Darkness

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 passed.

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 scraped against the bottom.

Judd’s eyes left the tree, scanning the soft land along the shore 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 prickling. 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.

He pushed the memory aside and thrust himself into the dense foliage, forcing the branches aside.

And saw Carl Anderson’s body, stretched out on its back, already crawling with insects. A vulture, perched on Carl’s face, one of his eyeballs clutched in its beak, screamed with indignation at the interruption of its feast, then leaped upward, its wings beating as it scrambled into the sky.

Judd stared at the carnage that had been Carl Anderson’s chest, torn open, congealing blood filling the cavity with a reddish brown ooze.

He gazed at the ruin of Carl’s face, the eyes torn from their now empty sockets, only a few remaining scraps of skin still clinging to the bones of the old man’s skull.

Knowing now the truth of the danger he sensed, Judd backed away, then turned and fled to the safety of his boat. Starting the engine, he pulled away from the island, the image of the defiled corpse still fresh in his mind.

He turned the boat homeward, intent only on reaching his cabin, where, perhaps, he could lock the doors and windows against the terrible fear that was building within him. But even as he left the island where Carl Anderson lay, his panic began to peak, for moving through the gathering darkness, there were boats.

Not boats filled with the other men who had come out with him to search for Carl Anderson’s body.

Boats filled with children.

Strange, silent children, their eyes staring straight ahead, as if they were following some invisible beacon that only they could see.

As they passed him, Judd Duval’s heart began to pound, and an icy knot of pure terror took form in his belly, spreading slowly outward, threatening to paralyze him.

Only when the last of the boats had finally passed did he start the engine of his own skiff and turn the other way, intent only on getting away from those mute, menacing children with their empty eyes.

• • •

Barbara Sheffield felt her frustration reaching the breaking point. All afternoon she had tried to convince Tim Kitteridge that he should be searching Warren Phillips’s office — his house — anyplace where they might be able to find proof of what she was certain he had done.

But the chief had been adamant. “I can’t do it, Mrs. Sheffield,” he’d told her only half an hour ago, with a patronizing tone of long-suffering forbearance in his voice that had made Barbara want to slap him. “Right now I have other things to worry about. According to your own son, there’s a body somewhere in the swamp, and now we’ve got those two kids missing as well. When we’ve taken care of that, I’ll start looking into Warren Phillips.”

What he hadn’t told her was that he also had nothing with which to justify a search of Warren Phillips’s premises. Until he’d had an expert study the birth certificates that Barbara and Craig Sheffield claimed were forged — and who might give him some evidence that Phillips had been the forger — he couldn’t even go to a judge for a search warrant. And despite the pleas of the Sheffields, he wasn’t about to commit himself to an illegal search of anything. That, he was certain, would leave him defending himself against a lawsuit for the rest of his career.

But when Carl Anderson’s body was found, it might be a different story. For if Carl looked as Kelly and Michael — and even Carl’s own son — said he did, Kitteridge would have sufficient reason to talk to Phillips about what condition he might have been treating Carl for, and what drugs he had administered. But until the body was found, he had only secondhand impressions of Carl’s condition.

“Does he really expect us just to wait here?” Barbara demanded of Craig as night began to gather over the swamp.

Craig, no less frustrated than his wife, sighed heavily. “I wish I could tell you there’s something else we can do, but he’s right. What we think we know just doesn’t matter, honey. Not to the law. He’s only protecting himself, and if it weren’t our own children involved, I’d have to agree with him. Two empty crypts and a couple of birth certificates we don’t think are real just isn’t enough. But when Carl Anderson’s body turns up—”

“If it turns up!” Barbara interrupted him, her voice quavering. “And what about Michael and Kelly? Where would they have gone? And why?”

Craig Sheffield could only shrug helplessly. But if another hour passed and the searchers had still turned up nothing, then despite the objections of Tim Kitteridge, he and Ted Anderson intended to join the search.

Not that they had much hope of finding anything — the memory of his last search of the swamp was still all too fresh for him to delude himself about that — but at least he would be doing something.

And doing something, at this point, would be better than waiting.

Waiting and wondering.

• • •

Michael rose from the sagging sofa and went to the door.

Though it was dark out now, he couldn’t remember the sunset at all. Indeed, the afternoon seemed to have disappeared, passing without a trace, as Clarey’s silent song had filled his mind.

But this time — unlike those days and nights in the swamp when he’d lost track of time, and been left with nothing more than empty gaps of hours gone from his life — he knew what had happened.

The memories were sharp and clear.

Once more he’d seen the man who until today had come to him only in his dreams, or haunted him in the mirror as he gazed at his own image.

But now he understood that it was not just one man he’d seen, but many.

Every man who had partaken of his youth had been in those dreams, but the visions he had seen of them since he was a child were as they truly were, stripped of their masks of stolen youth.

Old men, ravaged not only by time, but by the evil that had consumed them, preserving their bodies even as it rotted their souls.

This afternoon he had seen them again, and this time he’d seen them for what they were, recognized clearly the corruption within them.

But today he felt no fear of them. Indeed, he felt their own fear, sensed their terror, saw them cowering away from him, knowing he was there, knowing what he intended to do.

And knowing they had nothing left of their own with which to defend themselves.

In each of them he had recognized tiny fragments of his own being, fragments that had reposed within them for years, waiting for him to claim them. And now the time was at hand.

Turning away from the darkness outside, Michael went back into Clarey’s house.

The old woman’s eyes opened. It was fully dark now, and she lifted herself out of her chair, feeling once more the stiffness of her years. With trembling fingers she struck a match and lit the wick of the oil lamp on the table. A soft glow of light diffused the darkness of the room, and Jonas Cox, dozing on the sofa next to Kelly Anderson, stirred at the sudden light. Clarey went to the stove, opening the door to poke at the embers glowing within, and added a couple of sticks of wood from the pile on the floor next to the stove, then put a kettle of water on the burner. As the water heated, and she added coffee grounds to the kettle, she turned to the three teenagers, who were watching her uncertainly.

Kelly still sat on the sofa, her face pale even in the warm lamplight, her eyes expressionless.

Next to her was Jonas Cox, fully awake new, his body as tense as a ferret’s, ready to dart away at the first hint of danger.

Michael was near the door, and as Clarey’s ancient eyes fixed on him, she could see the difference in him, the change that had taken place inside him when he’d come to her, and since then, during the long hours of her summoning of the Circle.

“They be comin’ now,” she said, knowing he would understand her words. “The children be comin’. They be nearby.”

She went back to the stove and poured the steaming brew from the kettle into four cups, handing one of them to each of the children. As if they knew that the night ahead might be long, they drained the thick mugs of the bitter liquid and felt its heat spread through their bodies.

At last, when the kettle on the stove was empty, Clarey turned the lamp so that the wick burned low, leaving nothing more than a faint glow to soften the shadows in the corners of the room.

“It be time,” she said.

She went out to the porch, then waited while first Kelly and then Jonas Cox climbed into the waiting boat. Finally Michael helped her down the ladder, and she carefully seated herself in the small skiff.

As Jonas Cox dipped the oars into the water, Michael cast loose the line and stepped into the boat. It drifted out into the quiet lagoon.

The moon began to rise as the skiff moved slowly across the water, disappearing at last into the twisting channels, joining the flotilla that was already silently converging on the small island on which stood an altar in the center of a clearing.

• • •

Clarey Lambert watched the candles on the altar. They burned bright, their flames steady in the stillness of the night. She was alone now, the Circle of children departed, following Michael as he led them through the darkness.

She knew where they were going and what they were going to do, but she chose not to think about it. Rather, she preferred to sit by herself, close to the glowing embers of the bonfire, feeling its warmth penetrate the chill in her ancient bones in a way that the heat from the sun never could.

Tonight, she knew, was the night she would die.

But not yet.

Not until the last of the candles went out, not until the eyes of the dolls on the altar flooded with tears and she knew that all the children were whole again.

Only then would she let go of the life within her, the life she had clung to with a will that defied the vows of the Dark Man, who had sworn to live forever.

Clarey Lambert would outlive him, and laugh at him when she met him beyond the grave.

Tonight was a night she had long dreamed of, long prayed for. In her dreams she had always been there to watch the Dark Man die, watch him suffer as he had made the children suffer. But tonight, when at last the time had come, she found her hatred of him draining away, replaced by a pity she didn’t quite understand.

So she had stayed by herself on the island, content to tend the fire, certain in her own mind that when the time came for the Dark Man to die, she would know about it.

Just as she would know when each of the children regained his soul.

A faint sound drifted to Clarey’s ears, interrupting her reverie.

Barely audible at first, it slowly rose above the steady drone of the tiny night creatures until it filled the night with a scream of pent-up rage, a rising wall of sound that swept across the swamp, finally culminating in a shriek of anguish that shook Clarey’s body like a physical blow.

The end, Clarey knew, was finally beginning.