When they were first married, Ben and Martha went on a honeymoon trip through Pennsylvania and some of the New England states. One afternoon they had stopped at a shop outside Philadelphia, where an old watchmaker had a model village displayed in his window. Periodically small figures came out of the buildings of that village to perform—clockwork automatons. Fine Swiss movements, the old man had said.
That model village had looked exactly like Simpson Creeks did at the moment. Bustling with people going about their daily activities.
Several old-timers walked around the remains of Charlie Simpson’s store, chatting animatedly, gesturing, occasionally picking up cans and bottles out of the water and examining them. Ben recognized “Moldy” Clarke and Jessie Flanders, who’d both been killed in the first flood, but their bodies never found. He could also see—if he could believe his eyes—Bobbie Gibson, who’d died of a heart attack when Ben had been a teenager. Vivid, brighter than life. He could see the bright pinkness of their faces, the dazzling white of their hair. They were much more real than the landscape around them.
Lizzy Gibson, Bobbie’s ancient mother, was walking down the street using her cane, a paper sack under her arm. Her feet and cane tip touched the surface of the flood and sank no further. Ben couldn’t remember if she’d survived Bobbie or not.
Johnny Shedako, the Japanese man who’d been many things throughout Ben’s childhood—junk dealer, insurance salesman, farm equipment mechanic—was helping Garter Jones with his corn husker at the site of Ben’s wrecked store. The corn husker was a twisted wreck, rusted throughout, pieces missing, and, unless Ben was mistaken, upside down there in the water.
Jimmy Decker, Wilson Fenton, and Jackie DeLanny were racing each other down the street, their feet making no noise as they struck the water. They’d all lived in houses in a row along the banks of the main channel of the Simpson Creeks, and had perished when those houses were reduced to kindling by the flood.
Gillian Marsh was flirting with Harold Specktor near what used to be the cafe. Emil Johannsen was chasing his dog Crawdad up the street. The oil-colored hound had a tail like a snake. When Ben had been six or seven, Mr. Johannsen had spent several hours each week showing off the tricks his dog could do with that tail.
Ben heard the tinny sound of the bicycle bell and was suddenly a boy again, ten years old and running terrified down the gravel road past their house. He jerked the truck door open and leaped into the cab.
Alan Marley passed the pickup slowly on the ancient bicycle, the shiny hell-wheels spinning, spinning in the air a good three feet above the roof of the truck.
Ben shuddered and tried to pull his eyes away. Marley doffed his hat and cracked his mouth, filling it with shark’s teeth. A great purple birthmark clotted the entire right side of his face; it seemed to move like a separate, living parasite when Marley turned his head.
Alan Marley had delivered mail for Charlie Simpson’s dad when Mr. Simpson was postmaster. Marley had been the terror of Ben’s childhood, of all the children of that long-ago time. If he caught you out on the road alone, he’d chase you with that bicycle, trying to break a foot or a leg if he could. Cindy Gasson became a cripple because of him. And the worst thing was, none of the adults would believe them; they thought the children had made it up because of Marley’s unfortunate birthmark.
Then Marley finally killed somebody, little Timmy Peters; Timmy’s brother saw the whole thing and said Marley had ridden back and forth over the three-year-old dozens of times. Later Ben heard the little boy’s neck and back were broken, the ribs crushed into the lungs. Dan Peters caught up with Marley the next day—he’d been riding his bike down to Four Corners trying to get away—and shot him twelve times, reloading as he went. There never was a trial.
Marley grinned and rang the bell again and again. Ben thought he was going to cry. Then Marley was gone, and there was a tall man in black, preacher-looking clothes striding toward the pickup out of the darkness and the fog ahead. As he neared, Ben could see it was his father, with the same grim face.
Ben started the engine and stamped the gas pedal. His father flew apart into dozens of strands of sooty smoke as the truck hit him.
Ben kept going. The fog was creeping up this side of the mountain now.
For the past half hour or so Audra had been climbing the slope. Heavy mist still surrounded her, but she could feel the additional pressure on her ankles the way they were bending, so she could tell she was walking up an incline.
A gnashing behind her. A whispering.
It had been going on for so long, she couldn’t even be scared anymore. She just wanted it over. She would have stopped and faced it, waited for it, but her body wouldn’t let her. The cold, wet fog had somehow gotten between her mind and her legs.
A little boy was crying somewhere in the fog. Then a slightly older boy, moaning and sobbing. Then the sobbing became snarls, animal whines.
Dark streaks in the fog behind her. Dark movement. Giggling. Then the popping of animal lips.
“Stop it!” she screamed, and stumbled forward, bringing sharp pains into her ankles and feet. Her lower legs ached with sharp points of pain, as if an animal’s needle-sharp teeth were entering her skin again and again.
Giggling again. He was playing with her. There was nothing human in him, to play with her like that.
“Reed!”
More giggling. Then a sound like beast laughter, short and grunty puffs of sound.
A swift moving behind her. She screamed and tried to fly up the slope.
A tree caught her full in the face, a broken-off branch pierced her cheek, and with a shock she knew it had penetrated all the way to the mouth cavity. She jerked away and sobbed; bile came up to her teeth. Swiftness behind her. A whisper-movement through the dense fog. She began frantically climbing the tree. Branch after branch clutched or clawed with broken fingernails, bleeding hands, and soon she was hugging a section of bark above the branches, her cheek rubbing the sandpaper like bark as she screamed and shook, kicking down with her feet to break off the branches below her so that he couldn’t get up, no way could he get up here please GOD!
A thin shadow approached the tree out of white mist. Sniffling. She looked down… only a few feet below her, but could not see past the shadows shrouding his face, could just see the dull pink highlight of eye. Hair that was coal black, straight. Quarter moon reflection off a pasty-white cheek. He… it whimpered. And began scratching at the trunk with its fingernails, long fingernails glistening even through the dulling mist.
She sobbed.
Giggling. Giggling. It began to scratch more vigorously, furiously.
She looked down. The fog was rising, swirling around the tree. She could see no traces of her stalker anymore. The fog began working on the tree on contact, putting it through temperature changes—she could feel alternating waves of intense heat and intense cold. It caused a ticking noise in the tree, the ticking spreading out into the fog. Soon the whole area was ticking, slowly, and she couldn’t tell if her stalker was scratching anymore. She had no idea if he was still there.
Inez had calmed considerably since they’d left the mine, Charlie really had to admire her; he wondered why he hadn’t noticed this strength in her before. She was really some woman. There were things to do now, and she seemed pretty clear-headed about that.
“We’ve gotta get to the boarding house, Charlie… get those people out.” She was running at a good clip down the gravel road, plunging right through large, evil-feeling fog patches where neither one of them could see a thing, but she wasn’t even slowing down. Charlie was afraid he was going to have a heart attack before they’d made it half way.