Psychlone (14 page)

“Mr. Fowler, you're occupying these premises illegally. You've broken a seal and I don't know what else, and it looks like you had a drunken ball around here. I don't know whether to arrest you or just kick you the hell out. Any damage in the cabin?"

“No, sir. I've been keeping it clean. Cleaning the bathroom regularly.” He managed to hold back his smile this time, but just barely. The sheriff pierced him with a glance.

“You still stoned?"

“I have not been stoned, and what you see now is relief. You've just saved me from a task bigger than I could handle."

“What would that be?"

Fowler pointed to the cars and the trees. “I didn't do any of this. How could I? Take a look at the cars.” His eye fell on the dirt where the gravel had been removed. He walked over to the bare spot and pointed at a hoofprint in the dirt.

“Do you have pigs this large around here?"

“No pigs at all."

Prohaska came to the cabin door, dressed in his fawn-colored suit, walking awkwardly. “Hello, Howard,” he greeted the sheriff.

“Sam, are you all crazy here? This woman tells me her boyfriend is camping out in a secured cabin, fighting off ghosts—what in hell happened to you?"

Prohaska shook his head. “I wasn't drunk, and I was here for the same reasons as Mr. Fowler. But I don't know how to tell about it. You're a pretty level-headed fellow."

The sheriff nodded.

“All the worse,” Prohaska concluded. “Come in, have some coffee—for my sake, please—and I'll try to tell you. Mr. Fowler isn't crazy, and he has all kinds of evidence to prove it."

Fowler took Dorothy's hand and led her into the cabin. In the kitchen, she helped him prepare the coffee and warmed up a few frozen breakfast rolls. The sheriff ate hesitantly, uncertain about the legalities, as Prohaska related what had happened.

Fowler drained his cup and swore softly.

“What's the matter?” Dorothy asked.

“The chart paper has to be replaced. I let it go last night—broke the record.” While he worked over the recorder, he talked about the equipment and mentioned he had first come to the cabin at Henry Taggart's request.

Parkins sipped his coffee slowly, not reacting to anything yet, his eyes going back and forth between Fowler and Prohaska.

“You knew Henry Taggart well?” he asked.

“Went to high school together. Kept in touch after I came back from Vietnam."

“You dabble in this occult stuff?"

“Never have before. And I hope never to again."

“Mr. Fowler, Sam, I don't know what to do with you. Sam here has done five or six stories on this area, he's a smart fellow, and fair, too. I don't know about you, Mr. Fowler. I'd trust almost anything Sam says. But Jesus, you're telling me a pig made out of rocks did all this damage, wrecked two cars and ripped up a forest?"

Fowler nodded. “And worked over Sam."

“You need a doctor, Sam?” Parkins asked.

“Not immediately. I can wait for a couple of hours. But I'm sore as hell."

“There aren't any birds outside,” Dorothy said. “I couldn't hear anything singing or moving. It was so quiet."

“Water's all around the place now,” Fowler said. “I don't know how it will react."

Fowler made a last check of the cabin, to be sure everything was as it had been, then took Henry's key from his pocket and locked the front door. The emotions he was feeling were too mixed to sort out and identify, but he knew he had failed.

What evidence he had was ridiculous, useless to convince a world even more incredulous than he was—had been. No, he was incredulous still—despite what had happened, he hardly believed the past few days himself.

He took Dorothy by the arm and walked with her to the police car.

“I'll have a tow truck out here by tomorrow morning,” Parkins said. He opened the rear door of his car for them. Fowler started to get into the back seat, then hesitated and snapped his fingers. “I left the bag of gravel in the kitchen,” he said. Prohaska looked at him from the front seat and nodded.

“It'll wait. We'll get it to you by mail, if it's so important,” Parkins said.

Fowler agreed meekly and stepped in. Dorothy sat beside him, hands folded in her lap, silent. Her face was rigid. He glanced at her, then turned away to look at the cabin. As if nothing had happened, it was unmarred—but for a few scratches on the front door—and serene.

The sheriff backed the car out, turned it around, and drove down the gravel drive.

“It'll be glad to see us go, I think,” Fowler said. Dorothy flinched.

They were almost to the new stream when a loud bang and the car's sudden wobble made the sheriff brake to a stop. They all sat mute for a second. Prohaska looked out the window. “Blew a tire,” he said.

“I don't believe it,” Parkins said. He opened his door and walked around the car to examine the damage. “Mr. Fowler, you'll have to help me move your equipment to get at the spare."

Fowler waited for him to open the door on his side—there was no interior handle—and pulled his cases out of the trunk, laying them carefully on the gravel. Together they hoisted the tire and jack out and carried them to the front right fender. “You know how to set this kind of jack up?” the sheriff asked. Fowler nodded.

“Can I help?” Prohaska asked.

“Just get out of the car, both of you. Mr. Fowler and I will handle it."

“I'm not helpless, you know.” Then, under his breath, “It wants us to stay for lunch."

“Stop it,” Dorothy said firmly. “I don't want to hear any more about it."

Fowler placed the jack under the car frame and began to pump the handle. Slowly the car lifted from the deflated tire. “Okay, that's enough,” the sheriff said. “Here, there's a safety on the jack.” He pointed and Fowler flipped the little clip. Using the pry-bar, the sheriff removed the hub cap and began to strain at the nuts. “Goddamn electric wrenches put these things on too tight,” he said.

Fowler grinned sympathetically and helped apply pressure on the other nuts. They slipped the tire off and replaced it with the spare.

Fowler slapped at a mosquito, then looked at his palm. He had hit it. There was the evidence—a smear of blood, fragments of insect. The blood smear turned black. The fragments powdered and fell away. He put his hand down slowly and looked around. “Better hurry,” he told the sheriff.

“Why?"

“Just hurry."

There was a crashing in the woods behind them. Prohaska jerked and moaned as his bruised hand hit the open car door. Fowler held the nuts out to Parkins one by one.

“What will it do when it finds out it's trapped?” Prohaska asked. Fowler glanced at Dorothy, whose face was stony, and shook his head.

The tire was on and the nuts were tight. He put the hubcap in place and the sheriff slapped it with his palm. It refused to clamp in easily. Each time he hit one side, the other flopped out. They hit it together, tangling their arms, and it clanged into place.

Parkins stood and brushed off his knees. Fowler approached the open door as the sheriff let the car down and pulled the jack away. He was lugging it to the trunk when more snapping and crashing noises came from the woods. Fowler looked up the gentle slope toward the cabin. At the crest of the rise, a two-legged figure was standing, arms raised.

“Hold it,” Parkins said. “There's someone up there."

“Get in the car,” Fowler said. “Please!”

“It's gray,” Prohaska said, gripping the car door. “Sheriff, get us out of here."

Parkins packed the jack away and sighed raggedly. “You lift your equipment in, I'm going up to see what he's doing here."

“Sheriff—"

“Mr. Fowler, don't tempt me to change my mind about you! Nobody is going to wander around this area, is that understood?"

“It's not someone, look at it!"

The road was covered by tree shadows and the figure was indistinct across the thirty yards. Parkins squinted, then held his hand over his eyes to cut the sun glaring in his face from the West. “Stay here,” he said. Fowler quickly loaded his cases while Parkins hiked up the incline. Dorothy and Prohaska got into the car.

“Whoever you are, you're not supposed to be here,” the sheriff said loudly. The figure didn't move. Parkins swatted at flies buzzing around his head and repeated what he'd said.

“What's happening, Larry?” Dorothy asked.

“I don't know."

Prohaska leaned out the car window. “Howard, stay away from it!"

Parkins stopped and put his hands on his hips. “You! You heard anything I've said? Come down from there."

The figure lowered its arms and appeared to hunch its shoulders. A low hum rose from the woods. Parkins backed away a step and put his hand on his pistol. “Down from there right now,” he growled, unstrapping the holster flap. A cloud rose around the figure's feet, as if a dust devil was swirling. The sheriff started to walk backward.

Fowler ran toward him and grabbed his left arm, leaving his gun hand free. He tugged and Parkins stumbled after him, still trying to face the crest of the rise.

Fowler aimed him for the driver's seat. “Get in, get us out of here or you'll need a tow truck for this car, too.” Parkins started the engine and Fowler climbed into the back seat, grabbing the window edge to pull the door shut.

The dust around the figure cleared and Dorothy sucked in her breath.

“The pig,” Prohaska said, looking back.

It was at least as large as it had been the night before. Bits of gravel rose from the road bed and collected on its surface, adding to its bulk as Fowler watched. It advanced one foreleg, then the other, awkward, as if remembering how to move. The car lurched forward.

The boar leaped and scrambled. The entire forest shrieked.

It knew. Fowler pushed Dorothy into a crouch and covered the back of his neck. The gravel beast bounded into the air as the car skidded toward the new creek. Its forelegs crazed the rear window and punched a hole through, sending a shower of pebbles onto their necks. It bellowed with a nauseating, slate-squeaky edge and kicked at the rear of the car. The front tires hit the water and the car slewed on fresh mud and silt until it lay half in the creek. Parkins put it into reverse and backed up, ramming something heavy and unyielding, like a post.

Fowler didn't dare look back. Dorothy was hyperventilating and trying to scream, unable to make any effective noise.

“Fucking hell!” the sheriff bellowed.

The engine died. At the same moment, the boar's attack stopped. Parkins turned the key and the wet engine sputtered. The longer they stayed in the water, the less chance there was that the engine would start.

Dorothy began to pray in sobbing half-audible syllables. Fowler wondered if a cross would help. Somehow, he didn't think the creature was religiously observant. It was too primal.

He raised his head and looked back through the cracked rear window. He could see a dark shape lumbering behind them, and through a hole in the glass he discerned the pebbled skin.

All around the car, the trees were shivering.

The shape vanished for a moment. The car bounced as the thing landed on the roof. A stony hoof crashed through the rear window and stopped against the back of the seat, flexing this way and that.

He pushed Dorothy against the door and backed himself up to the rear seat. The hoof withdrew. A dancing series of beats on the roof followed Parkins’ attempt to start the engine again.

The engine caught, coughed, then held. The sheriff gunned it and put it into drive. The car leaped forward and the boar fell off the roof, lancing another hole through the window, catching one leg and being dragged, wailing, across the creek. The car raced up the last portion of the drive and skidded onto the road, almost across it into the field beyond. Parkins straightened it out and floored the accelerator. Tires smoking, they bounced and wobbled across the asphalt until the tread grabbed and they were off.

Fowler shook his head and began to laugh helplessly. He could think of no more appropriate reaction. The boar—what he could see of it—had broken up as soon as they crossed the creek.

They were home free.

It was trapped.

Haverstock, Illinois, was a bedroom community for Chicago. Each day, twenty thousand commuters took trains and cars into the city, and each night they returned. The town itself was old and honorable, with new housing tracts surrounding a central downtown district. The sprawl had been fast and unorganized in the forties, and now there were only a few open areas, broad fields and empty hillsides, between the developments.

In three acres of such open space, Charles Q. Taylor had built a geodesic cabin and set up a business which was riding the wave of current fads. His front and back garages and toolsheds were filled with stacked lengths of rod and piping. As a showplace and training area for salesmen, the acre in front of the round house was littered with samples of his stock-in-trade: pyramids.

The hollow frameworks, some covered with plastic sheeting and some open to the winds, gave a playgroundlike air to the yard. The pipes and rods were painted in rainbow colors. Accessories were placed in a neat single-wide mobile-home parked twenty yards from the house. The whole area was enclosed by chain-link fencing.

Taylor was a bachelor and alone for the first time in a week. The night was cold and still, clear enough to almost reach up and touch the stars and moon. He finished his dinner at seven-thirty and stood on the back porch, smoking a pipe and casually looking for constellations. There was a kind of turbulence or cloud cover to the west, a rippling effect not unlike the northern lights, which he had seen once from the general vicinity of Haverstock, but of course not in the west. He wondered if he had missed the sunset results of a rocket misfire.

Taylor, unlike many people in his business, genuinely believed in his merchandise. He had put tiny pyramids in his bathroom and bedroom, and in them he kept his razor blades, bars of soap, even bottles of vitamin C, to preserve them. When he swore an oath about his merchandise's efficacy in concentrating the pyramidic energy of the cosmos, he was honest and devoted.