F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 (47 page)

 
          
"But
you were dead, Uncle Joe," Lacey told him. Her voice trembled like a
wounded thing. "And now you're not."

 
          
"But
I'm not undead. Standing here in the sunlight is proof enough of that. And I'm
looking at you two and I'm not seeing prey. I'm seeing two people I care about
very much."

 
          
Carole
suspected that under different circumstances—any circumstances but these—those
words would have made her dizzy. But now ...

 
          
She
shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to step back from her roiling
emotions and think clearly. He sounded like her Father Joe, he acted like
Father Joe, he had Father Joe's mannerisms, but something was different,
something wasn't quite right. Something terrible had been done to him, and one
way or another, she had to find a way to undo it.

 
          
She
bent forward and snatched the book bag from where she'd dropped it on the sand.

 
          
"Carole?"
said Lacey from behind her. "Just a minute."

 
          
She
opened it and reached inside.

 
          
"Carole,
you're not really going to—"

 
          
''A
minute, I said!"

 
          
Carole's
fingers wrapped around the upright of Father Joe's big silver cross.
"We've been saving this for you." She yanked it from the bag and held
it out to him. "Here."

 
          
Father
Joe cried out and turned his head, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from
the sight of the very cross he used to carry with him wherever he went.

 
          
Carole
felt something die within her as she watched him and realized what she had to
do.

 
          
She
handed the cross to Lacey who stood dumbstruck, staring at her uncle with wide,
uncomprehending eyes. Lacey gripped the cross but never took her eyes from her
uncle.

 
          
As
Carole pulled open the book bag again, she slammed the doors, closed the
windows, and drew the curtains on everything she had ever felt for the man this
creature had once been. Her hand was reaching into the bag for the hammer and
stake when Lacey's voice, a hint of panic in her tone, stopped her.

 
          
"Carole
... Carole, something's happening here. Please tell me what's going on."

 
          
Carole
looked up and froze. The Father Joe thing was edging toward Lacey, his face averted,
his hand stretched out toward the cross.

 
          
"What's
happening, Carole?" Lacey wailed.

 
          
"I'm
not sure, but don't move. Stay right where you are."

 
          
Carole
watched with a wrenching mixture of horror and fascination as the Father Joe
thing's fingers neared the cross. She noticed that his eyes were slit-ted and
only partially averted, as if he were looking at the cross from the corner of
his eye.

 
          
The
undead couldn't stand to be anywhere near a cross, yet the Father Joe thing was
reaching for this one.

 
          
Finally
his scarred fingers reached it, touched the metal, and jerked back as if they'd
been burned. But no flash, no sizzle of seared flesh. The fingers came forward
again, and this time, like a striking snake, they snatched the cross from
Lacey's hand.

 
          
"It's
hot!" he said, looking up into the darkening sky as he switched it back
and forth between his hands like a hot potato. "Oh, God, it's hot!"

 
          
But
it wasn't searing his flesh, only reddening it.

 
          
Then
with the cry of a damned soul he dropped it and fell to his knees on the sand.

 
          
"What
have they done to me?" he sobbed as he looked at Carole with frightened,
haunted eyes. "What am I?"

 
          
Carole
closed the book bag.

           
She'd never seen the undead cry.
This wasn't a vampire. But he wasn't the Father Joe she had known either. He
was something in between. Was this an accident, or some sort of trick, some
undead plot to further confuse and confound the living? She'd have to reserve
judgment for now.

 
          
But
she'd be watching his every move.

 
          
JOE
. . .

 
          
Carole
took his arm and tugged him toward the boardwalk, saying, "We need to find
a place where we're not so exposed."

 
          
Joe
went along with her, his mind numb, unable to string two coherent thoughts
together.

 
          
The
afterimage of the cross—his cross—still stained his vision, bouncing in the air
before him. The blast of light had been intolerably bright, an explosion of
brilliance, as if Carole had lifted a white hot star from her book bag. The
light had caused him pain, but only in his eyes. It hadn't struck him like a
physical blow the way it seemed to affect the undead, staggering them back as
if they were being pummeled with a baseball bat. He could look at it as one might
the sun, squinting from the corner of his eye.

 
          
He
could touch the cross but couldn't hold it. He looked down at his palms. The
skin was reddened there, but at least it was normal looking. Not like the
ruined, thickened flesh on the back of his hands and on his arms and chest. He
touched his face and found thickened and pitted skin there as well.

 
          
Joe
felt as if his world were crumbling around him, then realized that it already
had. The life he'd known was gone, ended. What lay ahead?

 
          
He
pulled the damp sheet closer around him as Carole led him up the steps to the
boardwalk. Had this been his shroud? As she turned him right, Joe heard Lacey's
voice from behind.

 
          
"Aren't
we going to the car?"

 
          
"Let's
see if we can get into one of these houses," Carole said.

 
          
She
led them past the dead arcades and along the boardwalk leading to the inlet. No
one spoke. Lacey looked as dazed as Joe felt. They walked past the beachfront
houses, some large with sun decks and huge seaward windows, others tiny, little
more than plywood boxes, all nuzzling against the boardwalk. Most of the bigger
ones had been vandalized.

 
          
Carole
stopped before an old, minuscule bungalow that appeared intact. Despite the low
light, Joe had no problem making out the faded blue-gray of its clapboard
siding. Someone had painted the word SEAVIEW in black on the door and
surrounded it with sun-bleached clamshells.

 
          
Carole
tried the door. When it wouldn't open, she slammed her shoulder against it.
When that didn't work, she opened her book bag and began to rummage through it.

 
          
Joe
turned to the door and slammed his palm against it. The molding cracked like a
gunshot and the door swung inward. He stared at his hand. He hadn't put a lot
of effort into the blow, but it had broken the molding.

 
          
"How
did I do that?" he muttered.

 
          
No
one answered.

 
          
In
a courteous reflex, he stood aside to let Carole and Lacey enter first. Only
after they were inside did he realize that he should have gone ahead of them.
No telling what might have been lying in wait there.

 
          
As
he stepped across the threshold, he felt a curious resistance, as if the air
inside had congealed to try to hold him back. He pressed forward and pushed
through. The resistance evaporated once he was inside.

 
          
As
he closed the door behind him, he sniffed the musty air and looked around.
Typical beach house decor: rattan furniture with beachy-patterned cushions,
driftwood and shells on the mantle, fishnets and starfish tacked to the
tongue-and-groove knotty pine walls of the wide open living room/dining
room/kitchen combo that ran the length of the house; photos of smiling people
sitting on the beach or holding fishing rods. Joe wondered if any of them were
still alive.

 
          
Carole
pulled out her flashlight. "Let's see if we can find any candles."

 
          
"There's
three in that little brass candelabra back there," he told her.

 
          
"Where?"
She flashed her light around.

 
          
He
pointed. "On the dining room table."

 
          
Carole
shot him a strange look and moved toward the rear of the house where she
retrieved a brass candelabra from the tiny dining room. She lit one of its
three candles and set it on the small cocktail table situated before the
picture window overlooking the beach and the ocean. Lacey pulled the curtains.

 
          
"Let's
sit," Carole said.

 
          
"I
can't sit," Joe told her. "I need to know what happened to me."

 
          
"We're
about to tell you all we know," Carole said.

 
          
So
he sat. Carole did most of the talking, with Lacey adding a comment or two.
They told him how they'd found him, how his skin had started boiling in the
morning sun, and how they'd buried him.

 
          
Joe
rose and started pacing. He'd held himself still as he'd listened to them, not
wanting to believe their tale, yet unable to deny it, and now he had to move. He
felt too big for the room. Or was it getting smaller, the walls closing in on
him? He didn't know what to do with himself—stand, sit, move about—or where to
put his hands ... his body felt different, not quite his own. He'd sensed this
since pulling himself out of the sand. He'd washed himself off in the ocean,
hoping it would make a difference, but it hadn't. He still felt like a visitor
in his own skin.

 
          
"So
what am I then?" he said to no one on particular, perhaps to God Himself.
"Some new sort of creature, some freakish hybrid?" He sure as hell
felt like a freak.

 
          
"That
is what we need to find out," Carole said.

 
          
He
stared at her and she stared back, her eyes flat, unreadable. This was not the
Carole he'd known, not the woman he'd been drawn to. He'd sensed a terrible
change in her when he'd run into her outside the church, but now she seemed
even further removed from her old self. Cold .. . and she'd been anything but
cold in her other life. Had all the sweetness and warmth in her been burned away,
or had she merely walled them off?

 
          
Unable
to hold her gaze any longer, he looked down at himself. He was still wrapped in
the damp, sandy sheet. He wasn't cold but he didn't like looking like something
that had washed up from the sea.

 
          
"I'm
going to see if I can find some clothes."

 
          
Anything
to escape Carole's imprisoning stare. She made him feel like a specimen in a
dissection tray.

 
          
He
turned into the short hallway that was little more than an alcove that divided
the bungalow's two bedrooms. A pang shot through his abdomen and he realized he
was hungry. Clothes first, then food.

 
          
He
entered the bedroom on the left and pulled open a dresser drawer. No good.
Women's underwear. A thought struck him: What if two old spinsters kept this as
a summer place? Under no circumstances was he putting on a house dress. He'd
rather keep the sheet.