The dog let go. Its jaws continued working something. Its head turned slowly and looked at me.
I backed away.
The animal just stood there, watching me. Its eye catching a beam of light. The room was filled with the stink of us. I backed away further, slowly. There was a column just to the left of me. I wanted to put it between us. I wanted to hide.
I watched his eyes.
My hands clenched the c
The animal turned, its old dark body full of luxurious power, and stalked me.
It crossed the beam of light. I saw the tongue slide along its chops.
Its mouth was bright with blood. I saw the calm assured ness in every move.
When the easy trot began, I turned and ran.
It was ludicrous, impossible.
Just as impossible not to try.
I ran for the column.
He caught me high on the calf and I went down. The pitchfork tumbled from my hands. I felt the fangs go through me almost painlessly, like razors through soft butter. There was a moment of shrieking terror.
Then my head slammed hard against damp, slimy rock. I saw something move far away in front of me, against the farthest wall.
I heard laughter. Female laughter.
It was not Casey's. It was old and clogged and choking.
And then I felt nothing at all.
^^^^^^^^Am . m
When I woke, the room was running red with blood.
I lay in a small pool of it. It had run down the side of my head from just above my left ear. It was caked over my eyelids, in my lashes. My vision was a dull red too. That seemed to mean I still had some blood left inside me. That was nice.
The red was flecked with yellow. Starburst. Tiny explosions.
Something huge and awful was gnawing at my leg. I looked down at it.
It seemed to contain its own cruel, throbbing heartbeat. A match for the one in my head. I had three heartbeats. Undisputably I was alive then. I had no right to be.
The leg looked wet and horrible.
Thank god for Steven's flashlight, I thought.
I looked around. No black shapes beside me. None anywhere that I could see.
I looked where I thought Steven's body should be. It wasn't there anymore. For a moment I hoped I'd imagined the entire thing. But no.
I looked for Casey. I was disoriented now. I knew she'd been up against one of the columns. Somewhere over there. She ought to have had her back to me. I couldn't see her.
I tried to stand up. It was still too painful and I was much too dizzy. I groaned. It didn't seem to sound as though it came from me.
I settled for pushing myself up. Hands to the floor, head dangling. It hurt less that way.
"Clan?"
A tiny voice, coming from a darkened alcove behind me. to turn around.
"Clan?"
I heard tears and misery. It was her voice, but changed somehow. I could almost smell the tears, their salt humidity. I got out the name, a whisper.
"Casey."
It made me feel much better. We were both alive in there.
"You all right, Case?"
She shuffled out of the shadows, her face very pale. The naked right arm hung at her side like a dead thing. With an effort I turned to her. She stumbled to her knees in front of me.
"It... it hurt me." Sobbing. No sound. Just the involuntary shuddering of her body.
My leg howled as I turned on it further, reaching out to her.
"Hurt me bad."
"I know. It's all right, Case. It's all right."
It wasn't though. I held her and looked over her shoulder for the pitchfork. It was there just beyond us, tines curved upward.
She'd never felt so good to me.
"I did this," she said. "I did this to you."
"No."
It was useless to lie.
"I saw Steven ..."
She broke. Her body trembled. She was cold to the touch, and I could feel the hard, bunched-up muscles beneath her clothing.
When the tears were under control again she sat pressed to me tightly, face gleaming. She looked up at me. The fathomless blue eyes were wide and liquid. They reminded me of that other night not long ago. I knew she was mourning Steven. There was no help for it. I seemed to see down into the suddenly grown-up heart of her. I saw fear and compassion, and great hurt.
"You found me."
"We did."
It all came pouring out then, how she'd sat in that first passageway waiting for me, ready to turn her flashlight beam to my
it found her and took her down by the shoulder, a powerful, brutal black shadow in the midst of shadows.
"I couldn't even scream for you," she said. "I wanted to. God knows I wanted to. But all I could do was fight. All I could do was push at him and try ... try to ... and then soon I couldn't even do that anymore. I gave up, I guess, and he started ... dragging me...
along... and all I could do was lie there and stare at him weak as a baby. And then I felt something hot, hot and red I ike it was throughout my whole body, and I guess I passed out then. All I remember after that is something like pressure waking me, pressure in my shoulder. And there he was, snapping at me, just inches from my face .. . snapping. That sound!"
"Where is it now?" I asked her. "Did you see?"
"They... took him ... through there."
She pointed toward the far wall. There was another opening
4.|_
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"I think that's where it opens to the sea. When I was lying there, I could smell it."
"They?"
I remembered the cold hoarse laughter.
"Is it Mary, Case?"
"It's both of them. At least I think it is. I've been ... in and out a lot. But there's a woman, and there's a man. Who else could it be?"
"Ben and Mary Crouch. Jesus."
"They're horrible, Clan. And that thing. I saw Steven. It picked him up and dragged him ... like a doll. And parts of him ... parts of him were trailing..."
"Don't."
"... were spilling out of him, trailing along the floor..."
"Stop it, Case!"
She looked at me. It was horror and not loss of blood that had bled her white. In her eyes was a surfeit of horror.
The death freak in her was dead and I'd never miss it. Instead there was sadness now and a grim responsibility-to me, to what Steven had tried to do for her, to herself. I saw that as I watched her
She tried to smile. For a brave second she succeeded. And I could have cried for the joy of it. Because the bravado was gone. I saw the courage suddenly flare up in her again and it was pure and undiluted, the very best of her, and in that moment she handed it to me.
"Where's Kim?"
"The police. She took the car."
She nodded. "Can you walk?"
"I think so."
"Try." She stood up, and I got on my hands and knees and then reached for her good shoulder. I hauled myself up. I put some weight on the leg. From knee to ankle something stretched and screamed at me. But it held. "Okay," I said.
I reached for the pitchfork and the pain raced up my leg and right up through the shoulders. I damn near fainted. I was still making mistakes. She put out her hand to steady me. In a moment the pain was down to something bearable. She handed me the pitchfork.
One-handed.
"Wonder why they left it?
"I think your friend Rafferty was right," she said. "I think they're stupid. They don't count on much from us. Not wounded."
"You think that makes them stupid?"
"Yes, I do."
I was almost able to smile.
"That shoulder looks bad."
It wasn't just the shoulder. The upper arm too was mauled and
"I can't feel much. I think he did something to the nerves. But I can move it, Clan."
"Don't try. Let's just get out of here." I listened. "All three of them went through there?"
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pull herself together.
She was finished with the past. I looke her eyes and tried to pour out hope to her through mine, a hope I barely felt, a strength I could only command by forgetting where we were and how we came to be there.
So that suddenly I was the cynic. Not her.
-I dor where he is." She frowned and shook her head. "I think I remember I think he went back toward the house. I'm not sure."
"Think. It's important."
"Oh god."
"Come on, Case."
"Okay. Yes. All right. I remember ashadow. Movement. Yes. He's back there, Clan."
"Shit. Checking to see if there are more of us, probably. That means we're screwed either way."
"Great. Wonderful. Okay, let's work this through. It'sa long way back there, and a lot of it's narrow tunnel. We'd have Ben ahead of us for sure. And if they come back looking for us, we'd have Mary and that thing behind us too. With no room to turn around, maybe. I can't say I like that much."
"But the dog, Clan."
"We don't know what the hell's in that direction, except the sea is there somewhere...."
"Pretty close, I think."
"And Mary and the dog are there too, somewhere. What do you like?"
"Clan?"
"What."
She hesitated. "I was about to say I loved you. But what if I'm just grateful? Very grateful."
"I'll take it. Either way."
"You will, won't you."
"Yes."
She moved quietly to the flashlight and picked it up and then returned to me. She looked at me a moment.
"It's love," she said. "It always was, I think."
"I know. For me too, Case."
We stood there, not even touching.
What a terrible time to find out how good life can be, I thought. And how good to find out anyway.
We let the moment plant its seed deep, knowing there might never be a harvest. Her smile was a little rueful, but mostly it was glad. She came slowly, gently into my arms.
"I never want to see that dog again," she said, "but I'll take what we don't know over what we do."
"Same old Casey."
I held her close and then released her. There was almost a pain, a physical pain, at the parting.
I took the flashlight from her and located Steven's axe handle in the beam. Without a word she picked it up. Then we turned and touched hands and slowly we moved on.
We had not been the first to come through there.
They lay waiting for us in the passageway. A pair of human skeletons, rags falling away to scraps over cracked broken bones, lying in the dark.
Whether the dog had killed them or had only gotten them after death we couldn't tell. But it was easy to see where the bones had been scraped and gnawed. On one of them the legs had been separated from the torso and dragged a few feet away. The shinbone on the left leg was gnawed clear through. It was splintered like a piece of green wood. The skulls bore teeth marks too.
I'm told the brain is a choice morsel.
So Ben and Mary had finally yielded-up their secrets, some of them.
Fled with a pet or two. One of whom had grown very big and very old and had tasted human flesh.
Fled through a hole in the wall. Used it, probably, to gather supplies now and then. And when it was sealed up, cut it open again.
They had lived like animals here. It was easy to imagine a life of scrounging, gathering, hiding. Scavenging the beaches. At night perhaps, the ghost crabs scurrying sideways underfoot, pale as wax in the light of the moon. A captured gull's nest. Hidden traps along the shoreline. A stray cat. A stray dog. And always, hiding. The world outside the proven implacable enemy. Their entire army a pair of black, powerful jaws.
The skeletons were somewhat on the small side. One of them in scraps of denim.
Kids, probably. No older than us, and maybe younger.
I wondered if dog or man or woman had killed them. I wondered if they'd fought and lost and died as Steven had. I felt very, very vulnerable.
The corridor was as hort one. Casey was right-from here you could smell the sea. You could hear it too, the faint easy brush strokes of dead low tide. To me it sounded like freedom.
You couldn't help but reconsider going back the way we came, Ben or no.
Not after those corpses. But in the passageway we'd be much more open to attack. Besides, I wasn't wholly sure of the way. I could see us missing a turn, the panic, the fear that they could be in front of us or behind, the impossibility of covering ourselves with only one light between us. They knew these tunnels. We didn't.
No, the way out was a head of us. Past them. Through them.
Close by.
We moved toward the hiss of the sea. Its sound was seductive, dangerous. It could excite you, give you hope. And it could mask other sounds.
Fight the sound, I thought.
I saw a thin stream of moonlight filter through the passage. We were close now. It gave me an idea. A way to increase our odds a little. I pulled her near me and whispered.
"Douse the light."
She understood immediately. We stood silent in the darkness waiting for our eyes to adjust to the dim light. The dog and Mary Crouch would be ahead of us. In moonlight. When we faced them there would be a moment when we'd see them better than they'd see us. And that was our moment.
"Take her," I said.
She turned her head and nodded. We rounded the corner.
The room was small, maybe fifteen feet in diameter, with low ceilings.
Once the tides had come through here. The floor was covered with round stones polished smooth. Directly ahead of us was an opening four feet wide by six feet high. There were three browse-beds arranged perpendicular to the opening. I could picture
them lying there on warm summer nights like this one, the dog's keen nose facing the opening. Outside we could see the blue-black of night and the stars. A clean sudden peace.
Before us, the dog. The nightmare.
Feeding.
A glance at Steven was all I could handle and all I could spare. It could freeze you, slide you into madness. And the dog was busy now, its muzzle ferreting through blood and bone, its senses not quite so alert.
I heard the crack of bone. The muzzle rose in profile and I saw the froth and drool, the mad stare in one blind eye. It dipped back down into the kill.
And there was Mary too.
An old gaunt woman in rags, her thin wiry back hunched and studded with backbone like scars on the trunk of a tree. Her hair a fright wig of dirty matted gray and white. The long musculature of her arms taut as cables.
I heard her voice crooning to the dog as she knelt beside it and stroked the black expanse of its body from neck to haunches, a soft, high, even tone of pleasure and serenity tossed in the gentle wind that brushed through the entrance to the cave, while the dog tore and broke and violated the empty ruins of my friend.
Her hand moved like a claw over its body. Lovingly. And wordlessly she sang to him, urging him on, like a mother to a baby. Like a lover.
I felt my face contorting, my stomach heave. I wrenched my eyes away from her.
I looked at the dog.
And realized there was no clear line of attack.
For targets the pitchfork had only its back and hindquarters. I could do him no real damage there. I needed the breast or muzzle. I felt a moment of frustrated panic. Soon one of them would sense us behind them, and then I'd have my shot. But the dog would be moving. Fast and deadly.
I fought for control.
I felt Casey stiffen beside me. The fear was coming back to her now, rising off me, infecting her. I had only seconds before we'd both be useless for anything but a blind run, and there was no running from that monster. From the woman maybe. But not from him.
To my left was a large round stone. One long step away.
I handed her the pitchfork. I saw a moment of confusion on her face and then I saw she trusted me. She winced as she tucked the axe handle under her wounded arm. We were too close
to them to let it fall. She hefted the pitchfork and braced the handle under her shoulder, pointing it toward him, holding it like a lance. I listened for the sounds its jaws made, the scrape of teeth against bone. I remembered counting in the dark, how hard it was to hear over the internal sounds. It would be the same for them. That would cover me.