“That’s not the right road,” Starling Jane says. “It’s another dead end.” But Deacon turns anyway, only to find his progress blocked by a sprawling pile of trash and limestone gravel.
“Shit,” he hisses and shifts the car into reverse, his foot too heavy on the accelerator, spinning the tires, burning off more rubber.
“Keep that up, and we’ll have another blowout,” she says.
“You said you knew the fucking way.”
“I think you should go back to Ipswich. We should have turned south on High Street, not north.”
Deacon squeals out of the dead end, backing onto the main road, and then hits the brakes so hard that Jane is thrown back against her seat, then forward again, and she almost smacks her head against the dashboard. “What the fuck kind of sick joke is that supposed to be?” he asks her, pointing at a street sign.
“Labor in Vain Road,” she says, reading it aloud. “We really should go back to Ipswich, Deacon, while there’s still time. We should have turned—”
“Just admit you’re lost, Jane. Please just fucking admit you have no idea where we are.”
Jane looks away from the sign, stares silently at her empty hands.
“Yeah, well, fuck me,” Deacon says, shifting into drive again. “What time is it?”
“You just asked—”
“Well, I’m just asking again. What time is it?”
“Three forty-three,” she tells him, glancing reluctantly at her wristwatch.
“And moonrise is at four forty-five.”
“We still have time. It’s not that far from here, I swear. But we need to get back on the right road.”
“She’s going to die,” Deacon whispers and slaps the steering wheel hard with the open palm of his good hand. “You fucking lied to me, Jane, and now Chance is going to fucking die because you fucking lied to me.”
“No,” she says very quietly, and then doesn’t say anything else. He wants to hit her, wants to hit her more than he’s ever wanted to hit anyone in his life. Instead, Deacon looks up through the bug-spattered windshield at the sky, the too-broad Massachusetts sky stretched out like a second-rate Maxfield Parrish painting, and starts driving again. Almost twenty-four hours now since they left Birmingham, slipping out of the city in the battered old piece-of-shit Camaro Jane pulled out of her ass with two calls from a pay phone, the car and two guns delivered to them like a pizza. No way they would have made it very far in the Impala, not once Downs and the FBI discovered they were gone. The phony fire alarm worked like a charm, and Deacon still has no idea what the girl did to the cop standing guard outside her hospital door, but he was way too busy counting and recounting her deck of playing cards to even notice when Deacon wheeled her out of the room and down the hall to the elevator. Too much panic and confusion for anyone to notice them, Jane in her sunglasses and wrapped in a torn and bloodstained raincoat that he’d found in her closet, Deacon keeping his head down and his eyes straight ahead.
“We’ll be fine,” she said. “Just act like you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing and nobody’s going to look at us twice.”
And nobody did, magic or luck or both, and he hasn’t bothered to ask her which, no time for anything but the drive, the destination, an image of Chance burned into his mind like a dream of the Grail. His headache faded after a few hours, about the same time they reached Virginia and the Camaro started overheating.
“We’re not going to make it,” Deacon says, not turning back towards Ipswich, following Labor in Vain Road east.
“Yes, we will,” Jane whispers. “Maybe this connects with Argilla somewhere up ahead. There just aren’t that many roads out here. Unless maybe it loops back around towards town. It might do that, you know?” and she looks back over her shoulder.
“Yeah, Jane, let’s just keep thinking those happy fucking thoughts, why don’t we? Why the hell are you whispering?”
“I’m not,” she says, speaking so softly he could never consider it anything but a whisper. “But I think there’s something following us.”
Deacon glances at the rearview mirror, and there’s only the deserted blacktop behind them, a few trees and some scrubby underbrush, weeds and the litter scattered along the edges of the road. “I don’t see anyone,” he says.
“Just keep driving,” Jane whispers. “Don’t look at it. I think they know I’m coming.”
“There’s nothing fucking back there,” he says, too scared and exhausted to humor her anymore, not after the way she’s been freaking out on him every forty or fifty miles since they crossed into Connecticut, every time they passed a flock of blackbirds perched on a power line or a stray dog wandering along the highway.
“They probably wouldn’t use anything you’d be able to see. Not this close to the warrens. By now, I expect they know you’re with me.”
The road begins to turn towards the southeast, winding past a small and shimmering lake on their left, a brief glimpse of a long-legged water bird with gray-black feathers standing in the reeds near the shore before the trees obscure the view. Jane looks over her shoulder again and then mutters something to herself, drawing some complex sign in the air with her hand, the sign of a cross with more than four points, and Deacon checks the rearview.
“I still don’t see anything,” he says.
“Don’t look at it. Watch the road.”
“Jane, there’s nothing back there to look at. Except the fucking sunset.”
“It’s only three fifty-eight,” she says quietly, calmly, staring straight ahead as the car rounds another bend, and now the Camaro is traveling south.
“I didn’t ask,” Deacon says and starts to tell her this can’t possibly be right, because now they’re heading away from the sea, but Starling Jane opens the glove compartment and takes out her gun.
“I need you to promise me something,” she says. “If you should make it through this, and I don’t—”
“Hold on. You think I owe you a favor?”
“No, but I’m asking you anyway, because there’s nobody else left for me to ask. And I did bring you—”
“All you’ve done so far is get us lost,” Deacon says and glances down at the speedometer, sees that he’s only doing fifty and puts a little more pressure on the gas.
“We’re not lost. We’re getting close. You’ll see.”
“We’re not even going in the right goddamn direction.”
“The things Narcissa stole,” Jane says, speaking so softly now that he can hardly hear her. “I think she’ll still have it all with her. It’s papers mostly, old books, journals, maps, that sort of thing. I think they’ll be hidden somewhere in her car, the trunk probably.”
“What the fuck do I care?”
“If I don’t make it and you do, then I need you to take it all back to Providence for me. Don’t even think about reading any of it. As long as you don’t know exactly what it is, they won’t hurt you.”
“You’re out of your mind,” he says. “No way.”
“Please listen to me, Deacon. There’s a big yellow house on Benefit Street, just past the Athenaeum—”
“No,” he says again, more forcefully than before. “If we get through this shit, and I don’t kill you for what you and that asshole Pentecost have done to Chance, you’ll be the luckiest little creep on the face of the earth. So don’t start getting greedy.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, still staring straight ahead. “Fine. I won’t ask again.”
“Fucking Christ, you’ve got a pair of balls on you.”
“Is it really necessary to use that word so much? You don’t seem to be able to get through a whole sentence without it,” and she checks her pistol to be sure that it’s loaded, pops the clip out and shoves it in again.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
“No,” Jane says, aiming the gun at the windshield, squinting through her wraparound sunglasses as she sets her sights on the remains of a very large brown grasshopper squashed f
lat against the glass. “I’m not. It makes you sound like a vulgar, ignorant man, and I know you’re more than that. But you better slow down some. That’s our turn.”
Deacon starts to tell her to fuck off, considers putting her out right here, and then whatever happens, he’ll only have himself to blame, before he sees the road sign on his left and the stop sign on his right, and the road sign reads ARGILLA ROAD.
“Left or right?” he asks and switches off the Camaro’s wheezy heater because he’s started sweating.
“Left,” Jane says. “The house was near the very end of the road. Probably not much more than a mile from here.”
“That close?” Deacon asks, and “Yeah, that close,” she replies.
He takes the turn without stopping, hardly even bothering to slow down; the rear of the car fishtails, and for a second or two, he thinks they’ll wind up in the boggy, weed-choked ditch and have to run the rest of the way.
“Four o’clock on the dot,” Jane says, and Deacon looks anxiously at the dimming eastern sky, scanning it for any evidence of the full moon, praying that they’re not wrong about moonrise, that they’ve still got forty-five minutes to go this final mile and find Chance. Jane turns completely around in her seat, gripping the loaded semiautomatic in her right hand. “It’s still back there,” she says. “But it’s keeping its distance.”
“So what happens next? Is that little pop gun of yours really going to do us any good against this bitch?”
“We have the shotgun, too. As long as we can stop Narcissa before she finishes the summoning, we have a chance.”
“A chance,” Deacon says and shakes his head, wishing that one of the empty whiskey bottles or beer cans in the backseat were full, wishing he had something besides fear and adrenaline to clear his muddled head. “That’s really not very fucking funny.”
“Sorry,” Jane says, not sounding sorry, sounding distant and preoccupied, and she doesn’t take her eyes off whatever she thinks is following the car. “I didn’t say it on purpose.”
“What are you doing? I thought you just said we shouldn’t look at it.”
“That’s when I thought it was an assassin. Now I’m not sure what it is.”
“So long as it stays out of my way,” Deacon says, pressing the accelerator almost all the way to the floor, “I really don’t give a rat’s ass what it is.”
“I think I saw it once before, years and years ago, but it was locked inside a little green bottle then.”
Deacon hardly hears her, too busy watching the road and the speedometer, the Halloween sky bruising itself towards dusk, too busy trying to believe that they’ll be in time and he and Chance will have the rest of their lives to heal from the things they’ve seen and done in the past week. The Camaro’s engine roars and shudders like a weary, dying animal, swan song of pistons and crankshafts, belts and spinning fans, and the angry orange temperature light comes on again.
“Don’t you even think about it, cocksucker,” he growls and takes the wheel with his bandaged hand long enough to slam his right down hard against the dashboard. The orange light flickers indecisively and then winks out for good, but now there’s white smoke or steam, probably a little of both, leaking out from beneath the hood.
“Deacon, we’re not going to be much use to anyone if you kill us before we even get to the rath.”
“What the sam hell is a rath?”
“You know the poem, ‘and mome raths outgrabe.’”
“Is that what we’re hunting? A jabberwock?”
“Have you ever used a shotgun?” Jane asks him.
“Not unless video games count,” and she sighs and keeps watching whatever it is she thinks is tailing the dying Camaro.
“But you’ve used a pistol before?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Deacon replies, trying not to think about Scarborough Pentecost’s body lying in the front room of the spider-girl house or the gaping black hole between his eyes whenever he wanders into Deacon’s dreams. “I’ve used a pistol. Once.”
“Then I’ll take the shotgun.”
“You do that,” and Deacon is starting to have trouble seeing through the steam coming off the engine, the smoke from burning oil; he considers turning on the windshield wipers, but decides that would probably only make things worse. Around them, the land is growing flatter, the thick stands of pine and hardwoods giving way to the marshes, a restless sea of yellow-brown grass marked here and there by gnarled and stunted trees. There’s a small river to the east, snaking along between low and muddy banks. On their Rand McNally Massachusetts road atlas, it’s only a pale blue squiggle labeled the Castle Neck River, but several times Starling Jane has referred to it as the Manuxet. There are a few old willows growing in sandy places near the water, their drooping, bare limbs dragging the ink-dark surface like woodsy tentacles. Deacon doesn’t like the river, something he’d rather not even try to put his finger on, and he watches the road through the smoke and steam, instead.
“It can’t be much farther now,” Jane says, turning back around, and Deacon glances at the speedometer. The needle’s wavering uncertainly just above ninety miles an hour, and he eases some of his weight off the gas pedal. There’s a sudden, violent rattling sound from the guts of the Chevy, metal grinding metal, and “It’s a good damn thing,” he mutters. “A few more feet, and we’d have to get out and fucking push this piece of junk.”
Jane sees the huge gray Lincoln first, parked at the side of the road underneath a crooked little oak. “There,” she says. “That’s it. That’s her.”
“How do you know? Is this—”
“Deacon, just stop the fucking car!” she shouts, and he hits the brakes, screeching to a stop five or ten yards past the Lincoln.
“Do you have a god you pray to, Deacon Silvey?” Jane asks, handing him the pistol before he can pull the Camaro over to the shoulder.
“No,” he says, and she frowns and shrugs her bony shoulders, lost inside the raincoat. “No matter,” she whispers. “It probably wouldn’t make much difference anyway.”
Chance is trying to think of the name of the bitter, ugly root that Narcissa made her chew after breakfast, trying to think of anything but the pain. She takes another step, the rutted, sandy road like walking in a nightmare, and realizes they’ve started going uphill again. Narcissa has one arm around her tight and is carrying a leather satchel in her other hand. “It’s wearing off,” Chance says. “The morphine,” and stops as another contraction begins.
“It’s not much farther,” Narcissa says.
“I can’t do this. I can’t walk any more.”
“Yes, you can,” the werewolf replies, holding her up, holding her up and dragging her forward through the sand and thistles when Chance hurts too much to walk. “You can do all sorts of things, if you have no other choice.”
She can’t remember the name of the root, even though Narcissa told her twice, told her it would help get the contractions started, the root and the syringe full of oxytocin. Just like her, that she remembers the name of the drug and not the root. She wants to ask Narcissa what it was called, but she can’t get her breath to speak. The air’s gone cold enough now that it fogs when it rushes out between her teeth, forced out of her in dragon-smoky gasps whenever the pain comes, and she wishes she could think clearly enough to count the seconds, the minutes in between. Certain only that the distance between contractions is getting shorter and shorter. The air is cold, but the sweat’s coming off her like she’s hemorrhaging water, like she’s just a little black rain cloud trying to wash the world away. She’s started having chills and wonders if it’s a fever, if she’s burning up alive and maybe, if she’s lucky, the flames will get Narcissa, too.
“Just over this hill,” the werewolf growls, though Chance is beginning to doubt she really is a werewolf after all, beginning to think that’s just another lie the morphine told her.
“I have to stop,” Chance gasps as the pain releases her again. “Please, let me stop for a minute.”
“No way, crazy lady. You sit down now, and I’ll never get you back on your feet.”
“I can’t climb this fucking hill.”
“From the top you can almost see forever,” Narcissa says, as if she hasn’t heard a word Chance has said to her. “You can see the Annisquam lighthouse after dark, like the eye of a sea serpent rising up out of the bay. Sometimes you can see the top of Allen’s Reef showing above the waves.”
“I’m not a fucking tourist,” Chance grunts, still trying to catch her breath, the sweat dripping from her matted bangs and stinging her eyes. “I don’t really give a shit about the scenery.”
“When I was a little girl,” the werewolf says, and then she’s silent for a minute, pulling Chance along through the sand and brush. The wind whistles loudly through the dunes, and there are seabirds squawking noisily in the sky. “When I was a girl,” Narcissa says again, “Aldous would take me out near the reef sometimes in his rowboat. But he was always afraid to get in very close, afraid of the demons. That’s what he always called them, the demons. Sometimes we saw whales spouting farther out. Sometimes we saw sharks.”
A sudden gust blows the sand high, and Chance shuts her eyes in time, but it gets in her mouth and nose, sticks to her sweaty face and hair.
“I want another shot,” she says, but the werewolf shakes its head no and keeps dragging her towards the crest of the hill.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think more morphine would be a good idea at this point.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Just shut up and keep moving,” but then the next contraction hits her like a punch in the belly, knocks the breath from her, and she can’t keep moving. Chance tries to sit down in the sand, but Narcissa holds her up.
“You just better not forget our deal,” the werewolf smirks, “not if you want to see the kid.”
Low Red Moon Page 37