This was Cedar Hill, and in Cedar Hill if anything not normal or even mildly interesting happens, well, then, you call the police or the trusty news team at Channel 7 and get a mobile unit right over. If they’d dispatch a crew to cover the opening of a new electronics store one county away, they’d sure as hell send someone to a local neighborhood to cover the appearance of an intensely localized weather anomaly.
Never count on the help of others when you most need it. Take my word on this. I wasn’t about to assume that any of my neighbors had called or were going to call anyone to report this. So I did the only thing I knew for a fact would get someone on the phone to the news or police; I rose to my feet, lifted the Mossberg over my head using only my left hand, pointed it into the air, and fired.
The force of the blast wrenched my left arm backward and tore the handle-grip from my grasp. The shotgun flew back and landed in the grass about five feet away; I half-spun around, my shoulder screaming, nearly losing my balance. Almost none of this had to do with the physical effects of firing the weapon-some of it, yes, you can’t fire a scattergun with only one hand and not get jolted down to your marrow-but more than anything, it was the sound of the shot.
Under the best and most controlled of circumstances a gunshot is deafening, but it seemed as if this one had gone off in the center of my skull; it hadn’t just been a noise or an explosion-it was a pulverizing force that ripped the air from inside me and jammed an invisible ice pick into each side of my head. I stumbled around in half-circles pressing my hands against my ears (I had done this before, I knew that I had held my ears like this before, that there had been pain and panic then, as well… but where and when and why?) while stomping my feet and working my jaw in order to create some kind of pressure and please God make one or both of my ears pop-but nothing helped. At one point the pain and weight became so great I thought I was going to pass out, then a soft hiss began to issue from the base of my brainpan, someone letting the air out of a bicycle tire, and I pulled my hands away and felt the cool air enter my ears with a soft whoosh. I shook my head once, then twice to see if I could jar anything into functioning, but there was only a thick, gluey numbness; I didn’t hear so much as feel the hissing, which was rapidly giving way to a deep, disturbing thrum. I blinked, turned slowly around, saw the shotgun lying in the grass, and made a beeline for the thing. It was vital I have something to focus on besides the disorienting pressure in my head, and the Mossberg would do just fine. Looking up to where the mist met the clouds, I prayed that the blast hadn’t blown out my eardrums and rendered me permanently deaf. I shook my head once more as I swung down and grabbed the shotgun with my good hand, and as I returned to a fully upright position there was hiss and a buzz and a pop and something that sounded like a sheet being torn into shreds by a pair of teeth, then a moment of nauseating dizziness and then… sound. I could at least discern (if not actually hear) sound again. Not much, just the echo of a dog’s bark coming from somewhere deep under the Atlantic Ocean, but it was there, and I could recognize it, and that meant that the damage wasn’t (thank you thank you thank you ) permanent. Despite the circumstances, I smiled as I made my way up the back steps and into the kitchen. It was only as I was locking the door and shoving the kitchen table up against it that I allowed myself to acknowledge what I hadn’t wanted to admit while out there: the noise and force of the blast had been so fantastically intensified-so brutally magnified-because they had been contained.
The mist wasn’t just surrounding the house, it was encasing it.
I thought, This must be how a pheasant under glass feels.
Then a remembered voice: You might say they’re not from around here. But who’d said that, and when? Where? Like with holding my ears, I should have known, but…
(You’re getting awfully close to not leaving me with any choice here, pal.)
I looked out the window over the sink. The mist roiled forward, stopping only a few feet from the bottom step of the back porch. Two thin red beams danced across a part of the wall, then one of Magritte-Man’s cronies stepped through and simply stood there. The glow from his night goggles made him look almost comical. He gave a quick nod of his head to affirm that he could see me. I flipped him the bird with my right middle finger and immediately shrieked from the pain. I had to do something about my broken hand and I had to do it now or I didn’t stand a chance. Bowler (I now chose to think of him and the others by this name) waved a hand to get my attention, then made an odd gesture. I stared at him, shook my head, and he repeated the gesture, albeit a bit more exaggeratedly.
The front of the house.
He was telling me I should go look at something in front of the house.
Fuck you, Bowler, I thought. I’ll go take a look when I’m damned good and ready.
I stumbled into the bathroom and threw open the door on the upright cabinet where I keep all breed of crap-extension cords, old lighters, duct tape, loose tools, lighter fluid, a little of this and a lot more of that… and medical supplies. I removed everything I would need: bandages-both the elastic and gauze variety-as well as gauze pads, medical tape, hydrogen peroxide, and a couple of old finger-splints I’d hung on to after getting my left hand caught in a car door about a year ago. I laid out everything on the sink’s counter and took a deep breath.
Do it now, before you turn chickenshit.
I gripped the broken fingers with my left hand, released the breath I’d been holding, clenched my teeth, then simultaneously pressed down and pulled out.
The snap! made by the bones as they popped back into place seemed even louder than the shotgun blast; the pain shot up my arm right and hammered directly between my eyes. I dropped to one knee, grabbing the edge of the sink with my left hand to keep from hitting the floor, and tried to hold in the scream.
From under the house, the dog howled as if she’d felt it, as well.
“I’m st-still here, g-girl,” I whispered, trying to pull myself up. I was hit by a wave of pain, dizziness, and nausea, and fell to the floor.
(You’re not going anywhere for a minute or two, pal, so now it’s my turn.)
I couldn’t fight him; not now.
Hell, I could barely move.
(You left the house right after you found Mabel’s body, remember? )
If you say so.
(You figured Beth had taken the rest of the Its to the Keepers’ facility.)
That sounds about right, sure.
(So that’s where you went.)
Whatever.
(This ringing any bells yet?)
If it was, do you think I’d admit it to you?
(Fine, we’ll do it the hard way, then.
Even though it was cooler than usual, the humidity was high that night, and every street you
THREE
drove along was alive with a thin layer of mist that skirled across the beams of your headlights. You were driving through a sea of cotton. A deer darted across the road at one point, followed a few seconds later by two rabbits. Whichever road or street you took, there was always some kind of animal in your peripheral vision; a dog, a cat, a raccoon moving through the bushes and shadows on the curb.
The facility was harder to find at night; the road wasn’t lit at all, and the moon was hiding behind thick stationary clouds as if it were afraid or ashamed to allow its light to reveal too much.
You passed the building and had to turn around. You killed your headlights before turning up the asphalt drive, then pulled over into the shadows. You were going to have to walk the rest of the way.
Have you ever in your life been so anxiously aware of the silences in the night or the sound of your own breathing? Creeping up the drive like some thief casing a target house and nearly jumping out of your skin when a skunk waddled across the drive on its way from one patch of trees to the other. The area around the building was lighted by a sole sodium-vapor light at the edge of the visitors’ parking lot. You spotted Beth’s U-boat parked at the farthest end. On the other side of the building, Keepers’ vans formed the long, segmented shadow-shape of a giant serpent in slumber.