Darkness

  24

  It was a hot morning, and Kelly had momentarily wondered whether to wait until this afternoon, when Michael was done working, to go talk to him. But the image of her grandfather’s sepulchral face loomed vividly in her mind. And so, after breakfast, she’d left the house for Phil Stubbs’s place. She’d passed through the village, and seen Buddy Hawkins and some of his friends clustered on the sidewalk in front of Arlette’s café. She’d sensed them watching her, even imagined she heard them whispering among themselves, but had ignored them. Resisting the impulse to cross the street, she’d simply walked past, saying nothing.

  As she left the village behind and started along the road through the marshlands, with the sun beating down and the humidity closing around her like a suffocating shroud, Kelly found herself wishing she’d stayed within the air-conditioned walls of her grandfather’s house. But then she walked through the open gates of the swamp tour’s headquarters and paused for a moment, enjoying the relative cool beneath the spreading trees. In the shade of the pines and cypress, she felt better, and looked around, searching for Michael. She spotted him standing by the alligator pit, surrounded by a cluster of tourists. She moved to join the group, watching as Michael tossed a dead chicken into the enclosure.

  The ’gators, already alert, closed in on the chicken, one of them snatching it out of the air even before it landed. As its great jaws snapped closed on the bird, crushing it instantly into a shapeless pulp, Kelly remembered the ’gator that had come so close to killing her in the swamp, and felt her skin crawl. As Michael tossed two more chickens to the waiting reptiles, she turned away, toward the nutria cages. A moment later Michael was beside her.

  “How come you didn’t call me?” he asked. “If I’d known you were coming out here, I’d have picked you up with the bike.”

  Kelly glanced furtively around before she spoke, and dropped her voice though no one was nearby. “It’s my grandfather,” she said, her voice quavering. “He—Michael, he’s one of them!”

  Michael stared at her. “Are you sure?”

  Kelly nodded. “I was up all night long. He—He kept calling Dr. Phillips, and then he left real early this morning—” She stopped to steady herself, then continued. “I saw him, Michael. He’s old. I mean, really old—like he was about to die.” She shuddered, but went on. “He—He looked like the man we see in the mirror,” she finished.

  “Did he know you saw him?” Michael asked.

  Kelly shook her head. “And I didn’t tell Mom and Dad, either.” She looked at Michael uncertainly. “What are we going to do?”

  Before Michael could reply, Phil Stubbs stepped out of his office, his voice booming through the clearing. “Michael?” he called out. Spotting Michael and Kelly, he walked quickly over to them. “Bobby Carter just called in sick. You’re going to take a tour out.”

  Michael’s mouth dropped open. “Me? But I’ve never done it before.”

  Stubbs shrugged. “You know the swamp. All you have to do is take ’em out for a couple of hours, and tell ’em what’s there.” Then he smiled broadly. “And why don’t you take your girlfriend along, too? But keep your mind on what you’re doing,” he added. “I don’t need you losing track of time again, and taking these folks out in the middle of nowhere all day long. Two hours, no more! Got that?”

  Michael nodded, then, with Kelly beside him, he headed down to the dock where the tour boats were moored. Two of them had already departed, but one more was still tied up, a long, narrow boat with two long benches, back to back, running down its center. Across the stern was another bench, and at the front of the boat was the helmsman’s seat and the public address system. Michael surveyed the group that stood at the head of the dock, waiting for him. There were about fifteen women, in their twenties and early thirties, with a flock of children ranging from babies in carriers to ten-year-olds.

  “Jeez,” he whispered to Kelly as they approached the women. “This is gonna be awful.” He could already imagine the barrage of questions that would come from the kids, and tried to figure out how he was going to keep any of them from falling overboard.

  After he’d guided them into the boat and gotten them seated, he turned on the P.A. system and picked up the microphone. A high-pitched scream rose from the speakers and he quickly turned down the volume, then experimentally tapped the mike. Satisfied, he began to speak.

  “Welcome to Phil Stubbs’s world-famous swamp tour,” he began. “I’m Michael Sheffield, and I’ll be your guide this morning. Now, one thing I want you to remember is that the swamp is a dangerous place. We have alligators and crocodiles, and all kinds of other things, so it’s important that you keep your hands inside the boat at all times.” He fixed one of the older boys with what he hoped was a severe look. “And don’t lean out, either,” he said. “Those ’gators’ll come right up out of the water and pull you overboard!” The boy’s eyes widened in awe, and Michael saw several others immediately back away from the gunwales of the boat to sit back down on the bench. Winking surreptitiously at Kelly, he moved back to the stem, cast off the mooring line, then returned to the prow and cast off the bow line as well. Putting the transmission in gear, he opened the throttle a little, and the boat slipped away from the dock, moving out into the channel.

  For the next hour Michael cruised slowly through the swamp, telling the tourists how it had been formed and how its ecosystem worked, describing the various trees and slowing the boat to a stop whenever he spotted something interesting.

  As he’d expected, the children asked endless questions, but none of them came up with anything he couldn’t answer, and soon he found himself relaxing, enjoying the tour almost as much as his customers were. He began veering away from the area the boats usually operated in, taking his group into the depths of the swamp, showing them places he’d discovered long ago, that most people rarely saw.

  Coming around the end of one of the islands, they emerged from the gloom of overhanging trees into a marshy grassland, and Michael searched the area with his eyes, looking for a movement in the grasses that would betray the presence of a wild boar. At last he spotted what he was looking for, then began maneuvering the long boat through the narrow channels, his eyes constantly tracking the invisible pig as it pushed its way through the wetland. Finally he cut the engines and whispered into the microphone for everyone to remain silent.

  The voices of the children died away. For nearly five minutes the group sat in the quiet of the wilderness, the only sounds drifting through the morning air the twittering of the thousands of birds that nested among the grasses and reeds.

  At last there was a faint snuffling sound, and Michael pointed ahead. The grasses parted and an immense sow emerged from the foliage, her snout pressed to the ground as she rooted for food.

  Behind her, imitating her movements, were six tiny piglets.

  “Wow,” yelled one of the boys. “Look at that! Wild pigs!”

  Instantly the sow’s ears pricked, her head came up, and she faced the boat. A second later she was gone, her offspring disappearing even faster than she did. “Nice going, Terry,” another of the boys groaned. “Can’t you ever shut up?”

  As the boys began to squabble, Michael restarted the engine and headed back toward tour headquarters. If he didn’t make any more side trips, he should make it right on time. Glancing back at his charges, he found himself grinning as the mothers tried to mediate the argument between the two kids. “What do you think?” he asked Kelly, switching off the mike for a moment. “How am I doing?”

  “This is neat,” Kelly told him. “You’re really good at it.”

  Then he heard a voice from the rear of the boat: “Is it true that people actually live in the swamp?”

  The question came from a woman in the stern, who was holding a small boy, no more than three years old, on her lap, and had another one, even younger, lying in a carrier that sat on the seat next to her. Michael nodded and began telling them about the swamp rats and how they lived. On
e of the older boys waved his hand and began speaking even before Michael had acknowledged him.

  “What about the zombies?” the boy asked.

  Michael frowned uncertainly. “Zombies?” he asked. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  The little boy gazed steadily at him. “My cousin says there’s zombies in this swamp. Dead people. Except they’re not really dead.” As some of the little girls squealed nervously, the boy warmed to his own words. “My cousin says there’s kids out here. Dead kids that go around lookin’ for people to kill. He says they’re like vampires, an’ if they get you, they suck the blood right out of you!”

  “Bobby!” the boy’s mother said. “What a terrible story. I can’t believe Jody told you anything like that!”

  “Well, he did,” Bobby insisted, his eyes fixed on Michael. “Is it true?”

  Michael felt Kelly’s eyes on him. He glanced over at her and saw that her face was pale. For the first time that morning he had no idea what to say. When he tried to speak, his mouth had gone dry.

  Say something, he told himself. Say anything. Tell them it’s just a story.

  But it wasn’t a story, not really. It wasn’t quite the way Bobby was putting it, but—

  And then, as the boat drifted slowly through the narrow channel, barely wide enough here to let it pass, one of the women let out a startled gasp.

  A moment later there was another gasp, and then some of the children started screaming and pointing forward.

  Michael turned.

  Standing on the shore only a few yards away, a man was watching the boat.

  An old man.

  A man whose eyes, sunk deep into their sockets, were barely visible, but from which an evil glow seemed to emanate.

  Kelly, who had turned at the same time as Michael, grasped his arm. He could see recognition on her ashen face. Yet he hadn’t needed to look at Kelly to know who the man was, for he, too, had recognized him the instant he’d seen him.

  The awful sunken greedy eyes.

  Evil eyes, eyes he’d seen before.

  Eyes he’d seen in the face in the mirror.

  The boat was passing the vile figure now, and Michael remained frozen, unable either to speak or to move in the face of the nightmare image that had suddenly become reality.

  In the boat the women and children closest to Carl Anderson shrank away from him, as if they, too, felt the horror that was overcoming Michael.

  And then, as the boat was about to move away from him, Carl reached out, his gnarled fingers curling like? the talons of a carnivorous bird, and snatched up the baby that lay in its carrier on the stern seat.

  It happened so quickly that for a moment Michael wasn’t sure it had happened at all.

  The old man was gone, disappearing into the dense junglelike foliage as if it had swallowed him up. For one happy second Michael thought that perhaps the vile apparition hadn’t existed at all, that once more it was only his mind playing tricks on him.

  But the screams of the child’s mother told him he was wrong.

  She was standing in the stern of the boat, ready to go after the man who had stolen her child; only the hands of the women around her held her back.

  “My baby,” the woman screamed. “He took my baby!”

  Michael reacted almost without thinking. “Stay in the boat!” he shouted at the woman. He cut the engine and spoke quickly to Kelly. “Keep them in the boat. Whatever you do, don’t let them get out, or they’ll all get lost.”

  Without waiting for Kelly to reply, he leaped over the gunwale and dropped into the shallow water, then scrambled ashore.

  “Michael!” Kelly shouted. “Michael, don’t!”

  But it was too late.

  Michael, too, had disappeared into the swamp.

  Carl Anderson felt a sharp pain in his chest, and came to a stop, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His legs felt weak, and he let himself sink to the ground, leaning back against the trunk of a pine tree. Thick shrubbery surrounded the tree, so he would have a respite now, concealed from anyone who might be pursuing him.

  He clutched the baby to his chest and waited for the pain to subside, waited for his breathing to return to some semblance of normality.

  Exhaustion was spreading through him, draining away the last of his energy. He wasn’t certain how much longer he could go on.

  But he had to go on. If he didn’t, he would die.

  It was the shot—the shot that should have made him feel young again. But it wasn’t working this time; it hadn’t been strong enough. For a while, early this morning, he had felt better, confident that by this afternoon his strength would have returned to him. But as he’d worked his way deeper into the swamp, determined to lose himself until the shot’s restorative powers had rejuvenated him completely, he’d slowly begun to feel the weakness of age creeping up on him once more.

  He’d panicked, knowing that he had to find a child.

  Today.

  Now.

  A child whose youth Phillips could tap into and transfer to his own aging body.

  By tomorrow it would be too late.

  But where could he find a child?

  If Ted hadn’t taken his pickup keys, he could simply have driven up toward Orlando and found a shopping mall.

  There would be children everywhere, children with inattentive mothers.

  Children disappeared from shopping malls every day, and by the time the child was missed, he could have been halfway back to Villejeune.

  Villejeune, and Warren Phillips.

  Warren Phillips, and the eternal youth most men only dreamed of.

  But Ted had found him, and only the gun had bought Carl any time at all.

  The gun that was still in the belt of his pants, lending him courage despite the failing strength of his body.

  It was stupid to have taken the child from the tour boat, but when he’d stumbled upon it, and seen the children who filled it—plump babies with their smooth skin and supple muscles—he’d felt a surge of cold fury.

  Why should they be young when he was not?

  Why should they have a whole life to look forward to, while he had nothing but memories to succor his painfully failing body?

  After all, it wasn’t as if Phillips killed the children.

  Phillips had told him that long ago, when he’d first offered the treatment, and Carl’s own granddaughter was the proof.

  “It doesn’t hurt them. All I need is the secretion from their thymus glands,” Phillips had assured him. “After I’m done with them, they grow up perfectly normally.”

  Still, he should have waited, should have kept hunting through the marshlands until he found one of the swamp rats’ children, a child no one cared about, a child who had no future anyway.

  Instead he’d given in to his panicked rage and lifted the baby out of the boat.

  Now, cradled in his arms, the baby cried, and Carl clamped his hand over its mouth, silencing its tiny voice before its screams could betray their location.

  25

  Kelly knew she had to do something. A tense silence hung over the tour boat; the women, their children gathered protectively near them, watched the swamp, searching for any sign of Michael. But it was as if the marshes had swallowed him up. For the last twenty minutes they had neither seen nor heard anything at all.

  And yet, though nothing had happened, the tension in the boat was mounting every second.

  In the stern, the mother of the baby sobbed quietly, while two of the other women tried to comfort her. But at last the woman looked up, her eyes fixed on Kelly, who stood in the bow of the boat, desperately trying to think of something she could do.

  “Take us back,” one of the other women demanded. “We have to get help!”

  “I—I don’t know where we are,” Kelly said.

  TWo of the women closest to her glanced at each other. “But you must know where we are,” one of them finally said, her voice betraying her fear. “You work for the tour, don’t you?”
>
  Kelly shook her head. “I don’t—” But before she could finish the sentence, something stirred in her mind. A memory of being in the swamp, by herself, but not getting lost.

  Not like the other night, when she’d run away from her father, anger driving her forward.

  No, this was like the first night, when she’d gone into the swamp looking for the boy she’d seen from across the canal, and lost track of time.

  That night, obeying Clarey Lambert’s unseen guidance, she’d found her way back to where she’d begun.

  Now she concentrated, summoning that guidance once more.

  “I can do it,” she said, her voice imbued with new confidence. “I can get us back.”

  She gazed down at the dashboard of the boat, reaching out to brush her fingers over the unfamiliar array of instruments, grasping the key and turning it. An alarm buzzer sounded, and for a moment Kelly hesitated, but then followed the impulses that came into her mind, and pressed a button.

  The engine came to life.

  As she pushed the transmission forward and the boat began to slip through the water, the woman in the stem screamed.

  “No! We can’t leave! He has my baby!”

  The words came to Kelly’s ears as if from a great distance, and she was barely aware of them, for her mind was turned inward now, following only the invisible guidance to which she now gave herself.

  The boat moved slowly through the writhing maze of channels, and though they all looked alike to Kelly, she let herself be guided, turning from one channel into another with no concern as to the direction she was going or the breadth of the passages she chose.

  Ahead, the channel narrowed, and behind Kelly two of the women looked nervously at each other.

  “We’re not going to get out,” one of them said. “She doesn’t have the slightest idea where we are. She’s making it worse.”

  The other woman said nothing, for she could see Kelly’s face, see her eyes staring straight ahead, never wavering, never glancing around as if looking for landmarks.