Fiends (26 page)

26

"Come away from the window, Marjory."

Marjory obediently took a step back and let the damask curtains fall, turning her head to look at Birka. They were in the parlor of the parsonage of Dante's Mill, a tiny single-story house, one of four similar houses across from the church at the other end of town from the stables. The lights passing on the main street that had briefly turned the rain-spotted glass a dawnlike rose shade faded as the sheriffs patrol car drove on to the stables.

The boy whom Puff had named Alastor remained where he was on the deep window seat, just the top of his hairless head and his eyes above the sill as he watched the patrol car out of sight.

"Lookit that!" he said. "What is it, Marjory?"

"Police car," Marjory said.

"I think these clothes ought to fit you, Marjory," Birka said, smiling, holding out black shoes, trousers, and a collarless white shirt she had found in the bedroom closet. The parsonage, which was open to the public during the day, was completely furnished down to the ladies' ummentionables in a bureau drawer, but Birka had opted for men's clothing, because Marjory was larger than the average man; the average man in 1906 . . . Birka had been wondering about that, and it seemed like an appropriate time to ask.

"What year is this, Marjory?"

"Nineteen seventy," Marjory said, taking the clothing. The shirt was stiffly starched, the trousers a heavy wool. She frowned.

"It's better than what you have on now," Birka reminded her. "And we don't want you catching cold."

"Thank you," Marjory said, but her nose was already running, and had been for a while.

"Could I see a nice smile instead of a frown?"

Marjory's lips twitched forlornly as she tried to please, and then she looked down at the piled clothing in her arms. Behind her the windows lightened, there was a flush of scarlet on the papered walls.

"Here come
another
one," Alastor said gleefully. "Gosh!"

"Don't be seen," Birka advised.

"Won't. How fast can it go, Marjory?"

"Souped up, maybe a hundred twenty-five miles an hour."

Alastor looked baffled, and suspicious, thinking she was pulling his leg. "What kind of soup?"

"Marjory, change out of those wet things now."

"Why does she have to put clothes on?" Alastor said. "Ain't she going to be one of us?"

"Not yet, and hush."

Marjory turned and looked at Alastor on the window seat. She didn't say anything.

Birka observed that the scarlet light shining through the parlor windows was stationary and said, "Marjory, why don't we hurry just a little bit? We have a lot to accomplish before the night is over."

"All right," Marjory said, and she unbuttoned her blouse, took it off, then tried to undo the snaps on her Cross Your Heart bra. Birka had to help her. Marjory flinched at the icicle touch of her fingers. Birka admired the construction of the bra and wondered where to hide it, and the other items of clothing Marjory was taking off: "Panties", "Bermuda shorts."

Marjory stood naked in front of her and said, "I need—"

"Yes, I suppose the trousers will be itchy without something underneath. Why don't we try the preacher's drawers? As for your breasts, well, you can't wear this soggy thing any more. Hmm. I noticed some men's undershirts, one of those might do."

Birka hid Marjory's clothes and the towel she'd used to dry her hair in the bottom of a cedar chest in the bedroom and returned with other things. Marjory pulled on the undershirt, which reached to the top of her thighs, and the silk drawers. The shapeless, uncuffed wool trousers were at her ankles, loose around the waist but not so loose she had to hold them up. The high-top shoes were hopelessly narrow, she couldn't get them on. Birka decided that her damp "sneakers" would have to do. Marjory couldn't be expected to walk barefoot through the caverns without seriously damaging her feet.

Marjory was sitting on the edge of a sleigh-shaped couch tying one sneaker when they heard Enid calling outside.

"Marjorrryyyy!" Her Voice was amplified by a police bullhorn.

Marjory looked up slowly, growing tense. She glanced at Birka, her lips trembling.

"We can't go out and play right now, Marjory. You agreed. We have far more important things to do."

"Can we show Marjory the robes?" Alastor asked.

"We'll show her everything. Now get down from that window seat! They're more of them now, and obviously they're going from building to building."

"Yes, ma'am," Alastor said. "But what about—"

"Who?"

"I don't know her name. But I turned her."

"You little wretch! Who told you to do
that?"

Alastor looked humbled. He bit a knuckle on his right hand. "Just playin'," he muttered. "Besides, ain't we supposed to turn
everybody?"

"No! And you had better learn two things quickly. Everyone can
not
be turned, because some humans spoil on you. And if we turn them all, what will we do for robes? And without our beautiful robes,
what are we?"
Oh, now she was becoming shrill. She was tiring, and that was serious. Birka looked at the tinted windows and then quickly at Marjory, who had risen from the couch. "Sit down." Marjory sat, trembling. Birka felt the scissoring pain at the back of her head that meant she was putting too much effort into keeping Marjory docile. But there was the problem of the other one, out there somewhere in the midst of humans. That was dangerous, no matter what the results of her turning, but Birka had no solution to this unexpected problem. Her principal obligation, she reminded herself, was to protect the rest of them until Theron, reborn, could resume the leadership of all
huldufólk.

"We're going," she said. "Now." And was gratified that Marjory rose, without urging, to follow her.

27

They were getting into the back of the Ford Fairlane when Smidge went into convulsions.

She fell down in the road jerking uncontrollably, teeth grinding, saliva dripping from one corner of her mouth, eyes not quite closed but only the whites showing: it looked to Ted and the other deputies like a classic epileptic seizure. Her skin was chalky. The seizure lasted thirty or forty seconds, and then, as two of them held her, Smidge's body went slack and she gasped. At least she hadn't swallowed her tongue. When Ted spoke her name she responded vaguely. There was a nasty bruise on her right cheekbone he hadn't noticed before. Also an odor of corruption on her breath. Some of Smidge's hair came away in Ted's hand when he and one of the Wingo deputies laid her on the backseat of the Fairlane.

"What if she throws up in my car?" Rita Sue said indignantly. "Can't you take her to the hospital in one of the cop cars?"

"No," Ted told her, and looked at Boyce, who had come down to Dante's Mill in the second Wingo County car. "Park superintendent show up yet?"

"He's off fishing somewhere. One of the rangers is on his way, he's just five minutes from here."

"Okay, you all drive back to the lodge and wait on him, he'll call an ambulance." Smidge groaned and rolled her head side to side.

Rita Sue said, "Oh Lord, she's fixing to have another fit! Boyce, I want to go home!"

A disheveled Enid, bullhorn in hand, heard this and crossed the road with a deputy behind her. She looked at wit's end. "You
can't
go home. Marjory's missing. If you're a good friend to Marjory you'll want to stay until we find her."

"But it's not my fault she's missing!"

"We all have to do our part," Enid said, calmly enough, but there was a wildness in her brown eyes, which moved quickly, not settling on anyone for very long. "You go with that poor girl and try to make her comfortable until she has medical attention."

"Enid, maybe you should go with them too, and—"

"I won't hear of that, Ted! I won't hear of it. Why are we just standing around? I want to look in every one of these buildings for Marjory! I want to go down to the waterfall."

"We need keys, Enid, everything's locked up." Ted looked at Boyce, who put an awkward hand on Rita Sue's shoulder. She shrugged it off but got into the Fairlane anyway, glancing apprehensively at Smidge sprawled faceup in the backseat, as inert as if she were sleeping. But her lips were pulled back in a doggy sneer.

"I don't even
know
her," Rita Sue murmured. Boyce hopped backward, trying to keep his bandaged foot out of the mud, and got in behind the wheel of the Fairlane.

Ted put an arm around Enid's waist and conferred with the four Wingo County deputies^ One of the newcomers he knew from high school football. Low Cow Jones had put on thirty or forty pounds but still looked as if he could tear the bumpers off a pickup as easily as other men peel a banana. His partner had the build of a cheetah, slim-hipped and high in the shoulders, with a couple of bad facial scars and perfectly round, black eyes that made him seem more astute than he probably was. His name was Wayne Buck Vedders. The deputies on hand when Ted and Enid arrived at the state park were a couple of old-timers. Moon Milcock had a heavily pocked, brick-red complexion, hands that reached nearly to his knees, and the kind of ears that early in life had earned him the nickname Flappy. Lee Winkfield was a tall, thin man with a sour, grapey mouth; he chewed kitchen matches and was related to Ted by way of a great-uncle who owned a tire dealership in Tonto Springs.

"So what've we got here?" Milcock asked. "Two kids missing?"

"Maybe it's a little more complicated than that," Ted told him, and explained his encounter with Smidge, and the gob of what might have been human skin which she'd found, and been possessive of, in the stable. Enid shuddered against him and was silent.

Milcock scratched a hairless temple and said to the other Wingo deputies, "Reckon we ought to kick this 'un back to ol' Wimp and see if he wants to take a run out thisaway."

"Hell, Moon," Wayne Buck Vedders said, "the Old Man's granddaughter got married today over in Hazelrig, and right about now you'd have to pump a half gallon of Sani-flush through his liver just to get him standing straight up on his feet."

"Yeh, I forgot," Milcock muttered.

"Let's split up, then," Winkfield suggested, taking the matchstick out of his mouth so he wouldn't inhale it when he yawned. "Why don't me and Flappy check the high ground over there back of the lake where the girl said that Satan cult was operating, and you all see what you can come up with around here. Low Cow, you want to make us the loan of your ten-gauge?"

"What for, you figuring on raising the devil?"

"Buddy, I'd rather raise the devil than some outlaw biker's been gargling crank or some other kind of shit, with his eyes spinning around in his head the way they get. You'd have better luck stopping a locomotive with a .38 than one of them kind."

Low Cow Jones donated the shotgun from his patrol car and the other two deputies drove slowly out of Dante's Mill on the curving road past the millpond. Enid drew a long harsh breath and looked up at Ted, who smiled, trying to be reassuring.

"We know she's alive. Anyway, she sure didn't drown, if Smidge was telling the truth, and we can be thankful for that."

"No reason for her to lie, but where
is
Marjory? And why was she acting so strange?"

"Shock, maybe. Hard to say."

"Somebody might've taken her away, Ted! Before we got here. But that was only—how long?"

"Smidge could've walked from here to where we met her in ten minutes, maybe less. If she didn't stop to powder her nose."

"So where could Marjory have gone to, in a quarter of an hour or less? She has to be around here!"

Wayne Buck Vedders said, "The only way out of Dante's Mill by car is the way we came in. Maybe, if your sister's with somebody she don't want to be with, and they're just laying back in the woods looking to make a run for the highway, then we ought to be looking to block off the park entrance down by the highway." He glanced at Ted for confirmation.

"Good idea. Who all have you got left tonight?"

"Nobody in this end of the county. I reckon we could call THP, but that's got to go through the undersheriff, with Wimp unavailable. You know, it's a whole can of worms."

"Yeh, I know," Ted said. "Let's do it anyway."

28

"Glad that storm decided to move on," Lee Winkfield said as he and Milcock, who was behind the wheel, drove slowly up into the woods behind the Dante's Mill pond. Winkfield operated the spotlight mounted on his side of the patrol car, raking the understory that came down to the edge of the narrow road, which was part shale and afforded some traction despite the recent heavy rain.

"I don't much care for them electrical ones," Milcock admitted. "I knowed a boy once was standing on a wahr fence when lightning went through it, burnt all but his big toes off. He lived through the experience, but he was a funny-looking sight after that."

"Kinda reminds me, you remember Clinton Tuggle, was the U.S. Marshal in Apworth before he retired to go into the cattle business?"

"Allow that I do. Wasn't a man alive could take him in a five-card stud game until he married that feisty little church-going woman. They tell me she could hear a deck being shuffled five miles over in the next county."

"Well, Clinton, he had enough winnings tucked away to spend maybe forty thousand upgrading a herd, took him quite a few years to accomplish. Owned two Brahmin and two Limousin bulls he bred his heifers to. Then along come a lightning storm that hit one of the big sweetgums in his pasture, with most of his cows standing under it. You know how a sweet-gum is, them bare roots going ever which direction on top of the ground, and most of his herd was grounded on the roots."

"Uh-oh."

"Damn near wiped old Clinton out. Want to hold it right here, Moon?"

Milcock throttled down. Winkfield held the spotlight steady on a firebreak that ran uphill from the road. Water was running down one side of the break in a succession of waterfalls only inches high.

"What you got?" Milcock asked.

"See it? Vehicle parked up there. Station wagon, looks like."

"Yeh, I can make it out. Appears to be good bedrock along that firebreak, I ought to be able to drive up there."

"Let's have us a look, then."

The station wagon was parked with its back end to the road, and the hood was up. There was a tarpaulin suspended from low boughs of a pine tree over the guts of the wagon. Both deputies carried 10-gauges as they approached. Milcock stayed behind the wagon and Winkfield looked inside with his flashlight.

"Ain't nobody," he said.

"This here one's a real old-timer."

"Looks like a forty-six, forty-seven model." Winkfield took a fresh kitchen match from his shirt pocket and put it in a corner of his purple mouth. He opened the door on the driver's side. "Somebody's been sick," he said disgustedly. "Too much beer, from the smell of it." But he continued to look around meticulously before backing out.

"Puke," he said. "But no blood."

"Listen," Milcock cautioned, turning his head.

Winkfield listened, but his partner had the sharper ear. "Yeh, what?" he whispered after twenty seconds."

"I don't know for sure. Animal, maybe."

"Where's it coming from?"

"Yonder," Milcock said, pointing up the firebreak.

Neither man said anything else. They went up the firebreak three yards apart, Winkfield several steps behind Milcock. Water gurgled softly in the little trench on one side. They heard thunder, but it was a long way off. And, gradually, Winkfield heard something else. Sobbing. Milcock left the firebreak and went into the trees, shotgun in one hand, flashlight in the other. Winkfield followed cautiously. There was a modest path, no more than a deer trail. And something that glistened in the light. It was snagged on a thornbush.

"What've you got there?" Winkfield said, on his toes trying to see over Milcock's shoulder.

"Jesus," Milcock said, in a tired tone of voice. "You look."

Winkfield added his light to the scene. He saw a bloody patch of well-tanned hide with a few bleached, sun-crisped hairs on it, but he wouldn't have known exactly what he was looking at except for the unmistakable, if shriveled, human nipple off center on the patch. Man or woman, he couldn't say. Somewhere up ahead of them, there was a sobbing in the woods. Winkfield felt vulnerable; he felt as if he were standing on a whole mess of sweetgum roots with a charge of lightning building in the humid air inches from the fuzzed-up back of his neck.

Milcock peeled the cellophane from a pack of Lucky Strike. He broke off a dead twig from a birch sapling and gently removed the pierced doily of skin from the thorn. He placed it in cellophane and put the packet away. They heard a hoot owl. A large luna moth floated into Winkfield's flashlight beam and was all but motionless for a couple of seconds before drifting away. The intermittent and anonymous sobbing continued in the drizzling, seeping wood.