Son of the Endless Night, page 3
If there was something to investigate here, he thought, jumpy from dissatisfaction, then he was doing a piss-poor job of it.
He went back downstairs. The temporary night clerk was deep into his Penthouse magazine, eyes inches from the pulchritudinous photos as he absently fingered one of his terrific collection of zits. He glanced up. Rich rubbed his own jaw and tried to look as if he were in pain.
"Toothache coming on. I must have left the Demerol in my car."
Outside, the familiar vault of sky looked rigged with prehistoric points of starfire, lights focused on an immense unused stage set, the earthly fall of fresh snow; he felt himself shaping drama as he crunched along. Zero air froze the hair in his nostrils and burned his sore lips. Rich pulled up the hood of his parka and tightened the drawstrings, fumbled for his sheepskin-lined gloves. He struck off down a lighted but unshoveled walk that took him away from the parking lot and toward the burned-out wing of the inn.
There were a few muzzy lights on the property, shielded by conical tin. He saw and encountered no one. The snoring sound of a snowmobile came out of the hills beyond the inn, then faded to a waspish buzz. A tractor-trailer went whining by on the Post Road. Then it was so quiet he was startled by the sounds of his boots squelching through the granular snow cover.
Someone had backed a car close to the entrance of the burned wing, which was fronted by a pipe-frame canopy skeleton. The car was a long old tail fin Caddy, the battleship of motor cars, king of the road in the late 1950s. This one was solidly black in color but without luster, the original finish having worn down in most places almost to the primer coat. Rich, always interested in classic and near-classic cars, paused to look it over. Vermont plates. He observed the wear and tear of a quarter century of use: pitted and rusted chrome, missing radio antenna, a jigsaw piece of taillight gone, slovenly interior. But the snow tires appeared to be new, judging from the depth and sharpness of the tracks they had made in the snow. Whoever owned the Cadillac Fleetwood apparently cared nothing for show: but he was a careful driver. There was no evidence on the body of the car of major miscalculations, just a few minor pings and dents.
There was also a small wordless bumper sticker, nothing on it but the stylized fish that symbolized the Christian faith: This one was reflectorized.
The hood of the Cadillac was still warm from the heat of the engine. Between the car and the entrance to the building there were numerous bootprints, male and female, in the snow. Rich counted six different ribbed patterns. They had arrived as a group not more than fifteen minutes ago and had gone directly inside, not pausing to kill time on the steps or wait for others. It had been a businesslike and orderly procession.
One set of footprints came up from the main wing of the inn. Whoever he was, he had a short wide foot and, Rich judged, an impaired stride: there was a tendency to drag his left foot.
Windross.
Rich went up to the double doors. A sign had been posted beside them, CLOSED DUE TO FIRE, DANGER, NO TRESPASSING. There was a chain and a big laminated padlock that hung open. Many panes of glass in the doors had been replaced with crudely cut squares of plywood. The doors weren't tightly closed. Rich walked in, making a minimum of noise.
A battery-operated emergency light mounted on a wall of the foyer provided a strong glare that threw his shadow in disarray across the wide staircase. Rich's teeth were chattering again, from tension and excitement, a sense of something important about to be revealed. The building was as cold as a meat locker, but a taint of old smoke remained indelibly in the air. The wallpaper beside the stairs looked dingy, as if a black cloud had come boiling down from above. Along a hallway icicles hung from the pipe that ran beneath the ceiling, and there were huge blips and blisters of ice all over the warped pegged boards of the foyer, residue from the streaming hoses the firefighters had run up the stairs.
Rich thought he heard voices, but they were far away, no louder than bees around a hive. Coming from behind one of the closed doors on the first floor? Or were they upstairs, closer to where the fire had originated?
Rich crossed the foyer, his shadow jerking and stabbing upward into darkness; there were no emergency lights up there. He bent down and examined the soiled runner on the steps, found traces of snow from the boots of the visitors. He followed these traces a step at a time until he was nearly out of light, facing blackness, the smoke odor more distinct and irritating. Now he heard the voices a little more clearly.
They were reciting something. Men, women, men, women, then all joining in together: their words remained indistinguishable, but the voices had a kind of religious cadence that distressed him because this was no church, and there shouldn't have been anyone around at two in the morning.
Wherever they were, he knew he wouldn't be able to locate them. He was now at the top of the stairs on the second floor with the glow of the emergency light beneath him just strong enough to show the way up to the third and topmost floor. But with the windows at the ends of the hall shuttered tight, he would be blind in the dark before he'd gone more than a dozen feet in either direction.
Then the child cried out.
It was a thin wail of pain or terror that stilled the muttering voices and caused a dark-tasting liquid to heave up into Rich's throat, nearly choking him. With his nerves tingling sharply he gagged against the sleeve of his parka, then spat on the floor. He swallowed hard, straining to hear again, hear anything, shivering in the cold of the partially burned building, feeling in danger, in mortal terror himself.
There was, quite unexpectedly, a light at the far end of the hall to his left, a vivid snakelike glow in the stinking dark. As he stared, he saw it move. The crook of light seemed to float through the air two or three feet above the floor before coming to an abrupt stop.
It was not quite the worst thing he might have seen, after the voices and the outcry that had silenced the voices for now; a dangling riddled corpse or something large, hairy, and shuffling would have been worse. But it was enough to send Rich into a near-panic: he whirled and headed for the stairs, for the safety of the open air. And just as he was about to hit the stairs running, a rigid fold in the hall carpet, standing almost as high as a curb, tripped him. He did a flailing somersault and came down hard on his left shoulder, a fall that wrenched his neck and knocked most of the wind out of him.
As he lay there momentarily helpless the thing came shooting at him from out of the dark and seemed to describe a 180-degree turn in the air above his head; it landed beyond his feet with arched back and stiffened tail and a playful squall of excitement. He saw a big nondescript cat wearing a luminous night collar that had caught the meager light from below. The cat stared at him with big peridot eyes, waiting, as if it had felled an enormous mouse and was now disappointed that the sport couldn't continue.
Once, during the pandemonium of Bladderball Day, Rich had been accidentally kicked by someone in the mob of stoned ecstatic Yale students, kicked hard in the diaphragm and half paralyzed for several minutes, just barely aware of his surroundings. His friends never missed him and he was left in the rapidly emptying streets outside Phelps Gate to fend for himself. He felt almost as bad now as he had then, and there was a complication: now he was scared, scared half out of his mind as he struggled for breath.
Because he'd heard them coming. They were close, and he couldn't move.
Whoever they were, whatever they were doing in the building at this time of night, he knew he didn't want them to find him lying there dazed from the fall and unable to explain his presence. He forced himself to his knees, and looked up.
Footsteps. The beam of a flashlight grazed the wall not far from his head. They were at the top of the third-floor stairs, starting down. But they had paused. Someone was in a state of grief verging on hysteria. Man or woman, it was difficult to tell. The others tried to calm their grief-stricken companion. The diversion gave Rich the few extra seconds he needed to recover sufficiently to get down to the first floor.
The cat shot past him when he reached the doors, sprinted off across the snow as he went outside. The door groaned when Rich opened it, but he didn't care. He knew they had to be right behind him, would see him no matter how quickly he walked away. Running was out of the question. He wanted, above all, not to be seen. But he had only a few more seconds.
There was boxwood nearby, packed with snow, a hedge about five feet high that closely bordered the building. Rich jumped from the steps into the dark space between the building and the hedge, backed up until he was snagged on ice-covered twigs. He crouched there, shuddering, facing the entrance to the building a few feet away.
Two women came out first, followed by two men. They all looked middle-aged. Slightly careworn, or saddened; otherwise nothing noteworthy about any of them. They wore dark clothing: boots, long coats, hats. Rich saw a Bible-thick book in a gloved hand, a red ribbon dangling from it, the gilt letters or symbols on the cover nearly worn away from long years of devout usage.
They all turned, waiting, a couple of them with outstretched hands, for another to emerge.
It was Windross. He was virtually carried from the building, his left foot dragging. Perhaps he could no longer walk unaided. From his expression he looked as if he'd been cruelly tortured. He coughed and wept in spasms. A third woman, dramatically taller than the others, spoke urgently to Windross but in a voice pitched so low Rich couldn't overhear much of what she said. There was something about not giving in, no matter what he, Windross, saw. About strength of purpose, and the value of endurance, of repetition. The woman had widely spaced and intensely dark eyes and a fascinating scar low across one cheek that seemed to underscore an attitude of command.
". . . bring him with us," she was saying to her companion, a large stoop-shouldered man who supported the distraught Windross.
"I want Polly!" Windross screamed, fighting the hands that held him.
The dark-eyed woman spoke to him again, her mouth next to his ear, her eyes staring off into the darkness. The others waited, watching, faces seriously uniform; before each face condensing breath hung, mysteriously alight, forms cloudlike yet palpable, as if their souls had been let out for an airing.
After half a minute of listening to her Windross moaned suddenly and seemed to fall into a faint, his head lolling. The woman straightened and studied him, betraying neither compassion nor annoyance; then she glanced at the stoop-shouldered man and indicated the Cadillac with a motion of her head.
Others assisted and they carried Windross away. The dark-eyed woman stayed behind, rooted, not watching, lifting her own face slowly to the stars; she sighed and in that moment seemed vulnerable, sorely tried.
Rich couldn't take his eyes off her, and perhaps that was a mistake. She must have sensed his scrutiny. Her head snapped down and for several moments she stared right at him.
The motor of the Cadillac rumbled and the exhaust belched. Rich, his hindquarters already freezing, turned to a lump of ice inside the parka, even though he couldn't be sure the woman was able to distinguish anything at all there in the dark behind the hedge. Someone called to her; she glanced away but didn't move. She knew. But apparently she couldn't decide what to do about Rich. They waited together, in suspense.
Snow tires spun, slewed, found purchase. Another call, insistent.
"Inez."
She made up her mind then; and without another look at the place where he had attempted to hide she went down the steps in a girlish hurry, popped into the front seat beside the slumping Windross, and was driven away.
Rich waited two minutes, then rose slowly with a gloved hand clamped to his wry neck. He grimaced at the pain, pushed his way out from behind the hedge. The Cadillac was not in sight.
Silence was a blessing; stars shown with the timid luster of banished gods. He scooped a handful of snow for his dry mouth. Liquefying, it burned his tongue but tasted wonderful. He looked up at the doors of the closed building and, dreading the night and the impulse that had brought him up here in the first place, knew he must go back inside.
6
Karyn woke up coverless in their bed, shivering.
One of the windows in the room had been raised; the shutters stood wide open. Cold air poured in and the thin curtains billowed.
She slid off the bed naked and went sleepily to the window, teeth chattering. The window wouldn't budge when she tried to close it. Frozen in place, she thought. But who had opened it, and where was Rich?
The icy wind wrapped yards and yards of the voluminous curtains around her; she was all goosebumps and the material clung to her roughened skin as if it were highly charged; fine hair on the back of her neck and along her backbone sizzled. She gave up struggling with the window and concentrated on freeing herself. But she couldn't move her hands quickly enough inside the developing cocoon. She plucked and fretted but she was in a daze, h£r head hot and bothered; the material had little density but seemed to be in humming motion, vibrating at a frequency like that of a bee's wings. Karyn's futile efforts to free herself were exhausting. She just couldn't wake up and make the few decisive strokes necessary to break out.
A light, somewhere. Flashing distantly, isolated, but with a sense of something enormous behind it, weight and momentum like an oncoming train. The felt momentum set her heart to pounding. The curtains had slumped across her nose and mouth, almost sealing them. Her arms were pinned against her breasts, her bare legs were bound together. She needed to pee. Urgently.
"Help," she said meekly, feeling ridiculous in this situation.
The light was coming closer, swaying in air, throwing off rings of color that moved with the liquid blurred speed of circular saws spinning in opposite directions, cutting away the dark. Somebody was there, behind the light, and she was bare-assed, on view to unknown eyes.
"G-get me out of— "
It was the flame of a candle upheld in an old pewter holder. The flame illuminated in trembling light the inclined head of the blond child, who wore a flannel nightgown in a faded peach color. Her narrow blue-veined feet were bare. She walked on the balls of her feet, pickily, like a goat. She had pulled her hair starkly away from her face, which as it was wrenched from darkness looked spoiled by trouble.
"Polly!"
To Karyn's dismay urine dribbled between her closed thighs. She groaned.
Polly was amused. She extended the candle almost to arm's length to see Karyn better. Polly's eyes were wide, although most of the topaz blue had faded from them, leaving thin ice. She moved again, sideways, fairly dancing from excitement. Then she stood on tiptoe, rising to Karyn's height. Woman to woman. There were two small flaming spots on her cheekbones. The irregular edges of her teeth gleamed between parted arched lips.
It was a rapacious mouth she exhibited, and Karyn's skin tightened barrenly as if from the contraction of scar tissue.
"Polly, be c-careful with— "
"Rich wants to be with me," the girl said.
Her voice sounded thin and remote, but that might have been due to the faintness Karyn was experiencing as blood drained from her head toward her groin. She was suffocating in the clinging curtains, couldn't feel the floor with her feet. And the cocoon was becoming opaque, filling with a cloudlike whiteness.
"Please help me!"
Polly danced again, sidestepped trippingly, the candle waggling closer to Karyn's beclouded face. She sang, wordlessly, under her breath. "La-la, la-la, la-la!" Then she stopped and gave her tied-back hair a toss and said with smug good cheer, "Rich is coming."
"Oh God yes where is he?"
"He's going to play with my mouse."
Karyn bit her lip in a frenzy; she was finding it more difficult to draw a sustaining breath. The candle flame seemed only an inch away from the highly flammable curtain.
"P-play with— " She had bit her lip more severely than she thought; she tasted blood, and a fine mist of it sprayed the curtain over her mouth. "I d-don't know what you— " Her own blood on her tongue, naked humiliation, the girl's smirking antics and side glances, unexpectedly aroused Karyn.
"You hateful little bitch! Put that candle down and help me get out of here right now!"
Polly was taken aback; she stiffened, and her tongue pecked uncertainly at the corners of her mouth. Then she recovered and smiled slowly, condescendingly.
Just as slowly, with her free hand, she began to raise her nightgown, gathering it in folds until she had lifted it to the level of her ribcage, exposing her naiad's lucent belly and a jotting of floss over the flagrant pubes.
"This is my mouse," she said slyly.
Karyn simply stared through the thickening cocoon, feeling faint with disgust and fear.
"Do you want to see something else?"
Polly's face looked spoiled again, darkly sinful, her hot little mouth working ecstatically. With a grand gesture she jerked the nightgown above her pretty virginal breasts, which trembled like pale fruit on a bough. But it wasn't her breasts she was showing off.
Just below the breastbone, centered between the shapely nippled mounds, was a ballooning membrane. It pulsed ominously, glowing like a live coal, and betrayed life within its opaque skin. Karyn had a glimpse of something coiled and resting, like an unborn serpent. But feathery, with sharp angles, spurs, tiny hideous eyes that fastened savagely on Karyn.
"Rich will be with me!" the girl said, her downcast eyes worshipful. The glow from the distressing membrane flushed balefully across her face. 'Forever."
Karyn shrieked.
Polly let the hem of the nightgown fall to her feet. To Karyn's failing eyes and assaulted consciousness she seemed less substantial, a glowing image in a mist. But the candle flame stood inches high and steady as a blade. The stench of melted candlewax filled Karyn's nostrils.
