Tales from the Nightside (26 page)

Suddenly a car raced past, briefly exposing them to its headlights, and they vaulted over the wall and crouched out of sight until they were sure they hadn't been seen. Then they began to run as best they could toward the boulders.

The crust broke several times beneath them and they floundered, the snow spilling like droplets of ice over the tops of their boots, down the backs of their gloves. They  angled in from the left with no other plan than to observe. They would wait, listen, watch. And when they were sure they were not living a nightmare, they would run to the nearest house and get someone to help them before it was too late.

Just before the fourth fire, Dawn had called and told him about a dream she had had.

When Gary reached the outermost boulder, he slumped against it, his head sagging down toward his chest. There was a pounding in his ears, and the faint throbs of an impending headache across his forehead. Kim slumped to the ground in front of him, looked back and saw their moonshadows stretching darkly toward the road. Gary nodded at his silent question, and they crawled to the left before fingers and boots pulled them to the tableflat top of Gary’s rock. Their scrapping sounded like an avalanche, and he clamped a hand over his mouth to keep breathing from giving them away.

And then only the moon belted with strands of drifting cloud, the sough of the wind gathering speed on the hills to coast through the valley, an occasional car with bright eyes tunneling through the black, and the rush of blood like drums on a faraway continent.

And the clicking.

Gary stiffened and eased himself back until he could barely see over the edge. The game had ended, the fear begun.

They saw a pair of frighteningly familiar figures plowing through the snow, the details of their features invisible, their bulks outlined against the grey-white of the field. The clicking, closer, shifted into the tapping of dead branches rearing in a storm, and the creatures passed out of sight as they approached the far rock. Kim flattened his hands against the boulders as if to raise himself higher, and Gary tugged him down. His mouth was dry, his lips cracking in the cold as his tongue flicked over them. Another car sped out of the town and he wanted to cry out, dug his chin into the rock instead and listened.

A rumbling came then, and he was sure the stone directly in front of them was moving. Kim placed his lips directly against Gary's ear: "Follow?" but Gary shook his head. Whatever they were, it would do the boys no good to try to keep up with them. They had no weapons and had no idea what they would be fighting. They had come to discover, and having discovered, it was time to let the others know.

When the rumbling ceased and was replaced by a rising wind, Gary pushed and slid to the ground. Without looking around, he began running, falling, splitting snow, and running again. He could hear Kim sobbing behind him, and when they reached the wall, a car pulled up beside them, and Gary hated himself for starting to cry.

"So," Tanner said half an hour later, “you really think that what you saw out there was real?" He urged with a wave, and Gary lifted the cup of hot chocolate to his chapped lips. The fireplace warmth was gentle, but he could not stop shaking and some of the brown liquid slopped over the edge onto his fingers.

"He's tired, Dave," his mother said, her arm refusing to leave the boy's shoulders. "Why don't you let him sleep? Hasn't he been punished enough?"

"Listen, son, you promised to stay by that car," Tanner said stubbornly. "Do you have any idea what went through my mind when I couldn't find you?"

"I told you why," Gary said sullenly.

"Son, what did I tell you about those rocks?"

“Dave,” Pam said, her voice a quiet warning.

“Glaciers,” the boy said. He sipped at his drink, and tasted nothing.

"Right. They are not magical, nor are they secret doors to some mysterious underground cave. This valley was formed too many years ago for you to understand by great hulking rivers of ice. Those boulders were left behind, and no one has since bothered to move them. They’re too big, son. It would take a couple of sticks of my stump-moving dynamite just to budge them.

“Then what did I see?" Gary said angrily. "What happened to all those kids? Where are they? What about Dawn—"

“Gary, please!” Pam snapped, rocking him now, trying to soothe him.

"No, Mom, I'm sorry. I don't want to be bad, but I saw what I saw and you can go ask Kim, too Dad,” he said, leaning forward suddenly, his discomfort momentarily forgotten. "Dad, were there more kids missing after the fire? The Keagens. Were they... there?"

Tanner looked away to the fire and scratched the back of his neck. "Don't know," he said finally. "They're still shifting through the ashes. It's too hot yet to do any real digging. Don't even know if they were home. Someone said they might have been visiting relatives over in Springfield."

"They'll be there," Gary said. "The folks, anyway."

Tanner glared down at him, his large hands closing into fists at his sides. "Son, I want you to go straight to bed right this minute."

"But Dad—"

"And you can stop your whining! Don't you think you've frightened your mother enough by going out there tonight? And with a camera yet. What were these creatures of yours going to do, pose for a group picture?"

Gary had leaned away from his father's anger, but when the words had been spoken and the silence had crept back in from the shadowed corners, he shrugged off his mother's arm, dropped his cup, and walked stiffly to the stairs.

"They won't be there," he said sadly. "And they won't be at their stupid relatives, either."

And he raced up to his room and slammed the door, leaned back against it until his chest stopped heaving. It isn't fair, he thought as he grabbed his pillow and punched at it until his arm ached. It just isn't fair. He threw the pillow back onto the bed and walked to the window, pressing his forehead lightly against the glass. The moon was disappearing slowly as a storm bunched its clouds overhead. He remembered the glaciers he had been told about and that day in school when it had all fallen together.

His teacher, after reading "Jack and the Beanstalk" and a story about Paul Bunyan, explained the difference between myths and legends, and the oral tradition of handing stories down from one generation to another. Superstitions, fairy tales; werewolves, vampires, the giants who roamed the earth before time was recorded.

"And what," Gary had said excitedly to Kim after school, "if those things weren't myths or fairy tales after all? Suppose they really were legends whose basic truths had been forgotten after thousands of years. And suppose they had lived during the Ice Ages, hibernated after and renewed themselves with periodic raids between."

Suppose...

Kim had laughed, but weakly.

Gary switched on the lamp by his bedside table and pulled from a drawer a sheath of clippings he had stolen from the school’s library. This was, in conjunction with the pictures he'd been too frightened to take, part of the proof of his warning; they indicated the days when the temperature had dropped more than twelve degrees below freezing; they indicated the days just before and after each of the fires.

"Why aren't you in bed?" The voice was gentle, only hinting at scolding.

"I'm thinking, Dad," and he handed the man the clippings.

"You really do believe this, don't you?"

Gary hesitated before nodding, and Tanner sighed, carefully leading him to the bed, where he pushed until Gary was lying down. Then he sat on the edge of the mattress and combed at his hair with his fingers, rubbed at the dark stubble on his chin.

"If it will make you feel any easier about this, son, I don't think it's all your imagination. But—" and he held up a warning hand as Gary started to rise, "—I don't think monsters are the answer, either. I've been talking with your mother, just to get my thoughts out into the open as you and Kim tried to do. Well, you've heard the talk about the Savage clan?"

Gary nodded and rolled to his side, pulled his knees toward his chest and listened: the Savages, ingrown, some say a little mad, ornery enough to want the whole town to go away and leave them alone; arson, murder, and no clues left to warrant their arrest. A delegation, unofficial, was going to visit them tomorrow night to make it clear that the next time there's a fire, the Savages would not be left alone. Gary tried to shake his head at that, tried to deny the mistaken logic, but there was a weight in his head and a buzzing in his ears that pushed the droning words into the background, and when the dream came again, the figures were followed under the ground, and the threat felt more real, closer, and totally inescapable.

The lightning struck again, and when he sat up, it was already afternoon and he was hungry. His father had apparently undressed him while he had slept, and he wasted precious time trying to find the warmest clothes he owned before running downstairs and into the kitchen. His father was on the telephone talking about the Savages, and Gary closed his eyes briefly; it won't do them any good, he thought, not if they want to save Kim and me it won't.

"Well," his mother said cheerfully, "it's about time you got down here. You must have been a little tired, right?"

He smiled, nodded, and took his seat, trying not to gasp when he saw it was nearly time for supper.

"Do you feel better?"

He nodded again and watched her busying herself at the stove. Pretty, he thought, and wished he had noticed just how pretty she was sooner. He started to say something, and the light shimmered and he saw her blackened, her lovely long hair a flaming halo, her laughing mouth twisted into grotesque screaming. When his father returned to the kitchen, he was a walking charred corpse. Gary rubbed at his face and pushed away from the table.

"Mom, I have to go back to the shed for a minute."

She turned, staring. "In this weather? No, you're not, young man."

"Oh, Mom, please? I put the sled in there yesterday, and if we have lots more snow, I'll never be able to get it out."

“Well, why didn't you put it in the cellar like you were supposed to?"

“I forgot," he said, sliding toward the closet. "Please?" He allowed his voice to rise just enough, his eyes to open just enough, his mouth to quiver and turn downward.

“All right," she said, "but don't get lost."

“In the backyard? Come on, Mom!"

"Okay, Pam," Tanner said laughing, "stop teasing the boy. But," and he turned to Gary as he was slipping on his coat, "don't you try anything else, young man. Last night was the last straw for you you understand?"

"Don't worry, Dad," he said at the door. "I'm going to take care of everything."

Once on the back stoop he yanked his red ski mask down over his face, jabbed with an impatient finger to align the three slits with his eyes and mouth. Then he pulled the fur-trimmed hood over his head and drew the ties snugly to his throat. This time he wanted nothing, not even the cold, to slow him down.

A few yards later and all he could see was the kitchen light's glow, a dozen yards more and he might have been alone on the top of a mountain. There was very little wind, but the snow was heavy enough to make walking difficult. The shed was at the far end of their property, hidden from the house even during the summer, and when he pulled out the padlock key and opened the door, he didn't bother to look behind him. Instead, he hurried directly to the far end and rummaged through his father's geological equipment, packages and boxes he was never allowed to touch on his own. Finally, on the floor in the corner he found what Tanner called his stump-moving dynamite. He had seen how it was done more than a dozen times, could still hear his father's stern words of caution, but when a draft iced across his lips he bent down quickly to grab sticks, caps, and fuse. He stuffed it all into one pocket and ran out without closing the door. If he was wrong, he thought, one spanking more wouldn't make any difference.

Carefully, he made his way to the road, and then began to run. It was almost too dark to see, but after a number of falls he came up against the stone wall and was able to pull himself along until he estimated he was opposite the boulders. Then he struck out across the field, pushing through the snow that rose up to cover his knees. He tripped once over a hidden log and, with arms flailing, fell forward; and when he had righted himself, he quickly checked his pocket to see that the explosives were still there.

Another thirty yards and he fell again, with the snow penetrating his sleeves, boots, the slits of his mask.

The wind began shoving at his back.

And there was thunder.

He sat up, forgetting the cold numbing his limbs. Only once before had he been in a snowstorm when it thundered, and the sound of it now echoing through the white made him jump to his feet. Again thunder, and the snow flared blue-white when lightning crackled over the hills. Something struck him on the head, the shoulders, and when he held out his hand he saw it was hail.

"Dad?" he said aloud. "Dad, where are you?"

Suddenly there was a hooting blare that froze him, drove spasms of panic through his arms and legs. He looked around wildly, and when a gust parted the snow before him he saw the faint yellow glow.

Kim, he thought.

"Kim!" he shouted.

On hands and knees he scrambled to the boulders, grabbing at the slippery rock as if it would protect him. Hail cracked around him, and his head began to ache despite its hooded protection. He was crying, and he curled up against himself and began to rock, humming tunelessly. The alarm continued to sound.

Wind, thunder, hail, and suddenly Gary straightened, crawled through the passages between the boulders until he found the opening in the ground. He wanted to go down, but not without Kim. Instead he scrambled to the top of the boulder, crying still, blinking rapidly to keep the flakes from freezing on his lids. His gloves were off, the hail striking like dulled needles; and his hands plunged into his pocket, out again, and he squinted to see through the tears. He had no idea if cap and fuse were affixed properly, but he refused to allow himself to think, watching only, as the lightning sunbrightened the storm, and the fire so distant it could have been a reflection raged.