The person next to him grabbed his hand. The hand felt cold, dead, and Gordon looked down to see the boy, holding hard onto his hand, his face set in an expression of grim determination.
And then he and the boy were alone in a small meadow surrounded by pines and aspens. The wind was blowing hard, and though there was a full moon, the storm clouds passing continuously over its face gave a fluid shifting quality to the bluish light surrounding them. Far off in the forest, a wolf or coyote howled mournfully.
"This is what I wanted to show you," the boy said, letting go of his hand.
Gordon looked down at the ground, at the tiny white crosses sticking up from between clumps of overgrown weeds. He was scared, filled suddenly with an icy terror he had never before experienced. He looked next to him, at the boy, but the boy was gone. He was all alone in this hateful place, and he closed his eyes, hoping it, too, would disappear, but when he reopened them, all remained as it was. The wind blew hard, tinkling the round leaves of the aspens, sending small leaves and branches skittering across the rough ground. The white crosses, some standing straight, others falling over at various angles, seemed to glow with an unnatural luminescence.
A large cloud passed over the moon, sending the small meadow into total darkness. And then the weeds before the tiny crosses were parting. The hard rocky soil beneath was pushed upward as if something under the ground was trying to break free.
The wind blew harder, carrying away his terrified screams. He felt a soft hand on his leg and he looked down ... to see Marina's fingers on top of the crumpled sheet that covered his body. He was sitting up in bed, his skin wet with a cold sweat, the sheets sticking to his body.
He looked over at Marina. She was staring at him with concern, worry wrinkling her pretty features.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
He nodded, still unable to speak. He could feel his heart pounding, taking its own time about slowing back to normal. He reached over and grabbed her hand, squeezing lightly.
Marina looked him over carefully. "You've been having quite a few nightmares lately," she said.
He nodded. "I know." He closed his eyes, leaning back on the pillow.
"That was a really bad one."
"Is there something wrong, something you want to talk about? If there's something the matter, we should talk it out. I don't want you keeping it all bottled up inside."
"It's everything," he said, shaking his head. "All of the pressures, I
guess. The baby. What Dr. Waterston told us about. The kitten. The money situation." He pulled her close to him. "It's not anything I
can't handle. I don't even feel that stressed out during the day."
"But at night you have nightmares."
"At night," he agreed, "I have nightmares."
They lay there for a few moments, saying nothing, enjoying the closeness. Marina listened to the sound of a dog barking somewhere close to town. "Maybe," she began, turning toward him.
But he was already asleep, starting to snore, and she turned back over, staring up at the ceiling.
Soon she, too, was asleep.
"Jesus Christ! Is the whole damn world going crazy?" Jim ran an exasperated hand through his sweat-soaked hair and replaced his hat. He slumped in his chair. "All right," he sighed. "Send him in."
Rita nodded and moved out into the hallway. She looked toward the front desk and beckoned. Jim heard the sound of familiar shoes clomping down the hall. He sat up in his seat and tried to make his expression appear interested and concerned, but it was too much effort and he gave it up.
Gordon walked past the receptionist, who was holding open the door, and into the room. The sheriff motioned for him to sit down. "What's new today, Mr. Lewis?" he asked tiredly. Rita closed the door behind her.
"I was going to ask you the same question."
The sheriff smiled. "Not a damn thing," he said.
"Look, sheriff--"
"No. You look. I have several murder investigations going on at this moment, several missing person cases and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from vandalism that I have to explain.
Your kitty cat is not real high on my list of priorities right now."
"Yeah. It's small stuff. People break into houses and mutilate kittens all the time." Gordon stood up. "Look, Sheriff. My wife is terrified, and I'm not sleeping too well myself. Some fuckingwier do is walking around loose out there and you try to make it sound as though a group of kids was playing a harmless prank. I'm getting pretty damn tired of your--"
"You stop right there," Jim told him. He stood up and pointed a finger in Gordon's face. "Don't you say another word." He glared at Gordon, and the younger man looked embarrassedly away. Jim shook his head.
"Look, I apologize, all right? I didn't mean to dismiss your problem or make it seem unimportant. It's just that there's been a lot on my mind lately. There really are someweirdos out there, and I'm doing my best to keep things under control. A lot of strange things have been happening in this town."
"I know," Gordon said. "One of them happened at my house." He sat back down.
Jim smiled, the tension eased. He walked over to the window and looked outside. Somewhere on the Rim, search parties were trying to find Jack Harrison, Wayne Fisk, and Matt McDowell. Closer in, the mill was working at only partial power. Many of the workers, Tim McDowell included, were out searching. Jim turned toward Gordon. "You know Tim McDowell?"
Gordon nodded. "Yeah. We're good friends. He called me as soon as he found out. I was out searching with him yesterday afternoon." He kicked at a scrap of paper on the floor. "It's hard to believe."
Jim snorted. "You don't know the half of it. I could tell you things ..." He trailed off. "Hell, I feel like one of those movie sheriffs surveying the wreckage of his town after the big disaster and saying, "This used to be a nice place to live."" He laughed shortly. "Except I
have this horrible feeling that the big disaster hasn't happened yet."
"Me too," Gordon said quietly.
"You too?" The sheriff turned to look at him. "What do you mean, you too? You have no idea what's going on here."
"Then tell me."
Jim stared at him for a moment, as if thinking, then shook his head.
"No." He moved over to the desk and leaned against it, taking off his hat and setting it on a pile of papers. "Look, why don't you just go home. I'll call you if anything comes up."
Gordon looked at him suspiciously.
"I will." Jim smiled, holding up three pressed-together fingers.
"Sheriff's honor."
"Okay," Gordon said, standing up. "I have a lot of work to do anyway.
My wife wants me to put new dead bolts on all the doors and see if I can do something about the windows. Call me if you find anything out or if you have any more questions about what happened." He yawned.
"Sorry," he said, smiling apologetically. "Between this and the dreams I've been having, I haven't been getting much sleep."
Jim's bland farewell smile faded. He had been about to open the door for Gordon, but his hand remained unmoving on the round brass doorknob.
"Dreams?" he said.
"Yeah. Nightmares." Gordon looked at himquizically . "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Are these normal nightmares?"
"I don't know what you mean by normal--"
"Do you have them often?"
Gordon nodded. "Fairly often."
"When did you start having them? Did it all start recently? Say, a month or so ago?"
Gordon looked at him. He started to back slowly toward the desk. "What is all this?" he asked. "What do you know?"
An hour later, the two men were speeding down Old Mesa Road past the abandoned hulking building that had once been the town's bowling alley.
"I want you to talk to the priest," Jim said. "Tell him what you told me. I'll tell him what I know, too. I've kind of hinted around about things, but I haven't come out and told him what I really think." He
turned onto a side street. "I met Father Andrews a few days ago when his place was vandalized. He's a very intelligent man. He knows a hell of a lot about ESP and parapsychology and all that. I think he can help us out a lot."
"His place was vandalized, too?"
"Much worse than yours. The whole library was destroyed; books torn up, pages covered with shit." He looked at Gordon. "I mean real shit.
Human excrement. The whole thing set on fire--"
"Was this his house or Father Selway's ?" Gordon asked suddenly.
"Selway's."
"You think maybe they're connected?"
The sheriff nodded grimly. "I'm sure of it."
The car pulled up in front of a one-story wood-frame structure set back from the road. An old black Plymouth was parked in the dirt driveway.
The sheriff stopped the car and got out. Gordon got out as well and followed him up the path toward the front door.
They were almost to the door when a clean-shaven man with short blond hair, wearing jeans and an old work shirt, peeked around the corner of the house. "I thought I heard someone pull up," he said. He waved at Jim with a dirty trowel. "I'm back here, trying to put together some sort of garden."
The two walked around the edge of the house. The priest was standing next to a large rectangular patch of cleared ground that covered almost the entire side yard. The soil here had been recently tilled, and a pile of dried weeds andmanzanita bushes was pushed against the wall of the house. A few tentative rows had been started in the dirt at the far end of the rectangle. The priest dropped his trowel next to a stack of seed packets and wiped his hands on his jeans before offering one to Gordon. "Father Donald Andrews," he said. "First Episcopal Church."
Gordon shook the priest's hand. "Gordon Lewis," he said. "Pepsi deliveryman."
The priest laughed. He shook hands with the sheriff. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"
Jim looked at Gordon, then back at the priest. "We have to talk.
There are some things I'd like to tell you."
Father Andrews' face became serious as he listened to the sheriff's tone of voice. "Is this along the lines of what we were discussing the other day?"
Jim nodded.
"I thought so. I had a feeling you were keeping something back; though I hoped I was wrong." He picked up his stack of seeds and started walking toward the rear of the house. "Come on. We can talk inside."
Jim and Gordon sat on opposite ends of the couch in the living room while Father Andrews washed up and put on a pot of tea. The priest emerged from the kitchen a few moments later and sat down in the large overstuffed chair opposite the couch. He looked at the sheriff. "So what is all this about?"
"Dreams," Jim said.
"What?"
"You know about psychic experiences, Father. You've studied them, and you may have had a few yourself."
The priest nodded.
"I think that's what's happening here. Gordon and I have both been having some pretty strange dreams lately. Nightmares. For all I know, a lot of other people have been having them too." He paused. "A boy named Don Wilson had these kinds of dreams also." He leaned forward in his seat. "But that boy saw things in his dreams. Real things. He saw the Selway family being murdered, and he told us where to find their bodies."
The priest's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"He's dead," Jim said, anticipating the priest's next question. "He'd had a new dream, an important dream that he said he had to tell me about, but he was killed before he could explain it to me."
"What happened?" Gordon asked.
"His house burned down. Officially, he died of smoke inhalation." Jim shook his head. "I mean, he did die of smoke inhalation. But it was intentional. He was murdered. Do you understand? It was a very convenient fire."
Father Andrews frowned. "What? Some sort of cult?"
"That's just what my wife thought. But no, I don't think that's what it is. I know this sounds crazy, but just bear with me." The tea kettle started whistling in the kitchen and the sheriff looked at Father Andrews questioningly, but the priest shook his head. Jim looked from the priest to Gordon and back again. "In his dream, the boy said he saw the Selway family tortured and killed by monsters. He said the creatures ate the baby, ripped apart the other children and tore off Mrs.Selway's head. We found the half-eaten remains of the baby, the eviscerated kids, and the mother and her head exactly where Don told us we would." The sheriff looked at Gordon.
"None of this leaves the room, understand?"
Gordon nodded silently, his face pale.
"But that wasn't all. Don told us that after the creatures killed Selway'sfamily, they madeSelway himself kneel before a fire, telling him to bow down before his new God. Something huge came out of the flames, something with horns that Don said looked like the devil, and Selwaywalked into the fire." He paused. "We never foundSelway's remains. Don told us we wouldn't."
"That's quite a story," Father Andrews said. "But you expect me to believe it all?"
"What don't you believe?"
"Where do you want me to start?" He looked at the sheriff and sighed.
"Okay, first, the conception of the devil as an entity with horns and a tail and a pitchfork comes from artists and fiction writers. It has no theological basis in fact--"
"Are you telling me that the Bible gives detailed descriptions of each and every demon mentioned and that none of them have horns?"
"Well, no," the priest admitted. "There are very few physical descriptions."
"Okay then."
"But psychic dream correlations are very seldom literal. There's hardly ever a specific one-to-one correspondence between the details of a premonition and what actually occurs--"
The sheriff held up a hand. "Look, humor me. Suppose the boy saw what actually happened? What then?"
"I'm--"
"Take into account the fact that several churches have been vandalized and painted with goat's blood, that goats from neighboring farms have been slaughtered, that two of the farmers themselves have been killed, that similar things have happened around the state. Throw in your own experience, the disappearance of some teenage boys and some small stuff like Gordon's cat. What have you got?"
The priest looked at him. "Do you want my official answer as a member of the Episcopal church, or do you want my own personalanswer?v "Your personal answer. Your honest answer." "I don't know," Father Andrews admitted. "But you're starting to scare me."
Marina was standing in the front doorway when Gordon hopped out of the car. She walked down the porch steps to meet him. "What took you so long?"
He shook his head. "Nothing." He kissed her lightly on the lips.
"Did you find anything out from the sheriff?"
"No. Nothing new."
"That bastard. I'll be damned if I'll vote for him again. He hasn't done a single thing to find out what happened."
"He's trying," Gordon said.
She stepped back from him, her brows furrowed. She crossed her arms.
"What did he do? Give you some sob story about how overworked he is?"
Gordon smiled. "No."
"Well then why are you sticking up for him?"
"A lot of things have been happening around here. He's busy."
"That doesn't helpVlad ." Marina turned away with an angry toss of her head and walked back up the porch steps.
Gordon followed. "Look, I don't want to argue about this right now." He hefted the small brown paper sack in his hand, making a clanking jingling noise, and she turned around to look. "I bought some locks," he said.
She stared at him levelly. "That's something."
"I'm going to put them on so we don't have to worry about anyone else breaking in."
She nodded, softening but still not smiling. "You do that. I'll start making dinner."
For the next hour he lost himself in the menial job of installing locks on the windows. He was all the way around to the kitchen window when Marina called him in for dinner. He waved at
her, telling her he'd be through in a minute, and hastily put in the last screw before going inside to eat.
He washed his hands in the kitchen sink as Marina placed a large salad and two bowls of minestrone soup on the table. She seemed to have forgotten all about their earlier disagreement. "So," she said, getting out the silverware, "how do these locks work?"
He sat down. "Simple. You push the bolt to lock the window, pull the bolt to open it."
"How come you're putting them on the outside?"
"The lock itself is on the underside of the window, even though you lock it from inside the house."
The phone rang, and they looked at each other. Ordinarily, when someone called during dinner they let the phone ring without answering it, but Gordon did not want to take any chances. "I'll get it," he said.
Marina nodded.
He came back into the kitchen a few minutes later, embarrassed.
"Brad," he said. He scratched his head. "He wants me to help him finish up tonight."
"Tonight!" Marina looked at the clock. "It's after six already!"
Gordon shrugged. "He's let me off early the past few days to take care of this break-in--"
"So what's that mean? You owe him your life?"
"That's the reason he's fallen behind. All he wants me to do is help him deliver a few cases to the markets in town. That's it. With both of us working it shouldn't take more than an hour. Hour and a half at the latest."
"What about the door locks? You're just going to leave me here alone by myself? It'll be dark in less than an hour."
"We only have two doors," he said. "I don't have to meet Brad until seven. I have plenty of time to put both locks on."
"Hurry up and eat then." Marina shivered, though it was far from cold.
"I want them done before you go."
All of the lights in the house were on, but Marina was still frightened. She should have gone with Gordon, should have gone to the stores with him and read magazines while he unloaded Pepsis.
The house sighed somewhere, creaking, and she blamed the wind, though she knew the air outside was still. She focused her attention on the TV, trying to get herself involved in the show, but the picture came in poorly, the dialogue interrupted by loud crackles of static, and she realized that there was a storm somewhere between Randall and Flagstaff. The thought made her aware of how isolated she really was from everything. She considered calling Ginny, but then decided against it. She didn't really have anything to say; she would just be calling to assuage her fears, to feign companionship.
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