by John Gault
“David,” he began, “there’s something I think you should know about. It may involve all of the cases we’re working on, but, more specifically, it involves a friend of yours. Margaret Livingstone.”
Oh Jesus! Margaret’s killed herself! And where were you, David Bentley, when she needed you? Sleeping. Sleeping and playing cops and . . . and what?
“No, David,” Fleischer said, reading his mind. “She’s not dead; she’s in hospital under sedation. But there’s a real problem, I have to tell you and I’ve got to get inside and talk to Beck, so I can’t explain it fully. You know that niece of hers, the redhead, Abergail? Well, I think she may be missing person number five.”
David stood mute: too many images were spiralling through his head for him to settle on any one of them. So Fleischer continued. “We found Ms. Livingstone walking around the streets in her nightgown about half an hour ago, David. I didn’t call that in, because I was afraid you were here and I wanted to tell you personally. She couldn’t talk, and I don’t think she could really tell who we were, but we had no trouble getting her into the car and to the hospital. The only trouble we had was prying these out of her hand.”
David took the crumpled piece of paper first and held it up so that the light from the police station windows made it readable. “Miss Livingstone,” it said in cutout letters, “Abergail is dead. Ha-Ha.”
David started to crush it angrily in his hand, then stopped and handed it back to Fleischer. Then he took the sad little hank of hair and examined that against the light. Finally, he found some words. “Norm,” he said tonelessly, “I’ve never felt so Goddamned helpless—so incapable of doing my job. Jesus.” In a rare show of affection, Fleischer put his hand on David’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. Then he walked past him, back up into the station. David sat down heavily on the steps, put his face in his hands, and wept.
Jamie climbed to his perch for what he knew had to be the last time. He untied the big knot, unwound the rope its seven turns and pulled it free. Then he looped it over the branch he was standing on and played it out until the two ends met, about eight feet from the ground. Hand-over-hand he climbed most of the way down on it, dropped the last few easy feet, and pulled the rope free. He coiled it up, slung it on his shoulder, and walked to the hole.
With his hands he dug away the soft earth that covered most of the tree trunk that had been his vantage point; he tied one end of the rope to a root he figured would never bend or break. Then he played the knotted rope down into the hole. “Hey, friends,” he called and waited, listening. After a few minutes of pig-grunts they were directly below him once again, quiet now, as if waiting for him to open the conversation. Which he did, in his Jamie voice. “I won’t be coming here anymore,” he said sadly. “We’re moving. We’re going away. I can’t bring you any food . . .”
“Foord!” came the insistent sound from below. Then a chorus of “foord!”
“No,” Jamie said, when the voices had died, “no more food. But I’m setting you free now, to find your own more food . . .”
“Foord! Foord!”
“Oh yes. There’s lots of food up here.” He smiled, a little wistfully, and raised his hand in one last wave of good-bye. Then he got up and slowly walked away.
A pair of clawed hands took the rope and pulled.
There was a short, jabbered discussion, with all five participating in their tight little circle. Then, one by one, they began to climb out.
Caren woke first and, after she’d determined that Greg was still snoring happily beside her, she slid out of the sleeping bag carefully and considerately. She walked a few yards away, loving every barefoot step in the wet morning grass, and faced the red sun that was hanging just above the eastern horizon. She raised her arms to it, went up on her toes, and languorously stretched the stiffness from her naked, blemishless nineteen-year-old body. What a wonderful world it was, to provide mornings like this one; and places like this one. She did a slow turn, taking it all in—the rolling fields to the west and north, interrupted only by remnants of stone walls and split-rail fences, the woods to the south, with its symphony of greens, and the clear, sparkling water of the quarry, surrounded by the red granite walls, already reflecting the light and warmth of the sun.
Buffalo—home—was only three days behind them, as the motorcycle flies, but it seemed much, much farther away. How lucky they’d been, last night, to turn up this particular old farm road, rather than one of the dozens of others they’d thought about taking. Maybe, she thought, we can stay the whole day. I’d love to see it all at sunset, see if it’s as beautiful then as it is now. She did one more slow pirouette, surveying her temporary domain as she hoped she would always remember it, then tripped lightly over to the big Honda road bike and fished a bar of soap out of the saddlebag. Before going down to the water’s edge, she checked Greg again. He’d shifted a little, and he wasn’t snoring, but he was still sleeping soundly.
She dipped in a toe. The water was chilly but warm enough for her. Setting the soap down on the rock, she bent her knees and did a springing dive, cutting the surface cleanly, with only a minimum of splash. Caren was a good swimmer, a strong one who could do a mile at the University of Buffalo pool without even breathing hard. And this, this was better: she felt like she could swim forever and never get tired. About the middle of the quarry pond, thirty yards or so from where she’d dived in, she rolled over on her back and floated lazily, closing her eyes against the sun and thinking the happiest of thoughts.
When she opened them, Greg was standing on the rock promontory where she’d entered the water, smiling and waving at her. “Hi,” she yelled back. “Come on it, it’s absolutely gorgeous.” What a beautiful man, she thought, what a perfect body. She watched him step down to the water’s edge and then, suddenly, from behind him and off to one side, a blur of gray hurled through the air and then Greg was down on the rock, arms and legs thrashing madly; and something hideous and nonhuman was on top of him, screaming sounds that chilled her to the soul and swiping with gnarled, taloned hands. Instinctively she began swimming toward them, grimly, not crying out, pushing her body beyond its limits.
She didn’t see Greg get a hand free and drive it hard into the creature’s throat, but when she looked up again, Greg was scrambling to his feet, that beautiful body all torn and bloody, his eyes still wild with shock and fear. She stopped, morbidly fascinated, and treaded water as Greg dropped into the stance that just weeks before had won him his brown belt in karate from the most respected teacher in northern New York. On the large, flat surface of the rock, Greg and the monster circled one another. Greg kicked out twice, so fast that the motion was almost unseeable, but the thing dodged easily and sprang again. Greg stepped left, dropped down, then uncoiled a tremendous backhanded blow that caught the monster in midflight, lifted it high in the air, and sent it flying toward . . . her!
Suddenly a gray, hairy head broke the water in front of Caren, and she was looking into merciless, yellow eyes and a gaping mouthful of rotting, jagged, brown-yellow teeth. Then just as suddenly she was in its grip, being dragged under. “Greg!” she screamed. “Help me!” With what was left of her strength, she shoved her right elbow into the thing’s throat and, lungs shouting for air, held the ghastly face a few inches back from her own. Greg, oh Greg, don’t let this happen! Greg! Oh my God, this can’t be real!
“Have a good day,” the driver said.
“Thanks,” Trudy Saywell replied, lifting her backpack onto her shoulder. “You too. And thanks for the ride.”
“No problem,” he said, slipping the Chevy back into drive and pulling away. “Hope you get another ride soon.” She watched him for a few seconds until the indicator light went on and he turned left toward the town. She sat down cross-legged beside the road and rolled a joint, her first of the day and the first since she’d left Chicago, on the thumb, the night before. She’d have a little smoke, maybe try to loosen her muscles a little from the all-night drive, then get back on t
he road. Who knows where she’d end up? It didn’t matter. She’d go wherever her thumb and friendly drivers took her.
She had just lit the match and was bringing it to the dangling J when a huge dump truck screeched to a halt in front of her, and a man leaped out with a shotgun in his hands, Oh Christ, she thought, her heart half-exploding, it’s Easy Rider all over again! She threw both match and joint as far as she could and was almost on her feet when the man was in front of her. But he wasn’t looking at her, not really; he was looking beyond her, into the woods, squinting. She half turned to look, but she saw nothing. No, wait, there was a little movement there in the bushes. Some kind of animal, a wolf, a bear? “Did you see that?” the man asked, still not paying that much attention to her beyond the simple acknowledgement that she was there.
“What?” she said, matching his squint now, but unable to see even the movement she thought might have been there just previously.
“Something I’ve never seen before,” he said. “But it was there, I did see it. It was like a man, but a . . . oh, shit, it looked like a man but it was all covered with gray hair, like some kind of goddamned ape, but it wasn’t an ape.” She just stood there, shaking her head uncomprehendingly, and feeling the first pangs of fear that she was in the presence of a madman, a madman with a loaded gun. Should she scream? There were houses nearby; somebody would hear her, surely.
The man grabbed her arm and propelled her toward his truck, and she opened her mouth to cry for help, but his words, which were full of concern, not threat, stopped her. “Get in,” he said, “and lock it up after you. If you see a car, flag it down and tell him to get the cops.” Then, even more softly, “Young lady, some terrible strange things have been going on in this town, lately, terrible things. Now I saw something in there, in Whately’s Copse, and I’m going to find out what it is. Now you be smart, you keep yourself safe.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Nobody. A truck driver. My name’s Frank Gorman. Now you get in that truck, and you watch for cars, okay.”
She did as she was told. Two cars went by in a three or four minute period, but despite her frantic waving, neither stopped. Then she heard a gunshot, followed almost instantly by another and, forgetting her orders, she climbed down from the cab and stepped gingerly into the woods, where an old wooden fence had been broken down. “Mr. Gorman?” she said tentatively. “Mr. Gorman, are you all right?” Pushing away sharp branches with her hands, she moved in a little farther, calling the truck driver’s name. To her left she saw something red. Had he been wearing red? No, dark green, both shirt and pants. Nevertheless, she moved toward the red thing, still calling his name, but even more hesitantly than before.
“Mr. Gorman! Oh no, oh no!” His throat had been torn away and his face was awash with blood. His chest was still rising and falling, but irregularly, and it was making a rattling, gurgling sound. Trudy opened her mouth to scream, but that was as far as it got. Unseen, from above, the creature pounced, sinking its long, jagged teeth into her neck and driving her face down onto the ground. The terrible thing, she thought, before the oblivion mercifully came, the really terrible thing was that she could feel herself being eaten. And hear it.
David had just left the hospital, and his mind was full of Margaret. How incredibly sad she had looked, lying there all doped up, just staring and unable to speak, sobbing silently sometimes. What would happen? he’d asked the young psychiatrist. We just don’t know for sure, the doctor had said. He had tried to be reassuring, and David had tried to appreciate it, but . . .
“Christ, that sounded like gunshots!” He tramped the accelerator and shot down the highway, flying over the crest of the hill, just before Whately’s Copse, to see a big gravel truck half in the ditch and what looked like a young girl entering the woods. He jumped on the brake pedal, sending the Camaro into a four-wheel lock and the fastest stop possible, and the tires were still screeching when he had the radio microphone in his hands, demanding as many men as possible at Whately’s Copse. He didn’t even wait for an acknowledgement; he was around the car, opening the trunk, and snatching the five-shot, 12-gauge from its spring brackets on the lid.
He pumped a shell into the chamber as he plunged into the woods, calling after the girl. He was getting cut up pretty badly, but he paid no attention to the blood or the pain; that would come later, if at all. Something he saw, something he heard, made him swing to the left and suddenly he was looking into the yellow eyes of his waking nightmare, and at a mouth still chewing a bloody chunk of human flesh. He fired from the hip and the creature flew backward through the air, landing in a heap, half of its chest blown away. Then, incredibly, it rose to its feet and started toward him again. He lifted the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed carefully. This time he blew its head off, and this time it did not get up.
Then he saw the man and the girl. The man—he thought it was Frank Gorman, but he couldn’t tell because of all the blood—was dead. The girl, the one he’d seen enter the woods, was still breathing, but there was a huge deep wound on the back of her neck, the blood spurting rhythmically from an unseen severed artery. David dropped the shotgun and knelt beside her, feeling for the artery, trying to staunch the flow before she bled to death, as she almost certainly would in a very short time.
David caught the movement to his right, but it was too late to do anything about it other than raise an arm. The jagged teeth caught it, and he could feel them break down, down, through flesh and muscle all the way to the bone. Clawed hands grasped for his face, ripping away skin, and clawed feet kicked at him, shredding cloth, driving in, holding on like some fear-crazed cat.
David, shoving the horror away from him as best he could, knowing his only hope—small as it was—lay in keeping the creature on his forearm, reached across his body with the left hand, found the magnum, cocked it and pressed the muzzle right between the yellow eyes. He squeezed the trigger.
The lifeless creature still dangled from his arm. The hole in its forehead was no bigger than a third of an inch or so in diameter. The back of its head, however, was gone. Using the gun barrel as a lever, he pried the dead jaws open, and fighting against a pain that nearly made him faint, pulled the jagged teeth out of his arm. Blood—but fortunately not much of it, meaning major veins and arteries had been spared—flowed down over his hand, and the arm, from the elbow down, was numb and almost, but not quite, useless.
Somewhere behind him a lot of car doors were slamming, and his name was being shouted over an electric bullhorn. He recognized Beck Torrey’s voice, and he shouted back. Somehow, David gathered the girl into his arms—arm, actually, with the right just doing what it could—and staggered blindly through the woods toward the voices. Then somebody was taking the girl from him, and somebody else was holding him up, leading him out. The world started to swim and go very dark, then it stabilized itself and he was face-to-face with Beck Torrey.
“Monsters,” David gasped, trying to forget even more than he was trying to remember. “Whatelies. The hole. Oh, Jesus Christ, Beck. Oh Jesus Christ!”
“Come on, David, come on and sit down. The ambulance is on the way. You’re going to be okay. Now take it easy.”
But the girl, what about the girl? He tried to get past Torrey, to where he could see her lying on the ground. Helen was bent over her. Helen looked up at him, and shook her head.
Then, finally, the world went away. Beck Torrey caught the slumping body and lowered it to the ground. “Somebody get a blanket,” he shouted, “and where in the Christ is that goddamned ambulance?”
Rifles, shotguns, and handguns were exploding all over the woods as David was lifted onto the stretcher and whisked rapidly away. “Kill them, Beck,” he mumbled through his semiconsciousness, “kill the fuckers. Kill them, Beck, promise me you’ll kill them all!”
“We will, Dave,” Torrey said, “we will.”
Tom and Barbara burst through the door almost side by side, shouting for their son. And there he was, sitting a
t the kitchen table, drinking a glass of milk, looking somewhat surprised by their strange entrance, but far from wide-eyed with astonishment.
“Oh, thank God, Jamie!” Barbara said, skidding to a halt on the yesterday-polished floor. “Thank God you’re all right!”
“Sure,” he said, matter-of-factly, “I’m fine. What’s the matter?”
“Oh Jamie, all the terrible things. We saw a newspaper at the airport. We drove ninety miles an hour all the way home, listening on the radio. Oh, Jamie, how awful it must have been for you, your school friends disappearing. And Miss Oliphant, and . . .”
“They weren’t my friends,” Jamie said, taking another sip of his milk.
Then, for the first time, Tom spoke. “Where’s Sandy?” he asked, looking around the room as if she might be hiding up in the cupboards or behind the refrigerator.
“She left this morning,” Jamie replied. “With her boyfriend. His name is Allan.”
“She left you with all this going on?” Barbara simply could not believe that anybody, especially somebody like Sandy, who’d seemed so bright and responsible and capable, would walk out on a twelve-year-old boy. Even Jamie? Even Jamie. “What kind of monster is she, anyway?”
“Oh no, mom, she isn’t a monster. We had a good time together. It was great, really great. Honest.”
Barbara and Tom exchanged glances. He nodded, and she turned back to Jamie, who was on the way to the sink to wash her glass. “Jamie,” she asked, “your father and I talked it over in the car, and we decided that you and I should leave for Seattle now, today. Is that all right with you?”
“Sure,” he said, almost indifferently, more interested in drying the glass—or so it seemed—than this wonderful idea of his mother’s. “But first I better go down and clean out my terrarium, and let the toads and snakes go. It wouldn’t be fair to keep them there if I’m not around to feed them.”