The late afternoon gloom churned around Mark as he bulled his way through it. The shadows thrown by the big oaks and the tall barn resisted him, jostling his shoulders as he hunched forward into the stiff wind, stalking purposefully toward the empty nowhere of the farm road that led away from the house and eventually into the fields. His legs pumped like a fortissimo metronome, marking the rhythm of his furious pace. He paused once to angrily light a cigarette, sucking in fiercely enough to ignite a third of the Camel and fairly spitting the blue smoke into the night air; then he snapped his lighter shut with the metallic aggression of lopping shears and shoved it in his pocket as he resumed his march toward the end of his own anger.
The actual physical destination turned out to be the barn, not by any choice but merely because it loomed up in front of him and he stopped, startled, and looked up at it as if he’d never seen it before. His surprise betrayed the intense confusion in his mind: he hadn’t realized he’d walked this far from the house or even in that particular direction. He stood in the road, smoking the cigarette in harsh puffs, whipping the butt out of his mouth between each puff and blowing the smoke out in a thin, forced stream as he regarded the barn. It was the same barn he’d always seen, the barn that had been there when he had been born, the same barn he’d helped his father paint red when he was ten and repaint twice since then. It was the same barn in which he’d smoked his very first cigarette; the same barn in which he and Val had spent many a covert hour leaping from the loft into the massive hay mounds that covered most of the floor. It was the same barn where he and Connie had first kissed almost thirteen years ago, and where he had first made love to her, nestled there in the soft fragrant straw of the highest loft, the two of them losing their virginity together in a few moments of sweet, clumsy fumbling that possessed far more passion than skill. It was the same barn where he had had his last conversation with his father prior to that terrible night. Mark had come home for lunch and had spent twenty minutes talking to Dad about Terry Wolfe’s offer to lease a parcel of their land to build a Christmas Town attraction. Dad had said he’d think about it, and Mark had driven back to his office at the college. The next time he would see his dad would be while they were all hostages to Karl Ruger, and from that moment on everything had gone to shit.
Mark walked slowly up to the tall red sidewall of the barn. He reached out to touch it, drawn for some reason to the wooden planks, needing to feel the slightly pebbled surface of the thick layers of red paint. The paint felt cold, but it felt real, and it was an old and familiar texture. Mark leaned his forehead against the wood, closing his eyes and then screwing them up into tight pits of gristle as a wave of unbearably intense emotion crashed down on the shores of his soul. His lips writhed, trying to speak, trying to articulate what he needed to say. His chest ached with the burning need to scream.
In the end, all he could say was one word. “Connie!”
It came out as a whisper of mingled desperation, self-loathing, and fear that he had lost her forever. He stared inward across the vast empty landscape that stretched between his wife and his own impotent, damaged soul and wondered how he could ever make such an impossible journey back to her. With each beat of his breaking heart he pounded on the side of the barn with a balled fist. Inside the barn the echoes sounded like the amplified beating of a giant’s pulse.
“Connie!” he whispered in a voice choked with tears. Slowly, his knees buckled and he sank to the cold ground, huddling against the barn, not cowering away from the cold, but sinking into his own defeat and failure.
He did not see the shadow rising between him and the distant cloud-choked sky. He was so lost in his grief that he never even felt the coldness of it, a frost harsher and deeper than the icy blast of the October wind. He never saw the pale white hand reach out of the shadows, and knew nothing at all about it until it was far too late.
Chapter 26
(1)
The first swarm of roaches swept toward them. Fifty yards away. Forty. The second swarm was still a hundred yards away but it was moving with incredible speed.
“Keep running!” Crow yelled and reached back to grab Newton’s shoulder. With a growl of fury he propelled the reporter forward and then ran a half pace behind him, ready to shove him again if he slowed. “Run!”
They ran toward the rough path Crow had hacked through the vines, but by the time they had taken twenty steps it was clear that the second swarm would cut them off long before they reached it. Crow grabbed Newton’s arm and they both skidded to a halt as around them the whole forest seemed to be rustling with the sound of a million tiny legs. Crow looked back toward the house and the field. There was still that one big patch of sunlight and there was the fact that the wave of roaches had split apart to avoid it.
“God, let me be right about this,” he said and quickly squatted down to make sure his trouser cuffs were tucked tightly inside his boots. “Newt, listen,” he said, rising and talking fast. “No questions, no arguments. Just follow me. Fast!”
With that he spun around and ran full tilt toward the field—straight at the oncoming mass of insects.
Newton goggled at him. “Are you crazy?” he screeched, but Crow was going at a dead run and within seconds had reached the wave of roaches and kept going. From twenty feet away Newton could hear the sound of Crow’s Timber-lines crunching on the shiny backs of the creatures, the carapaces cracking like pistachio shells. Crow ran fast, arms and legs pumping, heading deeper and deeper into the sea of bristling black bugs. Some of them turned to pursue him and collided with the wave of oncoming bugs, causing a rage of overlapping currents that bubbled up off the ground.
“RUN!” he heard Crow yell over his shoulder.
“Oh, Jesus,” Newton said as the leading edge of the swarm flew toward him, “don’t make me do this.” Then he was running, too, and with his first step his sneaker crunched down onto the shiny black shells and he could hear the bugs pop wetly. He ran as fast as he could, and he stared at Crow’s back twenty feet ahead of him. He fixed on that, not daring to look down, knowing without seeing that the roaches were milling in confusion as the leading edge of the wave was fighting to turn and follow while the main mass of them was still in motion forward. Their bodies boiled up around his ankles as he ran and he tried to pick up his knees so that his ankles would be as high off the ground as possible with each step. He was horribly aware of how low his sneaker tops were.
He ran and ran, and within a dozen steps his shoes were smeared with a sticky white-green goo of insect guts and still the roaches swarmed around him in their legions; the hiss of their bodies scraped against one another and the whisper of their legs over the rough ground was dreadful. He ran as the air burned in his lungs and pain blossomed in his chest like fireworks, all the time watching Crow’s back as the man pelted down the path back the way they had come. Crow was running faster, pulling ahead yard by yard.
We’re going to die! He thought as he ran. We’re going to die! It was the only clear thought he could manage.
Roaches leapt at him, clung to his clothes, crawled up his pants legs as he ran, and Newton was uttering a high-pitched continuous cry of total terror. The field was still a hundred yards ahead and now Crow was almost up to the back wall of the house. Newton saw this and a fresh wave of terror struck him as he suddenly remembered that whoever or whatever had locked itself in that house could use their keys to unlock the locks, and then those doors would open. Front door, back-door, cellar door. All of them would open, and what—dear sweet God, what?—would come howling out?
We’re going to die! He thought, but deep down another, far more horrible feeling was growing. It had no words, no specific shape, but Newton was gradually becoming aware of the possibility that there might be things in that house worse than roaches, perhaps worse than death.
“Newt!” Crow’s voice shook him into awareness and he turned away from the house and saw that ahead of him Crow had suddenly stopped running. Newton almost stopped as well,
which would have been fatal because the roaches were gaining on him, coming at him from every direction, both swarms now joined into one vast bristling ocean, but Crow had stopped because he had reached the clear patch of sunlight. He whirled around, alternately brushing bugs off of his clothing and waving furiously to Newton. “Come on! Over here! In the light! Run, goddamn it, RUN!”
(2)
“He hates me,” Connie said hollowly, staring bleakly over the steam rising from her teacup. The kitchen was painted in shadows with only a single lamp on.
Val squeezed her shoulder. “No, he doesn’t. He’s just confused. I don’t think he’s gotten over Dad’s death yet. He’s rattled and upset and doesn’t know how to react.” She stroked Connie’s hair.
“But you yourself said—”
“I was mad at him,” she admitted, “and I was trying to shock him enough to snap him out of it. But…I seem to have only made him madder. We’d better give him time to cool down, sweetie. He’ll come around.” Her words did not match her thoughts, though. She prayed that Mark was out there now, wherever he was—sulking over a beer at the Harvestman, probably—thinking about those horrible things he had said and feeling bad about it. Maybe he’d come back soon, not crawling or abashed, but like a man, owning up to the things he’d said and done over these last couple of weeks, and ready to make things right. That would be great, but it was a bit too storybook and Val had her doubts. Maybe one day, but today didn’t feel like it was going to end with a Kodak moment.
They sat staring through the kitchen windows at the golden sunlight shining on the autumn-colored leaves of the big oak in the yard. All day it had been cloudy and now, just before sunset, the sun had drilled its way through the gray and the yard looked beautiful. It made her wonder what the forest was like down by Dark Hollow where Crow was. Was he seeing the same sunlight all the way down there? He could use it, she thought. Crow had been sweating his little hiking trip for days. Unconsciously she touched her stomach, and to the tiny baby just beginning to grow inside of her, she said, Your daddy’s a crazy man.
Connie said, “It’s not that I don’t want to…you know…do things with him. You know what I mean. In the bedroom and all—it’s just that I can’t. I just can’t.” Connie stared into the depths of her teacup as if there were answers down there. “Every time Mark tries to touch me, all I can feel is that man’s hands on me, and—and—”
“Whoa…shhhhh, girl,” Val said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “Don’t go there. Try to let it be. I understand what you’re going through. I’m still going through some of it myself.”
Connie looked at her, surprised. “You?”
“Uh huh. Nearly every night I see him in my dreams. Sometimes I wake up and imagine I can see him standing at my window. Pale, like a ghost. Scares hell out of me.”
With a shudder and a nod, Connie said, “Yes! That’s how I see him!”
Val laughed. “God, will you listen to us? We’re worse than a couple of Girl Scouts around a campfire.”
Connie tried on a smile, but it was too weak to hold. “I know…but I can’t help it.”
“Yeah, me neither, but I do remind myself that it’s just dreams…and dreams can’t hurt us. At least we have the satisfaction of knowing he’s dead.” Val stood up and gave Connie a quick hug and repeated, “He can’t hurt us.” She stepped back and smoothed her jeans. “Come on. Let’s take a walk. I need to get out of the house for a few minutes, catch the last of the sunshine.”
Connie looked doubtfully at the silent phone. “What if Mark calls?”
“Then he can damn well leave a message. Come on.”
(3)
Tow-Truck Eddie cruised the black road from Corn Hill all the way down to the Black Marsh Bridge and didn’t see a single kid on a bike. There were plenty of kids out, but they were older, mostly college kids in crowded cars heading out to the campus for the Little Halloween parties. No child on a bike, no Beast.
At the bridge he turned around and headed back to town. His frustration level was mounting, but as he drove the slow miles the voice in his head kept whispering one immensely powerful word, over and over.
Tonight! it said. Eddie’s hands held the steering wheel with a strangler’s grip.
(4)
Newton ran. It felt like ten miles to the light, but he ran. The roaches—some of them were actually leaping up at him—were piling over themselves in front of him, layer upon layer of them, and he had to plow shin-deep through them. Roaches were swarming up his pants legs—outside and inside—and as he ran he started slapping them off his clothes. One crawled down out of his hair and Newton screamed as shrilly as a little girl as he swatted it off his cheek. Suddenly Crow was there and he was reaching out with both hands to grab Newton and drag him into the patch of sunlight. Then he, too, was swatting and pawing at Newton, brushing away dozens of gleaming black bugs, knocking them down to the ground where they twitched and fled toward the shadows that surrounded them.
“Pants…pants!” Newton was yelling as he shook and danced in place and Crow grabbed his belt buckle, yanked it open, and then grabbed his pockets and pulled, tearing the cloth but also dragging Newton’s jeans down to his ankles. His legs were covered with roaches and as the sunlight touched them they leaped off and raced for shadows, while others scuttled up under the hems of Newton’s boxer shorts. Newton screamed when he felt them begin to crawl over his scrotum and try to wriggle between his buttocks. He tore off his boxers and danced a frantic jig and within seconds all of the insects had fallen off or been swatted away by his desperate hands. His legs were covered with tiny red marks from where some of the roaches had tried to bite through his skin. None of the bites had broken the skin, however, though Newton shuddered at the thought of what would have happened had the creatures had more than just a few seconds to gnaw at him.
They froze there—Crow with his chest heaving, eyes bugged out in terror, pants smeared to the knees with a paste made of insect guts and crushed shell, Newton with his pants and undershorts around his ankles, face white with shock. Around them in a circle thirty feet across the sea of roaches had come to a complete stop. Only their antennae twitched, but they did not move, did not mill around. They stood in their endless ranks and watched hungrily.
Crow stared at the insects for a moment and then slowly looked up at the cloudy sky. There were three beams of sunlight angling down and as he watched, a fourth broke through and its light touched the upper near corner of Griswold’s old house. It was still gloomy but the false sunset was ebbing. Just a bit. He looked at his watch. Sunset—real night—was less than an hour from now. “Newt,” he whispered. “Get dressed. Hurry up.”
Tears ran down through the dust and grime on Newton’s cheeks. “Crow—what’s happening?” There was a hysterical edge to Newton’s voice.
“The sunlight’s keeping them back, so might have a chance here…but you gotta be ready.”
The reporter looked at Crow, and then at the ring of light around them. The clouds were thinning and the circle of sunshine started expanding outward. Suddenly the insects began hissing again as they drew back away from it. “See!” Crow yelled in a voice filled with fierce triumph. “They can’t stand the light.”
“But…roaches always run when you turn on the light.”
Crow shook his head. “That’s because they don’t want to get stepped on…this is different. I don’t think they can abide the light.” It was a strange word to use and it hung there in the air, both of them aware of it and of what it implied.
Newton looked up at the sky. There were a dozen beams of light—the pillars of heaven, he thought, remembering the phrase from an old book. The pillars of heaven, and these little monsters can’t abide them. “No,” he whispered, but he meant yes.
Around them the gloom was visibly diminishing as the clouds above burned away. Now there was a big central column—heaven’s mainstay, Newton thought—and its light washed across the entire field. The sunlight, cold and raw with
the humidity of a lurking storm, was still rich and pure and it washed over them and over the sea of roaches that instantly turned and fled in a swarm back toward the house. In thirty seconds every one of them was gone except the bugs that lay smashed and dead in the line from where they had first been attacked. How many had they killed? A thousand? Five thousand? It hadn’t made even a dent in the ocean of them there had been.
Newton suddenly became entirely self-conscious about the fact that he was standing there with his pants down and turned with an absurd stab at modesty away from Crow and pulled up his boxers and jeans—checking to make sure there were no roaches hiding in the folds—and zipped and buckled. As he slipped his belt through the last loop a huge shiver of absolute disgust shook him from head to toes and he took a step away from Crow and vomited into the brush. While he spit and gagged the forest seemed to tilt and sway around him.
“We’ve got less than an hour before sunset, Newt,” Crow said urgently. “We have to make it to the pitch long before then.”
Newton straightened, his face green and his eyes runny with tears from straining to empty his gut, and he stared at Crow for a long second, then looked up at the sky. The light was slanting down from an extreme angle as the sun slid toward the southern treeline. They would be in darkness long before the sun actually set on the region.
“Little bastards must have gone back into the house…don’t ask me how. Or why. But if they’re regrouping or some shit then it’s our cue to haul ass.”
They started running toward the forest and this time Newton ran as fast as Crow.
(5)
Vic punched the dashboard lighter in and when it popped he lit his cigarette and then handed it to Ruger. They smoked in silence for a long time, watching as the sun slipped below the treeline. Vic’s pickup was tucked back into a copse of trees, safe within shadows as dense as the bottom of a well. They could see the sun, but the rays did not penetrate even as far as the truck’s hood. Ruger’s ski mask, hat, and gloves were on the backseat. He wouldn’t need them again tonight. Vic looked at his wristwatch. “Sun’ll be down in ten minutes.”
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