(1995) The Oath (27 page)

LEVI SAT
on his bed, phone receiver in hand, listening to the phone on the other end ring and ring. Then a machine answered, “Hi, this is Tracy. Leave a message after the beep.” He left no message but replaced the receiver, then sat there, troubled by a flurry of feelings, impressions, and stark fears. He prayed for certainty. Was he right? Were his impressions true?

He got up and started pulling on his clothes. If something was brewing out in those mountains, he wanted to be there.

ACROSS THE RIVER
, so far away the exact direction was hard to determine, a large limb snapped. It was the first sound Tracy had heard in all the silence they’d maintained for the last—how many minutes had it been? Long enough. She didn’t dare look down at her watch.

“Halfway up the mountain, see it?” said Steve.

Tracy scanned the area, trying to see an image. Part of her didn’t want to see anything, but—

There. Then not there. Where now? There they were again, two yellow pinpoints that could have been retinal reflections. Not a vehicle. No, they moved up and down, to and fro, like eyes on a creature’s head. Then they were gone again, winking out behind trees.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Might be a bear. Can’t tell,” Steve whispered.

It didn’t matter. Her hands were shaking no matter what it was, and her stomach felt so tight she thought she would double over.

The “eyes” appeared again.

“How do they glow like that?” she wondered.

Steve shook his head. He had no answer. Then he spoke just above a whisper, his lips barely moving, “I think it’s following my trail. I drove the long way around and hiked down that way, from across the river.” He watched a moment longer, and then he was sure. “Yeah. It’s tracking me.”

CHARLIE MACK
awoke and rolled out of bed in anguish, his body soaked in sweat. He felt as if the point of a spear was digging into the area over his heart. He lay on the floor, his face the picture of torment, his breath coming in desperate gasps, trying to clear his mind of bloody images.

“
WE’D BETTER SEPARATE
, spread out,” said Steve. “Can you get across the street?”

Tracy rose silently and put on her backpack.

“Keep your light handy. Don’t shoot until you’re sure of your target.”

“Same to you.”

She touched his back long enough to say good luck, then let her hand slip away. Keeping low and moving carefully, she made her way out of Hyde Hall and through the grass and brush toward the old Masonic Lodge.

Steve chambered a round, his eyes across the river. Now there was nothing but the black mountainside again. A breeze was picking up, and the trees were sighing. The extra noise would not help.

SOMETHING WAS
visiting Phil Garrett that night as well. Half drunk, he sat in the corner of his weather-beaten shack on the cold linoleum floor, staring around the dark room, his fist clenched tightly around the neck of a flask of whiskey. To his blurry eyes, the old table, the chair, even his jacket hanging from a sixteenpenny nail, were all alive and sinister. He cowered there, in a stupor of fear, his other hand grasping his chest.

STEVE HAD
an intense desire to get off that rock and hide somewhere, but he knew that would defeat his purpose. He would have to be the bait, at least until he could get a good shot. He looked toward the Masonic Lodge, but Tracy was out of sight.

“You still there?” he called as loudly as he dared.

He could see the palm of her hand pop up out of the grass and wave to him. All right. Now they would have two lines of fire and better chances of getting a clear shot.

Steve stayed right there on that rock, plainly visible as the breeze kept the cottonwoods steadily sighing. He took some deep breaths to steady himself.

He thought of Vic and of Maggie. He had heard Vic yelling, and Levi had said Maggie was singing. If that was what the creature wanted, he would give it to him. In quavering, pitifully inaccurate tones he began to sing. “Hand me down my walkin’ cane . . .”

He heard a click from the Masonic Lodge. Tracy had chambered a round.

Steve kept on singing . . . “Hand me down my walkin’ cane— oh!” A bat fluttered close, totally silent, visible for only an instant before changing course and disappearing in the dark.

“Steve!” Tracy hissed from somewhere in the dark.

“It was a bat,” he answered, then began singing again. “Hand me down my walkin’ cane, I’m a-gonna leave on the mornin’ train . . .”

“How’s that thing going to get across the river?”

“What?”

“How’s it going to get across the river, I mean, without giving itself away?”

Suddenly, there was a whooshing sound from across the river. Then, only the gentle sound of the breeze overhead. Steve had the icy sense that they’d just been given the answer to Tracy’s question.

It was all he could do to sing again. “My sins they have overtaken me . . .”

There was that sound again. Whoosh! . . . whoosh!

This time it didn’t come from across the river. It was above the river.

In one quick, fluid movement, Steve set the
30.06
aside and grabbed the shotgun. He didn’t want to miss. Forget preserving a trophy, he only wanted to live.

Now there was a steady wind approaching across the river, a rushing with a high-pitched edge. Steve searched the sky but could see nothing but stars.

Whoosh!

A curtain fell across the sky. The stars vanished. Steve blinked. Had he gone blind?

BOOM!!!

Tracy fired a round, and the sound went right through him. He bolted from the rock and just about fell backward. In the light of the blast he saw a metallic glimmer high overhead, and he heard Tracy scream.

BOOM!!! She fired again.

Around him, the remains of Hyde Hall seemed to be caving in. The one wall wrenched, the nails shrieked, and the boards splintered. He pointed the shotgun skyward, where he had seen the metallic glimmer, and squeezed the trigger. Only a few feet above him, he saw something flashing like heat lightning.

Then something huge and dark swept in from his left and struck him. He tumbled through space, totally unable to see, and came down with a rib-cracking crash on some fallen lumber, the shotgun still in his hand.

Somewhere, Tracy was firing round after round and screaming like an incensed commando.

Suddenly Tracy’s shots lit up a shimmering, metallic canopy above him in eerie stop-motion. He aimed the shotgun skyward and fired again. And again. And again. He knew the blasts had hit something, because he could hear the impact. But all he could see were sparks and flashes in a myriad of colors. This couldn’t be real.

Something hit the top of Hyde Hall’s stone chimney, and some stones clattered on the brittle boards below, filling the air with mortar dust.

Steve guessed an aim and fired. The mass above him lurched backward and collided with the wall nearest the river. Boards cracked and splintered, and the ground trembled under his feet.

He could hear Tracy coming across the road, still screaming. “Get out of there!”

Hyde Hall took another blow, and a splintered board whistled by Steve’s head. He ducked down, then ran in frantic leaps, bounding over the foundation and rolling into the dirt.

Tracy was nearby, groping, muttering a mile a minute, trying to reload in the dark. She was frantic, out of her mind.

A cloud, a shroud, a formless mass of black went skyward, hiding the stars, kicking up rapid, chugging volleys of wind. The sound moved out over the river, then weakened, slowed, and dropped earthward.

From the size and duration of the splash, a mountain had fallen into the river.

Steve was into Hyde Hall and out again with his
30.06
and his backpack before he knew it. He found Tracy in the middle of the road, still fussing with her rifle. “Come on!”

“Where’d it go?”

Tracy’s question was answered a moment later. The creature was aloft again, pounding at the air, kicking up wind. They fell to the earth out of instinct, out of terror. Tracy gave an anguished cry. Steve covered his head. They could hear and feel cold water and spray from the river falling around them.

The sound moved up river, then came down again with another thunderous splash.

“We got it!” Steve yelled, scrambling to his feet. “It’s hobbling, we hit it!”

Tracy curled up on the ground and took a few moments to breathe, just breathe.

He scrambled through the brush to her. “You okay?”

Her voice, like her nerves, was in tatters. “I have no idea!”

“Good shooting!”

She flopped in the grass on her back, unable to move. “What— what now?”

“We’ll go back and get our gear. We need the lights, and we’ll have to reload.”

She struggled up on one elbow, looked toward the river, then up at him, then toward the river again, discerning what he was thinking and not liking it.

He offered her his hand. “Come on. We’re going after it!”

Sam wasn’t all that big or tough, but the guys in the platoon were still afraid of him. He could stare down anybody, and there was something spooky about him, like maybe he could sic some demons on you if he wanted. We got along okay ’cause any time Sam felt like bragging I’d just listen.

From a memoir written by Dennis Mason, an old army buddy of Samuel Harrison Bly, sent to the Bly family after Sam, fifty-three, disappeared in 1981

TEN

PERFECT

T
HEY WERE
cursing the darkness, longing for daylight, for steady hands, cramming ammunition into the rifles and shotgun in the quivering beams of their flashlights, their bodies trembling with stark terror and adrenaline.

“Two more, two more,” Tracy said, and Steve dug the cartridges out of the box and slapped them into her hand. She jammed the first into the magazine; the second flipped out of her shaking fingers and disappeared into the tall grass.

Steve shined his light on the ground while she groped for the fallen cartridge. He was looking toward the river and the mountain slope just beyond it, pained by the passing of each precious second. That thing was still alive out there and getting away. If it managed to hide itself somewhere, perhaps crawl into a cave and die, they might never find it at all.

Tracy found the cartridge and slammed it in. She got to her feet and slung the rifle over her shoulder.

“Let’s go,” said Steve.

They headed for the river, stumbling in the dark, thrashing through the brush.

“What was it? Did you see it?” Tracy gasped as they ran.

“I saw a lot of sparks, and that was about it,” Steve said.

“Where’d it go?”

“Upstream. Watch your step.”

They reached the embankment just above the rolling current, then moved upstream. The riverbed widened, and they stepped onto a shore of dry river rocks.

“Okay, here we go,” Steve said quickly, his light sweeping over the expansive riverbed ahead of them. The rocks, normally above the river’s level and sunbaked this time of year, were wet, as if a wave had just washed over them.

“That first big splash we heard,” said Steve. “There was another one farther upstream.”

They ran, chasing the circles of light from their flashlights over river rocks, clumps of grass, boulders, and high-water debris.

Then Steve noticed that the bushes around them were dripping, the rocks darkened and glistening. This was the second point of impact.

They stopped and searched every direction with their lights.

The river slid quietly but quickly over the rocks. Here and there, water rippled and splashed around a boulder. They waited. They listened.

A limb snapped somewhere across the river. There was a thrashing in the brush.

They shined their lights on the river, probing its depths. The river ran wide and shallow here, maybe shallow enough to ford, Steve thought. He slung his rifle and shotgun over his shoulders and went in first, wading several yards into the moving water until it was up to his knees. He waved with his light and Tracy followed. Inch by inch, they waded through the painfully cold water. The moment either of them lifted a foot off the slippery rocks, the water carried it sideways. They slipped, stumbled, and helped each other regain their balance. Finally, they made it to the middle of the river, where the water was well over their knees. They pressed on. The water began to drop away. She felt a surge of hope. Then relief. They were going to make it.

Finally they splashed through water only ankle deep and made it to the opposite shore, their legs numb with cold, their hearts racing. They hurried through tall river grass, away from the sound of the river, then stopped to listen. They felt vulnerable, exposed. Whatever they were after, there was no longer a river between them, only darkness, which had to be to the creature’s advantage, not theirs.

They heard it again, moving slowly through thickets and dry twigs far up the mountain.

Steve looked at his watch. “Two-fifteen,” he whispered. “Two more hours and we’ll start getting some light.”

Silence. They listened. Nothing.

“But what is it?” Tracy asked. “We don’t even know what we’re chasing.”

“We know its approximate position,” Steve replied. “If we can keep tabs on it until daylight, we might get a look at it.”

Tracy’s light swept across Steve’s face. “Did you know you’re bleeding?”

“Where?”

Tracy brushed the hair from his brow to expose a wound. He winced a little, touched it, saw blood on his fingers.

“How bad is it?”

“Not too bad. You banged your head on something—or something banged you.”

“It didn’t hurt until now.”

He pulled out a bandanna and tied it around his head. That would do it.

“No lights unless absolutely necessary. Let’s go.”

They started up the slope, sometimes on all fours, pushing through thickets and deadwood, grabbing at bushes and limbs, groping for footholds. It was impossible to be silent. They had to pause frequently to listen. Sometimes they could hear a sound above them, sometimes not.