Chapter 52
As the morning wore on, Sabine learned why Tim Sadlier dressed in layers that were easily removable.
Although the weather wasn’t warm, the terrain they were searching was rough, with a gradual but discernible gradient, and after half an hour she’d had to take off her jacket to remove her sweatshirt.
This had resulted in Sadlier and Small receiving a flash of red brassiere—and what it contained when the sweatshirt caught on the clip holding Sabine’s hair in place, though Sadlier, unlike Small, had the decency to pretend not to notice.
She tied the sweatshirt round her waist, put the jacket back on, and caught up with the rest, Mallory Norton’s hair once more entwined around her fingers.
“Come on, honey,” Sabine whispered. “If you’re out here, give me a sign.”
They were moving through woodland, which made it harder for Sabine both to hold her position in the line and maintain a clear mind, since she had to keep an eye on Sadlier and Small as well as watch where she put her feet.
If she deviated too far east or west, she might overlook something important, and if she took a misstep, she could break an ankle.
The last of the season’s insects—mostly sluggish cluster flies—buzzed around her as she broke a sweat, and she picked up traces of stink bug on the breeze.
Without stopping, she wiped her brow and drank some water.
To her left was the Kennebec, visible through the trees some way distant, and to the right was a smaller tributary, flowing downhill.
Now she paused to take her bearings, and thought the stream to her right might be the same one that had carried Scott Theriault’s body.
If so, the spot where the corpse had lodged was somewhere behind her.
On the way back, she could change her position in the line so that—
What came at her was not utterly formless.
It had shape but not fixity, its margins blurring and shading to gray, its core a deep, roiling black.
It erupted from a stand of balsam fir, as if extruded by a rupture in some unseen membrane, like toxic gas expanded to the point of explosion.
Sabine had just seconds to register it before it was upon her, and the forest, the extended line, even Sadlier and Small, were instantly lost from sight, leaving her in darkness.
The force of the body’s passage swept Sabine off her feet and she landed awkwardly on her back, causing a rib to pop, but the pain was the least of her concerns because the dark had both mass and intent.
It was pushing against her face, suffocating her, and she was trying not to breathe because she didn’t want it inside her, but nailed fingers were scratching at her lips, forcing them apart so they could enter her mouth, and even as she tried to clench her jaw they were scraping at the enamel of her teeth.
She wanted to scream, but to scream would be to admit the dark, the dark with all its rage and loneliness, the dark that was many and one, plural made singular, so that even individual names were rendered fragmentary.
Fear, desperation, hate, longing: all those were present, and love too, though the love was struggling to survive amid the rest. Suddenly the hands were gone from her face, and she felt them instead on her arms, her head.
She pounded at them with her fists until a voice said: “It’s okay, we’re here. We’ve got you.”
The dark retreated, reluctantly, and Tim Sadlier’s features came into focus, Bennett Small beside him, and behind them, drawing nearer, the ranger, with the state trooper at his heels.
The dark remained above, below, and around, swooping and diving, like the murmurations of starlings, but less a multiplicity acting in unison than a barely restrained chaos, and what kept it from dissolution was a distinct force of will stronger than the rest, but not strong enough to prevent damage being inflicted on Sabine to the point of death.
Something in the dark was clinging to reason, but soon it would lose its grip.
After that, there would be nothing to hold the rest back.
“Can you stand?” Tim Sadlier asked.
“With help, but I may have fractured a rib. Left side.”
“What about your head?” This from the trooper. “Did you hit it when you fell?”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t,” said Sabine. “The pain’s only in my side.”
By now more of the searchers had come to see what was the matter, which meant Sabine was now both sore and embarrassed. With the aid of Sadlier and Small she managed to sit up, then stand.
“That’s your searching done for today,” said Sadlier. “We ought to have you checked out by a doctor, just in case you’ve done anything worse than break a rib.”
Sabine tried to demur, but the ranger and trooper were of the same opinion as Sadlier, if only to cover their backs.
They had enough troubles without adding the blowback from an untreated injury incurred during a search they were leading.
Sadlier volunteered to accompany Sabine to the rendezvous point, and from there to the clinic in Bingham.
Once again, Sabine was about to protest, but managed to stop herself as the first syllables formed on her lips.
She was shocked to find that she enjoyed Tim Sadlier’s company and he, on similarly brief acquaintance, gave every indication of liking hers.
Sometimes a person just had to get out of her own way.