Part 18 (1/2)
”Sheriff, look at that!” Danny had seen it first, and he pointed to the jagged-edged hole in the floor. Vance approached it, and he and Danny stood over the hole peering down into darkness. Squeak squeak. Squeak squeak.
Both of them looked up at the same time, and both of them saw it. A figure sat in the rocking chair in the far corner of the room, slowly rocking back and forth, back and forth. A scatter of National Geographics lay on the floor beside the chair. Squeak squeak. Squeak squeak.
”D-Dodge?” Vance whispered.
”Howdy,” Dodge Creech said. Most of his face was in shadow, but he was still wearing his yellow-and-blue-plaid coat, dark blue slacks, pearl-gray s.h.i.+rt, two-toned loafers. His red lick of hair was greased back on his pate, and his hands were folded in his lap as he rocked.
”What's... what's goin' on?” Vance asked. ”Ginger's about out of her-”
”Howdy,” the other man said again, still rocking. There was no color in his face, and his eyes glittered in the light of the two remaining lamps that hung from the ceiling's wagon-wheel fixture. The wagon wheel was crooked. Squeak, squeak went the chair's runners.
His voice, Vance thought: his voice is funny. Raspy, like air through the ba.s.s pipes of a church organ. It sounded like Dodge's voice, yes, but... different too.
The glittering eyes were watching him carefully. ”You're a person of authority, ain't you?” the voice asked, with a humming of sinus cavities.
”I'm Ed Vance. You know me. Come on, Dodge, what's this all about?” His knees were freezing solid again. Something was wrong with Dodge's mouth.
”Ed Vance.” Dodge's head tilted slightly to one side. ”Ed Vance,” he repeated, as if he'd never heard the name before and he was making sure not to forget it. ”Yessir, I knew they'd send a person of authority. That'd be you, wouldn't it?”
Vance looked at Danny; the boy was about a hair away from jumping out of his shoes, his hands clutching the rifle to his chest. The cadence of Dodge Creech's voice, the flat phrasing, the drawl: all of it was the same, yet there was that low church-organ undertone, and a rattling like loose phlegm in Dodge's throat.
”So let me pose a question to you, pardner,” the figure in the rocking chair said. ”Who's the guardian?”
”The... guardian?”
”I didn't stutter. Who's the guardian?”
”Dodge... what're you talkin' about? I don't know anythin' about a guardian.”
The rocking ceased. Danny gasped and took a backward step, and he might have plunged into the hole if he hadn't checked himself.
”Maybe you don't at that,” the man in the chair replied. ”Maybe you do, and maybe you're handin' me bulls.h.i.+t on a platter, Ed Vance.”
”No, I swear it! I don't know what you're talkin' about!” The thought hit him like a bullet between the eyes: This isn't Dodge anymore.
The figure stood up. Its clothes made a stiff crackling noise. Dodge Creech seemed two or three inches taller than Vance remembered, and much larger around the shoulders too. There was something funny about the way he moved his head-something like the jerky motion of a puppet on strings, guided by an unseen hand. The figure walked toward Vance, with that strange puppet's gait, and Vance backed away; it stopped, looked from Vance to Danny and back again, and then the white face with its wormy gray lips smiled-a teeth-clenched salesman's smile.
”The guardian,” he repeated, and the light gleamed off teeth that were no longer teeth, but thousands of close-packed, blue metallic needles. ”Who is it?”
Vance couldn't seem to get his breath. ”I swear... don't know...”
”Well sir, maybe I believe you.” The figure in the garish sport coat slowly rubbed its thick, colorless hands together, and Vance saw that the fingernails were about an inch long, made of that same blue-tinged metal and edged with tiny saw-blade-like teeth. ”You bein' a person of authority and all, I ought to believe you, right?” the thing in Dodge's skin asked. Vance had lost his voice.
Danny's back hit the wall, and a framed picture of Dodge receiving an award at an insurance salesmen's convention clattered to the floor.
”So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. See, I've come a long way, and I've already spent a lot of time and effort.” The metal-nailed hands kept rubbing together, and Vance realized that a swipe from one of them could rip his face off right down to the skull. ”I can find the guardian myself if I have to.” The head suddenly whipped to the left with violent motion, and the thing's gaze followed the helicopter through a broken window as it circled the pyramid. ”I don't like that thing. Not the least bit. I don't want it flyin' around my property.” Its attention returned to Vance, and the sheriff saw that there was no life in Dodge's eyes; they looked wet and dead, like false eyes stuck into a grinning mask. ”But I'll tell you true, Ed Vance: if I don't find out who the guardian is real soon, I'm gonna have to lay down the law. My kind of law.”
”Who... what are you?” Vance rasped.
”I'm an...” The figure paused for a few seconds. ”An exterminator. And you're a big fat bug. I'll be around, Ed Vance, and I want you to remember me. Okay?”
Vance nodded, a drop of sweat hanging from the tip of his nose. ”Oka-”
One of Dodge's hands rose. The fingers probed the left eye and wrenched it from its socket. There was no blood, just strands of oozing fluid. The eyeball went into the needle-filled mouth and burst apart like a hardboiled egg as the jaws clamped down.
Danny moaned, fighting against a faint, and madness clawed at Vance's brain.
”When I want you, I'll find you,” the creature said. ”Don't try to hide. You can't. We square on that, pardner?”
”Sq-sq-square.” The word came out in a choke.
”Good bug.” And then the figure turned away from Vance, took two long strides, and dropped into the hole in the living-room floor.
They heard it thump to the bottom after a long fall. There was a quick scuttling sound. Then silence. Danny screamed. He sprang to the edge of the hole, lifted his rifle and began firing into it, his face contorted with horror. Gunsmoke whirled through the dusty air, and spent cartridges flew. He came to the end of his bullets, but he kept frantically trying to feed sh.e.l.ls into the chamber.
”Stop it,” Vance said, or thought he had. ”Stop it, Danny. Stop it! ”
The deputy shuddered and looked at him, his finger still jerking on the trigger, his nose running, and the wind whoos.h.i.+ng in his lungs.
”It's gone,” Vance told him. ”Whatever it was... it's gone.”
”I saw it-I saw it looked like Dodge but it wasn't no way no way in h.e.l.l was it Dod-”
Vance gripped his collar and shook him hard. ”Listen to me, boy! ” he roared, right in Danny's face. ”I don't want you goin' as crazy as Ginger Creech, you hear me?” He felt a wetness at his crotch and knew he'd peed his pants, but right now he had to keep Danny from losing his mind. If the boy went over the edge, Vance would be right behind. ”You hear me?” He gave another hard shake, which served to loosen the cobwebs of shock in his own brain as well.
”Wasn't Dodge. Wasn't,” Danny mumbled. Then, with a gasp of breath: ”Yes sir. I hear you.”
”Go to the car.” The boy blinked dazedly, still staring into the hole. ”Go on, I said!”
Danny staggered out.
Vance swung his shotgun up and aimed it at the hole. His hands shook so hard he figured he couldn't hit a barn door in broad daylight, much less an alien who ate eyeb.a.l.l.s and had a thousand needles for teeth. Because that's exactly what it had been, he realized: an alien, dug itself a tunnel from the pyramid across the river and crawled inside Dodge Creech. My property, it had said. And what was that s.h.i.+t about a guardian, and how come it could speak English with a Texas accent?
He backed away from the hole, his nerves sputtering. Tendrils of dust and gunsmoke broke, drifted, connected anew around him. He felt like a scream trapped in concrete, and right then he swore that if he got out of this, G.o.d willing, he was going to lose fifty pounds by Christmas. One step out of the house and he turned and ran to the patrol car, where Danny Chaffin sat gray-faced and staring at nothing.
27 Scooter Brought the Stick
In a house at the far end of Brazos Street, Daufin listened while Sarge remembered.
”Scooter brought the stick,” he whispered as the dark things moved in his mind. Over the steady tolling of the Catholic church's bell, he thought he heard gunshots: the rapid cracks of a carbine, like brittle sticks being trod upon. The memories were coming to life, and one half of his brain itched like a wound that must be torn open and scratched.
”Belgium,” he said. His hands kneaded the air where Scooter had been, just a minute before.
”Three-ninety-third infantry regiment, Ninety-ninth Infantry Division, Sergeant Tully Dennison, all present and accounted for, sir!” His eyes were wet, his face strained with internal pressures. ”Diggin' in, sir! Hard ground, ain't it? Mighty hard. Froze almost solid. They heard some noise out over the ridge last night. Down there in the deep woods. Recon heard trucks movin' around. Maybe tanks too. Get that telephone cable laid down, yes sir!” He blinked, lifting his chin as if startled by the presence of Daufin.
”Who... who are you?”