The Nightrunners Part 29

He swallowed heavily. There was something hanging from the small front porch roof-a girl. The wind moved her and her head flopped around to look at him. The eyes were wide open and the face was covered in blood. The crotch of her jeans was cut away and her pubic hair was matted with gore.

"What . . . what is it?" Becky asked.

"The girl of your dreams," Monty said.

EIGHTEEN.

With wood, rocks and flattened beer cans behind the back tires, Larry was able to free the car, pull it up alongside a barbed-wire fence. Tree limbs sc.r.a.ped at the side of the car as he went, and when the ditch became narrow, almost flat, he crossed onto the road.

Ted and Moses ran to get in.

"As I remember," Moses said, "you hit a stretch of blacktop just before the Beaumont driveway, and it's a long thing. More a short road than a drive."

"Just say when we get there," Larry said, and he stomped down on the gas.

NINETEEN.

They put on the Halloween masks Loony had stolen from Pop's store. Brian wore the one with the knife in the skull, the one Monty had thought the most hideous.

Loony, who was embracing the shotgun, said, "Let's splatter them."

"We will. But we're going to do this right," Brian said in Clyde's voice. "Stone, you go up the drive there and find you a place to hang out, just in case we should get visitors. What I want to do to them might take awhile and I don't want to be interrupted. I want this b.i.t.c.h to suffer, like I suffered in that jail cell."

Behind Brian's back Loony looked at Stone and shrugged, put a hand to his head and rotated his finger.

He ceased the action before Brian turned. In Clyde's voice, Brian said, "I've got other plans for us, Loony."

Stone stamped his foot angrily.

Brian turned back to him, and still using Clyde's voice, said, "Don't worry. We'll save something for you. You'll get your fun. Loony, give him the shotgun."

Loony did as directed and Stone took it, began jogging up the driveway, the Halloween mask bobbing loosely on his head.

Near the front of the long drive that led to the cabin, he found a small tree with a wide fork. He climbed into the fork, put the slug-loaded shotgun across his knee and waited.

Five minutes after Stone was positioned, the Highway Patrol car, driven by Larry, made a wrong turn and went down the road where the '66 Chevy and the Rabbit were parked.

Larry cursed Moses for the mistake, and they turned around. But not before Ted got out and used his pocket knife to slash the tires on both cars. That way, the only car leaving this area would be their patrol car.

They backed around and went back up the road, and made the correct turn into the Beaumont drive.

Monty and Becky began a system of rotational checks; moving around the house to each panel-boarded window, crouching as low as they could when pa.s.sing the unprotected lake window.

So far, there were no signs of anyone trying to break in.

From where they leaned against the cabin, Brian and Loony had seen the patrol car's lights through the trees.

They watched in silence until Loony said, "Who's that?"

"What the f.u.c.k am I?" Clyde's voice said. "A G.o.dd.a.m.ned crystal ball?"

"What do we do?"

"Not a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing. Not yet, anyway. They turn down this road Stone will blast them."

They watched the car turn around, watched the lights go away. And soon after, they saw the car come into view as it made the Beaumont driveway.

What happened then was: Moses said he wanted out, but Larry ignored him. He turned the car down the drive, and Stone, nestled in his sniper position, raised the shotgun and fired. The slug hit the right front tire. The car, which was not moving fast, skidded slightly, stopped.

Stone fired again. This shot cut through the right pa.s.senger window, hit Ted just in front of the right ear.

Fragments of gla.s.s, brains, blood and skull flew like a meteorite shower. The slug pa.s.sed out through Ted's forehead, tumbled over the steering wheel (pa.s.sing Larry's face by inches) and exited with a spray of gla.s.s out the left vent window, but not before glancing along the metal framing and ricocheting with a clatter onto the hood.

Larry swung the door open, grabbed the riot gun from the back-seat prop, rolled out of the car and onto the ground. Another shot took out the back gla.s.s, and Larry duckwalked to the back door (which had no inside levers) and opened it for Moses, who tumbled out uninjured, but dribbling gla.s.s from his clothes. He dragged the rifle out behind him by the strap. He was shaking and moaning.

"Is ... is he dead?" Moses said.

"What do you think?" Larry reached up with one hand to touch something that lay on his shoulder like a grisy epaulet-a wormy grey and red ma.s.s of brain tissue. "To live, buddy," he said, thumping it off himself, and almost on Moses, "you got to keep this stuff inside your head."

"Oh s.h.i.+t, Jesus, G.o.d," Moses said. "He's going to kill us."

"No, he isn't. I'm going to blow his a.s.s away."

Another slug struck the car. More gla.s.s flew, rained down on them where they crouched.

"He's just shooting at the gla.s.s because he hasn't any better sense. We take it easy, and he's dead. Now listen here, I'm going to get him. Going to slip off in these woods behind me, cross the road a little farther down, see if I can sneak up on him."

"You're going to leave me here? You can't do that."

"Yes, I can. I'm going to get this guy . . . You know, old Ted wasn't bad for a commie, n.i.g.g.e.r-loving Catholic."

Moses just nodded.

"Probably some more of these a.s.sholes around, so stay sharp."

"Don't leave me. This isn't any of my business. You said you'd let me out before we got here."

"Take your hand off my arm. Good. Now I'm going."

"You said you'd let me out."

"You're out, aren't you? Listen here, stay sharp, or you'll end up dead, and anytime you feel like throwing the gun away and giving up, just take a peek in here at old Ted.

Got me?"

Moses didn't say anything, and Larry didn't give him time. Quiet as an Indian, Larry disappeared into the woods behind them.

TWENTY.

Brian pulled the pistol he had taken off Jim Trawler's body out of his belt.

"What are you going to do?" Loony said. They were still leaning against the cabin.

They bad seen the patrol car and heard the shots. Now the patrol car was sitting still, its lights s.h.i.+ning. And well behind the car, they had seen a shape cross the road at a slouch, disappear into the woods on Stone's side.

"I'm going to do whatever needs doing. You stay close to the cabin. They try to come out of there, use your knife. I'll be back quick as I can."

It had been Brian's voice speaking, and Loony, crazy as he was himself, was beginning to find it all a bit disconcerting.

"Where's Clyde?" he asked.

"Right here," came Clyde's voice, and as Loony watched, Brian's face twisted, molded, began to look like Clyde's. It was wild. Like when impressionists on TV imitated someone and managed in many ways to look like them. Brian had Clyde's voice and mannerisms down pat. Could it be that he was really possessed? Loony decided he'd find that hard to believe even if he were on glue- which he wished he were. His hands were starting to shake and the reality of life was fanning away the fog of his dreams.

"Stay," the Clyde voice said to Loony. Then, turning, Brian/Clyde moved into the woods and was gone. Loony thought one more time: How in h.e.l.l does he do that with his voice?

The water on the stove had started to boil and Becky turned the burners to simmer. Then, picking up the axe, she went to Monty's side.

"Boiling?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered. "His voice, Monty . . . that's him, the kid who raped me."

"It isn't him. He's dead and buried."

"I know that voice."

"It's the kid doing it, mocking him."

"It's more than that."

"The dead do not return, that's all there is to it."

"The skeptic is back."

"Seeing the future is one thing, but possession, which is what you're suggesting, is another. The dead are dead. The kid is imitating the voice. I suppose it is possession of a kind, possession by a memory. The total acceptance of a deranged mind. But there is nothing uncanny or supernatural about it. We all have the ability for that sort of mimicry, and our subconscious is far more alert and complex than the surface, or conscious mind.

It can pick up all the fine details of a voice, even the words in a language, and teach the conscious mind to speak it.

"This kid is as mad as a hatter, that's all. You've got to realize that. If we're going to beat him, we have to know we're not up against something supernatural."

"The psychoa.n.a.lyst returns."

"This hardly seems the time for us to get into an argument."

"Monty, I'm telling you, that's Clyde's voice. And you can give me all the psychological mumbo jumbo you want to, and I won't be convinced."

"Okay then, you're not convinced." . "Do you remember what he said, about how he wanted to be first . . . with me? I told you that from my dream, remember?"

"I haven't doubted your dreams, really, since that . . . that image I saw on TV."

"Everything I saw is coming true. There's nothing-"

"The girl on the porch, you thought that was you. If you can be wrong about that .

, . We could pull out of this. It's possible. Aren't you the one that's always belittling me for giving up easily, for being weak? Aren't you the liberated woman, or is that just bulls.h.i.+t talk?"

"Maybe it is," she finally said. "Maybe everything is just so much bulls.h.i.+t."

Loony, without glue fumes in his head, with his nerves p.r.i.c.king his skin like thorns, lost his cool and disobeyed Brian/Clyde's orders. He needed something to burn energy. He wanted to cut someone. Maybe get a little off that woman.

He looked up the drive, didn't see anyone.

He should wait, he knew that. If he didn't, Brian (Clyde?) would be angry.

... He moved his knife from hand to hand. Thought: To h.e.l.l with Brian, he's nutty as a pig in a tow sack,'

Moving around the edge of the house, he ran by the open lake window screaming, "Trick or treat!"

Monty and Becky saw his masked form race by, saw him stick his tongue out at them through the slit in the mask.

Larry was inching up next to the woods on the other side.