Clancy wouldn’t have a chance to think about the implications of that day or begin mourning for a week. A farmer coming back from a road trip spotted Clancy on the road. Clancy spent the next seven days in the W. H. Groves hospital in Salt Lake. As far as the police were concerned, Robert had killed Mary and then run away. He was never apprehended.
It wasn’t until a month later, finally sleeping after an hour of straight sobbing, that Clancy had his first dream of the trees.
He could never remember the details, but he’d gotten the message after experiencing the dream a dozen times. A hundred times. He was to stand sentinal at those trees, though Robert had been right: he could never set foot near them again, and he didn’t want to. Clancy’s job was to watch and warn. Nothing more.
So he’d moved to Peoa the next year, forgoing college much to his father’s disapproval, and joined the mink farmers there. He often worried that he had made a mistake, that God had not wanted him here, that he was throwing his life away on the wings of a dream. Sometimes years passed where he thought of the forest itself very little, as his own private affairs overtook him, but when the children started to die—the four who’d been lost starting in the 90’s—his fervor for his position had grown immensely.
†
“And now,” Miller said, sipping from a cup of Postum that had gone cold in the time he’d spent with his recollections, “my vigil is almost over.” He looked up at his ceiling, not really seeing the wood there, “Isn’t it?”
3
Tyson Hills sat in a collapsible chair by the edge of a wide creek with his ten-year-old son, Marc. Marc’s ears stuck out like brown flaps. Tyson was sure one day his son would grow into them—he just had to. The wind played with the high bare branches of the trees, but left everything else alone. The fish weren’t biting, but Tyson didn’t care. It was cold, but Tyson knew neither he nor his son were really bothered by it. As long as the water wasn’t frozen over, there wasn’t much that would stop them.
Tyson said, “You know what’s the best thing in the world, Marc?”
“Huh?” Marc said without moving his eyes from the point where the line and water met.
“Having a family. Being a dad.”
Marc didn’t say anything; he wasn’t much of a talker. Never had been. This also didn’t bother Tyson, who was a man content to fish and talk with his son, without fish and without much talk. Sometimes he said things to fill up air. He opened a can of Diet Coke, and relished the harshness of the bubbles bumping their way down his throat. Marc picked the same can up moments later for a sip of his own.
“I just want you to know I like being out here with you,” Tyson said, not looking for a response. He didn’t get one.
Marc started reeling, but soon realized he didn’t have anything. He smiled a little and recast, anyway. Casting was probably Marc’s favorite part. Whatever floats your fish, he thought.
He tipped his bucket hat forward, covering his eyes.
Three minutes later he was almost out, bundled and warm in his outdoor clothing, eyes shaded from the sun. In the teetering space between awake and asleep, he had a thought. Like many thoughts that come to a person in this state, it seemed to make sense for only the most fleeting of moments, and then—though the words of the thought could be remembered—its essence, its meaning, was gone.
The thought was this: You need to remember the house fire; your work isn’t finished. The Writer didn’t do it. A mean quality in the tone of this thought jarred Tyson almost fully awake. Writer? Who could that mean? He was only working with two writers right now, Tory Rindlesbacher and Michael Evans, and neither of them needed his immediate attention.
You know who I mean, his mind assured him. Don’t let yourself forget. Burn the house to the ground. Burn burn burn… Okay. Now Tyson really was awake. Where did this stream of words come from? He stared at the inside of his hat. There wasn’t much to see.
He sat straight, readjusting himself, suddenly uncomfortable in the flimsy chair.
Marc looked up at his dad, not quite smiling, an almost unreal serenity in his face. This was a pretty typical Marc face; he wasn’t an average ten-year-old.
“Sorry,” Tyson said, trying to sound natural. “I must have nodded off there.”
“No problem,” Marc said, turning his attention back to the water.
The wind was picking up now, causing pretty ripples to roll on the surface of the wide placid creek. Now what was it he was thinking? Burn the house to the ground? Something felt wrong, as if Tyson were climbing a rock face in his mind and suddenly found there were no footholds.
Burn burn burn…
That phrase raised the hairs on the back of Tyson’s neck. He swatted at an imagined mosquito, feeling somehow invaded. Robbed. The words did invoke a memory, didn’t they? And not just the melody of the old Trammps song. Tyson saw a circle ripple on the surface, then another. He readied his hands on his pole. He knew he’d get one any second now.
But it was Marc who got the first, and only, fish of the day. He helped his son reel it in, an twelve-inch rainbow. “Not too shabby,” Tyson said, feeling more than a little confused. “Maybe we ought to pack it in for the day.”
Marc looked puzzled, too. They still had hours before they needed to be home for dinner. But he said nothing except, “Okay.”
Those dark thoughts tugged and tugged at Tyson while he put the fish in the cooler, next to the ice packs. More than one force was at work inside him, arguing for their share of needed attention.
And then he did something that would cost the world exactly one human life: he let the troubling words about a house fire go, choosing not to grasp their significance, to not quite remember the conversations he’d had with Paul or Jen.
The truth of it was, he was afraid.
And here, Tyson Hills exits Paul’s great drama, his work unfinished.
4
Miller stood near the woods. Preternatural darkness, like a cloak of evil, wrapped around him and every tree trunk in sight. There seemed to be more trees than ever, though their density or acreage had not changed. Even if it was a dream, this paradox bothered Miller. This time he was not naked, instead he wore a type of leather armor, unlike anything Miller had ever seen. Black stones etched with alien red characters had been tied and woven into the hard, stiff armor plates. The stone gave the outfit a sinister dimension—especially if Miller looked close at them and saw how they moved—but he had an intuitive understanding of them, the kind of intuition unique to dreams, that they were in reality meaningless in symbol, size, and placement. Underneath the stones and the armor, he still did not have his garments. He was bare.
He faced the trees but knew that his house was directly behind him. Despite the house’s proximity to the evil place, it had always seemed removed from it—distant, and safe. A fear overtook him in the form of deep chill; he wanted to run back to the house, hide there, get away from this place. He shook so severely he could feel his bare arms knocking against the cool leather forearm covering.
“I’m a fool,” he said. “A useless fool.”
Instead of retreating, though every instinct in his brain told him to do so, dream or not, he walked through the thick blanket of snow toward the towering, overnumerous trees. He tried in vain to brace himself against the wind, which played on his skin as if his armor were made of vents. He felt he would be warmer naked than in this getup.
As it always had before, the face—Deeny’s face—popped out from between two tress. The face grinned down on him, showing two double-rows of pointed teeth.
“Back again?” the face said without moving in any way, as it always did.
“Yes,” Miller spoke calmly, though his heart felt ready to quit from excessive pounding. “I have something to ask you.”
“I have only death for you.”
“So you’ve said.”
Darkness was everywhere, despite the snow that whipped and jetted about in the ferocious, random winds.
Mille
r said, “Where did you come from?”
The face, almost, remained unchanged. The smallest twitch could be seen in one corner of the mouth, or perhaps it was only the idea of a twitch. Miller had the impression that if the smile faltered too much the face would crack like a porcelain mask.
The face spoke. “I came from Hell. I came from death. I came from hatred.”
“I know. I know all that.” His old man voice could only croak out these days. He wished he was young again, before he’d ever come here with Mary and Robert, so he could speak with power like he used to. Sometimes it felt like his whole life had been in decline since then: less power, fewer friends, more sleepless nights. Miller said, “But why are you this way? Why do you want to kill and kill and kill?”
“If birth and death are all there is, then death is all there is.”
“Are you human?”
“Humanity is and I am.” The twitch Miller thought he’d seen had not returned.
Miller tried to push past the nonsense, his annoyance with the creature helping to stave off the fear. “But where did you come from? Where were you before the Writer built the house?”
Miller could feel that the thing was trying not to answer; the words burst out of the face like a cough. “I was in the woods.” He wondered if this… this Deeny could still possibly not know about Miller.
“Where were you when those children disappeared?”
“In the woods.”
Miller was tired, as if he just realized he’d not slept in days. There was an impulse, an absurdly plausible one, to lay down in the snow and sleep, even though on some level of thought he knew he already was asleep. He bucked against the feeling like a drowsy man behind the wheel, the mental equivalent to slapping his own face.
He finally said, “Where were you before you were in the woods?”
The face exploded in a rain of blood and fire, the trees around it burst into flames and exploded as well, each one full of blood and bone and fire. An unthinkable wail, horribly human, emitted from every tree, rock, weed, cloud, and snowflake at once. Miller panicked. He tried to run back the way he’d come, but his awkward armor hampered his movements, and the ground sank from the center of the forest as a tremendous sinkhole opened beneath the trees. The path became an uphill slope, far too steep for an old man to climb.
Miller began slipping down into the hole. For a moment he was as Paul, fighting and digging into the soft, muddy ground. He could even see the writer clawing his way up the riverbank, not knowing what he was looking at. There was an odd warbling, as if the air was vibrating like a huge, thin sheet of steel. Then he fell into the hole and everything was blackness.
He had broken something.
5
Deeny howled and howled. He screamed. He materialized enough to pull thin, greasy hairs from his huge head. He bit trees and branches around him. He kicked and punched and lashed out in the air. He yelped and belched and cursed, using the worst of the words he had found in the Writer’s brain.
He was tumbling down a long, round hole with no real bearing of where he was or where he had been. Directly before this assault he had been only partially formed, floating amidst the trees, in a kind of sleep. But now he was returning to Rockport, four miles north-west of Peoa. Only it wasn’t Rockport back then, was it?
No. No.
It didn’t matter what it was or wasn’t called. It was all of the past. A useless stinking past that meant as much to Deeny as a murderless life. He didn’t want to remember this; there was no reason, no benefit.
The town had been called Enoch’s City since 1861, just a year or two after… after Deeny… came into being… as a… baby…
Father was explaining that to Mother. He said they were changing the name from Enoch’s City to Rock Fort because of the big rock wall that kept the Indians out. Deeny was… was what? Afraid of Indians, wasn’t he?
Well, that didn’t really make any sense.
Two feet thick and eight feet tall, Father said. This wall surrounded everything.
Dean was in bed. Had been that whole day… and the day before… and the day before. Something was wrong with Dean, and he couldn’t go outside. He wanted to see the wall now that it was done, but he couldn’t; they wouldn’t let him get out of bed. He was embarrassed. He was nine now, certainly old enough to help out around the house. Staying in bed made him feel lazy.
NO.
NO. NO. NO.
NO.
NO. NO.
Deeny fought the images. He did not want to see. He did not want to know.
There was nothing to see, anyway, nothing worth knowing.
Father was laughing, or at least he was trying to laugh. Mother told him to stop; she said he didn’t sound right. She said it’s wasn’t just cholera anymore; she said it was Viper’s Dance. Father said it was actually the Fire Dance. Then he said it was The Last Great Dance.
There was a sickening sound.
Father was twitching, and Dean, craning his neck from the deep bed, could just barely see Mother falling in a bloody mess onto the floor. The walls were made of logs. Something around Father’s neck was glowing a bright, sickly green. Father was still trying to laugh, but was stopped intermittently by great, heaving sobs. Dean could see Mother’s blood pooling on the floor in great quantities, spreading like the infection in his father. Dean’s eyes were wide; his mouth was a straight, thin line.
NO. I WILL NOT SEE THIS.
NO. I WILL NOT. NO. NO.
NO.
NO. THERE IS NO PURPOSE TO THIS.
NO.
Father appeared in the doorway, grinning, coughing, laughing, crying. His shoulder-length black hair stuck out from his torn hat, and Dean noticed his boots were missing; he stood on bare feet, swaying like a drunk. He was twitching in an exaggerated, awful way. His eyes would not rest anywhere.
His father repeated, perhaps to himself, that it was The Last Great Dance. The necklace he wore shone like a beacon, filling the room with piercing green light. It was frightening to see father wearing women’s jewelry. He looked down at Dean.
His eyes finally calmed for a moment, striking Dean as he said, “Ha. It looks like I have killed your mother, Deanie.” A serious look took over all the insanity on his face. His gaze shifted to the watery blood on the ground, it reached his naked feet. A drop of sweat, or perhaps a tear, fell into it. “I… I do not know what is happening to me, boy. Did you… did you feed the goat yet?”
Dean said nothing.
“Oh, yes, you cannot feed a goat nor do anything else. You are sick, too. Don’t tell your mother, but I have already saved your sister, I… sent her to the next world. She is with mother now.”
Father reached down with his blood-stained hands and lifted Dean’s scant weight in one deft motion, and then his twitching started up again with renewed vigor. He looked deeply in his son’s eyes and said, “Deanie. Do you think I am a monster? Like those Indians who eat men?”
Dean said nothing.
As if Dean had not quite understood, his father said, “They eat people, sometimes.”
Tears streamed down Father’s ragged face; Dean could not remember ever having seen him cry before. Not once. “Do you know where I got this necklace, Deanie? I would like to take you there someday, but now,” he kicked the body on the ground, “because of this, they are going to take care of me. They will kill me.” Then, to himself, he spat out, “What would Brigham think of me now?”
Father carried Dean to the front door and said, “I know you are not well, but let me take you… Wait, did you want to see the wall? It is big. We are changing the name of this town. No… there’s no time for that now. There is time for so little.”
Then darkness, blessed darkness, overtook Deeny and the horrible vision dissolved.
But it was not over, when light returned he was back in the forest, but it was not night and Father was still carrying him. The winter sun beamed down, apparently indifferent, and he could hear the crunch of Father’s footste
ps in the snow.
Father said, “Deanie, this place… this place is… special to me. I want you to understand. You are my son, so you should know.” He set Dean’s body down in the snow and grabbed the necklace he wore. The cold rose off the ground the way heat came from the stove. Father said, “You need to carry this on when I am done. No. That is not enough.” Suddenly Father turned and began screaming at the tree closest to them. “I know it is not enough! I know that! I will do it. Do you not think I can do it? I have brought him, have I not?” Dean wondered if the tree could hear his father yelling—he felt strongly that it could not, that the tree was just a normal tree, absolutely nothing more.
Large drops of spittle shot from his father’s mouth; his whole body shook with his words. “I have done all!”
Then he said, “I’m sorry,” and bent over Dean. His head eclipsed the sun.
He pried Dean’s mouth open so wide that it hurt, but Dean had neither the strength nor will to struggle. Father was breathing great huffing, coughing breaths. The necklace was a glowing green stone set in lacey-shaped silver, tapering off to sharp, ornamental edges. It was framed by two smaller green gems on either side. He started pushing it down Dean’s throat, accidentally slicing Dean’s tongue open. It hurt, certainly, but the glow of the necklace soothed Dean. He heard his father as if from a great distance. Blood and green light dripped down Dean’s throat, reminding the boy of the herbal teas his mother brewed when he was ill. He could not tell if his father was laughing or crying.
The darkness overtook Deeny and again the memory disappeared, but this time he was not fooled; he knew it was not over. When the scene returned he could feel the weight of dirt on him. Father was covering him with the frozen ground.
“This is what you must know,” Father was saying. “To kill is sublime. It is not me. No. No. I am not the one. I do not have the brain for it. I am afraid that you do not have the brain either. Ha ha. You are closer than me, I think. Just know this: to kill is sublime. Divine. Whatever you want to call it. Remember to kill.”
Tomorrow I Will Kill Again Page 14