It rattled at the walls. He lifted the lantern from the table and carefully carried it into the living room, the dog barking and following. Shadows lurched and fled before him, swinging wide across the floor and walls. Matty set the lamp down on the little table and ran to the window. He stood there, his face pressed to the glass. Silent incandescence showed only the running pane, as though the world slipped away, pattering. The curtain of water glittered…and when the night-voice found him, he’d already begun to shake. Cries of distant hounds drummed through the window glass with the thunder.
Reflected light gleamed dimly from the glass. Reversed, the room wavered on the pane. He stepped back, saw a face against the liquid night, a face like his, in a room such as this, framed by hair that held the lamplight like glowing coils, with eyes that seemed those of the night itself. “No! You! No, I won’t!” He screamed and the face screamed with him. He raced into the dark kitchen, struck a chair that overturned. Sand grated on the windows, trying to get in. “No, Pammy! Not again! I don’t want it to be! Save!” The dog growled once, then whimpered and began scratching frantically at the door while the boy yelled.
“Gotta get out!” Froth clung to his lips, and he clutched his abdomen. His eyes rolled back in his head, and gasping shrieks tore in agony from his stomach.
He lunged for the door. The dog scrambled away, whining, to slink into the living room. “Chabwok! Chabwok!” The boy screamed, and the door shook as he beat on it.
Squeezing beneath the sofa, the dog lay very still.
She’d been soaked through in seconds, yet she slogged on determinedly.
Wet sand blew full in her face, then slackened somewhat. The flashlight broke the storm apart, reduced it to dazzling fragments. She tilted the light downward, and it threw a wavering patch on the yellow ground. She was glad the dog had come home, because she couldn’t have left the boy alone otherwise. Pamela must have had sense enough to lock her door and stay inside, she decided. She must have. Dashing for the road, she listened. She wouldn’t try to make it over here, would she? Muffled, the barking seemed to have moved away. If she were frightened?
She was already running for the bridge when she realized she could have driven part of the way. Damn. She splashed through a puddle. The shotgun weighed so much, it interfered with her balance, its shaft so dense the lightning scratched no reflection on it. For just an instant, she considered going back for the car, then realized the road might well flood anyway. Ahead of her, the flashlight’s beam created a wraith of luminous vapor that darted from tree to tree and melted into the battering water, a pale and shimmering extension of herself.
The rain picked up to gale force again, sweeping the road in thick, rapid sheets. Oh damn. Half drowned out, her footsteps drummed across the bridge. Below, water churned. She paused for a moment, breathing heavily, then ran forward. Her foot found nothing, empty air, then caught, wrenching beneath her. She thudded hard against the wooden bridge and rolled.
She fell into blackness, one with the storm.
Lightning flickered through missing planks.
She splashed on her back, and water rushed up her nose. She reached blindly for the surface, and the flashlight swirled away from her, a blob of luminous churning. By instinct alone, she kept hold of the shotgun as the current pushed and spun her. The gun dragged her down. A thick root hit her thigh.
Rolling, she fought her way up the streaming bank and lay panting in the mud. She hunched over, gasping and choking, wiping at her eyes, her body heat bleeding away with the water that poured from her. That was nearly it, girl. She coughed uncontrollably. Nearly it.
She thought about hiding under the bridge until the storm lessened, but the stream swelled and twisted at her feet, growing wilder by the moment. And where was the bridge anyway? Grunting, she staggered up the embankment.
Will the gun even work, now it’s wet? She considered abandoning it, but howls twisted all around her in the wind. Pines hissed with the rain. They seemed to dance in a shimmer of light. She listened, not sure of anything now. Trying to get her bearings, she pushed on.
Those red eyes in my dreams. Again, her thoughts turned to the child who had been bitten. Please, Pamela, please be all right. Hurrying, she thought of the hound that had frightened her the other night. You have to be. If only for Matthew’s sake. She shivered. I’m almost there, Pamela. Don’t be afraid. Gripping the shotgun, she tried to keep it pointing straight ahead.
In a burst of brilliance, the road seemed wrong somehow, unfamiliar. Thunder seemed to grow louder, to follow closer on the flash. She couldn’t spot the turnoff or the hanging tree or any other landmark, though she should have by now. A branch struck her shoulder. Forked lightning cracked the sky overhead, revealed a road grown narrower than it should have been.
Behind her, something moved. With a harsh cry catching in her throat, she spun. A solitary tree swayed wildly. Saplings seemed to leap at her with each bright glare, and thunder left her too deafened to listen for dogs.
Is that it? Is it Pam’s place? Ahead lay a low structure. I must’ve come around from the other side somehow. She trotted forward, realizing even as she ran that the dark form couldn’t be the trailer. “Pamela! It’s me!” The shape was all wrong, somehow flattened and broken, and beside it rose a black obelisk.
Dark pillars surrounded her, and she stood absolutely still. The chill she’d been fighting went through her, forcing her teeth together with a sharp click. She blinked at the thing she’d mistaken for the trailer: one wall only, cut through with window holes that opened to nothingness. Lightning slanted behind it.
Thunder staggered her. The creek. She must have gotten turned around in the water. I’m lost. This had to be the old town, but a part she’d never seen before. Motionless in the ruins, she stared, her teeth chattering.
Through the pines floated an agonized, choking scream.
There was no way of telling if it came from a man or a woman, but there was no mistaking that it was a cry of terror and pain. And close.
Isolated in the downpour, she listened. There was no way of knowing even from what direction the cry had come. While the gale whipped through the pines, they seemed at last to have merged—this force and this terrain—to have become a single unit, a rippling universal shadow.
And something bulky moved with a heavy sound, crouching through the blurring trees. And a horrible stench sifted up through the rain.
Numb with terror, she backed away. She heard it moving again, could almost see it now, there in the underbrush.
Backing away, backing farther, she felt it, felt it slowly emerge. No, it’s not. Dimly, she glimpsed it—a form. Not there. A shape, all wrong. It’s…not.
Squat and heavy, it hunched on four legs in the flattened brush.
It’s a patch of mud or a tree trunk or…
It scrambled toward her.
Shoot! The gun shook wildly in her hands. Shoot it! She tried to aim. Why don’t you shoot?!
The gun exploded, rearing upward, striking her shoulder. The shot went high. The muted tearing of the pellets through the trees mingled with the soft battering of raindrops. After the flash, she could see nothing. The storm had become a steady drizzle, and the water pressed down her body like a hand. Wishing she had more than one shell remaining, she took a step backward, aiming at first one dark area, then another.