy years he had lived by
\par the motto
\par "Moderation in all things," and that prescription for life
\par had led him only to this point of humbling loneliness and horror. He
\par wished the been-which he occasionally spiked with good bourbon--would
\par have a greater numbing effect on him. He seemed to have an uncanny
\par tolerance for alcohol. And even when he had poured down enough to turn
\par his legs and his spine to rubber, his mind remained far too clear to
\par suit him.
\par He escaped into books, reading exclusively in the genre for which he'd
\par recently developed an appreciation. Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury,
\par Sturgeon, Benford, Clement, Wyndham, Christopher, Niven, Zelazny.
\par Whereas he had first found, to his surprise, that fiction of the
\par fantastic could be challenging and meaningful, he now found it could
\par also be narcotizing, a better drug than any volume of beer and less
\par taxing on the bladder. The effect it her enlightenment and wonder or
\par intellectual and emotional anesthesia--was strictly at the discretion
\par of the reader. Spaceships, time machines, teleportation cubicles,
\par alien worlds, colonized moons, extraterrestrials, mutants, intelligent
\par plants, robots, androids, clones, computers alive with artificial
\par intelligence, telepathy, starship war fleets engaged in battles in far
\par reaches of the galaxy, the collapse of the universe, time running
\par backward, the end of all things! He lost himself in a fog of the
\par fantastic, in a tomorrow that would never be, to avoid thinking about
\par the unthinkable.
\par The traveler from the doorway became quiescent, holed up in the woods,
\par and days passed without new developments. Eduardo didn't understand
\par why it would have come across billions of miles of space or thousands
\par of years of time, only to proceed with the conquest of the earth at a
\par turtle's pace.
\par Of course, the very essence of something truly and deeply alien was
\par that its motivations and actions would be mysterious and perhaps even
\par incomprehensible to a human being. The conquest of earth might be of
\par no interest whatsoever to the thing that had come through the doorway,
\par and its concept of time might be so radically different from Eduardo's
\par that days were like minutes to it..In science fiction novels, there were essentially three kinds of
\par aliens. The good ones generally wanted to help humanity reach its full
\par potential as an intelligent species and thereafter coexist in
\par fellowship and share adventures for eternity. The bad ones wanted to
\par enslave human beings, feed on them, plant eggs in them, hunt them for
\par sport, or eradicate them because of a tragic misunderstanding or out of
\par sheer viciousness. The third--and least encountered--type of
\par extraterrestrial was neither good nor bad but so utterly alien that its
\par purpose and destiny were as enigmatic to human beings as was the mind
\par of God, this third type usually did the human race a great good service
\par or a terrible evil merely by passing through on its way to the galactic
\par rim, like a bus running across a column of busy ants on a highway, and
\par was never even aware of the encounter, let alone that it had impacted
\par the lives of intelligent beings.
\par Eduardo hadn't a clue as to the larger intentions of the watcher in the
\par woods, but he knew instinctively that, on a personal level, it didn't
\par wish him well.
\par It wasn't seeking eternal fellowship and shared adventures. It wasn't
\par blissfully unaware of him, either, so it was not one of the third
\par type.
\par It was strange and malevolent, and sooner or later it would kill him.
\par In the novels, good aliens outnumbered bad. Science fiction was
\par basically a literature of hope.
\par As the warm June days passed, hope was in far shorter supply on
\par Quartermass Ranch than in the pages of those books.
\par On the afternoon of June seventeenth, while Eduardo was sitting in a
\par living-room armchair, drinking beer and reading Walter M. Miller, the
\par telephone rang. He put down the book but not the beer, and went into
\par the kitchen to take the call.
\par Travis Potter said, "Mr. Fernandez, you don't have to worry."
\par "Don't I?"
\par "I got a fax from the state lab, results of the tests on the tissue
\par samples from those raccoons, and they aren't infected."
\par "They sure are dead," Eduardo said.
\par "But not from rabies. Not from plague, either. Nothing that appears
\par to be infectious, or communicable by bite or fleas."
\par "You do an autopsy?"
\par "Yes, sir, I did."
\par "So was it boredom that killed them, or what?"
\par Potter hesitated. "The only thing I could find was severe brain
\par inflammation and swelling."."Thought you said there was no infection?"
\par "There isn't. No lesions, no abscesses or pus, just inflammation and
\par extreme swelling. Extreme."
\par "Maybe the state lab ought to test that brain tissue."
\par "Brain tissue was part of what I sent them in the first place."
\par "I see."
\par "I've never encountered anything like it," Potter told him.
\par Eduardo said nothing.
\par "Very odd," Potter said. "Have there been more of them?"
\par "More dead raccoons? No. Just the three."
\par "I'm going to run some toxicological studies, see if maybe we're
\par dealing with a poison here."
\par "I haven't put out any poisons."
\par "Could be an industrial toxin."
\par "It could? There's no damned industry around here."
\par "Well ... a natural toxin, then."
\par Eduardo said, "When you dissected them ..."
\par "Yes?"
\par "... opened the skull, saw the brain inflamed and swollen . . ."
\par "So much pressure, even after death, blood and spinal fluid squirted
\par out the instant the bone saw cut through the cranium."
\par "Vivid image."
\par "Sorry. But that's why their eyes were bulging."
\par "Did you just take samples of the brain tissue or . . ."
\par "Yes?"
\par ". .. did you actually dissect the brain?"
\par "I performed complete cerebrotomies on two of them."
\par "Opened their brains all the way up?"
\par "Yes."
\par "And you didn't find anything?"."Just what I told you."
\par "Nothing ... unusual?"
\par The puzzlement in Potter's silence was almost audible. Then: "What
\par would you have expected me to find, Mr. Fernandez?"
\par Eduardo did not respond.
\par "Mr. Fernandez?"
\par "What about their spines?" Eduardo asked. "Did you examine their
\par spines, the whole length of their spines?"
\par "Yes, I did."
\par "You find anything ... attached?"
\par "Attached?" Potter said.
\par "Yes."
\par "What do you mean, attached'?"
\par "Might have . .. might have looked like a tumor."
\par "Looked like a tumor?"
\par "Say a tumor ... something like that?"
\par "No. Nothing like that. Nothing at all."
\par Eduardo took the telephone handset away from his head long enough to
\par swallow some beer.
\par When he put the phone to his ear again, he heard Travis Potter saying,
\par "--know something you haven't told me?"
\par "Not that I'm aware of," Eduardo lied.
\par The veterinarian was silent this time. Maybe he was sucking on a beer
\par of his own. Then: "If you come across any more animals like this, will
\par you call me?"
\par "Yes."
\par "Not just raccoons."
\par "All right."
\par "Any animals at all."
\par "Sure."
\par "Don't move them," Potter said.
\par "I won't."."I want to see them in situ, just where they fell."
\par "Whatever you say."
\par "Well . . ."
\par "Goodbye, Doctor."
\par Eduardo hung up and went to the sink. He stared out the window at the
\par forest at the top of the sloped backyard, west of the house.
\par He wondered how long he would have to wait. He was sick to death of
\par waiting.
\par "Come on," he said softly to the hidden watcher in the woods.
\par He was ready. Ready for hell or heaven or eternal nothingness,
\par whatever came.
\par He wasn't afraid of dying.
\par What frightened him was the how of dying. What he might have to
\par endure. What might be done to him in the final minutes or hours of his
\par life. What he might see.
\par On the morning of June twenty-first, as he was eating breakfast and
\par listening to the world news on the radio, he looked up and saw a
\par squirrel at the window in the north wall of the kitchen. It was
\par perched on the window stool, gazing through the glass at him. Very
\par still. Intense. As the raccoons had been.
\par He watched it for a while, then concentrated on his breakfast again.
\par Each time he looked up, it was on duty.
\par After he washed the dishes, he went to the window, crouched, and came
\par face-to-face with the squirrel. Only the pane of glass was between
\par them. The animal seemed unfazed by this close inspection.
\par He snapped one fingernail against the glass directly in front of its
\par face.
\par The squirrel didn't flinch.
\par He rose, twisted the thumb-turn latch, and started to lift the lower
\par half of the double-hung window.
\par The squirrel leaped down from the stool and fled to the side yard,
\par where it turned and regarded him intently once more.
\par He closed and locked the window and went out to sit on the front
\par porch.
\par Two squirrels were already out there on the grass, waiting for him.
\par When Eduardo sat in the hickory rocking chair, one of the small beasts.remained in the grass, but the other climbed to the top porch step and
\par kept a watch on him from that angle.
\par That night, abed in his barricaded room again, seeking sleep, he heard
\par squirrels scampering on the roof. Small claws scratching at the
\par shingles.
\par When he finally slept, he dreamed of rodents.
\par The following day, June twenty-second, the squirrels remained with
\par him.
\par At windows. In the yard. On the porches. When he went for a walk,
\par they trailed him at a distance.
\par The twenty-third was the same, but on the morning of the twenty-fourth,
\par he found a dead squirrel on the back porch. Clots of blood in its
\par ears. Dried blood in its nostrils. Eyes protruding from the
\par sockets.
\par He found two more squirrels in the yard and a fourth on the front-porch
\par steps, all in the same condition.
\par They had survived control longer than the raccoons.
\par Apparently the traveler was learning.
\par Eduardo considered calling Dr. Potter. Instead, he gathered up the
\par four bodies and carried them to the center of the eastern meadow. He
\par dropped them in the grass, where scavengers could find and deal with
\par them.
\par He thought, also, of the imagined child in the faraway ranch who might
\par have been watching the Cherokee's headlights on the way back from the
\par vet's two weeks earlier. He told himself that he owed it to that
\par child--or to other children, who really existed--to tell Potter the
\par whole story. He should try to involve the authorities in the matter as
\par well, even though getting anyone to believe him would be a frustrating
\par and humiliating ordeal.
\par Maybe it was the beer he still drank from morning until bedtime, but he
\par could no longer summon the sense of community he had felt that night.
\par He'd spent his whole life avoiding people. He couldn't suddenly find
\par it within himself to embrace them.
\par Besides, everything had changed for him when he'd come home and found
\par the evidence of the intruder: the crumbling clumps of soil, the dead
\par beetles, the earthworm, the scrap of blue cloth caught in the frame of
\par the oven door. He was waiting in dread for the next move in that part
\par of the game, yet refusing to speculate about it, instantly blocking
\par every forbidden thought that started to rise in his tortured mind.
\par When that fearful confrontation occurred, at last, he could not
\par possibly share it with strangers. The horror was too personal, for him
\par alone to witness and endure..He still maintained the diary of these events, and in that yellow
\par tablet he wrote about the squirrels. He hadn't the will or the energy
\par to record his experiences in as much detail as he had done at first.
\par He wrote as succinctly as possible without leaving out any pertinent
\par information. After a lifetime of finding journal-keeping too
\par burdensome, he was now unable to stop keeping this one.
\par He was seeking to understand the traveler by writing about it. The
\par traveler ... and himself.
\par On the last day of June, he decided to drive into Eagle's Roost to buy
\par groceries and other supplies. Considering that he now lived deep in
\par the shadow of the unknown and the fantastic, every mundane act-cooking
\par a meal, making his bed every morning, shopping--seemed to be a
\par pointless waste of time and energy, an absurd attempt to paint a facade
\par of normality over an existence that was now twisted and strange. But
\par life went on.
\par As Eduardo backed the Cherokee out of the garage, into the driveway, a
\par large crow sprang off the front-porch railing and flew across the hood
\par of the wagon with a great flapping of wings. He jammed on the brakes
\par and stalled the engine. The bird soared high into a mottled-gray
\par sky.
\par Later, in town, when Eduardo walked out of the supermarket, pushing a
\par cart filled with supplies, a crow was perched on the hood ornament of
\par the station wagon. He assumed it was the same creature that had
\par startled him less than two hours before.
\par It remained on the hood, watching him through the windshield, as he
\par went around to the back of the Cherokee and opened the cargo hatch. As
\par he loaded the bags into the space behind the rear seat, the crow never
\par looked away from him. It continued to watch him as he pushed the empty
\par cart back to the front of the store, returned, and got in behind the
\par steering wheel. The bird took flight only when he started the
\par engine.
\par Across sixteen miles of Montana countryside, the crow tracked him from
\par on high. He could keep it in view either by leaning forward over the
\par wheel to peer through the upper part of the windshield or simply by
\par looking out his side window, depending on the position from which the
\par creature chose to monitor him. Sometimes it flew parallel to the
\par Cherokee, keeping pace, and sometimes it rocketed ahead so far that it
\par became only a speck, nearly vanished into the clouds, only to double
\par back and take up a parallel course once more. It was with him all the
\par way home.
\par While Eduardo ate dinner, the bird perched on the exterior stool of the
\par window in the north wall of the kitchen, where he had first seen one of
\par the sentinel squirrels. When he got up from his meal to raise the
\par bottom half of the window, the crow scrammed, as the squirrel had.
\par He left the window open while he finished dinner. A refreshing breeze
\par skimmed in off the twilight meadows. Before Eduardo had eaten his last
\par bite, the crow returned..The bird remained in the open window while Eduardo washed the dishes,
\par dried them, and put them away. It followed his every move with its
\par bright black eyes.
\par He got another beer from the refrigerator and returned to the table.
\par He settled in a different chair from the one in which he'd sat before,
\par closer to the crow. Only an arm's length separated them.
\par "What do you want?" he asked, surprised that he didn't feel at all
\par foolish talking to a damned bird.
\par Of course, he wasn't talking to the bird. He was addressing whatever
\par controlled the bird. The traveler.
\par "Do you just want to watch me?" he asked.
\par The bird stared.
\par "Would you like to communicate?"
\par The bird lifted one wing, tucked its head underneath, and pecked at its
\par feathers as if plucking out lice.
\par After another swallow of beer, Eduardo said, "Or would you like to
\par control me the way you do these animals?"
\par The crow shifted back and forth from foot to foot, shook itself, cocked
\par its head to peer at him with one eye.
\par "You can act like a damned bird all you want, but I know that's not
\par what you are, not all you are."
\par The crow grew still again.
\par Beyond the window, twilight had given way to night.
\par "Can you control me? Maybe you're limited to simpler creatures, less
\par complex neurological systems."
\par Black eyes glittering. Sharp orange beak parted slightly.
\par "Or maybe you're learning the ecology here, the flora and fauna,
\par figuring out how it works in this place, honing your skills. Hmmm?
\par Maybe you're working your way up to me. Is that it?"
\par Watching.
\par "I know there's nothing of you in the bird, nothing physical. Just
\par like you weren't in the raccoons. An autopsy established that much.
\par Thought you might have to insert something into an animal to control
\par it, something electronic, I don't know, maybe even something
\par biological. Thought maybe there were a lot of you out in the woods, a
\par hive, a nest, and maybe one of you actually had to enter an animal to
\par control it. Half expected Potter would find some strange slug living.in the raccoon's brain, some damned centipede thing hooked to its
\par spine. A seed, an unearthly-looking spider, something. But you don't
\par work that way, huh?"
\par He took a swallow of Corona.
\par "Ahhh. Tastes good."
\par He held the beer out to the crow.
\par It stared at him over the top of the bottle.
\par "Teetotaler, huh? I keep learning things about you. We're an
\par inquisitive bunch, we human beings. We learn fast and we're good at
\par applying what we learn, good at meeting challenges. Does that worry
\par you any?"
\par The crow raised its tail feather and crapped.
\par "Was that a comment," Eduardo wondered, "or just part of doing a good
\par bird imitation?"
\par The sharp beak opened and closed, opened and closed, but no sound
\par issued from the bird.
\par "Somehow you control these animals from a distance. Telepathy,
\par something like that? From quite a distance, in the case of this
\par bird.
\par Sixteen miles into Eagle's Roost. Well, maybe fourteen miles as the
\par crow flies."
\par If the traveler knew that Eduardo had made a lame pun, it gave no
\par indication through the bird.
\par "Pretty clever, whether it's telepathy or something else. But it sure
\par as hell takes a toll on the subject, doesn't it? You're getting
\par better, though, learning the limitations of the local slave
\par population."
\par The crow pecked for more lice.
\par "Have you made any attempts to control me? Because if you have, I
\par don't think I was aware of it. Didn't feel any probing at my mind,
\par didn't see alien images behind my eyes, none of the stuff you read
\par about in novels."
\par Peck, peck, peck.
\par Eduardo chugged the rest of the Corona. He wiped his mouth on his
\par sleeve.
\par Having nailed the lice, the bird watched him serenely, as though it
\par would sit there all night and listen to him ramble, if that was what he
\par wanted.
\par "I think you're going slow, feeling your way, experimenting. This.world seems normal enough to those of us born here, but maybe to you
\par it's one of the weirdest places you've ever seen. Could be you're not
\par too sure of yourself here."
\par He had not begun the conversation with any expectation that the crow
\par would answer him. He wasn't in a damned Disney movie. Yet its
\par continued silence was beginning to frustrate and annoy him, probably
\par because the day had sailed by on a tide of beer and he was full of
\par drunkard's anger.
\par "Come on. Let's stop farting around. Let's do it."
\par The crow just stared.
\par "Come here yourself, pay me a visit, the real you, not in a bird or
\par squirrel or raccoon. Come as yourself. No costumes. Let's do it.
\par Let's get it over with."
\par The bird flapped its wings once, half unfurling them, but that was
\par all.
\par "You're worse than Poe's raven. You don't even say a single word, you
\par just sit there. What good are you?"
\par Staring, staring.
\par And the Raven, never Jutting, still is sitting, still is sitting .
\par Though Poe had never been one of his favorites, only a writer he had
\par read while discovering what he really admired, he began quoting aloud
\par to the feathered sentry, infusing the words with the vehemence of the
\par troubled narrator that the poet had created: " And his eyes have all
\par the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him
\par streaming throws his shadow on the floor--" Abruptly he realized, too
\par late, that the bird and the poem and his own treacherous mind had
\par brought him to a confrontation with the horrific thought that he'd
\par repressed ever since cleaning up the soil and other leavings on June
\par tenth. At the heart of Poe's
\par "The Raven" was a lost maiden, young
\par Lenore, lost to death, and a narrator with a morbid belief that Lenore
\par had come back from-Eduardo slammed down a mental door on the rest of
\par that thought.
\par With a snarl of rage, he threw the empty beer bottle. It hit the
\par crow.
\par Bird and bottle tumbled into the night.
\par He leaped off his chair and to the window.
\par The bird fluttered on the lawn, then sprang into the air with a furious
\par flapping of wings, up into the dark sky..Eduardo closed the window so hard he nearly shattered the glass, locked
\par it, and clasped both hands to his head, as if he would tear out the
\par fearful thought if it would not be repressed again.
\par He got very drunk that night. The sleep he finally found was as good
\par an approximation of death as any he had known.
\par If the bird came to his bedroom window while he slept, or walked the
\par edges of the roof above him, he did not hear it.
\par He didn't wake until ten minutes past noon on July first. For the rest
\par of that day, coping with his hangover and trying to cure it preoccupied
\par him and kept his mind off the morbid verses of a long-dead poet.
\par The crow was with him July first, second, and third, from morning
\par through night, without surcease, but he tried to ignore it. No more
\par staring matches as with the other sentries. No more one-sided
\par conversations. Eduardo did not sit on the porches. When he was
\par inside, he did not look toward the windows. His narrow life became
\par more constricted than ever.
\par At three o'clock on the afternoon of the fourth, suffering a bout of
\par claustrophobia from being too long within four walls, he planned a
\par cautious itinerary and, taking the shotgun, went for a walk. He did
\par not look at the sky above him, only toward distant horizons. Twice,
\par however, he saw a swift shadow flash over the ground ahead of him, and
\par he knew that he did not walk alone.
\par He was returning to the house, only twenty yards from the front porch,
\par when the crow plummeted out of the sky. Its wings flapped uselessly,
\par as if it had forgotten how to fly, and it met the earth with only
\par slightly more grace than a stone dropped from a similar height. It
\par flopped and shrieked on the grass but was dead by the time he reached
\par it.
\par Without looking closely at the crow, he picked it up by the tip of one
\par wing.
\par He carried it into the meadow, to throw it where he had tossed the four
\par squirrels on the twenty-fourth of June.
\par He expected to find a macabre pile of remains, well plucked and
\par dismembered by carrion eaters, but the squirrels were gone. He would
\par not have been surprised if one or even two of the carcasses had been
\par dragged off to be devoured elsewhere. But most carrion eaters would
\par strip the squirrels where they were found, leaving at least several
\par bones, the inedible feet, scraps of fur-covered hide, a well-gnawed and
\par pecked-at skull.
\par The lack of any remains whatsoever could only mean the squirrels had
\par been removed by the traveler. Or by its sorcerously controlled
\par surrogates.
\par Perhaps, having tested them to destruction, the traveler wanted to
\par examine them to determine why they failed--which it had not been able
\par to do with the raccoons because Eduardo had intervened and taken them
\par to the veterinarian. Or it might feel that they were, like the.raccoons, evidence of its presence. It might prefer to leave as few
\par loose ends as possible until its position on this world was more firmly
\par established.
\par He stood in the meadow, staring at the place where the dead squirrels
\par had been. Thinking.
\par He raised his left hand, from which dangled the broken crow, and stared
\par at the now sightless eyes. As shiny as polished ebony and bulging from
\par the sockets.
\par "Come on," he whispered.
\par Finally he took the crow into the house. He had a use for it. A
\par plan.
\par The wire-mesh colander was held together by sturdy stainless-steel
\par rings at top and bottom, and stood on three short steel legs. It was
\par the size of a two- or three-quart bowl. He used it to drain pasta when
\par he cooked large quantities to make salads or to ensure that there would
\par be plenty of leftovers. Two steel-loop handles were fixed to the top
\par ring, by which to shake it when it was filled with steaming pasta that
\par needed encouragement to fully drain.
\par Turning the colander over and over in his hands, Eduardo thought
\par through his plan one more time--then began to put it into action.
\par Standing at a kitchen counter, he folded the wings of the dead crow.
\par He tucked the whole bird into the colander. With needle and thread, he
\par fixed the crow to the wire mesh in three places. That would prevent
\par the limp body from slipping out when he tilted the colander. As he put
\par the needle and thread aside, the bird rolled its head loosely and
\par shuddered. Eduardo recoiled from it and took a step back from the
\par counter in surprise. The crow issued a feeble, quavery cry. He knew
\par it had been dead. Stone dead. For one thing, its neck had been
\par broken. Its swollen eyes had been virtually hanging out of the
\par sockets. Apparently it had died in mid-flight of a massive brain
\par seizure like those that had killed the raccoons and the squirrels.
\par Dropping from a great height, it had hit the ground with sickening
\par force, sustaining yet more physical damage. Stone dead.
\par Now, stitched to the wire mesh of the colander, the reanimated bird was
\par unable to lift its head off its breast, not because it was hampered by
\par the threads with which he'd secured it but because its neck was still
\par broken. Smashed legs flopped uselessly. Crippled wings tried to
\par flutter and were hampered more by the damage to them than by the
\par entangling threads. Overcoming his fear and revulsion, Eduardo pressed
\par one hand against the crow's breast. He couldn't feel a heartbeat.
\par The heart of any small bird pounded extremely fast, much faster than
\par the heart of any mammal, a racing little engine,
\par putta-putta-putta-putta-putta. It was always easy to detect because
\par the whole body reverberated with the rapid beats.
\par The crow's heart was definitely not beating. As far as he was able to.tell, the bird wasn't breathing, either. And its neck was broken. He
\par had hoped that he was witnessing the traveler's ability to bring a dead
\par creature back to life, a miracle of sorts. But the truth was darker
\par than that. The crow was dead. Yet it moved.
\par Trembling with disgust, Eduardo lifted his hand from the small
\par squirming corpse.
\par The traveler could reestablish control of a carcass without
\par resuscitating the animal. To some extent, it had power over the
\par inanimate as well as the animate.
\par Eduardo desperately wanted to avoid thinking about that. But he
\par couldn't turn his mind off. Couldn't avoid that dreaded line of
\par inquiry any longer. If he had not taken the raccoons away at once to
\par the vet, would they eventually have shuddered and pulled themselves to
\par their feet again, cold but moving, dead but animated?
\par In the colander, the crow's head wobbled loosely on its broken neck,
\par and its beak opened and closed with a faint clicking. Perhaps nothing
\par had carried the four dead squirrels out of the meadow, after all.
\par Maybe those carcasses, stiff with rigor mortis, had responded to the
\par insistent call of the puppetmaster on their own, cold muscles flexing
\par and contracting awkwardly, rigid joints cracking and snapping as
\par demands were put upon them. Even as their bodies had entered the early
\par stages of decomposition, perhaps they twitched and lifted their heads,
\par crawled and hitched and dragged themselves out of the meadow, into the
\par woods, to the lair of the thing that commanded them.
\par Don't think about it. Stop. Think about something else, for Christ's
\par sake.
\par Anything else. Not this, not this.
\par If he released the crow from the colander and took it outside, would it
\par flop and flutter along the ground on its broken wings, all the way up
\par the sloped backyard, making a nightmarish pilgrimage into the shadows
\par of the higher woods?
\par Did he dare follow it into that heart of darkness? No. No, if there
\par was to be an ultimate confrontation, it had to happen here on his own
\par territory, not in whatever strange nest the traveler had made for
\par itself.
\par Eduardo was stricken by the blood-freezing suspicion that the traveler
\par was alien to such an extreme degree that it didn't share humanity's
\par perception of life and death, didn't draw the line between the two in
\par the same place at all. Perhaps its kind never died. Or they died in a
\par true biological sense yet were reborn in a different form out of their
\par own rotting remains--and expected the same to be true of creatures on
\par this world. In fact, the nature of their species--especially its
\par relationship with death--might be unimaginably more bizarre, perverse,
\par and repellent than anything his imagination could conceive.
\par In an infinite universe, the potential number of intelligent life-forms
\par was also infinite--as he had discovered from the books he'd been.reading lately.
\par Theoretically, anything that could be imagined must exist in an
\par infinite realm.
\par When referring to extraterrestrial life-forms, alien meant alien,
\par maximum strange, one weirdness wrapped in another, beyond easy
\par understanding and possibly beyond all hope of comprehension. He had
\par brooded about this issue before, but only now did he fully grasp that
\par he had about as much chance of understanding this traveler, really
\par understanding it, as a mouse had of understanding the intricacies of
\par the human experience, the workings of the human mind.
\par The dead crow shuddered, twitched its broken legs. From its twisted
\par throat came a wet cawing sound that was a grotesque parody of the cry
\par of a living crow.
\par A spiritual darkness filled Eduardo, because he could no longer deny,
\par to any extent whatsoever, the identity of the intruder who had left a
\par vile trail through the house on the night of June tenth. He had known
\par all along what he was repressing.
\par Even as he had drunk himself into oblivion, he had known. Even as he
\par had pretended not to know, he had known. And he knew now. He knew.
\par Dear sweet Jesus, he knew.
\par Eduardo had not been afraid to die. He'd almost welcomed death. Now
\par he was again afraid to die. Beyond fright. Physically ill with
\par terror. Trembling, sweating.
\par Though the traveler had shown no signs of being able to control the
\par body of a living human being, what would happen when he was dead?
\par He picked up the shotgun from the table, snatched the keys to the
\par Cherokee off the pegboard, went to the connecting door between the
\par kitchen and the garage. He had to leave at once, no time to waste, get
\par out and far away. To hell with learning more about the traveler. To
\par hell with forcing a confrontation. He should just get in the Cherokee,
\par jam the accelerator to the floorboards, run down anything that got in
\par his way, and put a lot of distance between himself and whatever had
\par come out of the black doorway into the Montana night.
\par He jerked the door open but halted on the threshold between the kitchen
\par and the garage. He had nowhere to go. No family left. No friends.
\par He was too old to begin another life. And no matter where he went, the
\par traveler would still be here, learning its way in this world,
\par performing its perverse experiments, befouling what was sacred,
\par committing unspeakable outrages against everything that Eduardo had
\par ever cherished.
\par He could not run from this. He had never run from anything in his
\par life, however, it was not pride that stopped him before he had taken
\par one full step into the garage. The only thing preventing him from
\par leaving was his sense of what was right and wrong, the basic values
\par that had gotten him through a long life..If he turned his back on those values and ran like a gutless wonder, he
\par wouldn't be able to look at himself in a mirror any more. He was old
\par and alone, which was bad enough. To be old, alone, and eaten by
\par self-loathing would be intolerable.
\par He wanted desperately to run from this, but that option was not open to
\par him. He stepped back from the threshold, closed the door to the
\par garage, and returned the shotgun to the table. He knew a bleakness of
\par the soul that perhaps no one outside of hell had ever known before
\par him.
\par The dead crow thrashed, trying to tear loose of the colander. Eduardo
\par had used heavy thread and tied secure knots, and the bird's muscles and
\par bones were too badly damaged for it to exert enough force to break
\par free. His plan seemed foolish now. An act of meaningless bravado--and
\par insanity. He proceeded with it, anyway, preferring to act rather than
\par wait meekly for the end.
\par On the back porch, he held the colander against the outside of the
\par kitchen door.
\par The imprisoned crow scratched and thumped. With a pencil, Eduardo
\par marked the wood where the openings in the handles met it. He hammered
\par two standard nails into those marks and hung the colander on them. The
\par crow, still struggling weakly, was visible through the wire mesh,
\par trapped against the door. But the colander could be too easily lifted
\par off the nails. Using two U-shaped nails on each side, he fixed both
\par handles securely to the solid oak door. The hammering carried up the
\par long slope of the yard and echoed back to him from the pine walls of
\par the western forest.
\par To remove the colander and get at the crow, the traveler or its
\par surrogate would have to pry loose the U-shaped nails to free at least
\par one of the handles. The only alternative was to cut the mesh with
\par heavy shears and pull out the feathered prize. Either way, the dead
\par bird could not be snatched up quickly or silently. Eduardo would have
\par plenty of warning that something was after the contents of the
\par colander--especially as he intended to spend the entire night in the
\par kitchen if necessary.
\par He could not be sure the traveler would covet the dead crow. Perhaps
\par he was wrong, and it had no interest in the failed surrogate. However,
\par the bird had lasted longer than the squirrels, which had lasted longer
\par than the raccoons, and the puppetmaster might find it instructive to
\par examine the carcass to help it discover why. It wouldn't be working
\par through a squirrel this time. Or even a clever raccoon. Greater
\par strength and dexterity were required for the task as Eduardo had
\par arranged it. He prayed that the traveler itself would rise to the
\par challenge and put in its first appearance.
\par Come on.
\par However, if it sent the other thing, the unspeakable thing, the lost
\par Lenore, that terror could be faced. Amazing, what a human being could
\par endure. Amazing, the strength of a man even in the shadow of
\par oppressive terror, even in the grip of horror, even filled with.bleakest despair.
\par The crow was motionless once more. Silent. Stone dead. Eduardo
\par turned to look at the high woods. Come on. Come on, you bastard.
\par Show me your face, show me your stinking ugly face. Come on, crawl out
\par where I can see you. Don't be so gutless, you fucking freak.
\par Eduardo went inside. He shut the door but didn't lock it. After
\par closing the blinds at the windows, so nothing could look in at him
\par without his knowledge, he sat at the kitchen table to bring his diary
\par up-to-date. Filling three more pages with his neat script, he
\par concluded what he supposed might be his final entry.
\par In case something happened to him, he wanted the yellow tablet to be
\par found-- but not too easily. He inserted it in a large Ziplock plastic
\par bag, sealed it against moisture, and put it in the freezer half of the
\par refrigerator, among packages of frozen foods.
\par Twilight had arrived. The time of truth was fast approaching. He had
\par not expected the entity in the woods to put in an appearance in
\par daylight. He sensed it was a creature of nocturnal habits and
\par preferences, spawned in darkness. He got a beer from the
\par refrigerator.
\par What the hell. It was his first in several hours. Although he wanted
\par to be sober for the confrontation to come, he didn't want to be
\par entirely clearheaded. Some things could be faced and dealt with better
\par by a man whose sensibilities had been mildly numbed.
\par Nightfall had barely settled all the way into the west, and he had not
\par finished that first beer, when he heard movement on the back porch. A
\par soft thud and a scrape and a thud again. Definitely not the crow
\par stirring. Heavier noises than that. It was a clumsy sound made by
\par something awkwardly but determinedly climbing the three wooden steps
\par from the lawn.
\par Eduardo got to his feet and picked up the shotgun. His palms were
\par slick with sweat, but he could still handle the weapon. Another thud
\par and a gritty scraping.
\par His heart was beating bird-fast, faster than the crow's had ever beaten
\par when it had been alive. The visitor--whatever its world of origin,
\par whatever its name, whether dead or alive--reached the top of the steps
\par and moved across the porch toward the door. No thudding any longer.
\par All dragging and shuffling, sliding and scraping.
\par Because of the type of reading he had been doing these past few months,
\par in but an instant Eduardo conjured image after image of different
\par unearthly creatures that might produce such a sound instead of ordinary
\par footsteps, each more malevolent in appearance than the one before it,
\par until his mind swam with monsters.
\par One monster among them was not unearthly, belonged more to Poe than to
\par Heinlein or Sturgeon or Bradbury, gothic rather than futuristic, not
\par only from Earth but from the earth. It drew nearer the door, nearer.still, and finally it was at the door. The unlocked door. Silence.
\par Eduardo had only to take three steps, grab the doorknob, pull inward,
\par and he would stand face-to-face with the visitor.
\par He could not move. He was as rooted to the floor as any tree was
\par rooted to the hills that rose behind the house.
\par Though he had devised the plan that had precipitated the confrontation,
\par though he had not run when he'd had the chance, though he had convinced
\par himself that his sanity depended on facing this ultimate terror
\par forthrightly and putting it behind him, he was paralyzed and suddenly
\par not so sure that running would have been wrong.
\par The thing was silent. It was there but silent. Inches from the far
\par side of the door. Doing what? Waiting for Eduardo to move first? Or
\par studying the crow in the colander?
\par The porch was dark, and only a little kitchen light was emitted by the
\par covered windows, so could it really see the crow? Yes. Oh, yes, it
\par could see in the dark, bet on that, it could see in the dark better
\par than any damned cat could see, because it was of the dark.
\par He could hear the kitchen clock ticking. Though it had been there all
\par along, he hadn't heard it in years, it had become part of the
\par background noise, but he heard it now, louder than it had ever been,
\par like a softened stick striking a slow measured beat on a snare drum at
\par a state funeral. come on lets do it.
\par This time he was urging the traveler to come out of hiding. He was
\par goading himself. Come on, you bastard, you coward, you id Id ignorant
\par fool, come on, come on, He moved to the door and stood slightly to one
\par side of it, so he could open it past himself. To grasp the knob, he
\par would have to let go of the with one hand, but he couldn't do that was
\par knocking painfully against him. He could feel the pulse in his
\par temples, pounding, pounding.
\par He smelled the thing through the closed door. A nauseating odor, sour
\par and putrescent, beyond anything in his long lifetime of experience.
\par The doorknob in front of him, the knob that he could of bring himself
\par to grasp, round a p and gleaming, began to turn. Scintillant light, a
\par reflection of the kitchen fluorescents, trickled along the curve of the
\par knoll as it slowly l The free-moving latch bolt eased notch in the
\par striker plate with the faintest rasp of brass on brass. pounding
\par in his temples, booming his chest so swollen and leaping that his
\par lungs and made breathing difficult, painful And now the knob slipped
\par back the other way, and the door remained unopened. The latch bolt
\par eased into its catch once more. The moment of revelation was delayed,
\par perhaps slipping away forever as the visitor withdrew.... With an
\par anguished cry that surprised him, Eduardo seized the knob and yanked
\par the door open in one convulsively violent movement, bringing himself
\par face-to-face with his worst fear.
\par The lost maiden, three years in the grave and now released: a wiry and
\par tangled mass of gray hair matted with filth, eyeless sockets, flesh
\par hideously corrupted and dark in spite of the preserving influence of.embalming fluid, glimpses of clean bone in the desiccated and reeking
\par tissues, lips withered back from teeth to reveal a wide but humorless
\par grin. The lost maiden stood in her ragged and worm-eaten burial dress,
\par the blue-on-blue fabric grossly stained with the fluids of
\par decomposition, risen and returned to him, reaching for him with one
\par hand. The sight of her filled him not merely with terror and revulsion
\par but with despair, oh God, he was sinking in a sea of cold black despair
\par that Margaret should have come to this, reduced to the unspeakable
\par fate of all living things-- It's not Margaret, not this thing, unclean
\par thing, Margarite's in a better place, heaven, sits with God, must be a
\par God, Margaret deserves a God, not just this, not an ending like this,
\par sits with God, sits with God, long gone from this body and sits with
\par God. -- and after the first instant of confrontation, he thought he
\par was going to be all right, thought he was going to be able to hold on
\par to his sanity and bring up the shotgun and blast the hateful thing
\par backward off the porch, pump round after round into it until it no
\par longer bore the vaguest resemblance to his Margaret, until it was
\par nothing but a pile of bone fragments and organic ruins with no power to
\par plunge him into despondency.
\par Then he saw that he hadn't been visited only by this heinous surrogate
\par but by the traveler itself, two confrontations in one. The alien was
\par entwined with the corpse, hanging upon its back but also intruding
\par within the cavities of it, riding on and in the dead woman. Its own
\par body appeared to be soft and poorly designed for gravity as heavy as
\par that it had encountered here, so perhaps it needed support to permit
\par locomotion in these conditions. Black, it was, black and slick,
\par irregularly stippled with red, and seemed to be constituted only of a
\par mass of entwined and writhing appendages that one moment appeared as
\par fluid and smooth as snakes but the next moment seemed as spiky and
\par jointed as the legs of a crab. Not muscular like the coils of snakes
\par or armored like crabs but oozing and jellid. He saw no head or
\par orifice, no familiar feature that could help him tell the top of it
\par from the bottom, but he had only a few seconds to absorb what he was
\par seeing, merely the briefest glimpse.
\par The sight of those shiny black tentacles slithering in and out of the
\par cadaver's rib cage brought him to the realization that less flesh
\par remained on the three-year-old corpse than he had at first believed and
\par that the bulk of the apparition before him was the rider on the
\par bones.
\par Its tangled appendages bulged where her heart and lungs had once been,
\par twined like vines around clavicles and scapulae, around humerus and
\par radius and ulna, around femur and tibia, even filled the empty skull
\par and churned frenziedly just behind the rims of the hollow sockets.
\par This was more than he could tolerate and more than his books had
\par prepared him for, beyond alien, an obscenity he couldn't bear. He
\par heard himself screaming, heard it but was unable to stop, could not
\par lift the gun because all his strength was in the scream. Although it
\par seemed like an eternity, only five seconds elapsed from the moment he
\par yanked open the door until his heart was wrenched by fatal spasms. In
\par spite of the thing that loomed on the threshold of the kitchen, in
\par spite of the thoughts and terrors that exploded through his mind in
\par that sliver of time, Eduardo knew the number of seconds was precisely
\par five because a part of him continued to be aware of the ticking of the.clock, the funereal cadence, five ticks, five seconds.
\par Then a searing pain blazed through him, the mother of all pain, not
\par from an assault by the traveler but arising from within, accompanied by
\par white light as bright as the eye of a nuclear explosion might be, an
\par all-obliterating whiteness that erased the traveler from his view and
\par all the cares of the world from his consideration. Peace.
\par CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
\par Because he had suffered some nerve damage in addition to the spinal
\par fracture, Jack required a longer course of therapy at Phoenix
\par Rehabilitation Hospital than he had anticipated. As promised, Moshe
\par Bloom taught him to make a friend of pain, to see it as evidence of
\par rebuilding and recovery. By early July, four months from the day he
\par had been shot down, gradually diminishing pain had been a constant
\par companion for so long that it was not just a friend but a brother. On
\par July seventeenth, when he was discharged from Phoenix, he was able to
\par walk again, although he still required the assurance of not one but two
\par canes. He seldom actually used both, sometimes neither, but was
\par fearful of falling without them, especially on a staircase. Although
\par slow, he was for the most part steady on his feet, however, influenced
\par by an occasional vagrant nerve impulse, either leg could go entirely
\par limp without warning, causing his knee to buckle. Those unpleasant
\par surprises became less frequent by the week. He hoped to be rid of one
\par cane by August and the other by September. Moshe Bloom, as solid as
\par sculpted rock but still pearing to drift along as if propelled on a
\par thin cushion of air, accompanied Jack to the front entrance, while
\par Heather brought the car from the parking lot. The therapist was
\par dressed all in white, as usual, but his skullcap was crocheted and
\par colorful. "Listen, you be sure to keep up those daily exercises."
\par "All right."
\par "Even after you're able to give up the canes."
\par "I will."
\par "The tendency is to slack off. Sometimes when the patient gets most of
\par the function back, regains his confidence, he decides he doesn't have
\par to work at it any more. But the healing is still going on even if he
\par doesn't realize it."
\par "I hear you." Holding open the front door for Jack, Moshe said, "Next
\par thing you know, he has problems, has to come back here on an outpatient
\par basis to gain back the ground he's lost."
\par "Not me," Jack assured him, glancing outside into the gloriously hot
\par summer day. "Take your medication when you need it."
\par "I will."
\par "Don't try to tough it out."
\par "I won't."
\par "Hot baths with Epsom salts when you're sore." Jack nodded solemnly.."And I swear to God, every day I'll eat my chicken soup." Laughing,
\par Moshe said, "I don't mean to mother you."
\par "Yes you do."
\par "No, not really."
\par "You've been mothering me for weeks."
\par "Have I? Yes, all right, I do mean to do it." Jack hooked one cane
\par over his wrist so he could shake hands.
\par "Thank you, Moshe." The therapist shook hands, then hugged him.
\par "You've made a hell of a comeback. I'm proud of you."
\par "You're damned good at this job, my friend." As Heather and Toby
\par pulled up in the car, Moshe grinned. "Of course I'm good at it. We
\par Jews know all about suffering." For a few days, just being in his own
\par home and sleeping in his own bed was such a delight that Jack needed to
\par make no effort to sustain optimism. Sitting in his favorite armchair,
\par eating meals whenever he wanted rather than when a rigid institutional
\par schedule said he must, helping Heather to cook dinner, reading to Toby
\par before bedtime, watching television after ten o'clock in the evening
\par without having to wear headphones--these things were more satisfying to
\par him than all the luxuries and pleasures to which a Saudi Arabian prince
\par might be entitled. He remained concerned about family finances, but he
\par had hope on that front too. He expected to be back at work in some
\par capacity by August, at last earning a paycheck again.
\par Before he could return to duty on the street, however, he would be
\par required to pass a rigorous department physical and a psychological
\par evaluation to determine if he had been traumatized in any way that
\par would affect his performance, consequently, for a number of weeks, he
\par would have to serve at a desk. As the recession dragged on with few
\par signs of a recovery, as every initiative by the government seemed
\par devised solely to destroy more jobs, Heather stopped waiting for her
\par widely seeded applications to bear fruit. While Jack had been in the
\par rehab hospital, Heather had become an entrepreneur--"Howard Hughes
\par without the insanity," she joked--doing business as Mcgarvey
\par Associates. Ten years with IBM as a software designer gave her
\par credibility. By the time Jack came home, Heather had signed a contract
\par to design custom inventory-control and bookkeeping programs for the
\par owner of a chain of eight taverns, one of the few enterprises thriving
\par in the current economy was selling booze and a companionable atmosphere
\par in which to drink it, and her client had lost the ability to monitor
\par his increasingly busy saloons. Profit from her first contract wouldn't
\par come close to replacing the salary she had stopped receiving the
\par previous October. However, she seemed confident that good word of
\par mouth would bring her more work if she did a first-rate job for the
\par tavern owner. Jack was pleased to see her contentedly at work, her
\par computers set up on a pair of large folding tables in the spare
\par bedroom, where the mattress and springs of the bed now stood on end
\par against one wall. She had always been happiest when busy, and his
\par respect for her intelligence and industriousness was such that he
\par wouldn't have been surprised to see the humble office of Mcgarvey.Associates grow, in time, to rival the corporate headquarters of
\par Microsoft. On his fourth day at home, when he told her as much, she
\par leaned back in her office chair and puffed out her chest as if swelling
\par with pride. "Yep, that's me. Bill Gates without the nerd
\par reputation."
\par Leaning against the doorway, already using only one cane, he said, "I
\par prefer to think of you as Bill Gates with terrific legs."
\par "Sexist."
\par "Guilty."
\par "Besides, how do you know Bill Gates doesn't have better legs than
\par mine? Have you seen his?"
\par "Okay, I take back everything. I should have said, As far as I'm
\par concerned, you are every bit as much of a nerd as people think Bill
\par Gates is."
\par "Thank you."
\par "You're welcome," he said. "Are they really terrific?"
\par "What?"
\par "My legs."
\par "You have legs?" Although he doubted that good word of mouth was going
\par to boost her business fast enough to pay the bills and meet the
\par mortgage, Jack didn't worry unduly about much of anything--until the
\par twenty-fourth of July, when he had been home for a week and when his
\par mood began to slide. When his characteristic optimism started to go,
\par it didn't just crumble slowly but cracked all the way down the middle
\par and soon thereafter shattered altogether. He couldn't sleep without
\par dreams, which grew increasingly bloody night by night. He routinely
\par woke in the middle of a panic attack three or four hours after he went
\par to bed, and he was unable to doze off again no matter how desperately
\par tired he was. A general malaise quickly set in. Food seemed to lose
\par much of its flavor.
\par He stayed indoors because the summer sun became annoyingly bright, and
\par the dry California heat that he had always loved now parched him and
\par made him irritable.
\par Though he had always been a reader and owned an extensive book
\par collection, he could find no writer--even among his old favorites-- who
\par appealed to him any more, every story, regardless of how liberally
\par festooned with the praises of the critics, was uninvolving, and he
\par often had to reread a paragraph three or even four times until the
\par meaning penetrated his mental haze. He advanced from malaise to
\par flat-out depression by the twenty-eighth, only eleven days out of
\par rehabilitation. He found himself thinking about the future more than
\par had ever been his habitand he could find no possible version of it that
\par appealed to him.
\par Once an exuberant swimmer in an ocean of optimism, he became a huddled.and frightened creature in a backwater of despair. He was reading the
\par daily newspaper too closely, brooding about current events too deeply,
\par and spending far too much time watching television news. Wars,
\par genocide, riots, terrorist attacks, political bombings, gang wars,
\par drive-by shootings, child molestations, serial killers on the loose,
\par carjackings, ecological doomsday scenarios, a young convenience-store
\par clerk shot in the head for the lousy fifty bucks and change in his
\par cashregister drawer, rapes and stabbings and strangulations. He knew
\par modern life was more than this. Goodwill still existed, and good deeds
\par were still done.
\par But the media focused on the grimmest aspects of every issue, and so
\par Though he tried to leave the the TV off, he was drawn to of the
\par latest tragedies and outrage the hottle or a compulsive yambl citement
\par of the racetrack The despair inspired by the news was a down escalator
\par from which he seemed unable to escape. And it was picking up speed
\par When Heather casually mentioned that Toby would be entering third grade
\par in a month, Jack began to worry h drug dealing and violence surrounding
\par A les schools He became convinced they ing to be killed unless they
\par could find a way, in spite of his financial problems to pay private sc
\par h t such a once-safe place as a classr d ngerous as a battlefield led
\par him in f I t the conclusion that nowhere was son. If Toby could be
\par killed in school, why not on his t playing in his Own front yard? Ia
\par overly protective parent, which he had never been before, reluctant to
\par let the boy out of his sight. h fifth of August, with his return to d
\par way and the restoration of a m\f1\'f8re t hand he shouldhave experienced p d
\par but the Opposite was the case. ting to the division for reassignme eat
\par even though he was at least a ving off a desk job and back on the li d
\par he had concealed his fears and P sions from everyone That night he
\par learned differently In bed, after he turned off the lamp, he worked up
\par the courage to say in the darkness what he would have been embarrassed
\par to say in the light: "I'm not going back on the street."
\par "I know," Heather said from her side of the bed. "I don't mean not
\par just right away. I mean never."
\par "I know, baby," she said tenderly, and reached out to find and hold his
\par hand. "Is it that obvious?"
\par "It's been a bad couple of weeks."
\par "I'm sorry."
\par "You had to go through it."
\par "I thought I'd be on the street until I retired. It's all I ever
\par wanted to do."
\par "Things change," she said. "I can't risk it now. I've lost my
\par confidence."
\par "You'll get it back."
\par "Maybe."
\par "You will," she insisted. "But you still won't go back on the
\par street..You can't. You've done your part, you've pushed your luck as far as
\par any cop could be expected to push it. Let someone else save the
\par world."
\par "I feel ..."
\par "I know."
\par "... empty ..."
\par "It'll get better. Everything does."
\par "...
\par like a sorry-ass quitter."
\par "You're no quitter." She slid against his side and put her hand on his
\par chest. "You're a good man and you're brave--too damn brave, as far as
\par I'm concerned. If you hadn't decided to get off the street, I'd have
\par decided it for you. One way or another, I'd have made you do it,
\par because the odds are, next time, I'll be Alma Bryson and your partner's
\par wife will be coming to sit at my side, hold my hand. I'll be damned to
\par hell before I'll let that happen. You've had two partners shot down
\par beside you in one year, and there's been seven cops killed here since
\par January. Seven. I'm not going to lose you, Jack." He put his arm
\par around her, held her close, profoundly grateful to have found her in a
\par hard world where so much seemed to depend on random chance. For a
\par while he couldn't speak, his voice would have been too thick with
\par emotion. At last he said, "So I guess from here on out, I'll park my
\par butt in a chair and be a desk jockey of one kind or another."
\par "I'll buy you a whole case of hemorrhoid cream"
\par "I'll have to get a
\par coffee mug with my name on It."
\par "And a supply of notepads that say From the Desk of Jack Mcgarvey."
\par " He said, "It's going to mean a salary cut. Won't pay as much as
\par being on the street."
\par "We'll be all right."
\par "Will we? I'm not so sure. It's going to be tight." She said,
\par "You're forgetting Mcgarvey Associates. Inventive and flexible custom
\par programs. Tailored to your needs. Reasonable rates. Timely
\par delivery.
\par Better legs than Bill Gates."
\par And that night, in the darkness of their bedroom, it did seem that
\par finding security and happiness again in the City of Angels might be
\par possible, after all.
\par During the next ten days, however, they were confronted by a series of
\par reality checks that made it impossible to sustain the old L.A..fantasy.
\par Yet another city budget shortfall was rectified in part by reducing the
\par compensation of street cops by five percent and that of the deskbound
\par in the department by twelve percent, a job that already paid less than
\par Jack's previous position now paid markedly less. A day later,
\par government statistics showed the economy slipping again, and a new
\par client, on the verge of signing a contract with Mcgarvey Associates,
\par was so unnerved by those numbers that he decided against investing in
\par new computer programs for a few months. Inflation was up.
\par Taxes were way up. The debt-strapped utility company was granted a
\par rate increase to prevent bankruptcy, which meant electricity rates were
\par going to climb. Water rates had already risen, natural-gas prices were
\par next. They were clobbered with a car-repair bill of six hundred forty
\par dollars on the same day that Anson Oliver's first film, which had not
\par enjoyed a wide or successful theatrical run in its initial release, was
\par reissued by Paramount, reigniting media interest in the shootout and in
\par Jack. And Richie Tendero, husband to the flamboyant and unshakable
\par Gina Tendero of the black leather clothes and red-pepper Mace, was hit
\par by a shotgun blast while answering a domestic-dispute call, resulting
\par in the amputation of his left arm and plastic surgery to the left side
\par of his face. On August fifteenth, an eleven-year-old girl was caught
\par in gang crossfire one block from the elementary school that Toby would

\par soon be attending. She was killed instantly. Events unfold in uncanny
\par sequences. Long-forgotten acquaintances turn up again with news that
\par changes lives. A stranger appears and speaks a few words of wisdom,
\par solving a previously insoluble problem, or something in a recent dream
\par transpires in reality. Suddenly the existence of God seems
\par confirmed.
\par On the afternoon of August eighteenth, as Heather stood in the kitchen,
\par waiting for the Mr. Coffee machine to brew a fresh pot and sorting
\par \f0 through mail that had just arrived, she came across a letter from Paul
\par Youngblood, an attorney-at-law from Eagle's Roost, Montana. The
\par envelope was heavy, as if it contained not merely a letter but a
\par document. According to the postmark, it had been sent on the sixth of
\par the month, which led her to wonder about the gypseian route by which
\par the postal service had chosen to deliver it. She knew she'd heard of
\par Eagle's Roost. She could not recall when or why. Because she shared a
\par nearly universal aversion to attorneys and associated all
\par correspondence from law firms with trouble, she put the letter on the
\par bottom of the stack, choosing to deal with it last. After throwing
\par away advertisements, she found that the four other remaining items were
\par bills. When she finally read the letter from Paul Youngblood, it
\par proved to be so utterly different from the bad news she had
\par expected--and so astonishing--that immediately after finishing it, she
\par sat down at the kitchen table and read it again from the top. Eduardo
\par Fernandez, a client of Youngblood's, had died on the fourth or fifth of
\par July. He had been the father of Sometimes, life seems to have a higher
\par meaning. lthe late Thomas Fernandez.
\par That was Tommy--murdered at Jack's side eleven months before the events
\par at Hassam Arkadian's service station. Eduardo Fernandez had named Jack
\par Mcgarvey of Los Angeles, California, as his sole heir. Serving as
\par executor of Mr. Fernandez's estate, Youngblood had tried to notify
\par Jack by phone, only to discover that his number was no longer listed..The estate included an insurance policy that would cover the fifty-five
\par percent federal inheritance tax, leaving Jack the unencumbered
\par six-hundred-acre Quartermass Ranch, the four-bedroom main house with
\par furnishings, the caretaker's house, the ten-horse stable, various tools
\par and equipment, and "a substantial amount of cash." Instead of a legal
\par document, six photographs were included with the single-page letter.
\par With shaky hands, Heather spread them in two rows on the table in front
\par of her. The modified-Victorian main house was charming, with just
\par enough decorative millwork to enchant without descending into Gothic
\par oppressiveness. It appeared to be twice as large as the house in which
\par they now lived. The mountain and valley views in every direction were
\par breathtaking. Heather had never been filled with such mixed emotions
\par as she experienced at that moment. In their hour of desperation, they
\par had been given salvation, a way out of darkness, escape from despair.
\par She had no idea what a Montana attorney would regard as a "substantial
\par amount of cash," but she figured the ranch alone, if liquidated, must
\par be worth enough to pay off all their bills and their current mortgage,
\par with money left hadn't known since she had been a small child and had
\par still believed in fairy tales, miracles. On the other hand, their good
\par fortune would have been Tommy Fernandez's good fortune if he had not
\par been murdered. That dark and inescapable fact tainted the gift and
\par dampened her pleasure in it. For a while she brooded, torn between
\par delight and guilt, and at last decided she was responding too much -.
\par like a Beckerman and too little like a Mcgarvey. She would have done
\par anything to bring Tommy Fernandez back to life, even if it meant that
\par this inheritance would never have been hers and Jack's, but the cold
\par truth was that Tommy was dead, in the ground over sixteen months now,
\par and beyond the help of anyone. Fate was too often malicious, too
\par seldom generous. She would be a fool to greet this staggering
\par beneficence with a frown. Her first thought was to call Jack at
\par work.
\par She went to the wall phone, dialed part of the number, then hung up.
\par This was once-in-a-lifetime news. She would never have another
\par opportunity to spring something this deliriously wonderful on him, and
\par she must not screw it up. For one thing, she wanted to see his face
\par when he heard about the inheritance. She took the notepad and pencil
\par from the holder beside the phone and returned to the table, where she
\par read the letter again. She wrote out a list of questions for Paul
\par Youngblood, then returned to the phone and called him in Eagle's Roost,
\par Montana. When Heather identified herself to the attorney's secretary
\par and then to the man himself, her voice was tremil she was half afraid
\par he would tell her there had been a mistake. Maybe someone had
\par contested the will. Or maybe a more recent will had been found, which
\par negated the one naming Jack as the sole heir. A thousand maybes.
\par Rush-hour traffic was even worse than usual. Dinner was delayed
\par because Jack got home more than half an hour late, tired and frazzled
\par but putting on a good act as a man in love with his new job and happy
\par with his life. The instant Toby was finished eating, he asked to be
\par excused to watch a favorite television program, and Heather let him
\par go..She wanted to share the news with Jack first, just the two of them, and
\par tell Toby later. As usual, Jack helped her clean the table and load
\par the dishwasher. When they were finished, he said, "Think I'll go for a
\par walk, exercise these legs."
\par "You having any pain?"
\par "Just a little crdmping."
\par Though he had stopped using a cane, she worried that he wouldn't tell
\par her if he was having strength or balance problems. "You sure you're
\par okay?"
\par "Positive." He kissed her cheek. "You and Moshe Bloom could never be
\par married. You'd always be fighting over whose job it was to do the
\par mothering."
\par "Sit down a minute," she said, leading him to the table and encouraging
\par him into a chair. "There's something we have to talk about."
\par "If Toby needs more dental work, I'll do it myself."
\par "No dental work."
\par "You see the size of that last bill?"
\par "Yes, I saw it."
\par "Who needs teeth, anyway? Clams don't have teeth, and they get along
\par just fine. Oysters don't have teeth. Worms don't have teeth. Lots of
\par things don't have teeth, and they're perfectly happy."
\par "Forget about teeth," she said, fetching Youngblood's letter and the
\par photographs from the top of the refrigerator.
\par He took the envelope when she offered it. "What're you grinning
\par about?
\par What's this?"
\par "Read it." Heather sat across from him, her elbows on the table, her
\par face cupped in her hands, watching him intently, trying to guess where
\par he was in the letter by the expressions that crossed his face. The
\par sight of him absorbing the news gladdened her as nothing had in a long
\par time.
\par "This is . . .I. . . but why on earth . . ." He looked up from the
\par letter and gaped at her. "Is this true?" She giggled. She hadn't
\par giggled in ages. "Yes.
\par Yes! It's true, every incredible word of it. I called Paul
\par Youngblood. He sounds like a very nice man. He was Eduardo's neighbor
\par as well as his attorney. His nearest neighbor but still two miles
\par away. He confirms everything in the letter, all of it. Ask me how
\par much a substantial amount of cash' might be." Jack blinked at her
\par stupidly, as if the news had been a blunt instrument with which he'd.been stunned. "How much?"
\par "He can't be sure yet, not until he has the final tax figure, but after
\par everything's said and done . . . it's going to be between three
\par hundred fifty thousand and four hundred thousand dollars."
\par Jack paled. "That can't be right."
\par "That's what he told me."
\par "Plus the ranch?"
\par "Plus the ranch."
\par "Tommy talked about the place in Montana, said his dad loved it but he
\par hated it.
\par Dull, Tommy said, nothing ever happening, the ass-end of nowhere. He
\par loved his dad, told funny stories about him, but he never said he was
\par rich." Again he picked up the letter, which rattled in his hand.
\par "Why would Tommy's dad leave everything to me, for God's sake?"
\par "That was one of the questions I asked Paul Youngblood. He says Tommy
\par used to write to his dad about you, what a great guy you were. Talked
\par about you like a brother. So with Tommy gone, his dad wanted you to
\par have everything."
\par "What do the other relatives have to say about that?"
\par "There aren't any relatives." Jack shook his head. "But I never even
\par met"--he consulted the letter-- "Eduardo. This is crazy. I mean,
\par Jesus, it's wonderful, but it's crazy.
\par He gives everything to someone he hasn't even met?" Unable to remain
\par seated, bursting with excitement, Heather got up and went to the
\par refrigerator.
\par "Paul Youngblood says the idea appealed to Eduardo because he inherited
\par it eight years ago from his former boss, which was a total surprise to
\par him too."
\par "I'll be damned," he said wonderingly. She removed a bottle of
\par champagne that she had hidden in the vegetable drawer, where Jack
\par wouldn't see it before he heard the news and knew what they were
\par celebrating. "According to Youngblood, Eduardo thought that surprising
\par you with it . . . well, he seemed to see it as the only way he'd ever
\par be able to repay his boss's kindness." When she returned to the table,
\par Jack frowned at the bottle of champagne.
\par "I'm like a balloon, I'm floating, bouncing off the ceiling, but . .
\par at the same time . . ."
\par "Tommy," she said. He nodded..Peeling the foil off the champagne bottle, she said, "We can't bring
\par him back."
\par "No, but ..."
\par "He'd want us to be happy about this."
\par "Yeah, I know. Tommy was a great guy."
\par "So let's be happy." He said nothing. Untwisting the wire cage that
\par restrained the cork, she said, "We'd be idiots if we weren't." know"
\par "It's a miracle, and just when we need one." He stared at the
\par champagne. She said, "It's not just our future. It's Toby's too."
\par "He can keep his teeth now." Laughing, Heather said, "It's a wonderful
\par thing, Jack." At last his smile was broad and without reservation.
\par "You're damn right it's a wonderful thing--now we won't have to listen
\par to him gumming his food."
\par Removing the wire from the cork, she said, "Even if we don't deserve so
\par much good fortune, Toby does."
\par "We all deserve it." He got up, went to a nearby cabinet, and removed
\par a clean dish towel from a drawer. "Here, let me." He took the bottle
\par from Heather, draped the cloth over it. "Might explode." He twisted
\par the cork, it popped, but the champagne did not foam out of the neck of
\par the bottle. She brought a couple of glasses, and he filled them. "To
\par Eduardo Fernandez," she said by way of a toast. "To Tommy." They
\par drank, standing beside the table, and then he kissed her lightly. His
\par quick tongue was sweet with champagne.
\par "My God, Heather, do you know what this meanst' They sat down again as
\par she said, "When we go out to dinner the next time, it can be someplace
\par that serves the food on real plates instead of in paper containers."
\par His eyes were shining, and she was thrilled to see him so happy. "We
\par can pay the mortgage, all the bills, put money away for Toby to go to
\par college one day, maybe even take a vacation--and that's just from the
\par cash. If we sell the farm--"
\par "Look at the photographs," she urged,
\par grabbing them, spreading them on the table in front of him. "Very
\par nice," he said. "Better than very nice. It's gorgeous, Jack. Look at
\par those mountains! And look at this one--look, from this angle, standing
\par in front of the house, you can see forever!"
\par He looked up from the snapshots and met her eyes. "What am I
\par hearing?"
\par "We don't have to sell it."
\par "Live there?"
\par "Why not?"
\par "We're city people." . n: . ^: "And we hate it."."Angelenos all our lives."
\par "Isn't what it once was." She could see that the idea intrigued him,
\par and her own excitement grew as he began to come around to her point of
\par view. "We've wanted change for a long time," he said.
\par "But I was never thinking this much change."
\par "Look at the photographs."
\par "Okay, yeah, it's gorgeous. But what would we do there? It's a lot of
\par money but not enough to last forever. Besides, we're young--we can't
\par vegetate, we need to do something."
\par "Maybe we can start a business in Eagle's Roost."
\par "What sort of business?"
\par "I don't know. Anything," she said. "We can go, see what it's like,
\par and maybe we'll spot an opportunity right off the bat. And if not .
\par . well, we don't have to live there forever. A year, two years, and if
\par we don't like it, we can sell." He finished his champagne, poured
\par refreshers for both of them.
\par "Toby starts school in two weeks...."
\par "They have schools in Montana," she said, though she knew that was not
\par what concerned him. He was no doubt thinking about the eleven-year-old
\par girl who'd been shot to death one block from the elementary school that
\par Toby would be attending.
\par She nudged him: "He'll have six hundred acres to play on, Jack. How
\par long has he wanted a dog, a golden retriever, and it just seemed like
\par this place was too small for one?"
\par Staring at one of the snapshots, Jack said, "At work today, we were
\par talking about all the names this city has, more than other places.
\par Like New York is the Big Apple, and that's it. But L.A. has lots of
\par names--and none of them fit any more, none of them mean anything. Like
\par the Big Orange. But there aren't any orange groves any more, all gone
\par to tract houses and mini-malls and car lots.
\par You can call it the City of Angels, but not much angelic happens here
\par any more, not the way it once did, too many devils on the streets."
\par "The City Where Stars Are Born," she said. "And nine hundred and
\par ninety-nine out of a thousand kids who come here to be movie
\par stars--what happens to them? Wind up used, abused, broke, and hooked
\par on drugs."
\par "The City Where the Sun Goes Down."
\par "Well, it still does set in the west," he acknowledged, picking up.another photo from Montana.
\par "City Where the Sun Goes Down ... That makes you think of the thirties
\par and forties, swing music, men tipping their hats to one another and
\par holding doors open for ladies in black cocktail dresses, elegant
\par nightclubs overlooking the ocean, Bogart and Bacall, Gable and Lombard,
\par people sipping martinis and watching golden sunsets. All gone. Mostly
\par gone. These days, call it the City of the Dying Day."
\par He fell silent. Shuming the photographs, studying them. She waited.
\par At last he looked up and said, "Let's do it."
\par 
\par PART TWO
\par 
\par The Land of the Winter Moon Under the winter moon's pale
\par light, across the cold and starry night, from snowy mountains soaring
\par high to ocean shores echoes the cry.
\par From barren sands to verdant fields, from city streets to lonely
\par wealds, cries the tortured human heart, seeking solace, wisdom, a chart
\par by which to understand its plight under the winter moon's pale light.
\par Dawn is unable to fade the night. Must we live ever in the blight
\par under the winter moon's cold light, lost in loneliness, hate, and
\par fright, last night, tonight, tomorrow night under the winter moon's
\par bleak light?
\par The Book of Counted Sorrows CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
\par In the distant age of the dinosaurs, fearful creatures as mighty as the
\par Tyrannosaurus rex had perished in treacherous tar pits upon which the
\par visionary builders of Los Angeles later erected freeways, shopping
\par centers, houses, office buildings, theaters, topless bars, restaurants
\par shaped like hot dogs and derby hats, churches, automated car washes,
\par and so much more. Deep beneath parts of the metropolis, those
\par fossilized monsters lay in eternal sleep. Through September and
\par October, Jack felt the city was still a pit in which he was mired.
\par He believed he was obligated to give Lyle Crawford a thirty-day
\par notice.
\par And at the advice of their Realtor, before listing the house for sale,
\par they painted it inside and out, installed new carpet, and made minor
\par repairs. The moment Jack made the decision to leave the city, he'd
\par mentally packed and decamped. Now his heart was in the Montana
\par highlands east of the Rockies, while he was still trying to pull his
\par feet out of the L.A. tar. Because they no longer needed every dollar
\par of equity in the house, they priced it below market value. In spite of
\par poor economic conditions, it moved quickly. By the twenty-eighth of
\par October, they were in a sixty-day escrow with a buyer who appeared
\par qualified, and they felt reasonably confident about embarking upon a
\par new life and leaving the finalization of the sale to their Realtor. On
\par November fourth, they set out for their new home in a Ford Explorer
\par purchased with some of their inheritance. Jack insisted on leaving at
\par six in the morning, determined that his last day in the city would not
\par include the frustrating crawl of rush-hour traffic. They took only
\par suitcases and a few boxes of personal effects, and shipped little more
\par than books. Additional photographs sent by Paul Youngblood had.revealed that their new house was already furnished in a style to which
\par they could easily adjust.
\par They might have to replace a few upholstered pieces, but many items
\par were antiques of high quality and considerable beauty. Departing the
\par city on Interstate 5, they never looked back as they crested the
\par Hollywood Hills and went north past Burbank, San Fernando, Valencia,
\par Castaic far out of the suburbs, into the Angeles National Forest across
\par Pyramid Lake, and up through the Tejon Pass between the Sierra Madre
\par and the Tehachapi Mountains. Mile by mile, Jack felt himself rising
\par out of an emotional and mental darkness. He was like a swimmer who had
\par been weighed down with iron shackles and blocks, drowning in oceanic
\par depths, now freed and soaring toward the surface, light, air. Toby was
\par amazed by the vast farmlands flanking the highway, so Heather quoted
\par figures from a travel book. The San Joaquin Valley was more than a
\par hundred fifty miles long, defined by the Diablo Range on the west and
\par Sierra foothills to the distant east. Those thousands of square miles
\par were the most fertile in the world, producing eighty percent of the
\par entire country's fresh vegetables and melons, half its fresh fruit and
\par almonds, and much more.
\par They stopped at a roadside produce stand and bought a one-pound bag of
\par roasted almonds for a quarter of what the cost would have been in a
\par supermarket. Jack stood beside the Explorer, eating a handful of nuts,
\par staring at vistas of productive fields and orchards. The day was
\par blessedly quiet, and the air was clean. ..- Residing in the city, it
\par was easy to forget there were other ways to live, worlds beyond the
\par teeming streets of the human hive. He was a sleeper waking to a real
\par world more diverse and interesting than the dream he had mistaken for
\par reality. In pursuit of their new life, they reached Reno that night,
\par Salt Lake City the next, and Eagle's Roost, Montana, at three o'clock
\par in the afternoon on the sixth of .. November.
\par To Kill a Mockingbird was one of Jack's favorite novels, and Atticus
\par Finch, the courageous lawyer of that book, would have been at home in
\par Paul Youngblood's office on the top floor of the only three-story
\par building in Eagle's Roost. The wooden blinds surely dated from
\par mid-century. The mahogany wainscoting, bookshelves, and cabinets were
\par glass-smooth from decades of hand polishing. The room had an air of
\par gentility, a learned quietude, and the shelves held volumes of history
\par and philosophy as well as lawbooks.
\par The attorney actually greeted them with, "Howdy, neighbors! What a
\par pleasure this is, a genuine pleasure." He had a firm handshake and a
\par smile like soft sunshine on mountain crags.
\par Paul Youngblood would never have been recognized as a lawyer in L.A. and
\par he might have been removed discreetly but forcefully if he had ever
\par visited the swanky offices of the powerhouse firms quartered in Century
\par City. He was fifty, tall, lanky, with closecropped iron-gray hair.
\par His face was creased and ruddy from years spent outdoors, and his big,
\par leathery hands were scarred by physical labor. He wore scuffed boots,
\par tan jeans, a white shirt, and a bolo tie with a silver clasp in the
\par form of a bucking bronco.
\par In L.A. people in similar outfits were dentists or accountants or.executives, costumed for an evening at a Country-Western bar, and could
\par not disguise their true nature. But Youngblood looked as if he had
\par been born in Western garb, birthed between a cactus and a campfire, and
\par raised on horseback.
\par Although he appeared to be rough enough to walk into a biker bar and
\par take on a mob of machine wranglers, the attorney was soft-spoken and so
\par polite that Jack was aware of how badly his own manners had
\par deteriorated under the constant abrasion of daily life in the city.
\par Youngblood won Toby's heart by calling him
\par "Scout" and offering to
\par teach him horseback riding "come spring, starting with a pony, of
\par course . . . and assuming that's okay with your folks."
\par When the lawyer put on a suede jacket and a cowboy hat before leading
\par them out to Quartermass Ranch, Toby regarded him with wide-eyed awe.
\par They followed Youngblood's white Bronco across sixteen miles of country
\par more beautiful than it had appeared to be in photographs. Two stone
\par columns, surmounted by a weathered wooden arch, marked the entrance to
\par their property. Burned into the arch, rustic lettering spelled
\par QUARTERMASS RANCH. They turned off the county route, under the sign,
\par and headed uphill.
\par Wow! This all belongs to us?" Toby asked from the back seat,
\par enraptured by the sprawl of fields and forests. Before either Jack or
\par Heather could answer him, he posed the question that he no doubt had
\par been wanting to ask for weeks: "Can I have a dog?"
\par "Just a dog?" Jack asked. "Huh?"
\par "With this much land, you could have a pet cow." Toby laughed. "Cows
\par aren't pets."
\par "You're wrong," Jack said, striving for a serious tone. "They're
\par darned good pets."
\par "Cows!" Toby said incredulously. "No, really. You can teach a cow to
\par fetch, roll over, beg for its dinner, shake hands, all the usual dog
\par stuff-- plus they make milk for your breakfast cereal."
\par "You're putting me on. Mom, is he serious?"
\par "The only problem is," Heather said, "you might get a cow that likes to
\par chase cars--in which case it can do a lot more damage than a dog."
\par "That's silly," the boy said, and giggled. "Not if you're in the car
\par being chased," Heather assured him. "Then it's terrifying," Jack
\par agreed. "I'll stick with a dog."
\par "Well, if that's what you want," Jack said. "You mean it? I can have
\par a dog?" Heather said, "I don't see why not." Toby whooped with
\par delight.
\par The private lane led to the main residence, which overlooked a meadow.of golden-brown grass. In the last hour of its journey toward the
\par western mountains, the sun backlit the property, and the house cast a
\par long purple shadow. They parked in that shade behind Paul Youngblood's
\par Bronco.
\par They began their tour in the basement. Although windowless and
\par entirely beneath ground level, it was cold. The first room contained a
\par washer, a dryer, a double sink, and a set of pine cabinets. The
\par corners of the ceiling were enlivened by the architecture of spiders
\par and a few cocooning moths. In the second room stood an electric
\par forced-air furnace and a water heater. A Japanese-made electric
\par generator, as large as a washing machine, was also provided. It looked
\par capable of producing enough power to light a small town.
\par "Why do we need this?" Jack wondered, indicating the generator. Paul
\par Youngblood said, "Bad storm can knock out the public power supply for a
\par couple of days in some of these rural areas. Since we don't have
\par natural-gas service, and the price of being supplied by a fuel-oil
\par company in this territory can be high, we have to rely on electricity
\par for heating, cooking, everything. It goes out, we have fireplaces, but
\par that's not ideal. And Stan Quartermass was a man who never wanted to
\par be without the comforts of civilization."
\par "But this is a monster," Jack said, patting the dustsheathed
\par generator.
\par "Supplies the main house, caretaker's house, and the stables. Doesn't
\par just provide backup power to run a few lights, either. As long as
\par you've got gasoline, you can go on living with all the amenities, just
\par as if you were still on public power."
\par "Might be fun to rough it a couple of days now and then," Jack
\par suggested. The attorney frowned and shook his head. "Not when the
\par real temperature is below zero and the windchill factor pushes it down
\par to minus thirty or forty degrees."
\par "Ouch," Heather said. She hugged herself at the very thought of such
\par arctic cold. "I'd call that more than roughing it,"
\par " Youngblood Jack
\par agreed. "I'd call it suicide." I'll make sure we have a good gasoline
\par supply.
\par The thermostat had been set low in the two main floors of the
\par untenanted house.
\par A stubborn chill pooled everywhere, like the icy remnant of a flood
\par tide. It surrendered gradually to the electric heat, which Paul
\par switched on after they ascended from the basement and inspected half
\par the ground floor. In spite of her insulated ski jacket, Heather
\par shivered through the entire tour. The house had both character and
\par every convenience, and would be even easier to settle into than they'd
\par expected. Eduardo Fernandez's personal effects and clothing had not
\par been disposed of, so they would need to empty closets to make room for
\par their own things. In the four months since the old man's sudden death,
\par the place had been closed and unattended, a thin layer of dust coated
\par every surface. However, Eduardo had led a neat and orderly life, there
\par was no great mess with which to deal..In the final bedroom on the second floor, at the back of the house,
\par coppery late-afternoon sunlight slanted through west-facing windows,
\par and the air glowed like that in front of an open furnace door. It was
\par light without heat, and still Heather shivered.
\par Toby said, "This is great, this is terrific!" The room was more than
\par twice the size of the one in which the boy had slept in Los Angeles,
\par but Heather knew he was less excited by the dimensions than by the
\par almost whimsical architecture, which would have sparked the imagination
\par of any child. The twelve-foot-high ceiling was composed of four groin
\par vaults, and the shadows that lay across those concave surfaces were
\par complex and intriguing. "Neat," Toby said, staring up at the
\par ceiling.
\par "Like hanging under a parachute." In the wall to the left of the hall
\par door was a four-footdeep, six-foot-long, arched niche into which a
\par custom-built bed had been fitted. Behind the headboard on the left and
\par in the back wall of the niche were recessed bookshelves and deep
\par cabinets for the storage of model spaceships, action figures, games,
\par and the other possessions that a young boy cherished. Curtains were
\par drawn back from both sides of the niche and, when closed, could seal it
\par off like a berth on an old-fashioned railroad sleeping car.
\par "Can this be my room, can it, please?" Toby asked. "Looks to me like
\par it was made for you," Jack said. "Great!" Opening one of the two
\par other doors in the room, Paul said, "This walk-in closet is so deep you
\par could almost say it's a room itself."
\par The last door revealed the head of an uncarpeted staircase as tightly
\par curved as that in a lighthouse. The wooden treads squeaked as the four
\par of them descended.
\par Heather instantly disliked the stairs. Perhaps she was somewhat
\par claustrophobic in that cramped and windowless space, following Paul
\par Youngblood and Toby, with Jack close behind. Perhaps the inadequate
\par lighting--two widely spaced, bare bulbs in the ceiling--made her
\par uneasy. A mustiness and a vague underlying odor of decay didn't add
\par any charm. Neither did spiderwebs hung with dead moths and beetles.
\par Whatever the reason, her heart began to pound as if they were climbing
\par rather than descending. She was overcome by the bizarre fear-- similar
\par to the nameless dread in a nightmare--that something hostile and
\par infinitely strange was waiting for them below.
\par The last step brought them into a windowless vestibule, where Paul had
\par to use a key to unlock the first of two lower doors. "Kitchen," he
\par said. Nothing fearful waited beyond, merely the room he had
\par indicated.
\par "We'll go this way," he said, turning to the second door, which didn't
\par require a key from the inside. When the thumb-turn on the dead-bolt
\par lock proved stiff from lack of use, the few seconds of delay were
\par almost more than Heather could tolerate. Now she was convinced that
\par something was coming down the steps behind them, the murderous phantom
\par of a bad dream. She wanted out of that narrow place immediately,
\par desperately..The door creaked open. They followed Paul through the second exit onto
\par the back porch. They were twelve feet to the left of the house's main
\par rear entrance, which led into the kitchen. Heather took several deep
\par breaths, purging her lungs of the contaminated air from the
\par stairwell.
\par Her fear swiftly abated and her racing heart regained a normal pace.
\par She looked back into the vestibule where the steps curved upward out of
\par sight. Of course no denizen of a nightmare appeared, and her moment of
\par panic seemed more foolish and inexplicable by the second.
\par Jack, unaware of Heather's inner turmoil, put one hand on Toby's head
\par and said, "Well, if that's going to be your room, I don't want to catch
\par you sneaking girls up the back steps."
\par "Girls?" Toby was astonished. "Yuck. Why would l want to have
\par anything to do with girls?"
\par "I suspect you figure that one out all on your own, given a little
\par time," the attorney said, amused. "And too fast," Jack said.
\par "Five years from now, we'll have to fill those stairs with concrete,
\par seal them off forever."
\par Heather found the will to turn her back on the door as the attorney
\par closed it.
\par She was baffled by the episode, and relieved that no one had been aware
\par of her odd reaction. Los Angeles jitters. She hadn't shed the city.
\par She was in rural Montana, where there probably hadn't been a murder in
\par a decade, where most people left doors unlocked day and night-- but
\par psychologically, she remained in the shadow of the Big Orange, living
\par conscious anticipation of sudden, senseless violence. Just a
\par delayed case of Los Angeles jitters. "Better show you the rest of the
\par property," Paul said."
\par "We don't have much more than half an hour of day- light left."
\par They followed him down the porch steps and up the sloping rear lawn
\par toward a smaller, stone house tucked among the evergreens at the edge
\par of the forest.
\par Heather recognized it from the photographs Paul had sent: the
\par caretaker's residence. As twilight stealthily approached, the sky far
\par to the - east was a deep sapphire. It faded to a lighter blue in the
\par west, where the sun hastened toward the mountains. The temperature had
\par slipped out of the fifties. Heather walked with her hands jammed in
\par jacket pockets and her shoulders hunched. She was pleased to see that
\par Jack took the hill with vigor, not limping at all.
\par Occasionally his left leg ached and he favored it, but not today. She
\par found it hard to believe that only eight months ago, their lives seemed
\par to have been changed for the worse, forever. No wonder she was still
\par jumpy. Such a terrible eight months. But everything was fine now..Really fine.
\par The rear lawn hadn't been maintained after Eduardo's death. The grass
\par had grown six or eight inches before the aridity of late summer and the
\par chill of early autumn had turned it brown and pinched off its growth
\par until spring. It crackled faintly under their feet. "Ed and Margaret
\par moved out of the caretaker's house when they inherited the ranch eight
\par years ago," Paul said as they drew near the stone bungalow. "Sold the
\par contents, nailed plywood over the windows. Don't think anyone's been
\par in there since. Unless you plan to have a caretaker yourself, you
\par probably won't have a use for it, either. But you ought to take a look
\par just the same."
\par Pine trees crowded three sides of the smaller house. The forest was so
\par primeval that darkness dwelt in much of it even before the sun had
\par set.
\par The bristling green of heavy boughs, enfolded with purple-black
\par shadows, was a lovely sight--but those wooded realms had an air of
\par mystery that Heather found disturbing, even a little menacing. For the
\par first time she wondered what animals might from time to time venture
\par out of those wilds into the yard. Wolves? Bears?
\par Mountain lions? Was Toby safe here? Oh, for God's sake, Heather She
\par was thinking like a city dweller, always wary of danger, perceiving
\par threats everywhere. In fact, wild animals avoided people and ran if
\par approached. What do you expect? she asked herself sarcastically.
\par That you'll be barricaded in the house while gangs of bears hammer on
\par the doors and packs of snarling wolves throw themselves through windows
\par like something out of a bad TV movie about ecological disaster?
\par Instead of a porch, the caretaker's house had a large flagstone-paved
\par area in front of the entrance. They stood there while Paul found the
\par right key on the ring he carried. The north-east-south panorama from
\par the perimeter of the high woods was stunning, better even than from the
\par main house. Like a landscape in a Maxfield Parrish painting, the
\par descending fields and forests receded into a distant violet haze under
\par a darkly luminous sapphire sky. The fading afternoon was windless, and
\par the silence was so deep she might have thought she'd gone deaf-- except
\par for the clinking of the attorney's keys. After a life in the city,
\par such quiet was eerie.
\par The door opened with much cracking and scraping, as if an ancient seal
\par had been broken. Paul stepped across the threshold, into the dark
\par living room, and flicked the light switch. Heather heard it click
\par several times, but the lights didn't come on. Stepping outside again,
\par Paul said, "Figures. Ed must've shut off all the power at the breaker
\par box. I know where it is. You wait here, I'll be right back."
\par They stood at the front door, staring at the gloom beyond the
\par threshold, while the attorney disappeared around the corner of the
\par house. His departure made Heather apprehensive, though she wasn't sure
\par why. Perhaps because he had gone alone.
\par "When I get a dog, can he sleep in my room?" Toby asked. "Sure," Jack.said, "but not on the bed."
\par "Not on the bed? Then where would he sleep?"
\par "Dogs usually make do with the floor."
\par "That's not fair."
\par "You'll never hear a dog complain."
\par "But why not on the bed?"
\par "Fleas."
\par "I'll take good care of him. He won't have fleas."
\par "Dog hairs in the sheets."
\par "That won't be a problem, Dad."
\par "What--you're going to shave him, have a bald dog?"
\par "I'll just brush him every day."
\par Listening to her husband and son, Heather watched the corner of the
\par house, increasingly certain that Paul Youngblood was never going to
\par return. Something terrible had happened to him. Something-- He
\par reappeared. "All the breakers were off. We should be in business
\par now." What's wrong with me? Heather wondered. Got to shake this damn
\par L.A. attitude.
\par Standing inside the front door, Paul flipped the wall switch
\par repeatedly, without success. The dimly visible ceiling fixture in the
\par empty living room remained dark. The carriage lamp outside, next to
\par the door, didn't come on, either.
\par "Maybe he had electric service discontinued," Jack suggested. The
\par attorney shook his head. "Don't see how that could be. This is on the
\par same line as the main house and the stable."
\par "Bulbs might be dead, sockets corroded after all this me." '- Pushing
\par his cowboy hat back on his head, scratching his brow, frowning, Paul
\par said, "Not like Ed to let things deteriorate. I'd expect him to do
\par routine maintenance, keep the place in good working order in case the
\par next owner had a need for it. That's just how he was. Good man, Ed.
\par Not much of a socializer, but a good man."
\par "Well," Heather said, "we can investigate the problem in a couple of
\par days, once we're settled down at the main place." Paul retreated from
\par the house, pulled the door shut, and locked it. "You might want to
\par have an electrician out to check the wiring."
\par Instead of returning the way they had come, they angled across the
\par sloping yard toward the stable, which stood on more level land to the
\par south of the main house. Toby ran ahead, arms out at his sides, making
\par a brrrrrrrrrrr noise with his lips, pretending to be an airplane..Heather glanced back at the caretaker's bungalow a couple of times, and
\par at the woods on both sides of it. She had a peculiar tingly feeling on
\par the back of her neck.
\par "Pretty cold for the beginning of November," Jack said. The attorney
\par laughed.
\par "This isn't southern California, I'm afraid. Actually, it's been a
\par mild day.
\par Temperature's probably going to drop well below freezing tonight."
\par "You get much snow up here?"
\par "Does hell get many sinners?"
\par "When can we expect the first snow--before Christmas?"
\par "Way before Christmas, Jack. If we had a big storm tomorrow, nobody'd
\par think it was an early season."
\par "That's why we got the Explorer," Heather said. "Four-wheel drive.
\par That should get us around all winter, shouldn't it?"
\par "Mostly, yeah," Paul said, pulling down on the brim of his hat, which
\par he had pushed up earlier to scratch his forehead.
\par Toby had reached the stable. Short legs pumping, he vanished around
\par the side before Heather could call out to him to wait. Paul said, "But
\par every winter there's one or two times where you're going to be
\par snowbound a day or three, drifts half over the house sometimes."
\par "Snowbound? Half over the house?" Jack said, sounding a little like a
\par kid himself. "Really?"
\par "Get one of those blizzards coming down out of the Rockies, it can drop
\par two or three feet of snow in twenty-four hours. Winds like to peel
\par your skin off. County crews can't keep the roads open all at once.
\par You have chains for that Explorer?"
\par "A couple of sets," Jack said.
\par Heather walked faster toward the stable, hoping the men would pick up
\par their pace to accompany her, which they did. Toby was still out of
\par sight. "What you should also get," Paul told them, "soon as you can,
\par is a good plow for the front of it.
\par Even if county crews get the roads open, you have half a mile of
\par private lane to take care of."
\par If the boy was just "flying" around the stable, with his arms spread
\par like wings, he should have reappeared -by now. "Lex Parker's garage,"
\par Paul continued, "in town, can fit your truck with the armatures, attach
\par the plow, hydraulic arms to raise and lower it, a real fine rig. Just.- leave it on all winter, remove it in the spring, and you'll be ready
\par for however much butt kicking Mother Nature has in store for us."
\par No sign of Toby. Heather's heart was pounding again. The sun was
\par about to set.
\par If Toby ... if he got lost or ... or something ... they would have a
\par harder time finding him at night. She restrained herself from breaking
\par into a run. "Now, last winter," Paul continued smoothly, unaware of
\par her trepidation, "was on the dry side, which probably means we're going
\par to take a shellacking this year."
\par As they reached the stable and as Heather was about to cry out for
\par Toby, he reappeared. He was no longer playing airplane. He sprinted
\par to her side through the unmown grass, grinning and excited. "Mom, this
\par place is neat, really neat.
\par Maybe I can really have a pony, huh?"
\par "Maybe," Heather said, swallowing hard before she could get the word
\par out. "Don't go running off like that, okay?"
\par "Why not?"
\par "Just don't."
\par "Sure, okay," Toby said. He was a good boy.
\par She glanced back toward the caretaker's house and the wilderness
\par beyond. Perched on the jagged peaks of the mountains, the sun seemed
\par to quiver like a raw egg yolk just before dissolving around the tines
\par of a prodding fork. The highest pinnacles of rock were gray and black
\par and pink in the fiery light of day's end.
\par Miles of serried forests shelved down to the fieldstone bungalow. All
\par was still and peaceful. The stable was a single-story fieldstone
\par building with a slate roof. The long side walls had no exterior stall
\par doors, only small windows high under the eaves. There was a white barn
\par door on the end, which rolled open easily when Paul tried it, and the
\par electric lights came on with the first flip of a switch. "As you can
\par see," the attorney said as he led them inside, "it was every inch a
\par gentleman's ranch, not a spread that had to show a profit in any
\par way."
\par Beyond the concrete threshold, which was flush with the ground, the
\par stable floor was composed of soft, tamped earth, as pale as sand. Five
\par empty stalls with half-doors stood to each side of the wide center
\par promenade, more spacious than ordinary barn stalls. On the twelve-inch
\par wooden posts between stalls were castbronze sconces that threw amber
\par light toward both the ceiling and the floor, they were needed because
\par the high-set windows were too small--each about eight inches high by
\par eighteen long--to admit much sunlight even at high noon. "Stan
\par Quartermass kept this place heated in winter, cooled in the summer,"
\par Paul Youngblood said. He pointed to vent grilles set in the suspended
\par tongue-and-groove ceiling. "Seldom smelled like a stable, either,
\par because he vented it continuously, pumped fresh air in. And all the
\par ductwork is heavily insulated, so the sound of the fans is too low to.bother horses."
\par On the left, beyond the final stall, was a large tackroom, where
\par saddles, bridles, and other equipment had been kept. It was empty
\par except for a built-in sink as - long and deep as a trough. To the
\par right, opposite the tackroom, were top-access bins where oats, apples,
\par and other feed had been stored, but they were now all empty as well.
\par On the wall near the bins, several tools were racked business end up: a
\par pitchfork, two shovels, and a rake.
\par "Smoke alarm," Paul said, pointing to a device attached to the header
\par above the big door that was opposite the one by which they had
\par entered.
\par "Wired into the electrical system. You can't make the mistake of
\par letting batteries go dead. It sounds in the house, so Stan wouldn't
\par have to worry about not hearing it."
\par "The guy sure loved his horses," Jack said. "Oh, he sure did, and he
\par had more Hollywood money than he knew what to do with. After Stan
\par died, Ed took special pains to be sure the people who bought all the
\par animals would treat them well.
\par Stan was a nice man. Seemed only right." the lights. "Name's Lester
\par Steer, and he owns the Main itreet Diner in town."
\par "He's a man!"
\par "Well, of course he's a man," Paul said, rolling the door shut.
\par "Never said he wasn't." The attorney winked at Heather, and she
\par realized how much she had come to like him in such a short time. "Oh,
\par you're tricky," Toby told Paul. "Dad, he's tricky"
\par "Not me," Paul
\par said. "I only told you the truth, Scout. You tricked yourself."
\par -"Paul is an attorney, son," Jack said.
\par "You've always of to be careful of attorneys, or you'll end up with no
\par ponies or cows." Paul laughed. "Listen to your dad. He's wise. Very
\par wise."
\par Only an orange rind of sun remained in view, and in seconds, the
\par irregular blade of mountain peaks peeled it away. Shadows spread
\par toward one another. The somber twilight, all deep blues and funereal
\par purples, hinted at
\par "I could have ten ponies," Toby said. "Wrong,"
\par Heather said. "Whatever business we decide to get into, it won't be a
\par manure factory."
\par "Well, I just mean, there's room," the boy said. "A dog, ten ponies,"
\par Jack said. "You're turning into a real farm boy.
\par What's next? Chickens?"."A cow," Toby said. "I been thinking what you said about cows, and you
\par talked me into it."
\par "Wiseass," Jack said, taking a playful swipe at the boy. Dodging
\par successfully, laughing, Toby said, "Like father, like son.
\par Mr. Youngblood, did you know my dad says cows can do any tricks dogs
\par can do--roll over and play dead and all that?"
\par "Well," the attorney replied, leading them back through the stable
\par toward the door by which they'd entered, "I know a steer that can walk
\par on his hind feet."
\par "Really?"
\par "More than that. He can do math as well as you or me." The claim was
\par made with such calm conviction that the boy looked up wide-eyed at
\par Youngblood. "You mean, like you ask him a problem, he can pound out
\par the answer with his hoof?"
\par "He could do that, sure. Or just tell you the answer."
\par "Huh?"
\par "This steer, he can talk."
\par "No way," Toby said, following Jack and Heather outside. "Sure. He
\par can talk, dance, drive a car, and he goes to church every Sunday," Paul
\par said, switching off the stae unrelenting darkness of night in that
\par largely unplowed vastness. Looking directly upslope from the stable,
\par toward a knoll at the terminus of the western woods, Paul said, "No
\par point showing you the cemetery in this poor light. Not that much to
\par see even at noon."
\par "Cemetery?" Jack said, frowning. "You've got a state-certified
\par private cemetery on your grounds," the attorney said. "Twelve plots,
\par though only four have been used." Staring toward the knoll, where she
\par could vaguely see part of what might have been a low stone wall and a
\par pair of gateposts in the plum-dark light, Heather said, "Who's buried
\par there?"
\par "Stan Quartermass, Ed Fernandez, Margaret, and Tommy."
\par "Tommy, my old partner, he's buried up there?" Jack asked. "Private
\par cemetery," Heather said. She told herself that the only reason she
\par shivered was because the air was growing colder by the minute. "That's
\par a little macabre."
\par "Not so strange around here," Paul assured her. "A lot of these
\par ranches, the same family has been on the land for generations. It's
\par not only their home, it's their hometown, the only place they love.
\par Eagle's Roost is JUST somewhere to shop. When it comes to being put to
\par eternal rest, they want to be part of the land they've given their
\par lives to."."Wow," Toby said. "How cool can you get? We live in a graveyard."
\par "Hardly that," Paul said. "My grandfolks and my parents are buried
\par over to our place, and there's really nothing creepy about it.
\par Comforting. Gives you a sense of hentage, continuity. Carolyn and I
\par figure to be put to rest there too, though I can't say what our kids
\par want to do, now they're off in medical school and law school making new
\par lives that don't have anything to do with the ranch."
\par "Darn it, we just missed Halloween," Toby said, more to himself than to
\par them. He stared toward the cemetery, caught up in a personal fantasy
\par that no doubt involved the challenge of walking through a graveyard on
\par All Hallows' Eve. They stood quietly for a moment.
\par The dusk was heavy, silent, still. Uphill, the cemetery seemed to cast
\par off the fading light and pull the night down like a shroud, covering
\par it-self with darkness faster than any of the land around it. Heather
\par glanced at Jack to see if he showed any sign of being troubled by
\par having Tommy Fernandez's remains buried nearby. Tommy had died at his
\par side, after 11, eleven months before Luther Bryson had been shot.
\par With Tommy's grave so close, Jack couldn't help but recall, perhaps too
\par vividly, violent events best condemmed forever to the deeper vaults of
\par memory. As if sensing her concern, Jack smiled. "Makes me feel better
\par to know Tommy found rest in a place as beautiful as this."
\par As they walked back to the house, the attorney invited them to dinner
\par and to stay overnight with him and his wife. "One, you arrived too
\par late today to get the place cleaned and livable. Two, you don't have
\par any fresh food here, only what might be in the freezer. And three, you
\par don't want to have to cook after putting in a long day on the road.
\par Why not relax this evening, get a start on it first thing in the
\par morning, when you're rested?"
\par Heather was grateful for the invitation, not merely for the reasons
\par Paul had enumerated but because she remained uneasy about the house and
\par the isolation in which it stood. She had decided that her jumpiness
\par was nothing other than a city person's initial response to more wide
\par open spaces than she'd ever seen or contemplated before. A mild phobic
\par reaction. Temporary agoraphobia.
\par It would pass. She simply needed a day or two--perhaps only a few
\par hours--to acclimate herself to this new landscape and way of life. An
\par evening with Paul Youngblood and his wife might be just the right
\par medicine.
\par After setting the thermostats throughout the house, even in the
\par basement, to be sure it would be warm in the morning, they locked up,
\par got in the Explorer, and followed Paul's Bronco to the county road. He
\par turned east toward town, and so did they.
\par The brief twilight had vanished under the falling wall of night. The
\par moon had not yet risen. The darkness on all sides was so deep that it
\par seemed as if it could never be banished again even by the ascension of
\par the sun. The Youngblood ranch was named after the predominant tree.within its boundaries. Spotlights at each end of the overhead entrance
\par sign were directed inward to reveal green letters on a white
\par background: PONDEROSA PINES. Under those two words, in small letters:
\par Paul and Carolyn Youngblood.
\par The attorney's spread, a working ranch, was considerably larger than
\par their own.
\par On both sides of the entrance lane, which was even longer than the one
\par at Quartermass Ranch, lay extensive complexes of whitetrimmed red
\par stables, riding rings, exercise yards, and fenced pastures. The
\par buildings were illuminated by the pearly glow of low-voltage
\par night-lights. White fences divided the rising meadows: dimly
\par phosphorescent geometric patterns that dwindled into the darkness, like
\par lines of inscrutable hieroglyphics on tomb walls. The main house, in
\par front of which they parked, was a large, low ranch-style building of
\par river rock and darkly stained pine. It seemed to be an almost organic
\par extension of the land.
\par As he walked with them to the house, Paul answered Jack's question
\par about the business of Ponderosa Pines. "We have two basic enterprises,
\par actually. We raise and race quarter horses, which is a popular sport
\par throughout the West, from New Mexico to the Canadian border. Then we
\par also breed and sell several types of show horses that never go out of
\par style, mostly Arabians. We have one of the finest Arabian bloodlines
\par in the country, specimens so perfect and pretty they can break your
\par heart--or make you pull out your wallet if you're obsessed with the
\par breed."
\par "No cows?" Toby said as they reached the foot of the steps that led up
\par to the long, deep veranda at the front of the house. "Sorry, Scout, no
\par cows," the attorney said. "Lots of ranches round here have cattle, but
\par not us. However, we do have our share of cowboys." He pointed to a
\par cluster of lighted bungalows approximately a hundred twenty yards to
\par the east of the house. "Eighteen wranglers currently live here on the
\par ranch, with their wives if they're married.
\par A little town of our own, sort of."
\par "Cowboys," Toby said in the awed tone of voice with which he had spoken
\par of the private graveyard and of the prospect of having a pony. Montana
\par was proving to be as exotic to him as any distant planet in the comic
\par books and science fiction movies he liked. "Real cowboys."
\par Carolyn Youngblood greeted them at the door and warmly welcomed them.
\par To be the mother of Paul's children, she must have been his age, fifty,
\par but she looked and acted younger. She wore tight jeans and a
\par decoratively stitched red-and-white Western shirt, revealing the lean,
\par limber figure of an athletic thirty-year-old.
\par Her snowy hair--cut short in an easy-care gamine style--wasn't brittle,
\par as white hair often was, but thick and soft and lustrous. Her face was
\par far less lined than Paul's, and her skin was silk-smooth. Heather
\par decided that if this was what life in the ranch country of Montana
\par could do for a woman, she could overcome any aversion to the
\par unnervingly large open spaces, to the immensity of the night, to the.spookiness of the woods, and even to the novel experience of having
\par four corpses interred in a far corner of her backyard.
\par After dinner, when Jack and Paul were alone for a few minutes in the
\par study, each of them with a glass of port, looking at the many framed
\par photographs of prize-winning horses that nearly covered one of the
\par knottypine walls, the attorney suddenly changed the subject from
\par equestrian bloodlines and quarter-horse champions to Quatermass
\par Ranch.
\par "I'm sure you folks are going to be happy there, Jack."
\par "I think so too."
\par "It's a great place for a boy like Toby to grow up."
\par "A dog, a pony--it's like a dream come true for him."
\par "Beautiful land."
\par "So peaceful compared to L.A. Hell, there's no comparison." Paul
\par opened his mouth to say something, hesitated, and looked instead at the
\par horse photo with which he'd inoken off his colorful account of
\par Ponderosa Pines' racng triumphs. When the attorney did speak, Jack had
\par the feeling that what he said was not what he had been out to say
\par before the hesitation. "And though we aren't spitting-distance
\par neighbors, Jack, I hope we'll be close in other ways, get to know each
\par other well."
\par "I'd like that." The attorney hesitated again, sipping from his glass
\par of port to cover his indecision.
\par After tasting his own port, Jack said, "Something wrong, Paul?"
\par "No, not wrong ... just ... What makes you say that?"
\par "I was a cop for a long time. I have a sort of sixth sense about
\par people holding back something."
\par "Guess you do. You'll probably be a good businessman when you decide
\par what it is you want to get into."
\par "So what's up?" Sighing, Paul sat on a corner of his large desk.
\par "Didn't even know if I should mention this, cause I don't want you to
\par be concerned about it, don't think there's really any reason to be."
\par "Yes?"
\par "It was a heart attack killed Ed Fernandez, like I told you. Massive
\par heart attack took him down as sudden and complete as a bullet in the
\par head. Coroner couldn't find anything else, only the heart."
\par "Coroner? Are you saying an autopsy was performed?"
\par "Yeah, sure was," Paul said, and sipped his port. Jack was certain
\par that in Montana, as in California, autopsies were not performed every.time someone died especially not when the decedent was a man of Eduardo
\par Fernandez's age and all but certain to have expired of natural
\par causes.
\par The old man would have been cut open only under special circumstances,
\par primarily if visible trauma indicated the possibility of death at the
\par hands of another. "But you said the coroner couldn't find anything but
\par a damaged heart, no wounds."
\par Staring at the glimmering surface of the port in his glass, the
\par attorney said, "Ed's body was found across the tbreshold between his
\par kitchen and the back porch, lying on his right side, blocking the door
\par open. He was clutching a shotgun with both hands."
\par "Ah. Could be suspicious enough circumstances to justify an autopsy.
\par Or it could be he was just going out to do some hunting."
\par "Wasn't hunting season."
\par "You telling me a little poaching is unheard of in these parts,
\par especially when a man's hunting out of season on his own land?"
\par The attorney shook his head. "Not at all. But Ed wasn't a hunter.
\par Never had been."
\par "You sure?"
\par "Yeah. Stan Quartermass was the hunter, and Ed just -inherited the
\par guns. And another odd thing--wasn't just a full magazine in that
\par shotgun. He'd also pumped an extra round into the breach. No hunter
\par with half a brain would traipse around with a shell ready to go. He
\par trips nd falls, he might blow off his own head."
\par "Doesn't make sense to carry it in the house that way, either."
\par "Unless," Paul said, "there was some immediate threat."
\par "You mean, like an intruder or prowler."
\par "Maybe. Though that's rarer than steak tartare in these parts."
\par "Any signs of burglary, house ransacked?"
\par "No. Nothing at all like that."
\par "Who found the body?"
\par "Travis Potter, veterinarian from Eagle's Roost.
\par Which brings up another oddity. June tenth, more than three weeks
\par before he died, Ed took some dead raccoons to Travis, asked him to
\par examine them." The attorney told Jack as much about the raccoons as
\par Eduardo had told Potter, then explained Potter's findings.
\par "Brain swelling?" Jack asked uneasily. "But no sign of infection, no.disease," Paul reassured him. "Travis asked Ed to keep a lookout for
\par other animals acting peculiar. Then . . . when they talked again, on
\par June seventeenth, he had the feeling Ed had seen something more but was
\par holding out on him."
\par "Why would he hold out on Potter? Fernandez was the one who got Potter
\par involved in the first place." The attorney shrugged. "Anyway, on the
\par morning of July sixth, Travis was still curious, so he went out to
\par Quartermass Ranch to talk to Ed--and found his body instead. Coroner
\par says Ed had been dead no less than twenty-four hours, probably no more
\par than thirty-six."
\par Jack paced along the wall of horse photographs and along another wall
\par of bookshelves and then back again. slowly turning the glass of port
\par around in his hand. "So you think--what? Fernandez saw some animal
\par behaving really strangely, doing something that spooked him enough to
\par go load up the shotgun?"
\par "Maybe."
\par "Could he have been going outside to shoot this animal because it was
\par acting rabid or crazy in some other way?"
\par "That's occurred to us, yes. And maybe he was so worked up, so
\par excited, that's what brought on the heart attack." At the study
\par window, Jack stared at the lights of the cowboys' bungalows, which were
\par unable to press back the densely clotted night. He finished the
\par port.
\par "I assume, from what you've said, Fernandez wasn't a particularly
\par excitable man, not an hysteric."
\par "The opposite. Ed was about as excitable as a tree stump."
\par Turning away from the window, Jack said, "So then what could he have
\par seen that would've gotten his heart pumping so hard? How bizarre would
\par an animal have had to be acting--how much of a threat would it have to
\par be seemed--before Fernandez would have worked himself up to a heart
\par attack?"
\par "There you put your finger on it," the attorney said, finishing his own
\par port.
\par "Just doesn't make sense."
\par "Seems like we have a mystery here."
\par "Fortunate that you were a detective."
\par "Not me. I was a patrol officer."
\par "Well, now you've been promoted by circumstances."
\par Paul got up from the corner of his desk. "Listen, I'm sure there's
\par nothing to be worried about. We know those raccoons weren't
\par diseased..And there's probably a reasonable explanation for what Ed was going to
\par do with that gun. This is peaceful country. Damned if I can see what
\par kind of danger could be out there."
\par "I suspect you're right," Jack agreed. "I brought it up only because
\par . . well, it seemed odd. I thought if you did see something peculiar,
\par you ought to know not just to dismiss it. Call Travis. Or me." Jack
\par put his empty glass on the desk beside Paul's.
\par Y'll do that. Meanwhile . . . I'd appreciate if you didn't - mention
\par this to Heather. We've had a real bad year down there in L.A. This is
\par a new start for us in a lot of ways, and I don't want a shadow on it.
\par We're a little shaky. We need this to work, need to stay positive."
\par That's why I chose this moment to tell you."
\par "Thanks, Paul."
\par "And don't you worry about it."
\par "I won't."
\par ""Cause I'm sure there's nothing to it. Just one of life's many little
\par mysteries. People new to this country sometimes get the heebie jeebies
\par cause of all the ope space, the wilderness. I don't mean to get you on
\par edge
\par "Don't worry," Jack assured him. "After you've played bullet
\par billiards with some of the crazies loose in L A there's nothing any
\par raccoon can do to spoil your CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
\par During their first four days at Quartermass Ranch-- Tuesday through
\par Friday-Heather, Jack, and Toby cleaned the house from top to bottom.
\par They wiped down walls and woodwork, polished furniture, vacuumed
\par upholstery and carpets, washed all the dishes and utensils, put new
\par shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets, disposed of Eduardo's clothes
\par through a church in town that distributed to the needy, and in general
\par made the place their own. They didn't intend to register Toby for
\par school until the following week, giving him time to adjust to their new
\par life. He was thrilled to be free while other boys his age were trapped
\par in third-grade classrooms.
\par On Wednesday the moving company arrived with the small shipment from
\par Los Angeles: the rest of their clothes, their books, Heather's
\par computers and related equipment, Toby's toys and games, and the other
\par items they hadn't been willing to give away or sell. The presence of a
\par greater number of their familiar possessions made the new house seem
\par more like home.
\par Although the days became chillier and more overcast as the week waned,
\par Heather's mood remained bright and cheerful. She was not troubled by
\par anxiety attacks like the one she'd experienced when Paul Youngblood had
\par first shown them around the property Monday evening, day by day that
\par paranoid episode faded from her thoughts..She swept away spiderwebs and desiccated insect prey in the back
\par stairs, washed the spiraling treads with pungent ammonia water, and rid
\par that space of mustiness and the faint odor of decay. No uncanny
\par feelings overcame her, and it was hard to believe that she'd felt a
\par superstitious dread of the stairs when she'd first descended them
\par behind Paul and Toby.
\par From a few second-floor windows, she could see the graveyard on the
\par knoll. It didn't strike her as macabre any longer, because of what
\par Paul had said about ranchers' attachment to the land that had sustained
\par their families for generations. In the dysfunctional family in which
\par she'd been raised, and in Los Angeles, there had been so little
\par tradition and such a weak sense of belonging anywhere or to anything
\par that these ranchers' love of home seemed touching--even spiritually
\par uplifting-- rather than morbid or strange.
\par Heather cleaned out the refrigerator too, and they filled it with
\par healthy foods for quick breakfasts and lunches. The freezer
\par compartment was already half filled with packaged dinners, but she
\par delayed doing an inventory because more important tasks awaited her.
\par Four evenings in a row, too weary from their chores to cook, they drove
\par into Eagle's Roost to eat at the Main Street Diner, owned and operated
\par by the steer that could drive a car and do math and dance. The food
\par was first-rate country cooking.
\par The sixteen-mile journey was insignificant. In southern California, a
\par trip had been measured not by distance but by the length of time needed
\par to complete it, and even a quick jaunt to the market, in city traffic,
\par had required half an hour. A sixteen-mile drive from one point in L.A.
\par to another could take an hour, two hours, or eternity, depending on
\par traffic and the violent tendencies of other motorists. Who knew?
\par However, they could routinely drive to Eagle's Roost in twenty or
\par twenty-five minutes, which seemed like nothing. The perpetually
\par uncrowded highways were exhilarating.
\par Friday night, as on every night since they'd arrived in Montana,
\par Heather fell asleep without difficulty. For the first time, however,
\par her sleep was troubled.... in her dream, she was in a cold place
\par blacker than a moonless and overcast night, blacker than a windowless
\par room. She was feeling her way forward, as if she had been stricken
\par blind, curious but at first unafraid. She was actually smiling,
\par because she was convinced that something wonderful awaited her in a
\par warm, welllighted place beyond the darkness. Treasure. Pleasure.
\par Enlightenment, peace, joy, and transcendence waiting for her, if she
\par could find her way. Sweet peace, freedom from fear, freedom forever,
\par enlightenment, joy, pleasure more intense than any she had ever known,
\par waiting, waiting.
\par But she fumbled through the impenetrable darkness, feeling with hands
\par extended in front of her, always moving in the wrong direction, turning
\par this way and that, that way and this. Curiosity became overpowering
\par desire. She wanted whatever lay beyond the wall of night, wanted it as
\par badly as she had ever wanted anything in her life, more than food or.love or wealth or happiness, for it was all those things and more.
\par Find the door, the door and the light beyond, the wonderful door,
\par beautiful light, peace and joy, freedom and pleasure, release from
\par sorrow. transformation, so close, achingly close, reach out, reach.
\par Want became need, compulsion became obsession. She had to have
\par whatever awaited hen -joy, peace, freedom--so she ran into the cloying
\par blackness, heedless of danger, plunged forward, frantic to find the
\par way, the path, the truth, the door, joy forever, no more fear of death,
\par no fear of anything, paradise, sought it with increasing desperation,
\par but ran always away from it instead.
\par Now a voice called to her, strange and wordless, frightening but
\par alluring, trying to show her the way, joy and peace and an end to all
\par sadness. Just accept. Accept. It was reaching out for her, if only
\par she would turn the right way, find it, touch it, embrace it. She
\par stopped running. Abruptly she realized that she didn't have to seek
\par the gift after all, for she was standing in Its presence, in the house
\par of joy, the palace of peace, the kingdom of enlightenment. All that
\par she had to do was let it in, open a door within herself and let it in,
\par let it in, open herself to inconceivable joy, paradise, paradise,
\par paradise, surrender to pleasure and happiness. She wanted it, she
\par really did oh-so-eagerly want it, because life was hard when it didn't
\par have to be But some stubborn part of her resisted the gift, some teful
\par and proud part of her complex self.
\par She sensed frustration of him who wished to give this gift, the iver in
\par the darkness, felt frustration and maybe anger, she said, I'm sorry,
\par I'm so sorry.
\par Now the gift--joy, peace, love, pleasure--was thrust on her with
\par tremendous force, brutal and unrelenting ressure, until she felt she
\par would be crushed by it. The darkness around her acquired weight, as if
\par she lay deep in a fathomless sea, though it was far heavier and
\par thicker than water, surrounding her, smothing, crushing. Must submit,
\par useless to resist, let it in, submission was peace, submission was joy,
\par paradise, paradise. Refusal to submit would mean pain beyond anything
\par she could imagine, despair and agony as only hose in hell knew it, so
\par she must submit, open the door within herself, let it in, accept, be at
\par peace.
\par Hammering Dn her soul, ramming and pounding, fierce and irresistible
\par hammering, hammering: Let it in, let it in, in, In. ... IT ... IN.
\par Suddenly she found the secret door within herself, pathway to joy, gate
\par to peace eternal. She seized the knob, twisted, heard the latch click,
\par pulled inward, shaking with anticipation. Through the slowly widening
\par crack: a glimpse of the Giver.
\par Glistening and dark. Writhing and quick. Hiss of triumph. Coldness
\par at the threshold. Slam the door, slam the door, slam the door,
\par slamthedoor-- ..
\par Heather exploded from sleep, cast back the covers, rolled out of bed
\par onto her feet in one fluid and frantic movement. Her booming heart
\par kept knocking the breath out of her as she tried to inhale. A dream..Only a dream. But no dream in her experience had ever been so
\par intense.
\par Maybe the thing beyond the door had followed her out of sleep into the
\par real world. Crazy thought. Couldn't shake it.
\par Wheezing thinly, she fumbled with the nightstand lamp, found the
\par switch. The light revealed no nightmare creatures. Just Jack. Asleep
\par on his stomach, head turned away from her, snoring softly. She managed
\par to draw a breath, though her heart continued to pound. She was damp
\par with sweat and couldn't stop shivering.
\par Jesus. Not wanting to wake Jack, Heather switched off the lamp--and
\par twitched as darkness fell around her. She sat on the edge of the bed,
\par intending to perch there until her heart stopped racing and the shakes
\par passed, then pull a robe over her pajamas and go downstairs to read
\par until morning. According to the luminous green numbers on the digital
\par alarm clock, it was 3:09 A.M but she was not going to be able to get
\par back to sleep. No way. She might be unable to sleep even tomorrow
\par night. She remembered the glistening, writhing, half-seen presence on
\par the threshold and the bitter cold that flowed from it. The touch of it
\par was still within her, a lingering chill. Disgusting. She felt
\par contaminated, dirty inside, where she could never wash the corruption
\par away.
\par Deciding that she needed a hot shower, she got up from the bed.
\par Disgust swiftly ripened into nausea. In the dark bathroom she was
\par racked by dry heaves at left a bitter taste. After turning on the
\par light only enough to find the bottle of mouthwash, she rinsed away the
\par bitterness. In the dark again, she repeatedly bathed her face in
\par handfuls of cold water. She sat on the edge of the tub. She dried her
\par face on a towel. As she waited for calm to return, she tried to figure
\par out why a mere dream could have had such a powerful effect on her, but
\par there was no understanding.
\par In a few minutes, when she'd regained her composure, she quietly
\par returned to the bedroom. Jack was still snoring softly. Her robe was
\par draped over the back of a Queen Anne chair. She picked it up, slipped
\par out of the room, and eased the door shut behind her.
\par In the hall, she pulled on the robe and belted it. Although she'd
\par intended to go downstairs, brew a pot of coffee, and read, she turned
\par instead toward Toby's room at the end of the hall. Try as she might,
\par Heather was unable to extinguish completely the fear from the
\par nightmare, and her simmering anxiety began to focus on her son.
\par Toby's door was ajar, and his room was not entirely - dark Since moving
\par to the ranch, he had chosen to sleep with a night-light again, although
\par he had given up that security a year ago. Heather and Jack were
\par surprised but not particularly concerned by the boy's loss of
\par confidence. They assumed, once he adjusted to his surroundings he
\par would again prefer darkness to the red glow of the low-wattage bulb
\par that was plugged into a wall socket near the floor.
\par Toby was tucked under his covers, only his head exposed on the.pillow.
\par His breathing was so shallow that to hear it, Heather had to bend close
\par to him.
\par Nothing in the room was other than it ought to have been, but she
\par hesitated to leave. Mild apprehension continued to tug at her.
\par Finally, as Heather reluctantly retreated to the open hall door, she
\par heard a soft scrape that halted her. She turned to the bed, where Toby
\par had not awakened, had not moved.
\par Even as she glanced at her son, however, she realized that the noise
\par had come from the back stairs. It had been the sly, stealthy scrape of
\par something hard, perhaps a boot heel, dragged across a wooden
\par step-recognizable because of the air space under each stair tread,
\par which lent the sound a distinctive hollow quality.
\par She was instantly afflicted by the same distress that she'd not felt
\par while cleaning the stairs but that had plagued her on Monday when she'd
\par followed Paul Youngblood and Toby down that curving well. The sweaty
\par paranoid conviction that somebody-- something?--was waiting around the
\par next turn. Or descending behind them. An enemy possessed by a
\par singular rage and capable of extreme violence.
\par She stared at the closed door at the head of those stairs. It was
\par painted white, but it reflected the red glow of the night-light and
\par seemed almost to shimmer like a portal of fire. She waited for another
\par sound. Toby sighed in his sleep.
\par Just a sigh. Nothing more. Silence again. Heather supposed she could
\par have been wrong, could have heard an innocent sound from
\par outside--perhaps a night bird settling onto the roof with a rustle of
\par feathers and a scratching of claws against shingles--and could have
\par mistakenly transposed the noise to the stairwell. She was jumpy
\par because of the nightmare.
\par Her perceptions might not be entirely trustworthy. She certainly
\par wanted to believe she had been wrong. Creak-creak. No mistaking it
\par this time. The new sound was quieter than the first, but it definitely
\par came from behind the door at the head of the back stairs. She
\par remembered how some of the wooden treads creaked when she had first
\par descended to the ground floor during the tour on Monday and how they
\par groaned and complained when she had been cleaning them on Wednesday.
\par She wanted to snatch Toby from the bed, take him out of the room, go
\par quickly down the hall to the master bedroom, and wake Jack. However,
\par she had never run from anything in her life. During the crises of the
\par past eight months, she'd developed considerably more inner strength and
\par self-confidence than ever before. Although the skin on the back of her
\par neck tingled as if alive with crawling hairy spiders, she actually blushed at
\par the mental image of herself fleeing like the frail-hearted damsel of a
\par bad gothic-romance novel, spooked out of her wits by nothing more
\par menacing than a strange sound.
\par Instead, she went to the stairwell door. The dead-bolt lock was
\par securely engaged. She put her left ear to the crack between door and.jamb. The faintest draft of cold air seeped through from the far side,
\par but no sound came with it.
\par As she listened, she suspected that the intruder was on the upper
\par landing of the stairwell, inches from her with only the door between
\par them. She could easily imagine him there, a dark and strange figure,
\par his head against the door just as hers was, his ear pressed to the
\par crack, listening for a sound from her.
\par Nonsense. The scraping and creaking had been nothing more than
\par settling noises.
\par Even old houses continued to settle under the unending press of
\par gravity. That damned dream had really spooked her.
\par Toby muttered wordlessly in his sleep. She turned her head to look at
\par him. He didn't move, and after a few seconds his murmuring subsided.
\par Heather backed up one step and considered the door for a moment. She
\par didn't want to endanger Toby, but she was beginning to feel more
\par ridiculous than afraid. Just a door. Just a staircase at the back of
\par the house. Just an ordinary night, a dream, a bad case of jumpy
\par nerves. She put one hand on the knob, the other on the thumb-turn of
\par the dead-bolt lock. The brass hardware was cool under her fingers.
\par She remembered the urgent need that had possessed her in the dream: Let
\par it in, let it in, let it in. That had been a dream. This was
\par reality.
\par People who couldn't tell them apart were housed in rooms with padded
\par walls, tended by nurses with fixed smiles and soft voices. Let it
\par in.
\par She disengaged the lock, turned the knob, hesitated. Let it in.
\par Exasperated with herself, she yanked open the door. She'd forgotten
\par the stairwell lights would be off. That narrow shaft was windowless,
\par no ambient light leached into it from outside. The red radiance in the
\par bedroom was too weak to cross the threshold.
\par She stood face-to-face with perfect darkness, unable to tell if
\par anything loomed on the upper steps or even on the landing immediately
\par before her. Out of the gloom wafted the repulsive odor that she'd
\par eradicated two days before with hard work and ammonia water, not strong
\par but not as faint as before, either: the vile aroma of rotting meat.
\par Maybe she had only dreamed that she'd awakened but was still in the
\par grip of the nightmare. Her heart slammed against her breastbone, her
\par breath caught in her throat, and she groped for the light switch, which
\par was on her side of the door. If it had been on the other side, she
\par might not have had the courage to reach into that coiled blackness to
\par feel for it.
\par She missed it on the first and second tries, dared not look away from
\par the darkness before her, felt blindly where she recalled having seen
\par it, almost shouted at Toby to wake up and run, at last found the
\par switch--thank God-clicked it. Light. The deserted landing. Nothing.there. Of course. What else?
\par Empty steps curving down and out of sight. A stair tread creaked
\par below. Oh, Jesus. She stepped onto the landing. She wasn't wearing
\par slippers. The wood was cool and rough under her bare feet. Another
\par creak, softer than before.
\par Settling noises. Maybe. She moved off the landing, keeping her left
\par hand against the concave curve of the outer wall to steady herself.
\par Each step that she descended brought a new step into view ahead of
\par her.
\par At the first glimpse of anyone, she would turn and run back up the
\par stairs, into Toby's room, throw the door shut, snap the dead bolt in
\par place. The lock couldn't be opened from the stairwell, only from
\par inside the house, so they would be safe. From below came a furtive
\par click, a faint thud--as of a door being pulled shut as quietly as
\par possible.
\par Suddenly she was less disturbed by the prospect of confrontation than
\par by the possibility that the episode would end inconclusively. Needing
\par to know, one way or the other, Heather shook off timidity. She ran
\par down the stairs, making more than enough noise to reveal her presence,
\par along the convex curve of the inner wall, around, around, into the
\par vestibule at the bottom. Deserted. She tried the door to the
\par kitchen.
\par It was locked and required a key to be opened from this side. She had
\par no key. Presumably, an intruder would not have one, either.
\par The other door led to the back porch. On this side, the dead bolt
\par operated with a thumb-turn. It was locked. She disengaged it, pulled
\par open the door, stepped onto the porch. Deserted. And as far as she
\par could see, no one was sprinting away across the backyard. Besides,
\par although an intruder would not have needed a key to exit by that door,
\par he would have needed one to lock it behind him, for it operated only
\par with a key from the outside.
\par Somewhere an owl issued a mournful interrogative. Windless, cold, and
\par humid, the night air seemed not like that of the outdoors but like the
\par dank and ever so slightly fetid atmosphere of a cellar. She was
\par alone.
\par But she didn't feel alone.
\par She felt . . . watched. . "For God's sake, Heth," she said, "what the
\par hell's the matter with you?" She retreated into the vestibule and
\par locked the door. She stared at the gleaming brass thumb-turn,
\par wondering if her imagination had seized on a few perfectly natural
\par noises to conjure a threat that had even less substance than a ghost.
\par The rotten smell lingered. Yes, well, perhaps the ammonia water had
\par not been able to banish the odor for more than a day or two. A rat or
\par another small animal might be dead and decomposing inside the wall. As
\par she turned toward the stairs, she stepped in something. She lifted her
\par left foot and studied the floor. A clod of dry earth about as large as.a plum had partially crumbled under her bare heel. Climbing to the
\par second floor, she noticed dry crumbs of earth scattered on a few of the
\par treads, which she'd failed to notice in her swift descent. The dirt
\par hadn't been there when she finished cleaning the stairwell on
\par Wednesday. She wanted to believe it was proof the intruder existed.
\par More likely, Toby had tracked a little mud in from the backyard. He
\par was usually a considerate kid, and he was neat by nature, but he was,
\par after all, only eight years old.
\par Heather returned to Toby's room, locked the door, and snapped off the
\par stairwell light. Her son was sound asleep. Feeling no less foolish
\par than confused, she went down the front stairs, directly to the
\par kitchen.
\par If the repulsive smell was a sign of the intruder's recent presence,
\par and if the slightest trace of that stink hung in the kitchen, it would
\par mean he had a key with which he'd entered from the back stairs. In
\par that case she intended to wake Jack and insist they search the house
\par top to bottom--with loaded guns.
\par The kitchen smelled fresh and clean. No crumbles of dry soil on the
\par floor, either. She was almost disappointed. She was loath to think
\par that she'd imagined everything, but the facts justified no other
\par interpretation. Imagination or not, she couldn't rid herself of the
\par feeling that she was under observation. She closed the blinds over the
\par kitchen windows. Get a grip, Heather thought. You're fifteen years
\par away from the change of life, lady, no excuse for these weird mood
\par swings. She had intended to spend the rest of the night reading, but
\par she was too agitated to concentrate on a book. She needed to keep
\par busy. While she brewed a pot of coffee, she inventoried the contents
\par of the freezer compartment in the side-by-side refrigerator.
\par There were half a dozen frozen dinners, a package of frankfurters, two
\par boxes of Green Giant white corn, one box of green beans, two of
\par carrots, and a package of Oregon blueberries, none of which Eduardo
\par Fernandez had opened and all of which they could use. On a lower
\par shelf, under a box of Eggo waffles and a pound of bacon, she found a
\par Ziploc bag that appeared to contain a legal-size tablet of yellow
\par paper. The plastic was opaque with frost, but she could vaguely see
\par that lines of handwriting filled the first page. She popped the
\par pressure seal on the bag--but then hesitated.
\par Storing the tablet in such a peculiar place was tantamount to hiding
\par it.
\par Fernandez must have considered the contents to be important and
\par extremely personal, and Heather was reluctant to invade his privacy.
\par Though dead and gone, he was the benefactor who had radically changed
\par their lives, he deserved her respect and discretion. She read the
\par first few words on the top page--My name is Eduardo Fernandez-- and
\par thumbed through the tablet, confirming it had been written by Fernandez
\par and was a lengthy document. More than two thirds of the long yellow
\par pages were filled with neat handwriting. Stifling her curiosity,
\par Heather put the tablet on top of the refrigerator, intending to give it
\par to Paul Youngblood the next time she saw him. The attorney was the.closest thing to a friend that Fernandez had known and, in his
\par professional capacity, was privy to all the old man's affairs. If the
\par contents of the tablet were important and private, only Paul had any
\par right to read them.
\par Finished with the inventory of frozen foods, she poured a cup of fresh
\par coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and began to make a list of needed
\par groceries and household supplies. Come morning, they would drive to
\par the supermarket in Eagle's Roost and stock not only the refrigerator
\par but the half-empty shelves of the pantry. She wanted to be well
\par prepared if they were cut off by deep snow for any length of time
\par during the winter.
\par She paused in her listmaking to scribble a note, reminding Jack to
\par schedule an appointment next week with Parker's Garage for the
\par installation of a plow on the front of the Explorer. Initially, as she
\par sipped her coffee and composed her list, she was alert for any peculiar
\par sound. However, the task before her was so mundane that it was
\par calming, after a while, she could not sustain a sense of the uncanny.
\par In his sleep, Toby moaned softly. He said, "Go away ... go ... go away
\par ..."
\par After falling silent for a while, he pushed back the covers and got out
\par of bed.
\par In the ruddy glow of the night-light, his pale-yellow pajamas appeared
\par to be streaked with blood. He stood beside the bed, swaying as if
\par keeping time to music that only he could hear. "No," he whispered, not
\par with alarm but in a flat voice devoid of emotion. "No . .. no .. . no
\par . . ." Lapsing into silence again, he walked to the window and gazed
\par into the night.
\par At the top of the yard, nestled among the pines at the edge of the
\par forest, the caretaker's house was no longer dark and deserted. Strange
\par light, as purely blue as a gas flame, shot into the night from cracks
\par around the edges of the plywood rectangles that covered the windows,
\par from under the front door, and even from the top of the replace
\par chimney. "Ah," Toby said. The light was not of constant intensity but
\par sometimes flickered, sometimes throbbed. Periodically, even the
\par narrowest of the escaping beams were so bright that staring at them was
\par painful, although occasionally they grew so dim they seemed about to be
\par extinguished.
\par Even at its brightest, it was a cold light, giving no impression
\par whatsoever of heat. Toby watched for a long time. Eventually the
\par light faded. The caretaker's house became dark once more.
\par The boy returned to the bed. The night passed.
\par CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
\par Saturday morning began with sunshine. A cold breeze swept out of the
\par northwest, and periodic flocks of dark birds wheeled across the sky
\par from the forested Rockies toward the descending land in the east, as if
\par fleeing a predator. The radio weatherman on a station in Butte--to
\par which Heather and Jack listened as they showered and dressed--predicted.snow by nightfall. This was, he said, one of the earliest storms in
\par years, and the total accumulation might reach ten inches. Judging by
\par the tone of the report, a ten-inch snowfall was not regarded as a
\par blizzard in these northern climes. There was no talk of anticipated
\par road closures, no references to rural areas that might be snowbound. A
\par second storm was rolling toward them in the wake of the first, though
\par expected to arrive early Monday, it was apparently a weaker front than
\par the one that would hit by evening.
\par Sitting on the edge of the bed, bending forward to tie the laces of her
\par Nikes, Heather said, "Hey, we've gotta get a couple of sleds." Jack
\par was at his open closet, removing a red-and brown-checkered flannel
\par shirt from a hanger.
\par "You sound like a little kid."
\par "Well, it is my first snow."
\par "That's right. I forgot."
\par In Los Angeles in the winter, when the smog cleared enough to expose
\par them, white-capped mountains served s a distant backdrop to the city,
\par and that was the closest she had ever gotten to snow. She wasn't a
\par skier. She'd never been to Arrowhead or Big Bear except in the summer,
\par and she was as excited as a kid about the oncoming storm.
\par Finishing with her shoelaces, she said, "We've got to make an
\par appointment with Parker's Garage to get that plow on the Explorer
\par before the real winter gets here."
\par "Already did," Jack said. "Ten o'clock Thursday morning."
\par As he buttoned his shirt, he moved to the bedroom window to look out at
\par the eastern woods and southern lowlands. "This view keeps hypnotizing
\par me. I'm doing something, very busy, then I look up, catch a glimpse of
\par it through a window, from the porch, and I just stand and stare."
\par Heather moved behind him, put her arms around him, and looked past him
\par at the striking panorama of woods and fields and wide blue sky. "Is it
\par going to be good?" she asked after a while. "It's going to be
\par great.
\par This is where we belong. Don't you feel that way?" -- "Yes," she
\par said, with only the briefest hesitation.
\par In daylight, the events of the previous night seemed immeasurably less
\par threatening and more surely the work of an overactive imagination. She
\par had seen nothing, after all, and didn't even know quite what she had
\par expected to see.
\par Lingering city jitters complicated by a nightmare. Nothing more.
\par "This is where we belong." He turned, embraced her, and they kissed.
\par She moved her hands in lazy circles on his back, gently massaging his
\par muscles, which his exercise program had toned and rebuilt. He felt so
\par good. Exhausted from traveling and from settling in, they had not made.love since the night before they'd left Los Angeles. As soon as they
\par made the house their own in that way, it would be theirs in every way,
\par and her peculiar uneasiness would probably disappear. He slid his
\par strong hands down her sides to her hips. He pulled her against him.
\par Punctuating his whispered words with soft kisses to her throat, cheeks,
\par eyes, and the corners of her mouth, he said, "How about tonight ...
\par when the snow's falling ... after we've had . . . a glass of wine or
\par two . . . by the fire . ..
\par romantic music ... on the radio ... when we're feeling relaxed . .
\par ."
\par "...
\par relaxed," she said dreamily. "Then we get together ..."
\par "... mmmmmmm, together ..."
\par ". . . and we have a really wonderful, wonderful . . ."
\par "... wonderful..."
\par "Snowball fight." She smacked him playfully on the cheek. "Beast.
\par I'll have rocks in my snowballs."
\par "Or we could make love."
\par "Sure you don't want to go outside and make snow angels?"
\par "Not now that I've taken more time to think about
\par "Get dressed,
\par smartass. We've got shopping to do."
\par Heather found Toby in the living room, dressed for the day. He was on
\par the floor in front of the TV, watching a program with the sound off.
\par "Big snow's coming tonight," she told him from the archway, expecting
\par his excitement to exceed her own -because this also would be his first
\par experience with a white winter. He didn't respond. "We're going to
\par buy a couple of sleds when we go to town, be ready for tomorrow." He
\par was as still as stone. His attention remained entirely on the
\par screen.
\par From where she stood, Heather couldn't see what show had so gripped
\par him. "Toby?" She stepped out of the archway and into the living
\par room.
\par "Hey, kiddo, what're you watching?" He acknowledged her at last as she
\par approached him. "Don't know what it is." His eyes appeared to be out
\par of focus, as though he wasn't actually seeing her, and he gazed once
\par more at the television..The screen was filled with a constantly evolving flow of arabic forms,
\par reminiscent of those Lava lamps that had once been so popular. The
\par lamps had always been in two colors, however, while this display
\par progressed in infinite shades of all the primary colors, now bright,
\par now dark. Ever-changing shapes melted together, curled and flexed,
\par streamed and spurted, drizzled and purled and throbbed in a ceaseless
\par exhibition of amorphic chaos, surging at a frenzied pace for a few
\par seconds, then oozing sluggishly, then faster again.
\par "What is this?" Heather asked. Toby shrugged. Endlessly recomposing
\par itself, the colorful curvilinear abstract was interesting to watch and
\par frequently beautiful.
\par The longer she stared at it, however, the more disturbing it became,
\par although for no reason she could discern. Nothing in its patterns was
\par inherently ominous or menacing. Indeed, the fluid and dreamy
\par intermingling of forms should have been restful.
\par "Why do you have the sound turned down?"
\par "Don't." She squatted next to him, picked up the remote control from
\par the carpet, and depressed the volume button.
\par The only sound was the faint static hiss of the speakers. She scanned
\par just one channel farther up on the dial, and the booming voice of an
\par excited sportscaster and the cheering of a crowd at a football game
\par exploded through the living room.
\par She quickly decreased the volume. When she scanned back to the
\par previous channel, the Technicolor Lava lamp was gone. A Daffy Duck
\par cartoon filled the screen instead and, judging by the frenetic pace of
\par the action, was drawing toward a pyrotechnic conclusion.
\par 
\par "That was odd," she said. "I liked it," Toby said. She scanned
\par farther down the dial, then farther up than before, but she could not
\par find the strange display.
\par She hit the Off button, and the screen went dark.
\par "Well, anyway," she said, "time to grab breakfast, so we can get on
\par with the day. Lots to do in town. Don't want to run out of time to
\par buy those sleds."
\par "Buy what?" the boy asked as he got to his feet. "Didn't you hear me
\par before?"
\par "I guess."
\par "About snow?" His small face brightened. "It's gonna snow?"
\par "You must have enough wax built up in your ears to make the world's
\par biggest candle," she said, heading for the kitchen. Following her,
\par Toby said, "When? When's it gonna snow, Mom? Huh? Today?"
\par "We could stick a wick in each of your ears, put a match to them, and
\par have candlelight dinners for the rest of the decade."."How much snow?"
\par "Probably dead snails in there too."
\par "Just flurries or a big storm?"
\par "Maybe a dead mouse or three."
\par "Mom?" he said exasperatedly, entering the kitchen behind her. She
\par spun around, crouched in front of him, and held her hand above his
\par knee. "Up to here, maybe higher."
\par "Really?"
\par "We'll go sledding."
\par "Wow."
\par "Build a snowman."
\par "Snowball fight!" he challenged. "Okay, me and Dad against you."
\par "No fair!" He ran to the window and pressed his face to the glass.
\par "The sky's blue."
\par "Won't be in a little while. Guarantee," she said, going to the
\par pantry. "You want shredded wheat for breakfast or cornflakes?"
\par "Doughnuts and chocolate milk."
\par "Fat chance."
\par "Worth a try. Shredded wheat."
\par "Good boy."
\par "Whoa!" he said in surprise, taking a step back from the window.
\par "Mom, look at this."
\par "What is it?"
\par "Look, quick, look at this bird. He just landed right smack in front
\par of me." Heather joined him near the window and saw a crow perched on
\par the other side of the glass. Its head was cocked, and it regarded them
\par curiously with one eye. Toby said, "He just zoomed right at me,
\par whoooosh, I thought he was gonna smash through the window. What's he
\par doing?"
\par "Probably looking for worms or tender little bugs."
\par "I don't look like any bug."
\par "Maybe he saw those snails in your ears," she said, returning to the
\par pantry..While Toby helped Heather set the table for breakfast, the crow
\par remained at the window, watching. "He must be stupid," Toby said, "if
\par he thinks we have worms and bugs in here."
\par "Maybe he's refined, civilized, heard me say cornflakes."
\par " While they filled bowls with cereal, the big crow stayed at the
\par window, occasionally preening its feathers but mostly watching them
\par with one coal-dark eye or the other.
\par Whistling, Jack came down the front stairs, along the hall, into the
\par kitchen, and said, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. Can we have
\par eggs and horse for breakfast?"
\par "How about eggs and crow?" Toby asked, pointing to the visitor.
\par "He's a fat and sassy specimen, isn't he?" Jack said, moving to the
\par window and crouching to get a close look at the bird.
\par "Mom, look! Dad's in a staring contest with a bird," Toby said,
\par amused. Jack's face was no more than an inch from the window, and the
\par bird fixed him with one inky eye. Heather took four slices of bread
\par out of the bag, dropped them in the big toaster, adjusted the dial,
\par depressed the plunger, and looked up to see that Jack and the crow were
\par still eye-to-eye. "I think Dad's gonna lose," Toby said.
\par Jack snapped one finger against the windowpane directly in front of the
\par crow, but the bird didn't flinch. "Bold little devil," Jack said.
\par With a lightning-quick dart of its head, the crow pecked the glass in
\par front of Jack's face so hard that the tock of bill against pane
\par startled him into a backward step that, in his crouch, put him off
\par balance. He fell on his butt on the kitchen floor. The bird leaped
\par away from the window with a great flapping of wings and vanished into
\par the sky.
\par Toby burst into laughter. Jack crawled after him on hands and knees.
\par "Oh, you think that was funny, do you? I'll show you what's funny,
\par I'll show you the infamous Chinese tickle torture." Heather was
\par laughing too. Toby scampered to the hall door, looked back, saw Jack
\par coming, and ran to another room, giggling and shrieking with delight.
\par Jack scrambled to his feet. In a hunchbacked crouch, growling like a
\par troll, he scuttled after his son. "Do I have one little boy on my
\par hands or two?" Heather called after Jack as he disappeared into the
\par hall.
\par "Two!" he replied. The toast popped up. She put the four crisp
\par pieces on a plate and slipped four more slices of bread into the
\par toaster. Much giggling and maniacal cackling was coming from the front
\par of the house. Heather went to the window. The tock of the bird's bill
\par had been so loud that she more than half expected to see a crack in the
\par glass. But the pane was intact. On the sill outside lay a single
\par black feather, rocking gently in a breeze that could not quite pluck it
\par out of its sheltered niche and whirl it away..She put her face to the window and peered up at the sky. High in that
\par blue vault, a single dark bird carved a tight circle, around and
\par around. It was too far away for her to be able to tell if it was the
\par same crow or another bird.
\par CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
\par They stopped at Mountain High Sporting Goods and purchased two sleds
\par (wide, flat runners, clear pine with polyurethane finish, a red
\par lightning bolt down the center of each), as well as insulated ski
\par suits, boots, and gloves -for all of them.
\par Toby saw a big Frisbee specially painted to look like a yellow flying
\par saucer, with portholes along the rim and a low red dome on top, and
\par they bought that too.
\par At the Union 76, they filled the fuel tank, and then went on a marathon
\par shopping expedition at the supermarket. When they returned to
\par Quartermass Ranch at one-fifteen, only the eastern third of the sky
\par remained blue. Masses of gray clouds churned across the mountains,
\par driven by a fierce high-altitude wind--though at ground level, only an
\par erratic breeze gently stirred the evergreens and shivered the brown
\par grass. The temperature had fallen below freezing, and the accuracy of
\par the weathermans prediction was manifest in the cold, humid air.
\par Toby went immediately to his room, dressed in his new red-and-black ski
\par suit, boots, and gloves. He returned to the kitchen with his Frisbee
\par to announce that he was going out to play and to wait for the snow to
\par start falling.
\par Heather and Jack were still unpacking groceries and arranging supplies
\par in the pantry. She said, "Toby, honey, you haven't had lunch yet."
\par "I'm not hungry.
\par I'll just take a raisin cookie with me." She paused to pull up the
\par hood on Toby's jacket and tie it under his chin. "Well, all right, but
\par don't stay out there too long at a stretch. When you get cold, come in
\par and warm up a little, then go back out. We don't want your nose
\par freezing and falling off." She gave his nose a gentle tweak. He
\par looked so cute. Like a gnome. "Don't throw the Frisbee toward the
\par house," Jack warned him. "Break a window, and we'll show no mercy.
\par We'll call the police, have you committed to the Montana Prison for the
\par Criminally Insane."
\par As she gave Toby two raisin cookies, Heather said, "And don't go into
\par the woods."
\par "All right."
\par "Stay in the yard."
\par "I will."
\par "I mean it." The woods worried her. This was different from her
\par recent irrational spells of paranoia..There were good reasons to be cautious of the forest. Wild animals,
\par for one thing. And city people, like them, could get disoriented and
\par lost only a few hundred feet into the trees.
\par "The Montana Prison for the Criminally Insane has no TV, chocolate
\par milk, or cookies."
\par "Okay, okay. Sheeeesh, I'm not a baby."
\par "No," Jack said, as he fished cans out of a shopping bag. "But to a
\par bear, you are a tasty-looking lunch."
\par "There's bears in the woods?" Toby asked. "Are there birds in the
\par sky?" Jack asked. "Fish in the sea so stay in the yard," Heather
\par reminded him. "Where I can find you easy, where I can see you." As he
\par opened the back door, Toby turned to his father and said, "You better
\par be careful too."
\par "Me?"
\par "That bird might come back and knock you on your 6s again." Jack
\par pretended he was going to throw the can of beans that he was holding,
\par and Toby ran from the house, giggling. The door banged shut behind
\par him.
\par Later, after their purchases had been put away, Jack went into the
\par study to examine Eduardo's book collection and select a novel to read,
\par while Heather went upstairs to the guest bedroom where she was setting
\par up -her array of computers.
\par They had taken the spare bed out and moved it to the cellar. The two
\par six-foot folding tables, which had been among the goods delivered by
\par the movers, now stood in place of the bed and formed an L-shaped work
\par area. She'd unpacked her three computers, two printers, laser scanner,
\par and associated equipment, but until now she'd had no chance to make
\par connections and plug them in. As of that moment, she really had no use
\par for such a high-tech array of computing power. She had worked on
\par software and program design virtually all of her adult life, however,
\par and she didn't feel complete with her machines disconnected and boxed
\par up, regardless of whether or not she had an immediate project that
\par required them.
\par She set to work, positioning the equipment, linking monitors to logic
\par units, logic units to printers, one of the printers and logic units to
\par the scanner, all the while happily humming old Elton John songs.
\par Eventually she and Jack would investigate business opportunities and
\par decide what to do with the rest of their lives. By then the phone
\par company would have installed another line, and the modem would be in
\par operation. She could use data networks to research what population
\par base and capitalization any given business required for success, as
\par well as find answers to hundreds if not thousands of other questions
\par that would influence their decisions and improve their chances for
\par success in whatever enterprise they chose.
\par Rural Montana enjoyed as much access to knowledge as Los Angeles or.Manhattan or Oxford University. The only things needed were a
\par telephone line, a modem, and a couple of good database subscriptions.
\par At three o'clock, after she'd been working about an hour--the equipment
\par connected, everything working-- Heather got up from her chair and
\par stretched.
\par Flexing the muscles in her back, she went to the window to see if
\par flurries had begun to fall ahead of schedule.
\par The November sky was low, a uniform shade of lead gray, like an immense
\par plastic panel behind which glowed arrays of dull fluorescent tubes.
\par She fancied that she would have recognized it as a snow sky even if she
\par hadn't heard the forecast. It looked as cold as ice. In that bleak
\par light, the higher woods appeared to be more gray than green.
\par The backyard and, to the south, the brown fields seemed barren rather
\par than merely dormant in anticipation of the spring.
\par Although the landscape was nearly as monochromatic as a charcoal
\par drawing, it was beautiful. A different beauty from that which it
\par offered under the warm caress of the sun. Stark, somber, broodingly
\par majestic. She saw a small spot of color to the south, on the cemetery
\par knoll not far from the perimeter of the western rest. Bright red. It
\par was Toby in his new ski suit.
\par He was standing inside the foot-high fieldstone wall. I should have
\par told him to stay away from there, Heather thought with a twinge of
\par apprehension. Then she wondered at her uneasiness. Why should the
\par cemetery seem any more dangerous to her than the yard immediately
\par outside its boundaries? She didn't believe in ghosts or haunted
\par places.
\par The boy stood at the grave markers, utterly still. She watched him for
\par a minute, a minute and a half, but he didn't move. For an
\par eight-year-old, who usually had more energy than a nuclear plant, that
\par was an extraordinary period of inactivity. The gray sky settled lower
\par while she watched. The land darkened subtly. Toby stood unmoving.
\par The arctic air didn't bother Jack--invigorated him, in fact--except
\par that it penetrated especially deeply into the thighbones and scar
\par tissue of his left leg. He did not have to limp, however, as he
\par ascended the hill to the private graveyard. He passed between the
\par four-foot-high stone posts that, gateless, marked the entrance to the
\par burial ground. His breath puffed from his mouth in frosty plumes.
\par Toby was standing at the foot of the fourth grave in the line of
\par four.
\par His arms hung straight at his sides, his head was bent, and his eyes
\par were fixed on the headstone. The Frisbee was on the ground beside
\par him.
\par He breathed so shallowly that he produced only a faint mustache of
\par steam that repeatedly evaporated as each brief exhalation became a soft
\par inhalation.."What's up?" Jack asked.
\par The boy did not respond.
\par The nearest headstone, at which Toby stared, was engraved with the name
\par THOMAS FERNANDEZ and the dates of birth and death. Jack didn't need
\par the marker to remind him of the date of death, it was carved on his own
\par memory far deeper than the numbers were cut into the granite before
\par him.
\par Since they'd arrived Tuesday morning, after staying the night with Paul
\par and Carolyn Youngblood, Jack had been too busy to inspect the private
\par cemetery.
\par Furthermore, he'd not been eager to stand in front of Tommy's grave,
\par where memories of blood and loss and despair were certain to assail
\par him.
\par To the left of Tommy's marker was a double stone. It bore the names of
\par his parents--EDUARDO and MARGARITE. Though Eduardo had been in the
\par ground only a few months, Tommy for a year, and Margaret for three
\par years, all of their graves looked freshly dug. The dirt was mounded
\par unevenly, and no grass grew on it, which seemed odd, because the fourth
\par grave was flat and covered with silky brown grass. He could understand
\par that gravediggers might have disturbed the surface of Margarite's plot
\par in order to bury Eduardo's coffin beside hers, but that didn't explain
\par the condition of Tommy's site. Jack made a mental note to ask Paul
\par Youngblood about it.
\par The last monument, at the head of the only grassy llot, belonged to
\par Stanley Quartermass, patron of them. An inscription in the weathered
\par black stone surprised a chuckle out of Jack when he least expected
\par it.
\par Here lies Stanley Quartermass dead before his time because he had to
\par work with so damned many actors and writers.
\par Toby had not moved.
\par "What're you up to?" Jack asked.
\par No answer.
\par He put one hand on Toby's shoulder.
\par "Son?"
\par Without shifting his gaze from the tombstone, the boy said, "What're
\par they doing down there?"
\par "Who? Where?"
\par "In the ground."
\par "You mean Tommy and his folks, Mr. Quartermass?"."What're they doing down there?"
\par There was nothing odd about a child wanting to fully understand
\par death.
\par It was no less a mystery to the young than to the old. What seemed
\par strange to Jack was the way the question had been phrased.
\par "Well," he said, "Tommy, his folks, Stanley Quartermass . . .
\par they aren't really here."
\par "Yes, they are."
\par "No, only their bodies are here," Jack said, gently massaging the boy's
\par shoulder.
\par "Why?"
\par "Because they were finished with them."
\par The boy was silent, brooding.
\par Was he thinking about how close his own father had come to being
\par planted under a similar stone? Maybe enough time had passed since the
\par shooting for Toby to be able to confront things that he'd been
\par repressing.
\par The mild breeze from out of the northwest stiffened slightly. Jack's
\par hands were cold. He put them in his jacket pockets and said, "Their
\par bodies weren't them, anyway, not the real them."
\par The conversation took an even stranger turn: "You mean, these weren't
\par their original bodies? These were puppets?"
\par Frowning, Jack dropped to his knees beside the boy.
\par "Puppets? That's a peculiar thing to say."
\par As if in a trance, the boy focused on Tommy's headstone. His gray-blue
\par eyes stared unblinking.
\par "Toby, are you okay?"
\par Toby still didn't look at him but said, "Surrogates?"
\par Jack blinked in surprise.
\par "Surrogates?"
\par "Were they?"
\par "That's a pretty big word. Where'd you hear that?"
\par Instead of answering him, Toby said, "Why don't they need these bodies
\par any more?".Jack hesitated, then shrugged.
\par "Well, son, you know why--they were finished with their work in this
\par world."
\par "This world?"
\par "They've gone on."
\par "Wwhere?"
\par "You've been to Sunday school. You know where."
\par "No."
\par "Sure you do."
\par "No."
\par "They've gone on to heaven."
\par "They went on?"
\par "Yes."
\par "In what bodies?"
\par Jack removed his right hand from his jacket pocket and cupped his son's
\par chin.
\par He turned the boy's head away from the gravestone, so they were
\par eye-to-eye.
\par "What's wrong, Toby?"
\par They were face-to-face, inches apart, yet Toby seemed to be looking
\par into the distance, through Jack at some far horizon.
\par "Toby?"
\par "In what bodies?"
\par Jack released the boy's chin, moved one hand back - and forth in front
\par of his face. Not a blink.
\par His eyes didn't follow the movement of the hand.
\par "In what bodies?" Toby repeated impatiently.
\par Something was wrong with the boy. Sudden psychological ailment.
\par With a catatonic aspect.
\par Toby said, "In what bodies?"
\par Jack's heart began to pump hard and fast as he stared into his son's
\par flat, unresponsive eyes, which were no longer windows on a soul but.mirrors to keep out the world.
\par If it was a psychological problem, there was no doubt about the
\par cause.
\par They'd been through a traumatic year, enough to drive a grown man--let
\par alone a child--to a breakdown.
\par But what was the trigger, why now, why here, why after all these many
\par months, during which the poor kid had seemed to cope so well?
\par "In what bodies?" Toby demanded sharply.
\par "Come on," Jack said, taking the boy's gloved hand. "Let's go back to
\par the house."
\par "In what bodies did they go on?"
\par "Toby, stop this."
\par "Need to know. Tell me now. Tell me."
\par "Oh, dear God, don't let this happen."
\par Still on his knees, Jack said, "Listen, come back to the house with me
\par so we can--" Toby wrenched his hand out of his father's grasp, leaving
\par Jack with the empty glove.
\par "In what bodies?"
\par The small face was without expression, as placid as still water, yet
\par the words burst from the boy in a tone of ice-cold rage.
\par Jack had the eerie feeling that he was conversing with a
\par ventriloquist's dummy that could not match its wooden features to the
\par tenor of its words.
\par "In what bodies?"
\par This wasn't a breakdown. A mental collapse didn't happen this
\par suddenly, completely, without warning signs.
\par "In what bodies?"
\par This wasn't Toby. Not Toby at all. Ridiculous. Of course it was
\par Toby. Who else?
\par Someone talking through Toby. Crazy thought, weird. Through Toby?
\par Nevertheless, kneeling there in the graveyard, gazing into his son's
\par eyes, Jack no longer saw the blankness of a mirror, although he was
\par aware of his own frightened eyes in twin reflections. He didn't see
\par the innocence of a child, either, or any familiar quality. He
\par perceived--or was imagining--another presence, something both less and
\par more than human, a strangeness beyond comprehension, peering out at him
\par from within Toby.."In what bodies?"
\par Jack couldn't work up any saliva. Tongue stuck to the roof of his
\par mouth. Couldn't swallow, either. He was colder than the wintry day
\par could explain. Suddenly much colder. Beyond freezing.
\par He'd never felt anything like it before. A cynical part of him thought
\par he was being ridiculous, hysterical, leting himself be swept away by
\par primitive superstition-- because he could not face the thought of Toby
\par having a psychotic episode and slipping into mental chaos. On the
\par other hand, it was precisely the primitive nature of the perception
\par that convinced him another presence shared the body of his son: he felt
\par it on a primal level, deeper than he had ever felt anything before, it
\par was a knowledge more certain than any that could be arrived at by
\par intellect, a profound and irrefutable animal instinct, as if he'd
\par captured the scent of an enemy's pheromones, his skin was tingling with
\par the vibrations of an inhuman aura. His gut clenched with fear. Sweat
\par broke out on his forehead the flesh crimped along the nape of his
\par neck.
\par He wanted to spring to his feet, scoop Toby into his arms, run down the
\par hill to the house, and remove him from the influence of the entity that
\par held him in its thrall. Ghost, demon, ancient Indian spirit?
\par No, ridiculous. But something, damn it. Something.
\par He hesitated, partly because he was transfixed by what he thought he
\par saw in the boy's eyes, partly because he feared that forcing a break of
\par the connection between Toby and whatever was linked with him would
\par somehow harm the boy, perhaps damage him mentally. Which didn't make
\par any sense, no sense at all. But then none of it made sense.
\par A dreamlike quality characterized the moment and the place. It was
\par Toby's voice, yes, but not his usual speech patterns or inflections:
\par "In what bodies did they go on from here?"
\par Jack decided to answer.
\par Holding Toby's empty glove in his hand, he had the terrible feeling
\par that he must play along or be left with a son as limp and hollow as the
\par glove, a drained shell of a boy, form without content, those beloved
\par eyes vacant forever.
\par And how insane was that? His mind spun. He seemed poised on the brink
\par of an abyss, teetering out of balance. Maybe he was the one having the
\par breakdown.
\par He said, "They didn't need bodies, Skipper. You know that. Nobody
\par needs bodies in heaven."
\par "They are bodies," the Toby-thing said cryptically. "Their bodies
\par are."
\par "Not any more. They're spirits now."
\par "Don't understand."."Sure you do. Souls. Their souls went to heaven."
\par "Bodies are."
\par "Went to heaven to be with God."
\par "Bodies are."
\par Toby stared through him. Deep in Toby's eyes, however, like a coiling
\par thread of smoke, something moved. Jack sensed that something was
\par regarding him intensely.
\par "Bodies are. Puppets are. What else?" Jack didn't know how to
\par respond.
\par The breeze coming across the flank of the sloped yard was as cold as if
\par it had skimmed over a glacier on its way to them. The Toby-thing
\par returned to the first question that it had asked: "What are they doing
\par down there?"
\par Jack glanced at the graves, then into the boy's eyes, deciding to be
\par straightforward. He wasn't actually talking to a little boy, so he
\par didn't need to use euphemisms. He was crazy, imagining the whole
\par conversation as well as the inhuman presence. Either way, what he said
\par didn't matter.
\par "They're dead."
\par "What is dead?"
\par "They are. These three people buried here."
\par "What is dead?"
\par "Lifeless."
\par "What is lifeless?"
\par "Without life."
\par "What is life?"
\par "The opposite of death."
\par "What is death?"
\par Desperately, Jack said, "Empty, hollow, rotting."
\par "Bodies are."
\par "Not forever."
\par "Bodies are."
\par "Nothing lasts forever."
\par "Everything lasts."."Nothing."
\par "Everything becomes."
\par "Becomes what?" Jack asked.
\par He was now beyond giving answers himself, was full of his own
\par questions.
\par "Everything becomes," the Toby-thing repeated.
\par "Becomes what?"
\par "Me. Everything becomes me."
\par Jack wondered what in the hell he was talking to and whether he was
\par making more sense to it than it was making to him. He began to doubt
\par that he was even awake. Maybe he'd taken a nap. If he wasn't insane,
\par perhaps he was asleep.
\par Snoring in the armchair in the study, a book in his lap.
\par Maybe Heather had never come to tell him Toby was in the cemetery, in
\par which case all he had to do was wake up.
\par The breeze felt real. Not like a dream wind. Cold, piercing. And it
\par had picked up enough speed to give it a voice. Whispering in the
\par grass, soughing in the trees along the edge of the higher woods,
\par keening softly, softly.
\par The Toby-thing said, "Suspended."
\par "What?"
\par "Different sleep."
\par Jack glanced at the graves. "No."
\par "Waiting."
\par "No."
\par "Puppets waiting."
\par "No. Dead."
\par "Tell me their secret."
\par "Dead."
\par "The secret."
\par "They're just dead."
\par "Tell me."."There's nothing to tell."
\par The boy's expression was still calm, but his face was flushed. The
\par arteries were throbbing visibly in his temples, as if his blood
\par pressure had soared off the scale.
\par "Tell me!"
\par Jack was shaking uncontrollably, increasingly frightened by the cryptic
\par nature of their exchanges, worried that he understood even less of the
\par situation than he thought he did and that his ignorance might lead him
\par to say the wrong thing and somehow put Toby into even greater danger
\par than he already was.
\par "Tell me!"
\par Overwhelmed by fear and confusion and frustration, Jack grabbed Toby by
\par the shoulders, stared into his strange eyes.
\par "Who are you?"
\par No answer.
\par "What's happened to my Toby?"
\par After a long silence: "What's the matter, Dad?"
\par Jack's scalp prickled. Being called
\par "Dad" by this thing, this hateful
\par intruder, was the worst affront yet.
\par "Dad?"
\par "Stop it."
\par "Daddy, what's wrong?"
\par But he wasn't Toby. No way. His voice still didn't have its natural
\par inflections, his face was slack, and his eyes were wrong.
\par "Dad, what're you doing?"
\par The thing in possession of Toby apparently hadn't realized that its
\par masquerade had come undone. Until now it had thought that Jack
\par believed he was speaking with his son. The parasite was struggling to
\par improve its performance.
\par "Dad, what did I do? Are you mad at me? I didn't do anything, Dad,
\par really I didn't."
\par "What are you?" Jack demanded.
\par Tears slid from the boy's eyes. But the nebulous something was behind
\par the tears, an arrogant puppetmaster confident of its ability to
\par deceive.."Where's Toby? You sonofabitch, whatever the hell you are, give him
\par back to me."
\par Jack's hair fell across his eyes. Sweat glazed his face. To anyone
\par coming upon them just then, his extreme fear would appear to be
\par dementia. Maybe it was. Either he was talking to a malevolent spirit
\par that had taken control of his son or he was insane. Which made more
\par sense?
\par "Give him to me I want him back!"
\par "Dad, you're scaring me," the Toby-thing said, trying to tear loose of
\par him.
\par "You're not my son."
\par "Dad, please!"
\par "Stop it! Don't pretend with me--you're not fooling me, for Christ's
\par sake!"
\par It wrenched free, turned, stumbled to Tommys headstone, and leaned
\par against the granite.
\par Toppled onto all fours by the force with which the boy broke away from
\par him, Jack said fiercely, "Let him go!"
\par The boy squealed, jumped as if surprised, and spun to face Jack.
\par "Dad! What're you doing here?"
\par He sounded like Toby again.
\par "Jeer, you scared me!
\par What're you sneaking in a cemetery for? Boy, that's not funny!" They
\par weren't as close as they had been, but Jack thought the child's eyes no
\par longer seemed strange, Toby peared to see him again.
\par "Holy Jeer, on your hands and knees, sneaking in a cemetery." The boy
\par was Toby again, all right. The thing that had controlled him was not a
\par good enough actor to be this convincing. Or maybe he had always been
\par Toby. The unnerving possibility of madness and delusion confronted
\par Jack again.
\par "Are you all right?" he asked, rising onto his knees once more, wiping
\par his palms on his jeans.
\par "Almost pooped my pants," Toby said, and giggled.
\par What a marvelous sound. That giggle. Sweet music. Jack clasped his
\par hands to his thighs, squeezing hard, trying to stop shaking.
\par "What're you ..." His voice was quavery. He cleared his throat.
\par "What are you doing up here?" The boy pointed to the Frisbee on the
\par dead grass. "Wind caught the flying saucer." Remaining on his knees,.Jack said, "Come here." Toby was clearly dubious. "Why?"
\par "Come here, Skipper, just come here."
\par "You going to bite my neck?"
\par "What?"
\par "You going to pretend to bite my neck or do something and scare me
\par again, like sneaking up on me, something weird like that?" Obviously,
\par the boy didn't remember their conversation while he'd been ...
\par possessed. His awareness of Jack's arrival in the graveyard began
\par when, startled, he'd spun away from the granite marker. Holding his
\par hands out, arms open, Jack said, "No, I'm not going to do anything like
\par that. Just come here."
\par Skeptical and cautious, puzzled face framed by the red hood of the ski
\par suit, Toby came to him. Jack gripped the boy by the shoulders, looked
\par into his eyes.
\par Blue-gray. Clear. No smoky spiral under the color. "What's wrong?"
\par Toby asked, frowning. "Nothing. It's okay." while first, you and
\par me?
\par A Frisbee's more fun with . Frisbee tossing, hot chocolate.
\par Normality hadn't erely returned to the day, it had crashed down like a
\par weight. Jack doubted he could have convinced anyone that he and Toby had
\par so recently been deep in the muddy river of the supernatural.
\par His own fear and his perception of uncanny forces were fading so
\par rapidly that already he could not quite recall the power of what he'd
\par felt.
\par Hard gray sky, every scrap of blue chased way beyond the eastern
\par horizon, trees shivering in the frigid breeze, brown grass, velvet
\par shadows, Frisbee games, hot chocolate: the whole world waited for the
\par first spiraling flake of winter, and no aspect of the November day
\par admitted the possibilities of ghosts, disembodied entities, possession,
\par or any other-worldly Compulsively, he pulled the boy close, hugged
\par him.
\par "Dad?" henomena whatsoever.
\par "You don't remember, do you?"
\par "Huh?"
\par "Good."
\par "Your heart's really wild," Toby said. "That's all right, I'm okay,
\par everything's okay."
\par "I'm the one scared poopless. Boy, I sure owe you one!" Jack let go
\par of his son and struggled to his feet. The sweat on his face felt like.a mask of ice. He combed his hair back with his fingers, wiped his
\par face with both hands, and blotted his palms on his jeans. "Let's go
\par back to the house and get some hot chocolate."
\par Picking up the Frisbee, Toby said, "Can't we play
\par "Can we, Dad?" Toby
\par asked, brandishing the Frisbee. "all right, for a little while. But
\par not here. Not in this . . ." It would sound so stupid to say not in
\par this graveyard. Might as well segue into one of those grotesque Stepin
\par Fetchit routines from old movies, do a double take and roll his eyes
\par and shag his arms at his sides and howl, Feets don't fail me now.
\par Instead, he said, "... not so near the woods. Maybe ... down there
\par closer to the stables." Carrying the flying-saucer Frisbee, Toby
\par sprinted between the gateless posts, out of the cemetery. "Last one
\par there's a monkey!"
\par Jack didn't chase after the boy. Hunching his shoulders against the
\par chill wind, thrusting his hands in his pockets, he stared at the four
\par graves, again troubled that only Quartermass's plot was flat and
\par grass-covered. Freakish thoughts flickered in his mind. Scenes from
\par old Boris Karloff movies. Graverobbers and ghouls. Desecration.
\par Satanic rituals in cemeteries by moonlight. Even considering the
\par experience he'd just had with Toby, his darkest thoughts seemed too
\par fanciful to explain why only one grave of four appeared long
\par undisturbed, however, he told himself that the explanation, when he
\par learned it, would be perfectly logical and not in the least creepy.
\par Fragments of the conversation he'd had with Toby echoed in his memory,
\par out of order: What are they doing down there? What is dead? What is
\par life? Nothing lasts forever. Everything lasts. Nothing. Everything
\par becomes. Becomes what? Me.
\par Everything becomes me. Jack sensed that he had enough pieces to put
\par together at least part of the puzzle. He just couldn't see how they
\par interlocked. Or wouldn't see. Perhaps he refused to put them together
\par because even the few pieces he possessed would reveal a nightmare face,
\par something better not encountered. He wanted to know, or thought he
\par did, but his subconscious overruled him.
\par As he raised his eyes from the mauled earth to the three stones, his
\par attention was caught by a fluttering object on Tommy's marker. It was
\par stuck in a narrow crack between the horizontal base and the vertical
\par slab of granite: a black feather, three inches long, stirred by the
\par breeze. Jack tilted his head back and squinted uneasily into the
\par wintry vault directly overhead.
\par The heavens hung gray and dead. Like ashes. A crematorium sky.
\par However, nothing moved above except great masses of clouds. Big storm
\par coming. He turned toward the sole break in the low stone, walked to
\par the posts, and looked downhill toward Toby had almost reached that long
\par rectangular buildg. He skidded to a halt, glanced back at his
\par laggardly father, and waved. He tossed the Frisbee straight into the
\par air. On edge, the disc knifed high, then curved toward the zenith and.caught a current of wind. Like a spacecraft from another world, it
\par whirled across the somber sky. Much higher than the greatest altitude
\par reached by the frisbee, under the pendulous clouds, a lone bird circled
\par above the boy, like a hawk maintaining surveillance of potential prey,
\par though it was likely a crow rather than a hawk. Circling and
\par circling.
\par A puzzle piece in the shape Of a black crow. Gliding on rising
\par thermals. Silent as a talker in a dream, patient and mysterious.
\par CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
\par After sending Jack to discover what Toby was doing among the
\par gravestones, Heather returned to the spare bedroom where she had been
\par working with her computers.
\par She watched from the window as Jack climbed the hill to the cemetery.
\par He stood with the boy for a minute, then knelt beside him. From a
\par distance, everything seemed all right, no sign of trouble. Evidently,
\par she'd been worried for no good reason. A lot of that going around
\par lately. She sat in her office chair, sighed at her excessive maternal
\par concern, and turned her attention to the computers.
\par For a while she searched the hard disc of each machine, ran tests, and
\par made sure the programs were in place and that nothing had crashed
\par during the move.
\par Later, she grew thirsty, and before going to the kitchen to get a
\par Pepsi, she stepped to the window to check on Jack and Toby. They were
\par almost out of her line of view, near the stables, tossing the Frisbee
\par back and forth. Judging by the heavy sky and by how icy cold the
\par window was when she touched it, snow would begin to fall soon. She was
\par eager for it.
\par Maybe the change of weather would bring a change in her mood, as well,
\par and help her finally shed the city jitters that plagued her. It ought
\par to be hard to cling to all the old paranoia-soaked expectations of life
\par in Los Angeles when they were living in a white wonderland, trkling and
\par pristine, like a sequined scene on a Christmas card.
\par In the kitchen, as she opened a can of Pepsi and poured it into a
\par glass, she heard a heavy engine approaching. Thinking it might be Paul
\par Youngblood paying an unexpected visit, she took the tablet from the top
\par of the refrigerator and put it on the counter, so she would be less
\par likely to forget to give it to him before he went home. - By the time
\par she went down the hall, opened the door, and stepped onto the front
\par porch, the vehicle pulled to a stop in front of the garage doors.
\par It wasn't Paul's white Bronco, it was a similar, metallic-blue wagon,
\par as large as the Bronco, larger than their own Explorer, but of yet
\par another model, with which she wasn't familiar. She wondered if anyone
\par in those parts ever drove cars. But of course she had seen plenty of
\par cars in town and at the supermarket.
\par Even there, however, pickup trucks and four-wheel-drive truck-style
\par wagons outnumbered automobiles..She went down the steps and crossed the yard to the driveway to greet
\par the visitor, wishing she'd paused to put on a jacket. The bitter air
\par pierced even her comfortably thick flannel shirt.
\par The man who climbed out of the wagon was about thirty, with an unruly
\par mop of brown hair, craggy features, and light-brown eyes kinder than
\par his rugged looks.
\par Closing the driver's door behind him, he smiled and said, "Howdy. You
\par must be Mrs. Mcgarvey."
\par "That's right," she said, shaking the hand he offered. "Travis
\par Potter.
\par Pleased to meet you. I'm the vet in Eagle's Roost. One of the vets.
\par A man could go to the ends of the earth, there'd still be
\par competition."
\par A big golden retriever stood in the back of the wagon. Its bushy tail
\par wagged nonstop, and it grinned at them through the side window. Seeing
\par the direction of Heather's gaze, Potter said, "Beautiful, isn't he?"
\par "They're such gorgeous dogs.
\par Is he a purebred?"
\par "Pure as they come."
\par Jack and Toby rounded the corner of the house. White clouds of breath
\par steamed from them, they had evidently run from the hillside west of the
\par stable, where they'd been playing. Heather introduced them to the
\par vet.
\par Jack dropped the Frisbee and shook hands. But Toby was so enchanted by
\par the sight of the dog that he forgot his manners and went directly to
\par the wagon to stare delightedly through the window at the occupant of
\par the cargo space.
\par Shivering, Heather said, "Dr. Potter--"
\par "Travis, please."
\par "Travis, can you come in for some coffee?"
\par "Yeah, come on in and visit a spell," Jack said, as if he had been a
\par country boy all his life. "Stay to dinner if you can."
\par "Sorry, can't," Travis said. "But thanks for the invitation. I'll
\par take a rain check, if you don't mind. Right now, I've got calls to
\par make--a couple of sick horses that need tending to, a cow with an
\par infected hoof. With this storm coming, I want to get home early as I
\par can." He checked his watch.
\par "Almost four o'clock already." Ten-inch snowfall, we hear," said
\par Jack.."You haven't heard the latest. First storm's built strength, and the
\par second's no longer a day behind it, more like a couple hours. Maybe
\par two feet accumulation before it's all done."
\par Heather was glad they had gone shopping that morning and that their
\par shelves were well stocked. "Anyway," Travis said, indicating the dog,
\par "this was the real reason I stopped by." He joined Toby at the side of
\par the wagon. Jack put an arm around Heather to help her keep -warm, and
\par they stepped behind Toby. Travis pressed two fingers against the
\par window, and the dog licked the other side of the glass
\par enthusiastically, whined, and wagged his tail more furiously than
\par ever.
\par "He's a sweet-tempered fella. Aren't you, Falstaff. His name's
\par Falstaff."
\par "Really?" Heather said. "Hardly seems fair, does it? But he's two
\par years old and used to it now. I hear from Paul Youngblood you're in
\par the market for just such an animal as Falstaff here." Toby gasped. He
\par gaped at Travis. "Hold your mouth open that wide," Travis warned him,
\par "and some critter is going to run in there and build a nest."
\par He smiled at Heather and Jack. "Was this what you had in mind?"
\par "Just about exactly," Jack said. Heather said, "Except, we thought a
\par puppy . . ."
\par "With Falstaff, you get all the joy of a good dog and none of that
\par puppy mess. He's two years old, mature, housebroken, well behaved.
\par Won't spot the carpet or chew up the furniture. But he's still a young
\par dog, lots of years ahead of him.
\par Interested?" Toby looked up worriedly, as if it was beyond conception
\par that such an enormous great good thing as this could befall him without
\par his parents objecting or the ground opening and swallowing him alive.
\par Heather glanced up at Jack, and he said, "Why not?" Looking at Travis,
\par Heather said, "Why not?"
\par "Yes!" Toby made it a one-word expression of explosive ecstasy.
\par They went to the back of the wagon, and Travis opened the tailgate.
\par Falstaff bounded out of the wagon to the ground and immediately began
\par excitedly sniffing everyone's feet, turning in circles, one way and
\par then the other, slapping their legs with his tail, licking their hands
\par when they tried to pet him, a jubilation of fur and warm tongue and
\par cold nose and heart-melting brown eyes. When he calmed down, he chose
\par to sit in front of Toby, to whom he offered a raised paw.
\par "He can shake hands!" Toby exclaimed, and proceeded to take the paw
\par and pump it.
\par "He knows a lot of tricks," Travis said. "Where'd he come from?" Jack
\par asked. "A couple in town, Leona and Harry Seaquist. They had goldens.all their lives.
\par Falstaff here was the latest."
\par "He seems too nice to just be given up." Travis nodded.
\par "Sad case. A year ago, Leona got cancer, was gone in three months.
\par Few weeks back, Harry suffered a stroke, lost the use of his left
\par arm.
\par Speech is slurred, and his memory isn't so good. Had to go to Denver
\par to live with his son, but they didn't want the dog. Harry cried like a
\par baby when he said goodbye to Falstaff. I promised him I'd find a good
\par home for the pooch."
\par Toby was on his knees, hugging the golden around the neck, and it was
\par licking the side of his face. "We'll give him the best home any dog
\par ever had anywhere anytime ever, won't we, Mom, won't we, Dad?"
\par To Travis, Heather said, "How sweet of Paul Youngblood to call you
\par about us."
\par "Well, he heard mention your boy wanted a dog. And this isn't the
\par city, everyone living in a rat race. We have plenty of time around
\par here to meddle in other people's business." He had a broad, engaging
\par smile.
\par The chilling breeze had grown stronger as they talked. Suddenly it
\par gusted into a whistling wind, flattened the brown grass, whipped
\par Heather's hair across her face, and drove needles of cold into her.
\par "Travis," she said, shaking hands with him again, "when can you come
\par for dinner?"
\par "Well, maybe Sunday a week."
\par "A week from Sunday it is," she said. "Six o'clock."
\par To Toby, she said, "Come on, peanut, let's get inside."
\par "I want to play with Falstaff."
\par "You can get to know him in the house," she insisted. "It's too cold
\par out here."
\par "He's got fur," Toby protested. "It's you I'm worried about,
\par dummkopf.
\par You're going to get a frostbitten nose, and then it'll be as black as
\par Falstaff's."
\par Halfway to the house, padding along between Heather and Toby, the dog
\par stopped and looked back at Travis Potter. The vet made a go-ahead wave
\par with one hand, and that seemed sufficient permission for Falstaff. He
\par accompanied them up the steps and into the warm front hall..Travis Potter had brought a fifty-pound bag of dry dog food with him.
\par He hefted it out of the back of his Range Rover and put it on the
\par ground against a rear tire. "Figured you wouldn't have dog chow on
\par hand just in case someone happened by with a golden retriever." He
\par explained what and how much to feed a dog Falstaff's size.
\par "What do we owe you?" Jack asked. "Zip. He didn't cost me. Just
\par doing a favor for poor Harry."
\par "That's nice of you. Thanks. But for the dog food?"
\par "Don't worry about it. In years to come, Falstaff's going to need his
\par regular shots, general looking after. When you bring him to me, I'll
\par soak you plenty."
\par Grinning, he slammed the tailgate. They went around to the side of the
\par Rover farthest from the house, using it as shelter from the worst of
\par the biting wind.
\par Travis said, "Understand Paul told you in private bout Eduardo and his
\par raccoons. Didn't want to alarm your wife."
\par "She doesn't alarm easy."
\par "You tell her then?"
\par "No. Not sure why, either. Except ... we've all got a lot on our
\par minds already, a year of trouble, a lot of change. Anyway, wasn't much
\par Paul told me. Just that the coons were behaving oddly, out in broad
\par daylight, running in circles, and then they just dropped dead."
\par "I don't think that was all of it."
\par Travis hesitated. He leaned back at an angle against the side of the
\par Rover bent his knees, slouching a little to get his head down out of
\par the keening wind. "I think Eduardo was holding out on me. Those coons
\par were doing something stranger than what he said."
\par "Why would he hold out on you?" - "Hard to say. He was a sort of
\par quirky old guy. Maybe ... I don't know, maybe he saw something he felt
\par funny talking about, something he figured I wouldn't believe. Had a
\par lot of pride, that man. He wouldn't want to talk about anything that
\par might get him laughed at."
\par "Any guesses what that could be?" "Nope."
\par Jack's head was above the roof of the Rover, and the wind not only
\par numbed his face but seemed to be scouring off his skin layer by
\par layer.
\par He leaned back against the vehicle, bent his knees, and slouched,
\par mimicking the vet. Rather than look at each other, they stared out
\par across the descending land to the south as they talked.
\par Jack said, "You think, like Paul does, it was something Eduardo saw
\par that caused his heart attack, related to the raccoons?"."And made him load a shotgun, you mean. I don't know. Maybe.
\par Wouldn't rule it out. More'n two weeks before he died, I talked to him
\par on the phone. Interesting conversation. Called him to give him the
\par test results on the coons. Wasn't any known disease involved--"
\par "The
\par brain swelling."
\par "Right. But no apparent cause. He wanted to know did I just take
\par samples of brain tissue for the tests or do a full dissection."
\par "Dissection of the brain?"
\par "Yeah. He asked did I open their brains all the way up. He seemed to
\par expect, if I did that, I'd find something besides swelling. But I
\par didn't find anything. So then he asks me about their spines, if there
\par was something attached to their spines."
\par "Attached?"
\par "Odder still, huh? He asks if I examined the entire length of their
\par spines to see if anything was attached. When I ask him what he means,
\par he says it might've looked like a tumor."
\par "Looked like." The vet turned his head to the right, to look directly
\par at Jack, but Jack stared ahead at the Montana panorama. "You heard it
\par the same way I did. Funny way to word it, huh? Not a tumor. Might've
\par looked like one but not a real tumor." Travis gazed out at the fields
\par again.
\par "I asked him if he was holding out on me, but he swore he wasn't. I
\par told him to call me right away if he saw any animals behaving like
\par those coons--squirrels, rabbits, whatever--but he never did. Less than
\par three weeks later, he was dead."
\par "You found him."
\par "Couldn't get him to answer his phone. Came out here to check on
\par him.
\par There he was, lying in the open doorway, holding on to that shotgun for
\par dear life."
\par "He hadn't fired it."
\par "No. It was just a heart attack got him."
\par Tnafr the influence of the wind, the long meadow grass rippled in brown
\par waves.
\par The fields ref rolling, dirty sea. Jack debated whether to tell Travis
\par about what had - happened in the graveyard a short while ago. However,
\par describing the experience was difficult. He could outline the bare
\par events, recount the bizarre exchanges between himself and the
\par Toby-thing. But he didn't have the words--maybe there were no.words--to adequately describe what he had felt, and feelings were the
\par core of it. He couldn't convey a fraction of the essential
\par supernatural nature of the encounter.
\par To buy time, he said, "Any theories?"
\par "I suspect maybe a toxic substance was involved. Yeah, I know, there
\par aren't exactly piles of industrial sludge scattered all around these
\par parts. But there are natural toxins, too, can cause dementia in
\par wildlife, make animals act damn near as peculiar as people. How about
\par you? See anything weird since you've been here?"
\par "In fact, yes." Jack was relieved that the postures they had chosen
\par relative to each other made it possible to avoid meeting the
\par veterinarian's eyes without causing suspicion. He told Travis about
\par the crow at the window that morning--and how, later, it had flown tight
\par circles over him and Toby while they played with the Frisbee.
\par "Curious," Travis said. "It might be related, I guess. On the other
\par hand, there's nothing that bizarre about its behavior, not even pecking
\par the glass. Crows can be damned bold. It still around here?" They
\par both pushed away from the Rover and stood scanning the sky. The crow
\par was gone.
\par "In this wind," Travis said, "birds are sheltering." He turned to
\par Jack.
\par "Anything besides the crow?" That business about toxic substances had
\par convinced Jack to hold off telling Travis Potter anything about the
\par graveyard. They were discussing two utterly different kinds of
\par mystery: poison versus the supernatural, toxic substances as opposed to
\par ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. The incident
\par on the cemetery knoll was evidence of a strictly subjective nature,
\par even more so than the behavior of the crow, it didn't provide any
\par support to the contention that something unspeakably strange was going
\par on at Quartermass Ranch. Jack had no proof it had happened. Toby
\par clearly recalled none of it and could not corroborate his story. If
\par Eduardo Fernandez had seen something peculiar and withheld it from
\par Travis, Jack sympathized with the old man and understood. The
\par veterinarian was predisposed to the idea that extraordinary agents were
\par at work, because of the brain swelling he'd found in the autopsies of
\par the raccoons, but he was not likely to take seriously any talk of
\par spirits, possession, and eerie conversations conducted in a cemetery
\par with an entity from the Beyond.
\par Anything besides the crow? Travis had asked. Jack shook his head.
\par "That's all."
\par "Well, maybe whatever brought those coons down, is over with. We might
\par never know. Nature's full of odd little tricks." To avoid the vet's
\par eyes, Jack pulled back his jacket sleeve, glanced at his watch. "I've
\par kept you too long if you want to finish your rounds before the snow
\par sets in."
\par "Never had a hope of managing that," Travis said. "But I should make
\par it back home before there're any drifts the Rover can't handle." They.shook hands, and Jack said, "Don't you forget, a week from tomorrow,
\par dinner at six. Bring a guest if you've got a lady friend." Travis
\par grinned. "You look at this mug, it's hard to believe, but there's a
\par young lady willing to be seen with me. Name's Janet."
\par "Be pleased to meet her," Jack said. He dragged the fifty-pound bag of
\par dog chow away from the Rover and stood by the driveway, watching the
\par vet turn around and head out.
\par Looking in the rearview mirror, Travis Potter waved. Jack waved after
\par him and watched until the Rover had disappeared around the curve and
\par over the low hill just before the county road.
\par The day was a deeper gray than it had been when the vet arrived. Iron
\par instead of ashes. Dungeon gray. The ever-lowering sky and the
\par black-green phalanxes of trees seemed as formidably restricting as
\par walls of concrete and stone. A bitterly cold wind, sweetened by the
\par perfume of pines and the faint scent of ozone from high mountain
\par passes, swept out of the northwest. The boughs of the evergreens
\par strained a low mournful sound from that rushing river of air, the
\par grassy meadows conspired with it to produce a whispery whistle, and the
\par eaves of the house inspired it to make soft hooting sounds like the
\par weak protests of dying owls lying with broken wings in uncaring fields
\par of night. The countryside was beautiful even in that prestorm gloom,
\par and perhaps it was as peaceful and serene as they had perceived it when
\par they'd first driven north from Utah. At that moment, however, none of
\par the usual travel-book adjectives sprang to mind as a singular and apt
\par descriptive. Only one word suited now. Lonely. It was the loneliest
\par place Jack Mcgarvey had ever seen, unpopulated to distant points, far
\par from the solace of neighborhood and community.
\par He hefted the bag of dog chow onto his shoulder. Big storm coming. He
\par went inside. He locked the front door behind him. He heard laughter
\par in the kitchen and went back there to see what was happening.
\par Falstaff was sitting on his hindquarters, forepaws raised in front of
\par him, staring up yearningly at a piece of bologna that Toby was holding
\par over his head.
\par "Dad, look, he knows how to beg," Toby said. The retriever licked his
\par chops.
\par Toby dropped the meat. The dog snatched it in midair, swallowed, and
\par begged, for more.
\par Isn't he great?" Toby said. "He's great," Jack agreed. "Toby's
\par hungrier than the dog," Heather said, getting a large pot out of a
\par cabinet. "He didn't have any lunch, he didn't even eat the raisin
\par cookies I gave him when he went outside.
\par Early dinner okay?" me," Jack said, dropping the bag of dog chow in a
\par corner, with the intention of finding a cupboard for it later.
\par "Spaghetti?"
\par "Perfect."."We have a loaf of crusty French bread. You make the salads?"
\par "Sure," Jack said as Toby fed Falstaff another bite of bologna.
\par Filling the pot with water at the sink, Heather said, Travis Potter
\par seems really nice."
\par "Yeah, I like him. He'll be bringing a date to dinner next Sunday.
\par Janet's her name." Heather smiled and seemed happier than at any time
\par since they had come to the ranch.
\par "Making friends."
\par "I guess we are," he said. As he got celery, tomatoes, and a head of
\par lettuce out of the refrigerator, he was relieved to note that neither
\par of the kitchen windows faced the cemetery.
\par The prolonged and subdued twilight was in its final minutes when Toby
\par rushed into the kitchen, the grinning dog at his heels, and cried
\par breathlessly, "Snow!"
\par Heather looked up from the pot of bubbling water and roiling spaghetti,
\par turned to the window above the sink, and saw the first flakes spiraling
\par through the gloaming. They were huge and fluffy. The wind was in
\par abeyance for the moment, and the immense flakes descended in lazy
\par spirals. Toby hurried to the north window. The dog followed slapped
\par its forepaws onto the sill, stood beside him, and gazed out at the
\par miracle.
\par Jack put aside the knife with which he was slicing tomatoes and went to
\par the north window as well. He stood behind Toby, his hands on the boy's
\par shoulders.
\par "Your first snow."
\par "But not my last!" Toby enthused. Heather stirred the sauce in the
\par smaller pot to be sure it was not going to stick, and then she squeezed
\par in with her family at the window. She put her right arm around Jack
\par and, with her left hand, idly scratched the back of Falstaff's head.
\par For the first time in longer than she could remember, she felt at
\par peace. With no more financial worries, having settled into their new
\par home in less than a week, with Jack fully recovered, with the dangers
\par of the city schools and streets no longer a threat to Toby, Heather was
\par finally able to put the negativity of Los Angeles behind her. They had
\par a dog. They were making new friends. She was confident that the
\par peculiar anxiety attacks that had afflicted her since their arrival at
\par Quartermass Ranch would trouble her no more. She had lived with fear
\par so long in the city that she had become an anxiety junkie. In rural
\par Montana, she wouldn't have to worry about drive-by gang shootings,
\par carjackings, ATM robberies that frequently involved casual murder, drug
\par dealers peddling crack cocaine on every corner, follow-home
\par stickups--or child molesters who slipped off freeways, cruised
\par residential neighborhods, trolled for prey, and then disappeared with
\par their Wlch into the anonymous urban sprawl. Consequently, habitual
\par need to be afraid of something had given rise to the unfocused dreads.and phantom enemies that marked her first few days in these more
\par pacific regions. That was over now.
\par Chapter closed.
\par Heavy wet snowflakes descended in battalions, in armies, swiftly
\par conquering the dark ground, an occasional outrider finding the glass,
\par melting. The kitchen was comfortably warm, fragrant with the aromas of
\par cooking pasta and tomato sauce.
\par Nothing was quite so likely to induce feelings of contentment and
\par prosperity as being in a well-heated and cozy room while the windows
\par revealed a world in the frigid grip of winter.
\par "Beautiful," she said, enchanted by the breaking storm. "Wow," Toby
\par said. "Snow.
\par It's really, really snow." They were a family. Wife, husband, child,
\par and dog.
\par Together and safe. Hereafter, she was going to think only Mcgarvey
\par thoughts, never Beckerman thoughts. She was going to embrace a
\par positive outlook and shun the negativism that was both her family
\par legacy and a poisonous residue of life in the big city. She felt free
\par at last. Life was good.
\par After dinner, Heather decided to relax with a hot bath, and Toby
\par settled in the living room with Falstaff to watch a video of
\par Beethoven.
\par Jack went directly to the study to review the gun available to them.
\par In addition to the weapons they'd brought from Los Angeles--a
\par collection Heather had substantially increased after the shootout at
\par Arkadian's service station-- a corner case was stocked with hunting
\par rifles, a shotgun, a .22 pistol, a .45 Colt revolver, and ammunition.
\par He preferred to select three pieces from their own armory: a
\par beautifully made Korth .38, a pistol-grip, pump-action Mossberg
\par twelve-gauge, and a Micro Uzi like the one Anson Oliver had used,
\par although this particular weapon had been converted to full automatic
\par status. The Uzi had been acquired on the black market. It was odd
\par that a cop's wife should feel the need to purchase an illegal
\par gun--odder still that it had been so easy for her to do so.
\par He closed the study door and stood at the desk, working quickly to
\par ready the three firearms while he still had privacy. He didn't want to
\par take such precautions with Heather's knowledge, because he would have
\par to explain why he felt the need for protection. She was happier than
\par she'd been in a long time, and he could see no point in spoiling her
\par mood until--and unless--it became necessary.
\par The incident in the graveyard had been frightening, however, although
\par he'd felt threatened, no blow had actually been struck, no harm. He'd
\par been afraid more for Toby than for himself, the boy was back, no worse
\par for what had happened. And what had happened? He didn't relish having
\par to explain what he had sensed rather than seen: a presence lrl and.enigmatic and no more solid than the wind.
\par Hour by hour, the encounter seemed less like something he had actually
\par experienced and more like a dream. He loaded the .38 and put it to one
\par side of the desk. He could tell her about the raccoons, of course,
\par although he himself had never seen them and although they had done no
\par harm to anyone. He could tell her about the shotgun Eduardo Fernandez
\par had been clutching fiercely when he'd died. But the old man hadn't
\par been brought down by an enemy vulnerable to buck shot, a heart attack
\par had felled him. A massive cardiac infarction was as scary as hell,
\par yes, but it wasn't a killer that could be deterred with firearms.
\par He fully loaded the Mossberg, pumped a shell into the breech, and then
\par inserted one additional shell in the magazine tube. A bonus round.
\par Eduardo had prepared his own gun in the same fashion shortly before he
\par died. If he tried to explain all this to Heather now, he'd succeed in
\par alarming hen- but to no purpose. Maybe there would be no trouble. He
\par might never again come face-to-face with whatever presence he had been
\par aware of in the cemetery. One such episode in a lifetime was more
\par contact with the supernatural than most people ever experienced. Wait
\par for developments. Hope there were none. But if there were, and if he
\par obtained concrete proof of danger, then he would have to let her know
\par that maybe, just maybe, their year of tumult was not yet at an end.
\par The Micro Uzi had two magazines welded at right angles, giving it a
\par forty-round capacity. The heft of it was reassuring. More than two
\par kilos of death waiting to be dispensed. He couldn't imagine any
\par enemy--wild creature or man--that the Uzi couldn't handle. He put the
\par Korth in the top right-hand desk drawer, toward the back. He closed
\par the drawer and left the study with the other two weapons. Before
\par slipping past the living room, Jack waited until he heard Toby
\par laughing, then glanced around the corner of the archway. The boy was
\par focused on the TV, Falstaff at his side. Jack hurried to the kitchen
\par at the end of the hall, where he put the Uzi in the pantry, behind
\par extra boxes of cornflakes, Cheerios, and shredded wheat that wouldn't
\par be opened for at least a week.
\par Upstairs in the master bedroom, breezy music played behind the closed
\par door to the adjoining bathroom. Soaking in the tub, Heather had turned
\par the radio to a goldenoldies station. "Dreamin' " by Johnny Burnette
\par was just winding down. Jack pushed the Mossberg under the bed, far
\par enough back so she wouldn't notice it when they made the bed in the
\par morning but not so far back that he couldn't get hold of it in a
\par hurry.
\par "Poetry in Motion." Johnny Tillotson. Music from an innocent age.
\par Jack hadn't even been born yet when that record had been made. He sat
\par on the edge of the bed, listening to the music, feeling mildly guilty
\par about not sharing his fears with Heather. But he just didn't want to
\par upset her needlessly.
\par She'd been through so much. In some ways, his being wounded and
\par hospitalized had been harder on her than him. because she'd been
\par required to bear alone the pressures of day-to-day existence while he'd
\par recuperated. She needed a reprieve from tension. Probably nothing to.worry about, anyway. few sick raccoons. A bold little crow. A
\par strange experience in a cemetery which was suitably creepy itial for
\par some television show like Unsolved Mysteries but hadn't been as
\par threatening to life and limb as of a hundred things that could happen
\par in the average police officer's workday.
\par Loading and secreting the guns would most likely prove to have been an
\par overreaction. .. Well, he'd done what a cop should do. Prepared
\par himself to serve and protect.
\par On the radio in the bathroom, Bobby Vee was singing
\par "The Night Has a
\par Thousand Eyes."
\par Beyond the bedroom windows, snow was falling harder than before. The
\par flakes, previously fluffy and wet, were now small, more numerous, and
\par dry. The ..wind had accelerated again. Sheer curtains of snow rippkd
\par and billowed across the black night. After his mom warned him against
\par allowing Falstaff to sleep on the bed, after good-nigh kisses, after
\par his dad told him to keep the dog on the floor, after the lights were
\par turned out--except for the red night-light-- after his mom warned him
\par again about Falstaff, after the hall door was pulled half shut, after
\par enough time had passed to be sure neither his mom nor his dad was going
\par to sneak back to check on the retriever, Toby sat up in his alcove bed,
\par patted the mattress invitingly, and whispered, "Here, Falstaff. Come
\par on, fella."
\par The dog was busily sniffing along the base of the door at the head of
\par the back stairs. He whined softly, unhappily. "Falstaff," Toby said,
\par louder than before.
\par "Here, boy, come here, hurry." Falstaff glanced at him, then put his
\par snout to the doorsill again, snuffling and whimpering at the same
\par time.
\par "Come here--we'll play covered wagon or spaceship or anything you
\par want," Toby wheedled. Suddenly getting a whiff of something that
\par displeased him, the dog sneezed twice, shook his head so hard that his
\par long ears flapped loudly, and backed away from the door.
\par "Falstaff!" Toby hissed. Finally the dog padded to him through the
\par red light-which was the same kind of light you'd find in the engine
\par room of a starship, or around a campfire out on a lonely prairie where
\par the wagon train had stopped for the night, or in a freaky temple in
\par India where you and Indiana Jones were sneaking around and trying to
\par avoid a bunch of weird guys who worshiped Kali, Goddess of Death.
\par With a little encouragement, Falstaff jumped onto the bed. "Good
\par dog."
\par Toby hugged him. Then in hushed, conspiratorial tones: "Okay, see,
\par we're in a rebel starfighter on the edge of the Crab Nebula. I'm the
\par captain and ace Inner You're a super-superintelligent alien from a
\par lanet that circles the Dog Star, plus you're psychic, you can read the
\par thoughts of the bad aliens in their starfighters, trying to blow us
\par apart, which they I don't know. They don't know..They're crabs with sort of hands instead of just claws, see, like this,
\par crab hands, rack-scrick-scrack-scrick, and they're mean, really really
\par vicious. Like after their mother gives birth to eight or ten of them
\par at once, they turn on her and eat her alive! You know? Crunch her
\par up.
\par Feed on her. Mean as it, these guys. You know what I'm saying?"
\par Falstaff regarded him face-to-face throughout the briefing and then
\par licked him from chin to nose when he finished. "All right, you know!
\par Okay, let's see if we can ditch these crab geeks by going into
\par hyperspace--jump across half the galaxy and leave em in the dust. So
\par what's the first thing we got to do? Yeah, right, put up e
\par cosmic-radiation shields so we don't wind up full of pinholes from
\par traveling faster than all the subatomic particles we'll be passing
\par through." He switched on the reading lamp above his headboard, reached
\par to the draw cord- -"Shields up!"--and pulled the privacy drapes all the
\par way shut. Instantly the alcove bed became a cloistered capsule that
\par could be any sort of vehicle, ancient or futuristic, traveling as slow
\par as a sedan chair or faster than light through any part of the world or
\par out of it.
\par "Lieutenant Falstaff, are we ready?" Toby asked. Before the game
\par could begin, the retriever bounded off the bed and between the bunk
\par drapes, which fell shut again behind him. Toby grabbed the draw cord
\par and pulled the drapes open.
\par "What's the matter with you?" The dog was at the stairwell door,
\par sniffing. "You know, dogbreath, this could be viewed as mutiny."
\par Falstaff glanced back at him, then continued to investigate whatever
\par scent had fascinated him. "We got crabulons trying to kill us, you
\par want to go play dog." Toby got out of bed and joined the retriever at
\par the door. "I know you don't have to pee. Dad took you out already,
\par and you got to make yellow snow before I ever did." The dog whimpered
\par again, made a disgusted sound, then backed away from the door and
\par growled low in his throat.
\par "It's nothing, it's some steps, that's all." Falstaff's black lips
\par skinned back from his teeth. He lowered his head as if he was ready
\par for a gang of crabulons to come through that door right now,
\par scrackscrick-scrack-scrick, with their eye stalks wiggling two feet
\par above their heads. "Dumb dog. I'll show you." He twisted open the
\par lock, turned the knob.
\par The dog whimpered and backed away. Toby opened the door. The stairs
\par were dark.
\par He flipped on the light and stepped onto the landing. Falstaff
\par hesitated, looked toward the half-open hall door as if maybe he would
\par bolt from the bedroom. ..
\par You're the one was so interested," Toby reminded him. "Now come on,
\par I'll show you--just stairs." As if he had been shamed into it, the dog
\par joined Toby on the landing. His tail was held so low that the end of.it curled around one of his hind legs. Toby descended three steps,
\par wincing as the first one squeaked and then the third. If Mom or Dad
\par was in the kitchen below, he might get caught, and then they'd think he
\par was sneaking out to grab up some snow--in his bare feet!--to bring it
\par back to his room to watch it melt. Which wasn't a bad idea,
\par actually.
\par He wondered whether snow was interesting to eat. Three steps, two
\par squeaks, and he stopped, looked back at the dog. "Well?" Reluctantly,
\par Falstaff moved to his side.
\par crural. Trying to make as little noise as possible. Well, one of them
\par was trying, anyway, staying close to the wall, where the treads weren't
\par as likely to creak, but the other ..
\par one had claws that ticked and scraped on the wood. Toby whispered,
\par "Stairs.
\par Steps. See? You can go down. You can go up. Big deal. What'd you
\par think was behind the door, huh? Doggie hell?" Each step they
\par descended brought one new step into view. The way the walls curved,
\par you couldn't see far ahead, couldn't see the bottom, just a few steps
\par with the paint worn thin, lots of shadows because of the dim bulbs, so
\par maybe the lower landing was just two steps below or maybe it was a
\par hundred, five hundred, or - maybe you went down and down and around and
\par around for ninety thousand steps, and when you reached the bottom you
\par were at the center of the earth with dinosaurs and lost cities. "In
\par doggie hell," he told Falstaff, "the devil's a cat. You know that?
\par Big cat, really big, stands on his hind feet, has claws like razors
\par ..." Down and around, slow step by slow step. ". . . this big devil
\par cat, he wears a cape made out of dog fur, necklace out of dog teeth .
\par . ." Down and around. "... and when he plays marbles ..." Wood
\par creaking underfoot. "... he uses dogs' eyes! Yeah, that's right
\par ..."
\par Falstaff whimpered. ". . . he's one mean cat, big mean cat, mean as
\par shit." They reached the bottom. The vestibule. The two doors.
\par "Kitchen," Toby whispered, indicating one door. He turned to the
\par other. "Back porch." He could probably twist open the deadbolt, slip
\par onto the porch, scoop up a double handful of snow, even if he had to go
\par as far as the yard to get it, but still make it back inside and all the
\par way up to his room without his mom or dad ever knowing about it.
\par Make a real snowball, his first. Take a taste of it. When it started
\par to melt, he could just put it in a corner of his room, and in the
\par morning, there'd be no evidence. Just water. Which, if anyone noticed
\par it, he could blame on Falstaff.
\par Toby reached for the doorknob with his right hand and for the dead-bolt
\par turn with his left. The retriever jumped up, planted both paws on the
\par wall beside the door, and clamped his jaws around Toby's left wrist.
\par Toby stifled a squeal of surprise. -Falstaff held the wrist firmly,
\par but he didn't bite down, didn't really hurt, just held on and rolled.his eyes at Toby, as if what he would have said, if he could speak, was
\par something like, No, you can't open this door, it's nuts, forget it, no
\par way. "What're you doing?" Toby whispered. "Let go." Falstaff would
\par not let go. "You're drooling on me," Toby said as a rivulet of thick
\par saliva trickled down his wrist and under the sleeve of his pajama
\par tops.
\par The retriever worked his teeth slightly, still not hurting his master
\par but making it clear that he could cause a little pain anytime he
\par wanted. "What, is Mom paying you?" Toby let go of the doorknob with
\par his right hand. The dog rolled his eyes, relaxed his jaws, but didn't
\par entirely let go of the left wrist until Toby released the thumb-turn on
\par the lock and lowered his hand to his side. Falstaff dropped away from
\par the wall, onto all fours again.
\par Toby stared at the door, wondering if he would be able to move quickly
\par enough to open it before the dog could leap up and seize his wrist
\par again. The retriever watched him closely. Then he wondered why
\par Falstaff didn't want him to go outside. Dogs could sense danger.
\par Maybe a bear was prowling around outside, one of the bears that Dad
\par said lived in the woods. A bear could gut you and bite your head off
\par so quick you wouldn't have a chance to scream, crunch your skull up
\par like hard candy, pick its teeth with your armbone, and all they'd find
\par in the morning was a bloody scrap of pajamas and maybe a toe that the
\par bear had overlooked. He was scaring himself.
\par He checked the crack between the door and the jamb to be sure the
\par deadbolt was actually in place. He could see the dull brass shine of
\par it in there. Good. Safe.
\par Of course, Falstaff had been afraid of the door above too, curious but
\par afraid.
\par He hadn't wanted to open it. Hadn't wanted to come down here,
\par really.
\par But nobody had been waiting for them on the steps. No bear, for
\par sure.
\par Maybe this was just a dog who spooked easy. "My dad's a hero," Toby
\par whispered. Falstaff cocked his head. "He's a hero cop. He's not
\par afraid of nothin', and I'm not afraid of nothin', either." The dog
\par stared at him as if to say, Yeah? So what next? Toby looked again at
\par the door in front of him. He could just open it a crack. Take a quick
\par look. If a bear was on the porch, slam the door fast. "If I wanted to
\par go out there and pet a bear, I would." Falstaff waited. "But it's
\par late. I'm tired.
\par If there's a bear out there, he'll just have to wait till tomorrow."
\par Together, he and Falstaff climbed back to his room.
\par Dirt was scattered on the stairs. He'd felt it under his bare feet on
\par the way down, now he felt it going up. On the high landing, he stood
\par on his right leg and brushed the bottom of his left foot, stood on his
\par left foot and ushed off his right. Crossed the threshold. Closed the.-door. Locked it. Switched off the stair light. Falstaff was at the
\par window, gazing out at the backyard, and Toby joined him.
\par The snow was coming down so hard there would probably be nine feet of
\par it by morning, maybe sixteen. The porch roof below was white. The
\par ground was white everywhere, as far as he could see, but he couldn't
\par see all that far because the snow was really coming down. He couldn't
\par even see the woods. The caretaker's house was swallowed by whipping
\par white clouds of snow. Incredible. The dog dropped to the floor and
\par trotted away, but Toby watched the snow awhile longer.
\par When he began to get sleepy, he turned and saw that Falstaff was
\par sitting - in the bed, waiting for him. Toby slipped under the
\par blankets, keeping the retriever on top of them. Letting the dog under
\par the blankets was going one step too far. Infallible eight-year-old-boy
\par instinct told him as much. If Mom or Dad found them like that--boy
\par head on one pillow, dog head on the other pillow, covers pulled up to
\par their chins--there would be big trouble.
\par He reached for the draw cord to shut the drapes, so he and Falstaff
\par could go to sleep on a train, crossing Alaska in the dead of winter to
\par get to the gold rush country and stake a claim, after which they'd
\par change Falstaffs name to White Fang. But as soon as the drapes began
\par to close, the dog sprang to its feet on the mattress, ready to leap to
\par the floor. "Okay, all right, pleez," Toby said, and he pulled the
\par drapes wide open. The retriever settled beside him again, lying so he
\par was facing the door at the head of the back stairs. "Dumb dog," Toby
\par muttered from the edge of sleep. "Bears don't have door keys."
\par In the darkness, when Heather slid against him, smelling faintly of
\par soap from her hot bath, Jack knew he'd have to disappoint her. He
\par wanted her, needed her, God knew, but he remained obsessed with his
\par experience in the cemetery. As the memory grew rapidly less vivid, as
\par it became increasingly difficult to recall the precise nature and
\par intensity of the emotions that had been part of the encounter, he
\par turned it over and over more desperately in his mind, examining it
\par repeatedly from every angle, trying to squeeze sudden enlightenment
\par from it before it became, like all memories, a dry and faded husk of
\par the actual experience. The conversation with the thing that had spoken
\par through Toby had been about death--cryptic, even inscrutable, but
\par definitely about death. Nothing was as certain to dampen desire as
\par brooding about death, graves, and the moldering bodies of old
\par friends.
\par At least, that's what he thought when she touched him, kissed him, and
\par murmured endearments. Instead, to his surprise, he found that he was
\par not only ready but rampant, not merely capable but full of more vigor
\par than he'd known since long before the shooting back in LA.
\par She was so giving yet demanding, alternately submissive and aggressive,
\par shy yet all-knowing, as enthusiastic as a bride embarking on a new
\par marriage, velvet and silken and alive, so wonderfully alive.
\par Later, as he lay on his side and she drifted asleep with her breasts
\par pressed to his back, the two of them a pair of spoons, he understood
\par that making love with her had been a rejection of the frightening yet
\par alluring presence in the cemetery..A day of brooding about death had proved to be a perverse
\par aphrodisiac.
\par He was facing the windows. The draperies were open. Ghosts of snow
\par whirled past the glass, dancing white phantoms spinning to the music of
\par the fluting wind, waltzing spirits, pale and cold, waltzing and pale,
\par cold and spinning, spinning..in cloying blackness, blindly feeling his
\par way toward the Giver, toward an offer of peace and love, pleasure and
\par joy, an end to all fear, ultimate freedom, his for the taking, if only
\par he could find the way, the path, the truth.
\par The door. Jack knew he had only to find the door, to open it, and a
\par world of wonder and beauty would lie beyond. Then he understood that
\par the door was within himself, not to be found by stumbling through
\par eternal darkness. Such an exciting revelation. Within himself.
\par Paradise, paradise. Joy eternal. Just open the door within himself
\par and let it in, let it in, as simple as that, just let it in. He wanted
\par to accept, surrender, because life was hard when it didn't have to
\par be.
\par But some stubborn part of him resisted, and he sensed the frustration
\par of the Giver beyond the door, frustration and inhuman rage. He said, I
\par can't, no, can't, won't, no. Abruptly the darkness acquired weight,
\par compacting around him with the inevitability of stone forming around a
\par fossil over millennia, a crushing and unrelenting pressure, and with
\par that pressure came the Giver's furious assertion: Everything becomes,
\par everything becomes me, everything, everything becomes me, me, me. Must
\par submit . . . useless to resist . .. Let it in . . . paradise,
\par paradise, joy forever . . . Let it in. Hammering on his soul.
\par Everything becomes me. Jarring blows at the very structure of him,
\par ramming, pounding, colossal blows shaking the deepest foundations of
\par his existence: let it in, let it in, let it in, LET IT IN, LET IT IN,
\par LET IT IN, LET IT ININININININ-- A brief internal sizzle and crack,
\par like the hard quick sound of an electrical arc jumping a gap, jittered
\par through his mind, and Jack woke. His eyes snapped open. At first he
\par lay rigid and still, so terrified he could not move. Bodies are.
\par Everything becomes me. Puppets. Surrogates. Jack had never before
\par awakened so abruptly or so completely in an instant. One second in a
\par dream, the next wide awake and alert and furiously thinking. Listening
\par to his frantic heart, he knew that the dream had not actually been a
\par dream, not in the usual sense of the word, but . . . an intrusion.
\par Communication. Contact. n attempt to subvert and overpower his will
\par while he slept. .. Everything becomes me. Those three words were not
\par so cryptic now as they had seemed before, but an arrogant assertion of
\par superiority and a claim of dominance. They had been spoken by the
\par unseen Giver in the dream and by the hate entity that communicated
\par through Toby in the graveyard yesterday. In both instances, waking and
\par sleeping Jack had felt the presence of something inhuman, impedous,
\par hostile, and violent, something that would slaughter the innocent
\par without remorse but preferred to subvert and dominate. A greasy nausea
\par made Jack gag. He felt cold and dirty inside. Corrupted by the
\par Giver's attempt to seize control and nest within him, even though it.had not been successful. He knew as surely as he had ever known
\par anything in his life that this enemy was real: not a ghost, not a
\par demon, not just the paranoid-schizophrenic delusion of a troubled mind,
\par but a creature of flesh and blood. No doubt infinitely strange
\par flesh.
\par And blood that might not be recognized as such by any physician yet
\par born. But flesh and blood nonetheless.
\par He didn't know what the thing was, where it had come from, or out of
\par what it had been born, he knew only that it existed. And that it was
\par somewhere on Quartermass Ranch.
\par Jack was lying on his side, but Heather was no longer pressed against
\par him. She had turned over during the night. Crystals of snow
\par tick-tick-ticked against the window, like a finely calibrated
\par astronomical clock counting off every hundredth of a second. The wind
\par that harried the snow made a low whirring sound. Jack felt as if he
\par was listening to the heretofore silent and secret cosmic machinery that
\par drove the universe through its unending cycles. Shakily, he pushed
\par back the covers, sat up, stood. Heather didn't wake.
\par Night still reigned, but a faint gray light in the east hinted at the
\par pending coronation of a new day. Striving to quell his nausea, Jack
\par stood in just his underwear until his shivering was a greater concern
\par than his queasiness. The bedroom was warm. The chill was internal.
\par Nevertheless, he went to his closet, quietly slid the door open,
\par slipped a pair of jeans from a hanger, pulled them on, then a shirt.
\par Awake, he could not sustain the explosive terror that had blown him out
\par of the dream, but he was still shaky, fearful--and worried about
\par Toby.
\par He left the master bedroom, intending to check on his son. Falstaff
\par was in the shadowy upstairs hall, staring intently through the open
\par door of the bedroom next to Toby's, where Heather had set up her
\par computers. An odd, faint light fell through the doorway and glimmered
\par on the dog's coat. He was statue-still and tense. His blocky head was
\par held low and thrust forward. His tail wasn't wagging. As Jack
\par approached, the retriever looked at him and issued a muted, anxious
\par whine.
\par The soft clicking of a computer keyboard came from the room. Rapid
\par typing.
\par Silence. Then another burst of typing.
\par In Heather's makeshift office, Toby was sitting in front of one of the
\par computers. The glow from the monitor, which faced away from Jack, was
\par the only source of light in the former bedroom, far brighter than the
\par reflection that reached the hallway, it bathed the boy swiftly changing
\par shades of blue and green and purple, a sudden splash of red, orange,
\par then blue and green.
\par At the window behind Toby, the night remained deep because the gray
\par insistence of dawn could not yet be seen from that side of the house..Barrages of fine snow flakes tapped the glass and were briefly
\par transformed into blue and green sequins by the monitor light.
\par Stepping across the threshold, Jack said, "Toby?" The boy didn't
\par glance up from the screen. His small hands flew across the keyboard,
\par eliciting a furious spate of muffled clicking. No other sound issued
\par from the machine none of the usual beeps or burbles. Could Toby
\par type?
\par No. At least, not like this, not with such ease and speed. The boy's
\par eyes glimmered with distorted images of the display on the screen
\par before him: violet, emerald, a flicker of red.
\par "Hey, kiddo, what're you doing?"
\par He didn't respond to the question.
\par Yellow, gold, yellow, orange, gold, yellow--the light .. shimmered not
\par as if it radiated from a computer screen but as if it was the
\par glittering reflection of summer sunlight bouncing off the rippled
\par surface of a pond, spangling his face.
\par Yellow, orange, umber, amber, yellow . . .
\par At the window, spinning snowflakes glimmered like gold dust, hot
\par sparks, fireflies. Jack crossed the room with trepidation, sensing
\par that normality had not returned when he'd awakened from the
\par nightmare.
\par The dog padded behind him.
\par Together, they rounded one end of the L-shaped work area and stood at
\par Toby's side. A riot of constantly changing colors surged across the
\par computer screen from left to right, melting into and through one
\par another, now fading, now intensifying, now bright, now dark, curling,
\par pulsing, an electronic kaleidoscope in which none of the ceaselessly
\par transfigured patterns had straight edges. It was a full-color
\par monitor.
\par Nevertheless, Jack had never seen anything like this before.
\par He put a hand on his son's shoulder.
\par Toby shuddered.
\par He didn't look up or speak, but a subtle change in his attitude implied
\par that he was no longer as spellbound by the display on the monitor as he
\par had been when Jack first spoke to him from the doorway.
\par His fingers rattled the keys again.
\par "What're you doing?" Jack asked.
\par "Talking."
\par CHAPTER NINETEEN..Masses of yellow and pink, spiraling threads of rippling ribbons of
\par purple and blue. The shapes, patterns, and rhythms of change were
\par mesmerizing when they combined in beautiful and graceful ways--but also
\par when they were ugly and chaotic.
\par Jack sensed movement in the room, but he had to make an effort to look
\par up from the compelling protomic images on the screen. Heather stood in
\par the doorway, wearing her quilted red robe, hair tousled. She didn't
\par ask what was happening.
\par if she already knew. She wasn't looking directly at Jack or Toby but
\par at the window behind them. Jack turned and saw showers of snowflakes
\par repeatedly changing color as the display on the monitor continued its
\par rapid and fluid metamorphosis.
\par "Talking to whom?" he asked Toby.
\par After a hesitation, the boy said, "No name."
\par His voice was not flat and soulless as it had been in the graveyard but
\par neither was it quite normal.
\par "Where is he?" Jack asked.
\par "Not he."
\par "Where is she?"
\par "Not she."
\par Frowning, Jack said, "Then what?"
\par The boy said nothing, gazed unblinking at the screen.
\par "It?" Jack wondered.
\par "All right," Toby said.
\par Approaching them, Heather looked strangely at Jack.
\par "It?"
\par To Toby, Jack said, "What is it?"
\par "Whatever it wants to be."
\par "Where is it?"
\par "Wherever it wants to be," the boy said cryptically.
\par "What is it doing here?"
\par "Becoming."
\par Heather stepped around the table, stood on the other side of Toby, and
\par stared at the monitor.."I've seen this before."
\par Jack was relieved to know the bizarre display wasn't unique, therefore
\par not necessarily related to the experience in the cemetery, but
\par Heather's demeanor was such that his relief was extremely
\par short-lived.
\par "Seen it when?"
\par "Yesterday morning, before we went into town. On the TV in the living
\par room.
\par Toby was watching it ... sort of enraptured like this. Strange."
\par She shuddered and reached for the master switch.
\par "Shut it off."
\par "No," Jack said, reaching in front of Toby to stay her hand. "Wait.
\par Let's see."
\par "Honey," she said to Toby, "what's going on here, what kind of game is
\par this?"
\par "No game. I dreamed it, and in the dream I came in then I woke up and
\par I was here, so we started talking-"
\par "Does this make any sense to
\par you?"
\par she asked Jack.
\par "Yes. Some."
\par "What's going on, Jack?"
\par "Later."
\par "Am I out of the loop on something? What is this all about?" When he
\par didn't respond, she said, "I don't like this."
\par "Neither do I," Jack said. "But let's see where it ads, whether we can
\par figure this out."
\par "Figure what out?" The boy's fingers pecked busily at the keys.
\par Although no words appeared on the screen, it seemed as if new colors
\par and fresh patterns appeared and progressed in a rhythm that matched his
\par typing.
\par "Yesterday, on the TV . . . I asked Toby what it was," Heather said.
\par "He didn't know. But he said . . . he liked it." Toby stopped
\par typing. The colors faded, then suddenly intensified and flowed in
\par wholly new patterns and shades.."No," the boy said. "No what?" Jack asked. "Not talking to you.
\par Talking to ...
\par it." And to the - screen, he said, "No. Go away." Waves of sour
\par green. Blossoms of blood red appeared at random points across the
\par screen, turned black, flowered into red again, then wilted, streamed, a
\par viscous pus yellow. The endlessly mutagenic display dazed Jack when he
\par watched it too long, and he could understand how it could completely
\par capture the immature mind of an eight-year-old boy, hypnotize him.
\par As Toby began to hammer the keyboard once more, the colors on the
\par screen faded--then abruptly brightened again, although in new shades
\par and in yet more varied and fluid forms.
\par "It's a language," Heather exclaimed softly. For a moment Jack stared
\par at her, uncomprehending. She said, "The colors, the patterns. A
\par language." He checked the monitor. "How can it be a language?"
\par "It is," she insisted. "There aren't any repetitive shapes, nothing
\par that could be letters, words."
\par "Talking," Toby confirmed. He pounded the keyboard. As before, the
\par patterns and colors acquired a rhythm consistent with the pace at which
\par he input his side of the conversation. "A tremendously complicated and
\par expressive language," Heather said, "beside which English or French or
\par Chinese is primitive."
\par Toby stopped typing, and the response from the other conversant was
\par dark and churning, black and bile green, clotted with red. "No," the
\par boy said to the screen. The colors became more dour, the rhythms more
\par vehement. "No," Toby repeated. Churning, seething, spiraling reds.
\par For a third time- "No." Jack said, "What're you saying 'no' to?"
\par "To what it wants," Toby replied. "What does it want?"
\par "It wants me to let it in, just let it in."
\par "Oh, Jesus," Heather said, and reached for the Off switch again. Jack
\par stopped her hand as he'd done before.
\par Her fingers were pale and frigid. "What's wrong?" he asked, though he
\par was afraid he knew. The words "let it in" had jolted him with an
\par impact almost as great as one of Anson Oliver's bullets. "Last night,"
\par Heather said, staring in horror at the screen. "In a dream." Maybe
\par his own hand turned cold. Or maybe she felt him tremble. She
\par blinked.
\par "You've had it too, the dream!"
\par "Just tonight. Woke me."
\par "The door," she said. "It wants you to find a door in yourself, open
\par the door and let it in. Jack, damn it, what's going on here, what the
\par hell's going on?".He wished he knew. Or maybe he didn't. He was more scared of this
\par thing than of anyone he'd confronted as a cop. He had killed Anson
\par Oliver, but he didn't know if he could touch this enemy, didn't know if
\par it could even be found or seen.
\par "No," Toby said to the screen. Falstaff whined and retreated to a
\par corner, stood there, tense and watchful. "No. No." Jack crouched
\par beside his son.
\par "Toby, right now you can hear it and me, both of us?"
\par "Yes."
\par "You're not completely under its influence."
\par "Only a little."
\par "You're ... in between somewhere."
\par "Between," the boy confirmed. "Do you remember yesterday in the
\par graveyard?"
\par "Yes."
\par "You remember this thing . . . speaking through you."
\par "Yes."
\par "What?" Heather asked, surprised. "What about the graveyard?" On the
\par screen: undulant black, bursting boils of yellow, seeping spots of
\par kidney red. "Jack," Heather said, angrily, "you said nothing was wrong
\par when you went up to the cemetery. You said Toby was daydreaming--just
\par standing up there daydreaming."
\par To Toby, Jack said, "But you didn't remember anything about the
\par graveyard right after it happened."
\par "No."
\par "Remember what?" Heather demanded. "What the hell was there to
\par remember?"
\par "Toby," Jack said, "are you able to remember now because . .
\par . because you're half under its spell again but only half . . .
\par neither here nor there?"
\par "Between," the boy acknowledged. "Tell me about this 'it' you're
\par talking to," Jack said. "Jack, don't," Heather said. She looked
\par haunted. He knew how she felt. But he said, "We have to learn about
\par it."
\par "Why?"
\par "Maybe to survive." He didn't have to explain. She knew what he.meant. She had endured some degree of contact in her sleep. The
\par hostility of the thing. Its inhuman rage. To Toby, he said, "Tell me
\par about it."
\par "What do you want to know?" -On the screen: blues of every shade,
\par spreading like Japanese fans but without the sharp folds, one blue over
\par the other, through the other.
\par "Where does it come from, Toby?"
\par "Outside."
\par "What do you mean?"
\par "Beyond." ..
\par "Beyond what?"
\par "This world." Is it ... extraterrestrial?" - Heather said, "Oh, my
\par God." "Yes," Toby said. "No."
\par "Which, Toby?"
\par "Not as simple as ... E.T. Yes.
\par And no."
\par "What is it doing here?"
\par "Becoming."
\par "Becoming what?"
\par "Everything." Jack shook his head. "I don't understand."
\par "Neither do I," the boy said, riveted to the display on the computer
\par monitor. Heather stood with her hands fisted against her breast.
\par Jack said, Toby, yesterday in the graveyard, you weren't just
\par between.
\par like now."
\par "Gone."
\par "Yes, you were gone all the way."
\par "Gone."
\par "I couldn't reach you."
\par "Shit," Heather said furiously, and Jack didn't look up at her because
\par he knew she was glaring at him. "What happened yesterday, Jack? Why
\par didn't you tell me, for Christ's sake? Something like this, why didn't
\par you tell me?" Without meeting her eyes, he said, "I will, I'll tell
\par you, just let me finish this."."What else haven't you told me," she demanded. "What in God's name's
\par happening, Jack?"
\par To Toby, he said, "When you were gone yesterday. son, where were
\par you?"
\par "Gone."
\par "Gone where?"
\par "Under."
\par "Under? Under what?"
\par "Under it."
\par "Under. . . ?"
\par "Controlled."
\par "Under this thing? Under its mind?"
\par "Yeah. In a dark place."
\par Toby's voice quavered with fear at the memory. "A dark place, cold,
\par squeezed in a dark place, hurting."
\par "Shut it off, shut it down!" Heather demanded. Jack looked up at
\par her.
\par She was glaring, all right, red in the face, as furious as she was
\par frightened. Praying that she would be patient, he said, "We can shut
\par the computer off, but we can't keep this thing out that way. Think
\par about it, Heather. It can get to us by routes through dreams, through
\par the TV. Apparently even while we're awake, somehow. Toby was awake
\par yesterday when it got to him."
\par "I let it in," the boy said. Jack hesitated to ask the question that
\par was, perhaps, the most critical of all. "Toby, listen ... when it's in
\par you ... does it have to be actually in you? Physically? A part of it
\par inside you somewhere?"
\par Something in the brain that would show up in a dissection. Or attached
\par to the spine. The kind of thing for which Eduardo had wanted Travis
\par Potter to look.
\par "No," the boy said. "No seed . . . no egg .. . no slug . .. nothing
\par that it is."
\par "No." That was good, very good, thank God and all the angels, that was
\par very good. Because if something was implanted, how did you get it out
\par of your child, how did you free him, how could you cut open his brain
\par and tear it out? Toby said, "Only thoughts. Nothing in you but
\par thoughts."
\par "You mean, like it uses telepathic control?"."Yeah." How suddenly the impossible could seem inevitable.
\par Telepathic control. Something from beyond, hostile and strange, able
\par to control other species telepathically. right out of a science
\par fiction movie, yet it felt real and true. "And now it wants in
\par again?"
\par Heather asked Toby. "Yes."
\par "But you won't let it in?" she asked. "No." Jack said, "You can
\par really keep it out?"
\par "Yes." They had hope. They weren't finished yet. Jack said, "Why did
\par it leave you yesterday?"
\par "Pushed it."
\par "You pushed it out?"
\par "Yeah. Pushed it. Hates me."
\par "For pushing it out?"
\par "Yeah." His voice sank to a whisper. "But it's ... it . .
\par . it hates . . . hates everything."
\par "Why?" With a fury of scarlet and orange swirling across his face and
\par flashing in his eyes, the boy still whispered: "Because ... that's what
\par it is."
\par "It's hate?"
\par "That's what it does."
\par "But why?"
\par "That's what it is."
\par "Why?" Jack repeated patiently. "Because it knows."
\par "Knows what?"
\par "Nothing matters."
\par "It knows ... that nothing matters?"
\par "Yes."
\par "What does that mean?"
\par "Nothing means." Dizzied by the only half-coherent exchange, Jack
\par said, "I don't understand." Ikl still lower whisper: "Everything can
\par be underd, but nothing can be understood." I want to understand it."
\par everything can be understood, but nothing can be stood." Hether's
\par hands were still fisted, but now she pressed to her eyes, as if she.couldn't bear to look at him in this half-trance any longer. Nothing
\par can be understood," Toby murmured again.
\par frustrated, Jack said, "But it understands us." No." What doesn't it
\par understand about us?" Lots of things. Mainly ... we resist."
\par "Resist?"
\par "We resist it."
\par "And that's new to it?"
\par "Yeah. Never before."
\par "Everything else lets it in," Heather said. Toby nodded. "Except
\par people." Chalk one up for human beings, Jack thought.
\par Good old Homo sapiens, bullheaded to the last. We're just not
\par happy-go-lucky enough to let the puppetmaster jerk us around any way it
\par wants, too uptight, too damned stuborn to love being slaves.
\par "Oh," Toby said quietly, more to himself than to hem or to the entity
\par controlling the computer. "I see."
\par "What do you see?" Jack asked. Interesting."
\par "What's interesting?"
\par "The how." Jack looked at Heather, but she didn't seem to be tracking
\par the enigmatic conversation any better than he was. "It senses," Toby
\par said. "Toby?"
\par "Let's not talk about this," the boy said, glancing away from the
\par screen for a moment to give Jack what seemed to be an imploring or
\par warning look. "Talk about what?"
\par "Forget it," Toby said, gazing at the monitor again.
\par "Forget what?"
\par "I better be good. Here, listen, it wants to know." Then, with a
\par voice as muffled as a sigh in a handkerchief, forcing Jack to lean
\par closer, Toby seemed to change the subject: "What were they doing down
\par there?" Jack said, "You mean in the graveyard?"
\par "Yeah."
\par "You know."
\par "But it doesn't. It wants to know."
\par "It doesn't understand death," Jack said. "No."
\par "How can that be?"
\par "Life is," the boy said, clearly interpreting a viewpoint that belonged
\par to the creature with which he was in contact. "No meaning. No.beginning. No end. Nothing matters. It is."
\par "Surely this isn't the first world it's ever found where things die,"
\par Heather said. Toby began to tremble, and his voice rose, but barely.
\par "They resist too, the ones under the ground. It can use them, but it
\par can't know them." can use them, but it can't know them. A few pieces
\par of the puzzle suddenly fit together. Reling only a tiny portion of the
\par truth. A monstrous, terible portion of the truth. Jack remained
\par crouched beside the boy in stunned silence. At last he said weakly,
\par "Use them?"
\par "But it can't know them." How does it use them?"
\par ."Puppets." Heather gasped. "The smell. Oh, dear God. The smell
\par ,the back staircase." Though Jack wasn't entirely sure what she was
\par talking about, he knew that she'd realized what was out e on the
\par Quartermass Ranch. Not just this thing in beyond, this thing that
\par could send the same dream to both of them, this unknowable alien thing
\par whose purpose was to become and to hate. Other things were out e. Toby
\par whispered, "But it can't know them. Not even as much as it can know
\par us. It can use them better. Better than it can use us. But it wants to
\par know them. Become them. And they resist." Jack had heard enough. Far
\par too much. Shaken, he rose from beside Toby. He flipped the master
\par switch to off, and the screen blanked. "It's going to come for us,"
\par Toby said, and then he Ucended slowly out of his half-trance.
\par Bitter storm wind shrieked at the window behind them, but even if it
\par had been able to reach into the room, it couldn't have made Jack any
\par colder than he already was. Toby swiveled in the office chair to
\par direct a puzzled look first at his mother, then at his father. The dog
\par came out of the corner. Though no one was touching it, the master
\par switch on the computer flicked from the Off to the On position.
\par Everyone twitched in surprise, including Falstaff. The screen gushed
\par with vile and squirming colors. Heather stooped, grabbed the power
\par cord, and tore it out of the wall socket. The monitor went dark again,
\par stayed dark.
\par "It won't stop," Toby said, getting up from the chair. Jack turned to
\par the window and saw that dawn had come, dim and gray, revealing a
\par landscape battered by a full-scale blizzard. In the past twelve hours,
\par fourteen to sixteen inches of snow had fallen, drifting twice that deep
\par where the wind chose to pile it.
\par Either the first storm had stalled, instead of moving farther eastward,
\par or the second had blown in even sooner than expected overlapping the
\par first. "It won't stop," Toby repeated solemnly. He wasn't talking
\par about the snow.
\par Heather pulled him into her arms, lifted and held him as tightly and
\par protectively as she would have held an infant. Everything becomes
\par me.
\par Jack didn't know all that might be meant by those words, what horrors
\par they might encompass, but he knew Toby was right. The thing wouldn't
\par stop until it had become them and they'd become part of it..Condensation had frozen on the inside of the lower panes in the French
\par window.
\par Jack touched the glistening with a fingertip, but he was so frigid with
\par fear that ice felt no colder than his own skin. Beyond the kitchen
\par windows, the white world was filled with cold motion, the relentless
\par angular descent of driven snow. Restless, Heather moved continuously
\par back and forth between the two windows, nervously anticipating the
\par pearance of a monstrously corrupted intruder in that otherwise sterile
\par landscape.
\par They were dressed in the new ski suits they'd bought the previous
\par morning, prepared to get out of the house quickly if they came under
\par attack and found their prison indefensible. The loaded Mossberg
\par twelve-gauge lay on the table.
\par Jack could drop the yellow tablet and snatch up the gun in the event
\par that something--don't even think about what it might be launched an
\par assault on the house. The Micro Uzi and the Korth .38 were on the
\par counter by the sink.
\par Toby sat at the table, sipping hot chocolate from a mug, and the dog
\par was lying at his feet. The boy was no longer in a trance state, was
\par entirely disconnected from the mysterious invader of dreams, yet he was
\par uncharacteristically subdued.
\par ? Although Toby had been fine yesterday afternoon and evening,
\par following the apparently far more extensive assault he had suffered in
\par the graveyard, Heather worried about him. He had come away from that
\par first experience with no conscious memory of it, but the trauma of
\par total mental enslavement had to have left scars deep in the mind, the
\par effects of which might become evident only over a period of weeks or
\par months. And he did remember the second attempt at control, because
\par this time the puppetmaster hadn't succeeded in either dominating him or
\par repressing the memory of the telepathic invasion. The encounter she'd
\par had with the creature in a dream the night before last had been
\par frightening and so repulsive that she had been overcome with nausea.
\par Toby's experiences with it, much more intimate than her own, must have
\par been immeasurably more terrifying and affecting.
\par Moving restively from one window to the other, Heather stopped behind
\par Toby's chair, put her hands on his thin shoulders, gave him a squeeze,
\par smoothed his hair, kissed the top of his head. Nothing must happen to
\par him. Unbearable to think of him being touched by that thing, whatever
\par it was and whatever it might look like, or by one of its puppets.
\par Intolerable. She would do anything to prevent that. Anything. She
\par would die to prevent it.
\par Jack looked up from the tablet after quickly reading the first three or
\par four pages. His face was as white as the snowscape. "Why didn't you
\par tell me about this when you found it?"
\par "Because of the way he'd hidden it in the freezer, I thought it must be
\par personal, private, none of our business. Seemed like something only.Paul Youngblood ought to see."
\par "You should've showed it to me."
\par "Hey, you didn't tell me about what happened in the cemetery," she
\par said, "and that's a hell of a lot bigger .."I'm sorry." You didn't
\par share what Paul and Travis told you. that was wrong. But now you know
\par everything. yes, finally." She had been furious that he'd withheld
\par such things from her, but she hadn't been able to sustain her anger,
\par she could not rekindle it now. Because, of course she was equally
\par guilty. She'd not told him about the unease she'd felt during the
\par 
\par entire tour of the property yesterday afternoon. The premonitions of
\par violence and the unprecedented intensity of her nightmare. Certain
\par that something had been in the back stairwell she'd gone into Toby's
\par room the night before all the years they had been married, there had
\par not been as many gaps in their communication with each-other since
\par they'd come to Quartermass Ranch. They wanted their new life not
\par merely to work but to be ct, and they had been unwilling to express
\par doubts observations. For that failure to reach out to each , though
\par motivated by the best intentions, they might pay with their lives.
\par Indicating the tablet, she said, "Is it anything?" It's everything I
\par think. The start of it. His account what he saw." He Spot-read to
\par them about the waves of virtually palpable sound that had awakened
\par Eduardo Fernandez in the night, about the spectral light in the
\par woods.
\par "I thought it would've come from the sky, a ship," she said. "You
\par expect ... after all the movies, all the books, you expect them to come
\par in massive ships."
\par "When you're talking about extraterrestrials, alien means truly
\par different, deeply strange," Jack said. "Eduardo makes that point on
\par the first page. Deeply strange, beyond easy comprehension. Nothing we
\par could imagine--including ships."
\par "I'm scared about what might happen, what I might have to do," Toby
\par said. A blast of wind skirled under the back porch roof, as shrill as
\par an electronic shriek, as questing and insistent as a living creature.
\par Heather crouched at Toby's side. "We'll be okay, honey. Now that we
\par know something's out there, and a little bit about what it is, we'll
\par handle it."
\par She wished she could be half as confident as she sounded. "But I
\par shouldn't be scared."
\par Looking up from the tablet, Jack said, "Nothing shameful about being
\par afraid, kiddo."
\par "You're never afraid," the boy said. "Wrong. I'm scared half to death
\par right now." That revelation amazed Toby. "You are? But you're a
\par hero."
\par "Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. But theres nothing unique about being
\par a hero," Jack said.."Most people are heroes. Your mom's a hero, so are you."
\par "Me?"
\par "For the way you handled this past year. Took courage to deal with
\par everything." didn't feel brave."
\par "Truly brave people never do." said, "Lots of people are heroes even
\par if they it dodge bullets or chase bad guys." People who go to work
\par every day, make sacrifices for their families, and get through life
\par without hurting people if they can help it--those are the real heroes,"
\par Jack told him. "Lots of them out there. And once in a while all of
\par them are afraid."
\par "Then it's okay if I'm scared?" Toby said. rmore than okay," Jack
\par said. "If you were never afraid of anything, then you'd be either very
\par stupid or me. Now, I know you can't be stupid because you're Insanity,
\par on the other hand . . . well, I can't be )sure about that, since it
\par runs in your mom's family." he smiled. Then maybe I can do it," Toby
\par said. "We'll get through this," Jack assured him. Heather met Jack's
\par eyes and smiled as if to say, You did that so well, you ought to be
\par Father of the Year. He winked at her. God, she loved him.
\par "Then it's insane," the boy said. Frowning, Heather said, "What?"
\par "The alien.
\par Can't be stupid. It's smarter than we are, can do things we can't. So
\par it must be insane. It's never afraid." Heather and Jack glanced at
\par each other. No smiles this time. "Never," Toby repeated, both hands
\par clasped tightly around the mug of hot chocolate.
\par Heather returned to the windows, first one, then the other. Jack
\par skimmed the tablet pages he hadn't yet read, found a passage about the
\par doorway, and quoted from it aloud. Standing on edge, a giant coin of
\par darkness. As thin as a sheet of paper. Big enough to drive a train
\par through. A blackness of exceptional purity.
\par Eduardo daring to put his hand in it. His sense that something was
\par coming out of that fearful gloom.
\par Pushing the tablet aside, getting up from his chair, Jack said, "That's
\par enough for now. We can read the rest of it later. Eduardo's account
\par supports our own experiences. That's what's important. They might've
\par thought he was a crazy old geezer, or that we're flaky city people
\par who've come down with a bad case of the heebie-jeebies in all this open
\par space, but it isn't as easy to dismiss all of us."
\par Heather said, "So who're we going to call, the county sheriff?" "Paul
\par Youngblood, then Travis Potter. They already suspect something's wrong
\par out here--though, God knows, neither of them could have a clue that
\par it's any-thing this wrong. With a couple of locals on our side,
\par there's a chance the sheriff's deputies might take us more
\par seriously."
\par Carrying the shotgun with him, Jack went to the wall phone. He plucked
\par the handset off the cradle, listened, rattled the disconnect lever,.punched a couple of numbers, and hung up. "The line's dead." He had
\par suspected as much even as he started toward the phone.
\par After the incident with the computer, she knew that getting help wasn't
\par going to be easy, she hadn't wanted to think about the possibility
\par they were trapped.
\par "Maybe the storm brought down the lines," Jack said. "Aren't the phone
\par lines on the same poles as the power and we have power, so it wasn't
\par the storm." the pegboard, he snatched the keys to the Explorer and to
\par Eduardo's Cherokee.
\par "Okay, let's get the out of here. We'll drive over to Paul and
\par Carolyn's, call Travis from there."
\par Heather tucked the yellow tablet into the waistband of her pants,
\par against her stomach, and zipped her ski-jacket over it. She took the
\par Micro Uzi and the Korth from the countertop, one in each hand. Toby
\par scooted off his chair, Falstaff came out from under the table and
\par padded directly to the connecting door between the kitchen and the
\par garage. The dog seemed to understand that they were getting out, and
\par he fully concurred with their decision.
\par Jack unlocked the door, opened it fast but warily, sing the threshold
\par with the shotgun held in front of him, as if he expected their enemy to
\par be in the garage.
\par flipped the light switch, looked left and right, and said, "Okay."
\par Toby followed his father, with Falstaff at his side. Heather left
\par last, glancing back at the windows. ow. Nothing but cold cascades of
\par snow. Even with the lights on, the garage was murky. It was as chilly
\par as a walk-in refrigerator. The big sectional roll-up door rattled in
\par the wind, but she didn't push the button to raise it, they would be
\par safer if they activated it with the remote from inside the Explorer.
\par While Jack made sure that Toby got in the back seat and buckled his
\par safety belt and that the dog was in as well, Heather hurried to the
\par passenger side. She watched the floor as she moved, convinced that
\par something was under the Explorer and would seize her by the ankles.
\par She remembered the dimly and briefly glimpsed presence on the other
\par side of the threshold when she had opened the door a crack in her dream
\par Friday night. Glistening and dark. Writhing and quick. Its full
\par shape had not been discernible, although she had perceived something
\par large, with vaguely serpentine coils. From memory she could clearly
\par recall its cold hiss of triumph before she had slammed the door and
\par exploded from the nightmare.
\par Nothing slithered from under either vehicle and grabbed at her,
\par however, and she made it safely into the front passenger seat of the
\par Explorer, where she put the heavy Uzi on the floor between her feet.
\par She held on to the revolver. "Maybe the snow's too deep," she said as
\par Jack leaned in the driver's door and handed her the twelve-gage. She
\par braced the shotgun between her knees, butt against the floor, muzzle
\par aimed at the ceiling.."The storm's a lot worse than they predicted." Getting behind the
\par wheel, slamming his door, he said, "It'll be all right. We might push
\par a little snow here and there with the bumper, but I don't think it's
\par deep enough yet to be a big problem."
\par "I wish we'd had that plow attached first thing." Jack jammed the key
\par in the ignition, twisted the switch, but was rewarded only with
\par silence, not even the grinding of the starter. He tried again.
\par Nothing. He checked to be sure the Explorer wasn't in gear. Tried a
\par third time without success. Heather was no more surprised than she had
\par been when the phone proved to be dead. Although Jack said nothing and
\par was reluctant to meet her eyes, she knew he had expected it too, which
\par was why he had also brought the keys to the Cherokee.
\par While Heather, Toby, and Falstaff got out of the Explorer, Jack slipped
\par behind the wheel of the other vehicle. That engine wouldn't turn over,
\par either. He raised the hood on the Jeep, then the hood on the
\par Explorer.
\par He couldn't find any problems. They went back into the house.
\par Heather locked the connecting door to the garage. She doubted that
\par locks were of any use in keeping out the thing that now held dominion
\par over Quartermass Ranch. For all they knew, it could walk through walls
\par if it wished, but she engaged the dead bolt, anyway.
\par Jack looked grim. "Let's prepare for the worst."
\par CHAPTER TWENTY.
\par Shatters of snow ticked and pinged against the windows in the
\par ground-floor study. Though the outer world was whitewashed and full of
\par glare, little daylight filtered into the room. Lamps with parchment
\par shades cast an amber glow.
\par Reviewing their own guns and those that Eduardo had inherited from
\par Stanley Quartermass, Jack chose to load only one other weapon: a Colt
\par .45 revolver.
\par "I'll carry the Mossberg and the Colt," he told Heather. "You'll have
\par the Micro Uzi and the thirty-eight. Use the revolver only as backup to
\par the Uzi."
\par "That's it?" she asked. He regarded her bleakly. "If we can't stop
\par whatever's coming at us with this much firepower, a third gun isn't
\par going to do either of us a damned bit of good."
\par In one of the two drawers in the base of the gun cabinet, among other
\par sporting paraphernalia, he found three game-hunting holsters that
\par belted around the waist. One was crafted from nylon or rayon--some
\par man-made fabric, anyway--and the other two were leather. Exposed to
\par below-zero temperatures for an extended period, nylon would remain
\par flexible long after the leather holster would stiffen, a handgun might
\par snag or bind up slightly if the leather contracted around it..Because he intended to be outdoors while Heather remained inside, he
\par gave her the most supple of the two leather rigs and kept the nylon for
\par himself. Their ski suits were replete with zippered pockets. They
\par filled many of them with spare ammunition, though it might be
\par optimistic to expect to have a chance to reload after the assault
\par began. That an assault would occur, Jack had no doubt.
\par He didn't know what form it would take--an entirely physical attack or
\par a combination of physical and mental blows. He didn't know whether the
\par damn thing would come itself or through surrogates, neither when nor
\par from what direction it would launch its onslaught, but he knew it would
\par come It was impatient with their resistance, eager to control and
\par become them. Little imagination was required to see that it would next
\par want to study them at much closer range, perhaps dissect them and
\par examine their brains and nervous systems to learn the secret of their
\par ability to resist. He had no illusions that they would be killed or
\par anesthetized before being subjected to that exploratory surgery.
\par Jack put his shotgun on the kitchen table again. From one of the
\par cupboards he removed a round galvanized-tin can, unscrewed the lid, and
\par extracted a box of wooden matches, which he put on the table. While
\par Heather stood watch at one window, Toby and Falstaff at the other, Jack
\par went down to the basement. In the second of the two lower rooms, along
\par the wall beside the silent generator, stood eight five-gallon cans of
\par gasoline, a fuel supply they had laid in at Paul Youngblood's
\par suggestion. He carried two cans upstairs and set them on the kitchen
\par floor beside the table.
\par "If the guns can't stop it," he said, "if it gets inside, and you're
\par backed into a corner, then the risk of fire might be worth taking."
\par "Burn down the house?"
\par Heather asked disbelievingly. "It's only a house. It can be
\par rebuilt.
\par If you have no other choice, then to hell with the house. If bullets
\par don't work--" He saw stark terror in her eyes. "They will work, I'm
\par sure of that, the guns will stop it, especially that Uzi. But if by
\par some chance, some one-in-a-million chance, that doesn't stop it, fire
\par will get it for sure. Or at least drive it back. Fire could be just
\par what you need to give you time to distract the thing, hold it off, and
\par get out before you're trapped."
\par She stared at him dubiously. "Jack, why do you keep saying 'you'
\par instead of 'we'?" He hesitated. She wasn't going to like this. He
\par didn't like it much himself. There was no alternative. "You'll stay
\par here with Toby and the dog while I--"
\par "No way."
\par "--while I try to get to the Youngbloods' ranch for help."
\par "No, we shouldn't split up."
\par "We don't have a choice, Heather."."It'll take us easier if we split up."
\par "Probably won't make a difference."
\par "I think it will."
\par "This shotgun doesn't add much to that Uzi." He gestured at the
\par whiteout beyond the window. "Anyway, we can't all make it through that
\par weather." She stared morosely at the wall of blowing snow, unable to
\par argue the point.
\par "I could make it," Toby said, smart enough to know that he was the weak
\par link. "I really could." The dog sensed the boy's anxiety and padded
\par to his side, rubbed against him. "Dad, please, just give me a
\par chance."
\par Two miles wasn't a great distance on a warm spring day, an easy walk,
\par but they were faced with fierce cold against which even their ski suits
\par were not perfect protection.
\par Furthermore, the power of the wind would work against them in three
\par ways: reducing the subjective air temperature at least ten degrees
\par below what it was objectively, pounding them into exhaustion as they
\par tried to make progress against it, and obscuring their desired route
\par with whirling clouds of snow that reduced visibility to near zero.
\par Jack figured he and Heather might have the strength and stamina
\par required to walk two miles under those conditions, with snow up to
\par their knees, higher in places, but he was sure Toby wouldn't get a
\par quarter of the way, not even walking in the trail they broke for him.
\par Before they'd gone far, they would have to take turns carrying him.
\par Thereafter, they would quickly become debilitated and surely die in
\par that white desolation.
\par "I don't want to stay here," Toby said. "I don't want to do what I
\par might have to do if I stay here."
\par "And I don't want to leave you here." Jack squatted in front of him.
\par "I'm not abandoning you, Toby. You know I'd never do that, don't
\par you?"
\par Toby nodded somberly. "And you can depend on your mom. She's tough.
\par She won't let anything happen to you."
\par "I know," Toby said, being a brave soldier.
\par "Good. Okay. Now I've got a couple of things to do yet, and then I'll
\par go. I'll be back fast as I can--straight over to Ponderosa Pines,
\par round up help, get back here with the cavalry. You've seen those old
\par movies. The cavalry always gets there in the nick of time, doesn't
\par it?
\par You'll be okay. We'll all be okay." The boy searched his eyes. He.met his son's fear with a falsely reassuring smile and felt like the
\par most deceitful bastard ever born. He was not as confident as he
\par sounded. Not by half. And he did feel as if he was running out on
\par them. What if he got help-- but they were dead by the time he returned
\par to Quartermass Ranch?
\par He might as well kill himself then. Wouldn't be a point in going on.
\par Truth was, it probably wouldn't work out that them dead and him
\par alive.
\par At best he had a fifty-fifty chance of making it all the way to
\par Ponderosa Pines. If the storm didn't bring him down ... something else
\par might. He didn't know how closely they were being observed, whether
\par their adversary would be aware of his departure. If it did see him go,
\par it wouldn't let him get far. Then Heather and Toby would be on their
\par own. Nothing else he could do. No other plan made sense. Zero
\par options.
\par And time running out.
\par Hammer blows boomed through the house. Hard, hollow, fearful sounds.
\par Jack used three-inch steel nails because they were the largest he had
\par been able to find in the garage tool cabinet. Standing in the
\par vestibule at the bottom of the back stairs, he drove those spikes at a
\par severe angle through the outside door and into the jamb. Two above the
\par knob, two below. The door was solid oak, and the long nails bit
\par through it only with relentless hammering. The hinges were on the
\par inside. Nothing on the back porch could pry them loose. Nevertheless,
\par he decided to fix the door to the jamb on that flank as well, though
\par with only two nails instead of four. He drove another two through the
\par upper part of the door and into the header, just for good measure. Any
\par intruder that entered those back stairs could take two immediate routes
\par once it crossed the outer threshold, instead of just one as with the
\par other doors. It could enter the kitchen and confront Heathen-or turn
\par the other way and swiftly ascend to Toby's room. Jack wanted to
\par prevent anything from reaching the second floor because, from there, it
\par could slip into several rooms, avoiding a frontal assault, forcing
\par Heather to search for it until it had a chance to attack her from
\par behind. After he'd driven the final nail home, he disengaged the
\par dead-bolt lock and tried to open the door. He couldn't budge it, no
\par matter how hard he strained. No intruder could get through it quietly
\par anymore, it would have to be broken down, and Heather would hear it
\par regardless of where she was. He twisted the thumb-turn. The lock
\par clacked into the striker plate again. Secure.
\par While Jack nailed shut the other door at the back of the house, Toby
\par helped Heather pile pots, pans, dishes, flatware, and drinking glasses
\par in front of the door between the kitchen and the back porch. That
\par carefully balanced tower would topple with a resounding crash if the
\par door was pushed open even slowly, alerting them if they were elsewhere
\par in the house. Falstaff kept his distance from the rickety assemblage,
\par as if he understood that he would be in big trouble if he was the one
\par to knock it over. "What about the cellar door?" Toby said. "That's
\par safe," Heather assured him. "There's no way into the cellar from
\par outside." As Falstaff watched with interest, they constructed a.similar security device in front of the door between the kitchen and
\par the garage. Toby crowned it with a glassful of spoons atop an inverted
\par metal bowl. They carried bowls, dishes, pots, baking pans, and forks
\par to the foyer. After Jack left, they would construct a third tower
\par inside the front door. Heather couldn't help feeling that the alarms
\par were inadequate. Pathetic, actually. However, they couldn't nail shut
\par all the first-floor doors, because they might have to escape by one--in
\par which case they could just shove the tottering housewares aside, slip
\par the lock, and be gone. And they hadn't time to transform the house
\par into a sealed fortress.
\par Besides, every fortress had the potential to become a prison. Even if
\par Jack had felt there was time enough to attempt to secure the house a
\par little better, he might not have tried. Regardless of what measures
\par were taken, the large number of windows made the place difficult to
\par defend. The best he could do was hurry from window to window
\par upstairs--while Heather checked those on the ground floor--to make sure
\par they were locked. A lot of them appeared to be painted shut and not
\par easy to open in any case. Pane after pane revealed a misery of snow
\par and wind. He caught no glimpse of anything unearthly.
\par In Heather's closet off the master bedroom, Jack sorted through her
\par wool scarves. He selected one that was loosely knit. He found his
\par sunglasses in a dresser drawer. He wished he had ski goggles.
\par Sunglasses would have to be good enough. He couldn't walk the two
\par miles to Ponderosa Pines with his eyes unprotected in that glare, he'd
\par be risking snowblindness.
\par When he returned to the kitchen, where Heather was checking the locks
\par on the last of the windows, he lifted the phone again, hoping for a
\par dial tone. Folly, of course. A dead line. "Got to go," he said.
\par They might have hours or only precious minutes before their nemesis
\par decided to come after them. He couldn't guess whether the thing would
\par be swift or leisurely in its approach, there was no way of
\par understanding its thought processes or of knowing whether time had any
\par meaning to it. Alien. Eduardo had been right. Utterly alien.
\par 
\par Mysterious.
\par Infinitely strange.
\par Heather and Toby accompanied him to the front door. He held Heather
\par briefly but tightly, fiercely. He kissed her only once. He said an
\par equally quick goodbye to Toby. He dared not linger, for he might
\par decide at any second not to leave, after all. Ponderosa Pines was the
\par only hope they had. Not going was tantamount to admitting they were
\par doomed. Yet leaving his wife and son alone in that house was the
\par hardest thing he had ever done-- harder than seeing Tommy Fernandez and
\par Luther Bryson cut down at his side, harder than facing Anson Oliver in
\par front of that burning service station, harder by far than recovering
\par from a spinal injury. He told himself that going required as much
\par courage on his part as staying required of them, not because of the
\par ordeal the storm would pose and not because something unspeakable might
\par be waiting for him out there, but because, if they died and he lived,
\par his grief and guilt and selfloathing would make life darker than.death.
\par He wound the scarf around his face, from the chin to just below his
\par eyes.
\par Although it went around twice, the weave was loose enough to allow him
\par to breathe. He pulled up the hood and tied it under his chin to hold
\par the scarf in place. He felt like a knight girding for battle. Toby
\par watched, nervously chewing his lower lip. Tears shimmered in his eyes,
\par but he strove not to spill them.
\par Being the little hero, so the boy's tears would be less visible to him
\par and, therefore, less corrosive of his will to leave.
\par He pulled on his gloves and picked up the Mossberg shotgun. The Colt
\par .45 was holstered at his right hip. The moment had come. Heather
\par appeared stricken. He could hardly bear to look at her. She opened
\par the door. Wailing wind drove snow all the way across the porch and
\par over the threshold. Jack stepped out of the house and reluctantly
\par turned away from everything he loved. He kicked through the powdery
\par snow on the porch. He heard her speak to him one last time--"I love
\par you"--the words distorted by the wind but the meaning unmistakable. At
\par the head of the porch steps he hesitated, turned to her, saw that she
\par had taken one step out of the house, said, "I love you, Heather," then
\par walked down and out into the storm, not sure if she had heard him, not
\par knowing if he would ever speak to her again, ever hold her in his arms,
\par ever see the love in her eyes or the smile that was, to him, worth more
\par than a place in heaven and the salvation of his soul.
\par The snow in the front yard was knee-deep. He bulled through it. He
\par dared not look back again. Leaving them, he knew, was essential. It
\par was courageous. It was wise, prudent, their best hope of survival.
\par However, it didn't feel like any of those things. It felt like
\par abandonment.
\par CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
\par Wind hissed at the windows as if it possessed consciousness and was
\par keeping watch on them, thumped and rattled the kitchen door as if
\par testing the lock, shrieked and snuffled along the sides of the house in
\par search of a weakness in their defenses.
\par Reluctant to put the Uzi down in spite of its weight, Heather stood
\par watch for a while at the north window of the kitchen, then at the west
\par window above the sink. She cocked her head now and then to listen
\par closely to those noises that seemed too purposeful to be just voices of
\par the storm.
\par At the table, Toby was wearing earphones and playing with a Game Boy.
\par His body language was different from that which he usually exhibited
\par when involved in an electronic game--no twitching, leaning, rocking
\par from side to side, bouncing in his seat. He was playing only to fill
\par the time.
\par Falstaff lay in the corner farthest from any window, the warmest spot.in the room. Occasionally he lifted his noble head, sniffing the air
\par or listening, but mostly he lay on his side, staring across the room at
\par floor level, yawning.
\par Time passed slowly. Heather repeatedly checked the wall clock, certain
\par that at least ten minutes had gone by, only to discover that a mere two
\par minutes had elapsed since she'd last looked. The two-mile walk to
\par Ponderosa Pines would take maybe twenty-five minutes in fair weather.
\par Jack might require an hour or even an hour and a half in the storm,
\par allowing for the hard slogging through knee-deep snow, detours around
\par the deeper drifts, and the incessant resistance of the gale-force
\par wind.
\par Once there, he should need half an hour to explain the situation and
\par marshal a rescue team. Less than fifteen minutes would be required for
\par the return trip even if they had to plow open some snowbound stretches
\par of road and driveway. At most he ought to be back in two hours and
\par fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour sooner than that.
\par The dog yawned. Toby was so still he might have been asleep sitting
\par up. They had turned the thermostat down so they could wear their ski
\par suits and be ready to desert the house without delay if necessary, yet
\par the place was still warm. Her hands and face were cool, but sweat
\par trickled along her spine and down her sides from her underarms. She
\par unzipped her jacket, though it interfered with the hip holster when it
\par hung loose.
\par When fifteen minutes had passed uneventfully, she began to think their
\par unpredictable adversary would make no move against them. Either it
\par didn't realize they were currently more vulnerable without Jack or it
\par didn't care.
\par From what Toby had said, it was the very definition of arrogance--never
\par afraid--and might operate always according to its own rhythms, plans,
\par and desires.
\par Her confidence was beginning to rise--when Toby spoke quietly and not
\par to her.
\par "No, I don't think so."
\par Heather stepped away from the window.
\par He murmured, "Well ... maybe."
\par "Toby?" she said.
\par As if unaware of her, he stared at the Game Boy screen. His fingers
\par weren't moving on the controls. No game was under way: shapes and bold
\par colors swarmed across the miniature monitor, similar to those she had
\par seen twice before.
\par "Why?" he asked.
\par She put a hand on his shoulder.."Maybe," he said to the swirling colors on the screen. Always before,
\par responding to this entity, he had said "no." The "maybe" alarmed
\par Heather.
\par "Could be, maybe," he said.
\par She took the earphones off him, and he finally looked up at her.
\par "What're you doing, Toby?"
\par "Talking," he said in a half-drugged voice.
\par "What were you saying "maybe" to?"
\par "To the Giver," he explained.
\par She remembered that name from her dream, the hateful thing's attempt to
\par portray itself as the source of great relief, peace, and pleasure.
\par "It's not a giver. That's a lie. It's a taker. You keep saying "no"
\par to it."
\par Toby stared up at her.
\par She was shaking. "You understand me, honey?"
\par He nodded.
\par She was still not sure he was listening to her. "You keep saying "no,"
\par nothing but "no.""
\par "All right."
\par She threw the Game Boy in the waste can. After a hesitation, she took
\par it out, placed it on the floor, and stomped it under her boot, once,
\par twice. She rammed her heel down on it a third time, although the
\par device was well crunched after two stomps, then once more for good
\par measure, then again just for the hell of it, until she realized she was
\par out of control, taking excess measures against the Game Boy because she
\par couldn't get at the Giver, which was the thing she really wanted to
\par stomp.
\par For a few seconds she stood there, breathing hard, staring at the
\par plastic debris. She started to stoop to gather up the pieces, then
\par decided to hell with it. She kicked the larger chunks against the
\par wall.
\par Falstaff had become interested enough to get to his feet. When Heather
\par returned to the window at the sink, the retriever regarded her
\par curiously, then went to the trashed Game Boy and sniffed it as if
\par trying to determine why it had elicited such fury from her.
\par Beyond the window, nothing had changed. A winddriven avalanche of snow
\par obscured the day almost as thoroughly as a fog rolling off the Pacific
\par could obscure the streets of a California beach town.
\par She looked at Toby. "You okay?"."Yeah."
\par "Don't let it in."
\par "I don't want to."
\par "Then don't. Be tough. You can do it."
\par On the counter under the microwave, the radio powered up of its own
\par accord, as if it incorporated an alarm clock set to provide five
\par minutes of music prior to a wake-up buzzer. It was a big
\par multiple-spectrum receiver, the size of two giant-economy-size boxes of
\par cereal, and it pulled in six bands, including domestic AM and FM,
\par however, it was not a clock and could not be programmed to switch
\par itself on at a preselected time. Yet the dial glowed with green light,
\par and strange music issued from the speakers.
\par The chains of notes and overlapping rhythms were not music, actually,
\par just the essence of music in the sense that a pile of lumber and screws
\par amounted to the essence of a cabinet. She could identify a symphony of
\par instruments--flutes, oboes, clarinets, horns of all kinds, violins,
\par timpani, snare drums--but there was no melody, no identifiable cohesive
\par structure, merely a sense of structure too subtle to quite hear, waves
\par of sound that were sometimes pleasant and sometimes jarringly
\par discordant, now loud, now soft, ebbing and flowing.
\par "Maybe," Toby said.
\par Heather's attention had been on the radio. With surprise, she turned
\par to her son.
\par Toby had gotten off his chair. He was standing by the table, staring
\par across the room at the radio, swaying like a slender reed in a breeze
\par only he could feel. His eyes were glazed. "Well ... yeah, maybe ...
\par maybe ..."
\par The unmelodious tapestry of sound coming from the radio was the aural
\par equivalent of the ever-changing masses of color that she had seen
\par swarming across the television, computer, and Game Boy screens: a
\par language that evidently spoke directly to the subconscious.
\par She could feel the hypnotic pull of it herself, although it exerted
\par only a small fraction of the influence on her that it did on Toby.
\par Toby was the vulnerable one. Children were always the easiest prey,
\par natural victims in a cruel world.
\par "... I'd like that ... nice ... pretty," the boy said dreamily, and
\par then he sighed.
\par If he said "yes," if he opened the inner door, he might not be able to
\par evict the thing this time. He might be lost forever.
\par "No!" Heather said..Seizing the radio cord, she tore the plug out of the wall socket hard
\par enough to bend the prongs. Orange sparks spurted from the outlet,
\par showered across the counter tile.
\par Though unplugged, the radio continued to produce the mesmerizing waves
\par of sound.
\par She stared at it, aghast and uncomprehending.
\par Toby remained entranced, speaking to the unseen presence, as he might
\par have spoken to an imaginary playmate. "Can I? Hmmm? Can I . . .
\par will you . . . will you?"
\par The damn thing was more relentless than the drug dealers in the city,
\par who did their come-on shtick for kids at schoolyard fences, on street
\par corners, in videogame parlors, outside movie theaters, at the malls,
\par wherever they could find a venue, indefatigable, as hard to eradicate
\par as body lice.
\par Batteries. Of course. The radio operated off either direct or
\par alternating current.
\par "... maybe ... maybe ..."
\par She dropped the Uzi on the counter, grabbed the radio, popped open the
\par plastic cover on the back, and tore out the two rechargeable
\par batteries.
\par She threw them into the sink, where they rattled like dice against the
\par backboard of a craps table. The siren song from the radio had stopped
\par before Toby acquiesced, so Heather had won that roll. Toby's mental
\par freedom had been on the come line, but she had thrown a seven, won the
\par bet. He was safe for the moment.
\par "Toby? Toby, look at me."
\par He obeyed. He was no longer swaying, his eyes were clear, and he
\par seemed to be back in touch with reality.
\par Falstaff barked, and Heather thought he was agitated by all the noise,
\par perhaps by the stark fear he sensed in her, but then she saw that his
\par attention was on the window above the sink. He rapped out hard,
\par vicious, warning barks meant to scare off an adversary.
\par She spun around in time to see something on the porch slip away to the
\par left of the window. It was dark and tall. She glimpsed it out of the
\par corner of her eye, but it was too quick for her to see what it was.
\par The doorknob rattled.
\par The radio had been a diversion.
\par As Heather snatched the Micro Uzi off the counter, the retriever
\par charged past her and positioned himself in front of the pots and pans
\par and dishes stacked against the back door. He barked ferociously at the
\par brass knob, which turned back and forth, back and forth..Heather grabbed Toby by the shoulder, pushed him toward the hall
\par door.
\par "Into the hall, but stay close behind me quick!"
\par The matches were already in her jacket pocket. She snared the nearest
\par of the five-gallon cans of gasoline by its handle. She could take only
\par one because she wasn't about to put down the Uzi.
\par Falstaff was like a mad dog, snarling so savagely that spittle flew
\par from his chops, hair standing up straight on the back of his neck, his
\par tail flat across his butt, crouched and tense, as if he might spring at
\par the door even before the thing outside could come through it.
\par The lock opened with a hard clack.
\par The intruder had a key. Or maybe it didn't need one. Heather
\par remembered how the radio had snapped on by itself.
\par She backed onto the threshold between the kitchen and ground-floor
\par hall.
\par Reflections of the overhead light trickled scintillantly along the
\par brass doorknob as it turned.
\par She put the can of gasoline on the floor and held the Uzi with both
\par hands.
\par "Falstaff, get away from there! Falstaff!"
\par As the door eased inward, the tower of housewares tottered.
\par The dog backed off as she continued to call to him.
\par The security assemblage teetered, tipped over, crashed. Pots, pans,
\par and dishes bounced-slid-spun across the kitchen floor, forks and knives
\par rang against one another like bells, and drinking glasses shattered.
\par The dog scrambled to Heather's side but kept barking fiercely, teeth
\par bared, eyes wild.
\par She had a sure grip on the Uzi, the safeties off, her finger curled
\par lightly on the trigger. What if it jammed? Forget that, it wouldn't
\par jam. It had worked like a dream when she'd tried it out against a
\par canyon wall in a remote area above Malibu several months earlier:
\par automatic gunfire echoing along the walls of that narrow defile, spent
\par shell casings spewing into the air, scrub brush torn to pieces, the
\par smell of hot brass and burned gunpowder, bullets banging out in a
\par punishing stream, as smooth and easy as water from a hose. It wouldn't
\par jam, not in a million years. But, Jesus, what if it does?
\par The door eased inward. A narrow crack. An inch. Then wider.
\par Something snaked through the gap a few inches above the knob. In that
\par instant the nightmare was confirmed, the unreal made real, the
\par impossible suddenly incarnate, for what intruded was a tentacle, mostly.black but irregularly speckled with red, as shiny and smooth as wet
\par silk, perhaps two inches in diameter at the thickest point that she
\par could see, tapering as thin as an earthworm at the tip. It quested
\par into the warm air of the kitchen, fluidly curling, flexing obscenely.
\par That was enough. She didn't need to see more, didn't want to see more,
\par so she opened fire. Chuda-chudachuda-chuda. The briefest squeeze of
\par the trigger spewed six or seven rounds, punching holes in the oak door,
\par gouging and splintering the edge of it. The deafening explosions
\par slammed back and forth from wall to wall of the kitchen, sharp echoes
\par overlaying echoes.
\par The tentacle slipped away with the alacrity of a retracted whip.
\par She heard no cry, no unearthly scream. She didn't know if she had hurt
\par the thing or not.
\par She wasn't going to go and look on the porch, no way, and she wasn't
\par going to wait to see if it would storm into the room more aggressively
\par the next time.
\par Because she didn't know how fast the creature might be able to move,
\par she needed to put more distance between herself and the back door.
\par She grabbed the can of gasoline at her side, Uzi in one hand, and
\par backed out of the doorway, into the hall, almost tripping over the dog
\par as he scrambled to retreat with her. She backed to the foot of the
\par stairs, where Toby waited for her.
\par "Mom?" he said, voice tight with fear.
\par Peering along the hall and across the kitchen, she could see the back
\par door because it was in a direct line with her. It remained ajar, but
\par nothing was forcing entry yet. She knew the intruder must still be on
\par the porch, gripping the outside knob, because otherwise the wind would
\par have pushed the door all the way open.
\par Why was it waiting? Afraid of her? No. Toby had said it was never
\par afraid.
\par Another thought rocked her: If it didn't understand the concept of
\par death, that must mean it couldn't die, couldn't be killed. In which
\par case guns were useless against it.
\par Still, it waited, hesitated. Maybe what Toby had learned about it was
\par all a lie, and maybe it was as vulnerable as they were or more so, even
\par fragile.
\par Wishful thinking. It was all she had.
\par She was not quite to the midpoint of the hall. Two more steps would
\par put her there, between the archways to the dining and living rooms.
\par But she was far enough from the back door to have a chance of
\par obliterating the creature if it erupted into the house with unnatural
\par speed and power. She stopped, put the gasoline can on the floor beside
\par the newel post, and clutched the Uzi in both hands again.."Mom?"
\par "Sssshhhh."
\par "What're we gonna do?" he pleaded.
\par "Sssshhhh. Let me think."
\par Aspects of the intruder were obviously snakelike, although she couldn't
\par know if that was the nature of only its appendages or of its entire
\par body. Most snakes could move fast--or coil and spring substantial
\par distances with deadly accuracy.
\par The back door remained ajar. Unmoving. Wisps of snow followed drafts
\par through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb, into the house,
\par spinning and glittering across the tile floor.
\par Whether or not the thing on the back porch was fast, it was undeniably
\par big.
\par She'd sensed its considerable size when she'd had only the most
\par fleeting glimpse of it slipping away from the window. Bigger than she
\par was.
\par "Come on," she muttered, her attention riveted on the back door. "Come
\par on, if you're never afraid, come on."
\par Both she and Toby cried out in surprise when, in the living room, the
\par television switched on, with the volume turned all the way up.
\par Frenetic, bouncy music. Cartoon music. A screech of brakes, a crash
\par and clatter, with comic accompaniment on a flute. Then the voice of a
\par frustrated Elmer Fudd booming through the house: "OOOHHH, I HATE THAT
\par WABBIT!"
\par Heather kept her attention on the back door, beyond the hall and
\par kitchen, altogether about fifty feet away.
\par So loud each word vibrated the windows, Bugs Bunny said: "EH, WHAT'S
\par UP, DOC" And then a sound of something bouncing: BOING, BOINC, BOING,
\par BOING, BOING.
\par "STOP THAT, STOP THAT, YOU CWAZY WABBIT!"
\par Falstaff ran into the living room, barking at the TV, and then scurried
\par into the hall again, looking past Heather to where he, too, knew the
\par real enemy still waited.
\par The back door.
\par Snow sifting through the narrow opening.
\par In the living room, the television program fell silent in the middle of
\par a long comical trombone crescendo that, even under the circumstances,
\par brought to mind a vivid image of Elmer Fudd sliding haplessly and
\par inexorably toward one doom or another. Quiet. Just the keening wind.outside.
\par One second. Two. Three.
\par Then the TV blared again, but not with Bugs and Elmer. It spewed forth
\par the same weird waves of unmelodic music that had issued from the radio
\par in the kitchen.
\par To Toby, she said sharply, "Resist it!"
\par Back door. Snowflakes spiraling through the crack.
\par Come on, come on.
\par Keeping her eyes on the back door, at the far side of the lighted
\par kitchen, she said, "Don't listen to it, honey, just tell it to go away,
\par say no to it. No, no, no to it."
\par The tuneless music, alternately irritating and soothing, pushed her
\par with what seemed like real physical force when the volume rose, pulled
\par on her when the volume ebbed, pushed and pulled, until she realized
\par that she was swaying as Toby had swayed in the kitchen when under the
\par spell of the radio.
\par In one of the quieter passages, she heard a murmur Toby's voice. She
\par couldn't catch the words.
\par She looked at him. He had that dazed expression. Transported. He was
\par moving his lips. He might have been saying "yes, yes," but she
\par couldn't tell for sure.
\par Kitchen door. Still ajar two inches, no more, as it had been.
\par Something still waiting out there on the porch.
\par She knew it.
\par The boy whispered to his unseen seducer, soft urgent words that might
\par have been the first faltering steps of acquiescence or total
\par surrender.
\par "Shit!" she said.
\par She backed up two steps, turned toward the livingroom arch on her left,
\par and opened fire on the television. A brief burst, six or eight rounds,
\par tore into the TV. The picture tube exploded, thin white vapor or smoke
\par from the ruined electronics spurted into the air, and the darkly
\par beguiling siren song was hammered into silence by the clatter of the
\par Uzi.
\par A strong, cold draft swept through the hallway, and Heather spun toward
\par the rear of the house. The back door was no longer ajar. It stood
\par wide open. She could see the snow-covered porch and, beyond the porch,
\par the churning white day.
\par The Giver had first walked out of a dream. Now it had walked out of
\par the storm, into the house. It was somewhere in the kitchen, to the.left or right of the hall door, and she had missed the chance to cut it
\par down as it entered.
\par If it was just on the other side of the threshold between the hall and
\par the kitchen, it had closed to a maximum striking distance of about
\par twenty-five feet. Getting dangerously close again.
\par Toby was standing on the first step of the staircase, clear-eyed once
\par more but shivering and pale with terror. The dog was beside him,
\par alert, sniffing the air.
\par Behind her, another pot-pan-bowl-flatware-dish alarm went off with a
\par loud clanging of metal and shattering of glass. Toby screamed,
\par Falstaff erupted into ferocious barking again, and Heather swung
\par around, heart slamming so hard it shook her arms, made the gun jump up
\par and down. The front door was arcing inward. A forest of long
\par red-speckled black tentacles burst through the gap between door and
\par jamb, glossy and writhing. So there were two of them, one at the front
\par of the house, one at the back. The Uzi chattered. Six rounds, maybe
\par eight. The door shut. But a mysterious dark figure was hunched
\par against it, a small part of it visible in the beveled-glass window in
\par the top of the door.
\par Without pausing to see if she'd actually hit the son of a bitch or
\par scored only the door and wall, she spun toward the kitchen yet again,
\par punching three or four rounds through the empty hallway behind her even
\par as she turned.
\par Nothing there.
\par She had been sure the first one would be striking at her back.
\par Wrong.
\par Maybe twenty rounds left in the Uzi's double magazine. Maybe only
\par fifteen.
\par They couldn't stay in the hall. Not with one of the damned things in
\par the kitchen, another on the front porch.
\par Why had she thought there'd be only one of them? Because in the dream
\par there was only one? Because Toby had spoken of just a single
\par seducer?
\par Might be more than two. Hundreds.
\par The living room was on one side of her. Dining room on the other.
\par Ultimately, either place seemed likely to become a trap.
\par In different rooms all over the ground floor, windows imploded
\par simultaneously.
\par The clinkjangle-tink of cascading glass and the shrieking of the wind
\par at every breach decided her. Up. She and Toby would go up. Easier to
\par defend high ground..She grabbed the can of gasoline.
\par The front door came open behind her again, banging against the
\par scattered items with which they had built the alarm tower. She assumed
\par that something other than the wind had shoved it, but she didn't glance
\par back. The Giver hissed. As in the dream.
\par She leaped for the stairs, gasoline sloshing in the can, and shouted at
\par Toby, "Go, go!"
\par The boy and the dog raced to the second floor ahead of her.
\par "Wait at the top!" she called as they scrambled upward and out of
\par sight.
\par At the top of the first flight, Heather halted on the landing, looked
\par back and down into the front hall, and saw a dead man walking. Eduardo
\par Fernandez. She recognized him from the pictures they had found while
\par sorting through his belongings. Dead and buried more than four months,
\par he nevertheless moved in a shambling and stiffjointed manner, kicking
\par through the dishes and pans and flatware, heading for the foot of the
\par 
\par stairs, accompanied by swirling flakes of snow like ashes from the
\par fires of hell.
\par There could be no self-awareness in the corpse, no slightest wisp of Ed
\par Fernandez's consciousness remaining in it, for the old man's mind and
\par soul had gone on to a better place before the Giver had requisitioned
\par his body.
\par The soiled cadaver was evidently being controlled with the same power
\par that had switched on the radio and the TV at long distance, had opened
\par the dead-bolt locks without a key, and had caused the windows to
\par implode. Call it telekinesis, mind over matter. Alien mind over
\par earthly matter. In this case, it was decomposing organic matter in the
\par rough shape of a human being.
\par At the bottom of the steps, the corpse stopped and gazed up at her.
\par Its face was only slightly swollen, though darkly empurpled, mottled
\par with yellow here and there, a crust of evil green under its clogged
\par nostrils. One eye was missing. The other was covered with a yellow
\par film, it bulged against a half-concealing lid that, though sewn shut by
\par a mortician, had partially opened when the rotting threads had
\par loosened.
\par Heather heard herself muttering rapidly, rhythmically. After a moment
\par she realized that she was feverishly reciting a long prayer she had
\par learned as a child but had not repeated in eighteen or twenty years.
\par Under other circumstances, if she had made a conscious effort to recall
\par the words, she couldn't have come up with half of them, but now they
\par flowed out of her as they had when she'd been a young girl kneeling in
\par church.
\par The walking corpse was less than half the reason for her fear, however,
\par and far less than half the reason for the acute disgust that knotted
\par her stomach, made breathing difficult, and triggered her gag reflex..It was gruesome, but the discolored flesh was not yet dissolving from
\par the bones. The dead man still reeked more of embalming fluid than of
\par putrescence, a pungent odor that blew up the staircase on a cold draft
\par and instantly reminded Heather of long-ago high-school biology classes
\par and slippery specimen frogs fished from jars of formaldehyde for
\par dissection.
\par What sickened and repelled her most of all was the Giver that rode the
\par corpse as it might have ridden a beast of burden. Though the light in
\par the hallway was bright enough to reveal the alien clearly, and though
\par she might have wanted to see less of it rather than more, she was
\par nevertheless unable to precisely define its physical form. The bulk of
\par the thing appeared to hang along the dead man's back, secured by
\par whiplike tentacles-- some as thin as pencils, some as thick as her own
\par forearm--that were firmly lashed around the mount's thighs, waist,
\par chest, and neck. The Giver was mostly black, and such a deep black
\par that it hurt her eyes to stare at it, though in places the inky sheen
\par was relieved by blood-red speckles.
\par Without Toby to protect, she might not have been able to face this
\par thing, for it was too strange, incomprehensible, just too damned
\par much.
\par The sight of it dizzied like a whiff of nitrous oxide, brought her to
\par the edge of desperate giddy laughter, a humorless mirth that was
\par perilously close to madness.
\par Not daring to take her eyes off the corpse or its hideous rider, for
\par fear she would look up to find it one step below her, Heather slowly
\par lowered the five-gallon can of gasoline to the floor of the landing.
\par Along the dead man's back, at the heart of the churning mass of
\par tentacles, there might have been a central body akin to the sac of a
\par squid, with glaring inhuman eyes and a twisted mouth--but if it was
\par there, she couldn't catch a glimpse of it. Instead, the thing seemed
\par to be all ropy extremities, ceaselessly twitching, curling, coiling,
\par and unraveling. Though oozing and gelatinous within its skin, the
\par Giver occasionally bristled into spiky shapes that made her think of
\par lobsters, crabs, crawfish--but in a blink, it was all sinuous motion
\par once more.
\par In college, a friend of Heather's--Wendi Felzer--had developed liver
\par cancer and had decided to augment her doctors' treatments with a course
\par of self-healing through imaging therapy. Wendi had pictured her white
\par blood cells as knights in shining armor with magic swords, her cancer
\par as a dragon, and she had meditated two hours a day, until she could
\par see, in her mind, all those knights slaying the beast. The Giver was
\par the archetype for every image of cancer ever conceived, the slithering
\par essence of malignancy. In Wendi's case, the dragon had won. Not a
\par good thing to remember now, not good at all.
\par It started to climb the steps toward her.
\par She raised the Uzi.
\par The most loathsome aspect of the Giver's entanglement with the corpse.was the extent of its intimacy. The buttons had popped off the white
\par burial shirt, which hung open, revealing that a few of the tentacles
\par had pried open the thoracic incision made by the coroner during his
\par autopsy, those red-speckled appendages vanished inside the cadaver,
\par probing deep into unknown reaches of its cold tissues. The creature
\par seemed to revel in its bonding with the dead flesh, an embrace that was
\par as inexplicable as it was obscene.
\par Its very existence was offensive. That it could be seemed proof that
\par the universe was a madhouse, full of worlds without meaning and bright
\par galaxies without pattern or purpose.
\par It climbed two steps from the hall, toward the landing.
\par Three. Four.
\par Heather waited one more.
\par Five steps up, seven steps below her.
\par A bristling mass of tentacles appeared between the dead man's parted
\par lips, like a host of black tongues spotted with blood.
\par Heather opened fire, held the trigger down too long, used up too much
\par ammunition, ten or twelve rounds, even fourteen, although it was
\par surprising--considering her state of mind--that she didn't empty both
\par magazines. The 9mm slugs stitched a bloodless diagonal line across the
\par dead man's chest, through body and entwining tentacles.
\par Parasite and dead host pitched backward to the hallway floor below,
\par leaving two lengths of severed tentacles on the stairs, one about
\par eighteen inches long, the other about two feet. Neither of those
\par amputated limbs bled. Both continued to move, initially twisting and
\par flailing the way the bodies of snakes writhe long after they have been
\par separated from their heads.
\par Heather was transfixed by the grisly sight because, almost at once, the
\par movement ceased to be the result of misfiring nerves and randomly
\par spasming muscles, it began to appear purposeful. Each scrap of the
\par primary organism seemed aware of the other, and they groped toward each
\par other, the first curling down over the edge of a step while the second
\par rose gracefully like a flute-charmed serpent to meet it. When they
\par touched, a transformation occurred that was essentially black magic and
\par beyond Heather's understanding, even though she had a clear view of
\par it.
\par The two became as one, not simply entwining but melding, flowing
\par together as if the soot-dark silken skin sheathing them was little more
\par than surface tension that gave shape to the oozing protoplasm within.
\par As soon as the two combined, the resulting mass sprouted eight smaller
\par tentacles, with a shimmer like quick shadows playing across a puddle of
\par water, the new organism bristled into a vaguely crablike--but still
\par eyeless--form, though it was as soft and flexible as ever. Quivering,
\par as if to maintain even a marginally more angular shape required
\par monumental effort, it began to hitch down the steps toward the
\par mothermass from which it had become separated..Less than half a minute had passed from the moment when the two severed
\par appendages had begun to seek each other.
\par Bodies are.
\par Those words were, according to Jack, part of what the Giver had said
\par through Toby in the cemetery.
\par Bodies are.
\par A cryptic statement then. All too clear now. Bodies are--now and
\par forever, flesh without end. Bodies are-- expendable if necessary,
\par fiercely adaptable, severable without loss of intellect or memory and
\par therefore in infinite supply.
\par The bleakness of her sudden insight, the perception that they could not
\par win regardless of how valiantly they struggled or how much courage they
\par possessed, kicked her across the borderline of sanity for a moment,
\par into madness no less total for its brevity. Instead of recoiling from
\par the monstrously alien creature stilting determinedly down the steps to
\par rejoin its mothermass, as any sane person would have done, she plunged
\par after it, off the landing with a strangled scream that sounded like the
\par thin and bitter grievance of a dying animal in a sawtooth trap, the
\par Micro Uzi thrust in front of her.
\par Although she knew she was putting herself in terrible jeopardy,
\par unconscionably abandoning Toby at the top of the stairs, Heather was
\par unable to stop. She went down one, two, three, four, five steps in the
\par time that the crablike thing descended two. They were four steps apart
\par when the thing abruptly reversed direction without bothering to turn
\par around, as if front and back and sideways were all the same to it. She
\par stopped so fast she almost lost her balance, and the crab ascended
\par toward her a lot faster than it had descended.
\par Three steps between them.
\par Two.
\par She squeezed the trigger, emptied the Uzi's last rounds into the
\par scuttling form, chopping it into four-five-six bloodless pieces that
\par tumbled and flopped down a few steps, where they lay squirming.
\par Squirming ceaselessly. Supple and snakelike again. Eagerly and
\par silently questing toward one another.
\par Its silence was almost the worst thing about it. No screams of pain
\par when it was shot. No shrieks of rage.
\par , Its patient and silent recovery, its deliberate continuation of the
\par assault, mocked her hopes of triumph.
\par At the foot of the stairs, the apparition had pulled itself erect. The
\par Giver, still hideously bonded to the corpse, started up the steps
\par again.
\par Heather's spell of madness shattered. She fled to the landing, grabbed.the can of gasoline, and scrambled to the second floor, where Toby and
\par Falstaff were waiting.
\par The retriever was shuddering. Whining rather than barking, he looked
\par as if he'd sensed the same thing Heather had seen for herself:
\par effective defense was impossible. This was an enemy that couldn't be
\par brought down with teeth or claws any more than with guns.
\par Toby said, "Do I have to do it? I don't want to."
\par She didn't know what he meant, didn't have time to ask. "We'll be
\par okay, honey, we'll make it."
\par From the first flight of steps, out of sight beyond the landing, came
\par the sound of heavy footsteps ascending. A hiss. It was like the
\par sibilant escape of steam from a pinhole in a pipe--but a cold sound.
\par She put the Uzi aside and fumbled with the cap on the spout of the
\par gasoline can.
\par Fire might work. She had to believe it might. If the thing burned,
\par nothing would be left to remake itself. Bodies are. But bodies
\par reduced to ashes could not reclaim their form and function, regardless
\par of how alien their flesh and metabolism. Damn it, fire had to work.
\par "It's never afraid," Toby said in a voice that revealed the profound
\par depths of his own fear.
\par "Get away from here, baby! Go! Go to the bedroom! Hurry!"
\par The boy ran, and the dog went with him.
\par At times Jack felt that he was a swimmer in a white sea under a white
\par sky on a world every bit as strange as the planet from which the
\par intruder at Quartermass Ranch had traveled. Though he could feel the
\par ground beneath his feet as he slogged the half mile to the county road,
\par he never got a glimpse of it under the enduring white torrents cast
\par down by the storm, and it seemed as unreal to him as the bottom of the
\par Pacific might seem to a swimmer a thousand fathoms above it. The snow
\par rounded all forms, and the landscape rolled like the swells of a
\par mid-ocean passage, although in some places the wind had sculpted drifts
\par into scalloped ridges like cresting waves frozen in the act of breaking
\par on a beach. The woods, which could have offered contrast to the
\par whiteness that flooded his vision, were mostly concealed by falling and
\par blowing snow as obscuring as fog at sea.
\par Disorientation was an unremitting threat in that bleached land. He got
\par off course twice while still on his own property, recognizing his error
\par only because the flattened meadow grass underneath the snow provided a
\par spongier surface than the hard-packed driveway.
\par Step by hard-fought step, Jack expected something to come out of the
\par curtains of snow or rise from a drift in which it had been lying, the
\par Giver itself or one of the surrogates that it had mined from the
\par graveyard. He continually scanned left and right, ready to pump out
\par every round in the shotgun to bring down anything that rushed him..He was glad that he had worn sunglasses. Even with shades, he found
\par the unrelieved brightness inhibiting. He strained to see through the
\par wintry sameness to guard against attack and to make out familiar
\par details of the terrain that would keep him on the right track.
\par He dared not think about Heather and Toby. When he did so, his pace
\par slowed and he was nearly overcome by the temptation to go back to them
\par and forget about Ponderosa Pines. For their sake and his own, he
\par blocked them from his thoughts, concentrated solely on covering ground,
\par and virtually became a hiking machine.
\par The baleful wind shrieked without surcease, blew snow in his face, and
\par forced him to bow his head. It shoved him off his feet twice--on one
\par occasion causing him to drop the shotgun in a drift, where he had to
\par scramble frantically to find it--and became almost as real an adversary
\par as any man against whom he'd ever been pitted. By the time he reached
\par the end of the private lane and paused for breath between the tall
\par stone posts and under the arched wooden sign that marked the entrance
\par to Quartermass Ranch, he was cursing the wind as if it could hear
\par him.
\par He wiped one gloved hand across the sunglasses to scrape off the snow
\par that had stuck to the lenses. His eyes stung as they sometimes did
\par when an opthalmologist put drops in them to dilate the pupils prior to
\par an examination.
\par Without the shades, he might already have been snowblind.
\par He was sick of the taste and smell of wet wool, which flavored the air
\par he drew through his mouth and scented every inhalation when he breathed
\par through his nose. The vapor he exhaled had thoroughly saturated the
\par fabric, and the condensation had frozen. With one hand he massaged the
\par makeshift muffler, cracking the thin, brittle ice and crumbling the
\par thicker layer of compacted snow, he sloughed it all away so he could
\par breathe more easily than he'd been able to breathe for the past two or
\par three hundred yards.
\par Though he found it difficult to believe that the Giver didn't know he
\par had left the house, he had reached the edge of the ranch without being
\par assaulted. A considerable trek remained ahead, but the greatest danger
\par of attack would have been in the territory he had already covered
\par without incident.
\par Maybe the puppetmaster was not as omniscient as it either pretended or
\par seemed to be.
\par A distended and ominous shadow, as tortured as that of a fright figure
\par in a fun house, rose along the landing wall: the puppetmaster and its
\par decomposing marionette laboring stiffly but doggedly toward the top of
\par the first flight of stairs. As the thing ascended, it no doubt
\par absorbed the fragments of strange flesh that bullets had torn from it,
\par but it didn't pause to do so.
\par Although the thing was not fast, it was too fast for Heather's taste,
\par too fast by half. It seemed to be racing up the damned stairs.
\par In spite of her shaky hands, she finally unscrewed the stubborn cap on.the spout of the fuel can. Held the container by its handle. Used her
\par other hand to tip the bottom. A pale gush of gasoline arced out of the
\par spout. She swung the can left and right, saturating the carpet along
\par the width of the steps, letting the stream splash down the entire top
\par flight.
\par On the first step below the landing, the Giver appeared in the wake of
\par its shadow, a demented construct of filth and slithering sinuosities.
\par Heather hastily capped the gasoline can. She carried it a short
\par distance along the hall, set it out of the way, and returned to the
\par stairs.
\par The Giver had reached the landing. It turned to face the second
\par flight.
\par Heather fumbled in the jacket pocket where she thought she had stowed
\par the matches, found spare ammo for both the Uzi and the Korth, no
\par matches. She tried another zipper, groped in the pocket--more
\par cartridges, no matches, no matches.
\par On the landing, the dead man raised his head to stare at her, which
\par meant the Giver was staring too, with eyes she couldn't see.
\par Could it smell the gasoline? Did it understand that gasoline was
\par flammable? It was intelligent. Vastly so, apparently. Did it grasp
\par the potential for its own destruction?
\par A third pocket. More bullets. She was a walking ammo dump, for God's
\par sake.
\par One of the cadaver's eyes was still obscured by a thin yellowish
\par cataract, gazing between lids that were sewn half shut.
\par The air reeked of gasoline. Heather had difficulty drawing a clear
\par breath, she was wheezing. The Giver didn't seem to mind, and the
\par corpse wasn't breathing.
\par Too many pockets, Jesus, four on the outside of the jacket, three
\par inside, pockets and more pockets, two on each leg of her pants, all of
\par them zippered.
\par The other eye socket was empty, partially curtained by shredded lids
\par and dangling strands of mortician's thread. Suddenly the tip of a
\par tentacle extruded from inside the skull.
\par With an agitation of appendages, like the tendrils of a black sea
\par anemone lashed by turbulent currents, the thing started up from the
\par landing.
\par Matches.
\par A small cardboard box, wooden matches. Found them.
\par Two steps up from the landing, the Giver hissed softly.
\par Heather slid open the box, almost spilled the matches. They rattled.against one another, against the cardboard.
\par The thing climbed another step.
\par When his mom told him to go to the bedroom, Toby didn't know if she
\par meant her bedroom or his. He wanted to get as far as possible from the
\par thing coming up the front stairs, so he went to his bedroom at the end
\par of the hallway, though he stopped a couple of times and looked back at
\par her and almost returned to her side.
\par e didn't want to leave her there alone. She was his mom. He hadn't
\par seen all of the Giver, only the tangle of tentacles squirming around
\par the edge of the front door, but he knew it was more than she could
\par handle.
\par It was more than he could handle too, so he had to forget about doing
\par anything, didn't dare think about it. He knew what had to be done, but
\par he was too scared to do it, which was all right, because even heroes
\par were afraid, because only insane people were never ever scared. And
\par right now he knew he sure wasn't insane, not even a little bit, because
\par he was scared bad, so bad he felt like he had to pee. This thing was
\par like the Terminator and the Predator and the alien from Alien and the
\par shark from Jaws and the velociraptors from Jurassic Park and a bunch of
\par other monsters rolled into one-- but he was just a kid. Maybe he was a
\par hero too, like his dad said, even if he didn't feel like a hero, which
\par he didn't, not one bit, but if he was a hero, he couldn't do what he
\par knew he should do.
\par He reached the end of the hall, where Falstaff stood trembling and
\par whining.
\par "Come on, fella," Toby said.
\par He pushed past the dog into his bedroom, where the lamps were already
\par bright because he and Mom had turned on just about every lamp in the
\par house before Dad left, though it was daytime.
\par "Get out of the hall, Falstaff. Mom wants us out of the hall. Come
\par on!"
\par The first thing he noticed, when he turned away from the dog, was that
\par the door to the back stairs stood open. It should have been locked.
\par They were making a fortress here. Dad had nailed shut the lower door,
\par but this one should also be locked. Toby ran to it, pushed it shut,
\par engaged the dead bolt, and felt better.
\par At the doorway, Falstaff had still not entered the room. He had
\par stopped whining.
\par He was growling.
\par Jack at the ranch entrance. Pausing only a moment to recover from the
\par first and most arduous leg of the journey.
\par Instead of soft flakes, the snow was coming down in sharp-edged
\par crystals, almost like grains of salt. The wind drove it hard enough to.sting his exposed forehead.
\par A road crew had been by at least once, because a four-foot-high wall of
\par plowed snow blocked the end of the driveway. He clambered over it,
\par onto the two-lane.
\par Flame flared off the match head.
\par For an instant Heather expected the fumes to explode, but they weren't
\par sufficiently concentrated to be combustible.
\par The parasite and its dead host climbed another step, apparently
\par oblivious of the danger--or certain that there was none.
\par Heather stepped back, out of the flash zone, tossed the match.
\par Continuing to back up until she bumped into the hallway wall, watching
\par the flame flutter in an arc toward the stairwell, she had a seizure of
\par manic thoughts that elicited an almost compulsive bark of mad laughter,
\par a single dark bray that came dangerously close to ending in a thick
\par sob: Burning down my own house, welcome to Montana, beautiful scenery
\par and walking dead men and things from other worlds, and here we go,
\par flame falling, may you.burn in hell, burning down my own house,
\par wouldn't have to do that in Los Angeles, other people will do it for
\par you there.
\par WHOOSH!
\par The gasoline-soaked carpet exploded into flames that leaped all the way
\par to the ceiling. The fire didn't spread through the stairwell, it was
\par simply everywhere at once. Instantaneously the walls and railings were
\par as fully involved as the treads and risers.
\par A stinging wave of heat hit Heather, forcing her to squint. She should
\par at once have moved farther away from the blaze because the air was
\par nearly hot enough to blister her skin, but she had to see what happened
\par to the Giver.
\par The staircase was an inferno. No human being could have survived in it
\par longer than a few seconds.
\par In that swarming incandescence, the dead man and the living beast were
\par a single dark mass, rising another step. And another. No screams or
\par shrieks of pain accompanied its ascent, only the roar and crackle of
\par the fierce fire, which was now lapping out of the stairwell and into
\par the upstairs hallway.
\par As Toby locked the stairhead door and turned from it, and as Falstaff
\par growled from the threshold of the other door, orange-red light flashed
\par through the hall behind the dog. His growl spiraled into a yelp of
\par surprise. Following the flash were flickering figures of light that
\par danced on the walls out there: reflections of fire.
\par Toby knew that his mom had set the alien on fire-- she was tough, she
\par was smart--and a current of hope thrilled through him.
\par Then he noticed the second wrong thing about the bedroom. The drapes.were closed over his recessed bed.
\par He had left them open, drawn back to both sides of the niche. He only
\par closed them at night or when he was playing a game. He had opened them
\par this morning, and he'd had no time for games since he'd gotten up.
\par The air had a bad smell. He hadn't noticed it right away because his
\par heart was pounding and he was breathing through his mouth.
\par He moved toward the bed. One step, two.
\par The closer he drew to the sleeping alcove, the worse the smell
\par became.
\par It was like the odor on the back stairs the first day they'd seen the
\par house, but a lot worse.
\par He stopped a few steps from the bed. He told himself he was a hero.
\par It was okay for heroes to be afraid, but even when they were afraid,
\par they had to do something.
\par At the open door, Falstaff was just about going crazy.
\par Blacktop was visible in a few small patches, revealed by the flaying
\par wind, but most of the roadway was covered by two inches of fresh
\par powder. Numerous drifts had formed against the snow walls thrown up by
\par the plow.
\par Judging by the available signs, Jack figured the crew had made a
\par circuit through this neighborhood about two hours ago, certainly no
\par more recently than an hour and a half. They were overdue to make
\par another pass.
\par He turned east and hurried toward the Youngblood spread, hopeful of
\par encountering a highway-maintenance crew before he had gone far.
\par Whether they were equipped with a big road grader or a salt-spreading
\par truck with a plow on the front--or both--they would have microwave
\par communications with their dispatcher. If he could persuade them that
\par his story was not just the raving of a lunatic, he might be able to
\par convince them to take him back to the house to get Heather and Toby out
\par of there.
\par Might be able to persuade them? Hell, he had a shotgun. For sure,
\par he'd convince them. They'd plow the half-mile driveway clean as a
\par nun's conscience to the front door of Quartermass Ranch, smiles on
\par their faces from start to finish, as jolly as Snow White's short
\par protectors, singing
\par "Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go" if
\par that's what he wanted them to do.
\par Impossible as it seemed, the creature on the stairs appeared even more
\par grotesque and frightful in the obscuring embrace of fire, with smoke
\par seething from it, than it had been when she'd had a clear look at its
\par every feature..Yet another step it rose. Silently, silently. Then another. It
\par ascended out of the conflagration with all the panache of His Satanic
\par Majesty on a day trip out of hell.
\par The beast was burning, or at least the portion of it that was Eduardo
\par Fernandez's body was being consumed, and yet the demonic thing climbed
\par one more step. Almost to the top now.
\par Heather couldn't delay any longer. The heat was unbearable. She'd
\par already exposed her face too long and would probably wind up with a
\par mild burn. The hungry fire ate across the hallway ceiling, licking at
\par the plaster overhead, and her position was perilous.
\par Besides, the Giver was not going to collapse backward into the furnace
\par below, as she had hoped. It would reach the second floor and open its
\par arms to her, its many fiery arms, seeking to enfold and become her.
\par Heart thudding furiously, Heather hurried a few steps along the hall to
\par the red can of gasoline. She snatched it up with one hand. It felt
\par light. She must have used three of the five gallons.
\par She glanced back.
\par The stalker came out of the stairwell, into the hallway. Both the
\par colpse and the Giver were ablaze, not merely a smoldering gnarl of
\par charred organisms but a dazzling column of tempestuous flames, as if
\par their entwined bodies had been constructed of dry tinder. Some of the
\par longer tentacles coiled and lashed like whips, casting off streams and
\par gobs of fire that spattered against the walls and floor, igniting
\par carpet and wallpaper.
\par As Toby took one more step toward the curtained bed, Falstaff finally
\par dashed into the room. The dog blocked his path and barked at him,
\par warning him to back off.
\par Something moved on the bed behind the drapes, brushing against them,
\par and each of the next few seconds was an hour to Toby, as if he had
\par shifted into super-slow-mo. The sleeping alcove was like the stage of
\par a puppet theater just before the show began, but it wasn't Punch or
\par Judy back there, wasn't Kukla or Ollie, wasn't any of the Muppets,
\par nothing you'd ever find on Sesame Street, and this wasn't going to be a
\par funny program, no laughs in this weird performance.
\par He wanted to close his eyes and wish it away. Maybe, if you just
\par didn't believe in it, the thing wouldn't exist.
\par It was stirring the drapes again, bulging against them, as if to say,
\par Hello there, little boy. Maybe you had to believe in it just like you
\par had to believe in Tinker Bell to keep her alive. So if you closed your
\par eyes and thought good thoughts about an empty bed, about air that
\par smelled of freshbaked cookies, then the thing wouldn't be there any
\par more, and neither would the stink. It wasn't a perfect plan, maybe it
\par was even a dumb plan, but at least it was something to do. He had to
\par have something to do or he was going to go nuts, yet he couldn't take
\par one more step toward the bed, not even if the retriever hadn't been
\par blocking his way, because he was just too scared. Numb. Dad hadn't.said anything about heroes going numb. Or spitting up. Did heroes
\par ever spit up? Because he felt as if he was going to spew. He couldn't
\par run, either, because he'd have to turn his back to the bed. He
\par wouldn't do that, couldn't do that. Which meant that closing his eyes
\par and wishing the thing away was the plan, the best and only plan--except
\par he was not in a billion years going to close his eyes.
\par Falstaff remained between Toby and the alcove but turned to face
\par whatever waited there. Not barking now. Not growling or whimpering.
\par Just waiting, teeth bared, shuddering in fear but ready to fight.
\par A hand slipped between the drapes, reaching out from the alcove. It
\par was mostly bone in a shredded glove of crinkled leathery skin, spotted
\par with mold. For sure, this couldn't really be alive unless you believed
\par in it, because it was more impossible than Tinker Bell, a hundred
\par million times more impossible. A couple of fingernails were still
\par attached to the decaying hand, but they had turned black, looked like
\par the gleaming shells of fat beetles. If he couldn't close his eyes and
\par wish the thing away, if he couldn't run, he at least had to scream for
\par his mother, humiliating as that would be for a kid who was almost
\par nine.
\par But then she had the machine gun, after all, not him.
\par A wrist became visible, a forearm with a little more meat on it, the
\par ragged and stained sleeve of a blue blouse or dress.
\par "Mom!"
\par He shouted the word but heard it only in his head, because no sound
\par would escape his lips.
\par A red-speckled black bracelet was around the withered wrist. Shiny.
\par New-looking.
\par Then it moved and wasn't a bracelet but a greasy worm, no, a tentacle,
\par wrapping the wrist and disappearing along the underside of the rotting
\par arm, beneath the dirty blue sleeve.
\par "Mom, help!"
\par Master bedroom. No Toby. Under the bed? In the closet, the
\par bathroom?
\par No, don't waste time looking. The boy might be hiding but not the
\par dog.
\par Must've gone to his own room.
\par Back into the hall. Waves of heat. Wildly leaping light and
\par shadows.
\par The crackle-sizzle-growl-hiss of fire.
\par Other hissing. The Giver looming. Snap-snap-snapsnap, the furious.whipping of fiery tentacles.
\par Coughing on the thin but bitter smoke, heading toward the rear of the
\par house, the can swinging in her left hand. Gasoline sloshing. Right
\par hand empty.
\par Shouldn't be empty.
\par Damn!
\par She stopped short of Toby's room, turned to peer back into the fire and
\par smoke.
\par She'd forgotten the Uzi on the floor near the head of the steps. The
\par twin magazines were empty, but her zippered ski-suit pockets bulged
\par with spare ammunition. Stupid.
\par Not that guns were of much use against the freaking thing. Bullets
\par didn't harm it, only delayed it. But at least the Uzi had been
\par something, a lot more firepower than the .38 at her hip.
\par She couldn't go back. Hard to breathe. Getting harder. The fire
\par sucking up all the oxygen. And the burning, lashing apparition already
\par stood between her and the Uzi.
\par Crazily, Heather had a mental flash of Alma Bryson loaded down with
\par weaponry: pretty black lady, smart and kind, cop's widow, and one tough
\par damned bitch, capable of handling anything. Gina Tendero, too, with
\par her black leather pantsuit and red-pepper Mace and maybe an unlicensed
\par handgun in her purse. If only they were here now, at her side. But
\par they were down there in the City of Angels, waiting for the end of the
\par world, ready for it, when all the time the end of the world was
\par starting here in Montana.
\par Billowing smoke suddenly gushed out of the flames, wall to wall, floor
\par to ceiling, dark and churning. The Giver vanished. In seconds Heather
\par was going to be completely blinded.
\par Holding her breath, she stumbled along the wall toward Toby's room.
\par She found his door and crossed the threshold, out of the worst of the
\par smoke, just as he screamed.
\par CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO With the Mossberg twelve-gauge gripped in both
\par hands, Jack moved eastward at an easy trot, in the manner of an
\par infantryman in a war zone. He hadn't expected the county road to be
\par half as clear as it was, so he was able to make better time than
\par planned.
\par He kept flexing his toes with each step. In spite of -two pairs of
\par heavy socks and insulated boots, his feet were cold and getting
\par colder.
\par He needed to keep full circulation in them.
\par The scar tissue and recently knitted bones in his left leg ached dully
\par from exertion, however, the slight pain didn't hamper him. In fact, he.was in better shape than he had realized.
\par Although the whiteout continued to limit visibility to less than a
\par hundred feet, sometimes dramatically less, he was no longer at risk of
\par becoming disoriented and lost. The walls of snow from the plow defined
\par a well-marked path. The tall poles along one side of the road carried
\par telephone and power lines, and served as another set of route
\par markers.
\par He figured he had covered nearly half the distance to Ponderosa Pines,
\par but his pace was flagging. He cursed himself, pushed harder, and
\par picked up speed.
\par Because he was trotting with his shoulders hunched against the
\par battering wind and his head tucked down to spare himself the sting of
\par the hard-driven snow, looking only at the roadway immediately in front
\par of him, he did not at first see the golden light but saw only the
\par reflection of it in the fine, sheeting flakes. There was just a hint
\par of yellow at first, then suddenly he might have been running through a
\par storm of gold dust rather than a blizzard.
\par When he raised his head, he saw a bright glow ahead, intensely yellow
\par at its core. It throbbed mysteriously in the cloaking veils of the
\par storm, the source obscured, but he remembered the light in the trees of
\par which Eduardo had written in the tablet. It had pulsed like this, an
\par eerie radiance that heralded the opening of the doorway and the arrival
\par of the traveler.
\par As he skidded to a halt and almost fell, the pulses of light grew
\par rapidly brighter, and he wondered if he could hide in the drifts to one
\par side of the road or the other. There were no throbbing bass sounds
\par like those Eduardo had heard and felt, only the shrill keening of the
\par wind. However, the uncanny light was everywhere, dazzling in the
\par sunless day: Jack standing in ankle-deep gold dust, molten gold
\par streaming through the air, the steel of the Mossberg glimmering as if
\par about to be transmuted into bullion. He saw multiple sources now, not
\par one light but several, pulsing out of sync, continuous yellow flashes
\par overlaying one another. A sound above the wind. A low rumble.
\par Building swiftly to a roar. A heavy engine. Through the whiteout,
\par tearing apart the obscuring veils of snow, came an enormous machine.
\par He found himself standing before an oncoming road grader adapted for
\par snow removal, a brawny skeleton of steel with a small cab high in the
\par center of it, pushing a curved steel blade taller than he was.
\par Entering the cleaner air of Toby's room, blinking away tears wrung from
\par her by the caustic smoke, Heather saw two blurry figures, one small and
\par one not. She desperately wiped at her eyes with her free hand,
\par squinted, and understood why the boy was screaming.
\par Towering over Toby was a grotesquely decomposed corpse, draped in
\par fragments of a rotted blue garment, bearing another Giver, aswarm with
\par agitated black appendages.
\par Falstaff sprang at the nightmare, but the writhing tentacles were
\par quicker than they had been before, almost faster than the eye. They.whipped out, snared the dog in mid-leap, and flicked him away as
\par casually and efficiently as a cow's tail might deal with an annoying
\par fly. Howling in terror, Falstaff flew across the room, slammed into
\par the wall beside the window, and dropped to the floor with a squeal of
\par pain.
\par The .38 Korth was in Heather's hand though she didn't remember having
\par drawn it.
\par Before she could squeeze the trigger, the new Given-or the new aspect
\par of the only Giver, depending on whether there was one entity with many
\par bodies or, instead, many individuals--snared Toby in three oily black
\par tentacles. It lifted him off the floor and drew him toward the leering
\par grin of the long-dead woman, as if it wanted him to plant a kiss on
\par her.
\par With a cry of outrage, furious and terrified in equal measure, Heather
\par rushed the thing, unable to shoot from even a few steps away because
\par she might hit Toby. Threw herself against it. Felt one of its
\par serpentine arms--cold even through her ski suit--curling around her
\par waist. The stench of the corpse.
\par Jesus. The internal organs were long gone, and extrusions of the alien
\par were squirming within the body cavity. The head turned toward her,
\par face-to-face, red-stipled black tendrils with spatulate tips flickering
\par like multiple tongues in the open mouth, bristling from the bony
\par nostrils, the eye sockets.
\par 
\par Cold slithered all the way around her waist now. She jammed the .38
\par under the bony chin, bearded with graveyard moss. She was going for
\par the head as if the head still mattered, as if a brain still packed the
\par cadaver's cranium, she could think of nothing else to do. Toby
\par screaming, the Giver hissing, the gun booming, booming, booming, old
\par bones shattering to dust, the grinning skull cracking off the knobby
\par spine and lolling to one side, the gun booming again-she lost
\par count--then clicking, the maddening clicking of the hammer on empty
\par chambers.
\par When the creature let go of her, Heather almost fell on her ass because
\par she was already straining so hard to pull loose. She dropped the gun,
\par and it bounced across the carpet.
\par The Giver collapsed in front of her, not because it was dead but
\par because its puppet, damaged by gunfire, had broken apart in a couple of
\par key places and now provided too little support to keep its soft, heavy
\par master erect.
\par Toby was free too. For the moment.
\par He was white-faced, wide-eyed. He'd bitten his lip. It was
\par bleeding.
\par But otherwise he seemed all right.
\par Smoke was beginning to roil into the room, not much, but she knew how
\par abruptly it could become blindingly dense.."Go!" she said, shoving Toby toward the back stairs. "Go, go, go!"
\par He scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees, and so did she,
\par both of them reduced by terror and expediency to the locomotion of
\par infancy. Got to the door. Pulled herself up against it. Toby at her
\par side.
\par Behind them was a scene out of a madman's nightmare: The Giver sprawled
\par on the floor, resembling nothing so much as an immensely complicated
\par octopus, although stranger and more evil than anything that had ever
\par lived in the seas of Farth, a tangle of wriggling ropy arms. Instead
\par of trying to reach for her and Toby, it was struggling with the
\par disconnected bones, attempting to pull the moldering corpse together
\par and lever itself erect on the damaged skeleton.
\par She wrenched the doorknob, yanked.
\par The stairhead door didn't open.
\par Locked.
\par On the shelf behind the alcove bed, Toby's clock radio came on all by
\par itself, and rap music hammered them at full volume for a second or
\par two.
\par Then that other music. Tuneless, strange, but hypnotic.
\par "No!" she told Toby as she struggled with the dead bolt turn. It was
\par maddeningly stiff. "No! Tell it no!" The lock hadn't been stiff
\par before, damn it.
\par At the other door, the first Giver lurched out of the burning hall and
\par through the smoke, into the room. It was still wrapped around and
\par through what was left of Eduardo's charred corpse. Still afire. Its
\par dark bulk was diminished.
\par Fire had consumed part of it.
\par The thumb-turn twisted slowly, as if the lock mechanism was rusted.
\par Slowly.
\par Slowly. Then: clack.
\par But the bolt snapped into the jamb again before she could pull open the
\par door.
\par Toby was murmuring something. Talking. But not to her.
\par "No!" she shouted. "No, no! Tell it no!"
\par Grunting with the effort, Heather twisted the bolt open again and held
\par tightly to the thumb-turn. But she felt the lock being reengaged
\par against her will, the shiny brass slipping inexorably between her thumb
\par and forefinger. The Giver.
\par This was the same power that could switch on the radio. Or animate a.corpse.
\par She tried to turn the knob with her other hand, before the bolt slammed
\par into the striker plate again, but now the knob was frozen. She gave
\par up.
\par Pushing Toby behind her, putting her back to the door, she faced the
\par two creatures. Weaponless.
\par The road grader was painted yellow from end to end. Most of the
\par massive steel frame was exposed, with only the powerful diesel engine
\par and the operator's cab enclosed. This no-frills worker drone looked
\par like a big exotic insect.
\par The grader slowed when the driver realized that a man was standing in
\par the middle of the road, but Jack figured the guy might speed up again
\par at first sight of the shotgun. He was prepared to run alongside the
\par machine and board it while it was on the move.
\par But the driver brought it to a full stop in spite of the gun. Jack ran
\par around to the side where he could see a door on the cab about ten feet
\par off the ground.
\par The grader sat high on five-foot-tall tires with rubber that looked
\par heavier and tougher than tank tread, and the guy up there was not
\par likely to open his door and come down for a chat. He would probably
\par just roll down his : window, keep some distance between them, have a
\par shouted conversation above the shrieking wind--and if he heard
\par something he didn't like, he'd tramp the accelerator and haul ass out
\par of there. In the event that the driver wouldn't listen to reason, or
\par wanted to waste too much time with questions, Jack was ready to climb
\par up to the door and do whatever he had to do to get control of the
\par grader, short of killing someone.
\par To his surprise, the driver opened his door all the way, leaned out,
\par and looked down. He was a chubby guy with a full beard and longish
\par hair sprouting under a John Deere cap. He shouted over the combined
\par roar of the engine and the storm: "You got trouble?"
\par "My family needs help!"
\par "What kind of help?"
\par Jack wasn't even going to try to explain an extraterrestrial encounter
\par in ten words or less. "They could die, for God's sake!"
\par "Die? Where?"
\par "Quartermass Ranch!"
\par "You the new fella?"
\par "Yeah!"
\par "Climb on up!"
\par The guy hadn't even asked him why he was carrying a shotgun, as if.everyone in Montana went nearly everywhere with a pistol-grip,
\par pump-action twelve-gauge.
\par Hell, maybe everyone did.
\par Holding the shotgun in one hand, Jack hauled himself up to the cab,
\par careful where he placed his feet, not foolish enough to try to leap up
\par like a monkey.
\par Dirty ice was crusted on parts of the frame. He slipped a couple of
\par times but didn't fall.
\par When Jack arrived at the open door, the driver reached for the shotgun
\par to stow it inside. He gave it to the guy, even though for a moment he
\par worried that, relieved of the Mossberg, he would get a boot in the
\par chest and be knocked back to the roadway.
\par The driver was a good Samaritan to the end. He stowed the gun and
\par said, "This isn't a limousine, only one seat, kinda cramped. You'll
\par have to swing in here behind me."
\par The niche between the driver's seat and the back wall of the cab was
\par less than two feet deep and five feet wide. The ceiling was low. A
\par couple of rectangular toolboxes were on the floor, and he had to share
\par the space with them. While the driver leaned forward, Jack squirmed
\par headfirst into that narrow storage area and pulled his legs in after
\par himself, sort of half lying on his side and half sitting.
\par The driver shut the door. The rumble of the engine was still loud, and
\par so was the whistling wind.
\par Jack's bent knees were behind the driver, and his body was in line with
\par the gearshift and other controls to the right of the man. If he leaned
\par forward only inches, he could speak directly into his rescuer's ear.
\par "You okay?" the driver asked.
\par "Yeah."
\par They didn't have to shout inside the cab, but they did have to raise
\par their voices.
\par "So tight in here," the driver said, "we may be strangers now, but by
\par the time we get there, we'll be ready for marriage." He put the grader
\par in gear.
\par "Quartermass Ranch, all the way up at the main house?"
\par "That's right."
\par The grader lurched, then rolled smoothly forward. The plow made a cold
\par scraping sound as it skimmed the blacktop. The vibrations passed
\par through the frame of the grader, up through the floor, and deep into
\par Jack's bones.
\par Weaponless. Her back to the stairhead door..Fire was visible through the smoke at the hall doorway.
\par Snow at the windows. Cool snow. A way out. Safety. Crash through
\par the window, no time to open it, straight , through, onto the porch
\par roof, roll to the lawn. Dangerous. Might work.
\par Except they wouldn't make it that far without being dragged down.
\par The volcanic eruption of sound from the radio was deafening. Heather
\par couldn't think.
\par The retriever shivered at her side, snarling and snapping at the
\par demonic figures that threatened them, though he knew as well as she did
\par that he couldn't save them.
\par When she'd seen the Giver snare the dog, pitch him away, and then grab
\par Toby, Heather had found the .38 in her hand with no memory of having
\par drawn it.
\par At the same time, also without realizing it, she had dropped the can of
\par gasoline; now it stood across the room, out of reach.
\par Gasoline might not have mattered, anyway. One of the creatures was
\par already on fire, and that wasn't stopping it.
\par Bodies are.
\par Eduardo's burning corpse was reduced to charred bone, bubbling fat.
\par All the clothes and hair had gone to ashes. And there was barely
\par enough of the Giver left to hold the bones together, yet the macabre
\par assemblage lurched toward her.
\par Apparently, as long as any fragment of the alien body remained alive,
\par its entire consciousness could be exerted through that last quiverring
\par scrap of flesh.
\par Madness. Chaos.
\par The Giver was chaos, the very embodiment of meaninglessness,
\par hopelessness, and malignancy, and madness. Chaos in the flesh,
\par demented and strange beyond understanding. Because there was nothing
\par to understand. That was what she believed of it now. It had no
\par explicable purpose of existence. It lived only to live. No
\par aspirations. No meaning except to hate. Driven by a compulsion to
\par Become and destroy, leaving chaos behind it.
\par A draft pulled more smoke into the room.
\par The dog hacked, and Heather heard Toby coughing behind her.
\par "Pull your jacket ovel your nose, breathe through your jacket!"
\par But why did it matter whether they died by fire--or in less clean
\par ways?
\par Maybe fire was preferable..The other Giver, slithering on the bedroom floor among the ruins of the
\par dead woman, suddenly shot a sinuous tentacle at Heather, snaring her
\par ankle.
\par She screamed.
\par The Eduardo-thing tottered nearer, hissing.
\par Behind her, sheltered between her and the door, Toby shouted, "Yes!
\par All right, yes!"
\par "Too late," she warned him; "No!"
\par The driver of the grader was Harlan Moffit, and he lived in Eagle's
\par Roost with his wife, Cindi -- with an i -- and his daughters, Luci and
\par Nanci -each of those with an i as well-- and Cindi worked for the
\par Livestock cooperative, whatever that was. They were lifelong residents
\par of Montana and wouldn't live anywhere else. However, they'd had a lot
\par of fun when they'd gone to Los Angeles a couple of years ago and seen
\par Disneyland, Universal Studios and an old brokendown homeless guy being
\par mugged by two teenagers on a corner while they were stopped at a
\par traffic light. Visit, yes; live there, no. All this he somehow
\par imparted by the time they had reached the turnoff at Quartermas Ranch,
\par as he felt obliged to make Jack feel among friends and neighbors in his
\par time of trouble, regardless of what the trouble might be.
\par They entered the private lane at a higher speed than Jack would have
\par thought possible, considering the depth of the snow that had
\par accumulated in the past sixteen hours.
\par Harlan raised the angled plow a few inches to allow the speed. "We
\par don't need to scoop off everything down to bare dirt and maybe risk
\par jamming up on a big bump in the road." The top three quarters of the
\par snow cover plumed to the side.
\par "How can you tell where the lane is?" Jack worried, because the
\par rolling mantle of white blurred definitions.
\par "Been here before. Then there's instinct."
\par "Instinct?"
\par "Plowman's instinct."
\par "We won't get stuck?"
\par "These tires? This engine?"
\par Harlan was proud of his machine, and it really was churning along,
\par rumbling through the untouched snow as if carving its way through
\par little more than air.
\par "Never get stuck, not with me driving. Take this baby through hell if
\par I had to, plow away the melting brimstone and thumb my nose at the
\par devil himself..So what's wrong up there with your family?"
\par "Trapped," Jack said cryptically.
\par "In snow, you mean?"
\par "Yes."
\par "Nothing steep enough around here for an avalanche."
\par "Not an avalanche," Jack confirmed.
\par They reached the hill and headed for the turn past the lower woods.
\par The house should be in view any second.
\par "Trapped in the snow?" Harlan said, worrying at it. He didn't look
\par away from his work, but he frowned as if he would have liked to meet
\par Jack's eyes.
\par The house came into view. Almost hidden by sheeting snow but vaguely
\par visible.
\par Their new house. New life. New future. On fire.
\par Earlier, at the computer, when he'd been mentally linked to the Giver
\par but not completely in its power, Toby had gotten to know it, feeling
\par around in its mind, being nosy, letting its thoughts slide into him
\par while he kept saying "no" to it, and little by little he had learned
\par about it. One of the things he learned was that it had never
\par encountered any species that could get inside its mind the way it could
\par force itself into the minds of other creatures, so it wasn't even aware
\par of Toby in there, didn't feel him, thought it was all one-way
\par communication. Hard to explain. That was the best he could do. Just
\par sliding around in its mind, looking at things, terrible things, not a
\par good place but dark and frightening. He hadn't thought of it as a
\par brave thing to do, only what must be done, what Captain Kirk or Mr.
\par Spock or Luke Skywalker or any of those guys would have done in his
\par place or when meeting a new and hostile intelligent species out on the
\par galactic rim. They'd have taken any advantage, added to their
\par knowledge in any way they could.
\par So did he.
\par No big deal.
\par Now, when the noise coming out of the radio urged him to open the
\par door--just open the door and let it in, let it in, accept the pleasure
\par and the peace, let it in--he did as it wanted, though he didn't let it
\par enter all the way, not half as far as he entered into it. As at the
\par computer this morning, he was now between complete freedom and
\par enslavement, walking the brink of a chasm, careful not to let his
\par presence be known until he was ready to strike.
\par While the Giver was rushing into his mind, confident of overwhelming
\par it, Toby turned the tables..He imagined that his own mind was a colossal weight, a billion trillion
\par tons, even heavier than that, more than the weight of all the planets
\par in the solar system combined, and even a zillion times heavier than
\par that, pressing down on the mind of the Giver, so much weight, crushing
\par it, flattening it into a thin pancake and holding it there, so it could
\par think fast and furiously but could not act on its thoughts.
\par The thing let go of Heather's ankle. All of its sinuous and agitated
\par appendages retracted and curled into one another, and it went still,
\par like a massive ball of glistening intestines, four feet in diameter.
\par The other one lost control of the burning corpse with which it was
\par entwined.
\par Parasite and dead host collapsed in a heap and were also motionless.
\par Heather stood in stunned disbelief, unable to understand what had
\par happened.
\par Smoke churned into the room.
\par Toby had opened the dead bolt and the stairhead door. Tugging at her,
\par he said, "Quick, Mom."
\par Beyond confusion, in a state of utter baffflement, she followed her son
\par and the dog into the back stairwell and pulled the door shut, cutting
\par off the smoke before it reached them.
\par Toby hurried down the stairs, the dog at his heels, and Heather plunged
\par after him as he followed the curving wall out of sight.
\par "Honey, wait!"
\par "No time," he called back to her.
\par "Toby !"
\par She was terrified about descending the stairs so recklessly, not
\par knowing what might be ahead, assuming another of those things had to be
\par somewhere near at hand. Three graves had been disturbed at the
\par cemetery.
\par In the vestibule at the bottom, the door to the back porch was still
\par nailed shut. The door in the kitchen was wide open, and Toby was
\par waiting for her with the dog.
\par She would have thought her heart couldn't have beat any faster or
\par slammed any harder than it did on the way down those stairs, but when
\par she saw Toby's face, her pulse quickened and each lub-dub was so
\par forceful that it sent a throb of dull pain across her breast.
\par If he had been pale with fear, he was now a far whiter shade of pale.
\par His face didn't look like that of a living boy so much as like a death
\par mask of a face, rendered now in cold hard plaster as colorless as
\par powdered lime. The whites of his eyes were gray, one pupil large and.the other just a pinpoint, and his lips were bluish. He was in the
\par grip of terror, but it wasn't terror alone that drove him. He seemed
\par strange, haunted--and then she recognized the same fey quality that
\par he'd exhibited when he'd been in front of the computer this morning,
\par not in the grip of the Giver but not entirely free. Between, he had
\par called it.
\par "We can get it," he said.
\par Now that she recognized his condition, she could hear the same flatness
\par in his voice that she had heard this morning when he'd been in the
\par thrall of that storm of colors on the IBM monitor.
\par "Toby, what's wrong?"
\par "I've got it."
\par "Got what?"
\par "It."
\par "Got it where?"
\par "Under."
\par Her heart was exploding.
\par "Under?"
\par "Under me."
\par Then she remembered, blinked. Amazed.
\par "It's under you?"
\par He nodded.
\par So pale.
\par "You're controlling it?"
\par "For now."
\par "How can that be?" she wondered.
\par "No time. It wants loose. Very strong. Pushing hard."
\par A glistening beadwork of sweat had appeared on his brow. He chewed his
\par lower lip, drawing more blood.
\par Heather raised a hand to touch him, stop him, hesitated, not sure if
\par touching him would shatter his control.
\par "We can get it," he repeated.
\par Harlan damn near drove the grader into the house, halting the plow
\par inches from the railing, casting a great crashing wave of snow onto the.front porch.
\par He leaned forward in his seat to let Jack squeeze out of the storage
\par area behind him. "You go, take care of your people. I'll call the
\par depot, get a fire company out here."
\par Even as Jack went through the high door and dismounted from the grader,
\par he heard Harlan Moffit on the cellular system, talking to his
\par dispatcher.
\par He had never known fear like this before, not even when Anson Oliver
\par had opened fire at Arkadian's service station, not even when he'd
\par realized something was speaking through Toby in the graveyard
\par yesterday, never a fear half this intense, with his stomach knotted so
\par tightly it hurt, a surge of bitter bile in the back of his throat, no
\par sound in the world but the pile-driving thunder of his own heart.
\par Because this wasn't just his life on the line.
\par More important lives were involved here. His wife, in whom his past
\par and future resided, the keeper of all his hopes. His son, born of his
\par own heart, whom he loved more than he loved himself, immeasurably
\par more.
\par From outside, at least, the fire appeared to be confined to the second
\par floor.
\par He prayed that Heather and Toby weren't up there, that they were on the
\par lower floor or out of the house altogether.
\par He vaulted the porch railing and kicked through the snow that had been
\par thrown up against the front wall by the plow. The door was standing
\par open in the wind.
\par When he crossed the threshold, he found tiny drifts beginning to form
\par among the pots and pans and dishes that were scattered along the front
\par hall.
\par No gun. He had no gun. He'd left it in the grader. Didn't matter.
\par If they were dead, so was he.
\par Fire totally engulfed the stairs from the first landing upward, and it
\par was swiftly spreading down from tread to tread toward the hallway,
\par flowing almost like a radiant liquid. He could see well because drafts
\par were sucking nearly all the smoke up and out the roof: no flames in the
\par study, none beyond the living-room or dining-room archways.
\par "Heather! Toby!"
\par No answer.
\par "Heather!"
\par He pushed the study door all the way open and looked in there, just to
\par be sure.."Heather!"
\par From the archway he could see the entire living room. Nobody. The
\par dining-room arch.
\par "Heather!"
\par Not in the dining-room, either.
\par He hurried back through the hall, into the kitchen.
\par The back door was shut, though it had obviously been opened at some
\par point, because the tower of housewares had been knocked down.
\par "Heather!"
\par "Jack!"
\par He spun around at the sound of her voice, unable to figure where it had
\par come from.
\par "HEATHER!"
\par "Down here--we need help!"
\par The cellar door was ajar. He pulled it open, looked down.
\par Heather was at the landing, a five-gallon can of gasoline in each
\par hand.
\par "We need all of it, Jack."
\par "What're you doing? The house is on fire! Get out of there!"
\par "We need the gasoline to do the job."
\par "What're you talking about?"
\par "Toby's got it."
\par "Got what?" he demanded, going down the steps to her.
\par "It. He's got it. Under him," she said breathlessly.
\par "Under him?" he asked, taking the cans out of her hands.
\par "Like he was under it in the graveyard."
\par Jack felt as if he'd been shot, not the same pain but the same impact
\par as a bullet in the chest. "He's a boy, a little boy, he's just a
\par little boy, for Christ's sake!"
\par : "He paralyzed it, the thing itself and all its surrogates. You
\par should've seen! He says there isn't much time. The goddamned thing is
\par strong, Jack, it's powerful. Toby can't keep it under him very long,
\par and when it gets on top, it'll never let him go. It'll hurt him,
\par Jack..It'll make him pay for this. So we have to get it first. We don't
\par have time to question him, second-guess him, we just do what he
\par says."
\par She turned away from him, retreated down the lower steps.
\par "I'll get two more cans."
\par "The house is on fire!" he protested.
\par "Upstairs. Not here yet."
\par Madness.
\par "Where's Toby?" he called as she turned out of sight below.
\par "The back porch!"
\par "Hurry and get yourself out of there," he shouted as he lugged ten
\par gallons of gasoline up the basement stairs of a burning house, unable
\par to repress mental images of the flaming rivers of gasoline in front of
\par Arkadian's station.
\par He went onto the porch. No fire there yet. No reflections of
\par second-story flames on the backyard snow, either. The blaze was still
\par largely at the front of the house.
\par Toby was standing in his red-and-black ski suit at the head of the
\par porch steps, his back to the door. Snow churned around him. The
\par little point on the hood gave him the look of a gnome.
\par The dog was at Toby's side. He turned his burly head to look at Jack,
\par wagged his tail once.
\par Jack put down the gasoline cans and hunkered beside his son. If his
\par heart didn't turn over in his chest when he saw the boy's face, he felt
\par as if it did.
\par Toby looked like death.
\par "Skipper?"
\par "Hi, Dad."
\par His voice had little inflection. He seemed to be in a daze, as he had
\par been in front of the computer that morning. He didn't look at Jack but
\par stared uphill toward the caretaker's house, which was visible only when
\par the dense shrouds of snow were drawn apart by the capricious wind.
\par "Are you between?" Jack asked, dismayed by the tremor in his voice.
\par "Yeah. Between."
\par "Is that a good idea?"
\par "Yeah."."Aren't you afraid of it?"
\par "Yeah. That's okay."
\par "What're you staring at?"
\par "Blue light."
\par "I don't see any blue light."
\par "When I was asleep."
\par "You saw a blue light in your sleep?"
\par "In the caretaker's house."
\par "Blue light in a dream?"
\par "Might have been more than a dream."
\par "So that's where it is?"
\par "Yeah. Part of me too."
\par "Part of you is in the caretaker's house?"
\par "Yeah. Holding it under."
\par "We can actually burn it?"
\par "Maybe. But we've got to get all of it."
\par Harlan Moffit clumped onto the back porch, carrying two cans of
\par gasoline.
\par "Lady in there give me these, told me to bring em out here. She your
\par wife?"
\par Jack rose to his feet. "Yeah. Heather. Where is she?"
\par "Went down for two more," Harlan said, "like she doesn't know the house
\par is on fire."
\par In the backyard, there were reflections of fire on the snow now,
\par probably from the main roof or from Toby's room. Even if the blaze
\par hadn't yet spread all the way down the front stairs, the whole house
\par would soon be engulfed when the roof fell into second-floor rooms and
\par second-floor rooms fell into those below them.
\par Jack started toward the kitchen, but Harlan Moffit put down the fuel
\par cans and grabbed him by the arm.
\par "What the hell's going on here?"
\par Jack tried to pull away from him. The chubby, bearded man was stronger
\par than he looked.."You tell me your family's in danger, going to die any minute, trapped
\par somehow, but then we get here and what I see is your family is the
\par danger, setting fire to their own house by the look of it."
\par From the second floor came a great creaking and a shuddering crash as
\par something caved in, wall or ceiling.
\par Jack shouted, "Heather!"
\par He tore loose from Harlan and made it into the kitchen just as Heather
\par climbed out of the basement with two more cans. He grabbed one of them
\par from her and guided her toward the back door.
\par "Out of the house now," he ordered.
\par "That's it," she said. "No more down there."
\par Jack paused at the pegboard to get the keys to the caretaker's cottage,
\par then followed Heather outside.
\par Toby had already started up the long hill, trudging through snow that
\par was knee-high in some places, hardly up to his ankles in others. It
\par was nowhere as deep as out on the fields, because the wind relentlessly
\par swept the slope between the house and the higher woods, even scouring
\par it to bare ground in a few spots.
\par Falstaff accompanied him, a brand-new dog but as faithful as a lifelong
\par companion. Odd. The finest qualities of character--rare in humankind
\par and perhaps rarer still in what other intelligent species might share
\par the universe--were common in canines. Sometimes, Jack wondered if the
\par species created in God's image was, in fact, not one that walked erect
\par but one that padded on all fours with a tail behind.
\par Picking up one of the cans on the porch to go with the one she already
\par had, Heather hurried into the snow.
\par "Come on!"
\par "You going to burn down the house uphill now?" Harlan Moffit asked
\par dryly, evidently having glimpsed that other structure through the
\par snow.
\par "And we need your help."
\par Jack carried two of the remaining four cans to the steps, knowing
\par Moffit must think they were all mad.
\par The bearded man was obviously intrigued but also spooked and wary.
\par "Are you people plumb crazy, or don't you know there's better ways of
\par getting rid of termites?"
\par There was no way to explain the situation in a reasonable and
\par methodical fashion, especially not when every second counted, so Jack
\par went for it, took the plunge off the deep end, and said, "Since you
\par knew I was the new fella in these parts, maybe you also know I was a
\par cop in L.A. not some flaky screenwriter with wild ideas--just a cop, a
\par working stiff like you. Now, it's going to sound nuts, but we're in a
\par fight here against something that isn't of this world, something that
\par came here when Ed--"
\par "You mean aliens?" Harlan Moffit interrupted.
\par He could think of no euphemism that was any less absurd. "Yeah.
\par Aliens. They-"
\par "I'll be a fucking sonofabitch!" Harlan Moffit said,
\par and smacked one meaty fist into the palm of his other hand. A torrent
\par of words burst from him: "I knew I'd get to see one sooner or later.
\par Read about them all the time in the Enquirer. And books. Some are
\par good aliens, some bad, and some you'll never figure out in a month of
\par Sundays--just like people. These are real bad bastards, huh? Come
\par whirling down in their ships, did they? Holy shit on a holy shingle!
\par And me here for it!" He grabbed the last two cans of gasoline and
\par charged off the porch, uphill through the bright reflections of flame
\par that rippled like phantom flags across the snow. "Come on, come
\par on--let's waste these fuckers!"
\par Jack would have laughed if his son's sanity and life had not been
\par balanced on a thin line, a thread, a filament. Even so, he almost sat
\par down on the snow-packed porch steps, almost let the giggles and the
\par guffaws come. Humor and death were kin, all right.
\par Couldn't face the latter without the former. Any cop knew as much.
\par And life was absurd, down to the deepest foundations of it, so there
\par was always something funny in the middle of whatever hell was blowing
\par up around you at the moment. Atlas wasn't carrying the world on his
\par shoulders, no giant muscular hulk with a sense of responsibility, the
\par world was balanced on a pyramid of clowns, and they were always tooting
\par horns and wobbling and goosing each other. But even though it was
\par absurd, though life could be disastrous and funny at the same time,
\par people still died. Toby might still die. Heather. All of them.
\par Luther Bryson had been making jokes, laughing, seconds before he took a
\par swarm of bullets in the chest.
\par Jack hurried after Harlan Moffit. The wind was cold.
\par The hill was slippery.
\par The day was hard and gray.
\par o
\par Climbing the sloped backyard, Toby pictured himself in a green boat on
\par a cold black sea. Green because it was his favorite color. No land
\par anywhere in sight.
\par Just his little green boat and him in it. The sea was old, ancient,
\par older than ancient, so old that it had come alive in a way, could.think, could want things and need to have its way. The sea wanted to
\par rise on all sides of the little green boat, swamp it, drag it down a
\par thousand fathoms into the inky water, and Toby with it, ten thou
\par WINTER MOON 463
\par sand fathoms, twenty thousand, down and down to a place with no light
\par but strange music. In his boat, Toby had bags of Calming Dust, which
\par he'd gotten from someone important, maybe from Indiana Jones, maybe
\par from E.T maybe from Aladdin--probably from Aladdin, who got it from the
\par Genie. He kept scattering the Calming Dust on the sea as his little
\par green boat puttered along, and though the dust seemed light and silvery
\par in his hands, lighter than feathers, it became hugely heavy when it hit
\par the water, but heavy in a funny way, in a way that didn't make it sink,
\par magical Calming Dust that crushed the water flat, made the sea as
\par smooth and ripple-free as a mirror. The ancient sea wanted to rise up,
\par swamp the boat, but the Calming Dust weighed it down, more than iron,
\par more than lead, weighed it down and kept it calm, defeated it. Deep in
\par the darkest and coldest canyons below its surface, the sea raged,
\par furious with Toby, wanting more than ever to kill him, drown him, bash
\par his body to pieces against shoreline rocks, wear him away with its
\par waters until he would be just sand. But it couldn't rise, couldn't
\par rise, all was calm on the surface, peaceful and calm, calm.
\par Perhaps because Toby was concentrating so intensely on keeping the
\par Giver under him, he lacked the strength to climb the entire hill,
\par though the snow was not piled dauntingly high on that windswept
\par ground.
\par Jack put down the fuel cans two-thirds of the way to the higher woods,
\par carried Toby to the stone house, gave Heather the keys, and returned
\par for the ten gallons of gasoline.
\par By the time Jack reached the fieldstone house again, :.464 DEAN
\par KOONTZ
\par Heather had opened the door. The rooms inside were dark. He hadn't
\par had time to discover the reason for the malfunctioning lights.
\par Nevertheless, now he knew why Paul Youngblood couldn't get power to the
\par house on Monday. The dweller within hadn't wanted them to enter.
\par The rooms were still dark because the windows were boarded over, and
\par there was no time to pry off the plywood that shielded the glass.
\par Fortunately, Heather had remembered the lack of power and come
\par prepared. From two pockets of her ski suit, she produced, instead of
\par bullets, a pair of flashlights.
\par It always seems to come down to this, Jack thought: going into a dark
\par place.
\par Basements, alleyways, abandoned houses, boiler rooms, crumbling
\par warehouses.
\par Even when a cop was chasing a perp on a bright day and the chase led
\par only outdoors, in the final confrontation, when you came face-to-face
\par with evil, it was always a dark place, as if the sun could not find
\par that one small patch of ground where you and your potential murderer
\par tested fate.
\par Toby walked into the house ahead of them, either unafraid of the gloom
\par or eager to do the deed.
\par Heather and Jack each took a flashlight and a can of gasoline, leaving
\par two cans just outside the front door.
\par Harlan Moffit brought up the rear with two cans. "What're these
\par buggers like?
\par They all hairless and bigeyed like those geeks who kidnapped Whitley
\par Strieber?"
\par In the unfurnished and unlighted living room, Toby was standing in
\par front of a dark figure, and when their flashlight beams found what the
\par boy had found before
\par WINTER MOON 465
\par them, Harlan Moffit had his answer. Not hairless and big-eyed. Not
\par the cute little guys from a Spielberg movie. A decomposing body stood
\par with legs spread, swaying but in no danger of crumpling to the floor.
\par A singularly repulsive creature was draped across the cadaver's back,
\par bound to it by several greasy tentacles, intruded into its rotting
\par body, as though it had been trying to become one with the dead flesh.
\par It was quiescent but obviously alive: queer pulses were visible beneath
\par its wet-silk skin, and the tips of some appendages quivered.
\par The dead man with which the alien had combined was Jack's old friend
\par and partner Tommy Fernandez.
\par Heather realized, too late, that Jack had never actually seen one of
\par the walking dead with its puppetmaster in full saddle. That sight
\par alone was sufficient to undermine a lot of his assumptions about the
\par inherently benign-or at least neutral--character of the universe and
\par the inevitability of justice. There was nothing benign or just about
\par what had been done with Tommy Fernandez's remains--or about what the
\par Giver would do to her, Jack, Toby, and the rest of humanity while they
\par were still alive, if it had the opportunity.
\par The revelation had more sting because these were Tommy's remains in
\par this condition of profound violation, rather than those of a
\par stranger.
\par She turned her flashlight away from Tommy and was relieved when Jack
\par lowered his own quickly, as well. It would not have been like him to
\par dwell on such a horror. She liked to believe that, in spite of
\par anything he might.466 DEAN KOONTZ have to endure, he would always hold
\par fast to the optimism and love of life that made him special.
\par "This thing has gotta die," Harlan said coldly. He had lost his
\par natural ebullience. He was no longer Richard Dreyfuss excitedly
\par chasing his close encounter of the third kind. The most ominous
\par apocryphal fantasies of evil aliens that the cheap tabloids and science
\par fiction movies had to offer were not merely proved foolish by the
\par grotesquerie that stood in the caretaker's house, they were proved
\par naive as well, because their portrayals of extraterrestrial malevolence
\par were shabby fun-house spookery compared to the endlessly imaginative
\par abominations and tortures that a dark, cold universe held in store.
\par "Gotta die right now."
\par Toby walked away from Tommy Fernandez's body, into the shadows.
\par Heather followed him with her flashlight beam. "Honey?"
\par "No time," he said.
\par "Where are you going?"
\par They followed him to the back of the lightless house, through the
\par kitchen, into what might once have been a small laundry room but now
\par was a vault of dust and cobwebs. The desiccated carcass of a rat lay
\par in one corner, its slender tail curled in a question mark.
\par Toby pointed to a blotchy yellow door that no doubt had once been
\par white. "In the cellar," he said. "It's in the cellar."
\par Before going down to whatever awaited them, they put Falstaff in the
\par kitchen and closed the laundry-room door to keep him there.
\par WINTER MOON
\par 467
\par He didn't like that.
\par As Jack opened the yellow door on perfect blackness, the frantic
\par scratching of the dog's claws filled the room behind them.
\par Following his dad down the swaybacked cellar stairs, Toby concentrated
\par intensely on that little green boat in his mind, which was really well
\par built, no leaks at all, unsinkable. Its decks were piled high with
\par bags and bags of silvery Calming Dust, enough to keep the surface of
\par the angry sea smooth and silent for a thousand years, no matter what it
\par wanted, no matter how much it raged and stormed in its deepest
\par canyons.
\par He sailed on and on across the waveless ocean, scattering his magical
\par powder, the sun above him, everything just the way he liked it, warm
\par and safe. The ancient sea showed him its own pictures on its glossy
\par black surface, images meant to scare him and make him forget to scatter
\par the dust-- his mother being eaten alive by rats, his father's head
\par split down the middle and nothing inside it but cockroaches, his own
\par body pierced by the tentacles of a Giver that was riding on his.back--but he looked away from them quickly, turned his face to the blue
\par sky instead, and wouldn't let his fear make a coward of him.
\par The cellar was one big room, with a broken-down furnace, a rusted water
\par heater--and the real Giver from which the other, smaller Givers had
\par detached.
\par It filled the back half of the room, all the way to the ceiling, bigger
\par than a couple of elephants.
\par It scared him.
\par That was okay..468 DEAN KOONTZ
\par But don't run. Don't run.
\par It was a lot like the smaller versions, tentacles everywhere, but with
\par a hundred or more puckered mouths, no lips, just slits, and all of them
\par working slowly in its current calm state. He knew what it was saying
\par to him with those mouths. It wanted him. It wanted to rip him open,
\par take out his guts, stuff itself into him.
\par Toby started shaking, he tried very hard to make himself stop but
\par couldn't.
\par Little green boat. Plenty of Calming Dust. Putter along and scatter,
\par putter along and scatter.
\par As the beams of the flashlights moved over it, he could see gullets the
\par color of raw beef beyond those mouths. Clusters of red glands oozed
\par clear syrupy stuff. Here and there the thing had spines as sharp as
\par any on a cactus. There wasn't a top or bottom or front or back or head
\par to it, just everything at once, everywhere at once, all mixed up. All
\par over it, the working mouths were trying to tell him it wanted to push
\par tentacles in his ears, mix him up too, stir his brains, become him, use
\par him, because that's all he was, a thing to be used, that's all anything
\par was, just meat, just meat to be used.
\par Little green boat.
\par Plenty of Calming Dust.
\par Putter along and scatter, putter along and scatter.
\par o In the deep lair of the beast, with its monstrous hulk looming over
\par him, Jack splashed gasoline across the paralyzed python-like
\par appendages, across other more repulsive and baroque features, which he
\par dared not stare at if he ever hoped to sleep again.
\par WINTER MOON 469
\par He trembled to think that the only thing caging the demon was a small
\par boy and his vivid imagination.
\par Maybe, when all was said and done, the imagination was the most
\par powerful of all weapons. It was the imagination of the human race that
\par had allowed it to dream of a life beyond cold caves and of a possible
\par future in the stars.
\par He looked at Toby. So wan in the backsplash of the flashlight beams.
\par As if his small face had been carved of pure white marble. He must be
\par in emotional turmoil, half scared to death, yet he remained outwardly
\par calm, detached. His placid expression and marble-white skin was
\par reminiscent of the beatific countenances on the sacred figures
\par portrayed in cathedral statuary, and he was, indeed, their only
\par possible salvation.
\par A sudden flurry of activity from the Giver. A ripple of movement
\par through the tentacles..Heather gasped, and Harlan Moffit dropped his half emptied can of
\par gasoline.
\par Another ripple, stronger than the first. The hideous mouths opened
\par wide as if to shriek. A thick, wet, repugnant shijting.
\par Jack turned to Toby.
\par Terror disturbed the boy's placid expression, like the shadow of a
\par warplane passing over a summer meadow. But it flickered and was
\par gone.
\par His features relaxed.
\par The Giver grew still once more.
\par "Hurry," Heather said.
\par o
\par Harlan insisted on being the last one out. He poured the trail of
\par gasoline to which they would touch a match.470
\par DEAN KOONTZ
\par from the safety of the yard. Passing through the front room, he doused
\par the corpse and its slavemaster.
\par He had never been so scared in his life. He was so loose in the bowels
\par that he was amazed he hadn't ruined a good pair of corduroys. No
\par reason why he had to be the last one out. He could have let the cop do
\par it. But that thing down there ...
\par He supposed he wanted to be the one to lay down the fuse because of
\par Cindi and Luci and Nanci, because of all his neighbors in Eagle's Roost
\par too, because the sight of that thing had made him realize how much he
\par loved them, more than he'd ever thought. Even people he'd never much
\par liked before--Mrs. Kerry at the diner, Bob Falkenberg at Hensen's Feed
\par and Grain--he was eager to see again, because suddenly it seemed to him
\par that he had a world in common with them and so much to talk about.
\par Hell of a thing to have to experience, hell of a thing to have to see,
\par to be reminded you're a human being and all it meant to be one.
\par o
\par His dad struck the match. The snow burned. A line of fire streaked
\par back through the open door of the caretaker's house.
\par The black sea heaved and rolled.
\par Little green boat. Putter and scatter. Putter and scatter.
\par The explosion shattered the windows and even blew off some of the big
\par squares of plyboard that had covered them. Flames crackled up the
\par stone walls.
\par The sea was black and thick as mud, churning and rolling and full of
\par hate, wanting to pull him down, call WINTER MOONING him out of the
\par boat, out of the boat and into the darkness below, and a part of him
\par almost wanted to go, but he stayed in the little green boat, holding
\par tight to the railing, holding on for dear life, scattering the Calming
\par Dust with his free hand, weighing down the cold sea, holding on tight
\par and doing what had to be done, just what had to be done.
\par Later, with sheriff's deputies taking statements from Heather and
\par Harlan in patrol cars, with other deputies and firemen sifting for
\par proof in the ruins of the main house, Jack stood with Toby in the
\par stables, where the electric heaters still worked. For a while they
\par just stared through the half-open door at the falling snow and took
\par turns petting Falstaff when he rubbed against their legs.
\par Eventually Jack said, "Is it over?"
\par "Maybe."
\par "You don't know for sure?"
\par "Right near the end," the boy said, "when it was burning up, it made
\par some of itself into little boring worms, bad things, and they tunneled.into the cellar walls, trying to get away from the fire. But maybe
\par they were all burned up, anyway."
\par "We can look for them. Or the right people can, the military people
\par and the scientists who'll be here before long. We can try to find
\par every last one of them."
\par "Because it can grow again," the boy said.
\par The snow was not falling as hard as it had been all through the night
\par and morning. The wind was dying down as well.
\par "Are you going to be all right?" Jack asked.."Yeah."
\par "You sure?"
\par "Never the same," Toby said solemnly. "Never the same . . . but all
\par right."
\par That is, Jack thought, the way of life. The horror changes us, because
\par we can never forget. Cursed with memory. It starts when we're old
\par enough to know what death is and realize that sooner or later we'll
\par lose everyone we love. We're never the same. But somehow we're all
\par right. We go on.
\par o
\par Eleven days before Christmas, they topped the Hollywood Hills and drove
\par down into Los Angeles. The day was sunny, the air unusually clear, and
\par the palm trees majestic.
\par In the back of the Explorer, Falstaff moved from window to window,
\par inspecting the city. He made small, snuffling sounds as if he approved
\par of the place.
\par Heather was eager to see Gina Tendero, Alma Bryson, and so many other
\par friends, old neighbors. She felt that she was coming home after years
\par in another country, and her heart swelled.
\par Home was not a perfect place. But it was the only home they had, and
\par they could hope to make it better.
\par That night, a full winter moon sailed the sky, and the ocean was
\par spangled with silver.
\par the end.
\par 
\par -------------------------------
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