Sleepwalk (47 page)
Authors: John Saul
As the rumble of the flood grew, so also did Greg Moreland’s own panic. Reason deserted him. He began thrashing in the darkness, stumbling first one way then another. But wherever he turned, something seemed to be in his way.
The roar was deafening now, and there was a crashing noise as the flimsy frame structure fronting the cavern was swept away. Then, as the inrushing water compressed the air in the cavern, he was struck by a blinding pain.
His eardrums, stressed beyond their capabilities, burst. Abruptly, Greg Moreland found himself in utter silence.
But even the silence lasted only a second before the water overcame him, knocking him to the floor, then picking him up again to hurl him against the rock wall of the cavern.
A fragment of concrete, carried from the dam on the pure force of the current, slammed into his head, crushing it like an egg against the rough sandstone wall.
The water swept on, scouring the cavern clean, gouging the bodies of Greg Moreland, Paul Kendall, and Stan Utley loose from the shelter of the cave, sweeping the transmitter and computers away, adding
them to the great collection of debris the flood had gathered.
When the water finally ebbed a few minutes later, the cavern in the wall, like the rest of the canyon, had been swept clean of every trace that human beings had ever been there.
A moment later the wall of the canyon, undercut by the fury of the flood, collapsed, marking the spot with a pile of rubble that, if left undisturbed, would last for a millennium, slowly to be reshaped by rain and wind.
The four of them approached the rim of the canyon slowly. An eerie silence seemed to have fallen over the night. The roar of the flood had faded away completely, but the normal night sounds, the rustling of small animals, the flutter of the wings of bats as they hunted for prey, the chirping of insects calling for mates—all were gone.
It was as if every living thing on the plateau had been shocked into utter silence by the forces that had been unleashed when the dam crumbled.
Judith instinctively slipped her hand into Jed’s as they crept toward the edge of the precipice.
The path they had come up a few minutes earlier was gone, and the verge of the canyon was twenty feet farther back than it had been before. The new face of the canyon, freshly exposed sandstone, was rough and uneven, like a gem waiting to be cut.
Far below them fragments of the great slab that had broken away from the heights lay shattered on what had once been the bed of the river but was now nothing
more than the hard and wetly glittering surface of the bedrock beneath.
To their right was what had once been the bottom of the lake, a great layer of silt that had been carried downstream by the river over the course of half a century slowly sinking to the bottom of the lake, building up. Eventually, even if the dam had survived, the lake would have disappeared, the canyon filled by the silt. Now it lay gleaming in the moonlight, a huge mud slick thirty feet thick, its surface carved in strange patterns by the water that had left it behind.
Awestruck, they stood still, gazing out on the ruins of the reservoir and the canyon, each of them lost in his own private thoughts.
Jed stared down into the utter desolation below, the sheer magnitude of the fury he had unleashed threatening to overwhelm him. Finally he looked away, gazing up into the sky. The moon and stars overhead were comforting, for unlike the landscape below, they were unchanged, oblivious to the cataclysm that had swept through the canyon. As he watched, a shadow swept past the moon. Jed felt his grandfather’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.
“What is it?” Jed asked, murmuring the words softly, as if even his voice would defile the strangely reverent silence of the night.
The pressure on his shoulder increased. “Don’t speak,” Brown Eagle whispered. “Just watch.”
Now Judith and Peter too were staring up into the sky. As if seeking the light of the moon, the shadow appeared again, silhouetted against the silver disk, and then began lazily spiraling downward.
It was a bird, its great wings set as it coasted on the air currents. As it came lower and lower, growing
larger, the four people watching it gasped at its sheer size. It circled over them, then soared eastward, its huge wings pounding as it gained altitude and once more began riding the breezes, sweeping back and forth over the canyon. It disappeared into the distance, then, a moment later, reappeared, beating its way back to swoop low over the small cluster of people on the canyon’s rim.
It screamed, a shrill sound that echoed off the canyon’s walls, then began climbing, higher with every wing beat, silhouetted once more against the brilliance of the moon. Finally, when it was almost out of sight, it dove, sweeping its wings back, stretching its neck so that its enormous curved beak sliced through the air.
It was over the canyon now; and then, as it dropped below the rim, it screamed once more.
Its wings spread wide as it neared the canyon wall only a few feet above the great mud slick that covered the chasm’s floor, and then it screamed a third time.
Its talons reached out, clutching at the naked rock, and in an instant it disappeared.
The four of them watched in silence, unsure whether they’d seen and heard the strange phantom bird at all. In the silence, Brown Eagle spoke.
“Rakantoh,” he said softly. “He’s come home.”
They had been walking for nearly an hour, pausing now and then to look down into the canyon.
They’d stared in silence at the spot where the sanitarium had been.
Now, as on the rest of the canyon floor, there was
nothing left: only a few boulders that the passing flood had almost whimsically dropped here and there.
Farther on they had paused again, and stared at the great slab of rubble where the ledge upon which the antenna had stood now lay shattered at the bottom, blocking the cavern that had been dug into the wall beneath.
At last they started down the gentle slope that led to the desert floor In the distance they could see the town, a few of its windows glowing with candlelight.
Spread out across the desert, already disappearing quickly into the sands and gullies, draining down the myriad washes that cut through the flatlands, there was a sheen of water.
By morning it would be gone.
They paused, almost by common consent, and Judith turned to Jed Arnold.
“What do you want us to tell them?” she asked. Immediately, they all understood what she meant.
Jed was silent for a moment, but when he finally spoke, his voice was clear.
“We’ll tell them the truth,” he said. “They tried to kill us all. So I killed them first.”
They started once more toward the town, with only the moon lighting their way.
But above them, high in the sky, the great bird soared.
Jed looked up at it, and smiled.
JOHN SAUL is the author of twenty-eight novels, each a million-copy-plus national bestseller: Some of them are:
Suffer the Children, Punish the Sinners, Cry for the Strangers, Comes the Blind Fury, When the Wind Blows, The God Project, Nathaniel, Brainchild, Hellfire, The Unwanted, The Unloved, Creature, Sleepwalk, Second Child, Darkness, Shadows, Guardian, The Homing, Black Lightning, The Presence
, and The Blackstone Chronicles. John Saul lives in Seattle, Washington
A scream shatters the peaceful night of a sleepy town, a mysterious stranger awakens to seek vengeance.… Once again, with expert, chillingly demonic skill, John Saul draws the reader into his world of utter fear. The author of countless novels of psychological and supernatural suspense—all million copy
New York Times
bestsellers—John Saul is unequaled in his power to weave the haunted past and the troubled present into a web of pure, cold terror.
Something is happening to the children of Eastbury, Massachusetts … something that strikes at the heart of every parent’s darkest fears. For Sally Montgomery, the grief over the sudden death of her infant daughter is only the beginning. For Lucy Corliss, her son Randy is her life. Then one day, Randy doesn’t come home. And the terror begins …
A horn honked, pulling Randy out of his reverie, and he realized he was alone on the block. He looked at the watch his father had given him for his ninth birthday. It was nearly eight thirty. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to be late for school. Then he heard a voice calling to him.
“Randy! Randy Corliss!”
A blue car, a car he didn’t recognize, was standing by the
curb. A woman was smiling at him from the driver’s seat. He approached the car hesitantly, clutching his lunch box.
“Hi, Randy,” the woman said.
“Who are you?” Randy stood back from the car, remembering his mother’s warnings about never talking to strangers.
“My name’s Miss Bowen. Louise Bowen. I came to get you.”
“Get me?” Randy asked. “Why?”
“For your father,” the woman said. Randy’s heart beat faster. His father? His father had sent this woman? Was it really going to happen, finally? “He wanted me to pick you up at home,” he heard the woman say, “but I was late. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Randy said. He moved closer to the car. “Are you taking me to Daddy’s house?”
The woman reached across and pushed the passenger door open. “In a little while,” she promised. “Get in.”
Randy knew he shouldn’t get in the car, knew he should turn around and run to the nearest house, looking for help. It was things like this—strangers offering to give you a ride—that his mother had talked to him about ever since he was a little boy.
But this was different. This was a friend of his father’s. Her brown eyes were twinkling at him, and her smile made him feel like she was sharing an adventure with him. He made up his mind and got into the car, pulling the door closed behind him. The car moved away from the curb.
“Where are we going?” Randy asked.
Louise Bowen glanced over at the boy sitting expectantly on the seat beside her. He was every bit as attractive as the pictures she had been shown, his eyes almost green, with dark, wavy hair framing his pugnacious, snub-nosed face. His body was sturdy, and though she was a stranger to him, he didn’t seem to be the least bit frightened of her. Instinctively, Louise liked Randy Corliss.
“We’re going to your new school.”
Randy frowned. New school? If he was going to a new school, why wasn’t his father taking him? The woman seemed to hear him, even though he hadn’t spoken out loud.
“You’ll see your father very soon. But for a few days, until he gets everything worked out with your mother, you’ll be staying at the school. You’ll like it there,” she promised. “It’s a special school, just for little boys like you, and you’ll have lots of new friends. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”
Randy nodded uncertainly, no longer sure he should have
gotten in the car. Still, when he thought about it, it made sense. His father had told him there would be lots of problems when the time came for him to move away from his mother’s. And his father had told him he would be going to a new school. And today was the day.
Randy settled down in the seat and glanced out the window. They were heading out of Eastbury on the road toward Langston. That was where his father lived, so everything was all right.
Except that it didn’t quite
feel
all right. Deep inside, Randy had a strange sense of something being very wrong.
For two very different families haunted by very similar fears, THE GOD PROJECT has only just begun to work its lethal conspiracy of silence and fear. And for the reader, John Saul has produced a mind-numbing tale of evil unchecked
.
Prairie Bend: brilliant summers amid golden fields, killing winters of razorlike cold. A peaceful, neighborly village, darkened by legends of death … legends of Nathaniel. Some residents say he is simply a folk tale, others swear he is a terrifying spirit. And soon—very soon—some will come to believe that Nathaniel lives …
Shivering, Michael set himself a destination now and began walking along the edges of the pastures, the woods on his right, climbing each fence as he came to it. Sooner than he would have expected, the woods curved away to the right, following the course of the river as it deviated from its southeastern flow to curl around the village. Ahead of him he could see the scattered twinkling lights of Prairie Bend. For a moment, he considered going into the village, but then, as he looked off to the southeast, he changed his mind, for there, seeming almost to glow in the moonlight, was the hulking shape of Findley’s barn.
That, Michael knew, was where he was going.
He cut diagonally across the field, then darted across the
deserted highway and into another field. He moved quickly now, feeling exposed in the emptiness with the full moon shining down on him. Ten minutes later he had crossed the field and come once more to the highway, this time as it emerged from the village. Across the street, he could see Ben Findley’s driveway and, at its end, the little house, and the barn.
He considered trying to go down the driveway and around the house, but quickly abandoned the idea. A light showed dimly from behind a curtained window, and he had a sudden vision of old man Findley, his gun cradled in his arms, standing in silhouette at the front door.
His progress slowed as he plunged into the weed-choked pastures that lay between the house and the river, but he was determined to stay away from the fence separating Findley’s property from their own until the old man’s barn could conceal him from the same man’s prying eyes. It wasn’t until he was near the river that he finally felt safe enough to slip between the strands of barbed wire that fenced off the Findley property and begin doubling back toward the barn that had become his goal.
He could feel it now, feel the strange sense of familiarity he had felt that afternoon, only it was stronger here, pulling him forward through the night. He didn’t try to resist it, though there was something vaguely frightening about it. Frightening but exciting. There was a sense of discovery, almost a sense of memory. And his headache, the throbbing pain that had been with him all evening, was gone.
He came up to the barn and paused. There should be a door just around the corner, a door with a bar on it. He didn’t understand how he knew it was there, for he’d never seen that side of the barn, but he
knew
.
Around the corner, just as he knew it would be, he found the door, held securely shut by a heavy wooden beam resting in a pair of wrought-iron brackets. Without hesitation, Michael lifted the bar out of its brackets and propped it carefully against the wall. As he pulled the door open, no squeaking hinges betrayed his presence. Though the barn was nearly pitch dark inside, it wasn’t the kind of eerie darkness the woods by the river had held, at least not for Michael. For Michael, it was an inviting darkness.
He stepped into the barn.
He waited, half expectantly, as the darkness seeped into him, enveloping him within its folds. And then something reached out of the darkness and touched him.
Nathaniel’s call to Michael Hall, who has just lost his father in a tragic accident, draws the boy further into the barn and under his spell. There—and beyond—Michael will faithfully follow Nathaniel’s voice to the edge of terror
.
One hundred years ago in La Paloma a terrible deed was done, and a cry for vengeance pierced the night. Now, that evil still lives, and that vengeance waits … waits for Alex Lonsdale, one of the most popular boys in La Paloma. Because horrible things can happen—even to nice kids like Alex …
Alex jockeyed the Mustang around Bob Carey’s Porsche, then put it in drive and gunned the engine. The rear wheels spun on the loose gravel for a moment, then caught, and the car shot forward, down the Evanses’ driveway and into Hacienda Drive.
Alex wasn’t sure how long Lisa had been walking—it seemed as though it had taken him forever to get dressed and search the house. She could be almost home by now.
He pressed the accelerator, and the car picked up speed. He hugged the wall of the ravine on the first curve, but the car fishtailed slightly, and he had to steer into the skid to regain control. Then he hit a straight stretch and pushed his speed up to seventy. Coming up fast was an S curve that was posted at thirty miles an hour, but he knew they always left a big margin for safety. He slowed to sixty as he started into the first turn.
And then he saw her.
She was standing on the side of the road, her green dress glowing brightly in his headlights, staring at him with terrified eyes.
Or did he just imagine that? Was he already that close to her?
Time suddenly slowed down, and he slammed his foot on the brake.
Too late. He was going to hit her.
It would have been all right if she’d been on the inside of the curve. He’d have swept around her, and she’d have been safe. But now he was skidding right toward her …
Turn into it. He had to turn into it!
Taking his foot off the brake, he steered to the right, and suddenly felt the tires grab the pavement.
Lisa was only a few yards away.
And beyond Lisa, almost lost in the darkness, something else.
A face, old and wrinkled, framed with white hair. And the eyes in the face were glaring at him with an intensity he could almost feel.
It was the face that finally made him lose all control of the car.
An ancient, weathered face, a face filled with an unspeakable loathing, looming in the darkness.
At the last possible moment, he wrenched the wheel to the left, and the Mustang responded, slewing around Lisa, charging across the pavement, leading for the ditch and the wall of the ravine beyond.
Straighten it out!
He spun the wheel the other way.
Too far.
The car burst through the guardrail and hurtled over the edge of the ravine.
“Lisaaaa …”
Now Alex needs a miracle and thanks to a brilliant doctor, Alex comes back from the brink of death. He seems the same, but in his heart there is a coldness. And if his friends and family could see inside his brain, they would be terrified…
.
Pity the dead …
one hundred years ago eleven innocent lives were taken in a fire that raged through the mill. That day the iron doors slammed shut—forever. Now, the powerful Sturgiss family of the sleepy town of Westover, Massachusetts is about to unlock those doors to the past. Now comes the time to
pray for the living.
The silence of the building seemed to gather around her, and slowly Beth felt the beginnings of fear.
And then she began to feel something else.
Once again, she felt that strange certainty that the mill was not empty.
“D-Daddy?” she called softly, stepping through the door. “Are you here?”
She felt a slight trickle of sweat begin to slide down her spine, and fought a sudden trembling in her knees.
Then, as she listened to the silence, she heard something.
A rustling sound, from up above.
Beth froze, her heart pounding.
And then she heard it again.
She looked up.
With a sudden burst of flapping wings, a pigeon took off from one of the rafters, circled, then soared out through a gap between the boards over one of the windows.
Beth stood still, waiting for her heartbeat to calm. As she looked around, her eyes fixed on the top of a stairwell at the far end of the building.
He was downstairs. That’s why he hasn’t heard her. He was down in the basement.
Resolutely, she started across the vast emptiness of the building. As she reached the middle of the floor, she felt suddenly exposed, and had an urge to run.
But there was nothing to be afraid of. There was nothing in the mill except herself, and some birds.
And downstairs, her father.
After what seemed like an eternity, she reached the top of the stairs, and peered uncertainly into the darkness below.
Her own shadow preceded her down the steep flight of steps, and only a little spilled over the staircase to illuminate the nearer parts of the vast basement.
“Daddy?” Beth whispered. But the sound was so quiet, even she could barely hear it.
And then there was something else, coming on the heels of her own voice.
Another sound, fainter than the one her own voice had made, coming from below.
Something was moving in the darkness.
Once again Beth’s heart began to pound, but she remained where she was, forcing back the panic that threatened to overcome her.
Finally, when she heard nothing more, she moved slowly down the steps, until she could place a foot on the basement floor.
She listened, and after a moment, as the darkness began closing in on her, the sound repeated itself.
Panic surged through her. All her instincts told her to run, to flee back up the stairs and out into the daylight. But when she tried to move, her legs refused to obey her, and she remained where she was, paralyzed.
Once again the sound came. This time, though it was almost inaudible, Beth thought she recognized a word.
“Beeetthh …”
Her name. It was as if someone had called her name.
“D-Daddy?” she whispered again. “Daddy, is that you?”
There was another silence, and Beth strained once more to see into the darkness surrounding her.