"Act to do what?" said Erwin.
"to save our heritage," Nordhoff replied. "We're the men who made this city. We poured our sweat into taining this wilderness and our geniuses into building a decent place to raise our families. Now it's all coming apart. We've suspected it for months now. Seen little signs of it everywhere. And now you come along, murdered by something unnatural, and the Lundy boy, raped in Dolan's store by something else, equally unnatural-"
"Don't forget the bees," Dickerson put in.
"What bees?" Erwin said.
"Do you know Frank Tibbit?" Dickerson said, "Lives off Moon Lane?"
"No, I can't say-"
"He keeps bees. Or rather he did. they all took off ten days ago."
"Is that significant?" Erwin said.
"Not if it were a solitary case," Nordhoff said. "But it isn't. We watch, you see, and we listen. It's our business to preserve what we made, even if we've been forgotten. So we hear everything that goes on, sooner or later. And there are dozens of examples-"
"Hundreds," said Connie.
"Many dozens, certainly," Nordhoff said, "many dozens of examples of strange goings-on, none of them of any -reater scale than Tibbit's bees-"
"Barring your murder," Dickerson put in.
"Is it possible I could finish a sentence without being interrupted?" Nordhoff said.
"Maybe if you weren't so long-winded about it," said Melvin Pollock, who looked to be at least Nordhoff s age, and had the long, drawn dour mouth of one who'd died an unrepentant curmudgeon. "What he's trying to say is this: We invested our lives in Everville. The signs tell us we're about to lose that investment forever."
"And when it's gone-" Dickerson said.
"We go with it," Pollock said. "Into oblivion."
"Just because we're dead," Nordhoff said, "it doesn't mean we have to take this lying down."
Dickerson chuckled. "Not bad, Hubert. We'll make a comedian of you yet."
"This isn't a laughing matter," Nordhoff said.
"Oh but it is," Dickerson said, heaving his bulk into a sitting position. "Here we are, the great and the good of Everville, a banker"-he nodded in Pollock's direction. "A real-estate broker." At Connie now. "A mill owner." Nordhoff, of course. "And the rest of us all movers and shakers. Here we are, holding on to our dignity as best we can, and thinking we've got a hope in hell of influencing what goes on out there"-he pointed through the gate, into the world of the living-"when it's perfectly obvious to anyone with eyes in his head that it's over."
"What's over'?" said Connie.
"Our time. Everville's time. Maybe He paused, frowned. "Maybe humanity's time," he murmured.
There was silence now, even from Nordhoff. Somewhere in the streets outside the cemetery, a dog barked, but even that most familiar of sounds carried no comfort.
At last, Erwin said, "Fletcher knows."
"Knows what?" said Nordhoff.
"What's going on. Maybe he's even the reason for it. Maybe if we could find some way to kill him-"
"It's a thought," said Connie.
"And even if it doesn't save the city," Dickerson said, clearly heartened by this prospect, "we'd have the sport of it."
"For God's sake, we can't even make people hear us," Dolan pointed out,
"how the hell do we kill somebody?"
"He's not somebody," Erwin said. "He's a thing, He's not human."
"You sound very certain of that," Nordhoff said. "Don't take my word for it," Erwin replied. "Come see for yourself."
Tesla had bought her flrst gun in Florida, four years ago, after narrowly escaping assault or worse at the hands of two drunken louts outside a bar in Fort Lauderdale, who'd decided they simply didn't like the look of her. Never again, she'd sworn, would she be without some means of selfdefense. She'd bought a modest little.45, and had even taken a couple of lessons so she'd be able to handle it properly.
It was not the last of the armaments she came by, however. Six months later, during her first trip to Louisiana, she'd found a gun lying in the middle of an empty highway, and despite Raul's warnings that it had surely been discarded for a reason, and she'd be a damn fool to pick it up, she'd done so. It was older and heavier than her purchase, the barrel and butt nicked and scratched, but she liked the heft of it; liked too the sense of mystery that surrounded it.
The third gun had been a gift from a woman called Maria Lourdes Nazareno, whom she'd met on a streetcomer in Mammoth, Arizona. Lourdes, as she'd preferred to be called, had been waiting for Tesla on that corner for several days, or so she'd claimed. She had the sight, she'd said, and had been told in a dream that a woman of power would be passing by. Tesia had protested that she was not the one, but Lourdes had been equally certain she was. She had been waiting with gifts, she said, and would not be content until Tesla had accepted them. One of the gifts had been a clavicle bone, which Lourdes told her belonged to a St. Maxine. Another had been a brass compass-"for the voyage" she'd said. The third had been the gun, which was certainly the prettiest of the three weapons, its handle inlaid with mother of-pearl. It had a secret name, Lourdes had told her, but she did not know what that name was. Tesla would discover it, however, when she needed to call it.
That occasion had not come along. She had traveled for a further two years after her encounter with Lourdes, and had never had need of any of the guns.
Until now.
"Which one do I get?" Phoebe said.
they had returned to the Cobb house from the pizza parlor for one purpose only: to arm themselves.
"Do you know how to use a gun?" Tesla asked her.
"I know how to point my finger," Phoebe said.
"Your finger isn't going to make a hole in somebody,"
Tesia said.
Phoebe picked up Lourdes' gun, and passed it from palm to palm. "It can't be that difficult, when you see the men who do it." She had a point.
"You want that one?" Tesia asked.
"Yeah," she said, smiling.
"We're only going to use them if we really have to."
"If something that looks like a snake and smells like shit comes sniffing around."
"You still don't believe me, do you?"
"Does it matter whether I do or I don't?" Phoebe said.
Tesia thought about this for a moment. "I guess not," she said. "I just want you to be ready for the worst."
"I've been ready for years," Phoebe said.
The Toothaker house was in darkness, but they'd come prepared for that eventuality. Phoebe had a large flashlight, Tesla a slightly smaller one.
"Feet anything?" Tesia asked Raul as she and Phoebe headed down the path.
Not so far.
The smell of excrement still lingered in the air, however, and it grew stronger the closer they got to the front door. The temperature had dropped considerably since they'd left the restaurant almost an hour before, but Tesia felt clammy-hot, as though she was developing a bad bout of flu. Weak at the knees, too.
"What do we do?" Phoebe said once they reached the step. "Just knock?"
"It beats trying to break the door down," Tesia said. She still harbored the hope that this was a wild-goose chase: that the whisper she and Raul had heard outside the diner had been a trick of the wind, and the smell was just a backed-up sewer, as Phoebe had said. She knocked on the door, loudly' they waited. There was no answer. She knocked again, and while she did so asked Raul if he sensed the presence of an occupant. His answer was not the one she wanted.
Yes, he said. I hear somebody.
The beast that had been twitching in Tesia's belly since they'd set out convulsed. She caught hold of Phoebe's arm. "I can't do this," she said.
"It's all right," Phoebe replied. She was reaching for the door handle.
"We've come this far." She turned the handle, and to Tesla's surprise the door opened. A wave of cold, sour air broke over the threshold.