Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (32 page)

“Did not,” he managed to gasp.
“Ain’t having a stroke,
it’s
my heart.”

“Joshua, go get Doc Cabot!”
commanded Sadie.

“No!”
Tamara moved forward
.

“Doan you tell me—”

“Ain’t got time to argue
wid
you, woman!
Now,
you
liste
n
to me!”
Tamara
grabbed a
throw rug.
She knelt and lifted Isaiah’s head
gently
, plac
ed
it on the rug and wrap
ped the sides.

“Doan’ mean no disrespect, I know he understand,” she said.
“Sadie, you go get
dat
other doctor.
Now.
We’s got to clean dis—Joshua!
” she called, but Joshua was already on his wa
y back from the kitchen, a
cleaning bucket and strips of old sheeting in his hands.
He wanted to gag, he wanted to throw up, bu
t he knew it was important
Dr. Cabot not see this.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

“Good boy.”
She turned back to her sister.
“Now, Sadie, go!
We get
dis
cleaned up, me and Josh goin’ after Paul.
You hurry
dere
and you hurry back!”

“Everett be by hisself!”

“Don’t
matter,”
Everett panted.
“Listen to her.
Go.”

“I done lost one
boy, I don’t want Josh near—”

“You ain’t lost him yet.
I needs Joshua, Sadie.
Everett need you,”
Tamara, down on her knees,
helped Joshua
wip
e
up the bloody gore.
“Now,
go
!”

Sadie turned and ran.

* * *

Bloody cleaning chores completed, T
amara
hurried to the door.
Josh hung back.
His
nervous system, now denied Cain’s soothing concoctions for close to forty-eight hours, screamed with rage
.
In a fever to get to Paul, he found it almost impossible to leave his father alone
on the floor,
blue-faced and covered in sweat
.

“Papa,” he said softly.
Tamara took his arm and gently pulled
.

Everett gasped instructions and pointed shakily to the door.

“Son,
ain’t
nothing
…
you can do
…
here. Find
your
…
brother.”

Tamara
pulled Joshua o
ut the door.

“Oh, my God,” the boy moaned.
“I did this.
A
ll of this.
Oh, God, what have I done?”

“Son, you ain’t got
time
to stop and feel sorry for yo’
self and I ain’t got time to soothe you down.
Get in
de
wagon!”
she commanded, striding swiftly to her small buckboard which waited beyond the wrought iron fence.

“Horses faster,” Josh said.
“I can saddle real quick—”

“No.
Might need
de
wagon.
He probably ca
n’t ride.”

“’Cause he dead,” Josh spoke quietly into the night, in the lilting, flowing, hybrid speech pattern habitually employed by his mother, which, like Joshua, was neither wholly black nor wholly white.

“We
doan
know
dat.”

“What you think.”

“No, it ain’t.
Ain’t a’tall.
Paul’s alive yet.
Cain’s waitin’ on you.”

“Me?”

“Why else you think he send Isaiah’s head?
Wants you to know he got ‘em.
Wants you
dere
to watch.”

Hope surged in Joshua’s heart
. Until he realized he’d left the house
with absolutely no weapon.
It was the first time he
’d
even thought of it.

“Go back!” he shouted.

“Ain’t got time.”

“I ain’t got no gun!
No knife, no nuttin’!
Go back!
If he’s waitin’ on me, we got time!”

“Guns and knives ain’t
goan
do nuttin’, boy, nuttin’!
An’ Cain ain’t
de
one to worry ‘bout.
H
e ‘bout to start somethin’ he c
a
n’t handle.
An’ when he do, he ain’t
goan
be able to wait on you!”

“Then Paul’s a dead man.”

“No, he ain’t,” said Tamara, flicking the reins and urging her horses forward down Wharf Street.
“He jest
goan
wish he was.”

* * *

Cain
paced
the clearing impatiently
. He
paus
ed
occasionally to lash out with his huge hands and deliver a neck-snapping blow to Paul’s head.
He was ready, damn it, ready.
Paul, stripped of his shirt, was lashed bare-chested to a sturdy stake implanted firmly in the center of the circle.

Cain paused in his long strides and struck again.

“Well, where is he, white man?
W
here
?”

“Told you he wasn’t at my house.”
Paul ground the words
out
between his
swollen
,
bleeding lips.

“
H
e was
!
I
know he was
!
He jest
doan
give a damn!
Dat’s it, white man!
You done give yo
’
life for a boy
doan
give a fuckin’
damn
‘bout yo
ur
s!
How
dat
feel?
Shiiiittt
, maybe
dat
boy better
den I thought!
Mo’ like me
den you, after all!”

Cain paced the clearing again
.

“
S
hiiiitttt
!!
Dat’s enough! D
e
g
ods,
dey
hungry
!”

He
p
ulled the knife
from the s
cabbard belted around his waist.

Chapter
Thirty
-Two

Cain’s roar of rage
trembled on the night air.
Tamara and Joshua rushed toward the riverbank on foot
.
T
here
was
no path for the wagon
. The crowd chanted
, covering the sounds of the underbrush and snapping twigs.

“Too late,” Josh moaned.

“Shut up and move!”
commanded Tamara.
She
pushed
h
arder and g
ained a
clear view of the circle.

Blood ran down
Paul’s chin, the product of his
own gnashing teeth
as Cain’s
knife twisted slowly and deeply
while
Cain drew it lingeringly, almost lovingly, over the skin.
Blood poured from two deep, wide cuts forming an X across Paul’s chest, running from each shoulder down to his belt buckle.
Cain thrust his hands into the blood
, held them high, and chanted.

Tamara burst into the clearing, Joshua at her heels
, knowing what she’d see, what was coming.
It
was
written on Paul’s hand, preordained, immutable, unstoppable.
One last, desperate hope remained to circumvent destiny.
If she could just prevent Cain
from cracking th
e
door
about to burst open—too
late to save Paul entirely
, he’d bleed to death before they got back to town.
But
he’d prefer that to the alternative.

“
Y
ou fool!
” she shouted
.
“
Y
ou
doan
know whu
t you doin’, man!
S
top
!
”

Cain turned
. About to unleash power such as the world had never seen, and a
woman
dared inter
fer
e?
Oh, no.
He didn’t think so.

“
T
ake ‘em
!” he shouted.
A
lightning bolt struck directly at Cain’s feet, knocking him down.

Tamara groaned.
Too late.
T
he air
filled with
electric
current flowing from the
flashing
lightning
.
T
he door cracked and opened
to
the worlds on worlds that ring this
world.
T
he air changed.
It
hissed, it burned, it smoldered.

Cain’s followers fell back.
Their retreat
turned
into a blind stampede fleeing toward
town
and the sactuary of the c
ity streets.
Toward
sanity.

It appeared from nowhere.
O
ne moment,
nothing.
The next, nightmare incarnate
.
It.
Cain’s eyes widened. He back-propelled his body along the ground with
his hands, scrambling back from the clearing.

It was huge,
ten feet or more in height.
The thing from beyond the door stomped the grou
nd of the clearing and screamed,
composite of all
predators
on earth.
Visions of a lion’s mane, a wolf’s fur, a monkey’s face,
a lizard’s feet,
raced
across Joshua’s sight. His eyes
settled on alligator-like teeth
ringing an
open mouth.

Cain’s eyes bulged
.
The old woman hadn’t told him
nightmares moved behind the gates. H
e did
n’t
need anyone to tell him
there was no way he could send it back.

The creature eyed the humans.
It growled and turned.
It smell
ed
blood, lovely blood
. Hot. R
ich
. H
eavy.
What luck!
The doors so seldom cracked into this dimension, the creature’s
favorite
hunting ground
,
so full of blood. B
right red blood
that
ran like wine down its thirsty throat, not
t
he anemic
liquid flowing in the
creatures
it usually fed on.

T
he
blood
scent was maddening
.
Where was it?
Fresh, hot. T
he aroma pulsat
ed
in the open air.
It
turned in a sear
c
hing pattern and roared in
triumph.
Its lizard-like hands grabbed Paul’s arms
and pulled the post itself
completely out of the ground
.
It
held
Paul h
igh
in the air
above it
and lapped
the flowing blood from
t
he
cross cuts on Paul’s chest.