Bloodstone (28 page)

Sheriff Claude Pepper drove through the gloomy streets at a crawl, the rain that lashed at the windshield keeping him from moving any faster. He was irritated, hungry, tired, and shaky. His headlights were on, as was the spotlight on the top of his car, and still he had to lean forward against the wheel and peer out through the frantically sweeping wipers to see anything.

Wasn’t supposed to rain like this, for Chrissake. Weather
service said it would be hot and sunny. Clear skies for a
week
. Which was why they had gone to all the trouble of setting up the festival outside. The storm had come out of nowhere and surprised them all.

He jumped, his heart skipping a beat, as a trail of something slippery and red slapped wetly against the windshield
and then slid up and over the roof; it took a moment before he realized that the fabric was part of a festival banner that had graced the top of the gazebo. He drove slowly past the storefronts and stared miserably out at the destruction on the square. The booths that still stood were leaning one way or another, signs had been ripped out of the ground and tossed fifty feet, bits of red and white and blue paper decorated the limbs of the trees. The maypole had been flipped up and thrown like a javelin, imbedding itself in the gazebo steps, where it quivered in the hurricane wind. There would be no festival today.

But that was the least of his worries. Foremost on his mind was the fact that everyone in town had apparently gone bonkers all at once. First it was Pat Friedman, shooting his wife the way he did, which was the craziest thing that had happened in years. But apparently that was just an opening act. During the past several hours he had received no less than twenty calls from frightened residents, reporting to have seen some sort of creatures walking in the streets. The first calls had come to his home during the early hours, plucking him from a restless sleep, and they continued, unabated, for the rest of the morning. A few of them had whispered urgently into the phones (their voices full of hysterical fear), saying that they had barricaded themselves in some back room, insisting that their dead relatives had come back to claim them. He had tried to calm these callers as best he could, and had promised to send someone; then he had gotten both his deputies out of bed and handed them the job. After all, what were deputies for?

Except neither of them had reported in, and soon after that a phone line had gone down somewhere, and he didn’t know whether they’d both driven to Brunswick for doughnuts and coffee, or whether he was dealing with the end of the world here.

Before he left the house, he’d taken his lucky Smith and Wesson out of the safe and loaded it, the first time he’d done
that in over a year. He didn’t really know why, only that he had started feeling a general nervousness about the whole situation and it bothered him. He was not really one to go along with gut instinct, but here it was, and shouting quite loudly to be heard.
A cop’s gotta feel things
, his father had always said.
You develop a kind of radar for trouble
. Until now, he hadn’t really understood what his daddy meant.

He continued up the square, not sure what he was looking for, but needing to have a look all the same. There were no other cars on the road. Most of the houses he had passed were dark and hostile, shades pulled or curtains drawn. Were there people in them, cowering behind overturned couches, behind locked doors, gripping the barrels of shotguns? Worse, had his deputies knocked on a couple of those doors, invited themselves in, and gotten their heads blown off by itchy trigger fingers? The thought brought a feeling of sick dread to his empty stomach.

As he passed the end of the green he spotted someone walking along the upper side of the road that ringed the square, a vague shape in the blowing sheet of rain, dressed in what appeared to be a nightshirt or something similar.

In this weather?
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
. The whole world had gone crazy.

He backed the car up and swung it around. The figure continued walking slowly away from him along the edge of the road. As he got closer he trained the spotlight on it. A woman, and a big one, by the look of her. Naked under the nightdress, too, the white fabric clung to her back, exposing her flabby buttocks and thighs. There was something wrong with her, that much was apparent. She walked with a stumbling, lurching gait, her arms down at her bulging sides.

He honked the horn, but got no response.
Jesus
, he thought suddenly,
that looks like Barbara Trask
. The thought of dealing with her craziness did not particularly appeal to him, but she was obviously in serious trouble. He
honked again, stopped the car just behind her, settled his hat firmly on his head and stepped out into the storm.

It was not as bad as it could be here, with the trees sheltering the worst of it. Still, he gasped as the needle-like, blowing raindrops whipped his bare skin. The wind tried to snatch his hat from his head and he slapped a hand on it to hold it down.

Barbara had continued moving slowly away from him, and he shouted her name, but she did not change direction or indicate that she had heard him. He approached her and put a hand on her ice-cold shoulder. Just before he turned her to face him, something in his stomach did a lazy, backward flip.
Something is very wrong
.

The first thing he saw as she turned was her staring, unfocused eyes that seemed to look right through him. Then he glanced down, and stumbled back away from her, feeling his stomach trying to heave up whatever food he had left from dinner the night before. He tried to regain his balance, lost the battle and ended up on his rear in the cold rain, with the taste of bitter stomach acid in his mouth.

Something had torn out her throat. Her head lolled on her ruined neck. Blood still oozed from the ragged wound, but the rain washed it away as quickly as it came, leaving the meaty flesh clean and exposed.

His stomach heaved again, hugely, and he gagged and spat onto the ground. As if in answer, a piece of paper flipped through the air and landed on the pavement at his feet;
Don’t miss the festivities!
it said. The print was starting to bleed down the page in streaks of red.
Join us on the
square
…

He spat on the paper and wiped the rain from his face, struggling for control. Barbara had crossed the road and was moving toward the Thomas mansion. He watched her, fear and nausea making him weak-kneed.
She’s dead
, he thought,
Jesus, she was mangled, nothing could live through that
—

She’s not dead for Chrissake, she’s in shock, now get off
your big fat ass and do something!

He heaved himself to his feet. He knew what had made that wound. That was a dog bite. The worst he’d ever seen, but a dog had done it, all right. She had reported her dog missing yesterday morning, but they hadn’t been able to find it (
serves her right
, he had thought at the time, hearing the news); today, she must have spotted it, tried to chase it down and been attacked.

Can’t trust a dog
, he heard his father saying,
you could
have one for ten years and then one day they’ll turn on you
just as quick as you please
. Wild animals, pure and simple
.

Maybe it had gone rabid. He would have to find it and kill it. Surprisingly, the thought gave him no real pleasure. He felt only disgust and a rolling, queasy sort of fear. But now he had to chase down Barbara Trask or she would bleed to death.

He crossed the road after her. Barbara had passed the gate to the mansion and was now almost to the side door, moving with the same slow, lurching steps as before. Strange, the way she moved. He remembered the fearful voices on the other end of the phone this morning.

She’s in shock, that’s all, you’ve seen it before. She needs
blankets and medical attention, fast
. He passed through the gate and up the walk just as she disappeared inside the house. He stopped in front of the open door. Dark in there. Something told him to stay outside. He pulled his weapon, checked it, and then stepped into the darkness. “Barbara?”

He had time to see a pair of glowing, hellish eyes coming at him, and then he was hit in the chest by a huge, twisting bundle of fur. It knocked him back against the frame of the door, jaws snapping, its powerful neck pressing forward. He wedged his forearm in between its teeth, felt them crunch down on skin and bone, the blood running hot and wet down his arm. He raised the Smith and Wesson from his side, pressed it into soft, yielding flesh, and pulled the trigger.

The report was muffled, but he felt the big body jerk in his arms. For a moment the jaws tightened even further and he screamed with the pain, squeezing the trigger again, then once more. This time, the dog went limp, and he let it fall to the floor with a heavy thump.

Oh, God. Motherfucking Christ
. The vicious son of a bitch had been right here, all along. Which was probably why Barbara had come here in the first place, still trying to rescue the same goddamn mutt that had ripped out her throat. His arm throbbed with pain, and the smell of the gun was strong, momentarily overpowering the other, more disturbing stink he had noticed the second he stepped into the house. The wind plucked at his back through the open door.

Fucking hellhound
. He kicked at the body at his feet, put another bullet in it for good measure, then stepped over it, cradling his hurt arm against his chest. If it had rabies, he would have to get a shot, and he hated needles. Now he knew why he didn’t like dogs. His father had been right. You couldn’t trust them.

“Barbara!” he shouted, into the silence of the house. No answer.
Crazy woman
, he thought,
gonna wander around in
here until she passes out. I’ll be lucky to find her in time
…

He heard a scratching noise behind him.

He whirled. The dog had dragged itself to its feet and was standing in the dim light of the open door. It was braced with its paws set widely apart and its head hanging low; but it was standing. It was alive.

No. Not alive
. It had taken four shots to the chest. Even as he raised the gun again, that fact pressed down on him and weakened his grip. The damage done had to have been fatal. And it was not breathing. He could see that from where he stood.

He fired. The bullet ripped a chunk of flesh from the dog’s right shoulder. It staggered, then came at him. He fired again, and again, muttering to himself as the hammer fell on an empty chamber and the dog kept coming.

He kept pulling the trigger of his lucky Smith and Wesson, hearing the clicks. He stumbled backwards, over a piece of furniture; the creature was upon him, snapping, ripping, tearing. He put up a hand weakly, felt it seized in an iron grip, and then the teeth were at his throat.

Dear God
, he thought, and a moment’s grace let him wonder if this was the end, after all.

Then he thought nothing more.

There were limits, Billy Smith told himself within the confines of that cold, empty jail cell, to what a mind could take. And there were checks and balances, a cosmic scale. If something especially good happened, then something equally bad would return the favor, and vice versa. It was a theory that had been with him all his life, and though he supposed it wasn’t the best way to live, always looking over your shoulder if you were happy, it had served him well when things had gone sour; he always had something to hope for.

But now hope eluded him. The theory simply did not hold any water. He had suffered much, and just when he thought he had a chance at happiness again, he discovered that someone had played a cruel joke. There were no limits after all, this joker said with a smile and a shake of the head. You just roll the dice, buddy, and whatever comes up, you get. But it’s house rules here, and house dice too, and guess what, they’re loaded. Nothing we can do about that, sorry.

Last night, the dreams had been the worst he could remember. He dreamed of death coming home, in the flesh. One long, continuous dream that was so clear and vivid it might have been real.

As the sky in the east began to turn the color of lead with
the approaching dawn, the dead of White Falls clawed their way out. They pushed up through layers of heavy earth, their bony hands grasping the sides of muddy graves like misshapen children fighting their way from the womb. They returned to their husbands, their wives, their lovers, their children, seeking life that they had given freely, and now wanted back. They came in waves, stumbling through empty, rain-washed streets, mouths gaping, blind and hungry and united by a single
voice; return what is mine
.

He watched it all happen. And then, just as he thought it could not get any worse, he had been granted a look from the other side.

The world went dark. Color bled out of it like a shirt running in the wash. His limbs grew cold and lost all feeling. He began to float within himself as the ground faded away beneath his feet. He was offered a glimpse of the void beyond; blackness there, emptiness, horrible, maddening, endless space without light or warmth or taste or smell. He heard the noiseless screams of the walking dead, and screamed with them, suddenly filled with a mindless hunger. Life had been cruelly snatched from his grasp; he wanted it back.
He wanted it back
.

When he awoke, sobbing, the hunger was still very much with him, its bitter taste lining the inside of his mouth like the morning after an especially rough bender. The jail cell in which he lay was cold and gray, full of the stench of stale human sweat. He had gained a new perspective. His body was a frail shell made up of dead and dying cells, a mortal thing that would fail soon enough and leave him floating in the horrible emptiness of the void. No amount of human company would ease this pain. If he looked into human faces, searching for understanding, he would see instead the number of years they had left, months, days. Perhaps he would even be able to see them slowly dying, hair turning gray, skin wrinkling and sagging by degrees as the structures underneath dried up and cracked and dissolved.

And there’s more to this game, pal. We ain’t done with
you yet
. He felt as if a great battle was being waged for his soul, but he had no weapons with which to fight. The dream and the hunger had revived the thirst again, and now it raged on. His throat ached for the burn, his fingers longed to feel the cool smooth glass of the bottle.

Roll the dice. Sometimes the dice go sour. Sorry, nothing
we can do about that. House rules
.

He sat in the empty cell, his head cradled in his hands, and wondered. His life seemed to lay itself out for inspection. He realized that everything that had happened, everything he had done, had been leading him to this place. His adoption, his adopted mother’s death, his drinking, the accident, his isolation, his guilt and obsession. And then the dreams, providing the final push. Perhaps they were some kind of trace memory, living on in brain cells inherited from Frederick Thomas, operating instinctively to carry out the man’s poisonous plan, like a homing pigeon returning to the nest, bringing its cargo to the required drop spot without the slightest conscious intention of doing so.

If so, he had been a fool. They had all been pawns in the hands of a man who had been dead over one hundred and fifty years. The dreams hadn’t come to warn him at all; they had come to bring him home. He had found his way home, all right. But first he had gone and collected his long-lost sister, kidnapped her, and locked her in handcuffs until she agreed to go along with his crazy scheme. They had managed to fall in love, which perhaps was more of the game; then, finally, he had driven her away when he needed her most.

Had no choice there, though, did you, pal? Not if you
wanted to hang on to what’s left of your sanity
. True. He could not face her and tell the truth. He did not want to hurt her that way. Why not keep the secret and hold it deep inside where it couldn’t do any more real damage? Besides, something told him that the best thing she could do now was
leave, take the car and run, as far away from him and this town as she could get.

Except it wasn’t going to work out that way, and he knew it. The game wasn’t over yet.

A door opened somewhere near the front of the building. Up to this point, he hadn’t really thought why the deputies hadn’t shown up with his breakfast; now, almost despite himself, he felt his stomach growling.
Bodily functions don’t care
much about all that self-pitying romantic bullshit
, he told himself grimly.
They just go about their business. You ought
to take a lesson from them
.

Another door opened, closer this time. He heard footsteps, which stopped abruptly nearby; a muffled oath and a long moment of silence; then the steps resumed, and Harry Stowe appeared outside his door. Stowe’s hair was plastered wetly to his scalp and his face was grim.

“He’s taken her,” Stowe said. He held a ring of keys in his hand. “There’s no time for your bullshit. We have to go.”

Harry Stowe had arrived at work as usual that morning, planning to take a half-day. He hadn’t slept well, but that was to be expected. He couldn’t let that interfere with his life. He still had a job to do. Jackie Marshal was coming in for a check-up; Lester Pritchard wanted some painkillers for his tooth. But when the time rolled around for his first appointment, Jackie Marshal never showed. Lester Pritchard didn’t come in either, but by that time, Stowe had begun to get an uneasy, burning sensation in his gut. He tried the Marshal house, and got no answer. Same at the Pritchard garage. Finally, he tried the police station, and when the phone continued to ring emptily against his ear, that nervous feeling turned itself up a notch. Not sure why, he dialed the number for the Old Mill Inn. No answer there, either.

You didn’t listen to her, did you? She told you that time
was running out
.

He picked up the phone again, but this time the line was
dead. The wind must have taken it down somewhere. He climbed into the car and drove down the street through the rain, and when he saw her car was gone from the Old Mill parking lot the nervous feeling upgraded itself to serious fear. He thought about Jeb Taylor, the way the boy had looked on the stairs the morning he had found Ruth’s body. Jeb Taylor was no longer himself. Something had taken hold of him. Had it infected everyone else in town as well?

He was driving past the high school when he spotted Angel’s car parked in front of Sue Hall’s place. He got out into the rain and stood hunched at the door, ringing the bell again and again. No answer. Finally he returned to the car to figure out what to do next, and that’s when he spotted Jeb’s car parked in back, partially concealed by the garage.

Did Jeb have Angel? There was no real reason to think so, and yet the feeling would not leave him. Time was running out.

Filled with a sudden fear he turned around and drove to the police station. When he got there he found the door wrenched open and the front room empty. It smelled strange in here, a smell he recognized but couldn’t quite place. A line of muddy footprints led beyond the door into the back.

He grabbed the ring of keys from a hook behind the desk and followed the footprints, not sure what he would see. Pat Friedman’s cell was empty. Bits of blood, bone, and matted hair clung to several of the bars.
Almost as if he squeezed
right through. But that would shatter his skull
…

He wiped the unsettling image from his mind. When he stopped in front of the next cell, Billy Smith was already staring up at him from the cot along the wall. He looked terrible. Huge dark circles ringed his eyes, and his usually intense features had gained another dimension, producing the haunted, skeletal look Stowe had seen only a few times before in his worst patients. People who had witnessed a great tragedy, or were told they had a month to live.

“Ironic,” Smith said. “That I end up in here again, after all
that’s happened. Locked up in another cell. I guess it’s where I belong.”

In answer, Stowe fumbled through the ring of keys. They made a faint jingling sound as they tumbled together. He tried one, then another. The third one threw the bolts, and he slid open the cell door. “Not anymore,” he said. “Now, let’s go.”

“Where?”

Stowe paused. Jesus, he was acting like a lunatic. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But Angel’s gone. We have to find her.”

“I told her to get away from this place,” Smith said. He didn’t wait for a reply. His face seemed to waver a moment, though it was hard to tell whether he was distressed, relieved, or a little of both.

“She didn’t run because she’s pregnant,” Stowe said bluntly. “I tested her myself.”

“Oh, my God.”

“She wanted to tell you…”

Smith wasn’t listening. Sudden understanding washed over his face. “He wants the child,” he whispered. “That’s what he’s always wanted.”

“Who?”

As if in answer, Smith closed his eyes. His body went rigid, then relaxed. He sat there for a minute, perfectly still, slumped against the wall. Expressions played about his face, not quite his own and yet strangely familiar. Then he opened his eyes.

“I know where she is,” he said.

His mind flexed and reached and then joined, two becoming one, two halves of the same mind. A feeling of completion, unity, satisfaction. Her essence flowed within him, the wings fluttering in his hands, the taste of candy apples filling his mouth, the color blue washing over his sight like ocean water.

Then the fear began. He was seeing through her eyes, feeling her emotions. She was scared all right, and confused, like a bird cupped in a giant hand, heart beating like a jackhammer.
Dark now and dead so many dead his face oh his
face
…

A jumble of images, flipping by so fast. Memory. An empty house, a dark hallway, a set of stairs leading down. Darkness, fear growing, gaining a voice.
We have been waiting
for you
. A face leering out of the dark overhead, a demon’s face, twisting and churning, liquid features. Touched by ice-cold hands; darkness and confusion; then the cold wet rain, moving through the gates and up to the door of a monstrous house, and through, and more darkness.

Then he felt her pause, questioning, and he knew she had felt him. He withdrew carefully, slowly, before she could sense anything else. He was open and vulnerable now; she could read him too easily. He did not want her to discover his secret.

When he returned to himself and opened his eyes, the sudden emptiness made him gasp. He felt incomplete, torn in two. He had never fully realized how close two people could be, sharing the same breath, the same blood, the same mind. He had never been a hardcore drug user, alcohol had always been enough for him. Only once had he tried anything stronger, and that was during his freshman year in college, when he had dropped a single hit of acid. Now he was reminded of that feeling, a disassociation that brought on a whole new perception of the world. It was as if someone had opened the door to another dimension and given him a peek before slamming it rudely in his face.

Harry Stowe was staring at him with a mixture of wonder and apprehension, and he realized he must have spoken. “Where?” Stowe asked. “Where are they?”

The last image remained with him. The black gates, the narrow walk, the huge house looming over them. “The
Thomas mansion,” he said. “At least, that’s where they were. I don’t know how long ago. It felt like a memory.”

“You were with her just now, weren’t you? I could see it in your face, some of her expressions…eerie.” He shook his head. “Like there were two of you.”

“We’re connected, somehow.” He waved his hand. Suddenly he felt almost helplessly angry. All the pieces had fallen into place.
A child
. The fruit of their passion growing even now inside her. The product of years of crossbreeding the damned, incest upon incest. New life tainted with old blood, pure blood. That was what Frederick Thomas was after, all along, why he had reached across the years and dragged them thousands of miles to this town.

New life.

Harry had crossed the small cell and was holding his arm, lifting him to his feet. “He’ll kill her,” Smith whispered. “When he’s gotten what he wants.”

“Then let’s get going.”

He was muttering to himself now; his dream of the night before had snuck stealthily back into his head. Not exactly the dream, but the feelings it had invoked. He remembered the awful emptiness of that place, the way his body felt after he awoke, a frail shell, already dying.

New life
.

Harry stood firmly, holding both his arms now and keeping him upright, looking into his face. He could see every pore in Harry’s skin, dead cells clinging to them in a dull-gray film of biological waste. Dead hair and nails, dead eyes. Decay, happening even as he watched.

Harry was talking to him. “I don’t know what’s happened to you over the past few days,” he said, “what’s made you lose your faith. But you have a chance to help her now. Help all of us. But we have to move.”