Part 31 (1/2)

They had reached the bottom of the slope and were charging across the flat ground of the garden, with Hiram in the lead. I stood and waited for them, with the club half raised, watching Hiram run toward me, with the white gash of his teeth s.h.i.+ning in the darkness of his face.

Right between the eyes, I told myself, and split his skull wide open. And after that get another of them if there were time to do it.

The fire was roaring now, racing through the dryness of the house, and even where I stood the heat reached out to touch me.

The men were closing in and I raised the club a little higher, working my fingers to get a better grip upon it.

But in that last instant before they came within my reach, they skidded to a milling halt, some of them half turning to run back up the slope, the others simply staring, with their mouths wide open in astonishment and horror. Staring, not at me, but at something that was beyond me.

Then they broke and ran, back toward the slope, and above the roaring of the burning house, I could hear their bellowing-like stampeded cattle racing before a prairie fire, bawling out their terror as they ran.

I swung around to look behind me and there stood those other things from that other world, their ebon hides gleaming in the flicker of the firelight, their silver plumes stirring gently in the breeze. And as they moved toward me, they twittered in their weird bird-song.

My G.o.d, I thought, they couldn't wait! They came a little early so they wouldn't miss a single tremor of this terror-stricken place.

And not only on this night, but on other nights to come, rolling back

the time to this present instant. A new place for them to stand and wait for it to commence, a new ghost house with gaping windows through which they'd glimpse the awfulness of another earth.

They were moving toward me and I was standing there with the club gripped in my hands and there was the smell of purpleness again and a soundless voice I recognized.

Go back, the voice said. Go back. You've come too soon. This world isn't open.

Someone was calling from far away, the call lest in the thundering and the crackling of the fire and the high, excited, liquid trilling of these ghouls from the purple world of Tupper Tyler.

Go back, said the elm tree, and its voiceless words cracked like a snapped whiplash.

And they were going back-or, at least, they were disappearing, melting into some strange darkness that was blacker than the night.

One elm tree that talked, I thought, and how many other trees? How much of this place still was Millville and how much purple world? I lifted my head so that I could see the treetops that rimmed the garden and they were there, ghosts against the sky, fluttering in some strange wind that blew from an unknown quarter. Fluttering-or were they talking, too? The old, dumb, stupid trees of earth, or a different kind of tree from a different earth?

We'd never know, I told myself, and perhaps it did not matter, for from the very start we'd never had a chance. We were licked before we started. We had been lost on that long-gone day when my father brought home the purple flowers.

From far off someone was calling and the name was mine.

I dropped the two-by-four and started across the garden, wondering who it was. Not Nancy, but someone that I knew.

Nancy came running down the hill. ”Hurry, Brad,” she called.

”Where were you?” I asked. ”What's going on?”

”It's Stuffy. I told you it was Stuffy. He's waiting at the barrier. He sneaked through the guards. He says he has to see you.”

”But Stiffy...”

”He's here, I tell you. And he wants to talk with you. No one else will do.”

She turned and trotted up the hill and I lumbered after her. We went through Doc's yard and across the street and through another yard and there, just ahead of us, I knew, was the barrier.

A gnome-like figure rose from the ground.

”That you, lad?” he asked.

I hunkered down at the edge of the barrier and stared across at him.

”Yes, it's me,” I said, ”but you...”

”Later. We haven't got much time. The guards know I got through the lines. They're hunting for me.”

”What do you want?” I asked.

”Not what I want,” he said. What everybody wants. Something that you need. You're in a jam.”

”Everyone's in a jam,” I said.

”That's what I mean,” said Stuffy. ”Some d.a.m.n fool in the Pentagon is set to drop a bomb. I heard some of the ruckus on a car radio when I was sneaking through. Just a s.n.a.t.c.h of it, ”So, all right,” I said. ”The human race is sunk.”

”Not sunk,” insisted Stuffy. ”I tell you there's a way. If Was.h.i.+ngton just understood, if...”

”If you know a way,” I asked, ”why waste time in reaching me? You could have told...”