Nguyen made no effort to get too close to the house, however. It might have been a place of triumph – he still believed that – but it held unpleasant memories for him. He had been present when the bodies of the thirty-two Point High students had been removed from the wreckage. Of course, they had not known then that there had been thirty-two people at Angela’s house when it blew. There had not been a single intact corpse.
But there were experts for every task in the world, even the gruesome ones, and maybe mortician Kane had come to lend a hand. In any case, the burnt remains had been gathered, and the teenagers had been numbered and identified, mostly using dental records. Jim Kline, Larry Zurer, Carol McFarland – the list went on and on. Nguyen had been surprised and maddened to discover Kevin Jacobs had also been killed. According to the experts, he had been the only one in the basement when the explosion occurred. There had not been enough of him left to bury.
No remains had been found of Angela Warner though.
Not even in the water. Nguyen had made them search there.
“Don't, girl,” Nguyen called to his dog. She had belonged to Angela and her grandfather; Nguyen had found her wandering around the night of the blow-up, soaking wet and deaf. The dog had yet to regain all its hearing. Kids at the school, classmates of Angela's, had told her the dog's name was Plastic. Nguyen called her that sometimes. “Don't get oil on your paws,” he said. “Stay away from the water.”
Nguyen had come to say goodbye to the area. He was moving to California. Many people were leaving; Point was quickly becoming a ghost town. The trauma from the deaths of so many kids had shattered families beyond repair. They couldn't bear to live and breathe in the same place that had brought them so much grief.
Then there was the strange story of the oil spill.
Approximately six weeks after the explosion a gentleman by the name of Phillip Frazier was attacked while driving his company truck – a full-size propane tanker that was in the area refueling tanks for the approaching winter. Mr. Frazier was unable to explain afterwards what had attacked him, except to say that it had come at him from the roof of the cab and that it was stronger and faster than anything he had ever seen. In fact, he said it was so fast he didn't even see it. The police thought that unlikely, but he stuck to his story.
Mr. Frazier had been knocked unconscious in the attack and his truck had been stolen. It didn't take long for the truck to be relocated, however. That evening, just after sunset, the wells that pumped on the hills overlooking Point Lake exploded. It seemed the thief had driven the truck up to the wells, probably coming at them from behind, and had detonated the propane tank in the midst of the small oilfield. Two of the wells had immediately caught fire, and before help could arrive all six were burning out of control. It was like the Kuwait oilfields after the Gulf War all over again. Experts had to be brought in from Middle East to extinguish the wells, and that took several days. Even more unfortunate, the burning wells served as cover for a much greater catastrophe.
There were six pumping wells on the hill. In addition, there were another six wells that produced a tremendous amount of oil without being pumped; the natural gas pressure underground was enough to drive the oil to the surface. These six wells, and the holding tanks that stored their oil, were also ruptured by the explosion of the propane truck. But they didn't catch fire. Their tank lines were broken, however, and the oil spilled ceaselessly into Point Lake for several days, a black river hidden by the flames of the other wells. Naturally, locals noticed the oil building up in the lake before the other wells were extinguished, but it wasn't possible to dam the flow properly until the flames had been put out. By then Point Lake had absorbed an oil spill that was irreparable. The cost to clean it up was put in the tens of millions by state experts, and it was decided the lake would be drained the coming spring. Drained and covered over, it wouldn't do to have such a huge tar pit lying exposed.
So Point was a dead town. Better to get out while the getting was good, people were saying. Nguyen agreed. He had other reasons as well.
He knew he was going to have to get rid of whatever was sleeping in Todd Green's grave before he left. It was a task he wasn't looking forward to.
“Come on, Plastic,” he called as he stepped away from the oily shore and headed into the trees. The collie followed happily, wagging her tail. At first Plastic had clearly missed Angela and her grandfather, but dogs quickly forgot. They were lucky. “Let's go see if we can find any game.”
The snow crunched under Nguyen's boots as they hiked into the woods. The light was poor – it was close to sunset. He should have come earlier, he thought. The ground turned upwards; he had to veer to the south to stay away from the place where the oil had burned and flowed. Climbing the hills was hard work in the soft snow. Nguyen found himself panting and had to take numerous breaks, even though he was in excellent shape. His constant searching also made him tire more quickly than normal. He had come to say goodbye to the area but also was looking for something he'd seen many times before – ever since the night the thirty-two kids had died in Angela Warner’s house.
Nguyen was searching for the remains of a dead animal.
He found one a few minutes later.
They weren't that hard to find if you knew where to search.
The animal was a deer – a doe. There wasn't much of it left. It had been completely gutted by what appeared to be a combination of teeth and knives. Bright red blood soaked into the surrounding snow. The vacant eyes of the deer stared up at him. He doubted the animal had even got a glimpse of what had killed it.
Nguyen had believed Phillip Frazier's story.
“No, girl,” Nguyen snapped as Plastic tried to lick the blood. “That's bad stuff. Stay away from it. Make you very sick.”
The dog peered up at him quizzically for a moment, then appeared to understand. She turned to chase after something else.
Suddenly the collie froze, its tail going straight up. But the dog did not raise it as a prelude to attack. Plastic whimpered softly. She was terrified.
“What is it, girl?” Nguyen whispered. He searched the woods but saw nothing. Nevertheless, a film of sweat began to gather on his skin beneath his woollen shirt. He remembered the coldness in Jim Kline's eyes; Angela licking Mary's blood; the stink of the green fungus in Kane’s laboratory; the groan under the ground in Rest Lawn Cemetery. A collage of the unexplainable floated on the still air, mixed with the smell of evil. He remembered his glimpse of the burning figure being blasted out over the cold water when the house had exploded. No remains of Angela Warner – no one seemed to know where she had gone.
Nguyen glanced down at the empty eye of the doe. This was the tenth animal he had discovered eviscerated in these woods in the last six weeks.
All these memories. They made him ask himself questions.
What was out there? What was watching him?
Something.
Then, an even more important question.
Why had he come to these woods so close to dark?
Foolish.
Nguyen turned back to the lake, back the way he had come. He put a hand on the gun under his coat. It was a futile gesture. He knew he wouldn't have time to use it if he needed to. He called to Angela's dog.
“Let's get out of here, girl,” he said.
High in a nearby tree red eyes watched the man and the animal depart. The mind behind the eyes was tempted. For a moment it considered attacking, swooping down from its branch and taking what it wished. But it hesitated. It had just eaten; it was not overly hungry. And there was something about the man, about people in general. The creature didn't know if it wanted to feed in that way.
The creature raised a purple talon to touch the figure at the end of the gold chain that hung round its wrinkled neck, then resettled its leathery wings on the thick branch where it sat. It did not understand why it always did this when it spotted human beings. It had no memory of where the amulet had come from. It had no memory at all, not even of
the fifth planet from the sun that had supposedly given birth to it. It had broken the link to that place at the beginning. The creature simply existed and fed while time passed.
But as it touched the amulet with its sharp claws it came to a clear decision not to attack the man. There was something wrong about killing humans. The creature jingled the amulet, and as it did a faint wave of sorrow touched its mind. It could remember that much. People were not for eating.
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