Part 39 (2/2)

She was twenty-eight years old and a high-priced call girl by the time her short unhappy life came to an end. One of her johns wanted something kinkier than she was willing to provide, and the argument swiftly led to violence. She was killed five weeks before Dan located her, and she was one month in the ground by the time that he paid a visit. He had missed meeting his brother by twelve years, and that had been sad but not as painful as missing a meeting with his sister by only thirty days.

He told himself that she would have been a stranger to him. They would have had little or nothing in common. She might not have been glad to see him, what with him being a cop and her a call girl. And he very well might have been sorry to meet the woman his sister had become. Almost certainly, given the circ.u.mstances, a reunion and any subsequent relations.h.i.+p would have been filled with much anguish and little joy. But he had been only twenty-two, a rookie on the force, when he had found his sister's grave, and at twenty-two he hadn't been as tough emotionally as he was now; he had wept for her. h.e.l.l, even these days, after more than fifteen years of policework, fifteen years of seeing people who'd been shot and knifed and beaten and strangled, after being considerably roughened by the work he did, he still sometimes wept for her and for his lost brother when, in the darkest hour of a sleepless night, he dwelt too intently upon the past that might have been.

He held himself, in part, responsible for Carrie's death. He felt that he should have worked harder to track her down, should have located her in time to save her. Yet he also knew that he deserved none of the blame. Even if he had found her sooner, no words or actions would have influenced her to give up life as a call girl; nothing he could have done would have kept her from that rendezvous with the homicidal john. The guilt that nagged at him wasn't earned. It was, instead, just one more example of his Atlas complex: He had a tendency to take the whole world on his shoulders. He understood himself; he could even laugh at himself, and sometimes he said that (considering his capacity and enthusiasm for guilt) he should have been Jewish. But being able to laugh at himself did not in any way lessen his sense of responsibility.

Therefore, when sleep remained teasingly beyond his reach, his thoughts often went to Delmar, Carrie, and Cindy Lakey. In the dark he would ponder humanity's capacity for murder, and he would consider his own frequent inability to save the living, and sooner or later he would even explore the idea that his mother had died at his own hands because complications from childbirth had taken her life. Crazy. But the subject made him a little crazy. The fact of death. The fact of murder. The fact that a violent savage hid deep within every man and woman. He wasn't able to come to terms with those inescapable facts, and he supposed he never would. He persisted in believing that life was precious and that humanity was n.o.ble - or at least was meant for n.o.bility. Delmar to Carrie to Cindy Lakey: that was the usual late-night progression of memories. When he got that far, he often found himself teetering on the edge of an abyss of irrationality and guilt and despair, and he would sometimes - not often but sometimes - get up, switch on a lamp, and drink until he knocked himself unconscious.

Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey.

If he failed to save the McCaffreys, their names would be added to that list, and henceforth the progression of unwanted memories would be longer: Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey ... Melanie, and Laura.

He wouldn't be able to live with himself then. He knew he was only one cop, only a man like any other, not Atlas, not a knight in s.h.i.+ning armor, but deep inside, there was a part of him that wanted wanted to be that knight; and it was that part - the dreamer, the n.o.ble fool - that made living worthwhile. If that part of him were ever snuffed out, he couldn't imagine going on. That was why he had to protect Laura and Melanie as if they were his own family. He had come to care for them, and if he let them die now, he too would be dead - at least emotionally and psychologically. to be that knight; and it was that part - the dreamer, the n.o.ble fool - that made living worthwhile. If that part of him were ever snuffed out, he couldn't imagine going on. That was why he had to protect Laura and Melanie as if they were his own family. He had come to care for them, and if he let them die now, he too would be dead - at least emotionally and psychologically.

Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey. .. The progression ran its course, and at last he drifted off to sleep with the soft breathing of Laura and Melanie in the background, like the susurration of a faraway sea.

Sheldon Tolbeck ran into the night, across the white meadow, through snow that was almost knee-deep in places. The mountainside was doubly frosted by both severe cold and frigid lunar light. As he raced from the cabin, he exhaled plumes of vapor and kicked up clouds of snow that drifted away like ghosts behind him; the appearance of ectoplasm was imparted to them by the phantasmagorical radiance of the moon.

From the cabin came Renseveer's screams, which carried well on the bitter air and echoed back from some far-off vale. The clarity of the air and the peculiarities of the terrain were such that even the echo re-echoed, again and again, until there was a hideous chorus of screams. From that unnerving cacophony, one might have thought the door of h.e.l.l itself lay in this high fastness and was open wide. The screams put the fear of the devil in Tolbeck, and he ran as if the hounds of h.e.l.l were nipping at his heels.

He was wearing boots but no coat, and at first the piercingly cold wind was painful. But then, as he persisted in his mad plunge toward the far end of the meadow, the wind became like a thousand needles delivering a dose of powerful anesthetic. Within fifty or sixty yards of the cabin, his face and hands went half numb. The sharp air penetrated his flannel s.h.i.+rt and his jeans, and within a hundred yards his entire body seemed to be under the influence of Novocaine. He knew this merciful lack of feeling would not last more than a few minutes; it was nothing more than shock. Soon, the pain would return, and the cold would be like a crab moving through his bones and tearing out bits of his marrow with its icy claws.

Not sure where he was going, driven not by reason but by stark terror, he floundered through a drift that was piled up along one edge of the meadow, and then he was into the woods. Ma.s.sive firs and spruces and pines towered over him. The phosphoric moonlight reached the forest floor only through a few scattered holes between the giant and closely packed trees. Where the rays of the moon got through, they were like wan searchlight beams, and everything in those shafts of faint luminescence seemed unreal, otherworldly. Elsewhere, the forest was wrapped in darkness that varied from pitch black to blue, to purple, to charcoal gray.

Tolbeck staggered forward, his hands held out in front of him. He walked into trees. He tripped over rocks and exposed roots. He plunged unexpectedly down the side of a gully, fell on his face, got up, went on. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness but not quickly, and for the most part he could see little of the land ahead of him, yet he rushed forward at a fast walk, often at a run, for Renseveer's screams had come to an end a few minutes ago - which meant that Tolbeck himself was now the prey. He stumbled and dropped painfully to his knees. He got up. He went on. He blundered through ice-sheathed brush that crackled, poked at him, scratched, and sc.r.a.ped. He went on. He ran into a low-hanging pine branch that lacerated his scalp, and the blood that flowed down his face seemed boiling hot by contrast with his half-frozen skin. He went on.

He found himself in a wide, shallow wash bottomed with rocks, pieces of deadwood, and occasional heaps of withered brush and silt deposited by the runoff from the last rain before autumn had phased into winter. There was some ice, a little snow where the densely packed boughs of the trees parted to let it in, but for the most part the going was easier than it had been outside the wash. He followed it upward for a few hundred yards until it narrowed and then choked off near the top of the ridge.

He scrambled up a short steep slope, into an area where the trees thinned out, clutching at brush and granite outcroppings that were partly crusted with snow and partly swept clean by the wind. His hands were so cold and stiff that he could not feel the cuts and bruises that he surely had sustained in the climb.

Finally, on the high crest of the ridge, his total exhaustion overcame his panic. Tolbeck crumpled in a heap, unable to go another step.

The trees were spa.r.s.e, the wind found him again, and moonlight and snow were all around. After a moment in which he unsuccessfully tried to catch his breath, Tolbeck crawled into the shelter and the shadows afforded by a nearby tooth of granite. He slumped there, peering down the wall of the ravine, squinting with bleak expectation into the lightless lower slopes of the wash through which he had ascended.

The only sound was the wind hissing through the needled branches of the evergreens and whispering across the rocky crag of the ledge. Of course, that didn't mean the psychogeist was not stalking him. It might be down there, coming toward him out of the trees, but it would make no sound as it approached.

Nothing moved except occasional snow devils whirling across the crest of the ridge and evergreen boughs stirred by the wind. But even as he squinted into the darkness below, Tolbeck realized that watching for his enemy was pointless, stupid, for if the psychogeist was moving in on him, he would not see it. It had no substance, but infinite power. It had no form, only strength. It had no body, just consciousness and will ... and a maniacal thirst for vengeance and blood.

He would not detect it until it was upon him.

If it found him, he could do nothing to defeat it.

However, he was not a quitter, never had been and never would be, so he was unable to accept the hopelessness of his situation. Hugging himself and s.h.i.+vering, pressing up against the sheltering granite formation, Tolbeck peered intently into the forest below, strained to hear any sound that was not produced by the wind - and told himself, over and over, that the thing would not come, would not find him, would not tear him limb from limb.

Immobility meant less body heat, and within minutes the cold had sunk numberless talons into his flesh. He shuddered uncontrollably, and his teeth chattered, and he found that he couldn't completely uncurl the bent fingers of his gloveless hands. His skin was not only cold but dry, and his lips were cracking, bleeding. His misery was so complete that he couldn't restrain his tears, which collected in his mustache and beard stubble, where they quickly froze.

With all his heart, Tolbeck wished that he had never met Dylan McCaffrey and w.i.l.l.y Hoffritz, wished that he had never seen that gray room or the girl who had been taught to find the door to December.

Who would have imagined the experiments could get this far out of hand or that such a thing as this would be unleashed?

Something moved below.

Tolbeck gasped, and the sudden intake of subfreezing air hurt his throat and made his lungs ache.

Something cracked, thudded, snapped.

A deer, he thought. There are deer in these mountains. But it wasn't a deer.

He remained on his knees, cowering against the rocks, hoping that he might still be able to hide, although he knew that he was deluding himself.

Something rattled below. The queer noise grew louder, closer. A small, hard object snapped against Tolbeck's chest, startling him, then clattered to the frozen ground.

He saw it roll away from him and come to rest in the moonlight. A pebble.

From below, the malign, psychotic spirit-thing had thrown a pebble at him.

Silence.

It was playing with him.

More rattling. He was struck again, twice, not hard, but harder than he had been struck the first time.

He saw another stone drop to the ground in front of him: a white pebble about the size of a marble. The clattering was made by pebbles rolling and bouncing and skipping up the side of the ravine, snapping against larger stones and rebounding as they came.

The psychogeist pitched with unerring accuracy. Tolbeck wanted to run. He had no strength.

He looked wildly left and right. Even if he had possessed the strength to run, he had nowhere to go.

He looked at the night sky. The stars were sharp and cold. He had never seen a sky so forbidding.

He realized that he was praying. The Lord's Prayer. He hadn't prayed in twenty years.

Suddenly a lot more rattling arose, a torrent of up-rus.h.i.+ng pebbles, dozens, scores, hundreds of little stones, a rattle-tick-snick-snap-click-clack-crack that built until it was like the sound of a hailstorm on a concrete parking lot. Abruptly a squall of stones burst over the crest of the ridge, spewing out of the darkness, waves of half-glimpsed missiles in the pale moonlight, spinning at Tolbeck, ricocheting off his skull, rapping his face and arms and hands and body. None of the projectiles was traveling at the speed of a bullet or even half fast enough to be lethal, but all of them were painful.

And now it was not as if the pebbles were being thrown at him but as if the laws of gravity had been suspended on the slope, at least in respect to small stones, for they came up in a veritable river, Jesus, hundreds of them, and he was caught in the center of those punis.h.i.+ng currents. He drew his knees up. He tucked his head down and covered it with his arms. He tried to squeeze even farther into the granite niche where he had hoped to hide, but the pebbles found him.

Occasionally, he was pummeled by pieces of stone too large to be called pebbles. Small rocks. And some that were not so small. He cried out each time that one of those found him, for it was worse than taking a blow from a fist.

He was bleeding and bruised. He thought one of the rocks had broken his left wrist.

The hard music on the slope, a deadly song of pure percussion, changed: The hailstorm patter of upwardly cascading pebbles was now punctuated by heavier thuds and cracks. Those noises were made by the small rocks bounding along the ridge wall to take their whacks at him. He was being stoned to death by something he could not see, and he was no longer praying but was screaming instead. However, even above his screams, he could hear the distant and terrible sound of boulders boulders rolling inexorably toward the top of the ridge. rolling inexorably toward the top of the ridge.

The entire slope below seemed to be tearing loose and churning upward, cataclysmically divorcing itself from the crust of the earth, as though divine judgment had required the planet to disperse its substance, and as though the fulfillment of that harsh judgment was beginning here. The ground shook with a series of violent concussions transmitted through the rough granite beneath him, as each bounce of each oncoming boulder generated the energy equivalent to a grenade explosion.

<script>