Kitteridge’s frown deepened. “And you just left him there?”
Michael nodded distractedly, as if he was having trouble even remembering what had happened. “I had to bring the baby back,” he said. “I had to bring it back to its mother.”
Though Kitteridge was certain there was more to the story than Michael had told him, he decided that any more questions could wait until later. The boy’s face was pale and his eyes looked glazed. “All right,” he said. “You just take it easy for a few minutes. Then maybe you can take us back to where you left him. Think you can do that?”
Michael’s head moved in assent, and the police chief’s attention shifted to Marty Templar, who had just arrived with four other men. But while Kitteridge talked to the deputy, Michael quietly went in search of Kelly Anderson.
He found her near the dock, looking out uncertainly at the swamp. “You okay?” he asked, standing beside her.
Kelly shook her head. “Th-They wanted me to take them back to where we were when my grandfather took the baby. But I didn’t think I could.” She turned to face Michael. “I don’t remember how I got back.”
Michael took her hand in his own. “It doesn’t matter. They want me to take them to where I left your grandfather, but I’m not going to.” Kelly frowned but Michael kept talking, and for the first time she noticed that he’d changed, somehow. His eyes burned with indignation. “I know what’s wrong with us, Kelly,” he said, his voice dropping so no one but she could hear him. “I know what’s wrong with all of us, and I know how to fix it.”
Ten minutes later, when Tim Kitteridge went looking for Michael, he had disappeared.
He, and Kelly Anderson as well.
Clarey Lambert opened her eyes, blinking in the bright sunlight. She was sitting on the porch of her house, her body erect in the rocking chair. She felt tired from the effort it had taken her to reach out first to Kelly’s mind, and then to Michael Sheffield’s, but now it was over, and she could hear the soft throbbing of the outboard engine as the boat bearing the two teenagers drew near. She turned in her chair, feeling the ache of her protesting muscles, and smiled at Jonas Cox. “They be coming. You hear?”
Jonas said nothing, his eyes searching the waterways in the direction from which the low sound drifted. Only when the boat came around the end of the next island and he recognized Michael and Kelly sitting in the stem did he finally relax. When he’d first heard the boat, he’d been certain that it was the Dark Man, coming for him.
As the boat bumped against the pilings beneath the structure, Jonas reached down, taking the line that Kelly held up to him, and tied it to the railing. Then Kelly and Michael climbed up the short ladder, coming to a sudden stop when they saw Clarey’s eyes fixed on them.
“The baby?” the old woman asked.
“He’s all right,” Michael told her. “I got him back to his mother.”
“It was my grandfather who took him,” Kelly said. “Why did he—”
Before she could finish her question, Clarey’s voice, crackling with anger, cut her off. “Not your grandpa,” the old woman declared. “Don’t you never think that man was your grandpa. And it don’t matter now—he be dead.”
Jonas Cox’s pinched face paled. “Michael killed him?” he asked, his voice trembling.
“No!” Clarey replied. “Michael didn’t kill Carl Anderson. Carl Anderson died a long time ago. Only his body stayed alive.” Her glittering eyes shifted away from Jonas, boring into Kelly. “You saw him—you saw him in your dreams, and in your mirror. Both of you did. But it warn’t just him you saw. It was all of ’em—all the old men whose souls died but whose bodies stayed alive, sucking up the lives and the souls of the young ’uns.” Clarey’s gaze shifted toward Michael, and now she noticed the difference in his eyes.
The empty gaze of the children of the Circle was gone, and Michael’s eyes smoldered with anger.
“It’s what he wanted that baby for. Gonna take that little child to the Dark Man, so he could suck the life out of it, that’s what that evil man was going to do.” She smiled again, and chuckled softly. “But you didn’t let him, did you? You took that baby away from him, and took your soul back, too, didn’t you?”
Kelly gasped, her eyes widening as she turned to Michael. “But if you didn’t kill him—”
“I didn’t have to,” Michael told her, knowing what she was thinking. He hesitated, seeing once more the scene at the foot of the pine tree, when Carl Anderson had watched him coming close and known what he was going to do.
Known, and been unable to stop him.
“I would have killed him, though,” he said at last, his voice quiet. “If he hadn’t died, I would have killed him.” His eyes, glistening with tears he made no attempt to wipe away, held steadily on Kelly as he told her what had happened.
“It was something inside him,” he concluded, after describing his attack on Carl Anderson’s corpse. “I could feel that there was something there, something I had to find.” He hesitated, then went on. “It was something that was mine, that I knew he’d taken from me. And when I found it—” His voice broke, and he couldn’t tell her what he’d done.
The memory of stuffing that bloody piece of atrophied tissue into his mouth, then forcing himself to swallow it, was still too fresh in his mind.
He smiled at Kelly, feeling once more that welcome warmth within him that until a little while ago he’d never experienced, nor even missed. “I’m free now,” he went on. “I know what’s wrong with you. And Jonas, and all the rest of us, too. I know what he took from all of us. And I know how to make us well again.”
Jonas Cox’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Ain’t no way to do nothin’ to the Dark Man,” he said. “Ain’t nobody even knows where to find him. An’ if he wants you, ain’t nowheres to hide.”
Michael shook his head. “It’s over,” he told the frightened boy. “He can’t make us do anything. Maybe he never could. All he could do was frighten us. But we’re all together, and we’re stronger than he is.”
He turned to Clarey Lambert, their eyes meeting. “Call them, Clarey. Call everyone.”
Clarey turned and went back into the house, the three children following her. “I knew the time were comin’,” she muttered softly, almost to herself. “Ain’t nothin’ bad gonna happen anymore, after tonight.”
She moved to her worn chair and let herself sink into it, closing her eyes. Silence settled over the room, and then Kelly began once more to hear the strange melody inside her head. As its intangible threads began to wind around her, she turned to Michael, her eyes questioning.
“She’s calling the Circle,” he said. “She’s calling us together for the last time.”
As Kelly gave herself to the haunting strains that seemed to come out of nowhere, she felt a pang of fear.
What if she wasn’t strong enough?
What if she couldn’t find the will within herself to do whatever it was that Michael had done?
But she put the thoughts aside.
She would do whatever was necessary, if it would free her from the awful terror of her nightmares, and from the chilling emptiness that had always yawned within her, threatening to swallow her up as if she’d never existed at all.
28
Craig and Barbara Sheffield sat in the car, staring at the peaceful facade of the small white colonial building with green shutters that housed the Villejeune mortuary, neither of them willing to go inside, neither of them ready to face what they might find there. But at last Craig sighed, opened the door, and got out. A moment later Barbara joined him on the sidewalk. Craig gave her an encouraging squeeze. “Ready?”
Saying nothing, Barbara pulled open the front door and stepped into the unnatural hush of the funeral home’s foyer. Ahead and to the left was the viewing room in which Jenny had lain only a few days ago. It was empty now, its door standing open. To the right, across from the viewing room, was a small office, and as Craig and Barbara stepped inside, Fred Childress looked
up, his eyes clouding as he recognized them and saw the strained look on Barbara’s face.
“Barbara? Craig? Is something wrong?”
“Yes,” Craig replied coldly. “Something is very wrong. I want the keys to our mausoleum, Fred.”
The undertaker’s eyes widened in shock. “The maus—”
“My mausoleum. The one where my children were buried. If they were buried at all!”
Fred Childress rose to his feet, his expression indignant. “I don’t know what you’re implying, Craig—” he began, but once again Craig cut him off.
“Get me the keys, Fred,” he said. “If you don’t, I’m going to break into the crypt without them, and if I find what I think I’m going to find, you’re going to be spending a very long time in jail.”
Childress’s mind reeled. It wasn’t possible—this wasn’t supposed to happen! “Craig, you know I can’t open a crypt without a court order—” he began, stalling for time, trying to straighten out the confusion that muddled his mind.
“I don’t have time, Fred,” Craig grated. “Now make up your mind! Do you want to give me those keys, or shall I break in?”
Childress’s jaw worked for a moment, but suddenly he found an answer.
Give them the keys!
Let them open the tombs, and then deny anything they might suggest. Surely, if he cooperated with them, they couldn’t blame him for what they found!
Quickly, he disappeared from the office, returning a moment later with a heavy ring of keys in his hand. “This is most unusual, Craig,” he insisted. “According to the law—”
“I know the law,” Craig said, taking the keys from the undertaker’s hand. “Come on, Barbara.”
Wheeling, he strode out of the office.
As soon as he was gone, Fred Childress picked up the phone and began searching for Warren Phillips.
Barbara stood rigidly in front of the mausoleum, not really seeing the stained limestone with its ornate facade. Indeed, as she waited while Craig searched for the right key, she barely saw the tomb at all. Suddenly she felt consumed by doubts. Did she really want to know?
If the coffin was empty, what would it mean?
Not only for her, but for Kelly, too. If Warren Phillips had taken her the moment she was born, and given her to the Andersons a week later, what would it mean?
What had been done to her during that week?
And now, sixteen years later, what could be done about it?
Though the afternoon was hot, Barbara felt herself shiver. For a moment she was almost tempted to tell Craig she’d changed her mind, to tell him to stop before it was too late. But before she could speak, she heard his voice.
“I have it,” he said softly.
Her eyes suddenly focused, and she saw the large key that he’d inserted in the bronze door of the crypt. His hand was still on it, but he was looking at her as if he understood the doubts that were suddenly assailing her. “Are you sure?” he asked one more time.
Barbara braced herself, then nodded. Craig turned the key in the lock. It stuck for a moment, then she heard the bolt slide back.
Craig pulled the heavy door open, the hinges screeching in sharp protest at the intrusion. For the first time in sixteen years, sunlight struck the small mahogany casket in which Sharon’s tiny body had been interred.
The wood had lost its luster over the years, and as Craig pulled the casket out of the tomb and set it carefully on the ground, an awful sadness came over Barbara.
There was something about the coffin, after its years in the mausoleum, that struck her as even more final than death itself.
As Craig began to lift the lid, Barbara turned away, unable to look at whatever might be inside. Only when Craig groaned softly did she finally force herself to look.
What she saw bore no resemblance to anything human.
Instead, lying on the yellowed and rotting satin with which the coffin was lined, was the desiccated body of an alley cat.
There was little left of it—a few fragments of skin, long ago hardened into leather, and the bones, laid out with a macabre naturalness. It was as if the creature had died in its sleep, one skeletal paw folded beneath its jaw, its tail curled up its side.
The empty sockets of its eyes seemed to stare reproachfully up at her.
Barbara’s stomach twisted, and she quickly looked away. “Put it back,” she whispered. “For God’s sake, put it back.”
Craig lifted the coffin back into the tomb and closed the door, relocking it as if it had never been disturbed at all.
Then, his own heart beating hard now, he began testing keys in Jenny’s crypt. A moment later he found the right one, but this time it twisted easily in the lock, and when the door swung open, there was no screech of protest from the recently oiled hinges.
He stared at the end of his youngest daughter’s coffin, putting off as long as he could the moment when he would have to slide it out.
His hands trembled as he grasped the end of the box, but he pulled it out just enough to open the section of its lid that had been closed on Jenny’s face only a few days ago.
He lifted it up and peered inside. Staring into the empty interior of the casket, his mind reeled, threatening to shatter into a thousand broken fragments.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” Barbara whispered, seeing the anguish on her husband’s face. “She’s not there, is she?”
Craig swallowed hard in a futile attempt to dislodge the lump that had risen in his throat. He shook his head, unable to speak.
“Oh, God,” Barbara moaned. “What’s happening, Craig? What did he do to our children?”
Craig dropped the lid and turned away, leaving Jenny’s coffin protruding from the open door of the tomb. Putting his arm around his wife, he led her out of the cemetery.
Warren Phillips glanced at his watch.
In a few more hours the last batch of thymus extract would be refined, and he would be ready to leave. Once he was gone, there would be no one left to answer the questions Tim Kitteridge would have.
Within a few days Judd Duval would be dead.
So would Orrin Hatfield.
And Fred Childress.
All of them, crumbling into dust as their bodies consumed the youth he had given them.
But he, along with his research and the few vials of the precious fluid he had left, would have simply disappeared, leaving behind him the laboratory in the basement, and the empty nursery.
He almost laughed out loud as he remembered the reassurances he’d given the undertaker when he’d called an hour ago: “Stop worrying, Fred—there’s nothing they can prove! Graves get robbed all the time, and there’s nothing to lead them back to us!”
Except for the birth certificates, but he hadn’t told Fred about those. Fred, or anyone else. And even if the Sheffields had discovered the forgery, it would still take some time before they’d be able to convince anyone to issue a search warrant for his house.
At least until tomorrow morning, and tomorrow morning it would be too late.
The five volumes of meticulous notes he’d accumulated over the years, detailing the research and experimentation he’d done before he’d finally succeeded in isolating the single compound within the body that held off the aging process, was already carefully packed in the trunk of his car.
Five volumes of complicated research that, in retrospect, seemed so simple.
The thymus gland, that mysterious organ that was so large in an infant and shrank so steadily through puberty and adolescence, almost disappearing in adults, should have been the most obvious place for him to look when he’d started on the project forty years ago.
And yet, even after he’d become convinced that the thymus was the key to his search, it had still taken him years before he’d finally developed a method of extracting the secretion of the gland and refining it without destroying the precious hormone it contained.
The answer to that problem, too, seemed simple now, for in retrospect it appeared o
bvious that it would be impossible to extract life from that which was already dead.
The glands he’d taken from corpses in the morgue had proved all but useless, and it wasn’t until he’d begun experimenting with live animals—mice at first, and then later, dogs and cats—that he’d finally begun to find success.
Only when he’d been quite sure of his methods had he begun experimenting on children, first using only the unwanted babies of the women of the swamp, the babies they’d neither planned for nor expected to survive.
But as the work had progressed and the technique had finally been perfected, he’d known he would need more babies, for as the children began to grow up, and as their thymuses shrank, they became less and less useful to him.
And he’d seen the differences in them, the differences he’d created by tapping into them long before they’d had a chance to develop normally.
They’d grown up to be strange, quiet children, children who never cried, but rarely laughed, either.
There was an ennui about them, as if something inside them—something almost spiritual—were lacking.
They seemed to care nothing for themselves, or for anything else, either.
And yet they seemed to have developed some special form of communication, some new sense to compensate for the loss of their youth. He didn’t pretend to understand this new sense, but had nevertheless found a use for it.
He had created a cult for them, carefully nurturing it over the years, building a mystique around the children, exploiting their differences from normal children, using those differences to control them.
He’d taught them that they were special children, but special only because of the Dark Man.
The Dark Man that he’d given them almost as a god, to be respected, and obeyed. And to be provided with more children, whom they would bear themselves.
Phillips had never appeared before them without the black mask that concealed his face, never let them know who he really was.
And sixteen years ago he’d put his own son into the project, too. But his own son would be different.