by Stephen Laws
Half staggering, half running away from the farmhouse, they sought the protection of the darkness and the storm. They would make it. Just a few yards more down the drive at the front and they would hit the main road and the hills and fields beyond, the darkness enclosing them. Then they would just keep on going through the night, putting as much distance between them and their unwelcome visitors as possible. The darkness would hide them.
And then twin beams of light stabbed out of the darkness directly in front of them, throwing their gigantic shadows behind them all the way back to the farmhouse. There was a screech of brakes being ap plied, a skidding crunch of gravel. Drew and Cath froze in shock, clinging together as the car that had roared into the main driveway came to a lurching halt on its suspension not ten feet from where they stood.
Police! Cath and Drew had the same instant thought. They’ve come after them. We’re safe!
The car door flew open, snatched by the wind and making the vehicle rock on its suspension again. A familiar figure clambered out into the gale, hair flying.
“Oh no . . . oh no . . .” Cath moaned, as she moved to the car, placed a hand on the hood and shaded her eyes with the other to stare through the windshield at the small figure in the passenger seat. She began to pray then as she moved. “Please God . . . please God . . .”
But God, it seemed, was not to be pleased.
“Mum!” cried Rynne, kicking open the door and clambering out as Cath ran to her. “All the lights went out and you didn’t come back and we were frightened and Faye said we should come to you and . . .”
“Oh no! Get back in the car, darling! Get back in the car!”
“Drew!” Faye shouted above the sound of the wind. “We were so worried. The telephones aren’t working and we were worried that you . . .”
Drew seized Faye by the arm and dragged her back to the car.
“Faye, get in the car! Now!”
He saw her bewildered look of shock; saw Cath struggling to shove Rynne back into the vehicle, held the door as he pushed Faye ahead.
The night exploded with a shattering roar.
A fist-sized hole punched through the centre of the windshield, the surrounding glass crazing into a mosaic of wild fractures; like broken ice on a frozen pool.
Silhouetted by the headlights, a terrible and familiar figure strode casually towards them—gun held out in front of him.
“Oh Christ . . .” moaned Drew, as Cath pulled Rynne close to her and watched as he approached.
“Oh my God . . .” Faye’s voice was filled with horror. “My God . . . what’s happening, Drew? What in God’s name is happening?”
“More guests for the party,” Pasco said, coming to a halt. His eyes and teeth shone in the headlights when he grinned. There was no humour in those glass-shard eyes. He stood to the side, and beckoned toward the farmhouse with the gun.
With cold horror, Drew took Faye’s arm—exchanging a long look with Cath over the roof of the car.
They walked past Pasco toward the farmhouse. When they had passed, he moved to the car—switched off the engine, pocketed the car keys, but kept them in the headlights as they walked.
Ahead of them, Crip was standing in the front doorway.
Waiting.
When he stepped aside to let them enter, Pasco switched off the headlights that had floodlit the front of the building.
Gun swinging in one hand at his side, he followed.
THIRTY FIVE
More of the hated Two-Legs!
The thin taste of the squawking small-life was gone now, but the fury it had temporarily assuaged had begun to swell within it again. Leaving the ruins of the demolished henhouse, it had prowled again; circling the house, watching and waiting. Warily, it kept a regular watch on the Round-Leg Beasts that served to carry the Two-Legs. They were dead now, as they always were when there was no Two-Legs to bring them to life. In disdain, it urinated on the Round-Legs of both beasts.
Suddenly, there was noise from the Two-Legs’ lair—on the other side.
With grumbling fury shuddering its ribcage, the She Cat flew around the side of the house.
There was movement on one wall of the lair. Two figures clambered from a hole high up.
At last—there were two to kill.
And a possible way into the lair.
It slouched low, hugging the ground and watching; now moving its haunches from side to side in preparation, digging its hind claws into the soil, ready to launch itself forward in a killing run.
The first Two-Legs clambered and fell to the ground—a female, and in fear, by the pungent scent that barely registered before being snatched away in the storm wind. Moreover, it was the fleeting scent of an intruder that it remembered from its own lair; when it had discovered that its partner and cub were gone. It shuffled; ready to make its run as the second figure—a male—began its descent. This was a male Two-Legs the She Cat recognised, not only from its fleeting scent that had also been present in its lair, but from the way the figure moved. This was the male Two-Legs it had tracked back to the house—the male it had nearly taken earlier before the others had come.
A screeching shriek came from the lair—and a long thin something swung out away from the wall in its direction, the male Two-Legs clinging to it and kicking out its legs wildly. This was a bizarre form of attack that the She Cat had never seen before, could not understand the physicality of it, and was full of threat. The She Cat sprang backwards instinctively on its haunches, forepaws batting and swiping at the night air. The long, screeching thing—like a thin and living tree but not a tree—fell shivering to the ground as the Two-Legs came down through the air to complete the bizarre attack. It shrank back further at the Two-Legs’ impact on the ground, alarmed. Fear temporarily overcame its urge to attack and protect. When it swung aside in the darkness and looked back, it first saw movement in the hole high up in the stone-lair wall, sensed anger there—then whirled to see that the male and the female were running from the stone lair into the night away from it.
A trace odour of fear was swept into its face and nostrils by the storm wind.
Enraged again, aware that there was entry to the stone lair on high, but that the long screeching tree that was not a tree might attack again if it tried to climb the wall, the She Cat took after the two hated Two-Legs that had first taken its cub and partner.
It would run them down and kill them both.
Maybe the other Two-Legs would come out when the death screams reached their ears.
Maybe they’d leave that entrance at the front of the stone lair open.
All these instinctive, inchoate but surging and powerful thoughts and emotions consumed the She Cat as she flew at the two figures through the night. The storm wind filled her gaping jaws, flooded her lungs and her belly, made her blood sing—as the fear scent came fast and strong and—
Light!
Two giant eyes in the night.
A screeching roar.
The She Cat reacted instinctively, swerving aside and streaking blacker than night behind a battered trough to the side of the drive.
Cries.
Excited jabbering sounds that only Two-Legs could make.
Close to the ground, she saw that it was another of the moving-not-living things on round legs. For the second time, one of these unnatural creatures that carried the Two-Legs and brought bright sun to the night had defied and stopped its stalking run.
But the wild night was still full of fear.
It sensed movement up at the stone lair.
The She Cat bent and curled its massive black and sinuous body against the far side of the trough, craned its powerfully muscled neck to look back and saw—
A Two-Legs—holding up a forepaw.
The night exploded.
The She Cat hunkered even closer to the trough, resisting the urge to flee. When it shifted forward, it could see that the Round-Leg Beast had disgorged even more of the Two-Legs. They were walking back to the stone lair in
the bright sun stare of its eyes. Scent fragments—the stink of fear—whirled in the wind currents around them. The She Cat craned its head again around the edge of the trough. The Two-Legs who had made the night explode was still standing beside the Round-Leg Beast. It watched him lean inside and do the thing—whatever that thing was—that made the Round-Leg Beast die, the bright sun stare instantly gone. It watched him begin walking after them, and saw that the entrance to the stone lair was open—and that the hated Two-Legs were re-entering. Was this the opportunity it had been waiting for? Could this last Two-Legs still make the night explode and bring death to it?
Slowly, low to the ground and sliding around the trough, it looked from the stone lair to the Two-Legs—from the lair—to the Two-Legs. It looked back once more to make sure that the Round-Leg Beast was still dead and not about to roar into life again. But there was no Two-Legs near to bring it to life again.
The Two-Legs were entering the lair.
The last Two-Legs could not see or hear it in the storm.
Bunching its powerful muscles so that they rippled under its thick black fur, it centred on the last Two-Legs—shifted and centred its gravity—dug its rear leg claws into the soft earth, and readied itself.
And then the Two-Legs turned, at the same time that the wind gusted and brought a brief sharp tang of scent to the She Cat. There was no taste of fear in that fleeting scent, no hesitation and no doubt. There was something else, something unnatural that the She Cat had never encountered before. It knew from its secret observation of these hated Two-Legs that they could not see in darkness. But something in the aggressive and confident stance of this Two-Legs halted her charge. Could this one see in the dark? Could it see her where she crouched—even now?
The Two-Legs raised the forepaw that had made the thunder.
Then it backed off into the stone lair, the entrance was suddenly sealed—and the She Cat’s chance was gone yet again.
Growling, fangs gleaming in the darkness, it slid first to the trough—and from there through long grass to a fence, where it fixed its sight on the only chance left.
The hole near the top of the stone lair, from which the male and the female and the screeching tree that was not a tree—and which lay silent and dead in the grass—had come.
It was still open.
THIRTY SIX
“What’s the matter, Pasco?” asked the child-man, anxious to show his concern.
Pasco had closed the door, and was still staring at it with a troubled expression on his face. He weighed the gun, tossing it from hand to hand as he pondered.
“I thought . . . for a second out there . . . I thought . . .”
“You still mad at me?” Crip asked anxiously.
Pasco paused, still troubled—and then seemed to focus again and discard whatever was on his mind. “Yes, I’m still mad at you. Get the hell in there.”
“See?” Crip turned, stomping like a bear-sized child into the living room where the others were standing together and waiting. He thrust his face into Drew’s face, arms stiff at his side, fists clenched. “You messed my head! You got me into trouble with my friends! You got Pasco angry with me! And—you!” Crip bellowed at Cath, making Rynne cry out in alarm and cling even more tightly to her mother. “You pretend to be nice but you’re not! You messed my head too. I should . . . should . . . mess your face!” Crip raised his fist to Cath, stepping forward.
Straight-backed, face stern—Faye stepped between them.
“Young man! Behave yourself this instant!”
Crip froze, the glittering anger in his eyes seeming to grow dull.
“I’m sure you’re a kind man and don’t like frightening children. But you’re being loud and you’re frightening the girl. Please desist!”
Crip stepped back—just as Pasco elbowed him aside and glared at her.
“Everyone sit down,” he said tightly. “And shut up.”
Crip was still standing, apparently dumbfounded and with his jaw sagging as Cath and Rynne moved to the second sofa. Still straight backed, Faye sat next to them—at attention, as if expecting to be invited not to stay. Crip seemed unable to take his eyes off her, as if she were some puzzle to which he could not find the answer. Drew moved back to the chair he had previously occupied, wearily sitting and turning his attention to Tully; still in the same position on the first sofa. His face was ghastly, eyes glittering from a mask of pain.
“You think you’re pretty bloody clever, don’t you?” said Pasco—and Drew looked across to see that he was talking to him. “Trying to get away like that.”
“I thought you’d made your minds up about something—and it wasn’t in our best interests to stay around.”
“You a mind reader as well?”
“Don’t have to be with you.”
“You’ve got a clever mouth.”
“Look!” Cath straightened, the sound of her angry voice making Rynne bury her head against her mother’s chest. “It’s not too late. You can still get out of here. We won’t say anything. All right—we know who Kapler Dietersen is—was . . .” Cath became aware of Faye stiffening. “But he—well—he isn’t anything to us.”
“Oh yeah?” said Pasco sarcastically.
“I mean—you just can’t . . .” Kill all of us. Cath bit down on the words before they came out.
“I’m sorry, Cath,” Faye said. “We shouldn’t have come, but the lights went out and the storm, and you’d been gone for so long. I’m so sorry.”
Pasco made a grotesque and sarcastic sound of sympathy, then tossed Faye’s car keys to Tully.
“Hey, Tully. You could start a garage business—you got so many of these.”
“Give me the gun, Pasco,” Tully said through gritted teeth.
“So what we going to do now?” said Pasco, ignoring him. “Hey, I know. Let’s send them all upstairs again, to different rooms this time. Then we’ll have them jumping through every fucking window in the house.”
Tully held out his hand. “The gun, Pasco.”
Pasco weighed it in his hand. “We’ve got to do something.”
“The gun!”
Pasco stuck it in the front of his belt, and then stood with his hands on his hips staring at Tully.
“No.”
“You running things now?”
“With you sitting there bleeding to death? Yes.”
“What’s ‘desist’ mean?” Crip asked.
“What?” Pasco snapped.
“It means when you stop doing something,” said Faye. Her voice was somehow ridiculously calm.
“Oh,” Crip said.
“Crip, shut up—and come here.”
Dutifully, the child-man did as he was told, head still down in deference.
“You want to be out of trouble with me?”
“Yes.”
“Then get the girl.”
“The girl?”
“The girl!”
“Which one?”
“The little one, you moron. The little girl.”
Cath hugged Rynne even closer, Faye moving closer to them. Drew gripped the armrests of the chair, ready to rise—as Crip slowly turned, then took a step toward the sofa.
“You won’t touch her!” Cath hissed.
Crip stopped, uncertain. He looked back at Pasco. “What for?”
“Do you want me to stay angry with you?”
“No.”
“They tricked you, didn’t they? Made you look stupid?” “
“Yeah, but . . .”
“So get the girl.”
“Pasco.” Tully leaned forward, tugging on the belt around his leg and groaning. “What the hell are you doing?”
Pasco pulled the gun out of his belt again with a flourish. “Crip, you hold the little girl down here. The ‘Nothing’ lady over there is going upstairs with me.”
“No, she’s not,” Drew said, rising.
“Yes, she is,” said Pasco, swinging the gun toward him. “Because if she doesn’t—Crip’s going to
hurt the little girl. Because that’s what Crip does best. Right, Crip?”
Crip turned back to the sofa—just as Faye quickly stood and put herself in front of him again.
“Crip,” Cath said, trying to keep her voice level. “You said you wouldn’t let him—do things. Remember?”
“That was before you tricked me. Made me look stupid. Anyway—he’s right. Hurting’s what I do good.” When he made to move again, Faye took another step forward so that they were face to face. Her eyes were hard and steady as she stared into Crip’s piggy little eyes. He lowered his head bashfully, then said: “You better get out of the way, missus.”
“No.”
“I hurt a little old lady just like you earlier on tonight. I offed her. Tully wants me to—I’ll hurt you really bad.”
“I’m not a little old lady.”
“Yes, you are,” Crip said, head still down.
“Not like any little old lady you’ve met before, sonny.”
“You!” snapped Pasco to Cath. “Over here. Now!”
Drew lunged—and Pasco had the gun barrel pointing at his face in a moment, only inches away.
The air was suddenly full of hateful and ferocious electricity.
“Pasco,” Tully said. “You are one monumental idiot, with a head full of shit for brains. You’re not going to do anything—and you’re going to give me that gun.” “You’re going to shut up, Tully!”
“No, I’m not. I’m going to tell you the reason why you’re going to give me the gun.”
“Too many clever mouths, too many people not doing what they’re told. Maybe if I put a bullet in the lover-boy, eh? What then ‘Nothing’ lady? Do anything then, wouldn’t you if I . . .”
“The guy with the boat. The guy who’s waiting for us? Know why he wouldn’t leave? Know why he’ll be waiting this storm out?”
Pasco kept his eyes on Drew, but his attention was focused on Tully.
“Because he’s my brother.”
Pasco took a step back, lowering the gun.
“Your brother?”
“That’s right.”
“You never said.”
“No—because you don’t need to know everything, Pasco. Too much information just seems to turn the shit in your head even shittier.”