The Binding (28 page)

He glanced out the passenger-side window. The house was just a dark blur in the window, its shape melted, moving as the mist pressed against the window and droplets ran down the glass. Its outline kept shifting murkily, the roofline tilting up, the lines of the porch flexing in and out with the running water, but its dark mass remained.

He was willing himself to get out of the Saab when something in the night sky caught his eye through the windshield. He gripped the leather of the steering wheel and pulled himself forward. Something was glowing off in the distance, but not in the sky. It was on a rise, deep in the Raitliff Woods, maybe two miles away. Glowing deep orange and red, with a smudge of gray-brown smoke hanging above it.

Someone made a fire in the forest
, he thought.
I’ve never seen that before.
He stared, fascinated, at the fire surrounded by banks of dark trees that smudged together into one dark gray wall.

Strange
, Nat thought.
Hunters?

He got out and slammed the door. The house was solid again, its dark blacks and greens now shiny and hard in the rain, its edges sharp, its gutters dripping. It stood as cold as a tomb. Nat
climbed the steps.

He felt the knob; the door was open. He pushed and the door fell back, soundlessly. The light inside the entrance hall was gray, as if the mist had penetrated through the window. He took a breath, steeling himself, and walked directly to the stairway, turning left and quickly heading up. He made the landing, turned, and stepped fast up the remaining eight stairs. Then he was on the second floor, his hand on the cool banister. The hallway was dark. He didn’t believe anymore that there were lights up here, except for the one at her door.

“Becca?” he called out. No response. The house seemed to drink up the sound of his voice, returning no echo.

He walked down the hall, hearing the sound of his heels striking the floor as darkness rose up on both sides. He’d counted last time: fourteen steps to make it to her door. Why hadn’t he brought a flashlight? His steps echoed. He counted eight, ten, twelve—he reached out and felt the fur of the mounted head he’d never seen.

Nat breathed out. But somehow he felt the house had let him arrive at the door without any incidents. Stupid. He had to stop thinking this way, giving the house this power.

Nat knocked on the Becca’s mangled bedroom door. The outside locks were undone and Becca must have been waiting for him because the inside ones snapped immediately and the door edged open. Her profile glowed in the beams of a light to her left. She was staring at him. His heart beat loudly in his ears.

She was lovely, her brown eyes and that half-flattened nose. She was wearing a thin ivory blouse and jeans.

“Hi, Becca.”

Becca turned and walked away without answering, leaving the door ajar. He pushed his way in and found the room just as he’d remembered it: the books untouched, the colored bottles of perfume each at the same angle to one another, the dappling sound of
water droplets thrown against the glass window. There was a feeling of sanctuary here. Not only for Becca but for him, too.

Becca’s eyes were ringed underneath by dark circles. When she sat and turned to look at him, he could read them clearly.
Why do you keep coming here?
they said.

“I wanted to see you,” he said.

She turned toward the window. She was looking out, down at the yard.

Nat sat in the room’s only chair. “I wanted to tell you that I believe you.”

He dropped his head and stared at his hands, but he could feel her gaze turned on him.

“You believe . . . what?”

“Everything. I believe that you are . . . under the power of someone else.”

“That I died?”

“
No!
” His voice caught. “No. I’ve read up on this.”

She looked, of all things, amused. “You read up on this?”

“Yes.”

She turned back to the window. “And?”

“I want to know about him.”

“Who?”

“The man who tried to kill you.” He couldn’t say anything more. He felt as though he didn’t really need to speak. Everything between them was known somehow. “Is he . . . here now?”

“Here?” she said. “He’s always here. Nearby. But now he’s roaming somewhere else.”

“You can feel that?”

She glanced at her hands and nodded.

“Do you know who he is?”

“Dr. Thayer,” she said, a smile curling the corner of her lips.

“Nat.”

“Nat.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“You’re so eager. You think that by knowing his name you can get rid of him?”

You should be laughing because I’m a trained psychiatrist
, Nat thought to himself,
and I’ve just admitted to you that I think you’re full-on possessed. That is not a normal diagnosis; that is a sign of an unbalanced mind. Laugh for that.

“Maybe,” he said.

“No. Not maybe.”

“Leave that to me. Who is he?”

Her throat worked. “I’ve only seen him in dreams.”

“Then tell me about the dreams.”

Becca closed her eyes, as if the dreams were too painful to go back to. Her fingers began to interlace and then unlace in her lap, a nervous tic he hadn’t seen before. He waited.

“In the dream I was in some hot country,” she said finally, her voice strained. “I could feel my clothes on me, though I never looked down to see them. I wasn’t able to do what I wanted, to look at what I wanted. It was as if . . . as if I was being carried along, remembering something that had already happened and I couldn’t change it. But I was wearing khaki, which was sticking to my neck and my back, with drops of sweat running over my spine. Hot. Almost unbearable. I was wandering through forests, thick. I was far from home and felt anxious. I was searching for something, something I must find or . . . or else.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“I began to feel another heat pressing through the forest. Not a natural heat, not the humidity that you get in a jungle, or so I’ve read . . . but something that pressed against my face and began to turn it red. In the distance I could hear something crackling. Like sticks being broken, or popping open themselves. As I got closer,
the noise grew louder.

“Then . . . It’s hard to describe. The jungle trees just dissolved in front of my eyes and I was suddenly standing in a yard. In front of me was a small house, a hut really, but I remember every board as if I’d seen them for years. It was made up of slats, painted white with green trim around the windows. There were white curtains, nice ones, you know, unexpectedly nice for the house, hung in the windows. I had the impression—could I smell them?—that they were freshly washed. The house was well kept.
This is a well-kept house
, I thought to myself.

“And then, fire. I felt the heat on the left side of my face. Something burning the skin there, as if I’d stepped too close to a campfire. I was about to turn and look when something in my head said,
Don’t look, don’t turn.
That voice was not part of me; it came from outside.”

She stopped.

“The voice was him?”

Becca nodded, her pale throat working. “I was thinking in the dream, too. I told myself,
I’m not afraid.
And then I saw the house. And I
was
afraid. To the left was a man dressed in khaki. His eyes were the eyes of sickness, black, with no pupils or whites, just insect eyes. They were looking at the house, and as I watched him the crackling of the fire rose in my ears.”

Nat said nothing.

“Suddenly, I knew what the man was looking at. There was someone inside the house. The man had put him in there and he was burning.”

Becca spoke faster now.

“I heard a scream and turned back to the house, and the clean white drapes whipped back silently as if a hurricane had blown its first puff of wind and then the window . . . just . . . vomited out a thick belch of smoke. It was black and gray and black, like a tornado twisting and roiling, and it was so
thick
.”

Becca coughed, bending at the waist. Nat watched her, fascinated.

“Go on,” Nat said.

She shook her head.

“Becca, you have to.”

“I don’t want to remember.” Tears formed in her eyes, and he could see she was grinding her teeth, as if she were in pain.

“Please.”

She shook her head again, took a deep breath.

“Then I heard someone scream. The person in the house was screaming. I turned back to the man, and his mouth was open. And in my ears, the voice saying,
DO YOU HEAR THAT?
”

Becca clapped her hands to her ears, and her face contorted in pain.

“I sank to my knees onto the packed-down earth of the yard. I remember that, the feel of it under my knees. The man’s head was thrown back in a terrible contortion and for a moment I imagined that his neck was broken but it seemed to be vomiting the smoke that was now pouring out of the house and he heard the dark roar of the flames deep inside. My skin was burning up.

“I wanted to save the man who was screaming inside. I staggered up to my feet and tried to walk around the front of the house. The door blew open and I felt the air suck by me and into the house and the flames inside blew up like gasoline had been thrown on it. I . . . I saw that black holes were beginning to appear in my khaki clothes, like holes were being burned right through. I screamed as the fire leapt to my body and bit into my chest as I reached the first step, then the second. I felt my hair beginning to combust and the air I breathed in was . . . it was made of flame.”

Her hands were shaking violently in her lap.

“Go on, Becca,” Nat urged.

“And then I saw something that made me stop. The inside of the house was a charnel, burned to charcoal along the boards and the floor. There was a table that seemed to stand on legs made of ashes and on top of the table stood . . . a man. The whole body was engulfed in flames, and I saw something spatter down onto the table and sizzle, like a piece of butter in a hot pan. I realized it was flesh, human flesh.”

Becca’s face twisted in disgust.

“The flames were going through me now, right through my body. There was a wooden beam, which ran from one end of the room to the other. And on the rafter there was something hanging visible just above the flames.
Why did they leave a cut of meat to cure?
I thought to myself.
This isn’t a smokehouse
, I thought.
This is a house for people to live.

“My hair caught fire, and the roots of my hair brought the flames down into my skull. The fire was eating me up, eating into my clothes, eating my skin, and I could feel each little patch of my flesh melting.”

She looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes. She paused, and with her left hand wiped them away. She shook her head. Her nose was growing red with the crying.

“And that’s
all
I remember. I either passed out, or I died. In the dream, I died, too, just like in real life.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

J
immy Stearns walked quickly around the side of the two-story county building all the way to the morgue door. He arrived out of breath and braced himself against the stone building as he reached for the handle. It was locked. He reached into his left pocket, found only lint and a pack of Life Savers, then switched to his right and pulled out his work keys. He found the right one almost immediately, slotted it into the keyhole, and pushed into the space.

The hallway was lit by sconces on the right and left. Turning, he saw there was nobody out there in the dusk along the path or up on the road, lit by the circular glow of the street lamps. He shut the door, flicked the bolt. The ringing noise of the bolt slamming into the lock hung in the air as he moved down the hallway.

He opened the door to the morgue proper, what they called the cooler, and felt a rush of formaldehyde-laced air push past him. He took a breath and coughed. He hated the smell. He just wanted to get his check and forget about this place for the night.

The room was blue-gray, with the white tiles winking here and there, with streaks of moonlight and the instruments sending out the odd gleam. The examining tables were empty, of course; they had to be washed down and cleaned at the end of every day, all the fluids swirling down the drains. The janitors did that; Jimmy wasn’t responsible.

There was no sound and little light, only the bright yellow line under Elizabeth’s door.

Jimmy thought he would talk to Elizabeth. Surely she’d heard
the lock in the door. She’d be scared, all alone here at night.

He approached the door. The frosted glass pane was rippled as well, so everything on the other side was distorted and opaque. He saw the light from her desk was on, not the overhead.

A humming sound, then nothing. Did something move in the right corner of the window? He couldn’t tell.

He felt the knob. The brass turned easily in his hand, and he quietly pushed the door inward, the rippled window sending all kinds of weird shapes to his eye. But nothing could have prepared him for what he saw once the door went moving on its own energy.

It wasn’t a package of scrubs on the desk. It was Elizabeth Dyer. She was laid out, faceup, on the broad wood desktop, and someone had hacked her throat apart.

Jimmy went still. Elizabeth Dyer’s face was paler than he’d ever seen it, the eyes closed, and its muscles were fixed in a look of absolute dread. The lips were pulled back as if in the next moment she would wake up and scream. Her blouse had been torn open to below the breastbone, and he could see the no-nonsense flesh-colored bra. Her legs were straddled over the end of the desk, and one of her black shoes was off, the second toe sticking up through a hole in her panty hose. Her throat glistened red. Blood pooled on the floor, and there was one arcing smear two yards from his right foot.

Jimmy gaped, and a strange thought entered his mind. It was as if he’d come by five minutes earlier and had killed Elizabeth but lost the memory of it and was now witnessing the result of his own work, returning to the scene of the crime. He felt a panic rise in his throat.
Did I do this and black out?
His head spun, and he reached for the door knob to steady himself.