On and on they plodded, numbed by the featureless landscape until their legs and feet seemed disconnected from them, separate entities carrying them relentlessly forward. Charlie did not ask where they were headed. He did not ask if, in fact, his father really knew. He was a stranger in this new land, which he assumed must be one of the Lands of the Dead, one of many in which Quidnecks believed. An interloper who did not have the status to ask questions, he sensed he was being allowed to continue only by the grace of some spirit, whose presence once or twice he thought he fleetingly felt. But he could not be sure. He only knew he was not in control of this scene; how it played out was in someone else’s hands entirely.
Charlie could not guess how long they had been walking when he observed an irregularity on the horizon.
Since they had started out, his eyes had been fixed to that horizon—in part because he needed focus or risked losing perspective altogether in this vastness, in part because he knew instinctively something eventually would appear on it. At first it was only a speck, shimmering in heat that rose in waves from the baked earth. Charlie thought it might be a bird, closer to them than this sea of parched flatness made it appear. But it was not a bird. As they got closer, he saw that it was a mesa, flat top resting on chalk-covered cliffs. He had a vague memory of having seen a similar promontory; a blurred image of a Navajo brother glimmered in his head and was gone.
“We must not go much closer,” George said, speaking for the first time.
They continued awhile, the father trying to slow the son’s eager progress. Soon Charlie could discern figures, a swarm of people, including one almost twice the size of the others.
“Close enough,” George said, restraining his son.
They stopped. Behind the mesa Charlie could make out mountains, over which storm clouds were breaking. The sun still baked them, but there was a whisper of a breeze now, the promise of rain . . . a deluge of rain . . . cleansing, devastating rain.
Charlie squinted, but he could make out no more detail on the mesa.
“Here,” George said, withdrawing a pocket telescope from inside his shirt. “Use this. I do not want to see any more.”
Charlie looked through the telescope.
The giant’s back was to Charlie, but he did not need to see his front to know he was naked. His skin was bronze-colored, his muscles sharply defined, his neck trunklike, his head shaved. He was not painted, did not have earrings or other jewelry that Charlie could see. Gathered around him were what appeared to be his followers, more than a hundred in all, men and women, as naked as the leader himself.
The giant turned.
Charlie was overcome with disgust.
In one hand he was clutching his penis—an enormous organ that was fully, frighteningly erect. He displayed it for the spectators, whose roars of approval came drifting across the desert.
“Hobbamock,” George said.
Charlie moved his binoculars off the giant to an earthen mound that seemed to function as some sort of stage or altar. On it was a row of people, spread-eagled and tied with leather to stakes. Not adults, Charlie realized with building rage. Children. About a dozen of them, split roughly equally between the sexes. The girls were on their backs, the boys on their stomachs. Each had been painted with one red stripe, almost like an arrow, that ran down their torsos to their loins. Charlie could not be sure it wasn’t blood, let with a single slice of a sharp knife.
His anger, already at fever pitch, rose even further with the shock of recognition. Abbie Gale was one of the children. Susie and Hank McDonald’s daughter. Several children he did not recognize. One other he did: Jimmy, his nephew. Jimmy, who appeared to be first in line.
Hobbamock pranced before the crowd. Charlie strained to hear the cries of the children, but he could detect none. Perhaps they’d been drugged. If they were saying anything, it was being drowned out by a rhythmic drumbeat the onlookers were sending up.
“I warned you,” George whispered, his voice shaking.
“No!” Charlie protested, his voice escalating. “Nooooo!”
“Quiet,” George implored.
“Noooooo!” Charlie gripped the spear he’d found. His knuckles were white.
“We must go now.”
“He must be stopped!” Charlie screamed.
“We are powerless.” Charlie had never seen his father so afraid. “We are unarmed and overwhelmed. It would be crazy.”
“We have this,” Charlie said, lifting the spear.
“It is useless in your hands.”
“We must try.”
“It would be suicide.”
“Jimmy is one of them!” Charlie said savagely. “My sister’s son!”
The old man looked down, ashamed. But there was nothing he could do any longer. In his Land of the Dead, there was peace—great, endless, soothing peace—but there was no power. All power had been stripped on the passage over. The most George could do was guide, and that had been accomplished now.
“Come, before it is too late,” he said, retreating.
Charlie ignored him.
Spear in hand, he ran madly—blindly—toward the mesa. He was bellowing. His rage filled the flat landscape, catching the attention of the spectators, then Hobbamock himself. Hobbamock stopped his ritual. The spectators were immobilized. Silence settled over them like drowning.
As Charlie watched, the spectators began to be transmogrified. Their size did not change, but their features began to. Fur grew on some and scales on others. Their faces melted into liquidy pools, and then the pools began to re-form themselves into new shapes. Limbs contorted. Hands became paws, fingers, claws. The end product was an assembly of wolves, bears, snakes, vultures.
Hobbamock’s agents. Charlie remembered meeting them in his dreams.
It was almost dark now. The storm clouds had cascaded in like stallions stampeding, and now they were broiling angrily overhead. The sky was spitting rain, and the wind had whipped itself into a howl. As the darkness enveloped him, the mesa and the spectacle on it began to fade. George had disappeared. The realization brought tears to his son’s eyes. Desperately, irrationally, Charlie groped for his flashlight. He found it, pushed the switch, but the batteries seemed to have gone dead. He did not bother with the matches.
The last thing he saw as the blackness was complete was Hobbamock, his face radiant, his lips locked into a sneer. The last thing Charlie heard as consciousness dimmed was Hobbamock’s cackle—owllike, painful, ascending in pitch until it was past painful, until only a dog could have heard it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Saturday, November 8
“What do you want to play?” Jimmy asked Abbie when they had reached the attic. With a few curtains and streamers and some old furniture (including the giant dollhouse they’d picked up for a song at the flea market), Brad had transformed the attic into a children’s wonderland. It was Abbie’s favorite place.
“Wanna color? I’ve got lots of books. Rainbow Brite, Winnie-the-Pooh, She-Ra, Princess of Power, Big Bird—”
“Nah,” he said.
“Want to go down and watch TV?”
“Nah. Got any GoBots?”
“Nope.”
“G.I. Joe?”
“Unh-unh.”
“Boy. You don’t have anything.”
“I have fourteen Barbies,” she said proudly.
“That’s girl stuff. How about we play dinosaurs?” Three months ago Jimmy would have suggested Rambo. But he didn’t play Rambo anymore. An awful thing had happened playing Rambo—a thing that was still going on.
“I don’t want to play dinosaurs,” Abbie said, squirming.
“Why not?”
“Just because, that’s all.”
“Well”—Jimmy coaxed—”you could be a caveman and I could be a Tyrannosaurus rex.”
“No.”
Jimmy didn’t get it. They’d played dinosaurs before, lots of times, and Abbie had loved it. Maybe it was the roles.
“OK,�
� he offered, “you could be Tyrannosaurus rex, and I’ll be the caveman.”
“No!” Abbie shouted, and burst into tears.
Jimmy’s first thought was: Oh, boy. Mr. Gale’s gonna hear her, and then I’ll be in for it. And I didn’t even do anything. But Abbie’s sobbing wasn’t that loud, and soon that fear had passed. Jimmy’s second thought was to comfort her. Yes, that’s what he should do. Because Abbie was a friend. Not a girlfriend or anything serious like that, just a special friend, as his mother, who liked Abbie tremendously, called her. Almost as good as his best boy friends—even if she didn’t have Transformers or GoBots.
Abbie had retreated to the attic window, where she sat on the floor, looking forlornly outside. Tears trickled in two streams down her peach-tinged cheeks. Without hesitation, Jimmy did what Ginny had always demonstrated you do when someone close to you is very, very upset—he went over and hugged her. Abbie accepted his embrace. Framed by the anemic light of November, they comforted each other.
“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said, not knowing what he’d done to be sorry about but figuring it was best to apologize anyway. “I thought you liked dinosaurs.”
“I used to,” Abbie admitted. She was getting a hold on herself.
“But not anymore,” Jimmy concluded.
“No. They’re . . . too scary, that’s all.”
“Scary? But dinosaurs have been dead millions and millions and millions of years.” He reassured her.
“No, they haven’t.”
“Yes, they have.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m still scared of them.”
Jimmy wasn’t sure he got it. He had never been afraid of dinosaurs; neither, he assumed, had Abbie. How else could they have played them the last time without something like this happening? His mind skittered over the various fears in his life. Losing Mommy.
That fear, probably the granddaddy of all his fears, had been there as long as he could remember. It ranked just above Charlie Going Away for Good. Being Late for Kindergarten was another fear. That was a new one, but no longer a very significant one; he’d been late once, and his teacher hadn’t yelled at all. Liver for Dinner. That wasn’t exactly a fear, but it was sure bad. Wolves. Until the incident in the woods—until THE NIGHTMARES—he’d liked wolves, at least pictures he’d seen in National Geographic. Now, just thinking about wolves gave him a sick feeling in his stomach. Sometimes the thought was so bad he got a sharp pain in his head, as if he’d fallen while ice skating. Maybe something like that had happened to Abbie to make her dislike dinosaurs. He didn’t want to ask. It wasn’t something you’d run around telling everybody.
“Like wolves are scary,” Jimmy blurted out.
“Yeah. Like wolves.”
Abbie looked at her friend, her very best friend of all the people she’d met since coming to Morgantown. There were a lot of reasons to like Jimmy: he was very nice, and he lived pretty close, and they liked a lot of the same games, and his uncle was Charlie, the Indian. But the biggest thing was how brave Jimmy was. One recess, way back at the beginning of kindergarten, he’d stuck up for her when Amy Wallace had started kidding her about what she’d brought in for show-and-tell: a milk bottle. (“A milk bottle’s a stupid thing for show-’n’-tell,” Amy had said, teasing her. Abbie had tried to explain that in New York they didn’t have milk that came around by a milkman, but tears had gotten in the way. That was when Jimmy had butted in. “Amy, you’re just jealous ‘cause Abbie’s prettier than you.” It had reduced Amy to tears.) Yes, come to think of it, the time with the milk bottle had been the thing that had really made them special friends.
Discovering that someone so brave could actually be . . .
. . . afraid of something the way she was . . .
. . . well, that made him even nicer.
“Jimmy?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever had nightmares?”
Nightmares. The word sliced through him like a razor blade. It felt like the time he’d had to have a tooth pulled, the electric feeling from the Novocain needle as it entered the gum. Jimmy swallowed.
“Have you?” Abbie repeated.
Should he tell the truth? He’d never mentioned the nightmares to any kids. Only adults, and only a very few of them: Mom and Uncle Charlie and Dr. Bostwick, the time he was sick back then before the fair. But Abbie was his friend. His special friend. She was having nightmares, too. He knew, because she’d told him one morning on the bus. If anyone could understand, it was Abbie.
“Only a couple of times,” he said. It was a white lie.
“Really?”
“Really. You, too, right?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “About dinosaurs.”
“All kinds of dinosaurs?”
“Oh, no.” Abbie corrected him. “Only one kind. Rhamphorhynchus.”
“Which one is that?”
“That’s one of the flying ones. It’s got a long tail and lots of teeth. Like a vulture. Have you ever seen a vulture?”
“Only in a book about birds. My mom bought it for me.”
“What’s your nightmare about, Jimmy?”
“A—a wolf.” There. He’d finally said it.
“Wow,” Abbie said in awe. “Was it big?”
“Gi-gan-ic.”
“Can he talk?”
“Yes, he can.”
“So can my rhamphorhynchus!” Abbie exclaimed. “Is he a mean talking wolf?”
“Very mean,” Jimmy said, then added, with no small degree of drama, “He wants to eat me.”
“Boy,” Abbie said, her voice equal parts wonderment and tingly fear, “that’s like the dinosaur. I think it wants to eat me, too. I told my dad, but he doesn’t believe me. He says it’s all make-believe.”
“That’s what my mom says, too.”
“But how could it be make-believe?” Abbie reasoned. “It comes right into my room.”
“Like my wolf.”
“I could touch it if it weren’t so scary and it didn’t make me cry.” The memory of it made Abbie shudder. Maybe she wasn’t so keen to talk about this, after all, although in the broad light of day, the nightmare never, ever seemed quite so bad.
“Does it smell?”
“Like BO?” Abbie said.
“Yeah, like that. I can smell the wolf. It’s wicked gross. Like farts,” he added, giggling.
“So they must be real,” Abbie concluded.
“Right,” Jimmy agreed.
They locked glances. Something—so real they almost could have reached out and touched it—flickered back and forth between them. Something they did not really comprehend, something at once unsettling and strangely comforting. For the very first time they were sharing darkest secrets, and the unburdening of them was a relief.
“My dad says the dinosaurs will go away,” Abbie said, “that it’s just nightmares ‘cause of us moving from New York to a new place and everything, and it always goes away. I wish he was right,” she said dubiously. “Do you think your wolf will go away, Jimmy?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, the creepy sensation crawling back into his spine again.
“I don’t know either. I wish I could chase it away, instead of waiting for my mind to do it itself. I don’t think my mind really wants to.”
“My uncle Charlie promised he has a way to keep the wolf away,” Jimmy boasted.
“Does it work?”
“I think he forgot his promise,” Jimmy lamented. “‘Cause the wolf still comes sometimes.”
“Maybe if you had a gun,” Abbie suggested, almost without meaning to. Guns were outlawed from the Gale household. But how many times on TV had Abbie seen problems taken care of with guns? Lots and lots of times.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “A gun.” Once he had hold of the idea, he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him before.
A gun. Better than a camera. Better than anything even.
That’s what Rambo would do, he starte
d to think, catching himself before he was too far into the thought.
In another few minutes their talk had moved on to more innocuous subjects. Another few minutes after that, and they were absorbed—silently, happily—in a jigsaw puzzle.
In the second-floor study Maria had been listening to the sounds from upstairs.
Children sounds.
Every once in a while a low growl escaped the dog, so low that a person on the other side of the study couldn’t have heard it. Lately Maria had been reacting to her human masters strangely.
Brad had the vague sensation that something was wrong with the dog. She didn’t—didn’t what? Didn’t like them quite as much anymore? That was silly. Dogs were dumb brutes, incapable of intellectual functioning much beyond the level of chewing shoes and napping. It was hard to articulate. There hadn’t been any single incident with Maria, but on a couple of occasions Brad swore he saw a mean look in the animal’s eyes that had never been there. Crazy, but it seemed as if the dog were watching them now, wary of them, where before her face had been full of nothing but brainless good humor.
Upstairs Abbie and Jimmy were jumping. Maria could feel the vibrations through the floor.
The Big Dog voice whispered:
(Don’t trust them. They’ll stop feeding you, you know. It’s only a matter of time. That big one . . . the way he whacks you with that newspaper, orders you around, calls you names. Who’s in charge here anyway? And that little one, isn’t she mean? Knocking you about the way she does. No, it’s not a pretty picture for a dog. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Thursday, November 13
Pniese and the Transcript story about Harry Whipple combined to lead Thomasine and Charlie to where they stood now: the entrance to an old mine up Thunder Rise.
“You knew it was here?” Thomasine said.
“Yes,” Charlie answered, “but I thought it had been closed down years ago. Before I was born. Until that article I had no idea it had been worked recently.”
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