Nightlight (24 page)

“I take it the bridge is out,” said Ed calmly.

Mary shivered.

“We'll have to take a look,” Ed continued.

The bulldozer clattered forward, and when they reached the river none of them spoke for a while.

“That bridge was here for fifty years. Maybe longer. But there's no reason for it to go just because of that. Big old timbers can be as strong as big new ones.” Ed pulled thoughtfully at his lower lip. “We've come this far like a bunch of fools. We might as well drive this thing across the river.”

“That's a very dumb thing to do,” said Randolph.

“That hasn't stopped us yet,” Ed responded.

“We don't have any idea at all how deep that river is. Look at all that. The water'll swamp the engine, and we'll be stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

“Won't happen,” said Ed, gripping Randolph's shoulder. “You see that white water up there? It's not too deep, if you don't mind driving over a bunch of boulders.”

Randolph jerked the machine with a clank, and gunned the engine. “It's a terrible thing to do,” he said in a resigned voice. “We'll be stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

The bulldozer chattered along the river bank, heaving to one side, and then another, as it surmounted white boulders. Randolph fought the machine into position, and the engine surged. “I've never done anything as stupid as this,” he called.

The bulldozer rocked backward, eased forward, and the treads clattered across stones. The metallic chatter of the treads was joined by the rush of water. The steel teeth glistened, and the machine staggered deeper into the river.

It boiled around them. Icy water stung their feet, and the engine sputtered. The bulldozer eased sideways sickeningly with the force of the river. Its nose headed downriver, and Randolph struggled.

“You're doing fine,” called Ed over the thunder of the river.

“We're doing terrible!” called Randolph.

Ed helped him pull the machine around, but they seemed to be making no progress across the river. Water streamed between their feet, and the engine vomited first a stream of black, then a stream of white as the machine stuttered.

The bulldozer fought its way over a submerged stone, and Randolph jerked gears, racing the engine, the machine going neither backward nor forward. “The middle of nowhere!” called Randolph.

They inched ahead, and once again the machine stumbled, and water shot between their legs. Water shivered off the gleaming treads, and they hung on tight as the bulldozer slipped and staggered toward the far bank.

A terrible force slammed them. Mary nearly fell, but hung on to the back of the seat. A black log nosed them, and ground against them until it forced its way past.

They were out of the water. The bulldozer threw mud behind it as they looked up into the rain. The machine fought the steep bank, but shimmied sideways.

“It's all right,” cried Ed.

Randolph tensed, pushing the machine forward, but the bank was too steep, and they slipped sideways.

“We've made it. You can stop now.”

Randolph did not seem to hear. The engine bellowed, and he crouched, fighting the bank.

“Let us off,” cried Ed.

Randolph eased back in the seat. He looked up at Ed with a disgusted expression. “We almost made it.”

“We're here. You did beautifully.” Ed slapped his shoulder.

Randolph sat at the controls of the machine, staring into the rain. “We almost made it.”

Ed took Mary's arm and pulled her up the bank. “There,” he puffed. “That wasn't so bad.”

“How far is it?”

“Not far,” Ed said, fighting a branch out of their path. “Leave him,” he said to her unspoken question. “He's developed an attachment.”

Mary slipped on the roots of a tree, but kept herself from falling by grabbing the festoons of redwood branches that hung all around them. “Surely there's a path,” she muttered.

“Of course there's a path. I'll let you know as soon as I find it. And I'll tell you what else. When we get to the cabin, we'll have a nice long sit before a nice big fire.”

“Yes, we will.”

“And we'll have something nice and hot to drink.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“And we'll ask these people why the hell they can't call when they're supposed to.”

But he was hurrying, in spite of the cheerfulness in his voice.

“You don't believe it, do you?” she murmured.

“Sure I do. I think we've just been overexerting ourselves out on the river a little bit, putting out just a little more concern than the situation absolutely calls for.”

But he was nearly running, now, gasping as he spoke. “We've just been overreacting to your very normal concerns.” He stumbled, but caught himself. “And once we got committed to a course of action, we were just too stubborn to chuck it and say forget this.”

She hurried after him, because if she lost sight of him she knew she could never find him again in the darkness.

“We're just overreacting to the reputation of the place,” Ed gasped, “and we just got carried away, what with the bulldozer and our own natural determination to—”

He stopped.

“What is it?”

“I thought I heard something,” he whispered.

“I can't hear anything.”

They were both trembling, and Ed gripped her arm. “Listen!”

Again and again through the hiss of the rain: the distant sound of a whistle, or of metal twisted out of shape in a pair of tongs. Or of an animal of some kind, an urgent cry, again and again, tirelessly, the shriek of a horse or a cat, a brilliant spear of sound thrown repeatedly through the darkness.

A human scream.

35

The steps crossed the room and the hand gripped Paul's shoulder, and he could not turn.

He knew this was not happening. Something about the cabin had slipped into his soul, and he was losing reality. He twisted his mouth, struggling to laugh at the phantom hand that had him by the shoulder, and he fought to turn, but he could not.

He could not turn his head.

At last his head began to move, his entire body turning, muscles pulling themselves around, like a body cast in lead. His eyes left the fire. Shadows quaked in the room. Rain sputtered at the window.

His tongue was stone.

A disintegrated corpse stood before him, its teeth naked in a lipless grin.

Paul put out his arms, but they traveled so slowly he knew they would never reach the thing that stood before him, its nose decayed into twin holes.

With a clatter the poker glittered on the floor.

The thing stooped to pick it up.

The movement changed something in Paul, and he could breathe. “Whatever you are, you aren't real,” he whispered. “Nothing like you could walk.”

The poker whistled through the air, and Paul staggered out of its way, slipping on the floor. The poker rose high into the air, and punched a jagged hole in the hardwood where his head cringed out of the way.

“This isn't happening!” said Paul.

The thing swung the poker straight down with both hands, and Paul lifted a shoulder. The blow stunned him, and he reeled to his feet in agony. “This isn't happening!” he wept. “You aren't real!”

The corpse before him lurched back for a moment, getting a new grip on the iron. Firelight glittered off its skull-grin. The twin caverns of its nose hissed.

Out of fury with the impossibility more than anything he lifted the only arm that still had strength, and blocked the poker as it whipped through the air. His hand seemed to shatter, but he stabbed his elbow into the grinning head.

The face slipped off his arm and the poker slammed his ribs. Paul fumbled for the poker with his lifeless arms, but the thing stabbed the heavy iron into Paul's stomach.

Paul staggered, and butted the thing with his head. The thing was shaken, and Paul groped for the poker with arms that trembled and jerked.

And then, like a sound seeking him from far away, he heard the simple noise of an iron rod colliding with skull. Three distinct white lights flashed to his right, and he sat slowly. He had no arms, and no legs. There were no sounds, and he tasted salt water.

There was an ocean. There was a wind, and choppy waves. There was only water. No sky.

He swallowed the warm sea. It made him feel quiet to drink it, and the surface of the sea stretched into a calm, perfect sheet of plastic. He blinked. There were lines in it. Parallel lines, pleasing to look at, and also tiring. He was going to have to count them.

Something sharp. Something jabbing, again and again. It was familiar, and he knew what it was. He rolled and a fire crackled around the black grenade of a pinecone. He lurched with nausea, and knew that the repeated jabbing was the sound of a scream.

A scream repeated over, and over.

“Lise!” Paul was on his feet.

The thing crouched, and Lise stood in the doorway, her lips apart like someone laughing. She screamed, and the poker rang against the hatchet in her hands, knocking it to the floor. She put out her hands, and grappled with the poker, but the dead thing was too strong. It wrestled her to her knees. It held her upright to steady her. It stepped back.

It planted its feet, and wrung the poker back.

Paul stepped slowly to the hatchet. It lay on the hardwood floor, like a thing that had been there a long time, tarnished with disuse. The handle leapt into Paul's hand, warm from Lise's touch.

With one fluid motion, Paul wrapped his broken hand around the handle, smiled against the pain, lifted the hatchet, and buried it in the shoulder of the standing corpse.

The thing collapsed.

Lise rose from her knees and reached for Paul. They held each other. Paul's arms trembled and he sat down heavily. “I thought you were dead,” she said. “Paul,” she wept, “I thought he had killed you.”

Paul nodded, speechless. They both looked at the huddled thing in the doorway.

“I'm so glad you're alive!” Lise breathed.

Paul's tongue searched a gash in his lip where his teeth had bit into his own flesh. When he felt that he could move again, he crept to the figure in the doorway, and then froze.

The thing stirred. It moved its legs and lifted its head, and a thin hand reached back and tugged the hatchet free with a sound like a foot being pulled out of mud. The wedge-shaped hole filled with red, and a gout of crimson spilled down the back of its shirt.

The thing turned its ruined face toward them, and rose, hatchet in hand.

A large, pale hand closed around the hatchet, and a gentle voice said, “It's all right, Len. It's all over. These people are your friends.”

Ed Garfield embraced the terrible figure. “Christ,” he said. “Look what you've done to yourself.”

36

Paul shivered under blankets, holding himself as still as possible so that his arms might not stab him with that white agony. Hours may have passed. He couldn't tell.

“I couldn't stay up in that tree,” Lise said. His head was in her lap, and she looked down at him, desperate to keep him exactly where he was. “I kept thinking about this house. And how I belonged with you. And how wrong I was to let you stay in here alone.”

“It's all right,” he said. His voice was strong, and he realized that he would be all right as long as, no matter what, he never moved again.

“Because I belong with you, Paul. There's no question about that now.”

“Of course you do,” he said, before he realized what she was saying. “You actually realize that you belong with me.”

“That's what I said.”

“That's what you said. But if you extrapolate from that statement—Oh, Jesus!”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. I moved my finger. I was trying to make a point and I moved my finger.”

“Don't talk with your hands.”

“No, I won't. I'll talk with my mouth.”

“Hold yourself perfectly still.”

“I can move my legs. It's just my arms—Oh, Jesus!” In mentioning his arms he had gestured with one, and he waited for the agony to subside. “But if you extend that statement of yours to its logical conclusion, then you have to realize what that means.”

“I know what it means. It means I'll marry you.”

Paul blinked. “You will?”

“Of course I will. Did you ever doubt it?”

“Yes. I mean, I had my doubts. But I still believed that we'd—that something would happen to—”

“Something did.”

“I knew everything would be fine,” said Paul.

“You're delirious. You're in shock.”

“I know it. But I am trained in being coherent, and even under these circumstances I am lucid.”

“You'll be all right,” she said.

“If I don't die of shock, you mean.”

“That's what I mean.”

“I feel great. Just hold me like this.”

“I will.” Her voice changed, and she wept.

“It's going to be fine,” he said. “Wait.” Salt stung his lip. “You're getting tears on me. We're going to be fine.” She nodded.

The door to the downstairs bedroom opened, and Ed Garfield stepped into the room.

He picked up the poker, and leaned it against the fireplace. He did not seem to realize that anyone was with him. When Paul spoke he did not respond.

“How are they?” Paul repeated.

He did not answer at once. “All I know is Randolph has set back on that bulldozer. He loves that machine. I think he'll want to keep it. We'll have more help than we can handle by dawn.”

“Is she all right?” asked Paul.

Ed leaned. He sighed. “She's managing.”

“Is he still calm?” asked Lise.

Ed stirred himself. “Calm? Yes, he's calm. Practically asleep. Not that it matters. I have him so tied up there's no way he could budge.”

“How is she?” asked Paul.