Just outside the door, she halted, bewildered. Behind her, light streamed from the shanty, and to the north was a dim glow from the city of Onaback. But elsewhere was darkness. Darkness, except when the lightning burned away the night for a dazzling frightening second.
It was Deena in her terrycloth robe, Deena now sitting up in the mud, bending forward, shaking with sobs.
“I got down on my knees,” she moaned. “To him, to him. And I begged him to spare my mother. But he said I’d thank him later for freeing me from worshiping a false goddess. He said I’d kiss his hand.”
Deena’s voice rose to a scream. “And then he did it! He tore my blessed mother to bits! Threw her in the creek! I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!”
Dorothy patted Deena’s shoulder. “There, there. You’d better get back to the house and get dry. It’s a bad thing he’s done, but he’s not in his right mind. Where’d he go?”
“Toward that clump of cottonwoods where the creek runs into the river.”
“You go back,” said Dorothy. “I’ll handle him. I can do it.”
Deena seized her hand.
“Stay away from him. He’s hiding in the woods now. He’s dangerous, dangerous as a wounded boar. Or as one of his ancestors when they were hurt and hunted by ours.”
“Ours?” said Dorothy. “You mean you believe his story?”
“Not all of it. Just part. That tale of his about the mass invasion of Europe and King Paley’s hat is nonsense. Or, at least it’s been distorted through God only knows how many thousands of years. But it’s true he’s at least part Neanderthal. Listen! I’ve fallen low, I’m only a junkman’s whore. Not even that, now—Old Man never touches me anymore, except to hit me. And that’s not his fault, really. I ask for it; I want it.
“But I’m not a moron. I got books from the library, read what they say about the Neanderthal. I studied Old Man carefully. And I know he must be what he says he is. Gummy, too—she’s at least a quarter-breed.”
Dorothy pulled her hand out of Deena’s grip.
“I have to go. I have to talk to Old Man, tell him I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“Stay away from him,” pleaded Deena, again seizing Dorothy’s hand. “You’ll go to talk, and you’ll stay to do what I did. What a score of others did. We let him make love to us becuase he isn’t human. Yet, we found Old Man as human as any man, and some of us stayed after the lust was gone because love had come in.”
Dorothy gently unwrapped Deena’s fingers from her hand and began walking away.
Soon she came to the group of cottonwood trees by the bank where the creek and the river met and there she stopped.
“Old Man!” she called in a break between the rolls of thunder. “Old Man! It’s Dorothy!” A growl as of a bear disturbed in his cave answered her, and a figure like a tree trunk come to life stepped out of the inkiness between the cottonwoods.
“I came…”
“Yeah?”
“For this!” she shouted, and she snatched off his hat and raced away from him, toward the river.
Behind her rose a bellow of agony so loud she could hear it even above the thunder. Feet splashed as he gave pursuit.
Suddenly, she slipped and sprawled facedown in the mud. At the same time, her glasses fell off. Now it was her turn to feel despair, for in this halfworld she could see nothing without her glasses except the lightning flashes. She must find them. But if she delayed to hunt for them, she’d lose her headstart.
She cried out with joy, for her groping fingers found what they sought. But the breath was knocked out of her, and she dropped the glasses again as a heavy weight fell upon her back and half stunned her. Vaguely, she was aware that the hat had been taken away from her. A moment later, as her senses came back into focus, she realized she was being raised into the air. Old Man was holding her in the crook of his arm, supporting part of her weight on his bulging belly.
“My glasses. Please, my glasses. I need them.”
“You won’t be needin em for a while. But don’t worry about em. I got em in my pants pocket. Old Man’s takin care a you.”
His arm tightened around her so she cried out with pain.
Hoarsely, he said, “You was sent down by the G’yaga to get that hat, wasn’t you? Well, it din’t work cause The Old Guy’s stridin the sky tonight, and he’s protectin his own.”
Dorothy bit her lip to keep from telling him that she had wanted to destroy the hat because she hoped that that act would also destroy the guilt of having made it in the first place. But she couldn’t tell him that. If he knew she had made a false hat, he would kill her in his rage.
“No. Not again,” she said. “Please. Don’t. I’ll scream. They’ll come after you. They’ll take you to the State Hospital and lock you up for life. I swear I’ll scream.”
“Who’ll hear you? Only The Old Guy, and he’d get a kick out a seein you in this fix cause you’re a Falser and you took the stuffin right out a my hat and me with your Falser Magic. But I’m gettin back what’s mine and his, the same way you took it from me. The door swings both ways.”
He stopped walking and lowered her to a pile of wet leaves.
“Here we are. The forest like it was in the old days. Don’t worry. Old Man’ll protect you from the cave bear and the bull a the woods. But who’ll protect you from Old Man, huh?” Lightning exploded so near that for a second they were blinded and speechless. Then Paley shouted, “The Old Guy’s whoopin it up tonight, just like he used to do! Blood and murder and wicked-ness’re ridin the howlin night air!”
“Let The Old Guy and The Old Woman fight it out tonight. They ain’t goin to stop us. Dor’thy. Not unless that hairy old god in the clouds is going to fry me with his lightnin, jealous a me cause I’m havin what he kin’t.”
Lightning rammed against the ground from the charged skies, and lightning leaped up to the clouds from the charged earth. The rain fell harder than before, as if it were being shot out of a great pipe from a mountain river and pouring directly over them. But for some time the flashes did not come close to the cottonwoods. Then, one ripped apart the night beside them, deafened and stunned them.
And Dorothy, looking over Old Man’s shoulder, thought she would die of fright because there was a ghost standing over them. It was tall and white, and its shroud flapped in the wind, and its arms were raised in a gesture like a curse.
But it was a knife that it held in its hand.
Then, the fire that rose like a cross behind the figure was gone, and night rushed back in.
Dorothy screamed. Old Man grunted, as if something had knocked the breath from him.
He rose to his knees, gasped something unintelligible, and slowly got to his feet. He turned his back to Dorothy so he could face the thing in white. Lightning flashed again. Once more Dorothy screamed, for she saw the knife sticking out of his back.
Then the white figure had rushed toward Old Man. But instead of attacking him, it dropped to its knees and tried to kiss his hand and babbled for forgiveness.
No ghost. No man. Deena, in her white terrycloth robe.
“I did it because I love you!” screamed Deena.
Old Man, swaying back and forth, was silent.
“I went back to the shanty for a knife, and I came here because I knew what you’d be doing, and I didn’t want Dorothy’s life ruined because of you, and I hated you, and I wanted to kill you. But I don’t really hate you.”
Slowly, Paley reached behind him and gripped the handle of the knife. Lightning made everything white around him, and by its brief glare the women saw him jerk the blade free of his flesh.
Dorothy moaned, “It’s terrible, terrible. All my fault, all my fault.”
She groped through the mud until her fingers came across the Old Man’s jeans and its backpocket, which held her glasses. She put the glasses on, only to find that she could not see anything because of the darkness. Then, and not until then, she became concerned about locating her own clothes. On her hands and knees she searched through the wet leaves and grass. She was about to give up and go back to Old Man when another lightning flash showed the heap to her left. Giving a cry of joy, she began to crawl to it. But another stroke of lightning showed her something else. She screamed and tried to stand up but instead slipped and fell forward on her face.