Part 15 (1/2)
”When?”
”Palomo Grove is built on bad land. The earth beneath our feet feels solid enough but it's on the move.”
”So the whole town could go the way of Buddy Vance? Is that what you're saying?”
”You can quote me as long as you don't name me.”
”That's fine by me.”
”Got what you need?”
”More than enough.”
”No such thing,” Hotchkiss observed. ”Not with bad news. Excuse me, would you?”
There had been a sudden galvanizing of forces around the fissure. Leaving Grillo with a punchline for his story any comedian would have envied, Hotchkiss strode off to oversee the raising of Buddy Vance.
In his bedroom Tommy-Ray lay and sweated. He'd come out of the sunlight and closed the windows, then drawn the curtains. Sealing the room thus had made it into an oven, but the heat and the gloom soothed him. In their embrace he didn't feel so alone, and exposed, as he'd felt in the bright, clean air of the Grove. Here he could smell his own juices as they oozed from his pores; his own stale breath as it rose from his throat and dropped back down over his face. If Jo-Beth had cheated on him then he would have to seek out new company, and where better to begin than with himself?
He'd heard her come back to the house in the early afternoon, and argue with Momma, but he didn't try to catch the words between them. If her pathetic romance was already falling apart-and why else would she be sobbing on the stairs?- then that was her own d.a.m.n fault. He had more important business.
Lying in the heat, the strangest pictures came haunting his head. They all rose from a darkness which his curtained room couldn't hope to match. Was that, perhaps, why they were incomplete as yet? Fragments of a scheme he wanted pa.s.sionately to grasp but that kept slipping from him. In them, there was blood; there was rock; there was a pale, flickering creature his gut turned at seeing. And there was a man he could not make out but who would, if he sweated enough, come clear in front of him.
When he did, the waiting would be over.
First, there was a shout of alarm from the fissure. Men around the hole, Spilmont and Hotchkiss included, set to work to haul the men up, but whatever was taking place underground was too violent to be controlled from the surface. The cop closest to the crevice cried out as the rope he was holding suddenly tightened around his gloved hand and he was jerked towards the lip like a hooked fish. It was Spilmont who saved him, taking hold of the man from behind long enough for him to pull his fingers free of the gloves. As both fell backwards on to the ground the shouts from below multiplied, supplemented by warnings from above.
”It's opening!” somebody yelled. ”Jesus Christ, it's opening!”
Grillo was a physical coward until he sniffed news; then he was ready to stand face to face with anything. He pushed past Hotchkiss and a cop to get a better view of what was happening. n.o.body stopped him; not with their own safety to consider. Dust was rising from the widening fissure, blinding the anchormen who were holding the ropes on which the retrieval party's life depended. Even as he watched, one of the men was hauled towards the crevice, from which shrieks that suggested ma.s.sacre were rising. He added his as the earth went to dust beneath his heels. Somebody threw himself past Grillo in the confusion and attempted to s.n.a.t.c.h at the man but too late. The rope tightened. He was pulled out of sight, leaving his failed savior face down at the edge of the crack. Grillo took three steps towards the survivor, barely able to see either the ground or its absence beneath his feet. He felt its tremors, however, rising through his legs and up his spine, throwing his thoughts into chaos. Instinct sufficed. Legs spread to keep his balance, he reached down for the fallen man. It was Hotchkiss, face bloodied when he'd hit the earth, a dazed look in his eyes. Grillo yelled his name. The man responded by grabbing at Grillo's proffered arm, as the ground around them both split open.
Side by side on the motel bed, neither Jo-Beth nor Howie woke, though both gasped and shuddered like lovers saved from drowning. There had been dreams of water for them both. Of a dark sea which was carrying them towards some wonderful place. But their journey had been interrupted. Something below their dreaming selves had s.n.a.t.c.hed at them, dragging them out of that lulling tide and down into a shaft of rock and pain. Men were screaming all around them as they fell to their deaths, ropes following like obedient snakes.
Somewhere in the confusion they heard each other, each sobbing the other's name, but there wasn't time for reunion before their downward motion was checked and an upward surge caught them. It was icy cold; a torrent of water from a river that had never seen the sun but mounted the chasm now, bearing dead men, dreamers and whatever else occupied this nightmare, before it. The walls became a blur as they rose to meet the sky.
Grillo and Hotchkiss were four yards from the fissure when the waters broke, the violence of the breakage enough to throw them off their feet as a freezing rain fell. It stung Hotchkiss from his daze. He grabbed hold of Grillo's arm, hollering: ”Look at that!”
There was something alive in the flood. Grillo saw it for the briefest of moments-a form, or forms-that seemed human as he glimpsed them but left on his inner eye another impression entirely, like the after-burn of fireworks. He shook the image off and looked again. But whatever he'd seen had gone.
”We got to get out!” he heard Hotchkiss yell. The ground was still cracking. They hauled themselves upright, their feet scrabbling in the mud for purchase, and ran blindly through rain and dust, only knowing they'd reached the perimeter when they tripped over the rope. One of the retrieval team, his hand half gone, lay where the first spurt had dropped him. Beyond rope and body, in the cover of the trees, were Spilmont and a number of cops. The rain came down lightly here, tapping on the canopy like a midsummer shower, while behind the storm from the earth roared itself out.
Soaking with his own sweat, Tommy-Ray stared at the ceiling and laughed. He hadn't had a ride like that since the summer before last, out at Topanga, when a freak tide had thrown up a magnificent swell. He, Andy and Scan had ridden it for hours, high on speed.
”I'm ready,” he said, wiping salt-water from his eyes. ”Ready and willing. Just come get me, whoever the f.u.c.k you are.”
Howie looked dead, lying on the bed all bundled up, his teeth clenched, his eyes closed. Jo-Beth backed away, hand to her mouth to block the panic, her words-Dear G.o.d forgive me-coming in m.u.f.fled sobs. They'd done wrong, even lying together on the same bed. It was a crime against the laws of the Lord to dream the way she'd dreamt (of him naked beside her on a warm sea, their hair intertwined the way she'd wanted their bodies to be) and what had that dream brought? Cataclysm! Blood, rock and a terrible rain which had killed him in his sleep.
Dear G.o.d, forgive me- He opened his eyes so suddenly her prayer deserted her. In its place, his name.
”Howie? You're alive.”
He unknotted himself, reaching out to claim his spectacles from beside the bed. He put them on. Her shock came into focus.
”You dreamed it too,” he said.
”It wasn't like a dream. It was real.” She was shaking from head to foot. ”What have we done, Howie?”
”Nothing,” he said, coughing the growl from his throat. ”We've done nothing.”
”Momma was right. I shouldn't have-”
”Stop it,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing up. ”We've done nothing wrong.”
”What was that then?” she said.
”A bad dream.”
”In both our heads?”
”Maybe it wasn't the same,” he said, hoping to calm her.
”I was floating, with you beside me. Then I was underground. Men were screaming-”
”All right-” he said.
”It was the same.”
”Yes.”
”See?” she said. ”Whatever's between us...it's wrong. Maybe it's the Devil's work.”
”You don't believe that.”
”I don't know what I believe,” she said. He moved towards her, but she kept him at bay with a gesture. ”Don't, Howie. It's not right. We shouldn't touch each other.” She started towards the door. ”I have to go.”
”This is...is...is...absurd,” he said, but no stumbling words of his were going to stop her leaving. She was already fumbling with the security bolt he'd put on when she'd entered.
”I'll get it,” he said, leaning past her to open the door. In lieu of any comforting words he kept a silence which she only broke with: ”Goodbye.”
”You're not giving us time to think this through.”
”I'm afraid, Howie,” she said. ”You're right, I don't believe the Devil's in this. But if he isn't, who is? Have you got any answers for that?”
She was barely able to keep her emotions in check; she kept gulping air as if trying to swallow, and failing. The sight of her distress made him long to hug her, but what had been invited last night was now forbidden.
”No,” he told her. ”No answers.”
She took the cue of his reply to leave him at the door. He watched her for a count of five, defying himself to stand and let her go, knowing what had happened between them was more significant than anything he'd experienced in eighteen years of breathing the air of the planet. At five, he closed the door.