The Remnant (23 page)

"Do you remember your mother’s screams?"

Trace shook his head violently. That was a
nonsense dream question, and he wasn’t going to be dragged back
there, now. Not when there were real questions to be asked here,
answers that needed finding.

"What does any of this have to do with that
day?" he asked, waving his hands around at the dream forest, "with
the rats. Why can’t you just come right out and tell me what’s
going on? Why did the rats try to kill me when I was a kid and then
save me in New York?"

"She shrieked like a banshee," said the
little man.

Trace could hear his mother’s cries in the
back of his head as though it were yesterday. Although he sought
desperately not to be carried away down that dark memory trail he
could not resist its pull. Suddenly he was no longer in the forest.
He was back in that swirling, clawing, scratching, biting mass of
vermin in the blinding darkness. He could feel the stings of the
rats’ teeth and tiny talons all over his body, and
he
screamed yet again. Then there was light and other voices besides
his own. His mother’s cries ripped the air, allowing in more light.
Giant hands found him and dragged him out of the darkness as a
million rodent feet scrabbled off his legs and away up the stairs
in a pattering flood.

"Goddamned rats!" his dad shouted. "Lookit
all of ‘em!"

But his mother continued to shriek
hysterically even as Trace discovered that he had no breath left.
His hands slipped from his eyes, but all he could make out was a
crimson haze. His fingers slid down across his body where his
clothes were shredded to less than rags. His belly was a swelling
mass of torn skin and flesh slick with blood.

And still his mother screamed.

She called out to God for mercy. Over and
over. Until the words echoed in Trace’s head like garbage rattling
in a can.

"Jesus Christ, Juanita!" shouted his dad,
lifting Trace in his arms. "Shut the fuck up, and help me!"

Even then she let out one last call to her
God that reverberated down the years in Trace’s mind.

"Yes," he whispered, not knowing whether he
spoke in the memory, in his dream, or into the night-cloaked room
in Ashley’s house. "I remember."

The blood faded from his eyes. When he rubbed
his fingers together they were dry. He was staring at the back of
the man’s robe again, wondering what his mother’s screams on that
long ago day had to do with anything, but he knew they did. The
screams. The swarm. The Rat King. They were all part of some fabric
the warp and woof of which he had yet to unravel.

"You were afraid that day."

"Terrified," muttered Trace.

He wondered just how anyone else might have
stood up to that supernatural horde of rats. Because that’s what
they were. There was no way that many rodents would gather in any
attic. Why should they? Neither he nor his father had ever
discovered what had drawn them there. Other than Trace himself.

"And yet you faced your fears... and the
rats."

"I was stupid. I could have been killed."

"When you realized that day at the foot of
the stairs what you might be walking into, why didn’t you simply
back away?"

Trace noticed that the trees were no longer
trees exactly. They were more amorphous. If he stared at one it
would merge with another, then another, until they were all just a
misty wall beyond the light glowing from the robe itself.

"I wanted an end to it. I wanted to kill the
Rat King."

"But you knew you might not. In fact your
actions almost resulted in your own death."

"I wanted an end," repeated Trace. "One way
or the other."

The cowled head shook, but Trace couldn’t
tell whether the action expressed disagreement or disappointment or
both.

"But what you found was a beginning."

"Yes," Trace admitted, at last.

He had discovered an inner toughness he had
not known existed before the rats had come. If he had walked back
down those stairs that day and closed the door he would have grown
up unscarred, but he would have been a very different man. And he
would never have learned just how much his father loved him, or how
ineffectual and useless were both his mother’s love and her
God.

"You found a part of yourself that day, and
later you found more of yourself in your father. Did you not?"

Trace nodded. He and his dad had shared
something after that they never had before, the sense of having
faced their fears together and won through them.

"You knew the rats were not just rats. Why
did you deny it?"

"Why were they there?"

"Why were you there?"

"To kill them."

"Or die trying."

"You’re saying they were sent to kill
me?"

The man shrugged.

"But the rats in New York led me to
safety."

"A tool may have more than one use."

Trace frowned as the germ of an idea suddenly
tickled the back of his mind. "Or users."

The man glanced over his shoulder, his face
still stoical. "Your mother’s screams taught you more than you
realized."

"Why don’t you quit playing games and give me
answers?" shouted Trace.

"Answers are for those who ask the right
questions," said the robed figure, turning away to fade like the
trees.

Trace reached out to hold the dream in place,
but the robed figure seemed determined to leave him in the dark, to
lead him down some winding path until he discovered his own answers
or died trying. It was infuriating.

"What questions?" he shouted, the germ
sprouting. "You can’t answer them! Can you? You’re not real! Not
real in any way that matters!"

The words echoed all around him, and he felt
a rustling by his side. Ashley flicked on a lamp and stared at
him.

"Sorry," he said.

She shrugged. "Bad dream?"

He nodded, snuggling in close to her again.
"A confusing one."

She slid her bare leg over his, and as he
felt her warmth arousing him again, he forgot the rats and the
robed figure once more.

Trace slipped out from under Ashley’s arm,
rose slowly from the bed, and paced naked over to the window. Maxie
wandered into the room and lay down, following Trace’s movement
with watchful eyes, his snout resting on crossed paws, and Trace
smiled at the dog. Just the sort of pooch he would have figured
Ashley to own. Friendly, loving, not aggressive. Pretty useless,
really, as anything other than a faithful companion.

He pulled the drapes aside and stared out
into the night. The moon was rising over a high, boney-looking
escarpment with one large overhang of rock that resembled a giant
bird’s beak. In silhouette the crag appeared black as coal, and the
slow ascension of the light made the stone seem to move as though
alive, opening for prey. He knew that in that instant that the
light was no more real than the little man in his dream, but that
on some level it was even more real than the scars that blanketed
his body.

What do you want from me?

The thought appeared out of nowhere, and of
course no answer came. No answer ever had. But he had known
subconsiously ever since childhood that this day was coming.

The rats had never been just rats. Even a
child knew that. In the real world thousands of vermin didn’t nest
in one old house. There was no such thing as a giant,
super-intelligent, Rat King, and the rodents didn’t stalk little
boys. Only there was, and they had, and because of that Trace had
always known that there was a reality
outside
the bounds of
what others knew and accepted as real. But that very knowledge had
led him to cling all the harder to the feeble precipice of reality.
Now the little man-who might not even exist outside Trace’s
mind-wanted to peel Trace’s fingers off the cliff edge, and Trace
knew that he was perilously close to falling into that abysmal
oblivion of madness.

What do you want from me? 
he
asked again.

But he was afraid he knew what the game was
now and how it was played.

It wasn’t a vision. Or at least it wasn’t
just
a vision. Marie was certain of that. The light had
really been out there in the forest and not just inside her
head-whether or not anyone else could see it-and its being there
meant something. Something important.

She climbed quietly from bed and tiptoed to
the front door so as not to have to pass by the living room. She
eased the locks open and slipped silently outside, closing the door
behind her. Crickets chirruped, and some animal rustled in the
brush then was quiet again. When she reached the forest’s edge she
was forced to admit that she was more apprehensive than she had let
herself believe back in the warmth and safety of the house. The
shadows beyond the trees were deep and ominous, and she couldn’t
help but shiver at the thought of crossing into them.

But somewhere within the woods lay the
light.

Even the feeble scritch of the brush against
her jeans was loud enough to shut the crickets right up. Then there
was only the sound of her passage, and now and then the hoot of an
owl far off in the distance. The starlight softened the shadows
into a gloomy mass, and the trees shifted and swayed among them
like dancers in a darkened ballroom.

When she was certain she was almost upon the
spot where the light had shone she leaned against a tree to catch
her breath. But she quickly jerked her hand away when an odd
tingling sensation shot up her arm. She touched the tree again with
a tentative finger, but the feeling didn’t return. When she passed
another tree-this time a small fir-she touched its trunk. Once
again there was a tingling feeling, but if felt good. It seemed as
though she drew energy right up out of the roots. She turned to
look back at the lights of the house, and she was almost certain
that this very spot was where the light had been coming from. As
she stepped into an area devoid of brush she glanced in all
directions, but nothing moved.

She continued on to Sparkie’s stall. The
horse wandered over to have his nose rubbed, snorting.

It was then that she noticed the light
again.

Ashley lay awake listening to Trace’s
breathing, feeling the soft pumping of his heart beneath her hand.
She could just make out Maxie’s form near the door by the filmy
glow creeping down the hall from the bathroom nightlight. She felt
so fulfilled that she half expected her own body to shine with some
inner gleam. There was a soft pressure within her breast, as though
her heart was now a size or two too large, and-although there was
still just the faintest devil voice whimpering way back in the
hiddenness of the dark side of her consciousness-she knew that what
she and Trace had shared was the best thing two human beings could
share.

Dear God, thank you for sending him to me. I
needed him so badly. I hope we’re not breaking any of your
rules,but I don’t know what they are anymore, and if we are, I
don’t care.

Amen.

She imagined the prayer flashing away across
the cosmos faster than the speed of light, through the vast
emptiness between the stars, the cold reaches of deep space, devoid
of any but the most feeble gleam of some orb so distant even its
light was frigid. And yet even within that bleak and measureless
vacuum she knew that her words would still be warm.

That Marie accepted her and Trace being
together was another weight off her shoulders. She had been
mortified to see the girl standing in the room with her and Trace
lying there together, but Marie seemed to have taken the whole
thing in stride. Perhaps she had even seen it coming before Ashley
did. Ashley didn’t lend much credence to Marie’s
second
sight
, but the girl was incredibly insightful for her age.

Trace stirred beside her, and she felt the
powerful flex of his thigh against her own. Then he calmed again in
sleep, and she sighed, rolling onto her back and staring at the
ceiling.

Her childhood room in California City had
been not much smaller than this one. But the house had seldom been
so silent. Even in those hours of the night when most households
were as dead as crypts Ashley’s childhood home usually emitted some
sound, and for Ashley it seemed that most often that sound was
someone crying.

Her father had one legal wife—Ashley’s
mother—but he kept many
celestial
brides, sealed to him for
eternity. The
women
ranged in age from thirteen to forty,
and at any given time there were more children than Ashley could
keep track of. But past the witching hour it was seldom one of them
crying. That sound almost always came from one of the young
brides.

Ashley most often recalled the night when she
was twelve and snuck down the hall to Ruth’s room. All the other
doors in that wing were closed tightly, but Ashley still crept like
a mouse, because she knew that the other wives were listening. They
might not answer the call of a weeping sister, but they would still
hear it ringing in their ears. To her dying day Ashley knew that
she would never forgive them for their callousness or
cowardice.

She followed the soft sobbing to the far end
of the hall and knocked so lightly on the door that she was afraid
Ruth would not hear, but she was just as afraid that someone else
would. When she rapped lightly with her knuckles once more the girl
opened the door, her eyes swollen, her cheeks stained with tears.
Her long auburn hair was tousled from the pillow.

"You shouldn’t be here!" Ruth whispered,
glancing nervously down the hall.

But Ashley sensed that the last thing the
girl really wanted was for her to go away. So she slipped past into
the bedroom and nudged the door closed behind her. Instinctively
she held out her arms, and Ruth fell into them. Although the girl
was almost two years older she shook in Ashley’s embrace like a
terrified toddler. Ashley led the girl back to the iron bed where
they sat side by side.