by John Farris
"He's dead, Marjory."
The word released something previously jammed tight in Marjory's mind. Her face, which had been slackly expressionless, began to twitch in alarm. She gasped, rapidly, shallow explosive sounds.
"Nooo . . . ooooo . . . get him . . . way from meeeee!"
"Don't, Marjory! It's okay! Come on, outside."
She was trembling so hard he found it difficult to get a grip on her.
"Marjory, who's in the house?"
"Him!" Marjory said, wildly, then her teeth began clacking.
"No. Not Alastor. I got him. Look, Marjory. On the floor. That's all that's left, he can't hurt you."
He was rough with her, turning her head, forcing her to see the little skull. Marjory made meaningless sounds. "Stop. Hurting me!"
"Are there any more of them in the house?"
"No. No more. He . . . G-G-God! . . . was in Enid's room. Came in window. Something wrong . . . with Enid. Where is—"
"She's gone, Marjory. Stole my father's car. That makes two of us tonight. Come on."
The struggle went out of Marjory. Her knees lost what little strength they'd had to this point. He had to half carry her to the stable door.
A few feet from the opening something stabbed through the sole of a moccasin, penetrating the arch of his right foot. Duane hobbled and almost fell with Marjory, but kept his eyes on the house fifty yards away. Marjory would take one step and sag, two steps and sag. By the time they got to the porch steps she was steadier, except for the violent trembling. He knew she was at least as cold as the night in the cavern when he had pulled her from the pool. Almost lost her then. Hypothermia. He knew what to do now. The hell with Enid, with everything else, he was going to take care of Marjory.
He pulled her up the stairs to the bathroom, and put her into the tub. The house was not as cold as he had assumed it would b/, but he was shaking too, and his pierced foot throbbed. The gas was on, there would be hot water. He filled the tub rapidly. He held Marjory upright in the tub, but he was beginning to dim out himself. Dark in the house, a grayness inside his skull, he almost nodded off. Could it be happening to him, hypothermia? Duane slowly dragged his own clothes off, and crawled into the tub with Marjory, the water level rising almost to the brim. Marjory put her arms around him. Two ice floes, chattering in each other's faces. He begun torub around her heart as briskly as he could manage.
"Duane?"
He was pleased that she wasn't chattering any more. His own tremors had lessened, but the heart of him felt like a cold chunk of iron. Marjory seemed deathly tired, unable to keep her eyes open.
"Duane?"
"Uh-huh."
"This doesn't mean . . . we're married."
That tickled him, but he couldn't laugh.
"I can't get married, Marjory. I have to go to reform school first."
"Oh," she said, in a tone that indicated she hadn't understood him.
"Maybe my dad will let me—" He sighed, and all the sorrow in his heart broke loose—"join the Army, to get me out of the house."
After a few moments, Duane began to sob. Slippery, exhausted but surviving, as primitive and essentially innocent as First Children, they held each other in the overflowing tub.
8
Going down into the caverns again was a brutal experience for Ted Lufford. The trouble he might possibly get into with various state or Federal authorities didn't weigh on him; but the sensation of being swallowed up in an evil place had his heart pounding before they'd finished the first descent.
They weren't talking much, communicating mostly in monosyllables, trying not to waste energy. Rex and Alvy led the way into the new entry they'd discovered after days of meticulous prospecting. It made good sense for Ted and Wayne Buck Vedders to duplicate their motions in order to avoid trouble. The immediate area was a rocky pitch, nearly thirty degrees, widening in a funnel from a rabbit-hole far above their heads. The worst thing about it was, bats used the funnel, too.
"Yeah," Rex said, when they took a break, "there's a bat cave somewhere nearby, but we didn't track it down."
"Bats," Vedders said grimly.
"They're out for the night, reckon. But we don't want to be coming out when they're a-coming home. Wasn't for the bats, though, we wouldn't of found this hidey-hole. Well, let's move. Bear left here, gen'muns."
"I hear water," Ted panted a few minutes later.
"Oh, yeah. Be right slippery the other side that passage."
"What passage?" They had come within ten feet of an apparently blank wall.
Alvy grinned. "He's talking about Aunt Minnie's asshole. You'll just about notice it when you get right on top of it, if you got sharp eyes."
Bill Whipkey put his pack down. "Time for this old boy to get to work."
Alvy looked doubtful. "Well, I don't know. You could close Aunt Minnie's for good with them 'splosives."
"Hoss, I do this for a living! Give me fifteen minutes to wire it up. Yeah, I could wire up the ground you stand on and set it off, and guarantee you wouldn't get a speck of dirt on you. Might make you a little deaf for a couple days."
"Might blow my pecker off, too."
Ted looked at his watch. It was a few minutes after one A.M. "Let's get this done," he said. "I've had a bad feeling."
9
Birka was aware of the first explosion, sensing it through vibrations. She didn't think it was a natural rock fall.
Enid sat hollow-eyed, pains in her chest. Her bare feet were cut and bleeding. She looked up when Birka touched her shoulder.
"We must hurry."
Enid got slowly to her feet, wincing.
You feel no pain. It won't be necessary to stop again.
Enid nodded.
Humanness is such a wretched condition.
Enid looked at the swirl of luna moths above their heads. It was as if her face had been touched by the supernatural light of a vision.
Birka smiled, but she was anxious. She put a gentle hand on Enid again, guiding her, hurrying her along.
10
Three hours; they had covered two thirds of a mile underground. Nothing looked familiar to Ted. He said, for the tenth time in ten minutes, "Are you boys sure—"
"That's our mark on the wall, ain't it?" Rex replied, turning his helmeted head to shine the carbide lamp on the chalked insignia. They were sideways in a passage with little headroom. Rex sounded surly. One of his eyes was redly swollen and smarting from grit lodged under the lid.
"Well, how far do you think—"
Neither Rex nor Alvy bothered to answer him. Ted looked back at Wayne Buck Vedders, whose face was a mask of mud, except for the whites of his round eyes. Buried in mud, his expression was still miserable. He breathed harshly through his mouth. Bill Whipkey, bringing up the rear, whistled a monotonous tune. Tight spaces didn't bother him. For a few yards they were almost ankle-deep in bitingly cold water. Then the water drained away mysteriously, the passage angled upward for thirty yards, gradually widening so that they were no longer on top of one another. Alvy, the lead dog, hiked ahead confidently, then stopped, the beam of his headlamp fading into a vast chambered darkness sprinkled here and there with the mild pastel glow of luna wings. The smallest noise now raised a sharp echo. Ted felt a welcome draft of chilled air on his humid face.
Alvy switched on the electric lantern fastened to a steel ring on his coveralls.
"There they be," he said, looking down. His tone was pensive. His breath plumed. "We are in Boogerland, girls."
They took turns filing up to the jagged hole in the wall of the cavern where, standing next to Alvy, they could look down and see by the focused light of his lantern the shimmering cocoon that filled the floor space, drifting in places, like a primordial, pristine snowfall, to a depth of five or six feet.
"Resembles a spiderweb, sure 'nuff," Bill Whipkey said.
"Well, I ain't going down there," Wayne Buck Vedders said vehemently. "Only one thing spiderweb means to me, and that's spiders. Goddamn bu
t it's cold!"
"You notice that?" Alvy said. "Maybe twenty degrees colder in here than anywhere else. Damn near freezing."
"This here what you saw?" Rex asked Ted.
"No, I never did see it for myself. But Duane was here, and this is exactly how he described it to me. What do you think, Billy?"
Whipkey flashed his own brilliant torch light around the walls and fanged ceiling of the cavern, peering into stalactite crannies and passages opposite them. Here and there luna moths were glowingly fixed to the walls.
"It's a bitch," he said finally. "Piece of Swiss cheese. No way I'd get that ceiling to fall right, even if I could get up there with the plastic I have. It'll take me a long time to rig charges just to plug up all the holes in the walls. Three or four hours, maybe."
Ted rubbed his grimy forehead. His eyes hurt from straining to see in dark places. He had a sinus headache. He still had a bad feeling. They were there, and now he wanted to go home. "How much plastic you toting?"
"Ten pounds."
"Let's go down there, pile it all in the middle of the floor, and touch it off."
"Hoss, depending on what's underneath, that floor might drop to the center of the earth."
"Good."
"We want to be well away from here when that much banger goes off. All the way outside, would be my recommendation."
"How do we do it?"
"No problem. I brought three timers along. Just set 'em for three in the morning and make tracks. You know, I don't see none of the boogers you gen'mun's advertised. So far it ain't been worth missing the opening of deer season for."
"They're in there, all right," Rex told him. "You can't hardly walk without steppin' on some."
"Let's sling some ladders and get started," Ted advised.
They anchored two rope ladders with pitons hammered into the floor of the passage. Rex and Alvy went down first, their combined breaths rising in clouds like live steam from a pit. Ted followed. Bill Whipkey stayed behind with Vedders to prepare the explosive charges: three packages of plastic, each with a timer. Whipkey whistled through his teeth while he worked. Vedders fidgeted, getting up from time to time to cast his light around the cavern.
"Looking for bats? No batshit, no bats."
"I don't know what I'm looking for."
On the floor of the cavern Alvy was searching through the maze of silk, parting it with gloved hands. A remote dark face, slick as pitch with closed lids like patent leather, came into view. And another. Ted felt a stricture around the heart.
"That's something I didn't notice before," Rex said quietly. "Look there, around the neck. Like they been strangled with that vine. The both of 'em."
"They were strangled, all right."
Alvy continued to prowl, as if taking inventory. "Little one over here." he announced. "Man, what preserved them this a way?" Wayne Hud Vedder's light cut across his back and wavered against a wall. "Hmrn" Alvy reached deeper into the cocoon, groped for a few moments. He straightened. "Looky here at this," he said, turning. He held up a piece of dried strangler fig. It had been cut. "You can see here where one of 'em was lying. This silk stuff s all tacky with something, some kind of fluid." He turned his head again, looking for Ted, carbide lamp flashing redly.
"Better move on back toward the ladder," Ted told him in a choked voice. "Bill! How long?"
"Got a jammed mechanism here. Couple minutes more."
Vedders's light swept across Alvy's face, and Alvy put up his other hand. The light moved on a few feet, then jumped behind Alvy and stayed there.
"Jesus Christ!" Vedders called hysterically. "Get out of there! Run! Get out!"
There was movement in the cocoon behind Alvy, a glossy undulation. He turned haplessly as something surfaced just behind him: a domed, hairless head white as shaped marble, the vaguely human face finely drawn. It had a kind of dolorous, primitive beauty, and was fantastically endowed with living, blazing blue eyes: light and furious, accusatory and deadly. She rose from the cocoon with a long slashing motion, flicking a hand at Alvy just below the chin. He gave a little start, and stiffened, his helmet slightly askew on his head, the light of the carbide lamp picking up little blips of fresh blood, dotting her face where once she had brows. Then the blood jetted from his opened throat and Alvy sagged down into the agitated silk, helplessly clutching himself while his life pumped away.
"Lord a' mercy," Rex said, "what kind of booger be that?"
As he spoke Ted reached out and snatched an arm, hauled Rex through the obstructive silk toward a ladder. Rex didn't need to be told to climb for his life.
Birka was coming, gliding toward Ted. He looked her in the eyes.
"I had a feeling," he said dismally. He didn't try to run, or even back off a little. And his seeming lack of fear gave Birka pause. She smiled, reluctantly.
"You again?" Birka said.
"Hard to kill, ain't you?"
"We don't die."
"Well, whatever you call it—" He had one hand in a pocket of his deer-hunter's vest. With the other he gestured. Stalling a little, giving Rex time to grunt and bang his way up the wildly swinging ladder. Vedders still held his flashlight beam on Birka, isolating her like an apparition in the midst of the cocoon. How many more? Ted thought. How many of them on the loose? She read him perfectly. But her own expression was not difficult for him to read. Birka scowled, and he knew. Just her, so far. It gave him heart to face the next few moments, which he knew would be the most difficult of his life. The thorn! God, she was so quick with that thing! "Whatever you call it, like them asleep in here, reckon if it ain't death, it'll do."
"In just a little while there will be no more sleepers."
"Yeah, well I reckon"—Ted paused to breathe, to steady himself, and gleaned another truth in the darkness beneath his feet, from the Dark Ones themselves—"reckon if you could do something about the state they're in, you would've done it already."
Her smile was slight, and rueful. She said nothing, but started for him again, right hand at the level of her breast, slightly clawed, the three inches of black thorn standing out from the marbled fingers. Ted felt a flurrying panic.
"You need help, don't you? Can't touch them yourself, once they're . . . asleep like that."
"Ted!" Vedders said in a strangled voice. "Get the hell out of the way, let me get a bead on her!"
"No, don't shoot! Won't do no good. Let me handle her. We're . . . like old friends, kind of." He spoke to Birka. "What's your name, anyway? Folks have names where you come from?"
Stay away from me, bitch.
You are cunning, aren't you? Perhaps we should keep you. Now I wonder . . . what treachery you have in mind?
"I'm Birka."
"Ted."
"Yes, I know. I know everything about you. Enid told me."
Enid!
Everything you suspect . . . Ted, and more. Well. Why don't we just distract you for an instant, and let me get this over with?
Beams of light crisscrossed the cavern and Vedders screamed, "There's another one coming up!"
Ted turned, plenty distracted, all right, and saw Enid's pallid face inside the hood of her parka. Blinded by the bright lights, she cowered, her hands in front of her face. In one hand was a sturdy pair of scissors.
"Birka!" she called, shrilly. And Birka, instead of falling on Ted with her slashing thorn, delayed momentarily to savor this moment.
No no you don't have her you don't you fucking
"Bitch!" Ted screamed, yanking his hand from the cargo pocket of his vest, uncoiling a whiplike strand of recently cut, green strangler fig, weighted at the tip with several ounces of lead fishing sinkers. The lead gave direction and impetus to the improvised lash, which Birka barely saw coming and could not avoid as it flicked around and around the slender column of her throat. Her mouth was frozen in a silent shriek, her pale eyes flashed on him. She touched the encircling vine with both hands and the tips of her fingers blackened instantly, dark as the thorn on her right hand.
No! I will give you the world—you will be a king like no other! I, I can do this! Release me! Oh, Ted . . . please don't do this to me!
"Goddamn, I had a feeling," Ted said, holding on grimly, watching the immobile lips seal, her eyelids fall and darken until there was only a distant gleam of blueness, and they sealed too; and everywhere, from toes to the shapely dome of her head, Birka was in the deepest night the temper of God had ever willed.
"Enid?"
She was standing where she had risen, shocked, blinded; he made his knots secure around Birka's shrunken neck and plunged through the cocoon toward Enid.
"Bill! Got those charges ready?"
Enid swung around at his approach, gasping, he touched a cold cheek and she hacked ineffectually at him with the scissors, fending him off. He'd been prepared for that, knowing she couldn't be in her right mind, just hoping . . . he took the scissors and pocketed them, and Enid was a mumbling heap in his arms.
"Somebody give me a hand down here! Boogers ain't gonna bite! Boogers is done for! Get Enid out of here, and Alvy, what's left of him!" He sounded hysterical to his own ears, and didn't care. "I want to blow it! Blow it now! Send them all to Kingdom come! Now, now, give me all that shit, Bill, we're blowing it now!"