“Is he all right?”
It was Mills, lumbering across the field. Behind him, Weldon had hold of ’Sconset Sally, who was struggling to escape. Mills had come perhaps a third of the way when the garbage, which had fallen back into the weeds, once more was lifted into the air, swirling, jiggling, and—as the wind produced one of its powerful gusts—hurtling toward him. For a second he was surrounded by a storm of cardboard and plastic; then this fell away, and he took a staggering step forward. A number of dark dots speckled his face. Sara thought at first they were clots of dirt. Then blood seeped out around them. They were rusty nailheads. Piercing his brow, his cheeks, pinning his upper lip to his gum. He gave no cry. His eyes bulged, his knees buckled, he did an ungainly pirouette and pitched into the weeds.
Sara watched dully as the wind fluttered about Hugh Weldon and Sally, belling their clothes; it passed beyond them, lashing the pine boughs and vanishing. She spotted the hump of Mills’s belly through the weeds. A tear seemed to be carving a cold groove in her cheek. She hiccuped, and thought what a pathetic reaction to death that was. Another hiccup, and another. She couldn’t stop. Each successive spasm made her weaker, more unsteady, as if she were spitting up tiny fragments of her soul.
VII
As darkness fell, the wind poured through the streets of the village, playing its tricks with the living, the inanimate, and the dead. It was indiscriminate, the ultimate free spirit doing its thing, and yet one might have ascribed a touch of frustration to its actions. Over Warren’s Landing it crumpled a seagull into a bloody rag, and near the mouth of Hither Creek it scattered field mice into the air. It sent a spare tire rolling down the middle of Tennessee Avenue and skied shingles from the roof of the AHAB-ITAT. For a while it flowed about aimlessly; then, increasing to tornado-force, it uprooted a Japanese pine, just yanked it from the ground, dangling huge black root balls, and chucked it like a spear through the side of a house across the street. It repeated the process with two oaks and a hawthorn. Finally it began to blast holes in the walls of the houses and snatch the wriggling creatures inside. It blew off old Julia Stackpole’s cellar door and sailed it down into the shelves full of preserves behind which she was hiding; it gathered the broken glass into a hurricane of knives that slashed her arms, her face, and—most pertinently—her throat. It found even older George Coffin (who wasn’t about to hide, because in his opinion Hugh Weldon was a damned fool) standing in his kitchen, having just stepped back in after lighting his barbecue; it swept up the coals and hurled them at him with uncanny accuracy. Over the space of a half hour it killed twenty-one people and flung their bodies onto their lawns, leaving them to bleed pale in the accumulating dusk. Its fury apparently abated, it dissipated to a breeze and—zipping through shrubs and pine boughs—it fled back to the cottage, where something it now wanted was waiting in the yard.
VIII
’Sconset Sally sat on the woodpile, sucking at a bottle of beer that she’d taken from Peter’s refrigerator. She was as mad as a wet hen because she had a plan—a good plan—and that brainless wonder Hugh Weldon wouldn’t hear it, wouldn’t listen to a damn word she said. Stuck on being a hero, he was.
The sky had deepened to indigo, and a big lopsided silver moon was leering at her from over the roof of the cottage. She didn’t like its eye on her, and she spat toward it. The elemental caught the gob of spit and spun it around high in the air, making it glisten oysterlike. Fool thing! Half monster, half a walloping, invisible dog. It reminded her of that outsized old male of hers, Rommel. One second he’d be going for the mailman’s throat, and the next he’d be on his back and waggling his paws, begging for a treat. She screwed her bottle into the grass so it wouldn’t spill and picked up a stick of kindling. “Here,” she said, and shied the stick. “Fetch.” The elemental caught the stick and juggled it for a few seconds, then let it fall at her feet. Sally chuckled. “Me’n you might get along,” she told the air. “’Cause neither one of us gives a shit!” The beer bottle lifted from the grass. She made a grab for it and missed. “Goddamn it!” she yelled. “Bring that back!” The bottle sailed to a height of about twenty feet and tipped over; the beer spilled out, collected in half a dozen large drops that—one by one—exploded into spray, showering her. Sputtering, she jumped to her feet and started to wipe her face; but the elemental knocked her back down. A trickle of fear welled up inside her. The bottle still hovered above her; after a second it plopped into the grass, and the elemental curled around her, fidgeting with her hair, her collar, slithering inside her raincoat; then, abruptly, as if something else had attracted its attention, it was gone. She saw the grass flatten as it passed over, moving toward the street. She propped herself against the woodpile and finished wiping her face; she spotted Hugh Weldon through the window, pacing, and her anger was rekindled. Thought he was so goddamn masterful, did he? He didn’t know piss about the elemental, and there he was, laughing at her plan.
Well, screw him!
He’d find out soon enough that his plan wouldn’t work, that hers was the reasonable one, the surefire one.
A little scary, maybe, but surefire all the same.
IX
It had come full dark by the time Peter regained consciousness. He moved his head, and the throbbing nearly caused him to black out. He lay still, getting his bearings. Moonlight spilled through the bedroom window, and Sara was leaning beside it, her blouse glowing a phosphorescent white. From the tilt of her head he judged that she was listening to something, and he soon distinguished an unusual pattern to the wind: five notes followed by a glissando, which led to a repetition of the passage. It was heavy, angry music, an ominous hook that might have been intended to signal the approach of a villain. Shortly thereafter the pattern broke into a thousand skirling notes, as if the wind were being forced through the open stops of a chorus of flutes. Then another passage, this of seven notes, more rapid but equally ominous. A chill, helpless feeling stole over Peter, like the drawing of a morgue sheet. That breathy music was being played for him. It was swelling in volume, as if—and he was certain this was the case—the elemental was heralding his awakening, was once again sure of his presence. It was impatient, and it would not wait for him much longer. Each note drilled that message home. The thought of being alone with it on the open sea terrified him. Yet he had no choice. There was no way to fight it, and it would simply keep on killing until he obeyed. If it weren’t for the others he would refuse to go; he would rather die here than submit to that harrowing unnatural relationship. Or was it unnatural? It occurred to him that the history of the wind and Gabriela Pascual had a great deal in common with the histories of many human relationships. Desiring; obtaining; neglecting; forgetting. It might be that the elemental was some sort of core existence, that at the heart of every relationship lay a howling emptiness, a chaotic music.
“Sara,” he said, wanting to deny it.
The moonlight seemed to wrap around her as she turned. She came to sit beside him. “How are you feeling?”
“Woozy.” He gestured toward the window. “How long’s that been going on?”
“It just started,” she said. “It’s punched holes in a lot of houses. Hugh and Sally were out a while ago. More people are dead.” She brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. “But…”
“But what?”
“We have a plan.”
The wind was playing eerie triplets, an agitated whistling that set Peter’s teeth on edge. “It better be a doozy,” he said.
“Actually, it’s Hugh’s plan,” she said. “He noticed something out in the field. The instant you touched me, the wind withdrew from us. If it hadn’t, if it had hurled that piece of wood at you instead of letting it drop, you would have died. And it didn’t want that…at least that’s what Sally says.”
“She’s right. Did she tell you what it does want?”
“Yes.” She looked away, and her eyes caught the moonlight; they were teary. “Anyway, we think it was confused, that when we’re close to
gether it can’t tell us apart. And since it doesn’t want to hurt you or Sally, Hugh and I are safe as long as we maintain proximity. If Mills had just stayed where he was…”
“Mills?”
She told him.
After a moment, still seeing Mills’s nail-studded face in his mind’s eye, he asked, “What’s the plan?”
“I’m going to ride in the jeep with Sally, and you’re going with Hugh. We’ll drive toward Nantucket, and when we reach the dump…you know that dirt road there that leads off into the moors?”
“The one that leads to Altar Rock? Yeah.”
“At that point you’ll jump into the jeep with us, and we’ll head for Altar Rock. Hugh will keep going toward Nantucket. Since it seems to be trying to isolate this end of the island, he figures it’ll come after him and we might be able to get beyond its range, and with both of us heading in different directions, we might be able to confuse it enough so that it won’t react quickly, and he’ll be able to escape, too.” She said all this in a rush that reminded Peter of the way a teenager would try to convince her parents to let her stay out late, blurting out the good reasons before they had time to raise any objections.
“You might be right about it not being able to tell us apart when we’re close to each other,” he said. “God knows how it senses things, and that seems plausible. But the rest is stupid. We don’t know whether its territoriality is limited to this end of the island. And what if it does lose track of me and Sally? What’s it going to do then? Just blow away? Somehow I doubt it. It might head for Nantucket and do what it’s done here.”
“Sally says she has a backup plan.”
“Christ, Sara!” Gingerly, he eased up into a sitting position. “Sally’s nuts. She doesn’t have a clue.”
“Well, what choice do we have?” Her voice broke. “You can’t go with it.”
“You think I want to? Jesus!”
The bedroom door opened, and Weldon appeared silhouetted in a blur of orange light that hurt Peter’s eyes. “Ready to travel?” said Weldon. ’Sconset Sally was at his rear, muttering, humming, producing a human static.
Peter swung his legs off the bed. “This is nuts, Weldon.” He stood and steadied himself on Sara’s shoulder. “You’re just going to get killed.” He gestured toward the window and the constant music of the wind. “Do you think you can outrun that in a squad car?”
“Mebbe this plan ain’t worth a shit…” Weldon began.
“You got that right!” said Peter. “If you want to confuse the elemental, why not split me and Sally up? One goes with you, the other with Sara. That way at least there’s some logic to this.”
“Way I figure it,” said Weldon, hitching up his pants, “it ain’t your job to be riskin’ yourself. It’s mine. If Sally, say, goes with me, you’re right, that’d confuse it. But so might this. Seems to me it’s as eager to keep us normal people in line as it is to run off with freaks like you ’n Sally.”
“What…”
“Shut up!” Weldon eased a step closer. “Now if my way don’t work, you try it yours. And if that don’t do it, then you can go for a cruise with the damn thing. But we don’t have no guarantees it’s gonna let anybody live, no matter what you do.”
“No, but…”
“No buts about it! This is my bailiwick, and we’re gonna do what I say. If it don’t work, well, then you can do what you have to. But ’til that happens…”
“’Til that happens you’re going to keep on making an ass of yourself,” said Peter. “Right? Man, all day you’ve been looking for a way to assert your fucking authority! You don’t have any authority in this situation. Don’t you understand?”
Weldon went jaw to jaw with him. “Okay,” he said. “You go on out there, Mr. Ramey. Go ahead. Just march on out there. You can use Mills’s boat, or if you want something bigger, how ’bout Sally’s.” He snapped a glance back at Sally. “That okay with you, Sally?” She continued muttering, humming, and nodded her head. “See!” Weldon turned to Peter. “She don’t mind. So you go ahead. You draw that son of a bitch away from us if you can.” He hitched up his pants and exhaled; his breath smelled like a coffee cup full of cigarette butts. “But if it was me, I’d be ’bout ready to try anything else.”
Peter’s legs felt rooted to the floor. He realized that he had been using anger to muffle fear, and he did not know if he could muster up the courage to take a walk out into the wind, to sail away into the terror and nothingness that Gabriela Pascual had faced.
Sara slipped her hand through his arm. “Please, Peter,” she said. “It can’t hurt to try.”
Weldon backed off a step. “Nobody’s blamin’ you for bein’ scared, Mr. Ramey,” he said. “I’m scared myself. But this is the only way I can figure to do my job.”
“You’re going to die.” Peter had trouble swallowing. “I can’t let you do that.”
“You ain’t got nothin’ to say ’bout it,” said Weldon. “’Cause you got no more authority than me. ’Less you can tell that thing to leave us be. Can you?”
Sara’s fingers tightened on Peter’s arm, but relaxed when he said, “No.”
“Then we’ll do ’er my way.” Weldon rubbed his hands together in what seemed to Peter hearty anticipation. “Got your keys, Sally?”
“Yeah,” she said, exasperated; she moved close to Peter and put a bird-claw hand on his wrist. “Don’t worry, Peter. This don’t work, I got somethin’ up my sleeve. We’ll pull a fast one on that devil.” She cackled and gave a little whistle, like a parrot chortling over a piece of fruit.
As they drove slowly along the streets of Madaket, the wind sang through the ruined houses, playing passages that sounded mournful and questioning, as if it were puzzled by the movements of the jeep and the squad car. The light of a three-quarter moon illuminated the destruction: gaping holes in the walls, denuded bushes, toppled trees. One of the houses had been given a surprised look, an O of a mouth where the door had been, flanked by two shattered windows. Litter covered the lawns. Flapping paperbacks, clothing, furniture, food, toys. And bodies. In the silvery light their flesh was as pale as Swiss cheese, the wounds dark. They didn’t seem real; they might have been a part of a gruesome environment created by an avant-garde sculptor. A carving knife skittered along the blacktop, and for a moment Peter thought it would jump into the air and hurtle toward him. He glanced over at Weldon to see how he was taking it all. Wooden Indian profile, eyes on the road. Peter envied him his pose of duty; he wished he had such a role to play, something that would brace him up, because every shift in the wind made him feel frail and rattled.
They turned onto the Nantucket road, and Weldon straightened in his seat. He checked the rearview mirror, keeping an eye on Sally and Sara, and held the speed at twenty-five. “Okay,” he said as they neared the dump and the road to Altar Rock. “I ain’t gonna come to a full stop, so when I give the word you move it.”
“All right,” said Peter; he took hold of the door handle and let out a calming breath. “Good luck.”
“Yeah.” Weldon sucked at his teeth. “Same to you.”
The speed indicator dropped to fifteen, to ten, to five, and the moonlit landscape inched past.
“Go!” shouted Weldon.
Peter went. He heard the squad car squeal off as he sprinted toward the jeep; Sara helped haul him into the back, and then they were veering onto the dirt road. Peter grabbed the frame of Sara’s seat, bouncing up and down. The thickets that covered the moors grew close to the road, and branches whipped the sides of the jeep. Sally was hunched over the wheel, driving like a maniac; she sent them skipping over potholes, swerving around tight corners, grinding up the little hills. There was no time to think, only to hold on and be afraid, to await the inevitable appearance of the elemental. Fear was a metallic taste in Peter’s mouth; it was in the white gleam of Sara’s eyes as she glanced back at him and the smears of moonlight that coursed along the hood; it was in every breath he took, every trembling shadow he saw. But by
the time they reached Altar Rock, after fifteen minutes or so, he had begun to hope, to half-believe, that Weldon’s plan had worked.
The rock was almost dead-center of the island, its highest point. It was a barren hill atop which stood a stone where the Indians had once conducted human sacrifices—a bit of history that did no good whatsoever for Peter’s nerves. From the crest you could see for miles over the moors, and the rumpled pattern of depressions and small hills had the look of a sea that had been magically transformed to leaves during a moment of fury. The thickets—bayberry and such—were dusted to a silvery-green by the moonlight, and the wind blew steadily, giving no evidence of unnatural forces.
Sara and Peter climbed from the jeep, followed after a second by Sally. Peter’s legs were shaky and he leaned against the hood; Sara leaned back beside him, her hip touching his. He caught the scent of her hair. Sally peered toward Madaket. She was still muttering, and Peter made out some of the words.
“Stupid…never would listen to me…never would…son of a bitch…keep it to my goddamn self…”
Sara nudged him. “What do you think?”
“All we can do is wait,” he said.
“We’re going to be all right,” she said firmly; she rubbed the heel of her right hand against the knuckles of her left. It seemed the kind of childish gesture intended to insure good luck, and it inspired him to tenderness. He pulled her into an embrace. Standing there, gazing past her head over the moors, he had an image of them as being the standard lovers on the cover of a paperback, clinging together on a lonely hill, with all probability spread out around them. A corny way of looking at things, yet he felt the truth of it, the dizzying immersion that a paperback lover was supposed to feel. It was not as clear a feeling as he had once had, but perhaps clarity was no longer possible for him. Perhaps all his past clarity had simply been an instance of faulty perception, a flash of immaturity, an adolescent misunderstanding of what was possible. But whether or not that was the case, self-analysis would not solve his confusion. That sort of thinking blinded you to the world, made you disinclined to take risks. It was similar to what happened to academics, how they became so committed to their theories that they began to reject facts to the contrary, to grow conservative in their judgments and deny the inexplicable, the magical. If there was magic in the world—and he knew there was—you could only approach it by abandoning the constraints of logic and lessons learned. For more than a year he had forgotten this and had constructed defenses against magic; now in a single night they had been blasted away, and at a terrible cost he had been made capable of risking himself again, of hoping.
The Jaguar Hunter Page 16