The Pines (23 page)

She was already running for the bridge when she realized she could have driven part of the way.
Damn.
She splashed through a puddle. The shotgun weighed so much, it interfered with her balance, its shaft so dense the lightning scratched no reflection on it. For just an instant, she considered going back for the car, then realized the road might well flood anyway. Ahead of her, the flashlight’s beam created a wraith of luminous vapor that darted from tree to tree and melted into the battering water, a pale and shimmering extension of herself.

The rain picked up to gale force again, sweeping the road in thick, rapid sheets.
Oh damn.
Half drowned out, her footsteps drummed across the bridge. Below, water churned. She paused for a moment, breathing heavily, then ran forward. Her foot found nothing, empty air, then caught, wrenching beneath her. She thudded hard against the wooden bridge and rolled.

She fell into blackness, one with the storm.

Lightning flickered through missing planks.

She splashed on her back, and water rushed up her nose. She reached blindly for the surface, and the flashlight swirled away from her, a blob of luminous churning. By instinct alone, she kept hold of the shotgun as the current pushed and spun her. The gun dragged her down. A thick root hit her thigh.

Rolling, she fought her way up the streaming bank and lay panting in the mud. She hunched over, gasping and choking, wiping at her eyes, her body heat bleeding away with the water that poured from her.
That was nearly it, girl.
She coughed uncontrollably.
Nearly it.

She thought about hiding under the bridge until the storm lessened, but the stream swelled and twisted at her feet, growing wilder by the moment. And where was the bridge anyway? Grunting, she staggered up the embankment.

Will the gun even work, now it’s wet?
She considered abandoning it, but howls twisted all around her in the wind. Pines hissed with the rain. They seemed to dance in a shimmer of light. She listened, not sure of anything now. Trying to get her bearings, she pushed on.

Those red eyes in my dreams.
Again, her thoughts turned to the child who had been bitten.
Please, Pamela, please be all right.
Hurrying, she thought of the hound that had frightened her the other night.
You have to be. If only for Matthew’s sake.
She shivered.
I’m almost there, Pamela. Don’t be afraid.
Gripping the shotgun, she tried to keep it pointing straight ahead.

In a burst of brilliance, the road seemed wrong somehow, unfamiliar. Thunder seemed to grow louder, to follow closer on the flash. She couldn’t spot the turnoff or the hanging tree or any other landmark, though she should have by now. A branch struck her shoulder. Forked lightning cracked the sky overhead, revealed a road grown narrower than it should have been.

Behind her, something moved. With a harsh cry catching in her throat, she spun. A solitary tree swayed wildly. Saplings seemed to leap at her with each bright glare, and thunder left her too deafened to listen for dogs.

Is that it? Is it Pam’s place?
Ahead lay a low structure.
I must’ve
come around from the other side somehow.
She trotted forward, realizing even as she ran that the dark form couldn’t be the trailer. “Pamela! It’s me!” The shape was all wrong, somehow flattened and broken, and beside it rose a black obelisk.

Dark pillars surrounded her, and she stood absolutely still. The chill she’d been fighting went through her, forcing her teeth together with a sharp click. She blinked at the thing she’d mistaken for the trailer: one wall only, cut through with window holes that opened to nothingness. Lightning slanted behind it.

Thunder staggered her.
The creek.
She must have gotten turned around in the water.
I’m lost.
This had to be the old town, but a part she’d never seen before. Motionless in the ruins, she stared, her teeth chattering.

Through the pines floated an agonized, choking scream.

There was no way of telling if it came from a man or a woman, but there was no mistaking that it was a cry of terror and pain. And close.

Isolated in the downpour, she listened. There was no way of knowing even from what direction the cry had come. While the gale whipped through the pines, they seemed at last to have merged—this force and this terrain—to have become a single unit, a rippling universal shadow.

And something bulky moved with a heavy sound, crouching through the blurring trees. And a horrible stench sifted up through the rain.

Numb with terror, she backed away. She heard it moving again, could almost see it now, there in the underbrush.

Backing away, backing farther, she felt it, felt it slowly emerge.
No, it’s not.
Dimly, she glimpsed it—a form.
Not there.
A shape, all wrong.
It’s…not.

Squat and heavy, it hunched on four legs in the flattened brush.

It’s a patch of mud or a tree trunk or…

It scrambled toward her.

Shoot!
The gun shook wildly in her hands.
Shoot it!
She tried to aim.
Why don’t you shoot?!

The gun exploded, rearing upward, striking her shoulder. The shot went high. The muted tearing of the pellets through the trees mingled with the soft battering of raindrops. After the flash, she could see nothing. The storm had become a steady drizzle, and the water pressed down her body like a hand. Wishing she had more than one shell remaining, she took a step backward, aiming at first one dark area, then another.

Flames sprang in the air, heat and a crackling shock that sent her staggering backward, stunned and reeling.

Don’t look!

Lightning slithered on the ground, and a lump of ore fused in blinding brilliance.

Its eyes!
As a red afterimage, she saw it standing erect now, scant yards away.
Oh my God looking into mine its eyes.
Returning to black, the ground seemed to shake, and her weaker leg gave out.
The mouth God I can’t run the snarl with its lips drawn back.
She fell to one knee.
Teeth in the red mouth.

Rain already beat down the flames that crept across the cloven earth between them.

Now, she ran with no knowledge of how she’d risen. Tripping, she slid on her face, the gun discharging on the ground beneath her. She was slow to get up, sure some part of her had been ripped away. Again, the full force of rainfall hammered from the sky.

Crashing sounds surged toward her.

No.
She lunged through the woods, shotgun left behind.
You
won’t get me!
The tearing pain in her side jolted.
Not this easy!
Branches clawed.
I won’t let you!
Then the ground was gone in sliding mud, and rushing black water knocked the breath from her, filling her mouth. Cold and powerful now, the creek boiled, tumbling her like a leaf.

Narrow here.
Lightning glowed off the water, freezing her as she crawled up the sand.

Doubled over, she hobbled on, shivering and limping.
I won’t
look back. I won’t.
Then she staggered into the clearing.

“Pamela!” She launched herself at the trailer. “Pamela, it’s Athena!” She pounded and yelled, her voice lost in the shriek of wind that buffeted and pulled at her. “Open the door! Let me in! Hurry!” Bubbling up through the downpour, the screams emptied out of her. “I think I hear it coming! God damn you! Open up!”

“Go away!” There came faint, frightened squeals. “I can’t unlock the door. They’re out there. I can’t now!”

“Let me in, Pamela!” Her words swept away before the growing howl and the roaring pound of terror in her ears. “Please, oh God.” The baying of dogs surrounded her.

The door popped open, and Pam collapsed out of it. Falling, she struck Athena, knocked her off the trailer steps. They rolled on top of one another, both struggling in the mud. “The lights went out!” Pam sobbed. “Oh, ’Thena, the lights went out and I didn’t know what to do. I hear it! Oh, what is it? I hear it!”

Athena jerked her head toward the thrashing in the trees, caught a glimpse of rapid motion. She heaved herself up, dragged Pam back inside.

Small lights glinted, and something slipped, smashing under her feet as she latched the door. Thin white candles stuck to the collapsible table, and their box lay open, contents scattered about the floor. Thunder rattled the window. The storm drummed on metal walls.

With a tinny sound, the door moved. Pam pulled Athena closer. The latch clattered.

The whole trailer shuddered. The door leaped. It banged and shook with impact after battering impact. Pamela cowered, sobbing in Athena’s arms.

The pounding stopped abruptly. Something tore at the walls.

“Pamela!” Athena took her by the shoulders. “Is there a gun here? Pamela?” She shook her. “Is there a gun?”

A terrible screaming roar ripped through them.

“What is it? Oh Lord!! There ain’t no gun. Oh Lord oh ’Thena.”

Metal wrenched loudly. The whole trailer jolted, tilting, and Athena threw out her arms to block her fall. Some of the candles toppled, went out.

In the gloom, the wall began to bow inward, groaning. “It’s gonna get in! Sweet Jesus, ’Thena, what is it? It’s gonna bend down the wall.”

The window vent shattered. Spinning around, Pamela screeched as a particle of glass struck her cheek. The remaining candles went out with a rainy gust.

Lightning—something like a hand at the window—then blackness.

Pam fell on her face and screamed in static terror with every breath.

Athena groped her way around the other woman, found the small cabinet and clawed through the drawers. Paper, rags, flatware. From the broken vent came scrabbling and a rasping breath.
There’s a face pressed at the window.
She clutched a paring knife.
Please, don’t let there be lightning. Please, don’t make me see it.

But when brightness flared again, only rain showed at the window.

“Where’s…?” From the floor, Pam made a noise like gagging. “Where is…it?”

A tremor ran through the walls.

Something rattled overhead. The trailer rocked wildly on its foundation. Athena hit the wall, slid sideways, the knife clattering away from her. Her knee struck the floor. Pamela grabbed at her and hung on as they rolled.

The pounding on the roof merged with the sound of the storm—giant hailstones, beating one after another. Rapid light flashed at the ruined window, and they watched the low ceiling bend, sagging toward them. Athena knelt beside Pam and held her hand. There came a small tearing sound and a splashing, sudden trickle of wetness.

“Oh no, oh no my baby, oh no, no.” Pam wept.

Athena stroked her hair, so long and soft. Pam clutched her, her breath very hot on Athena’s face.

“Maybe if we don’t say nothing, maybe it’ll go away if it don’t think we’re in here. ’Thena?”

Athena raised her head. It had all changed, the one roaring replaced by many growls and snarls. Was the forest alive with them?

Rain muddled the sounds from outside. Something scrabbled overhead, and scufflings blended with ferocious baying in the wind. Barking became shrill yelping, then reverted to snarls.

Moving with numbed calm, she worked herself painfully to her feet and limped to the broken vent.

“’Thena, what?”

She stood quietly at the window while the storm and something else raged outside.

“’Thena?” Pamela peered from between her fingers. A double flicker of lightning showed her an impassive face beneath the dark mass of hair.

“It’s gone.”

“What?” Pam whispered in a voice like a child’s. “What’s the matter, ’Thena?” She crept to the window.

They peered through the twisted metal slats. Intermittent glare afforded them glimpses of the dogs in the clearing, starved and diseased looking beneath wet fur, insane from fresh blood. The chicken coop lay in twisted fragments, and all the mongrels had drenched hens in their jaws, shaking them, crushing them with gushes of black fluid.

“No!” A white hen tried to flee, and Pam made a small wretched sound as she watched.

In silence, the two women stood, now in darkness, now in sudden radiance. They stared. Small rent bodies were tugged apart, and white feathers w ere flung about in the downpour. Small legs kicked amid the mangled flappings. In burning glimpses, through hanging shards of glass, they watched the miserable gray slaughter of the hens.

Thursday, August 6

They watched night fade to shades of dawn, watched the fragmented glass slowly brighten. Outside, it still drizzled.

Athena shifted about, uncomfortable in damp clothes. A blue glimmer came through ruffled chintz, a drowned sort of daylight that made the flowers on the curtains seem to crawl. Knowing she approached nervous collapse, she blinked at the acid-gray horror of the morning. Without comprehension, she watched Pam cheat at solitaire, then glanced at the broken window again. Her eyes felt tight.