The New Neighbor (32 page)

Ed closed his eyes for a long moment, licked his lips, then opened his eyes again and looked straight into Quillerman's. "Look, please, just go, all right? Just go and we won't –"
 

"I'm here to help you, Ed," Quillerman whispered. "Please,
let
me help you."
 

Ed's mouth worked, but nothing came out. He took a deep breath and prepared to speak again, but Quillerman beat him to it.
 

“She's evil, Ed. She's evil and you
know
it. I don't know what she's done to you, but
you
know, and you know that it's wrong. You
know
she's twisting you, corrupting you from the inside out, and you know that if you let it go on, you will be
lost
."
 

Ed's mouth continued to work, but he didn't speak. Tears glistened in his eyes and his hands shook as he placed them on the edge of the window. "Pastor," he whispered tremulously, "I ... I don't ... know what's ... happening to us."
 

"To you and Betty?"
 

He nodded.
 

Quillerman leaned closer to him. "It's her. Your neighbor. Lorelle Dupree. You
know
I'm right don't you, Ed?"
 

"I ... yes, I believe so."
 

"What you need to do now is –"
 

Something caught his eye. He faced front, peered through the windshield and saw Sheri MacNeil standing on the sidewalk in front of her house up the street. She wore sneakers, sweat pants and a heavy blue terrycloth robe. She stared at the pickup for a long time, took a few reluctant steps into the street, stopped and started again. Finally, she stuffed her hands into the baggy pockets of her robe and headed toward the pickup as Ed LaBianco bowed his head and cried silently, murmuring to himself.
 

"Pastor Quillerman?" Sheri asked, looking over Ed's shoulder. She was a tall woman, very pretty with short blonde hair. "Pastor, what're you doing?"
 

"Haven't you been listening?"
 

She nodded. "So has Chris. He's...scared. And I don't think you should be – I mean, maybe you shouldn't – it's not a good idea to –"
 

"Are you scared, too, Sheri?" he asked.
 

She stood very still for a while, then nodded slowly.
 

Quillerman was relieved and surprised to have gotten through to anyone so soon. But these were people he knew, people from his church. What about the others in the neighborhood who did not know him, who would think he was crazy and how, under the influence of the creature that called itself Lorelle Dupree, might react violently to his efforts?
 

He turned to Ed and Sheri and began speaking to them quietly as –
 

 
– the reporters watched.
 

Alana leaned toward Steve and said, "They look like they know him."
 

Steve said, "Worse yet, they look like they're taking him seriously."
 

They watched for a while until the blonde woman turned from the pickup, folded her arms against the cold and headed back up the street. Alana and Steve followed her without hesitation, flanked by their cameramen. They shouted at her simultaneously, Steve saying, "Excuse me, miss, could I ask you a few questions?" while Alana called, "Miss, what can you tell us about Pastor Quillerman? What connection does he have to the Garrys? Miss?"
 

The woman lifted a hand to hold them back and shouted over her shoulder, "Not right now, please, I don't want to talk." Then she went back into her house, where a small pale face peered out the front window, tiny hands pressed against the pane.
 

Alana and Steve and the two cameramen were left standing in the middle of Deerfield. Before they could turn back, the shrill, tangy voice of the fat woman in the Muumuu sounded again and they spun around to see her jogging down her front walk toward her husband.
 

Alana patted her cameraman's arm and said, "Get this, get this."
 

"But there's nothing happening," he said.
 

Alana and Steve went around the pickup and back up on the sidewalk where Malcolm and Will taped the fat woman as she pushed her husband aside and said, "
Well
? Are you gonna stop this nonsense, or
not
?"
 

Her husband put a hand on her shoulder and quietly spoke to her, but she pushed him away angrily, put her fists to her enormous hips and leaned into the window, pushing her face close to Pastor Quillerman's. "People are gonna start calling the police, you know! People don't like to hear this kinda crap spouted at their front door!"
 

Her husband stepped forward again, took her arm and said, "Listen to me, Betty, he's –"
 

"Get
away
from me and let me
speak
!"
 

In a voice that contradicted his meek appearance, he shouted, "Dammit, Betty, you know he's
right
."
 

She stared at him in shock, her jaw slack, arms limp at her sides. Finally: "What did you say?"
 

"He's right. We both know he's
right
."
 

Neither of them moved for a long moment. The vapors of their breaths mingled in a small cloud before their faces.
 

"Why don't the two of you go inside and talk about this," Pastor Quillerman said softly? When they turned to him, he smiled and nodded encouragingly. "Please, go inside. We'll get together later."
 

"Thank you," the man said, then took his wife's hand. They turned and did as the pastor had said, ignoring Alana and Steve and the cameras as they passed. The man looked almost sick with sadness, while the woman seemed barely able to hold in her anger.
 

The reporters dove toward the pickup and Quiller man's open window, but he was already rolling it up. He put the pickup into gear and drove away slowly, his voice sounding over the loudspeaker once again.
 

"Dammit," Steve muttered, looking at his watch. "We're gonna have to go. We've got a deadline."
 

"You're leaving?" Alana asked, surprised.
 

"I think the only story here has already been reported," he said, nodding toward the Garry house.
 

"Weren't you listening? Those people actually
believed
him. They think their neighbor is a demon."
 

Steve grinned. "Gullible people aren’t exactly news. This town’s got more churches than gas stations.” He turned to Malcolm and said, "We've a gotta get going." Then to Alana: "Nice meeting you." They went to their van.
 

“Let's stick around a while, Will," Alana said. "I’ve got a feeling this is gonna get weird.”
 

She was right.
 

Chapter 22

The Mist

George and Robby Pritchard stood at their living room window watching Pastor Quiller man's pickup drive back and forth. Jen was seated in her dad's recliner behind them. She'd served them some stew earlier and the bowls were still on the coffee table. None of them had spoken for a while.
 

They'd watched Mr. and Mrs. LaBianco and then Sheri MacNeil approach the pickup, and they'd watched the reporters standing by, waiting patiently for a few crumbs. Occasionally they heard the voices of people shouting at Pastor Quillerman from their porches. They called him foul names and told him to keep his opinions and his religion to himself. But Quillerman ignored them and continued to warning of the danger they were in, appealing to the goodness in them, the goodness not yet stolen away by their new neighbor.
 

Across the street and one house to the north, Mr. and Mrs. Weyland came out to the sidewalk, both wearing bathrobes. Mrs. Weyland had carried a stained brown paper bag and her husband a plastic green garbage bag. When Pastor Quillerman drove by, they reached into their bags and began to throw garbage at him – cans, cartons, boxes and old slimy fruits and vegetables that made a thick wet mess on the pickup's hood and windshield. As they threw garbage, they shouted at him to go away before they shot out his tires and removed him bodily from the neighborhood themselves. Pastor Quillerman spoke to them calmly through the loudspeaker, imploring them to take a look at themselves, to think about what they were doing and why, and to think about what kind of people they'd been just a few days ago, before they'd met their new neighbor.
 

And through it all, the odd mist had remained.
 

Once things had calmed down a little and the only action outside was Pastor Quillerman's slow and monotonous trips up and down the street, Robby paid close attention to the mist. It moved slowly, sometimes changing direction abruptly, and occasionally a smoky tendril or two of the mist would rise fluidly above the restless surface, reminding Robby of Lorelle standing naked outside the glass door while the mist crawled up her body. He closed his eyes a moment and gave his head a couple of hard shakes. He didn't want to think of her.
 

The afternoon darkened with the approach of evening. The streetlights on Deerfield came on as the clouds went from murky gray to a mottled charcoal. Quillerman turned on the pickup's headlights and their beams gave an even eerier quality to the mist. Robby watched as it moved with what almost appeared to be a life of its own ... a purpose. His eyes scanned the mist from left to right until he spotted something strange at the base of a power pole on the opposite side of the street between the LaBianco house and the Parkers’. Robby squinted and leaned forward a bit, not quite sure of what he was seeing. A tentacle of mist seemed to be winding its way slowly up the pole.
 

Robby reached over, tapped his George’s arm and said, "Dad? You ever seen mist do anything like this before?"
 

George looked out the window with heavy, preoccupied eyes. "Not around here," he drawled flatly.
 

"Isn't it kinda weird?"
 

"I don't know," he shrugged. "Not really."
 

"I mean
that
." Robby pointed at the power pole.
 

The mist, winding steadily up the pole like a snake, had nearly reached the top. Once it did, it moved quickly and engulfed the gray-metal transformer in a small cloud.
 

George said, "What in the hell is –"
 

Before he finished his sentence, there was an explosion of sparks that rained down on the ground and –
 

 
– the streetlights went dark at the same moment that –

 
– the light behind every window on Deerfield went out and –

 
– the Pritchard house became dark and the refrigerator’s hum fell silent and –

 
– the mist that had climbed up the power pole dissolved quickly as the sparks that fell down around it hit the ground and bounced and rolled like glowing marbles.
 

"What the hell was
that
?" Jen asked, her voice weak and panicky.
 

"I-I'm not sure," George said, putting a hand on her shoulder, "but why don't you go get the flashlights out of the tool drawer in the kitchen."
 

She nodded and left the room. George moved to a phone, put the receiver to his ear a moment, then replaced it, saying, "Dead."
 

Robby watched the reporter outside. She'd been sitting on the hood of her car with the cameraman standing beside her when the transformer exploded. She had fallen from the car and landed in a protective crouch while the man had spun around, leaned through the car's open window and grabbed his camera. But Robby knew they hadn't seen the mist climbing that power pole as he had.
 

"Mr. Prosky told me she could move around as a mist," Robby said quietly.
 

"You mean Lorelle?"
 

Robby nodded. "He said he'd seen her do it."
 

George took a moment to digest that bit of information, then pressed both hands over his face and rubbed them up and down, sighing. "Boy oh boy oh boy."
 

Pastor Quiller man's pickup appeared again, heading south on Deerfield, but it was going quite a bit faster than before until –
 

 
– it pulled over to the curb and screeched to a halt and Pastor Quillerman got out, hobbled around the pickup and stopped to look about him frantically at the mist because –
 

 
– it was swirling rapidly over the ground pulling away from houses and tree trunks and shrubbery and fences, pulling away quickly as if it were being
sucked
away, and –

 
– Pastor Quillerman staggered in a tight circle as he watched the mist rushing away around him, his eyes and mouth open wide with surprise and confusion as his head jerked around in a frightened, bird-like manner because – – the mist was rushing into Lorelle Dupree's house as if the house were a giant vacuum cleaner, and –
 

 
– Pastor Quiller man spun around and looked at their window, then hurried up the walk toward the front door, his limp making him zigzag all the way to the porch steps.
 

George rushed to the front door and opened it just as Pastor Quiller man stumbled through the doorway saying breathlessly, "It was her ... the mist ... she was in it ... she-she
was
the mist!" He leaned against the wall and pressed a hand to his chest as he tried to catch his breath.
 

"You okay?" George asked.
 

"Can I get you something?" Robby asked.