Dark Rain

by Tony Richards

  More were arriving all the time. Another bus went trundling by. I wound my window down and gazed at the faces behind me, dozens of them. They didn’t look transfixed in any blank-faced kind of way. Rather, like Judge Levin, they seemed thoughtful. Placid and even slightly expectant. Like – it struck me – they were hoping for good things to emerge from this particular day.

  A community of passive wishful thinkers, then. That was what these people had become. And there were finally so many of them I was forced to abandon my car, get out and walk myself.

  I finally reached Union Square. The barriers had all been pushed aside. And I could feel my eyes widen as I stared around.

  It had only it taken me a matter of minutes to get down here. But in that time, hundreds more had arrived. They had all sat down on the hard, smooth flagstones. Their eyes were raised as one toward the empty, waiting stage.

  There were townsfolk of all ages and professions. Workmen in jeans and overalls. Guys in smart gray suits. High school kids in T-shirts. And the women were got up in everything from sweats to floral dresses.

  I recognized our postman, some of the people who worked at Jacklin’s Family Restaurant, a couple of regulars from the diner I frequented. And there were Joe Norton and Jack Stroud.

  The square, despite their numbers, was not anywhere near filled up as yet. As I said, it’s a pretty large one. But newcomers were flooding in the entire time. They were arriving from all of the surrounding avenues, and pouring in a steady stream across the bridges on the Adderneck.

  There were whole families, I could see. Little kids being led by the hand or carried. And they were very silent too, which was the eeriest thing of all.

  I caught sight of Saul Hobart with a couple of his men, over by my office building’s doorway, so I made my way across to him. He was slack-jawed and his pupils glittered with astonishment.

  “What the hell are they doing?” he asked. “The ceremony’s not till eight.”

  Which was not so far away as it had once been, and he fully understood that.

  “They’re being controlled by Saruak,” I told him. “The whole town is, even most of the high adepts.”

  He cursed quietly. He had obviously been afraid that was the case.

  “There’s something else you have to do. Once the ceremony starts, there’s going to be a big stampede.”

  You’d have thought I’d grown an extra head. “There’s what?”

  “Everybody’s going to try and leave here, all at once. Not without good reason. And these –” I gestured, “are just the start of it. There’s going to be thousands more, the entire square filled to bursting.”

  He gave me a look that asked, How do you know any of this? Which hardly mattered, right now. If we got out of this in one piece, I would explain it to him then.

  “Listen, you’ve got to get the streets around here all cleared out, and I mean entirely. Every obstruction. Every parked car. The mailboxes, if you can. Anything that people can be crushed against. It’s vital, Saul.”

  His gaze flickered again. He’d already told me who he didn’t take instructions from. But I kept on remembering, vividly, that final scene the white jewel had revealed, and I wasn’t in any mood to argue.

  “Hundreds will be trampled otherwise. For God’s sake, would I steer you wrong about something like this? Can you afford to take that risk?”

  It must have been my tone of voice. His expression got all furrowed up. He stared across the growing crowd perplexedly.

  And then he said, “I’ll get right on it.”

  His head ducked and he began consulting on his phone.

  A familiar deep growling brought my head around. Cassie had arrived and was picking her way through the clumps of people on her Harley, taking care to steer wide of the littler kids. Her expression was the same as Saul’s had been. She seemed to half believe she was hallucinating all of this.

  “What is this?” she called out as she reached me.

  I quickly outlined what was going on.

  “And your highfalutin friends up on the Hill can’t do anything about it?”

  When I told her about Levin and the rest, she whistled. Saruak had finally impressed her, I could see. I described everything that I’d been doing since we’d last met up.

  “I knew those nuts would be no use,” she came back at me, loudly. “And what the hell’s a Changer of Worlds, when it’s at home?”

  Apparently, it wasn’t. I was pretty sure, by this stage, we had no such being in our town. In which case, the others were going down a route that was entirely pointless.

  Cassie chewed the whole thing over, and seemed to come up with something. Like I’ve said, she can be pretty shrewd.

  “The bum who made my kids … you know. He certainly changed my world. Have you thought of that?”

  I hadn’t, until now. Perhaps I’d shied away from the idea. But she was right, so I gave it some consideration.

  The guy who she was talking about … he’d only ever mentioned his name once, and that had been when she’d been pretty drunk. Tom Larson. I’d known the man. I had arrested him for burglary, one time. And he had definitely turned her world upside-down, the same way Jason Goad had done mine.

  But my mind rebelled against the whole idea. It couldn’t be either of them. Apart from any other matter, they had both disappeared, in the self-same moment that our families had.

  Something, though, was murmuring deep in the background of my thoughts. Something …

  No. I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t put my finger on it yet.

  We both gazed out across the square. The sun had climbed above the Town Hall roof. The flags up there cast gently drifting shadows, the same way that the banners were doing with the crowd. There were a few white clouds up in the sky beyond them, just as I had seen back at the Manor. A lazy breeze was towing them along.

  About a hundred more people had arrived and sat down, by the time that I looked back.

  They didn’t move at all. If they were even blinking, it was hard to tell. Their gazes all shone dully in the sunlight. Did they know that we were there at all?

  I wondered what was going through their minds. Perhaps they could hear Saruak’s voice, telling them that everything would be just fine. The ceremony would work. They’d be out of Raine’s Landing by late evening.

  They remained completely motionless, and looked comfortable enough, in spite of the hard stone that they were sitting on. For all the world like they were waiting for a concert to begin.

  But there would only be one instrument, I knew. The Final Trump.

  “Maybe I could scare them up a little, fire some shots into the air?” Cass suggested.

  But that didn’t sound like too much of a good idea. I was trying to think of a better one, when a harsh bark of a laugh rang out.

  I recognized it straight away, and swiveled round in its direction.

  Saruak was marching toward me from beneath the shadows of the stage. How long had he been there, skulking in his leery way? There was no way to tell.

  The tattered hems of his coat flapped. There were threads hanging from its edge that almost reached the ground. His boots looked grimier than before, from his trip to the great outdoors. His hat still covered half his face in obfuscating shade.

  The Dralleg was shambling along at his heels, hunched over and snuffling. Its claws were out. I felt a sharp pang of unease, watching it move past all these helpless, placid folk. It could easily repeat what it had done on that bus yesterday, recreating all that mayhem twentyfold or more.

  But it seemed to ignore the humans. Its green eyes were duller in the sunlight and the thing looked rather witless, with no real intelligence of its own. Its gaze was fixed on its master’s back, and it stuck closely with him, the same way that it had done in its bulldog form.

  “You’re like a fly, a bluebottle, all buzzing and pesky, Mr. Devries!” Saruak shouted. “You just keep showing up in the same annoying manner!”

  He seemed to think ab
out that and then grinned unpleasantly, displaying the off-white spikes of his teeth.

  “I’ve taken it long enough. I think the time has come to finally swat you.”

  FORTY-ONE

  His voice was as coarse and dry as ever, ringing with contempt and spite. And he didn’t sound even remotely like he was kidding, this time. I remembered how powerful he’d already become, and felt my body draw away from him.

  Which was more than you could say for Cass. She had already stepped over to her bike. She snatched her carbine up. And, between one heartbeat and the next, was aiming it.

  I lunged across and caught hold of her elbow.

  “Cassie, no!”

  She looked around at me, slightly annoyed at first.

  “With all these people around? Jesus!”

  Her expression told me that she saw my point. Her eyes narrowed frustratedly. But she started moving back with me, as quickly as we could, toward the edges of the crowd.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hobart and his men start to come to life as well, moving in our direction. I held a palm out flat, signaling to them to remain where they were. And thank God, they took the hint, although Saul did it pretty grudgingly.

  “Trying to run?” Saruak called to me.

  His dusty boots thumped on the flagstones. He seemed heavier than he had been. And it wasn’t just a matter of him putting on physical weight.

  “You forget, Mr. Devries. There is nowhere to run, thanks to this fascinating curse of yours. You’re like a goldfish in a bowl, and you can only go in circles.”

  He leaned his head a little to one side.

  “Think of me as a big cat, about to dip its claws in.”

  He was mixing his metaphors slightly, but no matter. I had gotten well used to these snarling, mocking diatribes of his. And paid what he was saying very little real attention. What I was noticing as he advanced, what struck at me most forcibly …

  Was the effect that he was having on the crowd around him. All these waiting townsfolk.

  Nothing had seemed to impinge on their attention so far. Nothing we had done had made them look around or even stir. They’d simply sat there, peering up at the empty stage, their faces pensive and their eyes like tarnished glass.

  But right now …

  It wasn’t that they looked directly at him. Their expressions stayed impassive, and their eyes remained locked on the stage. But their faces … they turned slightly to him as he passed. Mouths hardened a little. Thoughtful creases appeared in otherwise placid brows. As though they had just heard a sound, a voice, much too far away to understand what it was saying.

  They were noticing him, in other words, but not on any fully conscious level. They were like somnambulists. And he was a figment in the dreamworld they had entered.

  The Dralleg was another matter. People didn’t shift their heads toward that thing at all. No gazes went in its direction, despite its enormous bulk. It might as well have been invisible, stalking along behind its master, dragging its heavy limbs.

  But the sun was halfway up toward its peak. The creature cast an elongated shadow. And as that darkness swept across the crowd, their features became stony. Their shoulders hunched, a little like its. Their gazes became vaguely anxious. And a few small children stood up and looked almost on the verge of crying, except that not a whimper could be heard.

  I recalled what the Little Girl had said. ‘An expanding and engulfing nightmare.’ That was how she’d described the spirit as his powers grew. And his monster was a part of that, the venom in the scorpion’s tail.

  The Manitou voiced the threat. And his creature provided most of the muscle with which to back it up. They’d been a team so far, I could see, each depending on the other.

  I knew that my hopes of doing Saruak any genuine harm were limited. He had already grown far stronger than I could have imagined a couple of days back. But me and Cassie had already hurt the Dralleg several times. And I knew we could repeat the trick. So I began considering the possibility of taking the damned thing down for good. Between us, I was certain we could manage it.

  That would put its master’s nose badly out of joint, at least. And I’d pay good money to see that happen.

  We were still backing away through all the seated, hunkered figures. We had almost reached the outer edge. Were not having to step so carefully, and were beginning to speed up.

  Townsfolk were still coming in and drifting blankly past us, sure. But a few more seconds and we’d be pretty much out in the open. We’d have a chance of fighting back without too many civilians getting caught up in the crossfire.

  Cassie realized the same thing. I saw her knuckles stiffen on the dark grips of her carbine.

  We fell into step together, taking the final paces back in almost perfect unison.

  But where to make our stand?

  “Sidewalk,” I muttered. “Up behind us.”

  And she nodded briskly, getting what I meant.

  “Now!”

  The word was still dropping from my lips when I just turned around and sprinted. Cassie did the same. From behind us came another bark of laughter. Saruak thought that we were trying to get away from him. I ignored him, kept on going, slipping round a few more inward-coming folk.

  My shoes and Cassie’s black boots hit the curb at the exact same time. We both wheeled round again, took one more backward step.

  And then, mainly because we had no other place to go, we drew ourselves up and stood our ground.

  Saruak, as he had done from the start, looked cruelly amused by our antics. He kept pushing on toward us at the same unbroken rate. The smirk across his lower face was like a big, loosely healed scar.

  There had to be some way he could be thrown off balance, at the very least.

  “Stand or run, Mr. Devries,” he was snarling. “Make your mind up, one way or the other. I’m easy because, either way, it’ll make no difference in the least.”

  Way off behind him, I could see, Saul had drawn his weapon and was squinting down the muzzle of it. And his men had followed suit. They hadn’t done anything apart from that, were simply holding themselves at the ready, waiting to see if their help was going to be needed.

  Not a single other person was looking in our direction. There was more than half the town here, and there might as well have only been the seven of us.

  My attention returned to the Manitou. He drew up to within two yards of me and finally stopped. The Dralleg stayed behind him, the same way it had the last time. It was like a wide, distorted shadow of the man himself. I could hear it growling faintly, underneath its breath. But it made no attempt to get at us.

  I reckoned it would do whatever its master wanted. Would attack us in an instant, if he told it to. So whatever Saruak had planned for us this time, maybe he was planning to do it himself.

  That big left pupil of his glinted at me once again. Half in shadow as they were, those narrow, bearded features looked like two sections of different faces, one light and one dark. It served to remind me he was not a man at all. In which case, why’d his body aged? I had not thought of that before.

  His nostrils flared. His lips skinned back a little from his sharply pointed teeth. His pale eyes studied me curiously, drinking in the sight of me all over again. You’d think that he’d never even seen me before. What was it about me that fascinated him?

  His left hand started coming up, the long fingernails curling. But then he seemed to think better of it, let his whole arm swing back down. There were liver spots on the back of the palm, I noticed. How long had he been in human form?

  His stare intensified a little. It was almost as if he was searching for something in my eyes, on my own face.

  I seemed to … what was it, exactly? Seemed to puzzle him. I kept on thinking of the way that he’d come after me. Concentrating on me. Probing at me, when there were far more significant individuals in town.

  He was somehow being drawn to me, again and again, like I posed some kind of riddle he c
ould not completely solve. But I was just a simple man, with no mystique, no magic.

  His gaze hardened next moment. It grew flinty, rather bored. If I was a puzzle to him, then he seemed to give up on it.

  “How many people would just stand here, nose to nose with me?” he hissed. “Foolishly courageous to the last, Mr. Devries.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Oh, I do! I do!”

  His pallid irises flicked slightly to the side.

  “You know, I think that when I’ve killed you, I will keep this nasty little girl you drag around behind you for my own amusement. Nice long legs, I see. I like that.”

  He was about to add something more, when a triple-thud broke across him. Three tightly grouped holes, smoldering a little at their edges, had appeared in the front of his coat, pretty much where his heart ought to be.

  I looked round. Cass had dropped her carbine to her hip and let off a burst at almost point blank range. It was probably the remark about her legs that had pissed her off. She’s no sense of humor about things like that.

  The slugs should have lifted Saruak up off his feet. But the Manitou didn’t even rock. Didn’t even wince, in truth. The holes in the fabric were the only damage he’d sustained.

  His lean face snapped toward her. Even Cassie froze beneath his gaze. The muzzle of her carbine was still smoking. It was the only movement that I was aware of. Everything seemed frozen in place.

  “How spiteful!” he complained.

  The muscles in her arms went tense. Her dark eyes didn’t waver, boring into his.

  “Look what you’ve done to my coat!”

  When he saw she wasn’t going to reply, he returned his baleful gaze to me.

  “You’ve done better than you ought so far, with this one by your side,” he told me.