John Saul (47 page)

A presence that wasn’t human, but wasn’t an animal, either.

Then he heard a sound—a single step—but instead of making him jump, the sound paralyzed him.

His eyes darted quickly around, searching for something he could use as a weapon.

A pitchfork.

It was only two steps away, just across the aisle.

Gathering what little courage he could muster, Michael Stiffle forced himself to overcome the paralytic fear that had seized him, then leaped across the aisle and grabbed the pitchfork.

Just as his hands closed on the fork, he heard another sound, much closer this time, directly behind him. Whirling around, the needle-sharp tines of the fork pointing straight
out, Michael Stiffle found himself gazing at Joey Wilkenson.

Joey was staring back at him through narrowed eyes that glittered with menace, and an image suddenly came into Michael Stiffle’s mind.

An image of a wolf.

For a moment that seemed to go on forever, neither boy said a word.

It was finally Michael Stiffle who broke the silence: “Wh-What do you want?” he asked, his voice quavering.

Joey glared at the boy who had taunted him all his life. “I’m crazy,” he whispered. “It’s finally true, Michael. All the things you ever said about me are finally true.”

“L-Leave me alone,” Michael stammered. “I never hurt you. I never did anything to you!”

“Yes you did,” Joey replied. “And it wasn’t just you, Michael. It was your sister, too. And all your friends.” Joey’s eyes locked on to the other boy’s, and Michael felt himself powerless to turn away. “Do you know what’s going to happen to you, Michael?” Joey finally asked.

As he felt his knees begin to give way beneath him, Michael tried to speak, but found that his voice had failed him. Mutely, he stared at Joey.

“I’m going to kill you, Michael,” Joey whispered. “Some night, when you think you’re safe in your room, I’m going to come and kill you.”

Michael Stiffle stared at Joey, the other boy’s words echoing in his mind.

I’m going to come and kill you, Michael. I’m going to come and kill you
.

“N-Nooo,” Michael wailed, finding his voice at last. He rushed at Joey, the tines of the pitchfork pointed directly at Joey’s chest, but at the last second Joey stepped aside, his own hands closing on the fork’s handle as it lunged past him.

A fraction of an instant later, Joey had jerked the fork from Mike Stiffle’s hands, and as the other boy realized what had happened, he turned to flee.

He was almost to the tack room when Joey hurled the
fork with a force that drove the tines deep into the wood of the door through which Michael had been trying to flee.

Michael’s head was pinned to the door, two tines of the wide fork straddling his neck.

A third tine, though, had pierced Michael Stiffle’s neck, missing his spinal cord by a fraction of an inch but puncturing his carotid artery.

A scream burst from Michael’s throat, but it almost instantly died away to a bubbling moan as his throat filled with blood that poured out of his mouth and nose.

As he died, the last words he heard were Joey Wilkenson’s: “It’s only the beginning, Michael. This is only the beginning.”

Then, as Michael Stiffle died, dark laughter welled up from the depths of Joey Wilkenson’s soul, and he walked out of the barn, back into the bright sunlight outside. As his ears detected the sound of a car coming up the road toward the driveway, he loped to the house, picked up the bag of food that would get him through the next several days, and started across the pasture toward the shelter of the woods.

Rick Martin arrived less than a minute later. As he pulled into the yard in front of the house, he saw Joey across the field, only a few yards from the forest. His heart racing, he slammed the car to a halt. “Joey!” he yelled as he scrambled out of the front seat and jerked his gun from its holster. “
Joey Wilkenson!”

Joey stopped short and turned as Rick took aim.

Too quickly, Martin pulled the trigger, and the shot went wild.

By the time he was ready to fire again, Joey was gone.

His laughter still echoing among the rocky ramparts above, Joey Wilkenson disappeared back into the mountains.

A
nother hour, MaryAnne thought. Another hour, and we can leave this place forever.

The funeral was over, and she had gotten through it, though she wasn’t quite certain how. Now that she was back in Charley Hawkins’s Cadillac, though, with Alison beside her, she could finally allow herself to think about it.

There had been something surreal about the caskets that had been buried in the cemetery that morning. All through the memorial service and the interment that had finally come to an end a few minutes ago, she had the feeling that she was about to wake up, about to rouse herself from this terrible nightmare to find herself back home in Canaan.

Yet it had all happened, and the memories would remain etched in her subconscious for years to come.

Last night, and the night before, she had awakened from the real nightmare, when she had once more been trapped in the blizzard, carrying Logan’s body through the driving snow.

Except in the dream, Logan hadn’t been dead.

He had been alive, blood pouring from the terrible wound in his throat, and he’d kept begging her to help him, not to let him die.

Holding him in her arms, she’d kept moving through the blizzard, but no matter which direction she went, it was always the same.

Snow. Endless snow, driving into her face whatever direction she turned, and Logan endlessly dying in her arms.

Both nights she awoke screaming, and both nights Alison had finally crept into bed with her, holding her while she shook with the terrible memory of the dream.

Now, she was sitting in the backseat of Charley Hawkins’s car, and Alison was beside her, her daughter’s fingers intertwined in her own. In a few minutes they would be at the lodge, where the funeral reception was being held. After that, it would finally be over. She and Alison could leave Sugarloaf.

Would they ever be back? Would they ever be able to bring themselves to come back here, even to visit the grave of her son, Alison’s brother?

Right now she didn’t think so, and yet already she knew that sooner or later the numbness would wear off, and even the memories of what had happened here would begin to fade, losing their sharp edge.

But where would they go?

They hadn’t decided yet, though MaryAnne already knew that Alison was no more willing than she to go back to Canaan, and try to pick up the threads of their existence. The memories of Logan would be too strong, for everything either of them saw, everything they touched, would remind them of the little boy and renew the pain of their loss.

“But what about your father?” MaryAnne had asked when they discussed it last night. “Don’t you want to see him?”

“He’s not even coming for Logan’s funeral, is he?” Alison had asked bitterly.

“He can’t afford it,” MaryAnne reminded her, but Alison was unmoved.

“He could have gotten the money if he’d really wanted to.” She’d smiled, but there was no joy in the expression. “I guess I’m finally figuring out why you don’t want him back.”

They’d left it at that last night, both of them knowing they didn’t want to go back to Canaan, but neither knowing where she did want to go.

Now, in the car, Alison asked, “Mom? Where will we go?”

It was as if the girl had read her mind. Coming out of her reverie, MaryAnne turned to look at her daughter, who had stood beside her throughout the long service, their
hands grasped in mutual support. Suddenly Alison seemed older. Her eyes had changed, had lost their childish innocence, had darkened with a new maturity. It’s not just her brother she’s lost, MaryAnne thought. It’s her childhood, too.

“I haven’t even thought about it,” MaryAnne said.

“Well, I have,” Alison told her. “You remember how Logan always wanted to go to California? How he was always talking about going to Disneyland, and learning to surf, and all that stuff?”

MaryAnne felt her heart breaking a little more as she thought of all the things Logan had been looking forward to and now would never experience. Not trusting her voice, she could only nod mutely.

“Let’s do it for him, Mom,” Alison said. “Let’s go out to California, and do all the things Logan wanted to do.”

The car came to a halt, but MaryAnne made no move to get out. She sat quietly, thinking about what Alison had just said.

Could they do it?

Could they set out alone, just the two of them, and build a whole new life for themselves?

Charley Hawkins spoke from the front seat: “You can leave right now, MaryAnne. You don’t even have to think about it. All you have to do is pack your bags and put them in the Range Rover, and you can take off.”

MaryAnne suddenly felt disoriented. “But I can’t. I—I have to think about it—I can’t just
do
something like that.”

“Of course you can,” Charley said, his eyes meeting hers in the rearview mirror. “It’s exactly what Ted and Audrey did. They met each other, and they knew they were right for each other, and that was that. And neither one of them ever regretted a minute of it, despite how it ended. Even if they’d known what was going to happen, they’d have done it anyway.”

“You’re right,” MaryAnne said. “You’re both right. Let’s do it.”

The weight of her grief lifting slightly, she got out of the car. Ten minutes later she and Alison had finished packing. Putting their luggage into the Range Rover, they climbed
into the front seat. “Are you sure you don’t want to say good-bye to anyone? ” she asked Alison.

Alison shook her head. “I said good-bye to Logan at the cemetery. I think we should just go.”

MaryAnne put the car in gear and drove away. As they left the town of Sugarloaf forever, neither of them looked back.

If they had, they might have seen Joey Wilkenson, watching from the mountainside until the car finally disappeared.

Only when it was gone did he at last start back up into the safety of the high country, the wolf, whom he had named Lobo, limping at his side.

“Don’t worry,” he said softly, dropping one hand to the wolf’s head while the fingers of the other stroked Alison’s scarf, which was still around his neck. “We’ll find her again. Wherever they go, somehow we’ll find her.”

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Read on for a chilling glimpse of
BLACK LIGHTNING …

BLACK LIGHTNING
by John Saul

Five Years Ago—
Experiment Number Forty-Seven

It was a ballet the man had danced so many times before that the first steps had become familiar enough to be performed automatically, with little if any thought at all. If he’d been asked, he couldn’t have said exactly what it was about this particular subject that first caught his attention, what particularly had piqued his interest in including her in his study. Certainly not age—he’d never been interested in the relative youth of any of his subjects.

Nor did sex matter. There were nearly as many men as women among his subjects; whatever gender imbalances existed in his study group were purely a matter of chance, and, he was certain, statistically insignificant. Not that his critics would ignore whatever imbalances existed when they began analyzing his work—he was all too aware that every possible nuance of his study would be minutely examined, that every possible interpretation, no matter how outlandish, would be applied to his choice of subjects.

But the fact was that he really hadn’t come up with any standard criteria for selecting participants in the experiments. Neither race nor gender, age nor sexual orientation, had counted.

Nor had he ever been particularly concerned about whether he invited the subject to join his study, or whether the subject was the one to make the first contact.

His current subject had made the first contact herself, as it happened, and he had almost rejected her on the basis that she seemed somehow familiar to him, that he knew her from somewhere. Familiarity was the single grounds for automatic ineligibility for the project, for he could never be certain of his own objectivity if he had previously existing feelings for the subject, whether positive or negative.

He’d first become aware of the woman a couple of weeks ago, when he’d happened into a shop near the university for a cup of coffee. He’d briefly noticed her when he’d come in, sitting near the door alone, a copy of the
Seattle Herald
spread out on the table before her. He’d paid little attention to her until he bought his own coffee and settled into a chair several tables away.