Night Songs (40 page)

    Harsh stinging spray drenched him instantly, and he blinked away the water as he crawled to the spot from which he knew he could climb down. He looked over the edge. The tide was in and high; another twenty feet and the most persistent waves would ride over the top. He licked his lips and tasted salt. If Lilla was down there, then there was only one place she could be. If she'd climbed any lower she would have drowned by now.

    He willed her to be alive.

    He willed her not to be as crazy as they thought.

    He wiped his hands on his shirt and lowered himself over the edge.

    The rock was slippery and dark, almost green, and the worn spots on the steep pathway were filled with trembling water.

    His ears ached from the waves that slammed the rock below him.

    His chest ached, and his knees. When he reached the first ledge he dropped against the rock face and covered his eyes with his hands.

    The cave was less than six feet away.

    All he had to do was get up and move over, climb over a low mound of smooth stone and he'd be there.

    That was all, and he didn't want to do it.

    "Mom," he whispered, "Mom. Mom."

    If Lilla wasn't there, then his Mom was really dead.

    A wave hunched and surged without breaking, sliding off the cliff face and falling back into its trough.

    He grunted, not sure if the water on his face was from the ocean or his tears, and staggered to his feet. The wind shoved him back down. He cried out as he began a slow slide toward the edge, clawed at the rough path until he felt the sliding stop. He wanted to be back in school; he wanted to be in his room watching James Bond and Christopher Lee; he wanted to be in Colin's studio, looking at all the paintings Colin said were no good but he was keeping them around just to keep his ego down. He didn't know what ego was, but if Colin said that was important then he guessed it had to be. He wanted to be up top again. He wanted…

    He sobbed, and crawled, and made it to the mound that rose as high as his head. He reached up and gripped the top, pulled himself to his knees and with a shout threw himself over.

    He fell only two feet, slid two feet more under the cave's ragged overhang. The mouth was only four feet across, but the cave itself dug twenty feet into the island, the roof lifting enough so that someone like him could stand.

    He sat up, pulled his legs under him and knelt.

    "Lilla?"

    He frowned as he tried to listen for an answer, peering into the dark to see if he could spot her. "Lilla?"

    He cupped his hands around his mouth and called her name again before he took a deep breath and moved deeper inside.

    There was no light at all now.

    At his back, the ocean.

    The cave widened, and the battle sound of the surf was so loud it was almost silent.

    Halfway to the back he began to cry.

    She was gone. He was wrong, and she wasn't here. There was nothing on the ground that he could see, no candles, no lanterns, no flashlights. She wasn't here, and he had wasted all this time for nothing.

    He dropped to his knees heavily.

    Not here. Lilla wasn't here.

    His mother and Colin were dead.

    He drew up his legs and folded his arms around his calves, pushed his chin to his knee and let the tears come. He didn't care if he sounded like a baby. He didn't care.

    "Aw, nuts," he sobbed. "Nuts. Goddamn."

    Then he looked up and saw the shadow in the cave.

    It was outlined by the last of the day's light, and it was moving toward him. Slowly. Without a sound. Its hands at its side, its head lowered.

    He couldn't pull away; he was as far back against the wall as he could go, and he was so awfully tired that all he could do was shake his head. If there were words to stop the shadow he would have said them, but Lilla had all the words and he was just a kid and now he was going to be just like his mother.

    The figure stopped.

    It knelt before him.

    It leaned close so he could see it.

    "Hello, Little Matt," said Lilla with a smile, in a voice he wasn't sure was actually her own. "I sent the wind away. Can I play with you now?"

    

    

    

    Colin could think of nothing to say, and for a moment wished he'd been killed in the accident. As it was, he felt as though a great mass of living tissue had been scooped out of his chest and replaced with cold lead. A thin line of acid scorched across his forehead, and he stifled a groan. Peg didn't need that; she was beside him now, weeping silently as they followed Garve toward the dunes.

    Ah, Matt, he thought, then pushed the thought away. There was neither sense in, nor time for, dwelling on the boy now. It was too late. He and Peg had regained consciousness at the same time, had seen the open car door and realized within seconds that the boy was missing. It had taken them a while to dig themselves out, a while longer in a frantic search of the yard and house before Peg had stopped dead in her tracks, turned to him and said, "Gran." Nothing more was needed. The boy had gotten out, and had been caught.

    Colin stumbled over nothing and Peg took his arm, smiled at him grimly and pulled at him until they'd caught up with the others. Garve and Hugh were carrying the cans of kerosene taken from the cruiser's trunk; Lee held the shotguns. They'd been at the car when he and Peg finally reached it, using the first-aid kit from the glove compartment to bind their minor injuries. Lee's ankle, however, had been twisted, and she favored it with an awkward limp.

    "I think my head's gonna fall off," he said quietly, gingerly putting a finger to the bulky bandage hastily cross-taped to his forehead. "God."

    The side of Peg's neck was swathed, and she kept plucking at her shirt as if she were trying to pull off the blood. "I'm going to light it myself," she said tonelessly. "I'm going to burn that fucking old man my own goddamed self."

    He shivered, not entirely from the chilled air, and took the fuel can from Tabor's hand to relieve him. The chief nodded his thanks, took a weapon from Lee and walked with her in front. Hugh was silent. His glasses were broken, the lenses smeared and shattered, yet he wore them anyway and couldn't stop reaching up to push them back into place.

    "They'll be waiting for us," Garve said as they neared the bend in the road. Several of the streetlights were out, but there was still enough light from one on the corner for them to see the first dune. Tidal water from the yards poured into the street, swept over their shoes, surged now and again midway up their shins. "I don't know. I think they'll be waiting."

    Of course they'll be waiting, Colin thought in sudden anger. What the hell did he expect them to do? Keep right on strolling into the goddamn ocean? Of course they were waiting-because Gran willed it.

    The wind coasted directly into his eyes and he kept his head averted to keep his vision clear. He saw shadows beyond the curbing, shadows behind him, but he was too numb, too enraged to pay them close heed. Out of a whole town already cut down to a handful by the storm, there were only five of them left; out of a whole town, five to kill the dead.

    Lee thrust a warning arm out, and they stopped at the road's bend-the Estates on their left, the dunes straight ahead, and Gran's shack in the darkness, off to the right.

    At the top of the first dune stood Alex Fox, his blue suit jacket flapping, part of his neck missing. Susan was beside him, her mouth grotesquely sagging.

    Lee pumped a shell into the chamber at the same time Garve did, but no one moved.

    "He's watching," Peg said, pushing her way to the front. "The son of a bitch is watching us."

    Hugh took off his glasses and threw them away.

    A window shattered explosively somewhere to their left.

    Just before the last of the light had seeped from the sky they'd seen the clouds parting, disintegrating; there were no stars and there was no moon. Colin looked down at his empty hands and cursed. "Flashlights," he said in disgust. "We left the damned flashlight in the cars."

    "No problem," Garve said without looking around. "Hugh and I'll get some from…" and he pointed toward the Estates.

    "And leave us here alone?" Lee asked, astonished.

    "Somebody's gotta watch them," the chief answered, using the shotgun for a pointer. "They're not going to stay there forever. Someone has to keep an eye out."

    Alex swayed in the wind; Susan's skirt rolled and flared around her legs.

    "Then go, for God's sake," Colin snapped, shoving at Tabor's shoulder. The two men broke into a run toward the nearest house, and Lee dropped back to stand beside Peg. Alex turned his head slightly; Susan stared whitely.

    "Shoot them," Peg said flatly to Lee behind him. "Shoot the bastards."

    "Peg," Colin said. "Peg."

    "Shut up," she said. "Shut the hell
up"

    He saw her face then and didn't recognize her; the soft lines had creased, the eyes had turned to green stone, and despite the scratches and bruises that laced and splotched across her cheeks there was a colorless mask drawn from forehead to chin. Peg had lost herself when she'd lost her only child.

    Lee was murmuring something calming to her then, but he couldn't hear it. The wind. The wind, and Alex Fox, and Matt out there somewhere walking around like a demonic puppet. And everything he'd worked for since he'd first come to Haven's End gone and done because of an old man's selfish hatred.

    He began to breathe deeply.

    Susan Fox stared at him.

    The wind began to die.

    At first he thought it was his imagination, that it was the blast of the night ocean against the flooded beach drowning out the storm. But when he looked up, looked around, he knew he was right. The storm was finally passing over.

    He filled his lungs and held them full, held them full until he thought he would topple. Then he glared at the house where Garve and Hugh had vanished, glared toward the dark where Gran was waiting, and grabbed the shotgun from Lee's hands.

    "Hey!"

    He started for the curb, shrugging off her grasping hands, not bothering to look when he heard Peg say something sharply to her and heard a slap-hand against flesh, and Lee quietly moaning. He kept his gaze on Alex, stepped onto the sand and began a slow climb. The wind-blown spray had hardened the sand enough to prevent him from slipping, and when he was halfway up he stopped and raised the shotgun.

    He could hear the sea water churning in the hollow between the two dunes.

    Salt, he remembered saying, would keep these creatures on the island. The salt in the water.

    Susan took a step down, Alex right beside her.

    Peg called out a warning, and Tabor shouted angrily from a distance.

    A flashlight beam took Susan in her face. Colin swallowed at the torn flesh, the gaping mouth, the blank dead eyes, and he pulled the trigger, then pumped in another round before the blast had lost its lightning. Susan toppled back, arms pinwheeling vainly until she fell over and he heard the muffled splash.

    Alex moved more quickly, and Colin had to fire twice before the man was kicked into the water.

    Tabor clamped his shoulder and spun him around. "What the hell good is that gonna do, goddamn it?"

    Colin explained.

    They climbed the rest of the way cautiously, waving the others behind. Sawgrass hummed. The wind died even more.

    At the top, Garve directed the flash into the trough. Alex was floating face down and slowly turning; Susan's left hand poked out of the foam, dug into the sand.

    "Son of a bitch," Garve whispered, grinning. "Son of a holy shit bitch!" And he turned and beckoned, his grin so wide Colin thought the chief would split his cheeks. But Colin felt the same-that finally they'd been able to do something, to win. So he grinned in return when Garve shook his hand enthusiastically, clapped his back, and stabbed the flashlight at the bodies for the others to see. Hugh nodded as he pulled at his drooping mustache, allowing himself a weak smile when Lee impulsively threw her arms around him.

    Peg only stared.

    "It's a start," Colin told her.

    "Yes," she said, and made a sharp right turn.

    The euphoria was brief, and the rest were soon on her heels, not stopping until the dune began to rise toward the flatland, the trees, and the shack hiding in the dark. Then Garve pushed his way to the front again, holding the flash in one hand, his gun in the other. Colin stayed beside him; Peg reluctantly followed.

    They walked until the dunes were behind them and they were at the edge of Gran's clearing. The shack was thirty yards ahead, the beach fifty feet to their left hidden under foaming water. It was as if they had stepped onto an island.

    Then Montgomery turned on his broad-beam flashlight and put a hand over his mouth.

    They were there, over a dozen, ranged in a ragged line in front of the shack. All but El Nichols.

    When the light struck their faces, their eyes glittered white.

    "We'll never make it," Hugh said.

    "Well, they can't run, for God's sake," Colin said heatedly. "And the spray, the… the salt spray, it must be slowing them down."

    "There's too many," Hugh insisted, helplessly shaking his head. "There's too many. We'll be killed."

    A few of them took a tentative step forward.

    "Look," Colin said urgently, "there's no time to argue. They know we're here, and they can still follow us to some limited degree. Garve, you and Lee go to the left, over by the water there, and draw as many as you can toward you. Stick to the edge of the flat, and if you have to, jump in the water. They won't follow. Hugh, you and Peg go right. Same thing."