She couldn’t believe she was even thinking about this. It was worse than insane to take any of it seriously, let alone contemplate the actual murder of someone over a nightmare fairly tale.
Liz froze. The smell of burning pine that was suddenly so sharp in the air was not coming from her campfire. The trunks of several of the trees near her were smoking, the bark charred and glowing with small red embers. There were several new scorch marks on the earth, as well.
She heard a constricted whimper and realized she was making it. She felt sick and clutched her stomach. She turned. The scorched trees and ground now formed a much larger rough circle around the tent. She was thankful for the rain and mist. It had probably kept the trees from burning and trapping her in a fire.
She wished desperately for Hampton to be by her side. Beth and he had been gone several hours now. That might be a good sign. Beth had never been gone this long in the canoe. Perhaps she’d found the old logging road out.
When Beth got help, Liz reasoned, they would come for her with a pontoon plane so they could land on the lake and fly Kevin out. She focused on that thought and the terror eased a bit. She knew it was silly because it was much too soon, but she looked out on the lake and listened intently for the sound of a plane. The mist still hung over the water in motionless sheets. It was not smooth but appeared textured, as though riddled with twisting paths running through it.
She realized she was still clutching her stomach and her shoulders were so tensed up they hurt. She eased up, shaking her arms to relieve the cramping in her neck, and listened for a plane engine so intently it blocked out everything else. She did not want to think about the scorched circle around her.
She heard an odd sound. She concentrated on it, closing her eyes. She didn’t think it was coming across the water and it didn’t sound like a plane. It was so odd, almost like voices on a record played backward and too fast. Was it another group of campers?
The sound seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere and then from the tops of the trees.
Her heart sank. It was Beth’s voice, but distorted and distant. She was calling, and Liz heard Hampton barking, but also in reverse. Yet there was no mistaking the tone of Beth’s and Hampton’s voices.
“Beth!” she called, turning to look into the woods. “Beth, can you hear me?”
She waited and listened. Nothing. She called again.
This time she heard a sharp, agitated response, although Liz still couldn’t make out the words. It was strange because the sound was coming almost in waves. Liz stepped to the edge of the campsite, up to the outer ring of the burnt circle. Something told her she could not safely cross that line, and she held back, afraid to go any deeper into the forest. She called again.
“Beth, Hampton, can you hear me? Where are you?”
Again there was a response, but this time distant and faint, as though moving away. She called again, and the response grew fainter still until it disappeared altogether. Liz stood for a long time listening, hearing only the pounding of her heart and the slow random splash of water falling from the trees.
It was growing dark now, and the gray shadows deepened among the pines.
Her fever roared back so fiercely she staggered. At the same time, she heard a deep clicking sound that made her skin crawl. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed to be coming from the depths of the trees before her, and Liz backed away.
The insect clicks came faster until they morphed again into the sound she’d heard before, a deep throaty roar like a lion’s, but also like a laugh. She couldn’t tell which.
She backed up to the dying campfire and tossed more wood on it. Astonishingly, it immediately blazed up, throwing light across the nearby trees and into the deep blackness between them.
She stood listening as the clicking roar grow louder, but whether it was coming from the woods or her own head she couldn’t tell. It was as savage and harsh as the black hard eyes of the bear that had nearly attacked her, and it felt just as menacing and alien.
She thought of running into the tent, but in her terror she wanted to be out in the open rather than behind a flimsy nylon wall that offered no protection. She wondered briefly if Kevin had awakened, but heard nothing from him.
The sound was now a deafening roar so loud her head ached and the vibration of it rattled her whole body. She looked up, her hands over her ears, and saw the sky pulsing with curtains of rainbow light brighter than ever before, the black ragged tear across the middle throbbing like a heartbeat. That dark gap drew her, unwillingly, as if she were standing next to a steep cliff and felt drawn to the abyss.
She shrieked, squeezing her eyes shut, yelling so hard it felt like the sound was torn from her throat. This was madness. She was slipping into a fevered, hysterical madness, and she could not stop.
She stumbled and nearly fell, still shrieking, and it was several seconds before she realized that the roaring in her ears had stopped and only her voice broke the stillness.
Her throat ached. She leaned against a tree, breathing heavily. She dropped her hands from her ears. It was as silent now as it had been deafening before. There was no longer even the splash of water falling from the trees. She wondered for an instant if she’d been struck deaf. She ran a hand across the tree, listening to pieces of bark snap and fall, but it sounded oddly muffled and far off.
She looked back into the forest. Something was watching her. She could feel it and she began to shake. She could not run or hide, there was nowhere to go. All she could do was stand, waiting for whatever came next.
Waiting for what? she wondered. And what was it waiting for? Why did it just sit out there? It was toying with her. It had to be. She had never felt so vulnerable and helpless.
Slowly, her terror transformed into despair and fury. It was doing this because it wanted her to feel this way and it enjoyed making her tremble and cower like a cornered mouse before a cat. It was having fun. Just killing her would be too easy, too boring, like playing a game you never lose. The pleasure comes from watching the performance of the victim, not from the inevitable win. It was the only variable. What would the victim do? Cry? Run? Beg? Go mad? Or, best of all, do something completely unexpected?
Liz stooped and picked up a rock. “What do you want, you bastard?” she croaked, her voice torn and hoarse from the intensity of her screams. “Leave me alone!”
She hurled the rock as hard as she could into the trees.
Seconds later the rock shot back, striking the tree just inches from her head with such force it stuck in the wood. Liz stared at it. The wood around it smoked.
Again she heard a low, vibrating almost-growl.
That rock could just as easily have struck her head. She was sure of it.
She felt defeated, faced by something so much more powerful than herself that it was no contest. None. It could do whatever it wanted and toy with her for as long as it pleased or kill her as slowly as it wished.
It dawned on her that there was just one thing still in her control—that was, if she could just find a way to kill herself. It was as though the idea was whispered to her. She could still escape this thing, whatever it was. It was the last way in which what might happen was still hers to decide. End its game and spit on its pleasure by refusing to play.
There was the knife. She recalled that the ancient Romans committed suicide by falling on their knives. She could place the tip against her chest and fall on it. It would be quick. All she had to do was fall forward and gravity would do the rest.
What did she have worth hanging around for, anyway? Her husband had died years ago, she had no children and her life since Alex was nothing but a series of failed relationships with egocentric men who paid less and less attention to her the older she grew. Soon, even the ridiculous bald men with comb-overs wearing cheap suits and drinking cheap whiskey in cheap bars would not take a second look at her, and she’d be an old woman with no one and nothing except her solitude. It would not even be that long from now. She was s
cared and miserable and she could just call it quits and end the misery.
She’d considered suicide several times during her life and tried it once after Kevin had broken off with her. She took an overdose of sleeping pills, but Kevin found her and called the college medical center. The thing was, in looking back on it she knew it had not been a serious attempt, not really. She probably hadn’t taken enough pills and she was in a place where Kevin was almost certain to find her. Still, at the time she had thought she was serious, and that was at a point in her life when she’d had much more to live for than she did now. What did she have today except to wait for whatever was out there to finally make up its mind and take her? She could do it. It made sense.
She again looked at the rock embedded in the tree next to her head. Anything was better than another moment of despair in the face of this creature she so obviously could not escape. She was tired and only wanted the whole nightmare to end. She could do it. She could end it right now.
Her mind made up, she reached quickly for the knife Kevin had given her. Not finding it, she remembered she’d left it in the tent.
She heard the growl again. It knew what she was thinking. She was sure of it. Perhaps this was what it wanted her to do. Yes, this was exactly what it wanted. But why? Why was it doing this to her?
Hot with fever, the anger boiled up in her again and she staggered from the intensity of both. Her vision blurred and the world she saw in the shifting campfire looked unreal. She might, she thought, be hallucinating from her temperature.
Suicide came roaring back into her mind. Again, the idea seemed not to really be hers, but something insistently whispered in her ear. “Is that what you want?” she cried out loud. “For me to do myself in while you watch? That’s it, isn’t it, you sick pervert?”
Silence, not even an echo.
Suicide, she thought again. Yes, she had considered it in the past, but not for years. She liked her life and it was not that bleak, not at all. Yet for a moment she might even have done it had the knife been at hand. Confused and dizzy, she wondered how long she could go on terrified and angry before going crazy. What was happening to her?
Liz realized the air no longer had any odor to it. No smell of smoke from the fire nor the ever-present sent of pine sap from the trees, not even from the tree next to her.
“Who are you?” she called. Her voice died in the air, swallowed up without any echo. “Morgan, is that you?”
That was absurd and she knew it. She glanced again at the stone in the tree. Morgan couldn’t have done that, could she? Yet who, or what, could have?
More than fear, more than the dread that still pushed her to run and hide in that pathetic tent, she wanted to know. What was it that stalked her? If she was to die out here she wanted to know what or who was killing her.
She walked to the edge of the circle of campfire light where the scorched earth and trees seemed to mark the boundary of an enclosure. Her legs shook. If she ran straight into the woods, she wondered if she would suddenly find herself running right back into this camp. She suspected she would. Yet Beth and Hampton still had not returned. She very much wished she had that silly dog with her.
Her sense of lightheadedness increased, beads of sweat trickling down her forehead. She felt as though she was peering down a deep well and feared for a moment she might black out. She put her hand against a tree to steady herself.
Whatever was out there might be only a few feet from her in the dark. She could be dead before she knew it.
She stared into the absolute darkness beyond the light of the fire. Okay, she thought, if Morgan, or “it,” wants to play games, let’s play.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she said. She felt drunk.
A low throaty growl seemed to answer. Again, it was directionless, from in front of her or behind her or in her head, she could not tell. She fell back a step, and then stopped. It seemed close, so close she imagined she could feel its breath on her face.
Determined, she stepped back to the edge of the circle. “No you don’t,” she said. “Don’t you growl at me, you perverted little piece of shit. I said come out. If you’re going to kill me then do it, damn you, otherwise come out where I can see you.”
A thought struck her, a dim recollection that the name of a demon exerted some power over it. “Agbado, come out. Do you hear? I order you to appear.”
Suddenly, she smelled the air again. It was full of the odor of burning pine.
She stumbled backwards as two small yellowish red lights blinked on about thirty feet ahead of her. The lights drifted closer.
Chapter 7
Fever staggered her again. She literally felt on fire, yet not weak or sick, just agonizingly hot.
The lights were closer, but they stopped advancing; glowing flames with perfectly empty black circles at their centers, just like the auroras above her. Eyes in the dark of the wilderness, staring at her, unblinking. The flickering glow was unsteady, alternatively fading and blazing stronger.
Were they real, or just the creation of her fever-wracked mind?
Her hold on reality crumbled. Under this steady gaze she felt naked. Her heart racing, she stepped back, cowering. The determination to face whatever or whoever this was evaporated, and all she felt now was raw animal terror. She wished she had the knife, although she was sure it would be useless against whatever this was out there in the dark just beyond the meager light of the campfire.
The eyes continued gazing at her, and it occurred to her that they could not enter into the campfire light, no more than she could advance beyond what felt like the sanctuary of the burnt circle.
She heard a voice. “You spoke my name.”
The voice was not in front of her, but seemed to surround her, coming from all directions. It also was not human, yet had a quality that was unmistakably male, a strange deep resonance like the rumble of a lion’s growl. Although what she heard was perfectly clear, it came in odd waves of sound, stronger and then fainter. And still the flaming eyes hovered in the dark of the woods, staring at her.
“What are you?” she finally asked, her voice sounding thin in the cold night air.
“I am Agbado. You called me.”
“You’re not a man?”
“No,” he answered.
She thought she heard a smile behind his answer, but the rumble of his voice was so alien she could not be certain.
“Why are you here?”
“To serve.”
Sweat ran down her face, the heat burning within her nearly paralyzing. The eyes, the voice, even the woods and the dark, all felt like a hallucination. She hoped they were. “Why do you want to kill me?” she said.
“I want to kill no one.” The voice was matter-of-fact, almost respectful.
“But we’re trapped here. Why can’t we leave?”
“That is the will of another. The stone master.”
“I don’t understand,” said Liz. She was shaking, but whether from fever or fright she didn’t know.
“You shake,” said the voice.
“I’m burning up with fever,” said Liz.
A cold breeze touched her face, and the fever drained from her. Liz backed away from the eyes to the fire and clumsily sat on a large stone, clutching herself and now shivering with cold. The fire was hot, but it failed to warm her.
The eyes continued watching her, seeming to fade in and out focus, and still she could not tell if the sound of his voice was real or something she heard inside her head.
“Are you real,” she asked, “or am I crazy?”
“Perhaps both,” came the answer in its weird rumbling tone.
“Are you a demon as Kevin says?” she said.
The eyes continued to hold her in a steady, alien gaze, and Liz heard a low growling laugh. “I am sometimes called that. I am sometimes called an angel. I do not understand the words, but how you address me does not matter or change me. They are words. Use whichever are right to you.”
“There is no difference between a demon and an angel?” said Liz.
“Those words have no meaning to me.”
“Who is the stone master?”
“Whoever holds the keystone. There have been many. The stone master commands me.”
“Kevin says you’re a destroyer. He saw you do terrible evil. You killed many people. He saw it.”
Agbado barked a short, contemptuous growl. “He is a fool. He sees but does not understand. It is important that you understand, Liz Pemberton.”
“Then let us go. If you do not, Kevin will die. We’ll all die.”
“But I am not the one who holds you. I am only the instrument of another, not the one who commands. The stone master is the will, I am the tool.”
“Who is the master?” said Liz.
“Why do you ask questions when you know the answers? Your race is so strange in that respect.”
“I don’t know. Not for certain.”
“It is Morgan Houdek,” came the answer.
“Is she here?” Liz glanced around the trees. “Are you Morgan?”
“I am not but she is near. She wishes you dead.”
Cold dread gripped Liz, making her shiver. She almost wished for the fever to return.
She was afraid to ask the next question, but knew she would. “Then why don’t you kill us? You could do it easily, couldn’t you?”
The eyes simply stared at her until she heard, “I do not kill. I never kill. I never could. It is not my nature.”
“If you don’t release us, we will die.”
“That is the will of another, not me. She wants you to die. It is she who kills you. I am only an instrument of the will, for I have none of my own.”
“Why are you waiting for us to suffer? So that you can watch and enjoy it?” Liz shook all over. Despite knowing it was futile, she wanted to spring up and run. But she couldn’t rise; her legs would not do it.
The Demon Stone Page 20