Brother Odd

CHAPTER 38

ALTHOUGH BROTHER TIMOTHY HAD BEEN KILLED- and worse than killed-by one of these creatures, a part of me, the Pollyanna part I can't entirely wring out of myself, had wanted to believe that the ever-moving mosaic of bones at the school window and my pursuers in the cooling-tower service tunnel had been apparitions, fearsome but, in the end, less real than such threats as a man with a gun, a woman with a knife, or a U.S. senator with an idea.

Pollyanna Odd half expected, as with the lingering dead and the bodachs, that these entities would prove to be invisible to anyone but me, and that what happened to Timothy was somehow a singularity, because supernatural presences, after all, do not have the power to harm the living.

That hopeful possibility was flushed down the wishful-thinking drain with the appearance of the keening banshee of bones and the immediate reactions of Knuckles and his brothers.

As tall and long as two horses running nose to tail, ceaselessly kaleidoscopic even when traversing the meadow, the thing came out of the white wind and crossed the pavement in front of the first SUV.

In Dante's Inferno, in the ice and snowy mist of the frozen lowest level of Hell, the imprisoned Satan had appeared to the poet out of the winds made by his three sets of great leathery wings. The fallen angel, once beautiful but now hideous, had reeked of despair and misery and evil.

Likewise, here was misery and despair embodied in the calcium and phosphate of bone, and evil in the marrow. Its intentions were evident in its design, in its swift motion, and its every intention was pernicious.

Not one brother reacted to this manifestation with wonder or even with mere fear of the unknown, and none with disbelief. Without exception they regarded it at once as an abomination, and viewed it with as much disgust as terror, with loathing and with a righteous kind of hatred, as though upon seeing it for the first time they recognized it as an ancient and enduring beast.

If any was stunned to silence, he found his voice quickly, and the SUV was filled with exclamations. There were appeals to Christ and to the Holy Mother, and I heard no hesitation or embarrassment about labeling the thing before us with the names of demons or with the name of the father of all demons, though I'm reasonably sure the first words from Brother Knuckles were Mamma mia.

Rodion Romanovich brought his SUV to a full stop as the white demon passed in front of him.

When Knuckles braked, the chain-wrapped tires stuttered on the icy pavement but didn't slide, and we, too, shuddered to a halt.

The pistoning bony legs cast up plumes of snow from the meadow as the thing crossed the road and kept going, as though it was not aware of us. The trail it left in the fresh powder and the way the falling snow whirled in the currents of its wake dispelled any doubt about its reality

Certain that the beast's disinterest in us was pretense and that it would return, I said to Knuckles, "Let's go. Don't just sit here. Go, go, get us inside."

"I can't go till he does," Knuckles said, indicating the SUV that blocked the road in front of us.

To the right, south, rose a steep bank, which the uberskeleton had descended in a centipedal scurry. We might not bog down in the deep drift, but the angle of incline would surely roll us.

In the northern meadow, the dismal light of the sunless day and shrouds of snow folded around the fantastic architecture of restless bones, but we had not seen the last of it.

Rodion Romanovich still stood on his brake pedal, and in the red taillights, snow came down in bloody showers.

To the left, the meadow dropped two feet from the driveway. We could probably have driven around Romanovich; but that was a needless risk.

"He's waiting for another look at it," I said. "Is he nuts? Give him the horn."

Knuckles pumped the horn, and the brake lights on Romanovich's SUV fluttered, and Knuckles used the horn again, and the Russian began to coast forward, but then braked once more.

Out of the north came the monster, harrowing the field of snow, moving less quickly than before, a sense of ominous intention in its more measured approach.

Amazement, fear, curiosity, disbelief: Whatever had immobilized Romanovich, he broke free of its hold. The SUV rolled forward.

Before Romanovich could build any speed, the creature arrived, reared up, extruded intricately pincered arms, seized its prey, and tipped the vehicle on its side.