Fiends (37 page)

6

Enid Waller drove the Buick Riviera past the main campground at Dante's Mill State Park, going toward the millpond and the restored town. According to the clock on the dashboard, it was ten minutes to one in the morning, but she hadn't looked at the clock during her forty-five minute drive from Sublimity. "Time" was an abstract concept in which Enid no longer took an interest.

Halfway to the town of Dante's Mill an impulse made her slow down from an already sedate twenty miles an hour and look for a turnoff, a nature trail not ordinarily accessible to automobiles. When she found the trail she drove a couple of hundred yards into the woods, scraping the Buick through shrubbery and low-hanging branches.

When it seemed she must be in the right place she stopped. There was no ignition key, so Enid left the motor idling and got out. She stood by a front fender of the Buick, staring at a full display of stars, listening to owls in the woods, the occasional rustle of small animals in the understory. Her right hand was in the pocket of her lightweight parka, gripping a pair of pinking shears. She waited patiently, eyes on the sky. The temperature was near forty degrees and dropping. She didn't feel the cold.

At first it looked like a slightly-larger-than-average star, faintly colored and slowly adrift above the tree line; then, as Enid concentrated on this oddity it grew in size and took on a definite shape, complete with wings, like the wings of a butterfly or moth, but infinitely more beautiful. It was coming toward her now, through a gap in the tree line, and Enid's lips parted in wonder. She saw a wrapped, oval face, like that of a nun, a piercing blue eye. The gently undulating wings were like a veil across her field of vision; then Birka alighted a yard or two in front of her. She was firmly nude, with a figure no better than Enid's; but so beautifully white. Enid wanted to touch her, as if she were a piece of sculpture. But she kept a hand in her pocket, and the other politely by her side.

I'm so glad you came, Enid.

Enid licked her pale lips with a nearly bloodless tongue and looked puzzled.

"That's good. You perceive, but don't quite receive me. I was afraid you'd turned completely already, even though I was very specific to Alastor."

"Turned?"

"Become one of us. He's overeager, like any child. Pricking here, pricking there. That can have no effect, or some effect, or catastrophic effect. A terrible muddled thing neither human nor
huldufólk.
Never mind." Birka stepped toward Enid, who didn't move as Birka lowered the hood of her parka. Enid's hair had become very thin on one side. Birka covered her head again, tenderly. "You'll be
huldufólk
soon enough. But first we need your help.
Will
you help us, Enid?" It was a kind of false pleading; her smile was sly. But Enid was too stunned by the changes that had come over her during the past few weeks to make fine emotional distinctions.

Enid licked her lips again. She pulled out the heavy pinking shears and showed them to Birka.

"Is this what you wanted me to bring?"

Birka's eyes glinted. "Yes, darling. Those should do nicely. Now we'd better be going. I'm afraid to let the others lie there even for another hour. The sanctuary was violated, and I'm very much afraid it might be again." Birka was folding her wings as she spoke, compactly, so that she could carry them like a small cushion in one hand. "By the way, how is your lovely little sister?"

"Marjory?" Enid frowned, as if it were difficult to remember anyone by that name. "Oh. I think she died. He wanted me to help him drag her to the stables. So I helped him. Then I came here."

"Well, I certainly hate to lose Marjory, but I had to give the boy
something,
you understand. To keep him from getting rambunctious and possibly giving us all away. Why don't you just follow me? I'm afraid it'll be rather difficult going for a while, but you're up to it, aren't you?"

"Yes."

'"Yes, Birka,' darling. Hm?"

"Yes, Birka," Enid said, eager to please.

7

Duane did not want to go back into the stables, even though the air seemed to be warming slowly inside, as if with the dissolution of Alastor there was no longer a source for the intense, life-threatening cold.

He heard the dog again, breaking into howls on the farm across the pond. And the muffled groaning inside, as if the poor mutilated girl on the floor still lived.

Oh, God, what could he do? But he knew he must do something, and quickly.

Duane put his shoulder to the stable door and pushed it as wide as he could, to allow a little more of the moonlight to penetrate the foggy silken interior: to let the cold and the nauseating fumes out. Moonlight glinted on the haphazard arrangement of bones and parched skin that had been Alastor. Harmless now, chemically rendered into a death more final than the Black Sleep; but still Duane was afraid, at the point of full-blown terror. Beyond the bones, the motionless flayed body, big feet foremost: seeing Marjory like that would be in his dreams forever.

But her feet, seen more clearly in a better light, without freezing clouds of his own breath to obscure his view, were almost too big to be Marjory's. Too ugly.

Duane crept back into the stable, crunching old frozen straw, skirting the menacing bones blackly freckled by carbon tetrachloride, his eyes on the frozen heap of body. ^

It wasn't a woman after all. It was a man: skinny, flaccid, gray-bearded. Missing teeth in the open mouth. Dark eyes open too, pierced.
Who?
A relative of Marjory's? Duane had never seen him before. It was obvious he had been dead for hours. He could not have moved since Duane—

There was a rustling in a stall behind him as he bent closer to look at the face of Alastor's victim. Duane wheeled in horror, throwing himself off balance; he windmilled and pitched into a rusty chain across the entrance to the stall, came down hard on his knees. One knee was already sow limn his earlier fall, and he cried out in pain.

The zipped-up sleeping bag thrown into a corner of the stall wriggled, and he heard her moaning, the sound so low it was as if she could barely breathe.

Duane scrambled into the musty stall, uncovering a stiffened rat in old straw, and pounced on the sleeping bag.

"Marjory! Marjory?"

She moved inside the sleeping bag; joyously he felt her, an elbow here, a knee there, the shape of her head. He fumbled for the zipper, breaking off a fingernail, yanked. The zipper didn't work very well. It yielded a balky inch at a time.

Her skin was white too, beneath the pale blond hair; her eyes were closed. For a few moments fright stopped him. What if—? He touched her; she was cold, that was obvious, but he couldn't tell how cold. There was, however, a welcome, human stink of urine from deep in the bag. He fought the zipper again. Marjory moaned softly. She had been stuffed naked into the bag.

"Eenniddd," Marjory said, through clenched teeth.

"Marjory, it's Duane!" He had the zipper open halfway, and began to pull her out of the sleeping bag. "Come on, come on, let's get out of here!" An arm and hand were free, but the hand flopped uselessly. He grasped the bottom of the sleeping bag and tugged hard; Marjory fell out in a heap, and immediately curled herself into a quaking ball.

"No, Marj, get up!"

He stood her on her feet, which crossed, the ankles wobbly. She looked all right, just confused, disoriented, half-smothered. Brain damage? Worse? He had to know, he had to see. Holding her with one arm at the waist, he explored the back of Marjory's neck with his fingertips. No indication of a puncture.

"Marjory? Talk to me. It's Duane!"

"Dway—"

She was beginning to take in great lungfuls of oxygen. "Say
Duane,"
he demanded, leaning her against him, awkwardly walking them both out of the stall.

A smile flitted. Her eyes opened halfway for a moment. "Tha you, Dway?"

"Yes! You're gonna be all right!"

"I know. You here. Tha's good, Dway."

"Walk,
Marjory, goddamm it, I can't drag—"

"Where go, Dway?"

"House. Bath. Clothes."

"Don't have . . . clothes on, Dway. See me . . . naked."

He lost control of her as they emerged from the stall. Marjory took two puny swaying steps and went down hard, next to the face of the corpse on the floor. She opened her eyes and stared solemnly at Alastor's victim. Duane got his hands under her arms again. Marjory looked around at him.

"Happened to Mr. Crudup?"

"He's dead, Marjory."

The word released something previously jammed tight in Marjory's mind. Her face, which had been slackly expressionless, began to twitch in alarm. She gasped, rapidly, shallow explosive sounds.

"Nooo . . . ooooo . . . get
him . .
. way from meeeee!"

"Don't, Marjory! It's okay! Come on, outside."

She was trembling so hard he found it difficult to get a grip on her.

"Marjory, who's in the house?"

"Him!"
Marjory said, wildly, then her teeth began clacking.

"No. Not Alastor. I got him. Look, Marjory. On the floor. That's all that's left, he can't hurt you."

He was rough with her, turning her head, forcing her to see the little skull. Marjory made meaningless sounds. "Stop. Hurting me!"

"Are there any more of them in the house?"

"No. No more. He . . . G-G-God! . . . was in Enid's room. Came in window. Something wrong . . . with Enid. Where is—"

"She's gone, Marjory. Stole my father's car. That makes two of us tonight. Come on."

The struggle went out of Marjory. Her knees lost what little strength they'd had to this point. He had to half carry her to the stable door.

A few feet from the opening something stabbed through the sole of a moccasin, penetrating the arch of his right foot. Duane hobbled and almost fell with Marjory, but kept his eyes on the house fifty yards away. Marjory would take one step and sag, two steps and sag. By the time they got to the porch steps she was steadier, except for the violent trembling. He knew she was at least as cold as the night in the cavern when he had pulled her from the pool. Almost lost her then. Hypothermia. He knew what to do now. The hell with Enid, with everything else, he was going to take care of Marjory.

He pulled her up the stairs to the bathroom, and put her into the tub. The house was not as cold as he had assumed it would b/, but he was shaking too, and his pierced foot throbbed. The gas was on, there would be hot water. He filled the tub rapidly. He held Marjory upright in the tub, but he was beginning to dim out himself. Dark in the house, a grayness inside his skull, he almost nodded off. Could it be happening to him, hypothermia? Duane slowly dragged his own clothes off, and crawled into the tub with Marjory, the water level rising almost to the brim. Marjory put her arms around him. Two ice floes, chattering in each other's faces. He begun torub around her heart as briskly as he could manage.

"Duane?"

He was pleased that she wasn't chattering any more. His own tremors had lessened, but the heart of him felt like a cold chunk of iron. Marjory seemed deathly tired, unable to keep her eyes open.

"Duane?"

"Uh-huh."

"This doesn't mean . . . we're married."

That tickled him, but he couldn't laugh.

"I can't get married, Marjory. I have to go to reform school first."

"Oh," she said, in a tone that indicated she hadn't understood him.

"Maybe my dad will let me—" He sighed, and all the sorrow in his heart broke loose—"join the Army, to get me out of the house."

After a few moments, Duane began to sob. Slippery, exhausted but surviving, as primitive and essentially innocent as First Children, they held each other in the overflowing tub.

8

Going down into the caverns again was a brutal experience for Ted Lufford. The trouble he might possibly get into with various state or Federal authorities didn't weigh on him; but the sensation of being swallowed up in an evil place had his heart pounding before they'd finished the first descent.

They weren't talking much, communicating mostly in monosyllables, trying not to waste energy. Rex and Alvy led the way into the new entry they'd discovered after days of meticulous prospecting. It made good sense for Ted and Wayne Buck Vedders to duplicate their motions in order to avoid trouble. The immediate area was a rocky pitch, nearly thirty degrees, widening in a funnel from a rabbit-hole far above their heads. The worst thing about it was, bats used the funnel, too.

"Yeah," Rex said, when they took a break, "there's a bat cave somewhere nearby, but we didn't track it down."

"Bats," Vedders said grimly.

"They're out for the night, reckon. But we don't want to be coming out when they're a-coming home. Wasn't for the bats, though, we wouldn't of found this hidey-hole. Well, let's move. Bear left here, gen'muns."

"I hear water," Ted panted a few minutes later.

"Oh, yeah. Be right slippery the other side that passage."

"What
passage?" They had come within ten feet of an apparently blank wall.

Alvy grinned. "He's talking about Aunt Minnie's asshole. You'll just about notice it when you get right on top of it, if you got sharp eyes."

Bill Whipkey put his pack down. "Time for this old boy to get to work."

Alvy looked doubtful. "Well, I don't know. You could close Aunt Minnie's for good with them 'splosives."

"Hoss, I do this for a living! Give me fifteen minutes to wire it up. Yeah, I could wire up the ground you stand on and set it off, and guarantee you wouldn't get a speck of dirt on you. Might make you a little deaf for a couple days."

"Might blow my pecker off, too."

Ted looked at his watch. It was a few minutes after one A.M. "Let's get this done," he said. "I've had a bad feeling."

9

Birka was aware of the first explosion, sensing it through vibrations. She didn't think it was a natural rock fall.

Enid sat hollow-eyed, pains in her chest. Her bare feet were cut and bleeding. She looked up when Birka touched her shoulder.

"We must hurry."

Enid got slowly to her feet, wincing.

You
feel no pain. It won't be necessary to stop again.

Enid nodded.

Humanness is such a wretched condition.

Enid looked at the swirl of luna moths above their heads. It was as if her face had been touched by the supernatural light of a vision.

Birka smiled, but she was anxious. She put a gentle hand on Enid again, guiding her, hurrying her along.