The Servants of Twilight (57 page)

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Authors: Dean Koontz

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Thrillers

BOOK: The Servants of Twilight
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“I’ll have more later.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you feel nauseous?”
“No, no. I’m okay. Just tired.”
She studied him in silence for a moment, and he forced a smile for her sake, and she said, “Well . . . whenever you’re ready for more, I’ll reheat it.”
As the fluttering fire made shadows leap and cavort on the walls, Charlie watched her feed Joey. The boy was willing to eat and able to swallow, but she had to mash up the sausages and beans, and spoon the stuff into his mouth as if she were feeding an infant instead of a six-year-old.
A grim sense of failure settled over Charlie once more.
The boy had fled from an intolerable situation, from a world of pure hostility, into a fantasy that he found more congenial. How far had he retreated into that inner world of his? Too far ever to come back?
Joey would take no more food. His mother was unhappy about how little he had eaten, but she couldn’t force him to swallow even one more mouthful.
She fed the dog, too, and he had a better appetite than his master. Charlie wanted to tell her that they couldn’t waste food on Chewbacca. If this storm was followed by another, if the weather didn’t clear for a few days, they would have to ration what little provisions they had left, and they would regret every morsel that had been given to the dog. But he knew she admired the animal’s courage and perseverance, and she felt its presence helped prevent Joey from slipping all the way down into deep catatonia. He didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop feeding it. Not now. Not yet. Wait until morning. Maybe the weather would have changed by then, and maybe they would head southwest to the lake.
Joey’s breathing worsened for a moment; his wheezing grew alarmingly loud and ragged.
Christine quickly changed the child’s position, used her folded jacket to prop up his head. It worked. The wheezing softened.
Watching the boy, Charlie thought: Are you hurting as bad as I am, little one? God, I hope not. You don’t deserve this. What you
do
deserve is a better bodyguard than I’ve been, and that’s for damned sure.
Charlie’s own pain was far worse than he let Christine know. The new dose of Tylenol and powdered anaesthetic helped, but not quite as much as the first dose. The pain in his shoulder and arm no longer felt like a live thing trying to chew its way out of him.
Now
it felt as if little men from another planet were inside him, breaking his bones into smaller and smaller splinters, popping open his tendons, slicing his muscles, and pouring sulfuric acid over everything. What they wanted to do was gradually hollow him out, use acid to burn away everything inside him, until only his skin remained, and then they would inflate the limp and empty sack of skin and put him on exhibit in a museum back on their own world. That’s how it felt, anyway. Not good. Not good at all.
Later, Christine went out to the mouth of the cave to get some snow to melt for drinking water, and discovered that night had fallen. They hadn’t been able to hear the wind from within the cave, but it was still raging. Snow slanted down from the darkness, and the frigid, turbulent air hammered the valley wall with arctic fury.
She returned to the cave, put the pan of snow by the fire to melt, and talked with Charlie for a while. His voice was weak. He was in more pain than he wanted her to know, but she allowed him to think he was deceiving her because there wasn’t anything she could do to make him more comfortable. In less than an hour, in spite of his pain, he was asleep, as were Joey and Chewbacca.
She sat between her son and the man she loved, with her back to the fire, looking toward the front of the cave, watching the shadows and the reflections of the flames as they danced a frantic gavotte upon the walls. With one part of her mind she listened for unusual sounds, and with another part she monitored the respiration of the man and the boy, afraid that one of them might suddenly cease breathing.
The loaded revolver was at her side. To her dismay, she had learned that Charlie had no more spare cartridges in his jacket pockets. The box of ammo was in his backpack, which they had abandoned at the rocky overhang where she had patched his shoulder. She was furious with herself for having forgotten it. The rifle and shotgun were gone. The handgun was their only protection, and she had only the six shells that were in it.
The totem bear glowed on the wall.
 
 
At 8:10, as
Christine finished adding fuel to the fire, Charlie began to groan in his sleep and toss his head on the pillow she had made from his folded jacket. He had broken out in a greasy sweat.
A hand against his forehead was enough to tell her that he had a fever. She watched him for a while, hoping he would quiet down, but he only got worse. His groans became soft cries, then less soft. He began to babble. Sometimes it was wordless nonsense. Sometimes he spat out words and disjointed, meaningless sentences.
At last he became so agitated that she got two more Tylenol tablets from the bottle, poured a cupful of water, and attempted to wake him. Although sleep seemed to be providing no comfort for him, he wouldn’t come around at first, and when he finally did open his eyes they were bleary and unfocused. He was delirious and didn’t seem to know who she was.
She made him take the pills, and he greedily swallowed the water, washing them down. He was asleep again even as she took the cup from his lips.
He continued to groan and mutter for a while, and although he was sweating heavily, he also began to shiver. His teeth chattered. She wished they had some blankets. She piled more wood on the fire. The cave was relatively warm, but she figured it couldn’t be
too
warm right now.
Around 10:00, Charlie grew quiet again. He stopped tossing his head, stopped sweating, slept peacefully.
At least, she
told
herself it was sleep that had him. But she was afraid it might be a coma.
 
 
Something squeaked.
Christine grabbed the revolver and bolted to her feet as if the squeak had been a scream.
Joey and Charlie slept undisturbed.
She listened closely, and the squeak came again, more than one short sound this time, a whole series of squeaks, a shrill though distant chittering.
It wasn’t a sound of stone or earth or water, not a dead sound. Something else, something
alive
.
She picked up the flashlight. Heart pumping furiously, holding the revolver out in front of her, she edged toward the sound. It seemed to be coming from the cavern that adjoined this one.
Soft as they were, the shrill cries nevertheless lifted the hairs on the back of her neck because they were so eerie, alien.
At the entrance of the next chamber, she stopped, probing ahead with the beam of the flashlight. She saw the waxylooking stalactites and stalagmites, the damp rock walls, but nothing out of the ordinary. The noises now seemed to be coming from farther away, from a third cavern or even a fourth.
As she cocked her head and listened more intently, Christine suddenly understood what she was hearing. Bats. A lot of them, judging by their cries.
Evidently, they always nested in another chamber, elsewhere in the mountain, always entered and exited by another route, for there was no sign of them here, no bat corpses or droppings. Okay. She didn’t mind sharing the caves with them, just as long as they kept to their own neighborhood.
She returned to Charlie and Joey and sat down between them, put the gun aside, switched off the flashlight.
Then she wondered what would happen if Spivey’s people showed up, blocked off the entrance to this cave, and left them no option but to head deeper into the mountain in search of another way out, a back door to safety. What if she and Charlie and Joey were forced to flee from cave to cave and eventually had to pass through that chamber in which the bats nested? It would probably be knee-deep in bat shit, and there would be hundreds—maybe
thousands
—of them hanging overhead, and a few of them or even
all
of them might have rabies, because bats were excellent carriers of rabies—
Stop it!
she told herself angrily.
She had enough to worry about already. Spivey’s lunatics. Joey. Charlie’s wound. The weather. The long journey back to civilization. She couldn’t add bats to the list. That was crazy. There was only a chance in a million that they would ever have to go nearer the bats.
She tried to relax.
She put more wood on the fire.
The squeaking faded.
The caves became silent again except for Joey’s labored breathing and the crackle of the fire.
 
 
She was getting
drowsy.
She tried every trick she could think of to keep herself awake, but sleep continued to close in on her.
She was afraid to let herself go under. Joey might take a turn for the worse while she was dozing. Or Charlie might need her, and she wouldn’t know.
Besides, someone ought to stand guard.
Spivey’s people might come in the night.
No. The storm. Witches weren’t allowed to fly on their brooms in storms like this.
She smiled, remembering the way Charlie had joked with Joey.
The flickering firelight was mesmerizing . . . Someone ought to stand guard, anyway.
Just a quick nap.
Witches . . .
Someone . . . ought to . . .
It was one of those nightmares in which she knew she was asleep, knew that what was happening was not real, but that didn’t make it any less frightening. She dreamed that all the caves in the valley wall were connected in an elaborate maze, and that Grace Spivey and her religious terrorists had entered this particular cave from other chambers farther along the hillside. She dreamed they were preparing a human sacrifice, and the sacrifice was Joey. She was trying to kill them, but each time she shot one of them, the corpse divided into two
new
fanatics, so by murdering them she was only adding to their numbers. She became increasingly frantic and terrified, increasingly outnumbered, until all the caves within the valley wall were swarming with Spivey’s people, like a horde of rats or cockroaches. And then, aware that she was dreaming, she began to suspect that Grace Spivey’s followers were not only in the caves of the dream but in the
real
caves in the real world beyond sleep, and they were conducting a human sacrifice in
both
the nightmare and in reality, and if she didn’t wake up and stop them, they were going to kill Joey for real, kill him while she slept. She struggled to free herself of sleep’s iron grip, but she could not do it, could not wake up, and now in the dream they were going to cut the boy’s throat. And in reality, beyond the dream?
69
 
When Christine woke
in the morning, Joey was eating a chocolate bar and petting Chewbacca.
She watched him for a moment, and she realized tears were streaming down her cheeks. This time, however, she was crying because she was happy.
He seemed to be returning from his self-imposed psychological exile. He was in better physical shape, too. Maybe he was going to be all right. Thank God.
The swelling was gone from his face, replaced by a better—though not really healthy—color, and he was no longer having difficulty breathing. His eyes were still blank, and he continued to be withdrawn, but not nearly as far-off and pathetic as he had been yesterday.
The fact that he had gone to the supplies, had rummaged through them, and had found the candy for himself was encouraging. And he had apparently added wood to the fire, for it was burning brightly, though after being untended during the night it should have cooled down to just a bank of hot coals.
She crawled to him and hugged him, and he hugged her, too, though weakly. He didn’t speak, wouldn’t be bribed or teased or encouraged into uttering a single word. And he still wouldn’t meet her eyes directly, as if he were not entirely aware that she was here with him; however, she had the feeling that, when she looked away from him, his intense blue eyes turned toward her and lost their slightly glazed and dreamy quality. She wasn’t positive. She couldn’t catch him at it. But she dared to hope that he was returning to her, slowly feeling his way back from the edge of autism, and she knew she must not rush him or push him too hard.
Chewbacca had not perked up as much as his young master, though he was a bit less weak and stringy looking than he had been last night. The pooch seemed to grow healthier and more energetic even as Christine watched the boy pet him, responding to each pat and scratch and stroke as if Joey’s small hands had healing power. There was sometimes a wonderful, mysterious, deep sharing, an instant bonding in the relationships between children and their animals.
Joey held his candy bar out in front of him, turned it back and forth, and seemed to be staring at it. He smiled vaguely.

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