I suppose I should have dreamt of Hanlon changing. And of demon horsemen. And of crouching things, and ones that scuttled.
But the only thing I dreamt about was my lost family, as usual. When I woke, it was with sadness clinging to me, as it always does.
It was shortly before dawn. I could hear movement in my living room.
CHAPTER 63
I’d fallen asleep in my day clothes too. They were snagged around me. It’s something that I never did, back when my family was still around. But things were very different these days. I didn’t bother to change, or even pat myself down before I went on through. Given the circumstances, a body could live with a little unkemptness.
Out in the hall, I paused by my answering machine. The light wasn’t flashing. So there were no messages, not a peep from Cass. And that bothered me badly. Where’d she gotten to, last night? And after she had fought with the dark riders so very courageously. What was going on with her?
It was unnaturally quiet outside the house. Not the yap of a dog, nor the clatter of a trash can. Which I supposed was no tremendous surprise. Calms come after storms, just as much as before them.
Lauren was standing in the living room, a slender shadow by my coffee table. I’d expected her to sleep later than this. It was hard to tell exactly, in the predawn light. The scratches on her face looked to be healing up nicely. But she still seemed tired and unsettled. She had pressed out the creases in her clothes as best as she could. And had her small case in one hand.
“Looks like you’re ready to leave,” I commented.
And was she in a hurry to? I couldn’t keep the sadness out of my voice. Her lips narrowed and she shrugged.
“Now that Hanlon’s gone, I think the curse has really kicked in, Ross. I kept on hearing voices in my sleep last night.”
So that was it. Goddamn that hex hanging about this town!
“What were they saying?”
“You’re not welcome here.’”
“That’s not in the least bit true,” I told her.
And she finally managed a smile, although the rest of her body remained motionless.
“Any news on Saul?” she asked.
Which made it my turn to shrug.
“Or Cassie?”
“She’s behaving like a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma at the moment.”
“Churchill on Russia,” she came back at me, recognizing the quote.
Which made me take a bet that she read a lot too. I was finding it a real struggle to stop liking her so very much.
I muttered, “She’ll be okay. She’s very tough.”
“I noticed.”
“Sorry that she hit you.”
“Felt to me like she’s had a lot of practice.”
“That’s the truth,” I agreed.
We were trying to make a joke of this, and not succeeding very well. We both knew what was going to happen next. And was there any point in trying to drag this out? We stared at each other for another short while, separated by an invisible wall made up of circumstance and history.
Then Lauren started walking, and I followed her. As we went out through the front door, the sun came up. The yellow light struck her hair, making it shine golden. And in that instant, she looked more like Alicia than she ever had.
Emotion welled up in me, fierce and powerful. I wanted to ask her to stay longer. Wanted to tell her that she had a home here, any time she liked. Was there anything for her in Boston? In the time we’d spent together, she’d not mentioned family or friends, not even once.
And then my thoughts calmed, settling down. I saw that was not possible. This was not my wife, however she might look. So I held my tongue, and walked her over to her little car.
She seemed to be uneasy too, but kept on trying to make light of it. Before she got in, she grinned awkwardly at me and said, “I can’t imagine how I’m going to write this up in my report.”
“You won’t need to,” I told her.
Then I explained to her what we’d already figured out.
The truth was, people came here the whole time. Truckers, mostly. They brought stuff here, and carried it away. But they kept their heads down and their eyes averted all the while that they were in this town. And left as soon as possible. Part of the curse as well.
“Our best guess,” I finished up, “is that, as soon as they’re gone, they forget this place even exists. Or it gets tucked away at the back of their minds, which amounts to the same thing. The same’ll most likely happen to you, once you’re back in the normal world.”
Lauren looked surprised, and then rather disappointed.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” And her head ducked down. “I don’t want to forget you, Ross. I don’t see how that’s right.”
“Right and wrong don’t have much to do with it. It’s like…”
“Driving in England?”
I took that in and smiled.
“Yeah. That.”
She seemed momentarily bemused, uncertain what to do. But then, she suddenly reared up on her toes, and kissed me on the cheek. It seemed to be on impulse, and it took me by surprise. And it wasn’t just a friendly peck. Stayed there longer than it should have done, the warmth of it seeping into my skin.
When she pulled back, her eyes had gone damp again. She looked like she wanted to say something more, but all she did was squint unhappily. The voices of the curse still had to be ringing in her head. And so she got into the car next moment, shut the door, then wound the window part of the way down.
“Take care, right?” She forced another tight grin. “I know it’s hard round here but…don’t do anything too crazy.”
“Absolutely,” I replied, stooping toward her.
But then the engine turned, making me straighten up again and step away.
I was still watching her car disappearing down the street when my cell phone started ringing. I fumbled it out and answered it without looking away.
It turned out to be Ginny Graves, the woman who’d been rescued from her possessed, ax-wielding husband.
“I didn’t know who else to call,” she told me anxiously. “Something weird is up with Cassie.”
“She was here five minutes ago. Turned up at my door, unannounced. Her face was set like stone. She didn’t say a word, which isn’t her at all. She had Cleveland with her, and just handed him to me.”
I could hear a faint mewling in the background.
“Then she turned around, went back to her bike, and simply rode away,” Ginny continued. “I wasn’t sure what to do; frankly, I couldn’t believe it.”
Except that, after last night, I could. My pulse started thudding all over again. I thanked her for the information, and then hurried to my own car. My front door was still open, but that didn’t really matter in a neighborhood like this.
Cassie’s place was silent when I got there, not a light on anywhere. Her Harley was not in sight. I let myself in—we keep each other’s keys, for emergencies. And practically tripped over something, just inside the porch.
Her carbine was propped behind the door. Why’d she left it there? And when I went through to the living room, both her Glocks were lying on the coffee table.
I immediately saw that there was something missing too. This whole room was full of pictures of her kids. But on the same table where the Glocks had been set down, there’d been her favorite one. A big framed photograph of all four of them—her, Kevin, Angel, Cassie Jr.—out in Crealley Street Park on a bright, hot summer’s day. They’d been lying on the grass, shoulder to shoulder, with the brilliantly mixed hues of the floral clock behind them, the four of them smiling at the camera like, if they got any happier, they’d burst.
It was not there anymore. A thin ridge of dust sat where the photograph had been. But where’d she taken it, and why?
I went back outside. Mrs. Plack—her neighbor, the same one who owned the chickens—was emerging from her own door. She was carrying a basket full of washing, had green
rubber gloves on, which she always seemed to wear, and a cigarette butt screwed into the corner of her mouth.
“Know where Cassie’s gone?” I asked her, over the low fence.
Her lips puckered further, and she stared at me like I was the cause of all life’s problems. I was unshaven, a mess, and she obviously didn’t approve. But that didn’t stop her answering.
“Saw her riding north, not long ago. And she looked in a hurry. But then, that girl always does.”
What was north of here, though? Only the commercial district, and she had no reason to go there.
I kept searching for her as I headed up. My gaze darted down every side street, every passing alley. There was not a sign of her, no red Harley anywhere in sight.
When I reached the edge of town, I braked, and sat there with the motor idling. Where had she gone?
An instinct took hold of me. I started heading west along the narrow road that marked the Landing’s upper limit. And finally, a small shape came in view. I’d been right. She’d gone back to the place where she had ambushed Lauren, the old loggers’ trail. She was sitting on her bike, just gazing out into the forest. I had no idea what she was looking at.
I parked a few yards from her, got out. Wanted to walk over to her. But something about the set of her body warned me not to get too close. She didn’t even look at me, although she had to know that I was there.
She was dressed in an old blue T-shirt, black jeans, and her usual boots. Was grasping the bike’s handlebars, but leaning slightly to the right, still favoring her injured shoulder. A rucksack was strapped to her pillion, the khaki canvas bulging. I thought I could make out the edges of a photo frame. What was this? What the blazes did she think that she was doing?
Her head was tucked down. The Harley’s motor was still running.
“Cass?” I asked, raising my voice above the sound.
When she failed to respond, I took a gentle step in her direction.
“Planning on taking a trip?”
Which was a ludicrous suggestion, factually impossible. I’d only meant it as a joke. But she looked extremely determined when her face came up.
“I’m sorry, Ross,” she murmured. “But I just can’t do this anymore.”
I held myself still, trying to understand what I’d just heard. And then I thought I got it.
“Is this about Hobart?” I asked urgently. “He’s alive, Cassie. You didn’t kill him.”
Which didn’t seem to brighten her mood any, as I’d hoped it would.
“Should I congratulate myself on that?”
And I could see what she was getting at, how much it had to hurt her. I’d have felt the same. But what was done was done, and she had to get past it. She had always managed that before. I smiled at her gently and let my limbs relax, waiting for the Cassie that I knew to re-emerge.
“Hell, is that all this is?” I tried to reason with her. “You tried to shoot me, remember, back when Saruak was around? Almost succeeded too. But I’m still here.”
Her face dropped again, vanishing. All I could see was her cropped black hair.
“That was different,” she answered slowly. “Saruak had complete control of me. This time…”
The world seemed very still around us, the forest shrinking off into the distance. She took a good while, finding the right words.
“It was me. The darkness inside me, understand? The fury and the helpless rage.”
“We’ve all got that, to one degree or another.”
“No!” she broke across me. “You still don’t get it! Ever since my kids…”
I caught a brief glimpse of her eyes. They seemed to be leaking brightness.
“Ever since that happened, there’s been such anger in me. And I guess I’ve been trying to let some of it out by helping you. Trying to blow off steam and let the pressure go. But it just keeps growing, just keeps building.”
I could see she’d started shaking. And that worried me more than anything else had.
“And I’ve reached the stage,” she went on, “where I can’t do this anymore.”
My face had gone completely tight. I’d never heard her talk like this. I’d known all along how badly she was suffering, for sure. But I was in the same boat…I had lost my family too. And this was the right time to remind her of that. So I did it, the words clogging up slightly my throat.
“You’re different,” she snapped. “You cope, Ross. With everything. That’s your talent. You always keep the darkness under wraps, control your inner demons. But me? What if, next time, I do kill someone? Or a load of people?”
“That won’t happen,” I tried to assure her, although I was finding it pretty hard just getting words out by this stage.
“Can you be completely certain?”
She stared into my eyes, looking for an answer. And I couldn’t hide the true one. You can never be completely certain about anything, especially not here. We both knew that.
“This is crazy,” I pointed out. “Where do you expect to go?”
She jerked her head at the trees. “Out there.”
Which sounded so bizarre I thought her sanity had gone.
“Uh…there’s the small matter of a certain curse.”
“Regan’s Curse means I can’t get anywhere else. But I can still go out into the woods. We do it all the time.”
She was talking about…remaining out there? In that awful quiet and stillness that enveloped us whenever we stepped past the town limits? My sense of alarm increased.
“Alone out there?”
“Looks that way.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“Except I am.”
This was just plain nuts. Had her mind broken down completely? I started to walk over to her, realizing I had to make her see some sense. But she revved her engine, then the Harley moved away from me in a broad circle.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, swiveling around. “You can’t stay out there. We don’t belong there!”
“Add it to the list of places where I don’t belong!” she shouted back.
She had the bike pointed at the trees by this stage. And before I could say or do anything else, she opened up the throttle and went hurtling forward. I ran after her. Went over the border a few yards. Everything around me bled of color and went still.
Except for Cass, that was. She was roaring away along the logging track, moving too quickly for me to catch up.
I stumbled to a halt, watching helplessly as she dwindled. She was lost among the dense tangle of branches before much longer.
I could still hear the Harley for a good while after that. But then even its howling finally diminished, fading away to absolutely nothing.
There was utter silence, not even the whisper of a breeze. I stood immersed in it for perhaps an hour, waiting.
But Cassie did not come back.
CHAPTER 64
Forget everything that had happened to her in the past few days? The more Lauren tried to get her head around that concept, then the more it seemed ridiculous. She’d never been in such incredible peril. Never seen such startling, nightmarish events, or been so terrified in her whole life. She could no more lose those memories than replace her own head.
Still, she had come through it. That was a huge relief, and quite surprised her. But it was behind her now, just like the town was, physically. She’d gone past the final intersection a couple of minutes back.
It was turning out to be a very bright and pleasant morning, one of those last gasps of summer that were commonplace in this part of the world. No other cars were on this road. The sun shone through the foliage. Her window was still partly down, and she could smell the leafy odors.
A grackle sprang up from the road in front of her and soared away, a flapping dart of black and sapphire blue, rapidly diminishing against the sky. And was that some kind of good omen? Frankly, it didn’t really seem to matter. Getting out in one piece was enough good luck for an entire lifetime.
S
he glanced in her rearview mirror. Raine’s Landing had become merely a narrow strip of rooftops, glimpsed between a gap in the trees.
Forget it? Hardly likely. She’d recall it until her dying day. The only genuine problem was…would she ever dare tell anyone else about it?
She went around a bend in the road. And when she glanced up at the mirror again, the town was completely lost from sight.
It started fading from her thoughts immediately. She could no longer remember what the place looked like. There’d been a square, and a big hill near the center, hadn’t there? Or maybe not.
She’d had some difficulties there. She remained pretty sure of that. But of what nature…? Strange, unworldly figures flashed before her inner eye for half a second, then were swiftly gone. And just as well, since things like that did not—could not—exist.
Other faces started to appear. A black man. A short guy in spectacles. An attractive redhead, and a huge, bald cop. They hung in her memory for the briefest instant, and then faded too.
Who exactly had they been?
What was the place where she had met them even called?
Met who? she wondered finally.
One last face was hanging in her mind’s eye, longer than the others had. A man’s face, somewhat gaunt but handsome, blond hair thinning slightly at the front. Steel gray eyes peered at her. And there was concern in them.
His lips moved.
“Not welcome here? That’s not in the least bit true.”
Lauren pulled over abruptly to the ditch at the side of the road.
Who was that? She glanced back across her shoulder, but could see only the trees. But she had some kind of connection with this guy, a bond. She was positive of that. And she struggled to recall his name.
It came to her. She breathed out a soft syllable.
“Ross.”
Yes, that was it. Ross Devries. And suddenly, the rest of it came flooding back. She remembered every moment, every footstep, every street. The whole of it. Raine’s Landing.
In a lot of ways, it was an awful place. But there was an upside. In her few days there, she’d found herself among some of the hardiest, most resilient, bravest people she had ever known. And was that because they had no choice in the matter?
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