Part 23 (1/2)
McNeely felt the muscles of his jaw grow rigid.
It is not gone.
”Stop it, d.a.m.n you! Stop toying with me!”
We enjoy toying with you. And with the others.
”What do you . . .”
When you first came. The voices. The visions. The dreams. The woman speaking what she truly felt to her husband.
”You did all that?”
We did.
”Why?”
To explore you. To see what you feared, thought. What you desired.
George McNeely felt utterly naked, like a victim in the shower in one of those mindless slasher movies, eyes blinded by soap, with the black shadow looming larger through the opacity of the plastic curtain. But instead of seeing only his body, the grinning slasher saw through to his soul, seeing and relis.h.i.+ng every G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing he'd ever wanted to hide, laughing out loud at every secret he'd ever had. The thought was unbearable. He pushed it away by going back to something the voice had said earlier.
”You said that . . . Neville hates us . . . Gabrielle and Kelly and me. Why did he ... does he hate us so much?” So much that that hate still survives, he thought, but did not voice it.
He hated you from the start. That was why he brought you here.
”Why he ...”
You had done something to a relative in a battle. Wickstrom harmed a cousin. c.u.mmings destroyed a friend. Neville hates you for that. He wants to destroy you.
”That was why he chose us?”
He wanted to set his courage against yours.
”But why Gabrielle?”
His hate for her has come since he has been with us. Since you have f.u.c.ked her.
McNeely grimaced at the word. ”How do you ...”
Know all this? You forget. He is not only with us. He is us.
”That means that”-McNeely's face grew stern-”that you want to destroy us too.”
No. Far from it. We need you.
”Oh, yes! To help you escape!”
Yes.
”Do you honestly think that . . .” McNeely stiffened, his head suddenly pinioned in an att.i.tude of listening.
What is wrong?
”I thought I heard . . .” The creak of a door, slow and subtle, as though Wickstrom or Gabrielle had sneaked quietly down the steps, and even now stood on the other side of the slightly ajar fire chamber door, through which a weak slice of light shone sickly from the main part of the cellar.
What?
How can it not know? thought McNeely. I'm sure I heard ...
Then the door slashed fully open and nightmare burst in.
At first McNeely thought he had simply gone mad, that nothing that looked like that would be capable of locomotion in the real world. But The Pines was not the real world, and the remnant of humanity before him was most definitely moving, cannoning toward him with a force that smashed him to the hard concrete floor before he could raise an arm to defend himself. He struggled to make himself fight back, to grasp, the arms and fists that were pummeling his face and head with hammerlike strength, to twist and roll and throw off the fetid half-decayed lich that straddled him like some frenzied lover. But fear had crushed his heart with a grip of ice, and horror had thrown his stomach into rebellion so that his nose and mouth filled in seconds with his own vomit until his breath was gone and his strength was stolen, leaving him as malleable as a half-dead puppy, his lungs clenched with a grasp past breaking, as had been the lungs of David Neville, who now ceased his blows and grabbed McNeely's thick neck like a drowning sailor grabs a hawser.
The eyes that Seth c.u.mmings had squeezed from their sockets had shriveled into little more than parched yellow grapes, but there was enough left to burn with a hatred that stunned McNeely even more than the physical attack. The lolling tongue, now black with old blood, had fallen away in places like a rotting sponge that dripped venom onto McNeely's lips. Still horribly distorted from c.u.mmings's fatal embrace, the upper chest and shoulders seemed huge, a grotesque balloon filled with noxious gases in the shape of muscles monstrously rigid, decaying muscles with strength enough to drive their force down the yellow-white arms into the stinking wrists and fingers that embraced the neck of George McNeely, stopping the blood, stopping the air so that McNeely choked on the contents of his stomach that his own muscles kept sending up to his throat in involuntary mindless frenzy.
The raisin eyes grew brighter and brighter, burrowing like rats through McNeely's own eyes, deep, deep into his brain, a burning brightness that suddenly faded, dimmed, and was extinguished completely, plunging George McNeely into the deepest blackness he had ever known.
He regained consciousness slowly and painfully. The first thing of which he was aware was the hot stinging ache in his throat, as though fire had seared it and it now lay caked in salt. He actually thought that he was dead, and found himself hoping that he would not be in The Pines for all eternity, but would be in that place where love survives.
George Soft voice. Gabrielle? Has she joined me? Are we together?
He coughed, bringing up a gobbet of half-digested food that had lodged in his trachea. The taste of it told him he was not dead. Other sensations followed: the tingling of his face where Neville's fists had scored the flesh, the pounding roar at the back of his head where he'd struck the floor, that dank, rich odor that cut like a razor through the scent of the vomit drying in his nostrils, and finally the dead weight that pressed down upon his tortured chest. When he was conscious enough to recognize it for what it was, he struggled to push it off, but his strength was not yet sufficient. He let his head fall back and took deep racking breaths. The second attempt was successful. Neville's body did not so much roll off him as slide off. McNeely turned his head away and shut his eyes.
George ...
The voice was weak but insistent. When he looked, the face was there. But now it seemed less distinct, as though it were peering through seawater.
”You . . .” He coughed, spat on the floor.
George ...
”You did that,” he snarled.
We were not responsible.
”Bulls.h.i.+t! Who was?”
We saved you. Neville would have killed you. But we brought him back.
McNeely frowned and tried to think. What had stopped Neville after he'd blacked out?
We did.
”Get out of my mind!”
You're upset. . . .
”Hah!” It was too much. He started to laugh. For as bizarre and grotesque as this was, some cynical corner of his mind still saw humor in it. ”Hah! I'm upset? f.u.c.king right on! Oh, Jesus! Oh . . .” He leaned against the wall and laughed until he started coughing again and the tears ran. The spasm shook him and he pressed his palms against the wall until he felt in control. Then he looked at the face again. It was so G.o.dd.a.m.ned expressionless. ”All right,” he said, a bitter smile wrenching the corners of his mouth upward. ”Now you just tell me what”-his hands fluttered wildly in the air-”that”-they gestured, shaking, to Neville's decaying corpse-”was all about? Accident? Quality control f.u.c.k-up?”