by Mike Sirota
Paul, the mouth was saying. Paul.
Something else in the blackness: birdlike mutations with blood-red feathers spread wide, razor talons at the end of thin legs. Large talons, gleaming white mostly, but with dark stains that centuries could not wear off. Terrible faces with malignant coal-black eyes above broad, hooked nebs that clattered obscenely, like nestlings waiting to be fed.
Things from Indian legend that had once cast the shadows of their bloated wings over a terrified world.
Things from nightmares.
Paul thought, This isn’t going to be quick.
Nora stood. She staggered to Jenny Fry’s body and began pulling out the knife. No one reacted immediately to what she was doing. She wrenched it free and stumbled toward the prisoners.
Windsound diminished; so did the Water Babies’ keening, now with an inquisitive undertone. Landry pointed a finger at Nora as she neared the stakes. His mouth formed the words Stop her! Harriet Thorburn—his creature—obeyed.
While the other descendants remained on their knees, Carl Stillwell stood and put himself in the old woman’s path. His hands were raised, as if he were directing traffic on Washo Street. The matriarch glared at him.
“Get out of my way!” she screamed. “You’re as spineless as every Stillwell before you!”
She made an animal noise and ran at him, hands curved like claws. Stillwell cuffed her on the side of the head, driving her into the snow.
The windsound lessened more.
Nora reached Gail first. Trembling, she cut Gail’s wrist along with the rope; not deep, yet painful. Gail winced but did not cry out.
Her hands free, Gail grabbed the knife. Nora looked at Paul.
“Sorry, Mr. Fleming!” she cried. “You was one of the good ones. Sorry for all of it.”
She backed away. “Nora!” Paul shouted.
“Sorry…for them!” She gestured toward the descendants.
Gail freed Paul as Nora turned and faced the dal-yawii, her hands out. Carl Stillwell bent over the fallen matriarch.
“Ms. Thorburn,” said the deputy, “I—”
She kicked him in the genitals then clambered to her feet and charged Nora. Her eyes danced with madness.
“Stupid bitch! You’ll die too now, you—!”
Gail stopped the old woman before she could reach Nora. The knife penetrated Harriet Thorburn’s heart. Eyes bulging, she reached for Gail’s throat. Gail shoved her away; the blade slid out as she fell back. Her bleeding, shriveled body thrashed for a moment, then was still.
The windsound lessened even more.
Some of the descendants staggered to their feet. Others cowered more deeply in the snow. The dal-yawii reared, like trapped beasts. In the confusion that gripped the clearing, Paul hurried to Gail and took the knife from her trembling hand.
“Get to the trees, quick!” he yelled. “I’ll help Mary.”
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”
Together they ran to the other woman, who looked around, trying to understand what was happening.
Nora took another step toward the dal-yawii. “No more Thorburns left!” she cried. “No more Frys. Just the Stillwells and Tylers, McClain…and me! Take us, and let this be over!”
“No-oo!” Jane Tyler shrieked, standing. “You can’t speak for us!”
Nora glanced over her shoulder at Paul. “Sorry,” she said again, and walked toward the spinning black things.
“Nora, don’t!” Paul cried.
One of the flaking abominations spun forward to meet her. Windsound rose, again threatening to shatter their senses. The Water Babies’ cry mocked the helpless humans. Nora was swept up into the black maw, her feet lifted from the snow. Inside, the clusters of heads lamented soundlessly. The talons of the bird-things raked the air, scraping together, then found something that was—at first—less yielding.
They ripped Nora Hardman apart.
It was done with surgical skill. When her body was returned almost reverently to the snow, only small rivulets of blood poured from the stumps where her limbs and head had been. The arms and legs, equally bloodless, were dropped a few seconds later.
Nora’s head was not returned.
“Let’s go!” Gail screamed.
“Mary, can you walk?” Paul asked.
“Sure, yeah,” the woman gasped, trying to stand. “Just help me—”
She toppled, nearly dragging them down with her. They held her more firmly and tried to lift her up.
The dal-yawii met and came toward them.
Carl Stillwell had crept through the snow to Jenny’s side. Now he ran across the snow, putting himself between the dal-yawii and those who had been prisoners.
“Not them, no,” he said calmly to the nightmare creatures. “You’re gettin’ your due.”
The dal-yawii hesitated.
“Carl!” his father cried.
The deputy glanced at the others. They were standing. “Pa, Uncle Roy, don’t fight it no more,” he said, but it was doubtful anyone heard him.
He ran at the horrors and threw himself into the first one.
This time the bird-claws tore at him with fury, abandoning the earlier precision. His screams penetrated even the windsound as blood and pieces of flesh and darker bits of organs erupted from the black orifice, staining the snow, spattering Paul and the women.
They saw Carl’s large torso strike the snow. A part of one leg remained. So did most of his head—although without a face.
Death aroused the dal-yawii. Two of them twisted around the bonfire, which had grown blindingly bright. The third reared above Landry, imitating the way its servant stood rigidly, his eyes closed, still chanting.
Paul felt the words again: See, mushege. See the dal-yawii collect an old debt.
The dal-yawii snaked through the clearing in the darkness of their own shadows. Not caring anymore, Jake Stillwell dropped to one knee and waited to follow his son into oblivion.
He didn’t wait long.
The Water Babies’ cry was more like laughter now. Roy Stillwell tried to run for the trees but never got close. The screams of his death were the longest yet. Strips and gobbets of his ravaged flesh darkened an area five yards across.
“No, not me!” shrieked Jane Tyler to the one that twisted above her. “Take them! Them! Let me live and I’ll keep repaying you! Let me—!”
Her brother encircled her with one massive arm, lifting her like a child’s doll. She kicked and pummeled him; Arthur ignored it. The big man looked at Paul and the women and shook his head.
He carried his sister to the dal-yawii then joined her.
“Leave me here, dammit!” Mary cried to Paul and Gail. “Just go!”
But the dal-yawii surrounded the three, daring them to try. They were safer in the eye of the carnage.
Walter McClain stood alone. Firelight danced in the beads of sweat across his face. He still tried to comprehend the death of the woman he had served for over half a century; he was looking down at her when one of the dal-yawii took him.
But even something from Hell can be glutted by blood and death. It held him for a moment then vomited him out. Walter McClain emerged whole.
No, a trick of the angle from where Paul and the women watched.
Nearly whole.
His right arm was missing, along with part of his face and most of his scalp. The distortion on one side of his mouth left a death’s-head sneer.
McClain stayed on his feet.
Raising his one arm, he waved an unsteady finger at Paul. “Your fault!” he shrieked, staggering toward him. “No trouble before now. I’ll kill you! Kill…you!”
The dal-yawii undulated around Paul and Gail but left McClain alone. Mary, still kneeling in the snow, looked at the things and might have wondered if they were amused by this confrontation.
“Walter, stop!” Paul warned.
McClain covered the remaining yards quickly, grabbing Paul around the neck before he could react. His strength was surp
rising for a man practically dead. Paul tried to push the arm away; Gail grabbed McClain from behind, trying not to look at his ravaged, dripping face.
“Kill you!” he exclaimed in a liquid voice as blood gushed from his throat.
Finally wrestling him free, Gail threw McClain into the snow. He rolled over twice then tried to scramble to his feet.
Two of the dal-yawii fell upon him at the same time. No piece of what they returned to the snow seconds later was too large to be held in one hand.
The last descendant of the Thorburn party was dead.
The dal-yawii reared upright, in formation. They appeared greater in size. Again, maybe an illusion. Behind them, Landry’s hands were raised in triumph.
Windsound diminished, like a train fading beyond the outskirts of a town. The Water Babies’ cry was the same until the dark shapes retreated into Leanna Creek and, one by one, were silenced. Landry backed across the clearing, toward the trees where he’d first appeared, his face blurry in the darkness. Paul and the women heard his voice.
“The dal-yawii are satisfied. The old debt is paid. Now they go back. Remember what you saw here, mushege. Remember it.”
Then the forest took Mr. Black.
The dal-yawii followed their servant but stopped in the center of the clearing. Windsound rose again, briefly, as they twisted into the earth. Their shadows followed; they were three pine trees on the snow, then three broad stains, then three small circles, then . . .
Nothing.
Not a sound in the clearing other than the crackle of the dying fire. But enough signs that the dal-yawii had been there from the death and blood and pieces of bodies left in the snow.
Gail and Paul held each other. Mary managed to stand, and they let her in. There were no words yet; they shared the silence.
Finally Gail said, “There will be a time—soon—when we’ll have to explain this.”
Mary nodded. “We will. Paul, Gail, I…” She hesitated.
“What?” Paul asked.
“The way I acted here…Dammit, I’m sorry!”
“Mary,” Paul said. “You risk your life for us, then apologize…”
They heard a sound, far off. The whirring of a helicopter’s blades, probably near Big House.
“So the cavalry got here,” Paul said.
“Too late.” Mary shook her head. “Looks like we’ll be explaining sooner than we thought.”
The fire was nearly out. Gail shivered uncontrollably. “I want to be away from here!” she exclaimed. “Paul, please, let’s go…now!”
“Wait a minute,” Mary said, indicating the trees. “What about Landry? He’s—”
“Gone,” Paul said. “He’s gone. With…them, maybe. I don’t know. Whatever, we don’t have to worry about him.”
“Not now, anyway,” Mary said, and shuddered.
She started for the creek. Paul held Gail as they followed. “When we’re done with this,” he said, “I mean away from here and everything, I…”
“What?” Gail asked.
“I don’t want you to be alone. I don’t want to be alone! Shit, I don’t know what I mean!”
She tried to smile, couldn’t. “I do,” she said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
They kissed briefly then followed Mary across Leanna Creek. Gail kept her eyes straight ahead; Paul glanced behind him…
…at the remnants of the bodies in the snow, of the descendants who perhaps had found some kind of peace in their final act.
At the shadows of the nightmare they had lived.
Remember what you saw here, mushege. Remember it.
He and Gail followed Mary between the sentinel pines, to the footpath.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Title Page