Darkness (18 page)

They were no longer alone.

Other boats were around them now, shadowy forms drifting around the edges of Kelly’s vision. She had no idea how many there were, nor did it matter, for each of the boats contained someone else like herself, someone else whose mind was obeying the gentle summons of the music.

Slowly, barely visible at first, Kelly saw a glow of light flickering in the darkness ahead. Like a beacon, it pierced the darkness, and even though it was still far away, Kelly imagined she could feel its heat on her face. She felt drawn to it, as a moth to a flame, and as the boat moved steadily toward it, a sense of anticipation grew within her.

Tonight, something special was going to happen.

Tonight, she was certain, she was finally going to find out who she was, and why she had always known she was different from anyone else.

At last the boat touched the shore. Without needing any instruction at all, Kelly stepped out of the bow and fastened the line to a low-hanging cypress branch.

Other boats were already there. In the darkness beyond the island on which she stood, Kelly could sense the presence of still others, each of them homing in on the glowing signal.

The music was more compelling than ever: a low drumbeat pulsed in the air, and above it a high voice keened a melody.

With Michael beside her, and other shapes drawing closer in the night, Kelly moved toward the beckoning light.

Clarey Lambert felt the children drawing near. Shortly after dusk she had journeyed to the island hidden deep in the wilds of the swamp, and begun the preparations for the ceremony that was to come.

Last night George Coulton had died.

Tonight, a new child would join the Circle.

Now, on the island from which the Circle had begun its spread so many years ago, the preparations were all but complete. The altar was ready, the candles waited to be lit.

The Dark Man was nearby.

Clarey’s mind concentrated now on the call she had sent out an hour ago, the call only the children could hear, the call that would draw them to the Circle.

Someday, she supposed, she, too, would die. What would the Dark Man do then? Without her, would it all end, as he had always said?

She doubted it.

No, he would simply find someone else to take her place, someone else to don the robes and summon the children.

But it wouldn’t be someone like her, who loved the
children, who felt a small piece of herself die each time a new child was taken into the Circle.

Still, despite all the tiny fragments that had died within her over the years, she still lived, still clung to the hope of destroying the Circle. Still searched for a way to destroy the Dark Man and release the children from the living death to which he had condemned them.

She stiffened, sensing something different in the clearing where the children were gathering.

Long ago she had tuned her mind to sense each of them, so that always she knew where they were, what they were doing.

Except for the two.

The two the Dark Man had released from the swamp sixteen years ago.

Those two had been experiments. The Dark Man had wanted to watch them, wanted to see what would happen to them if they grew up beyond the Circle.

One of them he had sent far away, but the other one he had kept close by.

And Clarey Lambert knew why.

He wanted to watch Michael Sheffield, wanted to see how far the summons could reach.

On each of the nights when there had been a ceremony, she had watched the Dark Man scanning the faces of the children, searching for Michael.

Until tonight, Michael had never been there.

She’d felt him sometimes, felt him in the swamp, searching for the island where they were gathered. But he’d never found them, for she had never reached out and guided him.

But now the girl had come back. Today, the two of them had met, and tonight, together, they had heard the summons clearly, and responded.

From the shelter of the trees that concealed her, Clarey saw them in the clearing, waiting with the others. Saw them and felt a terrible dread.

The fire in the center of the clearing was not big, but it blazed brightly, its flames licking at the darkness,
illuminating the altar in front of which it had been built, its damp wood spitting embers outward toward the semicircle of children who stood in motionless silence around it. There were twenty-five of them, ranging in age from four to nearly twenty. They wore tattered clothes, clothes that had been worn by other children before them, and there was a sameness to their faces.

The narrow faces of the swamp rats, framed by scraggly, ill-kempt hair.

They were thin children, their bony frames a product of the poverty in which they lived, and though their eyes reflected the light of the fire, still there was a dullness to them, as if the inner light of their youth had long since gone out.

They looked old, not so much in the tiredness of their stance, for many of them stood straight and tall, but old in spirit, as if their lives were already over.

Kelly and Michael, standing close together toward one end of the semicircle, were unaware of the stark contrast they made to the others in the group, for already they had been mesmerized by the hypnotic call emanating from Clarey Lambert’s mind. All they were aware of was that somehow they belonged here, that somehow they shared a kinship with these children they’d never seen before.

With the others, they waited.

Something was about to happen, and though neither of them was aware of what it might be, they both knew they would be a part of it.

There was a movement in the trees beyond the altar, and a figure stepped out of the shadowed darkness. A figure clad in flowing robes of scarlet velvet, embroidered in gold and silver. The figure paused, staring out at the children, and then its arms rose, spreading wide.

Clarey Lambert’s voice rang out. But it was no longer the weak and rasping voice that outsiders heard. Now her voice rang with the pure clarity of a young woman in her prime. “Are all my children gathered?”

“We are here,” the children answered in a single voice.

Clarey turned, facing the altar, and dropped her arms to her sides. Slowly, she began lighting the candles, each of which illuminated a doll. The dolls had been made by hand, and each of the faces was different. And yet they had a certain sameness about them, just as did the children who now stood gazing raptly. The eyes of the dolls glittered brightly in the shimmering light.

Clarey Lambert stood silently before the altar for a few moments, then turned to face the gathering of children.

“He is with us,” she spoke, her words rolling from her lips in the measured cadence of a chant.

“He comes to bless us,” the children replied in a single voice.

The black-garbed figure of the Dark Man emerged from the trees, stood silent before the altar for a moment, then turned to face the assemblage outside.

The Dark Man’s face, like his body, was shrouded in black, but in the glimmering light of the fire, his eyes glowed brightly from two holes in the hood that concealed his features.

The Dark Man gazed out at the children, his eyes finally fixing on Michael and Kelly.

“My children return,” he said, his voice carrying in the hushed darkness. Striding away from the altar, he crossed the clearing, his eyes never leaving the faces of Michael and Kelly.

Neither of them moved, neither of them shrank away. Rather, they stood as if carved from stone, gazing steadily at the black-shrouded face. The Dark Man stopped a few feet from them. He held out his arms.

“Come,” he said. “I have missed you.”

Taking their hands in his, the Dark Man led them to the altar. “You have a gift to give,” he said, his words resonating in the silence that had fallen over the clearing. “Why have you withheld it?”

Unbidden, words rose in the throats of Michael and Kelly.

“We were lost,” they said. “Now we have come home again.”

Laying a hand on each of their shoulders, he turned them around to face him. He began speaking again, his voice dropping so that only they could hear, taking on a new rhythm, soft and soothing, a rhythm that reached inside their minds and put them gently into a hypnotic sleep. At last, when he saw that their last vestiges of will had been surrendered, he directed them to lie on the ground before the altar.

He approached Michael first.

From the folds of his robe he took a large syringe. As Michael unbuttoned his shirt and laid his chest bare, the Dark Man gazed down at the tiny, almost invisible scar that had been on his chest since the night he was born. He smiled with satisfaction, then shifted his attention to Michael’s glazed eyes. “Are you afraid?” he asked.

“No.”

“Will you feel pain?”

“No.”

“Do you give your gift freely?”

“I do.”

Slowly, the Dark Man lowered the needle, sinking it deep into Michael’s chest. He paused, then slowly began drawing the plunger upward.

From somewhere within Michael’s body a single drop of murky fluid seeped into the syringe’s chamber.

When he was finished, he moved to Kelly, unbuttoned her shirt, laid her chest bare and repeated the ritual. At last he stood before the altar and held the needles high.

“Youth,” he intoned. “Youth, freely given.”

Laying the syringes on the altar and covering them with a cloth, the Dark Man turned back to face the children who watched in silence from beyond the glowing
fire. “Rise,” he commanded. “Rise, and join your brothers and sisters.”

Kelly and Michael rose up from the ground, recovering their bare chests, and silently returned to the semicircle.

Jonas Cox stood next to Loretta Jagger, his arm draped around her shoulders as she cradled the baby against her breast. In silence he’d watched the ceremony in which Kelly Anderson and Michael Sheffield presented their gift to the Dark Man, knowing that when it was over, it would be his turn.

His and Loretta’s.

But their gift, he knew, was far more valuable to the Dark Man than that of Kelly and Michael.

The Dark Man valued babies more highly than anything else.

And though Jonas and Loretta had not yet produced a child of their own to give to the Dark Man, they had been honored in being allowed to present the baby in Loretta’s arms to him.

In fact, they might even be allowed to keep this baby and raise it in their own house, the house he and Loretta had moved into last year after his grandfather had died.

He and Loretta weren’t married yet, but that would come. As soon as Loretta was pregnant, there would be a special ceremony here on the island, in front of the altar of the Circle, and the Dark Man would marry them.

But not until Loretta was pregnant, for the Dark Man never allowed his children to marry until they had proved their faith in him by making him a baby.

Making him a baby, and presenting it to him the night after its birth.

That, Jonas knew, was why George Coulton had been released from the Circle. Even now, Jonas didn’t think of George as having died, for Jonas, like all the Dark Man’s children, believed that George had been born in the
darkness of death, and that only by serving the Dark Man, and obeying him, could life finally be given to him.

For the baby in Loretta’s arms, the long journey toward life was about to begin. Tonight the baby would be inducted into the Circle, and the Dark Man himself would take him, nurturing him for the first months of his life. Then the baby would be given to one of the Women of the Circle, who would raise him in the knowledge that he was different from children beyond the Circle.

Someday, if his obedience was perfect—as perfect as Jonas’s had always been—and if he fathered new children for the Dark Man—as Jonas intended to do—Jonas would be released from the Circle.

He would join the others.

Jonas knew who some of them were. Important men, men who didn’t live like swamp rats. And when it was time, and if he was worthy, he, too, would benefit from the Circle’s gift.

But if he wasn’t worthy, if he disobeyed the Dark Man …

An image of George Coulton flashed into his mind, but evaporated almost instantly.