“Omarian,” Kay corrected.
“What kinds of stories?” Evan asked her between forkfuls of beef stew.
She gave a little-girl shrug. “Funny stories. About old things.”
“Old things, huh? Like what?”
She paused a moment, gathering her thoughts. Mrs. Omartian was such a nice lady; she never talked loud and never got angry, no matter what any of them did, no matter if they swung too hard or laughed too loud or threw rocks. The only time she’d ever seen Mrs. Omartian get upset was when Patty Foster had fallen down and cut her knee real bad. “About an old place,” Laurie told her father. “Funnier even than Oz.”
“I’ll have to meet this Mrs. Omarian sometime,” Evan said, glancing over at Kay. “I’d like to hear these stories.” He smiled at Laurie and continued eating.
When they’d finished dinner, Kay and Evan did the dishes, and then she settled down in the den with a stack of mathematics texts she’d brought home from the George Ross library. Evan played a game of Crazy Eights with Laurie at the kitchen table, but his mind kept drifting from the cards he held; He kept thinking of the darkness outside the walls, and how the moon would be shining now on the windows in that looming house on Cowlington Street.
And when Laurie was sleeping and the lights were out, Evan and Kay made unhurried love in their bedroom, entwining and falling apart and entwining again. Kay breathed steadily beneath him, and clutched at his firm back and shoulders, but even in the ebbing warmth of their afterglow, when on the rim of sleep they both held to each other, Evan’s mind turned and twisted into the corridors of the past.
Eric. The cracking of a high, decayed branch. A falling body, thudding to earth in a golden field. Crows taking to the sky, fleeing death. And Evan, young Evan, who had seen his brother clutching at empty space in a dream but hadn’t recognized it as a premonition, standing over him, seeing the blood trickle from both sides of his mouth, seeing the small chest heave for air.
Eric had made a move to grasp his arm, but Evan had spoken. “I’ll go and get Dad I’ll go and I’ll hurry and get him I’ll hurry!” And then he’d run, stumbling all the way back to the small house on the hill, screaming for his mother and father to help because Eric had been hurt badly, he’d fallen while branch-walking and now he was broken on the ground like some sort of carnival puppet. He’d shown them the way, afraid afraid afraid that he was taking them along the wrong path, afraid he couldn’t find that place again, afraid…
And when they’d gotten there, Eric’s eyes had been glazed and steady, staring at the hot orb of the sun, and the flies were already tasting the blood around the young boy’s mouth, like water from red fountains.
Evan’s mind, tumbling through a labyrinth.
Faces peering through bamboo bars. Evan, dazed and weak, fighting off two black-garbed guards with all the strength left in his body. Gripping a knife and slashing, one of them swinging at his head with a rifle stock, the other falling back with liquid gushing from a torn jugular. The noise of screams and shouts, more guards coming from the jungle-camouflaged compound, the shadows converging toward the bamboo cages. Evan grabbing at the rifle stock, knocking it aside, driving the knife deep through the rib cage up into the lungs. Throwing the Cong aside, turning toward the cages where the crazed men babbled and frothed. Machine gun fire, bullets streaking across the ground between Evan and the cages. Searing flame across his left shoulder as a bullet whined past. And then he’d turned away from the cages and run for the jungle with the guards behind him, firing at his shadow; he’d dived into dense foliage and hidden there for what seemed like hours until the shouting had died away, and then he’d made his way back to where he knew his own camp lay, miles to the south.
He’d reported the capture of his recon patrol, and a rescue mission had been organized. He’d led the men back through the jungle, relying on his memory and his instincts, and the next day they’d found the Cong camp.
But only the dead remained. The others had been executed in their cages, their bodies riddled with bullets, and the stench of death hung there like a dark mist. And already the flies had come in swarms, ancient armies always victorious.
And it was then that Evan had known.
Yes, there was something like the Hand of Evil that crawled over the world, spiderish and dripping with venom. Seeking bodies and souls. Twice Evan had been in its presence and escaped, and twice that hideous thing had taken the lives of others instead of his. But whatever it was waited, and watched, and breathed the breath of night.
Because someday it would come for. him again.
He opened his eyes, pulled Kay to him, and kissed her forehead. She smiled sleepily, and then he let his mind topple over the brink.
Into a terrible, familiar place where the show was about to start, and he could not be late.
For they had something to show him.
A road sign, with light blazing behind it: BETHANY’S SIN. Images of the village: neat houses in rows, spreading elm trees, the Circle. And that house: the museum on Cowlington Street. The opening door; fear thundering in his soul. A sudden whirlwind of dust, a darkening of the light, a coldness that made his bones ache.
And that movement in the dust, a figure draped in shadows coming slowly nearer and nearer, walking soundlessly and with coiled, terrible strength. He wanted to cry out but could not; he wanted to run but could not. And now the figure parting the curtain of dust, reaching through it for him, coming closer, closer, fingers grasping for his throat.
And now Evan could see only the eyes in a dark, hovering face.
Electric blue, crackling with power that threatened to rip him to pieces. Unblinking. Below them, lips parted in the snarl of hate, showing glittering teeth.
Evan screamed, felt the scream tear at his throat like a claw; he fought his way out of it, Kay beside him now saying dear God dear God not again please no no not again no Evannnnnnnn…
“Okay…” he breathed finally, trying to steady his nerves. He felt wet and clammy, cold and alone. “Don’t worry. I’m okay. Really. I am.”
“Dear God in Heaven!” she said, and it was then he realized she had moved away from him and wasn’t touching him anymore.
He looked into her eyes, saw them widened and afraid. He ran a hand over his face and shook his head. “Go back to sleep.”
She stared at him in silence, as if she were staring at someone with a terminal disease: sadness mixed with fear.
“I said go back to sleep,” Evan said, his gaze drilling a hole through to her brain.
She shuddered inwardly from the expression in his eyes. She’d seen something like it before, when he’d awakened and told her there was going to be an accident and they might get hurt, there was going to be a red tractor-trailer truck marked ALLEN LINES that would lose its brakes and veer across a median toward them. But no, this was worse, and it frightened her to the very core of her being. His eyes were hollow and haunted, lit by an internal fire to banish the terrible cold that had crept through his bones.
“Go to sleep,” Evan whispered.
She started to speak, thought better of it, and laid her head back down on the pillow. Through the window she could see the moon, and it seemed to her in that instant that the moon was…grinning.
“My God,” Evan said softly. “Oh, my God.” He settled back, his heart pounding in his chest like a sledge hammer. There was no waiting for sleep; it had passed him by this night, discarding him like a cracked, useless container. He threw aside the sheets and let the air cool the sweat on his body; beside him, Kay stirred, but she neither touched him nor dared to speak.
Those eyes burned in his brain; when he closed his own, he saw them still, orbs of fire somewhere within his forehead.
And now, with this second dream, he knew. And feared the hideous knowledge.
Something in the peaceful village of Bethany’s Sin was stalking him.
Drawing closer.
And as they lay like fearful strangers, June slipped into Jul
y.
III
* * *
JULY
12
* * *
Night on the
King’s Bridge Road
“WE’RE CLOSING UP, HON,” the woman with the bun of bleached-blond hair said.
Neely Ames glanced up at her from behind his glasses and nodded, and she turned away, moving from his table back toward the bar. Light glinted off the amber glass of four empty beer bottles precariously stacked two-on-two before him; another beer bottle, half-drained, lay on the floor beside his chair. He watched the woman—what’d she say her name was? Ginger?—go back behind the bar and start counting money out of the cash register. He strummed a few more chords on the time-worn twelve-string Gibson guitar in his lap, and Ginger looked up, gave him a quick and tentative smile, then continued counting where she’d left off. Vic, the bartender, a burly man with a reddish beard and a gut that preceded him by a foot or so, cleaned beer mugs with a cloth and listened to the younger man play.
They were old songs, but of course neither Ginger nor Vic had ever heard them before because Neely had written them himself. Some of them had lyrics, some didn’t; some were complete, some were fragments; but each one in its own way was special; and each one sprang from a particular event or feeling in his life, something that had burned through his gut and finally made its way out, with much pain and often confusion, through his fingertips, to be voiced by that guitar. He was good at it, and he’d left home in Nebraska years ago to join a group of musicians called the Midnight Ramblers, but nothing had ever really broken for them and eventually they’d gone their separate ways. For some time after that, he’d made a fair amount of money playing in clubs and roadhouses like this one, but he didn’t really know a lot of the new, popular songs, and people seemed to want to drink rather than listen to music, anyway. Most times, he’d play a couple of his tunes for club managers and they’d shrug and say sorry, that kind of guitar music doesn’t sell too good anymore. And of course that was true, but he’d decided a long time ago that he’d play his own music or nothing, and he’d paid for that rather brash vow by a succession of menial jobs like the ones he’d been doing in Bethany’s Sin. It was money in the pocket though, and there was no use complaining.
From time to time, when he sat in a darkened bar with an ashtray full of stubs before him and empty bottles lined up like friends who’ve come and gone, something came to Neely: the memory of a voice, a sight, a taste, an aroma that made his mind slip back. Back through the years, back through lifetimes. He remembered his father, a strapping man with a crew cut and a preference for red cowboy shirts, playing guitar with a band called the Tru-Tones on the country carnival circuit; through him Neely had learned about music and pain. Neely’s father had been an alcoholic, a man who drank at night and screamed at the moon like a wounded dog; his mother, a graceful and intelligent woman who had been a minister’s daughter, became in time both a borderline drinker and a tent revivalist who passed out pamphlets on the saving mercy of Christ. Neely remembered her praying beside her man as he hung his head down in a pool of vomit that smelled of moonshine. But his mother had slipped, too, giving up the almost impossible task of trying to get him on the wagon in favor of crawling through the ruts at his side. Theirs had been true love.
And now Neely sometimes found that drinking helped the creative juices flow: he wasn’t an alcoholic, he wasn’t bound to it, but by God it eased some of those bad memories, and took him through lonely nights, and mostly just helped him forget the day his aunt and uncle had come for him and had his mother and father taken away to one of those white-walled hospitals where everyone’s eyes looked like holes that had been drilled through to the brain. he’d grown up fast, taut and smart with lessons no school could ever teach him. Sometimes when he drank raw whiskey, which wasn’t often, he thought he could see the same vision his father must have seen: that real life started tomorrow, down the road, around the next bend. Real life was waiting ahead.
After a few minutes more, Neely clutched his guitar by the neck and stood up. The beer bottles wavered, making the light dance a jig. Ginger smiled at him again, and Neely wondered what would happen if he asked her to go home with him. She was probably ten years older than he, but what the hell? No, no. Shouldn’t do that. Maybe she was the bartender’s wife; he’d seen Vic put his arm around her waist a couple of times that night. He watched her for a moment more and then moved toward the door.
“Hey,” Vic said, “you okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“You got a long way to drive?”
“Bethany’s Sin,” Neely said. “I work over there.” His tongue felt a little swollen, but other than that, he felt fine.
“Well,” Vic said, “you take it easy on the way home.”
“Thanks. I will.”
“Good night,” Ginger said. “I like the way you play that guitar.”
Neely smiled at her and then was through the door, walking in the glow of the red neon sign that said COCK’S CROW; above it was a rooster, outlined in neon, crowing toward the sky. Only his truck and a Chevrolet station wagon remained in the red-neon-licked gravel parking lot. He slipped into the truck, eased his guitar onto the seat next to him, started the engine, and turned toward Bethany’s Sin. As he drove, he glanced at his wristwatch, saw it was only a few minutes before two. Breathing the night air as it swept in through the truck’s open windows, he was feeling pleasantly light-headed; he didn’t want to think about six o’clock when Wysinger would probably be calling him with some work to do. The King’s Bridge Road stretched out before his headlights, a smooth asphalt ribbon that was one of the better-kept roads in the area surrounding the village; it led him past the darkened Westbury Mall and intersected with 219 for the last few miles into Bethany’s Sin. At this time of the morning there were no other cars, and the night ran before the truck’s lights.
He found himself thinking about that yard he’d cut today. Whoever lived there was gone; there was no doubt about it. All the clothes gone from the closets, nothing left but the furniture. That bothered him: why cut the lawn of an abandoned house? In the last couple of weeks he’d seen two other houses like that one, both dark and silent, one over on Blair Street and the other on Ashaway. Of course it was summer, vacation time for those who could afford it. After all, there’d still been names on the mailboxes. The locals were fanatics for keeping their village looking immaculate, and of course there was nothing wrong with that, but Neely wondered if a great deal of it wasn’t just to impress those who happened to drive through the village. Or maybe to entice more families into Bethany’s Sin. Whatever. It wasn’t his concern anyway.
His ears were filled with the insect songs of the forest. There was a bend in the road coming up ahead, and Neely decreased his speed—no need to run off into a gully and get in trouble with the troopers. They’d sure as hell smell the beer on him because he could smell it himself. Hell, I’m okay, he told himself. I’m doing damned fine.
And as if to emphasize that point, he hit the accelerator a fraction as he rounded the wooded bend.
Too late he realized that something was in the road.
The glare of headlights off something dark and moving. Several figures. Black things. Animals. He heard a low-pitched rumble and realized only then that they were horses; they scattered before the truck, hooves flashing, and then he was through them and around another bend. He glanced quickly into the rearview mirror, tapping the brakes. Horses? What the hell were horses doing out here in the middle of the night? He hadn’t been able to take a good look at the riders because he’d gone through them so fast, but he’d had the split-second impression of torsos and head turning swiftly toward him. The headlights had gleamed sharply off eyes that had been widened and unblinking and…yes, by God, as blue as raw electricity passing through power cables. He shivered suddenly, staring into the mirror, the truck slowing, slowing, slowing…
Stopping.
Night birds cried off to the left
. Crickets shrilled with their buzz-saw voices and then died away. Beyond the range of his headlights the road was so dark as to be nonexistent. He watched the rearview mirror, saw the splay of red from the truck’s taillights.
And that was when he saw them coming.
Shadows, approaching through the red. Sweat glistening off the flanks of those huge, muscle-corded horses. The riders bent forward slightly, cleaving the wind. Something catching moonlight, gleaming. Something metallic.
His hands tightened involuntarily around the wheel. He plunged his foot down on the accelerator.
The truck coughed, backfired, began to pick up speed. Now he couldn’t see them following but he knew they were there, and though he didn’t know how many or what they were, he had no thought now but to get back to Bethany’s Sin. The truck’s aged engine rattled and groaned like an old, rheumatic man; the wind roared in through the windows, tangling his hair. In another moment he thought he could hear the wild, hoarse breathing of those horses bearing down behind him. He glanced in the rearview mirror, saw nothing; looked over his shoulder, saw nothing. But they were there; he knew it. Coming closer. And closer. The engine racketed, and he gritted his teeth and mentally urged it on. With one hand on the wheel he leaned over, rolled up the far window. Then the window beside him. He could smell his own sweat. Something screamed just behind him: a wild, high cry that made his heart thunder with fear, and in that second he knew that something out on this shadowed road was alive and dripping with a terrible, vibrating hate. He could feel the tendrils of it reaching for him like so many black fingers gripping at his throat. On both sides of the road the tangled silhouette of the forest swept past, dark against dark. The speedometer needle quivered between forty-five and fifty. And again Neely heard that cry, apparently from just behind his head; he flinched from the eerie, piercing whine of it. The noise seemed to be driven through him like icy steel. A hand clutched at his stomach and he hovered on the brink of nausea. He felt like screaming and laughing at the same time, laughing wildly and hysterically until his voice cracked, because he knew this had to be the DTs or beer jitters or something like that; it couldn’t be real, no, it couldn’t actually be happening. He’d scared a group of deer crossing the road, that was it, and then his imagination had taken over. Glance in the mirror. Nothing back there. Everything dark. Nothing. Deer. Long gone by now, all scared as shitless as he’d been. You’re drunk, by God.