The Pines (41 page)

He glanced at the bristling animal beside him. Even the dog knew. He turned his gaze upward. The sky had begun to dim, and the wind blew stronger.

He hurried back to the house. When he pulled open the door, she spun around with a small cry. He put the rifle on the table, and for a moment, she leaned against him.

“I opened another can of soup. Are you hungry?”

“No.” His gaze traveled to the boy. “No, thanks. Matty’s feeling better?”

“A little, I think.”

At the table, the boy just sat quietly. Steve placed a big hand on his shoulder. “Pal? You okay now?” Slowly, the boy looked up with something coiled in his eyes. Steve backed away. “I guess I’ll get ready.”

“It’s not quite dark yet, is it? I’m only taking one suitcase. We can come back for the rest. If only Matty hadn’t been so sick all day, we could’ve left earlier. We should have anyway.” She brought a hand to her face. “I have to stop talking so fast. One hour after it gets dark, we’re getting out of here. I mean it, Steve.”

“’Thena…”

“One hour. I don’t know why I’m even…”

The child moaned, and his mother moved quickly to him. He pushed away and groaned again, doubling over. “…my friend…no, don’t do that please don’t…red coming out…help me…save…”

“Matty? What hurts?”

He groaned loudly, beginning to choke. Steve gently held his head while undigested vegetable soup spattered on the floorboards. The boy spat a couple of times and continued to heave with nothing coming out. His nose ran, his eyes watered.

“That’s a boy. Get it all out now.” Steve rubbed his back. “Everything’s going to be okay now. ’Thena, why don’t you get him a glass of water? You’re okay, Matty. Nothing to worry about. Want me to take you upstairs and get you cleaned up?” He used his handkerchief to wipe the boy’s mouth. “Don’t cry. You feel better now?” He reached for the glass of water and got the boy to drink, talking to him all the while and patting him.

She stood back, a thin smile playing across her lips, and listened to the soothing rumble of his voice. “You’re good with him.”

The boy stopped trembling and wiped his tears. He sat up straight in the chair, and his face grew calm.

Unnaturally calm, thought Steve. “That’s a boy now. Take it easy. Don’t worry about the mess. I’ll take care of it. You just…’Thena? ’Thena, what’s wrong with him?”

The boy stared with empty eyes. His breath evened out, grew fainter, became almost undetectable.

nnooooo

Gurglings built up within the boy with mounting pressure, ready to emerge in screaming protest and pleading. His face lit in a flushing surge of color, and saliva gathered on his slack lower lip and slowly dropped in one long bead while he struggled to speak.

where?

The adults hovered about him, and he heard the dwindling hum of their voices as the kitchen contracted and receded.

Darkness entered him: the sound of distant howling echoed in his mind, lonely and pathetic, waiting for him, wanting. The heat rose up inside him, spurting rancid from his nose and mouth, heat and blackness and the cries of wild animals within him. And something tingled behind his ears, a frenzied, unreachable itch.
Chabwok.

(“Look at his face. It’s like he’s in a trance.”)

Now, the dim-lit room all but faded, remained in the sickening murk only as an afterimage. The world wavered. He seemed to be in two places. He could still hear his mother and the gruff, gentle man, but distantly, their voices barely penetrating. Round and pale, their faces swam in his thickening vision, dissolving in the depths. Blackness, thick with the stench of bile, even here, crushed all possibility of light.

Pain burned in his loins. The fever, the suffocation crushed his chest, climbed, rushing through him, and the sound of the night, the searching yowl of demons, bellowed and shook the fibers of the dark.

don wanna be here no

At last, he could hear his own voice and knew his droning words had gone on forever.

“Daddy…Daddy, d-don’t, please, Daddy, no. N-Not again. I hear ’im? I can hear ’im! Yellin’ and hollerin’! Gonna hurt me.
Daddy?”
A current of pain washed out of him, and his words flowed, only half heard, like the music of the insects that filtered to that lighted kitchen drifting in his mind. Then the kitchen vanished altogether.
Daddy?
He’d never been in this room before. He lay on the floor and glints of light flitted up through cracks in the boards, making his heart pound even more. He tried to understand why he felt so scared, then his mind gave up the struggle.
Might come up here. No, don’t hurt me.
In the dark, the open window slit remained indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, yet he knew it was there, even before he felt the heavy air stir from that direction. He knew everything about this room. And from below the furious raging continued,

(“Matthew? Why don’t you answer me? Look at me! What’s wrong?”) quaking the building with its very loudness. Slumped in the darkness of
my room
,
mine
,
only not
, he listened to shouts and cringed as from the gin mill below, something splintered noisily. He

(“He can’t hear you, ’Thena. My God I think I understand this. Matty, where are you? Can you tell me what you see? Try, boy. Can you hear me?”) whimpered. And now the fever, the suffocation began to come heavily over him, claiming him, pulling his limbs. It raged up his legs, climbing through the blood to his stomach. Saliva flowed unnoticed from his lips to run across his bare chest, and he trembled and bent forward, choking again and afraid to make a sound. He couldn’t breathe anymore, and the burning pain in his groin made him weep.

Moaning softly, he pulled off the rest of his clothes. Marl leaned back against the bed and struggled for air.
Ernie’s bed.
His chest stiffened, and he clutched the tightened knot of his belly.
Lonny’s bed.
Hands clenched. His body hardened.

It was like drowning, the breath dammed deep within him, his lungs squeezed to bursting. Beyond his window, the night sighed softly.

His nostrils flared, vainly trying for oxygen, and the veins of his throat thickened and swelled, crushing his windpipe in anguished bulges. Burns exploded in his stomach, and he gritted back a scream. His teeth rattled as his head jerked spasmodically from side to side. He clutched at his swollen abdomen, fearing it would burst, and tears and spittle streaked his face.

Al Spencer rampaged and bellowed in the gin mill. He slammed a stool against the wall. He kicked a table over, and empty jars crashed to the dirt floor. The jars marked the last of his private stock; almost as an afterthought, the state troopers had smashed his still. But even before that, fewer and fewer of his customers had been venturing out. “Can’t even make a buck. Where da fuck’s Wes? Where’s Lonny? Assholes. Man works hard all ’is life.” At last he paused, panting heavily. Suddenly his face contorted with memory. He clawed away a loose board and extracted a jar half full of amber liquid. Leaning heavily on the wall, he gulped it down. “Gone.” By the glow of candles stuck in beer bottles, he surveyed the wreckage of his establishment. “All gone.” The slitted gleam returned to his eyes. “I know whose fault.”

One thought guttered in his brain. “Took ’im in outta kindness. Jus’ doin’ ’im a favor. So?”

So he hurled the jar against the wall.

“Lost everthin’! Says ’is name is Ernie. Doesn’t say the cops is after ’im! A favor! Up there—I knows what they was doin’ up in ’at room. Unner my own roof. You get down here, Marl. You hear me? I know you listenin’ up there! Thinks I don’t know.”

His eyes roamed to the calendar on the wall. December. Years ago. The woman’s breasts impossibly huge and blubbery in the brown and yellow light. Hanging below it, the blade of the meat cleaver glowed softly.

“Shoulda made your mother take you with ’er.” He paused, his breath labored. “When she went an lef’ me ’lone, lef’ me ’lone with a kid. You hear me? I shoulda took you inna woods and lef’ you wi’ half your head gone too. You think I done that?” Self-pity rang through the rage now as he stood at the base of the stairs and shrieked himself toward frenzy. “You think I done it? You don’t know what I done. Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. You don’t know. She left me. With a kid. My boy. Won’t even come near his old man no more but up there wi’ that sumnabitch, that’s awright. I know!” He unscrewed the cap on a kerosene can and slopped some into a lantern. “Punish ’im good. What? Who said that? Somebody here?”

Something like a voice replied. Faintly. A tiny scraping noise. A wordless whisper that could exist only in a nightmare.

Al’s mouth opened, and no sound emerged. His eyes screwed up in denial while his body went rigid with fear. “What? Can’t be? Wha’s’at?” He took a step backward, then another. “Marl?” Something like resignation seeped into his fury. “Marl? Where you at, boy?”

The whisper scratched again, louder now, and nearer.

Al trembled…then took refuge in madness. Lantern in one hand, he hooked the cleaver down from the nail. “I know wha’ you was doin’ up there.” He started back toward the stairs. “Marl! You come here, boy! Fix you, you sumnabitch.” Climbing, he clutched the cleaver tightly, and the dull blade caught the light. “Won’t even come down ’ere to ’is daddy no more, ’is daddy who needs ’im, took care a him.” His voice filled up with tears. “Din’ I always take care a you?” Halfway up the stairs, he stopped. “Boy?”

Above him, something crouched…and cast a froglike shadow on the wall.

Al blinked, silent now. All rage evaporated. Peering, he leaned forward. With infinite slowness, he raised the lantern higher.

When he dropped it, flames engulfed the stairs.

Loud rustlings filled the dark pit of the shed.

Rats. Big ones, by the sound of them. Clutching the rifle, Steve crouched behind the door. He touched the flashlight at his side, still reluctant to switch it on. He needed a drink.

Across the grounds, the bright rectangle of the screen door glowed. He knew she sat waiting, revolver at her side, and he guessed she’d be holding Matthew’s small firm hand in hers. Yet the yard isolated them as surely as if they’d been on separate islands.

There was no moon, there were no stars. He shifted his position slightly and heard the slitherings around him cease for a moment. He could almost feel the vermin listening. Seconds ticked by, and the electric, reverberating whine of crickets filled the minutes.

He thought about her alone with the boy, faraway in the snarl of the night. And again he remembered the childhood game of “Werewolf,” the shame of being too afraid to come out of his hiding place when he’d been It, when they’d all been hunting him, remembered how he’d become the best one at the game when he grew older…because he’d been afraid still. He wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, convinced now this waiting was insanity, that they should have run when Athena wanted to.

When her shouts came, the shock lasted only an instant. Then the flashlight beam swung weakly across the yard, the house, as he pelted toward the porch. Two voices rose, shattering the sound patterns of the crickets.

“’Thena!” He thudded up the steps. “The door! Unlatch the—!” He ripped the screen door from its hinges, flinging it aside.

“…running…coming now…blood running in the trees!” The boy twisted, shrieking on the floor. “Hide me! My friend, hu-hurting…!”

Down beside him, she struggled to restrain him. “He just fell,” she gasped, looking up at Steve, who stood frozen in the doorway. “…and…and started to…”

The boy flailed and growled, froth at his mouth. In the far corner, Dooley crouched, shivering, with lips curled back. Together, the man and woman held the screaming, weeping child until his struggles grew weaker and his head dropped back, thudding on the floorboards.

“…run…”

“Who’s running?” Steve leaned over him, his face just a few inches from the boy’s. “Is it Chabwok?”

“…the trees…”

“Is Chabwok coming here?”

Matty’s lips moved as he shuddered feebly. Steve released his hold on the boy’s shoulders and looked to Athena.

Matty’s eyes flew open.

“No, Steve! Don’t let go of him!”

The boy struggled unsteadily to his feet, and when she moved to grab him, Steve waved her back.

As though drawn by invisible chains, Matty stumbled toward the open doorway. His arms swung limply at his sides, and his feet shuffled. Steve reached out gently and took hold of him by a belt loop. He stopped moving; slowly one arm rose. “…night-rushing…” The pointing finger described a small arc to the left.

“That’s it then. It’s over that way.” Steve checked the flashlight. “Look at him. He knows. You were right. Somehow he’s sensitive to it.” He turned to her, confronting the fear in her eyes. “You take the rifle. We were wrong to wait. We’re getting out now.”

He allowed the trembling boy to lead him onto the porch, and she followed, pulling back just at the doorway. The dog also cowered, watching with eyes dull as slag.

“What is it, ’Thena? Do you hear something? Do you see…?”

“Nothing.” She stared past him. “Only the dark.”

He stepped back and put a hand on her face, and then he was gone, beyond the spill of light, down the porch stairs and into the yard.

A moment passed before she could make herself follow. “Good-bye, house,” she whispered, touching the kitchen wall. Taking the key ring from her pocket, she pulled the heavy inner door shut behind her, snuffing out the wedge of light. “Good-bye, Wallace.” She fumbled with the flashlight. “Steve! Where did you go?”

“We’re over here.” Drowned in darkness, voices drifted on currents of warm air. She heard them walking away, the boy stumbling like a sleepwalker, and she hurried after them.

Around the side of the house, Steve waited for her. “We didn’t bring the suitcases, Steven.”

“Forget it. Get in the car. Where’s the dog?”

“I thought you had him.”

“Dooley! Dooley, come here, boy. Here, dog.”

“Did he head over that way?”

“Dooley, come back here. Goddamn it!”