Twilight Eyes (52 page)

The flames in the oil lamps throbbed.

In the cage the insane abominations screeched a song of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The stench in the air grew worse by the second.

The ceramic icon, which had first been an object of curiosity and then of amazement and then of speculation, suddenly became an object of unadulterated fear. Staring at it, half mesmerized, I sensed that it held the secret to the heavy goblin presence in Yontsdown. But I also perceived that humanity’s destiny was hostage to the philosophy, forces, and schemes that the icon represented.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cathy Osborn said.

“Yes,” Rya said. “Let’s go, Slim. Let’s go.”

White sky.

Dark lightning.

Rya and Cathy went out to the nearby barn in search of a couple of buckets and a length of rubber tubing—items that ought to be at hand in a cider mill, even now, long after the cider season. If they found what they needed, they would siphon two bucketsful of gasoline out of the police cruiser and bring them into the house.

Cathy Osborn was shaky and looked as if she might be violently ill at any moment, but she gritted her teeth (her jaw muscles popped out with the effort of resisting the urge to vomit) and did what was asked of her. She exhibited a lot more spunk, greater adaptability, and more toughmindedness than I would have expected from someone who had spent her entire life beyond the
real
world and within the sheltered enclaves of academe.

Meanwhile, for me, it was Grand Guignol time once more.

Trying not to look too much at my savaged victims or at the queer and disturbing shadow that I cast while hunched like Quasimodo in the performance of my gruesome task, I dragged the two dead goblins out of the first-floor abattoir, one at a time. I hauled them through the kitchen, which still smelled of fresh-baked pie, and tumbled them down the cellar stairs. Descending after them, I pulled both naked corpses into the middle of the basement floor.

In the cage the ghastly triplets fell silent again. Six mad eyes, some human and some glowing with demonic scarlet light, watched with interest. They showed no grief at the sight of their murdered parents; they were evidently incapable of grief or of understanding what those deaths meant to them. They were not angry, either, nor yet afraid, but simply curious in the manner of inquisitive apes.

I would have to deal with them in a moment.

Not yet. I had to work up to it. I had to shut down my sixth sense as much as possible, harden myself to the unpleasant business of merciless execution.

Leaning over the open top of one of the spherical glass lamps on the altar, I blew out the flame on the floating wick. I carried the lamp to the dead goblins and emptied its flammable contents onto the bodies.

The clear oil made their pale skin glisten.

Their hair darkened as the fuel soaked into it.

Beads of oil trembled on their eyelashes.

The nauseating odor of urine and feces was overlaid with the sharper scent of the combustible fluid.

Still the caged observers were silent, almost breathless.

I could delay no longer. I had tucked the .357 Magnum into my belt. Now I drew it.

When I turned to them and approached the cage, their gazes shifted from the bodies on the floor to the gun. They were precisely as curious about it as they had been about the motionless condition of their parents—wary, perhaps, but not afraid.

I shot the first one in the head.

The two remaining freaks flung themselves back from the bars and flew frenziedly this way and that, shrieking with considerably more volume and emotion than they had shrieked before, seeking a place to hide. Moronic children they might be—even worse than morons: idiots living in a dim world where cause and effect did not exist—but they were smart enough to understand death. l required four more shots to finish them, though it was easy. Too easy. Usually I took pleasure in killing goblins, but I did not have a taste for this slaughter. They were pathetic creatures—no doubt deadly but stupid and not a match for me. Besides, shooting caged adversaries who could not fight back . . . well, it seemed like something a goblin would do and was an act unworthy of a man.

Bundled in their coats, scarves, and boots, Rya and Cathy Osborn returned. Each carried a galvanized bucket that was two-thirds full of gasoline, and they descended the cellar steps with exaggerated care, trying not to spill any of the contents on themselves.

They glanced at the three dead freaks in the cage—and quickly looked away.

Abruptly I was overcome by the urgent feeling that we had stayed in the house too long and that every passing minute brought us closer to discovery by other goblins.

“Let’s get it done with,” Rya whispered, and by that whisper—for which there was no apparent need—she clearly indicated that her apprehension was growing as well.

I took Cathy’s bucket and threw the contents into the cell, liberally splashing the corpses.

As Rya and Cathy retreated to the first floor, taking with them the still-burning oil lamp that had rested on the altar, I poured the second bucketful of gasoline across the cellar floor. Gasping for breath and getting only fumes, I went upstairs, where the women were waiting for me in the kitchen.

Rya held the oil lamp toward me.

“I’ve got gasoline on my hands,” I said, hurrying to the kitchen sink to wash.

Less than a minute later, having scrubbed away the danger of instant self-immolation but acutely aware that we were standing atop a bomb, I accepted the lamp and returned to the cellar steps. Fumes rose in suffocating waves. Afraid that the high concentration of vapors was nearly rich enough to explode when exposed to the flame, I did not hesitate but pitched the glass lamp to the bottom of the stairs.

The copper-tinted sphere struck the concrete and shattered. The flaming wick set fire to the spilled and spreading oil, which gave up a peacock-blue flame, and the burning oil ignited the gasoline. A terrible blaze
roared
to life below. A blast of heat swept up the stairs, so fierce that for a moment I thought it must have set my hair afire as I staggered backward into the kitchen.

Rya and Cathy had already retreated to the back porch. I swiftly followed them. We ran around the house, past the patrol car that was parked near the front porch, and down the half-mile-long driveway.

Even before we reached the perimeter of the forest that encircled the property, we saw firelight reflected on the snow around us. When we looked back, flames had already erupted out of the cellar, through the floor, into the downstairs. The windows glimmered like the orange eyes in a jack-o’-lantern. Then the panes of glass exploded with sharp sounds that carried well on the cold night air.

Now the wind would quickly whip the flames to every gable, to the peak of the roof. The blaze would be so intense that the bodies in the basement would be reduced to ashes and bones. With a little luck, the authorities—goblins every one—might think the fire had been accidental. They might forgo an in-depth investigation that would turn up bullet-shattered bones and other proof of foul play. Even if they were suspicious and found what they looked for, we would have a day or two before the search for goblin killers began.

Nearer the house, the sparkling snow appeared to be stained with blood. Farther away, yellow-orange light and enormous strange shadows writhed, curled, leapt, squirmed, and shimmered across winter’s calcimine mantle.

The first battle of the new war. And we had won.

We turned away from the house and hurried along the drive, into the tunnel formed by overhanging evergreen boughs. The firelight did not reach that far, but though darkness closed in with a vengeance and reduced visibility nearly to zero, we slowed only slightly. From our journey in to the house, we knew there were no major obstacles along the way. Although we ran blindly, we enjoyed at least a small measure of confidence that we would not break our legs in unexpected ditches or be knocked flat by barrier chains meant to keep out intruders.

Shortly we reached the main road and, turning north, soon came to the station wagon. Rya drove. Cathy sat up front. I sat in back with the police revolver in my lap, half expecting goblins to appear and stop us, fully prepared to blow them away if they did.

Miles later I could still hear (in memory) the eerie oscillating cries of the three misbegotten goblin children.

We took Cathy to a gas station and accompanied her and the serviceman back to her car. He quickly determined that her battery was dead, a situation for which he had come prepared. He’d put a suitable new battery in his Dodge truck before leaving the station. He was able to install it right there at the side of the highway, in the more than adequate light of a portable work lamp that plugged into the cigarette lighter of his truck.

When Cathy’s Pontiac was running again, when the serviceman had been paid and had gone, she glanced at Rya and me, then lowered her haunted gaze to the frozen earth at her feet. Pushed by the bitter wind, white clouds of exhaust vapor billowed toward the front of the car. “What the hell happens now?” she said shakily.

“You were on your way to New York,” I said.

She laughed without humor. “I might as well have been on my way to the moon.”

A pickup and a gleaming new Cadillac passed by. The drivers glanced at us.

“Let’s get in the car,” Rya said, shivering. “We’ll be warm in there.”

We would also be less conspicuous.

Cathy got behind the wheel, turned sideways so I could see her profile from the backseat. Rya sat up front with her.

“I can’t just go on with my life as if nothing had happened,” Cathy said.

“But you must,” Rya said gently yet forcefully. “That’s really what life’s about—going on as if nothing has happened. And you certainly can’t appoint yourself savior of the world, can’t go around with a megaphone shouting that demons are passing for ordinary people and are walking among us. Everyone would think you’d just gone crazy. Everyone except the goblins.”

“And they’d deal with you damn quick,” I said.

Cathy nodded. “I know . . . I know.” She was silent for a moment, then said plaintively, “But . . . how can I go back to New York, back to Barnard, not knowing which ones are goblins? How can I trust anyone ever again? How can I dare to marry anyone, not really knowing what he
is
? Maybe he’ll want to marry me just to torture me, to have his own private plaything. You know what I mean, Slim—the way your uncle married your aunt and then brought grief to your whole family. How can I have friends, real friends, with whom I can be open, direct, and truthful? Do you see? It’s worse for me than for you, because I don’t have your ability to
see
the goblins. I can’t tell the difference between them and us, so I have to assume
everyone’s
a goblin; that’s the only safe thing to do. You can see them, separate them from our kind, so you aren’t alone; but I’ll have to be alone, always alone, totally alone, utterly and forever alone, because trusting in anyone could be the end of me. Alone . . . What kind of life will that be?”

When she outlined her plight, it seemed obvious, yet until now I had not realized what a terrible box she was in. And no way out of that box, as far as I could see.

Rya looked at me from the front seat.

I shrugged, not casually but with frustration and a certain amount of misery.

Cathy Osborn sighed and shuddered, torn between despair and terror—two emotions that were difficult to contain simultaneously, since the latter presupposes hope while the former denies it.

After a moment more of silence Cathy said, “I might as well pick up a megaphone and start trying to save the world, even if they do put me in a madhouse, because I’ll wind up there, anyway. I mean . . . day after day, wondering who around me is one of
them,
always needing to be suspicious—in time that’ll take a toll. And not a lot of time, either. I’ll crack fast, ’cause I’m an extrovert by nature; I need contact with people. So before long I really
will
be a raving paranoid, ready for the asylum. Then they’ll lock me up. And don’t you figure there’re bound to be a lot of goblins on the staff of any institution like that, where people are locked up and helpless and easy game?”