Night Songs (38 page)

    

    They arranged themselves in the front office as comfortably as they could, most of them choosing a way to see through the front door's pane, to watch the leaves streak by in tricolor armies, to charge the building and scrape at the plywood. The water still fell over the curbing, the drains still swallowed, but high tide was less than four hours away, and unless the storm abated soon they wouldn't even be able to use the cars.

    Then Annalee said, "They know where we are," and there was an uneasy stirring, a shifting. Colin put a hand to his forehead and rubbed. But it was true; Gran in whatever forms he could take to direct his revenge was evidently able to ferret them out, and Colin couldn't help wondering again if they weren't being herded. He wouldn't put it past the old man. Enemies taken one by one was perhaps a more satisfying situation; but enemies taken in a group was ill-guided justice delivered in exultation.

    The idea should have depressed him, sent him back to the despair he'd felt when he had understood what the dead sought. Yet it didn't. The more he considered it the more a buoyancy filled his chest like a slow-rising bubble. It excited him, revitalized him-Gran in a hurry might just mean Gran against a deadline, that whatever he had done to reassure his return was something less than permanent. A day. Two days. Certainly not more. He tucked his chin toward his chest and stared at the floor, at the damp footprints drying to shadows, and he wondered further if Gran in his hatred had failed to reckon on Lilla's last attempts to warn them, or had underestimated their acceptance of something usually left to campfire stories and films of the thirties. It was possible.

    It had to be possible or they had no chance at all.

    When he had assembled it, reordered it, and put it to the rest, there were no serious objections.

    "You're surely not suggesting we wait him out," Hugh said grimly. "You're not, are you, Colin?"

    "No. Not a bit."

    "Just so I know."

    "Why not?" Peg asked, though there was no contradiction in the question.

    "Doubt," he said. "As long as there's doubt we don't dare take the chance."

    She agreed, and began dusting at her knees. "There's something else," she said.

    They waited.

    "Suppose… suppose we're wrong and he doesn't have this deadline we've assumed. Suppose he can go on unless we take care of him." Her hands drifted up to her lap, still dusting. "Then if they get to the mainland-"

    "Yes," Colin interrupted when he saw the look on Matt's face.

    "Then I suggest we stop speculating and get on with it," Hugh said, standing. "We should take both cars, though, in case one conks out. Gran's place is fairly high on the slope, as I recall, so we shouldn't have trouble with the tide. Not yet."

    "The ladies," Garve said then, looking to Matt to include him as well. "I don't think they should come with us."

    "No," Annalee and Peg protested together.

    "Right," Colin said. "The last time we split up we nearly had a disaster. Better we should do k in a group."

    "In a mob," Hugh said sourly. When Colin looked at him, surprised, the doctor raised a shoulder. "A mob, right? That's what we are. The peasants charging the windmill at the end of
Frankenstein,
burn the sucker down and scatter the ashes." Then he grinned. "Always wanted to be a peasant. Not for life, you understand, but just for a while."

    "Well, peasant," Colin said in relief, "let's get the torches and move out."

    No one, however, hurried for the door. They were subdued, pleased that Hugh had regained his humor, less than pleased they had to confront a specter they'd once thought themselves incapable of accepting. Their expressions were the same: anxious, angry, let's be done with it so I can wake up and scream.

    Peg smoothed Matthew's hair and kissed him on the cheek, not caring when he squirmed and protested with a quiet, "Mom." Colin filled his trouser pockets with shells, made sure both Peg and Hugh were given the other shotguns; Garve took a rifle, Annalee the same. When Matt complained he was the only one without a weapon, Tabor, without asking the boy's mother, handed him a revolver and pointed to the safety. Matt held it gingerly, his expression solemn as it dwarfed his small grip, then tucked it into his waistband and took his mother's hand to lead her to Colin's car. Hugh and his nurse rode with the chief.

    The windshield fogged over the moment Colin turned on the ignition, Matt in the middle switched on the defroster. When the glass cleared he turned on the wipers, and it was the only sound they heard as they pulled away from the curb.

    They made only one stop, at the Fletcher house to take the red cans of kerosene from the shed in the backyard and put them in Tabor's trunk. They worked without a sound, none wanting to look at the empty house around them.

    Then they were back on the road, heading south out of town.

    The headlights sparkled as the mist fell out of the dark.

    The water sweeping across the road rose whitely against the tires.

    "Mom," Matt said as they passed the gas station and headed into the woods, "what about Lilla?"

    She refused to answer; Colin saw her hands tighten on the barrel.

    "What about her, pal?" he said into the silence.

    "She isn't dead, is she?"

    "No."

    "Then shouldn't we try to save her, too?"

    "No!" Peg said, scarcely parting her lips. "If she's alive-"

    "Matt," Colin said quickly, "when we do what we have to at Gran's, we'll see. Right now, though, there's nothing left of the Lilla we used to know. You saw that when we had her before. I think… I think that her trying to help us did something to her mind. That part of it we knew is long gone, I'm afraid."

    "There's doctors for that, though," he persisted. "She talked to me in the jail. I mean, she really talked to me. She called me Little Matt, just like always."

    He heard the boy's anguish, and felt his mother's rage. "Matt, for what we've all been through today, there are no doctors at all. And none for Lilla, either."

    "It isn't fair," he pouted. "It isn't fair. I never met a real witch before. It isn't fair."

    "She deserves to die," Peg said heatedly. Defiance pulled at her lips when she turned to look at Colin. "Well, she does! She started all this, and it won't end until she's dead."

    "That's Gran, Peg," he said calmly. "That's Gran. Lilla never has been anything more than a dupe."

    "What's a dupe?" Matt said.

    "A dupe is a fool who believes someone who's lying," his mother said, staring hard out the side window. "Gran wasn't lying, and Lilla knew it."

    Colin opened his mouth to disagree, changed his mind and concentrated on his driving. Peg's hostility bothered him a great deal, though he thought he understood why. And he was guiltily pleased that Matt had voiced what he'd been thinking himself. It was entirely possible that Lilla's retreat would be reversed when Gran was taken care of, and he didn't think it right they abandon her when all was done.

    The wind shoved the car hard to the right, and his wrists were beginning to ache with the effort to keep the wheels straight.

    Slow, he ordered when he felt the car's acceleration. Slow, you jackass, or you'll take out a tree.

    Matt cleared his throat.

    A rock thumped under a tire and they all held their breath.

    The windshield wipers seemed louder, more final.

    "Oh," Peg said as they passed between the twin motels.

    He looked, and nearly braked. On the side of the road was Carter Naughton, walking. The headlights paled him, took him out of the dark until the car was abreast. He did not turn his head; he staggered sideways, righted, and kept on walking.

    Twenty yards later they passed Tess Mayfair; on the left side Mitch and Rose Adams.

    Pebbles rattled against the undercarriage, and a dead leaf plastered itself against Colin's window.

    Denise was with her brother fifty yards along; the ax was gone from her shoulder, the naked bone stark and obscenely clean in the passing light.

    "What are you
doing!"
Peg whispered, and he started, not realizing he'd taken his foot off the pedal.

    Alex Fox, in his best suit.

    Susan behind him.

    The patrol car's horn blared, and he gasped while Peg grabbed for Matthew. The horn blared again. None of the dead looked around or slowed.

    There was still sufficient light to outline the treetops, to give black substance to the swift-sailing clouds.

    Muriel North beside Reverend Otter, whose head rocked on what little muscle had been left at his dying.

    The temperature in the car rose until Colin cranked down his window an inch or two, no more. The wind was cut to a breeze, and it cooled him though the air itself was warm.

    Hattie Mills, her blouse shredded and her black skirt in ribbons down her right side. Colin refused to watch her, though he felt Peg's gaze shift to see his reaction.

    "They're gonna see Gran," Matt said matter-of-factly. His thumb rubbed over the rough butt of his gun.

    Bill Efron, his vest open and his thick white hair spotted with mud.

    Michael Lombard, carrying Bob Cameron.

    Theo Vincent, dragging a bar stool in each hand.

    Matt knelt on the seat and stared intently out the rear window. "Gee," he said softly. "Gee."

    "Goddamn it, Matthew!" Peg exploded. She grabbed the back of his neck and forced him to turn around. "This isn't a game! This isn't a goddamned game!" Spittle bubbled in the corners of her mouth and she wiped it away with a darting, rigid finger.

    "I know that," Matt said, jerking his head to shake his mother's hand away. "I know that."

    Amy and Tommy Fox walked the center line. Colin slowed and drifted around them. Water from the tires eddied around their ankles and up over their shoes. Tommy carried a rock; Amy's hands were empty.

    They passed no one else, and when he could no longer see the children in the rearview mirror he pulled over slightly and rolled the window down the rest of the way. He waved the patrol car alongside, and waited for Annalee to bring hers down too.

    "Matt thinks they're going to Gran's," he shouted over the storm.

    The others nodded. Hugh leaned forward, green-faced, his glasses blind. "Less time than we thought."

    "Yeah."

    "Maybe we should-"

    Colin didn't hear the rest. Tabor suddenly accelerated as the island began to rise and the road lost its shallow river. He sounded the horn twice, twice more, and Colin followed closely despite his struggling with the wind. The wheels shimmied, and he gritted his teeth. Spray from the cruiser nearly blinded him until he backed off. Matt leaned forward eagerly, biting his lower lip until his mother ordered him into the back. He did not argue. He clambered over the seat and folded his arms on the rear shelf, watching for signs the dead were in pursuit.

    Too fast, Colin thought as he fought to keep the car -on the road, we're going too damned-

    Suddenly the patrol car's brake lights flared, and it began to slide inexorably to the right, sharply to the left, finally skewed into a complete turn while still moving forward. Peg shouted wordlessly as Colin swerved to avoid the skidding vehicle, puzzled when he saw streaks of black on the tarmac. Then his own car lost its traction. He grunted, ignored Peg's warning when he saw the pair of downed trees stretched across the road. Tabor was unable to avoid the storm-born deadfall, and Colin heard the ripping of metal as the cruiser slammed broadside into the first trunk.

    He spun the wheel desperately, touching the brake pedal lightly as he found himself helplessly caught in a spin. Then the right front wheel held and they were jolted past the uprooted trees, branches scratching and screeching like nails along the side. Peg smothered a scream behind her hands. Matt instantly dropped to the floorboard and covered his head with his arms. The car jounced over the shoulder, and Colin threw up his hands as they plowed through the picket fence at the boarding house lawn.

    Slats flew up and to the side, speared one headlight, cracked against the doors.

    The brakes locked, and they skidded across the muddy lawn.

    "Down!" he shouted, and threw himself to one side, grabbing Peg as he did and forcing her beneath him.

    The car slammed into the latice-work beneath the front porch, struck a brick-and-concrete post and shoved it two feet off its base before momentum was spent and the porch collapsed around them. Colin was thrown up and back, and when the automobile stopped, his forehead struck the dash. He groaned and fought for breath. He felt his heart racing, saw slashes of red, of white, of deep midnight black scale at him like knives. He closed his eyes, but the knives kept coming and he couldn't decide if he should call out or swallow what tasted like blood in his mouth.

    There was something sticky and wet on his chin, something prodding his back, something trying to tell him he wasn't alone.

    He tried to sit up, had no idea where he was or how he was trapped.

    He tasted salt, he tasted blood, and he thought he heard Matt crying before the red and the white gave way to the black, and the last thing he heard was the wind hissing through broken glass.

    

    

    Matt hurt.

    The back of his neck, the length of his spine, the side of his left arm stung and throbbed, and for a terrifying moment he thought his father had come back to beat him for being bad. There were funny colors in his head for several unnerving seconds, then funny sounds in his ears until he uncoiled stiffly and sat up with a sigh. He could see nothing over the back of the seat, and when he looked to the rear window he saw a crisscross of splintered wood, a waterfall of dust. Metal creaked, and something thumped onto the trunk. A soft hissing. A faint dripping. A startling rain of planks, as more of the porch flooring broke loose and gave way.