The record ended, scraping along blank grooves now, rasping like claws on slate, but Mike continued to sit there, his face close to Memo's, his hand firm on hers.
The bats seemed a laughable thing, distant and already half-forgotten, as Dale Stewart sat next to his brother in Bandstand Park and watched The Time Machine. Dale had heard this might be the movie-Mr. Ashley-Montague often brought films that closed a few days before in the theater he owned in Peoria-and Dale had been dying to see the movie since he'd read the Classic Comic the year before.
A breeze rustled the trees in the park as Rod Taylor saved Yvette Mimieux from drowning in the stream while apathetic Eloi watched without expression. Lawrence sat on his knees-as he always did when he got excited-and chewed on the last of his popcorn, occasionally taking a sip from the bottle of Dr Pepper they had bought in the Parkside Cafe. Lawrence's eyes were very wide as he watched Rod Taylor descend into the underground world of the Morlocks. He edged closer to his older brother.
"It's all right," whispered Dale, "They're afraid of light and the guy has matches."
On the screen, the Morlocks' eyes burned yellowly like the fireflies in the bushes on the south end of the park. Rod Taylor lit a match and the monsters backed away, shielding their eyes with their blue forearms. The leaves continued to rustle and Dale looked up, noticing that the stars had been occluded by clouds. He hoped that the Free Show wasn't going to be rained out.
Mr. Ashley-Montague brought two extension speakers in addition to the one built into the portable projector, but the sound was still tinnier than it would have been in a real theater. Now the shouts of Rod Taylor and the cries of the enraged Morlocks blended with the rustling of leaves in the rising wind and the leathery flap of wings as dark shapes darted through the trees above the park.
Lawrence shifted closer, getting grass stain on his Levi's and forgetting to munch his popcorn. He'd pulled off his ballcap and, as he often did when he was nervous, was chewing on the bill of it.
"It's OK," whispered Dale, gently tapping his little brother on the shoulder with his fist. "He gets Weena out of the caves."
The colored images continued to dance as the wind rose.
Duane was in the kitchen having a late snack when he heard the truck turn into the drive.
Normally, in the basement with his radio on, he wouldn't have heard the truck, but the screen door was open, the windows were up, and it was quiet except for the incessant summer sounds of crickets, tree frogs out near the pond, and the occasional bang of the metal self-feeding door on the hog trough.
The Old Man's home early, he thought and realized in the same instant that the engine noise hadn't been right. This was a bigger truck… or at least a bigger engine.
Duane crouched and peered out the screen. In a few weeks, the rising corn would obscure even this view of the drive to the house, but now he could still see the last hundred feet or so of the lane. No pickup appeared. The expected crunch of gravel was not audible.
Duane frowned, took a bite of liverwurst, and went out through the screen door, stepping out across the turnaround between the house and barn for a clear view down the drive. It happened that people turned around in their lane, but not often. And the sound had definitely been a truck engine; Uncle Art refused to drive pickups-said there was enough curse to living in the country without being stuck in the ugliest form of locomotion ever designed by Detroit-and the engine Duane had heard hadn't been Uncle Art's Cadillac.
Duane stood out in the warm darkness, eating his sandwich and looking down the lane. The sky was dark, a featureless ceiling of clouds, and the fields of low corn were silent in that silken hush before a storm. Fireflies winked along the ditches and against the blackness of the low crab-apple trees beside the driveway to County Six.
There was a large truck with its headlights off standing motionless near the entrance to the drive a hundred yards away. Duane could see no details, but the size of the thing formed a dark wedge where a lighter gap should be.
Duane paused a few seconds, finishing his sandwich and trying to decide if he knew anyone with a truck that size who would be visiting on a Saturday night. He didn't.
Somebody bringing the Old Man home drunk? It had happened before. But not this early.
Far to the south, there was a flicker of lightning, too far away for thunder to be heard. The brief illumination had not shown Duane any details of the truck, only that the dark shape was still there.
Something brushed against Duane's thigh.
"Shhh, Wittgenstein," he whispered, dropping to one knee and putting an arm around the old collie's neck. The dog was trembling and making a sound in its throat that was not quite a growl. "Shhh," whispered Duane, patting the dog's thin head, holding it. The shaking did not stop.
If they left the truck, they could be almost here by now, thought Duane. And then he thought, Who'?
"Come on, Witt," he said softly. Leading the collie by the collar, he went back into the house, turned off all of the lights, went into the junk-strewn room the Old Man called his study, found the key in the desk, went into the dining room, and unlocked the gun cabinet. He hesitated only a second before leaving the over-and-under, the.30-06, and the 12-gauge in their places and taking out the 16-gauge pump.
In the kitchen, Wittgenstein whined. His claws scrabbled on linoleum.
"Shhh, Witt," Duane said softly. "It's OK, boy." He checked the breech to make sure it was clear, pumped it, checked it again, held it up to check the empty magazine against the pale light coming through the curtains, and opened the lower drawer. The shells were there in their yellow box, and Duane crouched next to the dining room table as he loaded five of them and put three more in the pocket of his flannel shirt.
Wittgenstein barked. Duane left him in the kitchen, loosened the window screen in the dining room, stepped out into the darkness of the side yard, and moved slowly around the house.
The glow from the pole light illuminated the turnaround and the first ten yards of driveway. Duane crouched and waited. He realized that his heart was beating faster than usual and he took deep, slow breaths until it slowed to normal.
The crickets and other insect noises had stopped. The thousands of stalks of corn did not stir, the air was absolutely still, and lightning flickered to the south again. This time the thunder was audible, coming fifteen seconds later.
Duane waited, breathing shallowly through his mouth, his thumb on the safety. The shotgun smelled of oil. Wittgenstein had quit barking, but Duane could hear the nails on linoleum as the collie went from closed door to closed door in the kitchen.
Duane waited.
It was at least five minutes later that the truck engine ground, started, and the gravel crunched.
Duane moved quickly to the edge of the cornfield, stayed low, and went down the first row to where he could see the driveway.
Still no lights. The truck backed onto County Six, paused a moment, and then went south-toward the cemetery, the Black Tree Tavern, and Elm Haven.
Duane lifted his head from the corn and watched, but he saw no taillights as the sound receded down County Six. He dropped back into the corn and crouched there, breathing softly, keeping the 16-gauge across his knees and listening.
Twenty minutes later, the first drops of rain began to fall. Duane gave it another three or four minutes and then he came out of the corn, staying close to the fields so as not to be silhouetted against the sky, made a complete circuit of the house and barn-the sparrows in the barn were silent, the pigs in the side lot grunting and rooting normally-and went in through the kitchen door.
Wittgenstein wagged his tail like a puppy, peering myopi-cally at Duane carrying the shotgun and going from boy to door, door to boy.
"Uh-uh," said Duane, ejecting the shells one by one and lining them up on the checkered tablecloth of the kitchen table,"we're not going hunting tonight, dimwit. But you are going to get a special meal… and then you're going to spend the night downstairs with me tonight." Duane went
to the cupboard and Witt's tail beat a faster tattoo against the linoleum.
Outside, the rain had let up after the initial flurry, but wind rustled the corn and whipped at the crab-apple trees.
Jim Harlen found that it wasn't such easy climbing after all. Especially not with the wind coming up, Wowing dust from the gravelled playground and school parking lot. Harlen paused halfway up the drainpipe to rub grit out of his eyes.
Well, at least the wind banging things around would cover any sound he might make shinny ing up this stupid pipe.
Harlen was between the first and second floors, already almost twenty feet above the dumpster, before he realized just how stupid a move this was. What was he going to do if Van Syke or Roon or somebody came along? Probably Barney. Harlen tried to imagine what his mother would say when she came home from her date and found her only son down at J. P. Congden's detention shed, awaiting transport to the Oak Hill jail.
Harlen smiled slightly. That would get his mother's attention. He shinnied up the last few feet of drainpipe, found the second-story ledge with his right knee, and rested there, his cheek against brick. The wind tugged at his t-shirt. Ahead of him, he could see light shining up through elm leaves from the streetlight at the corner of School Street and Third Avenue. He was very high.
Harlen wasn't afraid of heights. He'd beaten O'Rourke and Stewart and all the rest of them when they were climbing the big oak tree behind Congden's garden last fall. He'd climbed so high, in fact, that the other guys had shouted at him to come down, but he'd insisted on stepping up one last branch… a branch so thin it didn't seem solid enough to hold a pigeon without breaking… and peering out from the top of the oak to the ocean of treetops that was Elm Haven. This was kid's stuff compared to that.
But Harlen glanced down and wished he hadn't. Except for the drainpipe and corner molding, there was nothing between him and the metal dumpster and concrete sidewalk twenty-five feet down.
He closed his eyes, concentrated on finding his balance on the narrow ledge, and opened them to look up at the window.
It wasn't two feet away… it was more like four. He'd have to let go of the goddamned pipe to get over to it.
And the glow was gone. He was almost sure. Harlen had this sudden image of Old Double-Butt coming around the corner of the school, looking up at him in the dark, and shouting, "Jim Harlen! You get down here at once!"
And then what? Was she going to flunk him out of the sixth grade he'd just graduated from? Revoke his summer?
Harlen smiled, took a breath, put all his weight on his knees, and inched along the ledge, spread-eagled against the brick wall, nothing but friction and four inches of ledge holding him up.
His right hand found the window ledge, and his fingers grasped the weird molding below the sill. He was steady. He was OK.
Harlen stayed in that position for a moment, head bowed, cheek against brick. All he had to do was lift his head to look in the room.
At that second, part of his mind told him not to. Leave it alone. Go to the Free Show. Get home before Mom gets back.
The wind rustled leaves below him and tossed more grit in his eyes. Harlen glanced back at the drainpipe. No problem getting back; shinnying down would be a lot easier than getting up. Harlen thought of Gerry Daysinger or one of the other guys calling him a pussy.
They don't have to know I was up here.
Then why'd you climb up here, asshole?
Harlen thought of telling O'Rourke and the others-of embroidering the story a little bit if it was just Old Double-Butt picking up her goddamned favorite chalk or something. He imagined the shock those pansies would show when he told them about his climb, about seeing Old Double-Butt and Roon doing it on her desk, right there in the classroom…
Harlen lifted his head and peered in the window.
Mrs. Doubbet was not at her desk at the far end of the room, but was sitting at the small worktable at this end of the classroom-not three feet from Harlen. There were no lights on, but a pale phosphorescence filled the room with the sick light of rotting wood in a dark forest.
Mrs. Doubbet was not alone. The phosphorescence emanated from the shape next to her. This figure also sat at the small table, less than an arm's length from where Harlen pressed his face to the glass. He recognized her at once.
Mrs. Duggan, Mrs. Doubbet's ex-teaching partner, had always been thin. During the months when the cancer had ravaged her until she quit teaching just before Christmas, she had grown even thinner. Harlen remembered how her arms had seemed to be little more than bones wrapped in speckled flesh. No one in the class had seen Mrs. Duggan during the last weeks before her death in February-or at the funeral-but Sandy Whittaker's mom had visited her at home and in the funeral home, and had told Sandy that the old lady had wasted away to nothing but skin and bones at the end.
Harlen recognized her at once.
He glanced once at Old Double-Butt-she was bent forward, smiling broadly, totally intent on her partner at the table-and then his gaze returned to Mrs. Duggan.
Sandy had said that Mrs. Duggan had been buried in her finest silk dress-the green one she had worn to the Christmas party on her last day of teaching. She was wearing the dress now. It had rotted through in several places, and the phosphorescence shone through.
The old lady's hair was still carefully combed back, held in place by tortoiseshell barrettes Harlen had noticed in class, but much of it had come out in patches, and areas of bare scalp glowed whitely. There were holes in the scalp, just as there had been holes in the silk dress.
From three feet away, Harlen could see Mrs. Duggan's hand on the table-the long fingers, the loose gold ring, the soft gleam of bone.
Mrs. Doubbet leaned closer to the corpse of her friend and said something. She looked puzzled, then glanced toward the window where Harlen crouched, his knees pressed against the ledge.
He realized in that last instant that he must be visible-that the glow would illuminate his face against the pane as easily as it illuminated the exposed tendons gleaming like spaghetti strands through the cracks in Mrs. Duggan's wrist, as easily as it outlined the dark colonies of mold under the translucent flesh. What was left of the flesh.
From the corner of his eye, Harlen realized that Old Double-Butt had turned to look at him, but he did not avert his gaze from the back of Mrs. Duggan's neck as the parchment-skin there folded and vertebrae visibly shifted like white stones moving beneath rotted cloth.
Mrs. Duggan turned and looked at him. From two feet away, the phosphorescent glare burned through the dark pool of deliquescence where her left eye had been. Teeth gleamed in a lipless smile as she leaned over as if to give Harlen a kiss through the windowpane. No breath fogged the glass.
Harlen stood and turned to run, not remembering that he was on a thin ledge twenty-five feet above stone and concrete. He would have run even if he had remembered.
He did not cry out as he fell.
EIGHT
Mike loved the ritual of the Mass. On this Sunday-as on all Sundays except special holy days-he helped Father Cavanaugh serve the regular seven-thirty Mass and then stayed to be head altar boy for the ten o'clock High Mass. The earlier service was the crowded one, of course, since most of the Catholics around Elm Haven put themselves through the extra half-hour of High Mass only when they had to.
Mike always kept a pair of brown oxfords in the room that Father Cavanaugh called the chancel; old Father Harrison hadn't minded his altar boys' tennis shoes showing under the surplice, but Father C. said that helping to prepare the Eucharist demanded that more respect be shown. Mike's dad had grumbled at the expense. Mike had never had a new pair of dress shoes before-his dad said that it was hard enough keeping the four girls in clothes-but in the end, his father couldn't argue with showing respect to God. Mike wore the oxfords no place except St. Malachy's, and then only when he was serving Mass.
Mike loved every aspect of the church service, and loved it more the more he did it. When he'd started as an altar boy
almost four years earlier, Father Harrison had demanded little from the few boys willing to serve except that they show up on time. Like the others, Mike had walked through the motions and mumbled the Latin responses, not really paying attention to the translations on the laminated card on the step where he knelt, not really thinking about the miracle that was on the verge of occurring when he carried the small bottles of wine and water to the priest in the preparation for Communion. It had been a duty he agreed to because he was Catholic and this is what a good Catholic boy did… although the other Catholic boys around Elm Haven seemed to have excuses for not doing it.
But then, a little over a year ago, Father Harrison had retired-or had been retired; the old priest had been showing signs of age and alcoholism and his sermons were growing increasingly bizarre-and Father Cavanaugh's arrival had changed everything for Mike.
Father C. was, in many ways, an exact opposite of Father H., despite the fact that both men were priests. Father Harrison had been old and Irish, gray-haired and rosy-cheeked, ambling in his thinking, speech, and attitudes. The Mass seemed to have been a ritual that Father H. had performed so many times, with so few in attendance, that it appeared to have no more special significance to him than shaving would have. Father Harrison had really lived for the visitations and dinners where he was a guest-even a visitation to the sick or dying became an excuse for the old priest to sit, talk, have coffee, tell stories, and recall local people who were long dead. Mike had accompanied Father H. on some of these visitations -frequently the ill took Communion and Father H. thought that having an altar boy along added some sense of ceremony to the simple ritual. Mike was always bored out of his mind during these visits.
Father Cavanaugh, on the other hand, was young, dark-haired-Mike knew that the priest shaved twice a day and still had a five-o'-clock shadow showing through his dark skin-and incredibly intense. Father C. cared about the Mass-he called it Christ's invitation for us to join Him at the Last Supper-and he made the altar boys care. Or at least the ones who continued to serve.