Then he was running again, around the corner of the police station and hurtling through the door-but the office was empty.
"Peg! Matt!"
He had turned to tell the others they had missed them again, heard someone call his name, back in the cell block. He dropped the shotgun an Nichols' desk and ran, took hold of the doorjamb to stop him when he saw the trio sitting in the middle cell.
"It seemed," Peg said, "the safest place."
Hugh grinned.
Matt reached through the bars, groping for his hand.
They arranged themselves in the front office as comfortably as they could, most of them choosing a way to see through the front door's pane, to watch the leaves streak by in tricolor armies, to charge the building and scrape at the plywood. The water still fell over the curbing, the drains still swallowed, but high tide was less than four hours away, and unless the storm abated soon they wouldn't even be able to use the cars.
Then Annalee said, "They know where we are," and there was an uneasy stirring, a shifting. Colin put a hand to his forehead and rubbed. But it was true; Gran in whatever forms he could take to direct his revenge was evidently able to ferret them out, and Colin couldn't help wondering again if they weren't being herded. He wouldn't put it past the old man. Enemies taken one by one was perhaps a more satisfying situation; but enemies taken in a group was ill-guided justice delivered in exultation.
The idea should have depressed him, sent him back to the despair he'd felt when he had understood what the dead sought. Yet it didn't. The more he considered it the more a buoyancy filled his chest like a slow-rising bubble. It excited him, revitalized him-Gran in a hurry might just mean Gran against a deadline, that whatever he had done to reassure his return was something less than permanent. A day. Two days. Certainly not more. He tucked his chin toward his chest and stared at the floor, at the damp footprints drying to shadows, and he wondered further if Gran in his hatred had failed to reckon on Lilla's last attempts to warn them, or had underestimated their acceptance of something usually left to campfire stories and films of the thirties. It was possible.
It had to be possible or they had no chance at all.
When he had assembled it, reordered it, and put it to the rest, there were no serious objections.
"You're surely not suggesting we wait him out," Hugh said grimly. "You're not, are you, Colin?"
"No. Not a bit."
"Just so I know."
"Why not?" Peg asked, though there was no contradiction in the question.
"Doubt," he said. "As long as there's doubt we don't dare take the chance."
She agreed, and began dusting at her knees. "There's something else," she said.
They waited.
"Suppose… suppose we're wrong and he doesn't have this deadline we've assumed. Suppose he can go on unless we take care of him." Her hands drifted up to her lap, still dusting. "Then if they get to the mainland-"
"Yes," Colin interrupted when he saw the look on Matt's face.
"Then I suggest we stop speculating and get on with it," Hugh said, standing. "We should take both cars, though, in case one conks out. Gran's place is fairly high on the slope, as I recall, so we shouldn't have trouble with the tide. Not yet."
"The ladies," Garve said then, looking to Matt to include him as well. "I don't think they should come with us."
"No," Annalee and Peg protested together.
"Right," Colin said. "The last time we split up we nearly had a disaster. Better we should do k in a group."
"In a mob," Hugh said sourly. When Colin looked at him, surprised, the doctor raised a shoulder. "A mob, right? That's what we are. The peasants charging the windmill at the end of Frankenstein, burn the sucker down and scatter the ashes." Then he grinned. "Always wanted to be a peasant. Not for life, you understand, but just for a while."
"Well, peasant," Colin said in relief, "let's get the torches and move out."
No one, however, hurried for the door. They were subdued, pleased that Hugh had regained his humor, less than pleased they had to confront a specter they'd once thought themselves incapable of accepting. Their expressions were the same: anxious, angry, let's be done with it so I can wake up and scream.
Peg smoothed Matthew's hair and kissed him on the cheek, not caring when he squirmed and protested with a quiet, "Mom." Colin filled his trouser pockets with shells, made sure both Peg and Hugh were given the other shotguns; Garve took a rifle, Annalee the same. When Matt complained he was the only one without a weapon, Tabor, without asking the boy's mother, handed him a revolver and pointed to the safety. Matt held it gingerly, his expression solemn as it dwarfed his small grip, then tucked it into his waistband and took his mother's hand to lead her to Colin's car. Hugh and his nurse rode with the chief.
The windshield fogged over the moment Colin turned on the ignition, Matt in the middle switched on the defroster. When the glass cleared he turned on the wipers, and it was the only sound they heard as they pulled away from the curb.
They made only one stop, at the Fletcher house to take the red cans of kerosene from the shed in the backyard and put them in Tabor's trunk. They worked without a sound, none wanting to look at the empty house around them.
Then they were back on the road, heading south out of town.
The headlights sparkled as the mist fell out of the dark.
The water sweeping across the road rose whitely against the tires.
"Mom," Matt said as they passed the gas station and headed into the woods, "what about Lilla?"
She refused to answer; Colin saw her hands tighten on the barrel.
"What about her, pal?" he said into the silence.
"She isn't dead, is she?"
"No."
"Then shouldn't we try to save her, too?"
"No!" Peg said, scarcely parting her lips. "If she's alive-"
"Matt," Colin said quickly, "when we do what we have to at Gran's, we'll see. Right now, though, there's nothing left of the Lilla we used to know. You saw that when we had her before. I think… I think that her trying to help us did something to her mind. That part of it we knew is long gone, I'm afraid."
"There's doctors for that, though," he persisted. "She talked to me in the jail. I mean, she really talked to me. She called me Little Matt, just like always."
He heard the boy's anguish, and felt his mother's rage. "Matt, for what we've all been through today, there are no doctors at all. And none for Lilla, either."
"It isn't fair," he pouted. "It isn't fair. I never met a real witch before. It isn't fair."
"She deserves to die," Peg said heatedly. Defiance pulled at her lips when she turned to look at Colin. "Well, she does! She started all this, and it won't end until she's dead."
"That's Gran, Peg," he said calmly. "That's Gran. Lilla never has been anything more than a dupe."
"What's a dupe?" Matt said.
"A dupe is a fool who believes someone who's lying," his mother said, staring hard out the side window. "Gran wasn't lying, and Lilla knew it."
Colin opened his mouth to disagree, changed his mind and concentrated on his driving. Peg's hostility bothered him a great deal, though he thought he understood why. And he was guiltily pleased that Matt had voiced what he'd been thinking himself. It was entirely possible that Lilla's retreat would be reversed when Gran was taken care of, and he didn't think it right they abandon her when all was done.
The wind shoved the car hard to the right, and his wrists were beginning to ache with the effort to keep the wheels straight.