For a moment, the figure stood unmoving, dull pink the color of a swollen tongue billowing around her. Then the fingers of mist lifted her like a shirt on a clothesline and sailed her closer to them. Her legs dragged behind her body, leaving little wakes of clarity in the Raw that quickly covered over.
“Do you call the Raw to you? Is that how it works? Or do you swim in and out with the Raw like it’s some kind of tide?” Carpenter gave it a hard look.
Her response was a low rumble in the throat as she came fully into view. The clothes she wore shriveled on her frame and dropped away. Carolyn’s legs and arms burst at invisible seams and crumbled to dust. A thin black ridge appeared vertically on her face from her scalp down through the center of her nose and chin, all the way down to her collarbone. The bisected sides swelled, losing their human shape and semblance, then peeled bloodlessly away from each other and shriveled to black fringe. A long, black proboscis, thick at the neck but tapering off to the width of a finger, emerged from the recesses between the fringe. With snake-like sentience, it slithered around and around the torso, sheathing the last of the flesh in shiny black coils. The coils knotted and pulsed rapidly, then melded to form an oily new body, nebulous in shape and not quite solid. A jagged slash opened up in the front near the top, and from it, light burst through in all directions. It did not illuminate the Raw; it looked more to Jesse like splinters stuck in uncooked meat, like shards of—
Starlight, Jesse thought, but he wasn’t sure why. Like starlight caught in glassy slivers that pierced the Raw with brightness.
“Oh damn.” Tom drew the shotgun off his back. “Oh damn.”
It made a labored attempt at speech through the rip. “No...time. Changing...of...the...guards,” it warbled from the liquid depths of the body cavity. “Time...to...go.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nadia asked Carpenter, but he didn’t reply. He didn’t have time to. The door slammed shut, cutting off the Raw and the Carolyn-thing. A rumble like thunder sounded against the panes of glass in the upstairs windows. Jesse felt a bottoming-out in his stomach, like the lurching sensation of being on an elevator. Then, a sudden tremor beneath their feet knocked them backwards and they were all dumped against the reception desk.
Jesse reached up and grabbed the corner of the desk, pulling himself just out of the way as a computer slid off and crashed in a mini-bomb of plastic and electronics next to him. Tom yelped as a drawer from the card catalog shot out and nailed him in the left shoulder. Part of the printer sailed past Jesse’s head and caught Nadia in the ankle. Carpenter tried to stand and was knocked sideways by another wild pitch of the building. “What is it,” Nadia screamed, “an earthquake?”
Another violent spasm of the building sent them tumbling toward the Fiction section doorway. He could hear the slapping and thudding of books falling off the shelves in the next room as the floor beneath him rocked back and forth. A crystalline crash, almost louder than the rumbling, suggested the fall of the chandelier and a fine razor powder of glass spraying the floor and the canvas face of Mr. Withers with tiny slices. He glanced through the doorway once to see the portrait of Mr. Withers watching them from its rollercoaster seat on the wall. Then it fell, too, face-first onto the corner of a toppled shelf.
Then Jesse had the distinct sensation of falling, with an entire building falling around him, and a part of him had the crazy notion that he was falling upwards as the building was coming down. He could hear Nadia’s high-pitched wail and the occasional grunt from Tom or Carpenter as they banged around against the walls. This was all followed by a bone-jarring thud that threatened to wrestle his skeleton from his skin.
Finally, it all stopped. Noise and movement were replaced by cottony silence.
After a moment, Jesse could hear Tom’s low chuckle. “Wow. That was some ride, eh? Everybody okay?”
“I think so,” Jesse answered, rising with a newfound creak in his body. “You?”
“Gonna have a nasty bruise on my shoulder, but I’m still alive.” Tom grinned at him as he rubbed the sore spot. “Never seen a building do that before. Guess there’s a first time for everything.”
Turning to Nadia, Tom offered a hand to help her up. She let him pull her up and then leaned on him to take the weight off her bad ankle.
Jesse felt a twinge of—what? Jealousy? Not likely. “You okay, Nadia?”
She nodded, limping toward him on her good foot. “I don’t think it’s broken, but it hurts like hell.”
Jesse offered Carpenter a hand, but the old man just waved it away. The creak in his body was even louder than Jesse’s, but he stood up and managed a smile.
“So, think we’re still in Kansas?” Carpenter cracked his back then shambled over to the doors.
“Wait,” Nadia said. “Do you think we should? What if that thing is out there?”
“I don’t think it’s likely, but either way, we’ve got to look. We can’t stay here. It’s clearly some kind of hunting ground for them.” Carpenter opened a door slowly. His body and the door he held open blocked out their view of the outside. His face gave away nothing. They slowly made their way around to join him.
The Raw had cleared. All trace of it and the Carolyn-thing were gone. But they weren’t on Finch Drive anymore.
It looked as if a giant hand had scooped them up, building, gravel, ground, and all, and dropped them smack-dab onto the center of Willoughby Circle. Shredded asphalt hills surrounded and supported the library grounds, reminding Jesse of the way the pavement around the Archammer Apartments looked when it had first dropped in on Main Street. Splintered wood and burst tires had skidded out into the street, ostensibly from whatever the library had landed on. Not so lucky to escape was a flattened car hood and a mangled corner mailbox, jutting out from beneath the slabs of transposed pavement. A street light, bent like a blade of grass, fanned shattered glass around its head.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead. The thought almost made Jesse laugh.
“Check that out,” Tom said. They followed his gaze across the upturned lawn to a large rock like the one that had been outside the apartments. On it was a carved symbol whose dark contours were strongly suggestive even from their place inside the library doors. The symbol looked very much like a brain. “That rock wasn’t on the library property before.”
“Nope. It wasn’t,” Carpenter declared with a lopsided grin. “I can’t see anyone rolling it up here in these last couple of minutes—too big and heavy for that—and I doubt that sucker rolled itself up here. Although in Thrall, you never know. So maybe we were meant to land on it. Or near it, at least. Question is, why?”
“Maybe it’s there for the same reason there’s a rock outside Main Street’s new apartment buildings,” Jesse said. “Maybe they’re markers or something. Maybe they’re signposts.”
“Signposts to what, though?” Nadia asked. “What are they marking?”
Carpenter stepped out onto the steps and looked around. “Placement. I’ll bet they’re marking specific locations. Sacred sites, maybe. Sources of something. Doorways.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you the who or why of it, though.”
Jesse stepped out after him and looked around. What the hell was going on around here? Thrall had been on some strange frequency before, but now it was as if someone had cranked the radio all the way up to full volume, and all kinds of grotesque and deadly things were coming through the waves of Raw. The whole place was moving, changing for the worse, and taking them along with it. If he couldn’t even count on the buildings to stand still, how the hell was he ever going to find Mia and Caitlyn?
He turned his head and got an answer, or at least the possibility of one.
Across the street and down to the right was Thrall Museum of Arts and Sciences.
SEVEN
“I’ve got to eat something before we do anything else,” Nadia said as she sank to the library steps. “I’m starving, and I’m starting to feel woozy. It’s got to be eleven or twelve o’clock now.”
Jesse realized he was hungry, too. He hadn’t eaten anything since the diner the night before, and a dull ache, just remembered, rumbled in his gut.
“She’s right. I could go for a Twinkie myself,” Tom said. “Or a can of soup.” The latter he took out of his backpack, along with a hand-held can opener. Nadia took out a Twinkie, removed the wrapping, and inspected the cake. The soup sounded good. Jesse got out his own can, and caught the can opener mid-air as Tom sailed it overhead.
“Carpenter, you hungry? Want a can of soup?”
“No, but thanks. Got myself some beef jerky.” Carpenter grinned as he produced a thin, greasy package from a pants pocket.
Tom started a small fire with a cigarette lighter and some of the wood splinters in the street. Wrapping a sleeve around the can like a potholder, he held it over the fire. “Doesn’t get much more than lukewarm, but it’s better than straight out of the can,” he said as Jesse joined him. Tom took Jesse’s can in his other sleeve and held both, swishing the contents from time to time to spread the heat.
They ate in relative silence until Carpenter asked Tom around a wad of beef jerky, “Ever wonder why there’s still food at all here?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve been here how long now, three years with Thrall being like it is? Even if it was you alone foraging in the town, I can’t see that the stores around here would stock three years’ worth of food. Seems a little odd that even after all this time, a person can still find a restaurant or convenience store or a supermarket that still has something edible.”
“Well, most of it’s gone, or gone bad,” Tom answered. “All the perishable stuff went rotten after the first couple of weeks, and the freezer food only lasted so long. I don’t know what others are doing, but basically, I’ve been living off stock food from storage rooms and closets. Sometimes I find stuff in houses and apartments. And sometimes I catch fish in the summer with one of the fishing poles I snagged from the sporting goods store on Maple. Lake’s still clean enough to bathe and fish in. And bait’s easy. There are always worms.” Tom shrugged. “But I guess I never really thought about it beyond that kind of day-to-day hunt. I figure I’ve been lucky so far. It won’t hold out forever.”
“Ever cook up one of those things in town?” Carpenter asked with an almost wary glance at him. “One of those snake-things, maybe, or those wiggly three-legged suckers?”
“Oh, gross!” Nadia made a gagging noise. “Please don’t say you’ve ever eaten one, Tom.”
“I’d think they would be poisonous,” Jesse said. “I mean, wouldn’t you? With those little parasites in their blood?”
Tom emptied the contents of the can into his throat, then studied its empty bottom. “If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything. Some part of your head knows that the FDA didn’t do any studies on the meat around here, but after awhile, it doesn’t matter so much. You’ll eat any damn flapping, slithering, dragging thing, if it’s dead and it’s cooked and you’re hungry enough.” He didn’t look at them, but Jesse suspected it might have been in Tom’s eyes—the revulsion, a memory of acid-biting hunger and eating a shotgun kill to get by.
“What’s your point, Carpenter?” Jesse asked.
“Point is, Thrall provides. Or the things in it provide. At least, they seem to, whether by sacrificing one of their number to the occasional bullet, or somehow restocking shelves with deodorant and Twinkies and toothpaste.”
“I don’t understand,” Nadia said, licking the last of the Twinkie filling off her fingers. “Are you saying someone or something in the town is keeping people alive?”
“Could be,” Carpenter said. “It’s just a speculation, really. If everyone died off, maybe the monsters around here would, too. Maybe that’s why that Carolyn-thing let us live. Maybe that’s why there always seems to be something to eat or drink around here. Always bars of soap. Shampoo. A decent pair of pants, and a package of underwear. I don’t know, not for sure, but I figure things have got to be getting tough. It’s possible these things here are trying to conserve those who are left, while figuring out how to draw more people in. Maybe we are being farmed for food, in a manner of speaking.”
“That’s sick.”
Tom stood, dusting the dirt off his coat. “Sick, yeah, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was dead on about it.”
The implications of Carpenter’s theory levied a heavy silence on them as they turned it over in their minds. Jesse fought the feeling that he’d gotten himself into something far worse than even he could have imagined. Still, the trip to Thrall, the increasing risks, the doubt, the confusion—it all had to be worth something. It had to pay off with his finding Mia and Caitlyn.
And what if it doesn’t? Jesse forced the answer from his mind before it had a chance to fully form.
“I want to check out the museum,” he said suddenly.
“Oh?” Carpenter raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”
“You all know I came back to Thrall to find someone who was—is—special to me. I have reason to believe she might be at the museum.” Jesse didn’t look at Nadia, but from the corner of his eye, he could see her cheeks burning. He could almost feel the heat of them.
“Jesse, I hate to break it to you, but I can’t imagine she’d be taking in a showing nowadays, cultured though she no doubt is.”
“I don’t think she’s there just to see the exhibits.” His fingers closed around the fragment of photograph in his pocket, and he pulled it out. “This gave me the idea.”
Carpenter took the photograph from him. “Hmm. Pretty girl.”
“Wanted to be an anthropologist. A curator of a museum one day,” Jesse answered. “I don’t know if she ever did. But it would make sense, her taking up residence there. She always loved the museum.”
“Where’d you find that, Jesse?” Tom looked down at the picture. “You think she left it?”
“I’m not sure of anything anymore. But it’s her handwriting on the back. I found it in a book in the library, down in the basement.”
Carpenter flipped it over. “Looks like your name and a date.”
“If she’s still alive, I have to get her out of here,” Jesse said. For a moment, it felt like his words had dropped down into a gulf between him and them. He’d tossed Nadia and Tom the barest bones of his reasons for coming back to Thrall, but he hadn’t told them everything. He hadn’t even said it out loud to himself. He realized as he stood there that he’d been afraid someone would voice his nagging doubts. ‘What if they’re dead already? What if this is all a trick? What if you can’t get anyone out? What if all the natives of Thrall are stuck here, and maybe now, you’re stuck here, too?’ And worst of all, ‘What if they find they don’t want a gutless coward like you rescuing them?’
But no one voiced those things to him. No one said anything at all, not even Nadia.
He still wasn’t sure about telling them the rest, but a sudden rush of honest emotion took over. He could only watch from the outside as a voice that sounded surreal, a dream-like version of his, continued. “And, well, I need to find my—” he faltered, looked away from Nadia, “—my daughter.”
When Tom finally spoke, his voice was soft. “Your...daughter? You mean, yours and Mia’s?”
Jesse nodded, acutely uncomfortable. “That’s why Mia called me. To tell me about Caitlyn and ask me to come back. She wants me to get them both out of here.” Other things she had said stuck in his throat. “But I can’t leave on my own. I’m not strong enough. It won’t let me leave.... So afraid of failing her, hurting her...”
He ventured a glance at Nadia and immediately wished he hadn’t. She looked broken, her eyes wet with tears, her lips pressed together to keep from trembling.
“Nadia—” he began.
“You should have told me that part,” she whispered, standing up shakily. The venom in her eyes was unlike anything he had ever seen. “You should have told me.” She started walking toward the museum.
Jesse went to follow, but Carpenter touched his arm. “Give her a little bit of space,” he said. “Let her adjust.”
Jesse gave a miserable nod. “She’s right. I should have told her.”
Carpenter sighed. “Any matter of business in Thrall is a tricky thing to explain. I think she’ll be okay. We’ll look after her.”
After a moment, Jesse said, “If I can’t do this for them—”
“No one’s saying for sure that you can’t,” Carpenter said. “No one’s saying for sure that you can, either. Just gotta be one of those things we see about when we get there.”
Tom clapped a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “We’ll find them. We’ll find them and one way or another, Uncle Tom’s gonna get you guys outta here.” He grinned. “I’ll go catch up to Nadia and see if I can smooth things over.”
Jesse grinned back, in spite of himself. “Thanks, man. I appreciate that.”
Tom jogged ahead to catch up to Nadia while Jesse and Carpenter followed behind.
“I hope they’re alive,” he said, more to himself than Carpenter.
“If they are, we’ll find them.”
***
The circle behind them, they headed along the snaking portion of Willoughby that led back toward Main Street. Jesse watched Tom and Nadia as they walked ahead of him and Carpenter. Tom was saying something to her that Jesse couldn’t quite make out, and she was nodding. He gestured with his arms, and her laughter carried lightly back to them on the wind. That twinge of something Jesse couldn’t quite think of as jealousy flickered in his chest.
“I can’t do anything right with her,” he muttered, but hadn’t realized it had been aloud until Carpenter answered.
“You must be doing something right. She feels very strongly about you.”
Jesse frowned. “I guess.”
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