Chapter 27
Winter dawns were late, but she’d spent too much of the night on buses or subways, not to mention impersonating a hurricane in Don’s living quarters above the warehouse.
His bosses might not even realize the blue Charger was missing, since she’d also done her best to light the place on fire before heading out.
If Donny got cold feet and came back…but that wasn’t Bea’s problem at the moment. She’d done all she could for him, including committing arson for the very first time, and now she had to save herself.
Of course heading south or west might have been a better idea—a lot more country to lose herself in, if she could hope to do so. The feeling of being watched by invisible eyes waxed and waned, and honestly at this point it was almost an old friend.
Not really.
At least the high drilling whine of the little green men didn’t appear.
By the time she left the turnpike, filling up at an Irving station thankfully still crouched at the end of a long exit as it had been four years ago, it was well past 5am and a hideous, unwelcome numbness was creeping up her fingers and toes.
It had taken her three tries to find a place open for cash instead of deserted filling stations which assumed anyone passing by would have a credit card.
The yawning clerk gave her a cursory glance before taking payment, and she bought a cheap sunshield as well.
She was still damp despite the Charger’s heater going full-bore and the luxury of heated seats, but working the night shift in a boondocks stop-and-rob probably accustomed the clerks to a whole lot of strangeness, purely human… or otherwise.
Dawn found her close to the ultimate goal, rattling over the washboard ruts of an abandoned logging road she’d once hiked under muttering protest. A few miles up the side of a frowning hill the gravel track widened before petering out, and she pulled the Charger into heavy shade at the end.
It’ll have to do. She just hoped nobody would get curious, but people in this part of the world often knew how to mind their own damn business. Now Bea wondered how much of that was closemouthed rural tradition, and how much was these mountains being older than God and crammed with weird shit.
She barely got the sunshield up before passing out—though the hanging boughs of a regrown spruce draped over windshield and roof—at the exact moment the sun crested the horizon.
No dreams, no hallucinations. Even the foggy sense of time passing in the blackness of sleep was muted.
Consciousness burst into full flower, and Bea found herself slumped sideways over the center arm-rest and console, the cupholder digging into her ribs and her cheek pressed against the passenger seat’s upholstery.
A faint breath of new-car smell—whoever this beast had been stolen from was probably having a bad week, if they weren’t rich enough to afford the inconvenience.
Hope they’ve got insurance. Her mouth was full of a strange almost-spicy taste instead of morning breath, and she ran her tongue over her teeth while pushing herself upright.
All in all, for spending the day keeled over in the driver’s seat, she didn’t feel bad.
No stiffness, just the urge to stretch every limb nice and hard.
It was disorienting to both crash and wake up in darkness, though, like pulling long night shifts at the packing plant. Even more odd was the hazy sense of physical well-being, though her throat was awful scratchy.
And though she knew it was night-time, her eyes were working better than ever.
Take it while you can, Bebe. Her brother’s voice sounded cheerful. You’re still a couple to the good.
“Yeah,” she muttered, trying not to think about what might happen if Lukas caught her. Her breath halted for a moment; the resultant shiver wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Don’t dwell on it. Maybe he only got you the first time because his people were already watching.
That would mean he was aware of Don—but hopefully she’d given her brother’s best friend enough time to get good and lost. At least she could hope, and the fact that she’d spent an entire day sleeping unmolested in a stolen car was a good sign, right?
The blue Charger roused obediently when she twisted the key. Not having to pee in the woods was a goddamn luxury, really. If the bloodsucker-making process was reversed somehow, she’d have to go back to scanning for bathrooms at every opportunity.
Her vision was now so good she nearly forgot to flick the headlights on. Even the foglights were unutterably bright; getting back down the logging road was a matter of taking it slow, letting the shocks do what they were designed for, and wincing at particularly bad jolts.
She wasn’t quite on home ground, but it was close.
The road’s tunnel through dense greenery wavered slightly, and she realized her eyes were hot and full. Bea swiped angrily at her cheeks, and kept going.
* * *
Small changes accumulated over four and a half years.
The mailbox listed heavily, nearly buried in a drift of vines; the driveway’s mouth, butting up against ancient seamed two-lane paving, had crumbled at the edges, the concrete drainpipe underneath—meant for runoffs in wet springtime—half-choked with detritus from more than one storm.
Undergrowth scraped at the car’s sides as she negotiated the familiar rise.
There was no porchlight shining through winter’s last dusk-gasp, no star of floodlight atop the post at the edge of the turnaround or its twin near the stable’s dark, leaning bulk.
And there was the rambling knockoff colonial, her brother’s pride and joy. Four bedrooms, I’ll use one as an office. You can do something too—an art room, or meditation?
“When the fuck am I gonna meditate?” Bea murmured, the old conversation raw and aching in memory. He’d been so goddamn proud.
We have acreage too. Goes a fair bit up the mountain, it’s a big-ass lot. During hunting season we’ll have to wear orange. And the den looks right onto the back meadow, I can put my desk there and have the trees while writing.
The windows were scabbed over with boards, the wraparound porch he’d been so proud of visibly deteriorated.
The forest had crept across a good portion of the back meadow, looming closer than ever.
Bea shuddered—the weird stuff, like the tracks of tiny misformed feet or horribly savaged bodies of small wild animals, most often happened along that line.
Now she remembered each and every incident, including the ones passed off as imagination, hypnagogia, or just plain bullshit.
Can you just not be an asshole, she’d yelled over the phone, right before giving in and leaving college for good. You’re going off the deep end with all this alien abduction shit, can you just fucking not? I should have known you wouldn’t let me get my degree!
Her heart hurt, thinking about that fight.
Turning off the headlights and cutting the engine meant the foglights also died.
Night rushed at the windshield, swallowing the car whole.
Even the trickle of cold air through the inch of rolled-down window smelled familiar—fresh air loaded with balsam and the faint iron tinge of running water from the creek at the west edge of the property.
Months of being under siege in this house, afraid to even go into Noll Corner for groceries because when she came back something was sure to have happened, Jare wild-eyed and pale, the noises near the windows in the dead time between midnight and 3am…
The Charger’s door swung shut with a heavy, decisive sound. She was halfway to the house before she stopped, one drip-dried sneaker hovering until she realized she’d frozen mid-step and put it down.
She couldn’t go in there.
Nope. Not today, Satan. One of Don’s favorite little jokes. Had he stopped by Callie’s place, had he been able to convince her to flee with him?
“Worry about yourself, Bea.” Her voice broke the hush. The trees sighed, ruffling under rising wind. She should have been shivering, with no coat, no gloves, no hat.
But she wasn’t. The tremors came from an entirely different source.
She turned, and it took a few steps before she was on track.
Yes, this was exactly how Jared had approached the stable that evening.
Neither of them liked being out after dark by that point, but it had been a nice spring day, warmer than late April usually got, and Snowball usually did her business in a hurry at that hour.
There was the window Bea had peered through, a cataract eye filthy with dust and pollen outside and cobwebs on the inner surface.
Scraps of faded crime-scene tape fluttered near the doorway, and even though it was a cloudy moonless night, rain or worse threatening on a rising nor’east wind—she could tell by the way it sounded climbing over Noll Mountain’s shoulder—her new super-senses were pitiless, because she could see every splinter of the stable’s leaning walls.
The long-ago haze of horse, hay, and manure tickled her nose along with a deeper, darker thread.
He came along here, Snowball was barking but I didn’t hear her because I put my earbuds in.
Bea took one last lingering look at the window before backing up to walk along the path he’d taken and sidling through the doorway—Jared wouldn’t have had to turn sideways, but it was frozen half-open now, probably swung to during a storm.
After the body was taken away.
Oh, God. She didn’t have to go inside very far. Rotting wood, mildew, and that nasty hideous brassy note, still terribly present.
Death.
The stain was faded, yet obscenely visible. Bea found the right angle and sank into a crouch, tilting her head just so.
Right here. He was right here, looking at…and Snowball was over there, they threw her after they…
It wasn’t that hard to believe a monster, after all. Bea turned, staring at where she knew the window was. Lukas hadn’t heard her heartbeat for some reason—the wind rattled and moaned at the stable roof.
Quite possible, since the reek of greiben was strong and they are noisy in withdrawal. She could almost feel his breath in her hair, and hunched her shoulders before unfolding.
If she looked at the stain anymore, she might start to cry again. Instead, she half-spun, and looked up at the hayloft. Maybe she could leap there, with her body’s new super-reflexes...but she used the rickety old ladder anyway, holding her breath and hoping it wouldn’t crumble under her weight.
Would she get heavier? Lukas certainly was.
With each rung, another damp, nasty scent intensified. It reminded her of greasy yellow fog, big black insectile eyes, their horrible little mangled paws and naked buttocks.
It was looking more and more like she’d tried to stab the wrong monster. Now Bea had to wonder what else he was telling the truth about.
I really don’t want to think about that, either.
The hole in the roof was a lot bigger now.
It pointed due east; cold air whistled past, her sweater’s hem flapping and her hair lifting in a cloud, almost worse than the roof of the Everly building.
She found her fingertips resting against the gem at her breastbone, and its humming tingle could have been imaginary.
Oh, what the hell, she thought, and took a few running steps, gathering speed.
The leap flowered underneath her, just as it had at the North Bluff mansion’s big overdone gate, and her body knew what to do, twisting in midair to avoid branches, her sneakers hitting forest loam, the rest of her driven into a crouch like a cat jumping off a slightly too-high counter.
“Holy shit.” Now she was talking to herself in the middle of the woods at night. If this kept up she’d be a crazy old lady living under a bridge, muttering about abductions and monsters and…
What the hell’s that?
A faint, terrible rumbling underlaid the wind’s rising moan. Bea straightened, very glad her new eyesight had no trouble with tangled underbrush at night, and hoped she wasn’t about to get herself lost in the wilderness.
Faint, horrible sawing shrieks could have been the storm coming in, but an odd nervous thrill spilled down the back of her arms, goosebumps rising all over, her nipples hard as chips of rock and her hair tingling at the roots, curls flirting with moving air.
Shadows moved as she picked her way deeper into the trees, and when she touched the necklace again she realized the emerald—or petrified henchman, ugh—was faintly but definitely glowing.
“This is so goddamn weird,” Bea whispered, and hesitated. It was best to run away, wasn’t it?
But she had to know.
Slowly at first, then moving with more confidence as her new super-senses proved more than adequate to this new challenge, she moved towards the noise.
Due east.