Sleepwalker (22 page)

A voice said, “I hope I am in time, Peter.”

Peter did not pause to wonder, or to formulate a response. He turned, saw who it was, and knew immediately that he would have to kill her.

Irene's eyes were bright. “I hurried back from London, and then I thought, I wonder if he is at the site. You see how well I am beginning to understand you, Peter. I saw the lights, and now I see you standing there, looking unwell.”

She was panting slightly, carrying only a handbag. She put it down and unzipped her jacket, as though she were someone arriving for a long-planned meeting.

Peter's voice was a rasp. “I am up late,” he began. “And so are you.”

“I have come all the way from London tonight for a reason, Peter.”

Peter had begun to believe himself entirely brilliant again. He would be able to talk her out of whatever she thought. And yet there was something about Irene that made her indomitable. Her eyes were too bright, and she seemed always to be about to smile, as though she knew, always, too much.

“I have work,” Peter offered, panting, unable to control his breathing. “Catching up to do.”

“I believe, Peter, that you stole the Skeldergate Man, and took our poor old friend away and hid him.”

He stared, and then he experimented with a smile. “Why would I do that?”

“I believe that you have been taking advantage of the rumors here, Peter. The stories about the site, and how it is haunted. You want to scare us, I don't know why. I think perhaps you dislike someone among us, perhaps Davis. Perhaps you want to frighten him, or frighten all of us. But I understand other things, too, Peter.”

Kill her. The command was like a slap. Kill her now. A snarl from within his bones.

“I think perhaps you have underestimated the site, and our old friend the bog man. Perhaps you are the one who has been deceived, Peter. Perhaps the spirit of this place has possessed you and used you to give our old friend a new life. Perhaps the Man is using you, Peter, and perhaps you should be warned.”

She said this lightly, as though disagreeing on the accuracy of a train schedule. But her eyes were steady. Peter could not answer her, and in his hesitation she saw that she was right.

“I am so glad I came here, Peter. Because I know it is true. You have done something terrible. Have you—I cannot even ask it. Have you hurt Davis?”

Peter turned and mentally discarded the objects he saw. Even the scissors looked difficult, undependable, and he needed something sure. Something like a mattock, or a hammer, or—he saw it.

The Bulldog spade was in his hand.

Irene told him everything with her eyes: that she saw how late she was, how truly too late. And she was determined that it would be difficult to kill her. She flung herself across the cabin to a chair, and lifted the chair to keep him away from her.

It did not even slow him down, this minor obstruction. His movements were fluid, and swifter than she could have imagined. He swung wide, and the spade rang with the sound of the blow.

But she did not go down. She speared him with a leg of the chair, and all the breath left his body. She lunged toward the door, and he caught her with one hand and managed to bounce her off the table, the kettle clattering.

She was on her feet at once, picking up the chair, and this time he planted his feet, and swung harder.

There was no moment of falling. One moment she was upright, fending him away with the chair. The next she was on the floor, and he tore the chair from her grasp. He struck her again, but the unconscious rolling of her head made the blow half miss, and the spade handle splintered.

Peter fell to his knees. He was sweating, and his arms trembled. He could not even bring himself to laugh, aside from a croak.

Now he had a problem. Now he had a dead body, and this would not be so simple. He would have to put her somewhere quickly, somewhere no one would look for days, or, better, weeks. The river could not be trusted. Bodies tend to float. He could anchor the corpse, but as he considered this he realized exactly where he should put her.

He was barely trembling as he gathered her, and began to half carry, half drag her. He gathered up her handbag. He was not so foolish as to forget that. He would put her and her handbag in the discard heap, among the slag, the slabs of concrete, and the screened soil. She could stay there for months.

He was trembling now with delight. Even this disaster would be overcome. He found a place quickly, settling two or three chunks of concrete over her. It was too quick, he realized. He would need to find another spade and do the job as it should be done.

At the last moment, hurrying back to the cabin, he realized something about her body. As he had carried it he had felt it moving. Slightly. Just barely. He had felt it breathing.

She was still alive.

He clenched his fists. He could not deny it. He had not killed her.

He would fix that. He would clean his desk, find a new spade, and go back where she was, pinned under concrete. She would not go anywhere.

He sat at his desk. He could not stop shivering. What a mess this office was, he saw. Bits of spade handle. An overturned chair. And blood, bright spatters of it. He had a good deal of work to do, and he began, gathering wood bits, righting the chair, making the cabin look like a place of business.

A sound, somewhere out there in the darkness. It could not be Irene. There was no way that she could scramble out from under the concrete slag. And besides, it did not sound like a human being at all. There was a click, and then a long, whispering sound. It sounded like something dragging through the dark.

Surely there was nothing. Surely it was imaginary. But there was, he convinced himself, something. Something real. He crouched, tilting his head. He could not hear the sound now, but there had been a click again, metallic and sharp.

Someone was out there. Someone shuffled slowly in the dark. There was a step, and a drag, and another step. Someone with a limp, or a very irregular stride. A drunk man, perhaps. That is exactly how it sounded. A drunk man out there, staggering through the dark.

Coming closer.

There was a shape at the window. It was infuriating how disrespectful drink made people. Nosy and obnoxious. Dark hands worked at the window frame. The man was trying to break into the office. Peter clenched his teeth. It was a very good thing he was here to prevent what was, quite plainly, a crime about to take place.

He parted his lips to warn the man away, and then he had a much more brilliant idea. He would let the crime begin, and he would surprise the would-be burglar in his tracks.

Peter took a sharp breath. There was something wrong.

It was not a burglar.

It was not a man.

The dark hands patted at the glass, and then retreated. The shuffling step carried itself along the outside of the cabin. A foot found, and missed, and found again the bottom step.

The Skeldergate Man was climbing the steps. His hands pattered on the outside of the door, feeling it, by the whispering sounds they made, like slow black butterflies.

Peter felt his life stop, and believed that he would never move again. His heart clattered in his chest, and in his ears. The Man—the leathery thing that had been a man—had begun to walk on its own.

It made no sound but the pad of its hands on the outside of the door. No sound at all.

This was impossible, entirely impossible, and he should simply stride to the door, and open it, and stuff the tiresome corpse back into the car where it belonged. This was funny in its way, wasn't it? A fine invention, one that wouldn't shut off.

The door handle began to move. Shakily, but relentlessly, it twisted from horizontal to vertical. This was impossible as well, Peter thought to himself, feeling his mind become paralyzed. The hand had no strength in it at all for a very good reason. It had no bones. It could not turn a door handle.

The door opened. The silhouette was a darker shape against the less perfect dark of night.

Peter backed away, all the way to the computer. He would go out to the car and get the controls, as soon as he could move again.

The corpse stood upright, trembling slightly, swinging its head from side to side, a blind thing. It lurched into the cabin, and Peter dashed past it, down the steps.

It was a very good thing to be out under the sky. The cabin had been a trap. Now that he was out, he knew how easy it would be to resolve this crisis. He would run. It was very simple. And at the same time he found Irene's words burning into him.

The Man had been using him.

He turned toward the car. He would lock himself in there, and he would have a chance to think. That's all he needed. A moment to think. Just a moment to understand what was happening. But he was puzzled.

There was something around his neck. Nothing terribly strong. Something snakelike, and constricting. It tightened, and there was a weight behind it, dragging along the ground.

He spun, tangled in this obstruction, and for some reason he could not see clearly. It was dark, he knew, but he could not understand why his vision was so obscured.

There was a head in the way, just before his eyes, and the bindings that held him, and grew tighter, were leathery straps, the arms and legs of the Man.

Peter wrestled, and worked his way out of the leather lashes that held him, but which were, after all, quite light. He was very deeply puzzled as to how he had become entangled in them. He must have brushed the Man as he leaped past, toward the door. As he tried to strip himself of the ancient leather, one arm worked itself up toward Peter's face.

Toward his mouth. Peter cringed, backing away, but the thing would not leave him.

The hand found his lips. Leather fingers forced themselves between his teeth. Peter bit hard, trying to cry out, because this was not the powerless, device-driven thing he had known. This thing was alive. A wind, like ancient breath, icy as the exhalation of a cave, kissed Peter's cheeks. The taste of the ancient hand was tannic, like a new glove, and the leather limb forced its way into Peter's throat, and down. Peter gagged, his scream silenced. The face touched Peter's face, and Peter danced, struggling to toss the thing away.

The hand reached into Peter, and made a fist inside him. He could feel it like a knot as he danced, and he leaped and spun and ran, until he knew that he could not breathe, and had not been able to breathe for a long time.

Peter rolled on the ground, hammering the skull before him with his own. He tore at the thing, unable to hang on to it, and when he did find the throat before him, the neck collapsed easily within his grip.

The hand within Peter worked, spasming, searching. Peter fell, stood again, fought, fell, and rolled.

He rolled into a place that was not earth, but was an opening, and he fell, his mouth stretched in an unutterable scream.

27

It was sleep. Not good sleep—something was wrong. But no dreams. He turned his head, and a stone in his skull rolled and careened.

He took a breath, and it hurt. He was wet. He tasted hot salt water. He would be fine if he did not move. No moving. No moving at all.

Must live. The thought shook him. He might be dying, he realized, and he began to climb upward, out of the wet place that floated him.

Concrete at his cheek. He blinked. A brick wall.

It all came back. How long ago had it been? he asked himself. Not long. A light was on, and another. A head looked out to see what was happening, and Davis would have called but all the words had been slammed out of him.

He had landed with an impact greater than anything he had ever known. Like a great balloon bursting, but he had been the balloon.

Dead now, he thought. Now I'm dead.

Not dead. It was impossible to believe, but the evidence was there. Only a minute or two had passed since he fell. No time at all. Not hours. Otherwise, why was someone still looking out to see what the noise had been?

Davis mouthed the words he had no strength to speak. Down here. Here. I'm here.

I fell.

The two lights went off.

He must have slept again. Perhaps he had tried to move too quickly. He woke again, with a nausea that came and went, like a flashing light.

He tried to judge the time. It was, he thought, much closer to morning. The world seemed hushed, and the sky too dark. A bird squeaked somewhere, a voice from another world.

If he slept again he would not wake.

He would save himself. That would be easy, if he could walk. He wondered if that would be possible.

He would move his body. That was a very good plan. Davis had always liked plans. Formulate a plan, and carry it out.

Move the body. Shock. He would go into shock, and he would die of that, now that he had survived everything else. The thought angered him, and he moved his arms. He was wearing a shirt. And pants. He had not undressed before lying down. Yes, it all came back to him.

He worked his legs. Arms and legs. Good. Very important. He shakily felt himself, his chest, which was wet and warm, and, with great hesitation, his upper thighs, and the seat of his pants, which were wet, but not, he could tell, with great relief, impaled on a spear fence. His crotch felt intact. He was sprawled on cold concrete, and it was not such a bad place to rest.

Then he remembered all of it.

The Skeldergate Man.

His sightless eyes. His leathery, empty arms.

He had to warn people. He had to tell everyone.

But now Davis was afraid. He was very cold, and he did not have the strength to shiver. The cold rose from his toes, up his legs, into his torso. Shock from his injuries, he told himself, and fear.

Shuddering, Davis dragged himself to the brick wall. His legs danced with spasms. He investigated his ankles with his hands. He winced. He had, apparently, landed on his feet, half crouched. This had been his plan. The merest touch hurt, but he did not think they were broken. Hanging onto the drain had slowed his fall just enough.

Something wrong with my ribs, too, he thought. And my skull. But the damage did not seem mortal. There was a flutter of joy. He was alive, and he would be strong again some day.