Prowlers - 1 (16 page)

Only seconds.

And the humans had not made a sound.

CHAPTER 7

For years Boston city officials and representatives of the Red Sox and Major League Baseball had talked about tearing down Fenway Park and putting up a new stadium. The prospect was bittersweet. Fenway was the grand old dame of American ballparks, harking back to an earlier age when fans older than age seven could still believe that baseball was about the game and not the money. But beneath the bleachers, the park itself was a warren of cracked concrete and stagnant beer smell, and when it rained, puddles formed inside, in front of the concession stands. How all that water got in was anybody's guess.

Jack knew it was only a matter of time. Eventually, and probably very soon, a new Fenway would become fact and the original just a memory. A little piece of what made Boston unique would die.

But as he crept as quietly as possible through the

wide, drafty walkways beneath the bleachers, Jack felt certain that long after it was gone, the ghost of Fenway Park would remain, and the spirit of old-time baseball would linger.

It was dark down there, but enough moonlight and starlight streamed in from the entrances and the stairwells that led up into the stands for him to see. Barely. The stale smell of beer and popcorn filled his nostrils, and the silence—the utter lack of noise that usually came from the fans and the announcers out on the field—seemed to echo in the concrete shadows.

"If I get arrested," Jack whispered, "I'm gonna be pretty pissed at you."

Beside him, Artie's ghost smirked and shook his California surfer boy hair. "What're you gonna do, Jack? Kill me?"

Jack had no answer for that one.

"Not that this is what you want to hear, Artie went on, "but I can guarantee that getting busted for trespassing is, like, totally the last thing you should be worried about at the moment. All you'd have to do is tell people you did it on a dare, or that you're just an overzealous fan or

whatever. 'Course that's not gonna happen."

"Why not?" Jack asked, his voice a little too loud.

Artie held a single ghostly finger to his spectral lips and shushed him. "You haven't noticed any security guards yet, have you?"

"Not a one," Jack agreed in a low whisper. "That's pretty much my point, though, Artie. I'm bound to run into one of them."

"No. You won't. They're not down here."

"Well, where are they?"

"Out on the field."

"On the—" Jack frowned, then felt his facial muscles go slack. "And the ... the Prowlers?"

Artie pointed toward the stairs that led up and outside. A kind of chilling electricity ran across Jack's skin, a frozen prickling that had nothing to do with the weather. Jack wet his lips with his tongue and found that his whole mouth was suddenly dry. He glanced from Artie to the stairs and then back to the ghost. Finally he started to walk slowly toward the stairs.

"Not that way."

Jack turned suddenly at the sound of the soft female voice, so filled with sadness. It was the ghost of Corinne Berdinka, still in her nurse's uniform. He studied her more closely now and saw that, like Artie, she was a gossamer thing, completely transparent. Behind her eyes lay the endless void of somewhere else.

Maybe that's the Ghostlands, Jack thought. When I look into their eyes, maybe that's what I'm seeing.

"What's wrong, Corinne?" Artie asked.

The phantoms lingered there, not quite standing and not quite hovering. They regarded one another carefully, and then Artie glanced over at Jack.

"They want you to have the best view. And the safest. If you aren't careful, you'll end up joining us on this side."

Jack watched the ghosts as they lingered side by side, not quite touching, and tried to figure out what they

reminded him of. It came to him after a brief moment, as his mind flashed on the many wildlife

documentaries he had seen on television over the years. Groups of giraffe or tigers or elephants would stand around a watering hole or near their chosen territory and it was clear that they were part of a herd, part of a tribe.

Once upon a time Artie had been his best friend, but they weren't members of the same tribe anymore. Jack still shared a connection to his dead friend, but Artie had other allegiances now. Even as this thought crossed Jack's mind he noticed movement farther along the row of concessions and bathrooms in the depths of Fenway Park, and saw the spectral priest appear. The other ghosts seemed to sense him and turned to see him raise his left hand in a beckoning gesture.

"Down here," Artie told Jack. "Looks like Father Pinsky's found a place he figures you won't be noticed."

"Yeah," Jack muttered sadly. "Thank the padre for me."

He padded softly after the spirits, noticing how as they moved through shadows and light they sometimes became invisible to him. Even as he made this observation, a scream tore through Fenway Park from out on the field; a single, piercing shriek of pain and terror. The melancholy that Jack had been feeling whenever he saw Artie's ghost dissipated in an instant.

The scream chased away the melancholy with a dizzying suddenness and the world around him turned inside out. What had been dreamlike was now hyper-real. Jack's senses were attuned to the smallest sounds,

from distant car horns to the drip of water from a ceiling pipe. The cold concrete tunnels beneath the bleachers now looked like enormous tombs. Fenway was nothing but catacombs now, catacombs where the dead walked.

"Come on, Jack. They're almost done. It's important that you see this. That you believe," Artie said, his voice barely above a whisper, though supposedly the Prowlers could not have heard him in any case.

I believe, Jack wanted to tell him. Can we just go?

He said nothing, though. He was afraid to speak now. With that scream, the possibility that it was all true—ghosts, Prowlers, murder, and savagery—hit him full force. Though he had accepted all he had seen thus far, in the back of his mind there had remained the hope that this was all some extended hallucination brought on by grief. The fact that no one else could see or hear these ghosts made it simple to perpetuate that hope.

But that scream . . . anyone could have heard that scream.

The horror of the past week had suddenly shattered the barrier between Jack Dwyer's mind and the rest of the world. And out there in the tangible, three-dimensional, hard-edged world... it

could kill.

"Hurry or you'll miss them," Artie urged him. He toyed with the zipper on his sweatshirt, just as he had always done when he was alive. "If they come back this way—"

"Got it," Jack interrupted. "Let's move."

With more stealth than he ever would have imagined he possessed, Jack moved past another line of concession stands beside Artie and Corinne's ghosts. He had no idea where the spirits of the elderly couple had gone. They might still have been there, but invisible to him. He didn't ask about them. They were already dead, so the Prowlers couldn't hurt them.

As Jack reached the phantom priest, the specter dissipated. He shuddered, unnerved by the disappearing act.

The Ghostlands were all around him. The inhabitants wished him well, which was nice, but they wouldn't be a hell of a lot of help to him if he got into a jam.

"Up there," Corinne whispered, behind him.

He glanced at Artie's face, could see a Coca-Cola sign on the wall through his friend's features, then turned and walked gingerly up the steps. At the top, outside now, with the bleachers of Fenway Park rising all around him, Jack crouched behind a row of seats and looked down at the field. The backstop was in front of him, as was the large net that stretched above the seats to stop foul balls from striking the fans.

He was almost directly behind home plate, one section up from the field.

There were no more screams, but he could hear snarling. Jack stared down at the field through the netting and the wire mesh backstop, and he could see them out there. He counted four corpses—the security guards. Five enormous beasts were tearing at the dead men with long fangs and thick, powerful talons. Not

one of them looked the same as any other, either in size or in color. Their fur was silver, brown, gray, black, even a golden color whose brightness reflected the moon. Most were crouched on all fours, tearing at the flesh of the bloody cadavers, ears perked for any disturbance.

One walked upright, though slightly crouched. It seemed to be standing back and observing the others, but to Jack the main significance was that it was standing on two feet.

They must have come in through the same tear in the fence that he had entered. The Prowlers may very well have made that hole, solely for the purpose of hunting. No animal could have done that. They must have stalked the security guards and herded them down onto the field for the slaughter. Efficient and brutal.

As Jack watched, the Prowler closest to him—right about where the shortstop would stand—

glanced up into the stands, almost as though it could see him. Jack froze.

Oh, God, no. I'm not here. I am so not here. He wanted to look around for Artie, but he did not dare move even an inch. Instead, he concentrated on feeling the wind on his face and hands. Which way was it blowing?

Off the field. That was good. So the wind had not carried his scent to them. At least not yet.

The one who had looked at him, a beast with golden fur now spattered with red blood, turned its attention back to its captured prey. It clamped its jaws onto the

dead man's upper thigh, right through the pants of his guard's uniform, and tore with such ferocious power that the fabric shredded and flesh ripped.

Artie, Jack thought. That's what they did to Artie.

Something changed in him. Something snapped. Through the terror and the revulsion, the awe and disbelief, a dangerous calm descended over him. He still felt all of the other emotions, but now new ones began to blossom within him.

Hatred. Fury.

Monsters, he thought as he crawled on hands and knees back to the stairs. Father Pinsky and Corinne were gone, but Artie remained. Silently he led Jack back to the tear in the fence. Not until Jack had walked back over the bridge and into Kenmore Square did Artie speak to him.

"I'm sorry, but you had to see that."

"I know. I wouldn't have believed you if I hadn't seen it myself."

Jack sprinted across the square, dodging traffic and other pedestrians, though there were fewer people on the street now. A bus honked at him, but he ignored it. He bought a cup of coffee and descended into the T station, Artie's ghost in tow.

They stood next to each other as they waited for a train. Jack sipped the coffee and found it almost undrinkable. Almost. He shuddered at the taste, but it did warm him. It was not terribly cold that night, but he needed to be warmed.

People gathered around.

Jack's gaze darted about, and he examined all the strange faces around him, searching for one that did not look exactly right. He was on guard now, and thought he probably always would be. If they could pass for humans, could look like regular people on the street, then every stranger had to be suspect.

Anyone might be a monster.

He closed his eyes tightly and heard the scream from the park again, saw the intelligent yellow eyes look up toward him from the infield. As he heard the screech of metal on metal made by the approaching train, he felt a cold spot form on his upper arm. Artie, he knew, but he did not open his eyes.

"What are you going to do now?" Artie asked.

Jack chuckled dryly, darkly. "What you should always do with monsters. I'm going to kill them."

The train pulled in and he opened his eyes to find that Artie was gone and a number of people close by were giving him odd, fearful looks.

They're wondering if I'm a monster, he thought. He glanced at a few of the people and shook his head sadly. You have no idea, he thought. No idea.

Don loped toward the opening she had torn in the metal to enter Fenway Park with the others falling in dose behind her. Her stomach felt heavy, and she was deeply content with the results of her hunt. The news would be spectacular in the morning, the media would take the story of the guards' murder and turn it into a tale about blasphemy, about the stain such an

act of violence put on the church of professional sports.

Delicious. She loved to make the news. The pack had lasted seven months in Atlanta. That had been the longest. She was beginning to wonder if Boston would earn a record for their shortest stay in any city. At first, Tanzer had insisted on keeping to the fringes, but once Ghirardi had killed the priest, all bets were off. As far as she was concerned, the more colorful the better.

She stood aside, stretched, and let her bones pop and her flesh fold and flow out to cover her true form, her true face. They had left their clothes hidden in a cubbyhole near the gate. Once dressed, she stood aside and let the others slip out before her.

It was only as she pushed through the opening torn in the metal mesh that she caught the scent.

Dori sniffed the air.