Night Songs (36 page)

    "Impossible," Hugh objected without raising his voice. "We'd have to burn down the whole town, Col. And the storm won't help, either."

    "You're all
crazy"
Cameron muttered, pushing Montgomery to one side and staggering to the bar.

    "Then what are we going to do?" Colin asked calmly. "We can't wait for them to come to us. And they will come, you know. Maybe we can knock them off their feet and run like hell. But where? Another house? And how long do we keep going before they finally trap us?"

    "Fucking goddamned crazy," Cameron declared, twisting open a bottle.

    Peg closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips as hard as she could. She needed the pain to remind her this was real.

    The wind slammed the restaurant; in the kitchen a pot fell.

    

    

    Eliot Nichols felt nothing at all, heard nothing at all as he rose from a bed of sodden leaves in the woods and made his way through the underbrush toward the Anchor Inn. The wind was trapped in the boughs above him, the light like midnight beneath the dying autumn leaves. He came out of the trees behind Anna-lee's cottage, paused for a moment, then changed direction and headed for the back door.

    It was unlocked.

    He went in.

    There was no need to turn on a light.

    

    

    Rose sat up without a sound, her blood-spattered legs tangled in a kitchen chair. She kicked it clumsily, used the table to haul herself to her feet. She paid no attention to the tatters of her bloodied housecoat, or the straggles of her hair, or the purple-yellow bruises that formed a necklace around her throat. She walked into the living room, waited, turned and headed for the front door.

    Her family walked behind her.

    They were swayed by the wind as they left the porch, then walked down the street toward the woods, toward the last house.

    An ax was still embedded in Denise's shoulder.

    There was no blood.

    

    

    Carter Naughton knocked on Bill Efron's door, slammed it in with a forearm when nobody answered. Efron was on the staircase when Carter looked up, and smiled.

    

    

    At the Haven's End landing of the Sterling Brothers Ferry, Lilla D'Grou walked out of the water.

    

    

    "The boats!" Peg exclaimed suddenly, smiling for the first time in what seemed like years. "We've forgotten about the boats. My God, think! All we have to do is take one of the boats from the marina! Lord, we could be safe on the mainland before we know it."

    "In this weather?" Hugh said skeptically.

    "You'd rather die?" she countered.

    "Hold it," Colin said, a hand on her wrist. "Hold it just a minute and think, you two. Sure we can get off, like Peg says, but then what? We hike into Flocks and go to the police? Tell the police, 'Hey, fellas, we have a problem out there on Haven's End, see, and we're going to need a few dozen of you to help us kill off a few dozen dead people.' " He lifted a hand, drummed it on the keyboard lid.

    "We can try," Hugh said.

    "We can get ourselves locked up, too."

    She hated him, then, for trying to steal her escape.

    "And we can't just run away either," he continued as though he regretted it. "This salt thing that Peg said, I'll bet that'll keep them away from the water, but sooner or later someone else will come out here, and…"

    She hugged herself and rocked on the bench. "You're saying we can't leave until we do something about them."

    "I'm saying… yes. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."

    She looked at him steadily for a long, unpleasant moment, then rose and began wandering among the* tables.

    "Besides," Colin added, "how can we leave our friends here like this?"

    She hated him even more; it just wasn't fair, making her feel guilty about creatures like that.

    "Lilla," Hugh suggested. "If we get hold of Lilla, maybe she can help us. Maybe there's some way we can get her away from whatever influence Gran has on her." He stopped when he realized they were looking at him. "I… I've been thinking. I mean, it seems to me that Gran is able to do more than control her, take hold of her mind, as someone said before. I think-oh, God, listen to me-I think it more likely he's
in
in her mind. All that business about the salt water seems to keep him from walking around or we would have seen him before this. He would want to take care of us himself, right?"

    They watched, and Peg swallowed a sudden bubble of bile.

    "So he has Lil. Literally. She isn't Lil anymore, she's Gran, and that's the way he does it. So if we can get her, try to get through to the part of her that's maybe still the real her, maybe we… well, what the hell, it's worth a try, isn't it?"

    "Uh-uh!" Matt said with an emphatic shake of his head.

    She turned abruptly, her mouth open and the tip of one finger pressed against her lower lip. Matt. All this time she'd been talking about destroying a horror as if she were planning strategy for a high school football game, and her son had been standing there quietly, listening. Feeling God knows what, and she had ignored him completely.

    She felt the tears and blinked them away angrily. Then she heard Colin say, "Why not, pal?" as if Matt were an adult with an equal voice in destruction. She ran to him and pulled him away from the piano.

    "Leave him alone!" she said, shoving him behind her. "He's a boy! Leave him alone!"

    "But, Mom!"

    "Matthew Fletcher, don't you say one more word!"

    "But Mom, you said that the guy has the souls, and the people stay dead when the souls go back, and if Gran has the souls then why chase Lilla?"

    "Matthew, damn it," and she slapped him, once, hard, refusing to release him when he rocked away from the blow. He whimpered and yanked angrily at her arm, and she raised her hand to slap him again when Colin snapped her name, and she froze. She saw her son cringing, saw Hugh staring down at his shoes, saw Cameron grinning at her from behind a tall glass of scotch. Her hand burned. She pulled the boy roughly against her and held his face against her chest, stroked his hair desperately and waited for Colin to save her.

    He said nothing.

    "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Matt, I'm so sorry."

    "You're right again," Colin said, and Matt turned to stare. "We can't do any of the things we've been talking about, but by God, we can get Gran. And I know where he is."

    "The fish ate him," the boy protested.

    "No, I don't think so." He explained quickly about his attempt to get into the shack to find Lilla, about the light he saw and the stench that drove him back. And what he thought was the deadweight in the front room. "He's in there. I'd bet on it. I bet Lil went back out after the funeral and got his body. It's the only explanation, because she isn't a witch."

    "Yes she is," Matt said. Peg wanted an explanation, but Colin was already up and talking, and before she knew it she was using her hands to dry her son's tears while at the same time listening to what Colin was saying.

    Gran. All the time it was Gran, and now she knew she wasn't going to die.

    "Burn the damned thing," she heard herself say when Colin paused for a moment. He looked at her, and she blinked in surprise at the sound of her own voice. "Burn the shack, and you'll burn his body. It's too wet for just brush or a match. We need something flammable." She was talking too fast, and she didn't like what she was hearing. "We need something that will burn in a high wind. Gasoline! But the gas station's closed, do you know how to get into the pumps?" No one did. "The generator, then. I have spare fuel in back of the house. A couple of gallons."

    "Enough, I should think," Hugh said.

    "Jesus, you are all fucking off your nuts!" Cameron yelled, drinking now straight out of the bottle, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. He looked at his watch and unsuccessfully smothered a belch behind his" hand. "You know it's after six-thirty? I had a hell of a great party starting here in half an hour and you guys are talking about burning down a dead man's fucking shack. Jesus!"

    They ignored him, and he waved the bottle as if he were batting away pesky flies.

    Colin grabbed the shotgun and followed Hugh to the front, Peg and Matt trailing apprehensively. Before the door opened, she suggested one of them get to the police station and try to contact Garve on the patrol car radio, let him know what they'd learned and what they were going to do. Though she held her breath when Hugh said he'd do it, Colin vetoed the idea as she'd known he would the moment she'd said it. It would mean splitting them up, and though it seemed it was easy to outrun the dead, there was no sense now in taking any chances, not when they were so close to ending it.

    "You wait here," he said, "and 1*11 get my car. When I get back we'll get the kerosene, then Gran."

    "What if the road's flooded?" Hugh asked. "The tide's already probably covered the beach."

    "Then we'll walk, Doc, we'll walk."

    And he was gone before Peg had a chance to say good-bye.

    It was quiet.

    The chill of the stormwind vanished as soon as they turned back toward the bar. Cameron, his satin tie unknotted and his jacket thrown over a stool, lifted a glass to them in a giggling toast. Hugh took an angry step toward him; Peg grabbed his arm and stopped him with a look. Matt moved quickly toward the far side of the room, giving the muttering Cameron as much berth as he could.

    Cameron leaned over the bar then and stared at the floor with a soulful shake of his head. "Brother, this is a crock. Hey, who's gonna pay for this mess, huh? Hey, Pegeen, who's gonna pay for all this liquor?" He sat back heavily. "Christ, the place smells like a distillery."

    Someone knocked on the door.

    Montgomery turned to answer, but Cameron was at him before he could take a step. "My place," he said, voice and face surly. "My goddamned place, you two-bit, sawed-off quack. It's my place, and I'll let them in."

    "Yeah, you do that," Hugh told him, looked to Peg and shook his head.

    "Goddamn party's gonna start in a minute and I ain't even ready. Jesus. Hundreds of people, and all that beautiful booze gone. Jesus, what a mess." He pressed down on the bar to get himself on his feet. "You're gonna pay for all that booze, Peg, I swear to God. That stuff costs a fortune, even wholesale." He pointed stiffly at Matt. "And that stupid kid attacked me, goddamn it!"

    He opened the door, turned away from the wind.

    "Well, Jesus Christ," he said with a sneer, "where in hell have you been, you jackass? Hey, Peg, I thought you told me this dumb ass was dead."

    He screamed when Theo Vincent took hold of his neck and lifted him off the floor.

    He screamed when Vincent walked him to the coat-room and bent him over the lower door.

    He jabbed a thumb in Vincent's eye, and Vincent snapped Cameron's spine.

    Peg was already running. She grabbed Matt's upper arm and dragged him through the kitchen doors, Montgomery close behind after grabbing the rifle from Cameron's office. They ran down an aisle flanked by warming ovens and grills, butcher's blocks and sinks made of stainless steel; pots quivered on hooks over counters and stoves, ladles and cleavers and long knives caught the faint light and glittered. The floor was white tile, and their heels snapped like burning logs.

    They rounded a corner and raced past two cold-storage rooms and a gaping pantry, hit the side door without slowing and burst outside, almost screaming. She paused and gathered Matt into her arms, sidestepping Montgomery who couldn't slow down in time. He skidded into the hedge, barely stayed on his feet. Then they darted toward the corner of the deserted parking lot, where the high hedge had been worn away by kids cutting through from Neptune.

    They emerged behind the police station, ran right beside the wooded lot.

    They did not check the shadows; Peg saw the streetlights burning brighter now. It was night.

    Hugh was first to the sidewalk, and he grabbed hold of the building's edge and swung himself around to a slipping, falling halt. Colin's car was at the curb, the office door open.

    "Where…?" Peg gasped as she looked up and down the street. "It's only a block, Hugh. How could it take him so long to get here?"

    She followed her son and Montgomery into the office, did an about face and stood on the threshold. The water was spilling over the opposite curb now as the tide reached in from the beach, flooding the gutters and pooling around the storm drains. She could almost imagine she saw waves spraying high in the trees. "Colin?" she whispered.

    "He's not here, Peg, Hugh said, coming up behind her. "I don't know where the hell he is."

    

    

    

    Colin ran hunched over and turned against the wind, his free hand up to shield his eyes from the pellets of dust and slices of leaves that clouded past him every few feet. When he managed a look across the street he noticed there was still very little apparent damage to the houses he could see, aside from the occasional porch plant dashed to the ground, chairs tipped over, a dead branch or two littering the yards. He suspected then that the storm's strongest weapon was its numbing monotony. It blew steadily, without gusting, not near hurricane force but powerful enough to make normal movement difficult. And there was always the banshee screaming-through the trees rapidly stripped of their foliage, across the rooftops, humming high-pitched and tremulous in the bouncing telephone wires. The sound was enough to alert madness, and he wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what threatened to happen after twenty-four hours: tempers disintegrating, arguments sparked and fanned by impatience, children banished unreasonably to their rooms, and more than one family wishing they hadn't thought it such a lark to remain behind and taunt the weather.