"That . . . that wasn't his voice."
"I heard."
"My God, Vic, that wasn't his voice!"
It was entirely possible, she told herself, that what she heard had been a trick of the windows, the walls, the muffling of the heavy curtains—but Jaimie's voice had, at the last, become somberly deep, a pounding piano bass that pronounced rather than conversed, commanded rather than proposed. And the whining belonged to Ed McPherson, psychologist and father—a simpering, slithering squeal piping from a man in fear of his life.
"I do not believe in things like satanic possession."
"Neither do I, Dale, neither do I."
"Then what did we hear?"
No answer. She knew there couldn't be one, not one that made any sense.
The car slowed gradually as the road began to twist, turning back upon itself, narrowing, gaping great holes that seldom were repaired. Ruts, that jerked the wheel in Vic's hands, a boulder they had to ease around while brush scrabbled rat-like at Dale's door. Quickly she tried the radio, and there was nothing but static on all the stations. She looked at Vic's grim expression, then out where the headlights slashed into the woods and vision was like a solemn series of dimly lighted slides: gray boles and wormlike brush frozen in the act of grasping at throats, a lonely fir among hickory and elm like a fur-cloaked woman in the middle of a slum, an opossum crawling unconcernedly in front of the car like some great gray slug, and the quick white flick of a running deer's tail.
An abrupt gust of wind that sent armies of leaves into the air, spinning dead dervishes at the side of the road.
"This is insane. It's just too insane to be real!"
"We heard what we heard."
"Then were hysterical or something. We have to be! We've given our minds, our imagination some kind of preconception and now everything's being colored by it. I know what it was, some kind of hallucination!"
"An aural hallucination?"
"It happens, doesn't it? People hear things all the time. They hear voices. They hear little men who aren't there."
"Dale, Jaimie was there. So was Ed. And Ed was, God help me, afraid of him. His own small son, and he was afraid of him in there."
A bird darted in front of the windshield, and Dale screamed before she could recognize the intruder. Vic tried a small laugh, but when she answered it, it was more like a choking.
"Spooky up here, isn't it?"
"Vic, are you running away or looking for someplace where we can have space to do some thinking?"
"I wish I knew."
Finally the road completed its contortions, straightened, and began a steep climb. The forest moved closer, and Dale thought it would take only a year or two more of continued neglect before the trees took over and the road became an unscheduled dead end. Not a bad fate, she decided; but before she could say something to Vic the trees thinned and fell back and they were at the summit of a low hill somewhere to the north and east of the village. The road stopped, and Vic was forced to make an awkward U-turn, halting in the middle of the road, facing back the way they had come. The headlights soared off into nothing, the tips of the trees below them barely touched by the spears of white. Despite the heater and its fan, Dale shivered. Vic switched off the lights, and there was only the dashboard glow. She felt, then, as if she were in a miniature submarine fathoms deep, where fish carried their own illumination and monsters as yet unseen were trapped by the pressure in the depths far deeper than black.
"Why did we go there?" Vic asked, shaking his head. "Whoever's idea that was ought to be shot."
"Bang," she said, pointing a forefinger at him. He didn't laugh, however, and she didn't blame him.
"So tell me why I thought we should go there."
"The idea was to confront Ed, remember? Supposedly we would right now be better able to understand what's going on around here. Unfortunately, through no fault of your own, I'm worse off than before."
"You and me both, lady."
They looked straight ahead.
"God, that voice!"
"Please, Dale, don't remind me!"
Over the invisible hood into the darkness unrelieved by stars or distant towns' lights. And for the lack of those lights it was far colder than the frost that already formed brittle lace at the edges of the windshield.
"Do you think Jaimie's possessed, Vic? Do you think something's got hold of him and makes him the way he is?"
"I can't get myself to believe that was him talking. Is that the same thing?"
He turned on the motor again, letting the heat wash over them ineffectively before bringing back the silence.
"If Ed is so scared of whatever's going on there, maybe we can talk him into helping us. Maybe we can meet him someplace away from Jaimie and talk to him again. He must want to help us, Vic. He's much too intelligent not to want to get out of whatever it is he's involved in."
"To tell you the truth, kid, I don't think Jaimie will let him go."
"You've got to be kidding!"
"I hate to be redundant, Dale, but you heard what I heard. Did that sound as if he would let his father go?"
"Now listen, possessed or not, he is still a little boy! Ed must be at least six feet tall, if not more. He slumps so much you can't tell. But, Vic, he's bigger and he's the boy's father! How can he stop his own father from walking out if he wants to?"
Vic tapped her wrist. "How did he stop Dave?"
In the air above the road.
"I wish I knew what was going on. I wish I understood. Maybe we ought to see Fred. Who cares what he thinks! Just tell him, so if something else happens he'll know."
"And what will he do?"
She made a fist, slammed it on the dashboard. "How should I know! He can arrest Jaimie—"
"Dale!"
"—or Ed or Flora or . . . how should I know? All I know is, I want to find a nice warm cave somewhere and have a good cry. Is that all right with you?"
In the air above the road.
"Only if I can crawl in with you."
In the air above the road. Dale blinked, feeling as though she had been without substantial sleep for two weeks in a row. She put a knuckle to her eyes and rubbed. Hard. Wiped a sleeve over her face.
In the air above the road, a single yellow glow.
She glanced at Vic. His hands were clenched tightly around the steering wheel, back straight, chin jutting forward. He was staring, mesmerized.
The single yellow glow became a flame hovering steadily some one hundred yards ahead of them. Dale thought at first it was someone walking up the road carrying a small torch; but when Vic suddenly yanked at a knob and the headlights flared on . . . there was only the single yellow flame
"Swamp gas," she said without thinking.
"Tell me another, Dale, and maybe I'll believe that one, too." She watched the flame, knowing there was a wind and wondering why it wasn't blown out.
"Is it Jaimie?"
"How can it be?" Vic's voice was low, strained, edged with a fear Dale prayed wouldn't be there. "I mean, how could he have found us? We're in the middle of nowhere, for crying out loud. He couldn't have run behind us all the way. Nobody can run that fast, nobody!"
"Is it Jaimie, Vic? Please. Is it Jaimie?"
"Oh, Jesus, Dale, I think so."
The flame rose to clear the level of the trees. It steadied. It multiplied. Two . . . four . . . a blaze that made no sound. In the amber glow around it, there was smoke. Whirling as if it was trapped by the fire. Puffing into a cloud that moved steadily toward them, bringing the fire on its back like a rider. Sparks like shooting stars, red and amber. The cloud slowly broadened as the fire slowly expanded, and they could feel the heat as it penetrated the car. Vic frantically tried the engine—it coughed once and died.
A night bird flew out of the woods, wheeling about the cloud. A curling hand of soundless fire reached out and grabbed it, and the bird exploded into ash, and the ash fell in slow-motion rain, each fragment flaring once as it struck the cold gro
und.
Vic, his eyes still forward, reached into the back and grabbed a jack and handle from the seat. He laid the metal across his lap, touching it, fondling it as a second bird tried to dart under the cloud and was snared in a cage, amber and red. The cage shrank, soundless in its fire, and the bird exploded into a comet's tail that drifted to the ground, and vanished.
The stupor that held Dale shattered, and she screamed once before twisting around and fumbling with the door. It fell open and she tumbled outside, into a heat too much like a furnace. Instantly Vic scrambled over the seat and knelt beside her, shouting into her ear, then grabbing her elbows and jerking her to her feet. She slapped at his face, punched his chest, screaming, crying, until she yielded to his strength and let him lead her around to the back of the car. Watching as the cloud-and-fire drifted to within fifty yards, still expanding though its light was contained and did nothing to dispel the blackness around them.
A wind they couldn't feel boiled into the fire, twisted it, molded it, separated it into a monstrous image of black eyes and black mouth; and in the eyes, a single glowing flame, and in the mouth, a reflection of the cloud outside.
Dale tried to cover her face and banish the flames into the nightmares of her imagination. But it was futile, and her hands dropped limply to her sides. The fire was too fascinating, too compelling to avoid or ignore. And she was quietly resigned to remaining where she was. Behind the car. On the ground. Running now would only prolong the apparently inevitable, and she was too tired to tell herself not to give in.
The cloud/fire/visage halved the distance between itself and the car. Vic, grunting against the heat that pressed him down, flung both handle and jack at the approaching conflagration, but they fell short, vanished into the darkness without a sound to mark their feeble descent.
Dale, swaying, put her hand to the trunk and snatched it away. The car was too hot to touch, and she whimpered, blew on her palm, and didn't protest when Vic put an arm tightly around her waist and backed her with him toward the edge of the road. He said something, and she nodded, though she didn't know what he was talking about, could barely hear anything but the sound of her breathing.
Then the cloud grew, the fire gave itself voice—a muted roar that sounded like an angry giant's humming.
The gas tank exploded. Dale screamed. The flames on the road reached out to the flames in the sky and they joined, billowing, red and amber, at last permitting light to escape them. Dale ducked away, her vision momentarily seared by the glare. And when she could see, she turned Vic around to face her, to look at her one last time. She thought he was crying and wanted to kiss away the tears, but his coat was jammed up between them and she pushed at it frantically, needing now to feel him closer. She pushed and slapped a lump in his pocket. He shouted something, but it was lost in the roaring, the fire, the heat of the cloud that extended thick fingers above them. There was something in the coat that was keeping them apart. Something in the coat. She didn't want it, couldn't have it come between her and Vic and the coming immolation. She glanced up and saw his eyes closing, knew his strength had finally gone and the dizziness had at last returned. He sagged and she held him, felt the lump again and snatched at it furiously, screaming her anger, pulling it out and raising her hand to fling it away. Stopped. And stared at it.
Wood. Carved. The Hound of Culann. McPherson had slipped it into Vic's coat before they had left the house. There was no need for Jaimie to chase after them; he knew that whatever guided and fed that fire would follow the Hound and destroy its holder.
Willy.
Dave.
The heat dried her face, her lips, scorched the tips of her hair. She felt a slight burning sting at her forehead and the backs of her hands.
Suddenly she snapped her gaze away from the face in the cloud and threw the Hound to where the car had once been. Then she held Vic's arm with both hands and tugged him until they broke into a trot, a run, ignoring the lances that thrust at her legs as they moved off the road and into the underbrush. A small branch struck Vic's forehead and he shook his head, looked at her dumbly until her shouts and gestures penetrated. Into the trees, then, and downhill. Careening off trunks, falling head first into brush that snapped off twigs into her cheeks and palms, spinning away from half-buried boulders that numbed her ankles and brought agony to her soles.
And above them, still on the summit, the cloud/fire imploding. Through the branches she watched it drifting. The roaring ceased. The face vanished into flames again. The cloud evaporated into whirling smoke. The smoke that sparked bright red and amber was sucked into four, into two, into a single yellow flame that became a bright glare, a glow, a point of light that could have been a star.
And it was dark.
Still running, Dale tripped over a black thing and this time her hands and arms would not bring her back to her feet. Vic followed directly behind her, landed on her back and knocked the air from her lungs. She tried a scream; she could only grunt before the lack of air and the wash of pain and the overwhelming relief of escape became too much, too soon, and she allowed herself to black out in a single grateful step.
CHAPTER XII
The clouds broke, and there was a moon. The light and the air were cold—a soothing chill reminiscent of a dive into a pool on the hottest summer day. Dale smiled, wishing the bed wasn't so hard, but when she twisted to her side the mattress turned to rock. An initial refusal to open her eyes was immediately countermanded by the sudden fear that something had happened to Vic. She lifted an arm to brush over her face, lowered it and saw him sitting at her feet on a platform of stone. His forearms were resting on his knees, his hands clasped. Watching. Patiently waiting for her to regain consciousness. When she smiled he moved swiftly to her side and grasped both her hands, ran two gentle fingers over her cheeks. She winced, but grabbed his wrist before he could pull away.
"How are you feeling, lady?"
"I ache, but what a great feeling."
"I know what you mean."
After a first abortive attempt that sent them sprawling, he managed to bring her to her feet, and they stood uncertainly, not wanting to but unable to avoid gazing toward the top of the
"It really was there, wasn't it?"
He nodded. "I snuck back up when it was obvious you weren't going to come back for a while." A hand rubbed at his beard. "There is nothing there at all, Dale. No ashes, no fumes, nothing. The stupid road isn't even scorched. We might as well have not even been there for all the evidence there is left"
"Now that's just great! I was hoping we could finally go to Fred and tell him what's happening."
"Not now, lady. There's no way."
"Yeah, so what else is new?"
The cloud, face, fire, smoke—she shuddered as reaction finally broke through the control of her limbs, and she leaned against him until the moment had passed, the images were locked in some distant vault. There were tears on her cheeks, but she couldn't recall weeping; Vic's coat was stiff with dirt and clinging leaves, yet it was softly comforting and she didn't want to release him.
"Hey," he whispered, "I think it's about time we stopped playing mountain goat and got out of here."
"If I weren't so scared," she said, "I'd jump you so we'd have something to tell the kids."
"What kids?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you about that?"
He laughed, took her hand and led her downward, angling away from the road they had taken with the car. "Sooner or later we're bound to hit the highway," he explained when she wondered aloud why they didn't take the easy way, "and besides, if you don't mind, I'd just as soon not be around if that . . . thing shows up again."
"It won't," she said, and reminded him of the Hound.
"Beacon," he muttered. "Poor Dave. Poor old Dave."
A deer trail took them part of the way, allowed them time to think as they groped through the pale light with hands outstretched to keep branches and shrubs from slapping at their faces. Several times sudden dips sent th
em tumbling, but Dale soon learned to relax so that falls were easier when the ground vanished from beneath her feet.
"What was it?"
"If I knew that, madam, I'd know where to start."
A light below them winked. Vic halted their progress for a moment as he stared, bending forward at the waist as if the added inch would ease his vision. Then he moved to his right away from a thick nest of fir.
"Blessed be, street lights! The highway's down there at last. Straight ahead, kid. Third star to the right and all that jazz." Never-never land, she thought; I should be so lucky.
They clambered over rocks stripped of their moss, climbed over and crawled under fallen trunks glittering faintly with a light gray frost. Their only company the sharp crack of their thrashing, the rolling away of dislodged stones. Dale clung to the sounds, using them to drive off the persistent faint roaring that surged with the memory of the thing in the cloud. She no longer doubted. She no longer gave credence to the reasonable belief that they had been gullible victims of some exotic form of malevolent hypnotism; if that were the case, the car would still be where they had left it, and they would be in it now, riding comfortably back to the village instead of gouging themselves with unseen branches, thorns, daggers of stone. Mesmerism didn't leave physical scars or wounds that bled, didn't scorch a palm or cause an automobile to explode.
And she knew the acceptance was entirely an act of desperate faith, a fumbling embrace by her mind of something previously and undeniably, literally fantastic. It had to be that way. To continue to deny what her senses and sense demanded would mean the abdication of her sanity. The acceptance, then, that became a weapon, something she could use now to fight back before she was killed.
And killed she would be without it. That, too, was beyond speculation.
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