The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (15 page)

The camera panned to the right. I immediately noticed something in that corner of the room, on the other side of the table.

A man-like figure lurked there, hunched over, nearly shapeless, a ghost made of cobwebs.

As the infrared light of the camcorder’s nightvision illuminated it, the shape slowly turned to look at the camera. It was dressed in the deteriorating remnants of some sort of linen robe. A chill shot through me as it began to creep toward the window before video-Sawyer walked away with the camera.

I checked the pistol again and slapped the cylinder back into place.

“I think I might know what that is,” said Sawyer. “And it’s not good.”

“What is it?” I asked, my eyes canting in his direction. There was a white-faced figure standing behind him.

I raised the gun and pointed it over his shoulder. Sawyer must have thought I was aiming at him, so he dove out of the way. As soon as he hit the ground, he started scrambling away from the creature.

It was clad in a gauzy shroud, and had a pale face that resembled a white hockey mask, only with a long nose and crowned with large, triangular ears. I thought of plague masks I’d seen doctors wear in pictures of medieval Britain during the time of the Black Death. It studied us with lifeless, yet intense black eyes. Simple markings had been fingerpainted across its cheeks and brow in some dark ichor.

“It’s a Wilder,” said Sawyer, getting to his feet and hiding behind me, pointing the camera at the thing. “One of the Bemo-Epneme. You’re not going to believe why, or how, I know that.”

“What?” I asked, backing away as it came closer.

My hand, and the gun in it, was beginning to tremble. The “Wilder” continued to move toward us on nimble feet, gliding-floating like a spectre. As it drew near, I could hear the being behind the mask breathing, hissing venomously. Ice crashed through my veins.

I caught a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision. I looked up and saw that more of them were easing out of the windows of the buildings around us like paper Halloween ghosts. They looked like barn owls, staring at us with those horrible black eye sockets.

“These creatures,” said Sawyer. “They’re from your father’s books. I have no idea why we’re here looking at them. And that gun ain’t gonna do us any good
.
There are way too many of them and only two of us. We gotta
run.
”

I looked over my shoulder at him.

Sawyer roared, his voice reverberating in the hollow plaza,
“Run! OR DIE!”

A Wilder Shade of Pale

I
FIRED A SHOT INTO THE FACE
of the Wilder coming toward me, but he sidestepped it in a deft, casual way, as if he were simply making room for a passer-by. He didn’t even flinch or cry out, he just kept moving toward me, soundless, a murder-minded shark. My heart thundered in my chest as Sawyer pointed to our nine-o-clock and hissed, “That way!”

I glanced there and found a break in the incoming phalanx of ghosts.

We fled, cutting through a stall arrayed with a display of rotten clothes that flagged in the wind. Ripping through the shrouds, we found ourselves in a black space that funneled into an alleyway.

We took that and ran.

I held out the cellphone and the pistol at arm’s length, aiming them both from side to side. Sinewy, bestial claws rose out of windows as we passed them, long, corded arms that pulled white-faced spectres from inside the hulks looming over us. They spilled into the night air in our wake.

“This way,” said Sawyer, cutting right.

I assumed we could make it back to the millhouse this way, but a sheer brick wall blocked us. It turned out to be a hook in the path and we ran to the left, bursting out into a small sitting area where two stone benches faced a collapsed merchant stall.

One of our adversaries was crouching on the pile of garbage, and as we passed it, it reached into the folds of its cloak and drew a dagger, leaping at me. I put a deafening bullet in it at about seven inches.

It dropped at my feet, but was immediately up again, slashing at me with a ferocious blade.

“Keep moving!” screamed Sawyer.

By now, he had abandoned trying to videotape the situation, and was pumping both arms, sprinting at full power, no doubt sending the image on the camera into unintelligible fits.

Dark, silent ghosts were emerging from every shadow and hole as we ran, curious and lethal.

We came into a T-junction and cut right. Before we made it to the end of the alley, I looked behind us and caught a glimpse of a dark shape standing motionlessly at the other end, holding something long that looked like a sword.

I could hear footsteps that were not our own. The shape was chasing us.

We rounded a corner, Sawyer flailing to keep his balance, and ran into a dead end.

Without hesitation, he threw one leg up and breach-kicked a door open with a hollow
crack—”Eeeyah!”—
then disappeared into the dark doorway like a rabbit into a burrow.

I followed him into a jet-black nothingness, tripping over the threshold, fumbling at Sawyer’s sweater, almost tumbling. The sound of soft, running footfalls came to me from somewhere, and then the sound of a bootsole gritting across a rooftop overhead.

Someone broke a window, and a loud
thump
from the ceiling sent a paroxsym of panic through me. I barked my shin on a chair, hit a table with my hip, dishes crashed unseen to the floor.

I slipped on the pieces and righted myself, brushed against threadbare fabric. A vicious snarl ripped the air right in front of me. I could see Sawyer’s nightvision camera glowing to my left.

I pushed away from the table, ran my shoulder into a doorway, almost knocking myself down.

“Here!” I heard him growl. Another startling
bang
was followed by a flood of moonlight from a rectangle in front of me. A shadow ran through it and I followed it into the night.

We were in a dead, enclosed garden. Strips of white cloth dangled, tugged by the air, tied to stakes driven into lifeless, plowed rows. The buildings directly around us were low, only one story tall.

The shadows of the windmill’s arms passed over us at regular intervals. I could hear the canvas flapping with a throaty
crump-crump, crump, crump-crump.

Sawyer ran toward a wooden crate and meant to hurdle up it to grab the eaves, but when he put his foot on it, it disintegrated, swallowed his leg to the knee with a dry crunch.

I helped him up, panting, struggling to speak, “Somebody following us.”

“I know—over there,” Sawyer said, and ran away.

Another of the ghost-faced figures was coming out of a nearby window, perching nimbly on the sill like a buzzard on a fencepost. When it saw me, it called loudly, its piercing, metallic scream reverberating in the valley of shadows and mudbrick.

My blood tore through me in fear, frozen rocket fuel in my veins. I could hear my heart hammering in my rib cage, driving spikes into my dry throat.

I found Sawyer leaning a table against a wall at the back of the garden. He ran up it and lifted himself onto the roof, but when he pushed off he splintered the wood.

As I attempted to use it as a ramp myself, it broke and sent me sprawling shoulderfirst into the wall below.

“Shit!”
I said, landing on my back. An open hand thrust down at my face as I got up. Sawyer had clipped the camera to his belt and was reaching for me.

I grasped his palm, put the revolver in my pocket, and he grunted as I began to try to billy-goat up the wall. I looked over my shoulder. One of the masked creatures was no more than a meter from my back, his tattered cloak billowing around him like stormclouds.

I started to scream, but there was a strange, sibilant
shick
sound, accompanied by a spray of red across my legs. The Wilder’s head spun free of its torso and twirled into the dust; the rest of it collapsed at my feet and lay still.

Standing behind it was a slender figure, draped in a dark cranberry-red hooded cloak, a sheer veil concealing his face. A leather crucifix bisected the veil. He flourished the blood from his strange long-handled broadsword and feinted at me.

I flexed my arm, reaching up, clawing at Sawyer’s shoulder, fighting up onto the roof. Sawyer fell backwards and I on top of him. I rolled to my feet and looked down at the swordsman standing in the garden ruins.

I could see the lower half of his face in the moonlight.
“Kah t’vam!”
he spat in some plosive language, the childlike voice of someone not quite yet a man. “Keem a-tra agama-nam!”

And then, as we watched, the swordsman disappeared in a diffusion of matter, a silent explosion that scattered him to nothing. He wasn’t there anymore. It was like he’d simply stepped out of reality, ceased to exist.

We ran. Sawyer took three steps and the corrugated tin roof collapsed with a horrendous crash.

He bounced off of the top of the wall underneath and I almost made it to the other side before a rafter broke and sent me sailing into a dark hallway below. A nail scratched my back as I fell. I landed in a hail of cloudy dust beside Sawyer, who was coughing, the breath knocked out of him.

I kicked, wrestling with the debris, stood up, helped Sawyer stand. He was grunting, keening like a dying calf, trying to breathe:
“Hhhhhnnnnngh!”

I saw a sliver of moonlight and kicked at it. A door shattered, flying into grey-blue light and I pulled Sawyer through. We were in another alley. Sawyer was drooling, holding his stomach.

“You okay?” I asked.

I quickly checked him for injuries. Nothing was protruding from his gut, but there was a rivulet of blood running down one arm. He nodded, staggering, and waved me off.

We kept running and six seconds later we were in front of the windmill, facing two more members of the Bemo-Epneme that were coming toward us from the other end of the way.

I snatched the door open and shoved Sawyer inside with my body, then spun and slammed the door shut.

“My father’s books?!” I said, overturning a table. I dragged it in front of the door and started throwing bags of cornmeal behind it. “You said Dad’s books?”

Sawyer was bent over, his hands on his knees, wheezing. “Yeah,” he croaked, and straightened up. His face was red. “Books.”

I grabbed his sweater and dragged him toward the storage bin at the back of the millhouse.

“Ah, Jesus,” I said, when we got to the back.

We were staring at a blank wall. There was no doorway.

I took out my cellphone and shined it at Sawyer. He had tears in his eyes that threatened to come tumbling out, and he was holding his left arm. I went to pull out the revolver and realized my pockets were empty. I’d lost the gun somewhere—probably in the roof collapse. I swore several times and kicked the wall, producing a deep thud.

“No gun!” said Sawyer, crawling over to the corner of the bin. He squeezed into a ball and hugged his knees. I joined him, and put a finger to my lips. “Shh.”

Pale shafts of moonlight fell through the cracks in the wooden ceiling, made solid by the meal dust. It was a bisected bin lid that opened in the middle and hinged out to either side. Soundless shadows coursed back and forth overhead, sending the beams of light flickering in epileptic mania.

I heard footsteps in the front of the millhouse. Someone was walking toward us. Sawyer shook bodily, trembling harder than I’d ever seen anybody tremble.

A pale bald head came into the moonlight, crowned with a pair of goat horns. Sloping lavender shoulders came into view, and fiery yellow eyes flared to life, regarding us with amusement.

Clayton thanked the girl and closed the door on her. She was winsome, he gave her that, but he dared not lay a hand on her; not even to help her out of a pit of snakes. The Grievers were nasty customers and would brook no transgressions on any of their number, no matter how slight.

He crept over to the edge of the fire-lit platform and strained his eyes to see down the dark tunnel to the left and the right. The catacombs clattered with the distant echo of falling water, making it hard to get his bearings in the gloom. He sat down and felt with his toes, trying to find purchase, and slid until there was no hope of pulling himself back up.