Dexter in the Dark (39 page)

“All right,” I said. But she had already hung up.

Since I speak fluent Deborah, I suppose I should have accepted her telephone call as a kind of formal apology for her recent pointless hostility. Quite possibly she had come to accept the Dark Passenger, especially since it was gone. This should have made me happy. But considering the day I had been having, it was just one more splinter under the fingernail for poor Downtrodden Dexter. On top of that, it seemed like sheer effrontery for a hurricane to pick this moment for its pointless harassment. Was there no end to the pain and suffering I would be forced to endure?

Ah well, to exist is to wallow in misery. I headed out the door for my date with Deborah’s paramour.

Before I started my car, however, I placed a call to Rita, who would be very nearly home now by my calculations.

“Dexter,” she answered breathlessly, “I can’t remember how much bottled water we have and the lines at Publix are all the way out into the parking lot.”

“Well then we’ll just have to drink beer,” I said.

“I think we’re okay on the canned food, except that beef stew has been there for two years,” she said, apparently unaware that anyone else might have said something. So I let her rattle on, hoping she would slow down eventually. “I checked the flashlights two weeks ago,” she said. “Remember, when the power went out for forty minutes? And the extra batteries are in the refrigerator, on the bottom shelf at the back. I have Cody and Astor with me now, there’s no after-school program tomorrow, but somebody at school told them about Hurricane Andrew and I think Astor is a little frightened, so maybe when you get home you could talk to them? And explain that it’s like a big thunderstorm and we’ll be all right, there’s just going to be a lot of wind and noise and the lights will go out for a little while. But if you see a store on the way home that isn’t too crowded be sure to stop and get some bottled water, as much as you can get. And some ice, I think the cooler is still on the shelf above the washing machine, we can fill it with ice and put in the perishables. Oh—what about your boat? Will it be all right where it is, or do you need to do something with it? I think we can get the things out of the yard before dark, I’m sure we’ll be fine, and it probably won’t hit here anyway.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll be a little late getting home.”

“All right. Oh—look at that, the Winn-Dixie store doesn’t look too bad. I guess we’ll try to get in, there’s a parking spot. Bye!”

I would never have thought it possible, but Rita had apparently learned to get by without breathing. Or perhaps she only had to come up for air every hour or so, like a whale. Still, it was an inspiring performance, and after witnessing it, I felt far better prepared to put up shutters with my sister’s one-handed boyfriend. I started the car and slid out into traffic.

If rush-hour traffic is utter mayhem, then rush-hour traffic with a hurricane coming is end-of-the-world, we’re-all-going-to-die-but-you-go-first insanity. People were driving as if they positively had to kill everyone else who might come between them and getting their plywood and batteries. It was not a terribly long drive to Deborah’s little house in Coral Gables, but when I finally pulled into her driveway I felt as if I had survived an Apache manhood ordeal.

As I climbed out of the car, the front door of the house swung open and Chutsky came out. “Hey, buddy,” he called. He gave me a cheerful wave with the steel hook where his left hand used to be and came down the walkway to meet me. “I really appreciate the help. This goddamned hook makes it kind of tough to put the wing nuts on.”

“And even harder to pick your nose,” I said, just a little irritated by his cheerful suffering.

But instead of taking offense, he laughed. “Yeah. And a whole lot harder to wipe my ass. Come on. I got all the stuff out in back.”

I followed him around to the back of the house, where Deborah had a small overgrown patio. But to my great surprise, it was no longer overgrown. The trees that had hung over the area were trimmed back, and the weeds growing up between the flagstones were all gone. There were three neatly pruned rosebushes and a bank of ornamental flowers of some kind, and a neatly polished barbecue grill stood in one corner.

I looked at Chutsky and raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s maybe a little bit gay, right?” He shrugged. “I get real bored sitting around here healing, and anyway I like to keep things neatened up a little more than your sister.”

“It looks very nice,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he said, as if I really had accused him of being gay. “Well, let’s get this done.” He nodded toward a stack of corrugated steel leaning against the side of the house—Deborah’s hurricane shutters. The Morgans were second-generation Floridians, and Harry had raised us to use good shutters. Save a little money on the shutters, spend a lot more replacing the house when they failed.

The downside to the high quality of Deborah’s shutters, though, was that they were very heavy and had sharp edges. Thick gloves were necessary—or in Chutsky’s case, one glove. I’m not sure he appreciated the cash he was saving on gloves, though. He seemed to work a little harder than he had to, in order to let me know that he was not really handicapped and didn’t actually need my help.

At any rate, it was only about forty minutes before we had all the shutters in their tracks and locked on. Chutsky took a last look at the ones that covered the French doors of the patio and, apparently satisfied with our outstanding craftsmanship, he raised his left arm to wipe the sweat from his brow, catching himself at the very last moment before he rammed the hook through his cheek. He laughed a little bitterly, staring at the hook.

“I’m still not used to this thing,” he said, shaking his head. “I wake up in the night and the missing knuckle itches.”

It was difficult to think of anything clever or even socially acceptable to say to that. I had never read anywhere what to say to someone speaking of having feeling in his amputated hand. Chutsky seemed to feel the awkwardness, because he gave me a small dry snort of non-humorous amusement.

“Hey, well,” he said, “there’s still a couple of kicks left in the old mule.” It seemed to me an unfortunate choice of words, since he was also missing his left foot, and any kicking at all seemed out of the question. Still, I was pleased to see him coming out of his depression, so it seemed like a good thing to agree with him.

“No one ever doubted it,” I said. “I’m sure you’re going to be fine.”

“Uh-huh, thanks,” he said, not very convincingly. “Anyway, it’s not you I have to convince. It’s a couple of old desk jockies inside the Beltway. They’ve offered me a desk job, but…” He shrugged.

“Come on now,” I said. “You can’t really want to go back to the cloak-and-dagger work, can you?”

“It’s what I’m good at,” he said. “For a while there, I was the very best.”

“Maybe you just miss the adrenaline,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said. “How about a beer?”

“Thank you,” I said, “but I have orders from on high to get bottled water and ice before it’s all gone.”

“Right,” he said. “Everybody’s terrified they might have to drink a mojito without ice.”

“It’s one of the great dangers of a hurricane,” I said.

“Thanks for the help,” he said.

If anything, traffic was even worse as I headed for home. Some of the people were hurrying away with their precious sheets of plywood tied to their car roofs as if they had just robbed a bank. They were angry from the tension of standing in line for an hour wondering if someone would cut in front of them and whether there would be anything left when it was their turn.

The rest of the people on the road were on their way to take their places in these same lines and hated everyone who had gotten there first and maybe bought the last C battery in Florida.

Altogether, it was a delightful mixture of hostility, rage, and paranoia, and it should have cheered me up immensely. But any hope of good cheer vanished when I found myself humming something, a familiar tune that I couldn’t quite place, and couldn’t stop humming. And when I finally did place it, all the joy of the festive evening was shattered.

It was the music from my sleep.

The music that had played in my head with the feeling of heat and the smell of something burning. It was plain and repetitive and not a terribly catchy bit of music, but here I was humming it to myself on South Dixie Highway, humming and feeling comfort from the repeating notes as if it was a lullaby my mother used to sing.

And I still didn’t know what it meant.

I am sure that whatever was happening in my subconscious was caused by something simple, logical, and easy to understand. On the other hand, I just couldn’t think of a simple, logical, and easy-to-understand reason for hearing music and feeling heat on my face in my sleep.

My cell phone started to buzz, and since traffic was crawling along anyway, I answered it.

“Dexter,” Rita said, but I barely recognized her voice. She sounded small, lost, and completely defeated. “It’s Cody and Astor,” she said. “They’re gone.”

Things were really working out quite well. The new hosts were wonderfully cooperative. They began to gather, and with a little bit of persuasion, they easily came to follow IT’s suggestions about behavior. And they built great stone buildings to hold IT’s offspring, dreamed up elaborate ceremonies with music to put them in a trance state, and they became so enthusiastically helpful that for a while there were just too many of them to keep up with. If things went well for the hosts, they killed a few of their number out of gratitude. If things went badly, they killed in the hope that IT would make things better. And all IT had to do was let it happen.

And with this new leisure, IT began to consider the result of IT’s reproductions. For the first time, when the swelling and bursting came, IT reached out to the newborn, calming it down, easing its fear, and sharing consciousness. And the newborn responded with gratifying eagerness, quickly and happily learning all that IT had to teach and gladly joining in. And then there were four of them, then eight, sixty-four—and suddenly it was too much. With that many, there was simply not enough to go around. Even the new hosts began to balk at the number of victims they needed.

IT was practical, if nothing else. IT quickly realized the problem, and solved it—by killing almost all of the others IT had spawned. A few escaped, out into the world, in search of new hosts. IT kept just a few with IT, and things were under control at last.

Sometime later, the ones who fled began to strike back. They set up their rival temples and rituals and sent their armies at IT, and there were so many. The upheaval was enormous and lasted a very long time. But because IT was the oldest and most experienced, IT eventually vanquished all the others, except for a few who went into hiding.

The others hid in scattered hosts, keeping a low profile, and many survived. But IT had learned over the millennia that it was important to wait. IT had all the time there was, and IT could afford to be patient, slowly hunt out and kill the ones who fled, and then slowly, carefully, build back up the grand and wonderful worship of ITself.

IT kept IT’s worship alive; hidden, but alive.

And IT waited for the others.

THIRTY-SEVEN

A
S
I
KNOW VERY WELL, THE WORLD IS NOT A NICE PLACE.
There are numberless awful things that can happen, especially to children: they can be taken by a stranger or a family friend or a divorced dad; they can wander away and vanish, fall in a sinkhole, drown in a neighbor’s pool—and with a hurricane coming there were even more possibilities. The list is limited only by their imaginations, and Cody and Astor were quite well supplied with imagination.