Part 36 (1/2)

But Carl Anderson had let his son bring the Sheffields' daughter back to Villejeune.

And now it was all coming apart.

The Circle, completed, was discovering the truth.

Even before Fred Childress had called him today and told him of Craig and Barbara Sheffield's visit, he'd known that it was time to leave.

But it was all right-there were other places he could go, other places he could find where there would be babies available to him. He could begin again.

But until he could find that place, he would need enough of the hormone to keep himself young, to stave off the ravages of his own mortality.

He moved into the nursery, ignoring Lavinia Carter, and took the bottle from the IV rack above the crib in which Amelie Coulton's baby lay, its eyes staring up at him, almost as if it knew what was happening to it.

Then he moved to Jenny Sheffield's bed. Jenny, too, was awake, and she shrank away from him as he approached, her eyes suspicious.

”I want to go home,” she said. ”I'm not sick, and I want my mother.”

Phillips replaced the bottle that was attached to the tube in Jenny's chest with a new one, then looked coldly down at the little girl.

”You're not going to go home, Jenny,” he said. ”You're sick. You're very sick, and tonight I'm afraid you're going to die.”

Leaving Jenny staring after him, her eyes wide with terror, he turned and left the room.

Barbara and Craig listened numbly as Ted Anderson told them what had happened. ”I don't know what happened to the kids,” he finished. ”Kelly brought the tour boat back, and a little while later Michael showed up with the baby. And then they just disappeared. We don't know where they went, or why. No one even saw them go.”

Barbara sank down onto a wooden bench on which Mary Anderson, called out to the tour headquarters an hour ago, was sitting. She saw Tim Kitteridge working his way through the crowd toward them, and tried to stand up to meet him, but couldn't.

”I'm sorry about this, Craig,” he said, then turned to Barbara. ”I'm sure the kids are all right,” he went on. ”G.o.d knows, they seem to know the swamp better than anyone else. We'll find them.”

”You'd better find Warren Phillips, too,” Craig broke in. ”It wasn't the kidnapping that brought us out here, Tim. We were just at the cemetery, and something's very wrong around here. Neither of our daughters' bodies is in its crypt.”

Kitteridge stared at him blankly. ”What the h.e.l.l-”

”It's Warren Phillips!” Barbara blurted, her voice ragged with the beginnings of hysteria. ”He took Sharon, and he took Jenny, too! They didn't die! They never died at all! He's doing something with children! That's why Carl took that poor baby!”

The color drained out of Mary Anderson's face. ”You mean Kelly-”

Barbara nodded. ”It's the only thing that makes sense. Michael's birth certificate was forged, too. For some reason, Warren Phillips is taking babies, and he's been doing it for years!” Her pent-up emotions spilling over, she collapsed against Mary Anderson. ”What are we going to do?” she sobbed. ”What has he done to them?”

Kitteridge, still uncertain about what Barbara meant, turned to Craig. ”Can you tell me what this is all about?”

As calmly as he could, Craig tried to explain to the police chief what first Barbara, and then the two of them, had discovered that morning. ”We don't have any idea what it's all about,” he finished. ”But we know that there seem to be a lot of men around here who don't look nearly as old as they are. I'm talking about men who don't seem to have aged a day in the last fifteen or twenty years.” He ticked off half a dozen names. When he came to Carl Anderson's, Kitteridge suddenly stopped him.

”Carl had changed this morning,” he said. ”According to Ted, he'd gotten old overnight. I mean, realty old. When Ted saw him this morning, he looked like he was ready to die.”

Suddenly, for the first time in weeks, he remembered George Coulton. George Coulton, whose body-if it was his body-even Amelie had been unable to identify.

He warn't that old, she had said. He warn't much older'n me He warn't much older'n me.

But the body-the body he was certain in his own mind was was George Coulton-had looked at least eighty, maybe even older. George Coulton-had looked at least eighty, maybe even older.

”What the h.e.l.l is going on around here?” he said almost under his breath. ”It sounds like Phillips must have found the fountain of youth or something.”

In Craig Sheffield's mind it all came together. ”No,” he said. ”It's worse. He's found out how to take the youth away from our children and sell it to his friends. That's what he needs the babies for. To take something out of them and use it himself.” Suddenly he remembered one other name, a name he'd left off the list he'd just recited to Tim Kitteridge.

”Where's Judd Duval?”

Kitteridge looked at him blankly. ”He's in the swamp,” he said. ”He's looking for Carl Anderson and the kids.”

Craig was silent for a moment. Then, his voice hollow, he said, ”You'd better hope he doesn't find them.”

29.

As dusk began to settle over the swamp, Judd Duval felt the first icy fingers of fear brush against him, making the hairs on the back of his neck rise up and his skin crawl as if tiny insects were creeping into his pores. He'd been in the swamp most of the afternoon, and as the day had worn on, an intangible sense of impending danger had come over him. Part of it, he knew, was simply the swamp itself. Despite having lived in it all his life, his fear of it seemed to grow steadily, and today he felt its thousands of eyes watching him from every direction.

Yet no matter where he looked, he saw nothing.

Nothing except the moss-laden trees, the twisting vines, the black impenetrable water.

And the creatures.

Water moccasins slithered silently through the waterways, leaving only the faintest ripples behind them, and the ever-present alligators and crocodiles basked in the mud, their cold, glittering eyes seeming to fix hungrily on him as he pa.s.sed.

An hour ago he'd wound his way through the swamp rats' scattered settlement, and found a difference there, too.

The houses had seemed deserted, with no women sitting on their porches, no children playing at their feet.

He'd seen no men mending their fishnets or patching their boats.

Yet he'd sensed their presence inside the houses, felt them watching him.

It was as if they knew something, were hiding from some unseen danger that, though invisible, lay like a palpable force over the wetlands this afternoon.

Now, as the light began to fade, Judd found himself staring at a small island that loomed ahead of him. A single dying pine tree rose up out of a thicket of undergrowth, its branches silhouetted against the reddening sky like beckoning arms. Judd slowed his boat, letting it drift forward on the slow-moving current until the prow sc.r.a.ped against the bottom.

Judd's eyes left the tree, scanning the soft land along the sh.o.r.e line.

Reeds were broken, and footprints showed clearly in the mud.

Footprints that led toward the thicket around the soaring pine.

His heartbeat quickening, his sense of dread gathering around him like the cloak of darkness that was falling over the swamp, Judd got out of the boat and followed the tracks.

He came to the tangle of brush around the pine tree and paused, his skin p.r.i.c.kling. Every nerve fiber within him sensed that something vile was hidden within those bushes.

A memory flashed into his mind, an image of the body in the swamp, to which Amelie Coulton had guided him.